CUANAS: 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006

Friday, February 24, 2006

Posting
Will Be
Light

My posting will probably be very light for a while. I've got lots of stuff to do. I hope everyone will bear with me.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Appeasement 101

Here is a good piece by Victor Davis Hanson...

February 22, 2006
Appeasement 101
by Victor Davis Hanson
Tribune Media Services

It is easy to damn the 1930s appeasers of Hitler — such as Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain in England and Edouard Daladier in France — given what the Nazis ultimately did when unleashed. But history demands not merely recognizing the truth post facto, but also trying to reconstruct the rationale of something that now in hindsight seems inexplicable.

Appeasement in the 1930s was popular with the European public for a variety of reasons. All of them are instructive in our hesitation about stopping a nuclear Iran, or about defending the right of Western newspapers to print what they wish — or about fighting radical Islamism in general.

...

But deja vu pertains not just to us, but our enemies as well. Like the Nazi romance of an exalted ancient Volk, the Islamists hearken back to a mythical purity, free of decadence brought on by Western liberalism. Similarly, they feed off victimization — not just recent defeats, but centuries-old bitterness at the rise of the West. Their version of the stab-in-the-back Versailles Treaty is always the creation of Israel.

Just as Hitler concocted incidents such as the burning of the Reichstag to create outrage, Islamist leaders incite frenzy in their followers over a supposed flushed Koran at Guantanamo and several inflammatory cartoons, some of them never published by Danish newspapers at all.

Anti-Semitism, of course, is the mother's milk of fascism. It is always, they say, a small group of Jews — whether shadowy cabinet advisers and international bankers of the 1930s or the manipulative neoconservatives and Israeli leadership of the present — who alone stir up the trouble.

The point of the comparison is not to suggest that history simply repeats itself, but to learn why intelligent people delude themselves into embracing naive policies. After the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, the furious reply of the radical Islamist world was to censor Western newspapers, along with Iran's accelerated efforts to get the bomb.

In response, either the West will continue to stand up now to these reoccurring post-Sept. 11 threats, or it will see the bullies' demands only increase as its own resistance weakens. Like the appeasement of the 1930s, opting for the easier choice will only guarantee a more costly one later on.

Read the rest...

A Leftie Stops By CUANAS -
His Conclusion?
The Right Is Winning The Cartoon Jihad

A guy named Robert Lindsay stopped by CUANAS/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 (that's a historical fact, that's why we believe it). 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 (which had been Israel) 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.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

You
On My Mind
In My Sleep

A song by Richard Ashcroft

If all we lose is the skin
I'm putting you under within
We're gonna make this life together

The symptoms are too deep
I got you on my mind in my sleep
you on my mind in my sleep

Do you know how hard i tried
to lose this foolish pride
Can you take me as i am
Can you understand me
I'm changing now

If all we lose is the skin
I'm putting you under within
We're gonna make this life together

The symptoms are too deep
I got you on my mind in my sleep
you on my mind in my sleep

George Tenet:
U.S. Didn't Target
Bin Laden Because
He Was With
UAE Royal Family

Of course, this was in the days before 9/11:

The Central Intelligence Agency did not target Al Qaeda chief Osama bin laden once as he had the royal family of the United Arab Emirates with him in Afghanistan, the agency's director, George Tenet, told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks on the United States on Thursday.

Had the CIA targeted bin Laden, half the royal family would have been wiped out as well, he said.

The 10-member bipartisan commission is investigating the events leading up to the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.

A host of Clinton and Bush administration officials have testified before the commission.

"God Doesn't
Like People
To Draw"

In St. Paul, Minnesota, a charter school is working overtime to satisfy the Islamists in their midst. One of the first things that needs to be revamped is the schools art curriculum:

As violent protests over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad continue around the world, a St. Paul charter school is quietly negotiating the delicate question of how to teach art to Muslims.

Any depiction of God and his prophets is considered offensive under Islam, and disrespectful representations are even worse, as the recent worldwide outrage over the Danish cartoons has shown. But some Muslims also refrain from producing images of ordinary human beings and animals, citing Islamic teaching.

That presented a challenge for Higher Ground Academy, a K-12 school just west of Central High School on Marshall Avenue that has about 450 students. About 70 percent of them are Muslim immigrants from eastern Africa.

Executive Director Bill Wilson said he had concerns for some time about how to reconcile the school's art curriculum with the views of Muslim families, but the departure of the art teacher at the end of last school year gave him a window to act. This fall, he hired ArtStart, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization, to offer more options for about 150 kindergartners through second-graders, including visual arts and drumming. But parents were still upset that their children were drawing figures, Wilson said, and some pulled their children out of art class altogether.

Wilson then sat down with teacher and parent liaison Abdirahman Sheikh Omar Ahmad, who also is the imam at an Islamic center in Minneapolis, to work with ArtStart in determining how to meet state standards without running afoul of Muslim doctrine...

...Second-grader Hawi Muhammed said her parents don't mind if she draws people once in a while, but "God … doesn't like people to draw a lot," she said.

Michelle Malkin notes that certain kinds of drawings seem to be perfectly acceptable to Muslims worldwide:

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Hamas To Israel:
We Will
Nuke You

Here's a link to Hamas' website, where they are featuring a moving graphic which depicts a nuclear weapon destroying Israel.

The Astute Blogger notes that the leader of Hamas has gone to Iran to meet with the regime there, and has made the following statement:

Hamas' political leader in exile said Tuesday that Iran will have a "major role" in Palestinian affairs. ... "The Ayatollah's regime will have a major role in Palestine," Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said in a meeting in Teheran with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. "We trust Iran to help us deal with the challenges facing us today.""

... when asked if Hamas would recognize the Jewish state's legitimacy, if Israel were to withdraw to the borders before the 1967 war, Mashaal told the gathering of Tehran University students at Shahid Chamran Hall it would not. "We will not recognize Israel at any cost," answered Meshaal, Agence France Presse reported."

Put two and two together, and what do you get?

Monday, February 20, 2006

Factory Girl
A Song by Ryan Adams

So, the factory girl listened
for the sound of her daddy's engine
till the workbell sounds
and she leaves town

oh the summer's here are hot
all she seems to do is work and sleep
wish that she were still with you now

you don't know where she is lying
in her mother's bed or,
who she's sleeping with...

all the kids would laugh at her
cause she seemed so sweet and pure
i took this shift because of her

though i've never said a word
i once smiled and looked at her
'til the shift boss said,
"get back to work."

now you don't know where she is
or whose bed she's sleeping in
what man she's sleeping with.

i took this shift because of her ...

God Of Wonders

Lord of Heaven and Earth
Lord of all creation
Lord of Heaven and Earth
Lord of all creation
Of the water, earth and sky
The Heavens are your Tabernacle
Glory To the Lord on high

God of wonders
Beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe
Declares your majesty
You are holy, holy

Early in the morning
I will celebrate the light
And when I stumble into darkness
I will call your name by night

God of wonders
Beyond our galaxy
You are holy, holy
The universe
Declares your majesty
You are holy, holy

Hallelujah (to the lord of heaven and earth)
Hallelujah (to the lord of heaven and earth)
Hallelujah (to the lord of heaven and earth)
Holy, holyHoly, holy

Mirabai
A Welcome
Of Teardrops

Since most all of Western Civilization has decided that they are going to sit around jacking off while our beautiful world destroys itself, I have decided to go back to thinking about the things I love thinking about, at least for today.

Today, let's look at some verse by a Hindu poetess named Mirabai. To me, this is a song of Praise:

Dark Friend, what can I say?
This love I bring
from distant lifetimes is ancient -
don't despise it.

Seeing your elegant body,
I'm ravished.
Visit our courtyard, hear the women
singing old hymns.

On the square I've laid
out a welcome of teardrops,
body and mind I surrendered ages ago,
taking refuge
wherever your foot passes.

Mira flees from lifetime to lifetime,
your virgin.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Eyes

Perched On
The Edge
Of The Abyss

My sense tells me that if we don't do something about Iran very, very soon, we are in deep shit.

I have been writing here for the last couple of months that it seems that it will take a major terrorist attack (more than 10,000 dead) in the West before we will wake up.

I have been hoping that the Cartoon Jihad would do the job of waking us up. I really thought that a worldwide Muslim temper tantrum, over something so incredibly stupid, would cause people in the West to come to terms with who our enemy is.

Alas, it seems that maybe only five percent of us have woken up. Maybe a bit more, but not much.

Radio talk show host, Laura Ingram recently got back from Iraq, and she was SOUNDING THE ALARM, as much as a person can, that we are in danger of being hit with nukes. She went on for an hour about it. She structured her show so that the music leading into the breaks even spoke of danger and potential Apocalypse.

She must have heard something while she was over there. The brass must be talking. Here, though, no one talks. Not even our President.

In Washington D.C. they are conducting regular air-raid drills for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Military jets patrol the skies day and night. This, according to Always on Watch who lives in the beltway.

I am a big nobody, but I am trying as hard as I can to get the word out. But, a couple hundred thousand hits does little to change the world. The pundits in the media read our blogs. They know what is going on, but they believe moderation is called for.

People like Hugh Hewitt are a sweet poison to Western Civilization. Urging caution at a time like this is merely adminstering soothing ether.

We are in the foxhole of history right now. The last thing we need is sleep.

Calling Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is one of my favorite people. I have learned so much from him over the years. It is safe to say that without him I would not be blogging today.This week he has a very important column on why the American news media will not publish the Mohammed Cartoons.

Here's a short excerpt, but stay tuned for my commentary, because this one is important:

American news media have suffered in recent years. Thanks to the Internet and talk radio, millions of Americans have ceased relying on The New York Times and CNN for their written and televised news.

But it is difficult to recall a greater blow to the credibility of American news media than their near-universal refusal to publish the Mohammed cartoons originally published in a Danish newspaper that have brought about worldwide Muslim protests. This loss of credibility owes to two factors: dishonesty and cowardice.

Everyone and his mother knows why the networks and the print journals haven't shown the cartoons -- they fear Muslims blowing up their buildings and stabbing their editors to death. The only people who deny this are the news media. They all claim that they won't show the cartoons because of sensitivity to Muslim feelings.

Which brings us to the other reason for the latest blow to the news media's credibility: They are lying to us. If some politicians were telling lies as blatantly as the news media are now, the media would be having a field day exposing those politicians and calling for their removal from office. But, alas, what TV news station will criticize another TV news station? And what newspaper or magazine will criticize another newspaper or magazine?

So, without anyone in the media holding them accountable, the news media continue to believe they can fool nearly all the people all the time when they say they are not publishing the cartoons out of respect for Muslim sensibilities.

Great. Good commentary, very necessary and true.

BUT,

(you knew that was coming, didn't you?)

It occurred to me that Mr. Prager hasn't published the cartoons either. So, here it is, my call out to Dennis Prager:

You have a website. Publish the cartoons.

I'm going to be very honest here. I am tired of doing the heavy lifting for the media. Writing this blog wears on me.

Of course, there are many bloggers who are doing what we are doing here at IBA, so it's not like I am alone in this, but, at the same time, I am not an editor, publisher, or political commentator (that, I'm sure, doesn't come as a shock to any of you who read my crap on a daily basis), I am a sales guy in the media world. That's my job, not this blog.

And yet, it is people like me who have to do this work because the American media refuses to do so.

This is said in all sincerity, Mr. Prager. We need some help.What is happening to our nation when sales guys, policemen, housewives, and marketing people are left to do the work of disseminating the most important truths of our time?

Now, the fact of the matter is, Dennis Prager is on our side. So, why do I call him out? Well, because he needs to step up and put his whole self where his mouth is, just like all of us bloggers have done.

Let's start calling out all the print commentators, and TV commentators who are giving lip service to free speech without actually going the extra mile.

It's time to step up, my friends.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Proof Positive That
We Are Winning
The War For Iraq

Good news out of Iraq today, the Senior Advisor in the Iraqi Defense Ministry says Iraq wants to join NATO (Thanks to Christine):

The senior advisor in the Iraqi defense ministry Mohammed al-Askari told the press today that the ministry is looking forward to seeing Iraq become a member of the NATO and that the minister Sa'doun al-Dulaimi, the chief of staff and the higher commanders are planning to propose this plan to the new government once it's seated.

Al-Askari told al-Hurra TV tonight that the chief commanders in the ministry had been discussing this subject with great interest for a long time and that:

If al-Dulaimi gets a second term he will be working hard to convince the parliament about the necessity of joining the NATO as this falls in Iraq's strategic interests….

the recent changes in the Middle East region and Iran's intentions to pursue nuclear weapons is encouraging us to move in this direction.

And added:

We have got to think of a suitable deterring capability to protect Iraq from aggressions and we think being part of the NATO will provide Iraq with the best protection it can get because the NATO represents the base for peace and security in the world.

When asked about a statement given by the minister some time ago about Iraq's plans to equip the new army with Russian weaponry al-Askari responded:

We had no choice but to depend on Russian weapons for the time being because our army personnel are familiar with those weapons and cannot switch to western and American weapons overnight. We have suffered from the disadvantages of Russian weapons and that's why we have plans to switch to American weapons on the mid and long term.

Thank God we still have leaders in Iraq who have a logical vision for the future and a rational understanding for the changes in our world.

What a difference between someone who wants to stand by Iran and someone who dreams of joining the NATO!

I hope we can get more of the latter and get rid of the former…

Yes, we pray that that will be so.

By the way, if you want to criticize the title of this post, note that I said "winning", not "won."

:)

Iran Aiding
Venezuela
With Nuclear Program

Ahmadinejad and Chavez, best friends forever:

... another of the regime-run news agencies reported that the director of the Islamic Parliaments Assembly has announced that the Islamic regime is assisting Venezuela with its allegedly peaceful nuclear technology. On his recent trip to Venezuela, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel announced this news and added that neither country has had the opportunity to discuss the extent and form the cooperation will take.

Hugo Chavez, the anti-American president of Venezuela, in the most recent session of the Board of Governors of the IAEA, vehemently defended the terrorist regime of the Mullahs and their right to acquire the nuclear centrifuges; Chavez also voted against the referral of the Islamic regimes nuclear dossier to the U.N. Security Council which was proposed by the Britain, France and Germany.

Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel on his way from Caracas to Havana told reporters: "We may not have as of yet worked out the specifics of the process with the Venezuelan authorities however both parties are very enthusiastic about this teamwork."

The Venezuelan government which was the worlds 5th top oil exporter in 2005, announced that it is looking forward to acquiring nuclear technology for the ostensible medical advancements and production of energy and as such is receptive to working with the governments of the Islamic regime, Brazil and Argentina.

Thus runs proliferation. What is the solution to this? To keep bombing the nuclear facilities of rogue states every year or so? What a job for America to have to handle all by itself.

And, the reality is, the more we take care of this problem (if we do), the more we will be considered a pariah.

Le Pen's National Front
Forming Alliance
With Islam

Jean-Marie Le Pen

Yes, that's right, the racist and anti-immigrant Le Pen if hooking up with the Jihad. Why? Because, though Islamits pose a very real physical threat to France, he hates Jews more than he hates Muslims:

Most people associate France's Le Pen with anti-immigration, far right politics. Wrong. A frightening piece in Friday's New York Sun.

It looks like a political oxymoron, but Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front is poised to strike an alliance with France’s large immigrant Muslim community. A generation after France’s rightwing party began its surge with a tough anti-immigration campaign tinged with both racism and anti-Semitism, three factors are coming into play that could spell a strategic realignment.

These factors, which are still little grasped outside political circles in France but will have an enormous impact, include:

• The Islamicization of France is largely a fait accompli. It is assumed that 6 to 8 million citizens or residents of France, 10% to 13% out of a global population of 62 million, are Muslim by now. And that the Muslim community, being more prolific, is much younger than the rest of the population: As much as 25% of French citizens or residents under 20 is Muslim, with the number reaching 40% or 50% in the big cities.

• The National Front is surprisingly popular among Muslim immigrants or second-generation Muslim citizens. (Pastorius note: Gee, I wonder why that is?) For all its campaigning about immigration, Mr. Le Pen’s party has always extended support to Arab and Islamic causes abroad, from Saddam’s Iraq to Arafat’s or Hamas Palestine, and from Al Qaeda to Iran. And it is as firmly anti-American and anti-Jewish as the Muslim community itself tends to be.

• The attraction of the French far left, which accounts for another 20% of the national vote, toward Islam, rabid anti-Americanism, and even anti-Semitism, a phenomenon underscored by the emergence of Dieudonné, a former liberal music-hall humorist who has turned into an enormously popular French equivalent of Louis Farrakhan. Dieudonné, the son of a black Camerounese father and a white French mother, claims that Jews were the main European slave traders in the 17th and 18th centuries. He refers to civic and educational programs about the Holocaust as “memory pornography.” He has welcomed the electoral victory of Hamas in Palestine. According to the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, he is in moral terms “Le Pen’s son.”

Mr. Le Pen’s inner circle seems to have entertained such a strategy for quite a time. Back in 1999, Samuel Maréchal, one of Mr. Le Pen’s sons-inlaw, stated that France was becoming “a multiethnic and multireligious society,” and that “Islam was now France’s second religion.”

Read it all .

Atlas calls this the "final nail in the coffin." By that, I think she means that the Jews are surrounded, though they probably don't acknowledge the reality yet.

I'm not sure. I think the French recognize that the Islamists are a bigger threat than are the Jews. (But, the fact that we even have to ponder the question tells you how bad things are.) I think the French will elect Sarkozy and blows will be struck against the encroaching Islamicization of France.

However, with the increasing submission of European to the Jihadis who are angry about the Mohammed cartoons, we see that Europe is probably not yet ready to fight.

Here's what I think. I think Europe, and all of the West are just one major terrorist attack (at least 10,000 dead) from turning the Jihad around on the Jihadis. If the Jihadis make the mistake of hitting us hard, they will lose, and the methods that the fight will take will be very sad to watch, but, they will be necessary.

I believe the Jihadis will, indeed, make the mistake of overplaying their hand, thus, it is my prediction that the next few years will see the outbreak of a true worldwide war.

I think it is inevitable.

Thursday, February 16, 2006

"If I Speak
In The Arab World,
I Will Be Shot"

Unfortunately, but not unexpectedly, hope for the Muslim world comes in the form of people the Jihadis would like to kill:

Khaled Abu Toameh used to work for a Palestine Liberation Organization newspaper. Now he writes for the Jerusalem Post and for Mortimer Zuckerman's U.S. News & World Report, and he's so critical of the PLO that two pro-Israel advocacy groups, StandWithUs and Hasbara Fellowships, recently brought him on a speaking tour to North America.

Nonie Darwish grew up in Gaza City, where her father was the head of Egypt's armed resistance to Israel known as the fedayeen. Now she worries about the "systematic indoctrination into hate in all Arab schools" and is on a speaking tour with a retired Israel Defense Force colonel that is sponsored by another pro-Israel group, the Israel Project.

With Muslims burning down embassies over cartoons and voting to elect Islamic extremists in the West Bank and Gaza, there's a tendency among some in the West to write off pretty much the whole religion or civilization as unfit for self-government.

That'd be a mistake. If the light at the end of the tunnel in the Arab world has seemed hard to find lately, it does exist, as the cases of Mr. Abu Toameh and Ms. Darwish demonstrate. I met with them separately in New York last week.

How did their views change? Ms. Darwish, 57, said she had not met a Jew until she moved to America at age 30. As a child, she was taught, "Don't take candy from any stranger, it could be a Jew trying to poison you."

Then, ten years ago, her brother in Gaza had a stroke. A panic ensued over whether to send him to Cairo Hospital in Egypt or Hadassah Medical Center in Israel. The matter was settled by an Egyptian diplomat in Gaza: "If you want him to live, you send him right now to Hadassah." And so his life was saved.

Ms. Darwish said that while her mother was in Jerusalem taking care of her brother, she noticed that Jews who had been kicked out of Egypt by Nasser, who had confiscated their property, had rebuilt their lives in Israel. "They are not left in refugee camps like we did to the Palestinians," Ms. Darwish said.

Mr. Abu Toameh's views are shaped by what he has seen as a reporter - not so different from what the Palestinian Arabs who voted for Hamas have seen. He sees former Arafat officials like Jibril Rajoub and Mohammed Dahlan - "icons of corruption, warlords" - depicted by some Western Arabists as a "younger generation, reformists."

"The Palestinians don't buy it," Mr. Abu Toameh said. Mr. Dahlan, with no official government position, moves around Gaza in a 12-car convoy with 70 bodyguards. "People look at him and say, 'This is all the CIA money.' I think Mohammed Dahlan is one of the main reasons why people in Gaza voted for Hamas."

Much of what Mr. Abu Toameh and Ms. Darwish have to say is unconventional. "A lot of times we hear, 'Is America going to pressure Israel for peace?'" Ms. Darwish said. "I don't hear the media asking, 'When are the Arabs going to pressure the Palestinians for peace?'"

Mr. Abu Toameh said American policy in advance of the Palestinian elections can be summed up as "If you don't vote for the same thieves who have been stealing your money for ten years, we are going to punish you."

He said that the linkage between Gaza and the West Bank is more in the minds of Western diplomats and even Israelis than in the culture of the Palestinians. The West Bank feels more Jordanian, Gaza more Egyptian. They are "two separate entities," Mr. Abu Toameh said, reporting that in 1994, when Arafat tried to bring Palestinian policemen from Gaza to Ramallah, the Gazans were kicked out in five days. The dialect is different and intermarriage is extremely rare.

As for the safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza that Secretary of State Rice, among others, has fastened on as an issue for negotiation, residents of the West Bank laugh sarcastically, "Finally, we can visit Gaza! The Jabaliya refugee camp? What am I going to do?" When the safe passage does exist between Gaza and the West Bank, it is used only by VIPs. "I never heard of ordinary people using it," Mr. Abu Toameh said.

Both Ms. Darwish and Mr. Abu Toameh emphasized the limits to free speech and freedom of the press in the Middle East. "If I speak in the Arab world, I will be shot," Ms.Darwish said. Mr. Abu Toameh notes that an independent free press does not exist in the West Bank or Gaza. "They burn it down. They beat you up," he says. "The media there is controlled by the PLO."

Which explains why these sorts of voices are rarely heard in the Arab press. But doesn't explain why they are rarely heard in the American press.

Russia Warns U.S.
Against
Striking Iran

The Godfather hugs Tataglia, while Barzini looks on.

From Breitbart:

Russia's top military chief on Thursday warned the United States against launching a military strike against Iran and a top diplomat voiced hope that close cooperation with China could help resolve the Tehran nuclear crisis.

With tension mounting over Iran's nuclear programs, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of Russia's general staff, warned the United States against attacking Iran.

"A military scenario can't be ruled out," Baluyevsky was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies.

He said that while Iran's military potential cannot compare to the United States', "it is hard to predict how the Muslim world will respond to the use of force against Iran."

"This may stir the whole world, and it is crucial to prevent anything like that," Baluyevsky was quoted as saying.

Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alekseyev, meanwhile, said that cooperation with China could help push Iran toward accepting Moscow's offer to host Iran's uranium enrichment program.

The Russian proposal has become a centerpiece of international efforts to defuse tensions over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

"We are counting on the continuation of close contacts with our Chinese colleagues and other interested countries," Alekseyev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. He added, however, that the Iranian nuclear issue recently had become "sharper," and "it is too early to assess the effectiveness of our joint steps to resolve it."

Iran's ambassador to Moscow said Thursday that Tehran hoped Russia would be able to help resolve the international crisis surrounding the Iranian nuclear program.

"Taking into account the good relations between Russia and Iran, I hope that together we can overcome this crisis which has arisen recently," Gholamreza Ansari said at a meeting with Russian lawmakers.

For God's sake, read those parts I highlighted, and ask yourself, doesn't it sound like those lines could have been written by the Onion?

The thing is, we have no idea whether the writer of the above Breitbart article is cognizant of the irony of those quotes. And, of course, as a disinterested and objective journalist, he has no reason to be cognizant of irony, right?

An example:

"..a top diplomat voiced hope that close cooperation with China could help resolve the Tehran nuclear crisis."

might as well be

Hey, you go see my friend Frankie Three-Balls down at the corner. You tell him I sent you. He'll make sure no one knocks over your liquor store again, ok?

Like my friend Atlas Shrugs always says, Iran is the Tataglias. Russia and China are Barzini.

Yeah, you gotta know your Godfather to get it, but suffice it to say, China and Russia are playing us. Iran is their weapon of choice.

Screw this. Get the bombing over with already.

Iranian Fatwa:
Use Of Nukes Acceptable
As Counter-Measure

The leader of the religious conservatives in Iran, and mentor to President Ahmadinejad, has declared the use of nuclear weapons to be acceptable:

“The spiritual leaders of the ultra-conservatives [in Iran] have accepted the use of nuclear weapons as lawful in the eyes of the shari’a. Mohsen Gharavian, a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi [who is Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s spiritual mentor], has spoken for the first time of using nuclear weapons as a counter-measure. He stated that ‘in terms of the shari’a, it all depends on the goal.’

“The religious leadership of the Islamic Republic [of Iran], which has until now regarded the use of nuclear weapons as opposed to the Shari’a, and has repeated this point again and again, has so far kept silent about this. In spite of the fact that, in the last few weeks, some of the senior [leaders] of the Islamic Republic have tried to reduce the pressure [exerted by] the radical [conservatives], the radicals nevertheless seem to have complete control over the [political] arena.

“[Iranian National Security Council Secretary] Ali Larijani, who is in charge of the nuclear dossier, has spoken to reporters only once since the [IAEA] Board of Governors approved its resolution – and his silence is significant.(2) But yesterday, the IraNews news agency published recent remarks by Mohsen Gharavian regarding the nuclear issue. Gharavian is a lecturer at the religious schools of Qom, and is a disciple of [Ayatollah] Mesbah Yazdi. In his recent remarks, he said for the first time that the use of nuclear weapons may not constitute a problem according to shari’a. He further said that ‘when the entire world is armed with nuclear weapons, it is permissible to use these weapons as a counter-[measure]. According to the shari’a, too, only the goal is important...’”

To what? It doesn't stipulate as a counter-measure to what. So, could it be as a counter-measure to a nuclear strike, or any military strike? Blasphemous cartoons? Looking at them wrong?

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

"Take Anything
You Want From Me,
Any Little Thing"

The European Union gets down on its knees and begs the Islamists not to hurt them:

Maybe if I act like I'm dead, the Muslims will leave me alone.

School textbooks should be reviewed for intolerant depictions of Islam and other faiths by experts overseen by the European Union and Islamic leaders, the European Parliament was told yesterday.

The call for a special committee to examine religious education in schools came from Hans-Gert Pöttering, the German Christian Democrat, who heads the largest group of MEPs. But the proposal was immediately condemned as “appeasement” by Charles Tannock, a British Conservative MEP.

Mr Pöttering, the head of the centre-Right, but largely federalist European People’s Party, said the work of building bridges between Islam and the West had to “begin with young people”.

During a debate intended to show Europe’s unity in the face of the row over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, he said textbooks should be checked to ensure they promoted European values without propagating religious stereotypes or prejudice.

He also suggested that the EU could co-operate with the 56-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which has its headquarters in Saudi Arabia, to create a textbook review committee.

“They could help to choose the experts to sit on this committee,” he said.

Charles at Little Green Footballs has a bunch of info on the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Hint: They aren't a very friendly organization.

If You Are Ever
Tempted To Call Israel
An Apartheid State

... just remember that there is at least one Israeli Knesset Member who wants to establish Islamic rule in the Jewish homeland:

IsraelNN.com - Ibrahim Sarsur, head of the United Arab List, which is running for Knesset jointly with Ahmed Tibi's Ta'al party, said today in a press conference that his party believes in Islamic rule over Israel, in the form of a renewed Caliphate.

"We believe in Islam, we believe in the rule of the Caliphate and we do not support a separation between state and religion," Sarsur said. As such, he stated, the UAL-Ta'al list will fight what he called "Israelization and Zionization" through the Israeli Knesset. Sarsur is also a religious leader and a head of the Islamic Association of Israel.

Jews were rioting in the street, burning buildings, raping and pillaging, shouting death to the Arab world ...

Latest Poll:
77% Of Iraqis Are Happy
We Ousted Saddam Hussein

Kurdish victims of Saddam's chemical weapons

Even if prompted by the polltakers to think about all that they have suffered as a result of the war:

In a new Iraqi opinion poll conducted in January for WorldPublicOpinion.org by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland, Iraqis were asked, among other things:

"Thinking about any hardships you might have suffered since the US-Britain invasion, do you personally think that ousting Saddam Hussein was worth it or not?" 77% say it was worth it, while 22% say it was not. Polling results should always be taken with a grain of salt, but it is worth pointing out that just about all the relevant data available from the past four years points in the same direction.

When will this be put to rest? Saddam was a murderous thug. They found mass graves holding hundreds of thousands of people. There is only one reason for mass unmarked graves; if you are trying to bury evidence.

The man ordered the murder and torture of hundreds of thousands of his people.

Why would the Iraqis want him?

Oh yeah, he was relatively nice to the Sunnis, because he is Sunni.

Does that make him a good person?

Well, apparently, the Left has to think about that a little bit more. Maybe they could ask that baby in the picture above whether she is happy that Saddam has been ousted. I wonder what her answer will be?

Second Iraqi General
Says Saddam's WMD's
Are In Syria

The first one was here. Now, here's the second one. Is the dam holding back the truth about to burst?:

A former general and friend of Saddam Hussein who defected but maintains close contact with Iraq claims the regime supported al-Qaida with intelligence, finances and munitions and believes weapons of mass destruction are hidden in Syria.

Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti, southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein's Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s, spoke with Ryan Mauro of WorldThreats.com.

Known as the "Butcher of Basra," al-Tikriti commanded units that dealt with chemical and biological weapons. He defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991.

Last month, Saddam Hussein's No. 2 Air Force officer, Georges Sada, told the New York Sun Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were moved to Syria six weeks before the war started. Sada claimed two Iraqi Airways Boeing jets converted to cargo planes moved the weapons in a total of 56 flights. They attracted little attention, he said, because they were thought to be civilian flights providing relief from Iraq to Syria, which had suffered a flood after a dam collapse in 2002.

Discussing Saddam's support of terrorism, al-Tikriti said the dictator's regime sponsored Palestinian groups with logistical and material support.

For a time, support for al-Qaida was limited, the former general said, mainly because al-Qaida's aim was to create an Islamic empire while Saddam wanted a secular Arab nationalist empire.

"They only really came to terms in the mid '90s due to the fact that both knew they shared the same short-term enemy," the general said. "Once they came to terms on this, Saddam provided al-Qaida with intelligence support and whatever money or munitions they could provide."

Al-Tikriti said Saddam "had very long-standing contacts in the black market as well as with Moscow and would provide whatever munitions he could through these contacts."

The secular Baathists and radical Islamists certainly are able to put aside their differences to cooperate against the U.S., he insisted.

"If you look in Iraq today, you are witnessing Arab nationalist terrorist organizations and Islamist terrorist organizations working together to fight the United States."

Al-Tikriti dismissed the commonly heard claim that the U.S. helped bring Saddam to power, calling it "absolutely ludicrous."

The Baathist revolution, he said, was backed by the Soviet Union because of the shared socialist ideology.
"I was there helping with the revolution and worked on two occasions with Soviet KGB officials to help train us, much like the United States did with the Taliban during the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan," he said. "The United States never directly gave us any WMDs but rather ingredients. They were not mixed and these 'ingredients' could have been easily used for commercial use but were rather used to build low life chemical weapons."

Al-Tikriti says he knows Saddam's weapons are in Syria because of contingency plans established as far back as the late 1980s, in the event either Damascus or Baghdad were taken over.

"Not to mention, I have discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew," he said.

Saddam, after lying for so many years, knew the U.S. eventually would come for the weapons, he said, and wanted to maintain legitimacy with pan-Arab nationalists.

Also, he had "wanted since he took power to embarrass the West, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so," al-Tikriti said.

"After Saddam denied he had such weapons, why would he use them or leave them readily available to be found?" he said. "That would only legitimize President Bush, who he has a personal grudge against."

What we are witnessing now, he said, "is many who opposed the war to begin with are rallying around Saddam saying we overthrew a sovereign leader based on a lie about WMD. This is exactly what Saddam wanted and predicted."

Al-Tikriti said he turned against the Baath Party after his wife stood up to him and questioned his brutal tactics.

"This really made me think, because no one has ever even considered to question the tactics of myself or any others and lived to tell about it," he said. "This courageous move made me think deep and hard."

Al-Tikriti said he still maintains good sources inside and outside of Iraq.

"Some of Saddam's key scientists are personal friends of mine, as well as other key leaders in the former Iraqi military," he said. "I have helped draw information since my defecting to the United States government voluntarily and with the permission of these contacts. The only difference between many of them and I, is that I had the opportunity to defect and they didn't."

Do you think this story is true? The previous story sounded true. This guy sounds like he might just be telling us what we want to hear.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Wonder
Of Birds

A Song
by the
Innocence Mission

We keep our hands above the water
We know that, someday, we will fly away

With all the wonder of birds
With all the wonder of birds

We keep our voices as guarded secrets
Wait for awhile
And we will surely sing

With all the wonder of birds
With all the wonder of birds

We make a sky where we may be
We build a home with windows to fly through
Windows to fly through

We learn to dance with broomstick partners
Grace will be ours
When we will grow our wings

With all the wonders of birds
With all the wonders of birds

What
Will
Europe
Do
Now?

Victor Davis Hanson postulates that Bush, frustrated by Europe's attempts to trangulate America by currying favor with the Arab world governments, has turned the tables on them by letting them deal with the Jihadis as well:

... by letting the Europeans take the lead with the Iranian negotiations, and keeping nearly silent about the cartoon hysteria, the United States essentially has told the Europeans, “Here is the sort of restrained sober and judicious global diplomacy that you so welcome.”

Because of slated troop withdrawals from European bases, and a new American weariness with the old anti-Americanism, some Europeans are beginning to recoil at the idea that they might well be on their own—and in a war against fanatical enemies that they have appeased and without rational friends that they have estranged.

In response, we may see less of the anti-American rhetoric and a return to the Cold War slogans of a “strong Atlantic Alliance” and “an essential Nato,” as nuclear jihadists replace the fear of 300 Soviet divisions.

So now Europe is being thrust right into the middle of the so-called war against Islamic fascism. Once threatened, it will either react with a newly acquired Churchillian maturity to protect its civilization, or cave, in hopes that even more Chamberlain-type appeasement will satisfy the Islamists.

It should be a fascinating spring ahead.

Interesting theory. If Bush really strategized that ahead of time, and carried it out, I have to applaud him.

Actually, there seems little other explanation for his willingness to stay out of the Iran negotiations.

Countdown:
Iran Begins The Process
Of Uranium Enrichment

For peaceful purposes?

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran has begun feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into centrifuges at its pilot nuclear fuel enrichment facility at Natanz, an official close to the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday.

He said International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors observed Iranian scientists putting UF-6 gas into a "very small number" of centrifuges, machines that turn uranium into fuel for nuclear reactors or, if enriched to high levels, atomic bombs.

Of course, we'll never know for sure, until that blinding light, and the intense heat of the nuclear wind gives us the wakeup call.

Sometimes You Just Gotta Love Your Enemies:
Palestinian Good Cop/Bad Cop Strategy Edition

We've always known the Palestinians play Good Cop/Bad Cop. Fatah is the "peaceful" ruling party, while Al-Aqsa is the "military wing." The Palestinian Authority is the moderate party, while Hamas are the extremists.

Well, the mask is off now. Watch, as the Palestinians try to now pass off Hamas (they of the "Kill the Jews" charter) as the peace-seekers, while Fatah and Islamic Jihad are now the extremists. Watch as this becomes the new meme in the media.

But, you would have to be a fool (or an EU official) to believe it:

With Hamas now in power, the long-ruling Fatah party and its "military wing" Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades forced into the opposition, and Israel announcing it will soon withdraw from the West Bank, Palestinian terror leaders tell WorldNetDaily recent events here are leading them to launch what they call a third intifada – or violent confrontation – against Israel consisting of suicide bombings, rocket attacks against Jewish communities and "a few new surprises in our arsenal."

Some terror leaders, particularly from the Al Aqsa Brigades, whose associated Fatah party scored poorly in last month's parliamentary elections, say they are planning massive violence against Israeli civilians mostly to revolt against the new Hamas-controlled Palestinian government.

"The new intifada is only a question of time and this will be the hardest and the most dangerous one. It's just about timing until the order to blow up a new wave of attacks will be given," Abu Nasser, a senior Al Aqsa Brigades leader from the Balata refugee camp in northern Samaria told WorldNetDaily in an interview.

In the last 10 days Israeli forces intercepted 12 potential suicide bombers and have stopped several dozen bombings the past few months, prompting fears of "a new and worrisome wave of terror," said Yuval Diskin, head of Israel's Shin Bet security services.

The Al Aqsa Brigades was formed in 2000 by then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat as a military offshoot of the Fatah party.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas signed a cease fire with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last February, to which the Brigades was party – but the terror group continued carrying out attacks. Al Aqsa's Abu Nasser claims Israel put Hamas in power, and says his group is preparing a new terror onslaught as a result.

"For the last 10 months we respected a cease fire expecting to see changes in the lives of the Palestinian people, but we received from the Israeli side more assassinations ... and above all we received the Hamas victory, which seems to be the result of an Israeli and international conspiracy. They believe that Hamas will give up easier our lands and rights. I think that they are right, but we will not allow this to happen. We will fight and we will blow up the new intifada," Abu Nasser told WND.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal over the weekend said his group might sign a long-term cease fire with Israel, but told reporters he will not ask other Palestinian group to stop attacks.

Abu Nasser told WND the Brigades will not respect any cease fire agreed to by Hamas and will not halt attacks at Hamas' request. "I am sure Hamas will start arresting us, but it will not be that easy [for them]," said Abu Nasser. "We are preparing ourselves for the worst scenario."

You see what I mean? This is the same talk that we've always heard, only now the roles are reversed.

Man, you gotta love your enemies when they tell you the truth. Thanks, idiots.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Ahmadinejad Says:
"Don't Make Us
Lose Our Patience"

Is it me, or is Ahmadinejad starting to look and sound more evil all the time. At first when he came to the fore I thought he looked like your average slob. While I was cognizant of the great threat that he was, he also, at the same time, seemed like a small fish in a big pond.

But, something seems to be changing. I don't know how to articulate it. It could be a purely subjective impression. What does everyone else think?

Anyway, today comes another series of threats and outlandish statements, as if he's campaigning for dictator of the world:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: The affront to the honor of the Prophet of Islam it is in fact an affront to the worship of God, and to the seeking of truth and justice, and an affront to all the prophets of God. Obviously, all those who harm the honor of the prophet of Islam...

Crowd: Death to Denmark. Death to Denmark. Death to Denmark. Death to Denmark.

Ahmadinejad: As the representative of the great Iranian people, I call upon all free people of the world – Christians and Jews – to rise together with the Muslims and not to let a handful of shameless Zionists, who have been defeated in Palestine, to harm the sanctity of the prophets.

I call upon them not to let a few weak governments - which owe their rise to power to the support of the Zionists - support them in this ugly manner.

As I have said before, as far as several aggressive European governments are concerned, and as far as the Great Satan [the U.S.] is concerned, it is permissible to harm the honor of the divine prophets, but it is a crime to ask questions about the myth of the Holocaust, and about how the false regime occupying Palestine came into being.

On the basis of this myth, the pillaging Zionist regime has managed, for 60 years, to extort all Western governments and to justify its crimes in the occupied lands – killing women and children, demolishing homes, and turning defenseless people into refugees.

When we protest to the [Europeans], they say: “There is freedom in our country.” They are lying when they claim they have freedom. They are hostages in the hands of the Zionists. The people of Europe and America are the ones that should be paying the heavy price of this hostage-taking.

How come it is allowed to harm the honor of the prophets in your country, but it is forbidden to research the myth of the Holocaust? You are a bunch of tyrants, who are dependent upon the Zionists and who are held hostage by them.

We proposed the following: If you are not lying, allow a group of neutral, honest researchers to come to Europe, and to talk to people, examine documents, and let people know the findings of their research about the Holocaust myth. You have even prevented your own scholars from researching this issue. They are allowed to study anything except for the Holocaust myth. Are these not medieval methods?

You should be grateful that our people has acted nobly towards you so far, and has been patient. We want to remain patient. Don't make us lose our patience. The peoples have awakened. The world of Islam has awakened. Do not make us reconsider our policies.

Little Green Footballs has video.

Islamic "Martyrs"
Are Ready To
"Burn Down"
U.S. Interests

Martyrs?

Thanks to Christine for sending me this, from Iran Focus:

Tehran, Iran, Feb. 13 – A senior commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) vowed that following the printing of insulting cartoons of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in European dailies, the Islamic Republic’s suicide volunteers abroad were being placed on readiness alert to attack Unites States and Israeli interests.

Mohammad-Reza Jaafari, the commander of Iran’s “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison” and a Brigadier General in the IRGC, said, “Now that America is after gaining allies against the righteous Islamic Republic and wants to attack our sanctities, members of the martyrdom-seeking garrisons across the world have been put on alert so that if the Islamic Republic of Iran receives the smallest threat, the American and Israeli strategic interests will be burnt down everywhere”.

“The only tool against the enemy that we have with which we can become victorious are martyrdom-seeking operations and, God willing, our possession of faithful, brave, trained and zealous persons will give us the upper hand in the battlefield”, he said.“America and any other power cannot win in the unbalanced war against us”.

“Upon receiving their orders, our martyrdom-seeking forces will be uncontrollable and a guerrilla war may go on in various places for years to come”, Jaafari said.“We tell the American people that tomorrow’s actions are based on the stance and adventurism of their president [George W. Bush]. So it will be a lot less costly for the American people to contain Bush than to wage a war, which will definitely cost them a great deal”.

He added that several military divisions of the “Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison” had already been established in several of Iran’s provinces and others were presently being formed to “confront threats by America and Israel”.

Interesting that these threats don't sound as threatening as other recent threats from Iran. Maybe this guy just didn't have the energy to work up a full apocalypse today. Who knows?

Coulter
Crashes
And Burns

Is Ann Coulter having a public breakdown? It would seem so:

There is much buzz this weekend about comments that conservative author/columnist Ann Coulter made at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, a speech which I missed due to a book signing at the same event.

Ann used the term "raghead" when describing what our homeland security policies should be: "I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

Get her off the stage. Now. This woman is now using racist language. More than likely, the language she is using represents the way she thinks.

There is no room for racism in a just society. She needs to go.

Tancredo
And The
Nuclear Option

Last year, Congressman Tom Tancredo answered a question put to him on a radio show. The question was, if the United States is attacked by terrorists, with multiple nuclear weapons, in multiple cities, should we retaliate with nuclear weapons against the states suspected of harboring the terrorists.

Congressman Tancredo's response was that we ought to consider nuking Mecca, the holiest site in Islam.

For this statement, he was roundly chastised by, among others, Hugh Hewitt and Captain Ed Morrissey.I've never been able to figure out why, considering nuking Mecca, being that it is just one city, would be a moderate approach compared to the "just war" tactic of turning an equivalent amount of cities to dust.

Eyes All Around wrote to Congressman Tancredo and received this response:

Thank you for your recent letter regarding my comments regarding how best to deter future terrorist attacks. I appreciate you taking the time to write to me. Without question, my comments have prompted strong reactions from many quarters, but they have also served to start a national dialogue about what options we have to deter al-Qaeda and other would-be Islamic terrorists.

Many critics of my statements have characterized them as “offensive,” and indeed they may have offended some. But in this battle against fundamentalist Islam, I am hardly preoccupied with political correctness, or who may or may not be offended. Indeed, al-Qaeda cares little if the Western world is “offended” by televised images of hostages beheaded in Iraq, subway bombings in London, train attacks in Madrid, or Americans jumping to their death from the Twin Towers as they collapsed.

Few can argue that our current approach to this war has deterred fundamentalists from killing Westerners – nor has it prompted moderate Muslims and leaders of Muslim countries to do what is necessary to crack down on the extremists in their midst who perpetuate these grisly crimes.

People have accused me of creating more terrorism by making these statements. Indeed, we often hear that Western governments bring these attacks on themselves. Just days after the London subway attacks two weeks ago, for example, Tariq Ali, a prominent British Muslim activist, was quick to suggest that London residents “paid the price” for British support in the Iraq campaign. A professor in Lebanon, Dr. George Hajjar, went even further, proclaiming, “I hope that every patriotic and Islamic Arab will participate in this war, and will shift the war not only to America, but to… wherever America may be.” Hajjar went on to say that “there are no innocent people,” and referred to the victims of the attack as “collateral casualties.”

While I realize that some people around the world may be offended by my comments, I do not believe that the U.S. should take any option or target off the table, regardless of the circumstances. It is my hope that my comments may help to dissuade fundamentalist Muslims extremists from planning or carrying out terrorist attacks against the Western world.

The aforementioned statements by the influential Muslim leaders I outlined above are fairly “offensive” statements, to be sure. Unfortunately, however, the kinds of sentiments expressed by Ali and Hajjar are sadly commonplace in the Muslim world, where justification for terrorist attacks like the ones that rocked London, New York and Washington is never in short supply.

Fundamentalist Muslims have advocated the destruction of the West since long before the attacks of Sept. 11, long before the Madrid, London and Bali attacks, long before the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, long before the attack on the USS Cole and the 19093 WTC bombing. In many respects, the decision of the Islamic world to acquiesce to these actions and even provide tacit justification for them is just as damaging to global safety and security as the attacks themselves.

Until Islam can bring itself to stop rationalizing terrorist attacks and start repudiating and purging people like Ali and Hajjar from its ranks who do, this war will continue. And as long as this war goes on, being “offended” should be the least of anyone’s worries.

Tancredo may well be the President of the United States one of these days. But, he's going to need a better photo.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

British Cleric
Praises
London Bombers

Thanks to Christine for sending this over to me. From the London Times:

A LEADING imam in the mosque where the July 7 bombers worshipped has hailed their terrorist attack on London as a “good” act in a secretly taped conversation with an undercover reporter.

Hamid Ali, spiritual leader of the mosque in West Yorkshire, said it had forced people to take notice when peaceful meetings and conferences had no impact.

He also praised the bombers as the “children” of Abdullah al-Faisal, a firebrand Muslim cleric, who was convicted of inciting murder and racial hatred in 2003.

Ali revealed that the leader of the London suicide bombers had attended sermons in Yorkshire by al-Faisal and tapes of al-Faisal’s teachings were still circulating within his mosque.

Al-Faisal, who has branded non-Muslims as “cockroaches” ripe for extermination, is serving a seven-year prison sentence but is eligible for early release next week.

Evidence of continuing extremism and terrorist sympathisers in the bombers’ community has been exposed by a six-week investigation by The Sunday Times. It contrasts with the public statements of condemnation by community leaders — including Ali — in the immediate aftermath of the July 7 attacks.

The disclosures come as a Sunday Times-YouGov poll today shows that people are gloomy about the prospects of living in peaceful coexistence with Britain’s Muslim community. Nearly two-thirds, 63%, think that tensions will rise and only 17% are optimistic about the outlook. By 10 to one, 52% to 5%, people say that recent events have made them less tolerant of other religions.

Brits may be gloomy about the prospects of living with Muslims, but what other prospects are there? Especially for a people who won't even arrest an Imam who praises suicide bombers.

Doesn't it seem like we hear stories like this coming out of Britain all the time? This or that Imam stands up on a crowded street and says, "Yes, we hail the martyrs who slayed the infidels. The Infidel no longer live under the pact of protection. All infidels are subject to the laws of Islam. Islam will reign supreme."

And the Brits just stand around say, "Oh, it looks like the Muzzies are getting a tad steamed, doesn't it? Oh well, let them be then. It sure is bitter cold."

Hey Brits, wake the fuck up.

Why is it we never read stories like this out of France?

Because the French are mean. They are very mean to the Jihadis among them. We Americans could learn some lessons from the French.

Throw this idiot out of your country. Even if he is a citizen, he doesn't want to be a citizen of your country. Put him on a boat that sails perpetually around the world if you have to.

It's enough already. Really, all of us have to wake up. Americans too.

If people don't want to live under our Constitution, if they hate freedom and Democracy, if they want to set up Sharia as law in the middle of Dar al-Harb, then they shouldn't be here. Even if they are citizens. They should leave. And, if they continue to agitate for a law system that runs counter to our Bill of Rights, then we ought to arrest them and try them for crimes against America.

What else are we going to do?

These "gloomy" polls are just going to get gloomier and gloomier, if we don't start taking some action. The humane and sane action would be to proceed according to law. It is a crime to agitate for the overthrow of our government. If people would wake up and recognize that Sharia is the opposite of our Bill of Rights, then it would be easy to shut these idiots down and keep them from recruiting a new wave of martyrs.

We need to have the courage of our convictions. We need to decide whether we really believe in our own Constitution. We in the West need to decide whether we really believe in human rights or not.

If we do, then we need to stop all this Jihadi nonesense. If we don't then just hand them the key to Europe and be done with it.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

United States
Is Preparing
Military Strike
Against Iran

The London Telegraph is reporting that America is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear sites:Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.

"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."

The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington.

The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.

The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.

Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.

Iran was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities. Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.

The White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off, but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be tolerated".

Sen John McCain, the Republican front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse than the United States exercising a military option and that is a nuclear-armed Iran."

Has Ahmadinejad
Given Us
The Smoking Gun
We Need?

Via Drudge, the Bangkok Post is reporting this morning that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has gone on another one of his trademark tirades, including a promise to "remove" Israel:

Tehran (dpa) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday that the Palestinians and "other nations" will eventually remove Israel from the region.

Addressing a mass demonstration in Tehran - one of many organized throughout Iran to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution - he once again questioned the Holocaust "fairy tale".

"We ask the West to remove what they created sixty years ago and if they do not listen to our recommendations, then the Palestinian nation and other nations will eventually do this for them," Ahmadinejad said in a ceremony marking the 27th anniversary of the Islamic revolution.

"Do the removal of Israel before it is too late and save yourself from the fury of regional nations," the ultra-conservative president said.

"How comes that insulting the prophet of Muslims worldwide is justified within the framework of press freedom, but investigating about the fairy tale Holocaust is not?" Ahmadinejad said.

"The real Holocaust is what is happening in Palestine where the Zionists avail themselves of the fairy tale of Holocaust as blackmail and justification for killing children and women and making innocent people homeless," Ahmadinejad said.

The president said that the results of the parliamentary elections in Palestine and the victory of the Hamas group "clearly showed what the people really want."

The president also referred to the cartoons and called it a "Zionist plot" against not only Muslims but also those genuinely committed to Christianity and Judaism.

"Those who insulted the prophet should know that you cannot obscure the sun with a handful of dust. The dust will just get back and blind your own eyes," he said. The crowd replied to his remarks with "Death to Denmark" slogans.

In talking to friends about Ahmadinejad, I am always careful to explain that he has never come right out and said that he will destroy Israel. He has said, Israel should be wiped off the map, and that it needs to be removed.

This is the first time Ahmadinejad has said that it will be removed.

Has he now given us the smoking gun we need to destroy his regime, by any means necessary?

What do we need to have happen before we understand that we are confronted with a modern-day Hitler, and that we are in the position Europe was in in the late-30's, when Hitler could have been stopped?

If we don't act very soon, we will once again have the blood of tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people on our hands.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Oh Oh,
Is Someone About To Have
A Very Public Breakdown?

Rapper Kanye West is exhibiting clear symptoms of an impending Schizophrenic breakdown. From Contact Music:

Cocky rap star KANYE WEST is calling for a revised edition of THE BIBLE, because he thinks he should be a character in it.

The JESUS WALKS hitmaker, who picked up three Grammy Awards last night (08FEB06), feels sure he'd be "a griot" (West African storyteller) in a modern Bible.

He says, "I bring up historical subjects in a way that makes kids want to learn about them. I'm an inspirational speaker.

"I changed the sound of music more than one time... For all those reasons, I'd be a part of the Bible. I'm definitely in the history books already."

Really, people ought to get the word out to his handlers. If what I suspect turns out to be true, this is not going to be pretty.

Pope Says
Science No Threat
To Faith

Christians would do well to understand that science is simply another way of studying the Mind of God. True, some scientists are anti-Faith, and try to make the Scientific method an approach to life in the political and domestic sphere as well as the sciences, but there are bad apples in all professions.

Faiths across the world need to learn to bridge the chasm between the sciences and their relationship to God. The Pope leads the way:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Science made such rapid progress in the 20th century that people may sometimes be confused about how the Christian faith can still be compatible with it, Pope Benedict said on Friday.

But science and religion are not opposed to each other and Christians should not be afraid to try to understand how they compliment each other in explaining the mystery of life on Earth, he told the Vatican's doctrinal department.

The Pope made his comments at a time of heated debate, mostly in the United States, about intelligent design arguments challenging evolution. A Pennsylvania court ruled in December that intelligent design could not be taught as science in school.

"The Church joyfully accepts the real conquests of human knowledge and recognizes that spreading the Gospel also means really taking charge of the prospects and the challenges that modern knowledge unlocks," he said.

The dialogue between religion and science would actually help the faithful see "the logic of faith in God," said the Pope, speaking to members of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

He headed this Vatican department for nearly 25 years until his election last April.

Scientific discoveries sometimes came so rapidly "that it becomes very complicated to recognize how they are compatible with the truth revealed by God about man and the world," said the German-born Pontiff, 78.

The Church, however, should not fear the challenge of reconciling faith and reason because God was "in fact, the Lord of all creation and all history."

Israel Call Putin's
Hamas Invitation
A "Knife In The Back"

It's really a knife in the back for all of Western Civilization:

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel was left fuming over Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invite Palestinian poll winners Hamas to Moscow, slamming the move as a "knife in the back" from a key negotiator for Middle East peace.

The invititation was later backed by France as potentially positive for the peace process.

But it puzzled Washington and delivered a blow to the Jewish state's appeal to the international community to isolate the radical movement as it prepares to form a new Palestinian government.

"This initiative is a real knife in the back... because it aims to give international legitimacy to a terrorist group and we must oppose it with all our means," Education Minister Meir Sheetrit told public radio on Friday.

"What would Moscow say if we invited Chechen representatives (to Jerusalem) in response?" the minister asked.

Yes, if we talk with Hamas, maybe they will change. If we talk with Chavez, maybe he will change. If we talk with Ahmadinejad, maybe he will change. If we had talked with Hitler, maybe he would have changed.

Thursday, February 09, 2006

Putin Says
Hamas Not
A Terrorist Group

There's something a little off about this guy.

From Little Green Footballs:

“Maintaining our contacts with Hamas, we are ready in the near future to invite the Hamas authorities to Moscow to hold talks,” Putin told a news conference in the Spanish capital Madrid where he was on a visit.

Hamas, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, won a crushing victory over the long-dominant Fatah group in an election on January 25.

Haniyeh said Hamas leaders meeting in Cairo agreed to seek a unity government with other factions.

Speaking through a Spanish interpreter, Putin said: “We haven’t considered Hamas a terrorist organization. Today we must recognize that Hamas has reached power in Palestine as a result of legitimate elections and we must respect the choice of the Palestinian people.”

Playing Air Guitar
In The Valley
Of Megiddo

Legend has it, Nero played his violin while Rome burned to the ground. One can imagine him watching the flames dance while playing a tragic melody. Today, we don't seem to have the sense to be sad, or the sense of tragedy with which to understand our fate, if we continue marching down the road we are on.

Here is an article about the Iranian nuclear situation, by Kenneth Timmerman:

The prospect that the Islamic Republic of Iran could acquire nuclear weapons ought to be too serious for it to succumb to political spin, especially from within the U.S. intelligence community.

But leakers seeking to embarrass the Bush administration have been furiously spinning the extraordinary information obtained over the past eighteen months from an Iranian walk-in about Iran’s nuclear intentions, seeking to downplay its importance and suggesting that the intelligence community is divided over how to interpret it..

Here is what we know about the extraordinary documents provided by the walk-in on a laptop computer. They include:

-design information for modifications to the re-entry vehicle of Iran’s Shahab ballistic missile, to allow it to carry a nuclear warhead to Israel;

-drawings of a deep underground shaft, fitted out with remote-controlled sensors and a distant control booth, which analysts acknowledge has all the hallmarks of a nuclear weapons test shaft;

-a complete set of drawings, worked up by an front company in Tehran for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, for a small, clandestine uranium-conversion facility that could replace the large, commercial plant in Isfahan should the U.S. or Israel take it out in a military strike.

Last Thursday, the IAEA Board of Governors examined an extraordinary report from the agency’s chief inspector in Iran, that twice cited “nuclear weapons” work in Iran. Foreign diplomats who heard the report said it was “astonishing,” and was the first time the Agency had ever openly referred to evidence of an Iranian weapons program.

“No one doubts any longer what the Iranians are up to,” a Bush administration official tracking Iran’s nuclear development told me yesterday. “Even the Russians and the Chinese know exactly what the Iranians are doing.”

The only ones who don’t understand what Iran is up to, it seems, can be found in the U.S. intelligence community - at least, those members of it who are furiously leaking to the Bush-bashing press.

A front page analysis in yesterday’s Washington Post, for instance, claimed that “U.S. and allied intelligence analysts” estimate that Iran could be “as much as a decade away” from nuclear weapons capability. Even that rosy projection assumed that the project “encounters no major technical hurdles.” Beyond that, the Post asserted, whether Iran’s leaders have actually decided to pursue a weapons program and the “concrete progress” they have made “remain divisive questions among government analysts and U.N. inspectors.”

Proof of how iffy the intelligence obtained from the defector’s laptop, according to the Post, was the fact that “nowhere, for example, does the word ‘nuclear’ appear” on the test shaft and control room drawings. “What do expect them to do,” a Bush administration official said, “write ‘nuclear-weapons document’ all over these things?”

The intelligence spin-meisters convinced the gullible Post reporters that “other suggestive evidence is cloaked in similar uncertainty.” For example: “U.S. intelligence considers the laptop documents authentic but cannot prove it….

CIA analysts, some of whom had been involved only a year earlier on the flawed assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs, initially speculated that a third country, such as Israel, may have fabricated the evidence.” Now there’s a novel spin. If the world is concerned that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, it’s all because of the Jews!

That such nonsense passed muster at the Post shows yet again just how far a once great newspaper has fallen.

It took eighteen paragraphs of spin for the Post to include the view of "some policymakers" in the administration who "have begun pushing back, suggesting that the CIA is demanding an unrealisitcally high standard of evidence before reaching conclusions that the White House believes are obvious."

Must be those pesky "neo-cons" again. Perhaps Vice President Cheney has been hanging out at Langley again, asking questions - heaven forbid! - of CIA weapons analysts.

But the most damaging thing about the leaks to the Post was this piece of intelligence:

“Experts at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico ran the schematics [for the Shahab-3 nuclear-capable warhead] through computer simulations. They determined two things: The drawings were an effort to expand the nose cone of the Shahab-3 to carry a nuclear warhead, and the modification plans, if executed, would not work.”

Now, developing the intelligence and the computer capabiltities to come that conclusion cost the United States hundreds of billions of dollars and fifty years of nuclear weapons expertise to develop. Thanks to a dumb reporter at the Washington Post, we just gave it to the Iranians for thirty-five cents.

The United States provided the documents taken from the defector’s laptop to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, which shared them with the Iranians last fall. The Iranians understood immediately that the jig was up, and didn’t need to caveat that conclusion. In response, they hardened their tone, cut off negotiations with the IAEA and the EU-3, and made a variety of dire threats, including unilateral Iranian military action against the United States, Israel, and our Middle East allies.

And now for the really bad news. A U.S. intelligence official, who has reviewed intelligence reports from Europe, tells me there are source reports from Iran that suggest the Iranian regime is preparing for a nuclear-related test before March 20 - the date of the Iranian new year.

Separately, an Iranian defector, who held a senior position in the intelligence office of the Supreme Leader until July 2001 and maintains face-to-face contact with top intelligence and military officials inside Iran, told me recently that Iran has conducted “more than four” tests of non-nuclear components for a nuclear explosive device in recent months.

That suggests that Iran is attempting to build an implosion device, a sophisticated design that can be made small enough to fit on top of a ballistic missile. An implosion device uses specially-shaped high-explosives, packed around a hemispherical core of highly-enriched uranium, to trigger the nuclear chain reaction.

If so, Iran would need to test the weapon to validate the design, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official, since the high explosive charges must be shaped with extraordinary precision to compress the HEU core rapidly enough to explode. Any mistake in the design could cause the weapon to “fizzle.”

So why would Iran go to the trouble of designing a 400-meter deep test shaft, complete with submerged precision instruments to measure the blast and a remote monitoring site? Is Iran really ten years - or more - away from being able to conduct such a test? Or are they just six weeks away? Or six months? Or six years?

Getting the answer to that question right may be the single-most important task facing the U.S. intelligence community.

More on the Fate of Europe...

Here is a provocative piece by Theodore Dalrymple on the future of Europe....Hat tip to Gates of Vienna

Is Old Europe Doomed?
by Theodore Dalrymple
Lead EssayFebruary 6th, 2006

The late Professor Joad, a popularizer of philosophy rather than a philosopher in the true sense, used to preface his answer to any question by saying, "It depends on what you mean by…"—in this case, "doomed."

The word "doomed" implies an ineluctable destiny, against which, presumably, it is vain for men to struggle. And this in turn implies a whole, contestable philosophy of history.

Historical determinism has two sources: first the apparent ability of historians, who of course have the benefit of hindsight, to explain any and all historical events with a fair degree of plausibility, even if their explanations of the same events differ widely, thus giving rise to the impression that if the past was determined, the future must be determined also; and second the tendency of people to assume that current statistical or social trends will continue, or in other words that projections are the same as predictions. One has only to consider the exponential growth of a bacterium on a Petri dish, which if continued would mean that the entire biosphere would soon consist solely of that organism, to realize that projections do not necessarily give rise to accurate predictions.Nevertheless, it is undeniable that a pall of doom does currently overhang Europe. In retrospect, the Twentieth Century may be considered Europe’s melancholy, long withdrawing roar (to adapt Matthew Arnold’s description of the decline of religion). And just as, according to Disraeli, the Continent of Europe would not long suffer Great Britain to be the workshop of the world, so the world would not, and did not, long suffer the Continent of Europe to dominate it, economically, culturally and intellectually. Europe’s loss of power, influence and importance continues to this day; and however much one’s material circumstances may have improved (just take a look at photographs of daily life in France or Britain in the 1950s and compare them to daily life there today), it is always unpleasant, and creates a sense of deep existential unease, to live in a country perpetually in decline, even if that decline is merely relative.

...

The principal motor of Europe’s current decline is, in my view, its obsession with social security, which has created rigid social and economic systems that are extremely resistant to change. And this obsession with social security is in turn connected with a fear of the future: for the future has now brought Europe catastrophe and relative decline for more than a century

....

The dependent population does not like the state and its agents, indeed they hate them, but they soon come to fear the elimination of their good offices even more. They are like drug addicts who know that the drug that they take is not good for them, and hate the drug dealer from whom they obtain their drug, but cannot face the supposed pains of withdrawal. And what is true of Britain is true, with a few exceptions, everywhere else in Europe. In the name of social justice, personal and sectional interest has become all-powerful, paralyzing all attempts to maximize collective endeavor.

...

Doom or further decline is not inevitable, however, though avoidance of it requires active effort. The auguries are not good, not only because of the political immobilism that elaborate systems of social security have caused in most European countries, but because of the European multinational entity that is being created against the wishes of the peoples of Europe (insofar as they can be gauged).The European Union serves several purposes, none of which have much to do with the real challenges facing the continent. The Union helps Germans to forget that they are Germans, and gives them another identity rather more pleasing in their own estimation; it allows the French to forget that they are now a medium sized nation, one among many, and gives them the illusion of power and importance; it acts as a giant pension fund for politicians who are no longer willing or able successfully to compete in the rough and tumble of electoral politics, and enables them to hang on to influence and power long after they have been rejected at the polls; and it acts as a potential fortress against the winds of competition that are now blowing from all over the world, and that are deeply unsettling to people who desire security above all else.Apocalyptic thought is curiously pleasurable. Doom is too strong a word, in my view; I think it would be more accurate to say that Europe is sleepwalking to further relative decline. But we should also modestly remember that the future is, ultimately, unknowable.

Read the Rest

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Brian Eno

The Plateaux Of Mirror

Not Yet Remembered

A Clearing

The Chill Air

Denmark Takes
Note Of
Muslim Taqiyya

Denmark has noticed that many Imams speak with forked-tongue, saying one thing in Danish media, and another thing in Arab media. Thus, they have eliminated many of these double-speaking Imams from the political dialogue.

The Danes should be examples for us all in the West:

Political criticism of local imams in recent days has led the integration minister to exclude the muslim clerics from discussions of the integration of Muslims into Danish society.

Some imams have reportedly offered statements to media in Muslim countries that harmed Danish interests in the on-going row over the Mohammed cartoons, the integration minister, Rikke Hvilshøj, said on Monday.

'I think we have a clear picture today that imams are not the ones we should look to if we want integration in Denmark to work,' Hvilshøj told daily newspaper Berlingske Tidende...

One incident involved imam Abu Laban telling television station al-Jazeera that he was happy about the Muslim boycott. Later the same day, he said to Danish television station TV2 that he would urge Muslims to stop the boycott immediately.

Michelle Malkin notes:

The Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, also disinvited a group of radical imams for an anti-terror conference at his Marienborg residence in September. The conference sought to find ways of preventing Islam from being used in the name of terror attacks.

Founder Of CAIR
Is
Leader In Hamas

Mr. Marzook also does volunteer work every weeken, cleaing up on the sides of freeways.

For anyone who has trouble understanding why the Council on American-Islamic Relations is not a moderate human rights organizations, here's an interesting little bit of trivia.

Mousa Abu Marzook is now one of the top terrorists with Hamas. He is also the founder of CAIR:

Mousa Abu Marzook was deported from the United States in 1997, due to his activity with Hamas, a group that is on the State Department’s terrorism list. Before leaving the country, Marzook had founded three Hamas-related organizations, the first being the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP). The IAP was terminated in 2005, shortly after the group had been held liable for the murder of American teenager, David Boim, during a Hamas terror operation in Israel.

In 1994, three leaders of the IAP created a spin-off organization called the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). One of the three was Nihad Awad, an individual who is today the Executive Director of CAIR. That same year, Awad publicly stated his support for Hamas, and just two years later, in May of 1996, CAIR would coordinate a press conference protesting the extradition order of Marzook.

Joe Kaufman, Chairman of Americans Against Hate (AAH), stated, “If it were not for Mousa Abu Marzook, a man who has just said that his organization will never recognize Israel’s right to exist, CAIR would not be around today. Because of CAIR’s connection to this individual and the organization he represents, we call on the United States government to act immediately to shut down CAIR and place the group alongside Hamas on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.”

Nowadays, Mr. Marzook writes columns for the Washington Post, and says Israel doesn't have a right to exist (From AP:

CAIRO, Egypt - A top Hamas official said the militant group will not recognize Israel but will abide, for now, by past agreements Palestinian leaders made with the Jewish state. He also lashed out at the more moderate Fatah party for refusing to participate in a national unity Palestinian government.

And, of course, he's towing the party line, because the Hamas Charter itself says Israel has no right to exist, and that Hamas will eventually kill all Jews.

Yes, the founder of CAIR is also in an organization that has as its stated goal the desire to kill all Jews.

That passes for a moderate viewpoint ...

in hell.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Spirit

Bush Bashed
While Attending
King Funeral

The Left continues to get more and more unhinged. This latest is so disgusting that I am physically sickened:

Today's memorial service for civil rights activist Coretta Scott King -- billed as a "celebration" of her life -- turned suddenly political as one former president took a swipe at the current president, who was also lashed by an outspoken black pastor!

The outspoken Rev. Joseph Lowery, co-founder of Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ripped into President Bush during his short speech, ostensibly about the wife of Martin Luther King Jr.

"She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there," Lowery said. The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation.

A closed-circuit television in the mega-church outside Atlanta showed the president smiling uncomfortably."

But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.

Former President Jimmy Carter later swung at Bush as well, not once but twice. As he talked about the Kings, he said: "It was difficult for them then personally with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretaps." The crowd cheered as Bush, under fire for a secret wiretapping program he ordered after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, again smiled weakly.

Later, Carter said Hurricane Katrina showed that all are not yet equal in America. Some black leaders have blamed Bush for the poor federal response, and rapper Kayne West said that Bush "hates" black people.

The only good thing you can say about this is, it just goes to show that our right to Freedom of Speech is alive and well here in America.

Olmert
Reveals His
Sneaky Plan
To Give
The Palestinians
A State

Hopefully, every reader will understand that the use of the word "sneaky" in the title is satirical. In fact, Olmert could not be more upfront. He's giving the Palestinians the state they've always said they wanted, and always turned down, when offered.

The thing I have always loved about the Separation idea is that, while allowing Israel to draw back to defensible borders, it will force the Palestinians to take responsibility for themselves. There is a sense in which the plan gives them enough rope to either save themselves, or, uh, hang themselves.

Obviously, they are, at this point, working on hanging themselves.

The election of Hamas revealed, in stark contrast, the moral differeence between the Israelis, who want peace so badly, they give land away without negotiation, and the Palestinians, who simply want to kill Jews.

So, here's Olmerts plan:

JERUSALEM - Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday that Israel plans to separate from most of the Palestinians in the West Bank and this would require withdrawing from some of the territory.

It was the first time Olmert, who took over from ailing Ariel Sharon a month ago, has spelled out his thinking for future policy if he wins March 28 elections. The Kadima Party he inherited from Sharon, who is comatose after a stroke, is far ahead in the polls.

"We will disengage from most of the Palestinian population that lives in Judea and Samaria," Olmert told Israel's Channel 2 TV, using the biblical names for the West Bank. "That will obligate us to leave territories under Israeli control today."

Under questioning, Olmert listed West Bank four areas Israel would keep under his vision: Maaleh Adumim, a settlement of 30,000 next to Jerusalem; Gush Etzion, a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem; Ariel, a settlement of 18,000 deep in the West Bank; and the Jordan River valley.

About three-fourths of Israel's 244,000 West Bank settlers live in the areas Olmert delineated in the TV interview, according to government figures and estimates by the Peace Now settlement watchdog group.

Of course, we'll probably never hear any apologies from those who have villainized Israel all these years. Almost every move Israel has ever made in the Palestinian territories has contained within it a logic towards peace. Those who do not seek to villify Jews can see this logic. Those who love to hate Jews, can not see any logic when it comes to Israel.

But, now, the veil of diplomacy and strategy has been removed by Olmert, because Israel has found that diplomacy and strategy will not work with a Palestinian people who are simply bent on killing Jews.

And now that the veil is removed, what do we find? Israel wants to give the Palestinian people a state, at any cost.

Israel would be well within their rights to have declared Al-Aqsa/Fatah, and Hamas the Palestinian military, and thus rendered any attack by either group the act of one nation upon another, giving them the right to destroy the Palestinian regime. That is what I have advocated. But, no. Israel wants peace.

Let us hope the world will work with Israel to help ensure that this move by Olmert will lead to peace.

Israel Will
Surprise
The World

I believe Israel will surprise the world in how they deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. If the United States doesn't get up off their butts soon, and massively bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, then Israel will do it.

Many naysayers have been opining about how it will be impossible for Israel with the equipment they have. But, these people are not taking into account Israel's history. Everytime Israel is threatened existentially, their victory is swift and shocking and is a leapfrog in the history of military strategery.

Atlas has a great post up today about some of the ingenious tactics Israel may use in destroying the Iranian facilities:

It looks like the Iranians are proceeding full speed ahead with their Manhattan Project, and it is now in the hands of the UN Security Council to stop it. The likelihood of that happening is slim, I believe. It took us 12 years and endless resolutions to deal with Saddam, who was actively violating UN sanctions, shooting at our pilots, and killing his own people.

If it took us that long to deal with Saddam under the auspices of the UN, Iran will get the bomb, period.

While this may be an academic exercise for the UN, it isn’t for Israel. Even the United States may not be able to muscle the political maneuvering room to launch the kind of attack on Iran that would be necessary to knock out its reactors.

This crisis comes down to how long Israel feels it can wait for Iran to acquire its WMD and delivery capability. This timeline may be running out more quickly than people realize. If state-sponsored uranium enrichment has truly begun in earnest, and delivery capability is being researched, Israel may be forced to act sooner rather than later.

The attack would definitely be a single, massive air strike the likes of which the MidEast has never seen. Here is how I think it would go down.

It is widely believed that Iran is out of range of Israeli fighters and bombers. The range problem could be ameliorated by mid-air re-fuelers, but that would cause problems. Israel only has 5 KC-130 re-fuelers, and the idea of refueling over enemy airspace would complicate an already complicated plan.

The solution to this problem is to establish forward landing areas close to Iran, in order to “leap-frog” into Iran. This would, of course, be an act of war against (speculating here) either Saudi Arabia or Syria.

I believe that the Israelis would attempt to bypass Turkish, and Iraqi airspace. They would have to either seize an airfield, or construct one themselves. Paratroopers would insert into the area, secure the airfield, and set up a defensive perimeter. Then the transport aircraft would begin to land and set up a FARP (forward area re-arm/re-fuel point). I assume we’ll have passed the “international incident” by this point, and all out war will be declared by one (or many countries against Israel.

If the FARP is established in Syria, it would have to be set up in the northern hinterlands, the bulk of Syrian forces (including their ADA assets) are located in the south near the Israeli border. Such a move would undoubtedly initiate a direct attack on the Israeli defensive positions by Syrian troops, possibly employing their WMD capability.

I doubt that this would interfere with the airlift to the FARP, and I base that from judging the last Israeli duel with the Syrian air force/air defense system.

The other option is to establish the FARP in the Saudi desert somewhere near the Kuwaiti border. This approach would violate the airspace of Jordan, as well as Saudi Arabia, but would provide a more direct flight path across the Persian Gulf to Iran. Establishing the FARP in Saudi Arabia may be a less dangerous course of action than in Syria, but Syria may very well attack Israel anyway once the cover of the operation is blown.

That being established, Israeli aircraft would land at the FARP, re-arm, reload, and then begin the assault on Iran. This would include forward EW craft like the EC-707, IAI-201, and the Do-28D B1 (ELINT). These aircraft would identify and jam Iranian ADA, and would have to proceed with a fighter escort to deal with the Iranian Air Force.

Behind the EW craft would be the main strike force. Each target would have to have multiple strike waves, but the timing of the attacks and the vulnerability of the FARP would necessitate a massive “shock and awe” strike against each target.

Such an attack would become the stuff of legend, if Israel manages to pull it off.

However, such an attack really uses technology which is already known to exist. The thing about Israel is they tend to be ahead of the curve technologically. I believe there is a strong possibility that they have something in their arsenal that is completely new. Like, for instance, this:

THE first well-known strategic weapon was the Trojan horse, which allowed the Greeks to capture Troy without damaging the city's walls. If comments last year by Donald Rumsfeld, America's defence secretary, are to be believed, new electromagnetic weapons may yet allow America to do the same to Baghdad. This would, some think, represent the first combat use of such weaponry.

Using different types of electromagnetic energy (the same stuff as radio waves, X-rays and light), these weapons are able to destroy electronic systems and temporarily incapacitate people, all without the mess of explosions and gunfire. Although the systems are still said to be experimental, the recent use of armed, unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Yemen has shown that America's armed forces have become good at applying new weapons technology in the field.

It all started in 1962, when America first exploded a nuclear bomb 30km (19 miles) up in the atmosphere. The energetic gamma rays caused by the explosion triggered an electromagnetic pulse that disrupted radio stations 1,200km away. Although the pulse lasted for only a fraction of a second (and thus was harmless to humans) it was enough to seed the idea that electromagnetic pulses were possible, and potentially useful.

Luckily, an electromagnetic pulse can be generated without a nuclear explosion. America's efforts are centred at a research laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. A spokesman from Kirtland refuses to comment on the research, but according to a study done for the Australian air force, the most likely way of creating weaponised high-powered microwaves (HPMs) is through a device known as a vircator.

A vircator works by discharging stored electricity into a coil of wires wrapped around an explosive. The flowing electricity creates a magnetic field, which is then compressed as the (relatively small) explosive goes off. This causes a low-frequency electromagnetic pulse that is used to accelerate electrons to high energies and punch through a sheet of foil. The electrons form an unstable bubble of charge that oscillates in a cavity designed for the purpose. The oscillation creates HPMs that are then emitted from an antenna that guides them towards the target.

Because the source of the energy is a compact explosive, a vircator could fit inside bombs or cruise missiles. Deployed, they could disrupt a variety of enemy systems, from missile targeting and launch electronics, to command-and-control systems. It is possible that they could penetrate hundreds of metres below the ground and reach underground bunkers built for protection against explosives. Larger, reusable weapons are also being developed for use on ships to disable incoming missiles such as China's Silkworm.

It is possible that such a weapon could give the Israelis the ability to actually land in Iran, and attack the nuclear facilities from the ground. I do not think that the Iranian military, thusly immobilized would be able to put up much of a fight. The Israelis military might be able to actually walk into each facility individually, and plant explosives which would absoltuely obliterate Iran's nuclear dreams.

Let us see. You never know.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Free Socities
Vs.
Fear Societies

UPDATED at bottom of post.

The Cartoon Jihad brings the issue of Free Speech to the forefront, obviously. We watch in sadness while many of our leaders, and pundits in the American MSM speak of tolerance, and "respect for Islam," when what they really mean is we have reason to be afraid of Muslims, so we'd better not get them riled up.

The same leaders and pundits have repeatedly supported much harsher criticisms of Christianity, and of America, and I think that's a fine thing. Harsh criticism is the lymphatic system of Democracy. If it isn't exercised, then the lymph won't flow, and our society will become sick.

Here, in an interview with Front Page Magazine, Natan Sharansky explains exactly what happens when people are afraid to speak their mind:

FP: You distinguish between "fear" and "free" societies. Briefly explain to our readers what you mean by this paradigm.

Sharansky: Free societies are societies in which the right of dissent is protected. In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

One can determine whether a society is free by applying what we call the “town-square test.” Can someone within that society walk into the town square and say what they want without fear of being punished for his or her views? If so, then that society is a free society. If not, it is a fear society.

People may believe that there can be a society where dissent is not permitted, but which is nonetheless not a fear society because everyone agrees with one another and therefore no one wants to dissent. But as we show in the book, such a monolithic society, which may occasionally emerge, will not last very long.

Because of human diversity – different tastes, ambitions, interests, backgrounds, experiences, etc. - differences of opinion will be inevitable. Then the society will be confronted with the fundamental question. Will dissent be permitted?

The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society. Of course, there can be serious injustices within free societies. They can have all sorts of problems and abuses of rights. But by having a right to dissent and having institutions which protect that right, free societies also have mechanisms to correct those abuses.

In contrast, fear societies are always unjust and have no corrective mechanisms. Fear societies are inevitably composed of three separate groups:

True believers,
dissidents
and doublethinkers.

True believers are those who believe in the ideology of the regime. Dissidents are those who disagree with that ideology and are prepared to say so openly. Doublethinkers are those who disagree with the ideology but who are scared to openly confront the regime.

With time, the number of doublethinkers in a fear society inevitably grows so that they represent the overwhelming majority of the population. To an outside observer, the fear society will look like a sea of true believers who demonstrate loyalty to the regime, but the reality is very different. Behind the veneer of support is an army of doublethinkers.

This is the situation we see in the Muslim world today. It is true that they will march in lockstep shouting Death to America, and Kill the Jews, but many do so because that is what is expected of them.

But, what really concerns me here is that there are forces in our society who are trying to shut up the dissent against Islam. Truth is, no one has gotten arrested or tried here in America, as happened to Orianna Fallaci in Italy, and as has happened in Australia and Britain. Maybe I shouldn't worry, but when the White House is urging "respect" - which is really just a catchphrase meaning, "Don't speak your mind" - then, we have to be vigilant in protecting our inalienable right to Free Speech.

I would urge everybody to find a way to speak out on this issue. If Muslims around the world are burning and threatening, and even killing over cartoons, then we have the right to cariacature their malignant behavior.

In fact, I would say we have the responsibility to our own system of Governance to criticize Islam, and to criticize any member of our government who urges tolerance in the face of threat.

UPDATED: John Sobieski of Pedestian Infidel commented that we don't know that Muslims are merely walking around paying lip service to the idea of Islamofascism.

I need to clarify that, in my mind, doublethinkers don't even themselves know what they want anymore. Being doubleminded means being confused. A human being who is confused for a long period of time, gradually does not know his own mind anymore.

I think this is where Muslims are.

One thing we have to remember is Muslims are human beings. Why would human beings in one part of the world want anything different than human beings in another part of the world? The answer is, they would have different desires because they are living under a totalitarian ideology.

Sign
The Petition
To
Support Denmark

Thanks to Eyes All Around for letting me know about this. Click the link and sign the petition, if you agree.

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Ban The Burqa

If we really want to get serious about this war, we need to understand that Islam needs to fundamentally change. After World War II, we banned certain tenets of the state-religion of Japan; Shinto-Buddhism. We decreed, unilaterally, that no more would the practice of Emperor-worship be allowed.

Winning this war is not, simply, a matter of defeating Jihadis. It is a matter of ending certain tenets of Islam.

No more preaching of Jihad.

No more strict Sharia (if Muslims want to redefine Sharia, that is fine).

And no more Burqas.

Burqas are an abomination.

The burqa is the chains of female slavery.

Burqas need to stop.

If I had my way, this would be our rallying cry.

People think that women have the right to wear burqas. No, we must understand that some slaves would have chosen the chains. Many slaves stayed on with their masters after the Civil War. Does that make it slaver ok?

Hell no!

Many slaves, mired in the midst of their slavery, would have said they would choose the

chains. Does that make it right?

The Case For Democracy by Natan Sharansky, explains how this kind of self-deceit happens. Coercion through threat of violence makes people become double-minded. They profess one thing in public, and think another thing in their heads. This leads to confusion, and after awhile, people will forget who they are and what they want.

The Burqa dehumanizes women. It is a tool which instantly turns a living, breathing human being into a slave. When the shroud goes over the face of a human being, they are dead to the world. The human being, so enshrouded, can see out through the veil darkly, but no one can see in.

She is windowless, and alone.

From Act International:

"Women you should not step outside your residence. If you go outside the house you should not be like the women who used to go with fashionable clothes wearing much cosmetics and appearing in front of every men before the coming of Islam."
--- Edict (religious decree) announced by the Taliban’s "Religious Police".

Two months back, I was on an assignment in Afghanistan. Defying another Taliban edict - this one banning taking photographs of "any living thing" - I looked for ways to illustrate how three years of drought and 22 years of war had affected the lives of men, women and children in Afghanistan. In an environment created by the edicts restricting the behaviour of women it was difficult to get a single picture of women. Basically, I had to "steal" such pictures while pretending to be tying my shoelaces, looking the other way or trust my luck in accidental drive–by snapshots from car windows.

In the end, I tried another approach; one I felt more comfortable with. This approach did not force me to try to cheat the women within range of my lenses and, it even appeared truer to my own experience of travelling as a male in Afghanistan.

Over 14 days, I had next to no interaction with Afghani women and saw only three women’s faces directly. As a sort of compensation, I started focusing my lenses on some of the traces of the women I glimpsed or sometimes just missed where ever I went – villages, streets, bazaars, hospitals, clinics or restaurants and mosques. Traces of the millions of Afghan women concealed by the rules of the Taliban, the cloth of the head to toe long blue Burqa, local traditions and in some cases the 4 to 5 meter high mud brick walls surrounding their own homes.

One day we will look back on the burqa and we will wonder how it is that our civilization allowed such cruelty to human beings.

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Dry

The Cartoon Intifada:
We Have Won
The Battle Of The Sacred Joke

I believe the Paris Riots (Paris Intifada) may have been a coordinated action, an organized battle against the forces of Western Civilization. Go to this page for an archive of my thoughts on this subject.

Tonight on Little Green Footballs, there is a post about the evidence supporting the idea that the Cartoon Intifada is also an organized effort:

It’s some time since I visited Palestine, so I may be out of date, but I don’t remember seeing many Danish flags on sale there. Not much demand, I suppose. I raise the question because, as soon as the row about the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten broke, angry Muslims popped up in Gaza City, and many other places, well supplied with Danish flags ready to burn. (In doing so, by the way, they offered a mortal insult to the most sacred symbol of my own religion, Christianity, since the Danish flag has a cross on it, but let that pass.)

Why were those Danish flags to hand? Who built up the stockpile so that they could be quickly dragged out right across the Muslim world and burnt where television cameras would come and look? The more you study this story of “spontaneous” Muslim rage, the odder it seems.

The complained-of cartoons first appeared in October; they have provoked such fury only now. As reported in this newspaper yesterday, it turns out that a group of Danish imams circulated the images to brethren in Muslim countries. When they did so, they included in their package three other, much more offensive cartoons which had not appeared in Jyllands-Posten but were lumped together so that many thought they had.

It rather looks as if the anger with which all Muslims are said to be burning needed some pretty determined stoking. Peter Mandelson, who seems to think that his job as European Trade Commissioner entitles him to pronounce on matters of faith and morals, accuses the papers that republished the cartoons of “adding fuel to the flames”; but those flames were lit (literally, as well as figuratively) by well-organised, radical Muslims who wanted other Muslims to get furious. How this network has operated would make a cracking piece of investigative journalism.

I believe Al Qaeda is sophisticated enough to have added crowd control to their repetoire. Hitler did it, and he is their mentor.

I agree with this guy that this was, likely, planned.

Our intelligence organizations ought to be looking into who the key crowd instigators are. This is a talent that requires study, and time to develop. It also requires intelligence, and a good amount of natural charisma. It should not be hard to figure out who is doing this.

Once you find out who they are, you just remove them from the population, through prison, or deportation.

By the way, I believe these kinds of efforts begin in coffee shops and other such meeting places. They then travel to the Mosques, once there are enough people within the Mosque to support the change in direction. The street riot, the burning of flags, the torching of embassies, the placards calling for murder, are the third stage.

The goal is to gradually radicalize enough of the Muslim population that a "spontaneous" riot can turn into a full-scale war.

Wretchard, at Belmont Club, believes the Eurabian Jihadis have overplayed their hand, and have, thus, woken up Europe, rather than enervating the Euros-appeasers:

The Danish cartoon crisis has managed to ignite what the Bush administration hoped to avoid from the beginning: turning the War on Terror into a War with Islam. Now an incident arising from a relatively obscure newspaper in Denmark has forced a choice between the most deeply held of all Western values, freedom of speech, with the cherished strategic goal of keeping the Muslim "street" aboard in the War on Terror.

The argument for regarding the Danish cartoons as a boon is premised on the belief that President Bush's attempt to separate the War on Terror from Islam was doomed to fail anyway; that it was better to face that question now than later. According to this point of view, a view reinforced by the election of Hamas in the Palestinian territories, cultural and religious issues were at the root of international conflict.

That mere voting -- in Palestine for example -- would never be sufficient to establish a liberal democracy for as long as the underlying culture remained hostile and aggressive to democracy's roots. No one can foresee where the Danish cartoon controversy will lead. At best both sides will return to their lines of departure after having made their points, each with a renewed respect for the other.

The West should understand, if it didn't realize it before, that Muslims are willing to fight for their religion. And Muslims should understand, from the cartoon controversy, that whatever they had heard to the contrary it goes double ditto for the West.

And in the long run that grudging respect may make the the process of winning over the Muslim moderates easier than feigning the cheap and superficial attitude of multiculturalism. For who in Islam would believe in us if we did not believe in ourselves? Who in Islam could trust that we would fight at their side if we could not defend all that we were, all that we believed?

I agree with Wretchard. This battle has changed the landscape. The Paris Intifada was a victory for the Islamic Jihadis. The French do not like themselves enough to fight for their own streets. But, the French believe in their system (the French way, which is an outgrowth of Western Civilization) enough to fight for basic principles such as Freedom of Speech.

The most important statistic coming out of this battle is that EIGHT French newspapers published the Jyllands-Posten cartoons.

The French found their spine. It lies in their love of Western principles. Thank God, or, uh, whoever the French might like to thank.

Indeed, all of Europe has found its spine, as we have seen periodicals across the disputed territories of Eurabia publishing what the Jihadis consider to be blasphemy.

This battle has gone to the West. We have won. The Jihadis have succeeded in doing what even Hitler could not do; they have made the Euros, and particularly the French, fight for their principles.

Even if this one blows up in our faces, and people get killed, it will still be a victory for us. In fact, even more so. Because this is a battle we have found we are not willing to lose.

This is the hill we are willing to die on.

The Religion Of Peace
And
"The Real Holocaust"

Photo from Associated Press

Michelle
Malkin
Video

Click here to see Michelle Malkin's new video.

I Could Have Done More:
German Chancellor
Likens
Iranian Threat
To Nazi Era

German Chancellor, Andrea Merkel spells it out clearly:

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel likened Iran's nuclear plans on Saturday to the threat posed by the Nazis in their early days, as top U.S. officials urged a tough line to stop Tehran from making an atomic bomb.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accused the Islamic republic of being the world's leading sponsor of terrorism, a charge his Iranian counterpart rejected as "ridiculous" and "outrageous".

Addressing the annual Munich security conference, Merkel said countries around the world had underestimated the Nazi threat as Adolf Hitler rose to power.

"Looking back to German history in the early 1930s when National Socialism (Nazism) was on the rise, there were many outside Germany who said 'It's only rhetoric -- don't get excited'," she told the assembled world defense policy makers.

"There were times when people could have reacted differently and, in my view, Germany is obliged to do something at the early stages ... We want to, we must prevent Iran from developing its nuclear program."

Can you believe we are hearing such a thing out of a German leader?

Good for Germany, and good for the world.With leadership like this, there is a chance that we might get out of this war without millions dead.

Friday, February 03, 2006

Petal

Soft as skin, you brush against me
with your breath,
and, with your sighs

Death
On A
Pale Horse

Painting by Joseph Turner

Infidel
Bloggers
Alliance

Just in case there are any CUANAS readers don't yet know, I actually spend much of my time these days at the Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Basically, CUANAS is about whatever is of interest to me.

Infidel Bloggers Alliance is precisely targeted anti-Jihad writing, including writers from America, Israel, Spain, Italy, the UK, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Lately, we have been focusing, for the most part, on the Cartoon Kerfluffle.

Go check it out. There are some good pics of Pamela and Salman Rushdie's girlfriend that are certainly worth the price of admission.

Jihadopussies:
Mohammed Cartoon
Controversy
Is
At Fever Pitch

The French Riots were torturous for me. It was like watching my girlfriend being raped.

This Mohammed controversy, is like watching my enemy forced to dance like a marionette. Oh, what a beautiful sight.

I have been waiting for this battle. I knew it had to come. But, I thought we would have to start it. Instead, they did it to themselves.

Jihadopussies worldwide are making fools of themselves. The Western public is, finally, getting to see what's under the mask. They are having a global temper tantrum the likes of which no one has ever seen before.

We really ought to join together and thank the Jihadopussies for doing themselves in like they this.

Sometimes you just gotta love your enemy.

Go here to see more.

Thursday, February 02, 2006

The Crossing

Will we make it?

Lexington Herald-Leader
Columnist Says
Israel
Deserves
To Be Nuked

What year is it? 1939? I don't understand the world I am living in anymore:

Somebody named Elaine Shiber, the smartest person from Van Lear since Loretta Lynn, catalogued in a Herald-Leader commentary some of the terrorist acts committed as Zionists weary of genocide took up horrors on a lesser scale to have a place to alight.

It takes courage, as Shiber did, to inquire as to whether the outrage your enemy harbors is justified or not, and it takes courage to challenge the idea of Israel, with charges of anti-Semitism being the standard recompense for so doing.

But when you read what she reported and know that 40 times that much happened at the hands of Israel, you know why no Arab can have a nuclear weapon. They could be morally justified in using it.

Is this a joke? Surely, this must be a joke.

Gary Busey
And Billy Zane
Star In
Anti-American,
Anti-Semitic
Turkish Blockbuster

This is too unbelievable for words:

ISTANBUL, Turkey (Feb. 2) - In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.

They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison - where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

"Valley of the Wolves Iraq" - set to open in Turkey on Friday - feeds off the increasingly negative feelings many Turks harbor toward their longtime NATO allies: Americans.

The movie, which reportedly cost some $10 million, is the latest in a new genre of popular culture that demonizes the United States. It comes on the heels of a novel called "Metal Storm" about a war between Turkey and the U.S., which has been a best seller for months.

One recent opinion poll revealed the depth of the hostility in Turkey toward Americans: 53 percent of Turks who responded to the 2005 Pew Global Attitudes survey associated Americans with the word "rude"; 70 percent with "violent"; 68 percent with "greedy"; and 57 percent with "immoral."

Advance tickets are already selling out across Turkey for the film, which has dialogue in Turkish, Arabic, Kurdish and English. In addition to Turkey, the film is set to be shown in more than a dozen other countries - including the United States, Britain, Germany, The Netherlands, Britain, Denmark, Russia, Egypt, Syria and Australia.

The movie's American stars are Billy Zane, who plays a self-professed "peacekeeper sent by God," and Gary Busey as the Jewish-American doctor.

U.S. soldiers have become hate figures in Muslim countries around the world after the unpopular war in Iraq. But here in Turkey, a personal grudge fuels the resentment.

Are Gary Busey and Billy Zane finished in Hollywood? Cuz, you know, Hollywood is controlled by the Jews, right?

Hell no. They'll be bigger than ever.

Palestinians
Want Peace
With Israel?

Jamal "Hitler" Roub [left] On His Way To Carry Out An Excecution

Well, according to a new poll, they do:

Nearly three-quarters of Palestinians want the newly elected Hamas movement to drop its call for the destruction of Israel.

This came in an opinion poll released by the Ram Allah-based Near East Consulting Institute on Monday. The survey also found that 84% of those surveyed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip want a peace agreement with Israel while 86% want Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian Authority president, to remain in his post.

.....Rather than indicate backing for Hamas's hard-line tactics, the survey found that 73% of respondents believed that Hamas should "change its position on the elimination of the state of Israel".

Not only did an overall 84% support a peace agreement with Israel, but 77% of Hamas voters also wanted a settlement.

Whatever. They vote for Hitler, and then say they want peace.

You shake that hand and a bomb will go off, I guarantee it.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Iran Is Playin' With The Big Boys

Iran says if we even dare to refer them to the Security Council, they will retaliate with "all means" at their disposal:

Iran's foreign minister yesterday threatened immediate retaliation over a move to refer its nuclear weapons activities to the United Nations security council in comments which deepen his country's confrontation with the international community.

In an interview with the Guardian - his first with western media - Manouchehr Mottaki accused the US of manufacturing the crisis and insisted there was still time to avoid a collision. But he warned that any military action by the US or Israel against Iran would have "severe consequences" and would be countered "by all means" at Iran's disposal.

Mr Mottaki, who was appointed by Iran's hardline president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in September, said Iranian retaliation would come "simultaneously" with any decision on referral by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, which meets in emergency session in Vienna today.

Israel, along with the US, has not ruled out air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities if diplomacy fails. "Iran does not think that the Zionist regime is in a condition to engage in such a dangerous venture and they know how severe the possible Iranian response will be to its possible audacity," Mr Mottaki said. "Suffice to say that the Zionist regime, if they attack, will regret it." That message was underscored yesterday by Iran's defence minister who said that any attack on Iran would bring "a crushing response".

Mr Mottaki said the US, even with 200,000 troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, was unable to impose its will on the region. "It would be better for President Bush to spend the second half of his presidency governing his country in a calmer manner." He urged Britain and other European countries to postpone a decision on UN referral until a scheduled meeting of the IAEA on March 6. "There's still time for our European friends to take a wise decision not to take wrong steps."

Them's some big words for a bunch of guys without nukes.

Sometimes
You Just
Gotta
Love Your Enemy

Hamas, because they always say what is on their minds, brings clarity to the, supposedly, tangled web of the Middle East Conflict. Here, in an interview with Media Line, the leader of Hamas, Mahmoud A-Zahhar, tells us the truth:

The Media Line: What is 'this land' that you are talking about? Are you talking about the whole of Israel?

A-Zahhar: I understand where you are headed, and I will answer you.

First of all this Palestinian land, and all the Arabic nation, is all part of the same area. In the past, there was no independent Palestinian state; there was no independent Jordanian state; and so on. There were regions called Iraq or Egypt, but they were all part of one country.

That is why it is not permitted to [agree to] establish separate countries, which was the case after the Sykes-Picot Agreement [1916].

Our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic. Therefore, it is not allowed to establish an Arabic state over the land of Palestine alone.

Also, remember this land is still occupied. To sum up, the Islamic and traditional views reject the notion of establishing an independent Palestinian state.

The European example is clear. Europe's history is filled with wars and blood. Its races are varied, its languages are varied, and nevertheless it established the European Union.

The Islamists' view, which Hamas adheres to, is that a great Muslim state must be established, with Palestine being a part of it. Within this state, Israel has no place - its history is different, its language is different, its religion is different, its culture is different, and its security and political affiliations are different.

This is the view of Hamas movement.

See what I mean? You gotta love your enemy, when he tells the truth.

Thanks, Mahmoud.

Thanks to J, from Justify This.

Religious
Hatred
Bill
Blocked
In Britain

This is very good news:

In a blow to Tony Blair's authority, MPs voted by 288 votes to 278 to back a key Lords amendment to the bill, which targets incitement to religious hatred.

The prime minister voted in the first division but not in the second, which was lost by one vote.

The bill was aimed at extending the concept of the UK's race hate laws to cover belief but critics said ministers' proposals would have made it too wide-reaching.

Heck yes, too far-reaching. The point was they were attempting to stop people from criticizing Islam. No religion ought to be above criticism, especially not a religion whose Holy scriptures call for war against the infidels and Jews.

Would you really want to live in a land where a guy can't take a picture of a Crucifix submerged in urine, and have it published in magazines and newspapers?

I wouldn't.

Either we believe in free speech, or we don't. There can be no compromise. And, we truly must resolve that we would fight to the death to protect the ugly, disgusting speech of others, even the Jihadis. Let them preach that we are subhuman, let them call Jews apes and pigs, let them call for the destruction of America. At least we will know where they stand.

(By the way, when they start making plans on how to carry out the destruction of America, that is the time throw them in jail.)

A society which does not allow free speech becomes a confused, double-minded society where no one is to be trusted. We can't afford that. It will impede progress, and make our lives miserable.

And, the only price we have to pay for our freedom of speech is to be insulted. That's a very small price to pay.

Women Sue
Wal-Mart
Because
They Don't
Provide
Abortions

8 Weeks

Listen, whatever your opinion on abortion, let's be honest, RU-486 is not a contraceptive. IT IS AN ABORTION:

BOSTON - Backed by abortion rights groups, three Massachusetts women sued Wal-Mart on Wednesday, accusing the retail giant of violating a state regulation by failing to stock emergency contraception pills in its pharmacies.

The lawsuit, filed in state court, seeks to force the company to carry the morning-after pill in its 44 Wal-Marts and four Sam Club stores in Massachusetts.

The plaintiffs argued that state policy requires pharmacies to provide all "commonly prescribed medicines."
Wal-Mart carries the morning-after pill in Illinois only, where it is required under state law, said Dan Fogleman, a spokesman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart.

Fogleman said the company "chooses not to carry many products for business reasons." He would not elaborate. But in a letter to a lawyer for the plaintiffs, a Wal-Mart attorney said the store chain does not regard the drug as "commonly prescribed."

The notion that a person (because Wal-Mart is owned and run by people) would be forced to provide abortions to other people is like something out of the Mafia. It's like they want Wal-Mart to "earn their bones."

These women who are suing Wal-Mart are the perfect examples of radical pro-abortionists. It's not enough for them to have access, everyone must participate with them.

They might as well be wearing face paint and dancing with spears around a fire in the dark, because these people are preparing sacrifices. Their agenda isn't just abortion. It's Moloch worship.

Good God.

Bush:
America
Will
Defend
Israel

Bush makes it clear:

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - President George W. Bush vowed on Wednesday the United States would defend Israel militarily if needed against Iran and denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for "menacing talk" against Israel.

In a Reuters interview aboard Air Force One en route to Nashville, Bush also said he saw a "very good chance" the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency would refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.

"I am concerned about a person that, one, tries to rewrite the history of the Holocaust, and two, has made it clear that his intentions are to destroy Israel," Bush said.

"Israel is a solid ally of the United States, we will rise to Israel's defense if need be. So this kind of menacing talk is disturbing. It's not only disturbing to the United States, it's disturbing for other countries in the world as well," he added.

Asked if he meant the United States would rise to Israel's defense militarily, Bush said: "You bet, we'll defend Israel."

Bush also said he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin about Iran and would not say how Putin feels about a Security Council referral. "He understands the threat, and we share the same goal," he said.

Bush said on Tuesday in his State of the Union speech that Iran is being "held hostage" by clerical leaders who repress their people.

Asked in the interview if he was calling for Iranians to rise up and overthrow the ruling government, Bush said: "Not at all. What I am saying is that ... the United States is very aware of their conditions and we recognize that liberty is universal and that we hope some day they will be in a position to have a democracy based upon Iranian customs and Iranian traditions."

Ahmadinejad
Is
Hopping
Mad
At Us

Can you hear me now?

And, he's not afraid to speak his mind:

TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's president lashed out Wednesday at the United States and vowed to resist the pressure of "bully countries" as European nations circulated a draft resolution urging that Tehran be brought before the U.N. Security Council for its nuclear activities.

In a speech to thousands of supporters hours after President Bush's State of the Union address, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad derided the United States as a "hollow superpower" that is "tainted with the blood of nations" and said Tehran would continue its nuclear program.

"Nuclear energy is our right, and we will resist until this right is fully realized," Ahmadinejad told the crowd in the southern Iran city of Bushehr, the site of Iran's only nuclear power plant.

"Our nation can't give in to the coercion of some bully countries who imagine they are the whole world and see themselves equal to the entire globe," he added.

The crowd responded with chants of "Nuclear energy is our right!"

And soon, it will be our right to bomb your nuclear facilities into a million pieces.

UPDATE: Commenter Christine makes a very good point:

Something that needs to be kept in mind. Nejad has not said he would do bad things after he is attacked. He has said he will do bad things if he is sent to the security council.

All of the talk about whether or not sanctions would work, may not matter much. Because, the way he is talking, sanctions won't have time to start.

Europe
Bitchslaps
Islamofascism

Newspapers across Europe are reprinting the Jyllands-Posten cartoons:

Newspapers across Europe have reprinted caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to show support for a Danish paper whose cartoons have sparked Muslim outrage. France Soir, Germany's Die Welt, La Stampa in Italy and El Periodico in Spain all carried some of the drawings.

Their publication in Denmark has led to protests in Arab nations, diplomatic sanctions and death threats.

Islamic tradition bans depictions of the Prophet, but media watchdogs defend press freedom to publish the images.

Reporters Without Borders said the reaction in the Arab world "betrays a lack of understanding" of press freedom as "an essential accomplishment of democracy."

France Soir said it had reprinted the full set to show that "religious dogma" had no place in a secular society.

Under the headline "Yes, we have the right to caricature God", the daily carried a front-page cartoon of Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim and Christian gods floating on a cloud. It shows the Christian deity saying:

"Don't complain, Muhammad, we've all been caricatured here."

Responding to France Soir's move, the French government said it supported press freedom - but added that beliefs and religions must be respected.

French Muslims spoke out against the pictures.

The president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), Dalil Boubakeur, described France Soir's move as an act of "real provocation towards the millions of Muslims living in France".

Theologian Sohaib Bencheikh said "one must find the borders between freedom of expression and freedom to protect the sacred".

"Unfortunately, the West has lost its sense of the sacred," he wrote in a column accompanying the cartoons in France Soir.

(Cue Beavis and Butthead doing wanking-off motion.)

The publication in Denmark of the images last September has provoked diplomatic sanctions and threats from Islamic militants across the Muslim world. Dozens of protesters from a small Islamic party demonstrated in front of the Danish embassy in Ankara on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.

Ministers from 17 Arab countries on Tuesday urged Denmark's government to punish Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the caricatures, for what they described as an "offence to Islam".

Thousands of Palestinians demonstrated this week in the Gaza Strip. Syria and Saudi Arabia have recalled their ambassadors to Denmark, while Libya said it was closing its embassy in Copenhagen and Iraq summoned the Danish envoy to condemn the cartoons.

The offices of Jyllands-Posten, had to be evacuated on Tuesday because of a bomb threat.

The paper had apologised a day earlier for causing offence to Muslims, although it maintained it was legal under Danish law to print them.

How about that? Jyllands-Posten apologizes and the next day there's a bomb threat. What does that tell you?

Let me say this, good job Europe. I have never been so proud to be a Westerner. We all owe Europe for this.

CUANAS