The First Lemming

From Robert Spencer's Dhimmiwatch:

Bill Clinton, former President and future First Husband, condemns freedom of speech. From AFP, with thanks to MB:

Former US president Bill Clinton warned of rising anti-Islamic prejudice, comparing it to historic anti-Semitism as he condemned the publishing of cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper.

"So now what are we going to do? ... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?" he said at an economic conference in the Qatari capital of Doha.
"In Europe, most of the struggles we've had in the past 50 years have been to fight prejudices against Jews, to fight against anti-Semitism," he said.

Clinton described as "appalling" the 12 cartoons published in a Danish newspaper in September depicting Prophet Mohammed and causing uproar in the Muslim world.

"None of us are totally free of stereotypes about people of different races, different ethnic groups, and different religions ... there was this appalling example in northern Europe, in Denmark ... these totally outrageous cartoons against Islam," he said.

That's not the point. This is a question of being able to say something that Bill Clinton finds outrageous. These cartoons may be totally outrageous indeed. But if we cannot speak openly about Islamic militancy, we cannot combat it. And freedom of speech is certainly dead.
Posted by Robert at January 30, 2006 11:49 AM Print this entry

This is so incredible, it made me speechless for an unusual 5 seconds. I mean that guy is so unprincipled, even to LOOK at his phonily-benign, simpering face makes one squirm with embarrassment.

That is the guy who callously abused human life to win brownie points with the public as a "hardliner on crime". (Something for which George Dubbya has been crucified in the media, and rightfully so by the way, but that is not the issue here.)

The guy, who didn't even have the good grace to book a hotel room for his romps with that fat little whore and thus turned the Oval Office, the workplace of the most powerful man in the world and main defender of Western values, into "Oral Office" and the laughing stock of the world.

Well, his take on Western values hasn't changed much:

"So now what are we going to do? ... Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?" he said at an economic conference in the Qatari capital of Doha.

"In Europe, most of the struggles we've had in the past 50 years have been to fight prejudices against Jews, to fight against anti-Semitism," he said.

Yeah, that's great! I take it were them evil Orthodox Rabbis who flew airliners into the WTC. Not to mention the other terrorist atrocities they are committing all the time. No wonder the world doesn't like them. But this is not just a comparison gone awry, this is the calculating and callous abuse of the millenia-old suffering of the Jewish people by comparing them to the tacidly or openly complying followers of a violent death cult.

And that idiot ought to get a history book or better: read the one he's got. Antisemitism is not fifty, but roughly fivethousand years old, about twothousand in Europe.



As one of the commentators at Dhimmiwatch pointed out: It would be interesting to know how much this spineless piece of slime got for that appearance.

Hold on... I am out of sickbags again...

One more bit of solidarity...

I got the following comment in reply to my post "A Matter of Solidarity", with the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten , that was:

P-BS-Watcher said…
Thanks for posting the cartoons. The Danish newspaper which published the original cartoons has been forced to apologize. The Brussels Journal blog which has led the reporting of this attack on free speech is now receiving threats. Given the state of free speech in Europe as evidenced by the Italian "prove Christ existed" case, I expect Brussels Journal to be forced to remove the cartoons and their reporting. To guard against that possibility, I have reposted the cartoons and the Brussels Journal reporting thread on my blog. I urge all bloggers who care about free speech to do the same. See Farenheit 451 Alert

Which I herewith do!

_______________________________________

European Appeasement Reinforces Muslim Extremism
From the desk of Paul Belien on Tue, 2006-01-24 12:40

The Brussels Journal has reported on the developments in the Danish cartoon case since it started in October 2005. We are one of the few non-Danish European observers to do so. Last Sunday, instead of linking to a website with the twelve Danish Muhammad cartoons we decided to add them to our article about the case. In a sense we were republishing the cartoons, but as we are only a non-commercial website with some 5,000 visitors a day, have no paper edition and did not make a great fuss about publishing them we only received two “threats.” One e-mail, from a certain “Hayet” said.

hello;Les vrais trait de visage de notre profet (que seul les musulmans) lesconnais sont d’un homme le plus beau de monde donc votre photo estratéThe real trace face of our profet mohamed are the best; he is thebest beautiful men in the word. Your photo is misfire

The other, from a certain “Siham,” said:

good morningyou must take us a lot of excuses We respect your profect and all profects; and you you must respect our profect for not to have in futur other problems between us

Both emails were sent via the same IP address in France, indicating that “Hayet” is probably “Siham.”

The best way to end the whole cartoon affair would be for as many websites, blogs and papers in Europe just to publish the cartoons in an act of defiance to extremists. Moderate Muslims take no offense at the cartoons, as could be seen last week in Denmark where the refusal of the government to give in to demands for press censorship has encouraged the moderates to speak out against the radicals. As Glenn Reynolds wrote in a comment on the affair: “I think that moderate Muslims are a lot more likely to speak out if they feel confident that the government will stand up to the immoderate ones.” This is an appeal to all of us, not just our governments: If we all stand up to the extremist Muslims the moderate ones will be encouraged to speak out.

We have been critical (and still are) of the Dutch Somali-born politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali on account of her opposition to religion and religious people but Ms Hirsi Ali had a point yesterday when she said that the only way to confront the radicals is a free and open debate. Sadly, she says, there is no free and open debate “because of the complacency and self-censorship of Europe’s political and intellectual elites, the self-pity of the Muslims, and the threat of violence by the jihadists.” Indeed, it is the appeasement attitude and behaviour of the Europeans that is strenghtening the power of the extremists over the moderate Muslims.

Hirsi Ali was speaking in The Hague where she received the “European of the Year Award” from our American friend (and former inhabitant of Brussels) Conrad Kiechel, the editor of the international editions of Readers’ Digest. The European commissioner Neelie Croes said in her speech that Hirsi Ali is sometimes criticised because of her confrontational approach. “If you believe in eternal life you can afford to be sophisticated. If you do not, you need rebels on this earth to bring about change. Ayaan is a rebel.” In our opinion the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen would have been a better candidate for the European of the Year Award. He is not a rebel but a man of principles. Europe does not need rebellion to change things; all it needs is to stand by its principles in order to safeguard its civilization.

One of our readers drew our attention to the wise commentary of Mona Eltahawy, a journalist of Egyptian Muslim origin, in today’s Daily Star. Unlike Ms Hirsi Ali, Ms Eltahawy has not turned against religion as the root of all evil, but practices a liberal Islam by speaking out against the militancy and terrorism committed in the name of her religion.

She writes about the cartoon case:

Can we finally admit that Muslims have blown out of all proportion their outrage over 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad published in a Danish newspaper last September? [...] The initial printing of the cartoons in Denmark led to death threats being issued against the artists, demonstrations in Kashmir, and condemnation from 11 countries. What did any of this achieve but prove the original point of the newspaper’s culture editor, that artists in Europe were censoring themselves because they feared Muslim reaction? [...]
Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was right not to intervene, insisting the government has no say over media – the argument used by Arab leaders when they are asked about anti-Semitism in their media, by the way. [...]

What should have remained a local issue turned into a diplomatic uproar that Muslims otherwise rarely provoke when fighting for their rights around the world. Perhaps the Muslim governments who spearheaded the campaign – led by Egypt – felt this was an easy way to burnish their Islamic credentials at a time when domestic Islamists are stronger than they have been in many years.

Must we really boycott Danish products, as one e-mail I received exhorted? [...] Here are a few facts we should remember. However offensive any of the 12 cartoons were, they did not incite violence against Muslims. For an example of incitement, though, one must go back a few weeks before the cartoons were published. In August, the Danish authorities withdrew for three months the broadcasting license of a Copenhagen radio station after it called for the extermination of Muslims. Those were real threats and the government protected Muslims – the same government later condemned for not punishing the newspaper that published the cartoons.

Second, the cartoon incident belongs at the very center of the kind of debate that Muslims must have in the European countries where they live - particularly after the Madrid train bombings of 2003 and the London subway bombings of 2005. While right-wing anti-immigration groups whip up Islamophobia in Denmark, Muslim communities wallow in denial over the increasing role of their own extremists.

As just one example, last August Fadi Abdullatif, the spokesman for the Danish branch of the militant Hizb-ut-Tahrir organization, was charged with calling for the killing of members of the Danish government. [...] Muslims must honestly examine why there is such a huge gap between the way we imagine Islam and our prophet, and the way both are seen by others. Our offended sensibilities must not be limited to the Danish newspaper or the cartoonist, but to those like Fadi Abdullatif whose actions should be regarded as just as offensive to Islam and to our reverence for the prophet. Otherwise, we are all responsible for those Danish cartoons.

We need Muslims like Ms Eltahawy, who speak out against the extremists. We need Western journalists and politicians who support them by not allowing themselves to be intimidated by the extremists. But where are these journalists and politicians? None of his European colleagues has dared to publicly support Mr Rasmussen. On the contrary, both the European Union and the Council of Europe (as well as the United Nations) criticized Denmark over the cartoons. Only a handful of Europe’s papers and magazines has publicly supported a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish the cartoons. Most European mainstream media have not even dared to write about the case, leaving the European public in complete ignorance of a very important international conflict that has been going on for four months now.

More on the Danish cartoon case:

Jihad Against Danish Paper, 22 October 2005

Cartoon Case Escalates into International Crisis, 27 October 2005

Out of the Iranian Frying Pan into the Danish Fire, 29 October 2005

Pigs Do Not Fly, 17 November 2005

Bounty Offered for Murdering Cartoonists, 4 December 2005

UN to Investigate Racism of Danish Cartoonists, 7 December 2005

Dispatch from the Eurabian Front, 9 December 2005

Europe Criticises Copenhagen over Cartoons, 21 December 2005

Cartoon Case: EU and UN Call Denmark to Account, 28 December 2005

Danish Cartoon Affair: Letter from a Muslim, 31 December 2005

Danish Muslims Divided over Cartoon Affair, 8 January 2006

Danish Prime Minister Shocked at Lies, 11 January 2006

Scandinavian Update: Israeli Boycott, Muslim Cartoons, 14 January 2006

Denmark: Moderate Muslims Oppose Imams, 19 January 2006

Danish Imams Propose to End Cartoon Case, 22 January 2006

Why we all ought to thank Osthoff!

Well, I have stated HERE with some good reasons to back me and HERE as an educated guess that the kidnapping of the unspeakable Osthoff was probably staged.

John Rosenthal gives a more in-depth overview of what happened:

Susanne and the Baathists
By John Rosenthal
Last weekend, the German news magazine Focus reported that part of the ransom money paid for German hostage Susanne Osthoff’s release from Iraqi captivity was found on her person following her liberation... Furthermore, according to Focus sources – described by the magazine as “absolutely trustworthy” – when embassy personnel notified the Foreign Office in Berlin, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier ordered that the affair be kept “absolutely secret.” (Curiously, Reuters seems to have deemed this detail not newsworthy, as it is not to be found in its dispatch on the Focus report.)

The German government has made no official statement on the Focus report. This is unsurprising, since it has always denied its very premise: namely, that it paid ransom to obtain Osthoff’s release. However, what is evidently an unofficial response from elements of the German government was quickly forthcoming on the website of the weekly Stern. Citing unnamed “diplomats and investigators,” Stern reports [link in German] that both the Foreign Office and the Criminal Bureau are “astonished” by suggestions that Osthoff may have been involved in her own supposed kidnapping: to draw such a conclusion represents, according to the “diplomats and investigators” (apparently speaking with one voice), a “complete twisting of the facts.”

On their account, the facts are rather these: some $4,000 found on Osthoff was given to her by the hostage-takers as “compensation” for $3,000 that they previously stole from her [sic!], as well as the “sometimes brutal treatment” to which she was subjected during the kidnapping. It should be noted that the bizarre denial in fact serves to confirm many aspects of the original Focus report – including precisely the premise of a ransom payment. It should likewise be noted that the funds that Osthoff was transporting at the time of her disappearance were themselves German government monies, allegedly provided to her in support of an archaeological project in Mosul. Are we, then, supposed to believe – as according to the “untwisted” version of events – that after having extorted a reported $5 million in ransom from the German government, the honest kidnappers felt compelled to reimburse $3,000 they had “stolen”?

The protestations of the “diplomats and investigators” clearly merit the Shakespearean rejoinder: the lady doth protest too much. The Focus report in fact made no claims about Osthoff’s possible complicity in the alleged kidnapping. But in light of its content, it quite naturally gave new life to widespread speculation about such a possibility that has accompanied the story at least since the time of Osthoff’s release. Such suspicions have been fueled both by the supposed ex-hostage’s bizarre behavior – including her remarkable solicitousness toward her alleged kidnappers – and by certain troubling facts about her biography that have come to light in the German media.

Osthoff’s various attempts at providing an account of her ordeal did nothing to discourage the suspicions. Thus, in her first interview on German television – the now famous burqa-clad appearance on the public television channel ZDF – when asked to explain how the kidnapping took place, she responded:

I think these details are uninteresting. Nobody is interested in that. Normally, a kidnapping involves the use of force. People watch a lot of television. Maybe they see that no one lets herself get snatched up voluntarily. There’s a brief use of force, which is, of course, such that one has no more possibility, and it happens and so forth.

Her next interview, a print affair published in Stern, provided more details and gave the impression of greater coherence. But it contained, nonetheless, a disturbing inconsistency. Osthoff related how while being transported in the trunk of a car she bit off the bindings with which her hands had been tied. But as an alert Stern reader pointed out in a letter, she had previously said her hands were tied behind her back. “Does Ms. Osthoff possess the flexibility of a human snake?” the reader asked. Stern responded by saying the anomaly was the result of editing.

Given her penchant for wearing burqas (she also posed in one for Stern), her self-professed conversion to Islam, and her own uncorroborated identification of her kidnappers as members of the al-Zarqawi group, many skeptical observers of the Osthoff saga have been led to conclude that Osthoff is herself an Islamist militant and perhaps allied with the Jihadist forces that are supposed to have taken her hostage. A closer inspection of both her words and her biography suggests a different, but no less troubling, scenario.

Whereas Osthoff’s familiarity with Islamic practice has been called into question by specialists, her discourse is replete with references suggesting sympathies for the ousted Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Thus, in her last interview (on the public television channel ARD), when asked for what she most wished upon her release, Osthoff, who has been a frequent visitor to Iraq since the mid-1980s, responded: “To see Iraq in peace, …to see it how I have seen it in the past.” She has, moreover, repeatedly sought to call attention to what she presents as the plight of Iraqi exiles living in Germany: seemingly, at least in the ARD interview, referring to persons who have applied for political exile since the fall of Saddam Hussein. (According to official statistics [pdf-file in German], more than 5,000 Iraqis applied for political exile in Germany in 2003 and 2004.)

According to reports in the German press, Susanne Osthoff’s biography has in fact been marked by significant and close contacts with known supporters of the Hussein regime in both Germany and Iraq. One such contact is Jamal Dulaimi, a long-time acquaintance of Osthoff in whose Baghdad villa she is even supposed to have lived “from time to time.” An article from the 28 December edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) provides the following information concerning Dulaimi:

The psychiatrist Dulaimi was in the past one of Saddam Hussein’s personal physicians. In the 1990s he moved to… Kurdish north Iraq and after Saddam’s overthrow he returned to Baghdad. The Dulaimi clan live, above all, in the Sunni triangle around Fallujah and Ramadi. Its members figured among the major supports of the Saddam regime. Nowadays, they provide some of the major supports of the insurgency.

Jamal Dulaimi – whom Osthoff refers to as “Sheik Jamal” – is supposed to have provided Osthoff the driver in whose car she was allegedly kidnapped on 25 November. It is indeed apparently from his home that she departed on the fateful voyage. “Jamal’s wife made me breakfast,” she says in the Stern interview. The FAZ report continues:

There is another indication that likewise points in the direction of possible connections with networks from the time of Saddam Hussein. In the mid-1980s, Susanne Osthoff was introduced to Iraq by way of the Marburg-based Professor Walter Sommerfeld and his German-Iraqi Association, which was reputed to have good relations with the Hussein regime.

In light of the foregoing details, there is reason to wonder whether Osthoff’s burqa-wearing theatrics were not in fact a smokescreen put up to obscure links to Baathist circles and fellow-travelers. Evidence of what the German journalist and intelligence expert Erich Schmidt-Eenboom has recently described as “very good contacts” [partial translation here] between the German secret service, the BND, and the ousted Hussein regime makes this possibility all the more intriguing and troubling. It was the Osthoff case, and Osthoff’s admitted contacts with BND personnel, that first brought the current BND presence in Iraq to public attention.

Thanks to Davids Medienkritik for this and for the following gem:



Yes, that's right! The (leftwing) Süddeutsche Zeitung shows Ms. "Embarrassment Personified" Osthoff clad as Joan of Arc! A woman with intimate ties to the Saddam "Plasticshredder" Hussein regime, a convert to Islam. As Joan of Arc. A Christian saint.

But whatever. The fact that she exposed German authorities and intelligence for what they are, incompetent, double dealing oafs, and the German media and public as a debased mob, is a laudable, if unintended, deed.

Thank you, Musi-Susi!

The man who lost his job over Munich '72

No, that was neither Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who went on to become foreign minister of the FRG, nor Polizeipräsident Dr. Manfred Schreiber. He remained Polizeipräsident until he retired in 1983 and became something like an authority on terrorism and a published author. Not any of the soldiers either who refused to raid the terrorists because they thought it was too dangerous. That was fully covered by German law. Everything (but EVERYTHING!) not to be called "militarist" anymore!

It was the police psychologist Dr. Georg Sieber, the only one of the lethal 1972 travesty show who did his job, and therefore lost it.

For a citizen of a country manacled to its past, Dr. Georg Sieber had a remarkable knack for seeing the future. In the months leading up to the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West German organizers asked Sieber, then a 39-year-old police psychologist, to "tabletop" the event, as security experts call the exercise of sketching out worst-case scenarios. Sieber looks a bit like the writer Tom Clancy, and the crises he limned drew from every element of the airport novelist's genre: kidnappers and hostages, superpower patrons and smuggled arms, hijacked jets and remote-controlled bombs. Studying the most ruthless groups of that era, from the Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation Organization to the Basque separatist group ETA and West Germany's own Baader-Meinhof Gang, he came up with 26 cases, each imagined in apocalyptic detail. Most of Sieber's scenarios focused on the Olympic Village, the Games' symbolic global community; one that did not — a jet hired by a Swedish right-wing group crashes into a crowded Olympic Stadium — foreshadowed a September day in another city many years later.

I don't know what gave Alexander Wolff, the author of the article from which I took the above quote the idiot idea that their past might have rendered the Germans with a limited capacity to think. Nothing wrong with their brains. Not now, nor ever. It's BACKBONE and MORAL COMPASS, that are lacking.

Please have the decency and common sense to shut up!

Spielberg’s Munich has taken up too much media space recently. Another self-hating Jew, so what? Sadly, a self-hating Jew who can bring, with his filmmaking genius, his message of moral equivalence between the murderers of 11 innocent people and the assassins of those murderers across to a worldwide audience. Of course, the reactions to it are, as usual, more interesting than the bone of contention itself.

As Charles Krauthammer put it in his Washington Post article 'Munich,' the Travesty the first and the last thing which is to be said about Spielberg’s Munich:

Spielberg makes the Holocaust the engine of Zionism and its justification. Which, of course, is the Palestinian narrative. Indeed, it is the classic narrative for anti-Zionists, most recently the president of Iran, who says that Israel should be wiped off the map. And why not? If Israel is nothing more than Europe's guilt trip for the Holocaust, then why should Muslims have to suffer a Jewish state in their midst?

It takes a Hollywood ignoramus to give flesh to the argument of a radical anti-Semitic Iranian.

Amen!

The raving international reviews were, after all, only to be expected and "specifically we as Germans" are always glad if the Jews are shown in a less-than-shining light. Doesn't every crime they commit, really or imagined, reduce a wee bit our own guilt about the Holocaust? Only yesterday I enjoyed one of my favourite metaphorical fishwraps, namely the public radio station WDR2, and almost choked on the praise of Munich. "The good are bad as well and the bad are good too" gushed the commentator and, believe it or not, the stupid cow thought that was A COMPLIMENT!

Germans LOVE Jews

Red Army soldiers entered the grounds of the Auschwitz concentration camp on the afternoon of January 27, 1945.

No doubt, today we will have to suffer again all those disgusting lip-services that are deliverd with dogged monotony every year.

Will they help?

Well, let me digress a bit. Yesterday, Walter Kolbow, deputy chairman of the SPD (Socialdemocratic) parliamentary faction of the Bundestag wrote at his faction's website regarding the outcome of the elections for the PA:

"Im Sinne eines friedlichen Zusammenlebens beider Völker und der dringend notwendigen Fortsetzung des Friedensprozesses ist zu wünschen, dass auf beiden Seiten Vernunft und Pragmatismus schnell die Oberhand gewinnen."

"On the grounds of a peaceful cohabitation of both peoples and the sorely needed continuation of the peace process it is desirable, that on both sides common sense and pragmatism will prevail."

Blah blah blah blah...

But is it really JUST blah blah? There clearly is a message behind it. Yes, the pompous old coot is equalling Israel with the murderous -- ooops... make that "genocidal" -- Hamas scum!

The Palestinians voted for terror and genocide. Hamas has never been coy about its goal, namely Israel's destruction. A brief look at the Hamas Covenant makes that quite clear. And if Israel tries to defend herself she will be sabotaging the peace process, at least in the book of Kolbow and his ilk, i.e. the do-gooder majority.

Ah well... just another example of what Wolfgang Pohrt called the "Michel Syndrome", namely the German obsession to "stand with praise and censure at Israel's side as ethical probation officer to keep the victim from committing a second offence."

Pohrt wrote, too, that the Germans with their complex about responsibility ("Verantwortungsfimmel") resemble a convicted child molester who thinks he is specifically qualified for a job as kindergarden teacher.

Yes, we Germans DO have changed. We are no warmongers anymore, forget about "quick as whippets, tough as leather, hard as KRUPPsteel"!

But we have kept at least some of our better traditions. "Am Deutschen Wesen mag die Welt genesen" (German being shall heal the world) is still held in high esteem, we just don't call it that anymore. But we feel deeply concerned and STILL know what is good for others, what Wolgang Pohrt calls "Verantwortungsfimmel", but we have learned and changed our methods. We don't, of course, bloody our hands anymore.

Now we let others do the dirty work.

Happy Holocaust Memorial Day, Walter!

(And thanks to Gudrun who sent me the link to the text on the SPD parliamentary faction of the Bundestag website!)

A Matter of Solidarity

I herewith follow the appeal of the Brussels Journal: "The best way to end the whole cartoon affair would be for as many websites, blogs and papers in Europe just to publish the cartoons in an act of defiance to extremists."



Those of you who are unaware of the affair started by the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and its valiant refusal to give in to Muslim pressure: Read Robert Spencer's "Thou Shalt Not Draw" at FrontPage.

As I am writing this, I know of two other German Bloggers who followed the Brussels Journal's appeal: Politically Incorrect and Gegenstimme.

___________________________________

I just found an older blog entry at Rebellog.

See also Gudrun Eussner's Fundsachen with a huge compilation of links and information about the Jyllands-Posten affair.

___________________________________

I just noticed: Kewil has posted it as well at his blog Fakten Fiktionen.

The most obvious answer is usually the right one

Part of the ransom that was said to have been paid by the German government for the release of Iraq hostage Susanne My-kidnappers-are-good-guys Osthoff with ties to the former Saddam-regime was found on her after her release, according to the German newsmagazine FOCUS on Saturday .

Without revealing its sources, FOCUS reported that officials at the German embassy in Baghdad had found several thousand U.S. dollars in the archaeologist's clothes when she "freshened up" at the embassy after being released.

The serial numbers on the banknotes matched the ones of the ransom the German government had paid Osthoff's kidnappers, FOCUS said.

A spokeswoman for the German Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the report. Well, what choice did they have.

I've said so before: Osthoff had ties to the Saddam regime and hadn't performed anything worth noting in her field of research since 2003 (and nothing earth-shaking before that). She had been married to an Arab, her ties to several Arab tribes have been revealed in the meantime. Who pays for her daughter's boarding school in Bavaria (the ex-husband doesn't) when Osthoff herself is notoriously strapped for cash?

And I am repeating myself again: Only in a country without ethics, values and a definite identification pattern could a irresponsible mother, a person who supported a criminal regime, somebody who values a murderous cult over her own culture, a vain egomaniac AND FRAUD gain cult status.

Her nomination for the prestigious media award Grimme Preis 2006 fits the bill. The Grimme Preis is supposed to reward people for against-the-mainstream TV contributions without consideration for applause and public approval. Osthoff was nominated for her weird interviews on German television. Based on that reasoning, any child molester will be able to claim the Grimme Preis from now on.

I've said too, that she, in all probability, wasn't even captured. On December 28, 2005, that was.

Different from crime stories, in real life the most obvious answer is usually the right one.

I STILL object to Tookie Williams' execution!

One of the pictures in my last blog entry shows a pro-Tookie Williams demonstator displaying a statement "STOP THE RACIST DEATH PENALTY".



I have neither the inclination to discuss, nor is this blog the place for topics related to the problems of race and crime or punisment and crime. Not because they are so explosive, but because they need in-depth, unbiased and expert discussion and rock-solid figures, all things for which is no room in a blog like this.

However demonstrators who demand mercy for a convict usually claim that they would oppose capital punishment as such and protest the execution of any convict with similar passion.

Clarence Ray Allen, a 76 year-old blind diabetic with a heart disease and confined to a wheelchair, was executed at San Quentin last Tuesday. His death has stirred very little public irritation. Allen was a Choctaw Indian, but few records mention his "racial" affiliation, specifically here in Germany. Allen was largely perceived as White (whatever that is), and indeed he must have looked "White" to most.



Williams was, as we all know, black.

I took the trouble to perform two Google searches. The one for Clarence Ray Allen yielded about 228,000 results, that for Tookie Williams about 2,290,000.

Capital punishment in America MAY be applied in a racist way, but those complaining about racism in capital punishment certainly ARE it.

I object to Tookie Williams' execution!

I am just asking myself, humbly, tentatively and shaking at the thought of being called an advocate of capital punishment because only being called a RACIST is even worse that being called an advocate of capital punishment...

Yes, I am asking myself...

... if you will forgive my presumptuousness...



Where were the candlelight vigils

and rallies hold for HER?

Even the pope must whisper when discussing Islam

This is a most interesting and revealing article from DanielPipes.org. The stance of the current Pope towards Islam will be of crucial importance and I don't think I am exaggerating if I say for the survival of the West. His predecessor aspired to be remembered as The Pope Whom Everybody Loved Even The Muslims, a fatal stance for the defender of the Catholic faith, one of the pillars of our Western culture, like it or not.

The Pope and the Koran
by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun
January 17, 2006
[NY Sun title: "The Pope and the Interpretation of the Koran"]

Islam and Muslims are expected to be a priority for Pope Benedict XVI, but he has been publicly quite muted on these topics during his first nine months in office. One report, however, provides important clues to his current thinking.

Father Joseph D. Fessio, SJ, recounted on the Hugh Hewitt Show the details of a seminar he attended with the pope in September 2005 on Islam. Participants heard about the ideas of a Pakistani-born liberal theologian, Fazlur Rahman (1919-88), who held that if Muslims thoroughly reinterpret the Koran, Islam can modernize. He urged a focus on the principles behind Koranic legislation such as jihad, cutting off thieves' hands, or permitting polygyny, in order to modify these customs to fit today's needs. When Muslims do this, he concluded, they can prosper and live harmoniously with non-Muslims.

Pope Benedict reacted strongly to this argument. He has been leading such annual seminars since 1977 but always lets others speak first, waiting until the end to comment. But hearing about Fazlur Rahman's analysis, Father Fessio recalled with surprise, the pope could not contain himself:

This is the first time I recall where he made an immediate statement. And I'm still struck by it, how powerful it was. … the Holy Father, in his beautiful calm but clear way, said well, there's a fundamental problem with that [analysis] because, he said, in the Islamic tradition, God has given His word to Muhammad, but it's an eternal word. It's not Muhammad's word. It's there for eternity the way it is. There's no possibility of adapting it or interpreting it.

This basic difference, Pope Benedict continued, makes Islam unlike Christianity and Judaism. In the latter two religions, "God has worked through His creatures. And so, it is not just the word of God, it's the word of Isaiah, not just the word of God, but the word of Mark. He's used His human creatures, and inspired them to speak His word to the world." Jews and Christians "can take what's good" in their traditions and mold it. There is, in other words, "an inner logic to the Christian Bible, which permits it and requires it to be adapted and applied to new situations."

Whereas the Bible is, for Benedict, the "word of God that comes through a human community," he understands the Koran as "something dropped out of Heaven, which cannot be adapted or applied." This immutability has vast consequences: it means "Islam is stuck. It's stuck with a text that cannot be adapted."

Father Fessio's striking account prompts two reactions. First, these comments were made at a private seminar with former students, not in public. As "Spengler" of Asia Times points out, even the pope "must whisper" when discussing Islam. It's a sign of the times.

Click HERE to read the rest of the article.

Islam Is Mercy

Although I am not known to be particularly friendly towards Islam, what I learned today shocked me. Did you know that they hang little girls in Iran? And if you do, do you know too that they rape them before they hang them so that they won't go to heaven, as virgins are supposed to do?

Excerpts from: Women and the death penalty in Iran

The 1979 Revolution and the 1980’s.

Under the rule of the former Shah a small number of women were hanged, mostly for murder, using the British style long drop method. The Shah was deposed in 1979 and replaced by a fundamentalist Muslim regime led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He won a huge democratic majority for the formation of an Islamic Republic on April the 1st 1979. Under the new government women were required to wear the veil, Western music and alcohol were banned, and the punishments prescribed by Sharia law came into force.

Male and female executions became frequent – often for refusing to convert/recognise Islam, or for being a member of an anti-regime political group.

There are no accurate records of just how many men, women and girls were executed in the first years of the Revolution. There is a credible list of 14,028 names available and some sources claim figures of several tens of thousands, although these are not substantiated with names. According to a report published by the Organisation of Women Against Execution in Iran, at least two thousand women were executed between June 1981 and 1990. They have been able to prepare a list containing 1428 names. 187 of these women were under the age of 18, with 9 girls under the age of 13 and 14 between the ages of 45 to 70. The youngest girl executed was just 10 years old.* 32 of these women were reported to have been pregnant at the time of their execution. Many of those executed were high school and college students. Hanging was the most common method of execution for women although some were shot. (Large numbers of men were shot during this period). Men and women were hanged in large groups in Tehran prisons from cranes and fork-lift trucks. Each crane jib or fork-lift had a wooden or steel beam to which the noose were attached and when the preparations were complete the prisoners were simply hoisted into the air.

Under Revolutionary law young girls who were sentenced to death could not be executed if they were still virgins. Thus they were "married off" to Revolutionary Guards and prison officials in temporary marriages and then raped before their execution, to prevent them going to heaven*. The Mullahs believed that these women were ungodly and did not deserve paradise in the next life, and that if they were deprived of their virginity it would ensure that they went to hell. Therefore on the night prior to execution, the condemned girl was injected with a tranquilliser and then raped by her guard(s). After the execution, the religious judge at the prison would write out a marriage certificate and send it to the victim's family along with a box of sweets.

Generally details of executions from the early years of the Revolution are hard to find but the case of the ten women hanged in Shiraz in 1983 is well documented.

The “crime” of these women was to believe in the Bahá'í religion instead of Islam, and to believe in the equality of men and women. These were considered to be very dangerous concepts by the Revolutionary regime who had them arrested and tortured in an effort to persuade them to convert into Islam. Several of them were subjected to the "bastinado" - beating on the soles of their feet. They were all given the opportunity to avoid execution by recanting their faith and converting to Islam but none of them chose to.

On the night of June the 18th 1983 they were driven in a bus to a polo field on the outskirts of Shiraz where a gallows had been set up. The bus driver who took them there reported that they seemed to be in good spirits, singing on the way and prepared to meet their fate.

The youngest prisoner was Mona Mahmudnizhad, who was just 17 years old. Her father had been hanged some months earlier for his beliefs. At the execution ground she asked to be hanged last so that she could pray for all the other women. Reportedly she kissed the noose and recited a prayer before she was suspended.

The other nine members of the group were :

23 year old Roya Ishraqi, a promising veterinary student, was executed with her 50 year old mother, Izzad Janami Ishraqi.

20 year old Akhtar Sabit, a graduate nurse, who had taught children’s religious classes.

28 year old Mahshid Nirumand was a physics graduate from the University of Shiraz. She is said to have remained resolute in prison and to have shared her food with the others and encouraged them to remain firm.

Shirin Dalvand who was 25 years old and held a degree in sociology from the University of Shiraz. Shirin was an expert in the Baha'i faith. Under interrogation she was asked whether she would ever give up her religion - she told her questioner that she would hold to her faith " Until my death, I hope that the divine mercy will enable me to remain firm to the last breath of my life ".

Tahirih Siyavushi was a 32 year old nurse, who had been a member of the Local Spiritual Assembly of Shiraz. Her husband, Jamshid, had been hanged two days earlier. As a nurse Tahirih helped to look after the other prisoners.

20 year old Simin Sabiri, who had been a member of the Committee of Studies Baha' ies of Shiraz.

Zarrin Muqimi was 28 years old and also very knowledgeable about her faith defending it vigorously under interrogation.

The oldest of the ten was 54 year old Mrs Nosrat Yalda' I who had belonged to the Spiritual Local Assembly of Shiraz and whose house was regarded as the "nerve centre" of the Community life Baha' ie in Shiraz. She had been viciously whipped during her time in prison and her wounds were still visible after her hanging. Both her husband and her son, Bahram had also been executed.

The town’s people of Shiraz groups brought flowers to the mortuary to honour the bravery of these women, despite the dangers of such a protest. The Bahá'í religion is still considered dangerous by the regime and is suppressed.

Dina Parnabi was an Iranian high school student, accused of smuggling forbidden literature and criticising the regime in her talks with her classmates. She was hanged on the 10th of July 1984 in a Teheran prison. The hanging was done in private and after the execution was over, her body was stripped, washed and delivered for dissection at medical school. In Iran, female bodies delivered for medical studies often show the rope or cable burns around their necks, indicating that they were all executed by hanging.

Modern day Iran.

Through the 1900’s reported female executions were rare but in the 21st century they have begun to rise.

In 2004 it is thought that four women have been hanged, 3 in public. Shooting is no longer used and short drop or suspension hanging in private or public is now the norm. At least 2 women are thought to be facing stoning at the time of writing in January 2005, although it is probable that their sentences will be commuted to hanging. It is notable that public execution is increasingly used for both sexes and most of the 95 executions that I recorded in Iran during 2004 were carried out in public. Flogging prior to execution is not unusual.

Iran is a signatory both to the International Convention on Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, both of which explicitly forbid the execution of minors, however, Iranian law allows the death penalty for boys from age 15 and for girls from age 9. Girls and women can be sentenced to hanging either in private, or now more commonly in public, or to stoning to death. Under external pressure, minors now tend to be kept in prison until they are 18 and then have their death sentence carried out. Iman Farrokhi, who was hanged on the 19th of January 2005, was 17 when he was convicted of murder. Several other juveniles are under sentence of death.

Let us have a look at the individual cases of these women.

Everyone of them died a painful and humiliating death, there being no effort made to minimise their suffering or make their execution in any way humane. Pictures of Fariba Tajiani-Emamqoli’s hanging and those of male prisoners show that an American style coiled noose made from modern nylon rope is used and that the prisoner is either stood on a box which is pulled from under them or hoisted into the air by a crane jib as happened with Fariba and 16 year old Atefeh Rajabi.

The first execution took place on the 26th of January 2000 when Masoumeh Fathi was hanged in the north-western city of Tabriz for killing a prison warder during an escape attempt. On the same day Alieh Moradi and her male accomplice, Farhang Moradi, were hanged in Kermanshah in western Iran, for the murder of Alieh’s husband. Her children were present in the prison grounds to watch their mother die. Both executions took place within the prisons.

The first public hanging took place at dawn on the 19th of March 2001 when 30 year old Fariba Tajiani-Emamqoli and four men were put to death for drug trafficking in Tehran. Fariba was attended by a woman prison officer and was blindfolded and had her hands tied behind her back. Like most public hangings nowadays the hydraulic crane of a small recovery vehicle was used to hoist her into the air. The whole process took 25 minutes, with the bodies being left hanging for 10 minutes before being taken down A crowd of about 200 gathered to witness the event and chanted "Allah akbar" - God is great and "death to the traffickers, death to the traffickers."

A series of photos of Fariba’s execution:









Iran also uses stoning to death as punishment for women and this horrific fate was meted out to 32-year-old Maryam Ayoubi who was stoned on Wednesday 11th July 2001, within Tehran's Evin prison. Maryam had confessed to poisoning her husband with soup and then stabbing him to death with the assistance of her lover, who was hanged on the same day.

Women who are to be stoned are buried up to their shoulders in the ground and their head covered with a cloth. The law specifies the size of the stones that are then hurled at their heads until they die from their injuries.

Monireh Ghasempour was reportedly hanged in public in Tehran on the 11th of July 2004, but the details of her crime are unknown.

Diba Zomorodian, a microbiology student was hanged in Qazvin (western Iran) on the 29th of June 2004, again there being no details of her crime. It is thought that an unnamed woman was hanged in Qazvin on July 12th 2004.

A truly scandalous execution took place on Sunday, August the 15th 2004, when 16-year-old Atefeh Rajabi was hanged in public in the town of Neka. Atefeh was executed for “engaging in acts incompatible with chastity”.

Atefeh was not represented by a lawyer at her trial and efforts by her family to recruit a lawyer was to no avail. She had to defend herself and told the religious judge, Haji Rezaii, that he should punish the main perpetrators of moral corruption not the victims. She further enraged the judge by removing some of her clothing (probably just her headscarf) and he accused her of having a “sharp tongue”. It is claimed that he pursued her execution beyond all normal procedures and finally gained the approval of the Supreme Court and the chief of the nation’s “judiciary branch.” Her age was given in official court documents as 22 but her birth certificate has been viewed by reliable sources and shows she really was just 16.

At the place of execution in the town’s square the judge personally put the rope around the girl’s neck and gave the signal to the crane operator to begin her hanging.

Witnesses reported that she begged for mercy and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the execution truck. She repeatedly shouted "repentance" which, according to Islamic law, is supposed to grant the accused the right to an immediate stay of execution while an appeal is heard.

Judge Haji Rezaie said he was pleased to hang her and is quoted as saying. "Society has to be kept safe from acts against public morality." Her body was left dangling from the crane for some time so people could see what happened to teenagers who committed acts incompatible with chastity.

It should be noted that although according to the Islamic Republic’s penal code the presence of an attorney for the defense is mandatory, regardless of the defendant’s ability to afford one, nevertheless Atefeh did not get an attorney, despite the efforts of her father to raise money for one. Atefeh’s boyfriend, who had been arrested as well, received 100 lashes and was afterwards released.

So what was Atefeh’s “crime”? It would seem that it amounted to having sex with her boyfriend. According to judicial records, Atefeh had five previous convictions for having sex with unmarried men. For each offence she had been jailed and flogged. She confided in her friends that she had been abused by the guards in prison. A law suit is being brought by Shadi Sadr, a lawyer representing the Rajabi family, against the judiciary for wrongful execution. Sadr is also trying to bring a murder charge against the judge, Haji Rezaie.

Akram N., a 20 year old Iranian woman was hanged in prison in the north-eastern town of Shirevan, on the 7th of December 2005. She had been convicted of murdering an older woman, Maryam A., in December 2001. The death sentence was carried out at dawn in front of the religious prosecutor and judge.

There are thought to be 15 women currently under sentence of death in Iran as of December 2005:

Kobra Rahmanpour, aged 22, convicted of murdering her mother.

Najmeh Vosouq-Razavi, a law student from Mashhad, whose crime is not known.

Hajiyeh Esma’eilvand, 30, sentenced to stoning for adultery with an unnamed 17 year old boy.

Zhila Iazadi, aged 13 or 14,sentenced to stoning for incest with her 15 year old brother, by whom she became pregnant. It is reported that she has already received 50 lashes in prison and is in a poor state both mentally and physically.

It should be noted that all death sentences in Iran must be upheld by the Supreme Court before they can be carried out.

There seems to be considerable contradictions between the Iranian government’s “official line” and the allegations of human rights groups as to what is actually happening in the country in 2005. There have been reports of death sentences passed on juveniles and of stoning sentences passed on women, despite assurances to the International Community that these practices had ended. In January 2005, at a weekly briefing for journalists to which some foreign media correspondents were invited, judiciary spokesman Jamal Karimirad, dismissed the allegations saying that "in the Islamic Republic, we no longer face such verdicts and implementation of such verdicts." "I do not know how they get such baseless information and then make a fuss over it. The aim of such news is to harm Iran's image." There also seems to be a dichotomy between what senior ministers are saying for foreign consumption and what is going on at “ground level” with Islamic judges.

The United Nations condemned Iran's record on public executions, floggings, arbitrary sentences, torture and discrimination against women, in a resolution in December 2004. Many other bodies have done the same. You will find endless websites condemning Iran’s human rights record.

So what are we to believe? I will monitor the situation during 2005 and update this article in January 2006. Individual executions will be reported monthly.

THE HANGING OF WOMEN AND GIRLS IN IRAN.

What follows is a first hand account of the atrocities committed against women and girls in the first few years after the 1979 Revolution. It was written by an Iranian doctor who served as a prison doctor's assistant before managing to escape from Iran in 1986, and is published with his consent.

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of Iranian females went to the gallows for various offences after the Islamic revolution in 1979. They were of various ages and occupations, school teachers, students, workers, young teenagers, writers and business owners. What united them in their final hour was the method of their death. For females, the noose became the standard and brutal method of execution after denial of their rights enjoyed during the reign of Shah Pahalav, who went into exile after his abdication. Initially peaceful, the Islamic revolution promised Iranian women and girls a better society. But what they got was theocratic government that took their rights away from them. During the reign of the Shah, few Iranian females went to the gallows. They died mostly for murder and their executions were rare in comparison with the male criminals. Although several young female university students were known to have been hanged by the Shah's secret police, they were executed for arson and terrorism and died on a British style gallows that guaranteed a quick death from a broken neck. Traditionally, Iran, (Persia) was the first country in history to introduce hanging as punishment in the Middle eastern region 2,500 years ago. Previously females were simply strangled with a rope to preserve modesty. Hanging was seen as a simple and efficient method of punishment for both males and females, but only during Khomeini's reign, was mass hanging of women and girls implemented as government policy. Khomeini decreed that females as young as 10 could be executed by hanging for various offences, although there is no record of someone that young ever being hanged. The youngest girls ever hanged were between 12 and 14 years old and were always hanged en masse with the adults. Traditionally, all women and girls were raped by the guards prior to their execution. This measure was to ensure that they lose their virginity and do not go to paradise. The day after the rape, the condemned were allowed to rest for one day and then brought to a room to be prepared for their execution. Their head-scarves would be removed if execution was not in public and their necks and a portion of the upper chest would be exposed by unbuttoning the top button of a blouse or a shirt. All sentenced to hang would have their hands bound behind them with a rope and escorted to the gallows. Very strong thin ropes or steel cables with simple slipknots would be placed around their necks and drawn fairly tight. After suspension, the hanged would kick violently thrashing and choking, defecating and urinating. Their agonies were designed to last long for the drop was very short, made to ensure a slow, painful and complete strangulation. After they stopped kicking and convulsing, their bodies would be examined by a prison doctor and left hanging for 10 to 20 minutes. They would then be taken down, brought to the morgue and washed with a fire-hose. Relatives would claim the bodies after signing the death certificate and paying for the rope used.

Preparation for hanging.

The day before execution, the condemned women or girls are given the last chance of confessing more of their sins or provide any useful information about their amoral or criminal activities to the religious court. Additional information is recorded and the condemned are returned to their cells. While women and girls await execution, the gallows room, if the hanging is in private, is prepared. Ropes as well as wire cables are used for the hanging and are no more than one inch in diameter. They are usually strong and thin, designed to dig into the neck, crush the larynx and inflict reasonable amount of pain after the moment of suspension. In the early 80's simple wooden or plastic crates would be used for the condemned to step on and be noosed. To expedite the volume of executions, the gallows room was designed to accommodate a special gallows designed for multiple hangings. An iron or wooden beam sometimes with attached metal hooks would be positioned opposite a single gallows. A female had to be someone of importance to be hanged alone. Most girls and women shared the gallows together, sometimes being hanged four to six at a time. The floor of the hanging room would have one or two drainage holes designed to clean the urine and faeces expelled during their agony in the noose. After the execution, when the bodies were cut down, examined and removed, a prison guard would clean the room with a fire-hose. Most of the females hanged in Iran in private died in wire or cable nooses. Cable nooses were more durable since they did not snap under the prisoner's weight after the drop. During early public hangings of females, telephone cords, vertical blind cords and parcel ropes were used for hanging.


Hanging Procedure.

Solo hanging.

At the appointed time one or two clerics accompanied by the soldiers would wait for the condemned women or a girl to enter the gallows room. Regardless of her age, she would be shown the gallows she would be hanging on and then a blindfold would be applied to her face to cover only her eyes. In private hanging, her headscarf would be removed to expose her head and neck and her shirt unbuttoned to expose the upper chest as a sign of humiliation. Her hands would already be tied with a rope or a cord behind her back. Ropes are used to bind the prisoners. Only high ranking prisoners are hanged wearing handcuffs. The woman or a girl would then be placed under the noose and the executioner would place the noose around her neck. The slipknot is usually positioned on the side under her chin so the hanged does not die too quickly as she would if the slipknot was at the back of her head. After suspension, her windpipe would still be open for several minutes but it will be slowly squeezed shut. During that time, the fully conscious girl would feel the pain of the noose or a wire digging into her neck. There are different ways used to hang the females in solo hanging. Sometimes she would be hoisted up via winch turned by two executioners or guards or made to stand on a simple crate which will be kicked from under her. Observers wait patiently until her convulsions stop and leave the gallows room after the prison doctor pronounces her dead. The body is not taken down immediately. Sometimes it would remain hanging for ten to forty five minutes and finally removed after the rigor mortis had passed.

Mass hanging.

During mass hanging of four or more females, all condemned mount a bench one by one and wait for their nooses to be put on. If children are hanged together with the adults, they are placed on top of a crate placed on the bench so executioner could place the noose around their necks without problems. Most observers of mass hangings of Iranian females note mixed expressions on the faces of the condemned. Shock, pain, fear and curiosity are four main reactions to the proceedings. During the adjustment of the nooses, the condemned are forbidden to talk and if they display any resistance to the executioner like putting their chins down on their chests, they are yanked by the hair and when noose is slipped around their neck, the executioner deliberately draws it fairly tight. When all females have been noosed, the religious judge reads a sentence of death after which the bench is kicked away. Since the drop is short, the hanged struggle hard and long before expiring. The prisoners would be swinging beside one another with only a meter's length between them. It is very possible that one hanged woman would be able to observe the strangulation process of a female to her left and right before she herself would finally lose her vision due to the lack of supply of blood and oxygen to the brain. In the present, public hangings are usually carried out by lifting the condemned by the use of a crane as in the cases Fariba Tajiani-Emamqoli, hanged in public for drug trafficking and 16 year old schoolgirl Atefeh Rajabi, who was hanged for "moral corruption." The youngest hanged female in Iran was reportedly 11 year old Nasrin Sakvar, daughter of a doctor who denounced Khomeini regime and was killed by the Revolutionary guards. Nasrin was arrested while hiding several letters that compromised her father and was sentenced to death by hanging. Due to her young age, Nasrin's execution was carried out inside the prison, but she was hanged in a same brutal manner as the others suspended by the neck on a thin rope slowly strangling to death before guards and clerics who showed little or no emotion.

Iranian girls' attitude toward hanging.

In private interviews, most Iranian girls when asked how they wanted to die if they were executed, responded mostly in favour of the noose. Older woman mostly preferred firing squads, but 90 percent of all condemned females die on the gallows. There were a few very rare cases when a girl or a woman would be offered a choice between a bullet and the noose. Death on the gallows in spite its age long tradition and simplicity remains a fascinating subject among Iranian girls. Hanging is also the most popular method of suicide among young Iranian females aged 12 to 30. (Female suicides are a frequent occurrence in Iran) Currently, Iran holds the record for executing more females per year than any other country. The religious forces governing Iran see no reason to abolish hanging for females. One of the mullahs actually said that he wanted to hang as many Iranian girls and women as possible. Sometimes clerics place the ropes around women's necks personally and observed with morbid curiosity as the victim strangled and choked until her convulsions stopped. As far as death penalty goes, the Islamic Republic of Iran will continue to execute females by hanging as long as they remain in power.

Copyright by Dr. Hamiz 2004 & Saleha Darani

*Emphasis added by me!

Yes, that's right. That would be the same Iran Angelika Beer, German Greens MEP, called a 'fascinating country with a young well-educated society'. Of course, all this is not more than a quaint, folkloristic custom, which this 'young well-educated society' preserves with an admiring sense of tradition. We must not be judgemental here and who are we to judge with the Holocaust (top THAT!) under our belt and the Americans better shut up anyway because they are nasty to the Negroes!

I don't think I will sleep particularly well tonight.

January 10th: Day of Shame

On January 10th 1946 the first First UN General Assembly took place in London. The organisation was founded in 1945 to ensure lasting world peace after World War II.

Yet from early on, the UN's bias and corruption has rendered it incapable and with zero credibility. The organisation's corruption started decades ago and has included the buying of votes and influence by oil-rich Arab states to ensure an anti-Israel majority in all major UN bodies. Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, surrounded by hostile Muslim rogue states hell-bent on her destruction, is the only UN member that is subjected to scrutiny by a standing committee, the "Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Population of the Occupied Territories." The United Nations Reliefs and Works Administration for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) allows its schools to use antisemitic textbooks that teach hatred for Jews and Israelis. UNRWA openly admits to employing members of the terrorist gang Hamas and has doggedly opposed any efforts to build permanent homes for Palestinian refugees. That said, "Palestinian" refugees are the only refugees worldwide whose offspring is granted refugee status as well by the UN. Thus, the UNRWA is not committing an injustice of historic proportions, it is nicely justifying and ensuring its own existence as well.

The U.N. has repeatedly held "Emergency Special Sessions" focusing solely on Israel. Introduced in 1950 for emergencies like the Korean War, Emergency Special Sessions over the past 15 years have had ONLY Israel as their sole target. No Emergency Special Sessions for the genocide in Rwanda, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia or other major world conflicts. Not a beep about the decades-old occupation of Tibet by China. If the perpetrators can't be pinned down as Jewish, who cares for a couple of hundredthousand Negroes in Africa.

The UN's Commission on Human Rights has supported Palestinian terror attacks against Israel all the way, passing resolutions supporting Palestinian measures against Israel including "all available means including armed struggle," nothing but pretty euphemisms for terrorism. That such language should come from a "human rights" body and in clear violation of the UN Charter's call for the settlement of "international disputes by peaceful means," is a further sign of the UN's moral bankrupcy.

The conduct towards Israel is not the only, but the most blatant proof of the UN's defilement.

Knock knock UN...

And have a nice anniversary -- NOT!

By the way, the 10th of January is not JUST a day of shame: The best husband I ever had celebrates his birthday today! Happy Birthday, U.!

Gallant

From Michelle Malkin's Blog: Letter written by Martin Toler Jr., who died in the Sago Mine disaster. It reads: "Tell all I see them on the other side JR I love you It wasn't bad just went to sleep."



Hope to meet you one day, Martin.

And here we are, thinking that WE had problems...
(Thanks to Gudrun for pointing me at that!)

Folklore Gone A Bit out of Hand

Of course, this is not nice, but we must not see that out of context. It's part of their culture, really, and racist to blame them because their quaint folklore went a tiny wee little bit out of hand. Deep down, they are quite wellmeaning. We Germans have the Holocaust under our belt, which makes us a judge of everything (but EVERYTHING!) that goes on an "Palestine" but of nothing else and the Americans are not nice to the Negroes. So who are WE to judge?

Iran to hang teenage girl attacked by rapists
Sat. 7 Jan 2006
Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Jan. 07 – An Iranian court has sentenced a teenage rape victim to death by hanging after she weepingly confessed that she had unintentionally killed a man who had tried to rape both her and her niece.

The state-run daily Etemaad reported on Saturday that 18-year-old Nazanin confessed to stabbing one of three men who had attacked the pair along with their boyfriends while they were spending some time in a park west of the Iranian capital in March 2005.

Nazanin, who was 17 years old at the time of the incident, said that after the three men started to throw stones at them, the two girls’ boyfriends quickly escaped on their motorbikes leaving the pair helpless.

She described how the three men pushed her and her 16-year-old niece Somayeh onto the ground and tried to rape them, and said that she took out a knife from her pocket and stabbed one of the men in the hand.

As the girls tried to escape, the men once again attacked them, and at this point, Nazanin said, she stabbed one of the men in the chest. The teenage girl, however, broke down in tears in court as she explained that she had no intention of killing the man but was merely defending herself and her younger niece from rape, the report said.

The court, however, issued on Tuesday a sentence for Nazanin to be hanged to death.

Last week, a court in the city of Rasht, northern Iran, sentenced Delara Darabi to death by hanging charged with murder when she was 17 years old. Darabi has denied the charges.

In August 2004, Iran’s Islamic penal system sentenced a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, to death after a sham trial, in which she was accused of committing “acts incompatible with chastity”.

The teenage victim had no access to a lawyer at any stage and efforts by her family to retain one were to no avail. Atefeh personally defended herself and told the religious judge that he should punish those who force women into adultery, not the victims. She was eventually hanged in public in the northern town of Neka.

Remember Angelika Beer, MEP of the German Greens, the party of those who are always quick to stand for women's rights and never stand in the way if a crone insists on making a fool of herself? Her take on Iran? "Fascinating country with a young well-educated society"! You don't need to wait anymore while I rummage for my sick bag. I got a huge supply always ready.