An Apology to President Karzai of Afghanistan

I found this at the great Sister Toldjah's blog.

Kira Davis is right on.

One Israeli is Worth Over a Thousand Arabs

This is a late post that has been sitting in the bin. My apologies for not posting this earlier.

I am not the one saying it, Hamas is.

Israeli Soldier Moved From Gaza To Egypt

The exchange between Israel and its bitter Hamas enemy sees Israel freeing a total of 1,027 prisoners - hundreds of them from life sentences imposed for killing Israelis.

Buses of Palestinian prisoners are now moving from Israel into Egypt en route to Gaza.

For the murderous freaks of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, et al., this counts as a great victory. As far as I am concerned it says that the life of a single Israeli Jew is worth the lives of a thousand Palestinian Arabs. I don't believe that this is necessarily true, but then again I have no sympathy for a people that would chose the terrorism of Fatah and Hamas over peace and the opportunity to build their own State.

Here's hoping for Israel's continued success in her national defense, and damn all of those who would hold her back.

Ramadan 2011

The 2011 Ramadan Bombathon is on. Check out the score at The Religion of Peace. So far "the Religion of Peace" has a shutout going against competitors "All Other Religions" and "'Anti-Muslim' Right Wingers"

Palestinian Arab Civilization

Palestinian Arabs are passing out sweets and celebrating this.

It is a tribute to the Israelis that this barbaric non-civilization hasn't been forcibly removed to Jordan and Egypt. Most other countries would have done that decades ago.

Christmas Tree Bomber - Is There a Pattern?

The American Thinker asks Christmas Tree Bomber was Young Male Muslim. Could There Be a Pattern?

Mr. Wilson points out the facts, that the terrorist and would-be bomber is a young muslim (Somali) male named Mohamed Osman Mohamud. Her then goes on to make a further point. Referring to Derrick Jackson's piece in the Boston Globe defending the use of full-body scanner and aggressive "pat downs" (gropes). First a quote from Mr. Jackson and then the comment by Mr. Wilson

[T]hose today who are not willing to be scanned or complain about pat-downs, are in a fantasy world of personal entitlement. Call it the "Do-I-look-like-a-terrorist?'' syndrome. It has somehow escaped the critics that you cannot judge a terrorist by last name, skin color, or gender.

Who's in the fantasy world here? Only the willfully blind can ignore that nearly every terror threat in the last forty years has come from young males with names like Mohammad Massalha (Munich massacre), Abdelbaset al-Megrahi (Lockerbie), Mohammed Atta, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and Faisal Shahzad. The argument of people like Jackson is that once we start profiling 20-year old Somali men named Mohamed, al-Qaeda will recruit Swedish grandmothers. Maybe so, but to date this theory is not supported by any reality-based evidence.

Our incompetent government, having adopted the willful blindness of the Left™ would rather subvert the Constitution and destroy the Bill of Rights (4th amendment anyone?) than observe and act on the obvious. Unless we are doing intelligent profiling the TSA's efforts in our airports are not only a complete waste of time and money, but dangerous to our liberty and that which makes America exceptional; a Constitutionally limited government, a society with no "built-in" or otherwise established caste system, the freedom to our property and run a business, the freedom to succeed or fail on your own merits, etc. These are things that, all together, no other country has. We are now seeing our own government first, not understanding this and secondly, destroying it.

It is time to open our eyes and find the enemy so that we can destroy him. No more politically correct (does anyone besides me sense the tyrannical nature of that phrase?) blindness.

BTW: The 4th Amendment to the Constitution reads;

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Quaint.

What Happens When You Don't Control The Borders

Any idiot should be able to understand that if you make it clear that you will not enforce a law people will take advantage of that. America is full of very stupid and incompetent people of both parties who happen to be running our government. We need to wake up and vote for people who love America and believe in enforcing good laws, including the borders.

This is not a surprise, we have seen it coming for a long time.

Congresswoman Raises Red Flag on Hezbollah-Cartel Nexus on U.S. Border

Iran-tied terror group Hezbollah may be colluding with drug cartels along the U.S.-Mexico border, a Republican congresswoman warned, calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to establish a special task force to figure out how to "clamp down" on this "national security" threat.

The Lebanon-based group has long-standing and documented ties to South America and its drug gangs, but reports have recently surfaced that it may be expanding its influence to Mexico and the U.S. border.

and...

Myrick outlined a complex set of potential threats and evidence of their existence. She said "Iranian agents and members of Hezbollah" are thought to be learning Spanish in Hugo Chavez-run Venezuela before trying to obtain false documents to enter the United States as purported Mexicans. She said Hezbollah, known for its tunnel-digging skill, could be receiving drug money from cartel operations in exchange for help forging better tunnels across the U.S. border for trafficking.

She said gang members in prisons in the American southwest are starting to show up with tattoos in Farsi, implying a "Persian influence that can likely be traced back to Iran and its proxy army, Hezbollah."

This has actually been occurring for some time already.

A 2006 House Homeland Security Committee report further noted that Hezbollah members have already been caught entering the United States via Mexico, suggesting expanded activity. The report cited as one example the case of Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, the brother of a Hezbollah chief, who in 2005 pleaded guilty to providing material support to Hezbollah after being smuggled across the U.S.-Mexico border and settling in Dearborn, Mich.

The report raised red flags about the "dangerous intersection between traditional transnational criminal activities ... and more ominous threats to national security."

About Hezbollah.

Timeline of Hezbollah Attacks.

YouTube Cons the World

Lawrence Solomon says it:

Lawrence Solomon: YouTube Cons The World

YouTube’s reason for shutting down the video sensation?: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner/Chappell Music, Inc,“ YouTube tells those who try to access the parody.

This claim by YouTube is itself a con. As YouTube well knows, parodies are not subject to a copyright claim. To add to the absurdity of YouTube’s claim, YouTube carries numerous other parodies of “We are the world,” – a search on the YouTube site of “We are the world spoof” turns up 5,100 results.

YouTube’s real problem with this viral hit is the virus of anti-Semitism.

LiveLeak still has it. Here is the embed.



Thanks to the folks at Israelly Cool for finding this for us.


Update: The folks at YouTube apparently did not like getting called out on their anti-Semitism and have reposted the video. I still believe them to be anti-Semites.

Our Incompetent Government - ICE

This speaks for itself.

Deporting 'Son of Hamas'

Mosab Hassan Yousef is a best-selling author who wrote "Son of Hamas" about his life as a Palestinian who became an informant for Israeli intelligence. He's probably near the top of every Islamist terror hit list, yet, incredibly enough, the U.S. may soon deport him as a terror threat.

In 2007, Mr. Yousef came to the United States, where he converted to Christianity from Islam and applied for political asylum. The request was denied in February 2009, Mr. Yousef says, on grounds that he was potentially "a danger to the security of the United States" and had "engaged in terrorist activity." His case has automatically proceeded to the deportation stage, and on June 30 at 8 a.m. he will appear before Judge Rico Bartolomei in Homeland Security Immigration Court in San Diego.

Homeland Security is well aware of the author's history, and in fact is using it against him. According to Mr. Yousef, a letter from Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador cites passages in "Son of Hamas" as evidence of his connection to terrorist leaders and suggests that the work he did for Hamas while spying for Israel provided aid to terrorists. "At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent's transport of Hamas members to safe houses . . . indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization," the U.S. lawyer wrote.

But unless Ms. Calcador knows more than she's saying, this is bizarre. As a spy for Israel, Mr. Yousef had to make his colleagues believe he was a loyal member of Hamas. He used that trust to gain information that he provided to Israeli intelligence, which used it to prevent terror attacks and save lives. One of Mr. Yousef's handlers at Shin Bet confirmed his book's account to the Israeli daily Haaretz, and his father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, has disowned him from the Israeli prison he has occupied since 2005.

I honestly think that Mr. Obama and many members of his administration are actually on the side of Hamas.

Gaza Flotilla Participants Explain: We Con the World

The full text:

There comes a time
When we need to make a show
For the world, the Web and CNN
There's no people dying,
so the best that we can do
Is create the greatest bluff of all

We must go on pretending day by day
That in Gaza, there's crisis, hunger and plague
Coz the billion bucks in aid won't buy their basic needs
Like some cheese and missiles for the kids

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
With guns and our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Ooooh, we'll stab them at heart
They are soldiers, no one cares
We are small, and we took some pictures with doves
As Allah showed us, for facts there's no demand
So we will always gain the upper hand

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
we're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
But you worry that it may not look so good
Well well well well don't you realize
You just gotta call yourself
An activist for peace and human aid

We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV

We con the world
We con the people
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world (Bruce: we con the world...)
We con the people (Bruce: we con the people...)
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
The truth will never find its way to your TV

Courtesy of LatmaTV

Anti-Semitic UN to Act

The loathsome United Nations will, in its great tradition of antisemitism, act against Israel this week.

The Great Mona Charen writes,

Israel's Deadliest Foe to Strike This Week

The war over the war in Gaza is heating up. Next week, the United Nations General Assembly will consider the tendentious Goldstone Report, the highest profile exercise in blaming the victim in the U.N.'s tawdry history. Simultaneously, lawyers in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, and Norway are drawing up criminal indictments against IDF officers who participated in the Gaza operation. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that a number of names are on a police watch list for arrest and detention should they attempt to enter Britain.

Israel's enemies certainly seek to terrorize and demoralize Israel. But the more important campaign -- which is gaining traction -- is to delegitimize her and to brand Israel's self-defense as a war crime.

Hamas wants the world to recognize them as a legitimate government, and many in the world do. If they are, then it seems to me that the same rules should apply. This piece offers a comparison.

ISRAEL

Consider the assessment of Col. Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, and a veteran of the Gulf War and the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and Macedonia. "During Operation Cast Lead, the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare. Israel did so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military capability behind the human shield of the civilian population."

What army has offered 48 hours notice to its enemies of planned operations? Israel did so, dropping 2 million leaflets in advance of army movements. Twenty-four hours before the IDF moved on a suspected terrorist site, the army phoned civilians to warn them to evacuate. There were 100,000 calls. And five minutes before an operation began, the IDF sent out text messages. The calls and messages contained not just warnings, but instructions on which roads were safe to take and which schools or other buildings could be used for shelter. In the midst of the conflict, hundreds of trucks brought food, water, and medical supplies to Gaza.

In Rafa, Israel sought to close 225 tunnels (with 800 entrances) used to smuggle arms to Gaza from Egypt. The easiest and safest course for the IDF would have been to level the homes without warning that contained the entrances using air power or tanks. In Gaza City, to avoid civilian casualties, IDF infantrymen went house to house, encountering booby traps along the way and fending off seven attempted kidnappings.

Hamas was so confident that Israel would not knowingly shoot at civilians that they hid behind human shields throughout the short war. It was common, when word came of an impending attack, for Hamas to send children out to play in the streets at that moment. "Will I shoot?" Gruber asks. "I will not." There is video of a terrorist with a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder grabbing a 10-year-old boy by the collar and dragging him across the street to deter Israeli snipers. And it worked. Israel has similar video (from Reuters actually) showing U.N. ambulances ferrying armed men. "Yes," says Gruber with resignation, "the 'ambulances' were always at the front."

HAMAS

There are scores of other examples -- Hamas firing from mosques, schools, private homes, and hospitals. The very fact that Hamas used human shields betrays their admission that Israel abides by ethical standards in war fighting. They took advantage of Israel's moral qualms about harming non-combatants. Now they accuse Israel of the crimes they themselves committed -- deliberately targeting civilians by raining down 12,000 missiles on southern Israel since the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Liberals, amongst whom antisemitism is mainstream (of course they accuse we conservatives of it constantly), will back the UN in efforts to punish Israel for defending herself and support the real terrorists.

UPDATE: Just in case anyone objects to my view that modern liberalism™ is the home of mainstream antisemitism, this from Caroline Glick;

Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him.

Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.

In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response."

As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "F**k the occupation."

Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.

More to follow on liberalism™ and antisemitism.

Protests in Iran

These have been covered by just about everyone, so I thought that anything that I have to add would be redundant (even though that is the nature of blogging).

I was wandering around the internet and found myself at Curmudgeonly & Skeptical² and found this post about Neda Soltani.

During WWII the allies air dropped cheap pistols and burp guns all over France to help the resistance fight Nazis. We ought be doing that now, at the least.

Yes.

Can North Korea Win the War?

You can clearly see Seoul in South Korea and Pyongyang in North Korea.

It is hard to find intelligent discussion of this. Normally all you hear is "1.5 million man army" and "massive artillery bombardment will destroy Seoul". With a country that conducts no large-scale exercises and is as poor as dirt with armed forces of very low morale, this never seemed like it made real sense.

Stuart Koehl, a long time military analyst and student of the North Korean armed-forces has something to say.

Endgame in Korea? Lacking the military wherewithal to defeat the South, Kim's regime is simply trying to extend its miserable existence through extortion.

General George Casey, Army Chief of Staff, recently stated quite frankly that it would take ninety days to move forward an adequate force to block an attacking North Korean army. Using this official military assessment as their guide, there is no reason to believe the NK military leadership would hesitate to assure their Dear Leader of an effectively full occupation of the Korean Peninsula within that time period.

I've been a military analyst for more than thirty years. I have studied the North Korean army in detail--its tactics, equipment and capabilities--and I have to say, this projection is one of the more ludicrous I have seen. I understand that in a resource-constrained environment, service leaders and theater commanders have to propound the worst case scenario to ensure their fair share of the pie, but even a cursory look at the North Korean People's Army leaves one wondering "huh?

The arms and equipment of the North Korean military are, overwhelmingly, Soviet-derived systems of 1960s and 70s vintage, lacking the kind of electronics, communications, fire controls and survivability features necessary on the modern battlefield.

To understand what this means, look at the disparity in combat effectiveness between Saddam Hussein's army and our own in Operation Desert Storm. Now consider that, as compared to North Korea's, Saddam's army was extraordinarily well trained and competent.

Read it all. He goes on to explain in detail how North Korea cannot prevail in a war against South Korea and the United States.

Kim's army hasn't been to war since 1953. Sure, it can beat up on unarmed truce inspection teams and kidnap Japanese civilians from remote beaches, but what has it really done lately? Worse still, it hasn't been able to stage realistic, large-scale exercises due to a chronic shortage of both fuel and cash. An army that doesn't know how to move formations larger than a battalion or regiment will degenerate into chaos when it tries to move divisions and armies. Finally, promotion in Kim's army, like promotion in Saddam's, is awarded for political loyalty, not military competence. Loyalty in such regimes is usually defined as telling the psychotic dictator what he wants to hear. Yet the first key to success in modern war is a free and open exchange of information between leaders and subordinates. The problem of political reliability is paramount for Kim--if he lets his army loose on the South, will it actually fight, or will it disintegrate on contact (or worse, turn on the regime)

He goes into issues of weapons, terrain, movement of troops and equipment in a manner more thorough than you normally get to read. So, go and read.

War against the "DPRK" will not be painless, but, although because of our own weakness diplomatically he can win the near-term diplomatic battles, Kim cannot win (unless we just give up).

More information (with photos) about North Korean air defenses here.

From GlobalSecurity.org, more about;
North Korean Army Air force
North Korean Army
North Korean Navy

Let's Kill All The Jews

As I return home for a very few months and try to put things together, I thought that I should start right in with how our unwillingness to take meaningful action in the face of evildoers endangers the world. Include our unwillingness to see through the lies of our enemies (and Mr. Obama's choice to make friends of enemies and enemies of friends). I will start with a piece that I was writing a few months ago. As Obama makes noises about how Mr. Netanyahu needs to accept a "two-state" solution as Mr. Abbas supposedly does, we should remember that what the Palestinian leadership says in public is one thing, but another thing is said amongst themselves in Arabic.

Let's kill all the Jews.

That is the word from Fatah. They openly admit that they are fooling the western powers with the phony acceptance of the right of the state of Israel to exist, or the right of Jews in the middle east to continue breathing. And, having said so openly, expect no objection from us.



Read all about it on the Strategy Page.

Let's Kill All The Jews

March 19, 2009: Fatah, the "moderate" Palestinian political movement, has admitted that it does not recognize the existence of Israel. Fatah points out that the Palestinian Authority, an organization set up in the 1990s after peace negotiations with Israel allowed the Palestinians to assume control of their own affairs, does not speak for Fatah. The Palestinian Authority recognized Israel, but Fatah points out that this was done to meet the demands of Western nations that were going to provide the Palestinians with billions of dollars in economic aid. What the Western donors ignored was the fact that Palestinians regularly used maps of the area that showed Israel as Palestinian territory. To Palestinians, Israel did not exist. Children were taught that Israel was an illegal entity, and the Israelis (at least the Jewish ones) foreign invaders who must be expelled or killed. All this was in Arabic. English pronouncements tended to be rather more opaque on the "kill the Jews" stuff.

And so we allow ourselves to be fooled.

No Solution to the Piracy Problem?

You may have already read the news of the largest prize ever taken by pirates, the Sirius Star.

Reporting from Beirut and Nairobi, Kenya -- In their most brazen raid yet, suspected Somali pirates operating deep in open waters have seized an oil tanker as long as an aircraft carrier, the U.S. military in the Middle East said Monday.

So audacious and unusual was the Indian Ocean attack that it caught the attention of America's top military official, who expressed shock at the pirates' ability to strike so far from shore.

Global fecklessness is still (ironically) strong. Iranian grain ship seized as Somali pirates hold world to ransom

Somali pirates struck again yesterday, seizing an Iranian cargo ship holding 30,000 tonnes of grain, as the world’s governments and navies pronounced themselves powerless against this new threat to global trade.

Admiral Michael Mullen, the US military chief, pronounced himself stunned by the pirates’ reach after their capture of the supertanker Sirius Star and its $100 million (£70 million) cargo. Commanders from the US Fifth Fleet and from Nato warships in the area said that they would not intervene to retake the vessel.

The Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia, the owner of the ship, condemned the hijacking as an “outrageous act” that required international action.

“Piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together,” Prince Saud al-Faisal said. Arab diplomats would meet in Cairo on Thursday to discuss what could be done in response, Yemeni officials said.

Analysts said, however, that the seizure of the Sirius Star exposed the use of foreign warships as “a sticking plaster” that would not solve the problem. “Maritime security operations in that area are addressing the symptoms not the causes,” said Jason Alderwick, a maritime defence analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Roger Middleton, a Horn of Africa specialist at the Chatham House think-tank, said that the capture was a crucial escalation. “Now that they have shown they are able to seize an enormous ship like this, it is beyond a military solution. You won’t fix this without a political solution.”

Of course a political solution is required. The lack of a functioning government in Somalia allows for the existence of safe havens ashore for pirates. These must be taken away from them. Whatever exists of a government in Somalia must be made to agree.

Lawhawk over at A Blog For All discusses the solution.

These countries aren't powerless to act. They are abdicating their responsibility to act. These pirates are indeed terrorists, and there is some indication that they are perhaps middlemen for al Qaeda or other terrorist outfits.

That would fit with my contention that the failure to deal decisively with failed states and the situation in Somalia in particular is resulting a security nightmare.

The solution is to go after the pirates and stop treating this solely as a law enforcement action. The UN Treaty on the Seas has failed to dent the problems facing worldwide commerce as a result of the ongoing piracy. Articles 100 and following deal with what governments can and should do, and yet they are doing nothing of the kind.

Go and read his entire post. he has gotten it exactly right.

In other words, if the US captures pirates and their ships, US law would apply. Similarly, if the Royal Navy captures the pirates, British law applies. Yet, as the Times Online article notes, the British government passed on the men it captured to the Kenyans for prosecution.

These pirates are lucky they were not killed while engaged in their acts of violence on the high seas. For the rest of us, we're watching as the justice system grinds its wheels slowly and can't even begin to figure out how to deal with the problem in an effective manner.

Pirates, when captured, should never again see the light of day.

Kill.Them.All.

The Company They Keep

Dishonest liberals accuse us of trying to tar Senator Obama using guilt by association when we mention the people that he is close to. I don't know about you, but I learned while I was growing up that "you will know them by the company that they keep".

Everyone knows what company Obama keeps. Here is a book by some of them, Billy Ayers and his friends from the Weather Underground, courtesy of the great Charles Johnson who has the exclusive at LGF.

LGF Exclusive: Bill Ayers' 'Prairie Fire' in PDF Form

A Solution to Piracy

I have said this before. There is only one solution to piracy and, sadly, the UN as well as our own government are too feckless to do it.

Kill.Them.All

These are not cute people. They murder at will and stand to seriously affect world trade. Report warns Somali piracy threat to world trade

NAIROBI (AFP) — World trade faces major disruption if Somali piracy is unchecked and allowed to be co-opted by extremists and maritime routes could be gradually diverted, a report released on Thursday said.

London-based think tank Chatham House warned in a briefing paper that the international community needed to take swift action as pirates were rapidly improving their equipment and modus operandi.

Around 60 ships have been attacked so far this year alone. The danger has caused insurance premiums to rise tenfold in a year.

"If the cost of extra insurance becomes prohibitive, or the danger simply too great, shipping companies may avoid the Gulf of Aden and take the long route to Europe and North America around the Cape of Good Hope," it said.

"The extra weeks of travel and fuel consumption would add considerably to the cost of transporting goods" at a time when the price of oil is already putting the squeeze on world trade, Chatham House said.

And that support for terrorism;

"The other worst-case scenario is that pirates become agents of international terrorism," the study said, stressing that previous occurrences of seaborne terrorism in the region should act as an alarm bell.

Chatham House also argued that the ransom collected by pirates was likely used to fuel the war in Somalia and was routed to the Shebab, a hardline Islamist militia listed as a terrorist organisation by Washington.

And murder;

Pirates last week attracted the world's attention when they seized a cargo of battle tanks headed for Kenya and Chatham House warned it was only a matter of time before a hostage was executed.

See also these somewhat older stories;

Somali pirates seize Greek ship

Somali Pirates Held Record 374 Hostages in September

And if they pirate a ship carrying biological or chemical weapons (or worse) then you might actually get what is coming to you; Mysterious Cargo Aboard Iranian Ship Seized by Pirates Raises WMD Concerns

As Somali pirates brazenly maintain their standoff with American warships off the coast of Africa, the cargo aboard one Iranian ship they commandeered is raising concerns that it may contain materials that can be used for chemical or biological weapons.

Some local officials suspect that instead of finding riches, the pirates encountered deadly chemical agents aboard the Iranian vessel.

On Aug. 21, the pirates, armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, stole onto the decks of the merchant vessel Iran Deyanat.

They ransacked the ship and searched the containers. But in the days following the hijacking, a number of them fell ill and died, suffering skin burns and hair loss, according to reports.

The pirates were sickened because of their contact with the seized cargo, according to Hassan Osman, the Somali minister of Minerals and Oil, who met with the pirates to facilitate negotiations.

Sounds like radiation sickness to me, and others.

Chemical experts say the reports sound inconsistent with chemical poisoning, but may reflect the effects of exposure to radiation.

"It's baffling," said Jonathan Tucker, a senior fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. "I'm not aware of any chemical agent that produces loss of hair within a few days. That's more suggestive of high levels of radioactive waste."

Not necessarily waste either, I think.

North Korean Terror

Anyone (liberals in particular) who fails to understand the power of deterrence should read this.

North Korea's Trail of Kidnapping and Terror

Sadly, it seems that our feckless government will remove North Korea from the list or state sponsors of terrorism. The monster Kim will not be held accountable for his very many crimes and deterrence will fail. Criminals and mass murderers are enabled worldwide. Now, and in the future, genocide, state sponsorship of terrorism, government mass murder, and all manner of state criminality will be permitted by weak willed bureaucrats who think that words (ignored by the criminals), not actions, are sufficient. These words will be sufficient only to the relieve the self guilt of those who could do something and are too spineless to take action.

Darfur anyone?

A Poet of Islam

Samina Malik is a British Muslim poet who writes from the deep well of Islamic faith.



British Muslim woman convicted of penning poems about beheadings

Described as a "committed Islamic extremist", Malik, a shop assistant at Heathrow, hoarded an extensive collection of terrorism manuals, the Old Bailey heard.

She was a member of an extremist group linked to Omar Bakri Mohammed, a hate preacher who fled to Lebanon from Britain two years ago.

Yesterday a jury found her guilty of possessing documents likely to be used for terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2000, by a majority of ten to one, after deliberating for 19 hours.

Malik, who wore a black head scarf, wept as the verdict was read out.

She is happy to see other, innocent, people murdered in a horrific way. She loves watching the videos of people being beheaded while alive. These are a few of her favorite things. But, to have to answer for it, well that is another matter.

She also wrote of how she enjoyed video messages from Osama Bin Laden and "videos that showed massacres of the kuffars", or non-Muslims.

In one poem, called The Living Martyrs, she called for Muslims to rise up against the infidels.

In another, How To Behead, she warned that the victim should be bound and blindfolded.

Malik, who worked as a shop assistant airside in a branch of WHSmith at the airport, also owned an Al Qaeda encyclopaedia of Jihad, a Mujahideen poison handbook and a 'terrorist handbook' which explained how to make bombs.

On the hard drive of her computer police found a copy of a sniper rifle manual, a firearms manual, anti-tank weaponry, a document entitled How To Win Hand To Hand Fighting, and pictures of weapons.

Outside the court, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command, said: "Malik held violent extremist views which she shared with other like-minded people over the internet.

"She also tried to donate money to a terrorist group. She had the ideology, ability and determination to access and download material which could have been useful to terrorists.

"Merely possessing this material is a serious criminal offence."

But she weeps for herself. Her hatred and self-obsession speaks for itself.

UPDATE:
A news clip. It seems that she just wanted to be "cool".

Columbia U - Hitler Yes, Gilchrist No!

Much is being made about the fact that genocidal maniac Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been invited to speak at Columbia University, one of the leading leftist cesspits universities in the United States. Columbia University Dean John Coatsworth says that even Adolph Hitler would be welcome to speak at his indoctrination center university.

Video: Of course we’d invite Hitler to speak, says Columbia dean

(Be sure to read the comments from the terrorist's "useful idiots".)

That's interesting because, while we are willing to freely discuss the merits and demerits of genocide, we are not apparently willing to discuss border security. In fact, anyone who suggests that we should have the same border controls that every other nation on this planet has is accused of racism.

Columbia U. Nixes Minuteman Speech

Columbia University students have abandoned plans for a speech by Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, one year after their classmates violently interrupted an address by the illegal immigration foe.

The Columbia Political Union voted late Monday night to cancel Gilchrist’s Oct. 4 appearance, the New York Post reports.

The student group said in a statement that "it has become clear this event cannot take the form we had originally hoped it would and could not effectively accomplish the goals we had hoped it might."

Last year critics questioned Columbia’s commitment to free speech after Gilchrist was physically and verbally attacked by student protesters.

So for Columbia University and the American Left™ terrorism and Jew killing is ok, border security and the national defense is not.

Defund PBS and NPR

Officials at the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) dropped Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center from its America at a Crossroads series. They give numerous false reasons for this. Simply, PBS is a leftist™ outfit that supports Islamism and want us to understand that we deserve the terrorism directed against us. Their support of Palestinian terrorism against Israel is well documented so I'll not address that just now.

During a hearing before the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the federal budgets of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Rep. Jim Walsh (R-Syracuse) asked the leaders of those two organizations about the suppression of Islam vs. Islamists. He wanted to know why the voices of moderate Muslims (who liberals™ presumable care a great deal about) were so hard to hear. Where is their voice of outrage at terrorist attacks?

You would think that supporting moderate Muslims concerned about what is happening to them would be something on which liberals and conservatives would be able to agree.

Sadly, such is not the case.

PBS at a Crossroads - Why is a film on moderate Islam being suppressed?

"The answer," Rep. Walsh explained to PBS President Paula Kerger and her CPB counterpart, Pat Harrison, "is that there’s a concerted and substantial effort on the part of radical Wahhabist Islam to silence these voices with physical intimidation [and] verbal intimidation. And [the filmmakers] document it in the United States, in Canada and around the world: Denmark, France."

Then Walsh threw down the gauntlet: "Based on what I’ve heard, there has been a longstanding and concerted effort to ensure that the American people, who paid for the production of this documentary, do not see it."

The responses to these remarks were, at best, inaccurate and misleading. Two exchanges are illustrative. At one point, PBS’s Kerger told Rep. Walsh that Islam vs. Islamists had "not been rejected for air. The film is still in development and production. The film that you have is not a finished film." Mr. Walsh replied, correctly, "I spoke with the producer. That film is finished."

Then CPB’s Harrison interjected: "The problem is…they have two hours of material. They must get it down to one." The congressman held up the finished, 52-minute show, saying, "I believe this…DVD is an hour long."

The barefaced mendacity of officials of the CPB and PBS is staggering. This is your tax dollars at work.

Most probably the objection was spurious, having much more to do with my political beliefs than with PBS guidelines. One of the "Crossroads" producers actually asked our colleague, accomplished filmmaker Martyn Burke, "Don’t you check into the politics of the people you work with?" Imagine the uproar if a conservative (say, former CPB chairman Ken Tomlinson) had asked such a question of a liberal director.

Mendacity and hypocrisy, that is the CPB and PBS.

It is no small irony that, in a $20 million, taxpayer-underwritten series like "Crossroads," whose very purpose is to expose PBS’s audience to a broader array of filmmakers’ stories and perspectives, our film is being black-balled by the Left, which largely decides what will be broadcast on publicly funded airwaves.

Tonight I watched (most of) Banned by PBS: Muslims Against Jihad. Of course the fact that this was broadcast by FOX News by itself sends liberals into blithering fits. None the less, it was an excellent production that actually serves to make one more sympathetic to what is happening to the regular people who are Muslims and who are suffering under the extremists as much, or more than, anybody else.

To see the pain of the face of a mother who can no longer recognize her son because of what he became under the influence of the jihadis is to understand the evil of the Islamists at the level where we live. Most of us will never witness a suicide bombing, but we can all see the suffering of a mother who sees that she has lost her son. Yet, the Leftist™ morons at PBS believe that this is not fair to the Islamists, and so will not show it.

PBS' big editorial complaint against Islam vs. Islamists is that it was not sympathetic to the Islamists, and therefore unbalanced and unfair to the Islamist extremists. Again, from Mr. Gaffney's piece;

Then there were the myriad efforts by PBS and its "coordinating entry station," Washington’s WETA, to force us to change the character, structure, and content of Islam vs. Islamists so as to make it less "unfair" to the Islamists. These changes are not to be confused with constructive editorial suggestions. We received a number of those, and repeatedly incorporated them into the finished film. Rather, they were incessant demands from PBS and WETA that the film be redone so as to tell at greater length the story of "conservative imams" and others who oppose the anti-Islamist Muslims we set out to profile. The stated object of this revision was to provide more "context" for the positions taken by the former group. [Yes, it is unfair not to give terrorists their "context"]

Banned by PBS: Muslims Against Jihad is an excellent program and reminds us that Muslims love their friends and family too. But, PBS doesn't want you to see that.

Officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting often point out that the money that they get from the Government is insignificant to their operations. They are bluffing. I say that we should call their bluff and defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting including PBS and NPR (National Public Radio). They do not deserve our tax dollars.