We wrote here yesterday about the Palestinian Authority media reports that the PA leadership was to make awards to two female terrorists (including the Sbarro bomber) imprisoned in Israel. Today the Jerusalem Post reports that the Israelis have talked peace partner Mahmoud Abbas out of making the awards to the two terrorists. The awards have therefore been ‘revoked.’ Apparently, for today, at any rate, Abbas is more afraid of the Israelis than of the ‘Palestinians.’

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Barack Obama on former terrorist William Ayers: ”

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

A great article on Hezbollah’s use of the support from Lebanese Christian leader, Gen. Michel Aoun, can be found here at Family Security Matters - give it a read. Here’s what the author of the article has to say about Aoun and what it means to the West:

Maronite Christian, parliamentarian, and former Lebanese Army commander, Gen. Michel Aoun, has reiterated his support for –and alliance with – Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based international terrorist army supported by Iran and Syria. Speaking earlier this week, Aoun said that his ‘Memorandum of Understanding (translation, ‘alliance’)’ with Hezbollah is not only national, but international.

Hezbollah is attempting to use ‘a Christian cover [Aoun] to penetrate the West,’ says Sami El-Khoury, president of the World Maronite Union. ‘The U.S. administration should add him to the designated terrorist list and withdraw the visas from all members of his bloc.’

Several months after Al-Manar was placed on the State Department’s terrorist list, Aoun founded Orange TV (OTV), the now publicly-traded satellite-television company whose coverage extends around the world, including North America. And OTV’s footage and logo have since been broadcast as part of American newscasts

So, what we have here is Hezbollah putting a Christian face on their operations – using Michel Aoun to legitimize its operations and so far, the West is buying it. Don’t get me or the author wrong here, Michel Aoun is not being ‘used’ – he is an asshat who literally hates America, he is a jihadist who just happens to be a Christian. I have no problem at all with Michel Aoun being put on the terror list of the U.S. and hunting him down like any radical islamist. He’s worse than the islamists – he’s a turncoat traitor and a despicable excuse of one who has abandoned his faith.

Exclusive: Hezbollah Using ‘Christian Cover’ to Penetrate the West?
W. Thomas Smith Jr.

We also have to consider the fact that Aoun frequently condemns the United States, and has issued veiled threats against us. In an interview last month on OTV, Aoun defended Syria and Hezbollah, and he said, ‘U.S. policy is against Lebanon and no one can convince me of the opposite. …We should defend ourselves against the American policy.’ Aoun makes such statements as his signatory ally, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, continues to rally much of Lebanon’s Shiia population with public cries of ‘Death to America!’ and ‘Death to Israel!’

Moreover, sources are telling me Hezbollah has been providing military training to ‘Aoun’s people’ in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

John Hajjar, U.S. director for the pro-democracy World Council of the Cedars Revolution, says, ‘Aoun’s declaration of collaboration with Hezbollah worldwide puts him in the ranks of a terrorism associate, and the U.S. must take strong measures against him and his militant network. U.S. officials should stop seeing him, and his visa and the visas of his party’s officials should be revoked.’
Najib Zwein, director of the Beirut-based Bureau Central de Coordination Nationale, agrees, adding, ‘Hezbollah is using Aoun to penetrate international and Western security.’
For the past two years, Aoun has served as a political tool for Hezbollah’s three-part goal of continuing to exist (when Hezbollah should have long been disbanded under UN mandate), continuing to strengthen its political base (while strengthening its military wing), and ultimately achieving an Islamic state in Lebanon. With Aoun’s statement this week, Shiia Hezbollah’s Christian soldier is now increasing his commitment to his terrorist-ally’s geostrategic objectives. Aoun knows it. Hezbollah knows it. And we had better figure it out.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

In the early 20th century Britain took over and began attracting large numbers of Arab laborers. A few decades later those Arabs combined with some of the existing natives had a manufactured identity as Palestinians, a flag, an anthem written for them by a Greek Communist composer, guns, bombs and Western bleeding hearts on their side. They’ve spent the intervening period, rioting, looting, raping and killing any way they can.

Sound familiar? It should.

Israel’s Muslim problem pales by comparison to France’s 5 million Muslim problem. And Britain didn’t simply attract Arabs to Israel, it attracted them to the home country as well. Europe is overrun with guest laborers, con artists, smugglers, students, second wives and the whole bubbling goulash of Muslim immigrants who are reproducing in great numbers. They have held their first Intifadas, blown up buses, burned cars, built Mosques where the same flavor of hatred is preached as in Gaza or the West Bank and declared their intentions to reclaim Spain and whatever other parts of Europe the Ummah feels it has a claim on.

If Israel was supposed to be the new Europe, Europe instead is turning out to be the New Israel, saddled with defunct socialist bureaucracies and a growing Muslim terrorist threat that socialist governments do their best to whistle and pretend isn’t there or try to frantically appease.

Oslo may have been the setting for Israel’s Going Out of Business sale, but Norway and Sweden may well be the ones to go out of business first as even the coldest lands have filled up with the cries of Allah Akhbar, the lusty calls of newborn Muslim infants and the sobs and screams of raped Swedish women. This will make little difference in Israel or any other Western country which is on the conveyor belt to the same place, the Sharia Abattoir.

Israel’s situation didn’t come about because the Jews have some special quality for antagonizing perfectly peaceful people, as too many Europeans would like to believe. All it really takes to turn any European country into Israel is a few hundred thousand savages squatting on carpets, demanding their rights and grabbing the knife or the detonator if they don’t get them. And the only thing that can prevent it is a good strong immigration policy and a great deal of boats to ship anyone back home who isn’t happy with it.

Contrary to the endless bewailings of phony refugees in decades old refugee camps, Israel didn’t expel Arabs from its territory. Instead Israel sent soldiers to reassure them that they wouldn’t be harmed and to invite them back in. Madness? Yes, but a quite familiar madness to anyone who watches Prime Ministers declare that Islam is a religion of peace and welcome in more refugees and immigrants, even as the Muslims make it clear that if they had their way, the Prime Minister’s head would be decorating a sharp stick outside a Mosque somewhere.

Welcoming the apocalypse may be madness but it’s the madness of shortsighted politicians and like their European counterparts, the Israeli politicians were motivated only partly by soft-minded humanitarianism, in the mix too was the delectable thought of a reliable Labor voting base that could never possibly cast a vote for a conservative candidate and cheap labor too. That the voting base would wind up opening fire on their grandchildren was not a thought they took seriously, because it was an inconvenient thought.

The way things are has moved from inconvenient thought to inconvenient reality, but that has not diminished the desire of politicians, both European and Israeli, to wish it away in favor of a New Middle East, a New Britain, a New Ireland, a European Union — some magical utopian socialist reality where college degrees are all the wealth anyone needs, where governments care for everyone and any immigrant can be assimilated no matter how many wives they have and what prophet they believe in.

The more bombs go off, the more politicians cling determinedly to their fantasy and look for some pesky reactionaries to blame for the whole thing. Israel blames the settlers. Europe blames Israel. European left wing parties blame the Right. The Right blames America. America blames Republicans. Republicans blame a tiny minority of extremists, effectively negating their own argument.

And as the fingers point, the chorus bellows, pointless propositions are put forward and struck down in favor of lunatic appeasements, the West is turning into Israel. And as far as both the Muslims and the Left are concerned, like Israel, the world would have been a better place had Western civilization never existed and they are doing their best to put theory into practice.”

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Another unrepentant, genocidal terrorist is given op-ed column space in the Washington Post. This time it’s Hamas thug Mahmoud al-Zahar: Mahmoud al-Zahar – No Peace Without Hamas.

I won’t quote from this garbage.

The Washington Post has truly hit bottom now. They owe the United States an apology for publishing this disgusting terrorist propaganda; their excuses that they’re revealing something about Hamas are laughable. Nothing about Hamas is hidden, and nothing more needs to be revealed.

Despicable.

UPDATE at 4/17/08 8:41:27 am:

The editors foresaw a negative reaction, so they published some preemptive damage control: Mr. Zahar and Mr. Carter.

We believe Mr. Zahar’s words are worth publishing because they provide some clarity about the group he helps to lead, a group that Mr. Carter contends is worthy of being included in the Middle East peace process.

How many times is the Washington Post going to use that excuse? They’ve published op-eds by Hamas terrorist Mousa Abu Marzook, CAIR, the Muslim Brotherhood’s front group MAS, and the spiritual leader of Hizballah, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, just to name a few of the terrorists and sympathizers who have graced their pages. And they host a permanent eulogy to the father of modern terrorism.

How much more clarity does the Washington Post need?

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Joshuapundit has an interesting post in his blog, connecting the dots…

Has the wind changed? Is a military strike on Iran in the works?

According to several sources, Israel has requested and received connection to the US Ballistic Early Warning Systems (BMEWS) through its three main stations,located in Alaska, Thule Air Force Base in Greenland, and the British RAF long range radar station in Yorkshire, England.

This would be designed to give Israel a time edge in preparing its Arrow and Patriot missile defense systems, as well as an edge for the US Patriot missile facilities that are based in Israel in the Negev and near Ben Gurian airport an dprotect American facilities in Iraq and the Gulf as well as Israel.

This is by no means SOP, but has happened before,during the Gulf War and during the US invasion of Iraq when Israel was expected to be a target for missile strikes by Saddam Hussein. And the only reason for this would be either a renewed threat from Iran or the threat of retaliation for a US or Israeli strike. Even if Israel itself is not involved,there’s little doubt that Iran would attack in reprisal for an American attack on Iran.

This is one in a series of very connectible dots:

*General Petraeus and US Ambassador Ryan Crocker made a huge point of testifying before Congress on Iran’s malignant influence in Iraq last week.

*The removal of Admiral William Fallon from the command of CentCom, after various articles that characterized him as opposing any military action against Iran.

*The recent Iranian announcement that it has begun installing another 6,000 high yield centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear plant uranium enrichment complex,combined with the total failure of sanctions and the dead end in negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

*Recent threats issued against Israel not from Ahamadinejad, which would have been more normal, but from Iran’s deputy Commander in Chief of the Military Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, who threatened to eliminate Israel from ‘the scene of the universe’ if Iran is attacked.

*Regime changes and consolidation of Iran-friendly regimes in Turkey and in Pakistan, which could place constraints on any future US or Israeli strikes on Iran.

*Vice president Cheney’s recent trip to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,which could very easily have been designed to shore up support for an imminent action and give those Arab states the Bush Administration regards as allies a heads up warning of what might be in the works.

Read Joshuapundit’s whole post here.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Author Andy McCarthy interview: ‘Willful Blindness’: ”

Mark Levin interviewed his friend, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy about the latter’s new book ‘Willful Blindness: A Memoir of Jihah’ (in book stores today and also available here). Andy led the prosecution’s investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing:

In addition, here is the text of his interview with the National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez.

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Does someone in Washington get it?

John McCain called Tuesday for the federal government to free people from paying gasoline taxes this summer and ensure that college students can secure loans this fall, proposals aimed at stemming the public’s pain now from the troubled economy.

In the longer-term, the certain Republican presidential nominee said he would double the tax exemption for dependent children and offer people the option of choosing a simpler tax system.College loans? Eh. Whatevs. Standard issue, and one he crosses over on. But the rest, should he see it through, would be sweeeet.

Lower taxes = lower prices. YES, WE CAN!

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Both Palestine Today and Palestine Press Agency report that Egyptian officials invited Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Shalah to visit Cairo to meet Jimmy Carter but Shalah refused, saying that Carter is following an ‘American/Israeli agenda.’ Shalah has been harshly critical of Khaled Meshaal’s planned meeting with Carter.

It would appear that Carter initiated this request to meet with the arch-terrorist. All of the reasons that Carter uses to justify meeting with Hamas – that Hamas has supposedly offered a truce, for example, or that most attacks are not initiated by Hamas – do not apply to Islamic Jihad, yet Carter apparently wants to give legitimacy to Islamic Jihad terrorists anyway.

Meanwhile, Carter plans to meet with a Hamas official in Ramallah and he has already laid a wreath at the grave of his fellow Nobel Prize winner, Yasir Arafat, a man responsible for the deaths of thousands of people who Carter admired greatly.

(cross-posted at EoZ)

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The ex-President can usually be found cuddling up to the charismatic tyrants of the world–all in the name of peace and tolerance. This week, the deluded ex-President will be meeting with Hamas , the Palestinian organization that the U.S. government considers one of the leading terrorist threats in the world. Hamas leader Khaled Meshal, the exiled head of the terror group is in Syria and is already trumpeting the meeting with Carter on April 18 as a psychological coup against Israel–one that gives the terror leader and his organization some sort of international legitimacy.

This ongoing debacle perpetrated by Carter not only won him a Nobel Prize but also brought international honor to one of his favorite despots, the unrepentant terrorist who later destroyed any hope that the Palestinian people could achieve anything but martyrdom for the cause of Islamic jihad.

Having received the ultimate world award, it is too much to hope that Carter would ever be inclined to grow up and face reality about the company he keeps (this, btw, appears to be a serious malady on the political left). So, as long as he’s breathing, we can all expect Jimmy to cozy up to any and all dysfunctional Palestinian leaders as well as every other totalitarian tyrant running around in this portion of the universe.

Indeed, Carter has shown a remarkable egalitarianism with all other dictators, murderers and thugs who happen to rule a variety of countries; he particularly likes those who cloak their psychopathy in the guise of pseudo-democracy….

Let’s look at Jimmy’s Travel Photo Album:

2005 Carter and Abbas

2004 Carter and Hugo

2002 Carter and Fidel

1999 Carter and Arafat

1994 Carter and Kim Il Sung

1986 Carter and Noriega

Impressive.

But Carter has always been especially concerned about making sure that the Palestinians retain their standing as world-class victims of the Jewish state and, of course, the US. Just before the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections in 2006, Jimmy was overwrought at the possibility that the U.S. and Israel might ‘punish’ the Palestinians for electing a terrorist group that has in its charter the goal of eliminating Israel. Holding them accountable would just be wrong:

During this time of fluidity in the formation of the new government, it is important that Israel and the United States play positive roles. Any tacit or formal collusion between the two powers to disrupt the process by punishing the Palestinian people could be counterproductive and have devastating consequences.

Interestingly, the most ‘devastating consequences’ have come about anyway because Hamas is more concerned with promoting the destruction of Israel than it is in governing a Palestinian state. People like Khaled Mashal, with whom Carter is meeting this week, is the Hamas leader in exile who makes sure the destruction of Israel remains the key priority for Hamas–no matter how much the Palestinians suffer. Of course, that’s why Carter is meeting him in Syria. He has no particular interest in sharing the misery he deliberately inflicts on the Palestinians in order to obtain world sympathy for Hamas’ terrorist actions.

It is interesting that Carter sees allowing the Palestinians to deal with the consequences of their behavior as some sort of ‘punishment’ don’t you think? He blithely discusses the ‘devastating consequences’ of Israel or American actions, but I have yet to see him grapple with the ‘devastating consequences’ of Hamas’ charter. Or of suicide bombers. Or of the intent, stated repeatedly by the leaders of the Palestinians and approved of by the Palestinian people in the 2006 election or recent polls, to destroy Israel.

And, of course, he doesn’t seem capable of understanding the consequences of his own appeasement and enabling of terror and despotism worldwide.

Someone once said that Jimmy Carter was actually the first female president of the U.S. (I think it was Gagdad Bob at One Cosmos); and I must say that this assertion is an insult to bimbos everywhere. Carter reminds me of the pathetic mother in the movie Mean Girls who wants to be loved and accepted by her daughter’s clique (and completely identifies with them–meanness and all); so much so, that she is eager to enthusiastically support their antisocial acting-out behavior and endure the girls’ contempt as well.

Carter is perhaps a wannabee despot herself himself, who admires and seeks the approval of practically every dictator in the world (it is possible that using the word ‘practically’ is being overly cautious). I’m sure he lusts in his heart for the kind of brutish manliness such thugs radiate, but he only manages to come across as a weak and insecure person who stands for nothing.

Of course, the Palestinians are not simply mean adolescent girls who will eventually grow up; nor is Carter merely an ineffective and irresponsible mother who probably missed the chance to ever fully mature. The former is an unrepentant terrorist organization that remains devoted to its stated goals of destroying Israel and the Jews; and the latter is a former US president and first-class enabler of tyranny.

Until the Palestinians have to deal with the consequences of their behavior, they will not mature as a people. Sending them to their room own country and giving them a chance to ponder some reality was a good idea only if they now must also take responsibility for their behavior.

Carter’s–and the entire left’s–obsession with the eternal victimhood cult of the Palestininas has been the single biggest psychological impediment toward peace in that region. Why should the Palestinians ever change? Or mature? Or deal honestly with Israel? They have every reason to believe that the Carters of the world will always let them off the hook–and bail them out–no matter what they do or how badly they behave.

After Carter’s trip and his ‘seal of approval’ bestowed, expect Hamas’ terrorist behavior to escalate dramatically.

Nice work, Jimmy!

UPDATE: Somehow this seems perfectly appropriate.

UPDATE II: Siggy has more inflammatory comments about the ex-Prez”

(Via Dr. Sanity.)</

But it is the sheer length of time that Obama has spent as an organizer, lawyer and elected official from Chicago’s south side that is coming through in his projection of bitterness on to vast swaths of America.

It is clear that Obama has spent much of the last 30 years in and around some very dysfunctional neighborhoods full of some broken and almost certainly bitter people.

He has been hearing and speaking complaints against the powerful for just as long.

He has not been building a small family business and coaching in the AYSO league, making budget in a medium-sized corporation or manning the snack booth at the football game, teaching the AP English course or organizing the Knights of Columbus or Society of St. Vincent de Paul food drive.

It would be nice to imagine that Obama really stands for such people, but the evidence is accumulating that he is nothing more than a cynical manipulator of the poor, in the grandest Marxist tradition (Karl Marx said, ‘The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.’ In other words, they mattered only in so far as they were willing to carry out the Marxist agenda.)

A major brouhaha erupted in the blogsphere when Bill Kristol dared to suggest that Obama was a classic Marxist yesterday; but it becomes more obvious everyday that the candidate ‘of the little people’ really has enormous contempt for the little guy and condescendingly believes that He knows what is best for them.

Obama can let this persona show in the backroom mansions of leftist millionaires; but he understands it would not play well with the vast majority of hard-working, patriotic Americans, pursuing their own happiness, who have not been steeped in the neo-marxist fascism that bubbles over in the elitist halls of academia.

Hewitt is on to something important when he suggests that Obama is projecting his own bitterness and frustration onto middle America because the Marxist agenda has not yet been accepted (and hopefully never will) in this country. His message resonates with the extreme left because they suffer from the same bitterness and frustration that they are not recognized and appreciated as the incredbly wonderful people whose superior intellect and understanding should dominate because they know what’s best for us all.

Which brings us to Thomas Sowell:

An e-mail from a reader said that, while Hillary Clinton tells lies, Barack Obama is himself a lie. That is becoming painfully apparent with each new revelation of how drastically his carefully crafted image this election year contrasts with what he has actually been saying and doing for many years.

Senator Obama’s election year image is that of a man who can bring the country together, overcoming differences of party or race, as well as solving our international problems by talking with Iran and other countries with which we are at odds, and performing other miscellaneous miracles as needed.

There is, of course, not a speck of evidence that Obama has ever transcended party differences in the United States Senate. Voting records analyzed by the National Journal show him to be the farthest left of anyone in the Senate. Nor has he sponsored any significant bipartisan legislation — nor any other significant legislation, for that matter.

Senator Obama is all talk — glib talk, exciting talk, confident talk, but still just talk.

Sowell goes on to note that:

It is understandable that young people are so strongly attracted to Obama. Youth is another name for inexperience — and experience is what is most needed when dealing with skillful and charismatic demagogues.

Those of us old enough to have seen the type again and again over the years can no longer find them exciting. Instead, they are as tedious as they are dangerous.

I’m really beginning to be grateful that this Presidential campaign began so early–if it hadn’t, we might never have come to know the real Obama.”

(Via Dr. Sanity.)</

Speaking to IDF commanders in Judea and Samaria last week, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exhorted the officers tasked with preventing Palestinians from attacking Israel while operating under civilian cover to have sympathy for them. Olmert said ‘Take all the Palestinians who have been stripped at the roadblocks just because of fear that there may be terrorists and terror operatives among them. Take all those who wait at roadblocks because of fear that a car bomb may drive through the same roadblock. This could be a boiling cauldron, liable to explode and cause horrible burns, and it could be something else, dependent only on your ability to act wisely and forcefully.’

Since Olmert knows that IDF soldiers are as courteous as possible to Palestinians at roadblocks, his statement will have two major consequences. First it will cause a loosening of regulations at roadblocks and so impair IDF counterterror capabilities. Second, by insultingly insinuating that IDF forces are cruel, Olmert demoralized his own soldiers and reduced their willingness to accomplish their mission by hinting that they cannot expect the government to back them.

Olmerts message is just the latest action his government has taken in recent weeks that undermine the IDFs ability to maintain its military success since 2002 in defeating Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria and preventing them from reorganizing.

The Olmert-Livni-Barak governments decision to take down roadblocks throughout Judea and Samaria; provide immunity from arrest to wanted terror fugitives; and permit the deployment of US-backed Fatah militias in Jenin all serve to directly undermine the IDFs remarkable achievements in defeating and preventing the reconstitution of the Palestinian terror war machine in Judea and Samaria since Operation Defensive Shield was carried out in 2002. Even more disturbingly, its reported willingness to cede the Jordan Valley to Fatah in the negotiations it is now conducting with Fatah leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei indicate that the Olmert-Livni-Barak government is ready to transform Judea and Samaria into a base for global jihadist forces just as occurred when Israel surrendered Gazas border with Egypt in 2005.

That the government is squandering the IDFs hard-won achievements in Judea and Samaria is made clear in a paper on counterinsurgency warfare authored by Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror released this week by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Amidrors paper, ‘Winning Counterinsurgency War: The Israeli Experience,’ focuses on Israels military defeat of Palestinian terror forces in Judea and Samaria during and subsequent to Operation Defensive Shield.

AMIDROR IDENTIFIES six components of counterinsurgency warfare which he deems essential for effecting military victory over irregular forces. These components are: a political decision by the government to defeat terrorism; winning and maintaining control of the territory from which terrorists operate; acquiring relevant intelligence; isolating the terror enclaves from outside supporters; multidimensional cooperation between intelligence gatherers and fighting forces; and separating civilians from terrorists. Through its actions, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government it is undermining four of these components.

After identifying what he views as the essential components of successful counterinsurgency campaigns, Amidror identifies and defines three forms of military victory. First, there is ‘total victory’ which involves both a military defeat of insurgent or terror forces and the political reorganization of their societies from terror-supporting societies into terror-combating societies. Second, there is ‘temporary victory’ which involves a one-off military defeat of enemy forces which is not combined with any political transformation of their societies. Finally, Amidror considers what he refers to as ‘sufficient victory.’ As he defines it, a sufficient victory involves defeating an irreconcilable foe and then preventing him from rebuilding his capacity to wage war.

Like a temporary victory, a sufficient victory doesnt entail any political transformation of enemy society, and indeed it takes for granted that such a transformation is impossible to enact. But as opposed to a temporary victory, Amidror argues that the effect of a sufficient victory can be longstanding if the victorious side is willing and able to consistently prevent enemy forces from reconstituting themselves. That is, a sufficient victory requires a continuous rather than one-off campaign.

Amidrors definition of sufficient victory leads him to conclude that contrary to the approach of the Israeli and Western Left, there is a military option for victory in counterinsurgency wars devoid of political transformation. From an Israeli perspective, Amidrors vision of counterinsurgency warfare view is reasonable and understandable.

Israels options for transforming Palestinian society from a terror-supporting society to a terror-combating society are limited. Influenced by domestic, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic jihadist indoctrination; supported militarily, financially and politically by Arab states, Iran, terror groups and the West, the Palestinians have little reason to transform.
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MOREOVER, ISRAELs strategic and national interests in maintaining control over Judea and Samaria could render sustainable a military strategy with no withdrawal element. This is not the case in other battlefields such as the US counterinsurgency in Iraq.

To a degree, Amidrors view that sufficient victory is possible is echoed in recent statements by US military commanders in Iraq. In a dispatch from Iraq published last month in National Review, Richard Lowry reported, ‘For all the security gains over the last year, American commanders believe they have hit a plateau.’ Absent coherent, competent action by the Iraqi government to secure and maintain the loyalty of Iraqis to the Iraqi state, like the IDF in Judea and Samaria, all US forces in Iraq can do is keep violence down to sufferable levels.

Yet in contrast to Israels success in Judea and Samaria, the success of US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq is the consequence first and foremost of their politically-transformative guiding principles. As Lowry noted, the 80,000 Iraqi security volunteers who now openly collaborate with US forces in counter-terror operations, ‘represent more or less a direct transfer of forces from the enemys side to ours.’

In Israel, the basic assumption that guided both the decision by the Rabin-Peres government to embrace the PLO and form the Palestinian Authority in 1993 and the decisions by subsequent governments to leave the PA in place and maintain allegiance to the PLO as a negotiating partner was that like the Iraqi security volunteers, and like the South Lebanese Army which supported IDF operations in South Lebanon from 1985 through 2000, PLO and Fatah forces would act as transformative agents in Palestinian society moving it from a terror-supporting society to a terror-combating society.

This view, always controversial, has been proven wrong again and again. Just last week, the PLO ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki restated the PLOs aim of destroying Israel in an interview with Lebanese television.

In Zakis words, ‘The PLO… has not changed its platform even one iota.’ That platform, to destroy Israel in stages, remains the objective of the PLO. He continued, ‘In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the PLO proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine.’

Israels willingness to maintain its support for the PLO in spite of the PLO and Fatahs obvious rejection of Israels right to exist and their continuous support and involvement in terror attacks against Israel exposes two flaws inherent in Amidrors view that it is possible to maintain a sufficient victory in counterinsurgency wars over the long term without inducing political transformation of enemy societies.

The first flaw is that it takes as a given that the will of the victorious armys government to maintain counterinsurgency operations will remain constant. The Olmert-Livni-Barak governments maintenance of the inherently adversarial Fatah terror group as a legitimate negotiating partner shows that this is not the case. The governments commitment to Fatah necessarily induces it to undermine IDF achievements in Judea and Samaria. Those achievements are inimical to the interests of Fatah and so, from the governments current perspective, they must be cancelled to please Fatah.

Since 2002, the IDFs military control over Judea and Samaria has not involved any serious efforts to transform Palestinian society on the grassroots level. It has not enhanced security for Palestinian civilians who are terrorized by terror operatives operating in their villages and towns. As Amidror notes, Israels actions to separate civilians from terrorists in Judea and Samaria are limited to crafting operations that minimize collateral damage. But while Israel does not target Palestinian civilians, it has done nothing to prevent them from being targeted by Palestinian terrorists. And so, it has given them no option to fight those terrorists. As a consequence although militarily the situation in Judea and Samaria has been transformed over the past six years, politically, the only change among Palestinians is that they have become more radicalized.

And here lies the second flaw in his analysis. To be successful, a counterinsurgency war must have a political component that reaches out to enemy populations. While it is true that Israel has limited capacity to change the way that Palestinians think about Israel and the form their society ought to take, Israel does have some capacity. For instance, Israel could launch a hearts and minds campaign among Israeli Arabs who are both politically and demographically linked to the Palestinians.

Such a campaign would be two-pronged. First it would involve a concentrated law and order campaign whose aim would be to reassert Israels sovereign authority in Israeli Arab areas. Second, it would secure law-abiding Israeli Arabs while delegitimizing the current anti-Israel, pro-terror leadership now in charge of Israeli Arab society and so cultivate the conditions necessary to replace that leadership with Israeli Arabs who embrace their identity as Israelis and oppose terrorism. The impact of such a campaign on the Palestinians in both Judea and Samaria would no doubt be dramatic.

Amidror makes the important point that there is no empirical data that proves the oft-repeated contention that terror-supporting societies are more willing to sacrifice for victory than terror-combating societies. As the Israeli public has shown since the Palestinians began their terror war in 2000, Israelis are just as willing, if not more willing, to make sacrifices for victory than the Palestinians. But for victory to be accomplished and secured, a military campaign needs to be complimented by a political campaign led by a political leadership that explains reality to its own public and is able to give terror-supporting societies another option.

Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.

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(Via Caroline Glick.)</

They are armed and driving around in four pickups preparatory to carrying out attacks, say Egyptian officials. Israeli Passover holidaymakers have been warned from Jerusalem of mortal danger from terrorists at the Sinai resorts popular with Israelis. The small numbers who entered through the Taba crossing for the festival which begins next Saturday were advised to leave without delay.

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(Via DEBKAfile.)</

Jimmy Carter appears determined to do everything possible to legitimize Palestinian terrorism. In one of his more disgusting displays of pandering, today he laid a wreath on the grave of one of history’s most notorious mass murderers, Yasser Arafat, bearing the words, ‘President and Mrs. Carter.’

This man is a complete disgrace.

UPDATE at 4/15/08 8:47:35 am:

It gets worse: Jimmy Carter embraces Hamas official.

RAMALLAH, West Bank – Former President Jimmy Carter embraced a leading Hamas figure Tuesday, according to participants in a meeting that infuriated Israeli officials already upset by Carter’s freelance Mideast peace mission.

Carter also laid a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, whom the Bush administration and many Israelis blame for the breakdown of peace talks seven years ago and the violence that followed.

At a reception in the West Bank town of Ramallah organized by Carter’s office, the former president hugged Nasser Shaer, a senior Hamas politician, meeting participants said. Embraces between men are a common custom in Arab culture.

‘He gave me a hug. We hugged each other, and it was a warm reception,’ Shaer told The Associated Press. ‘Carter asked what he can do to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel … and I told him the possibility for peace is high.’

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Tehran authorities want to ‘renovate’ the neighborhood by removing historic synagogues. Shame on those jooooos for building them to begin with.

AKI

Tehran

Seven ancient synagogues in the Iranian capital, Tehran, have been destroyed by local authorities.

The synagogues were in the Oudlajan suburb of Tehran, where many Iranian Jews used to live.

‘These buildings, which were part of our cultural, artistic and architectural heritage were burnt to the ground,’ said Ahmad Mohit Tabatabaii, the director of the International Council of Museums’ (ICOM) office in Tehran.

‘With the excuse of renovating this ancient quarter, they are erasing a part of our history,’ said Tabatabaii.

That is exactly what Tehran is doing Mr. Tabatabaii, erasing Jewish history.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

For now Barry Hussein has managed to successfully fool some of the people some of the time, namely Democratic Party voters. And he did it in true con artist fashion by trying to pass himself off as everything to everyone. To young liberals, he was supposed to be a radically progressive visionary. To old line Democrats, he was supposed to be the second coming of JFK. To rich party elites, he was one of them, a wealthy Harvard and Columbia grad from an academic family. To the working class of Pennsylvania, he tried to reinvent himself as an ordinary bowling cheeseburger eating son of a working class family.

And that’s where he screwed up, because you can only double date so many demographics before one of them finds out what you’ve been saying about the other one behind its back. And that’s what happened when Obama cracked wise to his rich liberal hosts about those backwoods people with their bitterness, religion, guns and hatred of immigrants. Obama was doing what Obama does best, reinventing himself in the style of a celebrity for every new demographic but while he was busy bonding with his new friends over their mutual distaste for working class people, he wasn’t counting on having those same snide remarks go public and live.

Like every con man, Obama’s outward image is appealing precisely because it’s fake, a carefully woven coat of many colors, with no substance underneath. And like every con man, that identity begins to unravel when exposed to enough scrutiny. The consistency that a lie requires is nothing compared to the consistency that the many lies which define Obama require to maintain under the pressure of a campaign. Finally like every con man, Obama responds to the revelation of the inconsistencies, personal, moral and political, with glib rhetoric that tries to change the topic and recontextualize the situation. But you can only strain the coat of many colors so many times before it begins to tear and the constant shifts Obama must undergo creates a kind of narrative jet lag until the public grows tired of paying attention to whom Barack is trying to be at any given moment.

In his endless quest to reinvent himself, BHO has become the worst kind of chimera, a man without a face, painfully eager to turn private narrative into public image and fictionalizing his life in the process. Obama is his own biographer and even when he writes history, under his smooth pen it flows out as fiction. Navigating his many identities, American, Foreigner, Christian, Muslim, Black, White, Poor, Rich, Liberal, Progressive, Undefinable, Experienced, A Fresh Voice, Black Nationalist, Racial Unifier, Healer, Bigot creates the kind of schizophrenia that must in the end bring down even the greatest of con men, as we no longer know who Obama is anymore and until even Obama himself loses track of who he really is.

Obama’s biography like his convention speech was about navigating identities, a fundamental preoccupation for a man whose life is based around presenting himself as many things to many people. Obama’s campaign reminds one of the character played by Will Smith at the beginning of his movie career in Six Degrees of Separation, itself based on the true story of David Hampton, a con man who moved through the upper classes of New York society under a false identity and conning the wealthy out of their money.

Who is Barack Obama? The real answer is that like all con men. he’s a lie. Not simply because he’s lied on any single point but because his entire identity is a constantly shifting lie as he juggles a hundred balls in the air, trying to play to every demographic in its own turn.

With America as his ‘Mark’, Barry Hussein has tried to sell himself as the country’s savior but his halo can only stand so many dings before it begins to look tarnished. And the shiny coating is quickly coming off as millions of Americans begin asking the same questions and coming up with some bad answers.

His narrative gymnastics, his political yoga, his self-help contortionist act has brought him to this point and left him empty, both inside and outside. Like a brand of soft drink, Obama has become a brand and a logo, but the person who stands behind it remains an ugly enigma, a calculating liar who may no longer even remember who he himself is anymore.”

(Via from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals The Stories Behind the News.)</

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The fundraiser event for jailed Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, organized by the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union and promoted by the Council on American Islamic Relations, has been called off by theater management: Al-Arian Screening Canceled.

Starplex Cinemas has no ties or relations with the organization that rented the theater to do a film screening. The intent and content of the film was not disclosed. We have no political affilication and have canceled the screening.

We thank the community for bringing this to our attention.

For any questions or comments, please contact Kristen Wheaton at Starplex Cinemas.

Jonathan Constantine of Red County’s Campus Watch has more:

In a phone call with Wheaton later this morning, she explained that the decision was made because of the highly politicized nature of the screening, and the lack of disclosure by two female representatives from the Muslim Student Union concerning the content of the event. More specifically, according to a representative from Woodbridge 5, they described the screening as a ‘student film,’ despite the involvement of outside political organizations like CAIR.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

By Debbie Schlussel

My late father and I used to have a code phrase we’d use whenever there was a leftist–particularly a Jewish leftist–who went out of his/her way to pander to Islamofascists. We’d say that foolish person was ‘a likely candidate for Lunch in Tul Karem.’

That’s because in 2000–at the height of Palestinian homicide bombings against innocent civilians in Israel–the Hebrew-language Israeli newspaper, HaZofe (now called, ‘Makor Rishon,’ or Primary Source) had an interesting, but not surprising, story: Two Jewish Israeli peacenik businessmen went to Tul Karem in Samaria of the so-called Palestinian Authority to have lunch with their friends–two Palestinian restarauters, who who were ‘peace activists’ and ‘moderate’ Muslims, who only wanted to make nice with the Jews.

‘Lunch in Tul Karem’ Is Not a Meal or a Place . . .

. . . It’s a State of Mind w/ a Certain Result

The two Israeli Jews told all of their friends about their ‘peace mission’ with these two non-violent Palestinian specimens of humanity. (FYI, Tul Karem–home to Al Quds Open University–is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism and bomb-making factories.)

Not long after they reached the Tul Karem restaurant, the two Israeli men were found bloody, slaughtered dead, and dismembered at their peace-loving Muslim Palestinian friends’ restaurant in Tul Karem, at the hands of their two ‘moderate’ Muslim friends. No word on whether the Jews got to eat a digestible meal before their halal lunch of steel blades.

Now, yet another woman voluntarily went for ‘Lunch in Tul Karem’ and met her predictable, Darwin-esque fate:

An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the northern city of Gebze on Friday.

She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people.

Turkish police say they have detained a man in connection with the killing.

Reports say the man led the police to the body.

Ms di Marineo was hitch-hiking from Milan to Israel and the Palestinian Territories with a fellow artist on their ‘Brides on Tour’ project.

They had separated in Istanbul, planning to reunite in Beirut.

Ms di Marineo was last seen on 31 March in Gebze.

An Italian embassy official told the Associated Press news agency police tracked the man when he put a new SIM card into Ms di Marineo’s mobile phone.

Local media identified the suspect only by the initials MK and said he had a previous conviction for theft.

Ms di Marineo’s sister, who had gone to Turkey to look for her, identified the body. An autopsy is being conducted in Istanbul.

‘Her travels were for an artistic performance and to give a message of peace and of trust, but not everyone deserves trust,’ another sister, Maria, told the Italian news agency, Ansa.

Ya think? This is another one of those ‘Guess the Religion’ episodes. Just a gander, but I’ll bet that ‘M’ in the ‘MK’ initials stands for Mohammed. Either way, he’s a Turk, which means that he’s a Muslim and didn’t quite go for the ‘Brides on Tour’ peacenik thing.

Best to avoid ‘Lunch in Tul Karem’ at all cost and ‘consume your meals’ in the real world.

Thanks to my brave friend, ‘S from M,’ who sent this story, which she rightly says, falls into the ‘What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love, and Understandin” file.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via YID With LID.)</

Gee, can’t imagine how Palestinian women and children could ever get hurt. It’s all whitey’s fault, of course..the worst kind, too, the Jew Devil Whitey…in cahoots with the Jesus-fearing Aryan whitey….’magine that?

Eye for an eye: A senior Hamas member Saturday said that the group would target Israeli ministers should the IDF target any Hamas ministers.

Mushir al-Masri threatened that ‘at any Israeli stupidity of targeting Hamas leaders or ministers, Hamas will likewise take action.’

‘Vis-a-vis the Israeli threats to target ministers, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh or any other leader, al-Qassam Brigades would treat the Israelis on the principle of head for head and minister for minister,’ he said.

In a statement issued by Hamas Saturday, the group vowed to continue its struggle for ‘Palestinian rights’ and warned that all options were open. A Hamas spokesman said that threats made by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ‘do not scare us and will not affect the Hamas movement’s strategy.’

‘These threats follow the failure of all the plans made by the despicable Zionist government to secure its political objectives,’ he said. ‘These objectives aimed to topple the Hamas movement…and eliminate the public’s democratic choice.’

Minister assassinated in 2001
Last week, a spokesman for Hamas’ military wing said that a Palestinian sniper who fired at a group of Israelis and visiting Canadians near Gaza was targeting Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter. The minister’s aide was hurt in the attack.

The spokesman said that the attack came in the framework of ‘Palestinian resistance acts in response to enemy crimes and to the continued siege on the Strip.’

In October 2001, members of Islamic Jihad assassinated Minister Rehavam Ze’evi at his hotel room in Jerusalem.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

CNN analyst Jack Cafferty claimed the 4.9% unemployment rate in Pennsylvania is enough for the bitter gun-toting Jesus-nuts in the Keystone State to go join an Al-Qaeda training camp:
(17 seconds)

This may be news to CNN and Jack Cafferty but Al-Qaeda also recruits doctors and wealthy rock stars.
…But not too many Bible thumpers.

Maybe Jack missed this story back in July of last year…
British Asian doctors were captured and arrested after they attacked the Glasgow airport, with one being badly burned. They were stopped by police and passer-bys. They weren’t suffering with unemployment. (WPN)

Patrick Ishmael has more Obama video.”

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Israel first pursued a diplomatic solution to the situation. Israel’s foreign minister Moshe Dayan went to the United States. However, Israel failed to obtain assurances that the reactor program would be halted, and was not able to convince the French governments of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and François Mitterrand to cease aiding the Iraqi nuclear program (again no surprise).

On June 7th 1981 Israel destroyed Iraq’s Nuclear facility, At the time, the attack was widely criticized. Israel responded that its actions were self-defensive and thus justifiable under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Critics rejected the idea of ‘pre-emptive self-defense’. France, in particular (again no surprise), was outraged over the loss of a French national as a result of the attack, and since the raid diplomatic ties between France and Israel have remained strained. The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 487, calling upon Israel ‘to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA safeguards’, and stated that Iraq was ‘entitled to appropriate redress for the destruction it suffered’. Israel has not complied with these requests. The United States supported the resolution condemning the Israeli action. The US course of action was to withhold a contingent of aircraft already promised to Israel.

Over twenty years later when facing a world-wide terrorist threat as never before, the world began to realize the service performed by Israel, the IAF and Menachem Begin. Just imagine a world with an Iraq or, G0d Forbid, an Osama bin Laden with their hands on a nuclear weapon. If it wasn’t for Menachem Begin, a Prime Minister with guts to give the orders to protect Israel, knowing that a world would absolutely freak, and the heroes of the IDF who flawlessly performed their mission, this scary world would be a lot scarier.

Now its be time for Israel to do it again–because in the end Israel can never rely on anyone else for protection but herself:

Israel Can Stand Up for Itself By ZEV CHAFETS

THE failure of diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program became obvious this week, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad revealed the installation of 6,000 new centrifuges at the country’s main uranium enrichment complex. His announcement was accompanied by the now customary assertion that outsiders can do nothing to stop Iran from fulfilling its nuclear destiny.

Once, not so long ago, this kind of boast would elicit clear American declarations that Iran would never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Everything, President Bush would say ominously, is on the table. This time he has been quiet. I wish I believed that it is the quiet before a storm of laser-guided action. It seems more likely that it is the abashed silence of an American president whose bluff has been called in front of the entire world.

Washington’s performance should concern anyone who cares about long-term American influence in the Islamic world. But for Israel (and Israel’s supporters), this is an urgent problem. It is Israel, after all, that has been set by the Iranian leadership as the target for annihilation.

In response to the news from Iran, some supporters of Israel have started to suggest that the failed efforts at prevention be replaced by assured American deterrence: any Iranian nuclear attack on Israel would be treated as an attack on the United States. Charles Krauthammer, a Washington Post columnist, recently referred to this as ‘the Holocaust doctrine.’

From Israel’s perspective, the thought is tempting — but it’s not realistic.

In 1981, Israeli planes destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. The world’s reaction was harshly critical. Even the Reagan administration, usually a close ally, denounced the operation.

Prime Minister Menachem Begin was undaunted by the fury. At a press conference in Jerusalem he announced that he felt obligated to do anything in his power to stop Israel’s enemies from getting their hands on means of mass killing.

Begin mentioned the Holocaust; it was never far from his mind. But his primary focus was strategic, not historical. Israel was no different from any other country. It would bear the ultimate responsibility for its own security.

Begin was right. Here’s why:

First, in exchange for assistance, Washington would naturally (and rightly) demand a very strong say in Israeli policies. A misstep, after all, could embroil it in a nuclear exchange. Within a very short time, Israel’s sovereignty and autonomy would come to resemble Minnesota’s. This is not a bad thing if your country happens to border Iowa. It works less well in Israel’s neighborhood.

I’m not questioning American friendship. But even friendship has practical limits. Presidents change and policies change. George W. Bush, the greatest friend Israel has had in the White House, hasn’t been able to keep a (relatively easier) commitment to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. It is a good thing that Israel didn’t build its deterrence on that commitment.

What’s more, it is fair to say that Israel is not a weak country. It has developed a powerful set of strategic options. In the best case, it would be able to act on its own to degrade and retard the Iranian nuclear program as it did in Iraq (and, more recently, Syria). In a worse case, if the Iranians do get the bomb, Iranian leaders might be deterred by rational considerations. If so, Israel’s own arsenal — and its manifest willingness to respond to a nuclear attack — ought to suffice.

If, on the other hand, the Iranian leadership simply can’t resist the itch to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ — or to make such a thing appear imminent — then it would be up to Israel to make its own calculations. What is the price of 100,000 dead in Tel Aviv? Or twice that? The cost to Iran would certainly be ghastly. It would be wrong for Israel to expect other nations to shoulder this moral and geopolitical responsibility.

Don’t misunderstand. It would be a noble thing for the United States to support Israel’s efforts to stop an Iranian bomb or, if it comes to that, to back Israel’s response to an attack. But no country can rely on the kindness of others.

Next month Israel celebrates its 60th Independence Day. Sovereignty comes with a price. Israel’s willingness to pay it is the only Holocaust doctrine that it can really rely on.

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(Via YID With LID.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

‘We now face a threat level that is severe. Its not getting any less, its actually growing,’ she said in an interview to be published in Sundays News of the World.

‘We task the police and the security agencies with protecting us … There are 22,000 individuals they are monitoring. There are 200 networks. There are 30 active plots,’ she said.

Prime Minister Gordon Browns Labour government is seeking to extend pre-charge detention of terrorism suspects to 42 days from the current 28-day limit.

But Smith faces a tough task steering the controversial provisions through parliament.

The Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties have both said they will vote against extended detention. Labour backbenchers are also threatening to rebel and vote down the clause in the Counter-Terrorism Bill.

‘We cant wait for an attack to succeed and then rush in new powers,’ Smith said. ‘Weve got to stay ahead.

‘Because we now understand the scale of what is being plotted, the police have to step in earlier, which means they need more time to put evidence together.’

Britain has seen a marked increase in militant Islamist plots since it joined the United States in invading Iraq in 2003.

In 2005 four British suicide bombers killed 52 people in London. Other attempts have been thwarted by police or failed when devices did not detonate.

‘Since the beginning of 2007, 57 people have been convicted on terrorist plots,’ said Smith.

‘Nearly half of those pleaded guilty so this is not some figment of the imagination. It is a real risk and a real issue we need to respond to.’

Source: Reuters (English)

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Related: Hillary Hits Hussein On Eltitism, God And Guns As Scandal Widens

This tape was released by the Hussein Campaign. Meanwhile, Hussein himself has finally voiced ‘Deep Regret’ to try to hold onto votes. Too late, pal, you’ve already told us what’s really on your mind. It’s called an epiphany. Thanks for letting us see it. Meanwhile, back to the CNN tape. Go Herr Cafferty, go:

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Times Online:

The secret site where Iran is suspected of developing long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching targets in Europe has been uncovered by new satellite photographs.

The imagery has pinpointed the facility from where the Iranians launched their Kavoshgar 1 ‘research rocket’ on February 4, claiming that it was in connection with their space programme.

Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).

A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran’s long-range programme, was revealed by Jane’s Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.

Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.

Avital Johanan, the editor of Jane’s Proliferation, said that the analysis of the Iranian site indicated that Tehran may be about five years away from developing a 6,000km ballistic missile. This would tie in with American intelligence estimates and underlines why President Bush wants the Polish and Czech components of the US missile defence system to be up and running by 2013.

The Czech Republic has now agreed to have a special radar system on its soil and the Polish Government is still negotiating with Washington over the American request to site ten interceptor missiles in Poland.

The Kavoshgar 1 rocket that was launched in the presence of President Ahmadinejad of Iran was based on the Shahab 3B missile, a version of the North Korean Nodong liquid-propellant missile.

Dr Forden said that the Kavoshgar launch did not demonstrate any significant advances in ballistic missile technology. ‘But it does reveal the likely future development of Iran’s missile programme,’ he said.

At a meeting on February 25 between the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Iranians, UN inspectors confronted them with evidence of design studies for mounting nuclear warheads on long-range missiles. The Iranians denied any such aspirations.

However, according to Jane’s Intelligence Review, the satellite photographs prove that the Kavoshgar 1 rocket was not part of a civilian space centre project but was consistent with Iran’s clandestine programme to develop longer-range missiles.

The examination of the launch site revealed that it was part of a large and growing complex ‘with very high levels of security and recent construction activity’. It was clearly ‘an important strategic facility’, Dr Forden said.

The former Iraq weapons inspector said that Iran was benefiting from the North Korean missile programme and following its designs. The Taepodong 1 consisted of a liquid-propellant Nodong (like the Shahab 3) first stage, a liquid-propellant Scud second stage and a solid-propellant third stage.

‘The production and testing facility next to the Kavoshgar 1 launch site would seem well positioned to contribute to this third stage,’ Dr Forden said.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Just received a very troubling email from a reader in Jakarta, Indonesia (confirmed with a trace), where the government is apparently trying to block web sites that have posted Geert Wilders’ Fitna video.

The Indonesian authorities have put the clampers on several sites like YouTube over the Fitna movie, this morning your blog and several others critical of this censorship have been shut down.

Now the freaky thing is I think they are also able to block Yahoo email inboxes, I regularly communicated with one of the shut down blogs using one of my Yahoo accounts, I received an email linking to an article criticising the censorship yesterday today I cannot access my email, in other Yahoo accounts there is no problem.

Can you find out if Yahoo is assisting the Indonesian government in this censorship?

I’m accessing your site via Babelfish. I’m in Jakarta now and I need to know if the government has access to my Yahoo email.

I don’t know if Yahoo is helping the Indonesian Islamists do this, but unfortunately there’s a lot of precedent with both Yahoo and Google of knuckling under to demands from totalitarians.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Center for Law and Counterterrorism and the New Criterion co-hosted a conference in New York on Free Speech in an Age of Jihad. At the event were a number of Jawa regulars: Ezra Levant, Robert Spencer, Stanley Kurtz, Steven Emerson, Ibn Warraq, Andrew C. McCarthy, and Mark Steyn.

Pamela from Atlas Shrugs was liveblogging the event with pictures and should have video up soon.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The Detroit chapter of the NAACP has invited none other than the Reverend Jeremiah Wright to give the keynote address at the annual NAACP Freedom Fund Dinner: Guess who’s coming to town for dinner?

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The global jihad is unpleasant. Consequently Fitna, the controversial new film about the Koran and jihadist violence produced by the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, is also unpleasant. Parts of it are graphic and violent, and you might find it difficult to watch.

But watch it you should (you can readily access it online), if only to remind yourself of two things the media are
Jihadists are waging a bloody and barbaric war, and they are waging it with explicit reference to their religion.
generally too intimidated or politically correct to dwell on: jihadists are waging a bloody and barbaric war, and they are waging it with explicit reference to their religion.

Wilders’s 16-minute film intersperses quotations from the Koran with scenes of Islamist atrocities, such as the Al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Madrid, the beheading of Nick Berg, and the “honor killing” of women. To drive home the point that such horrors are committed in the name of Islam by fervent Muslims, Fitna includes footage of Islamic preachers exhorting their followers to crush the infidels and win the world for Allah. (“Throats must be slit and skulls must be shattered,” urges one. “This is the path to victory.”) There are also clips indicating how pervasive such hateful indoctrination can be: In a scene aired on Saudi TV, a 3-year-old girl repeats what she has been taught: that according to the Koran, Jews are apes and pigs.

Yet, what has been controversial about Fitna is not the abhorrent behavior it depicts, but that Wilders links such behavior to the Koran. Why that should be so notorious is unclear – after all, the jihadists themselves emphatically cite the Koran to justify their violence.

Nevertheless, Fitna has been widely condemned. The Dutch prime minister issued statements in Dutch and English saying the film “serves no other purpose than to cause offense.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon pronounced it “offensively anti-Islamic.” The European Union’s Slovenian presidency blasted it for “inflaming hatred.” Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith described it as “an obvious attempt to generate discord between faith communities.”

There were denunciations aplenty, of course, from the Muslim world as well. Reuters reported that Iran’s foreign ministry labeled the film “heinous, blasphemous, and anti-Islamic,” while the Indonesian government declared it “an insult to Islam.” In Jordan, 53 members of parliament demanded the expulsion of the Dutch ambassador. The Organization of the Islamic Conference denounced Fitna as “a deliberate act of discrimination against Muslims” meant to “provoke unrest and intolerance.”

Granted, there is nothing subtle about Wilders’s film. Anyone who didn’t know better might think after watching it that Islam is irredeemably violent, or that all Muslims seethe with religious hatred. Neither is true. “Like all great religions,” the scholar Daniel Pipes has written, “Islam is subject to a number of interpretations, from the mystical to the militant, from the quietist to the revolutionary…. The terroristic jihad against the West is one reading of Islam, but it is not the eternal essence of Islam.” Zealots who insist that Islam itself is the enemy condemn us, in effect, to a war without end. They also betray the anti-Islamist moderates of the Muslim world, who are as repelled by the fanatics as non-Muslims are.

Still, it isn’t as though Wilders had to invent anything. The violence Fitna portrays is horribly real, and the fanatics who commit it are explicit in saying they do so as Muslims. Where is the Islamic world’s outrage against that? When has Iran’s foreign ministry ever excoriated the beheading of a hostage, or the poisonous sermon of a jihadist imam, as “heinous, blasphemous and anti-Islamic”? How often has the Organization of the Islamic Conference
They ostentatiously deplored Wilders’s exercise of free speech instead of defending it.
thundered its disapproval of “honor killings” or Islamist anti-Semitism? When Theo van Gogh was murdered in public, when the Taliban turned Afghanistan into a repressive terror state, when fatwas were issued for the murder of Danish cartoonists – where was the chorus of Muslim anguish then?

Nor is Fitna, whatever its flaws, as dangerously misguided as the eagerness with which Western governments rushed to denounce it. Panicked at the prospect of Islamist violence, desperate to appease extremists who respond to “insults” with mobs and mayhem, they ostentatiously deplored Wilders’s exercise of free speech instead of defending it. They would never have reacted that way to a film that criticized Christianity or the United States or European tradition – and the Islamists know it.

Cringing before bullies is not the way to defend Western civilization. There is room for Fitna in the marketplace of ideas. Heaven help us if we are too timorous to say so.

This article first appeared in the Boston Globe on Wednesday, April 2, 2008.

Related Video Here

PJ Media:

Pope Benedict’s choice to publicly baptize the most prominent Muslim in Italy, Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, highlights a quiet worldwide exodus from Islam. In recent years, millions have moved on. With this high-profile action, Pope Benedict demonstratively blesses this massive conversion from the highest levels of the Church.

Interviewed by al-Jazeera in 2006, Ahmad al-Qataani, leader of the Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, explains the decline:

Islam used to represent … Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished to 316 million, half of whom are Arabs in North Africa. So in the section of Africa that we are talking about, the non-Arab section, the number of Muslims does not exceed 150 million people. When we realize that the entire population of Africa is one billion people, we see that the number of Muslims has diminished greatly from what it was in the beginning of the last century.

On the other hand, the number of Catholics has increased from one million in 1902 to 329 million 882 thousand (329,882,000). Let us round off that number to 330 million in the year 2000.

As to how that happened, well there are now 1.5 million churches whose congregations account for 46 million people. In every hour, 667 Muslims convert to Christianity. Everyday, 16,000 Muslims convert to Christianity. Every year, 6 million Muslims convert to Christianity. These numbers are very large indeed.

Allam’s public baptism came just ten days after the body of Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul, Iraq, was found in a shallow grave after being kidnapped by al-Qaeda February 29. The ceremony came just three days after an al-Qaeda tape threatening the pope and condemning cartoons of Mohammed. Muslims who convert to other religions or abandon religion entirely are subject to a standing order of death for apostasy. The baptism of Allam is an act of defiance in the face of Islamic threats.

The baptism of Allam also comes in the midst of papal ‘dialogue’ with Muslims. The dialogue began unpromisingly with the catcalls from Islam and its secularist allies which greeted the now-famous September 20, 2006, papal address at the University of Regensburg. In October, 138 Islamic leaders presented the pope with ‘A Common Word Between Us and You’ — nailed by critics as a craftily written call for conversion. On March 4, Pope Benedict approved formation of a permanent ‘Catholic-Muslim forum’ scheduled to meet in November. And now he has thrown his own call for conversion into the discussion. Islam’s secularist allies were quick to echo Muslims, calling the baptism ‘provocative.’ While accepting the Islamic death penalty for apostasy as a given, they complain the pope’s action could set back dialogue.

While the secularists wring their hands, Allam writes that his mind ‘has been freed from the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimizes lies and deception, violent death that leads to homicide and suicide, blind submission to tyranny, permitting me to join the authentic religion of Truth, Life, and Liberty. … I realize what I am going up against but I will confront my fate with my head high, with my back straight, and the interior strength of one who is certain about his faith.’

Allam, author of numerous books and deputy editor of Milan’s Corriere della Sera, joins a list of converts from Islam which includes many other public intellectuals and millions of average people from all over the world. This is more than the normal flow between two large religious communities. Islam can point to little in the way of recent conversions. Its claim to be the world’s fastest-growing religion stems mostly from the high birth rate in Islamic countries, whose infant mortality rates have been cut by the introduction of Western medicine. Christian growth is based on adult conversion. As leading Christian evangelist Wolfgang Simpson writes, ‘More Muslims have come to Christ in the last two decades than in all of history.’

Although al-Qataani points to Africa, there is another phenomenon based on repulsion from Islamist dictatorship, corruption, and terrorist violence. In Iran as many as 1 million people have surreptitiously converted to Evangelical Christianity in the last five years. Pastor Hormoz Shariat claims to have converted 50,000 of them through his U.S.-based Farsi-language satellite ministry. He contrasts the upswing to the efforts of evangelical missionaries in Iran between 1830 and 1979, whose 149 years of work built a Christian community of only 3,000. One Iranian religious scholar believes youth are abandoning Islam because it is identified with the corrupt Iranian government. Now the Iranian Majlis (parliament) is debating the death penalty for conversion.

After years of al-Qaeda war on Iraq, a similar phenomenon is growing. The New York Times March 4 reports: ‘After almost five years of war, many young people in Iraq, exhausted by constant firsthand exposure to the violence of religious extremism, say they have grown disillusioned with religious leaders and skeptical of the faith that they preach.’ A high school girl tells Times reporters: ‘I hate Islam and all the clerics because they limit our freedom every day and their instruction became heavy over us. Most of the girls in my high school hate that Islamic people control the authority because they don’t deserve to be rulers.’ A 19-year-old man says: ‘The religion men are liars. Young people don’t believe them. Guys my age are not interested in religion anymore.’ A Baghdad law professor explains that her students ‘have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.’ A 24-year-old female college student says, ‘I used to love Osama bin Laden. Now I hate Islam. Al-Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.’

In southern Russia the same pattern is emerging. According to Roman Silantyev, executive secretary of the Inter-religious Council in Russia, freed from atheist control, two million Muslims converted to Christianity. Repulsed by bloody terrorist attacks, those living in areas such as Beslan have converted to Christianity in the greatest numbers of all. As many as 100,000 have converted to Christianity in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan.

After decades of Islamist war, evangelicals report thousands of sub-rosa converts in rural areas of Kashmir. Says one churchgoer: ‘I am interested in this religion. I hate violence. I hate fundamentalists in Islam. I come here to seek peace.’ An Indian newspaper headline reads: ‘Urban Muslim Youth Out to Junk Faith.’

Following decades of terrorist rule, Palestinians are being quietly converted, holding in-home services to avoid detection. Says one evangelist: ‘I’ve been working among these people for thirty years, and I promise you I’ve never seen anything like this.’

Islam is also losing adherents in areas where Islamist harassment is heavy on the streets. The London Times estimates 15% of Muslims living in Western Europe have left Islam — 200,000 in the UK alone. Those who leave often face harassment, threats, and attack.

The mufti of Perak, Malaysia, estimates about 250,000 people have abandoned Islam, making formal application for apostasy to the state — a right allowed to Malaysian citizens who are not ethnic Malays. Says he: ‘This figure does not include individuals who don’t do solat, doesn’t fast and breaks [sic] all the tenets of Islam.’ Borrowing from the communist playbook, Malaysia operates ‘reeducation camps’ for any ethnic Malay found guilty of apostasy. Unsurprisingly, ethnic Malays are at the bottom of the economic ladder in Malaysia.

In a letter published in Corriere della Sera on Easter Day, Allam points out the pope ‘sent an explicit and revolutionary message to a church that until now has been too cautious in the conversion of Muslims … because of the fear of being unable to protect the converted who are condemned to death for apostasy.

‘Thousands of people in Italy have converted to Islam and practice their faith serenely. But there are also thousands of Muslims who have converted to Christianity who are forced to hide their new faith out of fear of being killed by Islamist terrorists.’

Allam describes Islam as a system for taking and holding power. Threat of violence is its enforcement mechanism. Allam also points out: ‘Beyond … the phenomenon of extremists and Islamist terrorism at the global level, the root of evil is inherent to a physiologically violent and historically conflictual Islam.’ So it is not coincidental that Muslims are abandoning the faith as U.S. and coalition soldiers smash al-Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Islamist terrorists and street thugs are beginning to look impotent.

Appeasement-oriented opinion explains Islamic violence as a response to Western policy. For them, reality is incomprehensible. But in a 1998 ABC News interview with John Miller, Osama bin Laden explained his motivation: Allah had given the jihadis victory over one superpower (the USSR) and Allah would grant them victory over the other. But a decade later it is not coming to pass on the battlefield. The defeat of the Islamists puts the lie to the claim that Allah will cause the infidels to desire submission. As a result, the Islamists’ ability to intimidate their captive populations is weakened. More and more it is Muslims who no longer desire submission to Islam.

“

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

No ‘Fair-Use’?
Shrug…maybe not under Dutch law.

LiveLeak statement

This media item has been removed by the uploader!
Reason from user ‘Geert_Wilders’: ‘deleted due to copyright issues…will upload edited version shortly…’

Dutch Lawmaker to Edit Anti-Quran Film

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) – A Dutch lawmaker whose anti-Quran film drew worldwide condemnations will edit out a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad after complaints of copyright infringement, his office said Monday.
Geert Wilders used the cartoon by Danish artist Kurt Westergaard twice in the film ‘Fitna.’ The drawing, which depicts Islam’s prophet wearing a bomb-shaped turban with a lit fuse, provoked violent protests in Muslim countries when it was published by European newspapers two years ago.

The Danish Union of Journalists has said it would sue Wilders for copyright infringement.

Wilders’ spokeswoman Daphne Rozenboom said in an e-mail that Wilders would replace the cartoon and make other minor edits. She could not give details on how Wilders would change a film that has been dispersed widely over the Internet and downloaded millions of times since its release late Thursday.

In Denmark, Westergaard said he was happy with Wilders’ decision and believed the lawsuit would be dropped.

He added that Wilders might have won his permission to use the cartoon if he had asked.

‘I don’t want my drawing to be used in something that I don’t know anything about. Had Mr. Wilders contacted me, we could have talked together and I could have found out what he wanted with the drawing,’ he said.

The 15-minute film showed verses from the Quran juxtaposed with scenes of violence and terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists.

It led to protests in Pakistan and drew condemnations from Muslim countries and politicians around the world. The Dutch government also denounced the film, and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it ‘offensively anti-Islamic.’ = TRUTH

About 40 hard-line Muslims demonstrated outside the Dutch Embassy in Indonesia in a protest that began Monday and continued Tuesday, calling for Wilders’ death. The protesters from Islamic Defenders Front – a small group that has occasionally staged violent protests against Western targets – threw plastic bottles and eggs at the compound before dispersing.

Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party delivered a protest note to the Dutch Embassy and urged Muslims worldwide to boycott Dutch products.

In Kuala Lumpur, a supermarket chain marked Dutch products with red labels, giving customers the option of boycotting them.

Ameer Ali Mydin, managing director of Mydin Mohamed Holdings Bhd., told The Associated Press on Tuesday that 40 of his stores would take part in the nationwide campaign.

‘I think as a Muslim, we have to take a stand,’ he said.

Mydin buys $18.8 million worth of Dutch goods a year, from dairy and cosmetics to electronics.

Wilders, whose party holds nine seats in the 150-member Dutch parliament, said the film was intended to warn the West of the dangers posed by Islam.

On Monday, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen met with ambassadors of countries belonging to the Organization of the Islamic Conference to assure them the film ‘in no way reflects the opinion of the Dutch government,’ spokesman Rob Dekker said.

He said the diplomats inquired whether Wilders would be prosecuted for violating hate speech laws. Prosecutors have said they have not yet decided whether to take action.

<— Slimey Dutch Islamic Federation attorney Ejder Kose.

_{Dutch Islamic Federation lawyer Ejder Kose adresses the media outside the courtroom in Rotterdam, Netherlands, Friday, March 28, 2008. A court in Rotterdam said it would deliver its decision on April 7 on a petition by the Dutch Islamic Federation seeking to gag Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders and order him to publicize an apology for his anti-Quran film.’My clients are not attacking freedom of speech. This is about ending the unjustified insulting of Islam,’ said lawyer Ejder Kose. Wilders’ lawyer Serge Vlaar countered that the federation ‘wants to ban a point of view. (AP Photo/ Fred Ernst)}

Free speech is a fine concept as long as you do not speak out against Islam. So feel free to say as you please but be good little dhimmis and do not tell the truth about Islam.
The ‘Dutch Islamic Federation’ has no website that I can find. Anyone know of one?

Complaint lodged against Wilders’ film

Thursday 27 March 2008

A lawyer from Lelystad has lodged a police complaint against Dutch MP Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam film which was released on the internet on Thursday evening, reports ANP news service.

Els Lucas made the complaint on Thursday evening, claiming the leader of the anti-immigration PVV party breaks the law by creating a link between the number of Muslims and the increase in violence in society. That is the point twit!

She believes the film Fitna incites discrimination and violence (from arrogant barbarians), reports ANP. ‘I have lodged a complaint because I do not believe this contributes to a peaceful society,’ she told ANP.

© DutchNews.nl

Neither does Islam but why nit pick… /sarc

Dutch Gov’t Repudiates Koran Film

By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com International Editor
March 28, 2008

(CNSNews.com) – Bracing for reaction, the Dutch government late Thursday distanced itself from a lawmaker’s newly released film linking the Koran to violence and terrorism, saying the problem was ‘not religion, but the misuse of religion to sow hatred and intolerance.’

Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, whose government earlier urged Geert Wilders not to release the provocative film, said he rejected its equation of Islam with violence. [eye roll] The film was posted on the Internet on Thursday (see related story).

‘The vast majority of Muslims reject extremism and violence,’ Balkenende said in a statement read during a press conference. ‘In fact, the victims are often also Muslims.

‘We therefore regret that Mr. Wilders has released this film. We believe it serves no purpose other than to cause offence. But feeling offended must never be used as an excuse for aggression and threats.’

Wilders late last month accused the prime minister of cowardice, saying he appeared to be so fearful of the consequences of the film that was willing to capitulate, rather than defend democratic freedoms.

On Thursday, he conceded that Muslims may be unhappy with his film, and said he hoped it would not spark disturbances.

Radio Netherlands quoted him as saying the film was not intended to provoke disruption, but to make clear the dangers, and he hoped it would lead to debate in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

Wilders is the leader of the Freedom Party, a small right-wing party he formed in 2004 under the slogan ‘Stop the Islamization of the Netherlands.’ It holds nine seats in the 150-member Dutch parliament, the Tweede Kamer.

Wilders has lived with security protection since the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was targeted for making a documentary about the treatment of women under Islam.

Dutch security officials this month raised the national risk level to ‘substantial’ and Dutch embassies have been circulating statements on the government’s view of the film, amid concerns about a possible backlash against Dutch nationals and business interests. Place the blame where it belongs!

The Dutch Council of Churches Thursday called the film a ‘caricature’ of Islam, and a Dutch lawyer, Els Lucas, lodged a legal complaint against Wilders, accusing him of inciting violence and discrimination. Lucas has in the past filed complaints against Wilders, charging that his stance on Islam violates Dutch law.

In a separate legal challenge, a Dutch court Friday is due to consider a petition, brought by the country’s Islamic Federation before the film’s release, asking whether the material breaches hate-speech laws. Hate speech (sharia law) laws put in place for Muslims

Early reactions among Dutch Muslims to the film’s release reportedly were muted.

When the film went online, it was late at night or early Friday morning in large parts of the Islamic world — including Pakistan and Indonesia, where protests against the film took place earlier.

The Web sites of many major newspapers in the Middle East and South Asia were slow to pick up the story, although leading Arabic television networks al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya on their English-language sites carried wire service reports on the release of the film.

There was no immediate reaction from key Islamic bodies such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which has been leading a drive to have the ‘defamation’ of Islam outlawed.

(Hours before the film was released, the U.N. Human Rights Council Click link to read statement of dhimmi cow ‘UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour < – Example of her dhimmified hypocrisy here. in Geneva passed a resolution, proposed by Islamic states, urging governments to prohibit the defamation of religions, and expressing ‘deep concern at attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human rights violations.’ For God’s sake! Islam is terrorism, violence and riddled with human rights violations. Under islamic (sharia) law! The vote was 21-10, with European countries and Canada leading the opposition.) Note free societies opposed this attempt to enforce sharia law across the globe.

Reaction may be forthcoming this weekend from the Arab League, which begins a summit in Damascus. Some key leaders are staying away because of Lebanon’s drawn-out political crisis, but the Koran film’s release could provide the participants with an issue to rally round.

The Arab European League (AEL), a Belgium-based party, accused Wilders of collaborating with ‘Zionists’ to make the movie.

‘His political agenda and his attacks against Islam and Muslims co[m]bined with his unconditional support to the Zionist project in occupied Palestine is welcomed and supported by the majority in the Zionist camp.’

The AEL was founded in 2000 by a Lebanese-born political activist. Recent postings on its Web site praise the assassinated Hizballah terror chief Imad Mughniyah, and call last month’s murder of eight Israeli religious students ‘a heroic attack,’ congratulating the ‘resistance martyrs’ responsible. Oh but that is ok?! Maggot!

‘Unfair translation’

Comments by Muslims carried on the Islam Online Web site reacting to the film’s release included accusations of Islamophobia, warnings of the fate awaiting ‘infidels,’ and allegations about ‘unfair’ translations of the Koran used in the film.

The film does not indicate what translation Wilders used.

Some Islamic scholars say that any translation of the Koran from the original Arabic is no longer the literal word of Allah. That is how they trick Non-muslims not fluent in Arabic.

A short film speaking the truth about Islam is offensive?
I’ll give them OFFENSIVE!

Protesters torch the Danish embassy in Lebanon in protest over the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.
They demand RESPECT by TORCHING a Danish Embassy!
Barbarians! Respect is earned!

This is the first I had heard of the impending sale of Westergaard’s original (Muhammad turban bomb.) drawing. I would love to have that for myself! Oh yeah! Anyone want to buy it for me, my BD is in June. lol Just playin’.

Muhammad ‘bomb’ cartoon for sale

A DANISH cartoonist whose drawing of the Prophet Muhammad sparked riots across the Muslim world wants to sell the original drawing ‘to make something out of a difficult situation’.

The small, ink cartoon is locked in a bank vault as Kurt Westergaard, 72, hides from Islamic militants who have vowed to kill him.

His drawing, featuring a bomb in the prophet’s turban, is by far the most famous of a dozen ‘Muhammad cartoons’ published three years ago by Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper for which Westergaard works.

It could command great interest at auction. But auction houses were voicing doubts about the wisdom of putting such a controversial item on sale.

‘It’s too hot to handle,’ said Franck Lombrail, an auctioneer in Paris. ‘It would represent a risk for the public at the sale.’

Flemming Rose, cultural editor of the Jyllands-Posten, called the cartoon ‘a great cultural icon of the 21st century’ and thought it was only fair for Westergaard to make money out of it.

Rose said that on a visit to the US last year, he had autographed posters of the cartoon collection, which had sold for £500 ($1079) each.

One option might be to put the cartoon up for sale on the internet.

The Indonesian Government is strong arming YouTube. How shocking! Not.

Indonesia Gives Ultimatum to YouTube: Remove Fitna or We Will Block Access – Doctor Bulldog & Ronin

Islam is such a lovely way of life. Freedom is the cornerstone. No thought police. No facisim. Everyone should give slavery under Islam a whirl. You will no longer have to think for yourselves. Sharia will do it for you. How freeing is that! Whoopie! /sarc

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
- Winston Churchill

Related:
The Audacity of Hypocrisy
Islam 101
Bowing and Scraping Like Good Little Dhimmis
LiveLeak Pulls Fitna: ‘Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature’
Fitna has arrived!
Imagine…
Video: Geert Wilders Interview on Danish Television
Fitna? or No Fitna?
UAC Documentary ‘An Inconvenient Religion’
It’s in the Qur’an…
Another Anti-Islam Film in the Wings
Do As We Say, Not As We Do…
Mo’s Dog Days of Summer
Mo Cat Got Your Tongue
mo cat protests
‘Bloody Cartoons’
No More Tantrums
Feeding Frenzy
Still Waters Run Deep
‘Above all else, the Devil cannot stand to be mocked.’
The Muslim Ego is Writing Checks It’s Reputation Can Not Cash
Video: Appeasing Islam – Pat Condell
Jordanian Islamonazi Group Filing Mo-Toon Lawsuit Includes time line of Muslim Mo-toon outrage Sept. 30 2005 – October 26 2006
Another Islamic / UN Obscenity
IHEU ‘ambushed’ by Whiny Sanctimonious Islamists at Human Rights Council
The Vast Islamic Conspiracy
The United Caliphate of The United Nations
The UN Has Lost Their Dhimmi Status…
ALERT! A Fatwa has been placed on Dr. Wafa Sultan
Savage Kicks It Up A Notch & Launches Full Frontal Assault Against CAIR
Sour Grapes
Sunday Toonage – (New) Kurt Westergaard
Muslims allowed to rape and murder all non-muslims

Browse My Amazon Shop

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!

“

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

By Debbie Schlussel

**** SCROLL DOWN For More Disturbing News on This – Did Muslim Counterfeiters Purposely Send Toxic Toothpastes to America? Plus e-mail for News Director ****

Recently, Detroit-based Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a warehouse full of smuggled counterfeit merchandise in suburban Detroit’s Oakland County. The merchandise is sold at cut-rate prices to operators of dollar stores throughout the Detroit area who then pass on the phony stuff on their customers, mostly poorer people looking for a bargain in a tough Michigan economy.

But the merchandise is not only phony, it’s poisonous. That includes toxic toothpaste containing ‘Diethelen Glycol [which] can cause paralysis of your facial muscles and cause brain swelling and can make your kidney’s fail.’

Last night, Detroit’s NBC affiliate, WDIV/LLocal 4, reported on the warehouse, but reporter Kevin Dietz left out one detail, which is almost always included–the names of the people who own and operating the warehouse and the stores that sell their counterfeit merchandise. That’s because all of them are Arab Muslims. Watch the video–on the middle right side of the link–closely. It’s hard, on the small screen, to tell the identity of the owners of the warehouse, but on the big screen, it’s quite clear, they are Arabs and they are laughing about their toxic toothpaste . . . all the way to the bank. (The Black man shown is their worker and not an owner of the business.)

What’s more, my sources tell me they are Muslim Arabs and are believed to be selling the smuggled counterfeit merchandise for money laundering to terrorists, specifically Hezbollah. But none of that is mentions, even though that’s why ICE is involved and it’s an ‘international investigation.’

It’s well known that Hezbollah has Arab Muslims selling counterfeit Nikes, hip-hop clothing, and other fakes like the toothpaste for profit to fund terrorist operations. I’ve written about it on this site many times, and it’s been documented in the L.A. Times and elsewhere.

Just Monday, yet another Muslim, Moustapha Moussa Amadou of South Carolina, pleaded guilty selling the fake Nikes and other clothing in Pennsylvania. On the same day, Ziad Assed Ismail of North Carolina was charged with selling counterfeit clothing at his ‘Hip Hop Spot’ store. Last week, in Indiana, Sharif Saleh was arrested for selling as many as 2,000 counterfeit Nikes in his foodmart. Also last week, Salim Muhammad a/k/a Sam Khan of Greenville, pleaded guilty to trafficking counterfeit goods for selling counterfeit clothing on his 33Urban website. And in Central Florida, Omar Amazinae and Abdessamad Farih, were arrested by federal agents for selling fake Nikes and counterfeit clothing at their respective stores.

There are so many Muslims selling fake hip-hop gear and engaging in the hip-hop lifestyle to respectively fund and pimp their kinship with terrorists that a friend of mine in Dearbornistan calls them Hezbollah’s Hip-Hop-bollah.

In those cases, it’s fake Nikes and hip-hop clothing, but in the case of the warehouse in my area, it’s toxic, counterfeit toothpaste. Many different phony products. Yet the perpetrators are all Muslims, mostly Arabs, and all for the same cause. Yet, you’d never know it if you watched my local newscast.

I went to high school with WDIV/Local 4 News Director Bob Ellis. He and I were in journalism class together and both wrote for the high school newspaper, ‘The JAY.’ All the way back in high school, both Bobby Ellis and I were emphatically instructed by our teacher, Dr. Ken Siver, that the most important things in reporting were ‘The Five Ws’–Who, What, Where, When, and Why. So, why is Ellis’ operation now omitting the first ‘W’–the ‘Who’–a basic tenet of objective journalism?

Well, apparently because–in the mainstream media, especially Detroit’s media–two other letters, P and C, too frequently trump that W.

Kudos to the ICE agents who raided the place. But will they really thoroughly investigate where the funds for the fake and poisonous merchandise are going–ie., likely to Hezbollah? The absence of ICE Michigan Special Agent in Charge Brian Moskowitz a/k/a ‘Abu Moskowitz’ from the media report was glaring. He usually grabs onto whatever media spotlight he can get to bolster his greater ambitions to run ICE. But this time, he was notable absent.

That’s probably because he was too busy–as is his usual tack–meeting with his buddy, FBI award revokee ‘former’ Islamic terrorist Imad Hamad, to apologize for the raids on the counterfeit-pushing Muslims. Agents tell me that any time they ever raid or arrest Muslims, they’re worried that Moskowitz has tipped off Hamad and his gang in advance. And they all know that he always calls Hamad, afterward, to apologize for their doing of their jobs.

**** UPDATE: Yet another set of Muslims caught pushing counterfeit merchandise, this time in Austin, Texas. Brothers Sahejad and Safiq Karedia, along with their mother, were charged with selling $83,000 in pirated CDs and DVDs and also sold counterfeit clothing along with Nike shoes. Which terrorist group will get the profits?

**** UPDATE #2: Did Muslims deliberately put toxic toothpaste into the American consumer stream? Reader Jim, who knows a lot about this says yes, and I believe he’s onto something:

Deb,

Diethelen Glycol is highly toxic. It is more commonly known as antifreeze. It takes only a small dose of DG to kill someone, and the death it causes is excruciatingly painful.

Diethelen Glycol is not an approved additive to anything for public consumption. I think perhaps the authorities are not telling the whole story here. The probability that this accidently got into toothpaste is low. There is a hell of a lot more to this story than meets the eye.

Keep up the good work.

Jim

While it’s true that the toothpaste is primarily made in China, the Muslim Arab purveyors of it–from their warehouse–had been warned about their poisonous, counterfeit products, yet they continued to sell them. That should tell you a little something about their intentions and agenda.

**** UPDATE #3: E-mail WDIV/Local 4 News Director Bob Ellis and ask him why he won’t report the names of the Muslim Arabs inserting toxic toothpaste into America.

“

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Last week Saudi King Abdullah, shocked the world as he ‘made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews’ — going so far as to refer to the latter two as ‘our brothers.’ Before you light the campfire and start singing Kumbaya lets examine who we are talking about. Enough of this Politically Correct nonsense !! Lets call a spade a spade, Saudi Arabia the home of Islam, where millions of Muslims went on Haj (pilgrimage) last week, an anti-Semitic and anti-Christian state. Remember how the government airlines warned Christians NOT to bring a bible into their country with their personal effects? Maybe before he calls for a group-hug the Saudi King should change the law in his country that BANS the practice of any other religion. Hey I am all for dialog, but maybe his government controlled media can stop calling for the killing of Jews before we invite our BROTHERS over for Shabbos dinner:

Real Talk?
The Saudi king ought to stop killing non-Muslims first.
by Raymond Ibrahim
National Review Online

According to the Associated Press, Saudi King Abdullah, in an unprecedented move last week, ‘made an impassioned plea for dialogue among Muslims, Christians, and Jews’ — going so far as to refer to the latter two as ‘our brothers.’ The Jerusalem Post states that such talks would be geared to developing ‘respect among religions.’

The Arabian kingdom, however, is famous for tenaciously upholding and exporting ‘Wahhabism/Salafism,’ that literalist brand of Islam that preaches absolutely no tolerance — murdering apostates and condemning all non-Muslims as infidels — and famous also for having supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers of 9/11, ‘educating’ fellows such as Osama bin Laden, and boasting a sword on its national flag. One can’t help but question the old monarch’s motives.

More tellingly, days before the king’s call for dialogue, prominent Saudi Sheikh Abdul Rahman Barack issued a death-fatwa against two Saudi writers. Their crime? They wrote articles in the Saudi paper Al-Riyadh questioning the Muslim position that holds all non-Muslims — whom the Saudi king would otherwise call ‘brothers’ — as infidels. According to the Arab News, Barack said: ‘Anyone who claims this [that non-Muslims are not infidels] has refuted Islam and should be tried so that he can take it back. If not, he should be killed as an apostate from the religion of Islam.’

Does this mean that King Abdullah truly believes Christians and Jews are not infidels, and if so, does that also mean a fatwa for his life is forthcoming?

At any rate, is the Saudi king aware that ‘dialogue’ is supposed to be held by two or more singular participants who nonetheless genuinely believe that they share some basic human rights — such as the freedom to practice whatever religion they wish without being molested? Only civilized peoples who are agreed to such fundamentals can move on to more temporal matters, such as territorial disputes (e.g., Israel/Palestine). But what is the point of having ‘dialogue’ over secondary matters when the primary issues — basic human rights — are not endorsed by all participants?

In Saudi Arabia, the facts remain: native citizens who dare convert to Christianity must be slain; absolutely no churches or any other ‘symbol’ of non-Muslim worship (e.g., crosses, rosaries, Bibles) is permitted on the peninsula; non-Muslims are barred from entering Mecca or Medina.

These are just the visible forms of intolerance practiced in the home of Islam and its founder. Theoretically — or rather, theologically — speaking, the worldview of Wahhabism/Salafism is even worse: whenever the opportunity presents itself, the whole world must be brought under Islamic rule, either willingly or by the sword, following the pattern of the Islamic prophet and the first ‘righteous’ caliphs. What is even more troubling is that this Muslim view of world conquest isn’t merely a product of certain obscurantist schools of Islamic thought; rather it is the codified worldview of all four schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam. In fact, it is a communal duty (a fard kifaya) imposed on Muslims.

So where exactly does Abdullah get the gall to call for ‘dialogue’? The measure of any community’s sincerity and tolerance toward nonmembers is how well that community treats nonmembers under its suzerainty. The West treats all religions roughly equally (in fact, Christianity often seems to be the most under attack).

In the United States, for example, Muslim minorities have the exact same rights — to build places of worship (mosques), publicly carry their scriptures (Korans), to worship and proselytize, and, simply, to be Muslim — as do Christians and others. That is proof that the West is prepared for dialogue over ancillary matters: it has already visibly demonstrated that it firmly believes all humans are guaranteed basic rights.

Countries like Saudi Arabia evince no respect for basic human rights and freedoms. The contrast is amply demonstrated by the recent comments of one high ranking Saudi who said that ‘It would be possible to launch official negotiations to construct a church [note the singular] in Saudi Arabia only after the Pope and all the Christian churches recognize the prophet Muhammad’ — which of course would make all Christians Muslim. How would Muslims react to a requirement that, to build mosques in the U.S., they must first publicly acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?

Perhaps the greatest proof that the old king was being insincere is the fact that, in his ostensibly ‘multi-culti’ speech, polytheists are conspicuously left out. Abdullah continuously stressed that this dialogue is to be only with ‘our brothers in all religions which I mentioned, the Torah [Jews] and the Gospels [Christians].’ If the Saudi king was honestly trying to promote religious tolerance around the world, why weren’t polytheists invited to the talks? Specifically, why weren’t Hindus invited, who also have a long and often bloody history with Islam, including territorial disputes (e.g., Kashmir) that continue to this day?

The theological reason is that polytheists (‘al-mushrikun’) are held in an even worse position than Christians and Jews (whom the Koran refers alternatively to as ‘people of the Book,’ but in the latter chapters and verses — which take precedence, according to most systems of Islamic jurisprudence — as ‘infidels’ who must be fought in perpetuity). So while Abdullah’s ‘brothers,’ Jews and Christians, can in fact keep their religion (once subdued and made to live according to second-class, ‘dhimmi’ status), polytheists must either convert, or die.

It is impossible to see the Saudi king’s motives in this monotheistic-faith ecumenism as completely sincere. His ‘impassioned plea for dialogue’ is certainly worthy of support. However, the starting point of that discussion must be the Muslim world’s treatment of the non-Muslims in their midst. Once Saudi Arabia affords basic human rights to Christians and Jews — not to mention Saudi citizens who wish to convert — then dialogue over secondary matters can ensue. Until then, the Saudis have no place at the negotiation table.

Raymond Ibrahim is the editor of the Al-Qaeda Reader, translations of religious texts and propaganda.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

We continue our look at excerpts from James Finn’s ‘Stirring Times: Or, Records from Jerusalem Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856‘.

In consequence of this and some other circumstances taking place in Jerusalem [referring to the persecution of Jews by Muslims and Christians described in parts 1 and 2 - EoZ], another instruction was issued by the Foreign Office, to the effect that whenever any Austrian, French, or other European Jew should be suffering under persecution or injustice, and should be repudiated by his own Consul, the English Consul might take up his case, unless the repudiating Consul, when applied to, should assign some strong and sufficient reason for objecting to that action. The spirit herein contained, notwithstanding the establishment since of other Consulates, was in conformity with the rule in 1839 ‘to afford protection to Jews generally.’ The Russian Jews had of late increased considerably in number among us — notwithstanding the stringent laws of that empire for keeping its population at home. Even for leaving the country for brief periods, vexatious formalities and fees had to be submitted to by all classes of Russian subjects, and sureties were required to answer for the reappearance of the travellers in order to satisfy the requisitions of taxes and military conscription, at the date written on the passport ; and besides all these conditions when fulfilled, the license to travel abroad was discountenanced rather than encouraged.

All this was felt more keenly by Jews than by other classes of the Russian population, for they entertained a peculiar horror of the Russian conscription, which entailed violations of their laws for Sabbath and diet, with compulsory attendance at church image-worship. Still, when the wit and determination of a Jew have only to grapple with the venality or obtuseness of Russian officials, obstacles often displace themselves. Jews were smuggled over the frontier, and the numbers repairing to Jerusalem for the inestimable privilege of being buried there became alarming. At length the Imperial Government resolved upon assuming fresh vigour of action within its dominions, and to get rid of the troublesome responsibility involved in looking after people who never meant to return, and whose sureties had no sufficient means for paying up the arrears of the home-taxes ; this trouble was all the greater since there was no Russian Consul at Jerusalem.

It was, therefore, determined to set adrift all the Russian Jews then found in Palestine, furnishing them with papers of dismissal, which also allowed them to resort for protection to any European representatives they might think proper to select, but recommending the English Consulate. These papers were written in French and Arabic, and delivered by the Russian Vice-Consul in Jaffa. This was in 1848, at a period of entente cordiale between England and Russia, and when no cloud had appeared in the sky intimating peril to Turkey.

Only those who have ever known the sentiments of Jews within the Russian dominions can adequately imagine the joy of these emancipated people — they were ‘As those that dream,’ and they flocked in large numbers to the English Consulate for protection, though some, on account of family connections or transactions of business, took Austrian or other protection. A register of names, dates, etc., of these prottgis was duly kept in the consulate, the business of which was consequently much augmented.

As one of the many tokens of gratitude, from the people so benefited, will be found in the Appendix the translation of an address in Hebrew to Her Majesty the Queen, received in Jerusalem in July, 1849. It was a beautiful specimen of penmanship on parchment. The translation, although exact, affords but a feeble idea of the gracefulness of the composition with its Oriental peculiarities.

Translated Extract from an Address of Russian Jews in Safed on their coming under English protection, 1849, After compliments to the Consul in Jerusalem to the people of Israel and to succour them with every kind of aid, for great and small, and to defend them from those who rise up against them:

With a perfect heart
Of mercy and loving kindness ;
And with the tips of the wings of Mercy
And the grace of her Righteousness
She has extended and caused to shine upon us,
Who dwell in our own land,
The holy (be it established in our days),
Us, who are burdened with troubles —
Sinking into distress,
Poverty and calamity,
But loving the land of our Fathers,
The place of our honour.
We here are those
Who are the sons of the provinces of Russia,
And this is the day we have looked for :
We have found it, we have seen it —
For she has bent down her pity to receive us
Under the shade of her wings of compassion,
And to comfort us with shade of her mighty rule,
For a name, for a praise, and for glory !
Yea, our souls within us are bound
To implore Him, who is fearful in mighty acts,
With praises and prayers,
That He may prolong her days
In rest and satisfaction ;
That the Lord may hedge her in,
And all that are hers :
The princes around her,
With her nobles,
And all those comforted in her shadow.
May they rise on wings of elevation, of prosperity,
In fulness of joy ;
And may her kingdom be established
Until the coming of Messiah !
May the Lord bless their lives and their substance,
And increase their honour,
And crown their praise !
Amen, so be Thy will !

Finn noticed, outside of this poem, the feelings that Jews had to the Land of Israel:

The intense attachment of a believing Israelite to the Holy Land can be but faintly appreciated by others. In proportion to the bitterness of soul and to the sufferings attendant on the exile, so is the affection, the yearning of heart towards the beautiful Land of Promise where sleep the fathers of the people. ‘ I long to return there as a child to its mother,’ are literally the words used by a Jew who had visited Jerusalem. The miracles which attended the deliverance from Egypt, the giving of the law, the forty years in the desert, the entrance into and possession of the Land ; the splendour of David’s kingdom, and the culminating glory of the Divine Presence in the Holy House : all these are for ever present to the mind of a pious Israelite, kept fresh and vivid by the constant recital of their Liturgies, by the never-ceasing study of the sacred writings, the law, the prophets, the psalms. What wonder that in far distant lands the living messengers from the ruins cf the Holy City and Temple should be looked upon with veneration, that willing hearts are moved to give liberally for the support of brethren who, for love of God and their nation, have been ready to go and suffer among ‘ the heathen,’ in order that they may offer supplications where alone they believe they can be completely effectual — at the Sanctuary itself — for the termination of the long tribulation, for the fulfilment of all the glorious promises of restoration that have during centuries past nerved the people of Israel to eudure, and to look forward through present agonies — undespairing, uncrushed — to the coming glory, the final bliss that are to outshine all the past by a splendour scarcely to be conceived!

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Saudi billionaire Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz, who successfully sued Cambridge University Press last July, has failed in his efforts to silence Rachel Ehrenfeld.

Saudi billionaire Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz, who successfully sued Cambridge University Press last July, has failed in his efforts to silence Rachel Ehrenfeld.

The American Center for Democracy in Defense of Freedom, which Ehrenfeld directs, has just issued the following press release. The New York State legislature today passed the ‘Libel Tourism Protection Act,’ which will help protect American writers from the likes of Bin Mahfouz, who uses his millions to silence critics of his own past and of others who work to spread Wahhabi Islam around the world. For the likes of Bin Mahfouz, the inability to convince people of the merits of your arguments leads instead to efforts to sue them into silence. That underhanded assault on our freedom of speech has now become more difficult, as this new legislation corrects holes in New York’s law that had left Ehrenfeld, and other authors, open to suits from foreigners like Bin Mahfouz.

Here’s the press release:

Legislature Passes Libel Terrorism Protection Act To Protect American Journalists and Authors From

Overseas Defamation Lawsuits

Albany, NY (March 31, 2008) – The New York State Legislature today unanimously passed the ‘Libel Terrorism Protection Act’ (S.6687/A.9652), sponsored by Assemblyman Rory Lancman (D-Queens) and Senate Deputy Majority Leader Dean G. Skelos (R-Rockville Centre).

When signed into law by Governor David Paterson, this legislation will protect American journalists and authors from foreign lawsuits that infringe on their First Amendment rights.

In Ehrenfeld v. Mahout, New York State’s highest court held that it would not protect Dr. Ehrenfeld from a British lawsuit filed by Saudi billionaire Khalid Salim Bin Mahfouz, where she was ordered to pay over $225,000 in damages and legal fees to Bin Mahfouz, as well as apologize and destroy existing copies of her books.

Dr. Ehrenfeld sought a court order in November of 2006 to protect her constitutional rights, but in a ruling with national First Amendment implications which sent legal shockwaves throughout newsrooms across America, as well as potentially undermining our ability to expose terrorism’s financial and logistical support networks, the New York Court of Appeals ruled that it does not have jurisdiction to protect Americans – on U.S. soil – from foreign defamation judgments, which contradict the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Libel Terrorism Protection Act declares overseas defamation judgments unenforceable in New York unless the foreign defamation law provides, in substance and application, the same free speech protections guaranteed under our own constitution, and it gives New York residents and publishers the opportunity to have their day in court here in New York.

‘This is a great day for free speech and freedom of the press, and I urge Governor Paterson to quickly sign this legislation into law. This law will protect our journalists and authors from trumped up libel charges in kangaroo courts in overseas jurisdictions which don’t share our commitment to free speech and freedom of the press,’ said Lancman.

‘This law will give New York’s journalists, authors and press the protection and tools they need to continue to fearlessly expose the truth about terrorism and its enablers, and to maintain New York’s place as the free speech capitol of the world,’ Lancman concluded. Lancman’s remarks on the Assembly floor are viewable here .

‘The truth is a critically-important component in the War on Terror,’ said Senator Skelos. ‘This important new law will protect American authors and journalists who expose terrorist networks and their financiers. In its decision, the Court of Appeals called upon the State Legislature to revise the law. Today, we made clear that New York State will safeguard the First Amendment and these courageous writers.’ #####

— Winfield Myers-Democracy Project“

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Likud Knesset faction chairman MK Gideon Saar submitted an ‘urgent query’ to the Knesset regarding last month’s terrorist slaughter in which eight Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav students were gunned down. He wanted to know if Israel supplied the murder weapon to the PA – and did not receive an answer.

Saar asked where the terrorist, a resident of eastern Jerusalem who did not have a license to carry a weapon, received the Kalachnikov that he used for the murders. ‘Does the security establishment know from where the terrorist received his weapon?’ Saar asked. ‘Was this a weapon that was given to the Palestinian Authority by the Government of Israel?’ In accordance with accepted Knesset procedure, the Minister Responsible for Liaison with the Knesset, Ruchama Avraham-Belila, took the forum to respond, and said as follows:

‘This was a murderous and lowly attack by an evil degenerate who came in to murder students while they were studying Torah. This was a shocking and appalling incident. After checking your question with the relevant bodies, I can answer you the following at this point, though it might not be enough for you: The General Security Service is currently in the middle of investigating the attack, and now, at this stage, all the details are under the veil of the censor. As soon as the investigation concludes, MK Saar, I will be happy to transmit to you all the details of what I know.’

In response, Saar said, ‘I will suffice at this stage by expressing my hope that the Government of Israel will not carry out its intention of submitting thousands more Kalachnikov rifles to the Palestinian Authority, until the answer to my question as to how the terrorist obtained his weapon is answered.’

Hero Blames Peres
It will be recalled that just minutes after the murderous attack, Yitzchak Dadon – one of the two heroes who killed the terrorist – was interviewed on several TV and radio stations, and each time he blamed President Shimon Peres and the Israeli government for having given to the PA the rifle that was used to murder the students.

Ever since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993, Israel has given thousands of weapons such as Kalachnikov rifles to the PA. The Rabin-Peres government of those days felt that the Palestinian Authority needed to instill law and order, especially with the influx of tens of thousands of PLO terrorists into Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Justifying Israel’s giving them thousands of guns, Rabin said at the time, ‘Fatah will fight Hamas without [the restrictions of] the Supreme Court and B’Tzelem.’

Despite the many deaths of Israelis at the hands of Kalachnikov-toting terrorists since then, and despite several ‘Don’t give them guns!’ campaigns by the nationalist camp, the government continues even now to either provide guns or to allow Egypt to send guns to the Palestinian Authority. “

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

‘Fitna’ is certainly provocative, yet it has good reason to provoke. A cancer of violence, bigotry and cruelty is metastasizing within the Islamic world. It’s fine for Muslim moderates to say they aren’t part of the cancer; and that some have, in response to the film, is a positive sign. But more often, diagnosing or even observing this cancer — in film, book or cartoon — is dubbed ‘intolerant’ while calls for violence, censorship and even murder are treated as understandable, if regrettable, expressions of well-deserved anger.

It’s not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, but they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor inclined to use violence.

For more on Fitna, the Darwin Fish, and rollicking good times in a Turkish café, “

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

‘We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals. Civilization will have broken down.’

Ted Turner

Millennial fever is a well known phenomenon. The last time it happened around 1000 CE, portions of Europe decided the apocalypse was nigh, began selling their possessions and preparing for the end.

Around 2000, the media and people with fallout shelters managed to convince a sizable amount of the public that the Y2K bug would cause everything from nuclear disasters to bank failures were imminent. Of course none of that came about.

While liberals like to paint a picture of conservative Republicans as crazed doommongers eagerly anticipating the apocalypse, it’s liberals who have given us the two great apocalyptic panics of the last 50 years.

‘Not doing it is suicide. Just like dropping bombs on each other, nuclear weapons is suicide. We’ve got to stop doing the suicidal two things, which are hanging on to our nuclear weapons and after that we’ve got to stabilize the population.’

Ted Turner

When liberals don’t like a policy, they turn it into a giant boogeyman. The liberal response to the cold war was to run around screaming for 30 years that the nuclear missiles were about to fall and wipe out the entire planet. Endless tedious novels, movies and songs were produced based on the premise that we were all about to die. At the heart of that obsession was the idea of ‘Nuclear Winter’, a concept which had as little credibility as human centered global warming does.

Nuclear Winter and the liberal understanding of Global Warming had one important thing in common, they were both pseudoscientific theories that postulated that humans could somehow destroy the earth for our sins, those sins being the sins of fighting Communism and buying consumer products. In a certain light of course both Nuclear Winter and Global Warming were the punishment for a single sin, capitalism. It isn’t that liberals don’t like their luxuries, their large homes, their luxury goods and their cars. It’s just that they don’t like the idea of widescale prosperity or a system where there is no real deprived underclass. And so is born Global Warming, which proclaims in short that if we don’t start driving up the cost of products fast so as to price them out of the range of working people, the world will end.

‘We already have too much economic growth in the United States. Economic growth in rich countries like ours is the disease, not the cure.’

Paul Erlich (Al Gore advisor)

The same liberals who routinely pooh pooh the idea that Islamic terrorism is a grave threat despite the thousands dead, expect us to believe that the real threat involves the extinction of the non-extinct polar bears. Forget fighting a war, they cry, the real problem is that if we don’t do something soon, we’ll be all reduced to eating each other soon enough and wandering the land trying to bite out each other’s brains.

If conservatives like their war movies, it’s clear that liberals like their Science Fiction.

For thousands of years of recorded history the earth has gone through warming and cooling periods. The fossil records back it up. We’ve gone from hippos in the Thames to Londoners buttoned up against the cold, long before the Industrial Revolution came along. Humans can kill each other, we can wipe out entire forests, but we can no more destroy the earth than we could win a boxing match with an elephant.

Liberals know that too.

‘If I were reincarnated, I would wish to be returned to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.’

Prince Philip, WWF

The goal of Nuclear Panic and Global Warming was to create within Americans a twinned sense of great power and impotence through the belief that we were so powerful that any wrong move by us will destroy everything including ourselves. The goal was to make us believe that we were a bull and the world was a china shop and that any use of our power would destroy everything.

That in a phrase sums up the liberal mindset on every American issue from foreign policy and national defense to industry. America is just too dangerous. The only solution is to diminish, to shrink within ourselves, to feel guilty and ashamed for everything we’ve done and for everything we’re set to do.

And at the heart of that is the real faith of liberalism, not in hope but in fear. Forget the positive slogans and the upbeat messages. Behind them all is the propaganda of naked raw fear. And the message is simple, ‘Stop what you’re doing or we’ll all die.’

‘Stop showering. Stop using toilet paper. Stop carrying plastic bags. Stop drinking bottled water. Stop driving. Stop flying. Stop going anywhere except to global warming rallies. Stop doing anything. Just stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.’

There’s nothing positive left about the environmental movement which runs as much on guilt and fear as any middle ages cleric. It’s become a horde of Chicken Littles crying that the sky is about to fall, not because they believe it, but because they want us to believe it. They need us to believe it so that we’re afraid.

‘I think if we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecological society under socialism. I don’t think it’s possible under capitalism.’

Judi Barri
Earth First

Problems require solutions. Frighten people with a seemingly plausible threat, never mind that it doesn’t exist, and you can harness the power of nightmares to implement your agenda. It’s what liberals have repeatedly accused conservatives of, and they should know because they are the biggest practitioners of it.

There is nothing positive about liberalism. Subtract the guilt and fear and nothing is left. All liberalism comes down to is government control, social conformity and political terror. And to get the public to accept those three, you need a grave threat. You need to convince them to ignore the social crises and real threats created by their policies and focus on the nightmare they have created. You need to recirculate and distribute that nightmare wholesale to the public through TV shows, books, movies and films.

You need to convince the public that they’re going to die, that their children will starve and eat each other… unless they vote a liberal in.

You need to convince them that they’re at fault. That they’re guilty. That their very existence is a toxic plague. And then they’ll bow their heads, hate themselves and surrender to a higher power. Not God. But the men in charge.

Welcome to socialism.

‘Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on earth, social and environmental.’

Dave Forman
Founder of Earth First!

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Despite Beijing’s opposition to harsh sanctions against Iran, China has provided the UN nuclear watch dog with data against Iran.

Read and react

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

By Debbie Schlussel

. . . Shenanigans like that of illegal alien Palestinian Muslim criminal Waheed Saleh is not only tolerated but allowed to go on in spades.

Saleh, though he’s not supposed to be in this country, is a New York City cabbie. He’s gotten in repeated fights over parking spots and cigarettes. Originally from the HAMAS terrorist hotbed of Jenin, Saleh is now suing the City of New York and two of its cops because they ‘violated’ Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s sanctuary city executive order, by tipping off Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to Saleh’s presence, after he constituted a continuing law enforcement problem. And he’s also suing on the grounds that he feels the NYPD is trying to squelch his ‘First Amendment speech rights.’

Um, what rights? He’s not even supposed to be here. Hello . . . ?

Catch & Release: What ICEs Princess Julie Myers
Did With Palestinian Muslim Illegal Alien Waheed Saleh
(Julie Myers Diet Coke by David Lunde/Lundesigns)

Moreover, Saleh is being represented by the high-priced law firm of OMelveny & Myers, one of the most expensive firms in New York (and other major cities in which it has offices). Just who is paying Mr. Salehs legal fees? And if Mr. Saleh is paying them himself, which is doubtful, one wonders where he amassed such amounts of money as a cab driver. Did he fail to declare and pay adequate federal taxes on the cash fares he collected? Apparently, he didnt pay federal–or any other–taxes at all (see below).

But here’s the kicker–which shows us what a great job Julie L. Myers a/k/a ‘The ICE Princess’ is doing:

At one point, Mr. Saleh had been released from federal custody on bail. His current whereabouts could not be verified.

Yup, ICE let him go, despite being a flight risk and a repeated violator of federal immigration laws. Thanks, ICE Princess.

There’s even more absurdity to this story. Read the whole ‘saga’ of Waheed Saleh.

Because we allow this kind of stuff to happen on a daily–no, make that hourly or per-minute–basis, we are losing our country, irretrievably. There are gazillions of Waheed Salehs. Tons of them.

Oh, and one other thing, Saleh is not even a legal cab driver, so he’s not even supposed to be collecting fares. He’s doing so illegally. But The New York Times has a PC-term for that. The ‘newspaper of record’ calls him a ‘gypsy-cab driver.’

Hmmm . . . If I were the Gypsies, I’d give them the fair play of turnabout and sue both the Times and Saleh for defamation.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

JERUSALEM – The removal of a series of Israeli anti-terror roadblocks yesterday was overseen directly by the U.S. and was carried out under heavy pressure from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, defense officials in Jerusalem told WND.

The removals also may have enabled an attempted terrorist attack against two Jewish civilians. The foiled attack yesterday, in the northern West Bank, was carried out just hours after Israel began lifting the roadblocks and was in an area where a major roadblock had been removed.

Defense officials here strongly opposed the roadblock removals, saying the obstacles impede the mobility of terrorists. Palestinians complain the roadblocks also make it more difficult for them to travel throughout the West Bank. The majority of West Bank roadblocks were established in the late 1990′s following repeated terrorist attacks from the territory. In yesterday’s incident, an Israeli man shot and killed a Palestinian armed with a knife after he approached the Israeli and a teenager at a popular hitchhiking stop between the West Bank Jewish communities of Shiloh and Eli, about 20 miles from Jerusalem.

Senior leaders of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group, the so-called military wing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah organization, told WND the attacker, a Palestinian from Hebron, worked on behalf of their organization. They said the foiled attack was not an attempted stabbing but part of a planned kidnapping operation that included a car waiting nearby.

Yesterday’s attempted attack came just hours after Israel began removing a series of anti-terror roadblocks throughout the West Bank in line with Israeli gestures toward Abbas.

Uri Ariel, chairman of the National Union-National Religious Party, explained to reporters, ‘Hours after the IDF began removing roadblocks and began easing restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, a terrorist tried to murder Israelis only a few kilometers west of a roadblock that had been removed from Shiloh Junction.’

The roadblock removals were specifically called for by Rice in a series of meetings with Israeli leaders.

At a news conference here on Sunday, Rice said that the U.S. expected the roadblocks would be removed ‘very, very soon’ and stated American diplomat William Fraser would oversee the removals.

Fraser was deployed to the region to monitor implementation of agreements pledged by Israel and the PA during last November’s U.S.-sponsored Annapolis summit, which seeks to create a Palestinian state before the end of the year.

‘Fraser will ensure that 50 roadblocks will be removed and that this will actually have an effect on the freedom of movement in the West Bank,’ Rice said in Jerusalem.

‘The Israeli Ministry of Defense had identified the roadblocks that will be removed, but we will ensure that they carry it out,’ she added.

Rice announced the U.S. ‘wants to monitor and ensure that their removal will begin. This is a very specific commitment on the part of Israel.’

She said that while in the past the U.S. did not micromanage the implementation of Israeli and Palestinian commitments, ‘this time we want to be a lot more systematic concerning the territories and what is being carried out on the ground.’

Aside from overseeing the roadblock removal, defense sources said Rice urged the Israeli government to reopen major crossings between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The crossings were closed after Hamas took over the Gaza Strip last year and in response to what Israel said were a high number of warnings about terrorist attacks at the border.

Terrorists in the Gaza Strip regularly have been firing rockets from the territory aimed at nearby Jewish communities. During Rice’s hour-long meeting on Sunday with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, one rocket was fired from Gaza.

The roadblock controversy is not the first time defense officials here have been frustrated with security deals brokered by Rice.

In November, 2005, Rice brokered an agreement in which Israel transferred all security control at the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to the PA and outside countries.

Israeli security officials speaking to WND in 2006 labeled the deal an ‘abject failure’ threatening the Jewish state’s national security.

Rice’s deal restricted Israel to monitor the Egypt-Gaza crossing by camera, called for a European presence at the border station, and gave the Palestinians some veto power on vehicles and persons entering Gaza.

The Europeans many times fled their duties in response to threatened violence. Israeli security officials charged the Palestinians tampered with the names of entrants, accusing Palestinian border workers of deliberately disguising the personal information of terrorists crossing the border.

Rice’s border deal went up in smoke last year when Hamas completely took over the Gaza Strip and expelled the PA monitors from the border. Hamas-backed gunmen multiple times breached the border, including an episode in January when a large chunk of the border fence was destroyed and hundreds of thousands reportedly passed between Egypt and Gaza.

Egyptian security forces did not interfere as massive quantities of weapons were transported across the Egyptian border into the Gaza Strip in January, according to Palestinian militant sources who were speaking to WND then from the border scene.“

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

As a public service announcement, I thought I’d educate our readers on a few things they should avoid so as not to offend our Muslim friends.

The Amboy Times blog brings us a work in progress (about people in regress):

Things That Offend Muslims

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Related: After hiding family members from Muslim Religion Of Peace killers, Liveleak reposts ‘Fitna’

Guardian and agencies:

A Dutch MP and author of a film about Islam that has drawn worldwide condemnation has said he will edit out a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad shown in the movie.
Fitna – which sometimes translates as ‘strife’ in Arabic – is a 15-minute film by far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders that accuses the Qu’ran of inciting violence. The movie shows images of September 11, the 2003 Madrid bomb attacks and the death of murdered Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh, interspersed with quotations from Islam’s holy book.

The movie has attracted condemnation from world leaders since it was released on the internet last week, with UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon labelling it ‘offensively anti-Islamic’. Protests also took place in some Muslim countries, including Indonesia and Pakistan.

Wilders said yesterday he would remove images of a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad, showing the Islamic prophet wearing a turban with a bomb in it. The picture, one of the 12 Danish cartoons that led to violent protests across the Muslim world in 2006, was included at the beginning and end of Fitna.

Wilders’s announcement comes after the Danish Union of Journalists said it would sue the MP for copyright infringement. The picture’s author, Kurt Westergaard, said he was not contacted with a request for permission to use the picture. ‘I don’t want my drawing to be used in something that I don’t know anything about. Had Mr Wilders contacted me, we could have talked together and I could have found out what he wanted with the drawing,’ he said.

Wilders’s office said the picture would be replaced with another cartoon of the prophet Muhammad. Additional, minor edits will also be made, said Wilders’s representatives.

Meanwhile, UK website Liveleak.com, which removed Fitna from its website on Friday after staff received death threats, reinstated it two days later. ‘We will not be pressured into censoring material which is legal and within our rules,’ reads a statement heading the video.

‘We apologise for the removal and the delay in getting it back, but when you run a website you don’t consider that some people would be insecure enough to threaten our lives simply because they do not like the content of a video we neither produced nor endorsed but merely hosted,’ it added.

About 40 hard-line Muslims demonstrated outside the Dutch Embassy in Indonesia in a protest that began Monday and continued Tuesday, calling for Wilders’ death. compound before dispersing.

Malaysia’s Islamic opposition party delivered a protest note to the Dutch Embassy and urged Muslims worldwide to boycott Dutch products.

Wilder’s party holds nine seats in the 150-member Dutch parliament, said the film was intended to warn the West of the dangers posed by Islam.

On Monday, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen met with ambassadors of countries belonging to the Organization of the Islamic Conference to assure them the film ‘in no way reflects the opinion of the Dutch government,’ spokesman Rob Dekker said.

He said the diplomats inquired whether Wilders would be prosecuted for violating hate speech laws. Prosecutors have said they have not yet decided whether to take action.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

A MUSLIM bus driver told stunned passengers to get off so he could PRAY.

The white Islamic convert rolled out his prayer mat in the aisle and knelt on the floor facing Mecca.

Passengers watched in amazement as he held out his palms towards the sky, bowed his head and began to chant.

One, who filmed the man on his mobile phone, said: ‘He was clearly praying and chanting in Arabic.

[See post to watch Flash video]
Click on the pic to view the vid.

‘We thought it was a wind-up at first, like Jeremy Beadle.’

The 21-year-old plumber added: ‘He looked English and had a London accent. He looked like a Muslim convert, with a big, bushy beard.

‘Eventually everyone started complaining. One woman said, ‘What the hell are you doing? I’m going to be late for work’.’

After a few minutes the driver calmly got up, opened the doors and asked everyone back on board.

But they saw a rucksack lying on the floor of the red single-decker and feared he might be a fanatic. So they all refused.

The passenger added: ‘One chap said, ‘I’m not getting on there now’.

‘An elderly couple also looked really confused and worried.

‘After seeing that no-one wanted to get on he drove off and we all waited until the next bus came about 20 minutes later. I was left totally stunned. It made me not want to get on a bus again.’

The bizarre event unfolded on the number 81 in Langley, Berkshire, at around 1.30pm on Thursday.

The passenger said he rang the bus firm to complain but claimed it did not believe him.

He said: ‘They asked me, ‘Are you sure?’. Then they said they would get back to me, but they weren’t taking me seriously at all.’

Yesterday the driver, who said his name was Hrun, told The Sun: ‘I asked everyone to get off because I needed to pray. I was running late and had not had time.

‘I pray five times a day as a Muslim — but I don’t normally ask people to get off the bus to do it.’

Muslims pray at pre-dawn, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening.

A spokesperson for bus company London United said: ‘We are aware of a reported incident involving our route 81.

‘We are currently undertaking a full investigation into the matter.’

“

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

You can watch ‘Fitna’ by clicking here.

THE HAGUE— Dutch businesses Saturday threatened to sue far-right lawmaker Geert Wilders if his anti-Islam film led to a commercial boycott, as several more Muslim countries condemned it.

‘I don’t know if Wilders is rich, or well-insured, but in the case of a boycott, we would look to see if we could make him bear responsibility,’ Bernard Wientjes, chairman of the Dutch employers’ organisation VNO-NCW, told the newspaper Het Financieel Dagblad.

‘A boycott would hurt Dutch exports. Businesses such as Shell, Philips and Unilever are easily identifiable as Dutch companies,’ he was quoted as saying.

Malaysia’s former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad suggested a boycott on Saturday, echoing a similar call by media in Jordan.
‘If we boycott Dutch products, they will have to close down their businesses,’ Mohamad told reporters. ‘If the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims unite and say they won’t buy, then it (the boycott) will be effective.’

Since the release of the 17-minute documentary ‘Fitna’ on the Internet on Thursday, Muslim nations including Malaysia and Singapore have condemned the film, as has UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Although there were no mass disturbances in the Netherlands, in Utrecht two cars were set ablaze overnight, with a slogan calling for the death of Wilders.

(AFP)

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The Dubai Tower and Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who is behind the scheme.

On a clear day, the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean – providing you’ve a head for heights.

Plans for a mile-high tower in the Saudi Arabian desert have been unveiled by the billionaire owner of London’s Savoy Hotel.

At 5,250ft, the £5billion project, masterminded by two British engineering consultancies, will be twice as high as its nearest rivals, skyscrapers under construction in Dubai and Kuwait, and almost seven times as high as the Canary Wharf tower in London’s Docklands.

It is being planned for a new city near the Red Sea port of Jeddah. Behind the scheme is 51-year-old Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who bought the Savoy for £1.25billion in 2005.

The plan gives the Middle East a clear lead over Asian countries and the U.S., who have vied in the past to construct the world’s tallest buildings.

None of the other skyscrapers under construction, including New York’s Freedom Tower on the World Trade Centre site, will exceed 2,296ft.

The prince’s company, Riyadh-based Kingdom Holdings, has set up a joint venture with the London firms Hyder Consulting and Arup.

Experts say the technical challenges are enormous. Much of the lifting will be carried out by helicopters, which will also be used as commuter transport for builders.

The tower will have to be capable of withstanding a wide range of temperatures, with its top baking in the desert sun by day but dropping to well below freezing at night.

To resist the strong winds prevalent in the area and stop it swaying, giving its occupants a form of high-rise seasickness, it will be fitted with a giant computer-operated damper.

Two ‘mini-towers’ – both taller than Canary Wharf – will be built on either side of the main tower.

Linked to it by elevated walkways, they will anchor it and act as stabilisers.

Until recently, the still-under-construction Dubai Tower was expected to be the world’s tallest building.

Plans have changed several times to make it higher, but the final version is expected to be 2,300ft with 160 storeys.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Ive received a spate of anti-Tibet, pro-Communist China comments in response to my blog entries about Tibet.They are all signed by folks with English names, but the language has the slightly clunky style of Chinese propaganda. I mean, other than in Chinas denunciations of Taiwan and Tibet, have you ever heard the word ‘splittist’ used before? I can spot Chinese government spin when I see it, and unless it is properly signed by the Chinese foreign ministry, Im just not going to go along with the charade by posting the comments.

On what basis — other than the clunky Maoist rhetoric — do I make this claim? A year ago, the Western Standard published a story by Kevin Steel about one such Internet soldier for China (quick but free registration required). Here are some excerpts:

He posts his messages everywhere under several different names on Internet blogs and discussion groups. He writes letters to the editor anywhere and sends e-mails to anyone–anyone who might take seriously shocking evidence that the Chinese government ‘harvests’ and sells live organs from political prisoners. His main message is that the Falun Gong–the group which first brought evidence of live organ harvesting to light–and the Epoch Times newspaper that broke that story are spreading propaganda against China’s Communist government. And he’s not even Chinese. He is Charles Liu, a 40-year-old Taiwanese-born technology consultant who lives in Issaquah, Wash., and does business in China.

:::.

He doesn’t really explain, when asked, why he started a blog last year called ‘The Myth of Tiananmen Square Massacre’ under the name of Bobby Fletcher (one of his online aliases, which he also uses to comment on the Western Standard’s online blog). On that blog, he pushes the minimal 250 casualty figure that the Chinese government has always maintained died that night in 1989 (more reliable estimates put the figure at at least ten times that).

Liu’s actions mirror disinformation campaigns waged by the Chinese government in the past. Typically, these include the deliberate spreading of false or misleading facts to sow confusion or doubt among the conflicting accounts. The classic example is the Tiananmen Square massacre; the Chinese government has maintained that no one died in the square itself, that there was only pushing and shoving on the streets around the square, resulting in a few military casualties. Overseas, the CCP relies on its United Front Work department, part of the Chinese intelligence service, to propagate its message. During the Cold War, the Soviets employed many overseas flunkies through their Disinformation Department.

:::

Winnipeg-based human rights lawyer, and Kilgour’s co-author, David Matas, really doesn’t know what to make of Liu. ‘I don’t know who he is, but what he does is spend a lot of time replicating nonsense to defend the Chinese government,’ Matas says.

The only concern Matas has is that Liu seems to know who he and Kilgour met with in the United States to discuss their report. Matas discovered Liu had sent e-mails to politicians–and their staff–prior to the meetings. ‘The only people who would have that information would potentially be the Chinese government. I can’t imagine how Liu would know we were meeting with those people,’ Matas says. ‘We’re not super-secretive, but you can’t find information on the Internet or in any public place about who we’re meeting with, where and when.’ He himself has received at least 10 e-mails from Liu, all of which he’s ignored. Maybe Matas is onto something with that approach.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

They have no concept of free speech or the meaning of the term ‘Viral Video’…it’s too late. As I heard some people put it: ‘The genie is already out of the bottle.’
(more…)

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Post from: The Nose On Your Face

Top 9 Muslim Complaints Over Geert Wilders Film ‘Fitna’

9. Live Leak  keeps acting all uppity with their ‘freedom to express different viewpoints’ attitude.

8. Portrays Muslims as violent and murderous; but in a negative way.

7. Thought the lead role should have gone to Shatner.

6. Upset with the big push by the producers to get it ready in time for Cannes.

5. Forces Muslim rioters to craft yet another batch of poorly-spelled, though surprisingly neat, protest signs in English.

4. Very poor lighting during the flag burning sequences.

3. Too one-sided. Never gave non-partisan groups like CAIR, Al Qaeda, or Hezbollah a chance to tell their side of the story. 

2. Refuses to show the ‘kinder, gentler side’ of bloodthirsty jihadists.

1. Takes call for ‘violent, painful death to all Jews and non-believers’ out of context.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

BAGHDAD (AP) – The fortified Green Zone came under fresh attack Monday, less than 24 hours after anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his fighters to stand down following a week of clashes with government forces.

Al-Sadr’s order stopped short of disarming his fighters and left the militia intact in a blow to the credibility of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who flew to the southern oil city of Basra a week ago to personally oversee a crackdown on militia violence.

The Shiite leader promised ‘a decisive and final battle’ but made little headway. A key adviser to al-Maliki said the operations against al-Sadr’s followers would end within days.

‘Before the end of this week, the operations will come to an end and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will be back to Baghdad,’ the adviser, Sami al-Askari, said.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said, however, that ‘operations will not end until Basra reaches a secure and acceptable situation enabling Iraqi citizens to live normal and secure lives.’

He did not elaborate on how long that might take.

The rocket or mortar attacks on the nerve center of the U.S. mission and the Iraqi government continued more than a week of near-daily fire mostly from Shiite-dominated areas of eastern Baghdad.

The number of rounds going into the zone has dropped in recent days, but the continuing attacks indicate that al-Sadr may not be able to reign in all Shiite militia factions.

The U.S. Embassy said no serious injuries were reported and the U.S. military said it had no reports of major damage. At least two Americans working for the U.S. government died in attacks on the zone last week.

The clashes between Shiite militias and Iraqi troops backed by U.S. forces began Tuesday, when al-Maliki launched military operations against the group and vowed to remain in Basra until the mission was accomplished. The battles there and violence that spread to other southern cities and Baghdad killed at least 400 people.

Al-Sadr’s cease-fire call followed intense negotiations by Shiite officials, including two lawmakers who traveled to Iran to ask religious authorities there to intervene, according to Iraqi officials familiar with the negotiations.

The situation in Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, was relatively calm on Monday, although sporadic gunfire could still be heard in the streets and AP Television News footage showed Iraqi troops searching house-to-house apparently targeting militants.

Some supermarkets and stores were open but residents said few people were venturing out.

A citywide curfew was lifted in Baghdad, although a vehicle ban remained on three strongholds of al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the capital.

Sadr City, the Shiite neighborhood where many of the mortars and rockets landing in the Green Zone are believed to be launched, was calm, residents said. Cars and buses were moving within the sprawling area, though they weren’t allowed to leave.

In other parts of Baghdad, shops and schools were open and people were heading to work.

Al-Sadr’s order was announced Sunday after lawmakers Hadi al-Amri and Ali al-Adeeb reportedly asked Iranian authorities to stop the flow of weapons to al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army as well as groups closely allied with the Americans. Tehran denies that it backs Iraqi militias.

The lawmakers—both of whom have close ties to Iran—also asked the Iranians to pressure al-Sadr to come up with a face-saving initiative, according to Iraqi officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Near Buhriz, about 35 miles north of Baghdad, unknown gunmen in a car attacked a checkpoint manned by U.S.-backed Sunni fighters, police said. Four of the fighters were killed.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The head of the main US spy agency has warned that Al-Qaeda is training operatives who ‘look western’ in order to enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks.

Central Intelligence Agency Director General Michael Hayden also said the terror network, which over the past 18 months has established a ‘safe haven’ in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the Afghanistan border, has shed its operational reliance on mastermind Osama bin Laden.

‘They are bringing operatives into that region for training — operatives that, a phrase I would use, wouldn’t attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport near Washington DC) with you,’ Hayden told NBC television Sunday.

The new recruits ‘look western’ and ‘would be able to come into this country … without attracting the kind of attention that others might,’ he said.

Hayden pointed to improved intelligence techniques in the federally administered tribal areas, due to ‘good cooperation from a variety of allies’ in Pakistan’s tribal regions, for the information on the Al-Qaeda recruits.

But much of the improvement was merely regaining ground that was lost through what Hayden described as an ‘absolutely disastrous’ hands-off policy in the region by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2006 that led to Al-Qaeda’s increased organizational ability there.

‘He was, in fact, pulling forces and the writ of the Pakistani government back from the tribal region, and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were having more and more free reign there.’

In an annual threat assessment released in February, US intelligence reported it had detected an influx of new western recruits to Al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas since 2006.

‘Al-Qaeda is improving the last key aspect of its ability to attack the US — the identification, training, and positioning of operatives for an attack in the homeland,’ the report said.

In presenting the report to Congress, US intelligence chief Mike McConnell also said that plots uncovered in New Jersey and Illinois this year ‘highlights the diverse threat posed by homeland-based radical Muslims inspired by extremist ideology.’

Hayden also stressed that while he was confident Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden was still hiding out near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Saudi-born fighter no longer has operational control over the terror network.

This now lies with Egyptian militants, he argued, although he said bin Laden remains an ‘iconic figure,’ and the CIA is making ‘every effort to kill or capture’ him along with his Al-Qaeda lieutenants.

‘Let me use (the term) iconic figure. His presence … gives a certain punch, a certain image, to the global movement,’ Hayden said.

‘But he’s not operationally involved. An awful lot of the operational force of Al-Qaeda — the Arabic name is … often finished by the country they are from — an awful lot of them are al-Masris, which means ‘the Egyptians.’’

Al-Qaeda’s number two is Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian militant who the US director of national intelligence Michael McConnell last September called ‘the real intellectual leader of Al-Qaeda.’

Bin Laden has claimed responsibility for the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, which killed nearly 3,000 people and prompted the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

(AP)

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Via this posting at Sons of Apes and Pigs:

DUBAI (AlArabiya.net)

A Dutch Muslim woman was thrown out of a public swimming pool for wearing an Islamic-style swimsuit, sparking a row between pool and municipality officials, German news agency DPA reported on Wednesday.

The woman, a convert to Islam, was wearing a ‘burkini’ — a combination of burqa (the garment Muslim women wear to cover the whole body) and bikini.

She was asked to leave Hanzebad swimming pool in the eastern Netherlands city of Zwolle, some 120 kilometers from the capital Amsterdam.

The municipality says the pool should allow women to wear the burkini, but pool officials said it does not meet regulations and might ‘scare off’ other visitors, DPA reported.

The pool manager said there are special hours set aside for conservative Muslim women and added that the Dutch lady chose to swim outside ladies hours to make a statement.

Discussions are still underway between pool and municipality officials to resolve the matter, the German news agency said.

What is there to discuss? Special hours have been set aside for Muslim women, and they’re still not satisfied? Oh, my mistake. She wanted ‘to make a statement.’ And just what might that statement be?

But Muslimah ‘fashions’ are not only for the swimming pool and for making statements. Indeed, according to this story at ABC News, burqa makeovers are for both Muslims and non-Muslims:

The burqa is the wardrobe of choice for many Muslim women. It is worn over a woman’s daily clothing, usually covering her from head to toe. Today, the burqa has gone designer, popping up on fashion runways in the West, like at this show by Norwegian designers Marked Moskva in Norway earlier this month….The designers reportedly say they are aiming their collection at Muslims and non-Muslims.

Have a look.

Garbed from head to toe, complete with combat boots:
A camouflage-patterned burqa by Marked Moskva.
(Mattis Sandblad, Scanpix/Reuters)

Something more colorful and sporting some arm:
A model wears Marked Moskva’s ballooned burqa.
(Mattis Sandblad, Scanpix/Reuters)

Show a little leg:
A crossover designer burqa inspired by Burberry ‘s signature plaid by Marked Moskva.
(Mattis Sanblad, Scanpix/AP Photo)

Show more leg but likely not Islamic, at least for streetwear:
A model wears this short and sheer creation.
(Mattis Sanblad, Scanpix/AP Photo)

Additional photos HERE.

So, Ladies, are you going to rush out and buy some of the latest fashions? Gentlemen, don’t you just love those new fashions?

I know that, for my part, I can’t wait to don the garments of submission. Yeah, right.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

The US gives Israel no aid. The money euphemistically called aid is anything but that. There are three types of aid: hesed (given of pure goodwill, not owed), tzedakah (owed for moral reasons), and mishpat (owed for legal reasons). None of those categories apply to Israeli-American relations. America possesses neither selfless goodwill, nor moral or legal obligations toward Israel. The annual subsidies are bribes at worst, payments at best.

America pays Israel for the influence in the Middle East. Controlling the Middle Eastern bully is America’s greatest regional asset. America receives immense leverage in its dealings with Muslims by the fact of controlling their major enemy. That achievement did not come easy: America failed at replicating it with Pakistan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Germany, Japan, and several other countries. America has two contradictory policies: isolation and the world outreach. Aligning itself with regional hegemons is the only way to resolve that political dichotomy. Tried in many countries, the US policy of regional alignment succeeded only with Israel. Only the Jews were ready to sell sovereignty.

The aid to Israel is an extremely efficient investment. America spent more than $300 billion for the second Iraqi invasion, but the debacle discredited it: Iran ignores the American threats and Muslim countries continue jacking up the oil price. Israel is given 1% of that amount in annual installments, and in return greatly reinforces the US stance in the Middle East: Arabs can always appeal to America against Israel, and America generally listens to them.

The American aid is insulting. In Jewish law, it is an obligation of every individual to avoid being a burden to society at any cost; charity is the last measure for those who cannot support themselves. It is outrageous for the Jewish nation to plead for aid with Gentiles. Israelis are not that poor, and the aid is not that huge. Ending the huge subsidies to Israeli Arabs and non-working Jews, reducing socialist pensions and job benefits in the Histadrut trade union, and firing a large number of useless bureaucrats would more than offset the lost aid. Sensible free market economic policy rather than the post-socialist regulatory abomination would propel the Israeli economy. The IDF can be reduced, long-term conscription abandoned, and a lot of money saved if Israel officially relies on nuclear deterrent in any large-scale war.

The amount of US aid, about $3 billion, remains steady in nominal dollars since 1979 while the CPI increased more by than three times during that period. The cost of weapons increases much faster than the CPI, and the amount which was substantial in 1979 is now negligible. The aid comprises 0.02% of the US GDP and 0.5% of its military budget. For Israel, the figures are, respectively, 1.5% and 17%. Though even the 17% can be realistically offset by streamlining the Israeli army, the situation is actually much simpler: Israel spends 77% of the American aid for American weapons. R&D is a major part of advance weapons costing, and Israeli purchases help amortizing it. In effect, Israel receives the US subsidies in order to pass them to the US military contractors. The comparable Russian weapons – not exactly of the same edge but still very good and sufficient for fighting the Arabs – cost 4-7 times less. In terms of purchasing power parity with Russia, US military aid to Israel amounts to about half a billion dollars annually and close to 3% of Israel’s military budget. Some of the weapons Israel procures in America are virtually useless, untested, hyper-expensive military toys superfluous in the real combat. Addicted to US weapons, Israeli army came to resemble its American counterpart in terms of inefficiency, skyrocketing costs, and the lack of training and daring spirit.

Large-scale procurement of American weapons made Israel dependent on America for any military operations and highly susceptible to the threats of American embargo on arms deliveries. Israel currently places tens of thousands of small, less than $100,000 orders with the US defense contractors, which suggests across-the-border dependence on American suppliers for spare parts and minor items. That creates immense political dependence on the US.

The general purpose American aid to Israel is now being phased out, and for good, as it was spent in the most corrupt manner and hardly benefited common Israelis. The extraordinary aid packages were always detrimental to Israel as they were tied to sweeping political concessions such as evacuating Gaza, a move which created power vacuum where Hamas quickly established itself.

The amount of US aid to Israel is comparable to private Jewish contributions, about $1 billion through charities and $500 million in Israeli bonds. Israel could reasonably double those contributions by a stronger Diaspora outreach program.
The balance of aid benefits the enemies of Israel. Egypt gets $1.3 billion in military aid annually, even though its only target and potential enemy is Israel. America knowingly and willingly funds an anti-Israeli army. Egypt also receives $500 million of general purpose aid, which frees the equal amount of its own resources for military programs. American aid is much more critical to impoverished Egypt than to Israel, and so the cessation of foreign aid to all parties benefits Israel.

America also aids Palestine – though the money nominally bypassed the PLO, it paid the salaries of PLO functionaries and employees. Now America directly funds Fatah, which even pays Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Hamas employees in Gaza with that money. In Palestine, America directly finances anti-Israeli terrorist infrastructure.

Not only the US aid, but also arms sales are doubtfully helpful to Israel. America traditionally offsets arms sales to Israel with deliveries to Arab states. Arab procurement of US weapons greatly exceeds Israel’s. Joint US-Russian arms embargo on the Middle East would benefit Israel: she is able to manufacture most weapons while Arabs cannot, and Israel has an edge over Arabs in arms smuggling and grey market procurement.

Arabs recognize the dubious value of US support. For example, Jordan, the Arab country closest to the US, supported Saddam in the Iraq-Kuwait war. Jordan was afraid of Saddam and did not count on the US help.

The campaign to end US foreign aid should also include ending the goodwill military campaigns, such as liberating the petty emirate of Kuwait. Israel would benefit from a still wider policy, namely America’s return to its traditional isolation. Taking the US bases out of the Gulf countries would leave Israel as America’s only juggernaut in the Middle East, and actually increase the US establishment’s dependence on Israel.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

‘Islaam denounces Democracy, Islaam denounces Christians and Jews…and Islaam is coming to crush the armies of disbelief and smash the false governments and religions of the world.’
(more…)

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Times Online:

Abu Iman barely flinched when the Iraqi Government ordered his unit of special police to move against al-Mahdi Army fighters in Basra.

His response, while swift, was not what British and US military trainers who have spent the past five years schooling the Iraqi security forces would have hoped for. He and 15 of his comrades took off their uniforms, kept their government-issued rifles and went over to the other side without a second thought.

Such turncoats are the thread that could unravel the British Army’s policy in southern Iraq. The military hoped that local forces would be able to combat extremists and allow the Army to withdraw gradually from the battle-scarred and untamed oil city that has fallen under the sway of Islamic fundamentalists, oil smugglers and petty tribal warlords. But if the British taught the police to shoot straight, they failed to instil a sense of unwavering loyalty to the State.

‘We know the outcome of the fighting in advance because we already defeated the British in the streets of Basra and forced them to withdraw to their base,’ Abu Iman told The Times.

‘If we go back a bit, everyone remembers the fight with the US in Najaf and the damage and defeat we inflicted on them. Do you think the Iraqi Army is better than those armies? We are right and the Government is wrong. [Nouri al] Maliki [the Iraqi Prime Minister] is driving his Government into the ground.’

The reason for his apparent switch of sides was simple: the 36-year-old was already a member of the al-Mahdi Army which, like other militias, has massively infiltrated the British-trained police force in the southern oil city. He claimed that hundreds of others from the 16,000-strong force have also defected to the rebels’ ranks.Abu Iman joined the new Iraqi police force after the invasion, joining the Mugawil, a special police unit infamous for brutality, kidnapping and sectarian murders.

‘We already heard two weeks ago that we were going to attack the Mahdi Army, so we were ready,’ he said. ‘I decided to take off my uniform and join my brothers and friends in the Mahdi Army. All these years, we were like a scream in the face of the dictator and the occupation.’ He said: ‘I joined the police because I believed we have to protect Basra and save it with our own hands. You can see we were the first fighters to take on Sadd-am and his regime, the best example being the Shabaniya uprising.’

Abu Iman said that the fighting raging in Basra yesterday was intense because the al-Mahdi Army was operating on its own turf. He was confident that the Shia militia would prevail because its cause was just.

‘The Iraqi Army is already defeated from within. They come to Basra with fear in their hearts, knowing they have to fight their brothers, the sons of Iraq, because of an order from Bush and his friends in the Iraq Government. For this reason, all of the battles are going in the Mahdi Army’s favour.’

Major-General Abdelaziz Moham-med Jassim, the director of operations at the Ministry of Defence, played down reports of defections in the Basra police force. ‘The problem of one policeman doesn’t make up for the whole of the force,’ he said.

In recent months Major-General Abdul Jalil Khalaf, Basra’s police chief, has tried to shake up the force and drive out militia infiltrators, who have wrought havoc in the past, often turning police stations into torture cells in which factions settled vendettas and power struggles with murder and abuse. But he only narrowly escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a suicide car bomb attack in Basra killed three of his policemen. A local tribal leader said the police directorate building was later gutted by fire.

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(Via avideditor’s shared items in Google Reader.)</

Louie is oinking ‘Bullshit’ hysterically as I type this…even lefty Rollins is calling him on it.

Sen. Barack Obama says in an interview that aired on TV Friday that he would have left his church if his pastor had not retired and had not acknowledged making comments that ‘deeply offended people.’

Obama talked about the dispute as it continued to brew over some of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s sermons and comments, which many viewed as anti-American and racist toward whites.

Bulletins from Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ in 2007 include comments — reprinted from other sources — that maintain South Africa and Israel worked on ‘an ethnic bomb that kills blacks and Arabs.’ They also quote a historian who said that ‘what the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews.’

The articles appeared in a church bulletin section called the ‘Pastor’s Page,’ and include one that originally ran in The Los Angeles Times. That article was written by a senior official with Hamas, which the U.S. government considers a terrorist organization.

Obama denounced the articles this week, telling the Jerusalem Post that the church was ‘outrageously wrong’ in reprinting the pieces.

In an interview that aired Friday on ABC’s ‘The View’ — excerpts of which aired on CNN on Thursday night — Obama talks about Wright’s reaction to the controversy.

‘Had the reverend not retired and had he not acknowledged that what he had said had deeply offended people and were inappropriate and mischaracterized what I believe is the greatness of this country, for all its flaws, then I wouldn’t have felt comfortable staying there at the church,’ the senator said.

Wright retired earlier this year, before events erupted.

Obama also said on the ABC talk show that he has spoken with Wright since the uproar over the pastor’s comments.

‘I think he’s saddened by what’s happened, and I told him I feel badly that he has been characterized just in this one way and people haven’t seen the broader aspect of him,’ Obama said.

Mark Halperin of Time magazine told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday night that aides to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, believe the controversy will give their candidate an opening if Obama becomes the Democratic nominee.

‘If you talk to McCain’s people about it, they are — choose your metaphor — licking their chops,’ he said. ‘They believe that if this does not derail his chances of becoming the Democratic nominee, it will be invaluable to them in gaining support among key constituencies — that’s code for white voters — in the general election.’

Even so, polls show that Democrats believe that Obama has responded very well, CNN’s Jessica Yellin reported. She cited a Thursday poll showing Obama with a 10-point lead over his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton. Yellin said polls showed that ‘Obama appeared to rise in Democrats’ estimation after the controversy — after he addressed the Wright controversy.’

Obama leads Clinton in the race for the Democratic nomination, with 1,622 delegates compared with 1,485 for Clinton, according to CNN estimates. A candidate needs 2,024 delegates to win.

One of the church bulletins that came to the fore Thursday, from July 22, 2007, includes an article by Mousa Abu Marzook, deputy of the political bureau of Hamas. ‘Why should anyone concede Israel’s ‘right’ to exist?’ he wrote.

Another bulletin, from June 10, 2007, contains on the ‘Pastor’s Page’ an ‘Open Letter to Oprah’ by Ali Baghdadi, an Arab-American activist. He refers to ‘Israeli death squads’ in a letter urging Oprah Winfrey to explore Palestinian suffering on a trip to the Middle East.

‘Arnold Toynbee, the world-renowned historian, stated that what the Zionist Jews did to the Palestinians is worse than what the Nazis did to the Jews, because, as he stated, Jews should have learned from their tragic experience,’ Baghdadi wrote.

Wright’s old sermons came under fire after a news report turned some of his most contentious comments into a YouTube phenomenon.

In one, the minister said America had brought the September 11 attacks upon itself. In another, he said Clinton had an advantage over Obama because she is white. He also accused the U.S. government of adopting policies to systematically oppress African-Americans.

(CNN)

Nods to LftBhndAgn.

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Binyamin Netanyahu
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‘No one can be a subcontractor for our defense. Mahmoud Abbas cannot constitute a solution for our defensive problems,’…”

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You knew the United Nations was corrupt and evil, but the story of Richard Falk really takes the all-time prize. This lunatic must be dismissed from his UN position: U.N. Official Calls for Study Of Neocons’ Role in 9/11.

WASHINGTON — A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. While Mr. Falk’s specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the ‘9-11 official version.’

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, ‘It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess.’

Mr. Barrett, who is the co-founder of the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth, said in an interview yesterday of Mr. Falk, ‘I would put him on a list of scholars who are sympathetic to the 9/11 truth movement.’

Nothing the UN does can surprise me any more, but this is disgusting almost beyond belief.

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The thwarting of an alarming terror plot was cleared for publication on Thursday, almost three weeks after a joint Shin Bet and police operation led to the arrest of two Palestinian employees of the ‘Grill Express’ restaurant in Ramat Gan.

The men, Eihab Abu Rial and Anas Salum, both 21-year-old residents of the West Bank city of Nablus, had planned to lace dishes served at the establishment with a powerful toxin without odor or taste, in the hopes of killing as many patrons as possible.

The two did not have working permits and were residing in Israel illegally. While in Nablus, they had been recruited to the al-Aqsa Martyr’s Bridges, the military wing of Fatah, under the guidance and funding of Hizbullah.

The men were arrested by police investigators following information obtained by the Shin Bet, several short days before they planned to carry out the attack.

In their questioning the men told interrogators they were to receive the poison from two operatives in the Balata refugee camp in Nablus – Husseini Salag and Hani Quabi – who are still wanted by security forces.

The white substance is virtually undetectable and affects its victims approximately four hours after being ingested.

If they would have been successful they could have killed hundreds of people who frequent the restaurant; it would take many hours for investigators to figure out the source of the illness while the restaurant would remain open and serving more customers.

Again, Palestinian Arab terrorists and their supporters prove themselves to be capable of pure evil. All the talk about not wanting to kill innocent people and how immoral Israel supposedly is is shown to be a sham when measured against a crime like this. It is effectively an attempted – and nearly successful – WMD attack, that will be largely ignored by the world.

And who will be ultimately hurt by such an attack? As with the Mercaz Harav massacre and yesterday’s Nahal Oz murders, the inevitable result is that Palestinian Arabs will be hurt, as no one in Israel will hire them any more as restaurant workers. There is no doubt that thousands of Palestinian Arabs are extraordinarily upset that their livelihoods are bing threatened by their comrades, and there is equally no doubt that their voices will not be heard because of the de facto censorship in their media, where any voices against terror are muted and marginalized.

Notice also who planned the attack – the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigades, out of Nablus, the terror group that the PA announced months ago was disbanded.

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U.N. officials say the darnedest things:

WASHINGTON — A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

‘Neocon,’ of course, is code for ‘teh J-O-O-S.’

This guy should be booted forthwith from his U.N. position, but he won’t be. He should probably be placed in an institution as well, but that’s not going to happen either. Not when he makes crazy talk lofty intellectual statements like this:

On March 24 in an interview with a radio host and former University of Wisconsin instructor, Kevin Barrett, Mr. Falk said, ‘It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don’t think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion, there should be an official investigation of the sort the 9/11 commission did not engage in and that the failure to do these things is cheating the American people and in some sense the people of the world of a greater confidence in what really happened than they presently possess.’

I’d like the last act of the Bush Administration to be tearing up the U.N. lease and kicking them across the pond, but I can only dare to dream.

stein hoist: CJ

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You know Jimmy Carter’s gone a little too far when even the State Department disapproves: State Department: Carter should not meet Hamas chief.

It’s just pathetic he should even need to be told.

The US State Department said on Thursday it had advised ex-President Jimmy Carter against meeting the leader of Hamas in Syria next week, saying it went against US policy of isolating the group.

 

Carter has in recent days discussed with the State Department’s point person on Israeli-Palestinian issues, David Welch, his plans to meet Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal.

 

‘We have counseled the former president about having such a meeting,’ said State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack, adding the advice was not to go ahead with such talks.

 

‘US government policy is that Hamas is a terrorist organization and we don’t believe it is in the interests of our policy or in the interests of peace to have such a meeting,’ he told reporters when asked about Carter’s plans.

 

Earlier, Hamas official Ayman Taha told Reuters in Gaza of Carter’s planned meeting. ‘There is an agreement to hold the meeting and arrangements are underway,’ he said. Taha said the meeting was to be held following a request from the Carter Center in Atlanta, whose goal is to promote global peace, health, democracy and human rights.

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In every generation they will rise up against us. Lets hope these Jihadis hang on the nooses they set up for us.

Orgy of anti-semitic cartoons in Arab media lately: ‘The ADL has compiled a list of blatant anti-semitic cartoons from the Arab world in the wake of Reuters’ mistranslating Matan Vilnai as threatening a ‘holocaust.’

While the ‘Zionism=Nazi’ imagery is nothing new in the Arab press, they have turned it way up recently, as the ADL report shows.

Of course, Palestinian Arabs don’t have to look far for their own, very real, historic connections to Nazis. Nazis wooed Islamists to get them on their side, Nazis armed Arab terrorists in Palestine before World War II, Nazis tried, semi-successfully, to work with them during WWII, the biggest Palestinian Arab leader helped in the genocide of Jews, Arabs drafted Nazis to help fight Jews after WWII, today’s Palestinian ‘moderates’ consciously imitate Nazi symbolism, and even today neo-Nazis explicitly support Islamic terror against Israel.

My First Rule of Arab Projection is alive and well.

(h/t Suzanne)

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Stand Against Anti-War Rallies’ Pro-Jihad, Anti-Jewish Effect: ‘America’s left commemorates the 5th Anniversary of the Iraq War by organizing Anti-War protests today, March 19th. See 5YearsTooMany.com for a rally close to you.

Will their agenda also denigrate Israel for self-defense against Palestinian terrorism? Minority-rights and pro-Zionism activists should attend these gatherings to defend against anti-Israelism/anti-Semitism. Please bring camcorders and digital cameras to report your experiences here. Find a local MoveOn.Org candlelight vigil near you (and represent):

The war in Iraq has gone on for nearly five years. The unbearable costs at home and abroad keep mounting. It’s clear that Americans are ready for a real change in direction. On March 19th, tens of thousands of people across the country will gather to observe the fifth anniversary of the war with candlelight vigils. (Photo courtesy: Atlas Shrugs)

We’ll commemorate the sacrifices too many families have made, and the billions of dollars wasted in Iraq that could have been better invested at home. Join us at a candlelight vigil on Wednesday, March 19th. Honor the sacrifice. Change our priorities. Bring the troops home. Click here to organize your own vigil, or sign up for one near you.

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