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thursday, april 01, 2004
Bremer: "Deaths Will Not Go Unpunished"
Paul Bremer promised that the atrocity we saw yesterday will not go unpunished. Unfortunately he combined it with another refusal to look straight at the enemy.
“The acts we have seen (Wednesday) are despicable and inexcusable. They violate the tenets of all religions, including Islam as well as the foundations of civilized society,” an angry Bremer told graduates at Bagdad’s police academy.
“These murders are a painful outrage for us in the coalition but they will not derail the march toward stability and democracy in Iraq,” he said. “Their deaths will not go unpunished.”
And in case you were wondering what happened to the murdered Americans’ bodies:
One witness said some residents took away the two vehicles to an unknown destination and what remained of the bodies were “cut up into pieces, with parts thrown into the river or to the dogs”.
UPDATE: This story says the bodies were recovered by Iraqi police, but I’d wait for confirmation before believing it.
In Fallujah, police retrieved the remains of the four slain Americans on Wednesday night, wrapped them in blankets, and gave them to U.S. forces, said Iraqi police officer Lt. Salah Abdullah.
"A Gift"
Unknown group claims responsibility for Fallujah killings.
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - A previously unknown group claimed the gruesome killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, western Iraq, in revenge for Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
“This is a gift from the people of Fallujah to the people of Palestine and the family of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin who was assassinated by the criminal Zionists,” said in the statement from the “Brigades of Martyr Ahmed Yassin.”
“We advise the US forces to withdraw from Iraq and we advise the families of the American soldiers and the contractors not to come to Iraq,” said the statement obtained by AFP.
The statement, entitled “Fallujah, the graveyard of the Americans,” claimed the group’s fighters killed “members of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Zionist Mossad,” referring to Israel’s intelligence agency.
It said the “blind violence” of Fallujah residents resulted from an increasing hatred of the Americans and was also in response to the “US aggression, raids on mosques and homes, the arrests, the torture of clerics and the terrorizing of women and children.”
Jihad in Andalusia
A Tunisian man suspected of being the ringleader of the Madrid train bombings began planning for Jihad in Madrid in 2003.
The Tunisian, Serhane ben Abdelmajid Farkhet, 35, was identified as the “personal leader and coordinator” of the group implicated in the March 11 attack, which killed 191 people three days before Spain’s general election, the warrants said.
The other five named in arrest warrants are Moroccan, including one man traced to an al Qaeda meeting in Istanbul in 2000. Two others are brothers of the only woman jailed in the case, and a fourth rented the house used to prepare the bombs, the warrants said.
Fakhet “not only was the energizing force for the awareness campaign for the jihad ... but also with specific intent (since the middle of 2003 at least) for the preparation of a violent act in Spain, specifically in the Madrid area,” the warrants said.
Of course, Spain no longer needs to worry about the jihad—or so Zapatero and Moratinos believe. In the words of Churchill, they had a choice between dishonor and war; they chose dishonor.
And they shall have war. Holy war.
wednesday, march 31, 2004
Is This Going To Stand?
I’m just going to ask one simple question.
Why hasn’t the United States already launched an overwhelmingly armed operation to recover the remains of our citizens murdered today in Fallujah, and punish those responsible?
Their body parts are still hanging from that goddamned bridge.
What the hell is wrong with us?
UPDATE: From the New York Times report on this abomination: 4 From U.S. Killed in Brutal Assault by a Mob of Iraqis.
A few hours later the men from Blackwater Security drove into downtown Falluja. After they were shot, the scene turned grisly. A crowd of more than 300 people flooded into the streets. Men swarmed around the vehicles. Some witnesses said the Americans were still alive when one boy came running up with a jug of gasoline. Soon, both vehicles were fireballs.
“Everybody here is happy with this,” Mr. Furhan, the taxi driver, said. “There is no question.”
After the fires cooled, a group of boys tore the corpses out of the vehicles. The crowd cheered them on. The boys dragged the blackened bodies to the iron bridge over the Euphrates River, about a mile away. Some people said they saw four bodies hanging over the water, some said only two. At sunset, nurses from a nearby hospital tried to take the bodies away.
Men with guns threatened to kill the nurses. The nurses left. The bodies remained.
Peaceful Religion Watch
Here’s the latest death cult insanity, preached last Friday at the Zayid Bin-Sultan Al Nuhayyan mosque in Gaza: PA sermon ‘O God, show us a black day for the Jews, the Americans, and their supporters’.
Shaykh Ibrahim Mudayris delivers the sermon, which he begins by praising God for “turning the execution of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin into a new life for the Palestinian people and making his assassination a scandal for the alleged misfit state, Israel.” He hails the other martyrs who, he says, “were killed by the US missiles, tanks, and planes in rancorous Zionist hands.” He prays: “O God, if we are unable to reply to the Jews, and if we are unable to avenge for the blood of the martyrs, they are within your power, O Almighty God. Show us the miracles of Your power on them. Show us a black day for the Jews.”
The imam also hails the “blessing” of the martyrdom of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin and says: “God made his assassination a call for the unity of the Arab, Islamic, and Palestinian nation. His death or martyrdom turned out to be a new life for this nation. How strange! The martyrdom of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin has become a call for national unity on this land.”
The imam continues: “It is not strange to see sparks coming out of the eyes of President Yasir Arafat, as he announced a public general mourning in all the institutions of this homeland for his comrade Shaykh Ahmad Yasin. It is not strange to hear Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatening to reply and avenge for Shaykh Ahmad Yasin before Al-Qassam Brigades. It is not strange to find the brigades of all the other fronts threatening to reply even before the sons of Yasin did.” He says: “It is not strange to find the first reply to his blood, assassination, and execution come from the Lebanese Resistance men in Lebanon. Why not, after all, they are the brothers of the Palestinian Resistance. Their reply came by making plans for the formation of brigades named after the martyr, leader Shaykh Ahmad Yasin.”
The imam continues with the same theme in the second sermon. He urges Muslims to remain patience in face of Israel’s crimes until the liberation of Palestine. He also appeals to the Arab leaders who would meet in Tunis to close their ranks.
The imam concludes with a prayer for unity. He prays to God to shake the land under the Zionists and United States and its allies. He also prays: “O God, show us a black day for the Jews, the Americans, and their supporters. O God, avenge for the blood of our martyrs, besieged leaders, wounded, prisoners, and deportees. O God, remove the injustice on us.”
Moral Equivalence At Its Worst
Billmon sees today’s exhibition of inhuman savagery in Fallujah, and points out that we deserved it.
He uses a lot more words to retch up this disgusting thought, but at the end of his essay on America’s horrible past you’ll see what I mean. Along the way, he pretends to know how the “Sunni street” thinks, and says they’re just like the “unreconstructed Confederates of the postbellum South.”
A real deep thinker. And of course, he calls out LGF in particular, cherry-picking several comments (out of a total of more than 600) from people who have just seen their countrymen brutally murdered and torn apart and are expressing their anger, so that he can feel morally superior.
UPDATE: And this morally superior example of the effete left is now deleting all comments at his blog except the ones from his sycophants.
"Discover Islam" Invites Neo-Nazi to Bahrain
Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News reports on “a top US scholar and writer” visiting the kingdom, where he said that the Western world is suffering from “moral decay” and that Islam should come to the rescue. (Hat tip: Norwegian kafir.)
ISLAMIC countries should come to the rescue of the Western world which is suffering from moral decay and deterioration, says a top US scholar and writer.
Muslims and Christians should join hands in the pursuit of peace, freedom, justice and moral values, said California-based Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP) president Professor Bill Baker.
No country, irrespective of its military and money power, can exist if its moral values are deteriorated, he told the GDN.
“Islamic countries can save the West from its moral decay, provided Muslims lead a life built on the five pillars of Islam,” said Prof Baker.
“Islam is like a house built on the rock of submission and supported by five pillars: Witnessing, Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving or Tithing, and Pilgrimage.
“These five pillars are the distinguishing marks of Islam from all other religions.”
Prof Baker is in Bahrain at the invitation of Discover Islam.
He gave a talk on Zionism or Judaism, Justice or Injustice, Oppressor or Oppressed at Beit Al Quran last night.
Uh, well.
Let’s hold on one little second here, Gulf Daily News. “Christians and Muslims for Peace president Professor Bill Baker” just happens to be the notorious neo-Nazi William Baker, who has manufactured most of his academic credentials, and was fired from Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral when the truth about his connections to Nazi extremist groups came to light.
This man is the scum of the earth, an antisemitic hater par excellence. Just what the Arab world is looking for.
EU Covers Up Islamic Antisemitism
The European Jewish Congress has accused the European Union of covering up the true scale of Muslim antisemitic violence: EU ‘covered up’ attacks on Jews by young Muslims.
A study released by the EU’s racism and xenophobia monitoring centre astounded experts by concluding that the wave of anti-Jewish persecution over the last two years stemmed from neo-Nazi or other racist groups.
“The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans,” said a summary released to the European Parliament . “A further source of anti-Semitism in some countries was young Muslims of North African or Asian extraction.
”Traditionally, anti-Semitic groups on the extreme Right played a part in stirring opinion,“ it added.
The headline findings contradict the body of the report. This says most of the 193 violent attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools, kosher shops, cemeteries and rabbis in France in 2002 - up from 32 in 2001 - were ”ascribed to youth from neighbourhoods sensitive to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, principally of North African descent.
“The percentage attributable to the extreme Right was only nine per cent in 2002,” it said.
The report on Belgium said most of the fire-bomb and machine-gun attacks on Jewish targets were the result of a spillover from the Palestinian intifada.
The European Jewish Congress accused the EU watchdog of twisting data from the 15 member states to suit its own ideological bias, describing the report as a catalogue of “enormous contradictions, errors and omissions.”
“We cannot let it be said that the majority of anti-Semitic incidents come from young, disaffected white men. This is in complete contradiction with the facts recorded by the police,” it said.
The EU suppressed a report last year by German academics concluding that Arab gangs were largely responsible for a sudden surge in the anti-Jewish violence, allegedly because the findings were politically unpalatable.
Victor Weitzel, who wrote a large section of yesterday’s far more detailed study, told The Telegraph that the latest findings had been consistently massaged by the EU watchdog to play down the role of North African youth. “The European Union seems incapable of facing up to the truth on this,” he said. “Everything is being tilted to ensure nice soft conclusions.
”When I told them that we need to monitor the inflammatory language being used by the Arab press in Europe, this was changed to the ‘minority press’.
“Honestly, it’s incredible,” he said.
EU May Have Funded Terrorists, Says Parliament
For the first time, the corrupt unelected weasels who run the European Union have admitted that some of the money they’ve been happily handing over to the Palestinian Authority just may have been used for terrorism: EU may have funded terrorists, says Parliament. (Hat tip: Steven Den Beste.)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Tens of thousands of euro of EU funds may have been diverted to people linked with Palestinian terrorism, according to a report from the European Parliament, obtained by the EUobserver.
The report cites documentary evidence seen by a Parliamentary working group- set up last year after allegations that EU funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) had been misused - that between 21,500-39,000 US dollars of EU funds may have been transferred to terrorists.
It is the first time that the EU has judged its own funds to Palestine may not been used for their intended purpose.
The allegations relate to funds given by the EU directly to the Palestinian Authority account from June 2001 until December 2002.
Saudi Intelligence Linked to Al Qaeda
Two Saudi firms that have been linked to terrorist activities are also connected to the Saudi Arabian intelligence agency and its longtime chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal: 2 firms linked to Al Qaeda, Saudi intelligence agency.
HAMBURG, Germany — Two private Saudi companies linked with suspected Al Qaeda cells here and in Indonesia also have connections to the Saudi Arabian intelligence agency and its longtime chief, Prince Turki bin Faisal, according to information assembled by German intelligence analysts.
The Twaik Group and Rawasin Media Productions, both based in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, have served as fronts for the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate, according to an inquiry by Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND.
Twaik, a $100 million-a-year conglomerate, has diverse holdings inside and outside Saudi Arabia. Rawasin reports earnings of about $4 million a year from producing and selling audio and videotapes promoting the Wahhabi version of Islam that is Saudi Arabia’s dominant religion.
The conclusions reached by the BND inquiry were presented to the office of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder late last year and subsequently circulated within the German intelligence community.
The inquiry determined that Twaik, like Rawasin, was what one source described as “an organ of Saudi Arabia intelligence.”
In the late 1990s both Twaik and Rawasin employed Reda Seyam, a 44-year-old Egyptian suspected by Indonesian authorities of having helped finance the Bali nightclub bombing. Germany’s federal prosecutor is investigating Seyam on suspicion of supporting a foreign terrorist organization, namely Al Qaeda.
The German inquiry also discovered that, during 1999 and 2000, Seyam took several flights from Saudi Arabia to destinations in Europe on aircraft operated by the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate, or GID.
The Tribune reported last year that between 1995 and 1998, Twaik deposited more than $250,000 in bank accounts controlled by Mamoun Darkazanli, a Syrian-born Hamburg businessman and longtime Al Qaeda associate with close ties to the Sept. 11 hijackers during their years in the northern port city of Hamburg.
France: De Villepin Replaces Sarkozy
Dominique de Villepin, who is a man, is changing jobs as Jacques Chirac shuffles his cabinet after major socialist victories in the last poll: France announces new government; de Villepin to head Interior Ministry.
PARIS (AP) - Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, a relentless critic of the U.S. war in Iraq, will head the Interior Ministry under a major French government shakeup announced Wednesday.
De Villepin, France’s top diplomat since May 2002, will be replaced by European Commissioner Michel Barnier, the presidential Elysee Palace announced. The current interior minister, the highly popular Nicolas Sarkozy, becomes head of the Finance Ministry, but his role - perhaps the government’s toughest - could expand to encompass command of ambitious but controversial reform programs.
Sarkozy was responsible for what little backbone the French had in their dealings with the radical unassimilated elements of their Muslim immigrants. De Villepin is very unlikely to show the same spine; the appeasement is going to get worse. The French ban on Islamic headscarves in school will be the first to fall.
Death Cult Family Moments
Islamic Jihad promises heaven to teen recruit.
On Sunday, 15-year-old Tamer Khawireh ran home and buried his head in his mother’s arms. Sobbing, he repeated over and over: “They tricked me, they tricked me.”
Islamic Jihad had recruited Khawireh to be a suicide bomber for martyrdom and limitless virgins thereafter.
Khawireh is one of four Nablus boys recruited by terrorist groups and then arrested for an attempted suicide attack against Israel in the past month. And with the city’s mayor forced out of office by threats, a police force long-since imploded, and a population at best ambivalent about suicide attacks, nothing seems able to hinder the recruitment.
“I want to stay here with you, I want to be part of this life,” cried the boy, as recounted Tuesday by his eldest brother, Raed. An Islamic Jihad religious leader had wooed the youth, captivating him with the prospects of heaven’s rivers of honey and the beautiful women he would find there.
A few hours after Khawireh’s confession to Raed, IDF troops swooped down on the family’s Nablus home, arresting him and another young man. Both remain in Israeli detention.
Like the other boys his age, Khawireh was easily bought. NIS 100, a new set of clothes, a cellphone, and some cigarettes had done the trick. One day Raed caught his brother smoking and using the phone. “I cuffed him and he promised to give the phone back,” said Raed.
“Am I not a rich man?” asked Khawireh’s stunned father, Massoud, on Tuesday, as he passed out pictures of his son to reporters in his upper middle class home.
Good news, right? The 15-year old chose life instead of death in the service of mass murder.
But then the father proceeds to blame Israel:
Massoud said he called Islamic Jihad to demand an explanation. They apologized, lamely arguing that they mistook the gawky 10th grader for an 18-year old. They then promised not to do it again, said Massoud.
He and Raed believe the Islamic Jihad, or collaborators with Israel embedded within the group, fingered his younger son after it became clear that he chose life.
Khawireh’s family called on the Palestinian Authority to launch an investigation to find out who is responsible for recruiting children.
“We discovered the plan only three hours before my brother was supposed to set out on the suicide mission,” Raed said. “It’s clear that he had been manipulated by suspicious elements and people who do not represent the Palestinian resistance.”
I wonder. If his son had decided the other way, and blown himself up in an Israeli restaurant, would the same father have been boasting about his son, the martyr?
From the latest Palestinian opinion poll.
* Wide support for armed attacks: 87% support attacks against Israeli soldiers, 86% support attacks against settlers, and 53% support attacks against Israeli civilians.
Suits: Data "Suggests" Iranian Nuke Plot
I feel like I’m standing on a railway track looking at an oncoming locomotive, unable to move out of the way, as Iran continues its headlong rush to obtain nuclear weapons, and the whole world keeps playing this brainless “do they or don’t they?” game: Diplomats: New Data Suggests Secret Iran Atomic Plan.
A group of Western diplomats who follow the IAEA said recent intelligence has provoked suspicion that Tehran moved enrichment activities away from Natanz to smaller sites that are part of a parallel program U.N. inspectors have not uncovered.
“We’ve got lot of intelligence about small enrichment plants (in Iran) for some months, going back to the November (IAEA) board meeting,” one Western diplomat told Reuters on condition of anonymity. The diplomat gave no details about the form of this intelligence.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told Reuters in a telephone interview that the latest charges were “baseless” and “an attempt to destroy the fruitful cooperation between the IAEA and Iran.”
An IAEA spokeswoman declined to comment.
When Iran lights off a nuclear device, the world will become an infinitely more dangerous place; and this scenario is beginning to look inevitable.
Moronic Convergence Watch
Here comes another “newly formed” group, calling itself 2004 Racism Watch, demanding that President Bush pull his campaign ad that contains a partial face shot of a man who could possibly be construed as “Middle Eastern:” Bush campaign asked to pull ‘offensive’ ad. (Hat tip: Tim Rosnau.)
That darned “truth” thing really is inconvenient and offensive, isn’t it? I say we stamp it out!
But get a load of the “advisory committee” for this group. How long before we hear the media calling this a “non-partisan” group?
Actor Ed Asner, a spokesman for the group and member of its advisory committee, called the use of the picture “disturbing,” and, in a statement, compared it to a controversial ad used by the 1988 Bush-Quayle campaign to highlight problems in the Massachusetts prison furlough system.
Other members of the group’s advisory committee include actors Ed Begley Jr., and Susan Sarandon; former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga. and authors Noam Chomsky and Barbara Ehrenreich.
Another RoP Attack in Uzbekistan
Report: Blast in Uzbek Capital Causes Casualties.
The agency quoted an unnamed source as saying the blast occurred in the Sabidrakhim district in the southwest of the capital. It said the number of casualties was being checked but gave no more details.
The city has been in the grip of two days of violence which has killed more than 40 people.
Authorities blamed radical Islamist groups for a series of explosions Monday which killed 19 people. Twenty-three died Tuesday, when security forces besieged a suspected Islamic militant hideout.
Officials in Tashkent were not immediately able to comment on the latest report.
Religion of Savagery
Iraqis Drag Bodies Through Streets After Attack.
Television pictures showed one incinerated body being kicked and stamped on by a member of the jubilant crowd, while others dragged a blackened body down the road by its feet.
As one body lay burning on the ground, an Iraqi came and doused it with petrol, sending flames soaring.
At least two bodies were tied to cars and pulled through the streets, witnesses said.
“This is the fate of all Americans who come to Falluja,” said Mohammad Nafik, one of the crowd surrounding the bodies.
Some body parts were pulled off and left hanging from a telephone cable, while two incinerated bodies were later strung from a bridge and left dangling there.
A young boy beat one of the incinerated bodies after it was pulled down with his shoe as a crowd cheered.
“I am happy to see this. The Americans are occupying us so this is what will happen,” said Mohammad, 12, looking on.
As the victims lay burning, a crowd of around 150 men chanted “Long live Islam” and “Allahu Akbar” (“God is Greatest”) while flashing victory signs.
Photo 1 | Photo 2 | Photo 3
UPDATE: If you don’t want to get angry, don’t click this link: Getty Images of the savages. WARNING. VERY GRAPHIC. Children playing with mutilated bodies.
tuesday, march 30, 2004
My Country Map
Every once in a while a European posts a comment at LGF, recycling the tired stereotype that mocks Americans for not being well-traveled. We don’t know what a passport looks like. We can’t tell the difference between Dutch and English. Our stupid, stupid minds. Stupid. Cowboys.
Well, here is a map of the countries to which I have traveled (shown in red), generated by World66, for future reference when the Europeans’ favorite stereotype is recycled again. Which it will be.
Ottawa Terrorism Arrests
The Ottawa Muslim arrested today is connected to the terrorism arrests in Britain: Anti-terrorism charges laid against Ottawa man after raid on home, office.
The charges state that between Nov. 10, 2003 and Monday, Khawaja was involved in terrorist-related activity in Ottawa and “at or near the City of London, England,” the RCMP said in the release.
RCMP officers raided the family home in suburban Orleans on Monday, bashing in the door and searching the premises.
Qasim Khawaja, Mohammad Momim Khawaja’s brother, was in the home when RCMP officers arrived.
The RCMP said Qasim Khawaja and his sister were not arrested and were removed from the home “to ensure the integrity of the scene.”
Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan refused to comment on the investigation.
Police there seized about half a tonne of ammonium nitrate, a frequently used bomb ingredient, in dawn raids by hundreds of officers.
Mohammad Momim Khawaja was arrested at the home of “Dr.” Mahboob A. Khawaja:
The Ottawa home is owned by Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja, the author of Muslims and the West, a book about Islamic fundamentalism that analyses global conflicts within the framework of Muslim civilization.
Khawaja has also authored several other essays critical of American foreign policy, “corrupt Arab leadership,” “American-Zionist political encroachment in the Middle East,” and the West’s response to terrorism and the war on terror.
He was once listed as a policy adviser and faculty member of International Affairs, Politics and Religions at Syracuse University.
Terror and Tolerance
In an op-ed piece that teeters on the edge of becoming a rant, Jean-Christophe Mounicq, who appears against all odds to be French, gets it. Really gets it. In a very politically incorrect way, that may cause seething from CAIR representatives. In fact, we should start a CAIR Seethe Watch on this one.
Terror and tolerance. (Thanks to all who emailed about this one.)
The morning of Jan. 29, upon hearing about the attack on a bus in Jerusalem, I did not experience the expected emotion. It seemed such a “normal” thing, and I have not enough tears to shed for people I do not know.
The next day, on Jan. 30, I read an article about one of the victims — Avraham Belhassen, 26 years old, a young father — and realized that I could tolerate no more. I can no longer tolerate terrorist folly, Islamist hatred, the passivity of Muslims, the blindness of the West.
Following the attacks in Madrid, this feeling struck me again. The reaction of the Spanish people, cringing in fear before the Islamist claim of responsibility, bothered me even more. I can no longer tolerate such cowardly Munich-like behavior that leads inevitably to dishonor and war.
The reaction of the European media and political class to the elimination of Sheikh Yassin — the master of hate and terrorism, and one who had called for the murder of Jews — pushed me over the edge. I can no longer tolerate descriptions of the monster responsible for hundreds of deaths and thousands of wounded as a “spiritual leader,” a poor “paralytic in a wheelchair.” I can no longer tolerate murderous, barbaric Islamist hatred.
Disgraceful Islamic Behavior
At a Muslim march in Pretoria South Africa to “voice anger” over the execution of the Hamas monster Yassin, a father paraded his six-year old son around in an imitation explosive belt: My Six-Year-Old Wants to Be Martyr, Says Dad. (Hat tip: Alexander.)
This six-year-old boy, dressed as a Palestinian suicide bomber, complete with a belt of fake explosives strapped to his body, says he wants to go to heaven - and his father says his child wants to be a martyr.
Uzair Dockrat was taken by his father Mohammad to yesterday’s march in Pretoria, organised by the Muslim community to voice anger at the killing of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City last week.
Uzair was paraded days after a 16-year-old Palestinian boy, Hossam Abdo, was captured by Israeli soldiers at a Gaza City checkpoint with about 8kg of explosives strapped to his body. He said he had been paid to carry out a suicide mission.
After prompting from his father, Uzair swore revenge on Israel for the killing. According to his father, Uzair expressed a wish to become a martyr.
“Martyrs are heroes ... they go to heaven,” Uzair said.
“They (Israel) kill our people with tanks and helicopters. We can blow them up,” he said.
Mohammad Dockrat said his son’s costume was a “symbolic act of self-defence” against Israeli aggression.
“We are violent towards those who are violent towards us, and in this case, Israel is the aggressor,” he said.
As bad as this sounds, another news report makes clear that it’s even worse.
The boy’s father is a university lecturer: Boy, 6, made ‘bomb jacket’.
Pretoria - The homemade “suicide-bomber jacket” worn by a six-year-old to a protest march in Pretoria was his own idea, says his father.
Mohammed Dockrat, a university lecturer, said: “Muslim children in South Africa have been aware of the attack on Islam since the war in Afghanistan.
”They saw other children being killed and maimed and are very aware of who the enemy is.“
The academic said his son, Uzair, decided to wear the jacket to a protest march in Pretoria attended by about 300 Muslims.
The Dockrats were among those protesting in front of the Israeli embassy against the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the Palestinian Hamas group, outside a mosque in Gaza in an Israeli missile attack a week ago.
Uzair’s brother apparently helped him to make the jacket.
Dockrat said the children’s awareness of the Palestinian struggle was visible even in their games.
”Actionman is their hero and the bad guys are Bush (President George W Bush of America) and Sharon (Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel).
And get a load of this. Even as his six-year old son stands there wearing a cute little explosive belt, talking about becoming a martyr, this “academic” has the colossal gall to claim that the recent case of a Palestinian teenager arrested wearing a suicide belt (a real one) was an “Israeli setup.”
Dockrat said he didn’t want his sons to be pacifists and he wanted them to be able to defend themselves.
He agreed there could be negative feelings towards Jewish friends in South Africa.
“But if you see what is happening in Jewish communities here, how they send their children for military training in Israel, then it seems to me that our children should be the ones to be afraid and not the other way around.”
Dockrat claims the recent case of a Palestinian teenager, wearing a suicide jacket, being arrested at an Israeli checkpoint, was an Israeli set-up.
“The Hamas group never uses children in suicide-bomb attacks and it occurs mostly on buses where there is a civilian target.
”We do not use children in the struggle, this is a principal of Jihad (holy war)."
Allah only knows what’s being taught in this guy’s classroom. Cognitive dissonance, thy name is Islam.
Uzbeks in Wild Battle with Islamozoids
Uzbek police stormed a hideout of Islamic terrorists today, resulting in a shootout and Grand Guignol finale with Islamozoids blowing up all over the place: Uzbek Police Storm Militant Hideout; Up to 23 Dead.
One woman evading capture blew herself up, witnesses said. Her severed head went flying over a wall. The battle erupted in Yalangach, two miles from one of President Islam Karimov’s residences, a day after explosions killed 19 people in the Central Asian state. Authorities said Islamic militants triggered those blasts.
When Tuesday’s firefight had ended, five corpses clad in black and identified by police as “terrorists” lay outside, each with bullet wounds. An Interior Ministry statement read on television said 20 militants had killed themselves.
“In the process of being detained, 20 terrorists blew themselves up. Along with this, three policemen died and five sustained wounds of various seriousness,” the statement said.
The Thwarted Post-9/11 Plans
According to captured Al Qaeda freakazoid Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, there were plans after September 11 to attack Chicago and Los Angeles—but the terror cells were thrown into disarray by the Bush administration’s unexpectedly strong response to 9/11: Chicago, L.A. towers were next targets.
LONDON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.
Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization’s plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators.
Mohammed told interrogators that he and Ramzi Yousuf, his nephew who was behind an earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, had leafed through almanacs of American skyscrapers when planning the first operation.
“We were looking for symbols of economic might,” he told his captors.
He specifically mentioned as potential targets the Library Tower in Los Angeles, which was “blown up” in the film “Independence Day,” and the Sears Tower in Chicago.
Would You Like Fries With That?
Capping off a busy day for the Religion of Peace™, a Moroccan nutball tried to blow up a McDonalds restaurant in Brescia, Italy: Bomber dies in blast at Italian McDonald’s. (Hat tip: Bruce.)
Witnesses said a man, later identified as Moustafa Chaouki, a native of Casablanca, drove his Fiat Tempra into the queue of cars waiting at the restaurant in Brescia, 100km east of Milan, at 10 pm. His car contained four cylinders of kitchen gas, each with a capacity of more than 70 litres.
Police believe he opened the taps of the cylinders, filling the car with gas. Witnesses said he then suddenly opened the driver’s door, and the car detonated into a fireball.
A woman in the car directly behind the Fiat, told the daily, Corriere della Sera: “I had just said to my boyfriend, ‘Don’t you smell something strange?’ Then there was the blast. That man didn’t even try to get out of the car. He stayed there, immobile in his seat, with one leg out of the door.”
About 20 customers were inside the restaurant, and a firefighter told Corriere: “We arrived within three minutes, and it was fortunate that we did because we succeeded in containing the explosion, chilling some of the gas cylinders inside the car.”
Otherwise, the unnamed officer added, the cylinders could have exploded, firing lethal metal fragments through the restaurant windows and possibly igniting other cylinders of carbon dioxide belonging to the restaurant which were close to the burning car.
We Got Mail!
A few days ago we were visited by someone who was either a true death cult jihadi, or doing a great impersonation of one. The bizarre twists and turns of his “thinking” provide a fascinating glimpse into the alogical world of the radical Islamist.
He’s in Sydney, Australia, and he found LGF by searching Google for hamas pictures of yassim. (He’s not a particularly strong speller.)
Here’s his first appearance at LGF, using the name “Ansar,” on the thread that shows up near the top of the Google search results: A Life in Pictures. Notice “Ansar’s” final comment:
The picture above is the most beautiful I have seen - a strike against the unjust US!!
If you scroll to the top of that page, you’ll see the picture he’s gloating over.
Then, like so many of these freaks, he showed up in another thread and carried on a phony conversation with himself, posing as several different people with the names “Ansar,” “Razhull,” and “Bismillah,” calling for the murder of Jews in revenge for the execution of Sheikh Yassin. It starts here, and along the way, he drops this little jewel...
An eye for an eye is the way of Islam!
...and briefly detours into a maudlin lecture on morality:
For the semitic peoples who have suffered much, have you become without compassion and moral reason - yes you must hate the Hamas militant -but the child standing on the street who is also killed - how can you hate this child?
When he came back to another topic, wrote this:
It is you have not understood Clem. Im not an A(rab) but an A(ustralian), fool!
...and then proceeded to post a link to a disgusting Palestinian propaganda site featuring pictures of dead and mutilated babies, I had had enough. Out came the banning stick.
Oh, did he thrash. He tried to post several comments, and when he realized he was banned, he fired off the following email to me. With a phony Hotmail address, of course.
The Aryans slaughtered you - now Islam will finish you!!
Allah wu Ahkbar!!!
Never forget how weak you are...
Just brimming with compassion and moral reason, isn’t he?
Tiny Minority of Extremists
Students at Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the most prestigious school in the Islamic world, show their love and support for an evil mass-murdering terrorist, and scream for revenge.
Students carry posters of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Tuesday, March 30, 2004, during a protest in the Islamic al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt calling for revenge for his assassination. ‘A crippled sheikh has awakened the nation, when will we act?’ the poster reads. The students also protested the last minute postponement of the Arab summit which was due to begin Monday in Tunisia. (AP Photo/Mohamad Al-Sehety)
Palestinians Seethe, Threaten
More threats against the US from the Palestinian death cult: Palestinians Back Down From U.S. Threats.
The American diplomatic delegation is scheduled to arrive in the region Wednesday to hear more about the withdrawal plan. U.S. officials said Monday they refuse to support the plan for now but would consider changing their minds after more talks with Israeli and Arab officials.
The team consists of Assistant Secretary of State William J. Burns, National Security Council Deputy Director Stephen J. Hadley and the council’s Mideast specialist, Elliott Abrams. It is their third trip to the area since February.
In Gaza, the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades — a violent group linked to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction — issued a statement saying the delegation was banned from Palestinian areas. It also accused America of unfairly preventing the U.N. Security Council from condemning Israel’s assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin last week.
“This visit is rejected completely, and the American administration will not like the circumstances of such a visit,” it said.
Hours later, however, Al Aqsa leaders softened the statement, saying there were no plans to harm the diplomats.
“We will not use force against the Americans because we don’t want one more enemy. We have one enemy and that’s enough,” said Abu Qusay, an Al Aqsa leader in Gaza.
However, he said the Americans still were unwelcome in the Palestinian areas and the group would call for anti-American demonstrations and boycotts of American goods.
U.S. Embassy spokesman Paul Patin said he did not believe the American delegation planned to enter the West Bank or Gaza, but “clearly our security people will be interested in this (threat).”
Ottawa Muslims Raided
More RoP terror raids today in Ottawa; but there are very few details yet on the reason for this raid on the home of a prominent Muslim leader: Ottawa Muslims held in global terror sweep. (Hat tip: Judith.)
A handful of Ottawa Muslims were being questioned last night in what authorities described as an international terror probe that saw heavily-armed Mounties storm the home of one of the city’s most prominent Muslims.
At 1:30 p.m. yesterday, RCMP tactical units, acting on security intelligence briefs, fanned out across the city, arresting one young Muslim man and questioning several others.
The raids followed a month-long RCMP surveillance operation targeting the Orleans home of Mahboob A. Khawaja, who is presently teaching at a university in Saudi Arabia.
Reached there last night, Mr. Khawaja said he was “extremely disturbed” by the raid.
“It’s nothing more than a hoax to create embarrassment,” he said in a telephone interview. “I don’t have the facts about why they would raid my house and take my two children into custody.”
The Mounties forced their way into his home, but their target was nowhere to be found. Instead, they found two of Mr. Khawaja’s adult children.
His wife, Azra, had gone out for some afternoon shopping and was picked up by police at a shopping centre.
Later in the day, RCMP arrested a Muslim man linked to the house.
According to his friends, one of Mr. Khawaja’s four sons was taken away yesterday by RCMP as he walked the hallways of the University of Ottawa, school books in hand.
RoP Plot Foiled in Philippines
The Religion of Peace™ is getting busy around the world, emboldened by the success of the Madrid bombings: Philippines Says Foils Planned Terror Attack. (Hat tip: Barak Moore.)
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine security forces have arrested several militants and seized a large amount of explosives, foiling a plan to bomb civilian targets in the capital Manila, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on Tuesday. “We have pre-empted a Madrid-level attack on the metropolis by capturing an explosive cache of 80 pounds (36 kg) of TNT which was intended to be used for bombing malls and trains in Metro Manila,” she said on national television.
Brits Discover RoP Plot in the Works
British police averted a disastrous terror attack today, arresting eight Pakistani Muslims and confiscating half a ton of explosive material. You’ll have to really dig in this Reuters release to find out that all the suspects were Muslims; the media continues to treat this obvious connection as if it were sheer coincidence worthy of only a passing mention, every time a terror cell is discovered plotting murder and destruction.
Peter Clarke, head of Britain’s anti-terror branch, told a news conference more than half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer was discovered in a 6-foot-high plastic bag in west London.
“Part of the investigation will focus on the purchase, storage and intended use of that material,” Clarke said.
An anti-terror source said the fertilizer was similar to explosive materials used in the 2002 Bali bombings, although there was no evidence that a bombing was planned or any possible target.
However the source said there was enough material to launch an attack on the same scale as the huge 1996 bombing near Canary Wharf in London’s financial district. Clarke stressed the operation was not linked to investigations into the coordinated train bombings in Madrid on March 11, which killed nearly 200 people or to Irish republican terrorism.
Britain has been on high alert since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. and, after the Madrid bombings, Britain’s most senior police officer Sir John Stevens warned an attack was inevitable.
Clarke said the eight men, all British and aged between 17 and 32, were arrested on suspicion of preparing to carry out acts of terrorism. They were detained in a series of 24 dawn raids carried out by 700 officers from five police forces and the security services.
“It was the biggest counter-terrorism raid in recent years,” the police source said. He added all the suspects were believed to be Muslim and of Pakistani origin.
Bomb Thrown at Aussie Embassy
Those pesky Buddhists threw a small bomb at the Australian embassy in Kuala Lumpur early this morning. (Hat tip: Midas Mulligan.)
KUALA LUMPUR: A small explosive device was thrown at the Australian High Commission (embassy) in Malaysia early Tuesday but did not cause any injuries, a spokesman told AFP.
The bomb was thrown from a moving car before dawn.
It caused no injuries or damage to property after hitting the front fence of the high commission in central Kuala Lumpur and exploding on the street, the spokesman said.
“We had a minor incident involving a small explosive device being thrown from a car at ten to five this morning (2050 GMT),” he said.
“It was thrown at the front fence of the high commission. It exploded with a big bang but caused no damage to life or property.”
monday, march 29, 2004
Secrets of Timothy McVeigh
LA Weekly has an interesting piece looking at the unanswered questions from the Oklahoma City bombing, including the still-open possibility of a Middle Eastern connection, deliberately ignored by the FBI for reasons of political correctness: Secrets of Timothy McVeigh.
Police spokesperson Captain Jeffrey Becker says three sets of fingerprints were found on the pickup: one on the driver’s-side window, a second on the frame around that window, and a third set near the driver’s-side door handle. Becker says his department ran the prints through a nationwide criminal database but came up empty. The police then handed the truck and the fingerprints over to the FBI. “We never heard back from them,” says Becker. “We never knew where it was stolen or heard anything about a suspect.”
A resident of the complex where the pickup was dumped, speaking confidentially, says he saw the truck parked at the complex a week after the bombing. His wife got a close look at the driver, on April 25. He says its “ugly yellow color” caught his eye. Ellis, he adds, came to the complex looking for witnesses. “He showed me a picture of the pickup and asked if he’d seen it. I told him yes,” says this resident. “Ellis then told me, ‘Remember that APB the day of the bombing, with two Middle Eastern–looking men in it? Well, this is the truck.’”
His wife told Ellis she remembered the driver because he glared at her. She said he was “clean-shaven, with an olive complexion, dark wavy hair, broad shoulders, 28 to 34 years old, and of Middle Eastern descent.”
The agent re-interviewed them a few days later. “Again,” according to the resident, “he said, ‘This is the brown pickup from the APB. It had no license plate, no VIN numbers, and was painted yellow.’ He also told us it was fingerprinted by the FBI.” His wife put together a crude drawing of the driver that Ellis picked up. The agent then refused to take their phone calls. “I never heard from him again,” says the husband.
"Anti-War" == Antisemitic
LGF reader zombie, whose photo of the World Trade Center scumbag at the San Francisco “anti-war” rally set off quite a blogburst, has found some photos from another demonstration in San Francisco last year: Photos from the rally in S.F. on February 16, 2003.
Included is the following image, perhaps the most hateful, antisemitic sign I’ve seen yet from the peaceful anti-war gang.
Libya Traded Nuke Secrets with Egypt
Middle East Newsline reports that Libya was trading nuclear secrets with our ally Egypt. The home of IAEA chief Mohamed Elbaradei. The country that receives more than $2 billion a year in foreign aid from the US. (Hat tip: Marshall.)
Inspections by a British-U.S. team of Libyan facilities in late 2003 and early 2004 have uncovered evidence that Libya was both the source for and recipient of nuclear and missile technology and expertise from Egypt. Officials said the evidence confirmed suspicions over the last three years of a secret trade between Cairo and Tripoli in strategic weapons obtained from North Korea.
“The evidence of Egyptian involvement in Libya’s missile and nuclear weapons program is highly damaging and most of the doubts we had previously have been resolved,” an official said. “That doesn’t mean, however, that there will be imminent repercussions.”
The officials did not elaborate on the type of evidence found in Libya. But they said Egypt appeared to have been using Libya as a way-station for obtaining nuclear and missile technology and components from North Korea.
Immigration as a Trojan Horse
Free Republic has a copy of a must-read article in the Wall Street Journal by Keith Johnson and David Crawford, on the new breed of Islamic warrior.
Evidence in the Madrid train bombings points to the participation of a new breed of Islamic holy warrior, unfettered by many of the religious and ideological constraints that defined Islamic terrorism in the past.
These Islamist warriors — schooled in the North African doctrine known as Takfir wal Hijra and trained by Afghan veterans of al Qaeda — think, recruit and operate differently from traditional Islamist networks. For Europe, that makes the threat particularly acute. The Takfir movement is strongest in Morocco and Algeria, the primary sources of Muslim immigration to Western Europe. Takfiri theorists openly advocate using immigration as a Trojan horse to expand jihad, or holy war.
Investigators have yet to pin definite blame for the Madrid attacks on any one group. Attention has focused on the Moroccan Islamic Combat Group as well as several other al Qaeda splinter groups. Moroccan officials say the leading suspect in the Madrid bombings, Tangier-born Jamal Zougam, is Takfiri.
Friday, German prosecutors said police in Darmstadt, near Frankfurt, raided an apartment used briefly last October by one of the suspects arrested last week in Spain. The 28-year-old Moroccan had applied to live and study in Germany but was turned down. Spanish police on Saturday also found a safe house outside Madrid where they believe the backpack bombs were prepared; fingerprints from two jailed suspects, including Mr. Zougam, were found in the house.
Many elements common to the suspects in custody for the Madrid bombings so far, investigators say, bear hallmarks of the ultrafundamentalist Takfiris or their close cousins, the Algerian-based Salafists. These include the use of petty crime and drug trafficking to raise funds, the recruitment of women, and operatives who adopt a Western lifestyle to keep a low profile. The virulent brand of Takfiri Islam makes all-out armed jihad an obligation for all true believers; even apostate fellow Muslims are fair game.
Blogads: They're Heeeere
Yes, I’m joining the growing number of bloggers who are participating in Blogads. Please note: there will be no pop-ups or pop-unders or pop-tarts, just some advertisements from companies and people that I think might be interesting to our readers; a nice thing about Blogads is that I have some control over which ads appear.
The hope is that this will start to pay for some of the time I spend on LGF, and make unnecessary those periodic pleas for donations that I hate writing.
If you’d like to advertise at LGF, click the link in the right sidebar that says “Click to advertise” and sign up!
The Next Threat
A very good piece by Jack Birnbaum at Tech Central Station, on the mad mullahs of Iran and their transparent scheme to placate, bribe, and threaten the world community long enough to attain the ultimate weapon: The Next Threat.
I won’t bore you with more details of the straight-faced lies of the mullahcracy and the semi-credulous pronouncements of the international monitoring agencies, and of whether inspectors are being allowed in today, because it will change by tomorrow. If at this point you don’t believe that Iran is on its way to a nuclear capability, you can stop reading and go check out today’s comics page. For the rest of you, the question now becomes: What strategic problems does this bring, and what to do about it?
First, a nuclear Iran becomes a bigger player in local politics. It may make it harder for the U.S. to continue increasing its influence among the new states of Central Asia, and may, if and when alliances and times of conflict line up right, complicate things in the Indian-Pakistani conflict. But these are the least of our worries.
Perhaps less likely, but more importantly if it does eventuate, would be increased influence in Europe. The Shahab-4 missile, developed with the kind assistance of North Korea, could carry a plutonium-core nuclear bomb from Iran to Central Europe. Even the mullahs aren’t crazy enough to do that, but just the existence of that capability may well affect European decision makers when they next discuss immigration, or headscarves, or the middle east conflict, or cooperation with the United States.
But the critical issues are not those. They are: the survival of Israel, and the threat of an untraceable nuclear attack on America.
The 1000 Styles of Rumsfeld
Vanishing Palm Style!
The Secret Pictures of Ahmad al Halabi
Daniel Pipes discovers some interesting information in the case of Ahmad al Halabi, the Muslim Guantanamo Bay airman facing 17 charges that could send him to prison for life: The Secret Pictures of Senior Airman Ahmad al Halabi.
[Halabi’s personal] website contains a miscellany of items that interested Halabi. He lists news from Arab League member states, the Islamic prayer times, pictures of Arab pop music stars, airplanes, and the like.
Then there are some items of greater relevance. Clicking on the “r” in “SrA/USAF” on the left side of the page takes you via a secret link leads to a hidden romantic page with flowers, several pictures of a woman, and this warning:
This is a private Web Page For RANA DALI
Only authorized persons may view this page.
Clicking on “Go to Ahmad’s Picture in Cuba” then brings up three pages of pictures of Halabi.
The first has pictures taken at Captain Yee’s residence, with a tughra-style “In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” at the top of the page.
The second posts standard military-style pictures of Halabi in Kuwait – standard except for the anomalous presence of the Syrian flag waving at the top of the page.
The third seems to be a Muslim-only page, with captions like “Group picture on EID Day,” “EID party, Dec 6 2002. From Right To left, Ahmad, Tabasom, Katib, Chaplin Yousif and Ahmad,” and “On the ferry from Right to left: Rabi, Tony, Bahlawan, Tariq and Ahmad.” This page features both the tughra and the Syrian flag.
Hanson: We Should No Longer Support Israel When...
Victor Davis Hanson makes a series of terrific points in a new column at his web site: When should we stop supporting Israel?
The recent assassination of Sheik Saruman raises among some Americans the question—at what point should we reconsider our rather blanket support for the Israelis and show a more even-handed attitude toward the Palestinians? The answer, it seems to me, should be assessed in cultural, economic, political, and social terms.
Well, we should no longer support Israel, when ...
You know you want to read it all.
Appeasement Epidemic Spreads to France
If you thought France’s ... uh ... tendency toward appeasement was already as bad as it could get, stand back. Because in spite of his opposition to the Iraq War, Chirac is still too far right for the socialist bloc; and the surrender virus is spreading from Spain to France: Chirac to act soon over poll rout. (Hat tip: zombie.)
Kerry Hubris: Boundless?
Foreign leaders’ endorsements weren’t enough for John Effin’ Kerry. Now he has the Big Guy Upstairs on his side.
ST. LOUIS - John Kerry cited a Bible verse to criticize leaders who have “faith but has no deeds,” prompting President Bush’s spokesman to accuse Kerry of exploiting Scripture for a political attack.
Kerry never mentioned Bush by name during his speech Sunday at New North Side Baptist Church, but aimed his criticism at “our present national leadership.” Kerry cited Scripture in his appeal for the worshippers, including James 2:14, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?”
“The Scriptures say, what does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?” Kerry said. “When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?”
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said Kerry’s comment “was beyond the bounds of acceptable discourse and a sad exploitation of Scripture for a political attack.”
Bum-Rushing the Bulldozers
In San Leandro a bunch of terror enabling fans of Rachel Corrie staged a monumentally stupid assault on a Caterpillar dealership. The East Bay Express, an alternative weekly, treats the story with all the seriousness it deserves: Bum-Rushing the Bulldozers. (Hat tip: veebee.)
The square building’s interior was cool from the air conditioning. The lead protesters passed the receptionist’s desk and surrounded the square cubicle station directly behind her, which housed about six file clerks, mostly middle-aged women who wore sensible clothes and had framed pictures of their children on their desks, but were now crowded by strangers reading Jewish prayers and holding lit candles. One clerk stood dumbfounded, a brown file in her right hand dangling at her side, and her mouth gaping open as if thinking: Why do these people have a problem with me? I don’t even work for Caterpillar.
A few men in suits and ties came out to the front, then walked back down the hallway and closed their doors. For a few seconds, the activists just stood there. One positioned a large cardboard poster of a smiling Rachel Corrie on the receptionist’s desk. Others decided the candles might set off the fire alarms, and yelled to everyone to blow them out, which merely caused a plume of smoke to waft through the office.
Finally, a short man in a yellow oxford shirt appeared and asked the lead organizer to direct his minions to leave the building. The man would identify himself only as a controller, and he pointed out that business was being disturbed.
“Caterpillar bulldozers disturb Palestinian lives every day,” one protester countered, to applause.
The lead organizer read his demands aloud. He likened Caterpillar bulldozers to weapons of mass destruction and considered the company culpable in Corrie’s death, then held the company’s shareholders and employees all but responsible for the devastation taking place a hemisphere away. One clerk turned up the volume on her radio. The organizer spoke louder.
The workers inside the cubicle believed they were the victims of a misdirected effort. One woman said to her colleague, “This isn’t going to help one bit, I tell you that much.” Her colleague nodded in agreement, with a look of such bitterness that it seemed as if she’d been forever turned off to the activists’ cause, as if personally insulted by their righteous implications. Why do these people have a problem with me? I don’t even work for Caterpillar.
The protesters believed they’d scored a good one. As they exited the office, just ahead of two arriving police officers, they were pumped up with pride. They’d established that yes, this was a serious campaign, and they left with the hope that the yellow-shirted controller would tell his boss all about his uncomfortable afternoon, who would tell his supplier, who would tell his boss, who would tell his, who would tell his. Until one day, Caterpillar stopped selling bulldozers to Israel.
“Hey, you guys,” one female organizer shouted as they left the building, “let’s go back to Starbucks and debrief.”
UPDATE: These tools actually have a video of the event at their web site: Jewish Voice for Peace. It’s an unbelievably pathetic 18.5 Meg Quicktime file. I wonder how many people would have to view it to max out their bandwidth allotment?
Religion of Peace Strikes in Uzbekistan
19 killed, 26 hurt in Uzbek terror attacks, explosion of bomb-making factory.
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan (AP) - Two suicide bombings, attacks on police and an explosion at an alleged terrorist bomb-making factory in Uzbekistan killed 19 people and injured 26, the Central Asian country’s prosecutor general said Monday.
Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov said the events began Sunday night with an explosion that killed 10 people at a house being used by an extremist in the central province of Bukhara.
There were also two attacks on police Sunday night and early Monday, killing three policemen, and two attempted suicide bombings near the Chorsu bazaar in Tashkent’s Old City, killing three policemen and a young child, he said.
The suicide bombings were the first reported in Uzbekistan. Kadyrov said the attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists - singling out the banned Hizb-ut-Tahrir group and followers of the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam.
Character Suicide
From Cox & Forkum.
sunday, march 28, 2004
John Kerry: 1971, Dick Cavett
John Kerry appeared on the Dick Cavett show in 1971, and C-SPAN is showing the video right now.
The Finger Pointing Starts
In this AP release on the pitiful failure of the Arab League summit, you can see the start of the impending propaganda attempt to blame the collapse on Israel. (And by extension, the US.)
The spin: “If only the evil Israelis hadn’t tried to defend themselves from the people we fund and support, we would have had a magical peace plan! Another precious chance at peace lost, and it’s all Israel’s fault!”
Arab Summit Falls Apart Over U.S. Reforms.
Arab League leaders had planned to use the summit, which was slated to start Monday, to submit proposals for political reforms in response to U.S. calls for greater freedoms in the region. Many of the most powerful countries in the Middle East are led by absolute rulers or royal families.
But Israel’s March 22 assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin provoked widespread outrage in the Arab world, making it politically risky for some states to pursue a peace initiative or take a stand on a reform plan championed by the Americans.
At the summit, the Arab leaders had also intended to relaunch a 2-year-old Saudi-crafted peace initiative toward Israel.
Syria blamed host Tunisia for the collapse. “This decision is entirely inexplicable. It is inappropriate,” Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa said Sunday.
Several governments called for an urgent meeting of Arab foreign ministers to overcome differences so the summit of the 22-member Arab League could be held.
But at least a few of these clowns are starting to wake up. What we’re seeing here is the beginning of a schism in the Arab world, between the old and the new. The murderers and power-challengers and haters versus the last chance they’re likely to get.
Tunisian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatem bin Salem said that if the meeting gone ahead, “the summit would have come out with formalities, and regretfully, would have been the subject of ridicule by Arab and world public opinion.”
Case in point: A Glance at the State of Arab Democracy.
Search Enhancements
I’ve been doing a little work on the LGF search feature. If you click the search button at the top of the page without entering a string to find (or click the “Advanced” link), you’ll go straight to the search page, where you can now choose to search only the entry text, or the entry and comments (everything). Searching entries only is quite a bit faster than searching everything.
If you choose to search with Google, these buttons don’t do anything; they only work with the built-in LGF search function.
UPDATE: And now, by popular demand, I’ve also added a feature to limit the searches by time. The popup menu labeled “Search previous:” lets you limit the search to the last day, last week, last month, last 3 or 6 months, or the last year. Anything more than that and you get the whole shebang.
Another Teen Suicide Bomber
Troops arrest Islamic Jihad would-be bomber, 16.
IDF troops on Sunday arrested an Islamic Jihad terrorist in Rafadia near Nablus on the West Bank.
The terrorist, Tamr Hawira, 16, is suspected of planning to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel in the near future.
Hawira was handed over to the General Security Service for questioning, where he told the Shin Bet of his plans to carry out an attack.
Sacrificing their children on an altar of hatred and murder. Let’s give them a state!
No Terrorists in Canada, Part 76
In the first nine months of the fiscal year, Canada’s anti-money laundering center has discovered $35 million in suspected terrorist financing.
The amount reflects the total detected by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre from April through December 2003, forming the basis of 29 case files passed to police or intelligence officials for further investigation.
The figures obtained by The Canadian Press are the latest indication that dangerous organizations continue to try to use Canada’s financial institutions as conduits for bankrolling terrorist acts.
Fintrac, as the federal centre is known, identified 25 cases of suspected terrorist financing involving $22 million in all of fiscal 2002-03.
“We’re already ahead of where we were over the full-year period last year,” centre spokesman Peter Lamey said in an interview.
The 1000 Styles of Rumsfeld
Drunken Swan Style!
The 1000 Styles of Rumsfeld
Pineapple Claw!
The Lonely World of Al Qaeda's Wives
Here’s British Arabism taken to its absurd masochistic conclusion; a puffy human interest piece about the tribulations of being an Al Qaeda brood mare devoted to the destruction of Western civilization.
It is almost as if terrorism were the family business - although Maha vehemently denies this. “We believe in defending one’s home, one’s family, and one’s faith,” she says. “Like in that movie, Braveheart.”
Even though divorce and death have now severed their direct marital ties with the terrorists, Maha and Zaynab remain linked to the men of al-Qa’ida by blood, by ideology and by shared experience.
When Allied bombs began to rain down on Afghanistan in October 2001, the Arab women in Kabul packed up in haste. Maha and Zaynab escaped from the capital in a convoy to Gardez, in south-eastern Afghanistan, along with Maha’s other daughter, Miriam, her granddaughter, Safia, and her youngest son, Abdul Karim. They rode along with the wife and two children of Zawahiri, but lagged behind.
To their horror, their destination, a guesthouse of a Taliban commander, was demolished by American bombs and their friends were incinerated inside. Awed and shaken, the Khadr women and children cowered behind a petrol station. “We were supposed to be staying there, too,” says Maha, her eyes filling with tears. Instead, they were told to head back to their orphanage in Jalalabad. On their journey, they kept their minds busy by listening to the radio, and, they say, by making notes of their more portentous dreams about Osama bin Laden - they interpreted soaring birds as signs that he had flown to safety.
Nothing to Fear
Another on-target column from Mark Steyn, aimed at would-be whistleblower Richard Clarke: Bush has nothing to fear from this hilarious work of fiction.
The reality is that there is a Richard Clarke for everyone. If you are like me and reckon there was an Islamist angle to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, then Clarke’s your guy: he supports the theory that al-Qa’eda operatives in the Philippines “taught Terry Nichols how to blow up the Oklahoma Federal Building”.
On the other hand, if you’re one of those Michael Moore-type conspirazoids who wants to know why Bush let his cronies in the House of Saud and the bin Laden family sneak out of America on September 11, then Clarke’s also your guy: he is the official who gave the go-ahead for the bigshot Saudis with the embarrassing surnames to be hustled out of the country before they could be questioned.
Does this mean Clarke is Enron - an equal-opportunity scandal whose explicitly political aspects are too ambiguous to offer crude party advantage? Not quite. Although his book sets out to praise Clinton and bury Bush, he can’t quite pull it off. Except for his suggestion to send in a team of “ninjas” to take out Osama, Clinton had virtually no interest in the subject.
In October 2000, Clarke and Special Forces Colonel Mike Sheehan leave the White House after a meeting to discuss al-Qa’eda’s attack on the USS Cole: “’What’s it gonna take, Dick?’ Sheehan demanded. ‘Who the s*** do they think attacked the Cole, f****** Martians? The Pentagon brass won’t let Delta go get bin Laden. Does al-Qa’eda have to attack the Pentagon to get their attention?’”
Apparently so. The attack, on the Cole, which killed 17 US sailors, was deemed by Clinton’s Defence Secretary Bill Cohen as “not sufficiently provocative” to warrant a response. You’ll have to do better than that, Osama! So he did. And now the same people who claim Bush had no right to be “pre-emptive” about Iraq insist he should have been about September 11.
France Bans Egyptian Flights
In a weird and troubling incident, France has banned Egypt’s Luxor Air from flying in the country after a Luxor plane took a “completely abnormal” low altitude flight path over a French city: Luxor Air Banned From Flying in France.
Luxor Air’s flying rights in France were suspended during an investigation into a March 21 flight from Luxor , Egypt, to Nantes in western France, Michel Wachenheim, director-general of France’s Civil Aviation Authority, said late Saturday.
The plane, an MD-83, made a 1.2-mile deviation as it came in for landing and overflew the urban center of Nantes at an altitude of 660 feet — a “very low” altitude and “completely abnormal trajectory with respect to its normal flight path,” Wachenheim said.
None of the 104 passengers and 10 crew aboard were injured.
After landing safely on its second attempt, the plane left Nantes quickly. “Visibly, they were very rushed,” Wachenheim said.
France’s Bureau of Accident Investigation has asked Egyptian authorities for information about the flight crew, and background on the plane and airline, which is a small privately owned company.
Egypt to Host Arab Hate Summit
Egypt will host the upcoming Arab League summit (this year’s theme: “Hate: It’s Where We Want to Be!”), after Tunisia abruptly cancelled. The first paragraph of the following excerpt speaks volumes about the Arab world: Cairo steps in to host Arab summit.
The Tunisian government news agency said Tunisia had insisted that the summit explicitly endorse democracy and reject what it called “extremism, fanaticism, violence and terrorism” — and that other countries had balked at this.
But a Gulf delegate linked the Tunisian decision to Ben Ali’s stormy visit to Washington in February when U.S. President George W. Bush told him he wanted to see a free press and an “open political process” in Tunisia.
Many of the delegates who were in Tunis with foreign ministers to prepare the summit insisted there had been little or no arguing, and that talks on a communique had gone well.
“It’s all about the Tunisian approach to the United States, the Tunisian attempt to win U.S. favour,” said an Arab diplomat who attended the last two days of preparatory meetings.
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frank says:
