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saturday, january 31, 2004

French Shari'a Watch

This year the Paris suburb of Evry will televise the mass ritual sacrifice of sheep for the Muslim Eid festival: Paris Suburb to Televise Slaughter of Sheep. (Hat tip: Hulugu.)

PARIS, 31 January 2004 — The Paris suburb of Evry, which has one of France’s largest Muslim populations, has decided to install video screens to enable the local faithful to watch some 3,300 sheep being slaughtered for Eid this year.

The televised ritual slaughter which will take place in a large mobile abattoir is the idea of a local meat wholesaler.

“If the idea succeeds this year then it’s likely to become a permanent fixture of Eids in future,” a local municipal spokesman said.

Meanwhile, at Le Mans, west of Paris, the local authorities have decided to build a “hard” structure in which the sheep belonging to local Muslims can be killed.

“If this works out,” says an official for the prefecture which is overseeing the development, “then it’s an idea that will probably be tried elsewhere in France.”

The new approach to the slaughter of the Eid sheep comes after years of difficulties for French Muslims who, having bought a sheep for Eid, thought it was their right to see them killed in a local slaughterhouse.

No Evidence CIA Slanted Iraq Data

Investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq show no evidence the CIA slanted the data.

Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who is leading the CIA’s review of its prewar Iraq assessment, said an examination of the secret analytical work done by CIA analysts showed that it remained consistent over many years.

“There was pressure and a lot of debate, and people should have a lot of debate, that’s quite legitimate,” Kerr said. “But the bottom line is, over a period of several years,” the analysts’ assessments “were very consistent. They didn’t change their views.”

Kerr’s findings mirror those of two probes being conducted separately by the House and Senate intelligence committees, which have interviewed, under oath, every analyst involved in assessing Iraq’s weapons programs and terrorist ties.

The panel chairmen, Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record) (R-Kan.) and Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), and other congressional officials said in recent interviews that they found no evidence that analysts shaded their findings to more closely fit the White House’s known desire to create the strongest, most urgent case for war with Iraq.

No Flying Pigs Here, Move Along

The Associated Press is doing backflips of approval and delight over the sermon preached today at Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia: Top Saudi Cleric Assails Terrorists. AP always surrounds the word “terrorists” with scare quotes when it’s used by a Western source—but notice the complete absence of quotes in this article.

MOUNT ARAFAT, Saudi Arabia - Saudi Arabia’s top cleric called on Muslims around the world Saturday to forsake terrorism, saying those who claim to be holy warriors were an affront to the faith.

In a sermon that was remarkable not only for its strong language but also its timing — at the peak of the annual hajj — Sheik Abdul Aziz al-Sheik told 2 million pilgrims that terrorists were giving their enemies an excuse to criticize Muslim nations.

Sorry, Sheikh baby, but I prefer to call it a “reason,” not an “excuse.”

Let’s look a bit closer at this highly-touted denunciation of terrorism:

“Is it holy war to shed Muslim blood? Is it holy war to shed the blood of non-Muslims given sanctuary in Muslim lands? Is it holy war to destroy the possessions of Muslims?” he asked.

Do I even have to point out that there is no condemnation of holy war against non-Muslims who are not “given sanctuary in Muslim lands?” (Another word for this “sanctuary” is dhimmitude—second-class citizenship akin to Jim Crow laws.)

And do I need to mention that in yesterday’s sermon in Mecca, one of his fellow freaky Sheikhs said:

“Oh God, give victory to the mujahedeen (holy warriors) everywhere,” al-Taleb said. “Give them victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies, and make this country and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists.”

But back to Sheikh al-Sheikh:

Al-Sheik also criticized the international community, accusing it of attacking Wahhabism, the sect whose strict interpretation of Islam is followed in Saudi Arabia.

“This country is based on this religion and will remain steadfast on it,” he said.

“Islam forbids all forms of injustice, killing without just cause, treachery ... hijacking of planes, boats and transportation means,” he said.

Islam forbids hijacking of planes? That’s a pretty forward-thinking 7th Century religion.

And of course, the Saudis would have us believe that the best way to combat this awful terrorism (which is only terrorism when it harms Muslims) is for them to become even more fundamental and rigid in their adherence to the brutal codes of shari’a:

Al-Sheik warned against “changing the religion’s basics” in school curricula.

“The minds of youth in the Islamic nation need to be shielded with Islamic sharia (law) and good manners and deeds. The nation’s future generations will only be reformed by what reformed the past generations,” he said.

They're Still Trying

Several flights from Britain and France to the US have been canceled for security reasons. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

On Friday, U.S. officials said new intelligence indicated BA flight 223 and Air France flights from Paris to an unspecified U.S. city could be terrorist targets. There was no immediate word from the French authorities on any cancellations.

“We remain concerned about al-Qaida’s desire to target aviation, especially international aviation,” U.S. Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. “The U.S. intelligence community continues to gather specific credible threat information on international flights, as we have done in an ongoing basis in the past few weeks.”

Air France flights AF026 were canceled “for reasons of security,” spokeswoman Veronique Brachet said.

British Airways said on Saturday that flight 223 to Washington’s Dulles airport would not fly on Sunday or Monday, but was to depart on schedule at 3:05 p.m. Saturday.

Not So Peaceful for the Sheep

Muslims Pray at Mt. Arafat Despite Security Concerns.

“Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance,” said Information and Culture Minister Fouad bin Abdul-Salam bin Mohammad Farisi, adding that the Muslim faith had been portrayed negatively since the September 11 attacks.

“...and of course, deadly stampedes and animal sacrifice,” Farisi continued. “Don’t tell PETA!”

Pilgrims on Sunday will throw stones at pillars on the spot where the devil is said to have appeared to biblical patriarch Abraham - the scene of deadly stampedes in past years.

The Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha begins the same day, with the sacrificial killing of sheep, goats and cows in commemoration of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail at God’s command.

Hitler Makes the List

After awarding the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat, how much lower can the Nobel Committee go?

Ten years later, we may get to find out. Among the nominees for the 2004 prize are Slobodan Milosevic and ... Adolf Hitler. (Hat tip: Valentine.)

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler and former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have made it to the list — every member of all the world’s parliaments, university professors from law to theology, ex-winners and committee members can submit names.

friday, january 30, 2004

The Mind of Our Enemies

VDH: The Mind of Our Enemies.

Just because we are spending billions and are tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq does not mean that we must remain complacent with Syria and Iran. Each problem has its own unique solutions. If the two countries continue to aid and abet the insurrectionists, then we, in turn, can promote and fund dissident groups, isolate them diplomatically, and as a last resort contemplate military options that do not involve either invasion or occupation. Indeed, precisely because Syria and Iran see our difficulty in Iraq as being in their own interests, we must find creative ways to remind them that the killing of Americans and the destabilization of Iraq would be, ultimately, their own worst nightmare.

Perhaps both rogue states are beginning to grasp the new reality of the last two years: The United States no longer believes that every instance of the use of force is wrong, but in fact accepts that action is more than justified to end an autocratic regime with a history of frightening arsenals, subsidized terrorism, and a record of harming the interests of the United States. Remember that Musharraf’s sudden investigation of Pakistani nuclear scientists, Libya’s unexpected admission of nuclear proliferation, the removal of troops from Saudi Arabia, the growing Saudi dissident movements, and renewed Iranian unrest did not happen in a vacuum — and will cease the moment we return to the old way of appeasement and neglect.

Word of Mouth

For several months I’ve been receiving occasional emails that say they’re “notifying” me that “someone is researching” my background, from a site with a domain name that’s a variation on word-of-mouth.org. I always assumed it was a scam of some kind, but after receiving another one tonight I finally Googled the thing and discovered this interesting tidbit at (where else) snopes.com: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Computers (Word of Mouth).

Jerusalem, 8:48 am

Bret Stephens lives near the site of yesterday’s terrorist mass murder in Jerusalem. Here is his heart-breakingly surreal account of what he witnessed: Jerusalem, 8:48 am.

Survivors lay on the pavement. One elderly man had flecks of human tissue on the back of his coat and scalp, but otherwise he seemed uninjured. Another man was bleeding from his ear, which had been sliced in half. A woman held her face in her hands, and everything was covered in blood.

It was still very quiet, or at least it seemed that way to me. I don’t remember any police there, although surely there must have been some. The ground was covered in glass; every window of the bus had been blasted. Inside the wreckage, I could see three very still corpses and one body that rocked back and forth convulsively. Outside the bus, another three corpses were strewn on the ground, one face-up, two face-down. There was a large piece of torso ripped from its body, which I guessed was the suicide bomber’s. Elsewhere on the ground, more chunks of human flesh: a leg, an arm, smaller bits, pools of blood.

NOW THE police and ambulances began to arrive in great numbers. How much time had elapsed I do not know. They began herding non-official personnel to the sidelines. My secretary called to tell me there had been a suicide bombing. I said: I know, I’m there. Also, she said, Independent Radio wanted to speak to me, would that be alright? Why not? I was patched through to a studio in London. It took me two or three minutes to describe the scene. “That’ll do nicely,” said the voice on the other end. “Cheers.”

Life Is Many Things

Jerusalem Post Editor Saul Singer remembers his brother Alex, murdered by one of the Palestinian Arab prisoners released this week by Israel: Life is many things.

This week’s prisoner deal, however, made the issue unavoidable for my family and a number of others who lost soldiers in Lebanon. Among the released prisoners was Anwar Yassin, who had another 13 years to serve of his 30-year sentence for killing Alex Singer, Ronen Weisman, and Oren Kamil on September 15, 1987.

The surprise introduction of a personal element has not helped crystallize my muddled views on the deal. A pundit’s job is to make tricky cost-benefit analyses, but even before I knew Alex’s killer was in the mix, my calculator had short-circuited. How to compare the concrete freedom of one Israeli, even one who may have been kidnapped under circumstances partly of his own making, against the potential victims of unrepentant released terrorists? What weight should be given to the injustice that Yassin, 36, will be given a hero’s welcome, and has a whole life ahead of him?

I am comforted by the fact that the price that so many Israelis have found expensive is regarded by Palestinians to be cheap. Some analysts found Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah to be more defensive than triumphant, and have noted that most of the Palestinians were small fry on the terror ladder, sprung only a short time before their scheduled release.

Yet while I find the morality and advisability questions to be murky, one message is not: the vast contrast between the value placed on human life. Prisoner deals represent a rare and stark quantification of the human value gap.

Read the whole thing.

Quakes Continue at the Beeb

Andrew Gilligan is out. And he’s whining furiously about the Hutton report:

He said: “If Lord Hutton had fairly considered the evidence he heard, he would have concluded that most of my story was right.”

He said the BBC’s punishment was “far out of proportion to its or my mistakes, which were honest ones”.

Mr Gilligan said: “This report casts a chill over all journalism, not just the BBC’s.

”It seeks to hold reporters, with all the difficulties they face, to a standard that it does not appear to demand of, for instance, government dossiers."

Peaceful Religion Watch

An audience of 500,000 people who made the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca listened today as Sheik Saleh al-Taleb issued the customary demands for Allah to kill, destroy, and inflict his wrath: Millions of pilgrims pray outside Mecca as hajj nears end. (Hat tip: Tim R.)

MINA, Saudi Arabia (AP) — The cleric who delivered the sermon Friday at the annual hajj pilgrimage had a simple request: God grant victory to Muslims fighting around the world.

The prayer by Sheik Saleh al-Taleb to 500,000 people in Mecca’s Grand Mosque and nearby streets came as the hajj neared its climax.

“Oh God, give victory to the mujahedeen (holy warriors) everywhere,” al-Taleb said. “Give them victory in Palestine. Oh God, make the Muslims triumphant and destroy their enemies, and make this country and other Muslim countries safe. Oh God, inflict your wrath on the criminal Zionists.”

After the sermon, pilgrims headed to the tent city of Mina, the last stop before they go to Mount Arafat for a day of prayers and soul- searching that is the main ritual of the annual gathering.

Rajab al-Arabi, a Belgian pilgrim of Tunisian origin, said hearing a Grand Mosque sermon is “something one wishes all one’s life. It’s a dream come true.”

But he added that he had expected a stronger message.

“In Belgium, we have Egyptian and Moroccan clerics who freely criticize the hardships of Muslims, which includes the injustice that has befallen Iraq and the occupation it is under,” he said.

Notice that it’s the Belgian Muslim who expected an even more radical sermon—to match what he hears at home.

Arafish Says...

After briefly greeting the school gathered in a large aquarium in his Muqataa headquarters here, they in turn pledged their loyalty to the 74-year-old symbol of Palestinian resistance.

“We sacrifice our blood and our gills to you, Abu Ammar,” they chanted, using Arafat’s nom-de-poisson, in unison with brood spawn who were also present.

Slouching Toward Big Brother

After September 11, most Americans felt that some tradeoffs between personal liberty and national security were warranted, and I still believe this was a correct feeling. But in this thought-provoking article, security expert Bruce Schneier warns that we need to make sure the people in charge of national security don’t have a skewed perspective on how far those tradeoffs should go: Slouching toward Big Brother.

In December, a provision slipped into an appropriations bill allowing the FBI to obtain personal financial information from banks, insurance companies, travel agencies, real estate agents, stockbrokers, the U.S. Postal Service, jewelry stores, casinos and car dealerships without a warrant—because they’re all construed as financial institutions. Starting this year, the U.S. government is photographing and fingerprinting foreign visitors coming into this country from all but 27 other countries.

I’m not sure I agree the fingerprinting of foreign visitors is a bad thing, but allowing the FBI to gather personal information from all those agencies without a warrant is definitely disturbing.

Schneier argues that it’s not a matter of the Republicans or Democrats being in charge; it’s a matter of the police being in charge.

...The Department of Justice, fueled by a strong police mentality inside the administration, is directing our nation’s political changes in response to Sept. 11. And it’s making trade-offs from its own subjective perspective—trade-offs that benefit it even if they are to the detriment of others.

From the point of view of the Justice Department, judicial oversight is unnecessary and unwarranted; doing away with it is a better trade-off. They think collecting information on everyone is a good idea because they are less concerned with the loss of privacy and liberty. Expensive surveillance and data-mining systems are a good trade-off for them because more budget means even more power. And from their perspective, secrecy is better than openness; if the police are absolutely trustworthy, then there’s nothing to be gained from a public process.

When you put the police in charge of security, the trade-offs they make result in measures that resemble a police state.

Bruce Schneier is the author of a book about security which I’ve read and highly recommend; a very entertaining and readable explanation of the basic concepts of security, with sensible guidelines for evaluating risks and tradeoffs intelligently: Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World.

UW Newspaper Hits Bottom

One of the standard lies of Palestinian propaganda is that the Israeli government somehow deliberately provokes incidents like yesterday’s bus bombing in order to manufacture an excuse to launch incursions into sacred Palestinian land.

It’s a twisted rationale, and very typical of terrorist groups like the PFLP, who employ such tangled immoral rhetoric to justify their atrocities.

And today University of Wisconsin student newspaper The Badger Herald publishes an article pushing this lie, by Fayyad Sbaihat—who is alleged to be a member of the PFLP, and is majoring in chemical engineering at UW-Madison: Bombing in Jerusalem surprises no one. (Hat tip: Jax.)

After the Israeli attack on Gaza Wednesday, a Palestinian militant said he would “hit inside Israel, until the Israelis make Sharon regret this incursion.” A response came, whether it was the full or a partial response is to be seen over the next few days. The bombing in Jerusalem was an expected and desired (by Sharon) outcome of the Gaza incursion, and the emerging fact is Sharon will soon have as much Israeli blood on his hands as he does Palestinian.

The link above leads to a page where you can leave a comment about Sbaihat’s article.

Here’s an entry from December in which Sbaihat is discussed, with more links to info about this person.

It no longer surprises me to find university newspapers publishing this kind of sneaky, murder-enabling garbage, unfortunately.

Wesley Clark Courts Radical Muslims

According to the New York Daily News, Democratic candidate Wesley Clark sought the political support of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America—two Muslim groups that have been linked to terrorism by numerous sources, and are currently under investigation by the FBI: Clark appealed to group suspected of terror link. (Hat tip: Morgan.)

The Democratic presidential candidate’s videotaped message was played Dec. 27 in Chicago for the annual conference of the Muslim American Society and the Islamic Circle of North America - a Queens group being probed by the FBI counterterrorism agents, said two federal law enforcement officials.

Both groups have held conferences featuring speakers accused of terror ties and have published material supporting suicide bombings against Israel.

Clark campaign spokesman Matt Bennett said yesterday they were unaware of the allegations or the FBI probe.

If that last statement is true, what does it say about how seriously Clark is taking the war on terrorism? He didn’t know?

thursday, january 29, 2004

Hizb'Allah Via Mexico

At least one alleged Hizb’Allah terrorzoid has already used our sieve-like border with Mexico to sneak into the US: A question about Hizballah and Mexico.

Now, turn to May 3, 2003. That’s when FBI agents searched the Dearborn, Mich., residence of Mahmoud Kourani, a 32-year-old illegal alien from Lebanon.

In a statement submitted last week in federal court, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kenneth Chadwell revealed words the FBI found on audiotapes there: “You alone are the sun of my lands, Nasrallah! Nasrallah!/. . . your voice is nothing less than my jihad.”

“We offer to you Hizballah, a pledge of loyalty,” said a tape. “. . . Rise for Jihad! . . . I offer you, Hizballah, my blood in my hand.”

Kourani pleaded guilty to harboring an illegal alien. A judge sentenced him to six months. On Jan. 15, a second indictment was unsealed, charging Kourani with conspiracy to provide material support to Hizballah.

“Kourani was a member, fighter, recruiter and fundraiser for Hizballah,” said the indictment. “Operating at first from Lebanon and later in the United States, Kourani was a dedicated member of Hizballah who received specialized training in radical Shiite fundamentalism, weaponry, spy craft, and counterintelligence in Lebanon and Iran.”

“Kourani,” Chadwell added in his statement, “is charged with conspiring with individuals at the highest levels of the terrorist organization, including one of his brothers who is the Hizballah chief of military security for southern Lebanon.”

Kourani got to America, the prosecutors allege, with the help of a Mexican official.

“On approximately Feb. 4, 2001, Kourani surreptitiously entered the United States by sneaking across the U.S./Mexico border in the trunk of a car,” wrote Chadwell. “He reached Mexico by paying $3,000 used to bribe an official in the Mexican Consulate in Beirut, Lebanon, to give him a Mexican visa.”

The Terrorist and the Archbishop

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, left, awards Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams the Bethlehem 2000 medal during a special ceremony at his office in the West Bank town of Ramallah Thursday Jan. 29, 2004. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)

MPAC Attacks Emerson

In an uncredited hit piece, the Muslim Public Affairs Council has launched a completely unhinged attack on Steven Emerson: Steve Emerson’s Self-Serving Distortions. (Hat tip: Baldy.)

The real difference between Steve Emerson and Salman Rushdie is that Emerson is a bigot who has made a career of rhetorically shooting Muslims first and asking questions later. Exhibit A is his announcement that Muslims were behind the Oklahoma City terror attack. Before any facts were available, the impartial and unbiased Steve Emerson had kangarooed his way to the incorrect conclusion that Muslims were behind the attack. But why let facts get in the way of a good argument? Has Steve ever gone to the American Muslim community and apologized for consistently slandering our community and attempt to make amends? Alas, Steve Emerson does not have that sort of integrity. See this telling analysis of Emerson’s work for more background:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2002/03/05/emerson/index.html

In 1995 he bizarrely claimed in the Jewish Monthly that Islam “sanctions genocide, planned genocide, as part of its religious doctrine.” He then declared in the Jerusalem Post that “the US had become occupied fundamentalist territory.” Emerson brings to mind the most paranoid anti-communists of the 1950’s. His pathetic attempt to recast himself as only a righteous seeker of Islamic extremists does not fit the facts. His is more a struggle to keep legitimate American Muslim organizations from participating in the political life of their country, for fear that they would advocate for causes he does not support, such as freedom and a state for the Palestinians. Not very democratic of him.

The way MPAC summarizes the Salman Rushdie case is very revealing:

Salman Rushdie wrote a work of fiction that was seen as critical of the Prophet and his family, for which he garnered the anger of some Muslims outside the United States, and ended up with a death sentence issued by Ayatollah Khomeini. He never falsely accused anyone of anything, he just wrote a novel. Steve Emerson on the other hand is not under any death sentence, he is just being outed for his bigoted and ignorant statements. We at MPAC opposed the attempt by some misguided Muslims to condemn Rushdie, and we took a stand in favor of his free speech rights to be impolite.

Under the ideal Islamic state, of course, neither Emerson nor Rushdie would have written such books. Creatures such as Emerson and Rushdie would never come to exist. And no “pure” Muslim would ever have to risk exposure to their foul, polluting, “impolite” ideas.

The Nature of the Shark

Here’s a perfect example of the Dark Ages mentality of the enemies of civilization.

Despite the release of more than 400 Arab prisoners by Israel, for which Israel received the remains of three murdered IDF soldiers and a businessman with legal problems, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the evil-minded “spiritual leader” of the Hizb’Allah death cult, shows absolutely no sign of gratitude, humility, reconciliation, or even ordinary human decency. Instead he reacts like a shark smelling blood in the water.

In a speech at a festive ceremony held in honor Lebanese prisoners freed by Israel on Thursday, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Israel would regret not releasing militant Samir Kuntar in the prisoner exchange deal the two countries carried out Thursday.

In 1979, Kuntar murdered three members of the Haran family in the northern city of Nahariya.

Nasrallah said that Hezbollah will respond to Israel’s decision not to free Kuntar, and threatened that members of his organization would kidnap soldiers again.

Nasrallah made clear that in future kidnappings, the Israeli soldiers would survive the abduction and be live hostages. The remark was a reference to the fact that the three soldiers abducted by Hezbollah in October 2000, whose bodies were returned Thursday as part of the prisoner exchange, were killed prior to the kidnapping.

“Next time I promise you we will capture them alive,” Nasrallah told those attending the Hezbollah rally.

"We Live in a Dangerous World..."

I don’t agree with everything he says, but Joe Lieberman continues to impress me as the only Democratic presidential candidate with an ounce of plain old common sense: What They Said: Candidates’ Statements.

“We live in a dangerous world. ... In a dangerous world, sometimes you have to use that power against dangerous people. The statements that this administration made before the war, the questions we now have about intelligence about the weapons of mass destruction, the failure of the Bush administration to be prepared for what to do after we overthrew Saddam have all unfortunately given a bad name to a just war. The fact is that Saddam Hussein himself was a weapon of mass destruction. ... I will never waver in my conclusion that the world is a safer with Saddam Hussein in prison and not in power.”

Islamic France and Human Rights

Robert Spencer makes a very good point about the French ban on the Islamic head scarf (the hijab): Islamic France and human rights.

France seems to be placing all the hope it once placed in the Maginot Line in a strange and seriously flawed idea: that it can contain the forces of Islamic theocracy by outlawing the most innocuous manifestation of Islamic anti-secularism, the headscarf.

Protests have erupted all over France, and they have turned ugly. The day after 20,000 Muslims protested the ban, a Jewish school bus was burned and stones were thrown at the synagogue in Strasbourg. Police believe these incidents were connected to the demonstrations.

The French are targeting the headscarf because they understand it is a symbol of something profoundly anti-French, although they don’t seem to grasp exactly what. Consequently their coercive secularism is targeting the symptom rather than the cause.

If only French Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy had the courage to say, “All right, you can have your headscarf. But to be a citizen of France you must explicitly and definitively renounce for all time the elements of Islamic law – the Sharia – that are at variance with the idea of the equality of rights and dignity of all people.”

Cycling Through Quicksand

Yep, the site is loading slowly; sorry about that. (Our email has also been flaky.) The elves and pixies that secretly run the Internet have been fending off an invasion of gremlins with terrible vorpal blades, and it’s taken an awful toll on their fast-twitch muscle fibers.

Had you going there for a second, didn’t I?

Actually, Hosting Matters has been experiencing some network problems. They’re working on it, and we should soon be back to Warp 9.

Aspiration, Not Desperation

A piece at the Jerusalem Post by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook shows beyond any doubt that the driving force behind atrocities like today’s bus bombing is not poverty. It’s not desperation, and it’s not lack of full employment. It’s an all-pervasive Islamic cult of death, deliberately and relentlessly hammered into the minds of Arab children from the time they are babies: Aspiration, not desperation.

Palestinian mothers have been taught to aspire to death for Allah for their children. A mother explained recently on PA TV why she expressed sounds of joy upon hearing of her son’s death: “A mother makes sounds of joy because she wants him to reach shahada. He became a shahid for Allah Almighty. I wanted the best for him; this is the best for [my son] Shaadi.”

PA ideology rejects the values that other societies hold supreme. Here is Issam Sissalem on PA TV: “We are not afraid to die and do not love life.”

Palestinian children have learned to see dying for the deity as their goal in life. In a chilling talk show interview on PA TV, two 11-year-old girls explain cheerfully and eloquently what they and their young friends desire:

Walla: Shahada is very, very beautiful. Everyone aspires to shahada. What could be better than going to paradise?

Host: What is better, peace and full rights for the Palestinian people or shahada?
Walla: Shahada.

Yussra: Of course shahada is sweet. We don’t want this world, we want the Afterlife. We benefit not from this life but from the Afterlife... Every Palestinian child aged, say 12, says “Oh Lord, I would like to become a shahid.”

Public opinion polls indicate that Yussra and Walla represent an overwhelming majority of Palestinian children who embrace this belief. According to three different polls, 70 to 80 percent of Palestinian children aspire to shahada.

In the ancient world, there was widespread belief that the deity wanted humans to die as the ultimate form of worship. People gave their children to the deity of Molech and the Baal. This ancient belief has now returned to plague the world.

Video of Jerusalem Bombing

Here is a video of the aftermath of today’s Arab mass murder in Jerusalem. WARNING: it’s very graphic.

And Again

Palestinian Arab savagery strikes again: Jerusalem Bus Bomber Kills 10, Wounds 50.

JERUSALEM - A Palestinian suicide bomber detonated a bag of explosives on a crowded Jerusalem bus outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s residence Thursday, killing 10 passengers and wounding 50 bystanders in the deadliest attack in four months.

The blast sent body parts flying into nearby houses. Shaken survivors crawled out of broken bus windows. A chunk of the bus’ roof landed on top of a two-story building, and witnesses said there was an overpowering smell of blood and smoke.

Sharon was not home at the time of the attack, claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a militant group close to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

The bomber, identified as Ali Jaara, 24, a Palestinian policeman from the West Bank town of Bethlehem, said in a note he left that he wanted to avenge eight Palestinians killed in fighting with Israeli troops in the Gaza Strip the day before.

wednesday, january 28, 2004

Dhimmitude at the Times

In the New York Times, John Kearney wants the media to stop calling Allah “Allah,” and just use the name “God” to signify that Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same deity: My God Is Your God. (Hat tip: davesax.)

Last August the Washington Post Web site posed this question to readers: “Do you think that Muslims, Christians and Jews all pray to the same God?” One Muslim respondent wrote yes, each of the three major monotheistic faiths “pray to the God of Abraham.”

Christian respondents, however, were equivocal or hostile to the notion. “Jews pray to Yahweh,” one Virginia woman wrote. “As a Christian, I pray to the same God.” But she insisted that “Muslims pray to Allah. Allah is not the God of Abraham.” This woman might be surprised that Christian Arabs use “Allah” for God, as do Arabic-speaking Jews. In Aramaic, the language of Jesus, God is “Allaha,” just a syllable away from Allah.

Still, who can blame her? Earlier that month, NPR reported Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza City intoning, “there is no God but Allah.” Last week, The Los Angeles Times mentioned mourners for a slain Baghdad professor reciting, “there is no God but Allah” at the university campus. In September, The New York Times reported an assassinated Palestinian uttering, “there is no God but Allah” before he died.

“There is no god but God” is the first of Islam’s five pillars. It is Muhammad’s refutation of polytheism. Yet to today’s non-Muslims, the locution “there is no God but Allah” reads as an affront, a declaration that inflammatory Allah trumps the Biblical God. This journalistic rendition distorts the meaning of the Muslim confession of faith.

But Kearney gives no evidence that the phrase “there is no God but Allah” is a distortion, just his own word. This is argument by assertion; politically correct wisdom received from on high. Hasn’t Kearney ever read a transcript of the Islamic supremacist sermons preached in Gaza City mosques? A real case could be made that the phrase as currently used by journalists conveys its precise meaning—that all other gods and all other religions are inferior to Islam.

Kearney uses the CAIR-approved term “Abrahamic faith” to denote Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and thinks the Muslim festival of Eid Al-Adha would be a good time to start implementing his shiny multicultural ideal world—a festival during which the God of Islam demands his followers sacrifice animals. With their own hands. Supermarket Chain Sells Sacrificial Sheep.

Weapons of Mass Distraction

Claudia Rosett says the debate over weapons of mass destruction is a red herring; the real threat is tyranny.

We seem to be heading for the surreal conclusion that it is all right to be a murderous tyrant who only thinks he is pursuing weapons of mass destruction—even if he apparently believes it himself strongly enough to take the risk of kicking out U.N. arms inspectors for four years. Somehow, I am not comforted by the vision of a Saddam presiding over a country where he is allocating resources for WMD, terrorists are traipsing through, and whatever is really going on is anyone’s guess, including Saddam’s.

What needs to start sinking in, somehow, is that while arsenals matter, what matters even more is the set of rules and values that a regime defends and its leaders live by. This, more than anything signed on paper or offered as totalitarian propaganda, tells us where the worst dangers lie. We have heard by now too many discussions in which mass graves, mass starvation, conventional mass murder and terrorist trafficking are all somehow hived off from the high and nuanced talk of geostrategy, of bomb estimates and inspections, so scientific but imprecise.

Kay's Testimony

C-SPAN is showing David Kay’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee; I recommend watching for yourself, because if you rely on media or politicians to tell you what Kay said you’re not going to get the truth.

IDF Raids Islamic Jihad

Every once in a while, the wire services slip up and release a photo that gives an inadvertent glimpse at the truth of the Arab-Israeli conflict; here’s one, as armed Palestinian terrorists take cover among unarmed “bystanders” during a fierce battle with IDF troops raiding an Islamic Jihad stronghold.

Palestinians take cover during clashes with Israeli troops in the Zitoun neighborhood in Gaza CIty, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004. Palestinian medical sources said at least eight people were killed in the clashes. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

Arab terrorists cynically rely on the essential morality of the IDF when they hide among non-combatants; if the Israelis were truly the genocidal monsters the Palestinians constantly allege, not one of the people in the photo above would be alive right now.

Even though this raid was specifically aimed at Islamic Jihad cells that were attacking the nearby settlement of Netzarim, Reuters Palestinian stringer Nidal al-Mughrabi blames Israel for damaging the “road map,” gives top billing to Palestinian claims of civilian casualties, and buries near the bottom of the article the Israeli claim that all casualties were armed terrorists: Israel Army Kills 8 During Gaza Gunbattles.

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli troops killed eight Palestinians Wednesday in the deadliest raid in the Gaza Strip in more than a month, casting a shadow over a new U.S. push to salvage a battered peace plan.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the main groups behind a campaign of suicide bombings against Israelis, vowed revenge, saying five of their fighters were among those killed in fierce gunbattles in Gaza City. Medics said the other dead were civilians, but Israel said all were armed “terrorists.”

“The bloody message has been received...and the Palestinian people will know how to respond to it,” Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed Al-Hindi told Reuters.

Earthquake at the Beeb

BBC chairman Gavyn Davies has resigned.

It comes after Lord Hutton said the suggestion in BBC reports that the government “sexed up” its dossier on Iraq’s weapons with unreliable intelligence was “unfounded”.

And he criticised “defective” BBC editorial processes over defence correspondent Andrew Gilligan’s broadcasts of the claims on the Today programme.

Announcing his resignation, Mr Davies said the people at the top of organisations should accept responsibility for their actions.

“I have been brought up to believe that you cannot choose your own referee, and that the referee’s decision is final,” he said.

He would be writing to the prime minister to tender his resignation with immediate effect.

Lord Hutton also said he was satisfied Dr Kelly had killed himself after being named as the suspected source of the BBC’s controversial weapons dossier story.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said the report showed “the allegation that I or anybody else lied to the House or deliberately misled the country by falsifying intelligence of weapons of mass destruction is itself the real lie”.

“I simply ask that those that have made it and repeated it over all these months now withdraw it fully, openly and clearly,” he said.

Iran's Manhattan Project Speeding Ahead

Having bought more time by making bogus agreements with the easily-hoodwinked IAEA, Iran is now moving into the “cheat” phase of their cheat-and-retreat cycle: Iran: Uranium Enrichment Halt to Be Short.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s suspension of uranium enrichment will be short-lived and the Islamic Republic will restart the program whenever it chooses, Hassan Rohani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Wednesday.

Iran announced it had suspended uranium enrichment in November as a goodwill gesture. It was under intense U.S.-led international pressure to prove it was not seeking atomic weapons.

“It (enrichment) is not stopped, rather it is suspended and this will not last long. Whenever we think it is right we will restart it,” the mid-ranking cleric told a students gathering, reported by the official IRNA news agency.

Western diplomats have told Reuters Iran has been acquiring large amounts of equipment for centrifuges used to enrich uranium despite its promise to suspend all activities.

Kay Blames Weak Intelligence

I’m getting dizzy watching all sides trying to spin the statements of former weapons inspector David Kay; today Kay clarified his opinions in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee:

WASHINGTON - Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay told members of the Senate Wednesday that the failure to turn up weapons of mass destruction in Iraq exposed weaknesses in America’s intelligence-gathering apparatus.

“We’ve had a number of surprises,” Kay told reporters after meeting behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It’s quite clear we need capabilities that we do not have with regard to intelligence.”

Later, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that “we were almost all wrong — and I certainly include myself here,” in believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

But Kay denied suggestions by Democrats that intelligence analysts felt pressured by the administration to shape intelligence to help President Bush make the case for war. He said he spoke to many analysts who prepared the intelligence and “not in a single case was the explanation that I was pressured to this.”

Kay also said despite no evidence of weapons stockpiles, Iraqi documents, physical evidence and interviews with Iraqi scientists revealed that Iraq was engaged in weapons programs prohibited by U.N. resolutions.

Kay keeps telling everyone who will listen that there was a failure of intelligence; and every Western intelligence service agreed that Iraq did possess banned weapons.

But there is definitely an ongoing attempt to mislead the public, as well—and the chief dissemblers are people like Howard Dean, who despite Kay’s very clear statements continues to twist the truth:

“The administration did cook the books,” Howard Dean told reporters Tuesday. “I think that’s pretty serious.”

tuesday, january 27, 2004

Did Hitlerism Die with Hitler?

Here’s a powerful essay/book review by Omer Bartov on the unpublished sequel to Mein Kampf, that asks the question: Did Hitlerism die with Hitler? (Again, thanks to all who emailed about this.)

Must we read another ranting book by Hitler? This book is certainly as close to the heart of darkness as a book can be. But it should have been read in its time, and it should be read now. It was an explicit warning to the world of what could be expected from the Führer of what was to become for twelve terrible years the Third Reich. When Hitler wrote it, no one could tell whether his plans and fantasies would ever be transformed into reality. Much of what Hitler put together in this book could already be found in Mein Kampf, if anyone had bothered to read it, and other ideas were expressed unambiguously in his speeches. Yet it was difficult to believe that anyone in his right mind would try to translate such rhetoric into policy. It was generally thought that in power Hitler would be constrained by the realities of diplomacy, the limits of Germany’s power, the national interests of the Reich, and the military, economic, and political partners with whom he had to make policy. 

Today we know that this was a fatal misunderstanding, rooted more in wishful thinking than in the kind of realism on which contemporary observers prided themselves and expected would eventually keep Hitler, too, in his place. Today we know that Hitler said precisely what he meant to say. We can also note, with the benefit of hindsight, that Hitler was neither insane, nor irrational, nor a fool. Several decades ago A.J.P. Taylor wrote that Hitler may have been mad or criminal as far as his plans and policies for world conquest and genocide were concerned, but in the conduct of his diplomacy in the 1930s he acted very much like everyone else, seizing opportunities and moving gradually toward the goals he had set himself. Reading this second book, I tend to agree. Hitler’s rhetoric here is not more empty-headed than that of many of his contemporaries; his use of clichés hardly exceeds what one encountered in the newspapers; his knowledge of history, his psychological observations, his criticism of his rivals, are in many respects typical of his place and time. 

But of course Hitler was about much more than this. He was also a pathological mass murderer who caused the death of millions and the destruction of Europe, and so it is important to know that he did precisely what he promised to do. For we still do not seem to have learned a simple crucial lesson that Hitler taught us more definitively than anyone else in history: some people, some regimes, some ideologies, some political programs, and, yes, some religious groups, must be taken at their word. Some people mean what they say, and say what they will do, and do what they said.

New Hampshire Live

New Hampshire festivities are available to you live over the Innernut, at C-SPAN. Medal-tossing Kerry is on as I write this, talking about “defeating George W. Bush and the economy of privilege.”

Vietnam Vet Wins NH

In New Hampshire, it’s John Kerry (who served in Vietnam) by a length: Kerry Wins N.H. Primary, Boosts Momentum.

MANCHESTER, N.H. - John Kerry easily won New Hampshire’s primary Tuesday, overpowering Howard Dean and other Democratic rivals for a second-straight victory to establish the four-term senator as the party’s presidential front-runner.

“It’s an enormous victory, a huge turnaround,” Kerry told The Associated Press. “We were written off for months, and plugged on and showed people the determination we have to defeat President Bush.”

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark were in a distant race for third as early returns trickled in from across the Granite State. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut was fifth, his candidacy in peril.

Alas, Howard, we hardly knew ye.

You Can Fool Some of the People...

A poll commissioned by the Zionist Organization of America (carried out by the firm of McLaughlin & Associates) found that 67.4% of Americans do not believe Palestinian Arabs deserve their own state. (Thanks to all who emailed about this.)

Hamas in the Florida Classroom

Daniel Pipes and Asaf Romirowsky write about Mustafa Abu Sway, a visiting Palestinian professor at Florida Atlantic University—and a Hamas “activist:” Hamas in the Florida Classroom.

Our little scoop met with yawns or with disbelief. Abu Sway himself denounced our article as a “witch hunt.” FAU ignored the revelation (“we have no reason to take any action”). The hometown Palm Beach Post published four skeptical responses, including an editorial insisting that “there is no known evidence” against Abu Sway.

Actually, being named as “a known activist” in Hamas by the Israeli government – who knows terrorism better? – qualifies in itself as “evidence,” but we since October have learned that Abu Sway also:

· Was a board member and raised funds for two Jerusalem-based Hamas-related organizations, the Heritage Committee and the Foundation for the Development of Society, both of which were shut down in February 2003.

· Has worked with the Palestinian “Charity Coalition” that includes such organizations as Al-Aqsa Foundation (South Africa) and Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens (France), both known as Hamas fundraisers.

· Is connected to Sheikh Ra’ed Salah’s Islamic Movement in Um al-Fahm, Israel, 14 members of which were arrested in May 2003 for Hamas fundraising.

If this does not count as evidence of ties to Hamas, we are not sure what does.

The MyDoom Virus

Several people have asked whether we were under a DDoS attack today, but no; the slowdown you may have seen at LGF was probably caused by the massive traffic being generated by the MyDoom virus.

UPDATE: Scratch that; MyDoom is a big problem, but it looks like the sluggishness may have been specific to our web host, Hosting Matters. Here’s a discussion at the HM support forum: Intermittent network issues. The problems seem to have subsided, and we’re zipping along at warp 9 again.

Pakistan Nuke Scientists "Got Millions"

Pakistan’s nuclear scientists got rich by spreading the tools of doomsday around the world: Scientists ‘got millions for nuclear secrets’.

Leading Pakistani scientists who sold nuclear secrets to rogue states will be punished as “enemies of the state”, President Pervaiz Musharraf said yesterday.

He was speaking after press reports stated that investigators had discovered millions of pounds in accounts linked to scientists.

The widening scandal is causing acute concern in Washington and London, which are determined to halt the spread of nuclear technology but fear they might weaken Gen Musharraf in the process. He was recently the target of two assassination attempts by Islamist extremists.

“We will punish them,” vowed the president in an interview with the BBC. “We are going to be very harsh with them because they are enemies of the state.”

UN: Get Out of NY

In Forbes Magazine, British historian Paul Johnson has a message for the United Nations: Get Out of New York! (Hat tip: Kae.)

When America was the leader of a successful wartime coalition—and the world wished it to continue in that role—it made excellent sense to place UN headquarters in New York. But those days have long passed. America has accepted its world-policeman destiny, and the UN is merely a minor obstacle to the successful performance of that task. The place has become a mere theater of empty rhetoric and shameless deals supporting a growing tide of anti-Semitism and racism and—let us not be mealymouthed—state crime. It is a place where near-bankrupt dictatorships can sell their votes to the highest bidder.

It is also a place where well-connected playboy diplomats from the Third World can indulge in an expense-account lifestyle in one of the richest cities on earth, ignoring the pitiful poverty of their home countries and often using their diplomatic immunity to break the law. This is an insult to the dignity of the human race.

As the UN is now constituted, a far better location for it would be in a city near the gravitational center of the Afro-Eurasian landmass. There it would be close to the realities of the problems it ought to be tackling—poverty; bad, cruel and corrupt governments; international lawlessness; civil wars. The place I’d suggest is Dar es Salaam (though I can think of a half-dozen other equally suitable venues). Having UN headquarters there would hugely reduce the cost of running it and its associated activities from New York. It would also deter the playboy element that is one of the curses of the organization and help persuade both staff and delegations to take their jobs seriously.

The Islamification of the UK

In Britain, there are now more Muslims attending a place of worship at least once a week than Anglicans: More attend mosques than church. (Hat tip: Norwegian kafir.)

According to figures 930,000 Muslims attend a place of worship at least once a week, whereas only 916,000 Anglicans do the same. Muslim leaders are now claiming that, given such a rise of Islam in Britain, Muslims should receive a share of the privileged status of the Church of England.

A spokesman for David Hope, the Archbishop of York, second in the church hierarchy, said the archbishop had conceded defeat, but added: “He believes that many more people have an affinity to the church than the number recorded as having attended once on a Sunday.” The figures were compiled from government and academic resources.

According to the 2001 census, three-quarters of the British population regards itself as Christian. Although there are no registers kept at mosques regarding attendance, but the census had included a question about religious adherence. Those figures have been further supported by surveys to give the first assessment of worshipping Muslims.

Although the census recorded 1.59 million Muslims but Ceri Peach, professor of social geography at Oxford University said the census could not record the correct balance because the question was voluntary. Academics believe the figure to be at least 1.8 million.

Iraqi Oil Bribes Revealed

The Iraqi Governing Council is planning an investigation after a Baghdad newspaper published a list of companies, politicians, and individuals who accepted illegal “oil bribes” from Saddam Hussein: Iraq to Probe Alleged Saddam Oil Bribes.

“I think the list is true. I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted,” Naseer Chaderji, a Governing Council member, told Reuters.

The list includes members of Arab ruling families, religious organizations, politicians and political parties from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Sudan, China, Austria, France and other countries.

Organizations named include the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Communist Party, India’s Congress Party and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Assem Jihad, an oil ministry spokesman, said thousands of documents which were looted from the State Oil Marketing Organization after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces on April 9 may prove that Saddam used bribery to gain support.

“Anyone involved in stealing Iraqi wealth will be prosecuted,” Jihad said.

Oil ministry officials say they have stopped selling oil to companies that may have acted as fronts to supporters of the toppled leader.

Frankenbouncer

In New Hampshire yesterday, peace lover Al Franken attacked a heckler trying to shout down Howard Dean. (Hat tip: Michael S.)

January 27, 2004 — EXETER, N.H. - Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean.

The tussle left Franken’s trademark thick-rim glasses broken, but he said he was not injured.

Franken - who seemed in a state of shock and out of breath after the incident - was helped back to his feet by several people who watched the tussle. Police arrived soon after.

“I got down low and took his legs out,” said Franken afterwards.

Franken said he’s not backing Dean but merely wanted to protect the right of people to speak freely. “I would have done it if he was a Dean supporter at a Kerry rally,” he said.

“I’m neutral in this race but I’m for freedom of speech, which means people should be able to assemble and speak without being shouted down.”

“And if somebody tries it, I’ll get down low on ’em and take their legs out!” bellowed the red-faced funnyman.

monday, january 26, 2004

French Jihad Watch

Last week we noted a report that the car of Aissa Dermouche, the French Muslim leader appointed by Jacques Chirac to a high administrative position, had been bombed.

Yesterday another “small blast” damaged a well known business school formerly headed by Dermouche: Small Blast Damages French School.

NANTES, France - An explosion early Sunday damaged a business school formerly headed by a Muslim who was recently appointed a top administrator in France. The man’s car was bombed a week ago.

Police immediately cordoned off the area around the Audencia school and opened an investigation. The explosion damaged a door and some windows of the school.

Prosecutor Jean-Marie Huet said on LCI television that authorities were looking into whether the two blasts were linked. Lab experts were sent to this western city from Paris to determine whether material used in the 6:15 a.m. blast was the same as that used to destroy the car of Aissa Dermouche.

Dermouche, 57, born in Algeria, was named to the prestigious post of prefect, the state’s highest representative of a region, on Jan. 14 by President Jacques Chirac. He is the first person of Muslim origin to be appointed to the post.

Four days later, his car, parked on a street near his home, was blown up.

Jailhouse Rock

A Palestinian woman ululates the intro to Jailhouse Rock while holding up pictures of the King, who she says is jailed in Israel, during a protest in the West Bank city of Ramallah January 19, 2004, demanding the release of the Memphis Mafia. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

9/11 Panel Gets to the Bottom

Law enforcement and border security failures that contributed to the 9/11 atrocity are finally getting the scrutiny they deserve: Sept. 11 Panel Looks at Border Security. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

WASHINGTON - A border agent said Monday that the suspected ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks raised enough red flags at customs — including having the wrong student visa — that he should been prevented from entering the United States.

Customs agent Jose E. Melendez-Perez, testifying at a public hearing on border and aviation security, said lead hijacker Mohamed Atta’s age and impeccable clothes also appeared to contradict his story about being a student.

“I would have recommended refusal,” Melendez-Perez said.

Atta’s improper entry is one of a series of errors by government officials prior to Sept. 11 that could have prevented the attacks, an independent commission investigating the terrorist attacks said Monday in releasing new details about the attack.

Some of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were allowed into the country despite carrying fraudulent visas and being questioned by customs agents, the commission said.

For example, hijacker Saeed al Ghamdi was referred to immigration inspection officials in June 2001 after he provided no address on his customs form and only had a one-way plane ticket and about $500. But al Ghamdi was able to persuade the inspector that he was a tourist.

Hawkins Interviews Frum

John Hawkins has a wide-ranging interview with David Frum, author (with Richard Perle) of the new book An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror.

And of course, like most people with taste and discretion, he is a reader of LGF.

Palestinian Child Abuse

In this undated but recent image released Monday, Jan. 26, 2004, by the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip, female suicide bomber Reem Raiyshi, holds her son Obida, 3, as they pose with weapons. Raiyshi blew herself up at the major border crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, on Jan. 14, 2004, killing herself and four Israelis. (AP Photo/Hamas)

This undated but recent image released Monday, Jan. 26, 2004, by the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip, shows Reem Raiyshi, right, in camouflage dress holding an assault rifle holding a copy of the Quran and an holding an assault rifle, speaking to her two children. Raiyshi blew herself up at a major border crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, on Jan. 14, 2004, killing herself and four Israelis. (AP Photo/Hamas)

Dean: Iraqi "Living Standard Worse"

Howard Dean is sounding more and more like an uninformed Democratic Underground poster: Dean Says Iraqis Lived Better Under Saddam. (Hat tip: growler.)

“You can say that it’s great that Saddam is gone and I’m sure that a lot of Iraqis feel it is great that Saddam is gone,” Dean said yesterday in answer to a question in Manchester. “But a lot of them gave their lives. And their living standard is a whole lot worse now than it was before.”

French Shari'a Watch

An excellent piece by Barbara Amiel asks the question: Is France on the way to becoming an Islamic state? (Thanks to all who pointed this out.)

France is facing the problem that dare not speak its name. Though French law prohibits the census from any reference to ethnic background or religion, many demographers estimate that as much as 20-30 per cent of the population under 25 is now Muslim. The streets, the traditional haunt of younger people, now belong to Muslim youths. In France, the phrase “les jeunes” is a politically correct way of referring to young Muslims.

Given current birth rates, it is not impossible that in 25 years France will have a Muslim majority. The consequences are dynamic: is it possible that secular France might become an Islamic state?

The situation is not dissimilar elsewhere in the EU. Europeans may at some young point in the 21st century have to decide whether they wish to retain the diluted but traditional Judaeo-Christian culture of their minority or have it replaced by the Islamic culture of the majority.

This is a subject that has come up at LGF many times; guess who is way out in front in our poll on Shari’a in Europe?

Kay: Iraqi WMD Components in Syria

Former chief weapons inspector David Kay told the Telegraph he discovered evidence of shipments of material from Iraq to Syria: Saddam’s WMD hidden in Syria, says Iraq survey chief.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year’s war to overthrow Saddam.

“We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,” he said. “But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved.”

MoDo Phones It In

Iowahawk has been exploring the trash bins behind the New York Times building again, and this time he came up with the first draft of a new piece about the State of the Union address by a well-known star columnist: MoDo Phones It In.

WASHINGTON — Gag me with a Spoon! The Fresh Prince of Smirkville smirked with such gnarly break-dancing enthisiasm, that one is hard pressed to find the appropriate 1987 pop culture reference. Who’s the guy’s political consultant — Adrian Zmed? He was so in-your-face, smirking his trademark smirk, it was disturbing to think of that trademark in-your-facial smirkery in charge of military Top Guns like Tom “Maverick” Cruise. It’s a good thing he stopped drinking and started talking about God. Frankie says Relax Don’t Do It.

sunday, january 25, 2004

Kay: "Not a Political Issue"

Democrats are doing their best to score political points from CIA weapons inspector David Kay’s statements that he doesn’t believe Iraq had WMD stores—despite Kay’s own cautions that the issue was a failure of intelligence, not a deliberate attempt to mislead: Kay: Lack of Iraqi WMD Requires Review.

“I don’t think they exist,” David Kay said Sunday. “The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist — we’ve got to deal with that difference and understand why.”

Kay’s remarks on National Public Radio reignited criticism from Democrats, who ignored his cautions that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction was “not a political issue.”

“It’s an issue of the capabilities of one’s intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information,” Kay said. Asked whether President Bush owed the nation an explanation for the gap between his warnings and Kay’s findings, Kay said: “I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people.”

The CIA would not comment Sunday on Kay’s remarks, although one intelligence official pointed out that Kay himself had predicted last year that his search would turn up banned weapons.

We Got Mail!

An admirer in Santa Clara California used our contact form this morning, and gave the probably phony address of hasbiyallah@hotmail.com. Mr. Hasbiyallah found LGF through this Google Search, and his reaction to LGF exemplifies the tolerance and good humor we’ve come to expect from representatives of the Religion of Peace™:

What’s up with all the sh*t against Muslims on your site? Do you f*cking forget that all the extremism if fueled by your f*cking occupying hook-nosed brethern in Israel and thier slaves in the US administratoin? Don’t you f*cking know that even Kay and Powell have admitted there is no WMD in Iraq? Under such circumstances, what else do you expect from the oppressed and crushed around the world but a call for jihad and resorting to extremism? Just f*cking ask yourself: why wasn’t there any terror attacks before any of this happened? The whites colonized the Muslims, killed them by millions in Africa, ME and Asia. Left them only to put thier f*cking puppets to rule them. Massacred Jews and made Muslims the scapegoats and got rid of them and gave them a piece of our land in ME. Isreal the only recognized racist entity on earth. Being Jew give u the right to automatic citizenship. So much for the only democracy in the world! What democracy? occupying others home and having democracy for yourselves while driving out people who lived there for thousands of years? Right of return for Jews based on them living there 2000 yrs ago? well, then leave the Americas, all you white ass mother f*ckers and let the true original inhabitants of this land remain here. if this doesn’t make sense, then zionism if f*cked up and out the window. what the f*ck do u say?

A Reminder...

...that if you see a message saying you’re not allowed to post comments, or use our forms to send email, it may be because I’ve had to completely block AOL addresses from using those functions of LGF. There is a group of truly nasty and very persistent creatures who have been using AOL accounts to post unwelcome comments, and because of the way AOL works the only method of blocking these haters is to disallow all AOL users. (From time to time it may also be necessary to block other ISP ranges, depending on the extant amount of troll spewage.) I’m sorry for the inconvenience, and there’s nothing personal toward anyone whose comment gets blocked, but that’s how it’s gotta be. If you can use a non-AOL account, you shouldn’t have a problem.

We're Frank Sinatra

Dennis Miller says 9/11 changed him, and comes up with an incredibly accurate comparison:

The United States right now is simultaneously the world’s most loved, hated, feared and admired nation, he said.

“In short,” he said, “we’re Frank Sinatra.”

Islamic Scholar: Women Driving is "Sinful"

Man, these guys are pathetic. (Sometimes you just have to say it.) Women Driving Cars Is a Sinful Thing: Al-Qarni.

MAKKAH, 25 January 2004 — Sheikh Ayed Al-Qarni, the well-known Islamic scholar, has denied telling the press that it was permissible for women to drive cars in Saudi Arabia. Al-Qarni was responding to reports in Arab News and other papers published two weeks ago.

“I have recently stated that the issue of women not driving cars is not considered to be one of the basics of our religion. What I meant by that was that it is a subsidiary issue. The statement was used against me. It was then portrayed as if I had said it was permissible for women to drive cars in our country and this is something that is totally wrong,” he told Al-Madinah newspaper.

The sheikh said he did not understand how his statement to the press could have been misused when he made it clear that he would not allow his own daughters or sisters to drive.

Al-Qarni also said he mentioned clearly that such an issue should be brought up with the relevant religious institution. What he meant, he said, was that the senior Islamic scholars in the Kingdom had already issued fatwas (religious edicts) saying that women driving cars was sinful and not permissible in Islam. “My statements were misused. This is not the right way for those who search for the truth,” he said. He set out four statements as clarification:

“One: I do not see women driving cars in our country because of the consequences that would spring from it such as the spread of corruption, women uncovering their hair and faces, mingling between the sexes, men being alone with women and the destruction of the family and society in whole.

“Two: Sadd Al-Dharaie principle (the closing of doors which could lead to corruption or sinful actions) is one of the values in our religion. Women driving cars is a sinful thing. It is used by those who want to wage a war against purity and hijab.

“Three: One of the principles of our religion is protecting honor and moral values. Women driving cars would threaten these principles because of the dire consequences resulting from it.

“Four: Such public issues must be brought up with the certified religious institution who have the say in such matters as I have said many times before.”

Pathetic.

Islamic Nuclear Cravings

Discovered by Internet Haganah on an Arabic site registered in Egypt called know-islam.com, an illustration titled “The Beauty of Destruction.”

Nasrallah Gloats Over Prisoner Swap

Apparently Israel will be going ahead with their incredibly foolish prisoner swap with Hizb’Allah, in which they will exchange 435 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners for the remains of three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli businessman who may also be dead. The leader of Hizb’Allah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, isn’t even trying to hide his smirking sense of triumph: Nasrallah: Thursday will tell who is alive and who is dead.

Hizbullah’s leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in a press conference in Beirut earlier Sunday said he would release details of the prisoner exchange once the deal was completed, in the next two to three days.

“Only on the day of the completion of the deal will we know who is alive and who is dead,” he said.

Nasrallah said that the prisoner swap needed to be done in two stages in order to reach a complete solution since the final deal includes Israeli prisoners that are not being held by the Hizbullah.

“We see the prisoners as our responsibility, regardless of their nationality,” the Hizbullah leader said. The Arab prisoners who are not included in the list should know that the door is not closing on them, for this is only the first stage, he added. “We will not forget them, as we never have. Even when Israel withdrew from south Lebanon we did not forget them.”

Ron Arad’s affair will open the door to the release of more Arab and Palestinian prisoners, Nasrallah said, including the ‘harsh’ cases.

“In the future we will achieve even greater results than today,” Nasrallah said. Asked if Hizbullah would carry out further kidnappings, Nasrallah smiled and said “yes”.

Referring to the prisoners who are to be released, Nasrallah said that more than 400 prisoners is a good number, considering Israel’s initial refusal to release any prisoners.

“Some of Israel’s principles were broken today; they can never go back, in future negotiations.”

Mad Dr. Dean

Mark Steyn’s new column is about Howard Dean’s stunning transition from raving, shrieking wildman to heavily tranquilized milktoast: Mad Dr. Dean jolts Kerry campaign to life.

In his interview with Diane Sawyer from Vermont’s charmingly restored Norwich Inn, he seemed to be fading into the authentic colonial wainscoting. The Vermonster had become, in ‘80s karaoke terms, the Calmer Calmer Calmer Calmer Calmer Chameleon. At Thursday’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire, the calmer he got — ”balanced budgets, fiscally conservative manageable budgets, budgets in balance fiscally conservative” — the more the bored Dean watchers speculated that he was about to go berserk, like kids at the zoo eager to start lobbing pebbles at the slumbering gorilla.

Not even Al Gore, in his bewildering array of alternative identities, managed to be both crazy and comatose in the same week. The governor seems to have come up with his own variation on the fiscally conservative/socially liberal shtick: Vote for Dean — fiscally balanced, emotionally unbalanced.

None of the Vermonster’s many enemies in the Democratic Party could have devised as exquisite a torture for Howard Dean as this last week. But, whether they’ve solved their party’s problem is another matter. What seems to be happening on the ground in New Hampshire is this: Now that John Kerry is the sane alternative to Howard Dean, much of Wesley Clark’s support has leached away to Kerry. But at the same time Dean has been so subdued and demoralized that some of his wackier support has leached away to Clark. If Kerry is the sane alternative to Dean, Clark is the crazy alternative to Kerry.

The Nuclear Black Market

The Washington Post has more disturbing information on the discovery of a nuclear black market that aided the Libyan weapons program, including the revelation that one of the “secret factories” that manufactures components is located in Malaysia—whose ex-prime minister Mahathir Mohammad has on many occasions called for Muslims to arm themselves with modern weapons: Probe of Libya Finds Nuclear Black Market.

The scale of the black-market operation — described by one expert as an “international supermarket” for nuclear parts — exceeds anything seen before, and it was undetected by Western intelligence agencies until recent months, the officials said. The same operation also is believed to have aided Iran, they said.

The smuggling enterprise supplied Libya with thousands of parts for gas centrifuges — machines that enrich uranium for nuclear weapons — as well as machine tools for making additional centrifuges, the sources said. It also provided Libya with designs for making a nuclear bomb, officials with the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed yesterday.

Investigators believe some of the centrifuge parts came from factories built expressly to manufacture nuclear components for the black market — a development that would represent a new and problematic milestone in nuclear proliferation. U.S. and IAEA officials are investigating one possible manufacturing site in Malaysia, with the help of that country’s government, well-placed officials said. The site has been visited by U.S. officials in the past two weeks, the sources said.

It’s another benefit of the Bush foreign policy that we’ve become aware of this nuclear conspiracy; let’s hope it’s not too late.

Mars Is Crowded

The second Mars rover, Opportunity, has landed and is working beautifully: Second Mars Rover Sends Pictures to Earth.

Swaddled in protective air bags, Opportunity plunged into the martian atmosphere at more than 12,000 mph and bounced down on Mars at a force estimated to be just two to three times that of Earth’s gravity. Engineers had designed it to withstand as much as 40 G’s, said Chris Jones, director of flight projects at JPL.

The six-wheeled rover landed at 12:05 a.m. EST in Meridiani Planum, believed to be the smoothest, flattest region on Mars. It lies 6,600 miles and halfway around the planet from where Opportunity’s twin, Spirit, landed on Jan. 3.

Initial analysis of the images suggested Opportunity landed in a shallow crater. Its low rim shouldn’t block the rolling robot once it gets going, Squyres said.

“It’s smooth sailing to the horizon,” he said.

saturday, january 24, 2004

Amazon: Now Part of the Electoral Process

Interesting: Amazon has a page where you can donate money (from $5 to $200) to your favorite presidential candidate’s campaign: Amazon.com: Presidential Candidates.

Ilan Ramon's Diary

A Native American searching a Texas field after the crash of the Columbia space shuttle made an amazing discovery.

January 23, 2004 — JERUSALEM — Disintegrating pages of a diary that an Israeli astronaut wrote during the doomed Columbia space shuttle mission were miraculously found in Texas, it was disclosed yesterday.

Ilan Ramon, an Israeli air force combat pilot, recorded his thoughts about the mission, starting from takeoff, in the handwritten journal.

But no one knew of its existence until a Native American scouring Texas fields for debris after the shuttle crash spotted the charred first page.

Neither the Native American, nor NASA officials, knew what the pages meant until they were shown to Ramon’s wife, Rona, who had remained in Houston after the Feb. 1 tragedy.

She immediately identified them as the handwriting, in Hebrew, of her husband.

“The existence of the diary was a stunning surprise,” said Naftali Gliksberg, who directed a documentary about the diary that will be aired in Israel on Tuesday, in advance of the first anniversary of the tragedy.

Only the first of the eight diary pages was legible, he told The Post. The others had been apparently bleached white during the shuttle’s plunge and 1,800-degree heat.

But Rona Ramon took them to the Israeli police department, which used optical scanners and, with the help of museum experts who decipher ancient manuscripts, they were able to reconstruct the pages.

Jihad Unspun and Google News

Honest Reporting criticizes Google News for including the work of Jihad Unspun, a really whacked-out, seemingly pro-jihad (so over-the-top that some say it’s a CIA “honeypot”) web site that often publishes incredibly vile antisemitic articles.

I’ve complained several times myself to Google News about Jihad Unspun, and also about their inclusion of Khilafa.com—an openly radical British Qutbist-Islamic web site. Honest Reporting includes contact information for Google News, at the link above.

Mass. Man Cleared in Rape Case

Last December we noted the story of Hossam Mousa, a Massachusetts pizza shop owner whose Egyptian wife alleged that he held her captive and beat her.

On Thursday, all charges against Mr. Mousa were dropped after key elements of the wife’s testimony failed to check out: Husband cleared in rape case: Wife will head back to Egypt as charges dropped.

Last month, the wife’s restraining order against Mousa was lifted after she denied statements recorded in the police report, blaming it on bad Arabic translation.

Yesterday, a somber Mousa told a reporter he wants to put his life back together.

“My reputation,” he said, shaking his head, “I hope to get it back. I thank my lawyer for standing by my side the whole time, my family and all my friends, the patrons of Goody’s.”

Mousa has owned Goody’s Pizza in Framingham for the last 10 years, and said he received letters of support from his customers since his arrest made headlines in newspapers and on television.

He moved to the United States almost 20 years ago and is an American citizen. According to his attorney, Mousa has no criminal record.

A couple of years ago, the couple met while vacationing in their native homeland, Egypt. She worked as a TV reporter in Saudi Arabia. It was not an arranged marriage, Mousa said, but a typical courtship.

He returned to Egypt last summer for their wedding. She moved to Natick in September. They started to experience marital difficulties, but nothing, Mousa said, to the extent of her court accusations.

Neither Mousa nor his lawyer could pinpoint how the struggling marriage ended up characterized as an abusive relationship. Among the things she told police was that he terrorized her by locking her in rooms for days at a time and raping her three times. ...

The case against Mousa began to unravel on Dec. 11 when his wife was unexpectedly asked to testify at the Middlesex Probate and Family Court in Cambridge to extend her restraining order against him.

At the time, the woman testified, “I didn’t know I was going to be asked all these questions.”

FitzGerald asked her when she was locked up in a room at her in-laws’ Ashland home for five days. When she gave the dates, he presented a Gold’s Gym record that documented she was at the Natick gym on those days.

Arafish Says...

Secret Nuclear Factories

The discoveries coming out of Libya are truly chilling, revealing an unsuspected underground nuclear black market, possibly even with its own secret factories for machining “sensitive” parts: Libya Nuclear Components Said Headed for US. (Hat tip: Roll-aid.)

The Washington Post reported in Saturday’s editions that Libya’s quest for atomic weapons was aided by a sophisticated nuclear black market that offered weapons designs, real-time technical advice and thousands of sensitive parts — some apparently manufactured in secret factories.

Quoting diplomats and experts, the newspaper said the scale of the black-market operation exceeds anything seen before and it was undetected by western intelligence until recent months.

Musharraf Details Nuclear Program

Extraordinary revelations about Pakistan’s nuclear program from Pervez Musharraf: Pakistan Details Its Covert Nuke Program.

“We are carrying out an in-depth investigation and...we will sort out everyone who is involved,” Musharaff said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum meeting in this Alpine resort.

Speaking to reporters at a breakfast meeting, Musharraf said Pakistan’s secret program to develop a nuclear weapon was started about 30 years ago, after neighboring India conducted nuclear tests, and that scientists were given “freedom of action” to develop the technology.

“Covert meant scientists moved around with full autonomy in a secretive manner,” he said, adding that the program “could succeed only if there was total autonomy and nobody knew. That is how it continued.”

“Now, if there was some individual or individuals, unscrupulous, if they were for personal gain selling national assets ... it was possible because it was not open, it was not under strategic check and controls. That is why it was possible,” he added.

He said those who might have leaked secrets were “anti-state elements” who acted against government policy.

The investigation began after Iran disclosed names of people who provided them with nuclear technology and they included Pakistani scientists, Musharraf said.

“I accept that,” he said, adding that he would like to see European countries and scientists investigated for their involvement as well.

Suffer the Little Children

You may have seen the stories about British Liberal Democrat MP, Jenny Tonge, who provoked outrage with her statement that if she were Palestinian, she might become a suicide bomber. Well, this story is even worse than it appears on the surface—because Tonge is also the party’s frontbench spokesperson for children. (Hat tip: rosh.)

The veteran Liberal Democrat MP, Jenny Tonge, has been asked to step down as the party’s frontbench spokesperson for children.

The call came after Dr Tonge said that she could consider carrying out a suicide bomb attack against Israel if she were a Palestinian.

This afternoon Lib Dem leader Charles Kennedy issued a statement calling on the MP for Richmond Park to resign her frontbench post.

Mr Kennedy said: “Her recent remarks about suicide bombers are completely unacceptable. They are not compatible with Liberal Democrat party policies and principles. There can be no justification, under any circumstances for taking innocent lives through terrorism.

”I am sorry to lose Dr Tonge from the frontbench team. She will continue to represent her constituency on the backbenches of the House of Commons."

When Dr Tonge was asked to clarify her comments on BBC 4’s Today programme, she stressed that she did not condone terrorism, but repeated her view that she could understand the position of a Palestinian who carried out a suicide bomb attack.

friday, january 23, 2004

Antisemitic French Comedian to Be Prosecuted

Last year we noted a report about French “comedian” Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala, who appeared on French television dressed as an Orthodox Jew, shouting “Heil Israel” while making the Nazi salute.

Today a report came over the AP wire that Dieudonne will be prosecuted under French hate crime laws:

PARIS - A well-known French comic will be prosecuted for on-air antics that included dressing up as an Orthodox Jew and decrying an “American-Zionist” axis, the Paris prosecutor’s office said Friday.

Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala’s performance, which drew criticism from the French prime minister, came during a prime-time TV show, “On Ne Peut Pas Plaire a Tout le Monde,” (“You Can’t Please Everybody”) on Dec. 1.

As part of the skit, the comic raised an arm and shouted “Isra-Heil!” — a reference to the Nazi slogan, “Heil Hitler.”

Prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation Dec. 24 into whether the comic’s skit and “incriminating comments” constituted racial defamation.

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has said he was “shocked” by the performance, and the show’s host, Marc-Olivier Fogiel, apologized for the episode. Several Jewish groups complained.

On Thursday, Justice Minister Dominique Perben said that “justice would be inflexible” if racism is proven.

Thousands of Hamas Supporters in Nablus

On the Muslim day of prayer, thousands of Palestinian Hamas supporters poured out of the mosques of Nablus filled with that lovin’ feelin’ ... for Hamas master creepazoid Sheikh Ahmed Yassin:

NABLUS, West Bank (AFP) - Some 2,500 sympathizers of the hardline Islamic group Hamas took to the street of this northern West Bank city in support of its spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, whom Israel has threatened to kill.

The crowd departed from Nablus’ Old City Al-Nasser Mosque and marched toward the center of town.

The marchers waived Hamas’ trademark green flag and chanted “We will sacrifice our soul and our blood for you Sheikh Yassin!” and “For every threat to Sheikh Yassin, Israel will pay a high price.”

RoPMA.

In the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh writes that the increasing popularity of the Hamas death cult may spell doom for the Arafish: Kiss of death? (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

Another Hamas official, who asked not to be named, said some of his colleagues expressed concern that Arafat, with the backing of the international community and the Palestinian public, would try to eliminate the Islamic movement and all Palestinian opposition factions.

“It was clear that the US, Israel, and the Europeans would give Arafat billions of dollars so that he could fight Hamas and look after Israel’s security,” said the official. “This was the main condition for allowing him and the PLO to come to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

But since then the relationship between Hamas and Arafat has been complex and tense. Over the past decade, Arafat’s policy has been to use Hamas and Islamic Jihad as an excuse for milking millions of dollars from the international community under the pretext of fighting terror. But despite the huge funds allocated to the PA security forces, Arafat prevented the complete destruction of Hamas, although there were times when he thought that the movement was planning to topple him.

Crackdown on Al Qaeda-Linked Charity

One link in the Golden Chain of terrorist financing that runs through Saudi Arabia is finally coming under attack—the Islamic “charity” known as Al-Haramain: U.S., Saudi Arabia Fettering Charity Linked to Terrorism.

U.S. officials yesterday released pages of declassified intelligence about Al-Haramain in the four countries. The documents allege that the charity was a major financier of terrorists in Indonesia, that a Tanzanian employee of the organization helped plan the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and that Kenyan employees planned assassinations of American officials.

One former Al-Haramain employee in Pakistan “was identified as an alleged al Qaeda member who reportedly planned to carry out several devastating terrorist operations” in the United States, according to a statement released by the Treasury Department yesterday.

U.N. designation of Al-Haramain branches will force Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan and Indonesia to move against the high-profile foundation even though officials there have resisted doing so for some time, in part out of fear of appearing to do the United States’ bidding, officials said. Operating through the United Nations “gives political cover” to those nations to act against the charity, one U.S. official said.

U.S. and Saudi investigators continue to investigate Al-Haramain’s several dozen branches around the globe and are expected to announce more terrorist designations soon. The crackdown is controversial in Saudi Arabia because Al-Haramain, which takes in tens of millions of dollars a year, is “in effect the Saudis’ United Way,” according to one U.S. official.

Howard's Tinfoil Hat Brigade

Wow.

At deanforamerica.com, Deaniacs discuss whether the Bush administration perpetrated the September 11 attacks: 911 Stunning Development. (Hat tip: Ms Andi.) It’s almost pitiful to read the comments from the few sensible folks trying to stop the tinfoil people from taking over.

jonathanclassof99
Posted: Jan 22 2004, 03:21 PM
Dean Starter

Group: Members
Posts: 65
Member No.: 6204
Joined: 22-January 04

One of Dr. Dean’s biggest “gaffes” that helped cost him the Iowa Caucus was some strange remark about Bush and 9/11. Having these types of loonies around Dr. Dean all the time is A BIG PROBLEM and it has already cost us one election and may destroy any chance we have of winning.

Is there anyway to get rid of the nuts and force them to go to Kucinich??

—————

whodafunk
Posted: Jan 22 2004, 03:21 PM
Dean Captain

Group: Members
Posts: 431
Member No.: 4128
Joined: 10-January 04

QUOTE (delta01 @ Jan 22 2004, 03:09 PM)
I agree with Johanathanclassof99.......
No wonder Dr Dean is slipping if people like this are around him all the time!

Have you ever noticed its the same people that always whine everytime new evidence comes out that shows government complicity in 9-11. And they never cite one fact or debunk any piece of information, they just whine, and, insult people and dismiss it out of hand, smart. I wish Dean would raise three issues about 9-11. Booker Elementary, talk about gaffes WTF was Bush doing? ISI ties to Atta, the 100,000 money transfer, why don’t we bring the ex ISI chief in for questioning? answer, he knows too much. Three, Insider trading, why can’t the SEC tell us who bought all the put orders on American and United Airlines pre 9-11 should be as easy as opening up a book.

Ever Feel Like You're Being Watched?

LGF reader Shtetl G requested a picture of puppies:

Arab One-Track Mind Watch

Arab leaders at the World Economic Forum are obsessively seething again about US support for Israel, as they do at every opportunity, and accusing the Bush administration of “hypocrisy” because of its policy of “democratizing” the Arab-Muslim world: Arabs slam U.S. over democracy. (Hat tip: scaramouche.)

At a public debate at the World Economic Forum in Davos, senior figures from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Iran accused the Bush administration of ignoring Israeli weapons of mass destruction and human rights abuses towards Palestinians while pressuring Arab and Muslim states to disarm and democratise.

In truth, there is less hypocrisy in the Bush administration’s policies toward the Arab world than in those of any previous US government. I know statements from Arab leaders are not expected to contain logic, but how is it “hypocritical” to support the only democratic state in the Middle East, while promoting democracy in the dozens of surrounding totalitarian countries? The people accusing the US of double standards are the cronies and bagmen of dictators and hereditary monarchies, and their credibility is nil.

Maariv International

LGF reader NC let me know that Israeli journal Maariv is finally available online in English.

Better or Worse?

Victor Davis Hanson takes stock of Moe, Larry, and Curly Dean, Clark and Kerry, and concludes they may end up destroying the Democratic party for a generation: Better or Worse?

Thematic in the Democratic primary campaign is that the United States is worse off now than it was before the invasion of Iraq. The harangues from some of the candidates have been quite unbelievable: Saddam Hussein’s capture did little to improve our security; we cannot prejudge bin Laden’s guilt; we are less safe than ever before and hated to boot; and so on.

The proposed alternatives from those who either once voted for or supported the war are equally surreal. We should have just indicted and arrested Saddam Hussein (via the FBI or Interpol?); or withdrawn from Iraq at the end of the year (Vietnam-style with helicopters on the embassy roof?); or allowed the U.N. to take over (along the lines of its 1993-99 triumph in the Balkans?); or involved the Europeans (who announce they may send troops in the future after the U.S. has won both the war and peace — and oil concessions need to be re-allotted).

Elder statesmen like Ted Kennedy and Al Gore are perhaps even more strident in their calumny. They swear the Iraq campaign was “cooked up” in Texas and that it ranks among the “worst” foreign policy disasters in American history. Indeed, poor former Vice President Gore has transmogrified in just a few months from a senior statesman who once took apart Ross Perot on live television into a caricature of a hand-waving, out-of-control Perot himself. Senator Kennedy’s fuming is simply more Chomskyite than Democratic.

And what has happened to General Clark? His once judicious observations of two years ago have become unhinged, and now make Curtis Le May seem circumspect by comparison. Democrats wanted a sober George Marshall on the campaign trail; instead Americans are beginning to witness an embittered, conspiracy-obsessed Maj. General Smedley Butler come alive — endorsed by the slander-spouting Michael Moore instead of respected peers like General Schwarzkopf.

Musharraf Admits Nuclear Leaks

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf admitted that Pakistani nuclear scientists have been selling secrets: Musharraf: It Appears Scientists Sold Secrets.

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Friday it appeared Pakistani scientists had sold nuclear secrets abroad, but reiterated Islamabad’s position that there had been no official involvement.

Pakistan says it began questioning its nuclear scientists, including the father of its atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, after the U.N. nuclear agency began investigating possible links between the Pakistani and Iranian nuclear programs.

Musharraf told CNN while attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that the investigation, launched in November, would be finished in “a few weeks.”

Asked the likely outcome, he replied: “Well, I would not like to predict, but it appears that some individuals, as I said, were involved for personal financial gain.”

Musharraf went further than past statements from his government that individual scientists “may” have transferred nuclear technology to neighboring Iran.

thursday, january 22, 2004

Arab Media Seethes Silently

President Bush’s State of the Union speech was not a big hit in the Arab world: Bush’s speech leaves Arab commentators speechless.

CAIRO (AFP) - Newspapers in Egypt and Syria took pains to highlight US President George W. Bush’s omission of any reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his State of the Union address.

“Bush ignores the Palestinian question and asks for an increase in the budget to promote democratization in the region!” Egypt’s government newspaper Al-Ahram said in a front-page headline on Thursday.

While other Cairo newspapers also ran news reports of his Tuesday night speech, highlighting the president’s stand on the “war on terror” or other aspects of the Middle East, the Egyptian media refrained from any commentary.

Al-Ahram also ran headlines from lines in his speech.

It published a reaction from chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat who argued that Bush’s speech meant the United States had decided to withdraw from the Arab-Israeli peace process in 2004.

Spirit Goes Haywire

Ouch. This is not good news from the Spirit rover on Mars; after scientists yesterday were doing handstands about the great data they were getting from the rover, it suddenly stopped transmitting—just as it began to examine its first rock sample: NASA: Spirit Rover Not Sending Data.

NASA last heard from Spirit early Wednesday, its 18th day on Mars. Since then, it has only sporadically returned random, meaningless radio noise, scientists said. Initially, the scientists believed weather problems on Earth caused the glitch. They said they now believe the rover is experiencing hardware or software problems.

“This is a serious problem. This is an extremely serious anomaly,” project manager Pete Theisinger said.

Spirit is one half of a $820 million mission. Its twin, Opportunity, is scheduled to land on Mars on Saturday.

NASA last heard from Spirit as it prepared to continue its work examining its first rock, just a few yards from its lander.

Anti-Terror Technology

Israel Unveils System to Beat Bus Bombers. (Hat tip: Steven Zak.)

RAMAT HASHARON, Israel (Reuters) - Israel unveiled a system on Thursday aimed at stopping suicide bombers boarding buses and carrying out attacks like those that have killed hundreds of people in the past three years.

Bus bombings are some of the most deadly of all — partly because windows toughened to resist shooting attacks or stone-throwing turn the vehicle into a pressure chamber if a bomb goes off.

The new system lets the driver block anyone he thinks is suspicious by hitting a red button to close a turnstile. Electronic gates will be installed at back doors, which have been used by bombers to sneak on without the driver knowing.

A sheet of armor is also mounted on the front of the bus below the window to trap shrapnel if a bomber detonates right outside.

“Public transportation has been a preferred target of terrorists,” said Transport Minister Avigdor Lieberman at the Ramat Hasharon headquarters of Israeli Military Industries, near Tel Aviv. “Now we have developed the technology to confront this problem.”

The system still depends on the driver being able to see through the would-be bomber’s disguise, but later variations will be built using electronic explosives detectors that trigger an alarm and let the driver shut the door.

Angriest Dwarf Gets Sheepish

Howard Dean has warts.

“Look, I’m not a perfect person. I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble. I wear suits that are cheap. But I say what I think and I believe what I say, and I’m willing to say things that are not be popular but ordinary people know are right,” he said. “In other words, I lead with my heart and not my head. That’s the only chance we have against George Bush.”

Isn’t that a perfect appeal to his base, though? Leads with his heart, and not his head. It’s more important to feel than to think.

Now there’s a quality we want in a President.

Iran Involved with 9/11?

Lots of people have emailed about this story; it could be a red herring, but if proven true it certainly would have huge implications: Terror trial witness links Iran to 9/11.

On what had been the eve of his widely expected acquittal, the trial of the second person charged by German authorities as an accomplice of the Sept. 11 hijackers was thrown into turmoil Wednesday after prosecutors disclosed the existence of a surprise witness purporting to link Iran to the hijackings.

The mysterious witness, who goes by the name Hamid Reza Zakeri and claims to have been a longtime member of the Iranian intelligence service, is said to have told German investigators that the Sept. 11 plot represented what one termed a “joint venture” between the terrorist group Al Qaeda and the Iranian government.

Sources familiar with Zakeri’s story, greeted with skepticism by some German intelligence officials, say he also implicates the defendant, a 31-year-old Moroccan and former student named Abdelghani Mzoudi, as a knowledgeable participant in the hijacking plot.

“If the story was true, the consequences would be remarkable,” said one senior intelligence official, who observed that Zakeri’s account comes nearly 2 1/2 years after Sept. 11, 2001, and “looks a little bit constructed.”

Tick, Tick, Tick

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei is warning that unless Iran cooperates fully with the investigation into their nuclear program, he will be forced to consider the matter at length. And possibly even refer it to ... the UN Security Council. IAEA to Iran: Cooperate or Face Consequences.

“They know it’s very important for the agency to come to a conclusion that the Iran program is for peaceful purposes,” he told reporters at the World Economic Forum.

“It would obviously have serious implications if they do not continue to cooperate fully with us in investigating the scope, nature, and content of that program,” ElBaradei added.

The United States suspects Iran of acquiring nuclear arms under cover of its atomic energy program, which Tehran insists is for peaceful purposes.

ElBaradei has previously warned that Iran would be reported to the U.N. Security Council if it did not cooperate with the Vienna-based nuclear agency.

I feel like I’m watching a film called “The Making of the Iranian Bomb,” with an international cast of knaves, fools, and weaklings.

Gimli Battles the Race Card

At FrontPage, Robert Spencer goes to battle for John Rhys-Davies: Gimli Battles the Race Card.

wednesday, january 21, 2004

Lantos Invited to Libya

Democrat Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the US Congress, will go to Libya to see if Gadhafi’s renunciation of nuclear weapons is genuine: Rep. Lantos to Check Libya’s WMD Program.

WASHINGTON - A senior Democratic congressman plans to go to Libya this weekend at the invitation of Moammar Gadhafi to check on the Libyan leader’s pledge to dismantle his nation’s nuclear weapons program.

Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., will meet with Libyan officials and possibly Gadhafi, whose decision to halt development of weapons of mass destruction marked a major policy shift by the North African leader.

Lantos, senior Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, will report his findings to Congress and to the Bush administration, his office said in a statement announcing the trip.

A separate congressional group headed by Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa., is going to Libya, as well.

The visits signal a growing momentum to repair U.S. relations with Libya, although the administration has taken no action to remove Libya from its list of countries that support terrorism or to lift the economic sanctions the listing requires.

Got One in Minnesota

Minnesotan Charged With al-Qaida Support. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

MINNEAPOLIS - A federal indictment unsealed Wednesday charged a Minnesota man with conspiracy to provide material support to the Al-Qaida terrorist network. Authorities said the man acknowledged being at training camps in Afghanistan at the same time as Osama bin Laden.

Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, 30, a Canadian citizen of Somali descent, was charged in an indictment returned Tuesday by a grand jury in Minneapolis.

The indictment alleges that from March 2000 until his arrest last month, Warsame conspired to provide material support and resources for bin Laden’s terror network.

A related affidavit said Warsame admitted to FBI agents he was at training camps in Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 at the same time as bin Laden.

Cleveland Islamic Groups Back Damra

The Islamic community of Cleveland, after initially calling for him to step down, is now rushing to the defense of Fawaz Mohammed Damra, Imam of the Islamic Center of Cleveland, following his arrest for connections to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Sami al-Arian case: Damra is forced to take paid leave. (Hat tip: Morgan.)

In a videotape from April 7, 1991, that was made public in the fall of 2001, Damra is shown calling for attacks on Jewish people and referring to them as animals.

Damra apologized, expressing his “overwhelming regret and sadness” for the remarks. The cleric said he made the remarks at a time when he had no interaction with the Jewish and Christian communities. He vowed to show the community that he is a peacemaker, but his interfaith work was severely affected.

After his arrest last week, some Arab-American and Muslim leaders immediately called for Damra to step down. Halabi was among them, but he said at the rally Friday that the majority of the board and the membership supported the imam.

The mosque’s five-member executive committee, meeting in emergency session the night of the indictment, had voted to support Damra and to let the justice process run its course .

What later seemed to sway the board majority toward a leave of absence, Halabi said, was advice from legal counsel. Halabi did not elaborate.

One board member who spoke on condition of anonymity said Damra’s supporters are gathering the signatures of at least 10 percent of the membership, as required by the mosque constitution to convene a general membership meeting.

The board member said the meeting could take place as early as this week, but Halabi said it is not clear whether the decision would be put to a vote of the membership.

The statement from the mosque leaders said their action “should not be construed as a comment on the merits of the allegations against the imam.”

The board said placing Damra on leave will allow him to devote full attention to his defense.

At the rally Friday, the Cleveland chapter of the Muslim American Society issued a statement calling on area Muslims to unite behind Damra. Jad Humeidan, executive director of the Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also urged support, declaring the Damra case “is part of a pattern of attacking the Muslim community, its leaders and its institutions.”

Hanson: The Election of 1864

Reacting to the SOTU speech, Victor Davis Hanson is very worried about some of President Bush’s domestic policies—especially the guest-worker program—but he’s still a supporter: The Election of 1864.

Muslim Speaker Attacks Israel at MLK Tribute

The Israeli consul general in Montreal walked out of an interfaith memorial ceremony for Martin Luther King Jr., when Yahya Abdul Rahman of the Montreal Muslim News Network used his speech to launch attacks on Israel: Anti-Israel comments mar King tribute. Rahman had some very interesting comments when asked about his speech:

Rahman said yesterday he has no regrets or apologies to offer, because “from my vantage point it was also a political event.”

“As a Muslim, I don’t make a separation between religion and politics,” he said in a phone interview. “Religion and politics are intertwined and there is absolutely no separation for me at all.

”I was there as a representative of my faith community, and I said what was most pressing on my heart.

“If other people were offended by it, it just proves my point - that sometimes people who espouse liberal values, when it rubs them the wrong way, it reveals their liberalism doesn’t go very deep at all.”

That’s an excellent summation of radical Islamic ideology and tactics; shower scorn on one of the most basic tenets of Western democracy—the separation of church and state—and at the same time invoke liberal guilt icons to confuse the multiculti crowd and excuse the most reprehensible intolerance.

Road Map to Murderville Update

The latest report on Palestinian Arab Violations of the Roadmap contains an eye-opening statistic:

During the first 38 weeks since the Road Map was issued, there have been a total of at least 954 Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks or attempted attacks, in which 140 people were murdered and 743 wounded.

Pakistan Islamists Seething Over Nuke Probe

Pakistani Islamofascist groups are not happy about the investigations into nuclear technology leaks from Khan Research Laboratories, and are staging a series of protest rallies: Countrywide protests against detaining nuclear scientists.

ISLAMABAD: Shabab-e-Millie (Youth of the Nation), to protest countrywide over the arrests of Pakistan’s nuclear scientists from Wednesday (today).

The youth organization of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan—an important component of the six religious parties alliance—MMA, announced here Tuesday to stage series of protest rallies against the detention of nuclear scientists.

“The first protest rallies would be staged in Rawalpindi and Lahore on Jan 21,” President of Jamaat-e-Islami Youth, Syed Shahid Pervez told to NNI. The rally in Rawalpindi would be addressed by the senior leaders including Secretary General of JI, Syed Munawar Hassan and the leaders of Shabab.

The countrywide protest rallies would be held on Friday after the noon prayers, Pervez said.

Bad Cop / Not-So-Bad Cop

The clerics and the princes are playing bad cop/not-so-bad cop in Saudi Arabia. After the highest religious authority in the Saudi entity said yesterday that women who don’t wear the veil “cause the doors of evil to open” ...

His remarks came after Saudi Arabia’s leading businesswoman, Lubna Olayan, who delivered the opening speech at an economic conference in the Red Sea port of Jeddah this week, was shown on the front of local newspapers without a headscarf.

“This is prohibited for all. ... I severely condemn this matter and warn of grave consequences. I am pained by such shameful behavior in the country of the two holy mosques,” Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh said in remarks carried by the state news agency SPA. ...

Sheikh Abdulaziz said those who strayed away from what he called the righteous path should fear God and His punishment. “They cause the doors of evil to open before the people of Islam,” SPA quoted him as saying.

... today the Crown Prince took a more conciliatory stance: Reformist crown prince urges Saudi women to play it cool.

RIYADH (AFP) - Reform is underway in Saudi Arabia but it must be step-by-step, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz insisted as a storm raged over the role of women in the arch-conservative kingdom.

“The changes are underway. We are moving forward with changes, but we have to do this step-by-step,” the de facto ruler told AFP Wednesday when asked about the debate over female empowerment.

The storm broke after women took centre stage in a country where “the ladies”, or nisaa in Arabic, have begun to break out of the straitjacket of male domination and puritanical tradition.

The unprecedented spectacle of businesswomen and female professionals, some daring to shed the veil, on stage at an international gathering of more than 1,000 men at this week’s Jeddah Economic Forum proved too much for the grand mufti.

Notice, by the way, that the second article doesn’t repeat that insane “doors of evil” line from the Grand Mufti, even though it’s obviously a more colorful quote. The media often shy away from the more deranged statements of Arab clerics.

tuesday, january 20, 2004

State of the Union

Here’s the C-SPAN streaming video of President Bush’s State of the Union address.

"Hey People It was Only a Tower"

You’ll never confuse Egyptian pop singer Sha’ban Abd Al-Rahim with Bob Dylan; his past Arabic hit songs have included golden oldies like “I Hate Israel” and “Striking Iraq,” and in his hot new release “Road Map,” currently rocketing up the charts in Cairo and Mecca, he sings that the USA is the perpetrator of the September 11 attacks: “Hey People It was Only a Tower...”

“‘Kharittat Al Tariq’ (Road Map) is the name of the song which gives voice to widespread views in the Egyptian street regarding the September 11th events and the U.S. - Iraq standoff. The song talks about the road map and includes quotes from U.S. President George W. Bush about the plan’s implementation. The song goes on to describe how America is the spitting image of Israel and it carries out its desires, making the world into a ‘jungle.’ But it does not stop at that point. Abd Al-Rahim goes on to boldly sing that the USA is the perpetrator of the September 11th attacks.

“‘Hey people it was only a tower and I swear by God that they are the ones who pulled it down.’ Abd Al-Rahim further sings that they purposely did it to make people think that Arabs and Muslims are terrorists and were behind that disaster. Now the U.S. can do what it pleases to the Arab world since everyone thinks they are to blame.

”The rest of the song includes lines like ‘sometimes he [Bush] says Iran and sometimes he says Syria,’ and ‘he shortens his speech if someone says Korea.’

“The song is written by Abd Al-Rahim’s long-time collaborator, songwriter Islam Khalil, an Arabic teacher at a primary school in Al Qanater in the Al-Qalyoubiya governorate.

An Al-Rahim groupie waxes ecstatic about his idol:

One fan, Muhammad Ibrahim, told the Cairo Times that he knows the lines of the song by heart and he is proud of it. ‘To me, this is the first public and daring accusation made against America concerning the September 11th attacks and the song will soon be the number one hit in the Arab world,’ he said, pointing out that Abd Al-Rahim deserves to be recognized by all as the number one political singer in the Arab world — a reputation he already has on the street.

(Pssst... the US gives Egypt more than $2 billion a year in foreign aid.)

The Shriek

Amaze your friends, confound your enemies, frighten household pets! Here it is, in MP3 format: Howard Dean’s gargled, hideous snarl.

A Walk On the Addled Side

In his new video, Evan Coyne Maloney tries to get inside the minds (?) of a group of a MoveOn.org supporters: Gettin’ a MoveOn.

Dark Ages Spreading in Nigeria

Saudi Arabia is very pleased with the progress toward an Islamic state in Nigeria, where about 200 people were killed in the Muslim riots that broke out in November 2002 during the Miss World pageant: Saudi to Finance Religious Teachers’ Employment in Kebbi. (Hat tip: Baldy.)

The Saudi Arabian Religious and Cultural Attache in Nigeria, Sheik Abdul-Aziz, announced his country’s satisfaction with the remarkable successes being recorded in the implementation of the Shariah decision when the Kebbi State Governor, Alhaji Muhammed Adamu Aliero visited the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Abuja.

Sheik Abdul-Aziz said his country has been monitoring and assessing the implementation of Shariah in the state since it was introduced and noted with delight the mode of implementation and the steady progress recorded.

He observed that since the introduction of Shariah, the state government programmes and policies were centred on economic empowerment of the people which has, by and large, improved the socio-economic well being of the people, thereby reducing considerably, the level of poverty in the state.

He further noted the reduction of social vices and appreciable compliance with the teaching of Islam among the Muslim Ummah, while the fundamental human rights of the non-Muslim have not been infringed upon as a result of the implementation of Shariah in the state.

Impressed by the progress made as part of its contribution towards the success of the Shariah, Sheik Abdul-Aziz announced that the Saudi government has decided to finance the employment of Islamic religious teachers for educational institutions and Islamic preachers in the state to compliment the state government’s enlightenment drive, for the adherence to Shariah in the state.

To this end, the envoy requested the state government, particularly those who studied in Saudi Arabia for immediate employment by the Saudi authority to teach in the state schools and preach the teaching of Shariah among the people.

EU Funds Disappear

Investigators from the European Union’s fraud office are arriving in Israel this week to try to find out where all that money the EU’s been sending to the Palestinians is really going: EU Funds Disappear. (Hat tip: Elle Plater.)

The European fraud-busters come at a time when allegations are mounting of corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian officials and employees of pressure groups in the West Bank and Gaza are accused of having systematically diverted foreign aid over recent years.

But the outcome of the OLAF investigation is by no means certain.

That’s because European Union officials, orchestrated by EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten, have repeatedly ignored the signs that millions of euros of taxpayers’ money may be ending up in the wrong Palestinian pockets.

In the hope of strengthening ties with Yasser Arafat and the Arab world, EU leaders have proved remarkably reluctant to find out exactly how their aid money is spent.

IAF Strikes in Lebanon

Responding to yesterday’s attack by Hizb’Allah that killed an Israeli soldier, the Israeli Air Force is hitting Hizb’Allah targets in Lebanon.

Dean Wigs Out

If you haven’t seen Howard Dean’s extraordinarily whacked-out speech from last night, you must. It’s an amazing moment of public unhingement, and it’s available on this page at C-SPAN; look for the link titled “Howard Dean Reaction to Iowa Caucus Results.”

El Norte

Victor Davis Hanson says that President Bush’s immigration plan is insane, and a disaster waiting to happen: El Norte.

...what about the hundreds of thousands of workers who either cannot or will not participate? Will illegal immigrants outside the program be stopped at the border, requiring more guards or an extensive wall? Or once here, are they now to be deported without their requisite papers? Will we see a return of the old green immigration vans, the “Migra” patrols of my youth that used to scour central California to pick up illegal residents for immediate transit back to Mexico? Are we to establish two alternate universes: some employers who bring in workers legally, and others who follow the old non-system of paying largely cash wages to workers who show up at the local lumberyard parking lot or hotel lobby?

The proposed solution also assumes that illegal immigration is fuelled solely by too many jobs in the U.S. and too few workers. Yet thousands of other Mexicans come north as preteens, or when they are aged or sick. The impetus that brought them here was not necessarily always immediate employment, but understandable amelioration from a bleak landscape of central Mexico where they cannot be sure of finding food, housing or health care. Despite Hispanic activists’ complaints that “illegal alien” is somehow pejorative, it is far more accurate nomenclature than their inexact use of the politically correct “undocumented worker”—when thousands currently are not at work, nor did they merely forget to do the necessary paperwork before leaving home.

Clothes Make the Man

When Howard Dean wants to party, he breaks out the kaffiyeh.

Democratic presidential hopeful former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean greets supporters after his address during his caucus night party in West Des Moines, Iowa, Monday, Jan. 19, 2004. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Because nothing says “merriment” like a stylish Palestinian Fatah head rag.

monday, january 19, 2004

Iowa Surprise

Kerry Wins Iowa Caucus in 11th Hour Surge.

DES MOINES, Iowa - John Kerry rode an 11th-hour surge to victory in Iowa’s kickoff presidential caucuses, upsetting Democratic front-runner Howard Dean and stunning caucus favorite Dick Gephardt. Kerry’s comeback blew the nomination fight wide open, setting the stage for a free-for-all in New Hampshire’s follow-up primary.

Gephardt scrapped plans to fly to New Hampshire for next week’s primary after a disappointing fourth-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, a source said Monday night, possibly signaling the end of his presidential campaign.

“I want to thank Iowa for making me the Comeback Kerry,” Kerry said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Two weeks ago, Dean and Gephardt were the co-favorites, but Monday night the former Vermont governor was stuck in third. He pledged to plow ahead, saying, “on to New Hampshire.” Gephardt, winner of the 1988 caucuses, was falling far short of the victory he needed to keep his political career alive.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was in second. “It feels terrific,” Edwards said as he awaited the final results at a downtown hotel. “What’s happened here the last two weeks with my campaign has been phenomenal.”

Bild: RAF Bombers "Ignored Auschwitz"

A very old debate with no clear winner has been reopened with the release of the RAF’s reconnaissance photos of Auschwitz; the argument has been raging at LGF, and now it has erupted in Germany as well, with the appearance of an article in the top German newspaper Bild: RAF bombers ‘ignored Auschwitz’.

“Why were the concentration camp thugs not bombed?” a headline in yesterday’s Bild asked, above an aerial photograph of Auschwitz in southern Poland, where about one million people - mainly Jews - were murdered.

The numerous wartime photos of Auschwitz taken by RAF reconnaissance pilots have been published on the internet by The Aerial Reconnaissance Archive based at Keele University.

The pictures show thick black smoke rising from crematoriums connected to the gas chambers. Other pictures show smoke billowing from mass funeral pyres. In one, from the summer of 1944, individuals can be made out as they line up for a roll-call.

“It’s certain that the British collators [of the pictures] knew of the existence of the concentration camps at that time,” the tabloid newspaper wrote. “Why therefore were the extermination camps not destroyed after the reconnaissance planes of the Britons and Americans photographed them in such detail? At the very least, the railway tracks on which the Jews were transported into the extermination camp?”

In the past, Bild has denounced the “indiscriminate” nature of Allied attacks against German targets and has quoted historians effectively branding Winston Churchill a war criminal for the wartime bombing strategy.

UPDATE: Some might say—and yes, I’d be one of them—that Germany had forever forfeited its right to hold opinions on matters such as these.

A Fatwa For Gimli

European Muslim groups and their apologetic dhimmis are seething again—this time they’re offended by remarks made to an American interviewer by John Rhys-Davies, who was featured at LGF last month for his unabashedly pro-Western views.

Bubba Gibbers

Speaking in Saudi Arabia, Bill Clinton rhapsodized Mohammed as a sort of Arab Henry Ford, and said that if cars had been around 1400 years ago (stay with me here), not only would Mohammed have made the desert kingdom the first automobile producing nation on earth, he would have even let the women drive!

Saudi Arabia bars women from driving and being seen in public with men other than family members.

A fatwa, or edict, issued by the head of the country’s Department of Religious Research, Missionary Activities and Guidance in 1990 declared women should not be allowed to drive because Islam supports women’s dignity.

Clinton said, however, Muhammad would have let his wife get behind the wheel.

“He probably would have made Saudi Arabia the first automobile producing nation on earth and put her in charge of the business,” he said, according to Reuters.

The former president was speaking at a conference in the Red Sea port of Jeddah, where women delegates, covered in black robes, were separated in the meeting hall from the men by a screen.

OK. That’s stretching a metaphor w-a-a-a-y past the breaking point.

LGF News Feeds Page

In our constant quest to feed the monkey of news addiction, we have a new feature: LGF News Headlines. This is a simple RSS news feed reader, showing the current feeds from several BBC pages, the Telegraph, the Department of Defense, Yahoo Politics, and Google News. You will find the link to this page in the right sidebar, just above the “World News” heading.

Suggestions are welcome for other RSS feeds to include on this page...

French Shari'a Watch

A nice deadpan headline from al-Reuters wire service: Marches, Bomb Mar French Drive to Integrate Muslims.

PARIS (Reuters) - France’s drive to better integrate its five million Muslims looked shaken Monday after a weekend of protests against a looming ban on Islamic veils and a bomb attack on the car of a senior public official of Muslim origin.

The veiled schoolgirls chanting “Allahu Akbar” (God is greater) in marches across France and the bomb that destroyed the car of the newly appointed prefect for the eastern Jura area have cast doubt over the policy of winning support among moderate Muslims.

No link has been established, but commentators have already blamed the rising tensions unleashed by the veil debate for the attack against Aissa Dermouche, whose appointment was meant to show that Muslims can advance in French society.

While leading politicians vowed to defend the veil ban even more strongly, some legislators are asking whether banning all religious symbols from state schools will alienate Muslims more than it will help integrate them.

Somehow, while no one was looking, that tiny minority of extremists seems to have turned into a majority:

The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the state- sponsored umbrella group meant to help Muslims find their place in French society, is deeply split between its moderate leader and more powerful Islamic groups outraged by the veil ban.

“It risks falling apart,” said Marseille mufti Sohaib Bensheikh, a prominent moderate member who is considering quitting the CFCM, told Europe 1 radio. “I’m very much in the minority and don’t feel very comfortable there.”

sunday, january 18, 2004

French Jihad Watch

This may be the start of something big: Car bomb targets French Muslim leader. (Hat tip: Kragar.)

Hours after up to 40,000 Muslims marched against a planned ban on Islamic headscarves in state schools, a carbomb attack on a newly appointed prefect of Algerian origin dramatically underlined the scale of France’s problem in assimilating its immigrant Muslim community.

The 4.30am explosion in the western city of Nantes destroyed the car of Aissa Dermouche, 57, an academic and educationalist who was appointed the prefect - or top state representative - of the Jura region last Wednesday.

“There is no doubt that this was a criminal act,” said Jean-Marie Huet, the Nantes state prosecutor. Although the car was empty at the time and no one was hurt, Mr Huet said the plainly well-prepared attack “targeted the new prefect personally, and the symbol that he represents”.

Mr Dermouche will be responsible for law and order in the region. His was not the first high-profile post to be awarded to a member of an immigrant minority, but it came amid a debate about how France can better assimilate its 5 million-strong Muslim community.

President Jacques Chirac, defending the values of a republic that supposedly treats everyone equally regardless of their background, has knocked the notion of positive discrimination and spoke last week only of the “deserved promotion” of a “talented individual of immigrant origin”.

Police said the explosive, whose nature has yet to be determined, could have been planted by Islamic radicals upset at Mr Dermouche’s “selling out”, or by far-right militants.

Video of Ambassador Mazel

Dutch television has actual film of Israeli ambassador Zvi Mazel at the opening of Stockholm’s Museum of National Antiquities, showing that he did not lose it and trash the entire exhibit, as the press originally spun it; he walks calmly around the exhibit unplugging the spotlights, then pushes one of the (unplugged) lights into the water. Streaming video is available on this page, but I don’t know how long it will be there. The show is the Saturday 22:00 broadcast, and here are the direct links:

Windows Media dialup.
Windows Media broadband.
Real Player dialup.
Real Player broadband.

The segment about ambassador Mazel is about three quarters of the way into the show. (Hat tip: ami.)

UPDATE: You can put your name on a petition to support Ambassador Mazel here.

French Shari'a Watch

A suburb of the French city of Lyon, Venissieux is becoming known as a hotbed of Islamic terrorism: Muslim Radicalism Flowers in French Town. (Hat tip: scaramouche.)

Six residents of Venissieux were arrested Jan. 6 in connection with the planned 2002-2003 New Year’s celebrations attack, including a local imam, or prayer leader, Chellali Benchellali, his wife and son. Another son was arrested in 2002.

Two other men from this city of 56,000 are detainees at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including Benchellali’s third son.

Venissieux, on the edge of the southeastern city of Lyon, epitomizes France’s troubled big city suburbs, teeming with high-rises, cursed with soaring unemployment and peopled mostly by Muslim immigrants from France’s former North African colonies. Generation after generation, they are unable to break out.

“It shouldn’t be hidden by the trees and parks. There is misery here,” said Zohra Hammia, 35, who runs a tutoring program for children.

Investigators contend that Menad Benchellali, 29, was preparing toxic potions in face cream containers at the family home with plans to attack Russian interests in France, including the embassy in Paris. The aim was to avenge deaths of Muslim rebels in the breakaway Russian province of Chechnya. The recipe involved deadly ricin poison and botulism bacteria.

Menad Benchellali, who allegedly trained in Georgia’s lawless Pankisi Gorge on the Chechen border, was arrested in December 2002 with eight others in two Paris suburbs. Lists of chemicals and equipment, including a protective suit, were found.

Menad’s brother, Mourad, is one of two residents held at Guantanamo. His neighborhood friend, Nizar Sassi, also is detained there. Menad, the alleged “chemist” in the Chechnya network, sent the two men off to Afghanistan in 2001, investigators have said.

Their father, a 59-year-old imam born in Algeria, reportedly made at least three trips to Bosnia to deliver humanitarian aid to Muslims. According to police, Chellali Benchellali then became involved in the cause of Chechen Muslims, showing films of Russians soldiers fighting Chechens at his mosque to collect funds for them.

Behind the Hijab Demonstrations

Watch has posted a translation of an article in the French journal Libération about Mohammed Ennacer Latrèche, the man behind the French Muslim Party (PMF) who sponsored yesterday’s demonstrations in Paris against the French hijab ban. (Hat tip: Merde in France.)

The son of an Algerian Imam from Strasbourg, Latrèche founded his party in 1997, after studies in Syria. His ambition was then to “liberate Muslims from the influence of the Socialist Party, the Zionist party.” He regularly drew attention to himself at the local level. Elected officials and the police have accused him of “overheating” the young on housing estates. In 2000, during the trial of a policeman who had killed a youth, Latrèche denounced “racist” jurors and a “partisan” justice, and led fifty demonstrators in prayer before the Strasbourg courthouse. However, it is the repeated incidents during many demonstrations that would make it impossible to associate with him. As recently as 2000, Licra [The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism], filed a complaint against him following the anti-Semitic slogans shouted during an event in support of the Palestinians. In 2001, he took aim at the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and the journalist Alexandre Adler. In 2002, he distributed pamphlets including maps from which Israel had been excised. The start of the war in Iraq gave him his 15 minutes of fame. He organized and participated in an operation of human-shields in Baghdad with several youths from Strasbourg neighborhoods. He also appears publicly with the Holocaust denier Serge Thion and co-edits “the Judeo-Nazi manifesto of Ariel Sharon” with Ginette Skandrani, the militant pro-Palestinian. Those close to him explain the silence of the local media regarding Latrèche by claiming that the former are “controlled by the Jews.”

Here’s Monsieur Latrèche in action, wearing a very comfortable-looking Western-style sport jacket.

Protest organizer Mohamed Latreche shouts slogans in a microphone behind a veiled woman as hundreds of Muslims take to the streets in Paris Saturday, Jan. 17, 2004, to protest the French government plan to ban religious attire in public schools. (AP Photo/Laurent Rebours)

Sharon Backs Ambassador Mazel

Yesterday I wrote that Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Zvi Mazel, who staged a wonderful piece of performance art when he physically shut down an antisemitic exhibit glorifying a suicide bomber, would probably be forced to apologize and resign; well, today I’m happy to report that I was wrong. Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon is backing Mazel all the way.

The artwork depicts a small ship in a rectangular pool filled with red-colored water. The ship carries a picture of Islamic Jihad bomber Hanadi Jaradat, who killed herself and 21 bystanders in an Oct. 4 suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel.

Sharon told a cabinet meeting Sunday he had called Mazel and thanked him “for his strength in dealing with increasing anti-Semitism, and told him that the entire government stands behind him.”

“I think Ambassador Mazel behaved in an appropriate way,” Sharon said. “I think the phenomenon is so serious that it would have been forbidden not to have acted on the spot.”

saturday, january 17, 2004

British Academics Seething

Senior British academics have been whipped up into a snarling, vicious pack of starving carnivores by the new Ridley Scott film about the Crusades—which they say ‘panders to Osama bin Laden’.

Sir Ridley Scott, the Oscar-nominated director, was savaged by senior British academics last night over his forthcoming film which they say “distorts” the history of the Crusades to portray Arabs in a favourable light.

The £75 million film, which stars Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons and Liam Neeson, is described by the makers as being “historically accurate” and designed to be “a fascinating history lesson”.

Academics, however - including Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Britain’s leading authority on the Crusades - attacked the plot of Kingdom of Heaven, describing it as “rubbish”, “ridiculous”, “complete fiction” and “dangerous to Arab relations”.

The Meaning of Jihad

An excellent post on yet another attempt by Islamic scholars from four nations (Singapore, Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia) to define the true meaning of jihad, at Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch.

It does no good simply to pretend that this is not so and hope that it will go away; it must be understood because it is a fundamental cause of innumerable conflicts around the world today. If we don’t understand the goals and motives of our opponents, how will we possibly prevail against them in the “war of ideas” that is so central to the war on terror?

Michael Moore Slimes Weasely Clark

Idiotarian of the Year runner-up Michael Moore introduced Wesley Clark today in his inimitable way, showing why he came so close to grabbing the 2003 Fiskie: Clark Hints at Bush’s Military Service. Moore manifestly represents the looniest of the loony left, unscrupulous and unserious; it’s a real tragedy to see the Democratic Party degenerate so far that candidates for the presidency are pleased by the endorsement of this buffoon.

PEMBROKE, N.H. - Wesley Clark suggested Saturday that questions remain about President Bush’s Vietnam-era service in the Texas Air National Guard, but the retired general stopped short of endorsing a comment by actor-director Michael Moore that Bush was “a deserter.”

Moore, a Clark supporter, introduced the Democratic presidential nominee at a campaign rally here by saying he looked forward to debates between Clark, if he wins the Democratic nomination, and Bush.

“I want to see that debate: the general versus the deserter,” Moore said to enthusiastic applause at a packed rally in a high-school gymnasium, reiterating a line he uses frequently.

Clark, asked later by reporters if he agreed with Moore’s characterization of Bush as a “deserter,” said: “I’ve heard those charges. I don’t know whether they’re established or not. He was never prosecuted for it. The question in this election is can we bring a higher standard of leadership to America.”

Incredible WWII Photos Released

A treasure trove of high-resolution aerial photographs taken by the British Royal Air Force during World War II will soon be available online.

More than five million aerial photographs of World War II are to be made publicly available on the internet.

The pictures will go online on Monday. Taken by the RAF, they were used by Allied commanders to help devise their strategy during the six-year conflict.

The pictures cover events such as D-Day, the Holocaust, and the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck.

The website has been created by the Aerial Reconnaissance Archives (TARA) at Keele University. Project leader Allan Williams said: “These images allow us to see the real war at first hand - as if we are RAF pilots.”

“I was really moved by the photographs of the Nazi concentration camps and the D-Day landings. It’s like a live action replay.”

Some of the pictures have a 3-D quality. They were taken by high resolution cameras, and when viewed with a stereoscope the contours of terrain become more visible.

It was a technique that helped create realistic 3-D models of the Normandy beaches ahead of the D-Day landings in June 1944.

The BBC story includes a few photos from the archive, and these two are absolutely chilling—showing the Auschwitz death camp one year before liberation, when the Nazi murder machine was functioning at high gear.

In the first, you can see the large plume of thick smoke from the crematorium, which at that time was kept operating 24 hours round the clock, at upper left:

The second shows a line of prisoners filing out of a barracks building for roll call:

Antiwar = Pro-Hijab

The Campus Antiwar Movement is meeting this morning before marching over to San Francisco City Hall and the French consulate to whine and scream about France’s ban on religious head wear. If you’d like to attend (bring a camera if you do), they’re getting together at the Starbucks at 1231 Market St, 10:30 am this morning, for double soy lattés and frappucinos before hitting the streets to declare solidarity with the Muslim Student Association. (Hat tip: Ms Andi.)

UPDATE: Banagor went to the demonstration and got some photos...

Israeli Ambassador Smashes Swedish Art Exhibit

The Israeli ambassador to Sweden completely lost it at the opening of a new exhibition at Stockholm’s Museum of National Antiquities, and smashed an exhibit glorifying the Islamic Jihad mass murderer who blew up the Maxim restaurant: Ambassador wrecks suicide bomber exhibit in Sweden.

Located in the museum’s courtyard, “Snow White and the Madness of Truth” depicted a smiling Hanadi Jaradat, the Maxim restaurant suicide bomber who killed 21 patrons and staff as well as herself on October 4. Her photograph was placed on a little boat floating in a basin filled with water dyed red.

The ambassador was a guest at the opening of the museum’s exhibition, which is linked to an international conference on genocide, “Stockholm International Forum: Preventing Genocide - Threats and Responsibilities,” to be held January 26-28.

Israel has threatened to boycott the conference if the museum’s “Making Differences” exhibit on the Middle East conflict is not dismantled, Army Radio reported, saying that the exhibition breaks understandings Israel reached with Sweden.

“This was not a piece of art,” the ambassador told Sweden’s SR radio news station. “It was a monstrosity.”

“For me it was intolerable and an insult to the families of the victims,” he said. “As ambassador [of] Israel I could not remain indifferent to such an obscene misrepresentation of reality.”

A big LGF thumbs-up to ambassador Zvi Mazel. It’s about time people stopped tolerating this sort of corrupt, debased, antisemitic “art.” Oh, I’m fully aware Mazel will be forced to apologize and possibly resign—but he’s a hero to me. And it’s beyond despicable that Sweden would allow this abomination to be exhibited at their national museum.

friday, january 16, 2004

Out With the Old, In With the New

Lots of readers emailed about this one; on the same day they forced Robert Kilroy-Silk out of his job for stating some simple truths about the Arab world, the British Broadcasting Corporation hired a reporter from JihadTV: Al-Jazeera editor leaves for BBC.

According to an al-Jazeera spokesman, Ibrahim Helal said he had had “a tempting offer” from the BBC.

The charity BBC World Service Trust confirmed that Mr Helal was joining to work on a variety of media training projects over the next two years.

Al-Jazeera has been criticised by the US for airing recorded messages from Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.

French Dhimmitude Watch

France’s Defense Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie (who is a woman), tells the US it should be listening more to the Arab-Muslim world and its overwhelming sense of humiliation: French Minister Blasts Certain U.S. Ideas.

Outlining the views of France, she said while terrorism is a great threat, its causes must be addressed, which she identified as “the sense of frustration in the face of injustice and poverty.”

“The humiliation is exploited by fanatics,” Alliot-Marie said, while urging “let us work together to eradicate blind violence, but also its roots.”

France is neither anti-Semitic nor anti-Israel, the defense minister said, while implicitly holding Israel accountable. “We should be listening more to the Arab-Muslim world,” she said.

“The sense of injustice and humiliation is really very widespread,” she said.

“Implicitly holding Israel accountable?” Something tells me there’s more to Alliot-Marie’s remarks than is being reported here by the AP.

Virginia Jihadi Royer Pleads Guilty

Former blogger and CAIR official Randall Todd Royer (aka Ismail Royer) has entered a surprise guilty plea in his trial: Va. Jihad Activist Pleads Guilty.

A key member of an alleged Virginia jihad network pleaded guilty to federal weapons and explosives charges today, denying that he intended to harm Americans but acknowledging that he and his co-defendants had sought to fight on behalf of Muslim causes abroad.

Randall Todd Royer, 30, of Falls Church, entered his surprise plea in U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He faces at least 20 years in prison when he is sentenced April 9. Another of the 11 men originally charged in the case, Ibrahim Ahmed al-Hamdi, 26, of Alexandria, pleaded guilty to similar charges and faces at least 15 years in prison.

A St. Louis native who became an activist for Muslim causes, Royer was at the center of the government’s case against a group of men who played paintball in the Virginia countryside to prepare for jihad training that could have targeted the United States, prosecutors say. By his own admission, he played a key role in organizing the men.

Today’s court action brings to six the number of men who have pleaded guilty in the high-profile case that the Justice Department had publicized as an important milestone in the war on terrorism. A federal grand jury originally charged the 11 men in June with weapons counts and with training with Lashkar-i-Taiba, a group that is trying to drive India from Kashmir and has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government.

Rhys-Davies on Medved

Michael Medved is talking with John Rhys-Davies (who plays Gimli the dwarf in the Lord of the Rings) right now; you can listen to streaming audio here. As we pointed out last month, Rhys-Davies is an anti-idiotarian.

Silk Sacked

Robert Kilroy-Silk has been sacked: Kilroy to step down from BBC. (Hat tip: Colt.)

Robert Kilroy-Silk has agreed to quit as presenter of the BBC’s morning talkshow after 17 years just a week after the row blew up over his anti-Arab diatribe in the Sunday Express.

In a carefully worded statement agreed by both sides, Kilroy-Silk said he believed it was the right time to leave the programme and concentrate on other projects but it is clear that he was given no choice by BBC bosses.

Consummated in Cairo

Robert Spencer has an illuminating piece about the 2003 Cairo Conference—a Moronic Convergence of epic proportions, attended by representatives of the Western far left and the Islamic world’s most radical ideologues: Consummated in Cairo.

The polarities of the Conference were exemplified when Ma’mum Hudaybi, leader of the Egyptian radical Muslim group the Muslim Brotherhood, shared the platform with Revolutionary Socialist Kamal Khalil. The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in the 1920s, was the first modern radical Muslim organization. It still states that one of its goals is, according to a website operated by a Brotherhood sympathizer, “mastering the world with Islam.” The Brotherhood proclaims: “Allah is our objective. The messenger [i.e., the Muslim Prophet Muhammad] is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

For his part, Khalil referred in a fiery speech to an antiwar demonstration held in Egypt as the Iraq war began: “I am speaking in the name of thousands of Egyptians who were in Tahrir Square on 20 March. They chanted against the imperialist aggression but they also chanted against the Egyptian state and the Mubarak regime. We want a world without Bush, Blair, Sharon and Mubarak. Let’s link the struggle against imperialism with the struggle against dictatorship and oppression. When the fingers of the Americans burn in Iraq and Palestine, the fingers of the dictator in Egypt will also burn.”

Hudaybi’s presence alongside Khalil heralded the welding of the antiwar movement’s anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist boilerplate to the caliphate and Sharia yearnings of radical Islam.

Teach Your Children Well

A Palestinian boy holds a picture of Reem Raiyshi, the woman who blew herself up Wednesday at the major crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip killing four Israelis, during a rally in support of Hamas Spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis Friday, Jan. 16, 2004. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Our Primordial World

Victor Davis Hanson on the power of pride: Our Primordial World.

Where Americans see skill and subtlety in taking out Saddam Hussein and a costly effort to liberate a people, many Iraqis, even as they taste freedom, drive new cars, and see things improve, talk instead of humiliation, hurt pride, or anger at their own impotence — whether whining over the morticians’ make-up work on Qusay, or ashamed about Saddam’s pathetic televised dental examination. Iraqis scream on camera that we should not stay another minute, but even more often whisper that we better not leave yet. Too often they seem to be mostly angry that we, not they, took out Saddam Hussein. While the tyrant’s departure was a “good” thing, it would have been even better had he killed a few thousand Americans in the process — if only to restore the sort of braggadocio lost by the Baathist flight and antics of a mendacious Baghdad Bob.

Israel suffers from the same dilemma of dealing with others’ hurt pride as we do. It created a relatively humane society throughout the West Bank from 1967-1993 — and raised the standard of living, and promoted individual freedom for Palestinians in way impossible elsewhere in the Arab world. But all that won no gratitude; instead, it stoked the fury arising from Arabs’ sense of weakness and self-contempt. In the world of the Palestinian lobster bucket, Israel’s great sin is not bellicosity or aggression, but succeeding beyond the wildest dreams of its neighbors. How humiliating it must be to be incapable of even muttering the word “Israel” (hence the need for “Zionist entity”), but nevertheless preferring an Israeli to a Palestinian ID card.

Got One in Germany

Another RoP member arrested and charged in Germany with planning terror attacks against US and Jewish targets: Germany Charges Tunisian with Planning Qaeda Bombs.

BERLIN (Reuters) - German state prosecutors said on Friday they had charged a Tunisian man, allegedly trained by al Qaeda in Afghanistan, with trying to form a “terrorist group” to attack U.S. and Jewish targets in Germany.

The prosecutors’ office said the 33-year-old man, named only as Ihsan G., had tried to recruit fellow-militants at a Berlin mosque to set off a series of bombs around the time of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq last March.

“Through the killing or wounding of a large number of people, the Western world was to be humiliated and the Muslim world and its values defended,” the office said in a statement.

It said the planned locations were unknown, but the aim was to strike U.S. and Israeli targets “in pursuit of Islamic fundamentalist ideas.” ...

According to the prosecutors’ statement, Ihsan G. attended an al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan in 2001 and received ideological and military training, including in how to produce explosives.

It said he re-entered Germany in January 2003 on false papers, traveling via South Africa and Belgium, and set about recruiting like-minded radicals at a Berlin mosque.

“Four of those approached showed themselves inclined to form a group with the accused and commit future bomb attacks; others promised their support,” the statement said.

A prosecutors’ spokeswoman said other members of the alleged conspiracy were still under investigation. She declined to give the full name of the defendant.

According to the charges, the Tunisian began training the recruits, initially on the premises of the mosque. He allegedly sought chemicals to make bombs and bought mobile phones and watches with alarms to serve as timers.

The statement said he had planned several explosions to coincide with a demonstration against the Iraq war, but was arrested on March 20 last year — the day U.S.-led forces invaded Iraq.

Got One in Dearborn

Feds: Man hid terror cash. (Hat tip: Ethel Carol.)

DEARBORN — Federal agents found thousands of dollars and evidence of wire transfers when they searched the house of an illegal immigrant charged with providing material support to terrorists.

Mahmoud Kourani was indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on a charge of conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization: Hezbollah.

The U.S. government considers Hezbollah, a Lebanese group known as Party of God or Islamic Jihad, to be a terrorist organization. The group’s goals, the government says, include the eradication of “Western imperialism” from the Middle East.

Hezbollah has conducted numerous high profile terrorist attacks, including the murder of a Marine Corps lieutenant in 1989.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Kourani bribed a Mexican consular official in Beirut to get a visa to travel to Mexico. Kourani and a traveling companion then paid another man in Mexico to be smuggled across the southern U.S. border on Feb. 4, 2001, the government said.

Kourani, 32, was “a member, fighter, recruiter and fund-raiser for Hezbollah,” the government said. His brother, an unindicted co-conspirator, is Hezbollah’s chief of military security in southern Lebanon and oversaw Kourani’s activities.

This is the first direct evidence I’ve seen that Hizb’Allah is taking advantage of our porous border with Mexico to infiltrate the US.

How to Stop Nuclear Terror

Here’s a very good piece at Foreign Affairs by Graham Allison: How to Stop Nuclear Terror. (Hat tip: Motti.) Allison argues for a “zero tolerance for nuclear weapons” policy that would require very strict international controls on the means of production, and says that the United States is not doing what needs to be done to prevent an eventual nuclear terrorist attack.

A “no new nascent nukes” approach will require ensuring that all nuclear aspirants, especially Iran and North Korea, stop producing heu and plutonium. This effort should begin under the auspices of inspections mandated by the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), including the NPT’s Additional Protocol that allows more intrusive inspections of suspected nuclear sites. But two other elements must also be added to the current system: a prohibition on the production of fissile material, and actual enforcement mechanisms. Enforcement should begin with political and economic sanctions for recalcitrant states but should also include threats and the use of military force if necessary, whether covert or overt. Enhanced export controls and greatly strengthened intelligence capabilities (especially human agents) should focus on preventing the work of nuclear aspirants and stopping sales from potential suppliers. Ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which the Bush administration has rejected, despite support from four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Secretary of State Colin Powell) and the negotiation of a cutoff in production of fissile material in current nuclear-weapon states would reinforce this principle.

Iran will be a decisive test of this strand of the new strategy. The administration has declared that the United States “will not tolerate the construction of a nuclear weapon” by Iran and has elicited similar threats from its allies. American assertiveness has galvanized the IAEA to demand that Iran prove a full account of past and present nuclear activity. Unless Iran complies, the IAEA will refer the case to the UN Security Council.

Note the differences between the administration’s current approach and the “no new nascent nukes” approach proposed. The administration has named Iran a member of the “axis of evil” and threatened it with regime change. It has tried to persuade Russia to halt construction of Iran’s Bushehr light-water nuclear power plant. And it has accepted verbal declarations of support from Iran’s trading partners in Europe. The proposed strategy, in contrast, would focus on one objective only: denying Iran material from which nuclear weapons can be made. This would mean preventing Iranian enrichment of uranium or reprocessing of spent fuel to produce plutonium. With Russian President Vladimir Putin as his partner, Bush would remind Iran that in signing the NPT, it forswore nuclear weapons, and he would demand that Iran verifiably dismantle any emerging capability for enrichment or reprocessing.

Moonbat Alert!

Posting from the University of Nottingham in the UK, an apparent devotee of the Religion of Peace™ wishes for all LGFers to be exterminated, and says:

Whichever God is up there, if He is as benevolent and compassionate as I believe Him to be, then He shall mete out the kind of justice you scum deserve.

Hmm. “Benevolent. Compassionate.” You keep using these words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean.

Yassin Living on Borrowed Time

Israel Says Hamas Leader Yassin ‘Marked for Death’.

“He is marked for death and he had better dig deep underground, where he won’t be able to tell the difference between day and night,” Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said of Yassin.

“We will find him in his tunnels and liquidate him,” he told Army Radio. ...

“I repeat that there is no room to speak about a truce,” Yassin, surrounded by bodyguards, said outside the Gaza mosque. “Resistance must continue, until the removal of the occupation.”

Asked if he feared for his life, he replied: “They have tried to kill Sheikh Ahmed Yassin before... I would like to say to them: We do not fear death threats. We are seekers of martyrdom.”

He said Israel knew he had “nothing to do with military activity” carried out by Hamas’s armed wing.

Iraqi Council Curbs Women's Rights

This is not good news from Iraq; Shi’ite members of the Iraqi Governing Council have voted to abolish civil codes that give women more freedom than in most Islamic countries, putting family law under the jurisdiction of shari’a: Women in Iraq Decry Decision To Curb Rights. (Hat tip: NC.)

BAGHDAD, Jan. 15 — For the past four decades, Iraqi women have enjoyed some of the most modern legal protections in the Muslim world, under a civil code that prohibits marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce and male favoritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes.

Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship did not touch those rights. But the U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council has voted to wipe them out, ordering in late December that family laws shall be “canceled” and such issues placed under the jurisdiction of strict Islamic legal doctrine known as sharia.

This week, outraged Iraqi women — from judges to cabinet ministers — denounced the decision in street protests and at conferences, saying it would set back their legal status by centuries and could unleash emotional clashes among various Islamic strains that have differing rules for marriage, divorce and other family issues.

“This will send us home and shut the door, just like what happened to women in Afghanistan,” said Amira Hassan Abdullah, a Kurdish lawyer who spoke at a protest meeting Thursday. Some Islamic laws, she noted, allow men to divorce their wives on the spot.

“The old law wasn’t perfect, but this one would make Iraq a jungle,” she said. “Iraqi women will accept it over their dead bodies.” ...

The order, narrowly approved by the 25-member council in a closed-door session Dec. 29, was reportedly sponsored by conservative Shiite members. The order is now being opposed by several liberal members as well as by senior women in the Iraqi government.

Yesterday I quoted George Will’s column for City Journal, in which he asked:

Will two years suffice for America—as Woodrow Wilson said of the Latin American republics—to teach Iraq to elect good men?

These regressive elements within Iraq must be defeated; if shari’a is allowed to take away women’s freedom, the entire Iraqi effort risks failure.

An aside: an annoying trend in mainstream media is to refer to theocratic troglodytes like these Shi’ite council members as “conservative.” But Western political categorizations are meaningless in terms of Islamic politics; when Western media uses them, they inform us more about their own bias than about the politics involved, by associating “conservatives” with the worst elements of Islam.

thursday, january 15, 2004

Poll Suggestions, Please?

Well, now that the Fiskie Award voting is over, and every lefty blogger in the universe has weighed in on what a disgusting horrible excuse for a human being I am, no better than a serial killer or Osama bin Laden, a coward, an extremist, a ghoul, a bad web designer, etc. ... I figure it’s time for a new poll.

And yet, I’m drawing a blank. Perhaps it’s the psychic pain of so much vilification, causing my aura to become matted and tangled. Perhaps it’s the turkey sandwich I had for lunch. But if anyone would care to suggest a topic for a multiple choice style poll, post it in this thread, please.

Yellowcake Discovered in Rotterdam

Here’s a report on a possibly significant discovery, concealed within a shipment of scrap metal originally from Iraq—two pounds of uranium oxide, otherwise known as “yellowcake.” (Hat tip: Daniel A.)

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A recycling company found uranium oxide — a radioactive material also known as yellowcake — in a shipment of scrap steel it believes originally came from Iraq, the company said Thursday.

Paul de Bruin, spokesman for Rotterdam-based Jewometaal, said that the shipment was passed on last month from a Jordan metal dealer who was unaware it contained any forbidden materials.

”I‘ve dealt with this man for 15 years and he says he’s sure it came from Iraq," De Bruin said. He said Jewometaal had been asked not to reveal the name of the Jordanian exporter while the find was being investigated.

Nuclear experts say that although not highly radioactive, uranium oxide can be processed into enriched uranium usable in a nuclear weapon — but highly advanced technology is needed.

The Dutch Environment Ministry confirmed Thursday that Jewometaal reported the unusual find on Dec. 16. After a preliminary investigation by a company that specializes in removing radioactive waste, the Dutch government decided to call in the International Atomic Energy Agency to investigate further.

A spokesman for the IAEA confirmed the agency had visited Rotterdam on Wednesday but had no further comment.

Environment ministry spokesman Wim van der Weegen said scrap metal companies in the Rotterdam port, which is Europe’s largest, report around 200 findings of radioactive material per year, often from old hospital equipment or normal industrial uses.

But the finding of an estimated two pounds of uranium oxide is odd, Van der Weegen said.

Experts said that around 2 pounds of yellowcake, the amount found, would not be useful for either a bomb or fuel.

Hamas-Lovin' Granny

Meet Anne Gwynne: a 65-year old Welsh grandmother with an affinity for Islamic terrorists.

Anne Gwynne, a former bank manager in Aberystwyth, has lived as an ambulance nurse in the West Bank town of Nablus.

The 65-year-old claims Israeli soldiers have wounded her and threatened to both frame her for carrying explosives and to rape her.

Ms Gwynne has become well known in the pro-Palestinian internet community but has been condemned by critics for defending the use of violence, including, in some circumstances, suicide bombing.

She claims Hamas is seen by Palestinians as the true representatives of their nation.

She told The Western Mail, “Palestine is Hamas and Hamas is Palestine. The Palestinian Authority is just a tool of Israel. They are nothing, except they hold the purse-strings.

”They love [Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat] for his past and hate him for his present."

Death Cult Hails Female Bomber

Palestinians Hail Female Bomber As Hero.

“She is not going to be the last (attacker) because the march of resistance will continue until the Islamic flag is raised, not only over the minarets of Jerusalem, but over the whole universe,” Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said. ...

The bombing was carried out by Reem Raiyshi, 22, a mother with two young children. She had been escorted into a room for a security search when she blew herself up. The attack was jointly claimed by Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a group linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah movement.

Thousands marched through Gaza City during her funeral. Masked gunmen from Hamas and Al Aqsa carried her coffin, draped in the Hamas green flag.

“It is not enough to call her a hero. Calling her hero does not give the whole truth. This woman abandoned her husband and children to win paradise,” Zahar said in the eulogy.

Religion of Totalitarianism

At the same time as Saudi front groups around the world scream, whine, and organize email campaigns at the slightest criticism of Islam, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia shows us that these groups are only trying to make the rest of the world just like home sweet home—a totalitarian, Islamic supremacist state that doesn’t allow criticism: Freedom of Expression Not at Cost of Islam. (Hat tip: NC.)

JEDDAH, 15 January 2004 — Saudi Arabia will not allow anybody to attack the Islamic faith in the name of freedom of expression, Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, declared yesterday.

“This country will never accept anybody, whoever he may be, to hurt the Islamic faith, in the name of freedom of opinion or any other name,” the crown prince said in an address to the nation aired live on state television.

Prince Abdullah was giving guidelines for the national dialogue forum, which has so far held two sessions in Riyadh and Makkah with the participation of prominent intellectuals and religious experts, including women.

He said the Kingdom would go ahead with its political and economic reforms. “We will not allow anybody to stand in the way of reforms, be it by calling for stagnation or recession or any other reckless adventure,” he said.

Red Mars

NASA’s Spirit rover is now a-ramblin’ on the surface of Mars.

Spirit was to have taken less than two minutes to travel the 10 feet from the unfolded petals of its lander onto Mars. Engineers said the move likely would be the riskiest of Spirit’s entire three-month mission.

Engineers delayed the move for three days to give Spirit time to reposition itself atop its lander, where it had sat since arriving. Spirit had to turn in place 115 degrees to line up with one of the exit ramps that ring the lander.

Originally, Spirit was to roll straight off the lander on its ninth day on Mars. But the now-deflated air bags that cushioned the rover’s Jan. 3 landing blocked that way, forcing Spirit to perform a slow pirouette, turning clockwise in three separate moves.

Mission plans called for Spirit to spend several days parked beside its lander after rolling off, giving it time to find its bearings and perform some preliminary analysis of the soil and rocks around it.

NASA then planned for Spirit to begin a meandering trip in the direction of an impact crater about 825 feet away. Spirit was designed to travel dozens of yards a day.

Can We Make Iraq Democratic?

Plenty of informative reading in the current edition of City Journal, highlighted by George Will’s piece raising serious questions about the feasibility of democratizing Iraq.

It is counted realism in Washington now to say that creating a new Iraqi regime may require perhaps two years. One wonders: Does Washington remember that it took a generation, and the United States Army, to bring about, in effect, regime change—a change of institutions and mores—in the American South? Will a Middle Eastern nation prove more plastic to our touch than Mississippi was? Will two years suffice for America—as Woodrow Wilson said of the Latin American republics—to teach Iraq to elect good men?

Yassin Personally Authorized Female Bomber

The “spiritual leader” of Hamas, a wheelchair-bound locus of festering evil named Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, personally gave his blessing to female suicide bomber Reem al-Rayashi:

According to Channel 2, Reem Salah al-Rayashi, 21, the mother of two small children, approached Hamas several times with the request to be a suicide bomber.

“She practically begged,” an Arab affairs reporter told Channel 2.

The Hamas leadership repeatedly spurned her requests, until Yassin himself intervened. Hamas has previously resisted the use of female suicide bombings on ideological grounds. However, when Hamas operatives brought a plan to bomb the Erez crossing into the joint Israeli-Palestinian industrial zone, the Hamas leadership put ideology aside and adopted the plan most likely to succeed.

Sheikh Yassin then personally gave his blessing for al-Rayashi to be used as a bomber, and issued a decree (a few hours after Wednesday’s attack) to the effect that “Jihad was the duty of men and women.”

Motherly Hate

Veiled Threat

Here’s a good piece by Christopher Caldwell on the rise of Islam in France: Veiled Threat. (Hat tip: DP.)

French politicians were apt to brag during the Iraq war of how clearly their voice was heard in the Arab world. France indeed has sway there, but at the price that it must listen attentively to the Arab world’s wishes. The mufti of Egypt has darkly warned Chirac that the anti-veil law would “destroy the social peace of French society.” The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has called it “an interference in the realm of Muslims’ personal and religious liberty.” And Hezbollah wrote that angry letter to Chirac. Interior Minister Sarkozy was thus heartened when Mohamed Sayyed Tantawi, the hugely influential imam of al-Azhar theological institute in Egypt, told him that France had the right to ban the veil. While Sarkozy’s visit was presented as a drop-in after a vacation, it was obviously of high diplomatic import.

But alongside any cheer that Sarkozy may feel at this triumph of diplomacy, it must be sobering to know that France needs a nihil obstat from Muslim clerics abroad before it can pass a piece of domestic legislation. More sobering still is an increasing tendency among Muslim theologians to count France as part of Dar al-Islam (“the House of Islam”).

Bush in 41.2 Seconds

Several people emailed about this very funny parody of those anti-Bush ads at Moveon.org (warning: colorful language): Bush in 41.2 Seconds.

UPDATE: What do you mean, it isn’t a parody?

Religion of Mass Murder

Reem Raiyshi a mother of two from Gaza, poses holding a Quran, the Muslim holy book, and a machine gun in this image released by Hamas and taken at an unknown location in the Gaza Strip in recent days. Raiyshi was named as the woman who blew herself up Wednesday at the major crossing point between Israel and the Gaza Strip, killing at least four Israelis and wounding seven others. (AP Photo/Hamas HO)

Notice that the Associated Press is now openly crediting a terrorist organization for their photos of mass murderers.

wednesday, january 14, 2004

Coming Unarmed to the Battle

Mix two parts “chicken hawk” fallacy with three parts moony-eyed envy, add a dash of holier-than-thou and a sprinkle of mean-spirited, and what do you get?

This bizarre little attack on James Lileks, by Dennis Perrin, who also adoringly cites the “web-savvy anarchists at Infoshop.org.”

PA Declines to Condemn

The PLO apparently thinks they’ve conned enough of the world into believing Israel’s security fence is an “apartheid, land-grabbing separation barrier” that they can drop all pretense of “condemning” the latest Palestinian mass murder: Israel ‘to blame for Gaza attack’. (Hat tip: Tim Blair.)

“Israel bears sole responsibility for what has happened as it continues the occupation, construction of the wall (Israel’s West Bank separation barrier), the closures and the escalation,” Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s chief adviser Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

He called on the international community and the UN Security Council to “make Israel stop its aggressions and force a halt to construction of the wall and a withdrawal from the Palestinian towns”.

Arab Masses Long for Nukes

LGF reader Tony Abu Tuz notifies us that the Arabic-language Al Jazeera (aka JihadTV) site is running a poll that asks:

Do you support the Arabs having nuclear weapons?

And the current results are (click on the left one of the two buttons below the radioactive symbol):

Yes: 80.7%
No: 19.3%

Random Glitch Factor (I Hope)

Just had a strange semi-problem with our weblog index; I repaired things, but have not been able to figure out yet what caused it. That’s why comments were turned off for a little while.

Needless to say, I’ll be keeping an eye on the situation.

The Reluctant UN

The United States would like the United Nations to go back to Iraq. Kofi Annan is still having nightmares from the shock of finding out that even with all the appeasing and obstructionism and anti-Americanism that pours from the UN, the mujahideen will still attack them when they get the chance: U.S. Pushes for Reluctant UN to Return Staff to Iraq.

Annan withdrew all international staff from Iraq in October after attacks on relief workers and the bombing of United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on Aug. 19 that killed 22 staff and visitors, including the mission chief, Sergio Vieira de Mello. About 1,000 Iraqis remain on the U.N. payroll for humanitarian projects.

The meeting called for Monday as well as this week’s U.N. decision to send a security team to Iraq indicated Annan’s willingness to move toward political involvement in Iraq.

But safety is only one issue preventing a return of U.N. staff. Annan has stressed the need for “clarity” in the U.N. role, which U.N. officials have interpreted as not wanting to play a subordinate role or be a rubber stamp to U.S. plans between now and June.

The officials fear that U.N. approval would risk undermining the world body’s ability to be an honest broker after the handover, when Negroponte and others anticipate the world body playing a “robust” role in helping to draft a constitution and prepare for elections by the end of 2005.

On the other hand, some in the United Nations fear that if Annan does not send key staff back to Baghdad soon, the world body will not be a player in the next phase.

The Beginning of the French Jihad?

Walid Phares has a very interesting piece about the Islamist significance of the hijab, and Chirac’s efforts to ban it in public places in France: The Beginning of the French Jihad?

When women wear the scarf, Islamic fundamentalists consider it a pillar of their influence. They can deploy their statistical power onto others, and they project it as a make-or-break indicator of their growth. If the hijab (scarf) were used increasingly, the Islamists would feel on the ascent. If its use decreases, particularly by orders of a secular government, like France, the Jihadists have no choice but to wage war.

But that war can be political, social, legal, and eventually can cross the line into a violent confrontation. President Chirac, pressed hard by his secular elite, thought Republican France could absorb the problem, particularly if he displayed a pro-Arab and pro-Islamist role. He was wrong on measuring the Jihadist parameters on this very important, sacred issue.

AMECA Protests CAIR Intimidation

I received the following email about a protest/seminar scheduled in front of the Anaheim office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) on January 19. Readers in Southern California: here’s your chance to stand up and let CAIR know that you’re not dhimmis.

American Middle East Christian-Jewish Association
P.O. Box 8152, Hemet, CA 92545
Tel: 909-766-8820 Fax: 909-766-8827

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 19, 2004

For more information contact Steve Klein

AMECA TAKES ISSUE WITH CAIR, Council on American-Islamic Relations & ISLAMIC SLAVERY.

We strongly protest the ongoing lawsuit of CAIR against Congressman Cass Ballenger, R-NC, and the intimidation of Paul Harvey and Dr. Laura Schlessinger and the Sudanese Government’s insistence of enslaving Christians and Animists in Sudan.

American Middle East Christian-Jewish Association (AMECA) has learned of these ongoing tactics by CAIR frightening American Citizens from enjoying their cherished First Amendment.

It has been determined that criticizing or suing our Judeo-Christian leaders is fair game for CAIR but turn about is not. While CAIR can criticize well-known Americans, those who criticize CAIR had better not even utter a word against CAIR or Islam that they don’t like or the lawsuits and demands of sponsors to cut shows will be served.

AMECA will conduct a peaceful educational seminar in accordance with our First Amendment rights on the public sidewalk in front of the Anaheim CAIR office at 2180 West Crescent Avenue, Suite F, Anaheim, CA 92801, on January 19, 2004 from 10:30 AM - NOON.

As it is Martin Luther King, Jr. day, we will also have a number of Sudanese who fled Islamic dominated Sudan to prevent becoming slaves of these Islamists. We will have a number of experts in Islam to share quotes from the Koran in both Arabic and English. We will provide an American civics lesson for both CAIR and those who wish to see our FIRST AMENDMENT exercised peacefully and profoundly: A RIGHT FOUND IN NO ISLAMIC CONTROLLED NATION ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD.

Libya Ratifies Nuclear Test Ban

Libya continues to show every sign of being honest about their intention to renounce weapons of mass destruction: Libya Ratifies Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Libya’s nuclear program was far from producing a weapon and the treaty is 12 nations short of the 44 ratifications needed for it to enter into force. Still, the announcement by the U.N. agency overseeing the agreement appeared to be a further sign of commitment by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to give up nuclear weapons ambitions.

The Vienna-based agency — known as the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Organization — said that in ratifying the pact earlier this month, Libya agreed to host a monitoring station at Misratah. That would be part of a network of 337 stations being set up worldwide to verify compliance with terms of the treaty.

Libya announced Dec. 19 it was giving up its weapons of mass destruction after months of secret talks with the United States and Britain. It said then it would sign the test ban treaty and become a party to the convention prohibiting chemical weapons.

Once it enters into force, the treaty bans any nuclear weapon test explosion in any environment.

A Western diplomat who works with the Preparatory Commission said the ratification “fit the picture” of Libya’s actions to prove it was serious since announcing it was scrapping programs or stocks of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

PA Radio Celebrates Mass Murder

Voice of Palestine, the official radio station of the Palestinian Authority, has been celebrating and praising today’s suicide bombing by a monstrous young mother: Arafat’s Radio Blesses Woman Bomber.

In an unprecedented show of support for a human bomb attack, Yasser Arafat’s official radio greeted with elation the news of latest suicide assault in the Gaza Strip.

“Citizen Rim al-Riyashi was heroically martyred when she carried out an explosive operation at the Beit Hanoun Junction , killing four soldiers of the Occupation,” declared Voice of Palestine Radio in its 4-PM newscast, about an hour after the attack in the Gaza Strip.

The style of the news item, which opened the afternoon news round-up, was more like a birthday greeting than a regular news report, stressing the woman’s identity and “heroic martyrdom” (Arabic: istish-haad) repeatedly.

There was no mention that she was a member of the Islamic terror group known as HAMAS (Haraka al-Muqawwima al-Islamiyya: Islamic Resistance Front).

Arafat’s VOP radio said Israel was to blame for the attack, and it offered no condemnation for the assault at the Gaza crossing point which also serves as a place of employment and access into Israel for Palestinian laborers.

No Chemical Agent Found

Another false alarm; those Iraqi shells that initially tested positive for a “blister agent” are clean: Tests on Iraqi Shells Find No Chemical Agent.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark  — Mortar shells found in southern Iraq by the Danish military do not appear to contain chemical weapon agents as originally suspected, Fox News has learned.

After a 16-man team from the Iraqi Survey Group was sent to the scene to examine the mortar shells, tests of five of them yielded no traces of chemical agent, a Danish military official told Fox on Wednesday.

Initial testing by the Danes and the British indicated that the set of 36 shells possibly contained blister gas, a type of chemical weapon agent.

One shell was to be brought back to Baghdad for further testing, Fox News learned, and an electronic assessment of the shells was to be sent to a U.S. lab for further analysis.

Both the Danish and U.S. officials told Fox that the latest negative finding wasn't conclusive and said a more final assessment could come in the next three to five days.

And Again

Suicide bomber kills four at Erez crossing in Gaza.

Three IDF soldiers and a civilian were killed and ten injured when a suicide bomber blew herself up at the Erez checkpoint in the Gaza Strip just after 9:30 on Wednesday morning.

The explosion took place inside the security check terminal, where thousands of Palestinian workers are allowed to pass each day to work at the nearby Erez industrial zone.

The female suicide bomber entered the security check building, which is a new facility with extensive security measures and blew herself up causing vast damage inside the building.

She was identified as Hamas member Reem Salih al Rayashi, 21 from Gaza. According to a Reuters report, she was a mother-of-two. ...

In a video made before the bombing, Rayashi declared her lifelong dream of becoming a suicide bomber. “I always wanted to be the first woman to carry out a martyr attack, where parts of my body can fly all over. That is the only wish I can ask God for,” she said with a smile.

Palestinian death cult society is already idolizing this mother from hell, who abandoned her children to commit Islamic mass murder:

Video grab image shows Palestinian suicide bomber 22 year old Reem al-Reyashi talking on an undated prerecorded amateur video, released on Janaury 14, 2004.

Palestinians walk past fresh grafitti saying the name in arabic of female suicide bomber Reem Raiyshi, 21, far left, in Gaza City, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004.

And the loathsome “spiritual leader” of Hamas makes the religious obligation component of this latest atrocity very clear:

Reem Salih al-Rayashi is the first female suicide bomber from the Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group Hamas. The use of a woman bomber could signal willingness to compromise its religious principles in order to more easily carry out attacks.

"Resistance will escalate against this enemy until they leave our land," Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin told Reuters. He also said the use of a woman was unique, but holy war "is an obligation of all Muslims, men and women." ...

The bomber, Reem al-Reyashi, said in a video released after the attack, "It was always my wish to turn my body into deadly shrapnel against the Zionists and to knock on the doors of heaven with the skulls of Zionists."

tuesday, january 13, 2004

Here She Is, Miss Un-American

It’s a time-honored tradition for the talented team of Cox and Forkum to provide the official illustration for the LGF Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year (Fiskie for short), and they’ve come through in fine form to honor this year’s winner: Rachel Corrie.

Internet Haganah vs. The Beltway

Internet Haganah has apparently been contacted by a well-known three-letter federal law enforcement organization, who are not pleased with Aaron’s (highly successful) grassroots crusade to expose and close jihad web sites.

Been Globally Dispossessed So Long It Looks Like Marxist Utopia To Me

The World Economic Forum is taking place in Davos, Switzerland from January 21 to 25: WEF draws world leaders to Davos. (Hat tip: Baldy.)

Last year the Davos meeting was the scene of a gigantic antisemitic and anti-American Moronic Convergence, and with Paul Bremer and John Ashcroft attending, this year’s event may drive the Euroleft into a serious psychotic episode:

On Tuesday anti-globalisation groups in Switzerland called for further protests against US policy in Iraq.

They plan to host a one-day conference in Zurich on Saturday ahead of the annual gathering of the WEF.

Other issues on the agenda at “The Other Davos” include plans to demonstrate against cuts in social security spending.

Alessandro Polizzari, secretary of Attac Switzerland and the event’s coordinator, said around 1,000 people representing 50 organisations were expected to attend.

British author Tariq Ali and the American economist, David Harvey, have been invited to take part.

The theme for this year’s event is “The globalisation of violence – Imperialism and global dispossession”.

Iran's Manhattan Project Speeding Ahead

So Iran signed an “accord” with the International Atomic Energy Agency that they would allow “snap inspections” of their nuclear sites.

Of course, no inspections have actually taken place, but I’m sure they will. Would the mullahs lie to us? Would the IAEA?

The second question seems especially pertinent, after reading the following story. It seems the IAEA built into that “accord” a rather huge loophole—a loophole big enough to drive a Fat Man through (and I don’t mean Michael Moore): Diplomats: Iran Amassing Atomic Enrichment Machines. (Hat tip: Colt.)

But Western diplomats told Reuters Iran has made it clear that it was only suspending activities that fell under its limited definition of the term “enrichment-related” and has therefore continued acquiring enrichment centrifuge machinery.

They say Iran maintains it would only breach the accord if it actually enriched uranium, not just acquired materials.

“They’re getting a lot of stuff,” said one Western diplomat who follows IAEA issues closely, referring to centrifuge technology. “They’re not assembling it, but they’re getting it.”

Another Western diplomat said the problem was that there were competing definitions of “enrichment-related activities.”

Yet another diplomat said it was “ridiculous” to exclude procurement activities from the suspension. He said the IAEA Board of Governors understood at its meeting on Iran in November that the definition of “enrichment-related” would be set out by the IAEA and not Tehran.

Why am I getting an uneasy feeling that the IAEA isn’t really working as hard as they could to prevent the Iranian Bomb?

Islamic Center of Cleveland Imam Arrested

Yet another prominent American Islamic leader has been arrested, for failing to disclose his past affiliations with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups: Prominent Ohio Islamic Leader Indicted.

Imam Fawaz Mohammed Damrah, who leads the Islamic Center of Cleveland, Ohio’s largest mosque, withheld information on his membership or affiliation with several groups, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, U.S. Attorney Gregory White said.

White would not specify the nature of Damrah’s involvement in the groups but said such allegations often involve fund-raising. The indictment did not accuse Damrah, a Palestinian, of committing any terrorist acts.

“We are strictly dealing with issues, activities and incidents prior to his becoming a naturalized citizen and what he was required to disclose” to gain citizenship, White said. Damrah became a citizen in 1994.

Damrah, 41, was charged with obtaining U.S. citizenship by providing false information. If convicted, he could lose his citizenship and face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

In February of last year, we noted a report in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that Fawaz Damrah had been identified as “Unindicted Co-Conspirator One” in the indictment of Sami al-Arian. Looks like Damrah has moved up on the list.

The Envelope, Please

The people have spoken! And the winner of the Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year 2003 is ...

Saint Rachel Corrie!

Boo Freakin' Hoo

Reuters is shifting into high gear in their outrageously biased propaganda campaign against the Israeli security fence: Tears Run as Israeli Barrier Rises Near Jerusalem.

ABU DIS, West Bank (Reuters) - Tearful Palestinians watched cranes lower huge concrete slabs into place at the edge of Arab East Jerusalem Tuesday as the latest sections of a disputed Israeli barrier cut them off from the city.

Work has been stepped up on the barrier in the past three days, separating the suburb of Abu Dis from Arab East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as capital of an independent state and Israelis see as part of their own indivisible capital.

“It used to take me a minute to get to my mother’s house. Now how long is it going to take me to get there?” asked Nadia Ghazali, dabbing her cheeks with a tissue, as she watched the machinery lumber in front of her apartment block.

Huge Support for Kilroy-Silk

The Robert Kilroy-Silk story is taking an extraordinary turn, as 50,000 people have responded to a phone poll, supporting Kilroy-Silk’s right to free speech. Have the British had their fill of whining professional victims like the Muslim Council of Britain? 50,000 protest at BBC host’s suspension for anti-Arab comments.

Fifty thousand people have voiced opposition to the BBC’s suspension of a popular television show after its host Robert Kilroy-Silk made inflammatory remarks against Arabs, a British tabloid newspaper said.

As a row over the comments simmered on, the Daily Express said 50,000 had responded in a phone poll to back Kilroy-Silk’s reinstatement.

“Thousands” more had protested to the BBC, added the Express, which accused the public broadcaster of “gagging” Kilroy-Silk, a former Labour party lawmaker.

The BBC suspended the veteran host’s morning show “Kilroy", on which guests discuss topical and personal issues, pending an investigation after the presenter lambasted Arabs as “suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors” in an article published in the Sunday Express on January 4.

“We’re sick and tired of being gagged” was the front-page response of the Daily Express Tuesday, which said there was “growing anger over what is being seen as a test case for the very principle of freedom of speech in this country.”

The rightwing paper claimed the support of Michael Howard, leader of Britain’s main opposition Conservative Party.

Howard told the Express: “While it is absolutely wrong to talk about people in categories, I also think that our tradition of free speech is precious and that is something we should never lose sight of.”

In an editorial, the paper accused the BBC of political correctness.

“The corporation, once synonymous with truth around the world, is guilty of censorship,” it blasted.

It’s no secret where the Guardian stands (they want to see Kilroy-Silk pilloried, of course), but in this story they reveal that public support for the talk show host is running at 97%: Kilroy-Silk looks to be on the way out after interview with BBC rival.

It is thought that executives feel they cannot ignore public opinion: a poll for the Daily Express yesterday showed that 97% of callers - about 22,000 people - agreed with the question: “Have BBC bosses been too harsh on Kilroy?"A similar poll for Sky News showed 93% support for Kilroy-Silk.

monday, january 12, 2004

Christian Science Monitor Hits Bottom, Digs

The Christian Science Monitor has really crossed the line into serious moonbattery; in an article about David Frum and Richard Perle’s new book, they use for reference not only Indymedia—they also link to a post at the absolutely foul, openly anarchist web site Infoshop: Terrorism & Security. (Hat tip: Doss.) Sheer insanity. This shows you where the Christian Science Monitor gets their twisted views on Western civilization—and I have now removed them from our news links, something I should have done a while ago.

Clinton: The "Narrow Lens of Terror"

Bill Clinton is in Qatar at the US-Islamic conference where Muslims are seething about the US standing in the way of destroying Israel, and he says it’s all just a big misunderstanding: Clinton Discusses Muslims’ View of US.

DOHA, Qatar - Former President Clinton said Monday that many Muslims have a distorted view of the United States because they often judge America solely on the basis of the Mideast peace process.

Clinton told a U.S.-Islamic World Forum that Americans also had problems understanding the Islamic world because their judgments were based on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Too many Americans know too little about the Islamic world, and much of what they know they learned after Sept. 11 through the narrow lens of terror,” Clinton told the forum, organized by the Washington-based Brookings Institution.

“What people do out of anger, pain and fear both darkens and distorts reality,” said Clinton.

I wonder how much the Arabs paid him for these jewels of wisdom.

Indonesia: Genital Mutilation Half Price Sale

In Indonesia, 90% of Islamic mothers surveyed support the barbaric practice of female circumcision—and hospitals are now offering a two-for-one deal: In the cut. (Hat tip: speedster.)

Hospitals across Indonesia are offering new parents a one-price surgical package for their just-born girls - when they pierce their ears, they’ll circumcise the girls as well.

At Jakarta’s Hermina Hospital the price for the two procedures is Rp95,000 (about $16); at IDI hospital in Surabaya in East Java it’s only Rp15,000, while in Makassar’s Khadijah Hospital in Sulawesi, hospital staff quote Rp25,000 to Rp30,000.

In some hospitals and health care centres, vaccinations are included in the package as modern medicine - attracting parents with the convenience of a one-stop shop - takes over a field long occupied by village-based healers.

While hospitals might be more hygienic, health care experts are worried by strong evidence that the move has led to more of the child’s genital tissue being cut because doctors use different implements and techniques.

Village midwives and traditional healers have been circumcising girls in Indonesia for centuries, although the extent and details of the practice are only now emerging.

Falling Under the Imam's Spell

Mark Steyn says the Kilroy-Silk affair reveals something very disturbing about the oh-so-tolerant West: We are falling under the imam’s spell.

And so, when free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often than not wins – and all the noisy types who run around crying “Censorship!” if a Texas radio station refuses to play the Bush-bashing Dixie Chicks suddenly fall silent. I don’t know about you, but this “multicultural Britain” business is beginning to feel like an interim phase.

Saint Rachel Goes For the Win

We’re coming down to the wire in the voting for Idiotarian of 2003, and in a surprise reversal, Rachel Corrie has surged ahead of Michael Moore, with 28% of the vote compared to Moore’s 26.2%. Voting ends tonight at 11:59:59 pm Pacific time.

Spies, Lies, and Weapons

Kenneth M. Pollack, author of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, has a thoughtful article in the Atlantic examining the possible reasons why we have not (so far) found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that every intelligence agency in the world predicted: Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong. (Hat tip: mal.)

Religion of Blood and Body Parts

The London Arabic-language daily Al-Hayat published an interview with Algerian Islamozoid Nabil Sahrawi, also known as Abu Ibrahim Mustafa, a leader of the Salafi Group for Da’wa and Fighting, in which he lays out the theological doctrine of jihad in an especially colorful way: The Islamic State Will Arise Only Through Blood and Body Parts.

"Question: ‘After the September 11 raid, America put you on the list of organizations it is fighting. What is your response to this?’

“Sahrawi: ‘We classified ourselves even before America classified us. The world is divided into two parts: the part of belief, and the part of unbelief and falsehood. There is no third part. Anyone who desires Islam and a regime in accordance with the Qur’an is classified by the infidels on their list of enemies and opponents... Anyone who says ‘There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah,’ is on this list, and his turn will come, whether he is armed or not...

“Question: ‘Is there a final message you want to send to the Algerian Muslim people in these difficult times...?’

“Sahrawi: ‘The conflict in the world today is a conflict between belief and unbelief. The war in Palestine, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Algeria, in Chechnya, and in the Philippines is one war. This is a war between the camp of Islam and the camp of the Cross, to which the Americans, Zionists, Jews, their apostate allies, and others belong.’

“The goal of this war, which they falsely called a war on terror, is to prevent the Muslims from establishing an Islamic state whose regime will be in accordance with the Qur’an and the Sunna of the Prophet, and which will constitute a source of pride and strength for the Muslims. America and its allies the Jews, the Christians, and the apostates will not cease their war on Islam before they remove the last Muslim from his religion and bring him into apostasy. We must be wary of this terrible plot that the enemies of Islam aspire to realize.

“During this time, Jihad is one of the greatest personal commandments. Every Muslim must know that defending Islam and the Muslims in this war is an obligation incumbent upon him, with his soul, his money, and his tongue. Support for Muslims is an obligation. The Islamic State will not arise through means of slogans, demonstrations, parties, and elections, but through blood, body parts, and [sacrifice of] lives...”

Now Their Target is Europe

The Observer has a report on an investigation of Islamic terror cells in Europe, suggesting that the bill is coming due for years of appeasement and unregulated immigration from Islamic countries: Terror cells regroup - and now their target is Europe. (Hat tip: SecHumanist.)

Previously seen as a relative backwater in the war on terror, Europe is now in the frontline. ‘It’s trench warfare,’ said one security expert. ‘We keep taking them out. They keep coming at us. And every time they are coming at us harder.’

An investigation by The Observer has revealed the extent of the new networks that Islamic militants have been able to build in Europe since 11 September - despite the massive effort against them. The militants’ operations go far beyond the few individuals’ activities that sparked massive security alerts over Christmas and the new year. Interviews with senior counter-intelligence officials, secret recordings of conversations between militants and classified intelligence briefings have shown that militants have been able to reconstitute, and even enlarge, their operations in Europe in the past two years. The intelligence seen by The Observer reveals that:

* Britain is still playing a central logistical role for the militants, with extremists, including the alleged mastermind of last year’s bombings in Morocco, and a leader of an al-Qaeda cell, regularly using the UK as a place to hide. Other radical activists are using Britain for fundraising, massive credit card fraud, the manufacture of false documents and planning. Recruitment is also continuing. In one bugged conversation, a senior militant describes London as ‘the nerve centre’ and says that his group has ‘Albanians, Swiss [and] British’ recruits. He needs people who are ‘intelligent and highly educated’, he says and implies that the UK can, and does, supply them.

* Islamic terror cells are spreading eastwards into Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic for the first time, prompting fears of a new battleground in countries with weak authorities, powerful criminal gangs and endemic corruption in the years to come.

* Austria has become a central communications hub for Muslim extremists; France has become a key recruiting ground for fighters in Chechnya; and German groups, who often have extensive international links, are developing contacts with Balkan mafia gangs to acquire weapons.

The investigation has also revealed that, despite moves by the government there to crack down, Saudi Arabia remains the key source of funds for al-Qaeda and related militant groups.

Bob's Your Anchor

Proving once again that scrupulous fact-checking, honesty, and credibility are completely unnecessary qualifications for Arab journalism, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf—yes, Baghdad Bob—has been hired as a commentator on Abu Dhabi TV: Bob’s Your Anchor.

January 12, 2004 -- It’s the all-new Baghdad Bob - he’s cleaned up his act, dyed his hair and he’s back on the air.

Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi minister of disinformation who became famous for his absurd daily reports that Iraq was winning the war, has popped up on Arab television as a commentator - as these new exclusive photos show.

The fallen regime spin-doctor was hired by Abu Dhabi TV specifically to rant about his former boss and favorite subject: Saddam Hussein.

“Finding [Saddam] wasn’t surprising. However, the way he was arrested was insulting,” al-Sahhaf said in a TV interview the day after the former Iraqi dictator was captured.

“We never expected that he would be arrested alive. We all were expecting that Saddam would kill himself rather than be [caught].

“He said that we would not surrender at all; rather, they [the United States] could only take us as dead bodies.”

The WMD Road to Damascus

Since shortly before the Iraq War, we’ve been hearing reports that Iraq smuggled their weapons of mass destruction to Syria. Today at National Review Jim Geraghty writes about an exiled Syrian journalist who claims to have very specific knowledge about these smuggling operations: The WMD Road to Damascus.

One of the most troubling and intriguing theories has been the idea that Hussein smuggled them to Syria or some other nation before the war began. Now Nizar Nayyouf, an exiled Syrian journalist now living in Paris, claims to have contact with a Syrian military intelligence official who is confirming that theory.

Speaking to the British television station ITN Friday, Nayyouf said that his source says he knows three sites where Iraq’s WMDs are kept.

“It has been confirmed that the Iraqi weapons which were smuggled into Syria through the intermediary of Colonel Zu Alhima Shalish are now located in three different places,” the Syrian source reportedly wrote in Arabic to Nayyouf. “The first of these places is a tunnel on the mountain slope near the village of Baida, which is situated two kilometers from Misyaf. This place is under the jurisdiction of Department 489, which deals with coded messages and documents.”

“The second of these places is a factory owned by the air force in the village of Tal Sinan, which is situated between the two cities of Hamma and Salmiyah. The third of these places is the town of Shinshar, which is situated 40 kilometers to the south of Hums and 3 kilometers to the east of the Damascus-Hums highway. There are underground tunnels there, which belong to Brigade 661 of the air force. This is a reconnaissance force. These tunnels are several meters deep.”

Nayyouf’s source contends that the weapons, likely missile parts and chemicals, were transferred in large wooden boxes and barrels, under the supervision of Colonel Zu Alhima Shalish and his nephew Assef, who works for the Albashair Company, which is owned by the Assads and has offices in Beirut, Damascus, and Baghdad. The source says that this company was also responsible for the smuggling of Iraqi oil to Syria and providing weapons to Saddam’s regime.

The source also shared one more interesting detail: the weapons were smuggled across the border to these sites in ambulances.

The O'Neill/Suskind Hoax

Yesterday CBS News heavily promoted a new book by Ron Suskind, featuring allegations by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill that the Bush administration was planning to go to war against Iraq even before September 11.

Today Power Line reports an email from author Laurie Mylroie, revealing that the document used in support of the O’Neill allegations was seriously misrepresented: Lid Blown Off O’Neill/Suskind Hoax.

"In his appearance this evening on ‘60 Minutes,’ Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, based to a large extent on information from former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill, made an astonishing, very serious misstatement.

“Suskind claimed he has documents showing that preparations for the Iraq war were well underway before 9-11. He cited--and even showed--what he said was a Pentagon document, entitled, ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraq Oilfield Contracts.’ He claimed the document was about planning for post-war Iraq oil (CBS’s promotional story also contained that claim).

“But that is not a Pentagon document. It’s from the Vice-President’s Office. It was part of the Energy Project that was the focus of Dick Cheney’s attention before the 9/11 strikes.

“And the document has nothing to do with post-war Iraq. It was part of a study of global oil supplies. Judicial Watch obtained it in a law suit and posted it, along with related documents, on its website. Indeed, when this story first broke yesterday, the Drudge Report had the Judicial Watch document linked (no one at CBS News saw that, so they could correct the error, when the show aired?)”

NYT Removes Interview With Assad

David Gerstman of Israpundit has discovered yet another possible case of subterfuge on the part of the New York Times, where they suddenly “disappeared” a very inflammatory interview with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and are now stonewalling Gerstman’s inquiries. Donald Luskin has the details, including Gerstman’s speculations on why the Times might have done this.

PA Demands Journalists Call Murderers "Martyrs"

The Palestinian Authority now demands that journalists refer to all Palestinians killed in the Arab-Israeli conflict as shaheed—“martyrs.” (Hat tip: C.S.)

Yussef al-Qazzaz, a senior official with the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, lashed out at Palestinian journalists for not placing the interests of their people above everything else, and dubbed some of them “primitive.”

Qazzaz’s attack was directed mostly at Palestinian correspondents who work for the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya 24-hour news channel, who have been using the term “dead” instead of “martyred” when referring to Palestinians killed in the ongoing violence.

PA officials have accused the journalists of displaying “insensitivity” by not referring to the victims as martyrs. A spate of suicide bombings in Riyadh and other parts of Saudi Arabia has prompted Al-Arabiya to start referring to these attacks as terrorist actions.

The officials claim the station has also instructed its correspondents in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to stop describing Palestinians killed in the confrontation with Israel or in suicide bombings as martyrs. The move, they say, is designed to avoid glorification of gunmen and suicide bombers who attack Saudi interests.

“Most of the correspondents of the Arab TV and radio stations need to be educated politically and culturally about the internal [Palestinian] situation,” said Qazzaz. “The task of educating these journalists should be the responsibility of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, although some of its heads also need to be educated.

“The Ministry of Information should also be entrusted with educating these correspondents by telling them which phrases are used in our political life. We don’t understand why some Arab satellite stations are no longer using the term martyrs.”

Qazzaz said he cannot understand how some Palestinian journalists make harmful remarks to their people at a time when even foreign journalists are careful not to alienate the PA.

Of course they’re careful; because, in the time-honored Palestinian fashion, if journalists don’t follow the PA’s line things like this happen:

Last week, Al-Arabiya’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip, Seif al-Din Shahin, was attacked and wounded as he was driving his car in the center of Gaza City. He said the attackers identified themselves as members of Fatah.

Shahin, 35, said five gunmen fired warning shots into the air, intercepted his car, dragged him out, and beat him with the butts of their rifles for nearly 10 minutes. The attackers told Shahin they were unhappy with his coverage of paramilitary celebrations in the Gaza Strip marking the 39th anniversary of the founding of Fatah.

Someone Tell Doctor Dean

Since the capture of Saddam Hussein, attacks against coalition forces in Iraq have dropped by 22%.

U.S. military officers say the decline in attacks, after months of growing intensity, is the first proof that Saddam’s capture and recent U.S. offensives have dampened, but not eliminated, resistance to the occupation.

The average number of daily attacks fell to 18 in the four weeks since Dec. 14, when the coalition announced that Saddam had been captured the day before. In the four weeks before Saddam was found, attacks averaged 23 a day.

According to Howard Dean, the capture of Saddam has not made Americans safer—but clearly, the facts tell a different story.

French Foil Biological Attack

French police say they have foiled a biological poison attack by arresting members of a terror cell linked to a radical imam in Lyon: Al-Qaida terror plot foiled, say French police. (Hat tip: phillippe.)

An interior ministry official said evidence from Islamist militants arrested in the Lyon area last week made it “very plain” that an attack with the deadly botulism or ricin toxins was being actively prepared.

The eight suspects arrested on Tuesday were mainly relatives of Menad Benchellali, the son of a radical imam in the Lyon suburb of Venisseux, who has been in jail since December 2002, when he was arrested during a police investigation of French Islamists’ efforts to send young Muslim volunteers to fight the Russian forces in Chechnya.

The ministry official, who asked not to be named, confirmed a report in Le Monde that the suspects admitted to the police that Mr Benchellali was a chemicals expert who had been trained in poison-making in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and was actively trying to produce a botulism toxin and ricin.

He had tested his chemicals on animals, they said.

Mr Benchellali’s arrest was said at the time to have thwarted suicide bomb attacks on Russian targets in Paris, including the embassy.

But Tuesday’s arrests have proved a “goldmine” of further “unexpected but unsettling” evidence, the official said.

“After last year’s arrests we thought we were dealing with a group planning bomb attacks on Russian interests, and possibly supplying false papers, money and lodgings to Chechens,” an investigator said.

“It now seems a cell around the Benchellali family was trying to manufacture chemical and biological weapons for attacks around Europe.”

This is another wake-up call to Europe. When one of these groups finally succeeds in perpetrating such an attack (and eventually, one will), it will be very interesting to see the reaction from the Europeans—who seem to believe that if they continue feeding the crocodile of radical Islam, it will eat them last.

sunday, january 11, 2004

The Kilroy-Silk Affair Widens

British dhimmis are falling over themselves trying to stick it to Robert Kilroy-Silk for his criticism of the Arab world, demanding that he abase himself before the extremist Muslim Council of Britain, and threatening that his comments could damage the owner of the Sunday Express: Kilroy, the ‘24-carat martyr’, urged to make amends. (Hat tip: NC.)

As the row continued yesterday, legal and regulatory experts said Mr Kilroy-Silk’s rant could damage the chances of the Sunday Express owner, Richard Desmond, buying The Daily Telegraph.

With a new “public interest test” due to be applied before a media tycoon can buy another paper, the matter could have a “hugely unhelpful” impact, they said.

Trevor Phillips, the head of the Commission for Racial Equality, insisted: “What I think Robert could do, because let me be clear I don’t think he is a racist, but I think that this kind of nonsense - trying to defend the indefensible - is throwing him into disrepute ... What Robert could do is issue a proper apology, not for the fact that people were offended, but for saying this stuff in the first place.

“Secondly he could learn something about Muslims and Arabs - they gave us maths and medicine - and thirdly he could use some of his vast earnings to support a Muslim charity. Then I would say he has been properly contrite.”

Mr Phillips said Mr Kilroy-Silk should acknowledge that what he had said was “wrong, incorrect and very offensive".

With all this talk about Kilroy-Silk’s comments being “incorrect,” not one of his critics has bothered to attempt to factually refute his statements.

UPDATE: An Arab columnist for the most hate-filled, bigoted newspaper in Britain, the Guardian, calls for Robert Kilroy-Silk to be prosecuted for “incitement to racial hatred:” Islamophobia should be as unacceptable as racism. This one is really over the top, and actually attacks Kilroy-Silk for his criticism of the Islamic death sentence on Salman Rushdie:

During the Salman Rushdie affair in 1989, he wrote that if Britain's "resident ayatollahs" could not "accept British values and laws then there is no reason at all why the British should feel any need, still less compulsion, to accommodate theirs". Buoyed by the support of liberals in a debate that was wrongly characterised as free speech versus censorship he went much further. "Muslims everywhere behave with equal savagery. They behead criminals, stone to death female - only female - adulteresses, throw acid in the faces of women who refuse to wear the chador, mutilate the genitals of young girls and ritually abuse animals," he wrote for the Daily Express in 1995.

Sharon Criticized From the Right

A huge crowd turned out today in Israel to protest Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle settlements in the disputed territories: 100,000 rally for settlements.

More than 100,000 pro-settlement activists turned out Sunday night for a demonstration in Tel Aviv in a frontal assault on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s promises to uproot settlements and unilaterally withdraw from the territories.

The rally, bumped up a day due to a forecast of rain for Monday, signaled the opening salvo in a multi-front campaign that aims to convince Israelis, primarily Sharon, the evacuation of settlements and unilateral withdrawal would be perilous mistakes.

The demonstrators representing a wide swath from the Likud rightward – some of them Sharon’s closest confidants, including Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin – gathered under the banner of “Israel will not bend.”

Construction and Housing Minister Effi Eitam (National Religious Party) took the first swipe at Sharon, saying that in a time when Syria, Iraq, Libya, and Osama bin Laden are all being crushed, “just now we hear from you the sounds of weakness? We will not stand by you if you expel Jews, children from their homes.”

Israel has red lines, said Eitam, the highest ranking member of the government present, and “those red lines are the blood of hundreds of women, children, and aged.”

He then dropped a political bombshell, saying that should Sharon choose to “uproot settlements,” the NRP would leave the government.

Howard Dean, In An Angry Mood

Speaking of Doctor Dean, in Iowa today he blew his stack at a retiree who dared to criticize his mean-spirited negativity and seething persona: Iowa Voter Blasts Dean for Knocking Bush.

Dale Ungerer, a retiree from Hawkeye, Iowa, lectured Dean for nearly three minutes near the end of a forum aimed at winning voters for Iowa’s Jan. 19 caucuses.

Ungerer accused Dean and other Democratic presidential hopefuls of dividing the country by bashing Bush instead of outlining their own plans and showing respect for authority.

“Please tone down the garbage, the mean mouthing, the tearing down of your neighbor and being so pompous,” Ungerer told the former Vermont governor and Democratic front-runner. “You should help your neighbor and not tear him down.”

“George Bush is not my neighbor,” Dean replied.

“Yes, he is,” Ungerer said, to which Dean responded: “You sit down. You’ve had your say and now I’m going to have my say.”

UPDATE: al Reuters has more detail on Dean's latest mouth-foot convergence: Voter Triggers Dean's Much-Talked About Temper. (Hat tip: NC.)

But when Ungerer stood and tried to interrupt, Dean shouted: "You sit down. You had your say. Now I'm going to have my say."

The crowd cheered and Ungerer sat.

"George Bush has done more to harm this county right here with unfunded mandates, standing up for corporations who take over the farmers' land, making it impossible for middle class people to make a real living, sending our kids to Iraq without telling us the truth first about why they went," Dean said.

"It's not the time to put up any of this 'love thy neighbor' stuff ... I love my neighbor, but I'll tell you I want THAT neighbor back in Crawford, Texas where he belongs."

Howard Dean, In a Mellow Mood

As a lifelong fan of inadvertently funny music, the kind of music that’s so bad it wraps around and becomes genius, Songs for Dean has been keeping me amused for the past half hour. (Hat tip: Cooper.) My favorite in this stellar collection has to be the “Howard Dean Rap,” featuring the pseudo-urban stylings of “Noah D.”

Stop - and stare, say hey, lookie there!
It’s a doctor! Where? And he knows health care!
And a Governor who’s been elected five straight times
You know we gonna spread our message makin’ sure that y’all realize

P to the O to the double L
Put ‘em all together and what does that spell?
Doom for George Bush, as his numbers feel
Boom boom for Dean, when my man Howard gives ‘em hell!

BBC Double Standard

Here’s a very good illustration of the utterly blatant bias of the BBC, who suspend one contributor for criticizing the Arab world, while winking at another contributor calling Jewish settlers “Nazis” who should be killed: BBC chiefs accused of ‘double standards’ over TV presenter. (Hat tip: Filtrat.)

Tom Paulin, the poet and Oxford don, has continued to be a regular contributor to BBC2’s Newsnight Review arts programme, despite being quoted in an Egyptian newspaper as saying that Jews living in the Israeli-occupied territories were “Nazis” who should be “shot dead".

Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP, said he found it hard to understand why the BBC had moved against Mr Kilroy-Silk but had not taken any action against Mr Paulin.

“I am not defending anything Mr Kilroy-Silk has said, but I was greatly upset by what Mr Paulin said, and I think the rules should apply to people equally,” said Mr Dismore. “Mr Paulin said awful things about Israel and Jewish people. He should have been kept off BBC screens while his own comments were investigated. I was surprised that that did not happen. It smacks of double standards on the part of the BBC.”

Mr Paulin made his comments in the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al-Ahram almost two years ago, saying that US-born settlers in the occupied territories should be shot dead. “I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them,” he said, adding: “I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all.”

Within days of the article appearing, a number of academic institutions, including Harvard, cancelled planned readings by the poet. The BBC, however, did not seek to remove him from Newsnight Review.

Arab Paranoid Conspiracy Watch

The latest irrational conspiracy theory to come out of the twisted paranoia of the Arab world: “Secret Zionist” gangs are blowing up synagogues in France to boost immigration to Israel.

The following are the words of Hafez Barghouty on PA TV:

“The Secret Zionists gangs have been trying, and are acting in France in the same way they used to act in Arab countries- Iraq, Egypt and Morocco, blowing up... Jewish synagogues in order to force them [the Jews] to immigrate [to Israel]. So after the attack on a synagogue, the Israeli ambassador in France called for all the Jews in France to immigrate [to Israel]...

...There are Israeli or Zionist gangs that carry out terror attacks against Jews and force them to immigrate [to Israel], because Israel suffers from emigration.”

Brits Foil Suicide Bombing

British police headed off a possible terrorist attack before Christmas, arresting an Algerian who was apparently preparing himself for a suicide bombing: UK Police Arrest Man in Suicide Bomb Plan.

LONDON (Reuters) - British police arrested a man before Christmas who was suspected of preparing himself for a suicide bombing and who had links to al Qaeda, the Sunday Times newspaper said.

The paper, which did not give a source, said the man in his late twenties was arrested after leaving notes to his family saying he planned to “martyr” himself. The paper said he was an Algerian asylum seeker.

The man had also shaved off all his body hair -- a religious act often observed by would-be suicide bombers so that they are “clean” before entering heaven, the paper said.

“I hope you treat me as a hero and a martyr,” the man wrote to his sister and mother.

Iran: Nukes Are a Basic Human Right

Iranian “president” Mohammad Khatami says if the US wants better relations with Iran, they should accept Iran’s “right” to a nuclear program.

Wow.

Khatami singled out U.S. criticism of Iran’s nuclear program. Iran says its nuclear facilities are geared to producing electricity, not bombs and last month signed an international protocol binding it to snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.

“They have wrongly accused us of having nuclear weapons,” Khatami told reporters after a cabinet meeting in Tehran.

“We have signed the additional protocol and if the Americans have good will now they should take back their words and also accept our legal right to have peaceful nuclear technology under the supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

Seething and Whining Continues

Absolutely no signs of introspection whatsoever at a conference on US-Islamic relations in Doha, Qatar, where Islamic scholars and hereditary dictators are once again seething and whining obsessively about a small country the size of New Jersey: U.S.-Islamic Conference Opens in Qatar.

Muslims criticized the United States for its strategic relationship with the Jewish state — and an American panelist said those ties would never change.

Opening the three-day conference organized by the Washington-based Brookings Institution, panelists noted that the United States and the Muslim world cannot afford to keep drifting apart.

“If we cannot contain and reverse the growing chasm between the West — and especially the United States — and the Islamic world, it will become the underlying structural flaw that will worsen many other problems,” including terrorism, the Middle East problem and global poverty, said panelist Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The Islamic world wonders why the international community does not put greater pressure on Israel to force a withdrawal from occupied Arab land, and why “all pressures fall on the Arab side alone,” said Qatar’s emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

“We believe that it is necessary for the United States, the sponsor of the peace process, and the international community, to further their efforts to end the continuing violence (in Israel),” Sheik Hamad said in Arabic.

“Stupid Americans! Why can’t you see how much better the world would be if you’d only let us wipe out those evil Jews?”

Of course, no mention was made of the Islamic world’s four wars of annihilation launched against Israel, or the insane antisemitic hatred preached by their spiritual leaders, or their support for a disgusting Palestinian terror war.

Turning A Blind Eye

You may have heard of the epidemic of rapes in Australia, committed by Muslim immigrants from Middle Eastern countries. But former Sydney detective Tim Priest writes that it’s going to get much worse, helped along by the multiculturalists: Don’t turn a blind eye to terror in our midst. (Hat tip: Baldy.)

The problems in Paris’s Muslim communities are being replicated in Sydney at an alarming rate. Paris has seen an explosion of rapes committed by Middle Eastern males against French women in the past 15 years. The rapes are almost identical to those in Sydney. The rapes are committed not only for sexual gratification: there are also deep racial undertones, along with threats of violence and retribution.

What is more alarming is the identical reaction among some sections of the media and criminologists in France: they downplay the race factor and even gang up on those who try to draw attention to the widening gulf between Middle Eastern youths and the rest of French society.

That is what we are seeing in Australia. The usual suspects come out of their institutions and libraries to downplay and even cover up the growing problem of Middle Eastern crime. Why? Because these same social engineers have attempted to redefine our society. They have experimented with all manner of institutions – from prisons to mental institutions and, recently, policing. ...

In February 2001, when I appeared before an inquiry into Cabramatta’s crime problem, I gave evidence which at the time attracted the usual claque of ratbags from the ABC and their associates at The Sydney Morning Herald, as well as Sydney’s Radio 2UE broadcaster Mike Carlton. I said that Sydney is going to be torn apart by gang warfare the likes of which we have never seen. Last year I was finally proved right, but I take no comfort from that. However, the criticism I received was unprecedented. I was a nutter, a liar, a racist, a disgruntled detective.

Of course, the critics still refuse to concede that we have a problem. They are still clinging to the multicultural theme. To highlight the problems with Middle Eastern communities in Sydney is to tear down the multicultural facade.

The amount of money spent on the multicultural industry beggars belief. It is a lucrative position for many. Governments pour huge money into anything that includes the word multicultural. Indeed, the police department, like other government departments, spends vast amounts on multicultural issues, jobs, education packages, legal advice, public relations and the rest. Having expended large amounts of money on multiculturalism, they are hardly likely to criticise it. Those that feed off multiculturalism are almost certainly not likely to question it.

Premature Explodulation

Another would-be Palestinian Arab mass murderer succeeded today only in blowing up himself: No virgins for Iyad.

A bomb carried by a Palestinian exploded prematurely on Sunday in a West Bank village near the settlement of Immanuel, the army said. The bomber, identified by relatives as 19-year-old Iyad Bilal Masri, was killed in the explosion.

The army said it believed the bomber was on his way to Israel to blow himself up when the “work accident” occurred.

saturday, january 10, 2004

Possible Mustard Gas Found in Iraq

Danish and Icelandic troops may have discovered hidden Iraqi shells filled with mustard gas today; this release from the Associated Press shows how the media elites have decided to play it: Blister Agent Found in Old Iraqi Shells. See, the chemical weapons were old. Why, the Iraqis probably buried ‘em and forgot all about ‘em.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Danish and Icelandic troops have uncovered a cache of 36 shells buried in the Iraqi desert, and preliminary tests showed they contained a liquid blister agent, the Danish military said Saturday.

The 120mm mortar shells are thought to be left over from the eight-year war between Iraq and neighboring Iran, which ended in 1988, said U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.

The shells were found by Danish engineering troops and Icelandic de-miners near Al Quarnah, north of the city of Basra where Denmark’s 410 troops are based, the Danish Army Operational Command said in a written statement.

The shells were wrapped in plastic but had been damaged, and they appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the statement said.

It said British experts did a preliminary test and said the shells contained “blister gas,” but did not elaborate.

Nazimedia Meltdown Accelerates

Arizona Indymedia is down.

Israel Indymedia is down.

“Palestine” Indymedia is down.

Airports on High Alert

The terror threat level has been lowered nationwide, but several US airports are still on high alert: Terror threat level still ‘high’ at eight US airports.

Announcing the lowering of the threat level Friday, after 19 days of intense nationwide security precautions, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said that the United States would however “maintain particular vigilance around some critical resources and locales,” The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Without giving details he said most of the increased security would involve “the private sector” and this included airlines.

Sources told the paper those facilities included eight airports, including those in Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

Arab Press Freedom Watch Backs Kilroy-Silk

The head of Arab Press Freedom Watch, Ibrahim Nawar, comes out in support of BBC reporter Robert Kilroy-Silk and his comments about the Arab world: Kilroy-Silk is right about the Middle East, say Arabs. (Hat tip: Peter Verkooijen.)

"I fully support Robert Kilroy-Silk and salute him as an advocate of freedom of expression. I would like to voice my solidarity with him and with all those who face the censorship of such a basic human right.

“I agree with much of what he says about Arab regimes. There is a very long history of oppression in the Arab world, particularly in the states he mentions: Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, as well as in Sudan and Tunisia. ...

“I would also agree with Mr Kilroy-Silk’s comments on the oppression of women by totalitarian Arab states. Women in Saudi Arabia even have to struggle for the right to walk unaccompanied in the street or to drive a car.

“It is worth remembering, however, that there are individual Arabs who do work hard to defend human rights and one cannot make a blanket generalisation about Arab people. We support Mr Kilroy-Silk’s comments specifically in reference to Arab regimes because we are against the oppressive policies supported by rulers in the Arab world.

“I condemn the decision to axe his programme and call for the BBC to reinstate him forthwith. Indeed, the treatment of Mr Kilroy-Silk is very worrying because it indicates that censorship is now taking place in liberal, Western countries like the United Kingdom. These countries should instead be setting an example to the oppressive Arab regimes that violate freedom of expression on a daily basis.”

That last is a particularly salient point. Rather than knuckling under to the whining demands of extremist, professional victim groups like the Muslim Council of Britain, the Western press must start to find its critical voice and tell the truth about the world situation. No one is served by denying reality, least of all the oppressed masses of Arabs themselves. The real danger of groups like MCB, CAIR, AMC, and many others is that they are trying to take advantage of our Western concern for civil rights and fairness, to institute the same repressive censorship that dominates the Arab world and stifles their societies.

Pathetic Nazimedia Meltdown Watch

Here’s the story of two star-crossed lovers, Indymedia moderators, whose love affair went very wrong. So wrong a professional mediator failed to resolve it. So wrong it’s destroying the San Francisco chapter of Indymedia: Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network from SF Bay Area IMC. (Hat tip: Jheka.) Read the comments for the full pathetic tale.

And remember, these are the people who are going to save the world, stop war, and end racism.

Cycling Diary

All right now! Did 54 miles on the carbon fiber torture device today; rode down into Palos Verdes and had lunch at the light house park just south of Hawthorne Boulevard. And then I come back and there’s a morally blinkered ISM tool babbling about “Zionazis” all over the place in our comments, like a wind-up Chatty Ahmed doll. Begone, Morlock!

Palestinians: We're A State! Nyah Nyah!

The Palestinian Authority practices “I know you are, but what am I?” diplomacy, in a laughable new announcement that they have the “right” to unilaterally declare themselves a state: Palestinians Insist on Right to Declare State.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - A top Palestinian decision-making body on Saturday voiced its right to unilaterally declare a state in the West Bank and Gaza amid Israeli threats to take stand-alone measures of its own.

The executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), in a Friday meeting, also named Arab East Jerusalem, seized by Israel in 1967 and annexed in a move rejected internationally, as the capital of a Palestinian state.

“The Palestinian leadership, in line with international legitimacy and signed agreements...has the right to declare a independent democratic Palestine on all the territories that were occupied (by Israel) since 1967,” the PLO executive committee said in a statement.

Nazimedia Meltdown Watch

The peace lovers at the San Francisco branch of Indymedia are fighting “visciously” [sic] among themselves: Open Letter to the Global Indymedia Network from SF Bay Area IMC.

Our IMC has now split into two groups. When a few of the tech members began to have personal problems with other members of the collective, these tech members demanded a split of the collective. The resulting dynamics within the group continued to worsen. It created an environment that made it difficult to continue working together and also discouraged potential new people from joining the collective. While most members of the collective opposed any kind of split, the aforementioned tech members insisted that they would split anyway, because they wanted to and because they could.

The tech members who wanted the split also had convinced the rest of the group to agree to move the site to the linefeed.org server. They claimed that this was merely a technical issue which would enable the site to run faster.

The members of the splitting group also began making viscious and false accusations about other members of the collective. This even went as far as accusing some members of being security risks and/or police informants.

Bwahahahaha!

friday, january 09, 2004

The Global Ambitions of Hizb'Allah

LGF reader “mad as hell” points out a thought-provoking article about the Iran-Lebanon connection, by Gal Luft of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security: Hizballahland.

Formed in 1982 by a group of young graduates of Shiite seminaries in Iran, Hizballah took as its main goal the exporting of Iran’s Khomeini revolution to Lebanon. Although its primary aim was to drive Israel out of Lebanon--Israeli forces had invaded the country in 1982 in order to disrupt and destroy Yasir Arafat’s PLO army, which had a death grip on the south--it was not Israel but the U.S. that became the first casualty of the organization and of its weapon of choice, the suicide attack. In 1983, a Hizballah activist killed 63 people at the U.S. embassy in Beirut; another drove a truck bomb into U.S. Marines headquarters, murdering 241 American servicemen.

That was just the beginning; since the 1980’s, Hizballah has gone international. Its cells have been uncovered in Europe, Southeast Asia, and West Africa. In our own hemisphere, the so-called Triple Frontier or tri-border area along the junction of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil has offered a lucrative haven for the drug and arms trafficking, smuggling, counterfeiting, and other illicit activities that now provide a major source of Hizballah’s funding. And then there is North America. Prior to last December, when Ottawa banned Hizballah, Canada was another major base of fundraising, primarily through a car-theft ring. One of Nasrallah’s top men, Ayub Fawzi, who also appeared on the FBI’s list of 22 most wanted terrorists after 9/11, operated from Canada for several years; so did Muhammed Dbouk, head of a clandestine cell in Vancouver that bought military equipment for the organization.

In the U.S. itself, Hizballah activists enjoy, as the FBI has warned, “the capability to attempt terrorist attacks.” One operative, Muhammad Hammoud, led a recently uncovered cigarette-smuggling ring in North Carolina and Michigan. A graduate of Hizballah’s training camps in Lebanon, Hammoud managed to gain entry to the country using forged immigration documents; once here, he married an American woman and established a false identity. His cell purchased and sent it on to Lebanon dual-use equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, while he himself functioned as a “sleeper” terrorist, i.e., one who could easily be activated to help carry out an actual armed attack. Hammoud’s cell was discovered by sheer luck when an off-duty police officer, working as a security guard, noticed suspicious activity at a cigarette wholesaler in North Carolina. How many others like Hammoud are living in the U.S. is impossible to know.

Got One in Idaho

For quite some time we’ve been keeping an eye on the case of Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi citizen studying for a PhD in computer security at the University of Idaho; today he was indicted for a number of terror-related offenses: Saudi in Idaho Charged with Supporting Terrorism. (Hat tip: Cornholio.)

Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, a Saudi citizen who has been in custody since his arrest on Feb. 26, will be arraigned on Monday in U.S. District Court in Boise. If convicted, he could receive 15 years in federal prison.

A grand jury, a group of citizens which hears arguments from prosecutors, issued the charge. The indictment said Al-Hussayen, 34, set up Web sites for Islamic organizations that espoused violence against the United States and that he tried to raise funds and recruit new members for a violent holy war, or jihad, in Israel, Chechnya and elsewhere.

The indictment contends Al-Hussayen maintained bank accounts which he used to funnel at least $300,000 to the Islamic Assembly of North America. The government claims the group has raised and sent money to support terrorist-related activities starting in February 2000.

In previous hearings, defense attorneys said there was no evidence Al-Hussayen did anything other than give money to legitimate charities and do some basic Web site maintenance for Islamic organizations.

Friends, supporters, colleagues, and university officials have testified Al-Hussayen is a peaceful person who condemned the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and led a blood drive for victims. They said he has a strong desire to clear his name and finish his studies.

Idiotarian Finals Update

After 2,634 votes, Michael Moore has again assumed the lead in our final vote for the Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year 2003, with 26.6% of the ballots. You can’t hold the big man down!

Rachel Corrie is making a surprisingly strong showing, though, with 25.2%, and could still surprise us all. It’s too early to count her out; there are more than two days of voting remaining.

Saddam: An Enemy POW

Interesting move. The first person in the “War on Terror” to be formally declared an enemy prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention is Saddam Hussein.

The Pentagon’s first official statement about the 66-year-old captive’s legal status means Saddam is due a host of rights spelled out by the Geneva Convention on treatment of prisoners of war.

“Saddam’s status is that he is an enemy prisoner of war. The lawyers have determined that,” chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters late on Friday, adding Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was informed of the determination earlier in the day.

The treaty requires that the International Committee of the Red Cross have access to POWs. Christophe Girod, the senior ICRC official in Washington, said the organization was speaking with U.S. officials in Baghdad about gaining access to Saddam to check the conditions in which he is being held.

Hitlerfest Won By Stone

Iowahawk reveals that the far left “activists” at Moveon.org have a winner in their “Bush in 30 Seconds” commercial competition. Facing stiff competition from several other Hitler-themed entries, the prize goes to an Oliver Stone remake of a classic 1963 science fiction horror film: MoveOn Greenlights ‘They Saved Hitler’s Brain’.

In the film’s opening scene, family patriarch Senator Prescott Bush (James Brolin) travels to Berlin in 1945 on a clandestine mission to secure exile for his Nazi benefactors and to secure a VW dealership franchise for Kennebunkport. In a tense bunker meeting, Hitler (Ethan Hawke in a cameo) is beheaded by a jealous Eva Braun (Natalie Maines) after he reveals that he has been having an affair with Bush’s young daughter-in-law Barbara (Susan Sarandon). Quick thinking by Hitler’s crack staff of missile scientists (led by Jack Black) saves the severed head, which Bush wraps in his Brooks Brothers overcoat, and all escape as the bunker collapses under heavy Soviet artillery.

Back in the United States, Prescott Bush has different plans for Hitler’s noggin. In 1947 he sends his maniacal son George (Tim Robbins) to the top secret Area 51 facility near Roswell, New Mexico, where he is to supervise Nazi scientists in the ‘Project W’ - an unstoppable killing machine spliced from the brains of Hitler and captured intergalactic alien corpses.

Why We Are Safer

Charles Krauthammer takes a good swing at Howard Dean’s ridiculous comment that we are no safer after the capture of Saddam Hussein: Why We Are Safer.

Howard Dean may end up as a footnote in history, but he has already earned a place in the dictionary as the illustration accompanying the word smug. He claims that not only was he right that we are not safer with Saddam Hussein captured; not only has he already been vindicated by history, all 21 days of it; but he has been so obviously vindicated that his opponents, bowing to his superior wisdom, have stopped their attacks on this point.

They have not. He has been peppered with questions about this statement, most recently during the Jan. 4 Iowa debate. How could he not? The idea that we are not safer (a) because we are still losing troops and (b) because al Qaeda has not been extinguished, amounts to an open-court confession of cluelessness on foreign policy.

The first is the equivalent of saying that we were not safer after D-Day because we were still losing troops in Europe. In war, a strategic turning point makes you safer because it hastens victory, hastens the ultimate elimination of the hostile power, hastens the return home of the troops. It does not mean there is an immediate cessation, or even a diminution, of casualties (see: Battle of the Bulge).

The other part of the statement -- we cannot be safer because we are still threatened by terrorism -- is even more telling. It rests on the wider notion, shared not just by Dean but by many Democrats, that so long as al Qaeda is active, we are never any safer. This rests on the remarkable assumption that we have a single enemy in the world, al Qaeda, and that it and it alone defines “safety.”

The Same Old Thing

Victor Davis Hanson compares the Middle East to the Stables of Augeas: The Same Old Thing.

Thirty years ago, during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, most of the Europeans of the NATO alliance refused over-flight rights to the United States. We had only hours in which to aid Israel from a multifaceted surprise attack and were desperately ferrying tons of supplies to save it from literal extinction. In contrast, many of these same allies allowed the Soviet Union — the supposed common enemy from which thousands of Americans were based in Europe to protect Europeans — to fly over NATO airspace to ensure the Syrians sufficient material to launch and sustain their surprise attack on the Golan.

American “unilateralism” in those days meant acting alone not to let Israel perish. Had we gone “multilateral” and listened to our NATO allies — Germany, France, Greece, and Turkey all prohibited American planes from flying supplies in their space in transit to Tel-Aviv — there would be no Israel today at all. How odd that nations who asked for our protection from the Soviets would allow them to fly in supplies to the Syrian dictatorship, but not extend the same privilege of airspace to their protectors to save a democracy.

In exasperation at such a bad state of transatlantic relations, a furious — who else? — Ted Kennedy attacked Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, blaming us, not the Europeans’ peculiar taste for fascism over Israeli democracy, for “heedlessly creating a crisis in the Atlantic alliance.” Again, this was 30 years before his most recent outburst about a fraudulent war being cooked up in Texas. The New York Times, of course, then as now, echoed his concern.

BBC Disgrace of the Day

The BBC races to show their sensitivity and appease the seething, whining Muslim Council of Britain, suspending talk show host Robert Kilroy-Silk for daring to voice some simple truths about the Arab world: BBC halts Kilroy for race ‘rant’.

The Kilroy programme will be taken off air immediately following comments made by Robert Kilroy-Silk in a newspaper article, the BBC has announced.

The presenter branded Arabs “suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors” and asked what they had given to the world other than oil.

The BBC stressed the comments did not reflect its views as a broadcaster.

It said the BBC One programme would be suspended from Monday while it investigated the matter fully.

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) described the piece written by the discussion show host in last week’s Sunday Express as a “gratuitous anti-Arab rant".

Mr Kilroy-Silk’s article included comments saying the toppling of despotic regimes in the Middle East should be a war aim, and questioned the contribution of the Arab nations to world welfare and civilisation.

He referred to how Arabs “murdered more than 3,000 civilians on 11 September” and then “danced in the streets” to celebrate.

Our Friends the Saudis

It seems like the Arab News has been trying to appear more “moderate” lately, but the poisonous Jew-hatred simmering under the surface still erupts from time to time. Today’s “political cartoon” is one of their ugliest in quite a while. (Hat tip: Allah.)

Palestinians Training for the Olympics

An article by Molly Moore at the Washington Post sympathizes mightily with Palestinian athletes training for the Olympics: High Hurdles for Palestinian Athletes On Road to Olympics. (Hat tip: scaramouche.) The article dwells on how the Israeli occupation has damaged training facilities and prevented athletes from working together; every reference to Palestinian terrorism is qualified in that by-now-familiar formulation that casts doubt on Israel’s efforts to prevent their citizens from being murdered (while still being strictly correct):

...military operations in Palestinian cities and communities, which Israeli officials say have been taken to prevent suicide bombings and other attacks, have damaged some training facilities and sports clubs. ...

Although the Awisats’ community inside Jerusalem has been spared from military incursions, the large fence-and-wall complex that Israel is constructing through the West Bank, in what it says is an effort to reduce terrorism...

Now, no one could deny that it’s better for young Palestinians to train for the Olympics than to get fitted for explosive vests. But the ones responsible for the hardships these athletes must endure are the Palestinians themselves, who have turned their backs on every chance they ever had to resolve the conflicts, choosing instead a genocidal, annihilationist, and ultimately suicidal path, and forcing Israel to institute the checkpoints, roadblocks, and now the security fence.

The Washington Post is not doing the Palestinians any favors by continuing to enable their destructive behavior. This sort of writing without context produces gems like the following, that sound positive on the surface—unless you know a little more about the subject:

"I feel I am carrying extra responsibility,” said Raad, who lives in the Palestinian community of Jabal Mukaber, on the southeastern edge of Jerusalem, and is coached by his father. “If I succeed, I’m doing something positive not only for myself, but for my country.”

He paused, recognizing he has no official country. Jabbing his hands at the air almost as forcefully as he attacks the water when he swims, Raad said, “The goal is going for the championship, having the Palestinian national anthem played and everyone standing in its honor.”

Sounds heart-warming, doesn’t it? A Palestinian Rocky, excelling against all odds, a tear in his eye as his National Anthem plays and the crowd cheers.

But the Palestinian anthem, so blandly referred to by the Post as if it were a Middle Eastern Star Spangled Banner, is a perfect example of the real problem. How many national anthems can you name that sing about the joys of revenge?

My country, my country
My country, the land of my grand fathers
My country, my country
My country, my nation, the nation of eternity
With my determination, my fire and the volcano of my revenge
The longing of my blood to my land and home
I have climbed the mountains and fought the wars
I have conquered the impossible, and crossed the frontiers
My country, my country, the nation of eternity
With the resolve of the winds and the fire of the guns
And the determination of my nation in the land of struggle
Palestine is my home, Palestine is my fire, Palestine is my revenge and the land of eternal
My country, my country, the nation of eternity
I swear under the shade of the flag
To my land and nation, and the fire of pain
I will live as a guerrilla, I will go on as guerrilla, I will expire as guerrilla until I will be back
My country, my country, the nation of eternity

UPDATE: LGF reader ZBeeblebrox brings up another point about the Washington Post’s context-free writing; how can you do a piece about Palestinians at the Olympics and not even mention the mass murder perpetrated by Palestinians at the 1972 Olympics in Munich?

thursday, january 08, 2004

New Space Exploration Plans

As a long-time space exploration cheerleader, when I heard about President Bush’s newly announced missions to Mars and the Moon ...

Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively reinvigorate the space program, which has been demoralized by a series of setbacks, including the space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush’s announcement would come in the middle of next week.

Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.

Many insiders had speculated he might set forth goals at the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ famed flight last month in North Carolina. Instead, he said only that America would continue to lead the world in aviation.

Earlier, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush in Florida that the president would make an announcement about space next week, but he declined to give details.

... I immediately clicked over to Rand Simberg to see what he had to say.

Weapons Flow From Iran to Hizb'Allah

The Jerusalem Post reports that Iran and Syria have been using the massive airlift of relief supplies for the Iranian earthquake to hide weapons shipments to Hizb’Allah. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

Taking advantage of the massive airlift of humanitarian aid to earthquake victims in Iran, Syria has reportedly allowed Teheran to resume their supplies of weapons to Hizbullah through Damascus.

According to Channel 1, cargo planes filled with weapons began landing in the Syrian capital last week brimming with weapons for the Iranian-backed Hizbullah organization. It was the first time since the Syrians halted the weapons flow under American pressure prior to the invasion of Iraq a year ago.

Sources in the Defense Ministry confirmed the reports, calling it a “cynical manipulation of humanitarian aid". They said that there has always been a trickling of weapons and propaganda to the Hizbullah but that the weapons transferred recently were larger quantities than in the past.

Until then the Iranians had delivered weapons to Hizbullah through weekly flights into Damascus.

Following the deadly earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam and the subsequent worldwide airlift, the Syrians reportedly dispatched a number of cargo planes to Iran under the guise of humanitarian aid.

Forbidden Iran

Tonight, January 8, at 9 pm, PBS’s Frontline show will be Forbidden Iran, about the Iranian Islamic government’s reign of terror and brutal suppression of student uprisings.

In July 2003, Canadian journalist Zara Kazemi was beaten to death in an Iranian prison for attempting to report a story that Iran’s hard-line, theocratic government didn’t want told.

In this edition of FRONTLINE/World, Canadian journalist Jane Kokan goes undercover in Iran to pick up the trail where Kazemi left off.

“The story I am after is the story Zara Kazemi died trying to tell,” Kokan says, “the underground student movement that’s taking on the mullahs.”

In “Forbidden Iran” --one of three segments in this edition of PBS’s international newsmagazine--Kokan risks her own safety to piece together evidence of a government-sponsored reign of terror against students calling for democratic reform. Traveling undercover as an archaeologist interested in ancient Iranian ruins, Kokan escapes the constant surveillance of the Iranian authorities to record exclusive interviews with students and activists who have been victims of the regime’s repression.

“Iran is a country violently split in two,” Kokan says. “It’s a harsh fundamentalist Islamic republic, but it’s also a young country: 70 percent of Iranians are under age 30. And they’ve had enough of the mullahs.”

Zerbisias: Idiotarian

At the Toronto Star, poor Antonia Zerbisias has the weight of the world on her shoulders, doing real journalism, damn it, and all those dastardly blog lizards won’t leave her alone! Why, sometimes the little upstarts even have the temerity to ... criticize her! The nerve! Zerbisias is out there, somewhere. (Hat tip: Mississauga Matt.)

Every day when I log on to my e-mail, I find at least 50 missives, mostly pro-Israel but increasingly pro-Palestinian as well, presenting their version of reality. Ugly debates rage over whether the Arabic-language news network Al Jazeera should be allowed into Canada because, quite frankly, some people don’t want its version of reality to be seen here. Entire Web sites spring up to monitor what journalists do, to call us “Idiotarians,” to condemn us as anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim, or to alert readers to bombard us with more e-mail. Other sites (memri.org) translate from Arabic what is claimed to be hateful daily news stories about Jews and Israel while other sites still (the newly launched aad-online.org) claim to do the same from Hebrew about Muslims and Arabs.

I think she’s secretly disappointed that she didn’t make the final round.

Survival of the Fittest

Here’s a fascinating interview with Israeli historian Benny Morris, conducted by a bleeding heart Ha’aretz liberal: Survival of the Fittest. (Hat tip: Benay.) Morris is a liberal himself, who has come to some hard realizations about the nature of Israel’s existential enemies, as shown in the following excerpt:

"There is a deep problem in Islam. It’s a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn’t have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien. A world that makes those who are not part of the camp of Islam fair game. Revenge is also important here. Revenge plays a central part in the Arab tribal culture. Therefore, the people we are fighting and the society that sends them have no moral inhibitions. If it obtains chemical or biological or atomic weapons, it will use them. If it is able, it will also commit genocide.”

I want to insist on my point: A large part of the responsibility for the hatred of the Palestinians rests with us. After all, you yourself showed us that the Palestinians experienced a historical catastrophe.

“True. But when one has to deal with a serial killer, it’s not so important to discover why he became a serial killer. What’s important is to imprison the murderer or to execute him.”

The ISM's Jihad Against Arabs

At FrontPage, Steven Plaut notices an ironic twist in the ongoing saga of the terror-enabling International Solidarity Movement, and their attempt to lionize member Tom Hurndall, shot by Israeli troops during a firefight with Palestinians: The ISM’s Jihad Against Arabs.

The other near-martyr of the ISM is less known in the U.S. but is being beatified as we speak in the UK. He is Tom Hurndall. Israeli soldiers were on a mission last April in the Gaza border town of Rafiah, from which all the tunnels used to smuggle arms and explosives enter from Egypt, when they came under PLO fire. Hurndall was there, like all ISM provocateurs, to interfere with Israel’s military operations against the terrorists. At the time of the shooting, Hurndall, along with other ISM members and local residents, planned to set up a “peace tent” on one of the nearby roads to prevent IDF tank patrols from using it.

When the firefight began, Hurndall ran out into the street and was hit by a bullet in the crossfire.  His supporters claim he was just trying to shoo some Arab children away from the battle zone.  Given ISM behavior in the past, it is at least as conceivable that he was planning to serve as a human shield for the terrorists doing the shooting. He was hit in the head and has been in a coma ever since.

Hurndall’s family and the ISM have gone on a crusade against Israel, claiming son Tom was intentionally shot down in cold blood. The same people have long claimed that Rachel Corrie was injured deliberately out of Israeli malice, rather than as a result of her own recklessness. These folks have never come up with a good reason for why Hurndall was running around in the middle of a firefight in the Gaza Strip in the first place, a firefight started by the very same Palestinian terrorists he came there to support and protect. 

But things have gotten “curiouser and curiouser." The Israel-bashing Left has been organizing pressure, including among U.S. and EU politicians, to lobby for the prosecution of any Israeli troops involved in the injuries of these far-Left “activists.” Now just imagine their frustration! The raison d’etre of the ISM is to protect those who wage attacks on Jews and delegitimize Zionism, but the main victim of their agitprop turns out to be a Bedouin Arab.

BBC Reporter Tells Truth, Muslims Seethe

The hair trigger offense sponges of the Muslim Council of Britain are pressuring the BBC to punish a reporter who wrote a column for the Sunday Express, in which he stated a few simple truths about the Arab world: Kilroy-Silk investigated for anti-Arab comments. (Hat tip: Morgan.)

And, to no one’s great surprise, it looks like the BBC will probably get on their knees and beg forgiveness.

The chat show host Robert Kilroy-Silk came under fire yesterday for attacking Arabs in a newspaper article at a time when the BBC’s other employees are being forbidden to express controversial views in the press.

In a column for the Sunday Express last weekend, headed We owe Arabs nothing, Kilroy-Silk said: “Apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the west - what do they contribute? Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I.

“What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb amputators, women repressors?”

A BBC spokeswoman said last night: “We are looking into how the Sunday Express column which Robert Kilroy-Silk writes in his capacity as a freelance fits with his on-screen work for the BBC.”

BBC guidelines introduced in the wake of the Hutton inquiry say that freelance writing by staff “should not bring the BBC into disrepute or undermine the integrity or impartiality of BBC programmes or presenters". ...

Several organisations complained yesterday that the content of Kilroy-Silk’s column was incompatible with his work for the BBC.

Describing him as “a man who positively revels in airing his anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views,” the Muslim Council of Britain urged the BBC to “take the necessary disciplinary action".

UPDATE: Here's the seething letter from the Muslim Council of Britain to the BBC: MCB Press Release. They have thoughtfully included the entire text of Kilroy-Silk's column, although they apparently formatted it with a cheese grater.

wednesday, january 07, 2004

Canadian Islamists Host a Neo-Nazi

On Monday, we noted reports that neo-Nazi William Baker had been invited to speak at a Muslim conference in Toronto titled “Reviving the Islamic Spirit.” Today Daniel Pipes has more details on Baker’s sordid past: Canadian Islamists host a neo-Nazi.

Baker was exposed in February 2002 in the Orange County Weekly in a major investigation by Stan Brin, titled “Hour of White Power: Reverend Robert H. Schuller relies on a man with ties to Neo-Nazis to build religious understanding.” Brin established Baker’s close ties to Willis Carto, the “dean of American neo-Nazi politics,” and revealed Baker’s many other insalubrious activities, including his chairmanship in 1984 of a neo-Nazi organization called the Populist Party. Soon after, the Crystal Cathedral’s Schuller expelled Baker and cut all ties to him.

But the news has not gotten out. William W. Baker stills gets invited to – and paid by – reputable institutions. In October 2003, Campus Watch exposed Baker’s presence at an event sponsored by the Muslim Student Association at the University of Pennsylvania.

Democrats Unlearn 9/11

Daniel Pipes really hits the nail on the head in this new article about the profoundly unserious attitudes of the Nine Dwarves and their fellow travelers: Democrats Unlearn 9/11.

For about a year, Republicans and Democrats agreed on the need vigorously to prosecute the war on terror.

No longer. Nearly all the Democratic presidential contenders as well as other heavyweight Democrats have spoken out against the war on terror, preferring it to be a police action against terror.

* Howard Dean, replying to a question that if bin Laden should be caught, whether to put him to death: “I’ve resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials.” (Some days later, under criticism, Dr. Dean shifted his position, saying “as an American I want to see he gets what he deserves, which is the death penalty.")

* Richard Gephardt: “I never felt it was inevitable that we had to go to war.”

* John Kerry: President George W. Bush wrongly “rushed into battle.”

* George Soros: “the war on terrorism cannot be won by waging war. ... Crime requires police work, not military action.”

* William Sloan Coffin: After 9/11, the U.S. government should have vowed “to see justice done, but by the force of law only, never by the law of force.”

Intifadah Street

James Taranto disagrees with my take on Egypt’s statements about the Camp David agreement being “a thing of the past.” He sees the tentative rapprochement between Iran and Egypt as more a part of a general trend toward gestures of peace in the Middle East, brought on by the Iraq War.

While I do agree with James’ major point—that there’s a real shakeup in Middle East politics, most of it beneficial to the US—what worries me about an Iran-Egypt alliance is that it looks less like a desire for peace, and more like a desire to unite against common enemies. For example, note that the initial move was taken by Iran, who renamed a street in Tehran from Khaled Islambouli Street—Islambouli was one of the assassins of Anwar Sadat—to Intifadah Street.

The Tehran City Council renamed Khaled Islambouli Street at a meeting Tuesday. Islambouli was the Egyptian army lieutenant who shot Sadat at a military parade in 1981. The street’s new name is Intifadah - after the violent Palestinian uprising against Israel, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

“The new name was approved by a majority of votes,” IRNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying. Asefi attended the council’s meeting.

“This is a step in the direction of detente and building confidence in international relations especially among Muslim countries on the basis of dignity, wisdom and national interests,” Asefi said.

Out of the Rathole

LGF reader Y&Y; pointed us at this incredible photo of Saddam Hussein immediately after he was pulled from the converted septic tank in which he was hiding:

Disclaimer: I went to Military.com and searched for the photo, but came up empty. So I’m not entirely sure whether this photo is genuine. It certainly looks realistic, though.

UPDATE: The photo is now featured on Military.com’s front page.

Idiotarian Finals Starting Over

I’ve just discovered that Michael Moore slipped to third place in our Idiotarian of the Year finals because of a bug in the latest revision of my polling application, so I’m reinitializing the poll; starting over, in human speak.

Since it was open less than 24 hours, and runs for five days, this seems like a fair solution. We wouldn’t want to cheat Mr. Moore out of a well-deserved one-year reign as King of the Idiotarians, if that’s what you, the voters, want.

France Looks for Nonexistent Terrorist

After rushing to deny any evidence of terrorism on the Air France flight canceled on Christmas Eve, the French are now quietly searching for a man who may have trained at a jihad camp in Afghanistan: France Seeks Traveler Who Missed Flight.

The man, who was ticketed for Air France flight 68 from Paris to Los Angeles on Dec. 24, was believed to have trained in Afghanistan, have ties to al-Qaida and carry a French passport, ABC television news reported, citing unidentified American officials.

The passenger also was feared to have been carrying a small bomb with components that might get past airport security, according to the ABC report.

French officials would not comment on those details.

“I confirm that we are looking for someone, but I can’t say more,” Justice Minister Dominique Perben said in an interview with RMC radio.

“What’s important when someone doesn’t take a plane is to know why he didn’t take it,” Perben said. [Ed. note: that last line is especially comical if you imagine it spoken with a French accent.] ...

Separately, French judicial officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators were looking for an Afghan man, Abdou Hai, whose name appears on a U.S. terrorism watch list.

His last name matches that of a passenger ticketed to board flight 68 but did not show up, the officials said. Investigators have not yet established whether the Afghan man and the absent passenger are the same person.

Please recall, also, that the US has accused France of bungling the investigation by announcing the security alert and letting the suspect get away.

Speaking of France, I see that the beleaguered Gallic nation is now at #2 in the Idiotarian of the Year finals—and Rachel Corrie has grabbed the #1 spot. In a surprise turn-around, Michael Moore has slipped to third place.

Muslim Newspaper Publishes Hate

A Canadian Muslim newspaper called The Miracle, distributed in mosques in British Columbia, has reprinted an antisemitic article by a mentally disturbed neo-Nazi racist that originally appeared at the pro-jihad web site Jihad Unspun: B.C. Muslim Newspaper Accused of Anti-Semitism. (Hat tip: Damian Penny.)

Copies of a B.C. Muslim newspaper have been turned over to the province’s hate crimes unit after it published an article accusing “the Jews” of everything from faking the Holocaust to staging the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. ...

“It isn’t Arabs lying about and guilt-tripping us with ‘the holocaust’ -- it is Jews,” the article reads. “It wasn’t Arabs who caused the Great Depression -- it was Jews. It wasn’t Arabs who started WWI -- it was Jews. It wasn’t Arabs who started WWII -- it was Jews.”

The Dec. 19 article by Edgar Steele of Idaho goes on to blame Jews for 81 other items, ranging from pedophilia and organized crime to “race-mixing,” militant feminism and “forcing us to allow homosexuals to lead Boy Scout troops.”

“It is appalling to see that a Canadian newspaper would even consider printing an article by Mr. Steele, whose earlier works include “In Defence of Racism,” a venomous piece on the purported intellectual inferiority of black people and their ‘propensity for violence and primal satisfaction,’ and “It’s the Jews, Stupid,” a particularly noxious treatise blaming the Jews for all things nefarious past, present and future,” said Keith Landy, the president of the Canadian Jewish Congress.

The Miracle, published in Delta, B.C., with a circulation of about 2,500, says on its editorial page it is dedicated to “Islamic brotherhood” and bringing “harmony amongst all Muslim and other communities.”

Chief editor Nusrat Hussain said he had no regrets about publishing the rant against Jews. “We try to keep freedom of speech and not necessarily that we agree with the article and that is what Canada is about.”

The latest edition claims the capture of Saddam Hussein was a hoax.

tuesday, january 06, 2004

Egypt Renounces Camp David

Following up on the impending Egypt/Iran alliance, LGF reader Baldy points out an article with more extensive quotes from Egyptian foreign minister Ahmad Maher, making it very clear that Egypt no longer considers itself bound by the terms of the Camp David agreements: Maher says Camp David an issue of the past between Egypt and Iran.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmad Maher said in Cairo on Sunday that Cairo considers the issue of Camp David as belonging to the past, stressing that Egypt is now eager to promote ties with the Islamic Republic, IRNA reported.

Maher, in an interview with IRNA and the Central News Bureau, said Egypt considers the case of the Camp David Accords as closed, stressing that the interest of Tehran and Cairo today is in the promotion of mutual cooperation.

“I don’t think using the issue of Camp David will be useful, because it does not exist anymore and is merely a thing of the past,” he said.

“There have been many changes and I believe that this case between Iran and Egypt has already been closed... What exists now is the interest of Iran and Egypt to work with each other.”

OK. So can we stop sending that $2 billion to Egypt now, and put it to work hiring pro-American (or at least, not anti-American) college professors instead?

Two Flags on Mars

Josh Harvey notices that NASA’s Spirit spacecraft, currently residing at a Mars address, carries a plaque commemorating the Columbia Shuttle disaster with the flags of two countries: the United States and Israel.

Jihadis, this is your cue to go nuts.

Egypt: Candidate for Axis Membership

Iran is reportedly about to restore ties with Egypt. If this happens, it means that a member of the Axis of Evil, one of the worst terror-sponsoring rogue nations on the planet, will be allied with Egypt—currently considered “friendly” toward the US (even though they are not), and recipient of more than $2 billion a year in US foreign handouts.

The mullahs have been getting quite bold recently; their recent hoodwinking of the United Nations and Mohammad AlBaradei has got them all puffed up like bullfrogs. I wonder how much of this is due to confidence that they’re going to have nuclear weapons before anyone will act?

Martial Law in Muslim Thailand

A wave of violence in southern Thailand, courtesy of the Religion of Peace™, has led the prime minister to declare martial law: Muslim areas get martial law. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

BANGKOK — Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said yesterday he will enforce martial law in Thailand’s mainly Muslim south, where insurgents this week have seized weapons, burned schools and attacked police outposts, killing four soldiers and three policemen.

Authorities said it was still not clear whether the two days of attacks were the work of Muslim insurgents angry about Thai troops in Iraq, or sophisticated criminals creating an atmosphere of confusion and intimidation in which they can commit illegal acts.

Martial law was already in existence in the region, but will now be strictly implemented because “ordinary jurisdiction will not work,” said government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair in an interview.

The wave of violence started Sunday, when about 30 raiders attacked an armory in Narathiwat province, killing four soldiers and stealing more than 100 American-supplied M-16 assault rifles, an army spokesman said.

Assailants set fire to about 20 schools in the province and destroyed several police posts in what appeared to be related attacks.

Yesterday, the insurgents exploded two bombs in the city of Pattani, killing three policemen and injuring several others, Mr. Jakrapob said. Two other bombs were discovered before they could be detonated.

The spokesman said it was “too early” to tell who was responsible, but suspicion fell on the banned Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), which boasted in May that Thai security forces were “falling like leaves” as Muslims fought to free the south from Bangkok’s rule.

Idiotarian of 2003 Finals

The final round of voting for the Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year is now open! You get one vote in this round, so make it count. Michael Moore is looking like this year’s favorite to win, but it ain’t over ’til it’s over...

Libya to Make Peace with Israel

This is a huge story that’s getting almost no coverage; wacky old Gaddafi continues to pull surprises out of his purple velvet hat, and his latest is an offer of a peace treaty with Israel: Report: Israeli delegation to visit Libya later this month. (Hat tip: Baruch.)

Following the announcement by President Muammar Gaddafi last month that Libya is willing to forego its weapons of mass destruction, Israel has initiated diplomatic contacts with Tripoli.

The head of the Foreign Ministry’s diplomatic team, Ron Prosor, met some two weeks in Paris with an Arab diplomatic, in order to establish a channel of communications with Tripoli. The meeting was coordinated with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Mossad chief Meir Dagan.

A high-ranking Israeli delegation is expected to visit Libya with the aim of reaching a mutual understanding on the signing of a peace agreement, Kuwaiti newspaper A-Siyasa, quoted on the Al Bawaba website, reported Tuesday.

Meanwhile, in comments published Tuesday, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was quoted as saying he is ready to compensate Libyan Jews whose properties were confiscated. He also said he is prepared to allow Libyans to travel to Israel, according to Arab press reports.

Iowahawk Waxes Taxonomic

Iowahawk explains the puzzling phenomenon of Bush Tolerance Syndrome.

Masquerading as Mainstream

Sherrie Gossett’s article on the Orlando Islamic conference sponsored by the Universal Heritage Foundation (apparently a front group for the Islamic Society of North America), and on the funding and spread of radical Islam in America, concludes today with its third part. For completeness, here are links to all three parts of the article, a good source of information on the disturbing connections of many so-called “mainstream” Islamic organizations:

Part One: WND goes inside ‘mainstream’ Muslim conference.

Part Two: How U.S. extremists fund terror.

Part Three: Masquerading as ‘mainstream’.

monday, january 05, 2004

Shari'a in Space

Iran plans to be the first Islamic country in space:

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Monday Iran would launch a locally made satellite within 18 months, the official IRNA news agency reported.

“Iran will be the first Islamic country to go into space with a locally produced satellite and launch pad system,” IRNA quoted Shamkhani as saying.

No details on the type of satellite Iran planned to launch were given.

Russian news agency Interfax said in August that Moscow planned to discuss with Tehran the possibility of resuming a project in which Russia would build Iran a telecommunications satellite.

We Got Mail!

A few days ago, a person who identified himself as “Chris Stiner,” from an IP address that traces to Egypt and a probably phony Hotmail address, found LGF by searching for “interview with Everclear Islam” (for which we are Google’s #1 result, I’ll have you know) and sent the following endearing note with our contact form:

Hey Charles and Mike,

I thought you guys were cool liberals based upon Charles’s picture with the long hair and all, but in the ned you’re both just two Zionist pigs. You support an apartheid state. You support oppression and your weblog is solely designed to spread hate toward Muslims. How can you sleep at night. You’ll probably just dismiss my words, I don’t really care. But if there is a hell, you guys are serious firewood. Look at yourselves in the mirror and see if you can covince yourselves that you’re doing good.

Trust me, you’re not.

Anyway, have a nice life.

Your American friend, Chris Stiner

Dear Chris,

Thank you for the note! It’s true that my very liberal-appearing hair has duped many into thinking I was cool. But really, now ... “Zionist pigs” destined to burn in hell? One might almost get the impression that you’re feeling a very un-liberal sort of hostility.

But maybe it’s just the irritation of having to live in Egypt, which is pretty much hell already.

My profound sympathies,

Ned, the Zionist Pig

Neo-Nazi Invited to Speak at Toronto Islamic Conference

At a three-day Islamic conference in Toronto titled “Reviving the Islamic Spirit,” one of the featured speakers was William Baker—a neo-Nazi “evangelist” with a long history of connections to antisemitic groups: Pluralism is key, Muslim forum told. (Hat tip Randall.) The Toronto Star spends the first part of their account of the conference painting a rosy picture of the “pluralistic” atmosphere, before mentioning the fact that a neo-Nazi was invited to speak.

In reference to another speaker at the conference, Chanicka denied that organizers knowingly invited someone who is alleged to have ties with American groups that have a racist agenda.

“We have no business being involved in inviting anyone who shares any agenda of hate and racism, because we don’t find that to be anything within the realm of Islam or beliefs as Muslims, especially within the purpose of this conference, which is promoting a pluralistic Canadian society,” Chanicka said.

He was responding to allegations made by Bernie Farber, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Farber alleged that panelist William Baker, founder of Christians and Muslims For Peace, had been connected with American groups with a racist agenda.

Farber also suggested that “serious questions” had to be addressed to the organizers as to why they had invited “someone like Baker” to speak.

The Orange County Weekly did a story on William Baker when he was fired from Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral after his affiliations with extremist groups came to light:

The Reverend Robert Schuller has quietly told self-styled “interfaith leader” William Baker to vacate his Crystal Cathedral office. The order came after an investigation published in OC Weekly revealed that Baker, who runs Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP), has a long history of anti-Semitic politics and held a leadership position in neo-Nazi organizations. The investigation also revealed that Baker had manufactured much of his alleged academic qualifications.

“We have separated ourselves from the CAMP ministry, and Mr. Baker will be off the campus as of May 31,” a Crystal Cathedral spokesman said.

Sources at Crystal Cathedral stated that the decision was based largely on revelations made in OC Weekly ("Hour of White Power,” Feb. 15). Soon after that story appeared, the Crystal Cathedral removed from the church’s website a link to Baker’s CAMP site, where Baker had peddled an anti-Semitic book titled Theft of a Nation.

Baker was chairman of the neo-Nazi Populist Party in 1984 and organized its national convention that year. The Populist Party was established and directed by Willis Carto, head of the now-defunct Liberty Lobby. The dean of American neo-Nazi politics, Carto also founded the Costa Mesa-based Institute for Historical Review, a group whose central purpose is Holocaust denial. In a written statement, Baker claimed he did not know the Populist Party was racist and that he never shared Carto’s racist politics.

Al-Battar Training Camp

The terror gangs headed by Al Qaeda are now publishing another online magazine to accompany their Voice of Jihad: Al-Battar Training Camp – A Magazine Published by the Military Committee of the Mujahideen in the Arabian Peninsula. Voice of Jihad focuses on Islamic holy war ideology; Al Battar gets down on the killing floor, with practical techniques for turning Muslim kids into cold-blooded jihadi killers.

Al-Battar’s Mission

The introduction to the issue states: “Preparing [for Jihad] is a personal commandment that applies to every Muslim even when Jihad [itself] is a commandment applying [only] to all Muslims as a community, and all the more so at this time, when [Jihad] has become also a commandment applying to every Muslim personally with the aim of repelling the aggressive enemy who has invaded the Muslim land.

“Because many of Islam’s young people do not yet know how to bear arms, not to mention use them, and because the agents of the Cross are hobbling the Muslims and preventing them from planning [Jihad] for the sake of Allah – your brothers the Mujahideen in the Arabian peninsula have decided to publish this booklet to serve the Mujahid brother in his place of isolation, and he will do the exercises and act according to the military knowledge included within it ...

“These are times of Jihad and preparation for Jihad. In the time of the Mongol invasion, it didn’t help the residents of Baghdad that most of them were clerics and educators ... ”

In an editorial, Abu Thabit Al-Najdi wrote: “ ... The Al-Battar Training Camp is a new magazine of the military committee of the Al-Qa’ida organization in the Saudi peninsula ... and it is given as a gift to the youth of Islam whose hearts burn in support of the religion by means of Jihad for the sake of Allah.”

Spreading Military Culture to the Youth

“The basic idea is to spread military culture among the youth with the aim of filling the vacuum that the enemies of the religion have been seeking to expand for a long time. Allah willing, the magazine will be simple and easy, and in it, my Muslim brother, you will find basic lessons in the framework of a military training program, beginning with programs for sports training, through types of light weapons and guerilla group actions in the cities and mountains, and [including] important points in security and intelligence, so that you will be able ... to fulfill the religious obligation that Allah has set upon you ... “

Moore Leads the Race

The first round of voting for the Robert Fisk Award for Idiotarian of the Year will be closing this evening at midnight Pacific, so if you haven’t voted yet, today’s your final chance.

Michael Moore vaulted into the lead early on, and with 11,698 votes cast so far, he hasn’t budged from the top spot.

Arab League Behaves Predictably

The cronies and bagmen of the Arab League are meeting in Tunisia for another pointless conference at which they’re denouncing terrorism “in any form,” vowing to fight against it even as they deny its existence: Arab ministers: Freedom fighters aren’t terrorists. (Hat tip: ploome.)

Resisting foreign occupation can’t be considered terrorism, interior ministers from Arab nations agreed Monday, wrapping up a security conference in Tunisia.

In a final declaration, the group of 19 ministers from the Arab League said they strongly condemned terrorism in any form. However, they stressed “the need to make a distinction between terrorism and peoples’ right to fight occupation and foreign aggression.”

Observers interpreted the remark as a reference to the Palestinian uprising and attacks by Iraqi militants against the U.S. occupation of their country, though the statement mentioned neither specifically.

The statement also said officials “categorically refused any attempt to place the blame for terrorism on Arabs and Muslims.”

Strengthening cooperation, the ministers made amendments to their charter on fighting terrorism, declaring that it is a crime to hold, print or spread documents promoting terrorist acts.

Seattle P-I: You're All Stupid!

In a dead-on parody of snobbish, arrogant, hilariously reductionist loony leftism, a guest column at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer by Neal Starkman explains why George W. Bush is popular with the American people: You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid! (Hat tip: V the K.)

What? It isn’t a parody?

Granted, there are certain subsections of the American polity that have substantially benefited from this presidency. Millionaires and charismatic Christians have accrued either material or spiritual fortification from Bush’s administration. But surely these two groups are a small minority of the population. What, then, can account for so many people being so supportive of the president?

The answer, I’m afraid, is the factor that dare not speak its name. It’s the factor that no one talks about. The pollsters don’t ask it, the media don’t report it, the voters don’t discuss it.

I, however, will blare out its name so that at last people can address the issue and perhaps adopt strategies to overcome it.

It’s the “Stupid factor,” the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.

It’s not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren’t the people I’m referring to. The people I’m referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They’re perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don’t have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don’t think.

You know these people; they’re all around you (they’re not you, else you would not be reading this article this far).

Holocaust Minimizers at Moveon.org

Here’s a second Bush=Hitler advertisement submitted to Moveon.org, and (according to Drudge Report) streamed on their site: Moveon.org: Bush=Hitler.

Islamic Dress for Non-Muslims in Malaysia

Islamists in the government of the Malaysian city of Kuala Terengganu have instituted restrictive Islamic dress codes for all women in all work places—and that includes non-Muslims: Malaysian city rules on women. (Hat tip: Diana.)

The rules, which ban even moderately revealing clothing, are an unprecedented attempt to impose the party’s values on the personal lives of non-believers in Malaysia.

Malaysia’s opposition Islamic party, PAS, has been trying to convince the country’s non-Muslims that it will respect their way of life in those areas where it holds power.

But new rules from the PAS-controlled city council in Kuala Terengganu governing how women should dress for work will undermine that claim.

Even non-Muslims will be banned from wearing short sleeved blouses, tight jeans, skirts with slits, or skirts cut above the knee.

Muslim women will have to wear a tudong, a headscarf drawn tightly about the face.

As hardline Islam takes over and begins the traditional imposition of totalitarian rules, it invariably wipes out local customs. Where is the outcry from the left’s guardians of world culture?

The traditional loosely draped Malay headscarf will be banned and the rules will apply to all work places.

Aftershocks

Here’s a good piece by Michael Ledeen on the situation in Iran, where a devastating earthquake has revealed the huge ideological gap between the mullahs and the people they rule—and also revealed the West’s capacity for denial of reality: Aftershocks.

All of this makes it more perplexing than ever that serious people like Colin Powell continue to believe that there is some nice way to “solve the Iranian problem.” Would that it were so. But, as we are reminded every day by the wonderful dentist in Baghdad who bravely blogs away at www.healingiraq.com, in the words of Jonathan Swift, “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of what he was never reasoned into.” The regime in Tehran is not reasonable, it is fanatical. It has waged war against us for a quarter century and it intends to destroy us. It claims to act in the name of all Islam, and views us as the greatest Satanic force on earth. It will not come to terms with us, because its very essence is hatred of us and of everything we represent. Knowing that the vast majority of its own people hate the regime and loves America, it murders, tortures, and oppresses them. When the mullahs appear to be acting reasonably and tell us they wish to help us fight terrorism, it is a deception, not an expression of their real desires.

Yet many of our leaders, fine men and women all, continue to believe that the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan suffice to let us return to diplomacy as usual, even as the entire Western world ties itself in knots to protect against the next assault from the terror masters. Rome is declared off limits to aircraft, along with the Las Vegas strip, the Rose Bowl, Times Square, endless domed stadiums, and major parts of Washington D.C. Western citizens are implored to leave Saudi Arabia. British Airways, Qantas, and all carriers headed for the United States are placing armed guards on their aircraft. No one seriously believes that a threat of such magnitude is generated by the remnants of al Qaeda, operating from a remote border region of Pakistan. It obviously requires the cooperation of powerful regimes and professional intelligence services.

EU Letter Bomb Watch

More letter bombs have been sent to European Union officials, all of them postmarked from Bologna, Italy: Two EU Officials Receive Letter Bombs.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Two letter bombs addressed to senior members of the European Parliament burst into flames and another was intercepted Monday, bringing to at least seven the number of explosives mailed recently to European Union targets.

There were no injuries from either of the packages that exploded — one at the Brussels office of conservative German Hans-Gert Poettering, the other at the Manchester, England office of Socialist legislator Gary Titley, officials said.

Bomb experts defused the other package, addressed to a Spanish conservative in Brussels.

The two letter bombs found in Brussels Monday were identical in form and all postmarked Dec. 22 in Bologna, Italy, from where the earlier attacks over the past two weeks are believed to have originated.

This doesn’t sound like an RoP project; they usually make sure there are enough explosives to finish the job. Could be an Italian anarchist group, with an anti-EU grudge.

Pakistan's Nuclear Diaspora

Muammar Gaddafi’s son has told the London Sunday Times that Libya paid Pakistan for plans and components to make nuclear weapons. Pakistan is frantically spinning and denying. Pakistan: Libya Nuclear Report Unsubstantiated.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan said on Monday a British newspaper report that said Pakistani scientists sold plans to make nuclear bombs to Libya appeared unsubstantiated, but any official complaint would be investigated.

Pakistan admitted late last year that scientists involved in its atom bomb program may have been driven by “personal ambition or greed” to export technology to Iran, but insisted the government had no part in any such deals.

The London Sunday Times quoted Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, as saying that Libya had spent $40 million on nuclear components from various black-market dealers, including Pakistani scientists.

A senior Pakistani official, who did not want to be identified, said the government had received information in the past that some scientists had sold nuclear technology to Iran and these charges were being investigated.

“If any such complaint is officially received in relation to Libya, that will be also be examined and investigated. So far they seem more like totally unsubstantiated allegations.”

sunday, january 04, 2004

Searching for Fedex

The LGF Search Requests page is showing a lot of searches for “fedex truck pictures” (or variations thereof) from widely separated US cities: New York, San Jose, Orlando, Little Rock, just from four quick lookups.

Curious.

Palestinians Must Maintain Moral Edge

Ramzy Baroud, editor of the Palestinian Chronicle, says that Palestinians have to knock off the suicide bombings and the shootings of little girls, or they risk losing the moral upper hand.

Words. Fail. Me.

Palestinians have the right of self-defense, and the unequivocal right of ridding themselves of the occupation. These rights are protected in international law and require little debate or intellectual tussling. But it is wrong for the occupied — who surely have the moral edge — to use the same illegitimate means as the occupier. International law makes a clear distinction, as should the Palestinian resistance, between occupying military forces and civilians. If Palestinians waver from this crucial line of reasoning, their historically virtuous struggle risks being tainted with moral corruption.

The Palestinian revolution was born in the orchards of Jenin as early as the 1920s. It was and remains a freedom struggle, a cry for justice. Typically, the overall methods used by the ongoing uprising in the occupied territories contrasts with the ghastly practices of the Israeli government and army. In fact, since their early days of combating the occupation forces, Palestinians aspired to be inclusive because they longed for equality and insisted on the universal applicability of human rights.

These values must remain intact.

But every nation — and Palestinians are no exception — has a breaking point. That is only human that, following decades of suffering, violence and dispossession, the determination to gain freedom can give way to desperation and a raw desire for vengeance. To those living in the occupied territories, suicide bombings are part of the reality into which Palestinians are born. Yet if Palestinians allow Israeli tactics to influence their resistance strategy, then the authenticity of the entire struggle is compromised.

Raw Pix from Mars

LGF reader “Engineer” tipped us to a site where you can see the raw images transmitted from the Mars Exploration Rover Mission.

More "Bush=Hitler" Inanities at Moveon.org

The barking moonbats at Moveon.org have gone all the way Hitler with the latest anti-Bush video posted at their site in an ad selection campaign. The Republican National Committee site makes the ad available, in Quicktime format—and yes, it really is just as bad as it sounds.

Dead Man Talking

Al Jazeera, always eager to spread the message of jihad, is airing a new audiotape that’s supposedly the work of Osama bin Laden: Al-Jazeera Airs Purported Bin Laden Tape.

CAIRO, Egypt - The Al-Jazeera satellite channel broadcast an audiotape Sunday purportedly from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in which he urged Muslims to continue fighting a holy war in Iraq and the Middle East rather than cooperate with peace efforts.

The speaker, who referred to recent events — including the December capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, called on Muslims to “continue the jihad to check the conspiracies that are hatched against the Islamic nation.” He said the U.S.-led war against Iraq was the beginning of the “occupation” of Gulf states for their oil.

“My message is to incite you against the conspiracies, especially those uncovered by the occupation of the crusaders in Baghdad under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, and also the situation in (Jerusalem) under the deceptions of the road map and the Geneva initiative,” the speaker said.

A Mideast peace plan dubbed the Geneva Accord was launched Dec. 1 by Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. The phrase “road map” refers to a U.S.-backed plan for a Palestinian state by 2005.

The tape’s authenticity could not immediately be verified, although the voice on the tape resembled that of bin Laden.

Al-Jazeera played it while showing a still photo of bin Laden against a dark blue background.

Ibrahim Hilal, Al-Jazeera’s editor-in-chief, told The Associated Press the network received the message Sunday. However, he declined to reveal how it was delivered.

Iran Wants More

It’s hard to feel good about being a Good Samaritan when the beneficiary acts like this: Iran says time not right for high-level US mission, more gestures needed.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran’s foreign ministry said the time was not yet right to receive a high-level US delegation and urged Washington to clarify its policy and make further gestures of goodwill so a resumption of dialogue could be considered.

“The time for such a visit has not yet come,” foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters, referring to a US offer to send a top delegation to discuss relief for victims of the December 26 earthquake in the southeastern city of Bam.

In addition to sending aid supplies and a medical team, Washington approached Tehran after the quake about the possibility of sending a delegation headed by top Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole.

The United States, which severed ties with Iran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, also suggested that a member of President George W. Bush’s family might accompany Dole to show the importance he places on relief for the victims of the quake, which killed some 30,000 people.

But Asefi said the visit “was not on the cards".

“If the dominant view in the American leadership is to break the wall of suspicion and they practically move in this direction, there will be another climate,” he told reporters.

“But in recent days we have heard different voices, so by consequence it is difficult to judge. It is not clear if this gesture is isolated or not,” he added.

“The US knows what it has to do. Political and humanitarian questions should not be mixed.”

Palestinians Enraged by Anti-Terror Pledge

Palestinian nongovernmental organizations are refusing to sign an agreement that they will not aid terrorists: Palestinian NGOs reject antiterrorism pledge. (Hat tip: zulubaby.)

The organizations said Saturday they are planning a popular campaign in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to express their opposition to the document.

These organizations include social welfare groups within the Palestinian Authority, as well as independent NGOs funded mostly by the US and the EU.

The US and some EU countries lately informed the Palestinian NGOs that, prior to entering into funding agreements, they must sign the pledge, which is entitled “Certification Regarding Terrorist Financing.”

According to the document, the Palestinian NGOs pledge not to “provide material support or resources to any individual or entity that advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has engaged in terrorist activity, including but not limited to individuals and entities,” based on the US Executive Order 13224.

One of the appendixes to the pledge includes the names of bodies and groups the US considers to be linked to terrorism and, therefore, prohibits any cooperation with them. It lists Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Aksa Martyrs Brigades (the armed wing of Fatah), the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine as some of the terrorist groups.

The new conditions set for financing the NGOs have enraged the Palestinians, who accuse the US of trying to blackmail them by asking them to sign the antiterror document.

Egyptian Plane Crash: Terror?

DEBKAfile looks at the possibility that yesterday’s crash of an Egyptian chartered jet in the Red Sea was an act of terrorism: Too Soon to Dismiss Terror as Cause of Egyptian Air Disaster. (Hat tip: Ethel.)

The Sharm el-Sheikh air disaster recalls the last Egyptian air disaster in 1999 when EgyptAir’s 990 Boeing 767 crashed opposite the American coast of Massachusetts shortly after takeoff, killing all 217 aboard. At the time, the Egyptian authorities attributed the disaster to unusual atmospheric conditions on the East Coast, a claim never confirmed by US authorities. In a subsequent federal probe, US aviation authorities established that the co-pilot, Jamil Batouty, who was not supposed to be on duty at the time, took over the controls and put the plane into a sharp nosedive shouting Allah is Great! in Arabic.

DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources reported then that a large group of Egyptian air force officers were aboard, flying home from counter-terror combat and fighter jets courses in the United States. Our sources learned that Batouty has been assigned by his known Egyptian Jihad Islami connections in Los Angels and Cairo to carry out a kamikaze mission to destroy this group.

saturday, january 03, 2004

Berkeley ISM Tool Whines

The American woman detained along with Swedish MP Gustav Fridolin for participating in a nonviolent riot in Israel happens to be from ... drum roll ... Berkeley! Berkeley activist jailed in Israel.

A Bay Area peace activist is being held this weekend in an Israeli jail after her arrest during a demonstration in the occupied West Bank.

Kate Raphael of Berkeley is fighting a deportation order by the Israeli authorities, which will be heard in court Monday, according to members of three international peace groups she is involved with.

The Israeli Consulate in San Francisco could not comment on the case because of the difficulty contacting government officials during the Sabbath.

Raphael, 44, is known for her commitment to political activism and social justice. Since her high school days in Richmond, Va., she has conducted trainings on non-violence, escorted women into abortion clinics, counseled rape victims and fought for the rights of lesbians and gays.

And now she fights for the rights of those who want to execute lesbians and gays by stoning.

Pedagogy of Hate

At the Jerusalem Post, an excellent opinion piece by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook on the tragic, evil brainwashing of Palestinian children into a life of hatred and murder: Pedagogy of hate.

If you want to know what’s really at the heart of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, don’t ask politicians or diplomats. Go to Palestinian children.

Unlike the rest of the world, they’ve been paying close attention to what their leaders and educators have been teaching. And they are ready to practice what they’ve been taught.

For instance, children interviewed on PA TV last week state without reservation that Israel has no right to exist, and that the goal for which they’re willing to sacrifice their lives is Israel’s destruction.

“They [the Jews] came to take Palestine, that is, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Haifa, Acre, Ramle. All these cities belong to Palestine,” one youth explains in a December 25 broadcast, echoing years of standard Palestinian Authority indoctrination.

And because he is convinced that Israel has no right to exist: “We hope, hope, hope and I emphasize these things, that the Arab countries and the foreign countries – all the countries of the world – will support the Palestinians and will expel the Israelis.

“We must expel all Israelis from Palestine. Because Israel – there is nothing called ‘Israel’ in the world. The Israelis [came] from Holland, America, Iran.”

The children are seen promising they will keep fighting, generation after generation, until they liberate Palestine.

Furthermore, they say they don’t fear death in the struggle because it is shahada – death for Allah. “Even if all the Palestinian children, Palestinian youth, Palestinian women, and Palestinian men die, we will not surrender!”

IED: Intrauterine Explosive Device

The latest news about the reason for those canceled British Airways flights is that the US had very specific intelligence about a female suicide bomber. (Assuming the Mirror isn’t making stuff up again.)

A BA flight to Washington was cancelled at the last minute yesterday after an intelligence tip-off that a woman suicide bomber planned to blow up the plane over the US capital.

It was the third day running that a major security scare had hit the afternoon Flight 223 service from Heathrow to Washington.

US security services told Scotland Yard the woman - almost certainly linked to al-Qaeda - intended to hide eight to 12 ounces of plastic explosive in her vagina.

She would then go to the toilet during the Boeing 747 flight, remove the material and detonate a blast that would down the aircraft.

A senior Yard source told the Daily Mirror: “Smuggling a bomb on to a plane by this method is one of our worst nightmares.

“If you do not have specific information about the suspect, it would be impossible to carry out an intimate body search of every female passenger.”

Governor Dean: Worst Nuke Security Rating in US

Howard Dean, who misses no opportunity to slam the Bush administration for being weak on homeland security, was warned repeatedly as Vermont governor about lax security at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.

The warnings, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press, began in 1991 when a group of students were brought into a secure area of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant without proper screening. On at least two occasions, a gun or mock terrorists passed undetected into the plant during security tests.

During Dean’s final year in office in 2002, an audit concluded that despite a decade of repeated warnings of poor safety at Vermont Yankee, Dean’s administration was poorly prepared for a nuclear disaster.

“The lack of funding and overarching coordination at the state level directly impacts the ability of the state, local and power plant planners to be adequately prepared for a real emergency at Vermont Yankee,” state Auditor Elizabeth M. Ready wrote in a study issued five months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Security was so lax at Vermont Yankee that in August 2001, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staged a drill in which three mock terrorists gained access to the plant. The agency gave Vermont Yankee the worst security rating among the nation’s 103 reactors.

Palestinian Child Abuse

Palestinian children march carrying toy weapons during a parade celebrating the 39th anniversary of Arafat’s Fatah movement at the Khan Yunes refugee camp in the southern Gaza strip(AFP/Said Khatib)

New Year's Riots ala Francaise

France apparently has a new way of celebrating New Year’s Day: More than 300 cars set ablaze as violence mars French celebrations. (Hat tip: norar.)

FRANCE witnessed an orgy of vandalism as rioters set more than 300 cars ablaze, in what has become something of a New Year tradition.

Thirty-two of the 324 vehicles which ended as burned-out shells were found in and around the eastern city of Strasbourg, where the practice began in the 1990s.

By 3am on New Year’s Day, 192 people had been arrested, including several dozen in Paris, where youths clashed with police on the Champs Élysées, smashing shop windows and injuring several officers.

“Several particularly determined and violent elements attacked the police, who were forced to use teargas in order to disperse them,” a spokesman for the Parisian police confirmed.

Dude, Where's My Fiskie?

Michael Moore grabbed an early lead in the voting for the 2003 Fiskie Award, and is staying in front even as the rest of the top ten nominees get shaken out below him.

And believe me, below Michael Moore is not a position in which you want to be.

You could even say that Moore rocketed away from the other contenders, except that the image of Moore “rocketing” anywhere under any circumstances is highly disturbing.

Idiotarian of 2003.

A Reminder...

......that if you see a message saying you’re not allowed to post comments, or use our forms to send email, it’s because I’ve had to completely block AOL addresses from using those functions of LGF. There is a group of truly nasty and very persistent creatures who have been using AOL accounts to post unwelcome comments, and because of the way AOL works the only method of blocking these haters is to disallow all AOL users. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, but that’s how it’s gotta be.

Changing the Face of Foreign Aid

US to Begin New Approach on Foreign Aid.

WASHINGTON - A revolution in U.S. foreign aid, rewarding countries for how they govern, is finally ready to get under way, almost two years after first promised by the Bush administration.

The program will favor countries whose governments are judged to be just rulers, welcoming hosts for foreign investment and promoters of projects to meet their people’s basic health and education needs.

Corrupt police states need not apply.

Administration officials expect this year to inaugurate President Bush’s plan, known as the Millennium Challenge Account, which he outlined in March 2002.

It contemplated $5 billion annually for the program starting in 2006, a 50 percent increase over the base foreign aid budget of $10 billion.

The administration had hoped for $1.3 billion for the current budget year, which began Oct. 1, as a starter; Congress has provided nothing so far but is expected to approve $1 billion after it reconvenes this month.

Bush’s initiative came six months after the Sept. 11 attacks and clearly has a national security component.

“Poverty, weak institutions and corruption can make weak states vulnerable to terrorist networks and drug cartels within their borders,” according to Bush’s National Security Strategy report from September 2002.

It should be very interesting to see the criteria for judging which countries deserve US aid. Will the Palestinian Authority qualify? Will Egypt?

All Roads Lead to Pakistan

Here’s a deeply scary report on Pakistan’s role as the spider in the center of the web of Islamic nuclear proliferation, and the activities of the “father” of Pakistan’s nukes, Abdul Qadeer Khan: From Rogue Nuclear Programs, Web of Trails Leads to Pakistan. (Hat tip: dennisw.)

Dr. Khan returned to Pakistan in 1976 after working in the Netherlands, carrying extremely secret centrifuge designs — a Dutch one that featured an aluminum rotor, and a German one made of maraging steel, a superhard alloy. He was charged with stealing the designs from a European consortium where he worked.

“The designs for the machines,” said a secret State Department memo at the time, “were stolen by a Pakistani national.”

The steel rotor in the German design turned out to be particularly difficult to make, but it could spin twice as fast, meaning it produced more fuel.

His accomplishments turned Dr. Khan into a national hero. In 1981, as a tribute, the president of Pakistan, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq, renamed the enrichment plant the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories.

Dr. Khan, a fervent nationalist, has condemned the system that limits legal nuclear knowledge to the five major nuclear powers, or that ignored Israel’s nuclear weapon while focusing on the fear of an Islamic bomb. "All Western countries,” he was once quoted as saying, “are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam."

In the years before Pakistan’s first test in 1998, Dr. Khan and his team began publishing papers in the global scientific literature on how to make and test its uranium centrifuges. In the West, these publications would have been classified secret or top secret.

But Dr. Khan made no secret of his motive: he boasted in print of circumventing the restrictions of the Western nuclear powers, declaring in a 1987 paper that he sought to pierce “the clouds of the so-called secrecy.”

Saudi "Scholars:" Don't Follow Infidels

A group of highly placed Saudis has signed a document warning the kingdom not to change the religious supremacism and hatred taught in Saudi school books: Saudi scholars warn against changing school books. (Hat tip: Baldy.)

RIYADH, Jan 3 (Reuters) - Some 150 Saudis, including judges, university professors and a cleric with links to Muslim militants, have signed a document warning the kingdom against changing its Islam-based school curricula.

The warning, which was obtained by Reuters on Saturday, was signed on January 1, a day after Saudi intellectuals, clerics and prominent personalities recommended educational reforms at the end of a conference held to tackle the roots of militancy. ...

The kingdom’s education system has come under attack in the West for promoting hatred towards Christians and Jews. In October, Education Ministry officials began removing references they saw as encouraging militancy.

Saudi Arabia, along with five other Gulf countries, also agreed last month to amend its school books to help stamp out militancy.

The warning criticised the proposed changes in the curriculum as American pressure that was aimed at “taking the kingdom along the path of infidels".

“Any omissions or mutilation of what was written by the Islamic scholars... contradicts the national unity the state is calling for, as this unity is based on our religious creed,” the statement said.

Inside the Universal Heritage Conference

In the beginning of December, LGF noted an upcoming Islamic conference in Florida, featuring a stellar cast of radical Muslims including the senior imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, who is on record calling Jews the “grandsons of monkeys and pigs.”

Sherrie Gossett attended the Florida conference and stayed for the rescheduled talks by radicals, after all the other media droids had left. (Knowing that regular media would want to finish early and file softball stories, the conference organizers rescheduled the meetings featuring jihad ranters as late in the day as possible, and took their names off the programs.) In the first of a three-part report, Gossett provides interesting detail on the backgrounds of some of the conference speakers: WND goes inside ‘mainstream’ Muslim conference. (Hat tip: Athos.)

KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Just as a Florida Islamic conference was trying to recover from one media controversy, they were mired in another when Islamic speakers who have voiced support for suicide bombers and referred to Jews as “Jewish crackers,” “apes” and “pigs” freely addressed the crowd and were warmly embraced by conference leaders.

The speakers addressed the crowd just hours after Islamic leader Dr. Sayed M. Saeed assured media that those present represented “mainstream” Islam, and radical rhetoric or “misguided imams” would not be tolerated. The controversial leaders addressed the crowd after all media (except for WND) had left. One addressed the attendees in only Arabic in a separate room.

The Universal Heritage Foundation, organizers of the December conference, first ran into controversy when media learned a planned three-day conference called “Islam for Humanity” was advertising it would feature a Saudi Arabian sheikh famous for virulent, racist rhetoric.

Last April, while addressing 2 million followers at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, chief cleric Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais prayed to God to “terminate” the Jews, who he called “the scum of humanity, the rats of the world, prophet killers ... pigs and monkeys.”

Al-Sudais also urged Arabs and Muslims to abandon peace initiatives with Israel. His comments were carried worldwide by Reuters and the Associated Press. The racist characterization of Jews was not a singular occurrence, as suggested by some media. Al-Sudais has variously described Jews as “evil,” a “continuum of deceit,” “tyrannical” and “treacherous”

Al-Sudais, was listed as a “specially invited guest” of the conference, which was slated to be held at the 31-acre Kissimmee campus of Universal Heritage Foundation, near Disney World, but was later moved to the nearby county-owned Silver Spurs Arena.

Following media exposure, al-Sudais’ name disappeared from conference materials. Later, Imam Siraj Wahhaj’s name also was dropped from a new issue of the program.

Wahhaj was deemed a potential unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and sits on the board of directors of the Islamic Society of North America, or ISNA, and the advisory board of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

On the opening night of the conference, Dec. 19, Dr. S.M. Syeed, secretary general of the ISNA, addressed the controversy directly, with media present.

Syeed said the conference presented and “extraordinary opportunity” since the public and media are “waiting to see what we’re saying.”

“We would never allow such statements to be made on our stage,” Syeed said. “That kind of rhetoric has no place in our conference, projects or programs. We need to be sensitive and we should certainly distance ourselves from them.”

Referring to the prior media controversy, Saeed said, “This does not represent the Islam mainstream ... these misguided imams. ... We should clearly announce they are not representing us or the message of the prophet as mercy to mankind.”

Palestinian Child Abuse

Palestinian children hold toy weapons as they stand next to masked militants from the Fatah movement during the 39th anniversary of Arafat’s Fatah movement, 02 January 2004, at the Khan Yunes refugee camp in the southern Gaza strip.(AFP/Said Khatib)

friday, january 02, 2004

One Across The Bow

Yo, Allah. Are you trying to send a message to the mullahs?

Meteorite hits Iran. (Hat tip: Gustavia.)

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A meteorite has hit northern Iran causing minor damage to property but there were no immediate reports of casualties, state radio has said.

It said the impact sent locals in panic onto the streets in the northern town of Babol in Mazandaran province.

“A meteorite which hit Babol on Friday morning caused only some minor damage to residential units,” radio said, without giving further details or citing any source.

It said the impact was felt up to one kilometre away.

Iranians are currently mourning at least 30,000 people killed by an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale which struck southeastern Iran on December 26.

Questions About Benin 727 Crash

Was the Boeing 727 that crashed off West Africa on Christmas Day the same aircraft that mysteriously disappeared from Angola last May? Questions Surface About Benin Jet Crash.

The Mullahs Bite

The religious thugs who rule Iran are spewing venom at the US, to shore up their sense of honor after accepting our aid, and to keep the people’s anger focused on the Great Satan: U.S. Criticized Over Iran Relief Efforts.

"The Americans, by publicizing their aid to Iran, have ineptly tried to implement their duplicitous policy of creating a rift between the Iranian nation and government,” state radio said in an unattributed commentary, adding that “our people’s solidarity” will stop that from happening.

Iranian radio said recent conciliatory remarks from top U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, were aimed at concealing Washington’s anti-Iran policies at a time when the world’s attention is focused on the devastation from the quake.

“One should therefore not trust the expression of opinion, speeches and other optimistic signals that are sent by the American foreign policy authorities toward Iran from time to time,” the radio said.

Instead of sending “meager aid” to help quake victims, Washington should unfreeze billions of dollars of Iranian assets, the radio commentary said.

Spencer on Washington Journal

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, will be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal show tomorrow, Saturday, at 7:45 am Eastern. You can watch video over the web at this page.

Iraq's Future - and Ours

At Commentary Magazine, another great new essay from Victor Davis Hanson: Iraq’s Future - and Ours. (Hat tip: mal.)

Iraqi Guerillas Pose As Journalists

Iraqi jihadis shot down a US helicopter today west of Baghdad, then posed as journalists in order to attack soldiers guarding the crash site.

In Baghdad, U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said enemy fire likely brought down the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior that crashed near Fallujah, a flashpoint in the insurgency.

Troops of the 82nd Airborne Division “are fairly convinced that it was enemy fire,” Kimmitt said.

Soon after, five men “wearing black press jackets with ‘press’ clearly written in English” fired on U.S. paratroopers guarding the crash site, Kimmitt said. He said it was the first time he had heard of assailants in Iraq posing as journalists. [Ed. note: Who says they were posing?]

The attackers fled in two cars. Soldiers doing a sweep through the town, with helicopters circling overhead, tracked down one of the cars and arrested four “enemy personnel,” Kimmitt said.

Krekar Arrested in Norway

Mullah Krekar, “spiritual leader” of the Al Qaeda-linked Iraqi Islamist group Ansar al-Islam, has been arrested in Norway (where he has had refugee status for more than 10 years), on charges of attempting to murder his political enemies in Iraq. (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

Krekar was arrested at his apartment by agents with Oekokrim, Norway’s elite police unit, and was being questioned, Grimstad said.

The charges were based on an investigation that started in February, he said.

“He is accused of cooperating in the attempted murder of his political enemies in northern Iraq during the period of December 2000 to April 2001,” Krekar’s lawyer, Brynjar Meling, told the AP. “As far as I can see, these are matters he has explained to prosecutors before, and it’s strange they’re being raised again.” ...

Krekar, born Najm al-Din Faraj Ahmad, has repeatedly denied links with al-Qaida, although he has called Osama bin Laden “a good Muslim.” He has also denied any connection with recent bombings and terror attacks in Iraq, or any role in smuggling drugs in Jordan.

Palestinian Child Abuse

Palestinian children hold toy guns as others hold posters of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat during a rally marking the 39th anniversary of the founding of the mainstream Fatah Movement in the Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Friday Jan. 2. 2003 (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra).

The Palestinian daughter of top Islamic Jihad commander Mekled Hameid marches with a pistol, during an anti-Israel rally at the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza, January 2, 2004. Thousands of Islamic Jihad supporters attended the rally to mark the first week after the death of top Islamic Jihad commander Hameid, who was killed during an Israeli air strike on his car last week in Gaza. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

A Precision Weapon

Here’s an interesting look at some of the guys making a difference in Iraq—Army snipers who pick off mujahideen from as far as half a mile away: In Iraq’s Murky Battle, Snipers Offer U.S. a Precision Weapon. (Hat tip: Hugh Hewitt.)

thursday, january 01, 2004

Swedish MP to Be Deported

Swedish parliamentarian Gustav Fridolin, as you can see from the photo accompanying this article at the Jerusalem Post, likes to mousse his hair into a sort of reverse DA. He also likes to hang out with the ISM tools, Israeli anarchists, and their Palestinian minders when they non-violently attack Israel’s security fence with bolt cutters as “protesters” use peaceful slingshots to non-violently hurl large rocks at Israeli guards: Swedish MP detained, to be deported.

A Swedish member of parliament was among eight demonstrators detained by Judea and Samaria Police on Wednesday following a violent clash in Budrus, a West Bank village some four kilometers from Modi’in. They were protesting the construction of the security fence on the village’s lands. ...

While waiting to learn whether he would be sent home, Fridolin told The Jerusalem Post that he felt that as a politician it was his job to go out and meet the people and learn first hand what is happening. His advice to those who claim the security fence is the only way to prevent suicide bombers from entering Israel is to heighten efforts to bring about peace.

“If Israel wants to enjoy better security, then you have to make the people living in Palestinian territories less desperate,” he said. “Forcing them off their land and uprooting their olive trees only causes people to become more desperate and it encourages those horrible people [suicide bombers], whom I deplore, to perpetrate attacks.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yonatan Peled said the ministry was in contact both with the Swedish Foreign Ministry and the Swedish embassy about Fridolin’s detention.

According to Peled, Fridolin – a member of the Green Party – also took part in Friday’s protest against the security fence that led to the shooting of Israeli activist Gil Na’amati.

An interesting point about these peacefully violent protests: the one on Wednesday was staged at a place where the fence exactly follows the Green Line.

Pro-fence activists said Wednesday’s clash proved that protesters opposed the fence even when it hugs the 1967 borders.

“Budrus sits on the Green Line,” said Marc Luria, of the Security Fence for Israel group. “We have been pushing for the fence for about three years. It is the government’s fault for being so slow in building the fence; today’s protest exemplifies that they [the Palestinians] will oppose it wherever it is. It is indicative of their opposition to building the fence in general, that is why the Palestinian leadership is involved in supporting such actions.”

Islam Is Not As Tolerant

Another Vatican official speaks out about the oppression of non-Muslims in Islamic countries, and Islamic intolerance of other religions: Islam not as tolerant as us: cardinal.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, who recently retired as the Vatican’s foreign minister, told the French Catholic daily La Croix this week that Christianity and Islam faced “an enormous task” of learning to live together in mutual tolerance.

Cardinal Tauran was the latest and highest-ranking Catholic to worry about Vatican relations with Muslims, an issue seen as central for whoever succeeds Pope John Paul.

“There are too many majority Muslim countries where non-Muslims are second-class citizens,” said Cardinal Tauran, the church’s top diplomat for 13 years before he had to step aside when he was made a cardinal.

Stressing the need to respect minorities, he singled out “the extreme case of Saudi Arabia, where freedom of religion is violated absolutely - no Christian churches and a ban on celebrating Mass, even in a private home".

“Just like Muslims can build their houses of prayer anywhere in the world, the faithful of other religions should be able to do so as well,” he said.

May the "Best" One Win

The first round of voting for the 2003 Fiskie Award is now open: Idiotarian of 2003. As described earlier, in this round you get five votes that you can spend however you like. The top 10 nominees after five days will go on to the final round.

BA Flight Held in Washington

Happy new year! Looks like the jihadis weren’t able to pull anything off yesterday; but the government was certainly very nervous about something: Agents Detain British Airways Jet at Washington Airport.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. security officials detained a British Airways Boeing 747 on arrival at a Washington, D.C., airport on Wednesday night and spent several hours questioning passengers, airline and security officials said.

FBI and Transportation Security Administration agents conducted “routine” questioning of passengers aboard BA Flight 223 from London when it arrived at Dulles International Airport and no arrests were made, an FBI spokeswoman said.

“There are a number of passengers on that British Airways flight that law enforcement officials wanted to speak with,” said the spokeswoman who asked not to be named.

Homeland Security Department spokeswoman Rachael Sunbarger told Reuters the flight had been detained on the tarmac for screening. She gave no further details.

The article does not say whether any of the passengers were detained.

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 frank says:

It was 11 o'clock upon a friday nite...you know that me an' her were feelin' outasite....yeah 20 reds and a big ol' pile of weed...ya know we drank some wine and then we LSD'd...well Chrissy puked twice and jumped on my bike...she said fire it up because you know what I like...then she burned her leg on the tailpipe then and said shiter-ree and puked again.... -- From a series of bootlegs that were recorded i n the 3 European tours that I travelled with during my illustrious military career in Pirmasens W. Germany....11/76-6/79...most of the quotes came from the live titties and beer versions with fz and skinny little terry ted bozio. Definitely in Paris, Stutgart and outside of Kaiserslaughtern ( K-Town )