New law in Iran would require Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians to wear special insignias that identify them....

What kinda paper is the National Post, anyway?

xpost that's what i'm getting at

(x-post)

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3251182,00.html

right-wing bullshit paper

thanks, that's what I'd figured

xpost

Saturday, January 28, 2006

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - The Canadian Forces want to raise morale among troops deployed here by setting up the furthest flung coffee and doughnut franchise in the world: Tim Hortons Afghanistan.

But the Canadian icon is balking at the idea of opening shop at Kandahar Air Field, where more than 2,000 Canadian soldiers are being deployed this month, saying it "is not part of our business model."

U.S. soldiers serving in the sprawling Kandahar base have their own Burger King, Subway and Pizza Hut franchises and, with thousands of Canadian troops heading to southern Afghanistan this month, senior Canadian officers have decided it just won't be a Canadian base without a Tim Hortons.

Frank Cley-son, director of the Canadian Forces Personnel Support Agency for the Afghanistan mission, says his agency is in negotiations with the coffee chain to set up a franchise here, 10,000 kilometres and nine time zones from North America.

"It's still in discussions between (National Defence Headquarters in) Ottawa and Tim Hortons headquarters in Oakville," said Mr. Cleyson. "There hasn't been a decision yet ... (but) I understand the ball is in Tim Hortons' court right now."

Greg Skinner, a spokesman for Tim Hortons, said in an e-mail interview that he was not aware of the most recent offer by the Canadian Forces, but said the company has turned down such offers in the past.

"We are not setting up a fully functioning store," he said."We are focusing on opening in Canada and the U.S. only. We have tight controls for our product and operations and these could not be maintained in Afghanistan."

The idea of a Tim Hortons in Kandahar arose when the first Canadians arrived at Kandahar air field and were greeted by a row of U.S. fast-food franchises along a "boardwalk" near the centre of the base, Mr. Cleyson said.

"The American military has standing offers with these corporations so you'll see their franchises wherever American soldiers are deployed," he said.

And the obvious way of adding a little Canadian content to the area, popular with off-duty soldiers from the dozens of countries now deployed to Kandahar, is a Tim Hortons.

"It's the most popular coffee franchise in Canada, certainly ... and it's very popular with the troops," said Mr. Cleyson. "We have Tim Hortons on bases across Canada and they're very successful.

"The guys would be lining up if there were one here, no question. Even the Americans are getting interested in the idea."

Mr. Cleyson said the company has been a longtime supporter of the military, donating hundreds of pounds of their tinned coffee to the support agency's "Operation Santa Claus" each Christmas.

"We provide every single solitary deployed Canadian soldier with a bag of goodies," he said. "And Tims has been a faithful donor to that program."

If the corporation and the Canadian Forces agree to terms, Mr. Cleyson said a small "Tims trailer" could be in place within a couple of weeks, perhaps even days depending on how the availability of cargo space on the military flights into Kandahar.

"There's a lot of logistics involved certainly," he said, "but it wouldn't take much to get it up and running."

The 800 Canadians now in Kandahar air field have been buzzing for weeks about the prospect of being able to buy a double-double on their way to their duties.

"American coffee just isn't the same thing," said one grizzled warrant officer, making a face at his morning cup of coffee in the base's mess tent.

"I'd pay some serious coin for a good cup of Timmies."

That's a very specific fetish, n'est-ce pas?

"This report is a complete fabrication and is totally false," Maurice Motammed said in Tehran. "It is a lie, and the people who invented it wanted to make political gain" by doing so.

Iranian dress code — might have done some good
By Arthur Weinreb

After the Post’s report had gone around the world, the newspaper backtracked saying that the journalist’s sources were Iranian dissidents.

...

If the world could see pictures of Iran’s minorities walking the streets of Tehran wearing strips of cloth of various colours then ...there might be a better understanding of the present dangers that the civilized world faces from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government.

Ooh, if only the Iranians were more like Hitler. Ooh, ooh, if only. If wishes were fishes, there'd be a bunch of mackerel buried in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

and how the Natl Post is connected to all this, and how the guy who wrote teh original article put out a press release doing a bit of the backpedal...

This is why TOMBOT and others spam posts like this. I'm beginning to think they're right. Care to respond?

http://thestar.blogs.com/azerb/2006/05/the_meme_of_the.html

Maybe because the muslim practice of making subjugated Jews wear yellow pre-dates the Nazis by more than a millenium, and was the original source of that Nazi practice.

"For dhimmis to be clearly distinguishable from Muslims in public, Muslim rulers often prohibited dhimmis from wearing certain types of clothing, while forcing them to put on highly distinctive garments, usually of a bright color. To increase the debasement of non-Muslims, the clothes usually had to be made of rough fabrics and were often incongruous. Although distinctive clothing for non-Muslims was not spelled out in Islamic holy texts, Muslim scholars still agreed that dhimmis must not wear the same clothing as Muslims do; frequently, these scholars cited the Pact of Umar in which Christians supposedly took an obligation to "always dress in the same way wherever we may be, and ... bind the zunar [wide belt] round our waists". Al-Nawawi required dhimmis to wear a piece of yellow cloth and a belt, as well as a metallic ring, inside public baths.[85]

Regulations on dhimmi clothing varied frequently to please the whims of the ruler. Although the initiation of such regulations is usually attributed to Umar I, historical evidence suggests that it was the Abbasid caliphs who pioneered this practice. In 807, Harun al-Rashid ordered that Jews should wear high cone caps and yellow belts, the first prototypes of the yellow badge; Christians had to wear blue belts. These distinction marks became obsolete in 849 when al-Mutawakkil ordered dhimmis to put a yellow veil on their heads and shoulders and wear a wide belt. He also required them to wear small bells in public baths. In the 11th century, the Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim ordered Christians to put on half-meter wooden crosses and Jews to wear wooden calves around their necks. In the late 12th century, Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf ordered the Jews of the Maghreb to wear dark blue garments with long sleeves and saddle-like caps. His grandson Abdallah made a concession after appeals from the Jews, relaxing the required clothing to yellow garments and turbans. In the 16th century, Jews of the Maghreb could only wear sandals made of rushes and black turbans or caps with a red piece of garment on it.[86]

Ottoman sultans were similarly diligent and inventive in regulating the clothings of their non-Muslim subjects. In 1577, Murad III issued a firman forbidding Jews and Christians from wearing dresses, turbans, and sandals. In 1580, he changed his mind, restricting the previous prohibition to turbans and requiring dhimmis to wear black shoes; Jews and Christians also had to wear red and black hats, respectively. Observing in 1730 that some Muslims took to the habit of wearing caps similar to those of the Jews, Mahmud I ordered the hanging of the perpetrators. Mustafa III personally helped to enforce his decrees regarding clothes. In 1758, he was walking incognito in Istanbul and ordered the beheading of a Jew and an Armenian seen dressed in forbidden attire."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060531_molly_ivins_iranian_badge/

Only wondering if the surprises about this administration will ever stop, that's all...

Bush proposes gay marriage ban because of "activist courts"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5044428.stm