'Israeli Arab' arrested in plot to murder Bush

Six 'Israeli Arabs,' two from the north and four from 'east' Jerusalem, have been arrested and indicted for allegedly setting up an al-Qaeda cell in Jerusalem. One of the six - a student at Hebrew University - has been charged with attempting to assassinate President Bush during his visit here in May.

The group, arrested in a joint Shin Bet-Israel Police investigation, includes two Hebrew University students, one of whom lived in the university dormitories with a view of a helicopter landing pad.

Using a camera, the student filmed helicopters taking off and landing and made contact via the Internet with Al-Qaida elements to discuss bombing one of Bush's helicopters on his visit for Israeli Independence Day.

The six were identified as, Ibrahim Na'ashaf, 22, from Taiba - a physics and computer science student at Hebrew University; Muhammad Najam, 24, from Nazareth - a chemistry student at the university; Yousef Sumarin, 21, from Beit Hanina; Anas Shwayke, 21, from Jebl Mukaber; Kamal Abu Kweidar, 22, from Jerusalem's Old City; and Ahmad Shwayke, 21, from Shuafat. [The first two are from the north and the last four are from Jerusalem. CiJ]

According to security officials, the six created a closed religious terror cell and contacted different Al-Qaida and Global Jihad elements over the Internet.

They were also active in the Temple Mount's Al-Aksa Mosque as well as throughout east Jerusalem.

Investigators found bomb-making instructions on the personal computers of several of the suspects.

In June, two Israeli Bedouins from the town of Rahat were arrested and charged with belonging to an al-Qaeda cell. I wonder how many more 'Israeli Arabs' (let alone Arabs from the territories, who are not citizens of the State of Israel and cannot generally travel freely within 'green line' Israel) are involved in similar activities.

This puts a whole different perspective on another story I ran earlier this week. On Monday, I reported that a 'student' who stole bomb making materials from a Hebrew University laboratory six years ago has been released from jail and wishes to be readmitted to the same laboratory from which he stole the bomb making material. The current director of the laboratory wishes to admit him. Hebrew University is a state-funded university. But don't expect the current re-education minister to step in and prevent the terrorist from being readmitted.

Given that a Hebrew U. student plotted to assassinate President Bush, and that two Hebrew U. students have been indicted for belonging to al-Qaeda, it makes a lot of sense to admit a convicted terrorist to the university to work on a doctorate in a laboratory that has explosive materials, doesn't it?

I knew you would agree.

/sarc

UPDATE 5:56 PM

More on this story here (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).

Cross-posted to Israel Matzav.

Hitchens vs D'Souza: The Dogma of Materialism

MUSE: THOUGHTS OF A DYING ATHEIST

The Dogma of Materialism

Posted Jul 18th 2008 1:10AM by Dinesh D'Souza



My Las Vegas debate with Christopher Hitchens continues to attract attention and comment.



If you'd like to read an account of the debate, you can do so here.
(I posted it below~ bz)


Also on Monday July 21, at 4.30 pm Eastern time, I'll be debating Richard Dawkins (yes, Richard Dawkins!) on Al-Jazeera (yes, that Al-Jazeera). This is a noteworthy development because Dawkins has so far refused to debate me. But now we're appearing together on the Riz Khan television show, which I understand has some 25 million viewers worldwide. If you want to watch Monday's debate live you can watch it here. The segment will also be posed on the web and I will link to it on this blog.


I also hope that, upon seeing for himself that I am not a Hitlerite kind of speaker, Dawkins will summon up the courage to step into the public arena with me. Like one of the atheist commenters recently said on Dawkins's own website: all the best spokesmen for unbelief have gotten a whipping from this D'Souza guy and it's now up to Dawkins to try and redeem the reputation of atheism.


Given that my thoughts are currently focused on how to deal with Dawkins, I'm going to post here on a question that seems to mystify him and many other scientific atheists. These fellows wonder: if there is reasonably good evidence for evolution--as, by the way, both Dawkins and I believe there is--why do around 50 percent of Americans refuse to accept it? The conventional wisdom among Dawkins and others is that Americans oppose evolution because they are religiously committed to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis.



But there is a much better explanation of why Americans reject evolution: the idiotic claims of leading champions of evolution who are promoting an atheist agenda. Consider Dawkins himself, rebutting the claim that there are significant "gaps" in the fossil record. Dawkins concedes that there are such gaps, but then writes this: "The gaps, far from being anoying imperfections or awkward embarrassments, turn out to be exactly what we should positively expect."



In other words, the absence of evidence for evolution is itself proof that the theory is correct! This is so bizarre that it makes one wonder what the presence of evidence might do to this theory. Would a complete fossil record without gaps be evidence against Darwinian evolution, as we hear that Dawkins and his fellow biologists "exactly" and "positively" expect that such evidence should not be present?
Dawkins finally puts his cards on the table by saying of evolution: "Even if the evidence did not favor it, it would still be the best theory available." And if Dawkins is dismissed as a crank, here is Harvard cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker making the same point. "Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it."



We have here the weird spectacle of so-called scientists who are so wedded to a theory that they cannot even imagine it not to be true. This is a level of dogmatism that would embarrass any theist. Even the strongest religious believer can imagine the possibility that there is no God. So how can these self-styled champions of reason adopt so closed-minded an approach?



The short answer is given by Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin, who in a 1997 essay in the New York Review of Books makes a revealing admission: "We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant proises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment--a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation for the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori commitment to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, the materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."



And you thought I was making this stuff up! No wonder Americans are skeptical of these apostles of skepticism. They are peddling their own metaphysical dogmas in the name of science, even though few are as honest as Lewontin in admitting it.




[SNIP]


"The 20th Century was really an attempt to create the secular utopia," D'Souza said. "It's failed miserably. So the one great experiment of creating secularism, of creating the religion-free society, has been a terrible failure."


At the end of debate, the conference host asked the audience – through an informal show of hands – who they thought won. Surveying the hands, the host named D'Souza the champ.


Later that night, the comment about the debate igniting sparks proved eerily prophetic as thunderous lightning bolts lit up the skies above Bally's Las Vegas, the rumbling sound reverberating throughout the Strip.


READ IT ALL

Queen @ Live Aid
We Will Rock You/ We Are the Champions

FERAL NATION AKBAR!

Jive Turkey

AT WINDS OF BABYLON:



Generals arrested as coup conspirators, a court on the verge of banning the ruling party:


The power struggle in Turkey between Prime Minister Erdogan's Islamic-rooted AKP and the secular, old-guard Kemalists is intensifying -- at the cost of political stablity Ali Ercan’s world swarms with enemies. The gray-haired professor of nuclear physics and deputy chairman of the Kemalist Thought Association (ADD) has to worry about reactionary Islamists, separatist Kurds, suspicious Armenians and Greeks, capitalist Americans and of course the European Union, with its constant pressures to reform. A bodyguard stands in front of Ercan’s small office on Gazi Mustafa Kemal Boulevard, round the clock.

Inside, a brass plaque greets visitors: “Turkey will never belong to Europe! She will never give up her sacred sovereignty!” Ercan, 55, came up with the slogan himself. Now he wants the words etched on his gravestone, he says. The Europeans come in for particular blame in this “dark and dangerous time which our country is living through.” Who else have encouraged Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Islamicize Turkey through “reactionary religious forces,” he says. Who else have pushed Erdogan to sell off Turkey economically and erode its national sovereignty?

Many Turks think the same way. It was Ercan’s association that drummed up massive demonstrations last year against Erdogan’s conservative Islamic-rooted government. Hundreds of thousands gathered in front of the Atatürk Mausoleum in Ankara to demonstrate against the election of Abdullah Gül, a onetime fundamentalist, as president and to rail against the foreign “neo-colonial powers” that backed him. The ADD is a sort of think tank for Turkey’s patriotic conservatives -- and a refuge, above all, for retired military leaders.

Ercan’s club has gained some notoriety in recent weeks after police arrested 21 members of the secret, ultra-nationalist group Ergenekon, who are alleged to have been planning a bloody coup against the government. The chairman of the ADD, retired General Sener Eruygur, was one of those arrested in connection with the plot.

The arrest of a onetime general like Eruygur by ordinary police officers is astounding. Nothing like this has ever happened before in the history of modern Turkey. Governments have never before challenged the military -- an institution which, since the foundation of the republic by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 1923, has seen itself as the iron guardian of the state.

A 'Tsunami' Breaks Over the Nation

The arrest of the retired general is being regarded as a watershed moment in the power struggle between Erdogan’s government and the Kemalists. This struggle will continue in the courts, since the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which Erdogan and Gül lead, is in the throes of a bitter legal battle. The democratically-elected ruling party may be banned altogether. Even by Turkish standards, that is pretty spectacular.

However, as the arrests demonstrate, Erdogan is fighting back.

[SNIP]

See also at The Spleen: " Rise of the Biblical Jive Turkey "

Capital I Me Mine

CAPITAL I - Sesame Street


Richard Dawkins is Smarter Than You!

Yeah he's the Dick to the Doc to the phd,
he's smarter than you he got a science degree!

I assure you by the regard I have in you for your fellowship and union with Moshiach Yeshua that I die daily- every day I face death, and die to self


What do I gain if merely from the human point of view, I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised at all , let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

Do not be so deceived and misled! Evil companionships, communions & associations corrupt and deprave good manners and morals and character.

Awake from your drunken stupor and return to sober sense and your right minds, and sin no more. For some of you have not the knowledge of God , you are utterly and willfully and disgracefully ignorant, and continue to be so, lacking the sense of God's presence and all true knowledge of Him. I say this to your shame.

But someone will say, How can the dead be raised? With what kind of body will they come forth?

You foolish man! Every time you plant seed, you sow something that does not come to life, germinating, springing up, and growing unless it dies first.

Nor is the seed you sow then the body which it is going to have later, but it is a naked kernel, perhaps of wheat or some of the rest of the grains.

But God gives to it the body that He plans and sees fit, and to each kind of seed a body of its own.

For all flesh is not the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for beasts, another for birds, and another for fish.

There are heavenly bodies (sun, moon, and stars) and there are earthly bodies (men, animals, and plants), but the beauty and glory of the heavenly bodies is of one kind, while the beauty and glory of earthly bodies is a different kind.

The sun is glorious in one way, the moon is glorious in another way, and the stars are glorious in their own distinctive way; for one star differs from and surpasses another in its beauty and brilliance.

So it is with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable and decays, but the body that is resurrected is imperishable (immune to decay, immortal). )

It is sown in dishonor and humiliation; it is raised in honor and glory. It is sown in infirmity and weakness; it is resurrected in strength and endued with power.

It is sown a natural (physical) body; it is raised a supernatural (a spiritual) body. [As surely as] there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

~ 1 Corinthians 15 31:44

The Beatles: I Me Mine

Iran: 'jews ascared...emigrating' after mighty mullah missile miracle

Iran: Missile drill causing massive Israeli emigration

IRNA news agency proudly reports to citizens of Islamic Republic that due to military maneuver held last week, of which evidence was said to be 'doctored', Israelis have begun to fearfully evacuate country

Dudi Cohen

Published:

07.14.08, 21:22 / Israel News

Iran continues to enjoy the dubious success of the military missile drill, which the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard held last week. The Iranian news agency IRNA reported to the country's residents on Monday that the Israelis were so terrified by the display of power that it has sparked a mass emigration.

No doubt

Maybe they are only listening to each other over there. I read this stuff and it sounds like the Wehrmacht staff talking to der Fuhrer in the bunker .... "Von Kleist vill destroy ze untermenschen mit ze Zird Army, mein Fuhrer"

"Yes I am from Dusseldorf und zat iz vy zey call me Rolf"

It's actually comedic

Is anyone else wondering what the hell they are imagining is going on?

There is no way the mass of people descended from the Achaemaenids can be this stupid, is there?

Storm Track Infiltration: Arab Stations Branded Terrorist Organizations

At least some US Congressmen have a backbone and see the enemy for what it is.

Gus Bilirakis – Republican – presented a draft resolution titled “Condemning the broadcasting of incitement to violence against the Americans and the United States in media based in the Middle East,” to the United States House of Representatives.

Read the rest at The Gathering Storm.

Democratic Party is now the party of F Scott Fitzgerald

An overarching theme and lesson of the Great Gatsby was, 'the rich are different from you and me'

Now, we can see the 'dems are different from you and me'.

They are exceptions to their own principles by reward for teaching us all what is right, one supposes.

As disgusting, magisterial and condescending as Tom Delay was, as frustrating as the incompetent and useless Dennis Hastert was, as stupfyingly idiotic and corrupt as the aborted Livingstone thing was, as hideous as the entire Foley affair was, these people are actually trying to ensure they ARE WORSE.

How?

Nancy Pelosi has given up rocket science (see her positions on missile defense) for being a PhD in Geology.. with her truly comical 'use it or lose it' attempt to compel drilling on land rejected for same as part of the risk taken when you buy leases for oil and/or natural gas, AS PART OF GETTING OUT OF THIS NATIONAL SECURITY DISASTER. She actually thinks that by saying all Bush wants to do is drill and engaging the 'failed policies of the past' mantra this will actually affect reality. Honey, EVEN IF OBAMESSIAH IS ELECTED WE STILL NEED MORE FOSSIL FUELS NOW, FROM SOMEWHERE, you dried up harridan.

Harry 'this war is lost' Reid, has told us all that in his expert geological opinion, we don't need to drill for oil ...AS PART OF GETTING OUT OF THIS NATIONAL SECURITY DISASTER, and blocked congressional lifting of the ban on drilling offshore.

Teddy Kennedy has blocked every single effort to create industrial wind generation of electricity in the waters off Martha's Vineyard since there might be a chance he or his family MIGHT actually see the means by which we help free ourselves, AS PART OF GETTING OUT OF THIS NATIONAL SECURITY DISASTER,

And now....Al "how dare he' Gore...arrives at a speech to tell us to ride bicycles...
YOU TUBE HAS THE VIDEO
But if anyone thinks for an INSTANT that this party is going to be better for the economy when their main principle seems to be UTTERLY ARROGANT FLAGRANTLY DISPLAYED HYPOCRISY, then they deserve the govt they will get.

In 2001 Bush proposed:

• New drilling for more oil and gas and new refineries.

• Building of nuclear power plants.

• Revamping the U.S. electricity grid.

• $10 billion in tax breaks to help push energy efficiency and alternative energy.

This program did not pass...why..well let's ask the NY TIMES...

"Ambitious Bush Plan Is Undone by Energy Politics." August 20, 2003
But the president's ambitious policy quickly became a casualty of energy politics and, notably, harsh criticism from Democrats enraged by the way the White House had created the plan.

While both parties hold huge blame since 1973 for this inexcusable disaster, there is no doubt about WHO THINKS WHAT NOW.

The democrats are against everything we can do NOW, and almost all of what we can do to bring medium term results, and they are for everything which can be obtained at great and lengthy expense, while they arrive in SUV, and Limo luxury because they are different from you and me. How many drive American made hybrids as their main or only vehicle? How many drive themselves? Don't be asking how many republicans do so, because it's the democrats who insist they are the party of working people.

Many who vote democratic do so because they believe that it's still the party of FDR and HST concerned with working people. They have been euchred by these Sorosian, Orwellian hucksters. The working people of the USA are going to to be disemboweled by the democratic party leadership as heating their homes reaches $10,000 per season ($5 a gallon X 275 gallons X how many fills per winter?) in the next few years without realistic relief by dint of more supplies pumped IN AMERICA while these artificial, backhanded, double-dealing, feigning, hypocritical, mealymouthed, two-faced, unctuous, mean and careless people....PARTISAN POLITIC their way to a national moment of real catastrophe.

People unable to afford to heat their homes, cut off by oil dealers who also have to pay their bills, are going to be a real, and immediate CATASTROPHE. What is Speaker Pelosi going to do ? Print money, and send out stimulus checks? And drive the price of a gallon up as dollars become cheaper, and savings and investments are cheapened by the resultant inflation?

When they go to sleep at night, Harry Reid, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and Mr and Mrs Obama unconciously channel Daisy and and Tom Buchanan in their separation form the rest of us ...and they, like that warning of F Scott Fitzgerald's are leading to a greater corruption of the american dream.

This winter people are going to be in trouble. More trouble than they can even imagine if Israel is compelled to go after Iran, even in their growing isolation by their american allies.

And that is a change you can believe in.

The Race Card And The Ballot Box

(With a hat-tip to Mustang, who emailed me the link below)

According to Governor Paterson of New York:

...Mr. Paterson, who was a Clinton super-delegate and often joined her on the campaign trail, said the outcome of the November election would decide whether America moves beyond its legacy of slavery and segregation.

"Can America reject the crucible of race that has dictated and pervaded all of our history to embrace an African-American man who has the right polices for the next decade in this country?" he said.

He continued: "Can America go past the crippling way that we've shot ourselves in the foot over and over, denying opportunity to people who are bright, to people who are qualified, to people who are able because they didn't look like us, or they didn't come from where we came from, or they are from a different gender, or they are from the African continent? Can America push that away and find new leadership? We'll find out in the next few months what America can do."...

The title of the article mentions "Accidental Racism."

I guess that Governor Paterson will label those who don't vote for Obama as racists, no matter what we say about Obama's associations with unsavory characters and his socialistic platform.

When all else fails, play the race card. Is that what we're coming to in the 2008 National Election?

Leader- Iran's right to carry out preemptive action to defend its national security

Iran leaders disagree on who are their enemies, what they are planning

U.S. officials said that Iranian political and military leaders appear divided on the extent of the threat posed to Tehran. Iranian leaders divided on threat from U.S., Israel

Iranian political leaders have sought to play down a recent Israel military exercise over the Mediterranean that were viewed as preparation for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iranian military and paramilitary leaders, by contrast, continue to sound the alarm as though military action against Iran was imminent.

Too bad, so sad.

Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Mohammad Ali Ja'fari said June 28 that Iran "must take the possibility of America putting its military threat into action more seriously." He then added: "Of course, I am not trying to say that military action is definite."

Other IRGC officers stated that recent Iranian missile test firings and naval exercises, codenamed Noble Prophet 3, were held in part due to perceived threats from the U.S. and Israel.

Several Iranian political leaders, by contrast, used standard rhetoric in recent statements that sought to minimize the potential for a war, in an apparent attempt to dispel worries among the population.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinezhad stated in a July 8 speech that reports of possible U.S. or Israeli strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities were "funny jokes." He asserted that the U.S. political, economic and military situation precluded an attack.

My personal judgement is that THIS is the official view in side the Mullihtburo.In line with Hassan Abbasi, Bush was an exception and now he is defanged, sans stones

Iranian Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki stated on July 4 that both the United States and Israel were not capable politically of attacking Iran and would not "risk the craziness" of a strike.

No more wild cowboy Bush, since he is now Gates, and Rice's bitch. Make no mistake that THAT is their read.

Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, a key Iranian leader, stated June 29 that military threats were "psychological warfare." He warned that Israel or "its protectors" would "regret" attacking Iran, though he deemed it "unlikely" that Israel would commit "such a big mistake.

However, both military and political leaders have warned in recent weeks that Iran would respond forcefully to any attacks and also hinted that Tehran would use surrogate groups in the region and around the world to carry out attacks, a veiled reference to the likely use of terrorism by the Lebanese based Hezbollah terrorist group. Jafari told Iranian state television recently that "if the Zionist regime were to undertake the slightest action against our interests, either on its own or with America, all the areas under the control of the Zionist regime would very soon become insecure." He then warned "Muslim revolutionaries" throughout the Middle East would feel a "divine obligation to respond and confront such an attack," and that Iran would respond "quickly" and "beyond imagination."

Maj. Gen. Hassan Firuzabadi, the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, warned on July 5 that Iran would "close down" the Strait of Hormuz if attacked.

The strategic waterway is used by tankers to supply between 20 and 40 percent of the world's oil.

One prominent Iranian, though not a member of the Tehran government, also has raised the possibility that Iran will take preemptive military action against either Israel or the United States. Mohammad Nabi Habibi, secretary general of the conservative Islamic Coalition Party, stated July 1 that he has urged the foreign ministry to "prepare international organizations to understand Iran's right to carry out preemptive action to defend its national security."

"The 33-day war (2006 Israel-Hezbollah war) showed that a preemptive attack is the best response to any kind of mischief," Habibi said.

Well, that would make it all pretty straight forward. I can't imagine our luck being that good.

Iran working on assymetric EMP weapon that could cripple all U.S. electronic systems

Gertz:

Iran is working on a nuclear weapon-related capability that could cripple all U.S. electronic systems with a massively disrupting electromagnetic pulse over the United States or elsewhere, a specialist on EMP told Congress last week.

William Graham, head of a congressional commission that investigated EMP threat, said the United States is vulnerable to attack by electromagnetic pulse weapons from Iran, as well as North Korea, China and Russia.

"Several potential adversaries have -- and more can acquire -- the capability to attack the United States with a high altitude nuclear weapon generated electromagnetic pulse," said Graham told the House Armed Services Committee.

"A determined adversary can achieve an EMP attack capability without having a high level of sophistication," Graham said during a hearing last week. "EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. A well coordinated and widespread cyber attack is another potential example."

An EMP strike would cover a wide geographic region and would cause significant damage to critical infrastructures and "thus the very fabric of society," he said.

Graham was the head of the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse Attack that first reported on the dangers in 2004.

The U.S. government needs to prepare for a future EMP attack through a combination of prevention, planning, training, maintaining situational awareness, protection and preparations for recovery.

"In so doing, the U.S. will reduce the incentives for adversaries to conduct such an attack on our homeland, our friends and allies, and our forces deployed abroad," Graham said. Among the threat scenarios are EMP attacks using a nuclear warhead detonated from a missile fired from a freight over U.S. territory, a terrorist attack sponsored by a rogue state.

Graham said Iran has conducted missile launches from a vessel in the Caspian Sean and has tested high-altitude explosions from the Shahab-3 medium-range missile.

"Iranian military writings explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States," Graham said.

Graham said there is no other explanation for Iran's high-altitude detonation tests or the freighter launch of the missile "other than to deploy an EMP type of attack."

He noted that relatively low-yield, unsophisticated nuclear weapons can be used to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons, as well as more sophisticated weapons, appear to have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter century at least.

More info HERE, article written in 2000.

North Korea also reportedly has the capability to mount an advanced nuclear weapon on a missiles, he said.

Additionally, China and Russia in the past considered limited nuclear attack options that, unlike their Cold War plans, employ EMP as the primary or sole means of attack, Graham said.

"Indeed, in May, 1999 during the NATO bombing of former Yugoslavia, high-ranking members of the Russian Duma meeting with the U.S. congressional delegation to discuss the Balkans conflict raised the specter of a Russian EMP attack that would paralyze the United States," he said.

Also, two weeks ago Assistant Defense Secretary James J. Shinn told the same committee that "China's military is working on exotic electromagnetic pulse weapons that can devastate electronics systems by using a burst of energy similar to that produced by a nuclear blast," Graham said.

Rep. Rosco Bartlett, R-Md and a leader in highlighting the threat, called potential EMP attacks on the country a "real threat."

"It's my understanding that a robust lay-down, like we produced by a single weapon of 200 kilovolts per meter that made it 300 miles high over Iowa or Nebraska, would probably shut down all of our national infrastructure," Bartlett said. "There would be no electricity. The SCATA units in our substations and so forth would all be gone. The large transformers would be destroyed, and we don't make those. It would take a year and a half or so to buy them from somebody overseas who makes them."

He Doesn't Sweat

The Moshiach Baruch O'Bummer is so advanced a soul that his body does not behave like the body of a normal human being.

When he exercises, he does not sweat:

Sometimes it's hard to tell if Barack Obama is running for president of the United States or Mr. Universe.

The Democratic presidential contender exercises regularly, but over a 24-hour span this week, he took it to a new extreme.

Twice on Wednesday and again Thursday morning, Obama traveled to a lakefront apartment building near his Chicago home to work out with a friend at his gym. On Wednesday night, Obama also spent an hour at the East Bank Club, a mammoth exercise facility just north of the city's famous business Loop where he is known to play basketball.

On the former occasions, reporters accompanying Obama saw him get in and out of an SUV wearing a baseball hat, white T-shirt and black sweat pants. On the visit to the East Bank Club, Obama was dressed casually as if going out to dinner, wearing slacks, a blue blazer and flip-flops.

A distinct lack of visible sweat on the Illinois senator triggered questions about whether he was actually exercising or using the gym visits as cover for conducting vice presidential vetting or interviews.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton e-mailed a succinct, two-word answer: "Working out."
That view held credence among some of the photographers who regularly accompany Obama. They said that even when he shot hoops earlier this year with members of the University of North Carolina varsity men's basketball team, they didn't see Obama sweat.

The New York Times makes Kuntar the victim

Wednesday's New York Times included an appalling, sickening article in which the 'gray lady' attempted to turn Lebanese mass murderer Samir al-Kuntar - who bashed in the head of 4-year old Einat Haran HY"D with a rifle butt - into a victim of a 'difficult childhood' (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). In the process, the Times also pretends that Kuntar landed on the beach in Nahariya in the middle of the night 29 years ago intending to have a barbacue or a cup of tea with its residents rather than inteding to murder as many Jews as possible.

That raid went horribly wrong, leaving five people dead, a community terrorized and a nation traumatized. Two Israeli children and their father were among those killed.

Note that the Times says "five people dead." But Kuntar was only responsible for four murders: Policeman Eliyahu Shahar and Danny Haran, who were both shot by Kuntar, 4-year old Einat Haran, whose head Kuntar bashed in with a rifle butt, and 2-year old Yael Haran who suffocated while hiding from Kuntar in a crawl space. The fifth person who died that night? One of the terrorists. In the despicable leftist universe of the New York Slimes, the terrorists and their victims are all the same.

As far as what Kuntar planned to do that night in 1979 that went 'horribly wrong,' here's his own trial testimony from 1980.

“I reached Nahariya beach at 2:30 in the morning,” he testified on January 6, 1980. “We tied our boat to a rock. We had instructions to avoid opening fire, to take hostages and bring them to Lebanon. I was commander of the cell. I planned to knock on the door at one of the houses. Majeed and I walked towards the building. I told him to ring the bell but not to speak, because I planned to speak English with the people living there. When we went in, Majeed buzzed one of the apartments, and Majeed spoke to the woman in Arabic and she answered him in Hebrew. He made a mistake and she didn’t open the door.

“I then heard the sound of a car driving up and stopping… I opened fire, then we went up to one of the apartments, where we pulled out a man and a girl so we could take them with us. I decided we should take the girl with us to ensure we’d stay alive, and then return her from Lebanon to Israel via the Red Cross.

The deaths of the hostages were something that lawyers would describe as foreseeable, and something for which a court in just about any country in the world would hold Kuntar criminally liable even if he had not murdered them himself. But in fact, he did murder them himself.

In court, prosecution witness no. 4 testified that he saw Danny Haran stand up and shout, “Cease your fire, don’t shoot. My little girl is here.” Immediately thereafter he saw Danny shot by Kuntar. Testimony was also given in court by a doctor who ruled that Einat’s death had been caused by a direct blow with a blunt instrument, something like a stick or a rifle butt.

...

“Kuntar went over to Einat Haran and hit her head twice with the butt of his rifle, with the intent of killing her,” wrote the judges in their verdict. “The other defendant also struck her head forcefully. As a result of the blows, Einat suffered skull fractures and fatal brain damage, causing her death. They murdered the hostages - a helpless father and daughter, in cold blood.” They wrote in the sentence, “By these acts the defendants reached an all-time moral low… an unparalleled satanic act… the punishments we are about to impose on the defendants cannot begin to match the brutality of their actions…”

But what's more appalling about the Times' piece is that despite the crime's brutality, the Times makes an effort to paint Kuntar as the victim of a 'difficult childhood:'

Mr. Kuntar was born to a Druse couple on July 20, 1962. His parents soon divorced, and his mother died when he was a boy. His father left to work in Saudi Arabia, leaving Mr. Kuntar in the care of his second wife, Siham, in Abey, a mountain village 18 miles southeast of Beirut.

Neighbors remember him as a quiet child. But as the eldest son without a father at home, he was difficult to control, they said. He stopped attending school when he was 14, a former teacher said.

Lebanon’s civil war was just erupting at the time he left school, and many boys from troubled families were drawn into the conflict.

“He never told me when he was going or where,” Mr. Kuntar’s stepmother said in a 2006 interview. “He disappeared for days.” She said that she soon discovered that he was training in the camps of militant groups.

“I used to tell him to study, don’t get involved with this, but I was not too strong,” Mrs. Kuntar said. “His father wasn’t here.”

Mr. Kuntar fell in with Marxists, the family says, but his political convictions were never very strong.

“He switched a lot from one group to another,” said Bassem, his younger brother, reached Monday by telephone in Beirut. “He wanted to be a part of a military operation against Israel. For him this was the goal.”

The family said that in 1975 Samir Kuntar fought briefly in Beirut where he met Muhammad Zaydan, better known as Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front in the city at the time. Mr. Kuntar joined the group the next year. (Mr. Zaydan’s most notorious exploit was the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in a bid to gain hostages to exchange for Mr. Kuntar.) In 1978, Mr. Kuntar went to the Israeli-Lebanese border after Israel invaded southern Lebanon in March of that year. His stepmother and brother said Mr. Kuntar returned deeply affected by the deaths he had witnessed.

In early 1979, Mr. Kuntar disappeared again. His family did not learn of his whereabouts until the Israelis announced his capture in Nahariya after a shootout that left two of his colleagues and a policeman dead.

And you thought after 19 wealthy Saudis murdered 3000 Americans on 9/11 the US media would drop the 'poor terrorists' meme? Not the Times....

More comments on this story from Soccer Dad.

Cross-posted to Israel Matzav.

Storm Track Infiltration: Now Why Doesn’t This Surprise Us?

Now that the liberals Supreme Court has dug our grave deeper in the is war against Islamofascism with their decree on detainees needing a criminal trial by jury, we will see more and more of this type of crap.

Read the rest at The Gathering Storm.

Jewish mother married to Muslim rescued from Muslim Quarter of Old City

Yep, you read that right. Even in a place like the Old City, it appears there may be a few cases like that, of Jewish women who've made the mistake of marrying Islamists, and one was very fortunate to be rescued from that hellhole:

(IsraelNN.com) After a 17-year captivity to an abusive Muslim husband, a Jewish mother and her eight children were rescued Sunday from the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. Yad L'Achim, an organization dedicated to solving problems of this type, freed Naama [not her real name] from imprisonment in her own home and almost two decades of fear, shame and violence. Seizing a window of opportunity – her husband was in prison and his brother under house arrest – her liberators wove through the narrow alleyways of the Muslim Quarter to deliver her to safety.

Go read the rest of the article, because the exact way this woman went down the wrong path to begin with is really startling. But it should serve as an important lesson: whatever way you wish to lead your life, don't do it by "crossing over" into another religion/culture as bad as Islam.

You Down with OIC?

Naughty By Nature ~ You Down With OPP?

For background on the OIC see the following Spleen posts:

57 Ways to Weave Your Cover

WTF is the OIC & why should you care?

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants to criminalize Christianity at the U.N.




By Dr. Laurie Roth Wednesday, July 16, 2008




Since 1999, the OIC has been pushing with the U.N the ‘Defamation of Islam’ campaign. The OIC isn’t a small fry committee trying to be heard in the U.N., but is being pushed by the 57, Muslim nation members in it and reflects the Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which is only reflected by Sharia law. That is how they want human rights defined and filtered through, Sharia law.




What is it the OIC exactly wants and is pushing through the U.N.? Its actually quite clear when reading through even a little of this rubbish. On the surface they say they want to cover the defamation of all religions, but amazingly only one religion is mentioned by name as persecuted of sorts, Islam. According to Patrick Goodenough, International Editor, CNSNews.com, the text states they have “deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism.”




They refer to that nasty mental illness that so many of us have, Islamaphobia, when we happen to in our hate and illness notice the forced sexual mutilations, beheadings, forced conversions, honor killings growing in America, buildings continuing to blow up, body parts continuing to fly past our windows and ongoing threats. Take more medication you mentally ill, hateful people. Don’t you know that real, international, religious freedom must submit to the wonder and edification of Shari Law?




The way this anti protection of religion and freedom piece of rot reads would only criminalize Christianity and push the execution of more Christians who are already being sentenced to prison and death for reading the wrong material, mentioning a verse to a Muslim or doing practically anything that might engage a real discussion in a Muslim country with a Muslim.




Patrick Goodenough, CNSNews.com, says it like it is in pointing out that this religious defamation idea is being used as a shield and a sword. “In Islamic countries, blasphemy laws are used as a shield to protect the dominant religion, but even more dangerously, they are used to silence minority religious believers and prevent Muslims from converting to other faiths, which is still a capital crime in many Islamic countries.”




Justice Scalia from our own Supreme Court recently reminded us of a few things of importance: “America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar Es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. On Septemeber 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing, 2,749 at the Twin Towers, in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and 40 in Pennsylvania.”




Lets call this what it is. This aggressive effort of the OIC to slam this through the U.N and get the defamation piece approved by the U.N. itself is nothing but a declaration of War against freedom of speech internationally and Christianity. This is hidden in fancy, protective words, it would only protect MORE persecution, targeting and murder of more Christians and suck out even any soft ray of freedom a Muslim in a country might want to even discuss or compare their faith with any other. This will be brought up later this year at the U.N. again. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon will give an expected report on the measure put together by the OIC in Pakistan last year and passed in a vote 108-51.
Lets talk more about the OIC’s special glasses of protection they want to cram down our mentally ill, freedom loving throats.



All freedom and religious protection must go through Sharia law. Lets see, beatings for wives and women, yes; Execution of gays, yes; crucifixion of robbers, yes; beheadings of Christians who preach the gospel, of course; execution for any convert from Islam to Christianity…..on and on it goes and reads. Gee, don’t you feel enlightened, inspired and eager to have the U.N. pass this Defamation of Islam Act? Have you figured it out yet that this is nothing but a bold maneuver of the Islamic countries to destroy Islam’s enemies and conquer the world, using violence, threats and killings as usual, but with an added flare, the most powerful International legal body officially behind them, the U.N.
If this passes with the money, power and push of the 57 members of the Islamic countries and friends, and the anti-semitic, anti-Christian and anti American U.N., get ready for an unprecedented blood bath world wide from the Religion of peace. Normal witnessing and sharing by a Christian pastor or missionary will be a crime, insulting and defaming Islam. That will mean a massive prison sentence or death sentence.




When are we all going to wake up and smell the sick tasting coffee? We are in a world war with Radical Islam. It isn’t Islamaphobia that we are struggling with! It isn’t hate for Muslims and their right to choose and express a different faith we are struggling with! It is that Sharia Law represents the complete opposite to our freedom of speech, constitution and the bill of rights! It is barbaric and condones beatings, torture and killings as a matter of course. OK, no more shy talk…..IT IS EVIL and the opposite of religious and personal freedom. It still blows my mind that Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, has even suggested that Sharia Law should be implemented and allowed in Britain due to how many Islamics have immigrated and developed there. He also puts his other fat foot in his mouth when he criticizes Christianities’ history of violence and its harsh punishments….bla bla. After all, everything to make peace with the big dogs who control oil and want to kill you. Kiss up. Don’t tell the truth or defend the truth!




Read more about this nightmare push by the OIC at the U.N. and what you can do to sign a petition against this at www.aclj.org. Stand up for REAL freedom of speech worldwide. If someone of ANY faith believes in what they follow, they should be allowed to debate their theology, discuss it and share it. If it is so right on, attract people because they are drawn to its compelling love and truth, not forced to follow it, stay with it or die. I have taken insults, questions and attacks for decades against my Christian faith. That is fine. I don’t wish to kill people because they feel differently. Let me share why I believe and what my theology is based on in love, if we disagree, fine.




Radical Islam will not stop until it takes over our legal system, our cultures, our moral framework, the U.N., our school curriculums and our lives if necessary. I say a big fat NO to Radical Islam. Come and Kiss My Grits!




The official Palestinian news agency on the evening of 13 July carries several reports on meetings PNA President Mahmud Abbas held today with international leaders on the sidelines of the Union for the Mediterranean in Paris.

Abbas held meetings with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Cypriot President Dhimitrios Khristofias, and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Abbas discussed with them "issues pertaining to the Middle East area and briefed them on the efforts to advance the peace process and the situation in the Palestinian territories."

At 1309, the agency reports that Abbas also met with OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu and briefed him on "the latest developments in the peace process and the obstacles it faces in light of the continuation of settlement activity in the Palestinian territories and the measures in occupied Jerusalem."

Originally published by Palestinian news agency Wafa website, Gaza, in Arabic 13 Jul 08.

THIN LIZZY ~ HOLY WAR ~ 1983