Myopic Thoughts

Quote Of The Day

2006-07-11T15:47:00.000-04:00

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert:

I don't know of one democratic country in the world, one, that would accept and do nothing when 1,000 missiles are shot at innocent civilians at the heart of the country. Some of those who preach to us would have done a lot more in a more brutal, vicious and cruel way.

(Via Roger L. Simon).

Watchdog Or Lapdog?

2006-07-09T23:41:00.000-04:00

Regime Change Iran posts a translation of a German article (from Die Welt) that reveals how Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, complied with an Iranian demand to ban the agency's chief inspector from Iran.

Inside countless memos and work reports, [Chris] Charlier notes the results of inspections and lists the tricks and deceptions of the Tehran rulers, which leads the inspectors in Vienna to a single conclusion: based on pieces of the puzzle gathered by Charlier, "Tehran is obviously making a bomb."

"For that he is now paying the price" says one of his colleagues. "El-Baradei has sacrificed Charlier and set him to counting paper clips in Vienna till he eventually retires".

The real reason is that in discussions with Mohammad El-Baradei, Charlier has always refused to close the Iran nuclear file and to absolve Tehran of effectively operating a military atomic program.

I'm Convinced

2006-07-07T22:13:00.000-04:00

The formula: Chicken wire + kerosene + newspaper + concrete slab + wingnut = Evidence for 9/11 conspiracy theory

(Via LGF).

Independence Day 2006

2006-07-04T10:53:00.000-04:00

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Media Watch

2006-06-28T12:17:00.000-04:00

This may be the most biased front page I've ever seen. (Via LGF).

The Roots Of Islamism

2006-06-27T22:17:00.000-04:00

Michael Gove has written a new book called Celsius 7/7. The Times has printed excerpts.

Islamists believe in the re-ordering of society to secure total submission to a narrow, puritan and fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. They are conducting a civil war within the Islamic world designed to overthrow existing regimes, which they consider to be unforgiveably apostate, and replace them with a single and unified Muslim state, the restored Caliphate. Islamists believe that the sanctity and culture of Muslim lands are menaced and defiled by Western influences, from capitalism to feminism, which have to be eradicated.

That cleansing process must be accomplished by suicidal violence, because, in the words of Islamism's most influential thinker, Sayyid Qutb, "the death of those who are killed for the cause of God gives more impetus to the cause, which continues to thrive on their blood."

The bloodshed should not stop at Islam's current borders. Not just because those nations which are unIslamic constitute dar-al Harb, the House of War, which constantly threatens the security of the Muslim world. But also because Islamists are driven by a divine mission to ensure the whole earth, in due course, learns to submit to Islamist rule.

...there is a wilful blindness among many in the West who refuse to acknowledge the totalitarian nature of the ideology which drives jihadi warriors. Even though the shelves of every Western bookshop sag under the weight of texts which record the cruelties and barbarism inflicted by totalitarianism in the twentieth century, there seems to be a remarkable reluctance to accept that totalitarian thinking could be behind contemporary cruelty and barbarism.

Instead Western commentators attribute Islamist violence to specific, discrete, grievances such as the presence of American troops on Saudi soil, the failure to establish an Arab Palestinian state or the material poverty of Arab peoples. In every case the blame for Islamist violence is laid at the door of the West, for failing to deliver "justice".

It is a remarkable commentary on the state of analytical thinking in the West that when faced with mass-murderers, who loudly proclaim the ideological basis of their actions and prophesy victory on the basis of Western weakness, Western thinkers respond by denying the ideological motivation of their attackers and instead blame the West for stoking grievances.

The belief that Islamist violence can be explained by these factors is as flawed as the belief in the 1930s that Nazi-ism could be understood as simply a response to the perceived injustices of the Versailles settlement which could be assuaged by re-uniting Sudeten Germans with their Bavarian cousins.

This should be a must-read for anyone who believes otherwise.

Quote Of The Day

2006-06-26T21:57:00.000-04:00

The latest dominant trait of the Muslims is victimhood. They think they are being persecuted and killed everywhere in the world. They want the world to take notice of this while the Muslims as a rule feel nothing about those outside the umma who suffer. The feeling of victimhood has something to do with the expatriate Muslims’ inability to integrate among host societies and their dissatisfaction with their own states.

--Khaled Ahmed, in the Daily Times (Pakistan)

NY Times Watch

2006-06-26T21:45:00.000-04:00

QandO has the best post that I've seen about the latest controversy surrounding the NY Times:

The media has a responsibility to the public it serves and that is to exercise the proper due diligence when weighing whether to publish a story it has unearthed. The ethical questions surrounding this incident seem pretty clear. Is it in the best interest of the public to know about a legal secret program underway to identify and stop the flow of money to terrorists simply because the potential for abuse exists? Or is it in the best interest of the public that the program remain secret and allow it to continue to protect that very same public from those who would harm them?

Also, there's a roundup at Pajamas Media.

Terrorist Sues British Government

2006-06-22T15:46:00.000-04:00

You just can't make up this kind of stuff:

A Palestinian terrorist leader held by Israel filed a lawsuit against the British government for pulling wardens out of a West Bank prison that was later stormed by Israeli forces, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Attorney Kate Maynard said she had filed papers on behalf of Ahmed Saadat alleging his human rights had been violated.

What an outrage.

Follow The (Oil) Money

2006-06-20T12:22:00.000-04:00

All Victor Davis Hanson is doing is stating the obvious, but are there leaders bold enough to take whatever actions are necessary?

Take away the $300-500 billion in windfall profits piled up in the coffers of the oil-exporting nations recently, and Hugo Chavez becomes just another spluttering Castro, hardly able to pay for his bankrupt populism in Venezuela, much less export it beyond his borders. Without petroleum largesse, Iran's Mohammed Ahmadinejad could afford neither a multi-billion-dollar nuclear weapons program nor costly subsidies for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Vladimir Putin's crackdown on capitalists, political freedom, and further Russian reforms comes only because he controls energy exports vital to the world economy.

Because of its dependency on Middle East gas and oil, Europe's high talk about human rights doesn't apply much to Arab extremists with energy-rich patrons in the Gulf. America is in a war against Islamic fascism, yet treads carefully around Saudi Arabia, despite the kingdomÍs subsidies to America-hating madrasahs. When poor oil-importing countries in Africa and Latin America make sacrifices to enact tough market reforms, their hard work only helps to enrich failed states like Iran, Libya, and Venezuela lucky enough to have an accidental resource beneath their feet that was found, exploited, and mostly purchased by the Westerners they demonize.

Briefly

2006-06-19T23:29:00.000-04:00

Winds of Change takes on Jim Moran.

Strategy Page looks at the state of the Palestinians.

Second Thoughts On The Gaza Beach Explosion

2006-06-19T23:23:00.000-04:00

Human Rights Watch is backing off from its claim that Israeli shelling was responsible for the deaths from an explosion at a Gaza beach:

While sticking to its demand for the establishment of an independent inquiry into a blast on a Gaza beach 10 days ago that killed seven Palestinian civilians, the Human Rights Watch conceded Monday night for the first time since the incident that it could not contradict the IDF's exonerating findings.

Unfortunately, the initial knee-jerk response to blame Israel cannot be rescinded, and I expect that we will eventually see what damage such a reaction can cause.

Thoughts On The Gaza Beach Explosion

2006-06-16T12:58:00.000-04:00

Charles Krauthammer:

Let's concede for the sake of argument that the question of whether it was an errant Israeli shell remains unresolved. But the obvious question not being asked is this: Who is to blame if Palestinians are setting up rocket launchers to attack Israel -- and placing them 400 yards from a beach crowded with Palestinian families on the Muslim Sabbath?

Answer: This is another example of the Palestinians' classic and cowardly human-shield tactic -- attacking innocent Israeli civilians while hiding behind innocent Palestinian civilians. For Palestinian terrorists -- and the Palestinian governments (both Fatah and Hamas) that allow them to operate unmolested -- it's a win-win: If their rockets aimed into Israeli towns kill innocent Jews, no one abroad notices and it's another success in the terrorist war against Israel. And if Israel's preventive and deterrent attacks on those rocket bases inadvertently kill Palestinian civilians, the iconic "Israeli massacre" picture makes the front page of the New York Times, and the Palestinians win the propaganda war.

But there is an even larger question not asked. Whether the rocket bases are near civilian beaches or in remote areas, why are the Gazans launching any rockets at Israel in the first place -- about 1,000 in the past year?

To get Israel to remove its settlers, end the occupation and let the Palestinians achieve dignity and independence? But Israel did exactly that in Gaza last year. It completely evacuated Gaza, dismantled all its military installations, removed its soldiers, destroyed all Israeli settlements and expelled all 7,000 Israeli settlers. Israel then declared the line that separates Israel from Gaza to be an international frontier. Gaza became the first independent Palestinian territory ever.

And what have the Palestinians done with this independence, this judenrein territory under the Palestinians' control? They have used their freedom to launch rockets at civilians in nearby Israeli towns.

Holiday In Afghanistan

2006-06-14T23:10:00.000-04:00

The NY Times provides a forum for a former detainee at Guantanamo Bay on its op-ed page.

In the early summer of 2001, when I was 19, I made the mistake of listening to my older brother and going to Afghanistan on what I thought was a dream vacation. His friends, he said, were going to look after me. They did — channeling me to what turned out to be a Qaeda training camp. For two months, I was there, trapped in the middle of the desert by fear and my own stupidity.

The writer, Mourad Benchellali, is from France. Who needs Paris, when you can go on a "dream vacation" in Afghanistan.

I was seized by the Pakistani Army while having tea at a mosque shortly after I managed to cross the border. A few days later I was delivered to the United States Army: although I didn't know it at the time, I was now labeled an "enemy combatant." It did not matter that I was no one's enemy and had never been on a battlefield, let alone fought or aimed a weapon at anyone.

Two months at a terrorist training camp, and suddenly everyone thinks you're a terrorist. How unfair.

Mr. Benchellali, who describes himself as a "quiet Muslim", faces charges in France for the time that he spent in the al-Qaeda camp. Do you wonder what this misunderstood man's family thinks about his travails? Well, they have problems of their own:

A court on Wednesday convicted 25 people for their roles in preparing an attack in France in support of Islamic fighters in Chechnya.

In handing down sentences, the court followed the prosecutor's office by giving the maximum 10-year term to the group's alleged chemicals expert, Menad Benchellali. However, Menad's father, Chellali Benchellali, an imam, or prayer leader, in the Lyon suburb of Venissieux, received only an 18-month suspended prison term -- far lower than the prosecution's demand for six years behind bars.

The court convicted 24 defendants of criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise, a broad charge used by France to sweep wide in bringing terror suspects to justice. One other was convicted of using false papers.

The Benchellali family was at the center of the case, with Menad's mother, Hafsa, and brother, Hafed, also on trial for roles in the plot to carry out an attack in France.

Is Mourad Benchellali the innocent man that he claims to be, or is he just a participant in the family business?

(Via Roger L. Simon).

A Question From Canada

2006-06-14T00:10:00.000-04:00

Canadians are looking more closely at their society in the aftermath of the recent arrests of jihadists in Ontario. They are asking the question: Is Islam a religion of peace?

The recent disruption of an alleged homegrown Islamist terror plot has caused many Canadians to ask: How can multiculturalism -- which preaches tolerance above all else -- be squared with a militant, intolerant creed that demonizes non-believers?

When the Koran is cited by Muslims in response to questions about violence, it is often discussed in such a way as to shut down a meaningful exploration of the text. One or two mild passages are usually offered, as if these fully represented the contents of a scripture containing 6,000-plus verses. But the Koran -- literally "recitation" -- is a collection of diverse materials that include polemic, praise, eschatology, law, narrative, battle calls, and details of the domestic life of the Prophet.

In particular, the sourcebooks contain a great deal of material relating to violence. This article reviews that small part of the material that is directly relevant to any debate about the link between Islam and terror: the commands to fight and kill.

Read it all.

Alberto's Devastation

2006-06-13T14:33:00.000-04:00

If you have been lucky enough the miss the media's overblown coverage of this season's first named storm, here is a special report from Glenn Reynolds, on location in Florida.

Media Watch-Deaths In Gaza

2006-06-12T23:53:00.000-04:00

1) Reuters:

Hamas fired rockets at Israel on Saturday, formally ending a 16-month-old truce, after seven Palestinians on a Gaza beach were killed by Israeli shelling.

Reuters definitively states that it was Israeli shelling that killed Palestinians, even though later in the article, the certainty of this statement is questioned. Of course, this serves to place blame on Israel for the act, as well as for the end of a non-existent Hamas truce.

2) AFP:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has expressed regret over the death of eight Palestinian civilians who were killed by shelling of a beach in the northern
Gaza Strip.

3) AP: Continue to blame Israel first, but later on, you see that more doubts are emerging.

Pounding on the sand, Houda Ghalia shrieked for her father after he was killed with five of her siblings at a seaside picnic by what Palestinians said was an Israeli shell.

Israel expressed regret Saturday for the killing of eight civilians, but stopped short of taking responsibility, saying an investigation was under way.

Israel's military chief said the killings may have resulted from a misfired Palestinian rocket. Palestinians insisted they were caused by an Israeli artillery shell.

4) Jerusalem Post:

The IDF probe investigating the deaths of seven Palestinian civilians, caused by an explosion on a beach in Gaza on Friday evening, concluded that chances were slim that the accident was caused by IDF shelling.

Aha. This article also presents evidence to support this conclusion. The claims in the other articles were based on hearsay and supposition.

Is this just bad journalism is it anti-Israel bias? Well, one other line from the AP article supports the latter:

Israel often fires artillery at Gaza, responding to Palestinian militants who launch homemade rockets at Israeli towns and villages.

Israel targets the terrorists who are responsible for firing rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas. However, is seems that AP wants you to think that Israel's anti-terror attacks are no different, and are not targeted any differently than Palestinian terror attacks.

As this story continues to develop, we'll see whether the wire services issue updates.

Update: The media is reporting the Israeli side of the story, although not is as much detail as the Jerusalem Post (link above).

LGF has more.

Update: Here is an excellent analysis from neo-neocon.

Quote Of The Day

2006-06-12T23:11:00.000-04:00

"When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I'm going to earmark the sh** out of it." --Democratic Congressman Jim Moran (Virginia's 8th district).

While Moran's seat in the House may be safe enough for him to make such idiotic statements, this doesn't seem like the best strategy for Democrats who hope to gain control of Congress. But what do I know; I'm only a swing-voter.

The Secret Is Out

2006-06-08T21:49:00.000-04:00

I've known about this for years.

Coulter Wars

2006-06-08T21:47:00.000-04:00

From Andrew Sullivan, Quote of the Day #2:

But the problem with Coulter is that she is a form of camp, is she not? The minute you take her seriously, you lose grip on her reality. She's not a social or political commentator. She's a drag queen impersonating a fascist. I don't even begin to believe she actually believes this stuff. It's post-modern performance-art. I think of Coulter in that sense as more at home on the pomo-left than the Christianist right (which is why the joke, ultimately, is on the Republicans who like her). Devoid of sincerity, detached from any value but performance, juggling rhetoric for its own sake, she is Stanley Fish's model student. Half the time, I tend to think that a Hannity or O'Reilly or Malkin actually believes their own rhetoric. With Coulter, I don't believe it for a second. And so her vileness cannot be taken seriously. She is worse than vile. She is just empty.

Just ignore her, and maybe she'll go away.

Hitchens On The Demise Of Zarqawi

2006-06-08T21:43:00.000-04:00

Quote of the Day #1:

If we had withdrawn from Iraq already, as the "peace" movement has been demanding, then one of the most revolting criminals of all time would have been able to claim that he forced us to do it. That would have catapulted Iraq into Stone Age collapse and instated a psychopathic killer as the greatest Muslim soldier since Saladin. As it is, the man is ignominiously dead and his dirty connections a lot closer to being fully exposed. This seems like a good day's work to me.

"Speculating is Strictly Forbidden —Violators Will be Fined"

2006-06-06T22:56:00.000-04:00

Michael Yon:

In the matter of Haditha, what we do know is that an investigation is underway. The results of that investigation have not been issued publicly and it is uncertain whether those results will include criminal charges. Because we have one of the only militaries on earth that actually investigates its own troops so openly, at the end of the day, we can and do hold our people to very high standards. Granted, in this case, apparently it took a media pry-bar to crack the lid, but we also have one of the only militaries in the world where a writer — even one who is flagrantly anti-military — can embed with combat troops.

Covering Terrorism the MSM Way

2006-06-05T21:28:00.000-04:00

After reading quite a few articles and blog posts about the Canadian terror arrests, I came across a column by Andrew C. McCarthy that echoed my own thoughts:

Instinctively, the mainstream media went into its now-familiar coverage template, Phase One of which avoids like the plague any mention of the fact that accused terrorists are Muslims.

As Cliff May and I noted here on NRO, and Roger Simon detailed on his website, readers of the New York Times were told that the 17 men arrested “represent the broad strata of our society … Some are students, some are employed, some are unemployed.” In point of fact, however, they represent a very narrow stratum of Canadian society: They are Muslims, many of whom attend the same mosque, the Al-Rahman Islamic Centre for Islamic Education in the Toronto suburb of Mississauga.

Not only were all those arrested Muslims. The reported evidence against them fits to a tee the shopworn pattern of Islamic terrorism repeated for much of the last two decades. Young men were radicalized at the local mosque and its companion school by elders preaching from the Koran. They participated in paramilitary training in rural outposts. The training involved firearms and communications equipment. The plotters may have conducted surveillance on specific targets. And they ordered prodigious amounts of explosives components—in this case, tons of fertilizer in preparation for the construction of crude but deadly effective ANFO (ammonium nitrate and fuel oil) bombs.

Read it all.

Update: A good example.

Protests Continue In Iran...

2006-06-04T23:52:00.000-04:00

...Mainstream media remains silent. Gateway Pundit is all over the story. Meanwhile, Judith Apter Klinghoffer covers the lack of coverage.

The State Of The Left

2006-06-04T23:04:00.000-04:00

Peter Beinart, making sense:

This horrible story from Haditha powerfully underscores the liberal vision, which is this. We are not angels: without sufficient moral and legal restrictions, and under conditions of extreme stress, Americans can be as barbaric as anyone. What's makes us an exceptional nation with the capacity to lead and inspire the world is our very recognition of that fact. We are capable of Hadithas and My Lais, so is everyone. But few societies are capable of acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again. That's how we show we are different from the jihadists. We don't just assert it. We prove it. That's the liberal version of American exceptionalism, and it's what we need right now in response to this horror.

Take a look at the comments to his post to see a lot of what is wrong with the American Left today.

Generic "Youths" Riot In France (Again)

2006-05-31T23:10:00.000-04:00

AP:

Youths torched a dozen cars and hurled stones at police in a second night of violence in the troubled Paris suburbs, raising memories of rioting that rocked the nation last year.

You can read the whole article, but don't expect to see the perpetrators identified except as "immigrants", and even that is in the next to last paragraph.

Quote Of The Day

2006-05-31T22:55:00.000-04:00

From Oriana Fallaci, who is profiled in the New Yorker:

I have always looked on disobedience toward the oppressive as the only way to use the miracle of having been born.

Major Terrorist Attack Thwarted By IDF

2006-05-29T12:27:00.000-04:00

Ynetnews:

During a nightly patrol soldiers from the Haruv regiment identified two Palestinian suspects moving on the road near the village of Burin,
south of Nablus. The troops called on the men to stop, and when they began escaping, chased after them. During the pursuit, the suspects dropped a bag.

The Palestinians were eventually apprehended and the bag, recovered by the soldiers, was found to be containing an explosive belt. Sappers were called in to the place and promptly dismantled the device.

An initial investigation revealed that one of the detained suspects was set to wear the explosive belt and detonate himself after reaching a location in central Israel.

Senior IDF officials told Ynet that the intelligence alert that led to the arrest is one of the most severe they have received so far. "This was a joint plan of the Islamic Jihad, Fatah and the Popular Front to carry out a large scale terror attack in Israel," an army source explained.

Riots In Iran

2006-05-29T12:06:00.000-04:00

Protests against Iran's regime have been taking place all over the country. So far, the mainstream media doesn't seem to think that these protests are important enough to cover. Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

The West Should Listen To Magdi Allam

2006-05-25T15:24:00.000-04:00

Magdi Allam is a native of Egypt who have lived in Italy for the past thirty years. He is a journalist and writer who has been an open critic of Islamic extremism. He has strong opinions about the West's response to the Islamist threat.

"The West thinks the Islamic terrorism that struck New York, London and Madrid is a reaction, a kind of uprising of the poor against the wealthy," he says in an interview with Haaretz. According to Allam, the West does not understand that it is facing an organized attack that is gradually gaining supporters around the world. Following September 11, he says, a new and dangerous front has emerged of Muslim radicals and extreme left- and right-wing elements that must be dealt with forcefully.

"My goal is to free the West from the nihilism that has spread in its midst, from the lack of values that leads to the growth of radical Islam," says Allam. "In the face of the threat from radical Islam, the West must be united and formulate a shared value system that sanctifies life and denounces the right to kill."

Read it all.

(Via Roger L. Simon).

Irony For The ACLU

2006-05-24T11:43:00.000-04:00

NY Times:

The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration.

I guess it could be worse. Some "civil liberties groups" have rather interesting connections.

Pet Peeve Of The Day

2006-05-22T23:11:00.000-04:00

Who doesn't hate this?

From Psyclone electronics cables encased in impenetrable layers of thick plastic to DigiPower camera batteries coated with packaging several times the size of the item itself, the hardest part of buying electronics these days is opening the products when you get them home. In many cases, it makes solving Halo 2 seem like a kindergarten project.

Repeat After Me: "The Saudis Are Not Our Friends"

2006-05-22T00:23:00.000-04:00

The Saudis have claimed to have made gains in removing the teaching of intolerance, and the demonization of non-Muslims from the kingdom's schools.

A year ago, an embassy spokesman declared: "We have reviewed our educational curriculums. We have removed materials that are inciteful or intolerant towards people of other faiths." The embassy is also distributing a 74-page review on curriculum reform to show that the textbooks have been moderated.

The problem is: These claims are not true.

A review of a sample of official Saudi textbooks for Islamic studies used during the current academic year reveals that, despite the Saudi government's statements to the contrary, an ideology of hatred toward Christians and Jews and Muslims who do not follow Wahhabi doctrine remains in this area of the public school system. The texts teach a dualistic vision, dividing the world into true believers of Islam (the "monotheists") and unbelievers (the "polytheists" and "infidels").

Sample passages from Saudi texts:

FIRST GRADE

" Every religion other than Islam is false."

TWELFTH GRADE

"Jihad in the path of God -- which consists of battling against unbelief, oppression, injustice, and those who perpetrate it -- is the summit of Islam. This religion arose through jihad and through jihad was its banner raised high. It is one of the noblest acts, which brings one closer to God, and one of the most magnificent acts of obedience to God."

See the full article for many more passages.

Update: Robert Spencer points to the Koran as the source of these passages, and sees this as a sign of a deeper problem than the Saudi educational system.

Just Don't Do It

2006-05-22T00:05:00.000-04:00

Oil-fueled prosperity meets medieval culture.

Under their modest flowing robes, two-thirds of Saudi women are too fat. They can try dieting, but you won't find many in aerobics classes or power-walking along this city's walking trails. And very few of their daughters attend schools that have physical education classes.

There are no laws against women exercising outside their homes, but in this conservative society many are influenced by scholars and clerics who argue against it.

Also, that's an interesting use of the term "conservative society".

Here We Go Again

2006-05-19T16:12:00.000-04:00

From Canada.com:

Iranian expatriates living in Canada yesterday confirmed reports that the Iranian parliament, called the Islamic Majlis, passed a law this week setting a dress code for all Iranians, requiring them to wear almost identical "standard Islamic garments."

The law, which must still be approved by Iran's "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenehi before being put into effect, also establishes special insignia to be worn by non-Muslims.

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth.

Update: This source claims that the story is untrue.

Headline Of The Day

2006-05-17T22:45:00.000-04:00

AP:

Mexico Threatens Suits Over Guard Patrols
Mexico warned Tuesday it would file lawsuits in U.S. courts if National Guard troops detain migrants on the border, and some officials said they fear the crackdown will force illegal crossers into more perilous areas to avoid detection.

Excuse us for trying to enforce our laws, and defend our borders. QandO has more.

The Betrayal of Ayaan Hirsi Ali

2006-05-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

Magnus Linklater in the Times:

FOR HER COURAGE, her honesty and her unflinching support of the rights of Muslim women, Ayaan Hirsi Ali deserves to be considered a heroine. A target for extremists throughout the Islamic world, her life is in constant danger. When, after the making of her film, Submission, its Dutch director, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered, she too found herself under sentence of death. Yet she has never held back from expressing her outspoken view that, in terms of subordinating women, repressing art and limiting freedom of speech, Islam is a backward religion. Controversial or not, she has a right to be heard. One might have imagined that the Netherlands, as a bastion of liberal values, would guarantee that right. Ms Hirsi Ali is a full citizen of the country and, until yesterday, was an elected member of the Dutch Parliament. She is entitled to expect the same kind of protection that Salman Rushdie once had in the years after the publication of Satanic Verses. Instead, she finds herself today abandoned by her political colleagues and forced into exile. She intends to go to America, where she has been offered work and where she will be given the security that she no longer has in the Netherlands.

Read it all.

Another Take On Illegal Immigration

2006-05-16T22:44:00.000-04:00

Here's an obvious point that you don't hear enough from the mainstream media:

Illegal immigration to the United States is "Mexico's disgrace," caused by the government's failure to create enough jobs, the country's leftist presidential candidate said on Tuesday.

Third Party Politics

2006-05-15T23:47:00.000-04:00

Dick Meyer imagines a third party with a slate of high-profile Senate candidates, and a ticket in 2008 of Michael Bloomberg and Anthony Zinni. This party will have no platform, but will have a core of pragmatism:

- hostile to budget deficits and billing our debts to our children;

- conservative when it comes to conserving and preserving the environment, safety, communities and social traditions;

- intolerant of not solving solvable, manmade problems like the lack of health care insurance and pensions;

- defensive, wary, not cocky, not very intellectual and sometimes humanitarian in its foreign policy;

- belligerent toward the custom of making hot button side issues (gay marriage, flag-burning, partial birth abortion, arts funding, a Spanish national anthem) the main issues; and

- intolerant of the practice of paying crooks with taxpayer dollars.

Freedom Of Expression In The EU

2006-05-14T22:27:00.000-04:00

Nick Cohen comments in the Guardian:

...Franco Frattini, the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, has already banned the use of the phrase 'Islamic terrorism' to describe Islamic terrorism. 'You cannot use the term "Islamic terrorism",' he insisted. 'People who commit suicide attacks or criminal activities on behalf of religion, Islamic religion or other religion, they abuse the name of this religion.'

I was brought up as a democratic socialist and abhorred the crimes committed in the name of the left. But I would always agree that Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were inspired by a version of socialism, just as the most liberal American Christian would accept that fundamentalists who bomb abortion clinics are inspired by a version of Christianity.

Yet the EU wishes to deny that political Islam inspires terrorists to blow up everything from mosques in Baghdad to tube trains in London, even when Islamist terrorists say explicitly that it does. You should always pay your enemies the compliment of taking them seriously. The EU can't understand what its enemies are saying, because it won't call them by their right name.

The Middle Class Vote

2006-05-11T20:42:00.000-04:00

Martin Frost:

Lots of people bemoan the fact that the Democratic Party does not connect with white middle class voters, but few of the complainers offer workable solutions.

Third-Way, a "center progressive" think tank made up of former Democratic Congressional and White House staffers, has now addressed this issue with some real insight.

Here are some of Third-way’s specific proposals:

(1) Get the nation’s fiscal house in order by controlling entitlement spending, reining in budget deficits and “holding the federal government to the same standards of efficiency and competitiveness that are demanded of the nation’s companies and workers.”

(2) Invest in infrastructure to create jobs of the future by investment in research and pure science and wiring the nation for advanced information technology.

(3) Help businesses keep jobs in America by containing health care costs, lifting some of the burden of retirement security off of business and punishing countries that use unfair trade tactics that harm American companies.

(4) Make college the goal of all young Americans by expanding the tax deductibility of college tuition for middle class parents.

(5) Provide all Americans with affordable health insurance in the form of “competition-based health care reform.”

The full study has lots more.

(Via Donklephant.)

More, Please

2006-05-09T22:43:00.000-04:00

Dr. Ahmed Abaddi is Morocco’s Director of Islamic Affairs and senior advisor to King Mohammed VI. Last week, he paid a visit to Washington.

Topping his agenda were under-the-radar peace talks with Israel, religious classes to teach Imams the history and virtues of the West, and dramatic new initiatives to build ties to Rabbis and evangelical Christians.

“We need our people to know the real West…to understand that the West ain’t no angel, but it ain’t no demon either,” Abaddi said, attempting a Western accent, at a private dinner in a Washington, D.C., suburb last week. “[This effort] is not a luxury. We are not being pressured to do it. We are trying to train responsible people to live in dangerous times.”

“Our world is threatening to destroy itself,” he noted, citing apocalyptic rhetoric coming out of Tehran, Iran’s nuclear program, radical Islamic terrorism, AIDS, and severe global poverty. “Morocco can help bring about peace. I think the Moroccan model is practical and helpful. It communicates an entirely different concept of Islam to the rest of the world….I personally can’t sit back and do nothing. After all, there is an Arab proverb that says, ‘Don’t be a mute Satan.’ I feel compelled to do everything I can to make a better world.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks At Harvard

2006-05-09T22:37:00.000-04:00

Miss Kelly has an excellent report on the event.

One business school student (Muslim male) asked "If Islam is so oppressive to women, how can you explain that Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia have had women prime ministers?" Her response to that was deadly: "In some Muslim countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, under sharia, women are forced to wear hijab, adulters are stoned (mostly women, not the men), daughters get half the inheritance that sons do, and a man can easily get a divorce, while it's very difficult for women to get divorced. In secular Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia, fundamentalist Islam is on the rise. Twenty years ago, Indonesian women did not go around in hijab, now it is commonplace. There is an attitude of denial in the face of a great deal of empirical evidence about the oppression of women. Anyone who denies this evidence is personally contributing to the subjugation of women." (That means YOU, Dude).

More Of The Same At The U.N.

2006-05-09T22:32:00.000-04:00

The new (and improved?) Human Rights Council replaces the old Human Rights Commission.

China, Cuba, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, countries cited by human rights groups as not deserving membership, were among the 47 nations elected to the council. But in a move hailed by the same groups, both Iran and Venezuela failed to attract the needed votes.

Is this progress? Maybe, for the U.N.

A Proposal For Reforming Islam

2006-05-07T22:39:00.000-04:00

MEMRI provides us with a translation of Algerian reformist Malek Chebel's 27 propositions for reforming Islam.

Robert Spencer comments.

Israel Foils Plot To Assassinate Abbas

2006-05-07T22:30:00.000-04:00

Times Online:

A Hamas plot to assassinate Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has been thwarted after he was tipped off by Israeli intelligence.

HamasÂs military wing, the Izza Din Al-Qassem, had planned to kill Abbas at his office in Gaza, intelligence sources said.

Of course, if Abbas had been killed, I wonder who would have been blamed?

Thoughts On Immigration

2006-05-03T23:42:00.000-04:00

Rick Moran takes on the Open Borders crowd:

I’ve had it with the smug, self-righteous group of immigration “reform” advocates who are calling those of us who support the rule of law over rule of politics “racists” and even (irony of ironies) “UN-American.” It reflects a towering intellectual dishonesty about the issue when your opponents feel free to distort the true nature of the opposition to illegal immigration by setting up so many strawmen that one would think the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz was on a self-replication binge, dotting the political landscape with enough copies of himself to populate a medium sized city.

The truth of the matter is that the Open Borders argument is political poison unless it is wrapped in the flag, buttressed by the politically correct buzzwords “tolerance” and “fairness” with a final appeal to pity by raising the specter of legal children being torn from illegal mothers by cruel, heartless, pro-enforcement monsters. This would all be bad enough. It is the attempt by this crowd to connect pro-enforcement advocates with neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical militiamen and the like that stinks of demagoguery and proves how truly mendacious the Open Borders groups can be.

Thoughts About Gas Prices

2006-05-03T23:35:00.000-04:00

Robert Samuelson explains "How We Got To $3 Gas," and Max Boot comments on the rising "dictatorship dividend."

A Life Sentence For Moussaui

2006-05-03T23:26:00.000-04:00

Roger L. Simon:

Even though I am almost always opposed to the death penalty, I cannot say I am pleased Zacarias Moussaoui has been given a life sentence. I am worried. I do not know or care if he is schizophrenic (as his defense said), but I do know the wannabe 9-11 murderer is infected by a virulent mental disorder that tells him mass terror actions and assaults on innocent people merit a place in paradise. As we all have seen, this particular mental disorder - Islamism - is highly communicable and results in megadeath. So Moussaoui must not be allowed to interact with his fellow prisoners in any way lest they be released after he has infected them with his homicidal mind-cult. I know some will find this some kind of suppression of his human rights, but the prison authorities should look at it as a public health measure. You wouldn't put someone with the Plague with the other prisoners either.

Another Threat

2006-05-03T00:03:00.000-04:00

AP:

Iran's first target would be Israel in any response to a U.S. attack, a Revolutionary Guards commander said Tuesday, reinforcing the Iranian president's past call for Israel to be "wiped off the map."

"We have announced that wherever (in Iran) America does make any mischief, the first place we target will be Israel," the Iranian Student News Agency quoted Gen. Mohammad Ebrahim Dehghani as saying.

Could anyone blame Israel for launching an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities?

So Long, Sami

2006-05-02T23:45:00.000-04:00

Sami Al-Arian, a former college professor in Florida, was arrested in February 2003. He was accused of providing support to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A six month trial resulted in Al-Arian being acquitted of eight charges. Nine other charges resulted in a hung jury.

Under a plea deal finalized last month, Al-Arian, 48, agreed to admit guilt and accept a possible sentence of 46 to 57 months and eventual deportation from America. Prosecutors agreed to join defense attorneys in recommending a sentence at the low end of the range, but the judge, James Moody Jr., ignored those suggestions and imposed the maximum sentence allowed by the plea bargain.

At a court hearing yesterday morning, Judge Moody coupled the tough sentence with a stinging verbal rebuke of Al-Arian. The judge scoffed at many of the explanations and defenses Al-Arian has offered since news reports emerged in the mid-1990s alleging that the computer science professor and his Islamic studies think tank had ties to terrorism. "You are a master manipulator. You looked your neighbors in the eyes and said you had nothing to do with Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This trial exposed that as a lie," Judge Moody said. "The evidence was clear in the this case that you were a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad."

Bad Medicine-S.1955

2006-04-30T23:52:00.000-04:00

Thirty-nine state attorneys general have urged U.S. Senators to oppose S. 1955

a bill that would dramatically change the health insurance marketplace by preempting state-mandated benefit coverage, gutting important state consumer protections and permitting insurance carriers to sue states that do not adopt the new federal standards.

[Illinois AG Lisa] Madigan said that while the bill was allegedly designed to help small businesses provide some form of health insurance to their employees, the bill actually would allow all types of insurance plans (individual, small group and large group) to offer bare-bones policies that do not include services that Illinois law currently requires, such as mammograms and other types of cancer screening, supplies necessary for diabetes management, access to specialists, care for newborns and adopted children, mental health treatment and other important healthcare safeguards.

According to Madigan, the bill would also preempt important state protections against unfair claims handling practices, potentially eliminating the right of Illinois HMO beneficiaries to an external, third-party review of a claim denial. Without these important protections, consumers would lose meaningful rights to contest unwarranted denials of insurance coverage and might not obtain benefits to which they are entitled.

I do have a personal interest here. I am a member of the American Optometric Association, which strongly opposes this bill. This bill would preempt states' "any willing provider" laws, which would limit the public's access to healthcare services.

This bill would be a gift to insurance companies. It would wipe out state laws that have been enacted to protect the public. S. 1955 is a Republican bill that would expand the power of the federal government at the expense of states' rights. Huh.

I urge everyone to contact their Senators and tell them to oppose S. 1955. It's a bad bill for healthcare consumers, and it could come to the Senate floor this week.

A Visit To The Border

2006-04-29T22:21:00.000-04:00

Michael Totten continues to show the mainstream media what real reporting is all about, as he travels to northern Israel; to the border with Hezbollah-occupied southern Lebanon.

“How dangerous is it here, really?” I asked the [IDF] lieutenant.

“I say this to my guys every morning: Everything could explode at any moment. Just after I said it this morning a bus load of pensioners showed up on a field trip. An old woman brought us some food. It’s crazy. They shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t be here.”

The Real George Allen?

2006-04-27T23:06:00.000-04:00

The New Republic profiles the Virginia Senator.

He tells reporters he is more like Ronald Reagan than George W. Bush. But it's not Bush from whom Allen ultimately needs to distance himself. There is a graveyard of old Allen personas--unpresidential personas, downright ugly ones--that could threaten his political ascendance. Even his authentic self--or, rather, the man described by his own family--might prove just as great a liability. His identity crisis has created the most intriguing duel of 2008: Before he runs for president, George Allen has to run against himself.

Desperate Times For Hamas

2006-04-27T15:08:00.000-04:00

Reuters:

The Hamas-led Palestinian government is weighing softening its stance toward
Israel to ease isolation but not without concessions from the Jewish state and the international community, Hamas officials said on Thursday.

They said ideas such as a 2002 Arab peace initiative, U.N. resolutions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Palestine Liberation Organization's national agenda -- all of which include recognition of Israel -- were on the table.

Does this mean that Hamas is going to be pragmatic and moderate its positions, or that it really needs foreign money?

One expert on Hamas said any softening would not involve a shift in ideology, but be a way to try to get Western aid restored to the
Palestinian Authority and heal a growing rift with President Mahmoud Abbas over government powers.

Question answered. Now, why do I think that this ploy will meet with at least some success?

Know Hope

2006-04-26T23:16:00.000-04:00

Michael Totten arrives in Tel Aviv:

Arab countries have a certain feel. They’re masculine, relaxed, worn around the edges, and slightly shady in a Sicilian mobster sort of way. Arabs are wonderfully and disarmingly charming. Israel felt brisk, modern, shiny, and confident. It looked rich, powerful, and explicitly Jewish. I knew I had been away from home a long time when being around Arabs and Muslims felt comfortably normal and Jews seemed exotic.

First impression are just that, though. They tend to be crazily out of whack and subject to almost instant revision. Israel, I would soon find out, is a lot more like the Arab and Muslim countries than it appears at first glance. It’s not at all a little fragment of the West that is somehow weirdly displaced and on the wrong continent. It’s Middle Eastern to the core, and it has more in common with Lebanon than anywhere else I have been. The politics and the history are different, of course. But once I got settled in Tel Aviv I didn’t feel like I had ventured far from Beirut at all.

Feeling Tired?

2006-04-26T00:17:00.000-04:00

The Glittering Eye is tired of many things:

I’m tired of Fortune 1000 CEO’s who make 100’s of millions of dollars when there’s not a doubt in my mind that an Indian CEO every bit as competent could be hired for a fraction of the cost.

I’m tired of companies like United and Ford where the employees hate their jobs while there are other companies (sometimes in the very same industries) like Southwest and Costco where the employees love theirs—even with lower salaries.

I’m tired of our leaders making nice with the cliques of thugs running the most horrible countries in the world because they think there might be a buck in it for an American company somewhere.

I’m tired of false equivalences. Neither we nor our government are as bad as the mullahs in Iran or the religious police in Saudi or the gangsters in the Chinese Politburo. George Bush has lots of shortcomings (where do I begin?). But he’s not a Hitler or a Kim Jong-Il and claiming he is just makes me angry. And tired. Clinton wasn’t as bad as his detractors made out, either.

(Via Donklephant).

Gas Pains

2006-04-24T23:02:00.000-04:00

Word Around The Net has a thorough post that is worth reading.

Once A Fascist...

2006-04-24T22:58:00.000-04:00

David Myatt, British neo-Nazi, becomes Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt, British jihadist:

“I spent several decades of my life fighting for what I regarded as my people, my race and my nation, and endured two terms of imprisonment arising out of my political activities.”

But his belief is now that: “The pure authentic Islam of the revival, which recognises practical jihad (holy war) as a duty, is the only force that is capable of fighting and destroying the dishonour, the arrogance, the materialism of the West . . . For the West, nothing is sacred, except perhaps Zionists, Zionism, the hoax of the so-called Holocaust, and the idols which the West and its lackeys worship, or pretend to worship, such as democracy.

“They want, and demand, that we abandon the purity of authentic Islam and either bow down before them and their idols, or accept the tame, secularised, so-called Islam which they and their apostate lackeys have created.

“This may well be a long war, of decades or more — and we Muslims have to plan accordingly. We must affirm practical jihad — to take part in the fight to free our lands from the kuffar (unbelievers). Jihad is our duty.”

Still Avoiding The "T" Word

2006-04-21T23:52:00.000-04:00

It's business as usual from Reuters:

The Transportation Security Administration has warned aircraft owners and airport managers that Muslim extremists may be targeting private American jets and urged them to boost security.

"On April 13, 2006, a message posted in Arabic on an Internet forum explained how to identify private American jets and urged Muslims to destroy all such aircraft," the TSA said in an advisory issued on Thursday and obtained by Reuters on Friday.

If "extremists" destroy airplanes, and possibly use them as weapons, then what do terrorists do?

Media Watch-ABC

2006-04-21T23:38:00.000-04:00

Do these people actually believe the garbage that they write? The sub-headline on an ABC article reads:

Lack of Funds and Support May Force Hamas to Return to Violent Ways

Is the writer suggesting that giving terrorists money will prevent them from being violent? If there is any doubt which side this writer is on, there is this:

For the last three weeks the IDF has fired about 4000 shells into Gaza in attempts to stop a handful of militants from firing the Qassams (homemade rockets that are mostly inaccurate) into Israel. (The last Israeli to be killed by a Qassam was in August 2005).

IDF shelling and other 'operations' have resulted in 30 Palestinian deaths, not including six children who were also killed. About 130 other Palestinians have been injured.

Just what is this supposed to mean? Should rocket attacks be ignored, because the weapons are inaccurate? Should Israel respond in kind, rather than using the forces at its disposal to strike back when attacked? I'd like to suggest to the writer that if the Palestinians stopped firing rockets into Israel, than just maybe the Israelis would stop their shelling. This is a pathetic attempt to blame the victim for fighting back. Nope, no bias at ABC.

Death And Defiance In Iraq

2006-04-19T23:05:00.000-04:00

Mohammed at Iraq the Model has lost a family member to the violence plaguing his country.

The terrorists and criminals are targeting all elements of life and they target anyone who wants to do something good for this country…They think by assassinating one of us they could deter us from going forward but will never succeed, they can delay us for years but we will never go back and abandon our dream.
We have vowed to follow the steps of our true martyrs and we will raise the new generation to continue the march, these children of today are the hope and the future.

Insanity At The Boston Globe

2006-04-18T21:40:00.000-04:00

An editorial in the Boston Globe has this to say about yesterday's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv:

It is in the nature of a vendetta that both sides try to justify as retaliation acts that otherwise would stand as sheer murder. The code of the blood feud assumes that every member of the enemy's camp may be slain in the name of avenging the honor of one's own clan, tribe, or nation. Whether innocent civilians are murdered by states, by their proxies, or by stateless terrorist groups, the threat is the same. The murders rip away at the civilized conventions that protect the innocent.

Does this in any way describe both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

The Purple Party

2006-04-18T21:20:00.000-04:00

Is it time for a new political party?

Why can’t we have a serious, innovative, truth-telling, pragmatic party without any of the baggage of the Democrats and Republicans? A real and enduring party built around a coherent set of ideas and sensibility—neither a shell created for a single charismatic candidate like George Wallace or Ross Perot, nor a protest party like the Greens or Libertarians, with no hope of ever getting more than a few million votes in a presidential election. A party that plausibly aspires to be not a third party but the third party—to winning, and governing.

Let the present, long-running duopoly of the Republicans and Democrats end. Let the invigorating and truly democratic partisan flux of the American republic’s first century return. Let there be a more or less pacifist, anti-business, protectionist Democratic Party on the left, and an anti-science, Christianist, unapologetically greedy Republican Party on the right—and a robust new independent party of passionately practical progressives in the middle.

The (November) Contest

2006-04-17T23:43:00.000-04:00

David Sirota on Democratic strategy:

For the first time in more than a decade, Democrats seem to have a shot at taking back Congress. But also for the first time in recent history, Congress is on the cusp of switching hands without a voter mandate. How is that possible? Because Democrats are only in the hunt thanks to gross Republican missteps--and they are going out of their way to make sure their potential election to the majority is about nothing. Call it the Seinfeld strategy.

Could You Blame Them?

2006-04-15T00:08:00.000-04:00

The likelihood of American military action against Iran in order to prevent that country from producing nuclear weapons is currently a popular topic for discussion. An attack by Israel may be more likely, especially considering these latest comments from Iran's president:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Israel a "permanent threat" to the Middle East that will "soon" be liberated. He also appeared to again question whether the Holocaust really happened.

"Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation," Ahmadinejad said at the opening of a conference in support of the Palestinians. "The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm."

In a just world, this maniac would be condemned by the U.N. and by leaders all over the world. An Israeli response, whenever it might occur, would be fully justified by this blatant threat, which is not the first made by Ahmadinejad. Of course, in the world we actually live in, Israel would be condemned for an attack which might just be necessary for its survival.

In the fantasy world that Reuters inhabits,

the tone of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech was slightly more moderate than fiery rhetoric last year, when Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling a conference: "Israel must be wiped off the map."

Sinking Perceptions Of Islam

2006-04-14T11:21:00.000-04:00

A CBS News poll reveals that only 19% of Americans have a favorable impression of Islam. That number was 30% in 2002. The CBS article about this poll has a curious first sentence (upcoming emphasis is mine):

Although Americans believe they are better informed about Islam than they were five years ago, a new CBS News poll finds fewer than one in five say their impression of the religion is favorable.

That's a big "although". Is CBS making an editorial comment that the American public's impression of Islam is mistaken, and due to a lack of information? Maybe they believe we are misinformed.

Is it possible that so many Americans have an unfavorable opinion about Islam because they really are better informed?

(Via LGF).

Seder Too Long?

2006-04-11T21:49:00.000-04:00

Michael Rubiner gives us a quickie service for Passover.

The story of Passover: It's a long time ago. We're slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh is a nightmare. We cry out for help. God brings plagues upon the Egyptians. We escape, bake some matzoh. God parts the Red Sea. We make it through; the Egyptians aren't so lucky. We wander 40 years in the desert, eat manna, get the Torah, wind up in Israel, get a new temple, enjoy several years without being persecuted again. (Let brisket cool now.)

Dutch Think Tank: Embrace Islam

2006-04-11T21:45:00.000-04:00

Amazing. Jan Schoonenboom is a researcher for the Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR).

According to Schoonenboom "we should not be so spastic about the Sharia." It may be that the system leads to corporal punishment in countries like Saudi Arabia and Sudan, "but under the Sharia in Morocco, family law has been reformed, very much to the advantage of women's rights." The Sharia for Muslims is comparable to the Ten Commandments for Christians, in the researcher's view. "It is God's plan for human nature."

Schoonenboom advises "an adventurous foreign policy" for the Dutch government. "We must support the moderate Islamic powers much more, such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Hezbollah in Lebanon, instead of secular movements without prospects in Muslim countries. We must talk to the Palestinian regime of Hamas. They are democratically elected. It is a terrorist movement, but so was Arafat's PLO. And the IRA in Ireland."

Schoonenboom denies that the WRR report is naive. It is a reaction of "a real fear of dangerous developments. Do we want to go on living in a land that is plagued by fear of attacks?

No, it's much better to surrender to fascists.

(Via LGF).

The Hersh Story On Plans For War With Iran

2006-04-10T23:03:00.000-04:00

Joe Gandelman has a comprehensive roundup along with his own opinions on this big story.

John Kerry Speaks

2006-04-10T14:51:00.000-04:00

It may have been a bad idea, at least according to Martin Peretz:

Kerry asserted that "the Koran, the Torah, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles had influenced a social conscience that he exercised in politics." My God, what bullshit politicians feel obliged to utter! Or maybe the bullshit is already second nature, or even first. But since Kerry raised it, let me ask: What hadith of the Prophet influenced him the most, and why?

Memories Of Guantanamo

2006-04-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

Teenagers who were released from Guantanamo Bay have fond memories:

Tracked down to his remote village in south-eastern Afghanistan, Naqibullah has memories of Guantanamo that are almost identical to Asadullah's. Prison life was good, he said shyly, nervous to be receiving a foreigner to his family's mud-fortress home.

The food in the camp was delicious, the teaching was excellent, and his warders were kind. "Americans are good people, they were always friendly, I don't have anything against them," he said. "If my father didn't need me, I would want to live in America."

Asadullah is even more sure of this. "Americans are great people, better than anyone else," he said, when found at his elder brother's tiny fruit and nut shop in a muddy backstreet of Kabul. "Americans are polite and friendly when you speak to them. They are not rude like Afghans. If I could be anywhere, I would be in America. I would like to be a doctor, an engineer _ or an American soldier."

Thoughts On Iraq

2006-04-06T20:50:00.000-04:00

Thomas P.M. Barnett has some.

Saying we “lost the war” in Iraq is simply saying “I want a return to the old days of the Powell Doctrine,” which only got us 9/11 and the rising Occidentalism of the Salafis who think American “staying power” is defined by helicopters fleeing over the horizon with their tail rotors between their legs.

Read it all.

Imperial Ambitions

2006-04-04T23:22:00.000-04:00

This is a must read. Efraim Karsh gives a history lesson on Islam and its empire-builders.

NBC Preparing NASCAR Sting

2006-04-04T22:58:00.000-04:00

Michelle Malkin has the full story. It appears that NBC's Dateline is looking for Muslims to send to a NASCAR event in order to uncover anti-Muslim sentiment.

AP Bias Against The NY Mets?

2006-04-03T23:02:00.000-04:00

Stay with me here. Here are two AP headlines from opening day:

1. Mets Get Break, Wagner Gets Save in Win
Okay, so the Mets only won because of a bad call by an umpire. In additon, they needed the game to be saved.

2. Braves Begin Title Quest by Beating L.A.
Here's an overwhelmingly postive headline about the Braves. Of course, you have to read a bit into the article to find out that the Braves had an 11-5 lead, and had to hang on to win 11-10.

This is an outrage!

Trashing The Koran

2006-04-03T22:52:00.000-04:00

A European restaurant manager working in Bahrain has fled the country after accidentally throwing away copies of translations of the Koran.

A lawsuit against the manager has been filed by MP Mohammed Khalid Mohammed at the Public Prosecutor, which issued a warrant for his arrest.

Shaikh Mohammed said that Interpol should bring the manager to justice like any other criminal.
"I don't care where this manager is, the only thing that matters is for him to be brought back to the country to face the punishment he deserves," he said.

"This is a serious matter and the government shouldn't rest until this man is punished.

"He should have been arrested a long time ago, but everyone knows about the bureaucracy in this country.

"This person has made a mockery of Muslims and Islam and should get the severest punishment possible, but first he should be brought back.

"I am very angry and I will not breathe a sigh of relief until he is behind bars."

Women And Islam

2006-04-03T14:37:00.000-04:00

Dr. Sanity:

I have said it before and I will say it again here: the treatment of women under Islam is not only the key to understanding the pathology of the culture, but also the key to developing an antidote to its most poisonous and toxic elements. Unveiling the women of Islam and eliminating their second-class status; empowering them in the oppressive Islamic countries where their individuality and self-expression has been crushed-- may cause a ripple effect that could eventually alter a family structure that currently encourages the development of generation after generation of dysfunctional and pathological men and women.

This Is Hamas

2006-04-02T23:29:00.000-04:00

Jerusalem Post:

Newly-installed Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar on Sunday reiterated Hamas's desire to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic state.

"I dream of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it," Zahar said in the interview. "I hope that our dream to have our independent state on all historic Palestine (will materialize)."

This dream, he added, "will become real one day. I'm certain of this because there is no place for the state of Israel on this land."

Thoughts On Cynthia McKinney

2006-04-01T17:47:00.000-05:00

The circus that has followed Cynthia McKinney's little problem with the Capitol Police is, unfortunately, not at all surprising. Her supporters, mostly on the fringe of the left, rally around her and cry racism. The right excoriates her in a way that borders on racism (and sometimes crosses that border). McKinney's history does little to support her case, and it's good to see that some on the left recognize this:

I'm sorry, but what a pitiful excuse for a Democrat. Yes, let's cry racism and sexism and Democratism, I guess you'd call it, because a cop didn't recognize you and you decided to not even wear your member of Congress pin, or turn around when the cop called out to you while we're at war. Next time, it'll be better if the cop lets strangers without their pins just barge into the halls of Congress, bypass security, and oh blow the hell out of the entire building because they're afraid the person they stop might be - what? - a Democrat?

Like I said, the only thing more pathetic than McKinney is that NOW and the NAACP would lower themselves to attend this ridiculous farce of a press conference. Have they nothing better to do than pander to someone who belittles legitimate concerns about race and gender and political bias?

Pathetic liberal groups, and pathetic Democratic members of Congress. Their funders should cut them all off until they prove the worth of their continued existence.

They're Only Dead Jews

2006-03-31T14:28:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, a Palestinian suicide bomber killed four Israelis. Every media account that I've seen, except for those from Israel, said nothing more about the victims. Just about every article did identify the killer. Why does there always seem to be more of a focus on the murderer rather than on the murdered, when it is Israelis being killed?

Thankfully, we have the Jerusalem Post:

Two of the four Israelis killed included an elderly couple - Rafi and Helena Halevy - who lived in the settlement for 20 years. Their funeral was scheduled to be held in Kedumim on Sunday. They are survivied by their four children, one of whom is a Lieutenant Colonel in the IDF.

Another victim was Reut Feldman, a 20-year-old youth from Herzliya who volunteered for national service in Kedumim. Her funeral was conducted in Herzliya on Friday afternoon.

Israel Radio reported that Feldman was on her way from a course in Ra'anana back to Kedumim to work a night shift in the West Bank town, when she was killed by the suicide bomber.

Feldman's aunt revealed that Reut's mother objected to the youth's request to extend her national service by an additional year, for fear of terrorist attacks. Reut's friends told Israel Radio that several months ago she brought her family great pride when she identified a terrorist on his way to perform an attack on Kedumim.

The fourth victim was Kedumim resident, 16-year-old Shaked Laskar. His funeral ceremony took place in the settlement on Friday afternoon.

Follow the link for pictures of the victims. I doubt that you'll find them anywhere else.

Appeasing Fascists

2006-03-30T14:10:00.000-05:00

AP:

Borders and Waldenbooks stores will not stock the April-May issue of Free Inquiry magazine because it contains cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that provoked deadly protests among Muslims in several countries.

"For us, the safety and security of our customers and employees is a top priority, and we believe that carrying this issue could challenge that priority," Borders Group Inc. spokeswoman Beth Bingham said Wednesday.

In other words, the threat of violence trumps freedom of expression. Once again, the message is sent that threats work.

An employee at a Borders store sent an e-mail to LGF:

I was shifting rows of books in our religion section and it happened to be that all of our Koran books (a section on its own) ended up on the bottom shelf. The next day I was informed by my General Manager that it is Borders policy as a whole (not my particular store) that due to complaints in the past from Muslim customers, we are not allowed to put our copies of the Koran on any shelf other than the top.

When I heard of this I became so infuriated that the company I work for (and I do love working for it) has caved in to Islamic pressure and is still continuing to do so. I love my job and my company but it does deeply disturb me to see what is happening to it.

Update: Robert Bidinotto posts an open letter to Borders.

Questions About Islam

2006-03-28T23:08:00.000-05:00

This column from Investor's Business Daily has been making the rounds today, and for good reason.

What better time for CAIR and other Muslim leaders to step up, cut through the politically correct fog and provide factual answers to the questions that give so many non-Muslims pause?

Generally speaking, those questions focus on whether the Quran does indeed promote violence against non-Muslims, and how many of the terrorists' ideas — about the violent jihad, the self-immolation, the kidnappings, even the beheadings — come right out of the text? But even more specifically:

Is Islam the only religion with a doctrine, theology and legal system that mandates warfare against unbelievers?

Is it true that 26 chapters of the Quran deal with jihad, a fight able-bodied believers are obligated to join (Surah 2:216), and that the text orders Muslims to "instill terror into the hearts of the unbeliever" and to "smite above their necks" (8:12)?

Is the "test" of loyalty to Allah not good acts or faith in general, but martyrdom that results from fighting unbelievers (47:4) — the only assurance of salvation in Islam (4:74; 9:111)?

Are the sins of any Muslim who becomes a martyr forgiven by the very act of being slain while slaying the unbelievers (4:96)?

And is it really true that martyrs are rewarded with virgins, among other carnal delights, in Paradise (38:51, 55:56; 55:76; 56:22)?

Are those unable to do jihad — such as women or the elderly — required to give "asylum and aid" to those who do fight unbelievers in the cause of Allah (8:74)?

Does Islam advocate expansion by force? And is the final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, to conquer the world in the name of Islam (9:29)?

Is Islam the only religion that does not teach the Golden Rule (48:29)? Does the Quran instead teach violence and hatred against non-Muslims, specifically Jews and Christians (5:50)?

There are other questions, but these should do for a start. If the answers are "yes," then at least Americans will know there's no such thing as moderate Islam, even as they trust that there are moderate Muslims who do not act out on its violent commands.

Quote of the Day

2006-03-28T12:52:00.000-05:00

From Hamas member, and member of the Palestinian parliament, Hamed Bitawi: "The Koran is our constitution, Jihad is our way, and death for the sake of God is our highest aspiration."

More On The Yale Taliban

2006-03-27T16:07:00.000-05:00

Malalai Joya, a female member of the Afghan parliament, spoke at Yale last Thursday. She had plenty to say about the school enrolling a former Taliban official.

"All should raise their voice against such criminals," she told a crowd of 200. "It is an unforgivable insult to the Afghan people that he is here. He should face a court of law rather than be at one of your finest universities." The Yale Daily News reported that the large attendance at her speech showed that the former Taliban official "continues to be widely controversial." Last night the Yale College Council, the undergraduate student government, began debating a resolution urging the university's administration not to admit Mr. Hashemi as a regular sophomore in the fall.

The Case Of The Afghan Convert

2006-03-24T23:11:00.000-05:00

NY Times:

Afghan clerics used Friday Prayers at mosques across the capital to call for death for an Afghan man who converted to Christianity, despite widespread protest in the West.

The case had fueled feelings among many here of a sense of assault against Islam worldwide...

Dr. Mohammad Ayaz Niyazi, an Egyptian educated in Islamic law, who attended one of the gatherings today, said, "There have been serial attacks on the Islamic world recently, starting with insulting the Holy Koran Quran, insulting the prophet of Islam, and now converting to Christianity by an Afghan."

Eugene Volokh:

Trying to prevent people from being killed for their religious beliefs is not an "assault against Islam." It's defense against Islam, or to be precise against a certain strand of Islam that regrettably cannot be dismissed as just some unimportant lunatic fringe.

The Yale Taliban

2006-03-24T11:09:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted before about Ramatullah Hashemi, the former Taliban spokesman, who is now a student at Yale. If Yale wasn't looking bad already, this makes it look worse:

A statement from Yale University, defending its decision to admit former Taliban spokesman Ramatullah Hashemi, explained that he had "escaped the wreckage of Afghanistan." To anyone who is aware of the Taliban's barbaric treatment of the Afghan people, such words are offensive--as if Mr. Hashemi were not himself part of the wrecking crew. It is even more disturbing to learn that, while Mr. Hashemi sailed through Yale's admissions process, the school turned down the opportunity to enroll women who really did escape the wreckage of Afghanistan.

In 2002, Yale received a letter from Paula Nirschel, the founder of the Initiative to Educate Afghan Women. The purpose of the organization, begun in that year, was to match young women in post-Taliban Afghanistan to U.S. colleges, where they could pursue a degree. Ms. Nirschel asked Yale if it wanted to award a spot in its next entering class to an Afghan woman. Yale declined.

Hamas Will Not Arrest Terrorists

2006-03-24T11:03:00.000-05:00

Do they get points for being honest?

Incoming Palestinian interior minister Said Seyam, chosen by Hamas to oversee three security services, said on Thursday he will not order the arrest of militants carrying out attacks against Israel.

"The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation," Seyam told Reuters in an interview. "The file of political detention must be closed."

Well, honest to a degree, since "resisting the occupation" includes killing women and children.

A "Moderate Cleric" Speaks Out

2006-03-23T23:28:00.000-05:00

Jerusalem Post (AP):

Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that an Afghan man on trial for converting from Islam to Christianity should be killed regardless of whether a court decides to free him.

Diplomats say the Afghan government is searching for a way to drop the case, and on Wednesday authorities said Rahman is suspected of being mentally ill and would undergo psychological examinations to see whether he is fit to stand trial.

Senior Muslim clerics said Thursday that Rahman must be executed and if the government caves into Western pressure and frees him they will incite people to "pull him into pieces." Four senior clerics interviewed by The Associated Press in their mosques in Kabul agreed Rahman deserved to be killed for his conversion.

"He is not crazy. He went in front of the media and confessed to being a Christian," said Hamidullah, chief cleric at Haji Yacob Mosque.

"The government is scared of the international community. But the people will kill him if he is freed."

"He is not mad. The government is playing games. The people will not be fooled," said Abdul Raoulf, cleric at Herati Mosque. "This is humiliating for Islam. ... Cut off his head."

Raoulf is considered a moderate cleric in Afghanistan.

Media Watch 2

2006-03-23T14:37:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or is this a completely inappropriate comparison?

The strong Western response to a threatened death sentence for an Afghan convert to Christianity looks something like a mirror image of the Muslim reaction to the Prophet Mohammad caricatures printed in the European press.

There have been no riots or sackings of Afghan embassies, unlike the violence that marked the uproar in Muslim countries after the Danish cartoons were published, but the shock and mutual incomprehension expressed in both cases are similar.

The subtext is that there is a clash of cultures. Is that all it is, or is it a struggle between freedom and tyranny? We in the West believe in freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, etc. Islamism is anathema to our beliefs. All belief systems are not morally equivalent. Nazism was not just another belief system as worthy as consideration as any other. It was wrong; it was evil. Islamism fits the same mold. It is today's fascism.

Update: As Matthew M. says in the comments, a new version of this article has appeared:

Western political leaders and the media have reacted with mounting indignation to the news that a Kabul court threatened to impose the death sentence on an Afghan man who abandoned Islam and coverted to Christianity.

Two months ago, political and religious leaders in the Muslim world were rounding on Western European media and governments for printing and defending caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that they considered blasphemous.

The cases are clearly different. Western leaders from President George W. Bush down have spoken up to save the life of a man whose religious freedom is a universal human right which his judges say is secondary to Islamic law.

In the cartoons case, demonstrators sacked Western embassies in Damascus and Beirut, lives were lost in unrest and Muslim leaders demanded apologies and curbs on Western press freedom.

Interesting.

Media Watch

2006-03-23T13:08:00.000-05:00

Did AP make a mistake by referring to Kadima party members as "militants" or are they really equating centrists with these folks?

(Via Israellycool).

NY Times Watch

2006-03-22T23:27:00.000-05:00

I wonder what Nicholas Kristof thinks about this? (I'd link to one of his columns about the Darfur genocide, but he is kept behind the wonderful Times Select firewall). The NY Times has accepted

an eight-page advertising insert singing the praises of the government of the African nation [Sudan], which is widely considered responsible for genocide against its own citizens. The supplement lauds Sudan for facing a “peaceful, prosperous and democratic future,” and, according to felixsalmon.com criticizes the media for being “focused almost exclusively on the fighting between rebels and Arab militias.”

Headlines

2006-03-22T23:19:00.000-05:00

Here's one from last Sunday:

Bush Marks Anniversary, Never Says 'War'

From the article:

President Bush marked the anniversary of the
Iraq war Sunday by touting the efforts to build democracy there and avoiding any mention of the daily violence that rages three years after he ordered an invasion.

The president didn't utter the word "war."

My inclination after reading this is to ask, "So?" Callimachus delves deeper.

Next up is the Headline of the Day:

Clinton vows to block bill criminalizing illegal immigrants

You gotta love it.

Looking Back On Iraq

2006-03-21T14:00:00.000-05:00

Andrew Sullivan provides some thoughts on the inadequacies of the administration:

I still find baffling the enormous gap between the stakes the president enunciated and the casual, on-the-fly, on-the-cheap way in which this war was waged. I can see why it might provoke conspiracy theories and paranoia. I have come to the provisional conclusion that it is a function of the president himself. He is interested in the grand idea but utterly bored by its execution. He is also incapable of good management. The more you read about the screwing up of Iraq, the more you see that a lot of it was due to internal administration squabbles that the president was unwilling or too personally uncomfortable to resolve. He seems terribly awkward in the face of complexity and difficulty, of grappling with his own errors, as if he can simply will them away, rather than actually grapple with them.

Then, he illustrates the failings of Democrats:

I found out that John Kerry focus-grouped the question of whether he should bring up Bush's legalization of torture in the presidential debates.

Islam Or Death In Afghanistan

2006-03-20T00:11:00.000-05:00

A man who converted from Islam to Christianity may face the death penalty in Afghanistan:

Islamic sharia law proposes the death sentence for Muslims who abandon the religion. Afghanistan's new constitution says "no law can be contrary to the sacred religion of Islam".

Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada said the suspect, Abdur Rahman, was arrested after members of his family informed police of his conversion.

He would be charged with abandoning Islam, Mr Mawlavizada said.

"The prosecutor says he should be executed on the basis of the constitution," Mr Mawlavizada said, who added that Mr Rahman could come back to Islam.

"If he does not ... he will be punished," he said.

Update: Here's a great quote from the trial judge:

"We will invite him again because the religion of Islam is one of tolerance. We will ask him if he has changed his mind. If so we will forgive him."

Yes, come back to the great, tolerant religion of Islam, or we will kill you.

Three Years In Iraq

2006-03-20T00:07:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports on interviews of 100 veterans who spent time in Iraq:

What they experienced was more complex than the war they saw on television and in print. It was dangerous and confused, yes, but most of the vets also recalled enemies routed, buildings built and children befriended, against long odds in a poor and demoralized country. "We feel like we're doing something, and then we look at the news and you feel like you're getting bashed." "It seems to me the media had a predetermined script." The vibe of the coverage is just "so, so, so negative."

Strategy Page examines the current state of affairs in Iraq:

Most Iraqis understand that a clean, cohesive government is the key to future peace and prosperity. But the cooperation and compromise required to make this all happen has so far eluded Iraqis. American and European diplomats and advisors constantly hover about with suggestions and advice. The key to peace in Iraq is not a military problem, the terrorists and Sunni Arab rebels are beaten. The key to peace is political, and the ability of Iraqi factions to work together.

The Falling Man

2006-03-16T21:01:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin reports on what is possibly the best known, and most moving photo taken on 9/11.

He Did It For Love

2006-03-14T23:23:00.000-05:00

Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who is charged with nine counts of attempted murder for his SUV attack on March 3, explains his actions:

The U.S. government is responsible for the deaths of and the torture of countless followers of Allah, my brothers and sisters. My attack on Americans at UNC-CH on March 3rd was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic territories. I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead.

The Disappearing Telegraph Article

2006-03-13T22:46:00.000-05:00

Alasdair Palmer wrote a piece for the Telegraph that featured the views of Dr. Patrick Sookhdeo, who is warning of the day when parts of Britain will be ruled by sharia law.

'Islamic clerics do not believe in a society in which Islam is one religion among others in a society ruled by basically non-religious laws. They believe it must be the dominant religion - and it is their aim to achieve this.

"That is why they do not believe in integration. In 1980, the Islamic Council of Europe laid out their strategy for the future - and the fundamental rule was never dilute your presence. That is to say, do not integrate.

"Rather, concentrate Muslim presence in a particular area until you are a majority in that area, so that the institutions of the local community come to reflect Islamic structures. The education system will be Islamic, the shops will serve only halal food, there will be no advertisements showing naked or semi-naked women, and so on."

That plan, says Dr Sookhdeo, is being followed in Britain. "That is why you are seeing areas which are now almost totally Muslim. The next step will be pushing the Government to recognise sharia law for Muslim communities - which will be backed up by the claim that it is "racist" or "Islamophobic" or "violating the rights of Muslims" to deny them sharia law.

The article was removed from the Telegraph web site for "legal reasons". It was removed from Google's cache. The link above is from Yahoo's cache. Why was it pulled? More here.

A Cuban Missile Crisis For A New Generation?

2006-03-13T17:10:00.000-05:00

Graham Allison in the Boston Globe:

As Henry A. Kissinger has noted, a defining challenge for statesmen is to recognize ''a change in the international environment so likely to undermine national security that it must be resisted no matter what form the threat takes or how ostensibly legitimate it appears." Iran's emergence as a nuclear armed state would constitute just such a catastrophic transformation for the United States. But just as JFK refused to choose between accepting nuclear weapons in Cuba or attacking the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis, the challenge today is to find additional options, short of war, to stop Iran's acquisition of nuclear arms.