Anubis

I know I've said this before...

2005-08-10T16:08:00.000+10:00

But I'm going to say it again. Go to this page, ignore the title and read.

It really is worth the effort.

The bear rumbles...

2005-08-10T15:06:00.000+10:00

The Russians have vocally entered the melee over Iranian uranium enrichment, warning that the process had better be halted "without delay":

LONDON, August 10 (IranMania) - Russia called on Iran to halt work on uranium conversion "without delay."

"The wise decision would be to stop work that has begun on uranium conversion without delay," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"We are convinced that the situation that has arisen now has not gone beyond the point of no return. With goodwill it can be corrected," the statement said.

But Tehran should immediately halt its nuclear fuel work and continue to work closely with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) "to resolve remaining question over Iran's nuclear program," it added.

The Russian statement said that "unfortunately" Iran had resumed work on converting uranium but said it could stop this again with harming its efforts to develop nuclear energy program for civilian use.

"We think that Iran could definitely maintain the moratorium without any damage to the realization of its nuclear energy programme," the statement added.

Russia plays a crucial role in Iran's nuclear efforts and has led the project for construction of Iran's first nuclear power station at Bushehr.

Earlier this year, Russia's top nuclear official visit Tehran where he obtained agreement from Iranian officials for the return to Russia of all spent nuclear fuel from the Bushehr plant.

I wonder what has spurred this sudden rush of good sense.

Tomwatch

2005-08-10T11:23:00.000+10:00

That's right, I'm still monitoring the Hollywoodian celebrity's descent into raving madness.

But to truly understand the wacky, couch-hopping, Brooke Shields-hating midget, we have to go back further, digging ever deeper into Tom's scientology past. There we find that once, in a fit of what might have been something akin to common sense, Tom almost rejected Scientology's claims about ancient aliens imprisoning souls in an exploding volcano: Cruise almost rejected sect's acts

When it comes to evangelizing, Tom Cruise today stands as the Jimmy Swaggart of Scientology. But there was a time, say insiders, when the controversial church almost lost the star.

About 10 years ago, after being introduced to the sci-fi writer L. Ron Hubbard's sect by ex-wife Mimi Rogers, Cruise had achieved the Operating Thetan III level of instruction (in which true believers are said to learn the story of the cosmic ruler Xenu).

The stress of learning - or believing? - that Xenu stacked his alien enemies in volcanoes, and then blew them up with H-bombs, was starting to wear on Cruise, according to one Scientology veteran who trained with Cruise.

He was "pretty screwed up," the source tells Kim Masters in Radar magazine. "He just got that pasty skin and that foolish look.

"He just wanted Scientology to be away from him. He wanted to do no more auditing [the church's mind-cleansing program], just nothing with any of that stuff, just go back to Hollywood."

Apparently worried that he was ready to bolt their Celebrity Center, his instructors are said to have backed off.

Cruise was "taken off any kind of real heavy auditing and [told], 'Let's have some fruit, let's get exercise, come to the exercise room,'" says his audit-mate. "'Let's play basketball.'"

But then he just gave up, and got crazier.

Cruise later embraced the faith with renewed vigor. In 2002, sources say, he came to the aid of fellow Scientologist Colleen Camp during her divorce from Paramount president John Goldwyn.

When Goldwyn claimed in divorce papers that the church was holding up the dissolution of his marriage, Cruise sought to head off bad press by confronting Goldwyn in front of his then-boss, Sherry Lansing. Mindful that Cruise's contract with the studio was up for renewal, Goldwyn withdrew the offending papers. (Goldwyn declined comment.)

Another studio exec is said to have asked Cruise to temper his discussion of Scientology while promoting "War of the Worlds" - to no avail. "[He] does what he does," the executive told Masters.

While Steven Spielberg doesn't criticize his star, his rep Marvin Levy said the director regretted that media attention to the actor's proselytizing "took some of the emphasis away from where we would have liked it."

Cruise's office declined to comment.

Live long and prosper, Tom.

Get used to it!

2005-08-10T10:19:00.000+10:00

Most Europeans had better get used to this kind of inconvienence. With their declining birthrates, booming Muslim ones (combined with a huge legal and illegal immigrant intake) the brave new future of Eurabia will be upon them before they know it: Residents rebel against Pakistan Road

For anyone who has ever travelled a dusty country road in Pakistan, the address Pakistan Road sounds logical for a two-metre long dirt road in a summerhouse quarter in Copenhagen's Amager quarter, daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten reported on Tuesday.

The Road Directorate's decision to name the road after Pakistan, however, has not received a warm welcome among the quarter's residents, most of whom own small summerhouses and vegetable gardens on allotments near the road.

'We aren't racists. But Pakistan Road just doesn't fit Danish summerhouses. We understand that the city wants to send a signal of some kind by naming a road after Pakistan, but it's us who have to live by the address for the next 200 years. They should find a bigger road to call Pakistan Road,' said Ejvind Hernø, spokesman for the Allotment Association Formosa.

Hernø said the summerhouse owners felt that the Road Authority had ignored their protests.

'It feels like we've already lost this fight,' he said. 'People are furious, and it's easy to imagine that someone will take action when the new road sign is installed. Of course I hope it doesn't happen.'

The Road Administration said it preferred Pakistan Road to other suggestions, as it fit with other Asian country names in the quarter, such as Korea Road, Iran Road, and China Road.

The authority added in its answer to the summerhouse owners that it wanted to name the road after Pakistan based on Denmark's special relation to the country in recent years, due to the general population development.

Those forward-looking politicians know who the new masters are going to be.

Update: They sure do: Norwegian Left Courts Pakistani Vote

On 12 September, Norway elects a new Storting (Parliament). Kristin Halvorsen, the president of the Socialist Left Party SV began her electoral campaign last week with a five-day visit to India and Pakistan.

Immigrants make up 3.6% of the Norwegian electorate in the general elections. In Oslo, however, this figure is 12%. For the municipal elections, where everybody who has lived in Norway for three years is entitled to vote, the Oslo figure is 18%. A large part of the Norwegian immigrant population is of Pakistani origin. Most of the Norwegian Pakistanis come from the region of Kharian, a Punjabi town that is sometimes referred to locally as “Little Norway” because so many families have relatives in Norway. Halvorsen hopes that campaigning in Kharian during the holiday season will help her win votes in Norway next month.

Halvorsen is not the first Norwegian politician to campaign abroad. Carl I. Hagen of the right-wing Progress Party has done so too. Hagen, however, campaigned among emigrated Norwegians. Many retired Norwegians settle along the Costa del Sol in Spain. The Progress Party even has a local branch in Spain.

The SV is not the only Norwegian party courting the immigrant vote. All Norwegians parties are doing the same, including the “anti-immigrant” Progress Party. In 1993, Carl I. Hagen participated in the festivities for the Pakistani national holiday on 14 August, a few weeks before the municipal elections.

Ideologically the Christian Democrat KRF has a program that should appeal most to the Norwegian Muslims because of its emphasis on traditional moral values. The leftist SV is in favour of adoption rights for gays, which Pakistani voters overwhelmingly reject. When addressing immigrant audiences Kristin Halvorsen feels compelled to downplay her party’s position on ethical issues as well as her ardent feminism. She qualified the SV’s opposition to forced marriages by stressing that there is a difference between forced marriages and arranged marriages which are common in the Norwegian immigrant community of Pakistani origin. The issue is a topical one at a moment when Rahila Iqbal, a young Norwegian woman of Pakistini origin, is suspected to have been killed by her father “to save the family’s honor.”

We shouldn't let all those messy ethics get in the way of a few additional votes.

I hope Halvorsen likes that outfit she's wearing. Twenty years from now it will be considered Scandinavian native garb.

Meanwhile, back in her utopian electorate: Vengeful gang beats up wrong target

As many as 15 Pakistani-Norwegian teenagers attacked a 31-year-old man outside his flat Monday night. They thought he was a journalist who'd written a provocative guide about how to have sex with young Muslim women.

Stand-up comedian Shabana Rehman defended the sex guide, calling it important.

It was all a case of mistaken identity, however. The hapless victim simply had the same name as the journalist who'd written the guide, Baard Torgersen.

The teenage gang did take the trouble to question his identity when they confronted him on the stairs leading up to his flat in Oslo.

"They asked whether I was Baard Torgersen," he told newspaper Aftenposten. "I said that was me, and then they asked to see my driver's license."

After they examined it, they asked for even more ID, and then spotted a discount card in his wallet for the publication "Natt & Dag" (Night and Day), which coincidentally had published the guide that had angered the Pakistani-Norwegian boys.

That set them off, with flying fists battering both Torgersen and a neighbour who happened to arrive on the scene as the fight went on.

The gang had fled by the time police arrived at the scene. The Baard Torgersen who actually wrote the sex guide declined to comment on the incident.

His editor, however, claimed the article that the teenage gang found so offensive was meant to launch a debate on sexual liberation among Muslim women in Norway.

Only going to get worse, people. Our way of life is diametrically opposed to their culture and faith. If you keep letting them in, they will attempt to prevent us from living and expressing ourselves freely. It's inevitable.

(Hat-tip: Reader Denny.)

Cringeworthy stuff

2005-08-10T09:57:00.000+10:00

Dave Heidelberg is at it again, the skivvy-clad, uber-sensitive, pinko-blogger considerately providing me with more mockery fodder: I heart girls who don't talk back

I have previously supported adults with intellectual disabilities. One woman that I was involved with had suffered horrendous injuries as the result of a serious car accident. The result of her injuries, was that she could not move, except to blink, and was unable to speak. Effectively she was a prisoner in her own body, as her cognitive functions were not damaged.

I used to take her to the movies, which was a highly complicated process, involving wheelchair taxis, and a lot of strength on my part. [Swoon - Ed]

Afterwards, I would wheel her to the park, and just chat with her [chat with her? Or chat at her? - Ed], telling all the various things that had happened to me during the week. I always wanted to know what she was thinking. Did she like me, or did she think that I was extremely annoying?

He'll never know, and one suspects that's precisely the way he wanted it.

Read the rest of the article. He goes into fantastic detail about the inner workings of his troubled leftist brain.

Bakri to return to the UK

2005-08-10T09:33:00.000+10:00

I sincerely hope that Blair has the cojones required to keep him out for good: Preacher of hate plans return to Britain

Bakri left London on Saturday after it emerged he would face possible treason charges over support for the London bombings.

He told BBC Radio Five Live he had travelled to Lebanon of his own free will to visit family but planned to return in four weeks.

"I am going to return back in four weeks unless the Government say we are not welcome, because my family is in the UK.

"I left by my own passport. I do not think I will have any problem returning back to the UK but I do not want the Government to use the presence of Omar Bakri to change the rules."

He said he believed the Government was using him to put pressure on the Muslim community.

He added: "I wish for the British people to think about Islam. I wish as well that this Government will go back to its own sense, not changing its values because they do not know who committed the bombings in London."

Bakri denied he had called the July 7 bombers the "fantastic four" and said he condemned the atrocity.

"I never, ever spoke about the bombings in London. Fantastic Four is a film, nothing to do with the bombings. I never, ever talked about the bombings except to condemn the killing of innocent people."

Uh huh.

It will be remembered that this nice man was twice caught on camera calling for the beheading of famous Australian TV personality Rove... because he mistakenly believed that Rove had made a few jokes about the religion of peace.

The way it is

2005-08-10T09:21:00.000+10:00

One of the very best descriptions of Islam I've yet read: Lebanese Terrorist-Turned-Researcher on Islam

Al-Naqqash: The claims about Islam's renunciation of violence are meaningless, unfounded, and illogical. Why? Because Islam is one of the greatest advocates of violence, when violence is warranted, and one of the greatest advocates of peace and compassion, when compassion is warranted.

Islam is the religion of life in general, and not a blind religion. Islam does not surrender to foreign aggression. So stating categorically that Islam is a religion of love that rejects violence – This is a big lie. "Take them and kill them wherever you find them." This is taken from the words of Allah (the Koran). About whom? About Allah's enemies. This is violence.

The peaceful part comes after you surrender to them, you see. So long as you pay the Jizya (protection money paid by non-Muslims to Muslims), and reconcile yourself to life as one of the dhimmi (second-class citizens).

Whoops!

2005-08-10T00:57:00.000+10:00

Somebody really got this site confused. Probably my single known Nigerian reader (see sidebar). This email just arrived:

RE: LETTER OF ASSISTANTSHIP

The above subject matter refers. l wish to request from your noble organissation assistanship in respect the following:

(1) copies of Holy Quran
(2) lslamic Materials / Books
(3) lslamic soft wares

l will be very grateful if you can mail us the requested materials so that we can distribute it to Muslims, Schools, and Mosque

looking forward to receive from your a positive respond. please mail to (NIGERIA ASSOCIATION OF MUSLIM AFFAIRS) P.O.Box 2450, Shomolu, Lagos, Nigeria.This is a registered association under Federal Government of Nigeria.

Yours in lslam.
SAHEED ABDUL BARIY
(Director of International Relations)

Sorry, Saheed. Can't help you. I'm the enemy.

Discovery coming in...

2005-08-09T22:02:00.000+10:00

The space shuttle Discovery has left orbit, and is on her way in.

I'm not all that religious, but I don't mind saying a small prayer for the astronaut's safety.

If anything happens, may an angry mob burn down the EPA and NASA administration buildings.

Update: Only minutes from landing, now.

Update II: Discovery is home.

France gets tough with Iran: Uses puppy dog eyes

2005-08-09T21:44:00.000+10:00

This is just degrading. France is practically grovelling to get Iran to halt the Uranium Enrichment they've probably already recommenced: France urges Iran to study EU proposals carefully

PARIS (Agencies) -- French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy urged Iran on Saturday to study carefully the European Union's offer of incentives in return for a suspension of its nuclear fuel work, after Tehran rejected the offer, Reuters reported.

"Faced with the first, negative reactions from Iran, I urge its leaders to give themselves the time to examine these proposals with care," Douste-Blazy told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper in an early release of an interview published on Sunday.

Asked if France's position would be shared by other nations if the issue was taken to the UN Security Council, Douste-Blazy said such a situation had not yet arisen: "We are not there."

"We hope the Iranians will study our proposals very closely," he said.

"We are ready to talk to them when they want to. But if they want to resume their sensitive nuclear activities in a unilateral manner, we cannot remain immobile."

The Iranians have studied the proposals, laughed at them, screwed them up into a little ball and thrown them back in your face, Pierre.

Isn't it funny the similarity this bears to the way you see "sensitive" new-age parents "dealing" with a recalcitrant child in a supermarket. The more the child bellows "NO!!!" the more the parent faintly whines "Please... come on, just this once...".

This is precisely what happened with Saddam for longer than a decade. Yet still the left wailed when finally the terms of the original ceasefire were enacted.

Newsflash, leftists. There are bad people in the world whose goal is to deliver you radioactive harm. Don't give them too many opportunities to realise it.

US civil rights movement dwindles into irrelevance

2005-08-09T17:51:00.000+10:00

Unseemly, hysterical irrelevance, at that. Needing to go ever further into the backward-looking, spittle-flecked realm of rhetorical poison in order to justify their existence, the Civil Rights Movement has descended to a new low... and decided to keep digging: Bush, GOP Labeled 'Thieves' Who 'Need to be Locked Up'

Atlanta (CNSNews.com) - A featured speaker at Saturday's civil rights march in Atlanta said the Bush administration and Republican Party leaders are "thieves" who "need to be locked up" for stealing the past two presidential elections and presiding over federal budget deficits and the war in Iraq.

"They all need to be locked up because they are all criminals and they are all thieves," said Judge Greg Mathis, the star of the syndicated television program "The Judge Mathis Show."

Mathis made his remarks to an enthusiastic crowd assembled in Atlanta to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Participants are launching a two-year campaign to extend and strengthen key aspects of the act when it expires in 2007.

Why are they thieves, you ask?

They're upset because Bush "stole" the 2000 election:

"It is indeed criminal to steal an election and within two years run up a federal deficit of half-a-trillion dollars, send our young people over to Iraq to die for an unjust war. What they are doing is criminal," Mathis said to loud cheers.

The march was sponsored by the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and included leaders from the National Urban League, The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the NAACP, and the AFL-CIO.

Still believe that these people are in any way relevant?

Now comes the hate-filled poison, delivered in the usual eloquent manner, by a leading Hollywood moonbat:

Entertainer/activist Harry Belafonte also used charged rhetoric during the march when he referred to black members of the Bush administration as "black tyrants."

There's some sensible, level-headed discourse.

But enough of all that rational stuff. Let's get into some serious lying:

The Bush administration was equated with past policies of slavery and segregation and labeled "the enemy of our (black America's) progress" by Mathis.

Really?

If that's the case, then why is Bush's cabinet the most multi-racial in US presidential history?

WASHINGTON — With little fanfare and not much credit, President Bush has appointed a more diverse set of top advisers than any president in history.

In his first term, Bush matched the record that President Clinton set in his first term for appointing women and people of color to the Cabinet, and Bush had a more diverse inner circle at the White House. Since his re-election last month, the president has made a series of groundbreaking nominations. (Related item: Four Cabinet secretaries to stay)

The lesson to be learned here?

Unless you like hatred, irrational racial ad-hominem attacks, and telling really awful lies... then you should probably stick to being a conservative.

Multiculturalism at its finest

2005-08-09T11:23:00.000+10:00

Scary stuff from Maryland, on the US East Coast. Six teenagers have been knifed... because they refused to join a Hispanic gang: 6 Teens Stabbed in Maryland Attacks

Six teenagers were stabbed in Montgomery County yesterday in attacks at a high school and at a shopping mall that left five of the victims severely wounded.

One police official said she believed that the attacks, first at Springbrook High School and then at a Target store in Westfield Shoppingtown Wheaton, involved youths from the same groups.

"This was not a random assault," Capt. Patti Walker said at the scene of the Wheaton attack.

A police spokeswoman, noting the similarities in the attacks, which were three miles and four hours apart, said that the department was investigating whether they were connected but that she could not confirm that they were.

Three people were taken into custody in Wheaton and several others at Springbrook, police said, but none had been charged by late last night.

A witness to the stabbings at the recently renovated Westfield mall shortly before 5:30 p.m. said she saw "two or three" assailants atop one of the victims.

"I could just see the knife going up and down," shopper Trudi Brown said.

[...]

David's friend Jorge Perez, 23, of Silver Spring said he believed that David was attacked because he did not want to join the Mara Salvatrucha gang, the AP report said.

I could understand if this had happened in Mexifornia someplace... but the East Coast?

Close the damn borders. Use the army if you have to. America is too beautiful a country to be despoiled by the likes of this scum.

Don't we already have enough?

2005-08-09T11:15:00.000+10:00

Scientists may be smart, but they are also particularly stupid. If there's any lifeform that is direly in need of immediate and massive replication, it's large-breasted Norwegian college girls desperately in need of intensive, personal assistance with their English lessons.

But no. They want to build more submersible, anti-human, biological biting machines: Australia seeks to breed test-tube sharks

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The endangered gray nurse shark is its own worst enemy -- its young eat each other in the womb -- so Australian scientists have a radical rescue plan to artificially inseminate and breed the ocean predator in test-tubes.

The gray nurse is one of the fiercest-looking but most docile marine creatures, and despite it being declared endangered in 1984 and its habitat protected, it could become extinct along Australia's east coast within 20 years, scientists say.

In a process called intrauterine cannibalism, gray nurse embryo pups develop a jaw and razor-sharp teeth very early in their development and cannibalize siblings in the womb.

The sharks have two wombs in which a dominant pup will consume its siblings, leaving only two surviving pups every two years when the shark breeds.

"It is not breeding quickly enough. It is being caught out in the wild and it is not recovering from the fishing pressures on the east coast," said Melbourne Aquarium curator Nick Kirby.

Boo hoo.

More Canadian dhimmitude

2005-08-09T10:44:00.000+10:00

I've always considered self-loathing Canadians to be one of the very best examples of a people behaving as beggars to their own demise. Supposedly a secular state, they seem to be lifting the whole "secular" theme rather a lot for their Muslim citizens.

Gluttons for punishment: Islamic law course hears opening arguments

Islamic law is coming to the University of Toronto.

Not in the form of sharia tribunals for cheaters or strict dress codes for female students, but in the form of two professors hired to teach the subject at the university's law school.

While students are excited about the opportunity to learn about another legal tradition, especially one that's often in the headlines, groups fighting to keep sharia out of Canada's legal system worry that the hirings are a setback to their efforts.

Bringing in Anver Emon, 34, and Mohammad Fadel, 38, to teach courses in Islamic law is part of a push for a more global focus that students are embracing, says acting law school dean Lorne Sossin. Having two full-time professors will give the law school a bigger concentration on Islamic law than anywhere else in Canada.

"The early indications are that students are going to be beating down the doors, and it's a testament to the timeliness of it, with Islamic fundamentalism in the news abroad and of course the sharia debate in Ontario just this last year bringing these issues close to home," Mr. Sossin says.

Too close to home for Homa Arjomand, who heads the International Campaign Against Sharia Court in Canada, and Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women.

Ms. Arjomand has been campaigning to keep Islamic law out of the Canadian system because in other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan or Nigeria, women have suffered under strict and violent interpretations of Islamic law. The hirings are "like a green light for sharia," Ms. Arjomand says. "I'm so mad."

Ms. Hogben says she's "concerned about the motivation." Canada's law system should be totally secular so the university shouldn't be seen doing anything to prepare for the possibility that sharia law may make inroads, she says.

She has every right to be concerned. She has actually lived under Sharia, and knows something about it. This is the government and academia green-lighting the use of a tertiary institution to advance, propagate and apologise for a "legal system" that is utterly alien, barbaric and anathema to our secular-based society.

As usual, it is some leftist official, woefully ignorant of Islam, who is to blame:

Amid an outcry that raised the spectre of Muslim women in Ontario living under the same restrictions as those under the Taliban, where adultery allegations could lead to summary executions, the Ontario government did what governments do. It commissioned a report.

Marion Boyd, a former Ontario cabinet minister who works as a mediator, spent six months researching the issue before recommending that religious law keep a place in family arbitration as long as safeguards are built in to protect women and children. Ontario's Attorney-General, Michael Bryant, plans to respond in the fall.

I wonder if that included visiting a single country where Sharia Law applies. I think not, but I will be writing to find out.

In the meantime, let the unchecked apologetica begin.

The Boyd solution can work, according to Mr. Emon, who believes Islamic law is more open to interpretation than many realize and can be adjusted to protect the rights of women. Islamic law studies such as those he will offer at the University of Toronto are necessary to show students that Islamic law is open to more liberal readings, he says.

"Islamic law is not just about these rules about cutting hands off thieves or discriminating against women. It's a living tradition in which jurists are trying to embrace and engage in active acts of interpretation," Mr. Emon says.

And, should the Ontario government leave the option of faith-based dispute settlement in the Arbitration Act, the University of Toronto's Islamic law courses will mean at least Ontario will have some lawyers who know their way around sharia law.

"If the proposal does go through, this would mean that some students would have the ability to support their clients' efforts in ways that maybe others don't," he says.

Even if the government rules Islamic law out of bounds in arbitration, a lawyer working in Toronto may have to deal with cross-border cases that involve countries where sharia is used, Mr. Fadel says.

He says Islamic law has come up in his work as a lawyer at Sullivan & Cromwell, a New York firm known for its work in business law. "It is increasingly relevant, say, for commercial transactions in which you have investors who call themselves Islamic investors, and they want the contracts to be compliant. It's not something that's so obscure that some percentage of U of T lawyers won't come across it at some point in their careers."

Mr. Sossin says he is aware that the hirings might raise some concerns, but ignoring an area of the law because of controversy is wrong. Instead, "you want to have the scholarship and teaching in the area," he says. "We're so unfamiliar with the Koran and the other Islamic law texts that we just lump it all together."

How about ignoring a sexism and superstition-ridden area of the law because it isn't what should be practiced in secular lands where we have abandoned such primitivism?

Tell me that this last tract isn't just a flat-out advertisement for the "benefits" of Sharia Law and I'll call you a damn liar.

To hell with them. Let Canada fall. Then let them serve a useful purpose. As an international example of how not to discard everything that makes the west free and equitable.

EVERYONE HATES THE FRENCH

2005-08-09T10:37:00.000+10:00

It certainly seems that way, at any rate. Sections of Europe are no exception: Anti-French sentiments expanding in Eastern Europe

GENEVA -- Resentment of France is growing in Eastern Europe where French policies are perceived to be anti-American and undermining the European Union's cohesion.

Diplomats describe the mood as "Francophobia" and attribute it to various statements by French President Jacques Chirac and to the rejection by French voters of the proposed European constitution.

According to one assessment, "The vast majority of people in Eastern and Central Europe is highly critical of French diplomacy. They consider the United States to be the big winner of the Cold War and the most influential power in the world."

"We tend to blame the French for everything -- or almost everything," said Jan Eichler of the Institute of International Relations in the Czech Republic.

According to Polish sources, suggestions have been posited in the former communist countries for a more balanced policy by the EU that would see the United States as a partner, not as a competitor. Some diplomats say French prestige and France's role as one of the union's dominant powers have suffered.

At the same time the decline of the use of the French language across the entire continent and particularly in EU institutions has caused concern in France.

"The French language is shrinking in Europe," headlined the conservative Paris daily Le Figaro recently.

These developments come at a time when there are no clear suggestions as to how the EU should cope with the current situation, with the constitutional project frozen after the "no" votes in the referendums in France and the Netherlands.

According to former Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek, "No major European institution has had the courage to analyze the present situation, nor to speak of strategy for the future."

Here's your strategy for the future.

ENVIRONMENTALISM Vs SPACE TRAVEL

2005-08-08T23:16:00.000+10:00

I have here two partisan articles, from two partisan news organisations. I am going to reproduce each in full, so that we can have a full and unfiltered look at what is being advanced by each side.

Our first speaker will be leftist Zoe Smeaton, writing for the BBC News Magazine, putting forward the notion that space flight is disastrous for the environment, and that NASA simply isn't doing enough to preserve the environment: Is the Shuttle green?

The Space Shuttle crew have been warning of the destruction of the Earth's environment. But what damage does it do to get a shuttle in space in the first place?

Observing the planet from her vantage-point in space, Discovery Commander Eileen Collins spoke last Thursday of the environmental destruction visible on Earth, likening the atmosphere to "an eggshell on an egg, it's so very thin". She added: "We know that we don't have much air - we need to protect what we have."
But is Nasa itself really observing this need for the protection of Earth as it sends shuttles into orbit?

The image of a shuttle at lift-off, enveloped in clouds of exhaust is now iconic. As crowds gather to witness the dramatic displays as shuttles are made airborne though, many may wonder whether all those exhaust fumes are damaging our environment.

According to Nasa, the Space Shuttle Main Engine design, three of which powered Discovery, is "the most advanced liquid-fuelled rocket engine ever built".

The International Space Station, and Earth below, as seen from Discovery
The fuel used by these engines is super-cold liquid hydrogen, kept at a temperature of -253 degrees Celsius, which Nasa reports is "the second coldest liquid on Earth".

Inside the engines, this hydrogen fuel is combusted with liquid oxygen in a reaction that reaches temperatures of up to 3136 degrees Celsius, "hotter than the boiling point of iron". This creates a high-speed stream of gas which ultimately generates the thrust necessary for launching the shuttle.

Professor George Fraser, director of Leicester University's Space Research Centre says this exhaust gas, made from the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, consists of water vapour and as such does not harm the atmosphere, making Nasa's main shuttle engines fairly environmentally safe.

In addition to these apparently "eco-friendly" main engines, Discovery was made more environmentally friendly the use of a certain type of insulating foam on its surface.

NASA SHUTTLE FOAM

1997: US Environmental Protection Agency ordered many industries to phase out use of Freon
2001: despite an exemption from CFC ban, Nasa continued to use 'green' non-freon-based foam
2003: seven astronauts died when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry - an investigation reported thermal protection system damage was initiated by sheared off foam striking the wing
2005: non-freon-based foam fell from the Discovery shuttle shortly after launch, and repairs were needed in space

Before 1997 Nasa preferred to use freon-based foam on the shuttles, but as a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), freon is now linked to ozone depletion and so has been phased out. Opting to follow Environmental Protection Agency guidelines, Nasa switched to a environmentally friendly version of the foam, although sections of this foam have now come off both the Columbia and Discovery shuttles.

Despite these factors, however, all shuttle launches can nonetheless have damaging impacts on the local environment.

Professor Fraser said: "The classic example of environmental impact is in Kazakhstan at the Baikonur launch site, where there are reports of quite serious environmental damage."

For most shuttles, the damage comes from the solid rocket boosters, or SRBs, require at shuttle launch to provide 71.4% of the thrust at lift-off and elevate the shuttle to an altitude of 45km (28 miles).

As a shuttle launches, a "cloud" becomes visible which contains SRB exhaust products, either dissolved or as particles in the water vapour released by the main engines.

Hydrochloric acid formed in this launch cloud leads to acidic deposits in the surrounding area, a phenomenon which may also be observed some distance away if exhausts are carried on prevailing winds.

The scenes of dead fish in Spain could be repeated next to launch sites
John Pike, president of Global Security.org, and an expert on the US space programme says: "The hydrochloric acid can pit the paint on your car if it is too close to the launch site."

A 1993 Nasa technical manual considered environmental effects of space shuttle launches at Kennedy Space Centre, and stated that some cumulative effects of launches in the nearby area are "reduction in the number of plant species present and reduction in total cover".

The manual also pointed out that acid deposits from the launch cloud can also impact nearby water lagoons and their wildlife.

If hydrochloric acid is deposited, the pH value near the surface of the water may drop and prove too acidic for fish, although these impacts on wildlife do "appear minimal and manageable".

Professor Fraser points out also that while shuttles may cause a small amount of damage to the ozone layer this will be "far less marked than that from the large number of high altitude aircraft in the World all the time".

Those awful shuttles.

Next is the conservative point of view on the same topic, advanced by William L. Anderson at Free Republic: Death by Environmentalism

Like those who were of age the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, most people can remember intimate details of what they were doing when they first heard that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded. To compound the tragedy, millions of schoolchildren across the country watched the whole thing in shocked amazement.

The "teacher in space" program that NASA hoped would be a public relations boon to the shuttle program exploded with the shuttle as teacher Christa McCauliffe of New Hampshire was among the seven astronauts who perished when the shuttle disintegrated miles above the earth. While NASA went on to record many more space flights after the Challenger disaster, the program once again was shocked into reality when Columbia blew up in flames just minutes before landing, killing all seven astronauts aboard.

In writing about the latest NASA disaster in the Free Market, I pointed out the problems and depressing realities about socialist space travel. What I did not say was something that is even more depressing: the roots of both disasters were planted in the government's environmental policies. Environmentalism not only killed 14 U.S. astronauts, but it killed them in a most horrible and public way.

As recent news reports have pointed out, the wreck of the Columbia was almost certainly due to a chunk of insulating foam coming loose and hitting some heat-protecting tiles, scattering them and leaving the spacecraft vulnerable to the intense heat it would experience upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere.

That is all that the mainstream news—and NASA—have been willing to report. What they have not said is that the particular foam that was in use at the time was an environmental substitute replacing a material that had worked well. However, the previous foam used to insulate the Columbia's external fuel tanks contained Freon, which is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) that the EPA banned because of the ozone depletion scare.

As Steven Milloy reports, NASA could have sought an exemption. Freon, after all, is inert and nontoxic, and its connection to ozone depletion is tenuous at best. However, having been burned by the EPA once before (as I will point out), NASA succumbed to what Milloy calls "PC foam." He writes, "PC foam was an immediate problem. The first mission with PC foam resulted in 11 times more damaged thermal tiles on Columbia than the previous mission with Freon-based foam."[i]

Furthermore, the damage was obvious—and quite severe. Milloy writes that following the 1997 Columbia mission, "more than 100 tiles were damaged beyond repair, well over the normal count of 40."

I now examine the Challenger explosion, which occurred the week after the Super Bowl in January 1986. As nearly everyone familiar with the catastrophe knows, a set of O-rings that was supposed to keep hot gases trapped in the rocket carrying the shuttle failed, the fuel quickly leaking out and igniting into a fireball shortly after takeoff.

It was an unusually cold morning at Cape Canaveral, too cold for the O-rings to perform properly. That is well-known. What most people do not know is that the material used to make the O-rings was a substitute to replace a product that the Environmental Protection Agency had banned because it contained asbestos.

The original O-rings used between the rocket joints came from an over-the-counter putty that had been used safely and effectively for a long time. However, in its war against the use of asbestos anywhere, anytime, the EPA forbade NASA from using that product at all after the space agency had sought an exemption. The EPA, not surprisingly, refused that request, something that would ultimately lead to the next disaster 17 years later. The new product, not surprisingly, failed and we know the rest of the story.

In normal situations, this would be a scandal of epic proportions. A government agency requires the use of unsafe materials that lead to the very public deaths of 14 individuals. Had a private firm permitted these kinds of unsafe working conditions, the situation would be worthy of a New York Times investigative report. Instead, all we hear is silence, interspersed with "the show must go on" comments about the future of the space shuttle program. Even the news reports on the foam disaster have ignored the reason why NASA used such an unsafe product; in fact, mainstream reporters are not even asking the pertinent questions.

Countless writers on these pages and elsewhere have pointed out the high costs—and low benefits—of environmental laws and regulations. Environmentalism has become a sacrosanct religion of which no questions can even be asked.

Yet, we see once again that applied environmentalism can be disastrous. Granted, we are talking about the lives of "only" 14 people, compared to the hundreds of thousands that have died of malaria following the banning of DDT, which once effectively killed the mosquitoes that carry the disease.

Whether we speak of 14 astronauts, or 14,000 people in a remote African nation, however, we speak of the same thing: death by environmentalism. The verdict is in; environmentalism is not only hazardous to our health, it threatens our very lives.

The loggerhead here really is the refusal of leftists to make value judgements that ultimately favour humanity.

They can scream about human endeavours that "rape the planet" all they like. But at the end of the day, we still need to exist. I worry that if the former view is given too much official support, one day it is going to be compulsory to avoid laying on the grass, lest you flatten some morally-superior being... like a worm.

SOCIALIST EU MANIACS GO TOO FAR

2005-08-08T22:57:00.000+10:00

Okay, this is almost enough for me to get armed to the teeth and start a bloody insurrection in Europe. Those socialists might very well enact every Orwellian policy under the heavens, but it will be a cold day in hell before I'll allow Bavarian Barmaid outfits to be banned: Breast not best, says EU

Beer drinkers in Germany are frothing at the mouth over EU plans to make Bavarian barmaids cover up.

The aim of the proposed EU directive is to protect them from the sun's harmful rays.

But the so-called "tan ban" has been condemned as absurd by breweries, politicians - and the barmaids.

Bavarian barmaids typically wear a a costume known as a dirndl - a dress and apron with a tight, low-cut top enhanced by a short white blouse.

Under the EU's Optical Radiation Directive, employers must ensure staff who work outdoors cover up against the risk of sunburn.

Bavarian bar keepers have been told the dirndl will have to be replaced as it does not provide adequate protection.

They face heavy fines if they fail to comply with the new legislation, which goes before MEPs next month.

The Mayor of Munich, Christian Ude, said: "A waitress no longer allowed to wander around a beer garden in a plunging neckline - this is the EU at its most pedantic."

A spokesman for the Bavarian Hotel and Restaurant Union said: "I have spoken to lots of waitresses and none said sunburn in the decollete area was a problem."

Organisers of the world's biggest beer festival, Munich's Oktoberfest, are just as angry. "This is an attack on the traditions of the region," said a spokesman.

No doubt about it. This means war.

AUST GOVT URGES GOOGLE TO DROP NUKE SITE IMAGES

2005-08-08T11:11:00.000+10:00

Now, I can't be sure that it was my post, or my 10 minute rambling conversation with the ASIO duty officer, or the 15 minute emphatic conversation I had with the Department of Defence duty officer, but it seems that someone might have been paying attention to me when I warned that Australia's vital strategic areas were compromised by Google Maps.

As I say, they might have already known about it, but as the government's reaction is coming just a couple of weeks after my report (and emphatic phone calls) while Google Maps has been around for months, it seems most likely that they didn't know, and are now acting on my tip: Google urged to drop nuclear site images

THE head of Australia's nuclear energy agency has called on the owners of an internet satellite program to censor images of the country's only nuclear reactor.

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation executive director Ian Smith said he would ask internet search engine Google to remove the Lucas Heights reactor from its Google Earth program. The online program combines satellite images with aerial photographs and maps to let users zoom in on almost any building in the world.

While Google Earth "censors" the White House with blocks of colour over the roof and the nearby Treasury Department and Executive Office buildings, anyone with a computer and web connection can use the free program to see aerial shots of sensitive Australian sites such as the Lucas Heights reactor, the secret US spy base at Pine Gap, outside Alice Springs, and Parliament House in Canberra.

The satellite image of the Lucas Heights facility, on a 70ha site 40km southwest of Sydney's CBD, clearly shows the layout of the buildings and carpark.

"We're going to ask Google to take it off," Dr Smith told The Australian.

"It doesn't stop somebody who's determined to get the information getting it, but having it on the internet just makes it so much more readily available. We don't want to provide any easy assistance to anyone who wants to interfere with the site."

Dr Smith said the Lucas Heights facility was clearly visible from the road, or from commercial aircraft flying overhead and noted Google's image was about two years out of date.

"The question comes down to, if you put it on the internet, does it go to Pakistan or Afghanistan and make it easy for them?"

Despite the construction of a new reactor and a five-year, $36million security upgrade announced in last year's federal budget, Dr Smith admitted that trespassers could enter the site "if they really want to".

"There's a small area near the middle of the site which is quite secure, but the bulk of our site isn't all that secure," he said.

"We don't have the guarding or the hardware to stop someone from getting in to the site if they really wanted to."

Dr Smith said ANSTO liaised with intelligence agencies to assess threats and met global security standards for storing nuclear materials.

Frenchman Willie Brigitte was deported from Australia in 2003 over an alleged plot to bomb the Lucas Heights reactor, which uses small amounts of uranium to manufacture medicines and for scientific research.

A Google spokeswoman defended the technology, noting the images were six to 18 months old and not detailed enough to zoom in on people. "The same information is available to anyone who flies over or drives by a piece of property," she said.

DigitalGlobe, the US company which sold the Lucas Heights photos to Google, said it did not censor any of its images.

"Although we are very sensitive to the concerns voiced, we are not required to seek permission to image areas around the world," spokesman Chuck Herring said.
Mr Herring said US law banned his company from selling to individuals, organisations or nations - including Iran and Cuba - on the US's "denied party" list. "When we sell it to Google, how they disseminate it over the internet is really up to them," he said.

A spokesman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock downplayed the security threat posed by web-based imaging. "Australian government security agencies are aware of such sites and the information available on them and factor them into their assessments of threat," he said.

I note that my estimate of the image being 6-8 months old is the one agreed upon by Google.

Further, take a look at the Google image that I left up on my original post. As you can see, people are visible.

It is also important to state that the thrust of my original complaint was that while strategic areas of importance in Israel, the US and the UK had been deliberately obscured, similar places in Australia were not. If Kim Jong Il's palaces could be afforded a little obscurity, so should our national-security sites.

GASP!

2005-08-08T10:51:00.000+10:00

Can it be true? UK Labor promoting... national pride???

Teenagers to swear allegience at Citizens Days

EVERY youngster in the UK will be required to take part in citizenship ceremonies under a radical government plan to boost "Britishness" and combat extremism, Scotland on Sunday can reveal.

Ministers are considering the controversial move following the bomb attacks in London by UK-born Muslims, which have placed unprecedented focus on the question of British identity.

Experts have warned that the bombers are the product of Britain's ghettoised urban culture, which has failed to provide national symbols around which to unite.

Scotland on Sunday can reveal that Britain's first 'Citizenship Day' has been pencilled in for this October, to celebrate the value of community and volunteer work.

Ministers are also consulting on plans to copy citizenship ceremonies in Australia and Canada, where citizens are encouraged to take part in ceremonies pledging their allegiance to their country.

Among the plans under consideration is a "rite of passage" plan in which all 18-year-olds would be forced to take part in a ceremony marking the fact that they are able to vote.

But the ceremonies are likely to be resisted by some young Britons, who are naturally wary of what they regard as flag-waving patriotism.

Even so, the bombings have led to a reassessment of how to create a new sense of Britishness which it is hoped may help to prevent future attacks.

The debate over Britishness has long been a fraught one. It is best summed up by the anger which is still felt, 15 years on, following Norman Tebbit's infamous "cricket test" which declared that only those 'Britons' who backed England over their ancestral homes in Pakistan, India and the West Indies could genuinely be described as British.

Tebbit's formulation was derided from the start, but the greater error, according to experts, has been the failure of British governments and political leaders to come up with anything better to encourage a sense of Britishness and combat the extremism so devastatingly displayed by the Leeds suicide bombers.

Quelled by political correctness and a sense of embarrassment of British history, the government has instead focused on celebrating the 'diversity' within British society, rather than emphasising Britain itself.

This, say critics, has simply helped create ghettos.

Mark Leonard, director of foreign affairs at the Centre for European Reform, who has written a book on renewing British identity, said: "There have to be proper integration policies. At present, people of different ethnic mixes live in a series of walled, gated communities."

Ted Cantle, chairman of the Community Cohesion Panel - an independent body which looked at ways to create common British values - added: "What we have at present is an Afro-Caribbean day and a Black History month which do a good job but at no point do we find things which bring people together.

"We are celebrating separateness and that is a real problem. It means we haven't found a way of celebrating Britishness across the divide."

Rachel Briggs, the head of international programmes at the think tank, Demos, adds: "There has to be a personal sense of attachment to Britain. If we don't get that right you could employ as many police officers as you like but you will still have communities that feel excluded and marginalised."

Muslims tell themselves they must remain marginalised from "evil" western culture, in order to remain good Muslims, dear.

Aside from not importing any more of them, and deporting those already infesting the place, how are you going to deal with that?

IS RUSSIA TURNING MUSLIM?

2005-08-08T10:43:00.000+10:00

This is what Russia's leading Muslim cleric is claiming, advancing a Russian Muslim population that is millions greater than official state estimates: Russia's turning Muslim, says mufti

MOSCOW: Russia's leading Muslim cleric has alarmed Orthodox Church leaders and nationalists by claiming the country has 23million Muslims, 3 million more than previously believed.

According to the last census, three years ago, about 14.5 million of Russia's 144 million people were ethnic Muslims. Religious leaders have put the number at nearer 20 million.

But the leader of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Ravil Gaynutdin, said this week the number of ethnic Muslims was 23million and rising.

"They are indigenous residents of our country, not migrants or immigrants, and have been living here from time immemorial," the mufti told a meeting of the European Union of Muslims. "The number of people professing Islam in Russia is constantly growing."

Russia is home to an estimated 3 million to 4 million Muslim migrants from the former Soviet states -- about 2 million Azeris, a million Kazakhs and several hundred thousand Uzbeks, Tajiks and Kyrgyz.

Some Russians are also converting to Islam, according to Sheik Farid Asadullin, of the Moscow Council of Muftis.

"Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians, mostly young and intelligent, see in Islam an answer to their questions," he said.

Islam was controlled in the Soviet Union, which had only 500 mosques, but has had a renaissance since 1991, helped by funds from the Middle East. Russia now has about 5000 mosques.

The rise in the Muslim population has raised fears among Orthodox Church leaders and nationalists that Russia could eventually become a Muslim-majority nation. The church claims to have 80million followers, but religious experts say the number is closer to 40 million and is falling.

Russia's population is declining, due in part to high alcohol consumption, but numbers are rising in Muslim regions, where large families are common and alcohol consumption is moderate.

"Ethnic" Muslims? Is that the same as an "Ethnic" Catholic?

I love the media. They are so used to catering to Muslim "sensitivities" that they kiss their asses even while writing stories warning of unchecked Muslim expansion.

For the last time, Islam is a religion, not an ethnicity. No matter what the idiotic Muslims bleat.

I sincerely hope that the Russians can deal with this. In any way necessary. A Muslim-majority Russia cannot be allowed to happen.

DUTCH STARTING TO GET WITH THE PROGRAM?

2005-08-08T10:34:00.000+10:00

Let's hope so. Coming on the heels of a poll indicating that most Danes would welcome imprisonment for people caught advocating terrorism, it is at least an encouraging sign that some Europeans havent resigned themselves to dhimmitude: Ban public servants wearing headscarves

AMSTERDAM — A majority of the Dutch public wants a new law to ban public servants from wearing headscarves or "other Islamic attire", a new poll has found.

Polling organisation TNS Nipo carried out the research for the latest edition of independent magazine Binnenlands Bestuur.

To date, a sizable majority in the Lower House of Parliament, De Tweede Kamer. has been opposed to banning religious expressions, such as the wearing of headscarves, by public servants.

The heads of municipal governments believe Islamic attire must be permitted as long as the person's face is not obscured.

TNS Nipo questioned 433 adults — 292 government employees and 50 municipal aldermen — for the poll.

There has been a growing aversion in the Netherlands in the last two years to attire associated with Muslims. A similar poll in 2003 revealed a majority felt it was acceptable for public servants to wear such garb.

Some 57 percent of the public, for instance, has a fundamental objection to a teacher wearing a head scarf. The new poll also found 77 percent and 81 percent respectively against police officers and judges wearing a headscarf.

TNS NIPO found 63 percent are in favour of a legal ban on public servants wearing a head scarf. About 80 percent expressed agreement to a large extent for the view that government employments should be banned from wearing any Muslim attire — because wearing this attire is seen as a refusal to adapt to Dutch norms.

Please - I don't want any libertarians whining in my comments about freedom of religious expression.

Screw them. When Islam decides to tolerate us, and allow our women to walk around Mecca or Medina in a bikini, then I'll tolerate their love of wearing bedsheets.

ISLAM GONE BEYOND INSANE?

2005-08-08T10:26:00.000+10:00

You would tend to think so, when they start to bulldoze their own "holy of holies", the city all Muslims daily pray toward: Saudi hardliners are wiping out their own heritage

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.

Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades.

Now the actual birthplace of the Prophet Mohamed is facing the bulldozers, with the connivance of Saudi religious authorities whose hardline interpretation of Islam is compelling them to wipe out their own heritage.

It is the same oil-rich orthodoxy that pumped money into the Taliban as they prepared to detonate the Bamiyan buddhas in 2000. And the same doctrine - violently opposed to all forms of idolatry - that this week decreed that the Saudis' own king be buried in an unmarked desert grave.

A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."

According to Dr Angawi - who has dedicated his life to preserving Islam's two holiest cities - as few as 20 structures are left that date back to the lifetime of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and those that remain could be bulldozed at any time. "This is the end of history in Mecca and Medina and the end of their future," said Dr Angawi.

Mecca is the most visited pilgrimage site in the world. It is home to the Grand Mosque and, along with the nearby city of Medina which houses the Prophet's tomb, receives four million people annually as they undertake the Islamic duty of the Haj and Umra pilgrimages.

The driving force behind the demolition campaign that has transformed these cities is Wahhabism. This, the austere state faith of Saudi Arabia, was imported by the al-Saud tribal chieftains when they conquered the region in the 1920s.

The motive behind the destruction is the Wahhabists' fanatical fear that places of historical and religious interest could give rise to idolatry or polytheism, the worship of multiple and potentially equal gods.

Maybe they just really like to blow shit up.

I suppose this is just representative of the new attitude within the Ummah since 9/11. OBL is a Wahhabi; he has brought the once opaque vision of violent world conquest into a clear, defined purpose for Muslims the world over.

What need have they of the past, when someday all the great cities of the world will be theirs?

NETANYAHU QUITS

2005-08-08T10:19:00.000+10:00

Thank God, something is about to give. Yesterday, I called for his return, today he quits the Sharon government: Bibi announces resignation

Stunning announcement: Eight days before the pullout's official start date, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced during Sunday’s government session that he has decided to quit the government.

“Here is my (resignation) letter,” the finance minister told Prime Minister Sharon and placed a handwritten note on the government table.

“The reasons for my resignation are all written here.”

“It’s becoming clear that the unilateral withdrawal under fire is not giving us a thing. The opposite is true, it undermines the security of Israel, splits the nation, entrenches the principle of withdrawal to the 1967 borders, which are not defensible, and is not the way to achieve peace,” Netanyahu wrote in his letter.

“What do we get in exchange for the withdrawal?” Bibi asks in his resignation notice. “What do we get in return for the uprooting of families and their children, homes, and graves? We’ll get an Islamic terror base. In recent months I hoped the government would open its eyes in the face of this clear reality and change course, but the opposite happened.”

“A balanced government reflecting the will of the people in the last elections has turned into a government that automatically executes a policy that contradicts Likud principals and the mandate we received from our voters,” Bibi wrote.

Following Netanyahu’s announcement, the government approved the first phase of the Gaza pullout by a 17-5 margin.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s associates said the disengagement would be executed despite Netanyahu’s resignation.

“Netanyahu fell captive in the hands of the Right, which threatened that if he doesn’t resign he would not receive their vote,” one source said. “The disengagement will be executed. Netanyahu’s actions are politically motivated, because he thought the disengagement would be followed by elections.”

Bibi is the Israeli right's posterboy. They've never needed to threaten him to do the right thing. He's always just done it. It will be interesting to watch what happens over the following weeks, as the ceasefire is bound to be broken by the Palestinians again.

RELIGION OF EAR-CHOPPING

2005-08-08T10:11:00.000+10:00

You have to laugh at this. It really is nice of the Islamists to provide such conclusive proof that Christianity and Islam are in no way comparable. At no time in Christian history did believers issue warnings of brutality such as this gentle admonishment from Muslims to street vendors in Southern Thailand: Work on friday and have your ears chopped off

Threats of violence against people who work on Fridays brought businesses in Yala and Pattani to a standstill yesterday.

Downtown Yala looked like a ghost town as 80% of shops closed and buses plying between Yala and Pattani and some outlying districts halted services. Outside Yala, food shops, groceries, petrol stations and other businesses run by Muslims were also closed while there were no hawkers on the streets.

Yusuf Doloh, a Yala vendor, said despite a guarantee of safety from authorities, people still felt unsafe and had decided to take precautions.

Security officials had asked people to live their lives normally. Islamic religious leaders confirmed that working on Fridays was not wrong under their religion.

Some bus passengers could not go home and had to stay in town after services were suspended. Business closure meant a day without income so some people were wondering out loud if threatening Muslims against working on Fridays was in breach of Islamic principles.

It was also quiet in Pattani. A market owner said vendors dared not sell their wares out of fear for their safety. “They said they were afraid of having their ears cut off,” he said, adding that most people also stayed in their homes.

A little disfigurement makes Allah smile, don't you know.

WAR IS COMING TO BRITAIN

2005-08-08T10:01:00.000+10:00

Who could have ever imagined that allowing in millions of people who adhere to a religion that insists its followers reject western tolerance, remaining intolerant of all non-believers, and teaching their children to hate the 'decadent' culture could be a bad idea?

Well, UK Labor's Tony Blair might be starting to find out the harsh truth, as the magnitude of the threat his nation faces becomes clear: Intelligence chiefs warn Blair of home-grown 'insurgency'

Intelligence chiefs are warning Tony Blair that Britain faces a full-blown Islamist insurgency, sustained by thousands of young Muslim men with military training now resident in this country.

The grim possibility that the two London attacks were not simply a sporadic terror campaign is being discussed at the highest levels in Whitehall. Fears of a third strike remain high this weekend, based on concrete evidence supplied by an intercepted text message and the interrogation of a terror suspect being held outside Britain, say US reports.

As police and the security services work to prevent another cell murdering civilians, attention is focusing on the pool of migrants to this country from the Horn of Africa and central Asia. MI5 is working to an estimate that more than 10,000 young men from these regions have had at least basic training in light weapons and military explosives.

A well-connected source said there were more than 100,000 people in Britain from "completely militarised" regions, including Somalia and its neighbours in the Horn of Africa, and Afghanistan and territories bordering the country. "Every one of them knows how to use an AK-47," said the source. "About 10 per cent can strip and reassemble such a weapon blindfolded, and probably a similar proportion have some knowledge of how to use military explosives. That adds up to tens of thousands of men."

Time to choose. Multiculturalism that involves Muslims, or national security. It seems that you simply cannot expect to have both when yours is a liberal democracy that infuriates them.

REFORMED LOVER OF GOOGLE MAPS

2005-08-07T01:21:00.000+10:00

It took a bit of hunting, but I finally managed to find the Iranian nuclear site near Isfahan that is causing the IAEA so many headaches.

My knowledge of uranium enrichment is woeful, perhaps someone better versed in the production of nuclear weapons can give us an idea of what the layout tells us. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger image).

APPEASEMENT REJECTED

2005-08-06T23:28:00.000+10:00

Iran is throwing down. It has rejected the EU's "incentive offer" and is proceeding to restart work at the Isfahan Uranium conversion plant immediately. It is further refusing to delay while the IAEA organises a team of observers and their equipment (more UN uber-efficiency).

Iran thinks the EU is bluffing. I think they are, too: Iran rejects EU nuclear compromise

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran on Saturday rejected the European Union's offer of incentives in return for a suspension of its nuclear fuel work, paving the way for a confrontation that could lead to U.N. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

The EU said its proposals aimed to allow Iran access to nuclear technology, but block work that could help make an atomic bomb. If Tehran resumed nuclear work, the EU said it would back U.S. calls to refer Iran to the U.N. for sanctions.

"The proposals are unacceptable and we reject them," senior Iranian nuclear negotiator Hossein Mousavian told Reuters.

Washington accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop a nuclear arsenal, but Tehran denies the charge and says its right to convert and enrich uranium for nuclear power stations is recognised by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

New Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did not specifically mention the nuclear issue as he was sworn in on Saturday, but said: "We are logical and respect international rules, but will not give in to those who want to violate our rights ... The Iranian nation cannot be intimidated."

The EU -- represented by Britain, France and Germany -- has been working to find a compromise between arch foes Iran and the United States since Tehran's nuclear programme was exposed in late 2002 after 18 years of work carried out in secrecy.

Anyone who believes the Iranians can be bargained with is a naive fool.

I welcome this news. We are one step further along the road toward regime change in Iran.

A LITTLE UNBALANCED, BORIS

2005-08-06T22:53:00.000+10:00

Palestinians break the ceasefire, daily launching rockets into settlements and killing Israelis by the handful.

The mainstream media yawns.

One pissed-off young Israeli soldier goes kill-happy on a couple of Palestinians... and wow.

The mainstream media is electrified (look how often the word "terrorist" is used!) and in Russia, politicians hysterically describe it as... well, you'll see: Russian parliament member called terrorist act in Israel crime against the world

MOSCOW, August 5 (RIA Novosti) - The Thursday terrorist act in Israel was a crime against the whole world, a Russian parliament member said Friday.

"The act of the terrorist, aimed at frustrating the peaceful settlement process between Israel and Palestine, was a crime not only against Palestinians, but against the whole world," Mikhail Margelov, the Chairman of the Federation Council committee on international affairs, said in statement Friday.

"Today, when there is a real chance to settle the many-year contradictions, Palestinian and Israeli interior oppositions are maximizing efforts to frustrate the process," Margelov said. "The most important thing for Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas is to remain unprovoked and preserve the right course for Palestinian-Israeli relations.

Not hard for Abbas to remain unprovoked. His people are the ones doing the provoking.

As for Sharon... I've no idea what's going on in that guy's head. He's nuts. Bring back Netanyahu.

Update: The UN can't seem to decide precisely how to define a terrorist... and won't condemn acts of terrorism as a general rule... until it's a Jew doing the killing: Annan Condemns Jewish Extremist's 'Terrorist Act' in Israel

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Friday condemned a deadly shooting rampage by a Jewish extremist in northern Israel as a "terrorist act", saying it illustrated the "dangers of fanaticism" in an atmosphere of tension.

An ultra-rightist teenage soldier shot and killed four Israeli Arabs on a bus in the northern town of Shfaram Thursday in a row over Israel's imminent withdrawal from the Gaza Strip before being lynched by local residents.

So much easier when it is an Israeli who is the criminal. And when the people killed are Muslims - and therefore are important enough to warrant their deaths being classified a crime against the whole world.

Anybody else starting to contemplate moving to a deserted island surrounded by minefields?

FEELING MISTY-EYED OVER THE HIROSHIMA ANNIVERSARY?

2005-08-06T22:42:00.000+10:00

Don't let liberal revisionists make you go all weepy.

Let the hard facts of the only other alternative (invasion), as provided by non-partisan site Wikipedia, explain why it is that dropping the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Then google up "Japanese war crimes" for a little reminder of who it was that we were fighting.

That Wikipedia article really is magnificent. Take the time to look it over.

A BLOG IS BORN

2005-08-06T22:18:00.000+10:00

My nagging paid off. Go see.

DANES GETTING THE RIGHT IDEA

2005-08-06T21:35:00.000+10:00

Earlier, I reported on the latest Galloway outrage and suggested that people expressing sympathy for terrorists ought to be reprimanded for having done so. It seems that I'm getting a little slow, and that most Danes are ahead of the ball on this: Danes wish to limit freedom of expression

Six out of ten Danes want to make it a criminal offence to express sympathy for terrorist organisations and attacks.

In other words, voters now seem willing to tighten existing anti-terror legislation introduced after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Next week, the far-right Danish People's Party is to discuss ways to limit freedom of expression when it comes to expressing sympathies for terrorism.

Nonetheless, the ruling Liberals have dismissed tightening current anti-terror regulations.

This morning, Liberal MP Birthe Rønn Hornbech said that the need to demonstrate political will to clamp down on terrorists should not lead to the creation of a police state.

Was Britain a police state during WWII when it imprisoned people (like Mosley) who, in the past, had expressed sympathy for their enemies? I think not.

It is time to start taking new ideas to the public. With every new terrorist attack, we'll find that more and more ears will be attuned to our suggestions. The liberal past is gone, it has lead to Islamic cells operating freely throughout the west. It is time to hunker down and get serious.

FRENCH PREPARING FOR NEW OVERLORDS

2005-08-06T21:22:00.000+10:00

It is truly a sad thing to see what the inheritors of the mantle of Charles Martel and Charlemagne have done with the land of the Franks. I liked them better when they were killing Avars and Arabs in the name of God: Muslim-Themed 'Beurger King' Opens

PARIS - Muslims in France are having it their way with "Beurger King" — a new fast-food restaurant that caters to the country's large Islamic population.

The bright and colorful eatery was launched in July in an eastern Paris suburb crowded with immigrants and dilapidated housing projects. Its name plays on the French word "Beur," meaning a second-generation North African living in France.

The menu at Beurger King Muslim, or BKM, is standard fast-food fare: burgers, fries, sundaes and doughnuts, and prices are comparable to those at major chains. But the beef and chicken burgers are halal — meaning made with meat slaughtered according to Islamic dietary laws.

Waitresses wear Islamic head scarves, as do many of their customers.

Mouna Talbi, 24, traveled 55 miles to Clichy-sous-Bois with her husband and two small sons to try it out.

"I was so happy to come here that I had tears in my eyes when I walked in," she said, watching her sons climb on colored blocks in the play area as she ate a halal burger.

"Then I went home to a delightful beating from my mast... um... I mean, husband."

What is wrong with Islamic women?

My ancestors were led to war by warrior queens nearly a thousand years before Muhammed decided to downgrade 50% of the human species. Gives you a bit of an idea just how backward Islam really is.

A world without fierce women; one populated only by the timid and compliant, just isn't worth living in.

APOLOGIES

2005-08-06T21:19:00.000+10:00

For the lack of posts, my internet connection has been iffy the last couple of days, and I spent a good part of this morning trying to get the code for random banner display to work. It didn't, so there we have it.

MORE INFORMATION

2005-08-05T22:34:00.000+10:00

On the Marines who were killed when an IED hit their amphibious assault vehicle in Haditha, Iraq is available here.

God bless them, and God bless the Corps.

HYPOTHETICAL

2005-08-05T08:56:00.000+10:00

You are approached by a shadowy individual who seems to know an awful lot about you. He/she informs you that they are from the government, and that you have been selected to be trained for an elite force that has been set up to fight terrorism.

Only, this group isn't going to play by the rules. They're going to systematically exterminate terrorists, their support organs, even prominent westerners who publicly condemn the war on terror.

You are assured that their mission has the sanction of the president/prime minister

Do you accept this offer? If so, why? If not, why not?

SIGNS OF LIFE FROM THE UK TORIES

2005-08-05T08:38:00.000+10:00

I hope this keeps up, but I won't be holding my breath: Multicultural Britain is not working, says Tory chief

Muslims must start integrating into mainstream British society, says David Davis, the shadow home secretary and front-runner to take over the Conservative leadership.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph today, Mr Davis signalled a significant shift away from the policy of multi-culturalism, which allows people of different faiths and cultures to settle without expecting them to integrate.

"Often, the authorities have seemed more concerned with encouraging distinctive identities rather than promoting the common values of nationhood," Mr Davis writes.

Mr Davis argues today that questions must be asked about how the "perverted values" of the suicide bomber were allowed to take root.

He says Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, was right to call multiculturalism outdated.

"We should learn lessons from abroad, for example from the United States, where pride in the nation's values is much more prevalent among minorities than here," he says. "Above all, we must speak openly of what we expect of those who settle here - and of ourselves.

"Let us be clear. Non-Muslims have obligations to their Muslim fellow citizens - to strive for equal opportunities for all, to accept the mainstream version of Islam as a part of society and to reject the vile racism of the BNP and its like.

"But Muslims in turn have obligations: not simply to condemn terror, as one Labour MP put it, but to confront it."

He praised the Government's response to the London bombings and promised Tory support for tougher laws to catch and convict those preparing terrorist acts or inciting extremism.

Mr Davis calls for the establishment of a new border control police force to secure Britain's "porous" borders.

The process of granting British citizenship should be reviewed. It is "totally unacceptable" that one of the alleged bombers was given a British passport despite having a long record of bad conduct, including time in jail.

Mr Davis repeats the Tory call to review the Human Rights Act.

Keep it coming, boys: Muslims who hate us can get out, says Tory

MUSLIMS who resent the British way of life should leave the UK, regardless of whether they are citizens or not, a senior Conservative said last night in comments that have heightened already tense community relations.

Gerald Howarth, the shadow defence minister, last night told The Scotsman that extremist Muslims who see the Iraq war as a conflict against Islam should be considered as treacherous as Soviet sympathisers during the Cold War. His remarkable claim shatters the tri-party consensus which Michael Howard, the Tory leader, sought to make with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, and the Liberal Democrats.

Mr Howarth said yesterday that he is incensed by suggestions from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, that Britain is "part of the problem" in Iraq - and said that the problem in the UK lies in fanatical Muslims living within our shores.

He is the first mainstream UK politician to suggest that extremist British Muslims should leave for Islamic societies. The government is looking at deporting foreign-born nationals and imprisoning British Muslims who incite or glorify terrorism.

I know that George Galloway probably isn't a Muslim, but if the government should bring in "incitement" restrictions, I can't think of anyone who is more deserving of a stretch someplace where there are a lot of violent British loyalists. Long Kesh, perhaps?

TWO MORE FOR THE TARGET LIST

2005-08-05T08:24:00.000+10:00

I think that any Muslim who has lived freely in a western society, who then proceeds to sneeringly declare war on us, forfeits the comfort and peace our civilization has afforded them. Their house should be burned to the ground, with them in it.

Here's two more likely candidates for the Jericho list: Fighting words in an anxious London

LONDON - As London braces for another feared attack, two prominent British Islamic militants say British civilians are fair targets.

“We don’t live in peace with you anymore,” said Abu Uzair in an interview on BBC Newsnight.

Abu Uzair and Abu Izzadeen — both British citizens — justified and even praised the attacks, which killed 52 people. “What I would say about those who do suicide operations or martyrdom operations — ‘suicide’ is a phrase coined by the media, they’re completely praise-worthy,” said Abu Izzadeen.

Both men previously were associated with a militant group in London that celebrated the 9/11 attacks, calling the hijackers “The Magnificent 19.” For years, the group’s leader has advocated violent attacks outside Britain.

British authorities now are investigating whether some of London’s radical imams played a role in inciting or indoctrinating the bombers. Many attended the most radical mosques.

NBC News found the cousin of suicide bomber Shahzad Tanweer in Pakistan. Ishfaq Ahmad says Tanweer admired Osama bin Laden. “At times he used to praise him [bin Laden] — that he is good man,” said Ahmad.

I'm not sure what enrages me most. The fact that they openly applaud the murderers of women and children, or the fact that they do so in such a brazen, fearless fashion, whilst living amongst us.

They randomly murder us. It is time for us to surgically murder them. I'm done with playing nice. These people think we are weak. Let us show them what our Viking, Celtic and Saxon ancestors did to those who mistook us for weaklings.

Death to terrorists. Death to terrorist supporters. Death to terrorist sympathisers.

TIME TO GO, GEORGE

2005-08-05T08:05:00.000+10:00

I think it's well past time that something destructive occurred in the vicinity of Mr Galloway. He is straying into some extremely dangerous territory; siding more and more openly with the enemies of the free world: British MP George Galloway in Syria: Foreigners Are Raping Two Beautiful Arab Daughters - Jerusalem and Baghdad

Galloway (on Syrian TV, July 31, 2005): Mr. Blair is using this crime and all these dead people as a justification for this absurd idea of a war on terrorism. "Terror" is a word... Terror is a tactic, it's not a strategy. The idea that Muslims have some kind of sickness in their bodies, which must be cured, which is the idea behind Bush, behind Mr. Blair, and behind Mr. Berlusconi's government in Italy - It must be resisted. It's not the Muslims who are sick. It's Bush and Blair and Berlusconi who are sick. It's not the Muslims who need to be cured. It's the imperialist countries that need to be cured.

[...]

The real question is, after the evidence of Sykes-Picot 1, are you ready to accept Sykes-Picot 2? What does Sykes-Picot mean to the Arab world? Nothing except division, disunity, weakness, and failure. Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners - Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. And some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters. Why? Because they are too weak and too corrupt to do anything about it. So this is what Sykes-Picot will do to the Arabs. Are you ready to have another hundred years like the hundred years you just had?

Galloway (on Al-Jazeera TV, July 31, 2005): This started out as a wish to terrorize the world with American power, or as Sharon would say: "Terrrrrrorize" the world with American power. But in fact it ended demonstrating the exact opposite. They can control the skies, but only if they don't come within range of an RPG, but they can't control one single street in any part of occupied Iraq. Not one street. Not one street anywhere. These poor Iraqis - ragged people, with their sandals, with their Kalashnikovs, with the lightest and most basic of weapons - are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day, which has made the country ungovernable by the people who occupy it. We don't know who they are, we don't know their names, we never saw their faces, they don't put up photographs of their martyrs, we don't know the names of their leaders. I'm sure, for all the times I spent in Iraq, that I never met any of them before. They are not the comfortable in the former regime, they are not the leaders, with maybe one exception: Izzat Ibrahim Al-Durri. They are the base of this society. They are the young men and the young women who decided, whatever their feelings about the former regime - some are with, some are against. But they decided, when the foreign invaders came, to defend their country, to defend their honor, to defend their families, their religion, their way of life from a military superpower, which landed amongst them. And they are winning the war. America is losing the war in Iraq, and even the Americans now admit it. Even the puppet ministers and regime in Baghdad know it. The former puppet minister (Iyad) Allawi admitted it three times in the last month. America is losing the war in Iraq. And this will not change. The resistance is getting stronger every day, and the will to remain as an occupier by Britain and America is getting weaker everyday. Therefore, it can be said, truly said, that the Iraqi resistance is not just defending Iraq. They are defending all the Arabs, and they are defending all the people of the world from American hegemony.

[...]

It's not the Muslims who are the terrorists. The biggest terrorists are Bush, and Blair, and Berlusconi, and Aznar, but it is definitely not a clash of civilizations. George Bush doesn't have any civilization, he doesn't represent any civilization. We believe in the Prophets, peace be upon them. He believes in the profits, and how to get a piece of them. That's his god. That's his god. George Bush worships money. That's his god - Mammon.

[...]

Galloway (on ANB TV, July 28, 2005): Most of the children, most of the schools, most of the buses, were bombed by the United States. Let's keep this clearly in perspective: Most of the children who died in Iraq were killed by George Bush, not by Zarqawi. Most of the schools that were wrecked, buses that were bombed, hospitals that were destroyed, lives that were taken, were taken by George Bush, not by Zarqawi. Number two: Most of the resistance in Iraq is not Zarqawi, It's not foreign, whatever "foreign" means when Iraq is occupied by 250,000 foreign armies. Most of their resistance are Iraqis resisting the foreign occupation of their country. Most of the operations which they carry out are against the occupying forces and their collaborators, and this is normal in every liberation struggle.

Playing to their oversized sense of victimhood, that unbelievably treasonable rhetoric is clearly designed to whip Arabs up into a frenzy of hatred. He is playing the Arab Churchill; a useful dhimmi using absurdly melodramatic Arab colloqualisms to exhort more Muslims to become martyrs, killing British soldiers.

Treachery seldom is so kind as to reveal its face so openly.

Galloway is now a rightful target of war. Somebody make him dead, for Christ's sake. And be bloody messy about it. Whoever does it will be a fucking hero. His name will live upon the lips of my family for generations.

JOAN COLLINS: "BRITAIN DESTROYING ITSELF FROM WITHIN"

2005-08-04T22:01:00.000+10:00

Joan comes off sounding quite like an equally glamourous friend of mine when she launches into the state of modern Britain... sorry, England: Britain destroying itself from within

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within, said the American historian Will Durrant about ancient Rome. This self-destruction of values is exactly what is happening in England today.

Yes, I still call the country of my birth England, in spite of the peculiar political correctness that insists that it be called 'the UK' and that we, its denizens, must be 'Britons'.

Even though the Welsh are proud to call themselves Welsh, as are the Irish and certainly the Scots, woe betide the Briton who calls himself 'English' -- a much-frowned-upon no-no.

I believe that when a country loses so much respect for itself that it can no longer even be identified by its historically correct name, insecurity and lack of respect filter down to its inhabitants.

Recently, I have concluded that London is no longer the 'seat of civilised society' that the world once considered it to be, and is certainly not the safe city I grew up in.

I always had a thing for Collins. Her intensely sexy (yet smallish) role in 60's remake of "The Big Sleep" forever enshrined her in my top ten teenage fantasy list.

THE WORLD REMEMBERS KING FAHD

2005-08-04T15:23:00.000+10:00

The Saudis would prefer you didn't remember him by this letter he once penned, however:

"I summon my blue-eyed slaves anytime it pleases me. I command the Americans to send me their bravest soldiers to die for me. Anytime I clap my hands a stupid genie called the American ambassador appears to do my bidding. When the Americans die in my service their bodies are frozen in metal boxes by the US Embassy and American airplanes carry them away, as if they never existed. Truly, America is my favorite slave."

- King Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz, Jeddeh 1993

Be sure to give my regards to Lucifer, Faddy.

LGF ON THE MONEY, AGAIN

2005-08-03T09:01:00.000+10:00

A few days ago, when the death of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia became public, Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs foretold the inevitable - a link being drawn between the King's death and the evil Jews of the Mossad.

Well, as sad as it is, he didn't have to wait long: Jewish doctor's ”secret links” to Arab leaders

It all began with some health problems and ended up in a strong and warm relationship that lasted for years between a senior Israeli doctor and prominent Arab figures and rulers.

In mid-July, the mass-circulation Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published in its weekend issue, a several page report on Prof. Mani and his secret encounters within the highest circles of the Arab world including close ties with the late Saudi King Fahd.

With the help of Saudi billionaire, Adnan Khashoggi, Israel’s Professor Moshe Mani would wrap himself up in a traditional Arab Jalabiya, and leap from one Arab leader to the other. According to the report, he went horse-back riding with the late Moroccan King Hassan, spoke with Sudan’s president Jaffer Numeiri – as he tried to convince him to assist Ethiopian Jews in coming to Israel through Sudan. Mani would celebrate in extravagant meals on yachts in Jeddah and other Arab cities, until the day he felt he had enough caviar…

[...]

Whether Mani was sent by the Mossad to Riyadh and other Arab capitals is a matter that wasn’t mentioned in the report, but, between the lines, one can understand that this may be the case.

Was Mani actually sent to “check out” other matters, besides the physical condition of Arab Royals and leading figures?

Or was he actually working for the secret fraternal order of the mason/templar/jesuits, in league with neocons and the Vatican bank?

Only Albawaba knows for sure.

CYBERSPIES WAGE COUNTERTERRORIST INTERNET OFFENSIVE

2005-08-03T01:10:00.000+10:00

It's always nice to see life being made just that much more difficult for the Islamists: Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out

Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell.

Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.

The Israelis detect the hand of British intelligence, determined to torpedo the websites after the London attacks of July 7.

The web has become the new battleground of terrorism, permitting a freedom of communication denied to such organisations as the IRA a couple of decades ago.

One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be “moderate”, remain.

A pity the terrorists themselves cannot be so easily targeted and neutralised.

THE RELIGION OF PEACE: "WAR IS THE ONLY WAY"

2005-08-03T01:02:00.000+10:00

It seems a somewhat myopic perspective to adopt while viewing a complex issue like Kashimir, but when the followers of the Prophet want to get their kill on, there's just no stopping them: Jihad sole solution to Kashmir

MUZAFFARABAD, August 01 (Online): Chairman Muttahida Jihad Council and Supreme Commander Syed Salahuddin said that jihad is the only way out for Kashmir problem.
Speaking in favor of armed combat he said that pleading for table-talks with India will prove to be a futile endeavour on part of some Kashmiri leaders as India has no serious interest in solving the issue.

He was airing these thoughts while addressing a condolence gathering called here, to mourn and pray for the departed soul of a freedom fighter Saifullah who embraced martyrdom in a skirmish with Indian occupied forces on 27th of July in Bandi Pura.

Ask yourself this: Does "Chairman Muttahida Jihad Council and Supreme Commander" sound like a back-alley representative of a "small minority of extremists" to you?

No, it doesn't. It sounds like a fairly well-respected and authoritive Islamic figure.

IT'S 1938 ALL OVER AGAIN!

2005-08-02T13:31:00.000+10:00

Tired of totally failing to bring the Iranian nuclear program to heel... by doing absolutely nothing... the EUropeans - ever a progressive people - have decided to try something revolutionary.

A non-aggression pact.

Britain, France and Germany are preparing to offer Iran a package that includes major security assurances, economic cooperation and a guaranteed fuel supply. In exchange, Tehran would permanently forgo production of fissile material that could be used for nuclear weapons, according to U.S. and foreign diplomats. Details of the offer, which has been in the works since May and is near completion, have won cautious support from the Bush administration, U.S. diplomats said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The European trio wants to present the proposals late next week after Iran's new president takes office. But the Iranians have been pushing to receive the offer today and have threatened to resume some nuclear work if it is delayed or falls short of expectations. Iran's state-run news service quoted Hassan Rowhani, the country's top nuclear negotiator, as saying the deal was expected to include "guarantees about Iran's integrity, independence [and] national sovereignty" as part of a nonaggression pact.

This, combined with the new Iranian President's talk of global conquest gives me the strangest sense of deja vu.

But hey. It's peace in our time. So why worry?

PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR WATCH

2005-08-02T11:07:00.000+10:00

Long-time PLO/Fatah bigshot, Farouk Kaddoumi, has ordered that a Fatah "popular army" be set up in the Gaza Strip: Fatah founds popular army in Gaza

Sources in the Gaza Strip said the decision to establish a "popular army" was made by top PLO official Farouk Kaddoumi, who is based in Tunis and also serves as chairman of the ruling Fatah party's central committee. A staunch opponent of the Oslo Accords, Kaddoumi was one of the few PLO leaders who refused to return to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994.

Kaddoumni, who is planning to move to the Gaza Strip after disengagement, recently opened an office in Khan Yunis. The office is run by dozens of Fatah activists and gunmen who are unhappy with the policies of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

On Monday, Kaddoumi's office launched a training program for dozens of recruits wishing to join the "popular army." The new "soldiers" are expected to undergo military training for several days before being officially drafted into the new army.

Kaddoumi told his supporters that the new force would be entrusted with helping the PA security forces enforce law and order and "protect the property of the Palestinians after the Israeli withdrawal. We will seek full coordination with all Palestinian factions to achieve our goal."

The decision to establish a Fatah "popular army" comes in the wake of reports that Hamas was also setting up a similar force in the Gaza Strip.

I give it a few months before open hostilities begin. No doubt the MSM will blame Israel.

ITALY BANS THE BURQA

2005-08-02T10:51:00.000+10:00

In a wonderful display of anti-dhimmitude, Italy's parliament has united to ban that uniquely Muslim expression of institutionalised misogyny, the burqa: Italy bans Islamic burqas

ITALY has banned Islamic burqas under tough terrorism laws that provide two-year jail terms and E2000 ($3200) fines for anyone caught covering their face in a public place.

The counter-terrorism package, passed by Italy's parliament yesterday, doubles the existing penalty for wearing a burqa or chador -- traditional robes worn by Muslim women to cover their faces -- or full-faced helmets or balaclavas in public.

Police can extract DNA samples without a suspect's consent, detain them for 24 hours without a lawyer present, and deport foreigners suspected of terrorism under the new legislation. Soldiers involved in counter-terrorism have been given the same stop-and-search powers.

The changes, approved in a rare show of bipartisanship, came as Italian police arrested a fugitive hunted by British police over the bungled bombing attempt in London on July 21.

Even those few deluded Islamic women who protest for the burqa will lose interest after getting around town in a pair of jeans for a few months.

"NO REFORM PERMITTED": MODERATE ISLAMIC COUNTRY

2005-08-02T10:37:00.000+10:00

Muslim anti-progressivism update from Indonesia, where the country's top Islamic council has issued a fatwa, forbidding any liberal interpretation of Islam: Indonesian Muslim body forbids liberal Islam

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia's top Islamic council issued a religious edict on Friday forbidding any liberal interpretation of Islam in the world's most populous Muslim nation.

"Religious liberalism is haram (forbidden)," said a fatwa, or doctrine, issued by the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI) and seen by Reuters.

"This is a reminder for Muslims to follow the religion in a correct way and not to try to deviate from the principles," Ma'aruf Amin, chief the MUI's Fatwa Commission, told Reuters.

Another fatwa banned inter-religious marriages in Indonesia where 85 percent of its 220 million follow Islam.

There is widespread debate in Indonesia over inter-religious marriages with some clerics saying Muslim men can marry non-Muslim women.

But Amin said the MUI had decided to ban such marriages "for the sake of Indonesian Muslims".

"This is the strongest view at the MUI and we are doing this to improve the religion quality of the Muslim," Amin added.

A typically despicable act of Islamic intolerance, one that will almost certainly go unreported in the mainstream media.

But don't allow this to make you lose focus on what Muslims have been assuring us - it is we in the west who are the intolerance ones.

CONGRATULATIONS, MR AMBASSADOR

2005-08-02T10:30:00.000+10:00

This is not going to be recieved well at moonbat central.

A TREACHEROUS LEFTIST IDIOT

2005-08-01T21:50:00.000+10:00

I want to preface my following remarks with the statement that I don't think all leftists are treasonable or mentally impaired. Some notable leftists, I believe, are quite decent, knowledgable, even enlightened individuals who have merely, through some strange postmodern osmosis, managed to draw entirely the wrong conclusions from what they've learned.

Do not allow this man to reproduce
Gary Brecher, writing for obscure Moscow alternative newspaper "The Exile", is not one of them. He has some pseudo-academic pretensions and a rather serious chip on his shoulder. So much so that, having drawn all the wrong conclusions about classicist Victor Davis Hanson, he proceeds to cheerfully imagine burning the academic's farm to the ground: Portrait of an American Traitor

We've got this Fresno intellectual who likes to strut the same way in the local paper. He's one of these snotty assholes with three names: Victor Davis Hanson. Oh, sorry: Doctor Victor David Hanson. He's got a Ph.D. and he teaches at Fresno State.

This fool passes himself off as a military historian, writing columns about Iraq and Afghanistan and everything else he feels like babbling about, but he doesn't have a clue about contemporary warfare. Every war nerd on the net knows more about what's happening in Iraq than he does. But that doesn't stop him. He teaches Classics, he's written a half dozen books on ancient warfare, and he never lets you forget that he's a professor and you're not.

In his last column for the Fresno Bee, he sneered at people who don't have Ph.D.'s for daring to have opinions about the war in Iraq: "What do a talented Richard Gere, Robert Redford and Madonna all have in common besides loudly blasting the current administration? They either dropped out of, or never started, college. Cher may think George Bush is 'stupid,' but she-not he-didn't finish high school."

Since I never even finished my AA degree, I took that kind of personally. I guess it's my fault for not getting into Yale on pure merit like Bush did. That column got me so furious I daydreamed about driving down Highway 99 to Hanson's farm and setting all his orchards and vineyards on fire. I kept thinking of what the Spartans said when one of their neighbors threatened them: "Your cicadas will chirp from the ground," meaning, "We'll burn your fucking olive orchards if you mouth off again."

Professor Hanson is one of these "back to the land" assholes who can afford to live on a farm because he's got tenure for life at Fresno State-they can't fire him for anything less than a major felony [One wonders if he made the same unhappy noises over Ward Churchill - Ed].

It's classic welfare state socialism that funds his estate, but that doesn't stop him from moralizing about the benefits of free market solutions. So he writes these columns from his farm in Selma, a few miles down the road from Fresno, about the sanctity of private land and private enterprise and the life lessons of farming.

He doesn't even suspect what a total hypocrite he is. According to his official online bio, Hanson graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1975. I don't know if you non-Californians understand what that means. UC Santa Cruz is the official sex-and-drugs campus of the whole UC system. It's so hippie-cool and mellow it doesn't even give grades, which are just too bourgeois. You just get little notes from your teachers. The kids who go there are rich brats who don't have to worry about getting a job-because graduating from there is like telling your future employers you were stoned for four straight years.

The annoying smart guy's arrogance upset Brecher, so he felt that the rational response was to go erradicate VDH's landholding. Instead, (probably because the act of doing something as energetic as an estate-burning would give him a coronary), Mr Brecher decides to simply turn into a foul-mouthed ignoramous, flinging around the kind of libelous accusations Michael Moore would balk at. How Zen.

I particularly like the way he accuses VDH of being a hypocrite, just after he had got done proving himself to be one. VDH is an ignorant "fool" who knows "less about modern warfare" than just about any "war nerd" on the internet. Yet in the preceding paragraph, Mr Brecher, a journalist(?), feels himself sufficiently equipped to criticise the local police methods of tackling hard criminals in his neighborhood. No doubt Mr Brecher was a decorated police officer before he gained a hundred pounds and became a quasi-Russian underground journo-blogger. Otherwise he would be, well, an ignorant, hypocritical fool who doesn't know what he's talking about.

But there is more to this article than rampant hypocrisy or Freudian indications of a severe personal sense of inadequacy. Were Mr Brecher's mistake merely one of emotional over-reaction, one could simply shake one's head, turn away, and move on with something of greater significance. Like clipping fingernails.

What really interests me about Brecher is that he seems to have gotten just about every conceivable fact about Victor Davis Hanson (VDH) and his work as professor of Classics abyssmally wrong.

So now it is time to Fisk. Unfortunately for Mr Brecher, military history is my forte. It isn't his. Let's pick up where we left off (after skipping a few paragraphs of meaningless hatred for which VHD's lawyers will probably make Brecher very sorry):

But you know, I could take all Hanson's hypocritical pompous bullshit if he only knew something about contemporary warfare. He doesn't. All he knows is that he's in favor of Gulf War II, and to defend that mess he's willing to slander Bush Sr's magnificent victory in Gulf War I. This is insane, really insane-taking America's only outright strategic victory since 1945, our most glorious campaign since Inchon, and turning it into a defeat just so you can make Bush Jr's fiasco look a little better. Here's Hanson's treasonous account of Gulf War I:
"War I (January 17 to March 3, 1991)

"The First Iraqi War : started over Saddam Hussein's August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait. His occupation precipitated the American-led coalition's efforts to reclaim Kuwait through land and air attacks. Saddam's complete capitulation was seen as satisfying the war's professed claim of restoring the sovereignty of Kuwait.

"But despite retreating from Kuwait and suffering terrible damage to his armed forces, Saddam, like the Germans in 1918, claimed that his armies had been repelled while on the offensive. So he passed off a setback as a draw against the world's superpower - and thus a win by virtue of his own survival against overwhelming odds.

"In any case, we called off our forces before the destruction of the Republican Guard. We also refused to go to Baghdad; we let rebellious Shiites and Kurds be tragically butchered; and we failed to enforce all the surrender agreements. Apparently the U.S. wished to bow to the U.N. mandates only to expel Saddam from Kuwait, or was worried about our Sunni partners who wanted a lid on Kurdish tribalism and Shiite fervor inside Iraq."
There are so many evil lies here, I don't know where to start. First there's the phony comparison to Germany after WW I. There's no comparison at all. Saddam's Kuwait invasion wasn't a nationalist war like WW I, and no matter what Saddam said, every dog in the street in Baghdad knew perfectly well that the Iraqi army had been outclassed and savaged.

Moreover, the Germans fought for four years and nearly won, whereas Saddam got his ass completely whipped in a three-day land war. Fact is, we did it right in Gulf War I. We neutered Saddam, destroyed his ability to threaten anybody, and left him in charge of his hellhole country. It was American diplomacy combined with military power at its finest.

I count two glaring errors, there. Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was entirely nationalistic. His justification/pretext for invasion was that Kuwait was an integral part of historical Iraq (think China and Taiwan) and that he was merely restoring his control. The fact that before the invasion the Kuwaitis had prematurely called in large loans made to him before and during the Iranian war really was utterly unimportant. Upon the Kuwaitis' defeat, he wasn't going to withdraw his forces on the promise that his debts would be erased. He was there to stay, and if he could then go on to annex Saudi Arabia as well, then that would be quite nice. He would control a massive amount of oil, just as the Nazis sought to do by driving toward the Crimea. His was a National Socialist state, after all, the last in existence. It was a state designed for one purpose alone: the waging of war, within and without its borders.

Mr Brecher's second and more glaring error is in believing that Saddamite Iraq came out of the first Gulf War in poor shape, and that his people knew it. In arguing otherwise, VDH was being "treasonable". In reaching this conclusion, Mr Brecher combines ignorance with hysteria.

Had he spent even a few months in any Arab country, Brecher would swiftly find out why. The Arab philosophy of war really isn't the same as ours. To the average man on the street, Saddam was a hero after the first Gulf War. Why? Because he had taken on the USA, the global hegemon, and survived.

The Arabs have been defeated in every major war for the last few hundred years. They have, as a result, completely refocused their perspective. The eastern way of war permits the deliberate targeting of civilians. It councils avoidance of the enemy's strength, preferring instead to attack where it is most vulnerable. The west (rightly) scorns this as cowardice, as the western tradition of war always has been to (where possible) avoid involving civilians, and instead directly face aggression head-on; two Hoplite phalanxes slamming bodily into one another, the victor being the strongest. In this way wars were decided swiftly, decisively and, for the most part, with a minimum of bloodshed.

Saddam took on the USA and survived. It didn't matter that they handed him his ass. They failed to kill him. In the eyes of the man on the street, that meant that at least part of the conflict went Saddam's way.

He was viewed by the entire Arab world as a hero. A warrior-king.

And this pig tries to say it was a defeat!

Saddam was left alive. His country, while weakened, was able to take advantage of corrupt UN & EU officials and keep a lifeline of cash flowing to his military. A "threat to no-one"? Hardly. His military had been savaged, but they still numbered in the hundreds of thousands at the beginning of hostilities. His country was brought firmly back under his control when US assistance to Kurdish and Shia uprisings (shamefully) failed to materialise. He was free to acquire nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. He still had a short range method of delivery for such warheads in his Scud fleet. With them, he could hit Israel.

Please point out to me how anyone of sober disposition could apply the word "victory" to such a state of affairs. Saddam had been (temporarily) strategically checked by the first Gulf War. Not check-mated.

Hanson goes on to say that we "refused to go to Baghdad" because we wanted to please the UN. Bullshit. We used the UN to build a huge alliance (something Bush's idiotic son didn't think was necessary), and we stayed out of Baghdad because Powell and Bush Sr. knew what would happen if we tried to occupy Iraqi cities. We're going through the consequences of that mistake right now; how can anybody pretend not to understand, by now, why it was a bad idea, and why Bush Sr. was right the first time?

What's amazing is that Hanson is actually trying to blame Bush Sr. for not jumping off the cliff first, before his idiotic son did. Like I said, it's insane-until you realize it's being done just to make Junior's disaster look good, which Hanson needs to do because he's been shilling for Bush Jr.'s war from day one. Hanson isn't just insane. He's one sleazy dude.

The war wasn't going any further once photos of the massacre along the Basra Highway got out. That is a stone-cold fact. Although these withdrawing troops had been looting, raping and pillaging in Kuwait for weeks, the Bush Administration knew how their mass-slaughter by highly-effective US air assets would be perceived.

The American public isn't the war-mad bloodthirsty sort, no matter what the Europeans might say. They are a decent people who don't like having to use their power in a brutal fashion. The encirclement of the main arteries out of Kuwait saw to it that it would be one long bloodbath for those Iraqi troops retreating through southern Iraq.

Their enemies were on the run and disorganized. The US had the troops in place, had the UN support, and had many allies who would be adversaries the next time around. If they wanted to go in to Iraq, they would have.

They didn't because their leaders still thought like cold warriors. Cold warriors thought in terms of comtainment. They used embargoes and sanctions to bring rogue states to heel. They (and Bill Clinton's administration was the one to set this fully in effect) believed that choking off the Saddamite regime would kill it. It killed all the wrong people. It was a bad call, but history is a litany of bad calls, made by every nation on the planet.

"The Fourth Iraqi War ("The Insurrection," "The Occupation") began immediately after the end of the conventional fighting and continues today. It was framed by the fact that the United States would not simply leave after toppling Saddam yet had never really gone into the Sunni Triangle in force during the three-week victory. War IV was waged by a loose alliance of Wahhabi fundamentalists, foreign jihadists, and former Baathists against the American efforts to fashion an indigenous Iraqi democratic government."

Here again, there's so many lies it's hard to know where to start. Like, what the hell does Hanson mean by saying we never attacked the Sunni Triangle? As military history, that's pure nonsense. The only reason he says it is because he has to explain to himself how come the insurgency was able to come on so strong after we kicked ass in the conventional war. And see, Hanson can't admit to himself that there was a difference in the kind of war being waged, a transition from conventional to urban-guerrilla warfare. If he once admitted that we're dealing with an urban guerrilla war now, he'd have to face the historical fact that modern armies still don't have an effective counter for that mode of warfare.

And all that ancient Greek stuff won't help Hanson deal with urban guerrilla war, because there was nothing like it in the ancient world. In those days conquerors wiped out cities the second they showed any sign of uppity behavior. Urban guerrilla wars were pretty quick and pretty unsuccessful: rise up against the occupier, and literally every man, woman and child gets slaughtered, and the offending city covered in salt. End of story

But wait, isn't a genocide precisely what the Americans are perpetrating in Iraq, at the behest of the evil Bushitler? For a leftist, this fellow is very quick to disregard most of his colleague's assertions. Maybe there's hope for him, yet.

Not too much, however. He keeps on making mistakes! He accuses VDH of lying over the non-existent attack on the Sunni Triangle... yet he doesn't present any contradictory evidence. "VDH is a liar because... because... just because!"

And what the hell is this?

"If he once admitted that we're dealing with an urban guerrilla war now, he'd have to face the historical fact that modern armies still don't have an effective counter for that mode of warfare."

He really must take some time out to explain to the British counter-insurgency veterans of Cyprus and Naga Hills and the combined British/Australian veterans of the Malayan counter-insurgency that their modern armies actually didn't utterly quash the guerrilas who seem to have totally vanished in those regions.

One can also quite easily argue that the Vietnam war serves as another reminder of the fact that a conventional power can overcome unconventional forces.

Yes, I know that the US/Allied forces abandoned south Vietnam and the Northern Communists swarmed south. But that didn't happen because the US troops had been defeated. American, Australian, New Zealand and South Vietnamese forces defeated or checked every major offensive that the North launched.

They lost the war because of agitating anti-war activists at home who made it impossible to maintain the kind of stalwart national effort that is needed if you are to ultimately achieve victory. Put simply, Jane Fonda lost America the war. Not Richard Nixon. Without Jane Fonda and people like her, terrorists of any shade would never triumph. The law of physics apply to terrorists too, and if the west were not troubled by leftists acting as fifth columnists, sowing the seeds of public discontent at home, no insurgency of any kind would ever triumph. Guerillas aren't supermen. They cannot match our deployable power, and our ability to maintain it logistically.

More on that - and how it applies to Mr Brecher, later.

Now we get into really egregious error country. Going off on a wild tangient, Brecher rambles about the historical migratory event and subsequent massacre that Julius Caesar used as a pretext for invading and subjugating Gaul.

One of my favorite examples of Roman "pacification" policy was what happened to the Helvetii, a Celtic tribe that used to live where Switzerland is now. Europe was a feisty, tricky place in those days, like Africa is now. Tribes were always on the move.

The Helvettii were a Celtic people, but they weren't targeted by Rome. They were targeted by Julius Caesar. At the time, he was an ambitious former consul with some serious debts to pay off. For that he needed booty, and lots of it.

The Helvetii decided they'd make a move on Northeastern Gaul...

They actually needed to migrate through southwestern Gaul, on their way to Aeduian lands that one of the the Aeduian leaders, Dumnorix, had set aside for their peaceful settlement.

...grabbing the land and wiping out the Roman-vassal tribes occupying the land.

I can only conclude that Mr Brecher has invented this section to conceal his lack of knowledge of the subject matter.

The Helvetii were invited to settle in those lands for two reasons. Firstly, they were a large, powerful people. One that would act as a strong bulwark against a possible future Roman invasion - something Dumnorix feared. Dumnorix had married into their tribe, and had secured alliances. No-one would have been slaughtered in their peaceful migration, which included their women and children. Secondly, the Helvetii wanted to move. Encroachment by neighbouring Germanic tribes was making life very difficult.

The entire Helvetii tribe numbered about 370,000, and from that they could field about 110,000 fighting men-every male who could hold a spear.

Had he stayed at school a little longer, or read a few books of VDH's calibre, he would know that Roman historians (like the Greek ones) made it a habit of exaggerating the numbers of the barbarians whom they fought. It is far more impressive a thing to defeat 100,000 warriors than it is to defeat 10,000, after all.

Archaeology has revealed that the population of Northwestern Europe was quite low at that point. The average tribe (realistically) would have numbered around 50-70,000 people, and could have fielded anywhere between 10-15,000 warriors. The Helvetii would have been at the high end of this scale, but within it, nonetheless.

They smashed into the settled Gaul tribes easily, grabbed a swathe of territory and prepared to keep advancing until they had enough good land to support the whole tribe.

Not a single ancient historian records a single battle taking place between the Helvetii and the local Gauls. Had this occurred, Caesar himself (whose account of the Gallic Wars has survived intact) most certainly would have seized upon it as an additional pretext for war against them.

Yet he does not mention it, because it did not happen. Except in Mr Brecher's imagination, where he is fervently trying to create a comparable historical insurrection.

What the Helvetii hadn't factored into their big move was the Romans.

As Caesar himself records, the Helvetii sent envoys to Rome before they crossed any part of Roman territory, outlining their intentions, and pledging to maintain the peace. As it was, Caesar had to make references to generations-old misdeeds by members of the tribe to justify his attack on them. Even then many senators wanted to recall him from Gaul and prosecute him.

Julius Caesar got a message from his Gaul vassals pleading for help against the Helvetii.

They weren't vassals, they were Roman allies, and they were from the pro-Roman Aeduian faction who were opposed to the increase in power and prestige that would be afforded to Dumnorix once the Helvetii were in place. Caesar knew this, and used it as a further pretext for subsequent murderous actions.

At this point he had six legions under him in Gaul, almost 300,000 men.

??????????????????????????????????????????

Somebody take the Smirnoff away from that boy, now.

The very largest credible estimates place the strength of a post-Marian Roman legion around 6,000 men. That means that at around six legions or 30,000 men (most legions were understrength in peacetime) Caesar would have handily outnumbered the Helvetiian warriors. This is why the Helvetii needed to be so terribly numerous in his accounts. Lest he look rather cowardly.

Had Mr Brecher attended one of VDH's classes, he would have known that.

But he wanted more, because he had something a little more drastic in mind than just defeating the Helvetii. He was out to exterminate them. So he called up another two legions, which meant he had 400,000 trained soldiers against 110,000 part-time tribal warriors.

Ignoring the gross numerical inventions (the likes of which no drunken historian in the world would support), Brecher is again oversimplifying. Caesar didn't care about the Helvetii one way or the other. Caesar just wanted to defeat them, so that he could take a good deal of valuables from them, and (hopefully) kill enough to warrant a triumphal parade back in Rome. Caesar wasn't out to commit Genocide.

Like most Genocidal madmen, he simply woke up one morning and found that doing so had been "necessary". Lack of empathy makes such things possible. Even the most bloodthirsty will have their thirsts slaked after killing a few thousand people.

It was no contest. The Romans surrounded the Helvetii and started stabbing their way through the mass of warriors, then the civilians.

The Helvetii, all "300,000" of them, tamely allowed themselves to be surrounded? How dumb does this guy think his Russian readers are?

The Romans actually opposed a water crossing that the Helvetii tried to make, and then the opposing sides formed lines of battle. The Helvetii fought bravely, the fight lasted most of the day, but they eventually lost and were slaughtered.

So far, it is Mr Brecher who gets full points for dishonesty. Not VDH.

As they advanced, the legions would herd a few saleable-looking women and children away from the killing. They were sent to holding pens in the rear to be sold as slaves. The main body of Roman soldiers kept working through the mass of Helvetii, stabbing and stabbing.

The Helvetii were not enslaved. The survivors of the battle were instead sent back to their original lands. Caesar did not want the Germanic tribes to occupy their lands in their place (bringing them a step closer to Rome).

Roman soldiers were taught to use the short sword-"gladius," which is where "gladiator" comes from-to stab, not slash.

Again with the shallowness of understanding. I quote from this lovely page on Gladiators:

"Gladius" was also a vernacular latin term for the penis and in popular imagination many gladiators were thought to be symbols of virility.

Perhaps Mr Brecher was just too shy to talk about penis's.

At the end of the battle, they had slaughtered 220,000 men, women and children-60% of the whole tribe.

Certainly a great number would have been killed, but it would have been far less than the later Gallic atrocities Caesar would commit. Of the Helvetiian army, losses probably would have been between about 30-60% at the absolute most. Soldiers very rarely fought to the death in the ancient world. If you saw that a lot of your friends were dead, or that the enemy looked set to surround you, you ran away.

So that would leave the tribe greatly weakened, but able to return to their original lands. It would have been a sorry fate anyway, because they had burned all their fortresses (oppidum) and surplus grain stocks before leaving, so as to deny them to the Germans.

Must have been exhausting too. Imagine the sheer hard work it took to kill that many screaming, scrambling people with the Roman short sword, not much bigger than a Bowie knife.

The Bowie knife is easily big enough to kill someone, and the Gladius was the finest sword of its age. It probably did not have an equal in terms of sheer killing power for more than 500 years.

More important was how it was wielded, though (it's not the size of the sword...).

The legionaries stayed shoulder-to-shoulder, using their large shields for cover from the slashing swords of the Gauls and Germans. In this way, all they needed to do was keep moving forward and keep stabbing. Several thousand of them working together could kill thousands of Gauls (who wore little or no armour themselves) in under an hour. A fact they were to prove many times over.

We could do it, way more easily than the Romans. We'd burn only as many calories as it takes to press a button. If we had the will, we could wipe out the whole population of the Sunni Triangle in a few days. If we used neutron bombs, we could do it without even messing up the area too badly. It would sure stop the insurgency.

Yes, it would. And it is largely thanks to the terribly righteous and knowledgable superior beings such as Mr Brecher that such methods are denied us. Denied us, mind. Not our enemies. Mr Brecher probably does not mind when our enemies mass slaughter our civilians.

Trouble is, that kind of genocide just isn't popular these days, and nobody, not even Professor Hanson, is ready to argue for it. It's hard to argue you want to bring democracy to the Sunnis by making them extinct. And what Hanson and morons like him won't admit is that short of genocide, there is no military solution to urban guerrilla warfare.

Genocide isn't necessary. Decimation might be. But, yet again, the Mr Brechers of the west would swarm out of the wordwork, to decry our inhumanity if we were to engage in something that VDH himself has decried in his previous works.

I wonder if Mr Brecher thinks genocide "isn't popular" in the middle east, where children ran and danced and laughed when they heard that thousands of American civilians had been blown and burned to death in New York City, Washington and Pennsylvania.

How utterly gaulling of this man. He and his kind are the very reason the west fails to win wars against inferior opponents. They use their energy to argue for the enemy and against their own country. They takes their "work" abroad, to the countries who have the longest histories of hating America and Americans, just so that they can be assured of a understanding readership.

Yet VDH is the traitor, not them. What an utterly vile assertion.

So Hanson cheats like a ninth grader, trying to avoid facing the urban-guerrilla problem. He makes fake lists like this one: "From the various insurgencies of the Peloponnesian War to the British victory over Communist guerrillas in Malaya, there remain constants across 2,500 years of time and space that presage victory or defeat."

Oh, like we're supposed to believe he chose that Malaya example just by chance, huh? It so happens that the Malayan insurgency of the 1950s is the ONLY guerrilla war that was won by the occupying army, in this case the Brits, and that's why Bush's spinners like to cite It. You know why the Brits "succeeded"? It's real simple: the insurgents were all ethnic Chinese, and the Malays hated their guts. They were a small, easily identified ethnic minority. The Malays never needed much of an excuse to start chopping up Chinese people, and when the Brits gave them license to kill they went at it full time. Then the Brits up and left.

It was a relatively small affair: over 12 years, some 7,000 MRLA guerrillas were killed. Just to give you a real comparison, one American general recently said that in the last year alone, we've killed or captured 50,000 Iraqi insurgents, yet, this same general admitted that the insurgency is only gaining strength.

The general goes unnamed.

Also overlooked is the fact that Malaya isn't the only successful counter-insurgency conflict that western nations have been embroiled in. In Cyprus and the Naga Hills, British Forces handily overcame native insurgents.

If Hanson thinks we can chop up millions of heavily armed, aggressive Sunni Iraqis the way the Brits mopped up a few thousand Red Chinese in Malaysia, he's insane.

Millions? It wouldn't really be an insurgency then, would it? It would be a conventional war against a hostile religious group.

Let the carpet bombing and the mass surrenders begin!

And maybe he is-all those years of the state subsidizing his phony "farm" and students sucking up to him for a good grade have driven him into a psychotic delusional state.

Pot. Kettle. Black.

But I don't really think he's insane-just a traitor, a liar willing to keep shoving American troops and money into a meatgrinder just so he doesn't have to admit he was wrong. Sooner or later we're going to have to face it: these NeoCons don't care about America any more than Stalin cared about Russia. They're not just wrong. They're traitors.

To wrap this fisking up, let's look at that last sentence, and marvel in the dishonesty and hypocrisy that is inherent in its construction by Mr Brecher.

Now let us recall that the matter of his argument is the insurgencies can't be beaten, and that the evil, lying VDH is avoiding this "undeniable fact", because to do otherwise would admit that the war is unwinnable.

But why exactly is it unwinnable? That seems to be something that Mr Brecher is not keen to explore. Little wonder why. The answer is: Mr Brecher.

He and his ilk have plagued the post-Vietnam west, eagerly awaiting the next chance to protest against those symbols of authority that present them with no real threat of reprisal. That leaves terrorist groups out, Islamic Republics out and Dictatorial Regimes out. So, these people are left with the popularly-elected governments of their own western nations to "resist".

As we have seen, Mr Btecher is wrong. Guerilla wars can and have been won. Even during Vietnam, American soldiers never failed to prevail on the battlefield. In none of these conflicts was "genocide" necessary. The only thing that made Vietnam different from Malaya, Cyprus and Naga Hills was the presence of one factor.

Yep, you got it. Mr Brecher.

Cyprus, Malaya and naga Hills were won in the 50's. At that time, there was no anti-war movement. No hippys, no lovechildren, just beatnik leftists wailing in coffeeshops. The Mr Brechers of that period were too busy wearing berets and writing poems about rainbows. Had they remained there, the Vietnam war would have eneded with the exhaustion of the North and the continuance of a democratic republic in the south.

The Mr Brechers of that time made victory for the enemy possible, because they acted as little voices of doubt, constantly whispering in to the ears of the public, urging surrender, urging appeasement, calling for peace at any cost.

Those people remain with us today. They do not constitute the entirety of the leftist movement, but they present us with a significant ongoing dilemma. How does one deal with a section of one's own population whose sentiments and actions are all designed to aid an enemy victory?

This is where we come full circle. We have seen through Brecher's shallow lies, his ignorance and his blinding, vitriolic hatred. But we have seen something far more important, I think.

Victor Davis Hanson is a man who understands history. In no way a neocon, he has instead voted democrat for most of his life. He is, however, convinced, as I am, of the larger importance of the war on terror. As such, he will always draw the ire of people who do not want us to win.

People like Mr Gary Brecher.

Traitors.

Additional: Lastly, I want to deal with the charge that VDH is arrogant.

While it is certainly true that VDH is a keen self-promoter, I can't help but react by asking: what personality, of any calibre, who writes on the internet, is exempt from that description?

Certainly not myself, and especially not Mr Brecher, whose lack of talent has led him to the extreme of writing for "The Exile": some kind of obscure, Moscow-based alternative newspaper,

VDH has his own website, without the resources of a newspaper (even an "alternate" one) and I dare say that he would most likely attract a daily readership many times that which "The Exile" can boast.

VDH's living might be secured by his university tenure, but his intellectual legacy is not. He is (grudgingly) recognised by leftist historians the world over as a leading expert in Greek and Roman history. People pay many tens of thousands of dollars to take personal tours of Greece and the near east with him (and other academics) because they know that they are going to be exposed to the analysis of one of the truly great historians of our time. They know this because they have read his work.

That people have done so, and enjoyed the experience, is obviously important to VDH. As a man who understands history, one who can envision (better than most) his place in it, his legacy would be a serious concern. He would want to leave behind his thoughts, his ideas, accumulated as they are over a lifetime of intensive study.

Mr Brecher, you do not have the right to attempt to take that from him. You do not have the credentials, nor do you have the basic, necessary understanding of the matters VDH excells in. He has a right to be proud of his accomplishments, you have accomplished nothing that would earn you the right to tear them down.

Having thoroughly established that fact, I now go to clip my fingernails.

THEY GO TOGETHER LIKE...

2005-07-31T22:59:00.000+10:00

Islam and jail inmates. As I reported a while back, a huge percentage of the prisoner population of France is Muslim. 70%, to be exact.

Muslims. Jail. 70%.

Here we go again: Muslim inmates make up 70 per cent of UK prisoners from minority groups

TWO OF Britain’s bombers, Richard Reid and Muktar Said-Ibrahim, converted or reconverted to Islam in prison. This is a very small number, of course, but as we have just seen, it does not take large numbers of such people to effect a huge change in a country’s atmosphere. And the omens for the emergence of more of them are not good.
First, the number of Muslim prisoners has risen sixfold over the past 15 years. With more than 4,000 such inmates they make up 70 per cent of prisoners from minority groups. They are mostly of Pakistani descent, and the relative absence of people of subcontinental origin who follow other religions is equally striking.

What is it about adherents of the religion of peace that drives them to commit so many criminal acts?

MEANWHILE, IN SECULAR(?) FRANCE...

2005-07-31T22:52:00.000+10:00

More dhimmitude. It seems that while it isn't okay for a young Jewish-French man to wear the yarmulke to school, it is fine to set up an Islamic Wing of the Louvre Museum: Saudi Prince Helps Set Up Islamic Art Wing in Louvre

PARIS , July 27, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal has donated a multi-million-euro gift to finance the construction of a new Islamic art wing in the Paris-based Louvre Museum to show off the bright face of the Muslim world.

The 4,000-square-meter wing in the world's largest museum will showcase up to 10,000 pieces, one of the greatest concentrations of Islamic art in existence, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported Wednesday, July 27.

Financed by 17 million euros from the Saudi business tycoon, the Islamic art wing is designed by architects Mario Bellinin from Italy and Rudi Ricciotti from France . It is scheduled to open in 2009.

Only some 1,300 objects from the Louvre's Islamic collection are currently on display.

The new rooms will have 36,000 square feet of display space, about four times the current area.

The donation is one of the biggest cultural gifts in France 's history.

"Your gesture is a testament to the generosity of the Islamic world," the French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres told Prince Walid in a ceremony on Tuesday, July 26.

That sound you can hear is Charles Martel and his rather more famous grandson rolling over in their graves.

THOSE DAMNED RACIST... IMMIGRANTS

2005-07-31T22:36:00.000+10:00

It isn't just the WASPY natives of Britain who are getting tired of their Muslim neighbours. As Irfan Husain reveals, others who have made Britain their home are tired of those who will not make efforts to integrate: The way of the ostrich

We in Pakistan have become so accustomed to daily bomb blasts in one part of the country or another that we are no longer shocked or horrified by them. Thus, many of us cannot comprehend the depth of the anger and revulsion that such attacks cause in more law-abiding countries. But the reality of a fellow-passenger blowing himself up in an underground train carriage is a very scary scenario. Now, a Pakistani-looking passenger will inevitably draw suspicious glances whenever he boards a train or a bus. Consider this e-mail I received recently from Steve Cribbs:
“...I am a 47-year old, working class, white Englishman, who frequently works in London and was in the area of two of the incidents last week, where there were four failed suicide bomber attempts. I’ve always considered myself to be a moderate man and this series of events ... is extremely worrying. Recently I have heard Afro-Caribbean immigrants demanding that all Muslims be sent back (even those born here!). I don’t feel that’s fair but have grave concerns that our cultures are mutually incompatible. We feel like we have taken in a nest of vipers. We feel betrayed by immigrants who have come here to our homeland who consider us as corrupt and immoral. Our women are branded as whores. Some immigrants say we are not fit to govern our own country and that they seek to make Britain a Muslim state...

“...I’ve seen films of firebrand clerics preaching murder in the name of Islam... They have twisted and warped their religion to suit their own sick notions of revenge. They have caused the West to view Islam with suspicion and made us doubt our policy of tolerance which endangers us and our children... The West is not blameless. There have been many Muslim victims of our foreign policies, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Also we are very aware of the double standards which turn a blind eye to wholesale murder of Muslims by other Muslims. Apparently that’s OK.”
The writer has pointed out the hypocrisy underlying our criticism of western policies. While we are rightly indignant about the killing of Muslims from Serbia to Chechnya to Palestine to Kashmir, we seldom spare a thought for victims of Muslim terrorists. Here in Pakistan, literally thousands have been slaughtered by their fellow-Muslims, often while they have been praying in places of worship. And while we protest and riot over the desecration of the Holy Book by American soldiers in Guantanamo, we do not condemn the destruction of the same Book in mosques when they are bombed by Muslims.

The rest of the article is quite worth a glance.

NEUTRALITY WON'T GET YOU A PASS

2005-07-30T15:32:00.000+10:00

Not from Muslims, who - "moderate" and fundamentalist alike - see the Islamic conquest of the world as their central objective. As Zachary Shore points out in the International Herald Tribune, Germany is about to learn that it isn't merely enough to avoid supporting the United States and Israel.

Just being a liberal democracy is bad enough to earn the ire of a high percentage of native Muslims: Where Next?

If isolating the United States in Iraq is the terrorists' main objective, we can make a good guess about their next target. Italy and Denmark are where many expect the next strike to occur, partly because of their troop presence in Iraq and partly because of threats made after the London blasts.

But Germany, with its 3.2 million Muslims, is due for a hit. Despite its opposition to the Iraq war, Germany has some 2,000 soldiers operating in Afghanistan, and their presence is just as provocative to Al Qaeda as are American forces in Iraq.

One senior German officer told me that he could see the disdain in Afghan men's eyes as a young female German soldier directed them out of her way.

If interethnic tensions are potent in Italy and Denmark, they are worse in Germany. Most of Germany's Muslims hail from Turkey's less-developed hinterlands. Many do not speak German, live in predominantly Muslim neighborhoods and have limited social interactions with ethnic Germans. Their unemployment and high-school dropout rates are above the already depressing national averages.

Most disturbing, some surveys find that the younger generation of Turkish Germans express surprising hostility toward Europe and the West. In one study, the sociologist Wilhelm Heitmeyer and his colleagues at the University of Bielefeld found that almost one-third of those polled agreed that Islam must become the state religion in every country.

Even though they live in Europe, 56 percent declared that they should not adapt too much to Western ways, but should live by Islam. More than a third insisted that if it serves the Islamic community, they are ready to use violence against nonbelievers. Almost 40 percent said that Zionism, the European Union and the United States threaten Islam.

Again, bear in mind, many Muslims who would indeed use violence to further Islam would also have the presence of mind not to indicate the fact in a poll. Which means that the percentage is probably much higher.

This in a nation that has done everything humanly possible to cater to the whims of Islamic migrants and the sensitivities of the Muslim culture. I especially hope my leftist friends are paying attention to this stuff. These aren't stilted conservative polls, conducted by Zionist agents.

And the responses given by the Muslims polled are unambiguous and alarming.

THE MOONBATS WERE RIGHT!

2005-07-30T02:30:00.000+10:00

Having an idle peek through Google Earth, I came across this... erm... unusually shaped building on a military base near San Diego.

No doubt many Margoids will find great vindication in this twisted architect's style.

INFORMATION SOUGHT

2005-07-29T18:55:00.000+10:00

I'm working on a piece concerned with the Drew Fraser/Macquarie University furore, and I'm trying to find some information. Namely, I need a list of nations that either don't allow immigration, or have very precise racial restrictions/quotas when it comes to immigration.

Please link to resources in comments.

STEVE GUTTENBERG

2005-07-29T16:46:00.000+10:00

I would never want to imply that the Goots is a man not adverse to a little recreational alcoholic/chemical usage.

However, I am rather at a loss to explain (or understand) some of his responses to a recent promotional interview he did for the upcoming remake of The Poseidon Adventure, in which he stars:

Guttenberg on the most difficult part of shooting "The Poseidon Adventure":

"The toughest part, I would say, is that in my trailer, I had V-8. I had Snapple. I had Aquafina. And I had Evian. And the hardest part, most of the time, is what do I do? Do I want the Aquafina? Do I want Snapple?"

Guttenberg on accidents on the "Poseidon" set:

"There was a time when my chair wasn't near the catering table. My chair was near the camera, where I don't like to be. And I stamped my foot in a fire ant mountain and there were fire ants and I got bit ... You've gotta eat them before they eat you."

Guttenberg on knowing his place on the "Poseidon" shoot:

"I was sharing a trailer with Rutger Hauer and he had first dibs on everything. The refrigerator, the bed, the makeup table. I didn't get to do anything. I didn't get to sit in it either. I sat on the floor."

Guttenberg on the amount of "Poseidon" green screen work:

"I actually filmed it here [at the bar]. We're actually filming a crowd scene now. [He starts waving his arms and bellowing.] Hold on! Don't let go of me! You can make it! Cut."

Guttenberg on rumors that his "Veronica Mars" character is based on billionaire Mark Cuban:

"I do know Mark Cuban. I love his cigars. I know they're illegal in the United States, but I love them. I always walk into a cigar place and say, 'Do you have some Cubans?' And they never do, that's illegal, but you go to the back and you get a Cuban. And I put a little mark on mine. So I know it's Cuban."

Guttenberg on a much-desired "Three Men and a Little Lady" sequel:

"It's actually called 'Steve and a 16-year-old' and it'll only work in Kentucky."

Guttenberg on improvising:

"I'm not a guy who takes scripts, man. I don't like to be told what to do. I walk in, I say my stuff and I leave. It's my life."

Guttenberg on keeping the common touch:

"I think about the little people. Not often. I spend most of my time with the people who work with me -- the woman who brushes my teeth, the man who puts on my shoes, my bedwarmers -- I have four or five women who sleep in my bed from 7 until 9 and then at 9:05 I ask them to leave and I go right in bed and it's snuggly."

Guttenberg on his relationship with the little people:

"My belief is this: There are the poor, there are the very poor and there are the rich movie stars. I like being the rich movie star."

Guttenberg on the reasons we haven't seen much of him lately:

"I'm not a worker, really. I'm more of a playboy. Here's the deal: You make a lot of money so you don't have to work. You don't make a lot of money so you can work."

Guttenberg on other reasons he may be been hidden from the public eye:

"I don't not work because I'm rich. I don't work because I live In Czechoslovakia. It's just such a tough commute. It's the commute that kills you. To get here for a 6 a.m. call from Czechoslovakia, I have get up at around 3. I have to go to sleep at around 6. It's the traffic over the Bermuda Triangle that's really bad. Other than that it's pretty smooth. I take side streets."

The Stonecutters have much to answer for.

MOONBATS UNLEASHED!

2005-07-29T16:34:00.000+10:00

Oh. My. God.

Jeremy, Martin, Chris, if you ever expose the Australian people to this form of leftist protest, I'm going to go all Lee Harvey on your sick asses.

BRITISH GOVERNMENT AIDED BOMBERS

2005-07-29T08:25:00.000+10:00

No, I'm not turning into a moonbat conspiracy theorist.

I'm talking about the way the British welfare nanny-state helped the 7/7 bombers by coddling and subsidising their existence while they were busily preparing the infrastructure of a major Islamist terror cell: The benefit bombers who repaid help with hatred

ON THE rundown North London housing estate where they lived, they were known as idlers and petty criminals who passed their time playing football and smoking marijuana.
Residents of Curtis House in New Southgate regarded Muktar Said-Ibrahim and Yasin Hassan Omar as feckless young men living aimlessly on state benefits.

Ibrahim had served time in Huntercombe Young Offenders’ Institution, Oxfordshire, according to Whitehall sources, and Omar, was known as a shoplifter.

As children, both fled civil war and bloody conflict in Eritrea and Somalia for the safe refuge of Britain. Yet they came to hate their adopted homeland so much that they volunteered for suicide bombing missions.

In preparing for “martyrdom” Ibrahim, 27, and Omar, 24, had turned the tower block that they shared with hundreds of people into a terrorist safe house and a bomb factory. Forensic science teams have found traces of explosives in flat No 58 and the rubbish chute as well as a substantial cache of bombmaking chemicals in a lock-up garage.

Tanya Wright, who lives on the floor below Omar’s rented flat in Curtis House, said that she saw both men on Friday afternoon, the day after the failed bombing attempts. “I saw them acting suspiciously outside their flat,” Miss Wright said. “As soon as they saw me they jumped back in the flat and shut the door. They looked shocked and panicked.”

She has given a statement to police who are increasingly concerned that, having failed in their missions, Ibrahim and Omar returned to rearm and try again.

The would-be bombers both arrived in Britain as refugees from Africa. Omar, a Somalian, arrived in 1992, aged 11. He is thought to have spent most of the next seven years in foster care. He was granted exceptional leave to enter Britain for four years. That was extended and in May 2000 he was granted indefinite leave to remain, entitling him to live permanently in Britain. He has been able to work legally since he was 16.

Ibrahim, also known as Muktar Mohammed-Said, was given exceptional leave to remain in Britain in 1992. He had arrived with his family from Eritrea. In November 2003 he applied for British citizenship which was granted, with a passport, last September.

Ten months before he tried to blow up a No 26 bus in Hackney, East London, he swore an oath of allegiance, stating that he would be “faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law”.

There was growing concern in Whitehall last night over how he had made a successful citizenship application despite having a conviction.

Ibrahim was once a criminal gang member jailed for violent muggings, it emerged last night. A year after leaving school, he was arrested in Royston, Hertfordshire, after a street robbery. Members of the gang were jailed at Luton Crown Court in 1996 for terms ranging between two and four years after admitting five robberies in the Welwyn Garden City and Stevenage areas. Ibrahim received five years because he had been carrying a knife.

Ibrahim also committed crimes in Letchworth.

He served his sentence at Huntercombe Young Offenders’ Institution, near Henley-on Thames, and later at HMP Woodhill, Buckinghamshire, it was claimed last night. One report stated that he took part in a riot in which several prison officers were hurt.

The Home Office was unable to comment last night on how Ibrahim was able to obtain a British passport following his conviction and prison sentence.

Is it because the British Socialists - like idiotic, self-loathing westerners everywhere - think that it is the sole duty of the west to subsidise and embrace every criminal scumbag the third world can vomit forth?

I suspect so.

RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE

2005-07-29T08:12:00.000+10:00

You'd think that Islamists would be satisfied with the murder of Dutch filmmaker, Theo van Gogh.

Not really: Moroccans Beat Up van Gogh's Son, 14

Since the murder of Theo van Gogh, last November, his now 14-year-old son Lieuwe has twice been physically attacked by young Moroccans, or (more likely) Dutch citizens of Moroccan descent. [Link, in Dutch.] Van Gogh's parents said this in an interview on national television.

They insisted their grandson had done nothing to provoke the assaults. In one incident, recalled Anneke van Gogh, Theo's mother, "[Lieuwe] was walking the dog in the Watergraafsmeer area of Amsterdam, and they came up to him and said, 'Is your name van Gogh?' Lieuwe said no, of course, but they beat him anyway."

She also recounted how, some time after Theo van Gogh's assassination, a group of Moroccans appeared in the street where he had lived, inquiring about Lieuwe's whereabouts. It was the neighbors' impression that the visitors weren't there to offer condolences, and the police were called — but according to the filmmaker's mother, no one bothered to show up. That would have been in keeping with local officers' alleged non-action after the two beatings Lieuwe received. The cops were called then, too, Anneke van Gogh told the TV interviewer, but they declined to make an appearance.

Recently, Lieuwe was transferred to another class, in another building of his school, after he'd been repeatedly bullied by Muslim pupils. His grandmother said that Lieuwe had had to endure taunts like "Good thing they killed your dad."

Charming people. Let's allow in another boatload.

SPAIN'S FEARLESS FIGHT AGAINST TERROR

2005-07-29T08:03:00.000+10:00

Yes, that was supposed to be sarcastic.

It seems like every five minutes, we are learning something more disturbing about the Madrid bombings. More particularly, the role played by certain Islamist elements within the national police, and organs of the ruling Socialist Party, who benefited so greatly from the bombing.

Now we are learning that the Socialists - during the worse spate of Islamist attacks in history - are purging the ranks of the anti-terrorism police, and replacing experienced officers with people ignorant of Islamic terror, but loyal to the Spanish Socialists: Antiterrorism chief demotes police leaders, hires inexperienced cronies

Telesforo Rubio, chief of the National Police's information brigade and head of antiterrorist operations, has been carrying out a "political cleansing," according to several officers and labor unions, in order to place inexperienced cronies of his in charge of the various antiterrorist police units.

There has been a great deal of unhappiness among police officers at Rubio's management ever since Socialist prime minister Zapatero named him antiterrorism chief.

As soon as he was named, criticism centered on his lack of experience for such an important post. Rubio had previously been police chief in the provincial city of Soria, in the Madrid suburb of Alcorcon, and in several districts in Madrid. He has won two minor decorations.

Rubio's connections to the Socialist Party are well-known, as he helped them draw up their electoral compaign and prepared his testimony before the March 11 parliamentary committee at Socialist headquarters in Madrid. According to the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia, Rubio began pushing out high-ranking antiterrorist officers as soon as he took office, and demoted several chiefs and inspectors experienced in Islamic terrorism.

According to La Vanguardia, "The officers who carried out the investigation of the March 11 bombings have already been replaced by other persons of the same rank without training in Islamic terrorism, but who are trusted by Rubio."

What the hell. It's not like they need an anti-terrorist police anymore anyway. They're on the Islamist's side.

I'VE SAID IT BEFORE...

2005-07-29T07:52:00.000+10:00

I'll say it again. Tony Blair, while certainly a principled and thoroughly nice guy, doesn't have a clue when it comes to Islam: Blair and Zapatero in anti-terror 'alliance of civilisations'

British prime minister Tony Blair has thrown his weight behind a Spanish idea for an ‘alliance of civilisations’ to form a united front against terrorism.

The proposal to bring together Christian and Muslim nations was raised by Spain’s leader Jose Rodriguez Zapatero during a bilateral meeting on Wednesday (27 July).

"We discussed the proposal that the Spanish prime minister has made for what he calls an alliance of civilisations, which is the idea that we join together, our countries with Muslim countries", said Mr Blair after the meeting.

[...]

But Mr Blair was keen to stress that Turkey, the huge and mainly Muslim EU-hopeful, would also support the idea.

"Turkey is particularly involved in this - to form a coalition of civilised people from whatever race or religion to combat the barbarity of terrorism", he said.

Islam isn't just a religion of explosive offense. It combines this with a subtle "softly, softly" strategic penetration of the west by Muslim immigrants who - while not openly condemning terror - certainly have no objection to the terrorist's core goals (the extermination of liberal democracy and the establishment of global Islam).

That's not a conspiracy theory, folks. It's a fact. Ask any Muslim you like. "Do you think that Australia/America/Country X would be better off if it were to embrace Islam and abandon democracy?"

The answer, every time, will be a resounding yes.

Now think about what that means. It means the abandonment of about a billion advances and liberties that the west has taken centuries to secure... and these people would prefer that it be snuffed out.

And how the hell can there ever be an "alliance of civilisations" when the basis of our civilisation - the rule of democratic government - is denounced by mainstream Muslim leaders?

WATCH THIS VIDEO

2005-07-28T18:38:00.000+10:00

It's the last 60 minutes report. I wasn't able to see it as I'm not in Sydney right now, but it is easily downloaded here.

If you don't bother to watch it, then you can't honestly say that you have the first clue what is really going on. It tends to water down the widespread nature of the Islamic teachings still mistakenly referred to as "extreme" or "fringe", but it does take a step in the right direction.

I SHOULDN'T FIND THIS FUNNY

2005-07-28T18:03:00.000+10:00

But for some reason I do. This was pinched from Charles at LGF. Apparently it is a non-photoshopped picture taken of a notice board in Notting Hill Station.

They probably did it for indemnity reasons more than anything.

The "foreign" part bugs me a little, though. The UK has been multicultural for eons. There are millions of non-Anglo-Celtic citizens of Britain. For all intents and purposes, they aren't foreign, or therefore "foreign looking".

Some dumb guard probably wrote it, but it also might have been some smartarse union leftoid who thought he'd make a deep socio-racial political point.

THANK ALLAH FOR NAZIM RAHMAN

2005-07-28T14:53:00.000+10:00

If it wasn't for Nazim, we would have had no way of knowing who the real victims of terrorist violence are. Not the innocent people blown to pieces, silly. Stop being so Fox News.

It's the Pakistanis, of course: The Real Victims of Terrorist Acts

In the wake of recent bombings in London, the spotlight and blame for the acts has once again been pointed at Pakistan and Pakistanis. Once again, the Western and Indian media has moved quickly to disgrace our nation and us. Once again, the government of Pakistan is forced to defend itself against unjust accusations. We blame the media and the bombers for our disgrace and it is only natural that we defend our tarnished reputation but there is a lot more at stake than just our reputation.

When we speak of victims, we usually speak of loss of life, sorrow of family and friends, shock and disgust felt by the nation, and economic costs of the event. Terrorist attacks have an immediate negative impact on the local businesses and in particular the travel and tourism industry. A terrorist attack affects the livelihoods of everyone in one-way or another. The trauma caused by such an attack increases ethnic and racial tensions while increasing religious intolerance. As has been repeatedly seen several times since the world trade center attacks, a terrorist attack makes it easier for governments to pass laws restricting individual liberties and violating individual privacy in the name of security.

A terrorist attack clearly has a detrimental effect on the local population. However, the largest victims are the community from which the attacker has originated, since they will be subject to discrimination for a long time. In the case of London bombings, this represents the Pakistani community and Muslims in general.

Let's see, the London death toll currently stands at 55 innocent commuters dead. In the aftermath of their deaths, 1 Muslim man was targeted for reprisal by a bunch of murderous thugs. After that, a Brazilian man was mistakenly gunned down by Police, who believed him to be a suicide bomber.

I'd like to see Nazim's human life valuation chart in greater detail before I comment further on precisely how moronic he is.

Speaking of obsessions with the totally irrelevant, the issue of race is still being parroted around by those who are plainly desperate to find any way to demonize British anti-terrorism efforts.

While some leftist claims along this line were merely premature and not intentionally dishonest, some articles go quite beyond the pale (no pun intended) in attempting to draw a demonstratably illegitimate racist conclusion from the tragic shooting death of a Brazilian Londoner: Non-white Britons in fear

LONDON -- British police have dealt with 250 suicide bomb scares since July 7, and on at least seven occasions were on the brink of shooting to kill, police chief Ian Blair has said, in a bid to reassure the public the Metropolitan Police is not trigger happy. However his words are unlikely to reassure London's non-white communities, many of who now fear that simply running for a bus or train could make them a target.

The shoot-to-kill policy employed by police in cases of suspected suicide bombers has come in for scrutiny after a Brazilian, Jean Charles de Menezes, was shot dead at Stockwell underground station Friday by plainclothes officers who suspected he was a suicide bomber.

Why are these claims demonstratably illegitimate? Because the man shot had paler skin than 99% of the SS Stormtrooper extras in a B-grade Nazi movie.

Once again, the toll stands at 55 innocent Londoners dead, 1 innocent Muslim and 1 innocent Brazilian killed. The Muslim was slain by murderous thugs, the Brazilian by police officers who might have acted incorrectly, but nonetheless only did so because they believed that the public was immediately threatened.

No idea how many of the victims in the London bombings were black or white. Perhaps the terrorists were anti-white racists. One could, if one were so inclined, twist the story into a big sob story for oppressed Europeans.

Whether or not the innocent Muslim man killed was black or white is unknown to me. But each is possible, as Islam is a religion and not a race. Something the press cannot seem to fathom.

CEASEFIRE - PALESTINIAN STYLE

2005-07-28T14:44:00.000+10:00

The whole "peace" thing is totally overrated anyway. That's why the Palestinians are doing everything in their power to avoid it breaking out: First Successful Terrorist Infiltration From Gaza

TEL AVIV – Palestinian terrorists, exploiting Israeli military preparations for withdrawal from Gaza, have achieved their first successful infiltration from the area.

Israeli military sources said a would-be Palestinian suicide bomber slipped past the security fence in the northern Gaza Strip and entered Israel. He was arrested on July 23 near Kibbutz Nir Am in the western Negev desert.

Military sources said authorities were alerted to the prospect of a terrorist infiltration. But they said the military did not deploy sufficient forces in northern Gaza to prevent it.

The terrorist, identified as Jihad Shahada, was said to have planned to blow himself up in Tel Aviv. They said the 18-year-old Fatah operative was wearing a five-kilogram explosive belt.

A military statement said Shahada, a resident of the Jabaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City, was sent by a Fatah operative named Salem Tabat to conduct a suicide attack in central Tel Aviv. The statement did not cite a specific target.

Shahada was accompanied by another Palestinian, who was later caught in the home of a relative in Jaffa. The 25-year-old Palestinian was sent to help Shahada find a target in Tel Aviv.

This was the second Fatah suicide bombing attempt from the Gaza Strip in as many months. In June, a 21-year-old woman tried to cross into Israel from the Erez terminal with a suicide belt. She was arrested without incident.

Oh, and in case you think the Israeli security fence is "a bad idea, one that doesn't make Israelis any safer", think again:

In 2005, Israel foiled 92 Palestinian infiltration attempts from the Gaza Strip, military sources said. Most of the infiltrators were detected as they approached the high tech security fence around Gaza.

It's not your fault you didn't know about this. 90% of the stringers AP, AFP and Reuters have covering the conflict for them are Palestinian.

ISLAMIC TOLERANCE WATCH

2005-07-28T08:16:00.000+10:00

(Kaafir/Kuffaar = Infidel/Non-Muslim)
(Haraam = Religiously Forbidden)

It is always nice when we are reminded - by Muslims themselves, no less - that it is Islam itself that is an institutional propagator of cultural and religious intolerance, and not its victim: Islam Q & A

Question:

If a Muslim eats or drinks with a Christian or any kaafir, is that considered to be haraam? If it is haraam, then what do we say about the aayah (interpretation of the meaning):

“The food (slaughtered cattle, eatable animals) of the people of the Scripture (Jews and Christians) is lawful to you and yours is lawful to them" [al-Maa’idah 5:5]?

Answer :

Praise be to Allaah.

Eating with a kaafir is not haraam if it is necessary to do so, or if that serves some shar’i interest. But they should not be taken as friends, so you should not eat with them for no shar’i reason or for no shar’i purpose. You should not sit and chat with them and laugh with them. But if there is a reason to do so, such as eating with a guest, or to invite them to Islam or to guide them to the truth, or for some other shar’i reason, then it is OK.

The fact that the food of the People of the Book is halaal for us does not mean that we have to take them as friends and companions. It does not mean that we should eat and drink with them for no reason and for no purpose. And Allaah is the source of strength.

How cosy.

And so it goes on, from one generation to the next: the religion of instilled hatred

Question :

I am a Muslim living in a foreign country with my husband in order to earn a living. I hope that you could tell me of the obligations and duties and guidelines that a Muslim would should adhere to, because there are so many Muslim women living in foreign lands.

Answer :

Praise be to Allaah.

1 – The first thing you should do is to leave that kaafir land, because the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) disavowed himself of anyone who settles among the mushrikeen. Hence it is haraam for you to stay in the land of kufr, especially since you are there for the sake of work, and that is not one of the legitimate excuses for which you may be allowed to stay there.

See question no. 13363 and 27211 concerning the prohibition on settling in a kaafir land, and the conditions for that to be permissible in some cases.

2 – You have to choose the Muslim land where people adhere most closely to modesty, chastity and commitment to Islam. It is well known that the Muslim lands vary in these matters, and not every country is a place where you could settle, unfortunately, rather that depends on your nationality and the laws of the land.

3 – If you cannot move to that country, then you must fear Allaah, may He be exalted, and adhere to His commands in all your affairs, foremost among which must be guarding your families against disintegration and assimilation. You must pay attention to your children, both males and females, give them a good Islamic upbringing and a sense of connection to Islamic history, teach them the rulings of Islam, and teach them Arabic well.

4 – The place where the Muslim family lives should be far removed from places of immorality. Conservative Muslim families should live together in one place so that they can support one another and help one another to obey Allaah, may He be exalted, and help one another to train and teach themselves and their children.

It is haraam for you to give your children free rein in forming friendships with the children of the kuffaar. It is not permissible for you to allow your children to watch immoral shows and movies that destroy moral values. You must also pay attention to what they read and watch so that their thinking will not go astray and they will not lose their religious commitment.

6 – Your family should have set times, even if they are short, when the entire family can get together and talk, so as to deal with problems faced by each family member before they grow worse and more complicated, or it becomes impossible to solve them.

7 – You must also make good choices in the families with whom you mix, lest some of them have a negative influence on your family members and your efforts to raise them properly be wasted.

8 – You should instill a hatred for this culture and its ways in the hearts of your children, and inform them that it is contrary to divine law and the sound nature of man. Give them examples and contrast it with Islamic morals, and instill a sense of connection with Islamic culture and its ways, and let them know that they will not stay in that land for long.

Remember that the next time you hear some talking head - be he/she Muslim or otherwise - waxing lyrically about the religion of peace, and how it is they that are the real victims of intolerance.

THURSDAY HYPOTHETICAL

2005-07-27T23:03:00.000+10:00

Don't ask my why I decided on Thursday. I just did.

Anyway, here's a senario for you.

You're a world leader of one of the following nations

The United States
The United Kingdom
China
Russia
Australia
Iran
North Korea
France
Israel

Your office door opens one day and your assistant informs you that your chief scientist is there to see you, without an appointment. He blusters in, red-faced, and informs you that your telescopes have picked up evidence of a large number of unidentified craft, presumably alien, headed on a trajectory straight towards earth.

He further advises you that while this is unannounced, these creatures must necessarily be peaceful in nature.

At that moment the chief of the armed forces phones through, and advises you that you must immediately move your nation's defences to the highest alert possible, in preparation for a pre-emptive strike that would ideally hit the armada before it could unleash some kind of land-based offensive.

"That's crazy!" Your chief scientist objects. "These guys would have technology way in advance of ours. They could probably swat our ICBMs out of the sky without even batting an eyelid."

"If we don't attack as soon as it is possible," the general retorts, "Then we will have lost our only chance at stopping these guys cold before they could threaten our strategic defences or population centers. We will have surrendered the initiative entirely to them."

"They're intelligent!" The scientist blurts. "They must be peaceful."

"I agree that they're intelligent," the general responds cooly. "Intelligent enough to know precisely how it is that we would interpret a gigantic interstellar fleet just 'turning up' in our airspace. They're not coming to make nice. They're coming to steal the planet and wipe us out."

You are informed that the aliens aren't responding to efforts to contact them.

Who are you, what country do you lead, and what do you do? Do you resist or appease? Finally, why do you think your nation would respond in such a fashion?

No silly or retarded answers, please. I'm very interested to know your thoughts, some of which will go towards research on a book project I'm currently working on.

RELIGION OF PEACE STRIKES AGAIN

2005-07-27T18:02:00.000+10:00

One civilian noncombatant has been decapitated and another shot in the Muslim drive for a seperate Islamic state in southern Thailand: Buddhist decapitated

THE Buddhist son of a police officer has been beheaded in restive Muslim-majority southern Thailand, while a former school director was shot dead, police said.

The severed head of Eakasak Visetsuwannaphum, 29, was discovered today in a fertiliser bag on the side of the road in Sai Buri district of Pattani, one of three southernmost provinces engulfed in violence that has claimed more than 820 lives in 19 months.

"Police, military and civilian officials and volunteers are still searching for the victim's body," police said in an official report.

The brutal slaying is the 11th decapitation since early June in Thailand's southernmost provinces bordering Malaysia.

In neighbouring Narathiwat province, former school director Pramote Kaewpromlad, 65, was shot four times early today and died at hospital, according to police.

The murders occurred as Thailand's Crown Prince Maha Vajiralongkorn was visiting the restive region, where he has been presiding over the awarding of graduation degrees at a university in Yala province.

The deep south of predominantly Buddhist Thailand has suffered near-daily attacks since an Islamic separatist insurgency re-ignited in January 2004.

A prelude of things to come - here.

MORE IRAQI CONSTITUTIONAL DISAPPOINTMENT

2005-07-27T17:32:00.000+10:00

This kind of thing doesn't detract from what the west has tried to do in Iraq, but it does paint an unflattering (but accurate) portrait of the general state of developmental backwardness of the peoples of the middle east: Islam Dominates Iraq's Draft Constitution

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Framers of Iraq's constitution will designate Islam as the main source of legislation — a departure from the model set down by U.S. authorities during the occupation — according to a draft published Tuesday.

The draft states no law will be approved that contradicts "the rules of Islam" — a requirement that could affect women's rights and set Iraq on a course far different from the one envisioned when U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.

"Islam is the official religion of the state and is the main source of legislation," reads the draft published in the government newspaper Al-Sabah. "No law that contradicts with its rules can be promulgated."

Provided that this is accepted in the current form, with a few keystrokes will vanish a vast amount of unrealised national potential.

A MUSLIM SPEAKS OUT

2005-07-27T09:24:00.000+10:00

A very compelling article by Mamoun Fandy, Ph.D., directed at his fellow Muslims. Terrorism: Where is the Counter Fatwa?

The time has come for a fatwa (a legal Islamic opinion) to be issued that disconnects Osama Bin Laden and his followers from Islam. In a time in which terrorist operations have spread across world cities from New York to Casablanca, from Cairo to London, and most recently in Sharm El Sheikh, we desperately need a series of fatwas that assert that Islam does not condone violence against innocent people. However, this is not even enough. We also need to exclude those among us who believe that violence is the way to defend Islam. As a Muslim, I believe that we need total clarity on the subject. We should respond to the fatwas that are issued in our name.

Muslims all over the world should build up their courage in opposition to terrorism and clearly show that Islam prohibits acts such as those committed by terrorists. It is time that Islamic leaders declare that Bin Laden is not a Muslim in response to Bin Laden and his groups' description of moderate Muslims as "the West's allies" and as "infidels". If Islam condemns Bin Laden's acts, then there should be a clear fatwa issued from the centers of Islamic Fiqh (Jurisprudence) such as Mecca and Al-Azhar to that effect, a fatwa that would shift them outside of the realm of Islam. It is also time to remove the title of 'Mosque' from any place in which Molotov bombs are prepared.

The Leeds terrorists concocted their plan inside a mosque as they fooled others into thinking that they were at prayers. To whom were they praying, God or the devil? Muslims should denounce the locations of where bombs and terrorist plans are prepared as evil, and not describe them as mosques. Some may argue that instead, moderate Muslims should takeover these mosques; however, this is unlikely, as the moderates are not daring enough. The least that should be done is ensure that such places are boycotted by the moderates. They should realize that if a mosque becomes a ground for making Molotov bombs, it ceases to be a mosque and should be considered a crime scene. Mosques are essentially places of worship and gaining knowledge, however, if they are used for other indecent purposes then they should no longer enjoy such sanctity.

Islamic texts say that the whole of the earth was created as a place of worshipping and purity. They also state that those who spread demolition on earth should be punished with severe penalty of having their arms and legs cut off. Despite this, however, some Muslims still support Bin Laden and his followers, and some newspapers and TV channels, most notably Al Jazeera, practically support him. Those Muslims, in fact have and still maintain the message to Bin Laden that "You do to the West what we want to do but are unable to execute." This is the implied message of which the West is ignorant.

Read the whole thing. It's worth it.

HILARIOUS

2005-07-27T08:37:00.000+10:00

This is why I can't seem to stay away from Defamer: We’re Not Putting A Bone Pun In The Title

We just knew it was a matter of time before a Lindsay Lohan sex tape surfaced, but we have to admit to being a little surprised that she didn’t team up with someone a little beefier.

I personally will never forgive Lindsay for replacing the wonderful red-gold mane for a dirty blond mop, or for dieting so much that her boobs vanished.

Update: Hollywood is just a creepy, creepy place.

NOTHING IF NOT SUBTLE

2005-07-27T08:18:00.000+10:00

I was beginning to worry about Ratzi for a while there. I needn't have bothered: Pope won't call Islam religion of peace

Pope Benedict XVI yesterday refused to declare Islam "a religion of peace."

Asked by reporters whether Islam could be considered a religion of peace shortly before entering a meeting with priests and deacons of Valle d'Aosta in northwest Italy where he is spending a brief holiday, the pontiff refused to reply positively.

"I would not like to use big words to apply generic labels," he replied. "It certainly contains elements that can favor peace, it also has other elements: We must always seek the best elements."

I go on pining for the days of Pope Urban, nonetheless:

"You should shudder, brethren, you should shudder at raising a violent hand against Christians; it is less wicked to brandish your sword against Saracens. It is the only warfare that is righteous, for it is charity to risk your life for your brothers. That you may not be troubled about the concerns of tomorrow, know that those who fear God want nothing, nor those who cherish Him in truth. The possessions of the enemy, too, will be yours, since you will make spoil of their treasures and return victorious to your own; or empurpled with your own blood, you will have gained everlasting glory."

- Urban II (1088-1099): Speech at Council of Clermont, 1095.

Now there was a Pope who knew how to deal with infidels.

IS NOTHING SACRED?

2005-07-27T00:37:00.000+10:00

Now we have to put up with hysterical leftist rhetoric in our thriller novels and action films: Sony books Bush critic's political thriller

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Sony Pictures is negotiating to acquire film rights to the first novel from Richard Clarke, the counterterrorism expert who accused the Bush administration of ignoring the terrorist threat before the Sept. 11 attacks.

His novel, "The Scorpion Gate," will be published in October by Putnam Adult. The studio hopes the film adaptation will be the first in a series of John Clancy-style political thrillers. The project will be produced by former studio chief John Calley.

The realistic geopolitical thriller is set five years in the future as oil-hungry forces in Washington are ready to reshape the map of the Middle East to further their own ends by launching a global nuclear war. The plot involves a fictional takeover of the House of Saud by extremists.

Clarke turned to fiction after writing his 2004 best-seller, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," which assessed the anti-terrorism efforts of the past four presidential administrations, all of which he worked in.

Realistic??? That's realistic??? What frickin planet are these Hollywood maniacs beaming down from???

Okay, I'm going to go sedate myself before I become as hysterical as the lefties I deride.

ISLAMIC TOLERANCE WATCH

2005-07-27T00:19:00.000+10:00

Whatever you do, if you go to an Islamic country, don't try to buy presents for native's offspring. That kind of Christian insensitivity will land your evil western ass in jail: Christians face jail for giving treats to children of Muslims

THREE Indonesian housewives face up to five years in prison for allegedly trying to lure Muslim children into Christianity at a Sunday School “Happy Week”.

Senior Christian figures claim that the prosecution is politically motivated and part of a campaign of persecution by Islamic fundamentalists against Indonesia’s Christian minority — about 8 per cent of the Muslim-majority population.

The three women faced threats from a yelling mob of 150 fundamentalists during a court appearance in West Java last week. It is claimed that the women were teaching lessons in reading and writing to mixed classes of Christian and Muslim children, taking them on trips to parks and swimming pools, and rewarding them with treats such as pencils for memorising Christian prayers and Bible verses. Many of the alleged offences took place at a special Happy Week earlier this year, although the lessons began in 2003.

A claim of “Christianisation” was made against the women by a chapter of the Indonesian Council of Muslim Clerics, which alleged that they enticed Muslim children to participate and that they had tried to convert the children to Christianity by giving them gifts.

The three, Rebekka Zakaria, Ratna Mala Bangun and Ety Pangesti, have been held in prison since May, charged under Indonesia’s criminal law with using lies, deception or enticement to change a child’s religion. They are evangelical Christians who belong to the Church of David’s Camp in Haurgelis, a strongly Muslim fundamentalist area in West Java which is about 2 per cent Christian.

How dare they!

You see? The west has an awful lot to answer for. All of this gift-giving and crazy notions of freedom of religious choice is obviously the work of the devil. Thank goodness for Islam, the religion of peace, whose devout adherents will see to it that these three housewives will go behind bars for this heinous crime.

And if they don't, well, that 150-strong fundamentalist crowd (read: small minority of extremists) will no doubt see to it that they are peacefully torn apart in the name of Allah the Merciful.

ROUND THE 'SPHERE

2005-07-26T23:26:00.000+10:00

Leigh over at A Western Heart has done a wonderful job fisking the latest Pilger outburst. It's the best I've seen, and LGF ought to have linked to him rather than Spartacus:

John Pilger's reputation for ignoring the facts preceeds him - this sort of "anti-Western-civilisation first, facts shaped to suit" argument is fairly typical for him. However it's a shame his editors don't force him to do any fact checking. For someone purporting to be a journalist, these sins are unforgivable.

Steve Edwards has decided to leave blogdom for the time being. He's easily one of the most erudite bloggers in Australia, and his insights - especially into multiculturalism and immigration will be sorely missed:

After two and a half years of regular blogging, I'm bidding "farewell" for now. It's been great fun; some new acquaintances have been made online, and no doubt quite a few enemies. To friends and foe, thanks for playing!

Annika has made a solid point about how terrorists perceive our reaction to their atrocities:

When the terrorists win, they will pack up their suicide belts and their scimitars and stop killing people. Until then, they will not have won.

My point is that if we were to "give in to fear," for instance, the terrorists wouldn't consider it a victory because, contrary to what the government and the media want us to believe, they don't give a crap if we're afraid or not. They want us all to either convert, redraw every map to 14th Century borders, or die. So unless you fill in the blank with one of those three things, the statement will invariably be incorrect.

The Currency Lad is still reading. It's highly inconsiderate, and I believe that some particularly devoted young Anubisite should wander over to Currency Manor and burn down his frickin' library:

Gone Reading - Back Soon

He fools no-one with that fancy university rhetoric.

Philip Gomes, in case you didn't know, is the devil. Go see why:

"Babies! Yum!"*

* Attributed quote may not be entirely accurate.

Daniel R. Oliver's blog is better looking than mine, and he uses big words in a disturbingly eloquent manner. He's also the devil, but occasionally he makes good points, like this one:

I was under the impression that a parliament was the legislative body of a sovereign nation. If so, then does this indicate that Muslims within Britain believe themselves to be part of a separate nation with separate laws?

Someone enlighten me - I'd very much like to be mistaken.

D over at Mangled Thoughts charts the undeniable links between aliens and global warming:

Read the rest of the speech, Senator Campbell couldn’t. He’s an illiterate ignoramus, just like the Greenies whose Pol Potian cause he serves so ably, as another of their bloody gurus.

I don't know who this Campbell person is, but it seems that D has taken quite a shine to him.

Keith knows more about PC operating systems than I do. Like many people, Keith is the devil:

While what I’ve read about Longhorn/Vista has been interesting, I’ve learned over the years that no matter what you call it a Window is a Window, is a Window.

And all Microsoft Windows come pre-broken.

No need for you to break them yourself.

So while I know that chances are I will have to buy another subpar Microsoft OS simply because of it’s popularity, my main computing will still be done with my Mac and my Linux boxes.

Chief places Kim Beazley squarely over his lap and goes to town on him with the "who's an ignorant fat bastard" stick:

Perhaps Mr Beazley could explain why any of our police are armed at all. Does he advocate a policy of shooting to disable? If so, aren't there other non-fatal alternatives such as bean-bag guns, electrical shocks, riot control gas or batons?

In case he hadn't noticed, Australian police have always had the power to shoot to kill. That's why they are the police. Because the public would get upset if soldiers did it. He's either being deliberately obtuse or he's completely ignorant of how those who keep his streets safe, do so. A pathetic attempt to get attention towards the ALP's complete lack of national security and counter-terrorism policies.

More links to come in the next installment.

PARTIAL RETRACTION

2005-07-26T16:11:00.000+10:00

There has been an awful lot of argy-bargy over the circumstances in which Mr Jean Charles de Menezes came to be dead.

The situation has only been inflamed by widely varying (and occasionally contradicting) stories floating through the mainstream media.

I can't say that I helped the situation any by rushing to defend the actions of the police so heedlessly. While I do not believe that this in any way changes the fact that Mr de Menezes (provided he could indeed speak English) should have halted when directed to do so by the police, it remains a possibility that the police might have erred in not seeking to detain him before he reached the tube station. If it turns out that they did wait until he had entered the station before seeking to apprehend him, a good portion of the blame does lay with them and their laxity.

I do not retract statements I made regarding the non-relevance of race to this situation. Mr de Menezes was not chosen because he was Brazilian. By outward appearance he easily could have been confused for an Italian, Greek, Spaniard, or a native of some of the other Balkan countries. His skin was paler than mine.

Further, I do not feel that there is anything to be gained in castigating the police. They were attempting (to whatever degree of proficiency) to protect the public, and hopefully this unpleasant episode will cause them to redouble their efforts.

This will not prevent more innocent people from dying. That may well happen. It will not happen because of the innate love police have of killing people.

However, if it should happen that the article in the financial times was inaccurate, and that the man was not seen emerging from a suspect's residence, had no ties to Islamic terrorism and was only really guilty of bad fashion sense and running from plainclothes police who had waited too long to make an intervention, then I retract the conclusions I drew from those facts.

I will refrain from making any kind of complete retraction until an inquiry has established the facts of the matter.

A LITTLE TWEAKING

2005-07-26T14:18:00.000+10:00

Some evil leftist totally undermined my self-esteem by pointing out to me that the old blog template went pear-shaped when viewed with something called "Safari". It may well be that "Safari" is only used in Asylums for the mentally and politically deranged, but I wasn't about to take that chance.

A few things aren't up yet but they will be.

Shameless plugs will have to be reworked to fit the new format. I have left the Investigate Magazine link up because its chief editor, a shadowy character who goes by the name James "Slasher" Morrow, scares me.

Update: I've now swapped back to Haloscan commenting because I couldn't make the blogger permalink function normally.

COX & FORKUM

2005-07-26T00:28:00.000+10:00

CHIEF BASTARD'S GOT NOTHING ON ME

2005-07-25T16:33:00.000+10:00

[Warning: Spoilers ahead]

DUMBLEDORE DIES.

That will teach you for reading Rowling in the first place. Now go read a grown-up's book, for God's sake. And stop crying like that. It's embarrassing.

LEFTISTS OBSESSED WITH RACE

2005-07-25T15:41:00.000+10:00

If the Brazilian man killed in the London underground had no link with terrorists, was not seen emerging from a suspected terrorist lair, and didn't break into a run when challenged by police because of some minor warrant that was outstanding (or something) then I will acknolwedge that it was a tragic mistake on the part of the police.

Until we have such information, I won't speculate further than I already have.

One thing I will do is totally reject the abyssmally stupid leftist knee-jerk reaction to claim that this man was killed because he was a man "of colour" and that now, all dark-skinned people are targets. Islam has nothing to do with race, and race has nothing to do with terrorism. A high number of jihadist terrorists are Arabic, but an equally high number are also Persian, Central-Asian or Asian.

So far (that I've seen personally) at least two leftists have alledged that race definitely played a part in this man being shot. One is a deranged leftist, a typical moonbat, the other is a decent fellow gripped by the fever of emotive moonbatitis. Here's their contributions:

Phil Gomes:

"Jean Charles de Menezes was undoubtedly a man of colour, so he now automatically comes under suspicion because of circumstance and the tenor of the times, and of course Jean Charles de Menezes will just be considered collateral damage as far as those who wish to tighten a noose around our civil liberties. They’ll say 'but if he had nothing to fear he would still be alive', but Jean Charles de Menezes as a man of the global south probably knew better than any of us that police with unlimited powers are something to be feared."

MP:

"No he was chosen cause he was a darkie and they all aparently look the same."

Why do I oppose their views with such righteous certainty? How am I able to cast aside their assertions of racial profiling with such debonair panache?

Why? Because this is Jean Charles de Menezes, that's why.

He could quite easily fit in as a native of Spain, Greece, southern Italy, the Balkans, the Basque region or southern France. In other words, a EUROPEAN.

He was targeted because either the things happened as described, or because the police thought he was a threat, but made a tragic error. He also made a traigic error, by running from them in a national high-security situation, and by making for the one place a suicide bomber would most want to go. If indeed he was running from them before he made it to the station, then his mistake is compounded.

He wasn't targeted for his race. If he was, the streets of London (a city of 1,000,000 Muslims and many more "dark people") would be running with blood. This isn't indicative of a "trend" or "policy". This is one instance of possible security failure after major terrorist attacks. By seizing on this, you leftists are abhorrently opportunistic, alarmist and dishonest.

Nice try, though. Do keep distracting people emotively from the big issues. Keep screaming righteous fury about race. Keep on signifying absa-bloody-lutely nothing.

You make us look ever so appealing to the voters come election time.

VINDICATED: PART III

2005-07-24T23:49:00.000+10:00

Don't think it makes me happy when I see this stuff. It doesn't. It makes me feel profoundly sad. We were supposed to be going to the moon and colonizing the solar system in my generation, not messing around with this crap.

But this is the way things are. No use denying it, because many of the Muslims no longer are: Poll shows support for bombers

A new poll says about a quarter of British Muslims sympathise with the motives of the London bombers, if not their methods.

And the survey in London's Daily Telegraph shows one-third of British Muslims believe Western society is immoral.

The poll asked Muslims if they felt the July the 7th suicide attacks in which 56 peopled died were justified, and six per cent said they were.

71 per cent said they weren't justified at all, and 11 per cent said they weren't justified on balance.

But asked whether they had sympathy with the feelings and motives of the four British Muslim bombers, 13 per cent said they had a lot of sympathy and another 11 per cent had a little.

A similar poll for The Sun newspaper showed 91 per cent of the Muslim respondents didn't feel the suicide bombings were justified by the Islamic holy book, the Koran.

Try to keep in mind, many of those Muslims polled would not have told the truth. Some who did feel sympathy for the terrorists would naturally abstain from expressing that sentiment, for fear of how they would be perceived.

You also might want to bear in mind that if morality is their big issue, it's not the conservatives in western society that they are disliking most, folks.

It's all you religion-hating atheistic leftoids wanting more freedom to express your transgendered multisexual weirdness on TV, and everywhere else.

It's the smug liberals who cackle at Will and Grace and the plethora of other TV shows promoting homosexuality - a lifestyle which Islamists reward with the death penalty.

It's the feminists who refer to women as "womyn" and rage against the evil men who have ruined the world.

Leftists and feminists have championed all the things Islamists despise most. Religious tolerance, freedom of speech, thought and expression, tolerance for sexual and gender diversity, the rights of women... the list goes on.

You people are target number one. Get it? Not boring old stuffed-shirt conservative Mike Jericho. My head comes off right after yours. Think on that awhile. Then see who you hate more. Me or them.

Only one of the two options wants you dead.

(Clue: I just wish you'd grow a brain).

Update: In places where there is no fear of recrimination, the result is often different: Caught in Bin Laden's wave of terror

Anti-western sentiment, particularly directed at the American military presence in Saudi Arabia, has been fuelled for a decade by militant dissident clerics. Their calls have found a sympathetic response, not least among the 10,000 or so Saudis who volunteered to wage jihad against the Russians in Afghanistan.

Last week the Saudi regime conceded the existence of an intelligence survey it had conducted last October of educated Saudis aged between 25 and 41. The New York Times, which disclosed it, said it concluded that 95% supported Bin Laden.

That poll was conducted long before Afghanistan or Iraq.

How to commit suicide & get famous

2005-07-24T13:42:00.000+10:00

No doubt the far left is going to crow about this: Law of the gun raises fresh doubts

By admitting that the man shot dead at Stockwell Tube yesterday was not one of the suspects in the July 7 attack or the attempted bombing on Thursday, the police have taken a potentially dangerous turning.

While officers in the US and other countries often shoot criminal and terrorist suspects, such incidents are rare in Britain, where only specialised units are allowed to carry firearms. They use their weapons only in exceptional circumstances and their actions may need to be justified in a criminal court.

Yesterday morning's incident at the south London Tube station was part of a massive operation aimed at finding those responsible for the latest terrorist attack to hit London.

A passenger who was near the scene said he had seen a man of Asian appearance shot five times by "plain-clothes police officers".

Mark Whitby told BBC News: "One of them [police officers] was carrying a handgun. It looked like an automatic. They pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him."

But what the hysterics probably won't focus on is the fact that this man wasn't chosen randomly:

According to police sources, the man who was shot dead had been observed leaving a house in London that was being watched in connection with bomb incidents earlier in the day. He was followed by a police surveillance team backed by armed officers, none of whom are thought to have been carrying photographs identifying the suspect.

He was followed on to the Underground system where exactly what happened remained unclear last night. The police version is that when the man reached Stockwell station, he began to act suspiciously and broke into a run, at which point the armed unit challenged him to stop.

The man, who is understood not to have been carrying any package or container, is thought to have been shot after he boarded a train that had stopped at the station.

So he almost certainly was in some way affiliated with Islamic extremists, and in a national high-security atmosphere, ignored shouted police warnings to stop, and behaved as though he were an imminent threat to numerous civilians.

To all but the most ardent leftist, it is going to be quite clear that this man had no burning desire to keep breathing.

Anubis Patron: Winston Churchill

2005-07-24T13:03:00.000+10:00

It seems that the man who saw the United Kingdom through some of its darkest days agreed with me on the nature - and menace - of Islam (via LGF):

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities - but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

—Sir Winston Churchill, from The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages 248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).

If only one might have been born in that halcyon age; before the onset of tyrannical political correctness.

How disappointing

2005-07-24T09:51:00.000+10:00

Via Tim Blair, this will serve little good beyond proving that the new Iraqi Democracy really was constructed by Iraqi Muslims and not the cronies of Donald Rumsfeld.

Behold the majestic Iraqi Bill of Rights:

Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency inside the borders of Iraq of not less than ten years for an Arab or twenty years for any other nationality, as long as he has good character and behavior, and has no criminal judgment against him ...

Racist, anti-semitic and xenophobic. And to think civilisation began in and around Iraq.

Update: It seems that I jumped too fast. While those articles were in an original draft, the latest draft seems to have removed them. As Publius Pundit Notes:

It has to be remembered that the document from June 30 and the document now are drafts. They are models for the progress being made on a whole constitution. Thankfully, this suggests that progress is indeed being made.

Many thanks to Sherry Keller for pointing out the correction.

Idolizing Evil

2005-07-24T01:47:00.000+10:00

Via Davids Medienkritik comes this wonderful article by Jeffrey Gedmin, director of the Aspen Institute in Berlin. Mr Gedmin is as offended as I when he spies an ignorant youth sporting a Che Guevara T-Shirt, and has set out to elucidate why it is that Che shouldn't be afforded mythical status: Che Guevara isn’t cool

Have you taken note of all those Che Guevara faces you see cropping up everywhere? You see them at soccer matches, book stores, Prenzlauerberg cafes, McDonalds and Hartz IV demonstrations. Carlos Santana, --whose music I like by the way--showed up wearing a Che t-shirt at the Academy Awards this year. He joined actor Antonio Banderas in singing the theme song from the movie "Motorcycle Diaries," the latest tribute to the late, great revolutionary icon and advocate for world peace and social justice.

I am indebted to Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who in the current issue of the center-left "New Republic" magazine, explains a bit about who Che Guevara was. Of course, Che is famous for helping Fidel Castro shape the Cuban revolution. Later, he was in charge of La Cabana prison. It was here that Che oversaw a military tribunal, which condemned hundreds, by some accounts a couple thousand counterrevolutionaries to death without trial in those early, heady days. Javier Arzuaga, the prison’s chaplain, recalls in a recent conversation with Vargas Llosa how strict Che could be, including when it came to the execution of children.

None of this should surprise. “Hatred,” Che once said, is important. It makes you, he reflected, "into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine." Che certainly loved to kill. He once killed a comrade, who he suspected of being disloyal. “I ended the problem,” he boasted, “with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain.”

During the glorious revolution days he once wrote to his wife, “Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and blood thirsty.”

Che loved doing what was best for the people. He once experimented with imposing a kind of sharia law, regulating relations between men and women and the use of alcohol. He helped set up a police state in Cuba and created on the tiny island labour camps for dangerous counterrevolutionaries.

These camps were the precursor for the camps that would be later used to confine homosexuals, aids sufferers and other undesirable elements. Che loved Soviet communism. He helped negotiate the stationing of Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba in 1962, and later became furious when Moscow negotiated their removal with the Americans. “If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all...” He spoke of “unimaginable destructiveness to defend a principle.”

Che’s legacy includes failed revolutions in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Haiti. He can take pride, posthumously, for helping Castro create the Cuban success. Che once said, you measure depth of change by the number of people “who feel there is no place for them in the new society.” That presumably means that as long as ordinary Cubans keep risking their lives in shark infest waters to reach the shores of Florida, then the revolution remains alive and well.

So the next time you see someone sporting one of those Che t-shirts, don’t ask questions, just say “Heil Che, Vive la revolucion!” It’s apparently the cool thing to do.

The Che socks really are for sale, and apparently, people exchange hard-earned currency for them. This started me thinking. If a suave black t-shirt + a picture of a genocidal leftist ideologue = money, then there's a way to get in on this racket.

So I proudly introduce the new line of radical socialist/angry undergraduate leisurewear. I like to call it the "Final Solution" range. Not only does it speak of the profoundly altruistic elements inherent in every totalitarian socialist state, it also covers the inbuilt hatred every far-leftist bears for Israel and the Jews!

It's a two-fer! Get your orders in now, there are alot of leftists out there with hateful money burning holes in their designer jeans.

Update: While my line of t-shirts is a joke, there really are people making a killing off this kind of stuff. Scary.

Now this is more like it...

2005-07-24T00:34:00.000+10:00

Italian Muslims take a step towards proving me wrong: Muslims united against terrorism

Rome, 22 July (AKI) - In the aftermath of the London bombings carried out by British-born Muslims, the Islamic community in Rome has gathered symbolically at the Rome Town Hall, to reassert its strong opposition to terrorism. Pakistani men in their traditional salwar kameez - baggy pants with long flowing shirts, Somali women with colourful headscarves and Moroccan women in their crisp kaftans gathered in the Campidoglio or Rome's Capital Hill. Rome's Mayor, Walter Veltroni, was joined by Mahmoud Sheweita, the imam of Rome's main mosque.

Sheweita issued a statement condemning terrorism and proposing concrete measures to fight extremism and favour integration.

The two parties, Italians and immigrants, felt the need to contrast the climate of 'clash of civilisations' generated by the recent terrorist attacks. "Claiming a culture's superiority is wrong and generates conflict (...) We have to respect one another, be curious and try to understand our mutual needs" said Veltroni, recalling that from ancient times Rome has been a cultural melting pot.

The imam Mahmoud Sheweita echoed the mayor's comments:"Plurality doesn't mean separation or absence of dialogue but has to be perceived as a positive interaction based on two elements, sharing common values and respecting diversity."

It must be the Italian food that has them so congenial.

Don't let it be said...

2005-07-23T22:38:00.000+10:00

That I never attack rightists.

The drooling British libertarian simpletons over at Samizdata are ready to go to war. Not against the terrorists, mind. Oh no. They are ready to draw their swords over something far worse. National ID Cards: Not heroic but necessary: 10,000 minutemen

I cannot claim to have been brave very much in my life. And I do not know that I am being brave now. But I do know that I am now committed along with more than 10,000 others to refuse to register with the National Identity Register, whatever the Government may now choose to do to me.

The first NO2ID "Refuse" pledge through the MySociety PledgeBank site has been successful. 10,000, and counting, British people value freedom enough that they are prepared to become an un-person, rather than submit to lifelong supervision under the fallaciously named "ID card" system that the Government hopes to introduce. In four weeks we have raised promises of £100,000 for legal defence. And people are still joining in.

In a few days we will launch a bigger pledge, a million-pound-plus fighting fund, for everyone to subscribe to who supports the refuseniks, but cannot (because they have dependents or professional obligations) join in the identity strike. We need 50,000 people willing to pledge £20 if the bill passes. Look out for it.

And to the American readers of this blog I say: Help us now. If we go down, you are next...

Drawing dramatic personal parallels to the minutemen of the American revolution. How utterly absurd. Not that I'm surprised. I recall that their geekish leader Perry de Havilland had a great old giggle about Terri Schiavo, who he compared to a zombie, if I recall correctly.

I had a friend who used to live in Samizdata HQ. Believe me, this is mild idiocy compared to what the "Samizdatistas" are capable of.

Their fans are the same. Typical hard-core libertarians, they make leftists look like calm, rational neocons:

No-one should belittle this achievement. it's almost impossible to get ten thousand liberty-minded people to sign up together to personally put their livelihood on the line for a common cause. It means certainty that our numbers are large enough to cause poll-tax scale chaos if ID ever becomes law.

Posted by Julian Morrison at July 20, 2005 02:07 PM

Let Battle commence! Bring the Bastards on, they will only get my fingerprints from my " cold dead Hands"

Posted by Phil at July 20, 2005 02:44 PM

These are the kinds of people who were rightfully beaten silly in high school. The conservative variant of anarchist, they are taking aim at their government during time of war, because they don't want to carry a little plastic card around. I had one of those cards while I lived in Israel, and I can state clearly, for the record, it is neither intrusive or troublesome.

I know that many rational small-government conservatives will disagree with me on this. Fair enough, I have no problem with debate.

I have a problem with twerpy little English dweebs who compare themselves to revolutionary war heroes and plan disruptive actions against their government while terrorist cells are roaming around their city.

Vindicated - Part II [Rant Warning]

2005-07-23T12:34:00.000+10:00

You know, Muslims, while fairly sneaky most of the time, occasionally become complacent and impatient in their goal of forcing the west into timid subserviance to the jihadist groups who they supposedly condemn.

Now and then, as though purely to prove me correct, they do something abyssmally stupid that exposes not only their sympathy for the aims of the terrorists, but their complicity in their agenda.

The latest example? Britain. Here, Muslims have been claiming that they are "British too" and that they are in the same boat with the native Britons and all kinds of other patriotic stuff. If they really meant it, I'd be pleased and feel no need to take issue. But the fact is, they don't mean it. At all. They are merely the "softly, softly" arm of the Islamist drive to gain control of the planet, and do so through gentler means than their jihadist brethren. They are the ones who whisper softly in our ears, mumbling sweet words, reminding us of how easy it would be to simply give in, to do as the jihadists want, and all of the terror will just go away.

And that's exactly what Muslim leaders - after only a couple of Islamist terrorist attacks in Britain - are doing. Urging surrender: Change foreign policy - top Muslims

Senior Muslims have warned the Government that it needed to revise British foreign policy if it wants to put an end to the violence.

Dr Azzam Tamimi, from the Muslim Association of Britain, said the country was in real danger and that this would continue so long as British forces remained in Iraq.

He described the July 7 bombings and the attempted attacks in London on Thursday as "horrifying" but said it was not enough to simply unite in condemnation of the bombers.

Dr Tamimi, speaking after a Sky News debate in Birmingham, said: "The latest developments very clearly show this is a very big thing. It's not just a few individuals from Leeds. I think it's time everybody got serious and engaged in an attempt to prevent it. Part of that would be to understand what's going on.

"7/7, 21/7, and God knows what will happen afterwards, our lives are in real danger and it would seem, so long as we are in Iraq and so long as we are contributing to injustices around the world, we will continue to be in real danger.

"Tony Blair has to come out of his state of denial and listen to what the experts have been saying, that our involvement in Iraq is stupid." His comments were echoed by the marketing manager for The Muslim Weekly newspaper.

Shahid Butt said he believed the threat to Britain would reduce if it pulled its troops out of Iraq. He said: "At the end of the day, these things [violent incidents] are going to happen if current British foreign policy continues. There's a lot of rage, there's a lot of anger in the Muslim community.

"We have got to get out of Iraq, it is the crux of the matter. I believe if Tony Blair and George Bush left Iraq and stopped propping up dictatorial regimes in the Muslim world, the threat rate to Britain would come down to nearly zero."

Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, also called on the Government to take responsibility for creating the "political environment" in which these attacks have happened.

He said: "Now we know this wasn't a one-off, we need to look at ways of addressing the underlying factors that created it. I feel it's urgent to start addressing these before there is further loss of life."

Traitors. One and all.

Why? Simple. If it was an Islamic nation that they lived in - one such as Iran - and that nation came under attack, those Muslim leaders would do precisely what Muslim leaders have always done when their nation came under attack. They would attempt to whip the faithful up into a frenzy, exhorting them to fight to the death for their county. The precedents for this fact are legion, and it is quite indisputable.

But here, after only one major terrorist attack, they are counseling the surrender of British national foreign policy to the whim of terrorists who are in no way representative of Iraq or the millions there who voted for change.

Reverse the senario for a moment. Imagine that Christian terrorists mounted an offensive in the USA, and cited abortion as a crime against God that must be halted, immediately. American policy must change, immediately, or they will continue to attack. Trains and buses in New York are blown up, yet Christians don't come out to protest the use of their faith in this way. Instead, they have a protest march against abortion. When asked to condemn the terrorists they do, then add the conditional clause "but" and continue into a rant about the evils of abortion. Now imagine that Christian leaders approach the President and encourage him to make abortions illegal, so that the terror will stop. They are saying that the right of the majority of their nation to decide their own policy is less important than the right of a violent minority to change it. They talk about the "anger" in the Christian community and avoid any references to vitriolic anti-abortion Christian teachings. "It isn't our fault" they cry. "It's the fault of the government who is insensitive to Christian sentiments, and is bringing this violence on itself. At the end of the day, these things [violent incidents] are going to happen if current American foreign policy continues. There's a lot of rage, there's a lot of anger in the Christian community."

Now - and I direct this at those few leftists who filter in here - how would you feel if that was the situation? It's almost exactly the same. Abortion gives a woman control over her body and her life, which is a good thing. Britain is in Iraq trying to give the Iraqi people a chance to decide their own future democratically. That is also a good thing. A third party is saying that that must not be allowed to happen, because democracy is a real threat to the Islamic theocracies they want to scatter throughout the Islamic world. That's the fact, jack.

If it were the Christians trying to subvert your government's policies, you'd feel a little differently, wouldn't you? And if those Christian leaders refused to work with you to weed out the bad seeds, and instead placed the focus of blame back on you, you'd know precisely where their loyalties lay, wouldn't you?

Why can no-one see this? Are you all fucking BLIND? These people have completely lifted the veil! They have no loyalty to Britain, they don't believe that its way of life is worth defending, or see that it is where their allegiance should lay. If the opposite were the case, they would be scream "death, Allah and no surrender", just as they have always done in the past when their nation is threatened.

But Britain is not their nation. It is where they have come to live, whilst keep their allegiances firmly with the Ummah. If those in the west can't see this blindingly obvious fact, then they have no-one to blame but themselves when it is their train or bus that some Jihadist chooses to obliterate.

These are Muslim leaders. They are representative of the greater Muslim population of Britain. Your enemy won't oblige you by being any more transparent than this. Learn from it, or prepare to reap what your ignorance has sown.

Update: Reader Jeff makes the million-dollar point:

I haven't seen any muslims traveling to Iraq to help them fight the invading terrorists.

Neither have I, Jeff.

It makes you wonder, doesn't it? These people have, in many instances, lived in democracies their entire lives. Surely they must appreciate the benefits of it as a form of human governance.

Why wouldn't at least a small percentage want to go to Iraq to help build a nation of free Muslims?

CNN makes suicide bomber the victim

2005-07-22T22:07:00.000+10:00

Does this story have a peculiar "pity the poor suicide bomber" spin to it, or am I just becoming cynical? It could also be the unbelievably stilted pro-Zapatero documentary CNN had on last night about the blissful paradise that is appeasement-regime Spain: 'He looked like a cornered fox'

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Eyewitnesses to Friday's shooting at a London Underground station described seeing a man being chased onto a train and then shot several times at close range.

Police confirmed to CNN that armed officers had shot dead a male at Stockwell station in south London.

One witness, Mark Whitby, told BBC news the man appeared not to be carrying anything but was wearing a thick coat that looked padded.

Whitby said a young Asian man was shot five times after being chased into a train carriage by three men.

"As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified," said Whitby.

"He sort of tripped but they were hotly pursuing him and couldn't have been more than two or three feet behind him at this time.

"He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the floor. The policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand, he held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.

"He looked like a Pakistani but he had a baseball cap on, and quite a thickish coat. It was a coat like you would wear in winter, a sort of padded jacket. It looked out of place in the weather we've been having."

Whitby said he had been about five yards away from where the incident occurred and was "totally distraught" by what he had seen.

Perhaps he would have preferred the officer be more sensitive to the feelings of the passengers by allowing a possible suicide bomber to detonate his vest.

That part about the suspect being "chased on to" the train is interesting - I've not read about him being chased onto the train anywhere else. Only that police boarded the train before shooting.

Update: In regard to the description of what the suicide bomber was wearing:

"He looked like a Pakistani but he had a baseball cap on, and quite a thickish coat. It was a coat like you would wear in winter, a sort of padded jacket. It looked out of place in the weather we've been having."

Anubis London operative M (who rode the tube in to work this morning) concurs with the witness's account that it is "definitely too hot" a day in London for a jacket of that kind.

Update II: Differing accounts

Underground passengers told reporters that a man jumped over the ticket barriers at Stockwell station and ran onto the platform. He appeared to be wearing padded clothes.

Passengers reported that police chased a man, who fell. Police pushed him to the ground and shot him.

Anthony Larkin, 30, a care assistant, was about to board a northbound Victoria line train from Stockwell station at 10.10am.

“Suddenly a whole load of police officers appeared, some of them in uniform, some without uniform, with guns drawn,” he told the FT. “They were shouting: ‘Get down, get down!’

“I froze. Then I heard two gun shots. People were screaming, shouting, crying.

“I saw the guy. He had a beard, he was thin, Asian-looking. He was trying to board a train.

“He was wearing jeans, T-shirt and a jacket. You could see wires coming out the front. Wires like a bomb belt. They shot him twice in the front.”

The act of jumping the turnstile just a day after more suicide bombings, then fleeing from police toward a packed train, along with visible wires emerging from his jacket certainly would tend to justify the police officer's actions.

Update III: It's being reported that this individual was a member of the cell who failed in their attacks yesterday.

Update IV: As usual, Muslims helpfully remind us that they are the real victims of this situation, and that they have far more to fear from us than we do from them.

Now, all I have to do in order to believe that is think back to the last time a Baptist extremist or a Mormon fundamentalist blew themselves up in a train filled with Muslims...

Creeping towards the light...

2005-07-22T21:53:00.000+10:00

I have, in the past, been extremely ungenerous to John Heard over the matter of Islam and Islamism. I have called him an appeaser and just about every other inflammatory term you could imagine. I won't apologise for the rhetoric, because that is the sole currency of bloggers.

But I will happily acknowledge that he seems to be seeing the light. I don't expect him to come entirely over to my views of the relationship between mainstream Islam and militant Islamism, mainly because you can't see how things really are on "the Arab street" until you've lived there. I have and it is what has forged my views on the matter. The vast majority of Muslims totally support the actions of the Jihadists; they differ only in how vocal they will be in said support.

John's article is thoughtful and insightful. I encourage you to read it all.

Suicide bomber shot dead?

2005-07-22T21:05:00.000+10:00

Reports of a suicide bomber being shot dead on a London train are just coming through... Dramatic shoot-out in London

London - Police shot a man at an Underground station in south London on Friday, police said, amid reports that he was a would-be suicide bomber.

"We can confirm that just after 10:00 today armed officers shot a male at Stockwell Underground station," a spokesperson for London's Metropolitan Police said.

Sky News television reported that the man was a "suspected suicide bomber" and that passengers had been evacuated from trains at the station.

Stockwell is one stop south of Oval station, one of three Underground stops that were, together with a double-decker bus, the scenes of apparent would-be suicide attacks on Thursday.

Witnesses quoted by BBC and Sky News said the man who was shot appeared to have been of south Asian origin.

Chris Wells, who was a passenger evacuated from an Underground train at Stockwell, said he saw about 20 police officers, some armed, rushing into the station before a man jumped over the barriers with police giving chase.

"There were at least 20 of them (officers) and they were carrying big black guns," he said.

"The next thing I saw was this guy jump over the barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting, 'Get out, get out'."

British Transport Police said the Northern and Victoria Tube lines, which pass through Stockwell, were suspended because of shooting.

To shoot him dead, they must have been convinced that he was about to trigger any explosives he might have been carrying.

This is one Islamobastard I would have preferred to take while breathing. We still have to find his pals.

The press is the enemy

2005-07-22T08:47:00.000+10:00

As has already been noted by Tim Blair, Instapundit and myself, the newsmedia has been particular fast to play the "self-blame" card, drawing a direct relation between the London bombings and the Iraq War.

Here is the transcript of the speeches given by Blair and Howard, as well as the questions (some of which are just awful) asked by the mujahedin fifth columinists (aka the press)

Full text: Blair & Howard

Joint press conference of British Prime Minister Blair and Australian PM John Howard
July 22, 2005
Good Afternoon everyone and a warm welcome to Prime Minister John Howard from Australia. Now before I say what the outcome of our talks has been together, I know you would want me to say a few words obviously on what has happened over the last few hours, and I hope you will forgive me if I say to you that it is best for operational details to go to the police and the emergency services and others that can give you the information.

I obviously heard about this, as you probably did, when I was in the middle of the lunch meeting with the Prime Minister. I have then taken the Cobra meeting at 2.30. I have just spoken to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner again now. He I think has issued a statement which I think will be published shortly, and his hope is that things now can get back to normal again as quickly as possible.

We can't minimise incidents such as this, because they obviously have been serious in the four different places, as we know. I think all I would like to say is this, that we know why these things are done, they are done to scare people and to frighten them, to make them anxious and worried.

Fortunately in this instance there appear to have been no casualties. The police have done their very best, and the security services too, in the situation and I think we have just to react calmly and continue with our business as much as possible, as normal. And following the meeting with the Prime Minister now and this press conference, I will go back to the schedule of meetings I had, since the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has indicated that both the police and the security services are now fairly clear what has happened and what the next steps are. And as I say, we hope that we can get the rest of the transport system back up and running again as soon as possible. So that is really all I can say on that at the present time.

If I could also just genuinely, and my apologies John for having interrupted so much of our discussion today, but fortunately we have had an opportunity to catch up on things.

I would like first of all if I might to thank the Prime Minister, and also the Australian people, for their kind condolences on what happened two weeks ago today, their sympathy and their solidarity which, as ever, has been immense and also hugely appreciated by us here. And I know there was at least one Australian victim of the terrorist attacks a couple of weeks ago and this scourge of terrorism is one that we all face together.

But Australia has been a particularly extraordinary, and strong, and indomitable ally of ours over these past few years, and both in Afghanistan and in Iraq we work closely together, but also in our bilateral relations across the whole range of security issues our two countries are immensely close.

This is a relationship that isn't just built on the large numbers of Australians that come here, and Brits that go to Australia, it is also based on I think common values, a common determination and strength to stand up for what we believe in, and we could have a no more secure or sound ally than Australia, and we are very grateful for all your help and support in it.

And our bilateral relationship is actually in extremely good shape. We are working closely together. Elsewhere in our city at the moment there is a bit of competition going on, but we will leave that to one side for the moment. But it is really very much a relationship that this country values, and therefore we are always delighted to see you here. Welcome. I am sorry our discussions together have been interrupted in the way that they have, but I know that you will understand.

John Howard:

Well thank you very much Tony. Can I say immediately what I said to the Prime Minister on the telephone two days after the attack on 7 July, that the entire Australian nation felt for the people of Great Britain, and particularly for Londoners.

There is no city in the world, after our own, that Australians have more affection for, more identification with and a great sense of history about than the city of London. I can say to you Prime Minister publicly what I said privately, and that is that Australia sympathises with support and will remain steadfast with Britain in pursuit of the common values and common causes that we have.

Terrorism is the enemy of all free people. Terrorism is not just about individual circumstances and individual events, terrorism is about the perverted use of an ideology for evil intent and for evil objectives. And those who think that terrorism is incident-specific misunderstand the mind and the workings of the minds of terrorists.

And we felt for the people of Britain. We were not as Australians spared death in that attack. I say in relation to the latest incident that the determination of the British people to continue with their daily lives is something that we have always seen as one of the great characteristics of the people of this remarkable country, and I want to say to you Prime Minister that wherever events take us, you can be sure that the common values that we have will remain, and Australia will remain a friend, a steadfast partner and a nation that shares the values that I know are very important to the people of Britain.

Might I also say in relation to these recent events that the response of the services in London and in Britain have been quite remarkable, and we Australians have been greatly impressed with the determination of the British people to get on with life. The terrorists want otherwise, and the best answer to terrorism is always to carry on unperturbed by their activities and by that demonstrate that defiance of terrorism.

I had an opportunity of a briefing from the Australian police contingent that came here recently and they reported to me in some detail of the comprehensive response of the British emergency services, and Prime Minister you can be very proud of the way in which your police, your ambulance services, your hospital services and all of those responded. And in that respect I have asked the Prime Minister, and he has agreed, that in an appropriate time in the not too distant future the people with specialist knowledge of London's response to the attack on 7 July will come to Australia and have a look at the services that we have and if there are any suggestions that can be made, if there are any things that we can learn from the London experience - and I am sure there will be.

Be it remembered that over a period of 20 - 30 years there were some 300 IRA initiated incidents in the city of London, and sadly the people of this city have had to deal with this sort of thing a great deal in the past.

On other matters, as I say, I agree with the Prime Minister that the bilateral relationship is in excellent condition. I congratulated him on London's victory for the Olympic Games of 2012, I think I sent him a note congratulating him, but I did have a cautionary element which said that that would be enough English victories for the time being. But nonetheless can I simply say that the experience of having the Olympic Games is great for any city, and we having had them in Sydney fairly recently and will of course, if there are any experiences from that, they are readily available.

The other matters we canvassed related to the trade issues that the world faces, we talked about Iraq and Afghanistan, we remain committed in both cases. Afghanistan is an important battle ground against terrorism, so is Iraq, and nobody should imagine that the terrorists would be other than absolutely delighted if there were a faltering of will in Iraq, and we share common objectives and common goals, but most importantly of all, 8.5 million people defied the most terrible intimidation to vote in Iraq on 30 January and that is a cause that is worth supporting, and a cause worth fighting for.

Prime Minister, I am as always delighted to be in London. Thank you for your hospitality. You have been extremely gracious and generous with your time, given the other demands that you have, and I can only say again that Britain's friends in Australia are many, and genuine, and we remain with you in the challenges that our free societies face at this particular time.

Question:

Could I ask the Prime Minister, after the Cobra meeting today, whether any new decisions flow from that in any sense. And also, following today's incidents, what you would say directly to all those people who may be thinking actually I am not going to go into London, I am not going to visit London, or I am not going to travel through London?

Prime Minister:

First of all, no, there are no decisions of a policy nature that arise out of what we heard. And I stress to you again, this is just in the last few hours, I really don't know anything more than you know about it at the present time, except that I think the police and security services have got the situation well under control and we hope to get it back to normal as quickly as possible. I think what I would say is this, and I think that the spirit of London and of Britain was represented again this morning when people came together in Trafalgar Square, and I saw the headline in the Evening Standard is about London United, and that is how people are and that is how I think they will stay.

Now of course we will give people whatever information we can and we will protect people as best we can, but I think that everyone is canny enough to know what these people are trying to do, whoever is responsible for this latest incident, and that is to intimidate people and to scare them, to frighten them, to stop them going about their normal business. Now obviously people will be concerned and anxious, of course they will, and that is why it is important that we give as much information as we can. But on the other hand it is important also that we respond by keeping to our normal lives and doing what we want to do, because to do otherwise is in a sense to give them the very thing they are looking for.

Question:

Do you have any sense who was responsible yet?

Prime Minister:

I think it really is too early to speculate, but I think that will become apparent I hope reasonably quickly. But the best thing in these circumstances, which is why I am hesitant about giving you information out of the Cobra meeting, some of which you may know in any event about who the police may have apprehended, or whatever, is to just to let them do that. They are the best people to take people through this, and I think, although I haven't actually seen it on television myself, but the Metropolitan Police Commissioner I understand made a statement a short time ago, essentially saying that they have checked the stations and so on and we wanted to get the thing back to normal as quickly as possible. But don't misunderstand me, I am not minimising the seriousness of this because you have got to accept these are four incidents and everyone can draw the obvious conclusions from that, but on the other hand I think it is important that we react calmly and continue with our lives, and that is what I intend to do and I am sure that people will do the same. And it is obviously a situation that causes people concern and worry, but I think that is the right response, and people showed it again in London this morning and I think they will show it again, indeed from what I have heard of people already saying who have come out of the tube stations affected, that is exactly the attitude they have got.

Question:

Mr Howard, will the Australian government consider legal measures against people who foment, or provoke, or indirectly incite terrorist attacks along the lines of those being considered here in Britain, and as suggested by Premier Carr?

Mr Howard:

We are carrying out an examination at the moment of the need to change and strengthen our laws against terrorist activity, or potential terrorist activity, and we will include in that examination the sort of changes that have been contemplated here in Britain. The Prime Minister and I had some discussion today about that. We are getting detailed information about the changes that are being contemplated, and they will be fed into the consideration being undertaken in Australia.

Could I just add that one of the difficulties that all societies face here is that essentially the laws dealing with the behaviour of terrorists were framed at a time when terrorists didn't have available to them the technology, access for how to make a bomb from the internet, mobile phones, text messages. To I hope not over-simplify it, we have 19th century legal responses to potentially 21st century technological terrorist capacity. Now you don't want to rush these things, but you do want to recognise that there is a case for looking at whether the laws are adequate, and we are going to do that, and included in that examination will be what Mr Blair and the British government has in mind.

Question:

Prime Minister, you have appealed for people to stay calm, but do you feel any sense of responsibility at all for the fact that ordinary people here in London now seem to be in the frontline in the war against terror?

Prime Minister:

Well I think what is important is that people do stay calm and react in the way that they have reacted so far. And the very purpose of the people who are doing this type of thing, their purpose is precisely in order to make people worried and frightened and taking responsibility off the shoulders of the people who engage in these types of acts. And we have just got to remain as we have been. I think the one thing, and the Prime Minister was just saying this a moment or two ago, the one thing that has come across very clearly over the past couple of weeks has been the impact if you like that the British attitude has had on the rest of the world, where people have seen our country react to terrorist attacks that are meant to make people frightened, and worried, and scared, and react with great dignity, and great strength and great determination that it doesn't change us, it is not going to change what we do. And therefore when something like this happens again today, and as I say I can't give you the full details of it at the moment, and the police will at a later time, our reaction has got to be the same. To react in any other way I think is to engage in the game they want us to engage in.

Question:

Do you feel in any sense that you have put people in this position, do you feel that in a sense your policies may have put people in this position?

Prime Minister:

Well I think I have said to you before, that I feel that people who are responsible for doing these things are the people who do them.

Question:

To both Prime Ministers, what was your immediate reaction on hearing that some incidents had occurred, was it here we go again? And do incidents like this, coming just 14 days after the horrific attacks, suggest that the war against terror is being lost on the streets? And yesterday an Australian bomb victim of July 7 linked the bombings to Iraq. Does that suggest that the propaganda war against terrorists is also being lost?

Mr Howard:

Could I start by saying the Prime Minister and I were having a discussion when we heard about it, and my first reaction was to get some more information, and I really don't want to add to what the Prime Minister has said. It is a matter for the police and a matter for the British authorities to talk in detail about what has happened here. Could I just say very directly, Paul, on the issue of the policies of my government, and indeed the policies of the British and American government on Iraq, that the first point of reference is that once a country allows its foreign policy to be determined by terrorism, it has given the game away, to use the vernacular. And no Australian government that I lead will ever have policies determined by terrorism or terrorist threats, and no self-respecting government of any political stripe in Australia would allow that to happen.

Can I remind you that the murder of 88 Australians in Bali took place before the operation in Iraq; and could I remind you that the 11 September occurred before the operation in Iraq; can I also remind you that the very first occasion that Bin Laden specifically referred to Australia was in the context of Australia's involvement in liberating the people of East Timor.

Are people, by implication, suggesting that we shouldn't have done that? When a group claimed responsibility on the website for the attacks on 7 July, they talked about British policy, not just in Iraq, but in Afghanistan. Are people suggesting we shouldn't be in Afghanistan?

When Sergio de Melo was murdered in Iraq, a brave man, a distinguished international diplomat, immensely respected for his work in the United Nations, when al Queda gloated about that they referred specifically to the role that de Melo had carried out in East Timor because he was the United Nations administrator in East Timor. Now I don't know the mind of the terrorist, by definition you can't put yourself in the mind of a successful suicide bomber, I can only look at objective facts, and the objective facts are as I have cited. The objective evidence is that Australia was a terrorist target long before the operation in Iraq, and indeed all the evidence, as distinct from the suppositions, suggest to me that this is about hatred of a way of life, this is about the perverted use of the principles of a great world religion that at its root preaches peace and cooperation, and I think we lose sight of the challenge we have if we allow ourselves to see these attacks in the context of particular circumstances, rather than the abuse through a perverted ideology of people and their murder.

Prime Minister:

I agree 100% with that.

Question:

Inaudible.

Prime Minister:

No, I don't think so at all actually, I don't think so at all. I think that in the end though, I was asked this question I think it was at the press conference I had on Tuesday with President Karzai from Afghanistan, but the roots of this are deep. You know this is the mistake of people thinking this suddenly began in the past couple of years, the roots of this were deep, the terrorist attacks go back over 10 years. And the way of defeating it is to defeat it of course by security measures, but also by going after the ideas of these people, the ideology of these people, their arguments as well as their methods, taking them on and defeating them, and the best way of doing that is to show how the values of freedom, and tolerance, and respect for people of other religions and races is the best way to lead our lives.

But in the end what they want us to do is to turn round and say oh it is our fault. The people who are responsible for terrorist attacks are the terrorists, and this combination of this evil bankrupt ideology based on a perversion of Islam with terrorism, this is something that has built over a period of time, it will have to be dismantled over a period of time, but I have got no doubt at all that in the end the values that we represent are the values that will triumph.

And do you know why I say that, I say that because every time people in somewhere like Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Palestine, these causes that they try to pray upon, every time the ordinary people in those countries are given the chance to vote, they vote, and they actually prefer the democratic way of life too, and that is why in the end we will win.

Nicely said, John.

The pro-Islamist reporter who asked the second shitty question was leftist Australian journalist Paul Buongiorno.

Whose side are you on?

2005-07-22T01:24:00.000+10:00

London has been bombed again, terrorists have deliberately (key word) targeted civilians and the super-relevant and not even slightly slanted Green left Weekly is delving into the Downing Street Memo. IRAQ: Bush, Blair, Howard and the Downing Street memo

US troops shot Farqad Mohammed Khinaisar at 8am on May 29. She was 15 minutes away from the Baghdad high school she taught at when a convoy of soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division opened fire on her car. Her death was the end result of a decision by the US, British and Australian governments to pursue their imperial interests, at the expense perhaps more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.

With the publication of the “Downing Street memo” in Britain's Sunday Times on May 1, the motives behind the Iraq invasion are once more under scrutiny. The top-secret document records the minutes of a July 2002 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair, some of Blair's closest advisors, top cabinet members and senior members of Britain's intelligence community, including Richard Dearlove, head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

While the US media did not extensively cover the issue at first, 88 members of Congress signed a letter sent to US President George Bush on May 5 by Democrat Congress member John Conyers that calls for the White House to respond to the issues raised by the memo. A petition in support of Conyers' letter has garnered more than 500,000 signatures.

Terrorists kill so that an Islamic hegemony can be established in an unfree Iraq, and the Green Left Weekers are worried about the chain of events that led to the fall of a tyrant and the liberation of a nation.

No wonder they're going out of business. Good riddance.

Oh shit...

2005-07-22T00:06:00.000+10:00

Not again.

LONDON -- Two weeks after suicide attacks on subway stations and a bus, police said explosions occurred at three subway stations and on a double-decker bus Thursday.

Only one person was reported wounded, but the explosions during the lunch hour caused major disruption in the city and were hauntingly similar to the July 7 bombings in which 52 people and four suicide attackers were killed.

The London police commissioner confirmed Thursday that four explosions took place in what he described as "serious incidents."

"We've had four explosions_ four attempts at explosions," Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair said outside police headquarters at Scotland Yard.

"At the moment the casualty numbers appear to be very low ... the bombs appear to be smaller" than the July 7 blasts.

Sky News TV reported that police said no chemical agents were involved in the explosions.

Police also said an armed police unit had entered University College hospital. Press Association, the British news agency, said they arrived shortly after an injured person was carried in.

Police in chemical protection suits were seen preparing to enter the Warren Street Underground station. Unspecified incidents also were reported at the Shepherds Bush and Oval stations.

It seems that not all Muslims in Britain "abhor" terrorism.

More updates:

Gordon Corera : BBC Television Centre : 1457 BST

On first sight there are similarities to what happened two weeks ago.

But the timing is slightly odd, much later in the day rather than rush hour for maximum damage.

Secondly on the professionalism side, it looks like these explosions didn't go off. It seems possible that the detonator went off but not the main charge.

The question that will be asked is, 'is this a copycat or a follow-on attack'.

Either way, there are a lot of leads for the police to pursue.

Alison Freeman : Warren Street : 1455 BST

Firefighters dressed in bright orange chemical suits entered Warren Street station.

They emerged later, some have removed them, so they can be hosed down. It is not clear whether this is a precaution.

Police are repeatedly making the cordon around the station larger and have warned people to stay inside for their own safety.

But people are sitting outside cafes in surrounding streets and watching the story unfold and lots of people have taken to the streets.

Daniel Sandford : BBC Television Centre : 1450 BST

Scotland Yard have put out their first bulletin.

They've confirmed officers have been deployed at Warren Street in order to carry out an investigation in full protective equipment.

They have also carried out an investigation at the Oval and early indications show there are no traces of chemical agents.

London Transport Police have fantastic new detectors and can get to the scene quickly.

They've clearly got one of these detectors to the Oval very soon after the incident.

This has shown how quickly the police learn lessons.

Two weeks ago witnesses were moved away from the scenes quickly - what the police are trying to do now is to gather people together who might have seen what happened.

These are all crime scenes, and the incidents are serious enough for the police to want to know what happened and who did it.

Rachel Wright : Oval Tube station 1449 BST

The police just asked for all witnesses to come forward and they have been taken off, presumably to give statements.

We've talked to a few eyewitnesses. One talked of the noise of "champagne corks popping" and "acrid smoke".

Another spoke of seeing someone running from the Tube station.

Duncan Walker : Shepherd's Bush : 1443 BST

For the dozens of people milling about by the police cordon, the alert is little more than an inconvenience.

There's no chance of getting the shopping done or travelling into town with the roads closed and the Tube down.

Among those hoping for the 'all clear' to be given is Reverend Nabil F Shehadi who was asked to be on hand by the Bishop of Kensington.

"People so far have just been asking how they can get home," he said. "The ironic thing is that my next position is as vicar of Beirut and I'm wondering which is safer."

Duncan Walker : Shepherd's Bush : 1441 BST

The normally busy Uxbridge Road has been closed down and all the shops shut.

Hundreds of people have been pushed back away from the station. Among them is Arline Dowling of Shepherd's Bush, who said: "I'm just really worried that they are telling us all to get back down the road and my daughter is in school, inside the cordon. This doesn't make me feel good at all."

Andrew Marr : Whitehall : 1430 BST

We've spoken to some ministers and they have made clear they know little more than we do.

They will be trying to establish whether this is a series of hoaxes.

The biggest difficulty for the COBRA meeting this afternoon is how you treat these kind of incidents - are we going to see many of them?

And what kind of response is appropriate in such a large city that you want to keep moving?

This may be a relatively short meeting as they are still waiting for hard information.

Originally the prime minister was going to have a press conference with John Howard, but he has been politely ushered out of Downing Street so Tony Blair can turn his attention to these incidents.

Mike Williams : Oval Tube station : 1428 BST

I was talking to a young woman a while ago who said that she was in the carriage, she heard a fuss being made at one end, a young man got off at the station and ran away.

At the same time she said she heard a small detonation and the smell of smoke. I couldn't quite work out from her whether she was talking about just smoke from a fire... she had to leave in a hurry and the police were taking her away.

She seemed to give the impression that it may have been tear gas or something. It would be consistent with a tear gas grenade, a small bang, a flash and the smell of acrid smoke. That was what she seemed to be describing.

The police here say that there have been no casualties as far as they are aware in this particular incident.

Crispin Thorold : Warren Street : 1425 BST

I have spoken to one person who was travelling on the northern line. He came off the northern line train and saw people coming, running away from the Victoria Line train, which is another line that serves this Tube station.

He said that there was a whole deluge of people sprinting towards him. He said everyone was very panicky and he said quite understandably that as soon as he saw those people he joined them and ran away from whatever had happened.

He did manage to talk to a couple of people. He said someone said something about smoke, someone else said something about a loud bang but he said he really didn't know whether those were things that had actually happened because he said there was so much confusion.

Brian Wheeler : Oval Tube station : 1415 BST

The police cordon has just been moved further back and is now several hundred metres from the underground station. There are 100 or so people gathered by the cordon.

Witnesses to whatever happened are being interviewed by police within the cordon area. There are conflicting accounts of what happened.

One man said he had been told a person had thrown a rucksack on a Tube train and jumped out just before the doors closed, that there was a bang with smoke and people had fled.

He said there had not been injuries as far as he knew. He said a man had been chased as he attempted to run away from the Oval underground station.

James Menendez : Oval Tube station : 1410 BST

I'm around 40 or 50 metres away from the entrance to the Tube and the reason for that is that it has been all sealed off.

There is a major crossroads outside the station and that has all been sealed off, the road has been closed.

The only vehicles that have been allowed in are the 10 or 12 emergency vehicles, all police vehicles as far as I can see, some marked, which are waiting outside but other than that there is no-one else in the station.

That has all been evacuated and that's all the information that they are giving us at the moment.

Peter Hunt : Warren Street : 1407 BST

Well it is an increasingly depressingly familiar scene.

I'm standing in front of a police line. There are two "do not cross" signs in front of me. There is a police officer there. As I look ahead of me I can see Warren Street tube.

There are four or five fire engines standing there. There is an emergency ambulance standing outside and in the street where there are no ordinary people there are several people in bright orange uniforms.

As I've walked down here a couple of hundred yards I've heard endless police sirens. Once again that sound filling the streets of London.

According to an eyewitness here people have spoken of smelling smoke on the northbound Victoria line and an eyewitness has spoken of people running off and leaving their shoes and belongings when they smelled that smoke.

We've also seen a sniffer dog in the vicinity. As I watch I can see the sniffer dog walking down one of the roads down an underpass with a police officer.

This whole area is cordoned off, as more and more officers come to this underground station.

Bill Wilson : Shepherd's Bush Tube station : 1405 BST

Two police officers have said there was "an incident on the Tube", with "somebody threatening to blow himself up, but then running off".

Police are everywhere, and a helicopter is hovering above the Tube station.

Traffic is all around, the Tube station is closed and cars have been turned back. There are five or six stationary London buses.

Brian Wheeler : Oval Tube station : 1400 BST

A police officer said that he did not think there had been an explosion on the Northern Line at the Oval.

There had been a separate suggestion there may have been an explosion on the platform.

The atmosphere is calm, the police cordon has been moved back 200 metres from the station.

There are no ambulances, but lots of police vehicles.

Ollie Stone-Lee : Warren Street : 1400 BST

The whole of Tottenham Court Road is now blocked off to vehicles.

Pedestrians can go to within 200 metres of the Underground station.

There are large crowds of people outside the many electrical outlets in Tottenham Court Road, following proceedings on television.

If there are unsuccessful bombers running around London, I hope that they inadvertantly run into an angry mob.

Update II: BBC just broadcast video of an Arabic-looking man being marched away from the Downing Street security gates, presumably under arrest. It looked as though his shirt had been ripped open.

The guards there aren't taking any chances. Assault rifles and MP5 submachine guns are visible everywhere.

Update III: The man seems to have been taken from the scene, even though he did not look to have explosives on him.

Tony Blair and Australian Prime Minister Howard have jointly addressed the media. Frankly, I was more than a little taken aback by the tone of the questions some of the reporters (you can guess who they represented) were already asking. You know the kind of thing "Is this related to Iraq?" etc. The worst one was asked of Tony Blair, though: "Do you feel responsible?"

Just once I would like to see politicians being exposed to this kind of veiled treachery respond with appropriate venom.

Update IV: Here is the full text of Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair's statement on the bombings.

Update V: The LA Times has coverage of the Blair/Howard press conference. Can I also just say, Howard really does Australia credit in such circumstances. He is a magnificent speaker off the cuff.

Update VI: (Via Anubis London operative M) A description of a possible failed suicide bomber?

Armed police officers have entered University College Hospital in Bloomsbury close to Warren Street station.

An internal memo to staff at the hospital warned them to be on the lookout for a black male, possibly of Asian origin, about 6ft 2ins tall, wearing a blue top with wires protruding from the rear of the top.

If only all suicide bombers "blended in" that well.

Update VII: If it has to happen, this is, I suppose the best we could hope for. Only one person was injured and a little havoc caused for commuters, but little more. If the terrorist's goal was to put fear into the hearts of Londoners, I doubt this tepid display of utter incompetence will accomplish the task. The stock market reacted initially, but then showed the same elasticity that it did on 7/7.

Update VIII: Thus far, two people have been arrested in connection to the bombings, but a number of suspects are still being sought.

Someone's having a birthday!

2005-07-21T23:13:00.000+10:00

The bird who put the "B" in bourbon (and, rumours aledge, the spring in Johnny Knoxville's step) is getting old and decrepit, and she's gathering to herself a vast horde of admirers and various other minions in order to celebrate the celestial event:

Before all else, here are the details for my birthday drinks next weekend.

Where: 3 Wise Monkeys, George Street.
When: 8pmish. Friday, July 29th, 2005.
Why: I turn 21, Adam's leaving for Mexico the next day, alcohol!
Bring: Yourself.

Bloggers who might be making an appearance: Jerkface, Misha, Nailpolishblues, Adrian, Johnny the Horse, Glen Fuller, Mark, Muffin, Mike Jericho, Johnno, Fabian, Andy B (driving up from Melbourne!), and Adam.

Men are asked to come in the appropriate posture (grovelling on the floor in adoration and subserviance) women can come astride them, clutching their leashes Lynndie Englund style.

To all the aspiring Jericho-killers out there: I'm sorry, Mujahedin. The J won't be in attendance, as he is geographically impossible at the moment. So put aside those righteous scimitars of love, buy a suitably large present and go pay homage to the bird.

Hollywood is the enemy

2005-07-21T22:37:00.000+10:00

These guys really ought to be reminded that they're only making movies. They aren't qualified to understand larger issues of real international import, they sure as hell aren't paid to analyse current events, and they are acting in a terribly unethical manner by churning out movies with subliminal propagandist messages woven into the plot. Rooting for the Martians

David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for War of the Worlds, says the Martian attackers in the film represent the American military, while the Americans being slaughtered at random represent Iraqi civilians. I see it differently. I think the Martians symbolize normal Americans, while those being attacked are the numbskulls who run Hollywood. Perhaps the normals went a bit too far in this easy-to-understand allegory, but think of the provocation.

Among other things, Koepp made the "thereisnoInternet" mistake, carefully masking his analysis in U.S. interviews, but saying it flat-out in Rue Morgue, an obscure Canadian horror magazine, apparently thinking nobody would notice. But as the movie makes clear, once the normals begin to track you with their newfangled technology, there is no escape. They can find you even in Canada.

Hollywood has grown eye-poppingly angry with the rest of the country, mostly over Bush and Iraq, but partly, at least, because the left-coasters apparently thought they were somehow entitled to a string of Democratic presidents after Clinton. The upshot is that even mild-mannered nonpropagandists like George Lucas have come under pressure to display their lefty credentials with silly political touches. The first three, brilliant Star Wars had no such touches, but the last three, nonbrilliant ones surely do. In the last of the epics, two anti-Bush lines showed up: "Only a Sith [a dark lord] thinks in absolutes" and "If you're not with me, you are my enemy."

Lucas said the "enemy" sentence had been written before Bush's similar words after 9/11. Maybe so, but Lucas had three years or so to figure out the political impact of the line but left it in anyway. Last May, at the Cannes Film Festival, natural breeding ground for excitedly anti-American prose, Lucas apparently said that his final Star Wars movie, featuring the rise of Darth Vader and the sinister empire, is a wake-up call to Americans about the erosion of freedoms under President Bush. (I say "apparently" because Cannes news reports, appearing only in various Canadian papers, had no direct quotes about a wake-up call, only paraphrases.) Paul Jackson of the Calgary Sun wrote: "Now [Lucas] says the Star Wars movies have a political message: Fight to free Americans from the evermore frightening dictatorial tyranny of the Bush administration."

Read it all. Feel your upper lip curl in scorn.

If you thought Greenpeace couldn't get any worse...

2005-07-21T14:17:00.000+10:00

Damn, you couldn't have been more wrong. Don't fork over your hard-earned cash to these pathetic creatures.

Excuse me, leftoids...

2005-07-21T14:03:00.000+10:00

You might want to start paying attention to what's going on in regard to Islamoloonyism. They're now openly targeting one of your "sacred groups" in the UK, and it's getting around the time that you should be starting to decide whose side you want to be on: UK Gay Leaders Receive Death Threats From Muslim Fundamentalists Group Says

(London) A British LGBT civil rights group says its leaders have received death threats from Muslim fundamentalists and warns that gay clubs could be targets for terrorist bombers.

"Gay venues could be bombed by Islamic terrorists," OutRage said Monday. "All gay bars and clubs should introduce bag and body searches. Muslim fundamentalists have a violent hatred of lesbians and gay men. They believe we should be killed. Our community could be their next target. This is no time for complacency."

The warning comes in the wake of this months terrorist attack in London. (story) More than 50 people died in the bombings that authorities say were the work of Islamic militants.

One bomb went off in a crowded bus, the others exploded in the subway system, two near stations in gay neighborhoods.

OutRage said that three of the group's officers have received "repeated death threats from Islamic fundamentalists in recent weeks and months."

Peter Tatchell, the leader of OutRage; Brett Lock its campaign coordinator; and Aaron Saeed, the organization's spokesperson on Muslim affairs, have been warned they will be murdered, Tatchell said Monday.

In a statement Tatchell said that they have been told they are on a "hit list" and are going to be "beheaded" and "chopped up", in accordance with "Islamic law".

The threats apparently began soon after OutRage stepped up its campaign in defense of LGBT Muslims, including gay Muslims fleeing attempted "honor killings" in Algeria, Iran Palestine and in the UK.

Tatchell said that since early April, Islamic fundamentalists have made various attempts to track his movements - posing as journalists, police officers and representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The sad reality is, not only leftists will shut their eyes and hum rather than pay attention to this.

Other conservatives who ought to be more concerned with all matters gay won't cover this, mainly because they're too busy righteously harbouring a misguided desire to imagine the best of the vile, backward death cult which would cheerfully see them burned alive.

Survival instincts. Some people just don't have 'em.

Deterring Terrorism

2005-07-21T13:29:00.000+10:00

A very interesting thread over at Gates of Vienna starting me thinking about this. Can terrorism be conventionally deterred, or will any methods of deterrence employed, in order to be effective, have to be as unconventional as the terrorists themselves?

The suggestion of nuking Mecca as a possible retaliatory response was raised as a possibility. Certainly it would be a wounding blow to the religion itself, but would it have any strategic value? Or would it merely serve to galvanise the entire body of Islam against the west?

I personally prefer the idea of a grand-scale decimatory retaliation, aimed at non-religious targets in states known to (in some way) aid and abet Islamist terrorism. If a nuclear weapon(s) or another WMD of equivalent lethality were to be used against a western target, a nuclear response would be warranted. I was thinking that the severity of the response should be triple that of the damage incurred by the first attack. Thus if a city were destroyed by the terrorists, three cities of equivalent size and strategic importance should be eradicated. Los Angeles = Riyadh + Damascus + Tehran.

Immediately following this there should be a declaration by the US President that any further terrorist attacks of any kind will be met with a final "Carthage method" retaliation (after three seperate wars with the north African empire of Carthage, Rome decided to forever remove the threat. Thus the instruction came from the senate to the legions: "let not one stone stand upon another, and the ground be sown with salt").

Of course we would be reviled, but when it comes to base survival, it is better to be alive than well liked.

I'd be very interested to know everyone's thoughts on this.

Small minority of extremists...

2005-07-21T13:25:00.000+10:00

Okay, so if that's really the case, why are so many would-be Muslim scientists being red-flagged by the oh-so-PC British Government? UK bars over 200 foreign scientists

LONDON: Security services have barred more than 200 foreign scientists from studying at British universities over the past four years, amid fears they could present a terrorist threat, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The Guardian newspaper said the scientists were among more than 2,000 vetted after applying to universities to do postgraduate or post-doctoral research in fields such as chemistry, microbiology and biotechnology.

The figures were released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act as police continue to search for those linked to the London terror bombings on July 7. The British authorities started taking greater security precautions in response to the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States.

Universities have long been seen as attractive to potential terrorists because of the high level of scientific training on offer, the Guardian said. Institutions can refer potentially suspect applicants for security clearance via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s voluntary vetting scheme, which was set up in 1994 to prevent foreign scientists learning skills on British soil that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction.

That's just the UK. It's a fairly well accepted fact that the vast majority of Muslim students studying abroad do so in the USA.

I wonder how many slipped through the net there.