Paul Sheehan on Sheik al-Hilali:

He has also done us all a favour by exposing the denialism favoured in academic, legal and media circles, and by some members of the NSW Government, that there is no problem reconciling community standards about the way women are treated and the attitudes of many Muslims living in this society.

After no fewer than eight gang-rape trials involving Muslim defendants, and hundreds of incidents in which women have been insulted as “sluts” and “whores” by Muslim men, the charade is over. We have a problem.

Have a read of Al-Hilali’s “sermon” here.

UPDATE: A more complete version.

Or you could skip straight to this sermon from the Skeik of Sheiks, the Iron Sheik himself. Similar bile content, but more comedy value.

I was on my way to work this morning and when I walked out of the tunnel between Central Station and Railway Square John Butler was just setting up for a short impromptu performance. He sat up as a busker, and people dropped coins in front of him, but there was a camera crew there also. He played a couple of songs on his acoustic and said at the end the money from “busking” was going to charity. I didn’t catch what they were recording this for. For a video clip or a TV program, I assume.

I recorded it on my phone camera, so the video quality is quite poor. The sound is ok though.

And a couple of photos:

In the commentary below The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens profiles the factional militant jostling under way in the Gaza strip – otherwise known as Beelzebub’s Moshpit of Death.

My summary: Iran and Syria are rocking the crowd with their crazy sound, while Security Egypt is nominally holding up the “no stage diving” sign and playing door bitch – they are not exactly fans of the band and are partial to taking anyone that forgets who’s boss around here out the back for a reminder. The Israelis, who thought they owned the place, turned up to the old haunt to find that its not what it used to be and fuller than ever of gangsters that like to play dirty. Not to mention the aweful music.
Pledge your allegiance, here comes the turf war – and someone (well, the band, actually) smuggled the crack in in their underpants (and who knows what the security are selling on the side?). The next track is a screamer, broken necks are inevitable.

(via Winds of Change)

Three Ways to War in Gaza
Who’ll fight–and who’ll manage to stay out?

[..]Last week, Egyptian police in the Sinai intercepted a shipment of 200 crates of guns and ammunition headed for the town of Rafah, which straddles the seven-mile Egyptian-Palestinian border. Also last week, the Israeli army (IDF) discovered 13 smuggling tunnels running under the border in addition to the 12 discovered since June. Israeli intelligence estimates that in the past year at least 19 tons of explosives have been smuggled through these tunnels into Gaza, plus some 15,000 Kalashnikov rifles, 1,000 RPGs, and quantities of Katyusha rockets, Strella antiaircraft missiles and Russian-made Kornet and Metis antitank missiles.

All this is in addition to an indigenous Gazan military industry that produced the hundreds of short-range Kassam rockets that have rained continuously on southern Israel for two years. And it explains why Israeli military planners feel they need to deal Gaza a punishing blow sooner rather than later, when the Palestinians might be in a position to bloody Israel the way Hezbollah did last summer. “We are going to make a massive ground operation in Gaza,” warns Yuval Steinitz, until recently chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, in a recent interview. Underlying the remark is the sense that the IDF will not allow itself to be surprised again by events, much less humiliated twice by ostensibly weaker foes.

[..] In public, the Egyptians generally neither acknowledge nor deny that they are letting the smuggling happen: Acknowledgment risks alienating the U.S. while denial risks enraging their own public opinion. In private, however, Egyptians admit that they condone and perhaps even participate in the smuggling, but only to arm and strengthen Fatah. The arms to Hamas are being shipped, supposedly against Egypt’s wishes, from Iran via Syria and Hezbollah.

Pamela Bone weighing in on the veil debate in The Australian (via Norman Geras):

The truth is that there is no feminist argument for the burka to be worn in Western countries. Yes, feminists in the 1970s fought for the right not to be mere sex objects (how dated that term sounds now!). But they also fought very hard to overturn the view, held by the courts, media and society, that it was women’s responsibility to protect themselves from rape: the view, which is a long way from having disappeared completely, that a woman who dresses or behaves in a certain way is “asking for it”.

You do not liberate yourself by hiding your face; indeed, women who wear the burka are, whether consciously or not, inviting men to fantasise about them, to imagine that underneath the burka there is something beautiful and mysterious. You liberate yourself by persuading men that they are responsible for controlling their own sexual desires. There are exceptions, of course, but most men are remarkably amenable to this suggestion and manage to control themselves fairly well even when confronted by a woman wearing very high heels.

When women’s faces are concealed but men’s faces are not, the implication is that only men are capable of sexual desire. Either that or – if you accept that having a sexual thought is sinful – it implies it doesn’t matter if women have such thoughts because their religious piety is not as important as men’s. These are hardly ideas that fit with women’s liberation.

What astounds me about the veil debate is that the Western world is having one at all.

Lets get one thing straight. Anyone who believes that God/Allah/the Great Cosmic Noodle wants women to walk around in a sack is a fucking idiot. Thats all thats needs to be said. End of story. Sayonara. Wa Alaykum As-Salam.

Speaking of fucking idiots. There is one whose name the above argument seems to have all over it: Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali.

UPDATE: Richard Chesnoff has another nominee:

If I could, I would grab hold of Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s well-tailored lapels, shake him and shout: “Idiot! Don’t you understand what you’re doing to your own people?”

I call a human rights violation.

PC David Copperfield (no, thats not really his name), Britain’s recent celebrity cop, and author of the book “Wasting Police Time: The Crazy World of the War on Crime” on “the eternal search for youths”:

Whenever we attempt to intercept juveniles it’s always helpful to know who we’re looking for. Unfortunately, the descriptions given by the public are almost always the same: hooded top, baseball cap, tracksuit bottoms and white trainers. As soon as we arrive, if we’re lucky enough to get there quickly, the crowd run off in all directions, leaving only the fatties and the girls who “don’t know nuffink” to answer our questions.

Sounds like the British public has been drinking the same water as the Sydney Morning Herald.

His book don’t sound like no fatty though:

‘WASTING POLICE TIME’ is his hilarious but shocking picture of life in a modern British town, where teenage yobs terrorise the elderly, drunken couples brawl in front of their children and drug-addicted burglars and muggers roam free. PC Copperfield reveals how crime is spiralling while millions of pounds in tax is frittered away, and reveals a force which, crushed under mad bureaucracy, is left desperately fiddling the figures.

His reasons for writing it:

to give people “an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence our police are plumbing, how thousands of officers are struggling to keep their heads above a sea of paperwork while their money is wasted and the crime books are cooked in ways that would make Gordon Ramsay proud”.

His blog is well worth checking out too:

The police blog of “PC David Copperfield” is an anonymously written internet diary detailing the life of a real officer based in a rundown but unidentified neighbourhood somewhere north of Birmingham.

It began in April 2004 with the entry “I hope to give you an idea of the depths of sheer incompetence the British police can plumb”, and PC Copperfield has not let his audience down. The site has since attracted 500,000 readers and the diary has been made into a book.

And you can read an extract from his book here. Humble common sense abounds. And an anecdote for every occassion. Read it, its sure to be therapeutic.

Ah, what the hey (see, no swearing, occifer!), here’s one more quote from the Cuntstable’s blog:

We’ve discussed the problems of inner city deprivation before: South Central LA, Tower Hamlets or the “banlieus” of Paris have all seared themselves upon our collective consciousness.

This week though, it’s the turn of Brackley, Northants to take centre stage. For those of you not familiar with the area, things in Brackley are now so bad, they’ve had to come up with an operation; it’s called “Operation Viking”. So that officers can familiarise themselves with the concept of “Viking”, Northants Police have provided a politically-correct definition of a viking: “Courageous Explorer, Determined Pathfinder”. For the rest of us though, the word Viking means “Rapist in a novelty hat.”

British journalist and author of Londonistan Melanie Phillips gauges the depths of Britain’s evolving collective derangement (hat tip Ayaan Hirsi Ali):

Everyone knows that Europe is a continent stuffed with craven, terror-appeasing fromages who loathe America. Britain, by contrast, led by the lion-hearted Tony Blair, is full of stalwarts who stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the defense of the West. Right?

Wrong. Fury at Prime Minister Blair for being President Bush’s “poodle” has reached such a pitch that the most successful Labor prime minister in memory is being forced out of office because of his support for U.S. policy in Iraq and Israel. Labor’s members of Parliament say his refusal to break with America by calling for an earlier cease-fire in Lebanon was the last straw. The disturbing fact is that Britain is consumed by a rampant anti-Americanism and an allied hostility toward Israel, which are driving public debate into irrationality, prejudice and appeasement.

In a Populus poll last month in The Times of London, 62% said the government should change its policy by distancing itself from the United States, being more critical of Israel and declaring a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq. An August YouGov poll in The Spectator magazine revealed that while 53% wanted a tougher anti-terrorism policy, 45% wanted to be allied more closely with the European Union than with America. Only 14% supported closer U.S. ties.

[..]But British animosity toward the U.K.’s most important and historic ally is wider and deeper. Partly it derives from simple snobbery, the long-standing British belief that Americans are vulgar upstarts who lack the gravitas that Britain has accrued from a thousand years of history.

Probe further, however, and you discover anguish at the progressive junking of that history. Schools, for example, no longer teach the history or values of the British nation on the grounds that national identity based on a majority culture is viewed as “racist.” Instead, they promote multiculturalism, the doctrine that minority value must have equal status to those of the majority. Loss of confidence in Britain’s role in the world has demoralized its governing class so badly that it has come to believe that the nation state is the principal source of all ills from prejudice to war, and that legitimacy resides instead in supranational institutions.

[..]The dismaying truth is that, even after the suicide bombings in London, America’s defense of the free world against Islamic terror is widely viewed in Britain as the cause of that terror. The paranoid bigotry that drives the jihad — that the United States and its Jewish puppet masters make up a giant conspiracy of evil — is being increasingly echoed within Britain’s non-Muslim population.

The very idea that weakening the alliance with the United States would be in Britain’s interests is madness. But in a country that has lost its way, rationality is a commodity in short supply.

To start with here’s Daniel Pipes laying out the reasons exactly why I do these opinion roundups every week. NY Sun, Oct 17th “Op-eds now more central in war than bullets“

With loyalties now in play, wars are decided more on the Op Ed pages and less on the battlefield. Good arguments, eloquent rhetoric, subtle spin-doctoring, and strong poll numbers count more than taking a hill or crossing a river. Solidarity, morale, loyalty, and understanding are the new steel, rubber, oil, and ammunition. Opinion leaders are the new flag and general officers. Therefore, as I wrote in August, Western governments “need to see public relations as part of their strategy.”
Even in a case like the Iranian regime’s acquisition of atomic weaponry, Western public opinion is the key, not its arsenal. If united, Europeans and Americans will likely dissuade Iranians from going ahead with nuclear weapons. If disunited, Iranians will be emboldened to plunge ahead.
[..] Non-Western strategists recognize the primacy of politics and focus on it. A string of triumphs – Algeria in 1962, Vietnam in 1975, and Afghanistan in 1989 – all relied on eroding political will. Al-Qaeda’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, codified this idea in a letter in July 2005, observing that more than half of the Islamists’ battle “is taking place in the battlefield of the media.”

Clifford D. May in the National Review on a similar theme, Oct 20th: “A Different War”

Has there ever before been a war in which journalists have given such a gift to their country’s enemies?

But this war is different. In this war, bullets and bombs are used at least as much to send messages as to kill and maim. And the media are for manipulating. One side makes full use of these changes. American political leaders seem not yet to fully comprehend what they are up against; much less have they begun to respond effectively

This editorial was published in the NY Times on Monday 17th of October, in the subscription only section. It was reproduced in full in Lebanon’s Daily Star a couple of days later, no doubt providing much entertainment to the anti-Western brigade, and much encouragement to the Islamists. It brings up an extremely important point. Know your enemy. (via Douglas Farah at the Counterterrorism Blog)
Jeff Stein: “Can Washington’s counter-terror officials tell a Sunni from a Shiite?”

For the past several months, I’ve been wrapping up lengthy interviews with Washington counterterrorism officials with a fundamental question: “Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?”
A “gotcha” question? Perhaps. But if knowing your enemy is the most basic rule of war, I don’t think it’s out of bounds. And as I quickly explain to my subjects, I’m not looking for theological explanations, just the basics: Who’s on what side today, and what does each want?
[.. ]But so far, most American officials I’ve interviewed don’t have a clue. That includes not just intelligence and law enforcement officials, but also members of Congress who have important roles overseeing our spy agencies. How can they do their jobs without knowing the basics?

Read it all. Unbelievable.

Herbert I. London and Robert McMarthy originally in the Washington Post, Oct 20: “In Defence of Liberty”

It is a sad reality that radicalism is actually mainstream in much of the Islamic world. This is due primarily to the refusal of many Muslims not just Muslim terrorists but millions of Muslims to accept the cardinal principles of enlightened liberty and democracy.

One need not merely infer this. Explicit proof is abundant in both Sunni and Shi’ite Islam. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s highest Shi’ite authority and recipient of high praise by administration officials maintains that non-Muslims should be considered in the same category as “urine, feces, semen, dead bodies, blood, dogs, pigs, alcoholic liquors,” and “the sweat of an animal who persistently eats [unclean things].” Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, the highest Sunni authority, instructs that Jews are “enemies of Allah [and] descendants of apes and pigs,” views he expressly attributes to the Koran.

This dehumanizing hatred has been turned against our nation. Mustafa Zakri, a member of parliament in Egypt (the recipient of $2 billion a year in U.S. largess), has asserted that “America is the head of the serpent, and the greatest enemy, which we must confront.” In Yemen, a judge recently dismissed charges against 19 terrorists who joined with al Qaeda in fighting U.S. forces in Iraq, reasoning that Islamic law sanctions jihad against occupiers of Muslim lands.

In newly liberated Afghanistan, the government attempted to put a man to death for the “crime” of converting from Islam to another religion, a capital offense under Islamic law. In Iraq, homosexuals are executed in Shi’ite-controlled areas consistent with a fatwa from the Ayatollah al-Sistani.

Meanwhile, Iran, nearing a confrontation with the West over its nuclear program, has developed a missile called “Zelzad 1.” Its namesake is a Koranic verse that tells of a conflagration which precipitates Judgment Day. The missile is emblazoned with the slogan: “We will trample America under our feet. Death to America.”

Michael Freund in the Jerusalem Post, Oct 18: “Right On: The coming Middle East war”

he warning signs are everywhere, yet no one wishes to see them. Israel’s foes are gearing up for war, and it’s time that we opened our eyes to the danger that confronts us.
The conflict may be just weeks or even months away, or perhaps a bit longer. How it will start is anyone’s guess, but make no mistake, a major outbreak of hostilities is almost certainly around the corner.
If this sounds like scare-mongering or even an advanced case of paranoia to you, just take a glance at the newspapers from the past few weeks. If you read them with a discerning eye, you will see exactly what I mean.
For whichever direction one chooses to look, be it north, south or east of us, trouble – major trouble – is brewing.

Patience Wheatcroft in the Telegraph, Sun, Oct 22nd: “The Government has a secret weapon: Islamic podcasts” (via Right Truth)

The Government is right to be seeking ways of countering the fiery propaganda of the radical Islamists who have found such a receptive audience in Britain. The most obvious would have been to have arrested them rather than handing over generous state benefits to enable them to continue their efforts. Instead, Abu Hamza was able to build up a property investment business on the foundations of our national cowardice.
Only now that the dire results of that cowardice are apparent in the number of plots fomenting in our midst have ministers decided to sound a bit braver. Querying the desirability of the niqab was a start. Supporting the view that a teacher cannot do the job properly if fully veiled is nothing more than common sense, but just weeks ago, a craven administration might not have judged it politically correct to say so.
Aishah Azmi may be more interested in her modesty than the aims of al-Qaeda but the tone of in which she denounced her critics suggests that it will need more than a podcast or two to counter the propaganda of the fundamentalist clerics.

Diana West in the Washington Times, Oct 20: “A vote for civil war”

Even as we pursue “security,” “stabilizing” the Shi’ite-dominated, Shariah-guided Iraqi government—and, thus, creating a natural Iranian (Shi’ite) ally — makes zero strategic sense. But, see here, say supporters of the president’s Iraq policy: If we don’t secure and stabilize the Shi’ite-dominated, Shariah-guided government in Iraq, that same government falls, America suffers defeat in jihadist eyes, and Shi’ite-Sunni war breaks out in full force.

Well, which scenario is better for the U.S. of A? I vote for civil war. It seems obvious when Shi’ite and Sunni jihadis — and their Islamic world sponsors — are busy slaughtering one another, they have much less time to plan their next attack on Americans, in the region or stateside. This isn’t to say there’s no role for American forces in the Middle East. But that role may be, as a Marine captain home from Afghanistan and Iraq put it to me, far from booby-trapped Iraqi cities, perhaps in Kurdistan, where they can keep a lid on Iraq while preparing for the next stage of the war on jihad, against Iran and Syria — assuming there is a next stage.

Such a redeployment is no defeat. But it would represent a drastic change in war aims and in the Bush belief in the magical properties of Western-style liberty for truly all. The fact is, democratizing Islamic cultures into secular wonders of ecumenical productivity just ain’t going to happen. The sooner we acknowledge this, the better for us. And above all, this war should be, as they say in our therapeutic culture, all about us.

Aslam Abdullah in the Jerusalem Post, Oct 21: “We’re Muslim-Americans – kill us, too”

The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, recently issued a decree to its supporters: Kill at least one American in the next two weeks “using a sniper rifle, explosive or whatever the battle may require.”

Well, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, I am an American too. Count me as the one of those you have asked your supporters to kill.

I am not alone. There are thousands of Muslims with me in Las Vegas, and many more millions in America, who are proud Americans and who are ready to face your challenge. You hide in your caves and behind the faces of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq. You don’t show your faces and you have no guts to face Muslims. You thrive on the misery of thousands of Muslim youth and children who are victims of despotism, poverty and ignorance.

During the past two decades, you have brought nothing but shame and disaster to your religion and your world.

You said “not to drop your weapons,” not to let “your enemies rest until each one of you kills at least one American within a period that does not exceed 15 days.”

But I invite you to surrender, to seek forgiveness from God almighty for the senseless killing you and your supporters are involved in and repent for everything you have done.

John Lloyd in the Financial Times, Oct 20 (subscription only) “Growing gulf sets young Muslims at odds with society “

A profoundly unsettling movement is sweeping through the universities, colleges and even schools of the Muslim communities of Europe. There, a minority of young Muslims, mainly men, have embraced a form of faith-cum-militancy which puts them at odds both with their fellow citizens and their (usually older) co-religionists. Whichever group promulgates the radical nostrums they ingest – Hizb ut-Tahrir, which Tony Blair, UK prime minister, had proposed banning, before drawing back, is among the most active in calling for a global caliphate enforcing Sharia law – the result is to produce a cohort within which a significant number views the replete and largely godless societies of Europe with scorn.
They hate Marxism, but owe much to it. Writing in the New Statesman, Shiv Malik, who attended Hizb seminars, reported on gatherings of enthused, driven radicals of the kind who fuelled far left movements 20 years ago. He quotes a Hizb member, Hassan Mujtaba, as saying that “as a political party we wouldn’t engage in action that would divert us from our main aim, which is the establishment of the caliphate. We wouldn’t go around building a school or a mosque or setting up a drugs project. We would collate information, really closely observe what is going on in British society and then provide a template that would assist those people to go and establish an Islamic community.” As Ariel Cohen, a researcher at the US Heritage Foundation, writes: “This ideology poses a direct challenge to the western model of a secular, market-driven, tolerant, multicultural globalisation.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali in the LA Times, Oct 22: “Europe’s Immigration Quagmire”

The continent needs more realistic policies that recognize both immigration’s economic benefit and the dangers of Islamism.
IN AFRICA, we sometimes used animals to say things on sensitive issues to avoid discussing the messenger instead of the message. So I shall use the ostrich and the owl to sketch the two most important positions on immigration and pluralism in Europe.

[..]

In a worst-case scenario, the warnings of the owl will not be heeded. The optimism of the ostrich will be abandoned. The monopoly of force that is now exclusive to states will be challenged by armed subgroups. European societies will be divided along ethnic and religious lines. The education system will not succeed in grooming the youth to believe in a shared past, let alone a shared future.

The European states will find themselves limiting civil liberties. Europeans will come to accept the de facto implementation of Sharia law in certain neighborhoods and even cities. The exploitation of the weak, women and children will be commonplace. Those who can afford to emigrate will do so.

Instead of an ever-growing union in Europe, future generations may witness an ever-disintegrating one.

In a best-case scenario, Europeans will heed the caution of the owl without losing the liveliness of the ostrich. This approach will be translated into a three-dimensional, comprehensive policy.

First, controlled or planned immigration. [..]

Second, an intervention, sometimes proactive, in Europe’s neighboring states or in failed states with conditions that force people to migrate in large numbers. [..]

Finally, in a best-case scenario, the EU will implement an assimilation program guided by the lessons learned from our failed attempts at multiculturalism. [..]

Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times, Oct 22: “Fear of too many babies is hard to bear “

Last Tuesday morning, in a maternity ward somewhere in the United States, the 300 millionth American arrived. He or she got a marginally warmer welcome than Mark Foley turning up to hand out the prizes at junior high. One could have predicted the appalled editorials from European newspapers aghast at yet another addition to the swollen cohort of excess Americans consuming ever more of the planet’s dwindling resources. And, when Canada’s National Post announced “‘Frightening’ Surge Brings US To 300m People,” you can appreciate their terror: the millions of Democrats who declared they were moving north after Bush’s re-election must have placed incredible strain on Canada’s highways, schools, trauma counselors, etc.

[..]I, on the other hand, was feeling pretty chipper about the birth of the cute l’il quality-of-life degrader. The previous day, my new book was published. You’ll find it in all good bookstores — it’s propping up the slightly wonky rear left leg of the front table groaning under the weight of unsold copies of Peace Mom by Cindy Sheehan. Anyway, the book — mine, not Cindy’s — deals in part with the geopolitical implications of demography — i.e., birth rates. That’s an easy subject to get all dry and statistical about, so I gotta hand it to my publicist: arranging for the birth of the 300 millionth American is about as good a promotional tie-in as you could get and well worth the 75 bucks he bribed the guy at the Census Bureau. But, even if you haven’t got a book to plug, the arrival of Junior 300 Mil is something everyone should celebrate.

Praveen Swami in The Hindu, Oct 23: “The search for the puppet-masters”

EVEN AS Pakistan’s armed forces massed the formations that would spearhead the Kargil war, the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s overall military commander proclaimed the opening of a second front. “To set up mujahideen networks across India is our one target,” Zaki-ur-Rahman Lakhvi told The Nation on April 9, 1999. “We are preparing the Muslims of India,” he said, “and when they are ready, it will be the start of the disintegration of India.”
Six years after Lakhvi delivered this open threat, India is finally waking up to its seriousness. While a mass of evidence has emerged on the Lashkar role in the July 11 Mumbai serial bombings, Indian investigators continue to search for clear answers to the two most important questions. Just what strategic purpose was the bombing intended to serve? And is the regime of President Pervez Musharraf an enemy of the Lashkar’s jihad — or, in fact, its author?
[..]After 1989, and the Islamist triumph in Afghanistan, the Lashkar’s energies turned eastwards. From the outset, its objectives were clear. The Lashkar’s strategic goal, the scholar Yoginder Sikand has observed, was “to extend Muslim control over what is seen as having once been Muslim land, and, hence, to be brought back under Muslim domination.”

Robert D. Kaplan in the Atlantic, Oct 22: “We Can’t Just Withdraw”

Iraq may be closer to an explosion of genocide than we know.

Because no one is able to monopolize the use of force among either the Sunnis or Shiites, within each community various groups are in fierce competition over who can best defend it, which translates into who can murder more members of the other community. Even formal groupings like Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim’s Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army are aggregations of many smaller factions and death squads, whom their leaders don’t always control. Only when the political struggle within each sectarian community calms down can the civil war itself be ameliorated. Right now, there is no one on any side with the pivotal power to negotiate with the other.

An emerging school of thought says that the only real leverage we’re going to have is the threat of withdrawal, which would concentrate the minds of the various groups to seek modalities with each other for governing the country. That’s a bet, not a plan. You could also bet that any timetable for withdrawal will lead to a meltdown of the Iraq Army according to region and sect. Even if we promise that all of our military advisors will stay put, in addition to our air and special operations assets, no one in a culture of rumor and conspiracy theory might believe us.

Part 1 of this week’s weekend comment and opinion round up gathers together op-eds that remember the 1956 Hungarian revolution. The rest tomorrow.

Yesterday, October 23rd, marked 50 years since the Hungarian anti-Soviet uprising, savagely crushed by the Soviet military, who sent in 17 tank battalions to crush the rebellion, killing thousands, imprisoning thousands more, executing hundreds of leaders and causing 200,000 people to flee the country. The op-eds below commemorate the event (scroll down below photos).

In a somewhat bizarre twist to history the last 24 hours have produced scenes in Hungary that echo those events half a century ago. There are barricades in the streets and protesters clashed with police late into the night.Thousands of police were out facing molotov cocktails, bullzoding barricades, arresting rioters. Around 6pm last night about 100,000 demonstrators were gathered in the streets of Budapest, most of whom dispersed as night came, although around 10pm around half of them were still hanging around, many apparently inspired by the revolutionary spirit of the day. Although it would seem it does not take much to inspire some. Thousands moved on to the 1876 Hero’s Place to continue protesting and rioting. Similar protests where held in other cities and towns. A crowd of several hundred marched on the Hungarian Socialist Party’s main headquarters, while rioters burned their headquarters in the town of Szombathely.

Demonstrators first gathered for the commemoration of the 1956 uprising but soon merged in mass and spirit with the anti-governement protesters, who have been protesting on and off since the September 17th leaking of a tape of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany talking about being sick of lying to the people about the Hungarian economy. The hardcore amongst the protesters are right-wing nationalists and random soccer hooligans and their protests so far have only embarrrased the main opposition party, the nationalist centre-right Fidesz party. Neither are they likely to do the oppossition any favours this time round.

Tear gas grenades, water cannons and rubber bullets were used to disperse the crowds. Hundreds were injured in the process. At one point protesters hijacked a Red Army tank from an open air museum and drove it towards the riot police line. The driver was arrested without anyone being injured. I am sure the irony of driving a Soviet tank while rioting in an attempt to bring down a democratically elected government was lost on the idiot.

Stratfor.com reports on just how all this happened (subcription only):

The Hungarian government sought to celebrate the 50th anniversary with others, and its guest list reads like a veritable “Who’s Who” of the democratic world. Heads of government or state are in attendance from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Switzerland and Ukraine. High-ranking delegations are also present from all other major Western states, plus the European Commission and NATO. Given the lengthy VIP list, security in Kossuth Square — located in front of the parliament building — is understandably extraordinarily tight. Marry such security protocols with an excess of 100,000 protesters and you have a recipe for misunderstandings. Those misunderstandings have now devolved into violence.

Due to increased security measures prompted by the visiting VIPs, the police drove out the small crowd in front of parliament. The crowd was pushed to side streets and searched, and the police found items such as coal in socks and small amounts of gasoline. This small group — like the hoodlums who sparked violence Sept. 18 — was itching for a fight. The discovery alarmed the authorities and triggered fierce police actions, resulting in anger among those on the streets to commemorate the ‘56 revolution with a peaceful march. And one can imagine the reaction from those in the crowd primed for demonstrations. The police counterresponse was equally predictable.

In the Hungarian mind, the government now occupies the same position as Soviet troops did back in 1956. This has prompted farmers to threaten to use their equipment to block access to Budapest to inhibit the government’s ability to reinforce troops in the capital.

Here are some photos from the protests:

And here’s that tank:

Now to the op-eds:

Neil Brown in the Australian, Mon Oct 23: “Words not enough to roll back aggression”
The Hungarian uprising of 1956 holds important moral lessons for freedom-loving people in the modern age of terrorism

TODAY is an important day. Fifty years ago, on October 23, 1956, the Hungarian people took to the streets of Budapest in a desperate attempt to throw off the yoke of the Soviet Union. It was the beginning of the Hungarian uprising. Twelve days later it was all over. They had failed.

In the meantime, they – and we – learned an awful lot about Soviet treachery and Western weakness. We could do worse than remember all of this today and see what lessons we can learn for our era, which faces an equivalent challenge from terrorism.
[..]
What did all of this show, or what should it have shown?

First, it showed that mere words and protestations are utterly useless in the face of aggression and terror of any sort. In those few days of freedom, the Hungarians called on the UN for help. Wishful thinking! The Security Council had a go at it, but the Soviets exercised their veto. Then the General Assembly passed eight resolutions condemning the Soviet brutality and calling for its cessation, but it made no difference at all. The Soviets always knew they could withstand mere words, and they were right.

Second, it showed some disgraceful conduct from those who were supposed to support liberty. Even the secretary-general of NATO said the Hungarians had committed “collective suicide”.

Moreover, no Western force would be used to help Hungary: it was made very plain to the Soviet satellites that they would get the same amount of help as Hungary if they tried a similar venture. And it did no credit to those on my side of politics who argued that we should not delude the Hungarians and others into thinking they could ever regain their freedom.

Peter Keresztes in the New York Sun, Fri Oct 20: “Price of Freedom”

“According to the American legation in Budapest, the likelihood of Soviet intervention in Hungarian affairs has recently decreased. Moscow apparently has accepted a further gradual decline at least in its overt control over Hungary.”

That is how the Central Intelligence Agency sized up Hungary’s political situation in its weekly summary dated October 18,1956 — only five days before demonstrations against Soviet occupation sparked mobilization by the Red Army and the crushing of the Hungarian revolution two weeks later

Ralph R. Reiland, Pittsburg Live, Mon Oct 23rd: “Freedom: The unrelenting quest”

The first shots of the Hungarian revolution were fired 50 years ago on this day, Oct. 23, 1956.

An estimated 250,000 people had gathered in Budapest in front of the Parliament, protesting against foreign rule and totalitarianism and demanding the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Within days, millions of Hungarians were in the streets or actively supporting the revolt. They stormed their nation’s radio stations and put the forbidden music of Beethoven and Mozart on the air.

The Soviets responded by sending tanks

Peter Nadas in the Wall Street Journal, Mon Oct 23: “October 23, 1956.” The Hungarian Revolution: impotent, poignant, personal.

Slowly it was getting dark. They kept coming from Buda on Margit Bridge, along Balassi Bálint Street, coming on Falk Miksa Street and pouring out to the square. They stopped coming on Alkotmány Street; here the crowd solidified into a motionless mass, but they were still coming from the other side of the square, from Nádor Street and all along the embankment. By this time, traffic in the city had come to a virtual standstill. They demanded in unison that the star be turned off on top of the Parliament cupola. The entire square adopted the demand: “Turn off the star!”

Returning from school, I too spent the afternoon on the street; I was now part of the crowd standing on the square. The Soviet star had been installed on the top of the cupola only a few weeks before; they had done a really good job. The square was echoing the thundering rhythm of this cheerful demand but, it seemed, there was no one around to hear it: The Parliament building with its turrets and traceries loomed darkly, somberly and silently in the background. Perhaps there was some light up in the cupola hall. Perhaps they did hear it up there and thought it better to yield to the people’s will.

Yet they turned off the public lighting of the square instead. A roar of indignation rose from the crowd, and it was to be feared that people would fall upon the building to tear it apart with their bare hands. Fires were started immediately; they set newspapers and pamphlets ablaze and held them up high. Wildfire-like, the quickly dying lights spread in waves above the heads. The silence had a solemnity about it; the sheer beauty of the waves of fire enchanted everyone for a moment. It was probably at this point that I lost my sketching board and my T-square.

Kati Marton in the NY Times, Mon Oct 23rd: “The Shadow of a Smile”

THE first time I saw deep joy on my father’s face — the kind that comes from within and which is a child’s most reassuring signal from a parent — was on Oct. 23, 1956. It was at Bem Square, on the right bank of the Danube, where thousands of students, a sprinkling of workers and even some young soldiers still in uniform had spontaneously gathered to hear the students’ list of demands for reform by Hungary’s Communist government.

I was holding tight to his hand when a woman appeared on the balcony of the Foreign Ministry, which faces the square, and waved the Hungarian tricolor. The hated Soviet hammer and sickle had been cut from the center. Thus was the symbol of the Hungarian revolution (and so many others still to come) born. When someone in the growing crowd brazenly shouted, “Ruszki haza!” — “Russians go home” — the revolution had its slogan, as well.

Imre Salusinszky tells the story of his family’s escape from Hungary, when he was just 18 months old in the Australian, Sat Oct 21st: “Flight into the unknown”
The quoted sections are from his father’s unpublished memoir:

“Lily tried to hold up the baby to indicate our peaceful purposes and indeed without any harm we drove around the tanks through the streets of Gyor and got out of the town.”

Unfortunately, we soon were stopped by a tank commander and sent back to Gyor, where my parents learned that permits for travel to border areas could be obtained from a Russian army officer.

When the officer put it to my parents that they really wanted to escape, my mother demonstrated a presence of mind that became the stuff of family legend: “I never claimed to be a brave man,” my father writes, “and my heart sank to the lowest possible level. But not so with Lily. She jumped up and said: ‘How do you dare to even suppose such a thing? My husband is a known researcher with an excellent position. Why would we want to escape?”‘

The officer relented, and finally, writes my father, we drove on to the border town of Sopron, where he convinced some local farmers to lead us to a gap in the Austrian border:

“I was driving slowly after three of them running in front of the car. After some 100m we turned to the left on a track which after some 500m disappeared and I was driving in a field following the farmers. Suddenly the front wheels of the car sank into a ditch.

The Guardian’s upright Sunday appendage, The Observer reports on growing tensions in France – anger, resentment and frustration that could spill out into open generational warfare any day now:

They call them the ‘baby losers’, the lost generation, ’sacrificed’ for the pleasure and leisure of their parents. And now, led by an unlikely alliance of economists, sociologists, angry 30-something commentators and a few self-hating turncoats from the ranks of the ‘baby boomers’ themselves, they are striking back.
They claim to be aiming to halt a widening gap between generations in France. Their enemies say they are trying to rob those who have worked hard all their lives of the fruits of their labours. ‘Our children will hate us,’ admits Denis Jeambar, 58, one of France’s most senior journalists and one of the few ‘baby-boomers’ to break rank with his peers. ‘And they will be right because we will have left them an exhausted, used-up, slack society.’

Hey, at least they got the “self-hating” right. Back off, vicious back-striker!

Meanwhile, out there in the suburbs, another generation – the ‘youths’, who also have not worked all their lives and are keen for a little robbing of their own are striking forward (Yahoo, AP):

EPINAY-SUR-SEINE, France – On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized.

[..]On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.

Anyhow, back to the important stuff. The Observer explains why those aggressive 30-something granny-haters are seething and poised to strike back:

The problem is simple. While those in their sixties, such as President Jacques Chirac or actress Catherine Deneuve, enjoy a quality of life that is the envy of much of Europe, the generations born after them can expect no such privileges. According to Louis Chauvel, sociologist at the National Foundations for Political Science, for the first time in recent history French citizens between the age of 20 and 40 can expect a lower standard of living than the one before, largely because the previous generation have decided not to share. ‘Some talk of a war between the generations but we are not there yet,’ said Chauvel. ‘But the reality has been a massive pillaging of the resources of one generation by another.’

See, simple. Catherine Deneuve is not sharing. Phew, at least for all this talk of “war between generations”, we are not there yet.

Now this “massive pillaging of the resources of one generation by another”, that’s something that other unsettled generation, the “youths”, can certainly share in (London Times):

An average of 112 cars a day have been torched across France so far this year and there have been 15 attacks a day on police and emergency services. Nearly 3,000 police officers have been injured in clashes this year. Officers have been badly injured in four ambushes in the Paris outskirts since September. Some police talk of open war with youths who are bent on more than vandalism.

“The thing that has changed over the past month is that they now want to kill us,” said Bruno Beschizza, the leader of Synergie, a union to which 40 per cent of officers belong. Action Police, a hardline union, said: “We are in a civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists.”

War? Didn’t these guys read the Observer? We are not there yet.

Not to worry, the Observer has more details about that more pressing problem of those incorrigible 30-somethings. What radical Islamists?

The problem is most acute among the French middle-classes. Chauvel, born in 1967, quotes rafts of statistics: in 1973, only six per cent of recent university leavers were unemployed, now the rate is 25 to 30 per cent; salaries have stagnated for 20 years while property prices have doubled or trebled; though the overall proportion of French citizens suffering in poverty has not changed, where in the 1960s the poor were predominantly the old, now they are the young; in 1970, salaries for 50 year olds were only 15 per cent higher than those for workers aged 30, the gap now is 40 per cent.
A raft of recent books, talks, magazine articles and meetings may change that. An article last week in Telerama on the ‘war between generations’ provoked a huge response. The author, Weronika Zarachowicz, 38, was flooded with calls and emails thanking her for raising the issue. However Zarachowicz also received angry calls from ‘baby boomers’. ‘One even compared me to the radio stations in Rwanda that incited massacres,’ she told The Observer. ‘Apparently I was calling for anyone over 50 to be killed!’

Not anyone, just the police and firefighters. And gynecologists. Anyway, that explains officer Beschizza’s comment above. The ‘youths’ have been incited to kill by whining sociologists (Mullouis in French). Here’s one who must have read Zarachowicz’s article for sure:

FLAMES lick around a burning car on a tiny telephone screen. Omar, 17, a veteran of France’s suburban riots, replayed the sequence with pride. “It was great. We did lots of them and then we went out and torched more the next day.”

Omar, whose parents immigrated from Mali, was savouring memories of the revolt that erupted 12 months ago from his home, the Chêne Pointu estate in Clichy-sous-Bois, in the eastern outskirts of Paris. “We’re ready for it again. In fact it hasn’t stopped,” he added.

Not afraid to get their hands dirty the brave Observer reporters got out there amongst the volatile “lost generation” to find out whats really making them so mad that they are even prepared to whinge to jounalists about it:

In one bistro in Paris’s seventh arrondissement last week the issue raised tempers. Michele Fayard, a 31-year-old teacher, agreed fervently. ‘I rent an apartment, I haven’t got a car and I’m not sure what will happen if I have kids. It makes me angry when I see how some of the older bureaucrats live. They only care about themselves.’

You haven’t got a car? I wouldn’t worry about that too much, it would probably just end up as fuel for a carBQ anyway. And to think, people older than you are wealthier and are just going around hoarding the world’s opportunities for themselves. The outrage! Why, you should burn their cars too, of course. The ‘youth’ tried that, and look what they’re getting:

President Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, his Prime Minister, are waging their own, softer, campaign to undermine the colleague whom they do not want to be president. M de Villepin called in community leaders this week and promised to accelerate hundreds of millions of pounds of measures that were promised last autumn to relieve the plight of the immigrant-dominated suburbs.

Never ones to suffer from false modesty, the intrepid Observer pundits next give us THE TRUTH:

The truth is that the generation that profited from the rapid economic growth and the expansion of the state and public industries in the decades between 1960 and 1990 – and from the new levels of meritocracy and social mobility won by the student revolts of 1968 – is now ageing.

The truth a la Observer: The students revolts of 1968 are to thank for the opulent, ’socially mobile’ ways of some of them older fatcat beaurocrats. Well, if that’s the case these current youngsters are just going to be swimming in wealth, ‘cause baby, the students revolts of 1968 are going to look like a UN resolution of condemnation compared to what you’ve got coming this time round:

Car-burning has become so routine on the estates that it has been eclipsed in news coverage by the violence against police. Sebastian Roche, a sociologist who has published a book on the riots, said that torching a vehicle had become a standard amusement. “There is an apprenticeship of destruction. Kids learn where the petrol tank is, how to make a petrol bomb,” he told The Times.

The Observer then back up their “truth” with the trusted opinion of an expert:

‘The problem is that the older generation has not passed on the relay to the younger generation,’ said Nicholas Charbonneau, author of Generation 69, a book on the phenomenon. ‘There is no place for the young in this country. All our politicians are older than those overseas, there is not a senior editor of a newspaper or magazine who is under 55. France is becoming a museum… a very beautiful museum, but a museum all the same.’

I think he must mean the Baghdad museum.

Michel Thooris, head of the small Action Police union, claims that the new violence is taking on an Islamic fundamentalist tinge.

“Many youths, many arsonists, many vandals behind the violence do it to cries of ‘Allah Akbar’ (God is Great) when our police cars are stoned, ” he said in an interview.

[..] “First, it was a rock here or there. Then it was rocks by the dozen. Now, they’re leading operations of an almost military sort to trap us,” said Loic Lecouplier, a police union official in the Seine-Saint-Denis region north of Paris. “These are acts of war.”

H/t: LGF 1, and 2, Gates of Vienna

A friend of mine has put together this Google Earth mashup, together with the guys from the Australian rock band Vespers. The nude Dutch sunbather, the Chinese model of the Indian border, that floating car in Perth – all are in there. The soundtrack is the new song from Vespers, so the video is a bit of a plug for them, but it is actually pretty good song too. And its a great promotion idea, so check it out.