The Hatemobile

From Loonwatch:

Farewell Jack

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'oun



". . . Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one - a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world's environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. . . "

- From Jack Layton's Open Letter to Canadians, written two days ago.

Courage

Most Norwegian kids have never lived in a war zone, and so have never been stalked through the woods by a ruthless killer, intent on their extermination.

The immigration and diversity that Anders Breivik and his ilk hate so much helped to save Norwegian lives.

From the Moscow Times:

Chechen War Prepared Teens for Norway Terror

16 August 2011

By Nikolaus von Twickel

Two Chechen teenagers who survived last month's massacre on Norway's Utoya Island said they pelted right-wing extremist Anders Breivik with stones and saved lives.

Movsar Dzhamayev, 17, and Rustam Daudov, 16, told the Norwegian Dagbladet daily that they were reminded of the war in their native Chechnya after seeing Breivik killing three people in front of their eyes on July 22.

"I have seen people being shot before in my country when I was small and had flashbacks," Dzhamayev said in the interview published late last week.

But after speaking to his father by cell phone, he pulled himself together. "My dad said, 'Attack the perpetrator and do it properly,'" he said.

With a third unidentified friend, the teens armed themselves with stones and returned to the scene only to witness Breivik killing another young camper on the island outside Oslo.

"We stood three meters from him and wanted to beat him, but then he shot one of our friends in the head. So we just threw the stones and ran for our lives," Daudov said.

While he was unsure whether he hit Breivik, Dzhamyev said he was certain he had.

"First he howled and then turned to me and shouted, "[expletive] [racial slur]," he said.

The teens said they decided that it was too difficult to stop the gunman and better to save lives. They discovered a cave-like opening in a rock where they managed to hide 23 children from Breivik, who ended up killing 69 people at the camp and eight more people in a bombing in central Oslo.

Dzhamayev, who kept guard outside, also dragged three youngsters from the lake who were close to drowning.

The two Chechens, who both live in Norway, said they first met each other at the summer camp and immediately became close friends.

Norway has a sizable population of Chechens, most of whom came as refugees from the wars that have ravaged the North Caucasus republic over the past 15 years.

Dzhamayev and Daudov are not the only Chechens reported to have survived the camp. A third, Anzor Dzhukayev, 17, was briefly arrested after the massacre on suspicion that he was an accomplice, Norwegian media reported last week.

A police spokesman said he was suspected of throwing away his gun and blending in because he showed no emotions, the Verdens Gang newspaper reported Friday.

Dzhukayev, who was released the following day, explained his coolness with his childhood experiences. "When I was little, I lived in a house full of bodies. I remember seeing dogs eating them," he was quoted in media reports as saying.

Attacks of some kind

I don't agree with Akiva Eldar's perspective on Israeli-Palestinian peace, but he is right about one thing: Netanyahu will use the attacks to justify even harsher treatment of the Palestinians, and the blood of those victims will then be used to pull the Palestinians back towards a maximalist position, since every other strategy seems to end in failure.

"The attacks in the south should remind us that in the Israeli-Palestinian military arena there is no knockout victory. Whoever didn't want the Palestina Liberation Organization got Hamas. Whoever didn't want Hamas is getting Al-Qaida."

The myth of Israel's Goliath image has been slain
From Ha'aretz

Akiva Eldar

The planning, time, place and methodology of the attacks in the south indicate that the intention was not just to kill Israelis, avenge Palestinian deaths, or speed up the end of occupation. Whoever sent the terrorists is no friend of President Mahmoud Abbas and his people, who are scurrying around trying to lobby support for a UN General Assembly vote for a Palestinian state next month.. . .

Read the rest.

A website I wish I had made. . .

. . . and, in fact, did.

A couple of years ago, when I had a lot of time on my hands, and the quantity of subject material was more manageable, I created a blog called The Mozlems Are Coming! I had intended to devote it to ridiculing the xenophobic conspiracy theory, forwarded by Spencer, Geller, Wilders and co., that there is a vast and ancient Muslim plot to conquer and subjugate non-Muslims everywhere.

I'm only slightly kidding.

Then, a combination of being busy, being lazy, the mushrooming of the Fear-O-Sphere genre, and the limited hit-count of this blog itself led me to put the project on hold indefinitely. It's something I regret. Since then, what used to go on in the darker corners of the internet has gradually moved into the mainstream, from the anti-Mosque protests in New York to the appearance of the many books penned by anti-Muslim wingnuts in hands of strangers I see on busses and trains. Before he spectacularly and gruesomely disproved every argument ever made about Scandinavians and racial profiling, Anders Breivik added his own 1500-page magnum opus to this growing body of hate literature.

For Spencer, Geller, et al to claim they weren't responsible is a bit like saying that Wagner wasn't responsible anti-Semitic violence. It's true, but he did inspire some people who were.

It is, therefore, regrettable that there aren't more people engaged in countering this burgeoning industry, whose intellectual products have already made a bloody imprint upon the world. Fortunately, a few brilliant people have stepped into the gap:


The site provides profiles regular updates on all the activities going in the Fear-O-Sphere, well-informed refutations of its (ahem) "scholarly" works, and unlike most political blogs (including and especially the anti-Islam ones), some healthy debate and disagreement in the comments, with regular contributions from a haters themselves.

I highly recommed the exposé on "Muslim Reformer" Wafa Sultan, one of the leaders of the cottage industry of Islam-Experts-With-Funny-Sounding-Names that professional hatemongers have come to rely upon.

None other than anti-Islam kingpin Robert Spencer himself has taken to flailing wildly at Loonwatch, calling it an "Islamic hate site." No comment from me is needed.

In summary: TheProudIslamist <3 Loonwatch.