I won’t be around a computer much for the rest of this week, so probably won’t have time to post.

Back next week.

Happy ANZAC day to everyone in Australia and New Zealand. Lest we forget.

Here’s a short ANZAC day roundup:

Not PC: “War. What is it good for?” A post about something worse than war.

Des Walsh: “A Special Day for Australians: Lest We Forget” A day to be proud of our country and confident about future.

Duncan Riley: “Lest We Forget, Anzac Day 2007″ A bit of Banjo Patterson to get you in the mood.

Iain Hall: “Dawn Service” The history of the dawn service.

Kev Gillett: “ANZAC Day” An Aussie Digger with a video you should watch.

Voice of the Pacific: “ANZAC Day 2007″ A fe w wise words from Rudyard Kipling which he apparently got into a bit of trouble over.

Bron Marshall: “Red Remembrance Poppies for ANZAC Day” Have your remembrance and eat it too.

UPDATE: Jules Crittenden has some firsthand accounts of Gallipoli. Recommended.

The Sydney Morning Herald travel blog recently had a post about “travelling through the developing world as a single female”, where people were invited to share their travel stories and opinions on which countries were the worst for Western female travellers.

The starting point for the discussion was an email from a reader:

Jane wrote to me a few weeks ago to suggest this topic, saying she was shocked at the hard time she’d been given while travelling by herself through countries such as Morocco and Egypt. In Egypt she was on a Nile cruise, but still got hassled whenever she stepped off her boat full of English tourists.

“When I managed to escape the confines of my floating little Manchester and actually go into the port towns (Luxor, Aswan), the locals were terrifying,” Jane writes. “I’m not a stupid traveller, nor a disrespectful traveller. But I was spat at, called a white bitch and hassled by one guy who went into great detail about what he and his four mates would like to do to me.

“With this in mind, when I flew into Morocco last week I decided to keep to daylight hours as much as possible and stick to only touristy spots. Even so, on my penultimate day in Casablanca, while walking to Hassan II Mosque, a guy walked up next to me and shoved his exposed tackle against my thigh while trying to herd me down another street. This was about 11am on a main road.”

And here are some of the comments:

Interestingly, the place I had the most trouble was London.

I lived in North London for the better part of a year in an area that was predominantly Turkish. I was spat at on a couple of occasions, groped a couple more and had more leers and snide comments made at me in the months I was there than I’ve had in my entire life. There was also a memorable occasion where two boys of no older than 17 threw rocks at me while I was jogging (in trackpants and a baggy t-shirt, I might add).
Emma at April 10, 2007 8:23 PM

The worst place I’ve been for harassment is Casablanca in Morocco. Like the story from Jane, almost every man I passed spat on me or at me. I had lots of really scary occasions where men followed me around for hours. Even the male hostel manager attacked me in the ladies bathroom and broke into my dorm room to try the same thing.
Posted by: Jessie at April 10, 2007 8:23 PM

however having a man with you doesnt necessarily keep you out of trouble… i was in Morocco with a girl i had met earlier in my trip and she still was treated like dirt. We ended up cutting short our trip to morocco by a couple of days because she felt so uncomfortable. Its a shame though because it was such a nice place, sadly marred by the locals…

I can say Morocco would be great… if not for the Moroccans.
* Posted by: Rich at April 10, 2007 9:56 PM

However, despite always wearing loose-fitting clothing, covering up and wearing a fake wedding band, I still ended up being groped on a few occassions in India (once shockingly), being hassled by men to buy me in Egypt, and generally being stared at and touched by men throughout Asia. Unfortunately it is just one of those things that comes with travelling in those sort of countries.
Posted by: Laura at April 10, 2007 11:55 PM

I know of a couple who travelled Turkey together. It was fine when they were by the coast, but one day in a restaurant/bar they met an (supposed) government official who seemed very friendly and with whom they enjoyed dinner and a night out. At the end of the night, he offered to give them a present – a trip to the mountains so they could have a romantic picnic. it was an offer which they thought twice about but, as often happens when you’re travelling, sometimes a little risk can bring about a great adventure. So, they accepted his offer.

the next morning, a jeep picked them up and drove them to a beautiful spot in the mountains. They started to picnic and then heard a vehicle approach. It turned out to be filled with armed men. Next thing, the men were out of the jeep and held the guy at gun point while they took turns raping the woman. A disgusting tragedy and needless to say, the relationship did not survive the holiday. the guy is sort of broken and as for the woman, I can only imagine….

I myself travel solo and have had to defend myself physically on a few occasions (india and Egypt were worst) but generally I just ignore the more benign stuff. Of course I wish I didn’t have to deal with it – that I could just enjoy the journey but what can be done if that is the culture of the men in that country?
* Posted by: anouk at April 11, 2007 6:54 AM

I lived in Egypt for a year, and it was hard work. As a white woman, every day was an obstacle course of being hissed at, spat at, yelled at, ripped off and propositioned by Egyptian men.
posted by: ejcd at April 16, 2007 2:07 PM

i had a wonderful experience in alexandria, egypt. i was walking aone around the souk (far too deep into the souk really) when a bloke in a salwar kameez began vigourously masturbating (imagine the fabric going up and down). i was very tired and sarcastically said to him, in english, ‘not getting any mate’.
Posted by: monica at April 17, 2007 10:28 PM

As an explanation for this kind of behaviour a number of people wrote that the inhabitants of these countries think all Western women are “sluts”, “‘whores” and “prostitutes” because of what they see on Western TV shows. There was even the token clown who’s “lived in Australia for a long time” and wrote that Western women deserve this treatment (“but im telling you that the western women get all what they deserve in this regard”), just to prove to any unbelievers that there really are men out there who think this way. Hmm, he’s lived in Australia all these years and he still hold those views? Amazing. Well, this is multiculturalism and thats his culture. Plenty more like him.

Maybe those men did think of Western women as “sluts”. Or maybe some of them thought of Western women as Bible-readers. Maybe even Bible-spreaders. Or maybe they were just bored mysogynist cowards who saw an easy target and what they did reflects a general cultural attitude towards women. Because there was this little incident in Egypt, when women didn’t need to be either hijab-less nor foreign to be randomly sexually assaulted.

Maybe they did because their own religious leaders tought them hatred:

Al-Fawzan: “Someone who denies Allah, worships Christ, son of Mary, and claims that God is one third of a trinity – do you like these things he says and does? Don’t you hate the faith of such a polytheist who says God is one third of a trinity, or who worships Christ, son of Mary?
“Someone who permits and commits fornication – as is the case in Western countries, where fornication is permitted and not considered a problem – don’t you hate this? Whoever says ‘I don’t hate him’ is not a Muslim, my brother.”
[...]
“But if this person is an infidel – even if this person is my mother or father, God forbid, or my son or daughter – I must hate him, his heresy, and his defiance of Allah and His prophet. I must hate his abominable deeds. Moreover, this hatred must be positive hatred. It should make me feel compassion for him, and should make me guide and reform him.”

So maybe they were expressing their “positive hatred” and “compassion” through attempt to “guide and reform” the infidel harlots.

Maybe even Dr. Tawfik Hamid (who was once a member of Jemaah Islamiya_ has a point about a simple but shocking truth:

“North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men.

Maybe this explains some other things too, Dr Hamid continues:

Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.

“Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don’t for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism.”

A pause. “I know. I was one who accepted it.”

This partial explanation is shocking more for its banality than its horror. Mass murder provoked partly by simple lust. But it cannot be denied that letters written by suicide bombers frequently dwell on waiting virgins and sexual gratification.

“The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?”

He’s exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. “Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They’re slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can’t you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want.”

Lebanese terrorist propaganda rag Al-Akhbar had this positively gorgeous photograph of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on their front page a couple of days ago
(h/t The Ouwet Front):

Today they’ve gone for a cross-eyed Commie retard with a shit-eating grin. The guy next to her doesn’t seem impressed.

They are protesting at Lebanese University on a rumour that US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman was going to accompany Craig Barrett, the chairman of Intel Corporation, on his visit to the University yesterday afternoon.

Al Akhbar was launched during last summer’s war by rabidly anti-American and pro-Hezbollah far left nationalists. Its newspaper license was leased from the Lebanese Communist Party. Looks like the LCP donated much more than just a newspaper license.

Is there an evil global warming did not cause?

Global warming oppresses the poor:

Mrs Beckett quoted a remark made by the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, that global warming was “an act of aggression by the rich against the poor”.

People do not cause Darfur genocide, global warming does:

British diplomats said the intention of Tuesday’s session was to lift climate change to the top of the international agenda. Britain has pointed to the violence in the Darfur region of Sudan as an example of conflict partly caused by land degradation.

Global warming causes Al Qaeda:

Last November, the Stern report suggested that 200 million people could be displaced by rising sea levels and drought by 2050. It said the global economy could shrink by one-fifth. Even Osama bin Laden accused the US in 2002 of harming nature “more than any nation in history”.

Seriously. What the fuck kind of paragraph is that. Who the fuck is writing this shit? Looking at you, Andrew Clark in New York. STFU, n00b.

And tucked at the end of the story, China don’t take no shit from no rising temperatures:

■ China has created artificial snow in Tibet after experts warned of melting glaciers in the Himalayas. The Tibetan meteorological station had created a fall of 2.2 millimetres, which accumulated to one centimetre, last week, about 4000 metres above sea level in northern Tibet, the Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

Nice one. Or maybe not.

The Chinese Communist Party – its a force of nature. They’d be pissing away deserts and drinking away rising sea levels if it’d keep that economy chugging up and away.

Meanwhile someone somewhere has pioneered the Abstract Expressionist school of journalism and the world didn’t even notice.

Self:

Chapter 1: “Life’s little contradictions”, by Tim Blair
Chapter 2: “A Self-Hater’s Guide To Science”, by P. Granate

A disgruntled marine replies to the “bring the troops home” mob:

There is a lot of good that goes on in Iraq that is never seen by the general public. If that was publicized alongside the bad, I think that it would temper some of the “get out of Iraq now” crowd’s gusto. If the stories of village people pleading with Marines not to go, and those Marines crying as their convoys pulled out because they knew what was going to happen without their presence in that town, got out to more people, then maybe we wouldn’t be so hell bent on handing that country over to a bunch of murderous animals.

[..]

It is important to remember that we are trying to assist a soverign [sic] nation recreate its government, establish a working infrastructure, and empower its people while fighting a running gun battle with multiple entities that want these same goals to fail. This makes it nigh impossible for the US to pull out of Iraq and maintain the ability to sleep well at night. Right or wrong, we went into their country, destroyed their infrastructure, disbanded their military, allowed their best and brightest to flee, and forced them out of their homes. It would be a crime against humanity to withdraw before they are capable of standing on their own two feet while citing their inability to meet our timelines. Yes, I want to be out of Iraq, I want my brothers and sisters that wear the eagle, globe and anchor back with their friends and families, but I do not want this at the expense of the Iraqi people. They did nothing to deserve this, the Mujahideen deserve every bit of pain and suffering that we can leverage on them for attacking their own people. Let us help them attain the deaths they so plainly wish for, but let us do it with an understanding of the “Long War”, and not capitulate, as did the British, to an enemy that will simply spin such a move into a media nightmare, while continuing with whatever oppressions they so desire.

And lets not forget the Aussies involved in the reconstruction effort.

Laina Farhat Holzman, in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

Every horror carried out by al-Qaida and its ilk — decapitations, kidnappings, torture, stoning women, child marriage and murdering hostages — is justified by referring to the model of the Prophet himself. This is the problem with Islam.

This quote appeared in Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s brilliant essay “Radical Loser”:

“Where cultural progress is genuinely successful and ills are cured, this progress is seldom received with enthusiasm,” remarks the philosopher Odo Marquard: “Instead, they are taken for granted and attention focuses on those ills that remain. And these remaining ills are subject to the law of increasing annoyance. The more negative elements disappear from reality, the more annoying the remaining negative elements become, precisely because of this decrease in numbers.”

I highly recommend reading the whole essay, especially the second half relating to Islamism. It traces the origins of political extremism, and its evolution from the individual, to the collective, to the mass movement. Its not new (de Spiegel, 2005), but highly relevant. Here’s an extract:

[..] The Arab world’s sense of pride is hurt not only by military inferiority to the West. Far worse is the impact of intellectual and material dependency. In the last 400 years, not a single noteworthy invention was made by the Arabs. Rudolph Chimelli quotes one Iraqi author as saying: “If an Arab had invented the steam engine in the 18th century, it would not have been built.” No historian would contradict him. This means that for any Arab who cares to think about it, the very objects on which everyday life in the Maghreb and the Middle East depends represent an unspoken humiliation – every fridge, every telephone, every power socket, every screwdriver, not to mention hi-tech products. Even the parasitic oil states, frittering away their future security, are obliged to import the technology from abroad; without Western geologists, drilling experts and civil engineers, fleets of tankers and refineries they would not even be capable of exploiting their own resources. In this light, even their wealth is a curse that constantly reminds them of their dependency. Not including the revenue from crude oil, the economic performance of the entire Arab world today counts for less than that of a single Finnish telecommunications company.

The Arab world has proved similarly unproductive where its political institutions are concerned. Imported forms of nationalism and socialism have failed everywhere, and democratic stirrings are routinely nipped in the bud. Of course, blanket statements of this kind can only aim to say something about the state of the whole. They tell us nothing about individual capabilities, that are subject the world over to the genetic normal distribution. But in many Arab countries, anyone who expresses independent ideas puts their own life at risk. Which is why many of the best scientists, engineers, writers and political thinkers live in exile, a brain drain that can certainly be compared with the exodus of Jewish elites from Germany in the 1930s, and which is likely to have similarly far-reaching consequences.

[..]

That such an all-encompassing dependency should be experienced as unbearable makes perfect sense. Especially among displaced migrants, regardless of their economic situation, the confrontation with Western civilisation leads to a lasting culture shock. The apparent superabundance of products, opinions, economic and sexual options leads to a double bind of attraction and revulsion, and the abiding memory of the backwardness of one’s own culture becomes intolerable. The consequences for one’s own sense of self-esteem are clear, as is the urge to compensate by means of conspiracy theories and acts of vengeance. In this situation, many people cannot resist the temptation of the Islamists’ offer to punish others for their own failings.

Solutions to the dilemma of the Arab world are of no interest to Islamism, which does not go beyond negation. Strictly speaking, it is a non-political movement, since it makes no negotiable demands. Put bluntly, it would like the majority of the planet’s inhabitants, all the unbelievers and apostates, to capitulate or be killed.

Read the whole thing.

Well, at least for some:

The booming economy may make elective surgery and luxury vehicles affordable for the upper-middle class, but the Venezuelans who are amassing the immense fortunes are the Boliburguesa, or the members of President Chávez’s inner circle. (The name refers to the president’s leftist Bolivarian revolution and the bourgeoisie.) Boliburgueses had constructed mega-mansions in the most storied Caracas neighborhoods and bought spanking new jets. A journalist friend who shadowed one of Chávez’s closest allies was chauffeured around in a bulletproof BMW, flanked by Korean bodyguards who can allegedly brain a would-be assailant with a butter knife at a distance of 20 meters. “It was like something out of Goldfinger,” my colleague said, still somewhat incredulous. Just as bizarre was his description of a Caracas sushi restaurant that had been enthusiastically recommended: rare tuna could be served—for an exorbitant fee—on the belly of a woman in the buff.

To be sure, this hedonism is out of reach for the great majority of Venezuelans. Even with the billions of dollars that have arrived in the country, four out of 10 residents subsist on two dollars a day or less.

(via FP Passport)

To be fair the Korean bodyguards are hardly a luxury item, seeing as Venezuela has the highest murder rate in the world, outside of Baghdad. And at $50 a pop, even those of the proletariat can afford to occasionally indulge.

I have submitted my post, “Professional revertard Yvonne Ridley misquotes, misrepresents self” to the Watcher’s Council.

As you may or may not already be aware, members of the Watcher’s Council hold a vote every week on what they consider to be the most link-worthy pieces of writing around… per the Watcher’s instructions, I am submitting one of my own posts for consideration in the upcoming nominations process.
Here is the most recent winning council post, here is the most recent winning non-council post, here is the list of results for the latest vote, and here is the initial posting of all the nominees that were voted on.