Can't blame them. The rubbish the MSM is reporting these days... I think I might just be tempted to do the same with my TV's.

Let's have a TV "Burn'in" in my backyard next Saturday and have a little piggy on a spit while we do some serious Koran reading!
Ehhh, burning, I mean Koran burning...

Posted by: Terminator at July 31, 2005 5:09 PM

No Al-Jazeera, no videoed pep talks from Uncle Osama, no beheading videos....
Sounds good to me.

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at July 31, 2005 5:22 PM

After six series of "Big Brother", not to mention "Celebrity Love Island" and the perpetual threat of programs featuring Johnny Vegas or Peter Kay, I think I'm with the jihadis.

Posted by: Doctor Phibes at July 31, 2005 5:44 PM

"The men congregated in a park after Friday prayers and piled up about 25 TV sets, doused them with fuel and set them on fire"

Our own home-grown schizophrenically Puritanical Leftists who drive around in SUVs with bumper stickers that say "Kill Your Television" next to others that say "Bush is Hitler" should appreciate their bedfellow Others on the other side of the World which they are.

Posted by: metaxy at July 31, 2005 5:49 PM

I know the feeling. Television -- can't live with it, can't kill it.

But still, one wishes that those Pakistanis, so pure of heart, had not been so maddened, and so maddeningly wasteful. Couldn't they have given the sets away, to others less fortunate -- because more Infidelish -- than themselves?

One thriftily hopes that the sets in question were bottom-of-the-line black-and-white, with fuzzy pictures. And how good can the reception be, anyway, in the northwest frontier regions of Pakistan> Why not send them across the Durand Line to Afghanis who have even less, in those places such as Kafiristan ("Land of the Infidels" for Islam did not arrive until 1896 in lucky, lucky Kafiristan) and Waziristan, and Nuristan and Puristan and Foosistan and aptly-named Woosistan, where villages are relucant to surrender their homemade hootch.

Think of how horrible it must have been, in the first months after the Iranian Revolution, when the wine cellars of the Infidels and the infidelesque "Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only" Muslims were opened, and their contents brought out, and smashed against walls, and the Pauillac '45 and the Romanee-Conti '29 and the Chambolle-Musigny and the Gaja Barbaresco ran red in the streets of Teheran, and no one dared to bend down to hand-cup into his mouth a few precious draughts out of respect to those who had toiled in the vineyards of the Lord (for the earth is His, and the fruits thereof). What a horrible waste it was, because, because, because, because -- because of the terrible waste it was (sung to the tune written by the newly-numismatized Yip Harburg -- "We're Off to See the Wizard").

What if the television sets those maddened Muslim villagers destroyed were not miserable old-fashioned cathode-ray tube things that even you and I, gentle reader, won't pick up from curbside on trash day, but were televisions of the very most up-to-date kind, the kind that promise Paradise, and deliver the goods.

This kind:

** NEW ** SONY - KDE61XBR950 61-IN HDTV XBR® Plasma WEGA™ Television
Change the way you experience television with Sony’s XBR® Plasma WEGA™ High Definition TV. Its floating glass panel design will seduce your senses as you enjoy stunning picture enhancement.

Our Price $12,299.99
Availability Usually ships in 24 to 48 hours
SKU No. 61xbr950
Mfg. Part No. KDE-61XBR950

Yes, Product Placement is here again at JihadWatch. Little luck so far. No M&Ms from the Mars Company. Not a single package. No Underwood Typewriter. No Lexus. Yet hope springs eternal.

Yes, the New Sony KDE61XBR950 61-IN HDTV XBR Plasma WEGA Television would have been a terrible thing to have destroyed up there in Waziristan, don't you agee? Especially as it is a "High Definition TV" with "its floating glass panel design" which, I am sure you will continue to agree, might readily "seudce your senses as you enjoy stunning picture enhancement."

Okay, SONY. If you really want to pull away from Panasonic, or those dangerous South Korean underpricers, you know what to do. There's more Product Placement where that came from. Mr. Marketing Manager - you will promptly ship one television -- smaller size please, a 42-incher will do, more or less like the one described to me, c/o Robert, if you know what's good for you. Hell hath no fury like a self-apponted Product Placer scorned.

Oh, I almost forgot the other bits of product placement slyly inserted above. I refer to that incomplete list of vintage wines destroyed by the Muslim fanatics in Iran when the Shah fell, and his courtiers fled, and their cellars were discovered, and the wines taken out and punished for being very naughty wines indeed.

You who make wine, market wine, distribute wine here and abroad, and who keep sending stuff (does he accept it?) to Mr. Parker, or his epigones or imitators or rivals, inemakers and distributors who send all that free stuff to Mr. Parker and all the wannabe parkerettes out there, those cases sent to assorted wine magazines where they gladden the hearts of the otherwise poorly-paid reviewers, all that stuff sent to him just so he can, like an oenological schoolmarm, give out his grades -- a 93 or a 96 or, dare one hope, possibly even a 98, to this or that wine, and thus send its stock sky-high forever, should take a look at my posting, to see how I have managed to enroll our deep disquiet about Islam into a celebration not of Western literature or art (books can be easily bought, paintings and sculpture seen in museums), but of wine.

So if you are in the business of promoting the products of the the best years in the vineyard lives of Pauillac, Chambolle-Musigny, Romanee-Conti, and that Gaja Barbaresco I slipped in as a personal favorite --let's keep in touch, shall we? And if you didn't see the wine you distribute mentioned In This Space, drop me a line. Let's talk.

Posted by: Hugh at July 31, 2005 6:39 PM

I'll bet they had killer headaches after breathing all that burning plastic. I am all for them disconnecting from the western world, I have said before to keep them from receiving anything from the west. Make them use all their money and time developing their own area of the world. I would pay to see an islamic television or car.

Posted by: Carolyn2 at July 31, 2005 7:12 PM

Interesting though: The mullah said on radio that watching tv was a sin. Shouldn't listening to the radio also be a sin then??? Hm, sound illogical to me. Well, muslims... not from this world they ain't.

Posted by: disillusionised_german at July 31, 2005 7:54 PM

I killed my television a long time ago...drove it from the house with a whip...within a week my breathing returned to normal and my persistant skin rash went away...

Posted by: duh_swami at July 31, 2005 10:27 PM

Hugh,
And the Scotch. Can you imagine the Scotch? Blends and single malts, all gone. Did no good but to sanitize the sewers for a day.

And I wonder if the televisions really worked. We sometimes have liberal politicians institute gun buy-back programs. A few grandma's bring in daddy's old Colt or a Purdy shotgun (which end up in some officer's closet), but most of the guns don't work, or are so rusted they would explode if fired. If the program is announced well enough in advance, enterprising scammers will drive for miles to get a stash of rusty old junk to cash in at the government trough. Idiot politicians think they have taken guns off the street. No, the crooks now have cash to get something that works, and will blow your socks off.

Posted by: texan at August 1, 2005 12:10 AM

They should be supplied with arms to settle their `tribal scores`.

And arm the other side to do the same. Let loose the dogs of terror. Help them exterminate each other.

Posted by: leavingtheleft at August 1, 2005 12:50 AM

Google Ask the Imam and you will find a website based in South Africa dedicated to on-line responses (fatwas) issued/dredged up by one Imam Ibrahim to questions on a wide variety of subjects posed by Muslims from all over the globe. Imam Ibrahim has ruled that listening to recorded music is forbidden, except for unaccompanied singing. He decries photography and drawings of animate objects, and declares that these may not be used on anyone's website. He would doubtless agree that television is also haram, as telecasts should be construed as graven images. (The same proscription should also, then, apply to movies.) Radio broadcasts, I assume, should be permissible as long as there is no accompanying instrumental music. While perusing this website can be quite an amusing, even hilarious experience, it is also chilling and macabre. This, folks, is Islam in practice. Read it for yourselves.

Posted by: commonsense at August 1, 2005 1:20 AM

Hugh:

" if you didn't see the wine you distribute mentioned In This Space, drop me a line. Let's talk. "

Let' s talk, alright!

Happy to treat you! I'm no longer in that business, but I still got 'access'- the Romanee Conti is hard to come by, though!

How about Chateau Margaux, Latour, Lafite, Haut Brion?

Then there's some Aussie stuff that'll blow you away, but you have to find your way over here mate, I'm not going to take it around the globe...

Posted by: Terminator at August 1, 2005 4:26 AM

Yes, I would like to visit Australia, a mysterious yet comforting place about which I know only the following:

There are kangaroos.
There is the book with the green cover, by Mrs. Aeneas Gunn, called "We of the Never Never" which I have on my bookshelf.
There is Les Murray.
There was Henry Handel Richardson.
There are Blue Mountains.
There was a famous Australian explorer whose first name was Lachlan, just like the son of Mr. Murdoch.
There is an excellent magazine called Quadrant, and Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans) writes for them, or has written for them, and may even now be living in Australia.
English convicts were transported there. Think of Pip's friend in "Great Expectations."
Clive James comes from there.
Barry Humphreys comes from there.
The last scene in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels" when Glen Headly has ensnared a group of Australians about to be parted from their money by Glen, and the con-men played by Michael Caine and Steve Martin, reinforces the cliche about Australians and barbecues.
There was "Muriel's Wedding" with that catchy tune sung by Muriel and her thin friend.
There was a coelecanth caught in 1936 off the shores of Austral....oops, that was the Union of South Africa. Sorry, wrong country. Skip that -- sorry, the eraser on the pencil is too hard and won't do the trick.
There was a famous movie about a World War I deserter and he wore an Australian bush-hat.
There was ANZAC. There was Gallipoli. There were Australian troops everywhere and anywhere they should have been, in every war, and their attitude was always right.
There is the most beautiful and variegated fauna and flora, and the macrolepidoptera aren't bad either.
There are Aborigines, and fake-aborigine poets dreamed up so that they could have prizes lavished on them for their authentic poetic voice and then the scheme was revealed and many Australians had egg on their faces -- well-deserved egg.
There are large cities called Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.
There is the Outback, with Alice Springs. There are lambs to be shorn.
At night tourists are taken spotlighting for wombats.
The country is altother wonderful and I have hardly scratched the surface -- all I have scratched is that shallow part of my pre-caffeinated brain which is called "What I Know About Australia."
There is Robert Hughes, whose book on the country is very long.
There may be an Oxford Book of Australian Verse but I don't own it.
There was Patrick White.
There is Van Diemen's Land. There is Tasmania. There is the Tasmanian Devil.
There are many marsupials. There is the monitor. There is the duck-billed platypus.
There are large crocodiles in Queensland.
There is Keith Windschuttle.
The botanist Joseph Banks had a field-day in Australia, and there is a genus of plants known as Banksia.
New Zealanders like to make sure that everyone knows they are not Australians, the way Canadians like to make sure that everyone knows they are not Americans.
There are a lot of big mining companies in Australia. Broken Hill is one of them.
Australia was discovered now on this coast, now on that. One of the earliest of its discoverers was William Dampier, whose "Voyages" became famous. Another was Captain James Cook, whose report of his voyages is accompanied by a very nice atlas.

Australia is one of my favorite countries. I like the sound of its name. The very idea of Australia comforts me.

Yes, Terminator, hold some of the O'Brien for me, and we will toast Botany Bay, and Watkins Tench, and what's past, and passing, and to come.

I love Australia.

Posted by: Hugh at August 1, 2005 8:28 AM

Hugh,

your message is like poetry: If it would rhyme I would make a song out of it!

Yes, we have all that. There are no Kangaroos where I live, but we have wallabies, the smaller variety.

There are sharks in the water and crocs in the billabongs (and in the sea)

We have parrots (all kinds) and possums, we have the Great Barrier Reef and the Rainforest. We have beaches as far as you can see and our house and landprices will make you go through the ceiling!

The wine is good and the ladies are willing!

what is keeping you away?

Posted by: Terminator at August 1, 2005 9:16 AM

I can't for the life of me figure out what. Oh yes, the little problem of money. Nonetheless, hope springs eternal that the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Marie will appear just over the horizon any time now, as my ships come in, right after I get my ducks all in a row. Make way for ducklings!

In any case, I've been singing Waltzing Matilda most of the morning, in wild-colonial-boy fashion, and thinking fondly of that sixth or eighth (or have they just discovered a ninth) continent. Or were they talking about a tenth planet? One gets so confused nowadays. You never know what the morning news will bring. You know the continent I mean, that very cute one, entire unto itself, way down yonder where the blue begins.

Who knows? I might get there yet.

Posted by: Hugh at August 1, 2005 1:21 PM

Peshawar is both a city and a region in Pakistan (the NW) it is Taliban Country, headquarters of the MMA (Pakistans official Taliban political party), women were Burka's, video and audio cassettes are confiscated by uniformed state paid police, and these same uniformed state paid police enforce the religious (Shari'a) laws that the religious police (mutawain, volunteers and mosque subsidized police) enforce in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.

We all saw pictures of these mutawain switching and beating women who were not fully covered, or beating people who were not religiously correct, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they were dressed in tribal clothes with a distinctive robe and black turban. These function is still carried on in the "new" Afghanistan (or rather Kabul) but by Northern and Eastern Alliance soldiers dressed in American provided cammies.

And the new regime still publicly executes people, but only leave the bodies hanging in public for 15 minutes, instead of until they rot.

Posted by: Giaour at August 1, 2005 11:32 PM

What next, mirrors?

(Now that is TRULY an anti-Islamic invention.)

How dare a drop of quicksilver be so uppity!

Destroy all forms of self-knowledge, now!

"If it contradicts the Koran, we don't want it.
If it agrees with the Koran, we don't need it."

Viva la muerte!

Posted by: BigSleep at August 2, 2005 1:05 AM