Female Bombers

I don't know if you've seen the vid of 21-year-old, Wafa Samir al-Biss' failed homicide bombing attempt. I saw a couple of stills, but can't remember the site. But here is an outstanding article by Manuela Dviri on the women who have failed to murder Israelis. She's an amazing author who is a peace activist with street cred. Her son was murdered by Hizbollah rocket in 1998.

It was about midday when a young Palestinian woman from the refugee camp of Jabalya in Gaza approached an Israeli checkpoint clutching a special permit to visit a doctor on the other side of the border.The girl had big, brown eyes and her black hair was tied in a ponytail, but it was the strangeness of her gait that attracted the attention of the security officials at the Erez crossing, the main transit point between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

When a soldier asked her to remove her long, dark cloak, she turned to face him. All her movements were taped by the military surveillance camera at the checkpoint: calmly, deliberately, she took off her clothing, item by item, until she looked like any normal young woman in T-shirt and jeans. It was then that she tried to set off the belt containing 20lb of explosives hidden beneath her trousers. To her horror, she did not succeed. Desperate, she clawed at her face, screaming. She was still alive, she realised. She had failed her martyrdom mission.

What gets me is this chick was willing to blow up the hospital which treated and healed her, but even more disgusting was her desire to kill the innocent:

"My dream was to be a martyr. I believe in death," she said. "Today I wanted to blow myself up in a hospital, maybe even in the one in which I was treated. But since lots of Arabs come to be treated there, I decided I would go to another, maybe the Tel Hashomer, near Tel Aviv. I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews …''

[...]

And what about babies? Would you have killed babies and children? she was asked. "Yes, even babies and children. You, too, kill our babies. Do you remember the Doura child?"

There are about 30 of these women whose homicide attempts were foiled, aborted or just given up.

Some of them did it to make amends for a relative who was a collaborator, others to escape becoming victims of honour killings, and for the psychologically frail or depressed it was a good way to commit suicide and at the same time become 'heroines'.

Her belief in the 'culture of death' is validated by this last statement - make amends for a collaborator and escape honor killings. I'm still, to this very day, absolutely amazed at their disregard for life...

But wait...

According to the Koran, male martyrs are welcomed to Paradise by 72 beautiful virgins. Ayat, as with many of the women she is incarcerated with, believes that a woman martyr "will be the chief of the 72 virgins, the fairest of the fair".

So, once again in a misogynistic egotism, the women will be the 'chief' whore for the men. I guess having 72 men service on woman would be more like rape. Oh wait, that happens here on earth.

I just don't get it. What kind of religion is this??? A religion of death...

Freedom and Liberty

My favorite blog site, The Belmont Club, by Wretchard has, as always, an interesting entry on Republican's usurping Jeffersonian freedom from the idealistic Democrats. He references an article by Michael Ignatieff in the New York Times .

Although Ignatieff plainly wants to see freedom spread, one of the sources of his unease is the role of God, or something like it, in the missionary endeavor. How much better it would be, he seems to ask, if any claims to universality or transcendence could be kept out it. Then we could bring the Europeans and the Canadians in on it.

This is where I personally have a problem with the Conservative wing of the Republican party. I'm not religious by any means, in fact I would describe myself (as in previous posts) as more of a spiritual philosopher attuned to Zen Buddhism. So when I hear the politicos talking about religion, I'm VERY concerned. Don't get me wrong. I don't give a sh*t about the Ten Commandments or even pray. Hell, I send my children to parochial school for goodness sakes!! But I do balk at the Righteousness of the Evangelical Right. I've known too many hypocritical pious jerks to swallow their crap without at first fighting my gag reflex.

Political Potpourri

Miss me? Sorry for the lack of posting, but the better half has pulled a yeoman's duty in assisting her mother in moving from her home of 25 yrs. So, while she's been doing her daughterly duty, I've kept the home front with the progeny.

So to get back up to speed, we'll keep it short and sweet:

>Dick Durbin is an absolute fool - I'm sorry. but to bring up the skeletons of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot even in the SAME BREATH as Gitmo shows NOTHING but partisanship. It is disgusting pure and simple. I may not agree with 40% of what the Bush admin does, but I will never vote again for the Dems if they continue to spew such vitriol.

>Rove's Rant - I'm sorry but did I miss something??? Didn't a large group of 'liberal' Democrats express just the sentiments Rove outlined? Didn't Atrios, Kos and others espouse just that?!?!? What about the wunder candate - Kerry? Please, just because your number two in the Senate, Durbin, makes an Ass of him self, don't think you once again have the moral equivalence....

>Supreme Court... Be afraid, be very afraid....

>So let me get this right. The Govt of 'State's Rights' re: Repubs, is flat out against State's Rights when it doesn't' meet their litmus test. Yet, the SCOTUS somehow, someway deigned in their wisdom to contrive a commercial product of something illegal in all but the most extreme circumstances...Medical Marijuana is a commercial product!?!?? So therefore can be regulated by the Federal Govt. Lord help us if and/or when abortion is overturned and sent back to the states. My guess is fetal material (Stem cells, DNA or hell, placentas) will be considered commercial material, thus regulated by Right-wingnuts.

>But wait, don't think the Right has a lock on the absurd. This next one is brought to us by the Left . . . The Kelo v. New London ruling left me absolutely speechless. . . . So, let's review. If a local govt deems a bit of property best suited for improvement for 'the better good of the local tax base', it can confiscate the property and basically give it to another PRIVATE entity for the purpose of increasing the revenue generated by that property. Does this raise alarms with anyone else? It better, this is one of our Constitutional foundations and it's been decimated by the Courts. This is not like freedom of Choice which is implied; this is a pillar of our Govt which has been ripped out!! I WILL take the extreme example and picture a local govt taking the waterfront/riverfront property and giving them pennies on the dollar, yet how do you compensate the view, the life of these people??

> And finally, SCOTUS decides file sharing is bad, cable sharing is bad but source sharing is required . . . and may women who file restraining orders be double afraid . . . jeez, this is all so frightening.

>But wait, there's more. From the Daou report, I linked to this from the Carpetbagger Report. This last year validates his supposition that Repubs are great at campaigning while the Dems are better at governing. Repubs are better in the Minority while the Dems do a better job in the majority. . . . Sorry, but I'm in agreement. Give me a Dem President and a Repub Congress ANY DAY! ! ! ! !

Iraq’s Jihad: Past as Prologue

We are now in the middle of a full-blown Jihad, that is to say we have against us the fiercest prejudices of a people in a primeval state of civilization.
Gertrude Bell, Baghdad, Iraq, September 5, 1920

OK, so today is not an original, but pls check out the fascinating reading Gertrude Bell edited by Andrew Bostom. What's that French saying 'the more things change, the more they stay the same...' I don't remember, but it was in a Rush song.

And Yes, I do believe a society of martyrs is primeval. But this does not bode well for the West.

The Horror of Bosnia

I can not express my disgust with the video I saw of some Serb punks toying with young Bosnians. I've seen many vids that are hard to watch, but not many compare with the gut-wrenching scenes of the impending executions. This almost made me physically ill. . . the anticipation . . . I hope they hang the animals who did this. THIS is what perpetuates the cycle of hate.

I hope they meet the same 'virgins' as the Islamofascits'.