Jennifer's Blog

Potty Humor is at an all time high thanks to the lat­est failed Islamic ter­ror­ist, AKA the Under­wear bomber. Butt. Seri­ously! What can we expect next? Ter­ror­ists with explo­sive anal plugs, tam­pons, implants or pros­the­ses? I mean how far we can expect Islamic extrem­ists to go to destroy our way of life? Appar­ently, far. Killing inno­cent peo­ple world­wide is fair game in the name of Allah. Let’s recap.

It didn’t take long for Al Qaeda in the Ara­bian Penin­sula to claim respon­si­bil­ity for what looked like a shabby pair of skivvies that didn’t do did­dly. In fact, Al Qaeda said the under­wear bomb didn’t go off due to a “faulty det­o­na­tor.” Hmmm. Sweaty balls? Peed in his pants? Nope. Not going to see where this leads.

The fact is that the 23-year old Niger­ian Under­wear Bomber, Umar Farouk Abdul­mu­tal­lab, agreed to blow up a North­west Air­lines flight from Ams­ter­dam to Detroit filled with inno­cent pas­sen­gers with his butt. If that’s not a dirty way to fight, I don’t know what is.

So how did this hap­pen? Extrem­ist Islamic groups like Al Qaeda have pen­e­trated Lon­don col­lege cam­puses in recent years to recruit poten­tial jihadists from stu­dent polit­i­cal groups and reli­gious stud­ies cir­cles. The prob­lem has become so wide spread that Lon­don is becom­ing Islam­i­fied.  Think I’m exag­ger­at­ing? Guess again. The most pop­u­lar name for baby boys this year in Lon­don was Mohammed. Think this is a fluke? Guess again. Mohammed has already gained the top slot for baby boy names in Brus­sels, Ams­ter­dam, Copen­hagen and Oslo. Think this is con­cern­ing. Dang right.

So what about other 100 per­cent Islamic areas like Afghanistan. Well, the other bad guys, the Tal­iban, just claimed respon­si­bil­ity for a sui­cide bomb­ing that killed eight Amer­i­cans believed to be CIA employ­ees. Per the Taliban’s site (ya know they all have them), an Afghan National Army sol­dier det­o­nated his explosives-packed vest, killing 20 peo­ple and injur­ing 25 others.

Then, a road­side bomb hit an armored vehi­cle Wednes­day in south­ern Afghanistan, killing five Cana­di­ans – four sol­diers and a female jour­nal­ist. The list goes on.

Then there’s Yemen – another hotbed for Islamic ter­ror­ists. And guess what? It’s 100 per­cent Islamic. And what about Saudi Ara­bia where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijack­ers (two were from the United Arab Emi­rates, one was Egypt­ian and one was Lebanese) came from. Yes, it’s also 100 per­cent Islamic.

Then there’s war-torn Soma­lia where an Islamic man car­ry­ing chem­i­cals, Abdi Has­san Abdi, tried to board a com­mer­cial air­liner in Mogadishu last month with chem­i­cals that author­i­ties believe dou­bled for an explo­sive device. And yes, you got it. Somali is 100 per­cent Islamic.

We have to fig­ure out a way to com­bat would-be Islamic ter­ror­ists head-on with­out cav­ing to polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. Our intel­li­gence agen­cies have to do more than just “mon­i­tor” or put these per­sons of inter­est on a “watch list.” We have to penal­ize the alarm­ing num­ber of sym­pa­thy groups that arm Islamic ter­ror­ists and cre­ate viral cam­paigns on their behalf.  We have to silence the hate mon­gers: the Holo­caust deniers and the wave of unfore­seen Anti-Semites and Anti-Zionists spread­ing like wild­fire. And we have to tell the annoy­ing pri­vacy groups whin­ing over full body scans to get a life. Heck, I’m not opposed to full cav­ity scans for those that require it. Are you? 

Sor­cery plays a huge role in Harry Pot­ter nov­els and sub­se­quent block­busters. It even did well for Disney’s Aladdin sto­ry­books and ani­mated movies. So imag­ine get­ting the death penalty for own­ing a book on magic, try­ing to learn it or believ­ing in psy­chic medi­ums like John Edward or James Van Praagh. This alone would indict mil­lions of peo­ple around the world. And yet this is exactly what is occur­ring in Saudi Ara­bia right now. 

Hear­ing about reli­gious police – Mutawa’een –  in Saudi Ara­bia arrest­ing cit­i­zens who believe in the super­nat­ural, prac­tice magic, pray less than five times a day or don’t cover their hair as proper Mus­lim women should was a huge dis­ap­point­ment. I cringed at the thought.

Then when I read that Saudi Mutawa’een arrested Ali Hus­sain Sibat — a  Lebanese TV show host who pre­dicts the future in Ara­bic from Beirut via satel­lite TV — while he was vis­it­ing holy cities on pil­grim­age, my mind drifted. I could not imag­ine the hor­ror this 46 year old, father of five was going through. For a moment, I thought I had inad­ver­tently time trav­eled into the Salem Witch trials.

Then I read that his cap­tors offered to release him once he con­fessed on-air at a Saudi tele­vi­sion sta­tion only to have the Saudi legal sys­tem try him and sen­tence him to death. Real­ity abruptly sank in. This was beyond sick.

Con­sider the sim­i­lar­i­ties. Back in late 1600’s, it was a com­mon prac­tice to accuse peo­ple of sor­cery, test their faith (e.g., bru­tally tor­ture), fine (or con­fis­cate their pos­ses­sions), try them and soon after hang or burn them at the stake. But like most witch hunts, there is always an ulte­rior motive. In Salem, many women accused of “witch­craft” and sen­tenced to death were either unmar­ried or recently wid­owed land-owning women. The law at the time granted land with no legal heir back to the pre­vi­ous owner upon the owner’s death. This made witch hunt­ing a way to acquire lucra­tive prop­erty with lit­tle effort.

This brings up the arti­cle that I found in today’s Saudi Gazette. The online paper dis­cusses how Saudi cit­i­zens can report heretics with­out any recourse. Gee, this sounds a tad like the way the Roman Catholic Church encour­aged cit­i­zens to report sus­pected heretics dur­ing the Inqui­si­tion. Or even when Ger­man Nazis encour­aged towns­peo­ple to report on Jews dur­ing the Holocaust.

Get a load of what the direc­tor of the Hai’a branch of sor­cery in Riyadh, Sheikh Adel Faqih said:

“We deal with sor­cer­ers in a spe­cial way. No one should think that we men­tion the name of whomever files a report about sor­cery. We pro­tect the iden­tity of infor­mants. We merely receive the infor­ma­tion and thank the indi­vid­ual for his help with­out involv­ing him in any kind of confrontation.”

Faqih also said that they do not arrest a sor­cerer sim­ply because some­one has filed a report against him.

The Gazette goes on to describe more of Faqih’s meth­ods of iden­ti­fy­ing sor­cer­ers. Some have to do with ask­ing for the name of a patient or a patient’s mother or if he’s (notice the gen­der bias here) seek­ing to buy an ani­mal with cer­tain fea­tures. One com­ment goes as far as sug­gest­ing if he asks for a sheep to be killed with­out men­tion­ing Allah’s name and asks to stain the body with the animal’s blood or if he asks for sim­i­lar unusual things.

Wow. All of it’s unusual, espe­cially since we’re only 8 days from 2010.

Hmmm. Sounds eerily like Catholic monks scout­ing for heretics that can’t cross them­selves prop­erly or Judaiz­ers that refuse to eat ham. His­tory is replete with exam­ples of groups that develop flawed pro­to­cols to iden­tify dis­be­liev­ers or groups that don’t make the cut. This, like all the ones before it, is a recipe for disaster.

Last July, a north­ern Saudi city sen­tenced another man to death in rela­tion to “sor­cery.” The Mutawa’een raided his home and found walls cov­ered in 100,000 words of graf­fiti includ­ing dis­torted verses of Quran. Next to noth­ing is known about the trial but the court con­victed him of “apos­tasy” rather than sorcery.

These cases gar­nered a strong reac­tion from Amnesty Inter­na­tional UK Direc­tor Kate Allen who stated,

“Saudi Ara­bia already has an appalling record of exe­cut­ing peo­ple after bogus tri­als, but these cases are a dis­turb­ing new twist”

Hav­ing an anti-sorcery patrol in Saudia Ara­bia today like the monks that scouted for heretics in the Inqui­si­tion is ironic. All reli­gions require their fol­low­ers to believe in the super­nat­ural. But sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death in 2009 for prac­tic­ing magic, pre­dict­ing horo­scopes or writ­ing graf­fiti on their own walls only shows that the ONLY super­nat­ural Islam allows is its own teachings.   

So if you’re not a fan of the Criss Angel Mind­f­reak tele­vi­sion series or you’re annoyed by yet another heav­ily pro­moted David Blaine stunt, don’t get your hopes up. Saudi Ara­bia is prob­a­bly the last place on earth either will perform.

Photo credit: Annie Liebovitz

We hear an awful lot that Islam is a reli­gion of peace. And I know some who fit that descrip­tion. Yet coun­tries that have near 100 per­cent Islamic pop­u­la­tion – Afghanistan, Soma­lia, Saudi Ara­bia and Yemen – seem any­thing but peace­ful. So why are we privy to fre­quent news reports of Islamic ter­ror­ist attacks, sui­cide bomb­ings, insur­gent upris­ings and Fat­was order­ing vio­lence to those that speak against Islam?

Most are famil­iar with the fatwa that Iran­ian Aya­tol­lah Khome­ini pro­claimed on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, and those involved in the pub­li­ca­tion of his novel. But how many know that an uniden­ti­fied Mus­lim stabbed Rushdie’s Japan­ese trans­la­tor, Hitoshi Igarashi, to death at the uni­ver­sity where he worked? Or that an uniden­ti­fied Mus­lim beat and stabbed Rushdie’s Ital­ian trans­la­tor, Ettore Capri­olo, out­side his home? Or that a sus­pected Mus­lim shot and severely injured Rushdie’s Nor­we­gian pub­lisher William Nygaard out­side his home in Oslo. Or that an Islamic mob set fire to the hotel accom­mo­dat­ing Rushdie’s Turk­ish trans­la­tor, Aziz Nesin, killing 37 guests while Nesin and oth­ers escaped. All because of this death threat:

I inform all zeal­ous Mus­lims of the world that the author of the book enti­tled The Satanic Verses — which has been com­piled, printed and pub­lished in oppo­si­tion to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an — and all those involved in its pub­li­ca­tion who were aware of its con­tent, are sen­tenced to death. I call on all zeal­ous Mus­lims to exe­cute them quickly, wher­ever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Mus­lim sanc­ti­ties. God Will­ing, who­ever is killed on this path is a martyr.

Then there’s Theo van Gogh. He was the film direc­tor that pro­duced an 11-minute movie called Sub­mis­sion based on the abu­sive life of Somalian-born Mus­lim and now Dutch par­lia­ment politi­cian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But his career ended abruptly.

A 26-year old Dutch-Moroccan born Mus­lim, Mohammed Bouy­eri, shot Van Gogh eight times with a semi-automatic pis­tol, killing Van Gogh in broad day­light. Bouy­eri then cut Van Gogh’s throat, nearly decap­i­tat­ing him and stabbed him in the chest. The killer left two knives in his torso, one attach­ing a five-page warn­ing to his body. The note (Text) threat­ened West­ern gov­ern­ments, Jews and Hirsi Ali – who went into hid­ing. The note also con­tained ref­er­ences to the ide­olo­gies of the Egypt­ian orga­ni­za­tion Tak­fir wal-Hijra.

Just this year, Dutch politi­cians have faced an unprece­dented num­ber of death threats. Police corps in The Hague region received 428 seri­ous death threats against politi­cians the pre­vi­ous year. And 285 directly tar­get­ted anti-jihadist Party for Free­dom leader Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politi­cian’, who pro­duced the con­tro­ver­sial film, Fitna, and sparked Mus­lim out­rage and an antic­i­pated fatwa ordered by ter­ror­ist net­work Al-Qaeda.

Sud­denly, Islam is look­ing more like a huge stack of dead bod­ies than a reli­gion of peace

Mus­lims have also issued fat­was on other pub­lic fig­ures crit­i­ciz­ing Islam includ­ing Jerry Fal­well, Taslima Nas­reen, Isioma Daniel, and even ordered fat­was against Jews, Amer­i­cans and their allies.

I mean when you have 9/11 mass mur­der­ers like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri — both on the FBI’s most wanted ter­ror­ists list— as call­ing cards for your reli­gion, “peace­ful” prob­a­bly isn’t the best description.

Only days ago we heard about five Mus­lim Amer­i­can men that Pak­istani author­i­ties detained on sus­pi­cion that they were pur­su­ing jihadist train­ing in Pak­istan. Police have reported that three of the men are of Pak­istani descent, one is of Egypt­ian descent and the other is of Yemeni heritage.

Pak­istan is about 97 per­cent Islamic and Egypt is about 90 per­cent Islamic so hear­ing about sec­ond gen­er­a­tion home­grown jihadists from these coun­tries isn’t sur­pris­ing. What is dis­turb­ing is that these five young men were described by their mosque youth leader as “whole­some, devout young men.” Again, not the most acc­cu­rate choice of words.

If Islam is a peace­ful reli­gion, then why are second-generation Amer­i­cans becom­ing jihadists?

This brings us back to Major Nidal Hasan. He was born of Pak­istani descent, and those who knew him on base said about the same thing. His for­mer patients labeled him as “scary” and his col­leagues referred to him as “an Islamic extrem­ist.” So it’s ironic to hear his fam­ily describe him as “a calm oppo­nent to the war.”

Hello? Hasan was a Major in the US mil­i­tary who report­edly toted a busi­ness card that read S.O.A. (Solider of Allah). This just goes to show that Islamic ter­ror is a real threat and if left to its own devices will con­tinue to ignite in places we least expect.

Then there’s 9/11. An Amer­i­can wake-up call to Islamic orga­nized ter­ror that took the lives of 2,976 vic­tims plus the 19 jihadist hijack­ers that com­mit­ted these acts of vio­lence. And since the fall of the World Trade Cen­ters, the num­ber of Islamic ter­ror­ists attacks have grown expo­nen­tially. Con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ures sug­gest Islamic ter­ror­ists post 9/11 have car­ried out more than:

14,514

deadly ter­ror attacks (this num­ber grows daily). Many believe this num­ber is far too low due to underreporting.

Hmmm. I’m not find­ing much peace here. Author Dan Brown wrote the novel The Da Vinci Code and while the Catholic Church denounced it, Catholics world­wide did not place a hit on Brown or threaten to mur­der those con­nected with the novel’s trans­la­tion, pub­lish­ing and filmaking.

We need to read between the lies here. The same Islamic soci­ety that hides behind the word “peace­ful” puts fat­was on peo­ple for free speech and expres­sion and also per­mits honor killings for sham­ing one’s family.

Banaz Mah­mod is one such case. Banaz’s father dis­ap­proved of the man she fell in love with so he, her uncle and oth­ers raped, tor­tured and mur­dered her. A sim­i­lar case is 11– year old Nazmeen. A rel­a­tive molested her and set on fire for wear­ing lip­stick. Another case occured state­side just last year in Lewisville, Texas where the father of two sis­ters, 18-year old, Amina Said and 17-year old, Sarah,  fatally shot them in a taxi.

Despite these hor­ren­dous accounts and the ris­ing death toll from peace­ful (ha!) Islam, there is one more fact to con­sider. The birthrate of Islam­ics far exceeds the birthrate of Hin­dus, Bud­dhists, Chris­tians, Jews and ALL OTHER RELIGIONS PUT TOGETHER. At this rate, Islam­ics will exceed 50 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion by the end of this cen­tury. Audi­ble gasp.

Unfor­tu­nately, the num­bers fore­shadow the future. If the world doesn’t end by the 2012 (Iran – I’m also talk­ing to you), then we can count on the grow­ing num­ber of rad­i­cal Islam­ics to do the job.

Chanukah for Jew­ish kids is a fun occa­sion. Meno­rah can­dles to light. Songs to sing. Drei­dels to spin. Food to eat. And gelt to enjoy. Hon­estly, how many of us can walk away from choco­late? But like Christ­mas, the reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance of the hol­i­day often takes a back­seat to presents. So what’s a par­ent to do?

The eas­i­est, less costly and more mean­ing­ful maneu­ver is to make the reli­gious part of the hol­i­day fun while plac­ing less empha­sis on presents. This can take some work. But it is achiev­able. How? Try assign­ing themes to each day and pro­mote them to your brood like an NBA coach would to his team.

For instance, one day you can focus on the edu­ca­tional aspect of Judaism so your gift can be a children’s book. Tip: Life is eas­ier if you find one that inter­ests your kids.

One day you can focus on tzedakah and accom­pany your chil­dren to a shel­ter to make a dona­tion. Another day you can focus on the arts and spend an hour or two (or three) with your chil­dren at a museum. Next, you can focus on cul­ture so you can play Yid­dish music and encour­age your chil­dren to dance, sing or play along on their own instru­ments. Another day you can cook latkes, suf­gan­iot and ask your kids to join in on the fun. Use your imagination.

Each day can be a new adven­ture for your kids to explore their faith and culture 

The bottom-line is its every parent’s job to teach his or her chil­dren the mean­ing of each hol­i­day. I mean if they don’t learn it from you, then who? And with a lit­tle cre­ativ­ity, you can have fun with your kids and pass on some great lessons. Let’s face it. Would you rather have your chil­dren snowed by the com­mer­cial­iza­tion of the hol­i­days or embrace their faith and cul­ture with some cre­ative plan­ning on your part? Easy choice for me.

No one would ever think of telling Gov­er­nor Rick Perry to return Texas to Mex­ico. Nor, would any­one chide Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger to return Cal­i­for­nia to Mex­ico. And no one, I mean no one, would ever demand that US Pres­i­dent Obama return Amer­ica to the United King­dom. Yet, the world, often influ­enced by Mid­dle East­ern oil money, expects Israel to hand over the Golan Heights to Syria, the West Bank to Jor­dan and Gaza to Egypt – all at Israel’s peril. 

Like most ter­ri­to­r­ial seizures, Israel cap­tured these areas dur­ing war sim­i­lar to the exam­ples cited ear­lier. That’s right. Texas and Cal­i­for­nia (two of the three states I have lived in most of my life) gained their sov­er­eignty through war. But we never refer to the Lon­es­tar state, the Golden State or the Land of Stars and Stripes as “occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.” That would be anti-American.

But can’t we see the for­est for the trees? I mean its com­mon knowl­edge that Arabs opposed to Israel man­u­fac­tured the term “occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries” just like the term “Pales­tini­ans.” Both words came into usage as a way of blam­ing Israel for Arab refugees result­ing from the 1948 and 1967 inva­sions of Israel. And guess what? The inva­sions occurred by Arab states who refused assis­tance to their fel­low Arabs. Instead, they left them in refugee camps while blam­ing Israel.

Let’s be hon­est. Don’t you think the 22 Arab states sur­round­ing Israel could have wel­comed the Pales­tini­ans if they wanted to? Wouldn’t it be easy to annex land and use some of their oil resources to end war instead of arm­ing groups of ter­ror­ists? But most know that as long as these dis­en­fran­chised groups exist either they or Iran can arm and fund ter­ror­ist attacks on Israel. The greater des­per­a­tion among these groups the greater the pop­u­la­tion of can­di­dates will­ing to sac­ri­fice their lives to kill more Israelis.

The cycle of hate doesn’t just stop there. Oh, no. It spreads like a can­cer to Jews around the world. And the more Israel tries to defend itself the more its haters spread anti­semitism. The lynch mob of coun­tries crit­i­ciz­ing Israel’s right to pro­tect itself and its cit­i­zens (which by the way include over one mil­lion Israeli Arabs) only incite more anti­se­mitic attacks in all cor­ners of the world.

How many coun­tries do you know that have never received global recog­ni­tion of their bor­ders or their cap­i­tal? Try one. Israel. This is after reach­ing state­hood nearly 62 years ago in 1948.

And for those that are unclear of Israel’s cap­i­tal, you guessed it, Jerusalem.

So to be fair, let’s give all or part of Austin (cap­i­tal of Texas) to the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment along with Sacra­mento (cap­i­tal of Cal­i­for­nia) and all or part of Wash­ing­ton DC to the United King­dom. This way we won’t treat Israel dif­fer­ent from any other demo­c­ra­tic coun­try in the world. Or maybe, just maybe, we can come to our senses, stop telling Israel to return land and abol­ish anti­semitism once and for all.

Yes­ter­day, I encoun­tered an unsa­vory tweeter on Twitter.com. The hater couched him­self as a “human rights activist” while spew­ing vile lies about Israel and its peo­ple. But those of us abreast of the sit­u­a­tion in Israel, abroad and the UN know that this is just another thinly-veiled attempt to dis­credit and demo­nize the Jew­ish state. All this only days before Chanukah. Nice.

So let’s review the facts lead­ing up to this. It wasn’t acci­den­tal that Robert Bern­stein, the founder of one of the world’s lead­ing human rights orga­ni­za­tions, Human Rights Watch, accused the New York-based group of anti-Israeli bias in Octo­ber. His words only begin to tell the story of what Israel and its sup­port­ers have known for some time:

Israel bash­ers hold a dou­ble stan­dard on rights abuses

Bernstein’s op-ed in the New York Times opens with the acknowl­edge­ment that most, includ­ing him, never saw coming:

“As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chair­man for 20 years and now found­ing chair­man emer­i­tus, I must do some­thing that I never antic­i­pated: I must pub­licly join the group’s critics.”

Bern­stein goes on to reit­er­ate the sen­ti­ments of what those con­cerned with pre­serv­ing Israel’s right to exist already knows — that the Mid­dle East is lit­tered with author­i­tar­ian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet, the Human Rights Watch turned a blind eye towards Arab States only to sin­gle­hand­edly lynch Israel by writ­ing far more con­dem­na­tions to the Jew­ish state.

So to be fair, let’s com­pare apples to apples. Israel reigns as one of two demo­c­ra­tic states (the other is Turkey) in a sea of Mid­dle East Mus­lim autoc­ra­cies and dic­ta­tor­ships. More than 1 mil­lion Israeli Arabs enjoy civil and polit­i­cal vot­ing rights and these rights extend to women. Yet, Saudi Ara­bia instills a per­va­sive sys­tem of gen­der apartheid, which denies women the right to vote, drive, dress as they wish, choose their mar­riage part­ner or divorce, give tes­ti­mony in court or even appear in pub­lic with­out a male guardian.

Come on! Women’s rights are at a stand­still in the Mid­dle East. They haven’t pro­gressed much in the last few cen­turies. And if you want more details about how women are mis­treated in Arab coun­tries, read A God Who Hates and Infi­del, both writ­ten by Arab women that detail hor­ren­dous injustices.

Then there is Iran with its reign­ing Holo­caust denier, Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad. Besides the fact that Iran has called for the anni­hi­la­tion of Israel and funds ter­ror­ist groups like Hamas and Hezbol­lah (both of which the Human Rights Watch knows has tar­geted Israeli cit­i­zens and used thier own peo­ple as human shields ), Iran is the epit­ome of human rights vio­la­tions. The coun­try has no qualms about charg­ing hik­ers and jour­nal­ists and impris­on­ing them with­out basis. In fact, it put one jour­nal­ist to death just for tak­ing a photo of Evin prison located in north­ern Tehran. And Iran is clear cut about its stance on homo­sex­u­al­ity.  Accord­ing to Ahmadine­jad it just doesn’t exist. This is because Iran exe­cutes its adult homosexuals.

Sur­prised? Hardly. I could go on about the exten­sive human traf­fick­ing that occurs in Arab coun­tries but then that would put the spot­light back on the real offend­ers. Capiche?

One of the biggest prob­lems for Israel is the UN. The United Nations Assem­bly Pres­i­dent Miguel d’Escoto Brock­man of Nicaragua – another coun­try with a stel­lar (ha!) human rights record – has com­pared Israel to apartheid in South Africa. By doing this, Brock­man called for mea­sures against Israel that included boy­cotting, divest­ments and sanc­tions. Now, dial back to Hitler for a minute and you can see the nau­se­at­ing resemblance.

Then there’s the recent crowned jewel – the human rights coun­cil in Geneva.  This coun­cil included the cor­ner­stone of human rights: Libya, Pak­istan and Saudi Ara­bia. Gig­gling now?  I think you get my drift.