It Was Not an Honor Killing!

1. I have to be frank about all this bullshit. I am sick and tired of how the media portray individual events and uses them to smear a whole people.  All the Mantiqiyyin and Mantiqiyyat are pissed. Yes, it was “an exceedingly bloody crime scene” and indeed it was a horrible murder of a defenseless woman. And yes, we at Mantiq al-Tayr must acknowledge that the two were estranged and that she had hired an attorney and wanted a divorce and was planning to move out soon.  Furthermore, she was so disfigured authorities at first couldn’t even tell how she’d been killed. It’s awful and indefensible.  Even the killer acknowledges this fact and called it “horrific.”

And there is no doubt that in the aftermath of such a tragedy that everyone would go berserk and portray such a brutal crime in the most damning way possible with respect to the defendant and frankly such a defendant deserves it. But all the hue and cry about this being an honor killing and how the culture of the murderer encourages these things can only lead to hostility and violence against a small minority struggling to make its way in a country whose basic principles it is still trying to come to terms with.

Furthermore, we at Mantiq al-Tayr have been vindicated in our views by the very legal system that is so harassing and besieging the likes of the husband murderer in this case. The time has come for us to eschew the ethnocentric knee-jerk responses to stereotypical phenomena that permeate our consciousness.

It turns out that this woman was wrapping Christmas presents in her kitchen when she was killed. Furthermore she was talking about vacation plans that her husband didn’t like.  And she may have had some mental problems that drove her husband to kill her. He just couldn’t control himself.  Fortunately the Judge in the case overcame the racist stereotypes in the press and showed mercy on this poor man married to an estranged Christmas-present-wrapping wife with a desire to leave him and who therefore beat her to death with a metal bar while talking to her in the kitchen.  Some people probably would have wanted this man sentenced to life in prison or to death.  After all, the woman’s brother described her thusly: “She was the most amazing individual, often described as an angel on earth.”

However Mrs. Ellen Robb had the audacity to suffer from some mental problems which bothered her poor, long suffering, Israeli citizen husband, Rafael Robb,  and “he just lost it.” Poor baby.   The prosecutor too showed sympathy for this poor little tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was born in Israel. “It’s a classic heat-of-passion killing,” said DA Bruce Castor. Judge Paul W. Tressler, and thank G-d we have such insightful judges as he, did not allow passion to overcome his sentencing standards.“This physical bludgeoning is the worst I’ve seen in my entire life,” said Judge Paul Tressler.

“A lot of people failed this woman,” Tressler said.  He was blaming the woman’s other family members for her death since they had not sought to have her put into a mental institution which would have prevented her Jewish husband from killing her while she was wrapping Christmas presents.

So Judge Paul Tressler sentenced Rafael Robb to 5 to 10 years in prison including the two years he had already served by the time of sentencing.

“The defendant will receive credit for nearly two years he has already served behind bars. He will be eligible for parole after serving at least five years and was given 10 years probation.”

Thank G-d that Rafael Robb will be out walking the streets by the end of 2011.   All he did was beat his wife to death with a metal bar because she was going to leave him and because her mental state caused him annoyance. Women married to Israelis in Pennsylvania should be very afraid.

How Does This Sound?

1. “Absolutely. If a Jew who has — who is — a practicing Jew who believes the word of the Hebrew Bible to be the word of Yahweh, who abides by Judaism, who goes to synagogue and prays every Saturday, who prays three times a day — this practicing Jew , who believes in the teachings of the Hebrew Bible, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.”

“A Jew is allowed to lie under any situation to make Judaism , or for the benefit of Jews in the long run. A Jew sworn to office can lay his hand on the Hebrew Bible and say ‘I swear that I’m telling the truth and nothing but the truth,’ fully knowing that he is lying because the same Hebrew Bible that he is swearing on justifies his lying in order to advance the cause of Judaism . What is worrisome about that is when we are faced with war and a Jewish political official in office has to make a decision either in the interest of the United States, which is considered infidel according to the teachings of Judaism , and our Constitution is uncompatible [sic] with Judaism — not compatible — that Jew in office will always have his loyalty to Judaism.”

“Those Jews who are coming into the United States, they are immediately going from the border into the major cities where there is a large Jewish concentration in the United States, such as New York Aviv or Bethesda…”

“We need to see more patriotism and less terrorism, and especially on the part of the Jewish community in this country, who are good at nothing but complaining about every single thing instead of standing up and working with us in fighting the enemy in our country.

“I tell them, if you see a synagogue being built in your community, and you are worried about suspicious activities happening in the synagogue, go down to city hall. Find out who owns the deed to that synagogue. Is it an Israeli foundation? Is it (in) names of some Jewish Rabbi outside of the United States of America? Write those names down. It’s public information — for free. Write the information down. Come home. Call the F.B.I. in your local community. Turn the names to the F.B.I. and the F.B.I. can start checking. Are these people on the most wanted list? Do they have links to terrorism? This is how we can help our government as citizens…”

Original text is included in the article here. Please compare.  In the text above, references to Muslims were replaced by references to Jews. Imagine such a bigot being able to speak to US military academies.

Noam Chomsky Appointed Honorary Spiritual Leader

1. Noam Chomsky, that beloved gadfly whose work in linguistics is virtually incomprehensible and whose  political views are essentially banned from the US main-stream media, has finally made the big time. Rael has appointed him as an “honorary guide” of the International Raelian Movement.  No doubt Noam is thrilled. Maybe he’ll even convert and receive the “cellular plan.” (Folks, I am telling you, I am in the wrong business. People will believe absolutely anything and Rael is living proof.) On the other hand, how bad can a religion be that calls on its female members to go to demonstrations topless? Good grief.

2. Wikipedia’s founder has an interesting history having started out in the Internet porn business with Bomis.com. Maybe he should become a Raelian? Yup, Jimmy Wales is a most interesting character. Enjoy researching him.

3. The Anti-Defamation League is an organization dedicated to defaming the Palestinian people and to supporting Israel in its racist policies against the Palestinians.  Noam Chomsky,  an involuntary Honorary Guide of the International Raelian Movement and who does not think the Jewish lobby is very powerful, says this of the ADL “…one of the ugliest, most powerful pressure groups in the U.S…Its primary commitment is to use any technique, however dishonest and disgraceful, in order to defame and silence and destroy anybody who dares to criticize the Holy State (‘Israel’).” The ADL’s letter to the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post on February 9th is an excellent example of the fact that the ADL is an agent of a foreign government.  In this letter the ADL viciously attacks the Palestinian people who respond to Israel’s olive branches with “violence and terror” and with “Hamas and rocket attacks.” Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud platform rejects the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, is portrayed in this letter as a man of peace. The ADL is as anti-semitic as they come.

Babes, Spychips, Ixquick and Morons

1. Katherine Albrecht is a babe.  But I digress. She is also one of the leading privacy advocates in the United States and she is waging a campaign against Google, that cute HUGE outfit that keeps all of your queries and associates them with your IP address forever. That sweet little search engine company that in 2006 came up with the cool idea to have your computer’s built-in microphone be used to listen to the ambient sounds in your room and then give you advertisements based on what TV show you are watching. Yeah, that company.  This is also the company that has come up with Google Latitude so your phone can be used by your “friends” to track your every movement. She notes that Privacy International says that the software on your phone can be turned on by someone other than you. Gee. How sweet.  Google also wants to use your medical searches to predict flu outbreaks.

So what’s a bird to do? Well, Ms. Albrecht (did I mention that she is a babe?) recommends that you can at least stop using the Google search engine so that Google can’t log any more of your search data. She also recommends the search engine by a company named Ixquick which, according to her and to its website, does not ever record any IP addresses and deletes queries with 48 hours.  We’ve been using it exclusively at Mantiq al-Tayr for the past week and find that Ixquick is a great search engine. For example, if you enter “Anonymous Arabist” in the engine, you immediately get links to pictures of dead cats. Just kidding.  The first two hits (after the ad links) take you to that artful, tasteful and relevant blog. So give it a try.

2. This dog is dead.

This is why. Ms. Albrecht has been campaigning against RFID chips for many years.  More than this cute little doggie’s life is at stake.  But it is sure is a sad story.

3. These people are morons. More on their ilk later.

At Witte’s End

1. Griff Witte spent the entire week presenting beleaguered Washington Post readers with the way Israelis look at things using the elections in Israel as an excuse to pad his resume for an eventual job working for AIPAC, apparently.  However, he did drop a couple of good paragraphs in his pieces this week, comments which will no doubt cause JDL types to say that Witte is in league with Al-Qaida.  His Valentines Day piece was based on the mythical premise that there is a peace camp in Israel and that Tzipi Livni (of all people) is part of it.  He also describes the vicious anti-Arab racist Avigdor Lieberman as “ultra nationalist” which is the way the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post always describes the most racist elements of Israel’s racist society.  However, he does an end around on Lieberman comparing him to the horrible Meir Kahane who was expelled from the Knesset for having “racist” views. Score one for Witte.  (BTW, getting kicked out the Knesset for hating Arabs is sort of like getting kicked out of the KKK for hating blacks.) But then he portrays Benjamin Netnayahu as almost a peace-nik hanging out in the Likud camp. Too bad he doesn’t point out in this highly misleading discussion that Likud’s official position is that there can be no Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Witte also treated us to the usual baloney about the poor Israelis who live in fear all the time at the start of the week. However, he ended that piece with the following quote – a quote which is probably going to prove to be true in part because newspapers like the Post support the Zionist cause. The red highlighting is mine.

“The possibility that two states will be established here does not exist, because the ‘independent’ Palestinian state that we ‘want’ or can offer the Palestinians is not a state, but rather a parody of a state,” wrote Kobi Niv in Monday’s Maariv, a Hebrew daily. “Between a state (the large and strong Israel) and a joke (a divided and weak Palestine under Israeli auspices) there can never be peace, but only war and terrorism, for all eternity, or until one of the sides is wiped out, whichever comes first.”

2. Tzipi Livni is a former Mossad operative who worked with assassination teams.  Both of her parents were arrested for violent  terrorist crimes.  Her mother was a train rober and also participated in blowing up a train.  This is the person Griff Witte tells you is the moderate who will create a Palestinian state. I wonder if her parents knew Rahm Emmanuel’s parents.

3. We pause here to give you message from the Jewish Defense League, founded by Meir Kahane.

4.  Brian Wilson is our hero.

Some Beautiful Things

1. Michael Sells is Religious Studies professor at Haverford College.  A few years ago he wrote a lovely introduction to the Qur’an called “Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations” which also contains a CD with some beautiful recitations in it of the Surah’s that he discusses in the book. You can learn about Michael Sells and order the book and CD that comes with it here.

In my humble opinion, the most beautiful recitation on that CD is of the Surah called Al-Qadr, which, and I think this is kind of cool, is a title that is almost impossible to translate.  Sometimes it is translated as “Power” and by others as “Destiny.” Neither term fully captures the evocativeness of the Arabic word.

Al-Qadr was revealed on a night during one of final odd numbered days of the month of Ramadan.  On that night, the entire Quran was send down from the 7th heaven to the lowest heaven from whence, through the mediatorship of the angel Gabrielle, it was revealed in portions to Muhammad over a twenty-two year period. That night is extolled in this very short Surah in ways that still give commentators pause today. Michael Sells has some great comments on this Surah in his book.

The recitation I am including here of Al-Qadr is done by Seemi Bushra Gazi, a woman residing in Vancouver, Canada.  An short and interesting bio of her can be found here.  So, if you’d like to hear something beautiful and have one minute and eighteen seconds to spare for something like this, then please click right click and save the follwing link qadr-hafs-ghazi971 and sit back and enjoy.  To follow along using English transliteration go here. To see the actual Arabic go here. For a translation go here.

2.  If you like beautiful photography of architecture and nature then TrekEarth is for you. Great stuff to look at and ponder while listening to Quran recitation. Here’s a nice example.

3. “Okay Mantiq, where’s the Griff Witte update?!” Please don’t get your feathers ruffled. There will be more published either later today and certainly by tomorrow.  إن شاء الله .

Arabs Flagrantly Violate the April 3 Accord

1. In yet another act of perfidy, betrayal, deceit, treachery, and in-your-face rage against the West, the Arabs have openly and publicly violated the April 3 Accord.  This famous accord, signed by both sides in 2007,  was supposed to bring full domestic tranquility and stability to the region, according to former UN Secretary General Butros Butros Butros Butros. But, as they have done in all previous cases, the Arabs have shamelessly violated the provisions of this last-chance pact.  All of the candidates for the still-disputed position of US Prime Minister were quick to denounce this violation. Tzipi “I can be a bitch” Livni told the Jerusalem Washington New York Times Post “Here I am holding out a olive branch to those goddamn Arabs and this is what they do.” Not to be outdone, Boobi Netanyahooooo spoke on the Kohl News Network with Wolf “Free Jonathan Pollard” Blitzer stressing “the need to bomb Iran immediately because they were the ones secretly behind the cancellation of the accord.” Avigdor Lieberman (as far as we know not directly related to Likud Senator Joe Lieberman), was quoted in HahahaRetz “Let’s kill all the Palestinians and then we’ll give them a loyalty test.”  Barrack Obama, who holds the ceremonial post of Deputy US President under Shimon Peres, and who is probably a natural born US citizen, said that he “audaciously hopes” that somehow the Arabs will come to their senses.

To see an original copy of the agreement go here. To see the excuses for violating it, go here.

2. Coming up this weekend: Who will be the new US Prime Minister?, a Griff Witte update, and more. Plus new links, pics and other stuff.

Animal House

1. Some of the Mantiqiyyun and Mantiqiyyat love hamsters. We aren’t sure why, although they are great food for hawks, but most of us just can’t wrap our bird-brains around hamster love. However, in an effort to be be magnanimous and in all other respects hamster literate, we link you to the following criminal hamster.  If you see any suspicious hamsters in your neighborhood, please call 666-666-6666.

2.  Cats are conspiratorial, conniving, bird-eating, fur-ball puking, manipulative and cuddly creatures, very much like husbands if you think about it. Anyway, since baseball season is upon us, here is a link to a cat that doesn’t use steroids. Well, we are not completely sure about this, but at  least the George Mitchell report  which also managed not to mention A-rod, the most highly paid player in the history of baseball, didn’t out this little pussy cat.

3.  The emails are coming in as I write this. “Mantiq, why aren’t you complaining about Griff Witte?  Knock off the animal stuff and get down to business.” That was from Judith Miller, formerly a fiction writer for the New York Times. She must have a new job with MEMRI.  I think she has a crush on Griff.

We can see why.

Griff takes a fair amount of heat from Israeli partisans because he doesn’t sound like Benyamin Netanyahoo.com 100% of the time.  Any journalist who dutifully false-frames the situation but allows some semblance of humanity for the Palestinians is usually attacked this way to make it look like the US media is owned by Muslim extremists.

More on Griff this weekend.

4.  Last time we reported on the terrorist HAMAS chickens that Israel prevented from staging a terror attack on against the Perdues and the Tysons.  Well, it turns out that US tax dollars have helped eradicate other species as well that operate under HAMAS control.  It turns out that the Israeli military discovered that phantom HAMASistas were using something like animal shields at the Gaza Zoo, so they destroyed it and killed many of the animals there. Apparently for no reason at all. Let’s get that cat with the baseball bat in item 2 above and send him out to beat some sense into the Israelis.

Chickens Launch Rockets Into Tel Aviv

No longer a threat to the Jewish State

1. Even the chickens in Gaza are terrorist anti-semites which is no doubt why the Israelis killed thousands of chickens being raised on farms during their criminal assault on Gaza. The utlimate goal of the Israeli terror is to destroy all civil infratstructure in Gaza and to eventually force the Gazan’s out.  You can read the article by clicking on the picture. It will take you to the blog of young Palestinian journalist Sameh Habib whose work has been prominently featured on quality sites like that of Dennis Bernstein ever since the terror attack on Gaza began.  Sameh also shows some pictures of Mai al-Samouni who lost 29 family members. If her story doesn’t move you, then we suggest that you move to Israel.

2. Iris Dement has a wonderful tune called “Our Town” which sorrowfully relates the decline of a mythical small town in America. It is probably the single song for which she is best known. We are not big country music fans here in the land of mantiq, but we very much enjoy Ms. Dement whose work really crosses over into folk.  We humbly suggest to her that she work on another song called “Our Country” because the whole place is going to hell and probably deserves to.  She’s a bit of rogue with a very low Internet presence. We think that’s kind of cool. This brief article talks about that. Here you can find an out-of-date unofficial homepage for her.  Anyway, we hope you enjoy the song.

3. Well, we need to finish up today on a cheery note. After all we can only talk about chicken massacres and the fact that our country is going straight to hell faster than the twin towers collapsed for so long before we just, well, molt. Soooooo . . .

We know that Internet surfers like their words to be long and  hard. Thanks to VideoArab you can now build your vocabulary and talk like a Harvard educated Ph.D. in linguistics.  It’s a cute video.

4. Okay, enough of that. Back to famine and plague and stuff.  In the UK, Deek Jackson has a weekly video podcast where he makes fun of things like, well like famine and plague. By the way, did you know that two plague-infected mice in the US have just disappeared from their lab? Pretty cool huh? Anyway, back to Deek. His podcast is called the FKN news.  Watch him interview death while also making fun of Western politicians.

Michael Phelps Executed by Firing Squad

1. Finally giving in to the cries from human rights organizations around the world to put an end to the suffering of sports fans throughout the US, the world and the Milky Way,  the US Olympic Committee executed Michael “buy this bong” Phelps by firing squad.  “This should put an end to all the holier-than-though columns by know-nothing sports columnists” said USOC spokesthing Tzipi Livni.

2. WordPress bloggers about a week or ten days ago were constantly harrassed when they logged on to their site by a wordpress blog that said that masturbation is really really bad for you.  After much consultation, meditation and a few beers the flock here at Mantiq al-Tayr is pleased to bring male Mantiqians this link which gives most helpful and healthful tips and methods to avoid masturbation courtesy of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  Please keep both hands on your keyboard when you link to that site.

3. Mantiqians are kind of known for being bird-brains, but even the most feeble-minded Americans whose brains have been so damaged over the years through the crap that is on television plus the even more damaging material routinely found in the Jerusalem Washington Post have got to wonder at the logic employed in today’s version of that driveway tabloid.  Griff Witte can’t really be blamed for the headline of the article (we hope) which is far worse than the article itself.

Some of you might still remember that Israel, totally by accident and out of self defense against the most powerful nuclear power and terrorist organization on earth called HAMAS (Hateful Asshole Muslim Anti-Semites) sent in some boy scouts and a helicopter into Gaza in late December and killed over 1300 people. Now back when this humanitarian assistance to Gaza was going  on, the Washington edition of the Jerusalem Post reported the following (red highlighting is mine):

Tuesday’s attack on the school came only hours after an Israeli missile struck a residential area in al-Bureij refugee camp, injuring seven U.N. workers in a nearby medical clinic, U.N. officials said. Late Monday, an Israeli airstrike on a U.N. school in Gaza City had killed three members of a family.

“The school” in the above paragraph is the UN-run al-Fakhora school. The article featured the Israeli attack on the school killed over 40 people. The article was a little vague on where the shells hit, though it did report that the school had been “hit” and used that term in the headline.  However, the bulk of the article implied that civilians standing outside the school were the victims.  Note that the quote above shows that this was the THIRD Israeli attack in about 48 hours on places where UN people worked.

Well, with the Post and Griff Witte coming to the rescue we learn today the following from the latest headline on the issue: U.N. Says School in Gaza Where 43 Died Wasn’t Hit by Israeli Fire

Now if that’s all you read, which is probably the case for many Post readers, you might think that the Israelis didn’t target the school and did not kill 43 people. It turns out though that if you read the article you’ll see that the shells hit just outside the school and the UN says that the ” U.N. Relief and Works Agency has maintained from the beginning that the strikes landed outside the school.”

Oh, in case you are interested, the article clearly shows that the shell blew the hell out of the civilians standing outside the building who were going to the building to seek shelter AND killed people in a market buying food. But the important thing is that the shells missed the building.

Maybe Griff Witte will go back and fix the real errors the Post makes when writing about the Palestinians. But that’s no doubt too much to ask.

4. It’s nice to see that Lower House of the Israeli Knesset member, Benjamin Cardin (Likud, Maryland), is representating Israel instead of his constituents, as usual.