Italian firebrand takes her fight to the ‘Islamo-fascists’ (ORIANA FALLACI ALERT)

The Sunday Times ^ | December 15, 2002 | Sarah Baxter

[headsonpikes]

"There is red fascism and black fascism. The roots of illiberality are the same."

She is admirable for her moral courage.

[aculeus]

“I don’t want the burqa. I want to stuff it in their throats.”

Throat-stuffing bump.

[headsonpikes]

Oriana's a pistol. ;^)

[A_perfect_lady]

Thanks, that makes me feel a little better.

[VOA]

Turkey put out the invitation to Spanish Jews in 1492 after they were kicked out of Spain.

A few months ago The Los Angeles Times had a notice on their obituary page about the
passing of a Turkish diplomat who pulled a bit of an "Schindler" on the Nazis
during WWII.
I can't recall the particulars, but I think he cobbled together Turkish papers to
protect a number of Jewish Turks (and maybe those of other nationalities) in
some area of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Apparently he not only put the documents together for these endangered souls, but he
did a good job of "huffing-and-puffing" to bluff the Nazis into letting him
get these folks onto transports to Turkey.

Even though I've got a bad attitude about a lot of Islam...I try to add to my
posts that there are some outposts of sanity in the Muslim world like Islam.
I just wish the locations of Insane Islam could be converted to something like Turkey...
(or even better, what progessive Turks wish to make of their country)

[VOA]

In all fairness, it (Turkey) has tried mightily.
However, now, the fundamentalists are gaining massive strength and are a real threat
to undo the decades of progress.

You have enunciated in a few lines what would take me pages to say about Turkey.

To my naive mind, one of the greatest dangers is that (if I understand correctly),
the real core of progressive/sane social thought in Turkey is with her military corps.
I've heard a couple of news reports that say that whenever Turkey starts to go
off the path to what we'd consider something like Western democracy/republicanism,
it is the educated group of the military that usually tells the civilian "authorities"
that they've made a mistake.

When I post my caveats about Turkey being one sane outposts of the Muslim/Islmaic world...
I suppose I should say "relative to the rest of that sphere".

And I'll say that I'm really praying for them to choose the right path...

[VOA]

Fundamentalists in Turkey, Marxists in Brazil,
Zimbabwe fixing to nationalize the gas stations...

I think there was a post here yesterday that Zimbabwe is out of petrol (or something
to that effect.

I'll give Dubya credit...he's had some harsh words for Mugabe.
Although I have mixed feelings about propping up the mess that Central/Sub-Saharan
Africa has become, at least on a humanitarian level, I think Dubya could earn
some sort of humitarian-saint status (and the further disdain of the U.N.)
by carpet bombing the suffering areas of Zimbabwe with pallets of grain, bottled water,
and M-16/ammo.
The latter so the suffering masses can protect themselves and their food
from Mugabe's thugs/"civil servants".

[A_perfect_lady]

Nice thought, but Bush could single-handedly save the world and the left, UN included, would purse up their lips and say, "Well, we didn't want YOU to do it." Nothing a conservative will ever do is going to get any credit with the rest of the world. Indeed, nothing America does even under a liberal gets any credit with the rest of the world. We are capitalists and they will hate us till they can destoy us. And if they destroyed us and the rest of the world's economy sank into hell as a result (which it would), they'd blame our corpse for that too. I'm all for carpet-bombing Mugabe's palace in Zimbabwe, but that's it. As South African blogger Kim du Toit has noted, Africa is a black hole of corruption and all aid simply disappears into the void. His advice to the US is "Let Africa Sink."

[Shermy]

Thanks for the ping.

[Billthedrill]

I just finished her book - "fury" is right - you certainly don't end up with any misapprehensions about where she stands on the issue if Islam's treatment of women. For those who don't know her, “I don’t want the burqa. I want to stuff it in their throats" manifested itself once during an interview with a Very Important Moslem. She did tear off the burqa she had to wear in order to be admitted into his presence and threw it in his face. That was the Ayatollah Khomeini.