Hulleye Comes By!

“Most terrorists are Muslims” said Israeli Consul General Ya’acov Brosh at an evening of dialogue for Muslim-Jewish understanding. Here is a story from the Toronto Star about the resulting controversy. The story details the efforts of our friend Tarek Fateh of the Muslim Canadian Congress to address this form of racism.

Kudos to the Star for giving this some coverage. Most of time this kind of story never makes it to the news. One wonders what the tone of the story, and the resulting controversy, would have been like if a Muslim “diplomat” had told a similar lie about the Jewish people; that most wars are planned by Jews, or most of the top financial criminals are Jewish.

Here are a few things that we would have like to see discussed in such news stories:
• We would be interested to learn the reaction of organizers and sponsors of the event to this outrage, particularly Akbar Ahmed and the Daniel Pearl Foundation.
• The wisdom of inviting politicians and government functionaries to address such events. Has the Pearl Foundation been inviting Iranian diplomats and Hizbollah representatives to address their inter-faith events?
• Maybe a little discussion of how the definition of “terrorism” is very carefully crafted to include Muslims and exclude others. Iran, for example is a supporter of terrorism of its actions in Lebanon but Israel is not.
• In spite of the faulty definition, the government agencies that track terrorism list most of the global instances out side the Islamic world, in places like Central America.
• Maybe a few examples of similar anti-Semitic remarks and their resulting fall out.

courtesy MWU!

saj shirazi - cuz he was kind enough to link back to me and leave me a comment. =)

faisal qureshi - old mensan buddy who does some fabulous photography

watercolor - because there should be a u in colour, i’m gonna link it with a u. and nietzsche quotes rock. (the poetry is nice too)

canadian conservative MP monte solberg could well be the first person to blog directly from the floor of the canadian house of commons. he did so, via blackberry, last night.” many, who’d a thunk it — a tory breaking new blogging ground.

http://www.montesolberg.com/2005/05/voting.htm

Voting

I hope this posts. Am blogging from my blackberry in the House where I have just voted for our non-confidence motion. The Libs are trying hard to play this down. They have two cabinet ministers out, Efford and Cotler. We’ll win, but they’ll claim it’s non confidence.

Pretty unhappy campers over there! They can’t believe that their iron-grip on power and pocketnooks might be loosed. Kilgour just voted with the Libs. Hmmm. 153 to 150. We win!
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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

courtesy boing boing

you know what, i’m sick of hearing about politics. ndp, layton, harper, martin, liberals, tories, conservatives, green party, right, left, backbiting, votes, electoral processes, democracy, confidence, non-confidence, democrats, repubs, bush, sunni, shia, rice, blair. makes my head spin. i was never a big fan of politicians and politics and never held much faith in the democratic system. maybe the democratic parties of pakistan are to blame for that. you know how they’ve done such a remarkable job through my lifetime and all that anyway. i mean what the heck was all that anti-war sentiment all about, when two of the biggest supporters of the iraq war get re-elected for a second and third time respectively after they have been caught lying through their teeth repeatedly. all of a sudden, lately castro’s lectures are making a lot more sense and capitalism is just going in the dumps. all people can ever think about is how to make profit. go watch the corporation if you don’t know what i’m talking about. hey you idiots, you’ve already profited enough, go and help others out across the globe now. go read zmag where people like chomsky and albert can enlighten you.

oh and about those non-confidence votes, that’s exactly how emperor palpatine got voted into the senate and that just shot the galaxy to bits. you really don’t want that happening around here, now do you?

anyway my point is, i’m tired of this damned sponsorship scandal. get over it already. martin is paying for what chretien ended up doing. that just blows. i like both of them, martin and chretien.

this is what the star had to say today:

The all-out power struggle in the House of Commons appears almost certain to give way to an election campaign within the next week.After the Conservative and Bloc Québécois prevailed over the Liberals and their NDP allies in a momentous but disputed vote last night, the Tories threatened to ratchet up their efforts to disrupt Prime Minister Paul Martin’s minority, possibly with new dramatic tactics as early as today. “Mr. Martin’s behaviour has gone from dithering, to desperate and now to dangerous,” said Conservative Leader Stephen Harper, who said the Prime Minister’s response to the key vote may be unconstitutional. “This is a very serious situation. Let me assure you that we will take additional steps to deal with this situation.”In an electric, high-stakes atmosphere last night, the Conservatives and Bloc mustered 153 votes in favour of a motion instructing a parliamentary committee to recommend that the government resign. The Liberals, supported by the New Democrats and two independent MPs, tallied 150 opposing votes.Martin insisted that last night’s showdown was on a procedural motion that did not amount to an expression of non-confidence that would force the minority government to resign and launch an election campaign.

all that just sounds gay. i mean this is canada we’re talking about here. where the culture is how not to be american and where everyone eats tim horton’s and keeps answering questions from foreigners about how we don’t live in igloos and where our army consists of two lesbians and a pistol. oh well, as long as we stand on guard for thee, and salute big brother down south once in a while, that makes us canadian enough i suppose. here’s how to be a canadian, even if you already are one. live and let live.