Islamic Basketball

From the February 19, 2006 Chicago Tribune and reprinted in the February 25, 2006 Washington Post:

"...[T]he girls can't accept that they have only been allowed to compete against girls basketball teams from other Muslim schools. There are only four in the Chicago area, they complain, and their competition isn't exactly tough.

"Since last year they've been beseeching Coach Farida Abusafa, 26, an English teacher who also coaches sports, to ask public schools and non-Muslim private schools if their girls teams would be willing to compete against girls from the Universal School.

"The problem is the schools would have to agree to bar men and boys above the age of puberty from watching the games.

"'It's not like it's a sin to play a public school,' Abusafa said. 'The problem is the males coming to the game.'

"The dilemma underscores the balancing act many Muslims perform as they toggle between American and Middle Eastern culture....

"Conceivably, the Muslim girls could play in headscarves, sweat pants and long sleeves. But the bulky attire might make playing difficult, they said...."

Too bad! If these Muslim girls feel so strongly about the restrictions of Islamic law, let them play games against other Muslim schools. After all, the parents of the boys in the public schools are paying the taxes which support the schools' sports programs.

We don't need to Islamify basketball!

Texas Poison 'Em

Ricin discovered in University of Texas dorm:

AUSTIN - A University of Texas student found a substance that has tested positive for ricin, a potentially deadly poison, in a roll of quarters she was using to do laundry in her dormitory, officials said.

The student and her roommate were being treated for potential exposure to the poison, although neither has exhibited symptoms, said Dr. Theresa Spalding of UT Student Health Services.

The student told university police she found the chunky powder Thursday as she was doing her laundry at the Moore-Hill dormitory, Spalding said. Preliminary tests for ricin came back positive Friday.

“We were very concerned as soon as we heard about the positive testing late this evening,” Spalding said. She said the quarters had been in the students’ dorm room for several months.

Ricin is extracted from castor beans and can be added to food or water, injected or sprayed as an aerosol. It can be in the form of a powder, mist, pellet, or it can be dissolved in water or weak acid.

Symptoms can include anything from difficulty breathing, fever, cough, nausea and sweating to severe vomiting and dehydration.

The dorm was sanitized and inspected, and students were cleared to return, the university said.

Has the Jihad come to the Longhorn State?

France mourns death of Ilan Halimi

I hadn't time to post about this earlier, but I'd very much like to thank Michelle Malkin for taking the time to post about it. Halimi was murdered by a gang led by a black Muslim ganglord who may have come from the Ivory Coast after a blonde woman, who may have been Arabic herself, seduced him and led him to be captured by the gang so they could hold him for ransom, and then, when finding out he was Jewish, murdered him on those grounds. No-Pasaran's got more info, including mugshots of the Muslim scumbag who'd murdered Halimi.

From Haaretz:

Cries of "vive la France" and "la justice" accompanied President Jacques Chirac, his wife Bernadette and Premier Dominique de Villepin last night as they left the memorial evening held here yesterday for Ilan Halimi.

The ceremony, which was held in the Grand Synagogue on rue de la Victoire, was seen by many in the Jewish community as the state leaders' formal declaration that anti-Semitism was to blame for the horrific kidnapping, torture and murder of the 23-year-old Parisian.
Advertisement

At 5 P.M., two hours before the ceremony's official opening, police cars surrounded the synagogue area. Police at roadblocks inspected the bag of everyone who entered the area. Hundreds of thousands of people crowded on either side of the street, waiting their turn to enter the synagogue. At the synagogue's entrance police used metal detectors and checked the identity cards and passports of all who pushed in.

The synagogue's 3,000 seats were full, dozens more mourners stood in the aisles and many thousands remained outside and could not get in.

During the chilling ceremony, an 8-year-old read the Psalm "I will raise my eyes to the mountains, whence will come my help?" near a giant picture of Halimi.

Halimi's family and others in the Jewish community said that had the authorities admitted earlier that the young man had been attacked for being a Jew, he could possibly have been saved.

Halimi was found dying, covered with burns and cuts, on Monday February 13. He had been kidnapped three weeks earlier, after a Muslim gang sent a blonde to seduce him. Halimi had agreed to meet with her after meeting in a chat room. Immediately after his abduction his mother went to the police, saying he was kidnapped by anti-Semites. Sources in the community said three Jewish youngsters had managed to escape similar abdications in recent months.

The police told Halimi's mother, Ruth, to stop all telephone connection with the kidnappers, as a way of forcing them to use electronic mail, which was traceable.

The police did not know that during the five days in which the kidnappers tried in vain to contact Halimi's family, Halimi suffered terrible torture. One of the kidnappers said, "We put our cigarettes out on him because he was a Jew."

Caroline Glick notes that the Islamic gang appears to have connections to the Hamas as well:

Anti-Semitism in the Muslim dominated suburbs of Paris and other French cities is all-encompassing. As Nidra Poller related in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, "One of the most troubling aspects of this affair is the probable involvement of relatives and neighbors, beyond the immediate circle of the gang [of kidnappers], who were told about the Jewish hostage and dropped in to participate in the torture."

It appears that Ilan Halimi's murderers had some connection to Hamas. Tuesday, French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said that police found propaganda published by the Palestinian Charity Committee or the CBSP at the home of one of the suspects. The European Jewish Press reported this week that Israel has alleged that the organization is a front group for Palestinian terrorists and that in August 2003 the US government froze the organization's US bank accounts, accusing it of links with Hamas.
Halimi's family alleges that throughout the 20 days of Ilan's captivity, the French police refused to take the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers into account. The investigators insisted on viewing his kidnap as a garden variety kidnap-for-ransom criminal case, which they said generally involves no threat to the life of the captive. The police maintained their refusal to investigate the anti-Semitic motivations of the kidnappers in spite of the fact that in their e-mail and telephone communications with Ilan's family, his captors repeatedly referred to his Judaism, and on at least one occasion recited verses from the Koran while Ilan was heard screaming in agony in the background. The family alleges that if the police had been willing to acknowledge that Ilan was abducted because he was Jewish, they would have recognized that his life was in clear and immediate danger and acted with greater urgency.

The police in France, and in fact, in many other places around the world, are going to have to start showing some serious reform.

Glick also notes something else very disturbing about this case:

In addition to the exterminationist anti-Semitism of Ilan's murderers and the unwillingness of the French authorities to acknowledge the anti-Semitic nature of the crime until it was too late, there is one more aspect of the case that bears note. That is Israel's reaction to the atrocity. In short, there has been absolutely no official Israeli reaction to the abduction, torture and murder of a Jew in France by a predominantly Muslim terrorist gang that kidnapped, tortured and murdered him because he was a Jew.

No Israeli government minister, official or spokesman has condemned his murder. No Israeli official has demanded that the French authorities investigate why the police refused to take anti-Semitism into account during Ilan's captivity. No Israeli official flew to Paris to participate in Ilan's funeral or any other memorial or demonstration in his memory. The Foreign Ministry's Web site makes no mention of his murder. The Israeli Embassy in Paris - which has been without an ambassador for the past several months - only publicly expressed its condolences to the Halimi family on February 23, 10 days after Ilan was found. This, when the French Jewish community considers Halimi's murder to have been the greatest calamity to have befallen it in recent years; when aliya rates rose 25% last year; and when Ilan's mother has told reporters that her son had planned to make aliya soon and was just staying in France to save money to finance his move to Israel. For its part, as Michelle Mazel pointed out in The Jerusalem Post yesterday, the French press has noted that the Israeli media has not given the story prominent coverage. Halimi's murder has not appeared on the front pages of the papers or at the top of the television or radio broadcasts.
Although appalling, the absence of an official Israeli outcry against Halimi's murder is not the least surprising. Today, the unelected Kadima interim government, like the Israeli media, is doing everything in its power to lull the Israeli people into complacency towards the storm of war raging around us. Against the daily barrages of Kassam rockets on southern Israel; nervous reports of al-Qaida setting up shop in Judea, Samaria and Gaza; the ascension of Hamas to power in the Palestinian Authority; and Iran's threats of nuclear annihilation, Israel's citizenry, under the spell of Kadima and the media, appears intent on ignoring the dangers and pretending that what happens to Jews in France has nothing to do with us.

Israel's societal meekness accords well with Kadima's ideology. Its creed was best expressed by Foreign Minister, Justice Minister and Immigration Minister Tzipi Livni last month at the Herzliya Conference and is best characterized as "conditional Zionism." In her speech, Livni explained that Israel's international legitimacy is conditional. Unless a Palestinian state is established in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, she warned, Israel will lose its legitimacy as a Jewish state.

So for Livni, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Shimon Peres and the rest of the Kadima gang, unlike every other people in the world, the Jewish people does not have an inherent, natural right to exist as a free, sovereign and independent people in its homeland. For Kadima, the Jewish people's right to self-determination in our land years is conditional on our enemies' acceptance of our right to be here.

Kadima's conditional Zionism finds expression in its policies in Judea and Samaria. There, the gist of the government's actions is that the only people with inherent human rights in Judea and Samaria are the Arabs.

If would-be governments like Kadima, led by people like Olmert, whose own corrupt activities were exposed recently, and can be read about in these earlier topics, are going to be the ones leading the country, acts of anti-Semitism like the horrifying murder of Halimi will never be effectively dealt with.

See also Debbie Schlussel's report, which notes that Halimi's family, of Sephardic descent, came from north Africa to France to get away from anti-Semitism, and also Melanie Phillips' report (via Israpundit).

Cross-posted to Tel-Chai Nation.

Taqiyya!

Here's a short clip that gives the lowdown on the "cartoon riots" and how they were started (for anyone who might have been living in a cave for the last month). click the picture for the video :

Ikea supports female subjugation

From cdr salamander:

 

When IKEA first approached TheHijabShop.com, their excited team was impressed that an internationally-acclaimed company like IKEA was making so much effort to accommodate Muslims in its workforce. (…) The IKEA branding was added by using a navy blue coloured cloth, with a thin yellow line bordering the top of the cap and the edge of the bottom part of the hijab, finishing it off with the IKEA logo embroidered on the back.

Another politically correct firm...

Powered By Qumana

Some Very Enlightening Thoughts From Ali Sina

This is an excerpt from an interview with Ali Sina from his site www.faithfreedom.org:

Jarek:
Q04: You are asking people to mock Islam. By making fun of it and insulting its dogmas and principles you think good and intelligent people will start to be ashamed of being Muslims and will abandon this religion. However, the cartoons published by Jyllands Posten were only very mild, and yet the reaction of the Muslims worldwide was the opposite. They reacted in unison, in some countries even violent, killing tens of Christians and their faith seems to become even stronger. How do you explain that?

Sina:
Why do you think they reacted so violently? It is because you pressed their sore spot. If you are strong you can take a punch and not flinch, but if you have a sore spot, all it takes to bring you to your knee is a nudge on that sore spot. Muslims committed the huge blunder of revealing their vulnerability. Now the world knows what hurts them. When you find your opponent’s weak spot, it is exactly where you want to hit him. (See this!)

Muhammad was a narcissist and Muslims, by having entered into his bubble universe have become narcissists by extension. More precisely, they are reverse narcissists. A commonly used term for reverse narcissist is co-dependent.

The biggest preoccupation of the narcissist is the preservation of his image. But the reverse narcissists do not have self image. The narcissist destroys the self image of his co-dependants and gives them his own image to cling to. He destroys their identity and selfhood and makes them believe that their glory and greatness is in their submission and obedience to him. He makes them swallow that without him they are nothing. That they are like specks of dust floating in the air, invisible and insignificant, but they can light up and become visible if they come under his light. That is how the narcissist controls his co-dependants.

The first thing Islam does is to destroy the self image of the believers. It convinces them that without Islam they are worthless creatures only fit for hellfire. It tells them that their culture is jahelyyah (ignorance) and their ancestral religion was taaghoti (satanic). They are made to despise their identity and selfhood and seek their glory in their submission to Islam and slavery to its deity who was Muhammad’s own alter ego. Islam has taken everything from its wretched believers. They are robbed from their identity and self pride. All they have now is Islam. That is why Islam for Muslims is more than just a religion. It is their identity. When you criticize Islam, they perceive it as an attack on their identity and cringe with pain. They take that not only as an insult but also as an assault on their person. Like a corned animal they become vicious and fight back with all their might – a fight of survival. That is why you see such a violent reaction to a few silly cartoons.



Why we must continue the campaign of humiliation and ridicule? It’s because we must destroy that false image of Islam to which the Muslims cling for their identity. That idol must be smashed. When that false image is destroyed there would be nothing left to cling to and only then the Muslims will be able to find themselves and recover their lost selfhood. The co-dependant must see that his narcissist, the object of his adoration, is not that great but a fraud, a loser, a clown. This can't be done through logical argumentations alone. By trying to disprove the claims of a fruitcake with philosophical and logical expostulations and remonstrations you give him importance. Muhammad was an idiot, a psychopath, a crackpot. He needs to be laughed at not disproved. What is there to disprove about splitting the moon, climbing the seventh heaven riding on the back of a horse with human face and meeting dead prophets who tell him to bargain with God to reduce the number of prayers from 50 to 5 times per day? Is God stupider than his prophets? The entire Quran is a big joke. If it was not so violent, it would be the biggest comic book ever written.

Muhammad was a jackass. People who believe in him are stupid. Let us call a spade as spade. These people must be laughed at. They, and their screwball prophet have to be ridiculed not respected. Let them cringe, let them wince, let them agonize. We must demolish this fetish and break the shackles of these wretched people. They must be set free and the only way to do that is to demolish their fetish.

Once Muhammad is ridiculed, once this talisman is destroyed, Muslims will be liberated and they will leave Islam. When that happens they'll thank you.

It is not difficult to destroy Islam. Islam is the pumped up ego of a megalomaniac psychopath. Muhammad was a narcissist madman. Just as a huge balloon can be deflated by a small needle, all it takes to make Islam explode is to ridicule its loony inventor and its brainless followers.

Shame works! I have seen it work many times. It worked for me. It was not just the truth but also the savagery of the Muslims that made me want to distance myself from Islam. I was ashamed of Islam; I was embarrassed of what Muhammad had done and what Muslims were doing. I thought to myself, what would I say if people find out the truth about Muhammad’s perversions and ask me, how can you follow a pedophile? What is your opinion about the ridiculous scientific and logical blunders of the Quran? Wouldn't that be embarrassing? Wouldn't I look like a fool? Shame works on those who have the sense of shame. Those are the ones we want to rescue. Shame does not work on those who have no shame. Those we don't want anyway. Let the fools remain Muslims. We want to salvage intelligent and good people who call themselves Muslims by error.

I know the Muslim psychology. It is all pomposity and bravado. I give you my word that if Islam is ridiculed publicly and systematically, it will be defeated. Shame is a great motivator as well as deterrent. Do not underestimate the power of ridicule. This is serious stuff not a laughing matter.

****************************

This is a very important point that Sina makes, that muslims have shown their weak point, a point which may be exploited and should be. I have no doubt that it will continue to be exploited, if only in the spirit of American creativity, entrepreneurship and standing up to bullies. In fact, one news report has already stated that Orriana Fallaci is working on her own Muhammad cartoon. I can't wait!

This is the part of this interview that deals with the cartoons. For the full interview, see www.faithfreedom.org.

Ahoy, Osama!

(Posted yesterday at Mystery Achievement)

James K. Glassman comments on President Bush's support for a Dubai-based company, and has a Marlon Brando/General Kurtz white-hot bullet moment:

And Dubai -- I don't have to tell you -- is an Arab nation. Yes, two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the UAE, but, then again, as Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute notes, Richard Reid, the attempted "shoe bomber," was a British citizen, and Jose Padilla, among others, is an American citizen (as was Timothy McVeigh). The UAE has been a staunch ally in the war on terror, training security forces in Iraq and helping to cut off the flow of money to al Qaeda.

Isn't this precisely what the United States preaches? Don't we want places like Dubai to fight terror and to grow, to invest, to buy, to trade, to adopt Western commercial practices, to expose themselves to the rest of the world and thus become tolerant and moderate?

Instead, congressional leaders are trying to kill the deal, which is set to go into effect next week. Why? "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with a dubious record on terrorism is a homeland security and commerce accident waiting to happen," says Schumer.

This is rank racist nonsense. Schumer knows very well that responsibility for port security in the United States lies not with DP World or any other operator, but instead with the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs. "Nothing changes with respect to security under the contract," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "The Coast Guard is in charge of security, not the corporation."

Using Schumeresque logic, the U.S. should ban flights into the U.S. by airlines from Arab countries, and we should certainly bar any cargo from being loaded in Arab ports and bound for the U.S. ("If you are worried about a bomb in a box going off in New York, you need to worry about who loads the container overseas rather than the terminal operator who unloads it in the U.S.," says someone who actually knows something about port security, Theodore Price of Optimization Alternatives, a Texas company that provides terminal-operating software.) In fact, one would suppose that Dubai, with billions at stake, would be more careful -- not less -- about assisting in anti-terror activities at U.S. ports if it is actually operating them.

Yeah, unless the loader and the terminal operator are in cahoots to smuggle deadly contraband into a U.S. port, James. Nice try, too, trying to scare us conservatives into thinking we're anything-goes, free-market libertarians by quoting a DEMOCRATIC!! Congressman. Problem is, we haven't exactly been "racist" up to this point in our choice of who operates our ports.CNN gets slammed frequently (and deservedly) for the "Bring Me The Head Of George W. Bush" slant it puts on the news. But I find that its stories often reward those who have the patience to stick it out until the last paragraph. As in, the last paragraph of this one:

Foreign-owned companies operate many ports in the United States. For example, companies from China, Denmark, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan run docks in Los Angeles, California.

Check it out, yo! All kinds o' non-Caucasians in that line-up! And what do they all have in common? Two very essential things, if you stop and think about it:

1. They've never sponsored or otherwise supported a terrorist attack on American soil.

2. The vast majority of their citizens are not Muslims.

The charge of "racism" against Americans who fear a group not for the color of their skin, or their last names, but for what their religion tells them to do is a canard employed frequently by both Islamist propogandists and the self-haters of the Western Left every time we show some signs that we are willing not only to take the military fight to our enemies, but--and especially--when we actively exposes the lies that both the Islamists and the W.L. use to try to convince us that "resistance is futile."

Which is why I have believed for a long time now that there is absolutely no meaningful difference between the two aforementioned groups and self-indulgent, libertarian anarchists like James Glassman, Glenn Reynolds, and their like when it comes to loving and defending the shreds and shards that are left of the moral and ethical patrimony of the Judeo-Christian West. To wit: They are not interested in it at all, as long as whatever result of whatever happens gives them as much time and cash as they want to spend on Russian hookers and crack--or whatever else tickles their fancies.

And as if any more evidence were needed that President Bush's plan is the bastard offspring of a tube of Testor's and a room with poor circulation, Time.com lands the coup de grace:

As the simmering dispute boiled over, it looked as if Bush’s only high-profile supporter would be former president Jimmy Carter, who said on CNN that he did not think the deal was a threat to the United States or its security.[...]

Go ahead. Rub your eyes. Blink. Now read it again.Jimmy Effen Carter does not think the deal is a threat to our security.What else do you need to know, people?

ADDENDUM 251325Z FEB 06: Joseph D'Hippolito emails a link to a must-read post from Gates of Vienna that takes the opposite view of President Bush's decision; justifying it based on both the President's character and track record, and the possibility that he's forging a coalition to drop the hammer on Iran--one that includes the U.A.E. and other Arab Muslim countries. At this point, who knows? For now, I'll echo the sentiments of Baron Bodissey's reader, Shellback: Although I am a fan of Bush's, I won't drink Kool-Aid for him. Or anybody else, for that matter.

How Does One Get Stoned in Iran?

How Does One Get "Stoned" in Iran?


Thanks to both The Religion of Peace and What Would Charles Martel Do for the photograph, and to Charles for this text:

"Death by stoning in Iran has. . . become a brutal abuse of power and a barbaric example of outright defiance of the International Declaration of Human Rights as well as most modern standards. Treatment of women in many islamic countries fall under this category of course, but that is another issue.

The method of execution by stoning (usually for the crime of adultery) used in Iran involves burying a woman to her shoulders and then stoning her to death with rocks of a specified size. The intent behind the specification of rock size is to have the executioners not use stones that would not do enough damage nor to use larger ones which might kill or render the victim unconscious immediately, the implication of course being to inflict as much suffering as possible.

The face of the woman in a picture smuggled out of Iran in 1992 haunts me, and though I have searched, I have been unable to find her story. The story of a woman killed in the same Iranian town if Arak in 1994 has been reported on, and is one of the most horrific things I have possibly ever heard of. This woman (name unknown to me) was buried in preparation and her last request to have her husband and children sent away so as not to see her execution was denied.

During the stoning, this woman managed to dig her way free, despite the fact that her eyes were gouged out, and began to run away. According to some reports, this method of escape ends the execution. This woman, however, was chased down and shot by a firing squad."

Thank you again, TROP and What.

I, too, had seen a description of actual eyewitness account of a stoning, but it was quite a long time ago. I believe I have found it again, however, and will include it here. The process is every bit as horrendous as you might imagine.

The victim of this barbaric torture was named Soraya, and the whole story of Soraya M's death is in a book ("The Stoning of Soraya M., by Freidoune Sahebjam, available at Amazon.com and other bookstores). The article I found with this material in it is at : http://hammihan.20fr.com.

The author states:

"Over the past fifteen years, more than 1000 women have been stoned to death in Iran. Here is the true and shocking story of one such woman." The book is based on an eyewitness account and it documents, day by day and hour by hour, a terrible miscarriage of justice.

I will reproduce selected elements from the front and back flaps of the jacket and from the text of the book itself here as accompaniment to the picture above.


From the jacket:

"The woman who had been sentenced to death stood facing the silent crowd. Her head was held high, and her eyes were fixed on old Zayhra, who was staring back at her. . .[the crowd grew] more and more restive as they looked at the defenseless woman being lowered into the pit. Stone in hand, they awaited Machdi Ebrahim's orders.

Soraya M.'s husband, Ghorban-Ali, was a shiftless, ambitious man, prone to rages and dreams of wealth. . .[who] wanted to get out of his marriage. . .

"The gravediggers returned with their shovels and spades and began to fill up the hole. With each shovelful of dirt, they intoned "In the name of Allah!"


And from the text of the book itself:

"Sheik Hassan. . .raised high the Koran and said: 'May the will of the Almighty be done, and may Islamic law be carried out.'

"It was then that everything began.

"With a sweeping gesture of both his arms, Machdi Ebrahim motioned for the crowd to move back several steps. He took a piece of cord from his pocket and counted out fifteen cubits. He carefully cut the cord and handed it to Shokrollah. 'This measures somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-two to twenty-five feet,' he said. 'Using the hole as your center, go draw me a circle. Mark it with quicklime.'

"Using Soraya's head as the center, Shokrollah drew a circle on the ground.

"The mayor took a stone and handed it to Soraya's father: 'It is to you,' he said, 'that befalls the honor throwing the first stone. . .'

"The old man. . .took the large stone in his hand. . .and as he threw the stone with all his might. . .he shouted: 'Allah be praised! . . . There, whore, take that!'

"He missed the mark. . . Four times he tried to strike his daughter, in vain. In a state of rage, he said: 'Give me another stone. I'm going to crush her skull. . .I'm going to split open the woman's head!

"Then it was Ghorban-Ali's turn. . .

" 'Your turn, my boy,' the mayor said to him affectionately, 'and may God guide your arm.'

"The presumably cuckolded husband drew back his arm and then launched his stone, which streaked toward the woman's head missing by a scant six inches.

". . .a second stone. . .just grazed the woman's head. . . a third stone was thrown, this one striking the victim's right shoulder. A barely audible sound came from her mouth, and her chest gave a slight shudder.

"The crowd was screaming hysterically now, and there were ripples of applause from the men. The shadow of a smile flitted across Ghorban-Ali's face; he picked up another stone, aimed more carefully, and threw it as hard as he could. This time the stone struck the woman on the forehead, just at the hairline. The skin burst open, blood began to trickle down her face, as Soraya's head jerked violently backward.

"That's it, you got her! Good for you, Ghorban-Ali. He got her, did you see? Throw another stone, go ahead, give the slut what she deserves!

"The victim's two sons were next. They both picked up stones and threw them at the same time. One of them struck her on the head. There was a sound, like a loud hiccup, as her head jerked back.

"Now the stones were flying thick and fast. . .only a few feet in front of [the crowd] was a head [that] kept bobbing to and fro in time to the stones that were striking it. . . despite the mayor's dire warning, the villagers had been creeping closer and closer to their target, and as a result, there were many more direct hits than when the spectacle began.

"Finally it was Sheik Hassan's turn. He put his Koran in his left hand and, with his right, picked up a large stone. . .he turned back to the crowd and said. . .'I am not the one who is throwing this stone. . .It is God who is guiding my arm. . . It is he who commands me and the revenge I am meting out is not for me, but for our imam, revenge for the heinous crive this woman has committed. . .I shall throw as many stones as it takes to kill this bitch. And afterward the rest of you can throw your stones as well.

"In the center of the circle, Soraya was slowly expiring. Her head and chest were little more than a shapeless mass of bloody flesh. The noisy crowd, completely out of control, broke ranks and moved in even closer, ready for the kill. Her scalp was nothing more than a gaping wound; her jaw had exploded; her eyes and nose burst open. Her head drooped at a grotesque angle. . .over what remained of her right shoulder."

"Hassan, his robe spattered with blood, raised his arm. . .'My dear friends. . .listen to me for a moment. . .I believe that God has done his work. . . Would someone like to check and make certain the harlot is dead?

"Several men raised their hands. Hassan picked Said the well digger. The man lay down on the ground right next to the victim and put his year close to Soraya's open mouth. 'She's still alive. . .The bitch still hasn't died.'

"A man slowly stepped forward, holding a stone above his head with both hands, and brought it down directly on top of her skull. Another followed, and picked up a brick that was lying there next to the victim, and hit her furious with it half a dozen times. The skull burst open, and the brains spilled out onto the ground.

"Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!

"A sudden silence came over the assembly. Then. . .the crowd intoned, together with the mullah: 'In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful."

(Condemned to death by the Khomeini regime for his writings, Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam returned undercover to his native land in 1987 in order to research this book. He lives in France.)

Jyllands-Posten Newspaper Wins 2 Awards

Like getting an Oscar and an Emmy!!

The Jyllands-Posten Newspaper has won the Victor Prize as well as The Winston Churchill Golden Balls Award.

Quite an accomplishment by anyone's standards!

Copenhagen - Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which angered the Muslim world by publishing cartoons of Prophet Muhammad last year, has won a Danish critical journalism award for its initiative, the jury said. Denmark’s largest daily was honoured with the Victor Prize for “having opened everyone’s eyes by showing how easy it is to introduce cracks in freedom of expression and how so-called political correctness is infiltrating what we believe to be inalienable rights,” Hans Engell, the editor of tabloid Ekstra Bladet which awards the prize, said during a prize ceremony in Copenhagen late on Thursday.

The Victor Prize, named for the late editor-in-chief of Ekstra Bladet Victor Andreasen, was handed to Jyllands-Posten’s editor Carsten Juste.

“This prize is awarded to Jyllands-Posten for its adamant defence for months of freedom of expression, which is under threat,” Engell told AFP. “Jyllands-Posten only did its duty: exercise its right to freedom of expression,” he added.

Juste, guarded by two secret service bodyguards, noted “how fragile freedom of expression is” as he accepted the award, his newspaper reported.

Cartoonifada 2006: The Unacceptable Consequences

The Vatican has since made statements, and the MSM has begun to cover events in Nigeria (note: now that the Christians have struck back), but this was my take as of yesterday......


I feel that I must at least attempt to shake readers back to reality before I delve deeper into this issue of the muslim outrage and unacceptable response to the now infamous "mohammad cartoons". The response on the part of the muslim world, especially in areas where there have been mounting death tolls, but also in the US where at least one muslim spokesperson has stated that, "free speech is not absolute", is not a response that we in the West can take seriously as a rational, civilized response to what were in reality simple cartoons. We must remember this, they were CARTOONS, people.

Now that I've made clear the triviality of the issue that has sparked these now deadly responses from Dar al Islam, I must insist that the responses that we have seen over the last few weeks are entirely unacceptable and must be condemned, and condemned without any caveats. Certainly with no caveats concerning our rights to freedom of expression and free speech. No religious figures deserve a pass here, and certainly not the founder of a religion whose numerous media continue to crank out rather blasphemous cartoons regarding other religions. I'd say that Mohammad is as fair game as anyone, and the fact that criticism of this "prophet" is usually followed up with a death threat should only further our outrage to this response. Step outside of the current situation for a moment and imagine that author Dan Brown was in hiding with a price on his head for what he wrote about Jesus and Christianity in his book The DaVinci Code. Point taken?

What I consider to be "unacceptable costs" in this current round of madness from the muslim "ummah" began with the protest signs themselves, as well as the obvious staging of the event. We now know that it took from the original publication of the cartoons in Denmark's Jyllands-Posten in September until February to see the organized response. We also know that this response was largely due to a tour of Middle Eastern countries by Palestinian/Danish Imam Abu Laban with a collection of cartoons that included several "fakes" that had never been published by any Danish or other European media outlets. Nevertheless, we suddenly saw protests, many quite violent, and protesters carrying signs obviously meant for the international media, as they were (regardless of the country where the protests were taking place) all printed out in English. This fact alone is curious enough. The fact that many of the slogans on these signs were of a violent and offensive nature was the debut, in my opinion, of the unacceptable response, as was the burning of embassies in some initial riots......

For more, see

What Would Charles Martel Do?

"Yes Amrozi, we do remember Khaibar"

This fine article authored by Mark Durie first appeared in the Australian periodical Quadrant in Nov 2003. A worthy read, it has some important information that all infidels who wish to resist jihad need to know...

When Amrozi bin Nurhasin, the smiling Bali bomber, entered a Bali courtroom on the day of his sentencing, he was shouting "Jews, remember Khaibar. The army of Muhammad is coming back to defeat you." What was this Khaibar, and why should it be remembered?

In the time of Muhammad, Khaibar was a fertile oasis in the Arabian desert. It was populated by Jews, who maintained its irrigation systems and lived off its produce. When Muhammad conquered the oasis in 628, the Jews who lived there managed to negotiate a surrender. The conditions of their surrender were that some of them could remain to tend the date palms and gardens, but in return they had to pay 50% of their harvest to the Muslims. The land itself would henceforth belong to the Muslim community. The Jews of Khaibar were also granted permission to keep practising their faith. Soon after, the Arab Christians of Najran were forced to accept the same conditions.

The right of the Jews of Khaibar to stay on their former lands was a temporary concession, withdrawn in 640 by Umar, in obedience to Muhammad’s dying wish: ‘Two religions shall not remain together in the peninsula of the Arabs’. In this same year the whole of Arabia was cleansed of non-Muslims.

Khaibar is a name all Muslims jurists will recognize, since it was the conquest of Khaibar which set the precedent in Islamic case law for the subsequent treatment of non-Muslims who surrendered to Islamic conquest and rule. (Khaibar also provided Muhammad with one of his wives, Safiya, a leading Jewish woman of Khaibar whom he selected for himself from among the enslaved captives.)

The discriminatory shari’a regulations applying to non-Muslims, who are referred to in Islamic law as dhimmis, are based upon the precedent of Khaibar. Through a twist of history the defeat of the Jews of this little-known Arabian oasis helped determine the treatment of many millions of non-Muslims after Islamic conquest, including the once-vast Christian populations of the Middle East.

For this reason, the name of Khaibar has great significance for us all. For extremist Muslims like Amrozi, it stands for the defeat of infidel enemies, and their humiliation and subjugation under shari’a conditions, an enduring signpost to the hope of an Islamist victory. For non-Muslims this name stands for centuries of obliterated history and oppressive discrimination, referred to by Bat Ye’or, historian of the dhimmis, as dhimmitude.

Amrozi the smiling terrorist was right — we should all remember Khaibar, as a turning point in world history. Today the precedent of Khaibar continues to shape the lives of the Jews of Iran, the Copts in Egypt, Africans in the Sudan, Pakistani Christians, Hindus and Zoroastrians, and many more. Widespread discrimination against non-Muslims is endemic in Islamic nations, to a significant degree, and there are signs that the problem is getting worse in the twenty first century, not better.

Amrozi’s laughing face has been constantly on the front page of Australian newspapers in recent months. The grief felt over the casualties in the Bali attacks is profound. So it was a irony that, when the Australian newspaper reported Amrozi’s words on the day after his sentencing, the editors did not recognize the name of Khaibar and misspelled it as Hibah. Despite its landmark significance for interfaith relations, the name of Khaibar now seems to be forgotten, its significance obscured. The fate of the Jews of Khaibar had momentous consequences for world history, yet this page of history has been torn out of the non-Muslim world’s collective consciousness. It is time for it to be returned to its rightful place.

Indeed.

Demonstration in Madrid for the freedom of expression

And the Ents keep moving (thanks, Pastorius)

 

To all people living in Spain: the next March 4th, Saturday, a demonstration will be held in Madrid supporting the freedom of expression, in the surroundings of the Monument of the Constitution, at 12:30. It's organized by the Liberal Youths (you know, Liberal in Europe does not mean the same as in America..., it means standing for freedoms).

 

The manifesto runs:

The freedom of press in the democratic countris is menaced by the fanatic fundamentalists that have sworn to kill anyone who draws Mohammed. In this situation we only can show our incondicional solidarity with the people that are targets of fanatics, and to proclaim the freedom of expression as an inalienable human right. It should not be disminished by the murderers' violence or the politics' cowardice.

There are people who have been their targets for decades. That is why showing our solidarity with all the Muslims that must live in silence and support the odious tyranny of their corrupt Governments or the permanent menace of the integrists. All of them must know we will fight for our and their own freedom. We reclaim for them the same freedoms that we have and of which we are not going to be deprived easily.

In this time when the first reaction is to be "prudent" we have to take a moment of reflexion and take into account that we are free, and that this freedom, that has been so costly, is menaced.

This is moment in which we have to compromise firmly with freedom: we have to support our democratic convictions to confront the integrism. This is the time to forge an Alliance of democrates of all the civilizations to put and end to this tyranny that holds its grip throughout half of the world and menaces the other half.

We are grateful to Danish people because of the example that it is giving the world in the fight for our freedoms, against religious fanatism and cowardice. And we are demanding from our politicians to adopt the same attitude and take a firm stand with the Danes.

That is why from Liberal Youths we want to call all organizations, associations and citizens that want to support all these values, to come next March 4th at 12.30 to the surroundings of Constitution's monument.

Originally published in Juventudes Liberales.org. HT: Manning's blog. A summary in EN.

 

Powered By Qumana

Democracy, Religion(s) and the Clash of Civilizations

In their comments at "Are the ENTS Awakening" -Pastorius and Pim's Ghost at Infidel Blogger's alliance start a thought provoking analysis as to whether it is possible to avoid a cataclysm in which certainly tens of millions, potentially hundreds of millions will die, and perhaps settle less than the crusades did.

It's obvious from the cartoon jihad that the freedom critical to all else in the Bill of Rights, and the constitution, the one which we use as the progenitor for protection of the individual against any tyranny of the majority, or as we have seen in too many nations, the MOB is THE flashpoint. Freedom of speech is blashpemy.

According to the salafi philosophical descendents of Ibn Tamiyya, Sayd Qutb etc., there is going to be no alternative. It's them or us. Period. If they control the destiny of Islam, we might as well brings the men and women home, start the salafi arrests, wahabbi-salafi mosque closures and deportations here at home, and then light off all the Tomahawks, Tridents and Peackeepers today.

However, perhaps letting my liberal slip show, I don't think that's going to be the way to go. I think the answer IS democracy. Democracy, despite the islamozoids winning in Algeria, Hamas, etc. PROVIDING the ballot box remains private, sacrosanct and well used.

We have seen today a drawing back of some European nations from the Eurabia the incredible B'at Yeor has accurately described. Some. Despite the attempts of the left there to portray this as some fascist-esque revival, there are enough there to ensure that policies which have lead populations decadent enough to forgo enough children to remain ALIVE, will now get a thoroughly jaundiced review. We see the pope cut to the heart of the problem (the Quran must be considered to be immutable) several times.

So with issues sharpening and each cycle of values exposure, and 'more intimate' contact between Muslims in our societies, and Muslims dominated nations, and the west, how is a clash to be avoided?

I am absolutely CERTAIN after 4+ years of talking with gulf Arabs every day that about 2/3 are completely against the conscience riving actions of the 1-2% who commit mass murder, and the 30%+ who, in some way either do or would support these actions in the name of 'god' emotionally, or worse support it financially or thru other means. These ~67% of muslim folks have a moral compass in relatively good shape, but cannot stand up to the religious authority(ies) which continually, since it's Muslim Brotherhood ascendance - pound the values of {72 hot chicks in heat to get their hands on you if you die in the cause of killing the people who run around making up laws out of their own heads instead of following "god's" (presumably tesoterone gel is provided after a few days or weeks)}

But these same folks have only one way to repudiate the religious doctrine which their conscience SCREAMS at them cannot be "Islam". The privacy of the ballot box. We may see as we have seen, the election of semi-ignorant loony bigots, but I would remind americans that Robert Byrd still serves in the Senate, and I wouldn't crow to loudly about one Trent Lott. More, just as we have seen with Spain, governments freely elected are always transient. That's true for inimical administrations as well as friendly ones. AS LONG AS ELECTIONS ARE CONTINUALLY HELD. The history of democracies, INSISTS, that people free to vote will always vote for the own welfare, with mistakes to be sure, but that has import. That’s why democracies don’t go to real war with each other. Such a war would clearly be peoples against peoples, not peoples against Bin Laden.

Roads and schools will win out over {72 hot chicks who cannot be proved to exist in waiting}. If the elected govts do not deliver these opportunities, then they WILL get fired. This does not assume “they” are like us, it assumes “they” love their children. This will continuously isolate the zarquoids among the Muslims. Once that happens, humanity wins.

Of course this process seems limited when one considers the galactic twerp of Iran and his mullah madmen circling the well, waiting. We may have to deal with them, or our close allies might. But yet .. one idea out of that conundrum may yield some hope…isolate Iran and admit Israel to NATO.

As Wellington said of Waterloo, ‘it was a near run thing’. So this will all be. Must be.

I have no doubt we are going to the brink. None. I have no doubt before it’s all done we’ll buy more duct tape, and stock clean water. But I hope there is a way there are not too many rats in the cage in this close and closer world.

But there may yet prove to be too many to have religious intolerance and bigotry in close proximity to freedom of speech. I which case, we all know what the end must be. Frankly I have no doubt we would do it.

We did it before just to reduce our fighting men’s casualties and shorten a war. Imagine what we would do to save our society.

Australian Government: If You Believe In Sharia, Go Live Somewhere Else

Today, I keep seeing things that make me think that the Muslim Jihadis have outlasted their welcome. First, we had the Archbishop of Nigeria saying enough violence. Then, we had the Vatican declaring Islam hyprocritical. And now, we have Peter Costello, Treasurer of Australia, telling Muslims who believe in Sharia that maybe they ought to find another place to live.

And, when Muslims complained and demanded censure of Mr. Costello, Prime Minister John Howard said, absolutely not:


Prime Minister John Howard has refused Muslim calls to censure Treasurer Peter Costello over comments he made about Islamic extremists.

And Mr Costello has challenged Muslim leaders to pledge their allegiance to Australia before they criticise him over his comments about citizenship.

Muslim leaders have called for Mr Howard to censure Mr Costello over his speech last night to the Sydney Institute in which he said anyone who believed Islamic sharia law could co-exist with Australian law should move to a country where they felt more comfortable.

Islamic Friendship Association president Keysar Trad said Mr Costello had unfairly singled out Muslims and was promoting division and Islamophobia.

But Mr Howard said Mr Costello’s comments were “fundamentally accurate”. “He’s not trying to stir up hostilities with Islamic people any more than I was when I made some comments three days before the Cronulla riots,” Mr Howard told Southern Cross Broadcasting in Melbourne.

Mr Costello said Muslim leaders should be pledging themselves and their followers to Australian values before they started criticising him.

“Rather than try and censure me ... they should make a clear statement that they subscribe to all of these views - that they are loyal to Australia, they respect the rights and liberties of others, they believe in democratic government and they believe that all Australians should live unequivocally under the one law made by the Australian parliament - and endorse these values and recommend them to their followers,” Mr Costello told Southern Cross Broadcasting.

“Pledge themselves unequivocally to these values first of all, and then call on their followers to pledge themselves unequivocally to these values. This is what I would invite them to do, rather than to criticise me because all Australians should in my view subscribe to these values.”

But Mr Trad said nobody was protesting against Australia’s secular laws through any other means than the normal democratic process.

“We have not asked for sharia law to be imposed,” he told ABC Radio. “I don’t know anyone in this country who is asking for sharia law to be imposed and I don’t known anyone in this country who has rejected the rule of law. I am genuinely hopeful that the prime minister will censure the treasurer over these ridiculous comments, that the treasurer is grossly out of line. Rather than try to promote understanding and harmony in this society, his comments are highly divisive and he is stirring up Islamophobia, and these comments should really be beneath any decent politician.”

Mr Trad said the Muslim community in Australia had disowned Islamic fanatics.

In his speech, Mr Costello said where there was reason to believe people were not truthfully or honestly meeting their citizenship test, there was every right for them to be denied citizenship. He likened entering Australia to entering a mosque, with people entering a Muslim place of worship expected to take their shoes off as a mark of respect.

“If you don’t want to take your shoes off, don’t go into a mosque. If you want to come into Australia, you will be asked respect for its values,” Mr Costello told the Nine Network this morning. “If you don’t have respect for those values, don’t ask to come into Australia. This is what we ask of people. We have to preserve a way of life which makes us the greatest country in the world.”

The Devil and the Deep Green Sea

Straight from the Big Freaking Surprise Department:

The far-right British National Party (BNP) is to distribute a campaign leaflet
featuring the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad which have enraged Muslims around the world.

A party spokesman said on Wednesday the images illustrate how Islam and Western values do not mix but were not intended to cause offence. The BNP leaflet asks "Which Do You Find Offensive? A cartoon of Mohammad with a bomb for a turban or Muslim demonstrators calling for terrorist attacks on Europe and the "extermination' of non-Muslims".

"By showing you just how mild and inoffensive the cartoon is, we're giving you the chance to see for yourself the huge gulf that exists between the democratic values that we share, and the mediaeval views that dominate Islam, even supposedly 'moderate' versions," the leaflet said.

The leaflet can be viewed at the BNP Website here.

That this is so predictable makes it all the more depressing. If the British government allows fanatic mobs to scream for beheadings and murder then the government cannot be surprised when rightists use official passitivity as a campaign issue. If the media rigorously surpresses the cartoons then of course the BNP is going to use them to mobilize voters or just for the shock value and the free press.

The British and other European governments and media cannot simultaneously appease Islamists and marginalize the "far-right." The very act of appeasing Islamists empowers the nationalists. Any compromise with the nationalists would infuriate the Islamists. And I'm sure the Europeans will soon find a way to anger them both.

Since WWII Europe has fought to rid itself of the "far-right, nationalist" Devil. Now Europe is increasingly trapped between the descendents of that Devil and the Islamist deep green sea.

The UAE Port Story Is A Bunch Of Bullshit

If you thought it was strange that all of the sudden Democrats were worried about the security of the United States, you were right to be suspicious.

The Astute Blogger has got the goods.

Now that you know the facts, ask yourself, why would the Dems lie about something so fervently? Well, withe the Dems, isn't it usually about the redistribution of income?

Check out Atlas Shrugs, "It's all about the money."

Video: Mohammed Cartoon Protest in Front of Danish Embassy

Video excerpts from the demonstration are now available for download c/o the NEFA Foundation website (look at the top for the link to "Prophet Mohammed Cartoon Protest").
HT: The Counter-Terrorism Blog

Related:
1- Mohammed Image Archive
2- Flemming Rose: Why I published those cartoons
3- Per Nyholm: We are being pissed upon ("Man pisser på os")

Are The Ents Awakening?

The Vatican has issued a statement calling for Muslims to be more tolerant and less hypocritical:


PARIS (Reuters) - After backing calls by Muslims for respect for their religion in the Mohammad cartoons row, the Vatican is now urging Islamic countries to reciprocate by showing more tolerance toward their Christian minorities.

Roman Catholic leaders at first said Muslims were right to be outraged when Western newspapers reprinted Danish caricatures of the Prophet, including one with a bomb in his turban. Most Muslims consider any images of Mohammad to be blasphemous.

After criticizing both the cartoons and the violent protests in Muslim countries that followed, the Vatican this week linked the issue to its long-standing concern that the rights of other faiths are limited, sometimes severely, in Muslim countries.

Vatican prelates have been concerned by recent killings of two Catholic priests in Turkey and Nigeria. Turkish media linked the death there to the cartoons row. At least 146 Christians and Muslims have died in five days of religious riots in Nigeria.

“If we tell our people they have no right to offend, we have to tell the others they have no right to destroy us,” Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s Secretary of State (prime minister), told journalists in Rome.

“We must always stress our demand for reciprocity in political contacts with authorities in Islamic countries and, even more, in cultural contacts,” Foreign Minister Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo told the daily Corriere della Sera.

Reciprocity — allowing Christian minorities the same rights as Muslims generally have in Western countries, such as building houses of worship or practicing religion freely — is at the heart of Vatican diplomacy toward Muslim states.

Vatican diplomats argue that limits on Christians in some Islamic countries are far harsher than restrictions in the West that Muslims decry, such as France’s ban on headscarves in state schools. Saudi Arabia bans all public expression of any non-Muslim religion and sometimes arrests Christians even for worshipping privately. Pakistan allows churches to operate but its Islamic laws effectively deprive Christians of many rights.


It takes the Ents a long time to discuss and come to a conclusion about anything, but when the cohclusion comes it can create a major shift in society. Let's see if the dam above Isengard is about to come down.

This is how it was, what 2006 may be known for

I think that the year 2006, and even before that, may be famous for when people began to realize many important things.

For example, here in Israel, it could be the understanding of the murderous threat that the Hamas, and also the PLO, impose on the country. That the so-called palestinians voted in such large numbers for the Hamas, to yes, you guessed it, replace the PLO, which many of them probably consider "old-fashioned," for the purpose of destroying Israel, as they're trying to do by firing rockets from Gaza against Ashkelon and the surrounding area.

Put another way, this may have awakened people to the fact that the so-called palestinians, courtesy of all the Islamic indoctrination they've been put through, do not want to live in peace and co-existence with Jews/Israelis.

In Europe, there's the awakening to the Islamic threat that now looms over the continent, especially in France, where the large scale riots took place. And with the organized incitement against Denmark over the cartoons, you could say that that's one more sign as to how people are coming to understand the true nature of Islam.

This leads to another important point: that not only are people awakening to the Islamic threat, but that, as the bold steps to republish the cartoons in various newspapers that have done so, in order to give the public the chance to judge for themselves, has shown that some are aware of the fact that we cannot let ourselves and free speech be cowed by threats of violence.

And with Dubya's sellout of US seaports without prior notice to the public and the representatives of Congress, I think that could tell that people are beginning to understand not only the threat that the United Arab Emirates poses (see this item from the Counterterrorism Blog for more), were the deal to go through, but also that, if a Democratic president like Bill Clinton can be unreliable, so can a Republican president like Dubya, who may have ruined his credibility even more by threatening to veto attempts to block the deal. And it's a good thing that our elected officials have all joined together as one in order to protest the deal.

And also just as impressive is that, there's even an "Army of Davids" that's come to protest the deal, and that may be one of the most helpful factors in stopping it from going through.

I'm sure there'll be plenty more that 2006 will be famous -- or notorious -- for, and time will tell what'll come next.

The New York “Stuck-on-Treason” Times and the Recent Spate of Terrorist Arrests

There is a variety of news stories out in the last week, all concerning the roll up of various Islamic terrorist cells operating in the United States. Unfortunately, the UAE-DPO story is taking up most of the room, so these real, right here, right now stories are getting short shrift.

Little Green Footballs had a brief item up yesterday; it was confirmation of an earlier account with more details, sent to us by an informed reader.

A number of people are concerned about the actual day-to-day terrorism activities of Middle Easterners in the United States, both naturalized citizens of our country and those here on visas. One of our readers, whose job touches on domestic intelligence activities, has learned to keep her eyes open when traveling. This has taught her more than she wants to know.

Recently she said she encountered a situation that made her most uncomfortable: right off the interstate, in North Carolina, she stopped to get gas. The station had underpriced their product substantially, so of course it did a good business. What she noticed, though, was the existence of five or six major phone trunk lines running into the building. “ In the middle of nowhere in North Carolina”, she said.

Here’s how she thinks the operation works: say Uncle Ahmed in Pakistan calls this gas station. He speaks some code sentence — say, for example, “Aunt Khalifa is having a baby.” Or any news of a family nature. The receiver of the call places a call himself, repeating the code sentence. This message gets passed down the line who-knows-how-many-times, by landline, disposable cell phones, whatever. And by our lily-white rules, NSA may only listen to the first call. Anything else has been ruled off the turf as “invasion of privacy.”

The upshot of the whole situation is that terrorists have the perfect environment in which to operate without interference. The only help we do have is British intelligence, which is not so hamstrung as we are. Our friend says that the domestic calls — because phones use satellites to function — are vulnerable to the complex system of intercepts the British have established. Thus, they may pass information on to us and we may listen to it. Fortunately, there is as yet no law against a little help from our friends.

Now, in the past week, we have this rash of news stories, carried briefly by the MSM and then dropped in favor of the port security star stories, of various operations being brought to a halt by the FBI and other intelligence agencies. Here’s the one from Lousiana:

FBI Raids Middle Eastern Owned Convenience Stores and Service Stations

The FBI is conducting a large scale investigation into north Louisiana convenience stores with ties to the Middle East. As TV8's Gina Swanson reports the Department of Homeland Security is in on the sting operation involving stores in at least four parishes.

They seized evidence by the box full. The FBI on Wednesday searched at least a half dozen convenience stores in North Louisiana. All with ties to the Middle East. The probe led agents to stores in Tallulah, Lake Providence, Monroe and Ruston. Law enforcement sources confirm that the stores are suspected of involvement in money laundering or counterfeiting. The Department of Homeland Security has sent agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or Ice, to work the case. At each station, agents seized boxes of evidence and retrieved at least one weapon. Police sources say at least some of the gas station operators are from Yemen, an Arab country located just south of Saudi Arabia

ULM history professor John Sutherlin believes the Arab heritage of the convenience store owners could make them a convenient target for terror suspects:

"Anytime Arab or Muslim people are involved people immediately think it must be terror related or have some connection to 9-11," Sutherlin says. [when Arabs are involved in money laundering and counterfeiting rings who in their right mind doesn’t believe it’s terrorism-related?? Oh. Right. This quote is from someone at the local college…should have known —Dymphna]

The investigation reaches beyond Louisiana. TV8 news — the carrier for the previous story— confirmed the FBI and department of homeland security Wednesday also raided stores in Buffalo, New York.

Here’s another TV report, from the commenters at LGF. This one is from Little Rock:

Six people who live in Bryant have been charged by the U.S. attorney with something called money structuring. They operate two Little Rock gas stations, where officials say they were illegally sending money to the Middle East.

The three husband-wife teams are charged with sending $300,000 to dozens of people in the Middle East.

The FBI raided the Shell Station on Markham last November as part of the investigation. After the long investigation six men and women, four U.S. citizens and two legal residents, face charges that could land them in prison and cost them their businesses.


[…]

The main charge is money structuring. That's described as purchasing bank checks in amounts slightly below the $3,000 federal limit that requires having to identify yourself. “Structuring cash” transactions avoid triggering the filing of reports or record keeping by a bank.

U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins says, “The ability to track large sums of money sent overseas is a vital part of investigating crimes that may impact out national security. So, when people intentionally evade these laws, they're undercutting our safety.”

[…]

One husband-wife team is also charged with defrauding the state child welfare system. They're accused with hoarding more than $100,000 cash in their home, but lying about their income on state documents.

And to round it out, The Middle Ground has a long story about an Ohio plot:

CLEVELAND - Three Muslim men from the Middle East were charged Tuesday with plotting terrorist attacks against U.S. and coalition troops in Iraq and other countries.

[…]

Mohammad Zaki Amawi, 26, is accused of threatening in conversations to kill or injure Bush. He also is charged with distributing information about making and using bombs.

The others are Marwan Othman El-Hindi, 42, a U.S. citizen born in Jordan; and Wassim I. Mazloum, 24, who came to the United States from Lebanon in 2000…

Her story is much longer than this and has some disturbing elements regarding the manufacture and use of car bombs by one of the people she names, a car dealer in Toledo.

The Middle Ground says that Toldeo has a large Muslim population and reminds us that this was the base for KindHearts, the Hamas-front charity that was recently closed down. Then she notes this about the terrorist plotters:

It's very likely that this operation was brought to an abrupt end due to the NSA surveillance program being outed in the NYT. According to deputy director of the FBI, Joe Pistle, "enhanced surveillance" was part of the operation. Considering that the investigation efforts appear to have gone on for over six months with the man already delivering "laptops" to the "mujihadeen brothers", which would have been plenty to take him and the others in for material support, it seems that investigators were trying to discover the other connections. The issue with warrantless wire taps may have forced them to roll up the investigation earlier than planned.

Her deductions are reasonable, and it may be why those places in Little Rock, the parishes of Louisianna, and Buffalo, New York were also “rolled up.”

If Lincoln were President, half The New York Times would be where they belonged: in jail with the terrorists. With citizens like them, who needs terrorists to bring the country down?

The cyberterrorism caused by the cartoons

Pim's Ghost has posted over this issue here. My colleague AMDG have already posted about Michelle Malkin Blog being attacked by hackers. Via Fu2rman, we have another news about it.

The Counterterrorism Blog also posted this case of cyberterrorism:

This morning, I received an e-mail from CT Blog fan Ms. Tracy Twyman in Portland, OR, in response to my report yesterday about a hacking of a Seattle-area website by Muslim cyber-terrorists (that's what I'm calling you, get used to it) - quoting her below with edits for the links:

"Thanks for covering the story about the cyberterrorists. If you're keeping a list, you might like to know that my websites, Dragon Key Press and Plus Ultra Blog, were hacked about 1 and a half weeks ago, because I was republishing the Mohammed cartoons, as well as other incindiary material. Both websites were down for about a day until our web host was able to fix it. To tell you the truth, I never thought about going to the police or the FBI about it. I assumed they wouldn't do anything.

I did come across some interesting info though. Lately my website has received frequent visits from people in Turkey clicking links to the site that have been posted on two separate forums, each of them clearly forums for Islamic cyberterrorists. They are here and here. I was not able to get into these forums to see what they were saying about my website, but I can only assume they were discussing plans of attack. I thought you might be interested in this information."

This afternoon, a very interesting follow-up from Tracy (thanks Tracy!), which I hope will attract attention from law enforcement and ideas from other knowledgeable CT Blog fans:

"This morning, yet another person from Turkey visited plusultrablog.com from yet another Islamic hacker forum. If you go to the main page here, you can see that that's exactly what it is.

The administrator of Nordish.net wrote this to Michelle Malkin:

I've just read your blog entry about the coordinated hacking attacks from the Islamic world. They targeted my site on the same day they targeted zombie's. I know where they are launching one of their main attacks from. There is an Islamic hacking message forum that coordinates these attacks, apparently. I saw the IP addresses that accessed my site, and it matched those who spammed and flooded my site. My site was offline for 5 hours 2 days ago, and 3 hours yesterday... 2 hours today. Fortunately my host has been very helpful and we have inserted those malignant IP's into our firewall. So far so good... Anyway, here is the site that has been coordinating attacks against the Mohammed Image Archive.

What is striking (or not?) is that the web from which both attacks were made is http://www.cyber-security.org/CW/Forum/ from Turkey...

Even Al Qaeda has a "University" to teach this kind of things:

If you read Arabic and want a degree in jihad, click on www.al-farouq.com/vb/. If you're lucky--the site disappears and reappears--you will see a post that belongs to the Global Islamic Media Front (GIMF). It announces the "Al Qaeda University of Jihad Studies." According to Ahmad al-Wathiq Billah, the GIMF "Deputy General Emir," students "pass through faculties devoted to the cause of the caliphate through morale boosting and bombings," and the site offers specialization in "electronic, media, spiritual and financial jihad."

The Internet has long been essential for terrorism, but what has surprised experts is the growth of such Islamist (radical Islam) and jihadist sites. Their continuing rise suggests that recruitment for a "holy war" against the West could proceed unabated, despite capture of key leaders.

The jihadist places have developed important ways to defend themselves, although there has been succesful attacks against them. But Bush told them that the "Patriotic Hackers" were still Hackers and, as such, they were going to be punished accordingly. (via Kokonut Pundits).

Also treating this issue: Kim Priestap, Dust My Broom, The Scratching Post, Iowa Voice, Junkyardblog, Viet-Justice,

Tags: caricaturas, cartoons, ciberterrorismo, cyberterrorism

(Crossposted at Eurabian News)

Powered By Qumana

Nigerian Archbishop: Let Us Remind Our Muslim Brothers They Do Not Have A Monopoly On Violence

A statement from the Archbishop of Nigeria:


Having watched with sadness and dismay the recent development in some States in the Northern part of this Country where many Christian Churches and other property have been wantonly destroyed by some Islamic fundamentalists, the Christian Association of Nigeria is compelled to issue the following statements:

From all indications, it is very clear now that the sacrifices of the Christians in this country for peaceful co-existence with people of other faiths has been sadly misunderstood to be weakness.

We have for a long time now watched helplessly the killing, maiming and destruction of Christians and their property by Muslim fanatics and fundamentalists at the slightest or no provocation at all. We are not unaware of the fact that these religious extremists have the full backup and support of some influential Muslims who are yet to appreciate the value of peaceful co-existence.

That an incident in far away Denmark which does not claim to be representing Christianity could elicit such an unfortunate reaction here in Nigeria, leading to the destruction of Christian Churches, is not only embarrassing, but also disturbing and unfortunate. (Pastorius note: Wow, that's a sublime understatement.)

It is no longer a hidden fact that a long standing agenda to make this Nigeria an Islamic nation is being surreptitiously pursued. The willingness of Muslim Youth to descend with violence on the innocent Christians from time to time is from all intents and purposes a design to actualize their dream.

It is sad to note that all acts of hostility meted against Christians by Muslims in the past have remained unaddressed with nobody paying compensations or the culprits brought to justice. We do appreciate the fact that at this stage of our national development, peace is absolutely necessary for realizing our dreams and aspirations. It is in view of this that Christians in Nigeria agreed to participate in the forthcoming National Census as sacrifice for the peace and progress of this nation, in spite of our protest over the non-inclusion of Religion and Ethnicity as necessary demographic data.

May we at this stage remind our Muslim brothers that they do not have the monopoly of violence in this nation. Nigeria belongs to all of us – Christians, Muslims and members of other faiths. No amount of intimidation can change this time-honoured arrangement in this nation. C.A.N. may no longer be able to contain our restive youths should this ugly trend continue.

We now demand that further destruction of Christian Churches and property in this nation be permanently put to an end.

All levels of Government in this country should take adequate steps to protect the lives and property of Christians everywhere in this land as no further destructions will be tolerated or ignored.

The Federal Government and those States where Christian Churches have been destroyed are hereby urged to take urgent steps at rebuilding those structures and paying adequate compensation while assuring Christians of adequate protection in this country. These governments should now show in practical terms that Nigeria belongs to all of us by going beyond mere promises of rebuilding destroyed Churches and property as in the past to actual reconstruction, which will help the victims to quickly put this unfortunate incident behind them. A stitch in time saves nine.

Signed

Most Revd. Peter J. Akinola (CON, DD.) President, Christian Association of Nigeria

Rally for Freedom of Speech (London)

Yes, a real one it seems this time.

March for Free Expression

A Rally in Trafalgar Square between 2:00pm and 4:00pm on Saturday March 25th 2006. Depending on estimates of numbers, the details of a march to Trafalgar Square will be announced on March 15th 2006.

Check out the blog. I'm there. Reckon I should get one of those t-shirts?

Leftie Stops By IBA - His Conclusion? The Right Is Winning The Cartoon Wars

A guy named Robert Lindsay stopped by IBA the other day. I wouldn't have found out about his blog if it weren't for the fact that he linked to us. Anyway, here's how Mr. Lindsay describes himself:


Independent Left journalist in California. Revolutionary, Christian, Pan-Arabist, liberation theology, antiauthoritarian, civil libertarian, mixed economy, Sandinistas, Hugo Chavez. BA Journalism, MA Linguistics, business owner, Green Party, Communist Party USA.


I like that. He sounds like a very eclectic guy. He's a Christian, like me. He's a business owner, like me. And, he's a member of the Communist Party.

I wonder if he's ever heard of the saying, "Property is Theft."

But, that's besides the point, for the most part.

Anyway, you've got to check out what he has to say about the Cartoon Jihad:


Those on the Left or in the Muslim community who think the Cartoon Wars have benefited either of us are terribly mistaken. The Cartoon Wars have been a shot in the arm for the Right in the US, Israel and Europe and they have been catastrophic for Islam. Sure, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafis, the jihadists and all of their primitivist ilk are milking this thing for everything they can.

But for moderate, sane Muslims, for the Muslim World in general, and for the Left in the West, the Cartoon Wars are bad news.

The Left has ended up siding with a bunch of primitivist, misogynistic, reactionary, Medievalist dolts who have been slaughtering our comrades for decades now.

Islam looks like a bunch of crazed, idiotic, intolerant children who have no place in modern society.

The only possible consequences of the Cartoon Wars are increased support among non-Muslims for the War on Terror (War on Muslims), and increased support for the Muslims' worst enemies in Israel, the US, Britain, Russia, India and the nativist Right in Europe. The sensible European citizen figures the sane thing to do is to side with the anti-immigrant Right instead of the Islamist-accomodating Left.


I agree with Mr. Lindsay on two things there. The cartoon Jihad is a disaster for the Left (and for the Jihadis), and the Left has ended up siding with people who go counter to their professed beliefs in human rights.

Mr. Lindsay goes on to say:


I have been perusing various rightwing sites about the cartoon conflict, since the best news about the cartoons comes from rightwing sites.

Those sites include The American Thinker, Face of Muhammad, Infidel Blogger's Alliance, Gina Cobb, Tiger Hawk, Thomas the Wraith, Pedestrian Infidel, Gates of Vienna, CUANAS, hmmh..., Cox and Forkum, No Dhimmitude, The Fu2rman and Western Resistance. They have all covered the Cartoon Wars very well.

All of these sites are rightwing and they are all, or almost all, strongly anti-Islam. Most are also strongly anti-Muslim. I would argue that most of these sites cross the line into anti-Muslim bigotry.


I think Mr. Lindsay will be happy to know that the ONLY Muslims I have a problem with are the "primitivist, misogynistic, reactionary, Medievalist dolts who have been slaughtering our comrades for decades now."

In fact, while there are a few contributors here at IBA who would say that Islam is the problem, and not, as I say, that Islamic Jihadism is the problem, I think all of us would agree that,

1) if a Muslim does not believe in violent Jihad against the Infidel
2) if a Muslim does not believe women should be wrapped in burqas, and given no choices in their lives
3) if a Muslim does not believe in stoning gays, adulters and apostates, and alll the other "medivalist" strictures of Sharia

then none of us have a problem with the Islam of this Muslim.

The problem is, there are several governments (very powerful governments) in the Islamic world who allow, and in some cases, enforce these kinds of philophies (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, the Palestinian territories), and this needs to stop.


Mr. Lindsay also noted the following about us bigots:


These sites have some other commonalities.

They all support the Zionist Jewish settler-colonial invader entity in Palestine called "Israel" and its illegal war on the Palestinian people. They all despise the Palestinians, the original natives of the land who were displaced by Zionist colonization. They all state, echoing Golda Meir, that there is no such place as Palestine.

No, I don't deny that there is not a people called the Palestinians. If there were not, then the Jordanians and the Egyptians would not know who to keep out of their lands. The King of Jordan would not have known who to slaughter back in 1972. And, people like you wouldn't know who to give aid to now.

What most of us believe (and some of us articulate) is that there has never been a country called Palestine. And, the aspriring governments of the Palestinian people have been more concerned with destroying Israel, and killing Jews, then they have been with actually building a country.

And, somehow, that makes the folks who make up those governments look like "primitivist, reactionary, Medievalist dolts."

Interesting how that works, huh?

As for there being no country called "Israel," well, there was a country called Israel a couple thousand years ago, and a people called the Jews chronicled the history of that country, and their loss of it's land. And, after having been slaughtered repeatedly by the people of Europe, and, after their Sephardic brothers having maintained a presence in the land for thousands of years, the Jews moved back, and were granted a land by the British, and later by the United Nations.

That's what we say, Mr. Lindsay.

So now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to polishing my gun, and thinking up racist jokes about towelheads.

Funny thing is, I used to be a Leftie, until I saw how my friends were siding with the worst of the worst.

Maybe, Mr. Lindsay is at the same tipping point I found myself at a few years back.