Vital Perspective

Going after the Buddhists

Richard Gere won't like this:

"Five people were shot dead and another person was injured in attacks by suspected Islamic militants in Thailand's insurgency-torn southern provinces, according to police.

A 33-year-old Muslim was gunned down in a drive-by shooting late Sunday as he rode a motorcycle to his home in Yala, one of three Muslim-majority provinces bordering Malaysia, police said. [ed- guess they thought he was a Buddhist]

In neighbouring Pattani province, a 46-year-old Buddhist man was also killed in a drive-by shooting late Sunday.

Meanwhile, two Buddhist couples were shot after insurgents opened fire on a home in Songkhla province, near Yala. Three people were killed, and the fourth was seriously injured, police said."

Well, when you're an Islamist that has 72 virgins waiting for you as a reward for committing murder, the beaches of Phuket just lose their appeal.

Su-Shi Watch: Pakistan

Lots of murder and mayhem in Pakistan, where Sunnis are taking advantage of the crowds at the rather bloody Shiite religious festival of Ashoura to blow people up in various ways:

"Two rockets hit a Shiite Muslim mosque on Monday in the northwestern Pakistan city of Bannu, wounding 11 people, two seriously [...] Anti-government Islamic militants have fired rockets at military and government installations in Bannu in the past, but the targeting of the mosque suggests a sectarian motive. In the past three days, at least two suicide bombers in northwestern Pakistan have detonated explosives near Shiite gatherings for Ashoura. No group has claimed responsibility, but Sunni Muslim extremists are suspected."

You think?

Also this:

"At least thirteen people, including two senior police officials were killed and another sixty sustained injuries in suicide attack in Peshawar, capital of the Northwestern Frontier Province (NWFP), tonight.

Provincial law minister Malik Zafar Azam confirmed 13 fatalities in the attack that took place almost an hour ahead of the start of a Shiite mourning process in Dhaki Dalgaran Bazar of densely populated Qissa Khuwani area.

He said that majority of those killed and injured in the blast were police and law enforcement officials, who were deployed in the area to provide security cover to the mourning procession [...]

''Local authorities found leather jacket and body parts including legs of the suspected suicide bomber from site of the attack, which have been sent to a laboratory for DNA test,'' officials said." [...]

This is the second act of terror since yesterday. A suicide attack near parking area of Marriott hotel in Islamabad had killed both the bomber and a security guard."

Su-Shi Watch: calling for reenforcements

Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qarahawi would like the Kurds to join in the melee on the side of the so-called opressed Sunnis of Iraq.  Yeah, because the Sunni dominated dictatorship of Saddam Hussein just treated the Kurds oh so well. Sheikh Yousuf must have clean forgotten about Halabja.

"I call upon our Kurdish brothers, I call upon Jalal Al-Talabani, Mas'oud Al-Barazani, and the Islamic and national Kurdish leaders... I call upon them to fulfill their duty – first of all, through mediation. They should mediate between the two sides. They constitute an
influential force. They hold the posts of president and foreign minister, and
they have significant power. They should mediate. "If two parties of believers
fight one another, make peace between them. And if one party acts unjustly
towards the other, fight the one acting unjustly, until it complies with
Allah's command." This is Allah's decree to the nation. The Kurds are now
required to take this stand. If their mediation is rejected, they must fight
the party that acts unjustly. In my opinion, the Sunnis will not reject this
mediation, because they are the oppressed ones. They are the ones being
attacked. They are the ones being expelled from their homes. They are the ones
whose mosques are being plundered. They are the ones who are being kidnapped
from their homes. They are the ones whose decapitated heads are rolling in the
streets. They are the ones who are severely tortured before being killed. They
are the ones who suffer these tragedies. If the Shiite brothers reject [the
mediation], the Kurds are required to support the oppressed."

Sheikh Yousuf also conveniently appears to have forgotten who started the bloodbath in Iraq. A brief glimpse at news archives might serve to remind him that the Shi'a swallowed quite a bit of Sunni murder and mayhem before finally having enough and hitting back. MEMRI link also contains video.

That explains it

Via Imshin, we have the following fascinating perspective regarding the Palestinian propensity to blow themselves up along with other people in the Asia Times:

It is repulsive to think that a people of several millions, honeycombed with representatives of international organizations, the virtual stepchild of the United Nations, appears doomed to reduce its national fever by letting blood. The 700,000 refugees of 1948, hothoused by the UN relief agencies, prevented from emigrating by other Arab regimes, have turned into a people, but a test-tube nation incapable of independent national life: four destitute millions of third-generation refugees in the small and barren territories of Gaza, Judea and Samaria, which cannot support a fraction of that number.

The project of a Palestinian economy based on tourism and light manufacturing is a delusion in the globalized economy of Chinese-dominated trade in manufactures. The subsistence-farming fellahin should have left their land for economic reasons, like the Okies during the 1920s and 1930s, and dispersed into cities, like a hundred other rural populations of the so-called developing world. Kept hostage for political reasons, they cannot stay, and they cannot leave. They have chosen instead to fight, and if need be to die.

The Palestinians cannot hope to earn their keep in peacetime; their only hope is to keep the region in perpetual tension, the better to blackmail the West and the Arab Persian Gulf states for subsidies. Voting for Hamas, in other words, was a rational choice on strictly economic grounds. Economics was an afterthought, though. Without a viable alternative, the Palestinians might as well choose the leadership that best flatters their national feeling. Now this balancing act has broken down, largely because Iran has disrupted the fragile equilibrium among Palestinian factions. By turning to Tehran for funding, Hamas has made itself an outlaw, and the West as well as Saudi Arabia has no alternative but to support violent means to reduce a democratically chosen majority party.

Article also has an interesting perspective on Carter.

New Middle East

We mentioned before that nuclear race in the Middle East has begun with more Arab countries declaring their intensions to develop nuclear power (for "peaceful purposes" of course)

The countries involved were named by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as Algeria, Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Tunisia and the UAE have also shown interest. Now King Abdullah of Jordan said he too wants to develop a "peaceful nuclear program". Here is what he said to Ha'aretz:

"The rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, 'we'd like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,' after this summer, everybody's going for nuclear programs.

Su-shi Watch: the business of Su-Shi war

This statement by an Iraqi former Republican Guard commando named Rami tells you everything you need to know about the current situation in Iraq:

"I used to attack the Americans when that was the jihad. Now there is no jihad. Go around and see in Adhamiya [the notorious Sunni insurgent area] - all the commanders are sitting sipping coffee; it's only the young kids that are fighting now, and they are not fighting Americans any more, they are just killing Shia. There are kids carrying two guns each and they roam the streets looking for their prey. They will kill for anything, for a gun, for a car and all can be dressed up as jihad."

Another one by a Sunni called Abu Omar: "Its not a good time to be a Sunni in Baghdad." He had been on the Americans' wanted list for three years but I had never seen him so anxious; he had trimmed his beard in the close-cropped Shia style and kept looking towards the door. His brother had been kidnapped a few days before, he told me, and he believed he was next on a Shia militia's list. He had fled his home in the north of the city and was staying with relatives in a Sunni stronghold in west Baghdad.

He said: "I am trying to talk to the Americans. I want to give them assurances that no one will attack them in our area if they stop the Shia militias from coming." [...] The Americans are trying to talk to us Sunnis and we need to show them that we can do politics. We need to use the Americans to fight the Shia."

An Iraqi Sunni, Abu Aisha, explains the Su-Shi business: "Every time they [Sunnis] arrest a Shia, we take their car, we sell it and use the money to fund the fighters, and jihad,"  The mosque sheik or the local commander collects the money and it is distributed among the fighters; some get fixed salaries, others are paid by "operations", and the money left is used for ammunition.

"It has become a business, they give you money to kill Shia, we take their houses and sell their cars," said Rami. "The Shia are doing the same. Last week on the main highway in our area, they killed a Shia army officer. He had a brand new Toyota sedan. The idiots burned the car. I offered them $40,000 for it, they said no. Imagine how many jihads they could have done with 40k."

Iran increases voting age from 15 to 18

Iran's latest decision to increase voting age from 15 to 18 tells us that Ahmadinejad's biggest fear is not the U.S. but his own restive youth.

Nearly three quarters of Iran's population is under the age of 30 but these youngsters make an unhappy lot. The rising generation of Iranian youth is more democratic, more liberal, more secular and more positively disposed toward the West than ever before. The future offered by the regime is bleak. The education system is largely inadequate or inappropriate to the modern age; unemployment is high, even before the next large cohort enters the job market; the economy is floundering.

By barring from voting almost 5 million Iranians between the ages of 15 and 18, many of them cast their ballot against him in local elections last month, causing him a humiliating defeat, Ahmadinejad hopes to fare better in the next legislative elections in February 2008, and the presidential ones in 2009. But be sure that when this youth reaches the new voting age they will not like Mr. Ahamadinejad and his ilk more than they do now. 

Aussie jihad

Australians are exceptionally nice people, which is perhaps why they continue to tolerate the offensive remarks of their controversial mufti Sheik Taj Aldin Alhilali. Yes, he is the one that last year likened immodestly-dressed women to uncovered meat. Now he outdid himself saying that Australian Muslims are more entitled to the country than those with a convict heritage.  "White Australians arrived in the country shackled as convicts.[..] We (Muslims) came as free people. We bought our own tickets. We are entitled to Australia more than they are," he said. Interestngly, it seems that more and more of Australia's Muslims who are "entitled to Australia" end up behind bars and not for petty theft.  Here are few recent examples:

Taha Abdul Rahman, 28, was arrested at a house in Sydney and charged with 17 offences related to the receipt, supply and possession of weapons among them rocket launchers stolen from the Australian Defense Force.

Mohammad Ali Elomar bought five stolen army rocket launchers and said he would use them to blow up a nuclear reactor and the Parliament House.

Adnan Darwiche,an associate of Elomar, was last year jailed for life for double murder.

The Sheik's diatribe against his adopting country continues: "white Australians "are the biggest liars";  the outrage over the controversial meat sermon was "a calculated conspiracy in order to bring the Islamic community to its knees". His last complaint which came after a Sydney court ruled a harsh sentence against a Muslim "entitled to Australia" gang rapist boggles the mind: "Australian law guarantees freedoms up to a crazy level." ooh, sorry dear Sheik for the extra dose of Aussie freedom. It indeed intoxicates the mind. How about a long vacation back home in the Middle East where the meat is always covered and where people like you rot in jail.

Are you sick of your wife?

If you are suffering from marital boredom, Saleh Al-Saieri of Saudi Arabia, who has married 58 women in 50 years, fathering 36 children, has got a solution for you:

"As soon as Al-Saieri gets the itch to marry again, he draws lots between the current four wives to choose which one will be divorced."

Not only is Mr. Al-Saieri an equal opportunity divorcer, he applies the same principles of fairness and non-discrimination when it comes to his choice of bride:

"I married university graduates and illiterate women. The oldest wife I am married to is 40 and the youngest is 13, who I married just one month ago. She lives in southern Saudi Arabia."

Mr. Al-Saieri knows his limits, intending to stop when he hits 60 wives (no pun intended.)

(Hat tip Sir Harry Morgan, commenting on an LGF thread quoting the story of two Saudi business partners in their 70s who have married their teenage daughters in order to strengthen business ties)

Su-Shi Watch: The natives are restless

To those who still believe that there is a snowball's chance in hell that Su-Shi Mania will come to an expeditious resolution, you may want to watch this, ahem, altercation on al Jazeera.  The beaten wife mentality of much of the Arab world is quite eloquently on display as well, with the following statement: "Saddam executed my own brother and many of my relatives. He executed the uncle of my children but the way he was executed proved Saddam was a brave man. He has truly become our martyr, and we will visit his grave like the graves of the righteous."

LGF also links to Su-Shi mayhem in Detroit.

UPDATE: We neglected to mention, the first clip features what must truly be one of the worst insults ever: "You Persian shoe" (you might miss it in the rapid Arabic, so here is the transcript.)  But do watch the video, you won't regret it.