THE PERILOUS FIGHT

THE MASSACRE AT FORT HOOD AND MUSLIM SOLDIERS WITH ATTITUDE

2009-11-06T23:56:00.008-05:00

by Michelle Malkin - November 6, 2009

[In the wake of the bloody Fort Hood jihadist massacre, I thought it might be appropriate to take a little stroll down memory lane...courtesy of Michelle Malkin's blog. - Martel]

Those of you with long memories will remember all those who came before Hasan. Here is my column from March 2003 on Muslim soldiers with attitude:

Sgt. Asan Akbar, a Muslim American soldier with the 326th Engineer Battalion, had an “attitude problem.”

According to his superiors and acquaintances, Akbar’s attitude was bitterly anti-American and staunchly pro-Muslim. So how did this devout follower of the so-called Religion of Peace work out his attitudinal problems last weekend?

By lobbing hand grenades and aiming his M-4 automatic rifle into three tents filled with sleeping commanding officers at the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade operations center in Kuwait.

Akbar was the lone suspect being detained in the despicable attack, which left more than a dozen wounded and one dead. Surviving soldiers say Akbar, found cowering in a bunker with shrapnel injuries, was overheard ranting after the assault: “You guys are coming into our countries, and you’re going to rape our women and kill our children.”

“Our”? At least there’s no doubt about where this Religion of Peace practitioner’s true loyalties lie. Naturally, apologists for Islam-gone-awry are hard at work dismissing this traitorous act of murder as an “isolated, individual act and not an expression of faith.” But such sentiments are willfully blind and recklessly politically correct.

Sgt. Akbar is not the only MSWA — Muslim soldier with attitude — suspected of infiltrating our military, endangering our troops and undermining national security:

Ali A. Mohamed. Mohamed, a major in the Egyptian army, immigrated to the U.S. in 1986 and joined the U.S. Army while a resident alien. This despite being on a State Department terrorist watch list before securing his visa. An avowed Islamist, he taught classes on Muslim culture to U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., and obtained classified military documents. He was granted U.S. citizenship over the objections of the CIA.

A former classmate, Jason T. Fogg, recalled that Mohamed was openly critical of the American military. “To be in the U.S. military and have so much hate toward the U.S. was odd. He never referred to America as his country.”

Soon after he was honorably discharged from the Army in 1989, Mohamed hooked up with Osama bin Laden as an escort, trainer, bagman and messenger. Mohamed used his U.S. passport to conduct surveillance at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi; he later pled guilty to conspiring with bin Laden to “attack any Western target in the Middle East” and admitted his role in the 1998 African embassy bombings that killed more than 200 people, including a dozen Americans.

Ain’t multiculturalism grand?

Semi Osman. An ethnic Lebanese born in Sierra Leone and a Seattle-based Muslim cleric, Osman served in a naval reserve fueling unit based in Tacoma, Wash. He had access to fuel trucks similar to the type used by al Qaeda in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, which killed 19 U.S. airmen and wounded nearly 400 other Americans.

Osman was arrested last May as part of a federal investigation into the establishment of a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon. Osman recently pleaded guilty to a weapons violation, and the feds dropped immigration charges against him in exchange for his testimony.

Ain’t open borders grand?

John Muhammad. The accused Beltway sniper and Muslim convert was a member of the Army’s 84th Engineering Company. In an eerie parallel to the Akbar case, Muhammad is suspected of throwing a thermite grenade into a tent housing 16 of his fellow soldiers as they slept before the ground-attack phase of Gulf War I in 1991. Muhammad’s superior, Sgt. Kip Berentson, told both Newsweek and The Seattle Times that he immediately suspected Muhammad, who was “trouble from day one.”

Curiously, Muhammad was admitted to the Army despite being earlier court-martialed for willfully disobeying orders, striking another noncommissioned officer, wrongfully taking property, and being absent without leave while serving in the Louisiana National Guard.

Although Muhammad was led away in handcuffs and transferred to another company pending charges for the grenade attack, an indictment never materialized. Muhammad was honorably discharged from the Army in 1994. Eight years later, he was arrested in the 21-day Beltway shooting spree that left 10 dead and three wounded.

Ain’t tolerance grand?

Jeffrey Leon Battle. A former Army reservist, Battle was indicted in October 2002 for conspiring to levy war against the United States and “enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America.” According to the Justice Department, he planned to wage war against American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Ain’t diversity grand?

“It’s bad enough we have to worry about enemy forces, but now we have to worry about our own guys,” Spc. Autumn Simmer told the Los Angeles Times after the assault on the 101st Airborne. The Islamist infiltration of our troops is scandalous. Not one more American, soldier or civilian, must be sacrificed at the altar of multiculturalism, diversity, open borders, and tolerance of the murderous “attitude” of Jihad.

FYI: Muslim US soldier Hasan Abujihaad was convicted last year on espionage and material terrorism support charges after serving aboard the USS Benfold and sharing classified info with al Qaeda financiers, including movements of US ships just six months after al Qaeda operatives had killed 17 Americans aboard the USS Cole in the port of Yemen.

THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED...?

2009-03-22T12:46:00.003-05:00

Profiling And Criminalizing Political Dissent

by William F. Jasper

Friday, 20 March 2009 21:51

A recent report issued through the Missouri State Highway Patrol is stirring alarm among citizens and some elected officials that Christians, political conservatives, and opponents of unconstitutional government action are being targeted for intimidation and harassment — or worse. The drafters of the report clearly are attempting to create in the minds of law-enforcement personnel an association between violent “right-wing extremists” and the millions of law-abiding Americans who oppose gun control, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve System, the income tax, illegal immigration, and abortion.

The eight-page report entitled “The Modern Militia Movement” and dated February 20 also specifically mentions by name Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), who ran for president in the 2008 Republican Party primaries, and third-party candidates Bob Barr and Chuck Baldwin. The clear implication is that people sporting bumper stickers or literature related to these candidates should be viewed as potential threats that view all law enforcement as “the enemy.”

After listing 18 incidents of “noteworthy militia activity” from 1995 through 2008, some of which involved bombings or armed confrontations with law enforcement, the report states:

You are the Enemy: The militia subscribes to an antigovernment and NWO [New World Order] mind set, which creates a threat to law enforcement officers. They view the military, National Guard, and law enforcement as a force that will confiscate their firearms and place them in FEMA concentration camps. (Bold emphasis in original.)

The report, issued by the Missouri Information and Analysis Center (MIAC), a branch of the state’s Highway Patrol, then states:

Militia members most commonly associate with 3rd party political groups. It is not uncommon for militia members to display Constitutional Party, Campaign for Liberty, or Libertarian material. These members are usually supporters of former Presidential Candidate [sic]: Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin, and Bob Barr.

Chuck Baldwin is the founder and pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Florida, as well as a radio talk-show host and newspaper/Internet columnist. In 2008, he was the Constitution Party’s candidate for president of the United States. In a March 17 response to the MIAC report, he stated:

Do you not see how dangerous this kind of slanderous labeling can become? It could affect your flight status when you try to board an airline. It could affect your application for sensitive jobs. It could affect your adjudication before a court or judge. It could make you a target for aggressive law enforcement strategies. It could affect your being able to obtain a passport. It could affect one's ability to purchase a firearm or receive a State concealed weapon permit.

This is very serious business! We are not talking about private opinions. We are talking about law enforcement agencies. And remember, most law enforcement agencies share these types of reports; therefore, how many other state police agencies have similar reports floating around? Probably several. Plus, how do we know that this report was not influenced by federal police agencies? We don't.

Rest assured, I do not plan to take this lying down. As one who is personally named in the above report, I demand a public retraction and apology from the MIAC and Missouri State Police. I can tell you that my family is extremely distraught that their husband, father, and grandfather would be labeled in such a manner. I am also not ruling out legal action. In addition, I am discussing an appropriate response with Ron Paul and Bob Barr.

Missouri State Representative Jim Guest finds the MIAC report “very disturbing” and has requested a meeting with the agency. “I was rather skeptical at first as to whether it was even a genuine report,” he told The New American. “I thought it could be an Internet hoax.” However, the Highway Patrol soon verified for him that the report was authentic. In a press release/editorial issued March 17, Rep. Guest denounced the report as “profiling to the highest degree to identify citizens of this country who display bumper stickers or other labels as being part of a modern militia movement.”

Rep. Guest is the author of a bill in the Missouri state legislature to oppose the Federal Real ID Act, which establishes a national drivers license and an enormously invasive national database. According to Guest, 26 states have passed some sort of anti-Real ID legislation and 11 states have successfully changed state law to reject Real ID provisions. Guest sees the MIAC report as part of the organized “movement to stop our rejection of the Real ID Act and pending state legislation to protect our 2nd amendment rights.”

“This assault on Americans by profiling us as militant instead of profiling those who are here illegally, or terrorists, amazes me,” says Rep. Guest. However, he vows that he “will not be intimidated” by these tactics.

Feeling heat from the public outcry over the MIAC report, Missouri law-enforcement officials have been trying to downplay the document.

Lt. John Hotz of the Missouri State Highway Patrol told the Columbia Tribune that the document is not intended to promote political profiling. “All this is an educational thing,” Hotz said of the report. “Troopers have been shot by members of groups, so it’s our job to let law enforcement officers know what the trends are in the modern militia movement.”

The Columbia Tribune report continues: "Hotz said using those or similar factors to determine whether someone could be a terrorist is not profiling. He said people who display signs or bumper stickers from such groups are not in danger of harassment from police."

Rep. Guest disagrees, pointing out that because the report wrongfully mixes ordinary patriots in with violent organizations and identifies legitimate political beliefs with a “mindset” that “creates a threat to law enforcement officers,” there is the very real danger that some officers will overreact. This could result in violations of citizens’ rights, or, even worse, lethal confrontations.

Rick Shinn knows from personal experience that the kind of law-enforcement mentality fostered by reports like the MIAC report can lead to undesirable consequences. News of the MIAC Milita report took him back, he told The New American, to an incident a little over 10 years ago, when the Clinton administration was engaged in an eerily similar attempt to gin up an anti-militia, anti-patriot attitude in the law-enforcement community.

Shinn, a videographer, carpenter, and Internet web designer, is a resident/property owner of Incline Village, Nevada, on the shore of beautiful Lake Tahoe. One day while enjoying the Tahoe sunshine on the drive of a private club of which he is a member, he was surrounded by four county sheriff’s vehicles and six or seven officers. It was clear, he said, that they had been attracted to him by his bumper stickers.

“One of them [the bumper stickers] was ‘Get US Out of the United Nations,’ and the other one was about the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms,” he recalled to The New American. “One of the officers who came up said ‘Oh, looks like we’ve got one of those constitutionalists here, eh?’ And I responded, ‘Aren’t all Americans supposed to be constitutionalists?’”

According to Shinn, they detained him for about 45 minutes while they searched his van — without probable cause, without his permission, and without a search warrant. “I didn’t have anything illegal, so they didn’t find anything to arrest me for or ticket me for,” he recalls. Still, it was a very unsettling experience. There was no question in his mind that he had been targeted because of his political bumper stickers, which are a form of expression that is supposed to be protected under the First Amendment. “That was right at the time,” he notes “when Bill Clinton and [Attorney General] Janet Reno, and [FBI Director] Louis Freeh were issuing warnings to local police to be on guard against ‘anti-government’ militias and other ‘dangerous’ patriots.”

Those Clinton-era warnings culminated in the FBI’s 1999 “Project Megiddo” report (see "Criminalizing Dissent" and the Project Megiddo report), which was distributed to law-enforcement agencies in anticipation of millennium mayhem by “right-wing extremists.” Pushing the memory refresh button on the Clinton/Reno/Freeh jihad against “anti-government, right-wing extremists” could prove to be a very useful exercise at this juncture, as increasing evidence points to an earnest renewal of that jihad under the Obama/Eric Holder/Robert Mueller regime.

According to Lt. Hotz in the Columbia Tribune story, the “MIAC, which opened in 2005, is a ‘fusion center’ that combines resources from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other agencies.” It might more accurately be called a “confusion center,” since it appears, at least in this case, to be sowing confusion, and particularly the brand of confusion provided by the federal government’s favorite left-wing extremists at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), led by millionaire lawyer/activist Morris Dees.

The MIAC Militia report specifically mentions the SPLC twice, but the report reads like a copy-and-paste job from the SPLC’s infamous Intelligence Report, which are notorious for smearing political conservatives, constitutionalists, pro-lifers, and Christian organizations by referring to them as “hate groups” and including them in lists and articles alongside violent and repulsive groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazis, and skinheads.

The MIAC report’s bullet points on “noteworthy militia activity” appear to be condensed from the SPLC’s Intelligence Report entitled “Terror From the Right,” and the MIAC authors have adopted the SPLC’s terminology, as well its practice of conflating odious and lawless groups with those that are principled and law-abiding.

The SPLC’s “Hate Group Map,” for instance, lists “926 active hate groups in the United States in 2008.” As usual, most of the groups listed are rather small clusters of racist and violent-prone gangsters, such as the White Aryan Resistance, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Skinhead Front, and the various KKK factions. However, in typical fashion, the SPLC has mixed in other respected organizations that have nothing in common with these certifiable hate groups. For example, Christian groups such as Chalcedon Foundation, Traditional Values Coalition, Abiding Truth Ministries, Westboro Baptist Church (of Topeka, Kan.), the Illinois Family Institute, and the Family Research Institute are included on the “Hate Map” because the SPLC has labeled them “Anti-Gay.”

Likewise, Tradition in Action and The Fatima Crusader/International Fatima Rosary Crusade are included, described by the SPLC as “Radical Traditionalist Catholic.” Groups concerned about the very real crisis involving illegal immigration are falsely labeled as “Anti-Immigrant.” The groups listed include American Patrol/Voice of Citizens Together, Save Our State, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and American Immigration Control Foundation/Americans for Immigration Control. It labels the VDARE Foundation (publisher of the VDARE Internet site focusing on immigration problems) and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation (publisher of Joseph Sobran’s columns and newsletter) as “White Nationalist,” a category the SPLC then associates with “Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederate, neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, and Christian Identity.”

Similarly, on its web page, “Active Patriot Groups in 2005,” the SPLC lists law-abiding, constitutional organizations such as the John Birch Society, the Constitution Party, the Free Enterprise Society, the Second Amendment Committee, and the American Independent Party alongside various militia groups, bracketing them with articles bearing titles such as: “Hate Group Numbers Up 33%”; “Going Undercover to Target Violent Racists”; “Former FBI Agent Infiltrates Hate Groups”; and “Neo-Nazi Youth’s Rampage Ends in Death.”

To protect itself, the SPLC provides this faux disclaimer: “Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the ‘New World Order’ or advocate or adhere to extreme antigovernment doctrines. Listing here does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist.”

The “disclaimer” notwithstanding, it is obviously a major purpose of the “Active Patriot Groups” list, like the “Hate Group Map,” to smear legitimate, non-violent, law-abiding groups with whom SPLC disagrees.

The SPLC has been involved for many years in transferring its political bias into federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies through federal programs such as the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center (FLETC). The SPLC’s web page on “Law Enforcement Training” boasts:

The Intelligence Project regularly conducts in-person trainings for local, state and federal law enforcement officers by request. We focus on the history, background, leaders and activities of far-right extremists in the U.S….

Intelligence Project staff have been involved in the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center's hate and bias crime "train-the-trainer" program since its inception in 1992. FLETC trains personnel for more than 75 federal law enforcement agencies and provides services for local, state and international agencies.

FLETC invited Intelligence Project personnel to help develop and write courses for a training program to improve the recognition, reporting and investigating of hate crimes. A member of the Intelligence Project staff taught one of the program's first pilot classes in New Jersey in 1994 and continues to instruct FLETC classes today.

The same SPLC web page features a photo of Illinois State Police regional commander Bill Davis shaking hands with and thanking SPLC Intelligence Project staffer Joe Roy for a training presentation.

Obvious questions arise: has Illinois produced a report similar to the MIAC report? How many other state and local law-enforcement agencies have produced similar reports? To what degree was the SPLC, FLETC, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and/or the FBI involved in the production of the MIAC report? After repeated calls to the Missouri State Highway Patrol and MIAC, I received a return call from public affairs spokesman Sgt. Jason Clark. Sgt. Clark said he could assure me “one hundred percent” that the contents of the MIAC report “originated locally and not from the DHS or any other federal agency.” As to possible SPLC involvement, Sgt. Clark said he was sure that the SPLC had not conducted any training for the Missouri Highway Patrol. However, he couldn’t rule out SPLC involvement and/or input into the MIAC report, stating, “I’m ignorant as to the sources of the information used.” He provided me with additional contacts within the chain of command to request that information, and The New American is following up on that line of investigation.

WE HAVE SEEN THE ENEMY...AND IT IS US!

2009-03-22T12:06:00.009-05:00

Preparing For Civil Unrest In America

Legislation To Establish Internment Camps On US Military Bases

by Michel Chossudovsky

The Economic and Social Crisis

The financial meltdown has unleashed a latent and emergent social crisis across the United States. What is at stake is the fraudulent confiscation of lifelong savings and pension funds, the appropriation of tax revenues to finance the trillion dollar "bank bailouts", which ultimately serve to line the pockets of the richest people in America.

This economic crisis is in large part the result of financial manipulation and outright fraud to the detriment of entire populations, leading to a renewed wave of corporate bankruptcies, mass unemployment and poverty. The criminalization of the global financial system, characterized by a "Shadow Banking" network has resulted in the centralization of bank power and an unprecedented concentration of private wealth.

Obama's "economic stimulus" package and budget proposals contribute to a further process of concentration and centralization of bank power, the cumulative effects of which will eventually result in large scale corporate, bankruptcies, a new wave of foreclosures not to mention fiscal collapse and the downfall of State social programs.

The cumulative decline of real economic activity backlashes on employment and wages, which in turn leads to a collapse in purchaisng power. The proposed "solution" under the Obama administration contributes to exacerbating rather than alleviating social inequalities and the process of wealth concentration.

The Protest Movement

When people across America, whose lives have been shattered and destroyed, come to realize the true face of the global "free market" system, the legitimacy of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and the US administration will be challenged. A latent protest movement directed against the seat of economic and political power is unfolding.

How this process will occur is hard to predict. All sectors of American society are potentially affected: wage earners, small, medium and even large businesses, farmers, professionals, federal, State and municipal employees, students, teachers, health workers, and unemployed. Protests will initially emerge from these various sectors. There is, however, at this stage, no organized national resistance movement directed against the administration's economic and financial agenda.

Obama's populist rhetoric conceals the true nature of macro-economic policy. Acting on behalf of Wall Street, the administration's economic package, which includes close to a trillion dollar "aid" package for the financial services industry, coupled with massive austerity measures, contributes to precipitating America into a bottomless crisis.

"Orwellian Solution" to the Great Depression: Curbing Civil Unrest

At this particular juncture, there is no economic recovery program in sight. The Washington-Wall Street consensus prevails. There are no policies, no alternatives formulated from within the political and economic system. What is the way out? How will the US government face an impending social catastrophe?

The solution is to curb social unrest. The chosen avenue, inherited from the outgoing Bush administration is the reinforcement of the Homeland Security apparatus and the militarization of civilian State institutions. The outgoing administration has laid the groundwork. Various pieces of "anti-terrorist" legislation (including the Patriot Acts) and presidential directives have been put in place since 2001, largely using the pretext of the "Global War on Terrorism."

Homeland Security's Internment Camps

Directly related to the issue of curbing social unrest, cohesive system of detention camps is also envisaged, under the jurisdiction of the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon.

A bill entitled the National Emergency Centers Establishment Act (HR 645) was introduced in the US Congress in January. It calls for the establishment of six national emergency centers in major regions in the US to be located on existing military installations.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-645

The stated purpose of the "national emergency centers" is to provide "temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster." In actuality, what we are dealing with are FEMA internment camps. HR 645 states that the camps can be used to "meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security."

There has been virtually no press coverage of HR 645. These "civilian facilities" on US military bases are to be established in cooperation with the US Military. Modeled on Guantanamo, what we are dealing with is the militarization of FEMA internment facilities.

Once a person is arrested and interned in a FEMA camp located on a military base, that person would in all likelihood, under a national emergency, fall under the de facto jurisdiction of the Military: civilian justice and law enforcement including habeas corpus would no longer apply.

HR 645 bears a direct relationship to the economic crisis and the likelihood of mass protests across America. It constitutes a further move to militarize civilian law enforcement, repealing the Posse Comitatus Act.

In the words of Rep. Ron Paul:

"...the fusion centers, militarized police, surveillance cameras and a domestic military command is not enough... Even though we know that detention facilities are already in place, they now want to legalize the construction of FEMA camps on military installations using the ever popular excuse that the facilities are for the purposes of a national emergency. With the phony debt-based economy getting worse and worse by the day, the possibility of civil unrest is becoming a greater threat to the establishment. One need only look at Iceland, Greece and other nations for what might happen in the United States next."

The proposed internment camps should be seen in relation to the broader process of militarization of civilian institutions. The construction of internment camps predates the introduction of HR 645 (Establishment of Emergency Centers) in January 2009. There are, according to various (unconfirmed) reports, some 800 FEMA prison camps in different regions of the U.S. Moreover, since the 1980s, the US military has developed "tactics, techniques and procedures" to suppress civilian dissent, to be used in the eventuality of mass protests (United States Army Field Manual 19-15 under Operation Garden Plot, entitled "Civil Disturbances" was issued in 1985)

In early 2006, tax revenues were allocated to building modern internment camp facilities. In January 2006, Kellogg Brown and Roots, which at the time was a subsidiary of Halliburton, received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): "The contract, which is effective immediately [January 2006], provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing ICE Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs...

The contract may also provide migrant detention support to other U.S. Government organizations in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster. (KBR, 24 January 2006, emphasis added)

The stated objectives of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are to: "protect national security and uphold public safety by targeting criminal networks and terrorist organizations that seek to exploit vulnerabilities in our immigration system, in our financial networks, along our border, at federal facilities and elsewhere in order to do harm to the United States. The end result is a safer, more secure America"

The US media is mum on the issue of the internment camps on US soil. While casually acknowledging the multimillion dollar contract granted to Halliburton's subsidiary, the news reports largely focused their attention on possible "cost overruns" (similar to those which occurred with KBR in Iraq).

What is the political intent and purpose of these camps? The potential use of these internment facilities to detain American citizens under a martial law situation are not an object of media debate or discussion.

Combat Units Assigned to the Homeland

In the last months of the Bush administration, prior to the November 2008 presidential elections, the Department of Defense ordered the recall of the 3rd Infantry’s 1st Brigade Combat Team from Iraq. The relocation of a combat unit from the war theater to domestic front is an integral part of the Homeland Security agenda. The BCT was assigned to assist in law enforcement activities within the US.

The BCT combat unit was attached to US Army North, the Army's component of US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). The 1st BCT and other combat units would be called upon to perform specific military functions in the case of civil unrest: The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

Under the proposed withdrawal of US forces from Iraq under the Obama administration, one expects that other combat units will be brought home from the war theater and reassigned in the United States. The evolving national security scenario is characterized by a mesh of civilian and military institutions:

-Army combat units working with civilian law enforcement, with the stated mission to curb "social unrest".

- the establishment of new internment camps under civilian jurisdiction located on US military facilities.

The FEMA internment camps are part of the Continuity of Government (COG), which would be put in place in the case of martial law. The internment camps are intended to "protect the government" against its citizens, by locking up protesters as well as political activists who might challenge the legitimacy of the Administration's national security, economic or military agenda.

Spying on Americans: The Big Brother Data Bank

Related to the issue of internment and mass protests, how will data on American citizens be collected? How will individuals across America be categorized? What are the criteria of the Department of Homeland Security?

In a 2004 report of the Homeland Security Council entitled Planning Scenarios, pertaining to the defense of the Homeland, the following categories of potential "conspirators" were identified:

"foreign [Islamic] terrorists" ,

"domestic radical groups", [antiwar and civil rights groups]

"state sponsored adversaries" ["rogue states", "unstable nations"]

"disgruntled employees" [labor and union activists].

In June of last year, the Bush administration issued a National Security Presidential Directive (NSPD 59- HSPD 24) entitled Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security. Adopted without public debate or Congressional approval, its relevant procedures are far-reaching. They are related to the issue of civil unrest. They are also part of the logic behind the establishment of FEMA internment camps under HR 645. .

NSPD 59 (Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security) goes far beyond the narrow issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of "associated biographic" information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be "accomplished within the law":

"The contextual data that accompanies biometric data includes information on date and place of birth, citizenship, current address and address history, current employment and employment history, current phone numbers and phone number history, use of government services and tax filings. Other contextual data may include bank account and credit card histories, plus criminal database records on a local, state and federal level. The database also could include legal judgments or other public records documenting involvement in legal disputes, child custody records and marriage or divorce records."

The directive uses 9/11 and the "Global War on Terrorism" as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across the land. It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American citizens.

In a carefully worded text, NSPD 59 "establishes a framework" to enable the Federal government and its various police and intelligence agencies to: "use mutually compatible methods and procedures in the collection, storage, use, analysis, and sharing of biometric and associated biographic and contextual information of individuals in a lawful and appropriate manner, while respecting their information privacy and other legal rights under United States law."

The NSPD 59 Directive recommends: "actions and associated timelines for enhancing the existing terrorist-oriented identification and screening processes by expanding the use of biometrics". The procedures under NSPD 59 are consistent with an earlier June 2005 decision which consisted in creating a "domestic spy service", under the auspices of the FBI.

Working hand in glove with Homeland Security (DHS), the proposed "domestic intelligence department" would combine FBI counterterrorism, intelligence and espionage operations into a single service.

The new department operating under the auspices of the FBI would have the authority to "seize the property of people deemed to be helping the spread of WMD": They would be able to "spy on people in America suspected of terrorism or having critical intelligence information, even if they are not suspected of committing a crime." (NBC Tonight).

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST: PART FOURTEEN

2008-12-09T18:25:00.004-05:00

And Now For A World Government

by Gideon Rachman

For: The Financial Times

Published: December 8 2008

I have never believed that there is a secret United Nations plot to take over the US. I have never seen black helicopters hovering in the sky above Montana. But, for the first time in my life, I think the formation of some sort of world government is plausible.

A “world government” would involve much more than co-operation between nations. It would be an entity with state-like characteristics, backed by a body of laws. The European Union has already set up a continental government for 27 countries, which could be a model. The EU has a supreme court, a currency, thousands of pages of law, a large civil service and the ability to deploy military force.

So could the European model go global? There are three reasons for thinking that it might.

First, it is increasingly clear that the most difficult issues facing national governments are international in nature: there is global warming, a global financial crisis and a “global war on terror”.

Second, it could be done. The transport and communications revolutions have shrunk the world so that, as Geoffrey Blainey, an eminent Australian historian, has written: “For the first time in human history, world government of some sort is now possible.” Mr Blainey foresees an attempt to form a world government at some point in the next two centuries, which is an unusually long time horizon for the average newspaper column.

But – the third point – a change in the political atmosphere suggests that “global governance” could come much sooner than that. The financial crisis and climate change are pushing national governments towards global solutions, even in countries such as China and the US that are traditionally fierce guardians of national sovereignty.

Barack Obama, America’s president-in-waiting, does not share the Bush administration’s disdain for international agreements and treaties. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he argued that: “When the world’s sole superpower willingly restrains its power and abides by internationally agreed-upon standards of conduct, it sends a message that these are rules worth following.” The importance that Mr Obama attaches to the UN is shown by the fact that he has appointed Susan Rice, one of his closest aides, as America’s ambassador to the UN, and given her a seat in the cabinet.

A taste of the ideas doing the rounds in Obama circles is offered by a recent report from the Managing Global Insecurity project, whose small US advisory group includes John Podesta, the man heading Mr Obama’s transition team and Strobe Talbott, the president of the Brookings Institution, from which Ms Rice has just emerged.

The MGI report argues for the creation of a UN high commissioner for counter-terrorist activity, a legally binding climate-change agreement negotiated under the auspices of the UN and the creation of a 50,000-strong UN peacekeeping force. Once countries had pledged troops to this reserve army, the UN would have first call upon them.

These are the kind of ideas that get people reaching for their rifles in America’s talk-radio heartland. Aware of the political sensitivity of its ideas, the MGI report opts for soothing language. It emphasises the need for American leadership and uses the term, “responsible sovereignty” – when calling for international co-operation – rather than the more radical-sounding phrase favoured in Europe, “shared sovereignty”. It also talks about “global governance” rather than world government.

But some European thinkers think that they recognise what is going on. Jacques Attali, an adviser to President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, argues that: “Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.” As far as he is concerned, some form of global government cannot come too soon. Mr Attali believes that the “core of the international financial crisis is that we have global financial markets and no global rule of law”.

So, it seems, everything is in place. For the first time since homo sapiens began to doodle on cave walls, there is an argument, an opportunity and a means to make serious steps towards a world government.

But let us not get carried away. While it seems feasible that some sort of world government might emerge over the next century, any push for “global governance” in the here and now will be a painful, slow process.

There are good and bad reasons for this. The bad reason is a lack of will and determination on the part of national, political leaders who – while they might like to talk about “a planet in peril” – are ultimately still much more focused on their next election, at home.

But this “problem” also hints at a more welcome reason why making progress on global governance will be slow sledding. Even in the EU – the heartland of law-based international government – the idea remains unpopular. The EU has suffered a series of humiliating defeats in referendums, when plans for “ever closer union” have been referred to the voters. In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic.

The world’s most pressing political problems may indeed be international in nature, but the average citizen’s political identity remains stubbornly local. Until somebody cracks this problem, that plan for world government may have to stay locked away in a safe at the UN.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

[I wish I shared Mr. Rachman's apparent breezy confidence in the stubborn strength of "the average citizen's political identity". However, given that the "average citizen" is a dumbed down dunce with no clue about real politik (witness the recent US elections) and no guns with which to mount even the most half-hearted defense of his freedoms, my outlook is a bit more pessimistic. Unless the American voter gets an education about the true nature of "the republic for which it stands" and hangs the professional political class for treason, then the day will indeed come when The Blue Helmets will patrol our streets enforcing curfews and arresting dissenters. At least, he gets this much right: "In general, the Union has progressed fastest when far-reaching deals have been agreed by technocrats and politicians – and then pushed through without direct reference to the voters. International governance tends to be effective, only when it is anti-democratic." Truer words have never been spoken! However, I'm not altogether sure if he thinks that's a good thing or a bad thing. And notwithstanding Mr. Rachman's smarmy comments about "black helicopters" and "America's talk radio heartland" the truth is that those on the so-called "far right" have been sounding this alarm for years. What a shame the Gideon Rachman's of the world have just now awakened to breathe in the musty smell of the New World Order coffee. Check please! -Martel]

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART SEVEN

2008-12-08T15:29:00.020-05:00

The Truth About Bosnia

by Leslie Lebl

The nomination of Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State brings back memories of the time when Bosnia represented the primary foreign policy success of her husband's administration. The United States and its NATO partners saved a Muslim minority from genocide at the hands of the Serbs; kept the country from being divided up between Serbia and Croatia; and established peace after several years of a bloody war.

Thirteen years later, the landscape looks a little different. The recent apprehension of indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic raised hopes that Bosnia was on the verge of societal reconciliation. While the apprehension was a step forward, such reconciliation is unlikely as long as another, long-festering problem remains unaddressed: the ever-growing influence of radical Islam in Bosnia. For years this trend has been an open secret; while perceptive observers have reported on it, most of Western government, media and academe have averted their eyes from the threat.

That is not the case for regional journalist Christopher Deliso, whose The Coming Balkan Caliphate traces the spread of radical Islam throughout the Balkans, a process greatly stimulated by the Bosnian war. Nor does it apply to Naval War College professor John Schindler, author of Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad.

Both authors argue that Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic misled the West, presenting himself, his party and his government as secularized and devoted to a multiethnic democracy, when in fact he was intent on establishing an Islamic state. Not only did their policies and actions ensure continued resistance from Serbs, Croats and non-radical Muslims, but they made Bosnia the ‘missing link' in Al Qaeda's trajectory. And the United States, through its decisive role in support of Izetbegovic, boosted the cause of global jihad.

Schindler and Deliso agree on their portrayal of Izetbegovic. Perceived by most Western observers as the embattled leader of victimized, multiethnic Bosnia, Izetbegovic in fact had a lifetime of well-established Islamist credentials. Just before World War II, he founded a Muslim youth society modeled on the Muslim Brotherhood, with the goal of creating an Islamic state in Europe. During the war, he served as a recruiter for the infamous SS Handzar Division, known for killing and looting unarmed Serbs.
Izetbegovic subsequently authored the Islamic Declaration which, along with his attempt to establish ties with the Islamist Khomeini government, landed him in jail for five years in the 1980s. The Declaration does not appear to have been translated in English in its entirety and as a result few Americans have read it. Here are some excerpts:

"...the Islamic order has two fundamental premises: an Islamic society and Islamic authority. The former is the essence, and the latter the form of an Islamic order. An Islamic society without Islamic power is incomplete and weak; Islamic power without an Islamic society is either a utopia or violence.

A Muslim generally does not exist as an individual. If he wishes to live and survive as a Muslim, he must create an environment, a community, an order. He must change the world or be changed himself.

There can be no peace or coexistence between the ‘Islamic faith' and non-Islamic societies and political institutions...Islam clearly excludes the right and possibility of activity of any strange ideology on its own turf.

... the Islamic movement should and must start taking over the power as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough to not only overthrow the existing non-Islamic, but also to build up a new Islamic authority..."

Reading this, one would never guess that Bosnia was a secular, Westernized province in Yugoslavia in which the Muslims formed a minority. As Bosnian political analyst Nebojsa Malic puts it, according to Deliso, "Izetbegovic's vision of Bosnia was not a multi-ethnic democracy, but a multi-caste hierarchy of the kind that existed under the Ottoman Empire, the memories of which were still fresh at his birth in 1925."

Under the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslims lived a subordinate, precarious existence. They could practice their faith in private and were ‘tolerated' by the sovereign as long as they submitted to Ottoman power, never mentioned the Koran or the Prophet, and never criticized Islam. They did not, however enjoy same rights as Muslims and, if they broke the rules, lost the sovereign's protection and put their lives at risk.

The Croats and Serbs knew their Ottoman history as well as the Muslims and read the danger signals accurately. In addition, there were other reasons to suspect Izetbegovic's motives, in particular his repeated efforts to establish ties to the radical Islamic regimes in Libya and Iran as well as with more traditional Muslim countries like Turkey.

Schindler provides a useful summary of Izetbegovic's actions before and after the 1992 declaration of Bosnian independence. These included trips in 1991 to Libya, Turkey and Iran. In Turkey, Izetbegovic asked that Bosnia be admitted to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a Saudi-backed forum which includes all Muslim countries - an obvious measure of his contempt for Bosnia's multi-ethnicity. In Iran, he asked Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani for help if hostilities broke out. The reported response: "As of now, the state budget of Iran will be projected as if Iran had two million more inhabitants than it currently has."

In November of that year, Izetbegovic's new political party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), at its first party congress purged the top leadership of non-Islamists. Several weeks later, the Young Muslims emerged from the shadows to hold their first-ever congress; some of their guests of honor were SDA leaders.

These facts help to explain, if not to excuse, the subsequent actions of Bosnian Serbs and Croats. Schindler notes that, in May 1991, Bosnian Serb leader and future indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic challenged Izetbegovic to "renounce his Islamic Declaration in public and declare that he will not establish an Islamic state in an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina." That never happened.

Meanwhile, Izetbegovic was building a dense network of ties to countries like Iran and to Islamic charities, mosques and ‘humanitarian' organizations that funneled funds, arms and materiel to the Muslims during the war. At home, in the second half of 1991 the SDA set up its own military force, the Patriotic League, trained and equipped by Iran and Saudi Arabia. Envisioned as a 30,000 man force, the League was never particularly effective, and was eventually combined with other units of the predominantly Muslim Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The SDA's efforts to set up its own intelligence service had more success. The Muslim Intelligence Service, or MOS, was set up in Vienna in 1991 with a primary goal, according to Schindler, "to ensure the dominance of Izetbegovic's inner circle of Islamists." That it did, with the help of the large sums of money moving through various Islamic networks, until the United States demanded that it be closed down after Dayton. Shortly thereafter it was re-created under another name.

Deliso and Schindler recount the mixed signals of Izetbegovic, and note that he excelled in telling each audience what it wanted to hear. What they do not say is that, in so doing, Izetbegovic was following in the well-developed tradition of takiyya, in which a Muslim is allowed to lie to infidels if it protects Muslims or helps to spread Islam. From that perspective, what Izetbegovic did was honorable - unfortunately, the West fell into the trap.

Western analysts and politicians worried during the war that, by its secret collusion to help Iran supply arms to the Muslims, the United States had allowed one of its mortal enemies to gain a foothold in Bosnia. Certainly, Izetbegovic felt much closer to the Iranians and their ‘pure' Islamist revolution than he did to the Saudis, who did not practice what they preached. More than a decade later, the Iranians retain a considerable presence in Bosnia but keep a low profile. More visible, and well-described in these books, are organizations linked to the Saudis and the Gulf States.

The war in Bosnia soon became the prime recruiting tool for global jihad. Ed Husain describes in The Islamist how he, like many others, was radicalized by graphic videos of horror inflicted on the Bosnian Muslims. Indeed, the war in Bosnia came at a fortuitous juncture. Many jihadis had fought in Afghanistan. When the war against the Soviets ended in 1992, their choices in Afghanistan were poor. Staying there risked embroiling them in internecine, Muslim-on-Muslim conflicts; not only was this not jihad as they saw it, but they were outsiders. Some went home, but others couldn't because of legal charges or the risk of repression. For many of those who could re-enter it, civilian life was boring and meaningless. Bosnia as the next front in global jihad was irresistible.

Schindler presents considerable evidence to support his contention that Al Qaeda, including Bin Laden himself, "played the dominant role in getting the international component of the Bosnian jihad off the ground in 1992." This includes the personal engagement of Bin Laden. He was residing in Sudan at the time but apparently traveled to Bosnia and was, at one point, sighted in Izetbegovic's antechamber by two Western journalists (although it seems unlikely that Izetbegovic would have kept such an important contact waiting).

Schindler also traces the SDA's ties, especially those of close Izetbegovic associate Hasan Cengic, to the various Islamic charities and ‘humanitarian' organizations active in Bosnia. Before and during the war, Cengic served on the board of directors of the Third World Relief Agency, an organization with links to both the Saudi government and Al Qaeda that served as a conduit for funds and jihadis entering Bosnia.

Deliso, like most other observers, assembles much of this data, but does not connect the jihadis directly to Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. He does, however, trace other Al Qaeda connections that spread throughout the Balkans but were particularly noticeable in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia.

While Al Qaeda provided much of the leadership, the foot soldiers of the jihad came from many countries and groups. The Egyptian Islamic Group and Algeria's Armed Islamic Group (GIS) supplied the largest contingents, although Hezbollah was also present, as were Muslim youth and some converts from Europe.

The jihadis had their first armed engagement in fall 1992. Thus, by June1993, when the Saudis asked Clinton to take the lead in providing military assistance to Bosnia, the links to Islamist groups and jihadi fighters were already in place. U.S officials were not responsible for these developments but can be criticized for either ignoring or underestimating them.

Initially, jihadi contributions were minimal, but by the end of the war they had become feared assault troops. Their experiences in Bosnia gave them a new set of war-fighting skills, much as appears to have happened in Iraq ten years later. Jihadi savagery served more than just military purposes, however. Such actions as decapitations of non-Muslims were understood by all the participants as a return to Ottoman times and to classical Islam.

The end of the war by no means meant the end of Islamist influence in Bosnia. Despite efforts by the U.S. government to dislodge them, after the Dayton Accords and again after 9/11, some jihadis remained in country, often marrying Bosnian girls or being granted Bosnian passports by the Izetbegovic government. Shortly after 9/11, NATO forces raided the offices of the Saudi High Commission in Sarajevo, thwarting a terrorist attack on the U.S. and British embassies. A number of individuals were arrested and subsequently deported for alleged terrorist activity. Meanwhile, representatives of Islamic charities and other organizations continued to Islamicize Bosnia, and to use it as a point of entry into Europe. Sadly, as Deliso and Schindler note, U.S. efforts after September 11 to shut down these organizations failed.

For many years observers believed that the Islamists would make little headway there. Indeed, in a 2006 poll, over 70% of Bosnian Federation TV viewers said they believed Saudi fundamentalism was a threat to Muslims and to Bosnia. However, the fact that the majority of Bosnian Muslims oppose it does not mean that radical Islam has not made significant inroads there.

Deliso describes the efforts of the Bosnian religious establishment, starting in 2006, to combat Wahhabism, but sees them as ineffectual in opposing the well-funded Saudi challenge. Schindler's assessment is equally pessimistic, based on such indicators as the participation of the Islamic Community of Bosnia in the 2006 protests against the Danish cartoons, as well as the re-opening of sharia (Islamic law) courts, which had been closed down in 1946.

Nor are the present-day links to the jihadi past restricted to Bosnia. Both authors cite the numerous links between Bosnia and all kinds of terrorist acts: the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993; the GIS attacks in France in the mid-1990s; the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington; or the Madrid train bombings of 2004.

The links are not just personal; e.g., someone who fought in Bosnia later carries out a terrorist act in Europe. Rather, the links included planning, organization, and exploitation of networks set up during the war. As Deliso points out, the first suicide bombing in Europe, in 1995 in Rijeka, was organized and prepared in Bosnia. Indeed, the attempted attack on the 2005 funeral of Pope John Paul II was hatched in the Bosnian village of Gornja Maoca.

In 2007, Bosnia was described as one of Al Qaeda's transit points, where sympathizers help to hide agents and provide financial support or false documents. In May 2008, Bosnian TV reported allegations that Izetbegovic insider Hasan Cengic had personally signed a money transfer connected to the 9/11 attacks.

Both authors use numerous sources to detail these links; Schindler in particular refers to documentation and testimony from court cases. Neither is breaking new ground in telling the story of Bosnia's role in the global jihad. That is what makes it even more astounding that so little of this material has filtered into public perceptions of Bosnia and its role in global jihad.

So just who was responsible for the arrival of jihad in Bosnia? Deliso states that the jihadis would never have reached Bosnia in the first place had it not been for the Clinton administration's determination to defeat the Bosnian Serbs at all costs. Although accurate as far as it goes, that accusation ignores the numerous initiatives undertaken before the war's start by Alija Izetbegovic, as well as the powerful forces behind establishing a new front for the global jihad after the Soviets left Afghanistan. That said, there is no doubt that, when the United States finally did intervene, its actions promoted the spread of jihad. The question is why this obvious fact is buried so deep.

[Doesn't globalist politics make the strangest bedfellows? Ever wondered how it could be that just a few short years ago we were in solidarity with the jihadists in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, supplying them with the vigilant protection of "peacekeepers" on the ground, not to mention the specialized military training and indeed the very weapons they would in turn use against our own troops? And now we're locked in a global life and death struggle with those very same forces! What insanity is this? How is it that Russian troops once fought the Islamic radicals in their own backyard tooth and nail, yet now they come to their aid in Georgia...and that against their own people? Inconsistency, thy name be globalist foreign policy! Indeed, it is not unreasonable to say that we created Al Queda. Arming your own enemies? The fast track to cultural suicide. - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST: PART THIRTEEN

2008-11-10T20:34:00.010-05:00

An Al Qaeda Enclave In Britain

Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, Birmingham and Luton are planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain, according to a leaked Government intelligence report.

Its official, a report by the 'Ministry of Defence' has named Luton as one of several Al Qaeda enclaves within Great Britain.

Those who live in and around Luton will know that that enclave is called Bury Park which took centre stage on the morning of 7/7 and during the biggest anti-terror operation in British history up until that point which was codenamed 'Operation Crevice'.

The basis of this blog is an on the ground first hand account of my personal experience living around the area of Luton where Al Qaeda and their supporters are operating.

I have been arrested for my writings on this blog, under the charge of 'stirring up racial hatred'.

Opinionated people who think they know what is right from wrong who do not know the facts to this blog will immediately condemn me as if I have done something wrong because of the title of the charge levelled at me, because if I have been arrested for that charge then I must be bad and what I am doing is bad.

I am not like you, I do not sit in doors with the curtains shut and the TV on watching the football or the X Factor pretending I live in a perfect World because the problems are not on my frontdoor. The community I talk about is where I grew up, it is the community where my friends are dying because of what is happening, and the community I am watching being taken over before my eyes so it is my responsibility to say what I am saying (which is the truth) for the sake of the future.

I am just saying what the vast majority of people are thinking, who are too scared to say or do anything through fear, and its not surprising because I have murdering drug dealing Pakistani Moslems wanting to silence me and the British State now wanting to put me on trial, so it no wonder everyone is scared of confronting the truth.

A population forced to accept the murder of their friends and the destruction and take over of their community through fear of violent Pakistani Moslems who are linked to Al Qaeda, and the British State telling them its all a part of multi cultural Britain, the rich diverse enrichment that Moslems bring to our Country and communities and if you disagree we will arrest you.

If you dont agree with the Governments line then you are a racist and an Islamaphobe and they have laws in place to deal with you, so as to silence the dissent.

Well I dont agree and I am not a racist, I am a realist and this is my Country that my forefathers fought and died for, for me their descendant.

On my blog I have not called for violence, I have not condoned violence, or encouraged anyone else to commit violence. All I have said is the truth from my perspective based upon the facts, yet I am under arrest because I have hurt Moslems feelings and breached 'community cohesion'.

Stuff community cohesion if these people are killing my friends, destroying the community and planning to take the Country over.

We want to live in peace but if their is a hostile force taking over what are you meant to do? Just sit back and accept it?

Isn't it time people faced up to reality before its too late?

Naming Luton in this report justifies what I am saying through my blog, and reading through its pages will give you the details of what is actually happening.

In a perfect World none of this would be happening, the threat and future consequences from the Islamic religion would not have to be thought about, but we do not live in a perfect World and this is really happening on the streets of Luton & Dunstable where I live whether you like it or not.

Denial and disbelief is not going to make it go away, thats why in this short video I posted I said that people must tell the police what they know about Pakistani Moslem criminality because this is all a part of Al Qaedas strategy, funding their covert civil military operations and terror training through the trade in Taliban Heroin and all other street drugs that they control, and in the process securing a strong position on the ground with the money earned and the networks they have in place.

The network of Pakistani Moslems who are conducting the street Jihad are over flowing with drug money.

They control the ground at this moment in time, but from a very very weak position.

They have had 30 years of building their base in this area with no opposition that's why it took centre stage on 7/7 when Al Qaeda declared war upon Great Britain.

Either the powers that be accept defeat here and allow the spread of this militancy on the ground with it eventually washing up on the surrounding areas or they tackle it on the ground here, thats the simple fact of the matter, and considering their is wealth of Christian and Royal history here, it will be very telling what their thoughts and decisions are. Sacrifice and surrender or No surrender - 21st Century Warfare

Hemel Hempstead is next because Leighton Buzzard has already been targeted.

Heroin money washes in buying up businesses which then leaves networks of Pakistani Moslems on the streets to pump their drugs into the community, and then they start moving in and taking over with the money earned.

City by City, Town by Town, Village by Village the Jihad is unfolding and the authorities are powerless to act because they deny this aspect of the Jihad. Al Qaeda terror operations is one aspect, but the daily street Jihad that is taking over the Country is left to continue.

What can the Security Services do apart from watch what is happening because the State is powerless to act.

All those Moslems who are a threat to National Security should be rounded up and placed in internment camps for the safety of the British people, and the networks of Heroin suppliers and the barons should be smashed.

While the known terrorists are walking our streets no one is safe and while the Heroin business is allowed to continue they are filling their War chests with the proceeds of Taliban Heroin with which to fight their low level Civil War against us with.

If Moslem terrorists do attack as this report states then that is justification enough to intern all Moslems linked to international Islamic terror, including those who are ideologically joined to them through the internet.

National Security and the protection of the British people has got to be paramount and if Moslems disagree then they should leave the Country because its those from amongst them who have pushed everyone into a corner.

If the Queens Kingdom does not come down hard upon its enemies, then make way until the eventual take over in the future where Britain will become an Islamic State, thats just the basic facts of the matter.

From The Daily Telegraph:

The document, which was drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and Special Branch, states that "some thousands" of extremists are active in the UK. They are predominantly UK-born and aged between 18 and 30, and many are believed to have been trained in overseas terrorist camps.

Under the heading "International Terrorism", the report, which is marked "restricted" states: "For the foreseeable future the UK will continue to be a high-priority target for international terrorists aligned with al-Qaeda. It will face a threat from British nationals, including Muslim converts, and UK-based foreign terrorists, as well as terrorists planning attacks from abroad."

The report states that the threat from the Islamist extremist community in the UK is "diverse and widely distributed" but adds that the numbers of terrorist in Britain is "difficult to judge".

The document does state, however, that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which is based in MI5's headquarters at Thames House in London, estimates that there are "some thousands of extremists in the UK committed to supporting Jihadi activities, either in the UK or abroad".

A year ago Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, said in a speech that his organisation had identified that there were at least 2,000 individuals who posed a threat to national security and public safety.

Since 2001, over 1,200 terrorist suspect have been arrested, over 140 have been charged and more than 45 have been convicted of terrorism offences, according to Home Office figures. It is also estimated that there are some 200 terrorist networks functioning in Britain today who are involved in at least 30 plots.

But this latest security assessment appears to suggest that the number of individuals who now pose a threat to the UK is even higher.

The report continues: "The majority of extremists are British nationals of south Asian, mainly Pakistani origin but there are also extremists from north and east Africa, Iraq and the Middle East, and a number of converts. The overwhelming majority of extremists are male, typically in the 18-30 age range.

"The main extremist concentrations are in London, Birmingham, with significant extremist networks in the South East, notably Luton. Extremist networks are principally engaged in spreading their extremist message, training, fund raising and procuring non-lethal military equipment to support the Jihads in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, and sending recruits to the conflicts.

The above picture is of a convicted Pakistani Moslem heroin & crack dealer dressed as a suicide bomber at a Moslem demonstration in London. He is from Bedford which is a ten minute drive from Luton. He eventually went on to work for British Rail! This is the lunacy of modern Britain.

[I have taken the liberty of reposting this article directly from Lionheart, the blog of a brave fellow warrior in the struggle for the soul of Western Civilization. If I could shout it from the housetops, I would tell the world of the ordeal of Paul Ray. Having been arrested by the British authorities on charges of racism and "stirring up racial hatred", he has now been forced to flee his beloved Britain because of death threats from the British Jihadists. This brave patriot now faces an uncertain future. His "crime"? Just this: Warning you, precious reader, of the looming peril of unrestrained immigration and the forces of violent cultural change which it is bringing to Great Britain. For more on his plight, watch BOTH of these videos while you still can. Soon, the Thought Police will have them expunged.

Paul's Arrest

Paul On The 700 Club

WAKE UP MY FRIENDS! Today Britain, tomorrow the world. Now is not the time for idle words. While we engage in polite discussion, the forces of Jihad are moving in the shadows. While we hold hands and sing another chorus of 'Kum Ba Yah', the enemies of Western Civilization are plotting and seeking positions of advantage. While we discuss universal healthcare and the liberal myth of "job creation", those with a REAL vision of the future are working tirelessly to ensure that your future health will be a non-issue. Now is the time for action my friends! We must raise a voice...a LOUD voice! A voice of protest. A voice of reason. A voice of sanity amidst the vast ocean of political lunacy which surrounds us. If we continue down this road, then liberty will be eclipsed in this generation. Does this make you afraid? Good! You NEED to be afraid my friends. Be VERY afraid! If merely saying in print what The Lionheart has dared to say means you can and will be charged and tried as a criminal, then liberty lies bleeding in the streets. Listen closely...that sound you hear is the the jackbooted feet of the Staatspolizei marching down YOUR street. Can The Four Horsemen be far behind? - Martel]

QUARANTINED FOR POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS

2008-11-10T19:59:00.011-05:00

Belgian Far Right Leader: I Am One Of Israel's Staunchest Defenders

by Cnaan Liphshiz for Haaretz

At Belgium's request, the European Parliament is expected next month to lift the immunity of one of its members, a former leader of the rightist Vlaams Belang party, exposing him to racism charges. Describing himself as a victim of blatant persecution, Frank Vanhecke told Haaretz the decision could spell his "political death."

In the interview, Vanhecke countered claims that Vlaams Belang is anti-Semitic, calling them "unjust and untrue," pointing to his record of cooperation with Antwerp's Jewish community and standing up for Israel in the European Parliament.

Vlaams Belang is an anti-immigration party in the Flemish Community of Belgium that advocates the independence of Flanders and separation from the French-speaking population.

Although it's one of the country's largest parties, and the second largest political party in Flanders, it is kept out of government by the Cordon Sanitaire, a pact between all other Belgian parties to refrain from joining a coalition with Vlaams Belang.

Belgian justice minister and Deputy Prime Minister Jo Vandeurzen asked the European Parliament in April to lift Vanhecke's immunity so that Vanhecke can be prosecuted for a short article which appeared in 2005 a local party brochure, that linked an act of vandalism at a Christian cemetery to the Muslim minority in Sint-Niklaas, a city in the Flemish province of East Flanders.

Although Vanhecke was not the author, as Vlaams Belang president at that time - and consequently the publisher - he was legally responsible for all party publications. Vanhecke claims he had no knowledge of the 130-word article prior to publication.

Police apprehended the vandals, but Belgian law prohibits disclosing their identity because they were underage. Vlaams Belang says this prevents the party from proving that the youths were indeed Muslim immigrants. The author, whose identity is known, is not being prosecuted.

If convicted under Belgian anti-racism legislation, Vanhecke could lose his seat in the European Parliament as well as his right to be active in politics. Last Monday, the European Parliament?s Committee on Legal Affairs voted to lift Vanhecke's immunity, leaving the final vote for a plenary session in December. Commentators following the case say the December vote is a mere formality on the way to lifting Vanhecke's immunity.

"The Belgian government is persecuting me because I'm a member of a party which calls for Flemish independence," MEP Frank Vanhecke told Haaretz last week. In Vlaams Belang's official reaction to the Monday vote, the party said that "Belgium really is a banana republic."

Guido Naets, a Belgian ex-journalist and former spokesman of the European Parliament, asked the Legal Affairs Committee to turn down the Belgian request on the grounds of a conflict of interest on Brussel's part.

Naets also pointed out that Vlaams Belang is a Flemish-secessionist party which aims for the independence of Flanders from Belgium. He declared that this, and not racism, is the real reason for an attempt to ban Vanhecke from the coming European elections.

"In the almost 30 years that I have known Vanhecke [...] I have never been able to catch him out on any form of racism whatsoever," Naets said. "Vanhecke will be prosecuted because he is a symbol for a party that wants to abolish Belgium."

Before it became Vlaams Belang in 2004, the party was called Vlaams Blok. It changed its name and adjusted its platform after Belgium's supreme court declared it was a racist movement, effectively banning it from the political establishment.

During the interview, Vanhecke, 49, said he was aware that many Jews view Vlaams Belang antisemitic. "It's a form of automation, where we are immediately classified as antisemitic despite the facts on the ground."

Noting Vlaams Belang's "excellent contacts" with the Antwerp Jewish community, Vanhecke went on to say that the "misconception" owes in part to a "grave error" on the part of some Flemish secessionists who sided with the Nazis in the 1940s "only as a misguided and naïve attempt to achieve independence."

Another relevant issue is "the unacceptable behavior of a few weeds" who associate themselves with the party, Vanhecke said. With a hint of frustration in his voice, Vanhecke adds: "They say I'm antisemitic when the truth is I am one of Israel's staunchest defenders in the European Parliament. I invite you to read my queries to the European Parliament concerning its unjust treatment of Israel, and about the support the same parliament is giving to Palestinian murderers."

Vanhecke went on to say he thinks of himself as "a defender of Israel and of the Jewish people," adding: "Israel stands for the spirit that we stand for; liberty and self-determination."

[The smug political correctness of the socialist elite in Brussels truly knows no limits. This, my dear readers, is the true face of liberal "social democracy" in the leftist la-la-land we know as Europe. Mr. Vanhecke is a true patriot. And yet, the inner circle of Belgian political power treats him as a leper. Quite literally. Indeed, the phrase 'Cordon Sanitaire' is transliterated 'Sanitary Line'...meaning that Mr. Vanhecke (and presumably anyone else who believes as he does) is quarantined, lest his "deadly filth" pollute the pristine environment of the European Parliament. Talk about political correctness with teeth!? The forces of cultural suicide have assumed total control in Europe and soon Belgium will be swallowed up by the next wave of Pan Arab immigration. Hey! Freedom loving Belgians! Last one out bring the flag! Is this the future of American political discourse as well? It is indeed unless those who love freedom get their heads out of their collective rear ends and reclaim the culture. Otherwise, prepare to receive the exact same treatment at the hands of America's neo-Marxist socialistas. Now that they have control of The White House and both branches of The Legislature, l'm taking bets how long bi-partisanship lasts. Any takers? -Martel]

MONEY...IT'S A CRIME...

2008-11-09T07:38:00.003-05:00

The World Tires of Dollar Hegemony

by Paul Craig Roberts

What explains the paradox of the dollar’s sharp rise in value against other currencies (except the Japanese yen) despite disproportionate US exposure to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression? The answer does not lie in improved fundamentals for the US economy or better prospects for the dollar to retain its reserve currency role.

The rise in the dollar’s exchange value is due to two factors.

One factor is the traditional flight to the reserve currency that results from panic. People are simply doing what they have always done. Pam Martens predicted correctly that panic demand for US Treasury bills would boost the US dollar.

The other factor is the unwinding of the carry trade. The carry trade originated in extremely low Japanese interest rates. Investors and speculators borrowed Japanese yen at an interest rate of one-half of one percent, converted the yen to other currencies, and purchased debt instruments from other countries that pay much higher interest rates. In effect, they were getting practically free funds from Japan to lend to others paying higher interest.

The financial crisis has reversed this process. The toxic American derivatives were marketed worldwide by Wall Street. They have endangered the balance sheets and solvency of financial institutions throughout the world, including national governments, such as Iceland and Hungary. Banks and governments that invested in the troubled American financial instruments found their own debt instruments in jeopardy.

Those who used yen loans to purchase, for example, debt instruments from European banks or Icelandic bonds, faced potentially catastrophic losses. Investors and speculators sold their higher-yielding financial instruments in a scramble for dollars and yen in order to pay off their Japanese loans. This drove up the values of the yen and the US dollar, the reserve currency that can be used to repay debts, and drove down the values of other currencies.

The dollar’s rise is temporary, and its prospects are bleak. The US trade deficit will lessen due to less consumer spending during recession, but it will remain the largest in the world and one that the US cannot close by exporting more. The way the US trade deficit is financed is by foreigners acquiring more dollar assets, with which their portfolios are already heavily weighted.

The US government’s budget deficit is large and growing, adding hundreds of billions of dollars more to an already large national debt. As investors flee equities into US government bills, the market for US Treasuries will temporarily depend less on foreign governments. Nevertheless, the burden on foreigners and on world savings of having to finance American consumption, the US government’s wars and military budget, and the US financial bailout is increasingly resented.

This resentment, combined with the harm done to America’s reputation by the financial crisis, has led to numerous calls for a new financial order in which the US plays a substantially lesser role. "Overcoming the financial crisis" are code words for the rest of the world’s intent to overthrow US financial hegemony.

Brazil, Russia, India and China have formed a new group (BRIC) to coordinate their interests at the November financial summit in Washington, D.C.

On October 28, RIA Novosti reported that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin suggested to China that the two countries use their own currencies in their bilateral trade, thus avoiding the use of the dollar. China’s prime Minister Wen Jiabao replied that strengthening bilateral relations is strategic.

Europe has also served notice that it intends to exert a new leadership role. Four members of the Group of Seven industrial nations, France, Britain, Germany and Italy, used the financial crisis to call for sweeping reforms of the world financial system. Jose Manual Barroso, president of the European Commission, said that a new world financial system is possible only "if Europe has a leadership role."

Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said that the "economic egoism" of America’s "unipolar vision of the world" is a "dead-end policy."

China’s massive foreign exchange reserves and its strong position in manufacturing have given China the leadership role in Asia. The deputy prime minister of Thailand recently designated the Chinese yuan as "the rightful and anointed convertible currency of the world."

Normally, the Chinese are very circumspect in what they say, but on October 24 Reuters reported that the People’s Daily, the official government newspaper, in a front-page commentary accused the US of plundering "global wealth by exploiting the dollar’s dominance." To correct this unacceptable situation, the commentary called for Asian and European countries to "banish the US dollar from their direct trade relations, relying only on their own currencies." And this step, said the commentary, is merely a starting step in overthrowing dollar dominance.

The Chinese are expressing other thoughts that would get the attention of a less deluded and arrogant American government. Zhou Jiangong, editor of the online publication, ChinaStakes.com, recently asked: "Why should China help the US to issue debt without end in the belief that the national credit of the US can expand without limit?"

Zhou Jiangong’s solution to American excesses is for China to take over Wall Street.

China has the money to do it, and the prudent Chinese would do a better job than the crowd of thieves who have destroyed America’s financial reputation while exploiting the world in pursuit of multi- million dollar bonuses.

THIS JUST IN FROM ELECTION CENTRAL!

2008-10-30T18:40:00.002-05:00

How Many Non-Citizen Voters? Enough to Make a Difference!

October 13, 2008

by David Simcox

The Impact Of Non-Citizen Voting On American Elections

The approaching 2008 general elections underscore concern that the growing access of non-citizens to the ballot box could distort the outcome. Groups arguing for easier access to the polls deny there is a problem at all, seeing restrictive registration and identification rules as anti-democratic and even racist. They dismiss non-citizen voting as rare, not criminal in intent or concerted, and more harmful than beneficial to non-citizens.

Yet anecdotal evidence persists and grows that non-citizens are registering and voting in significant numbers. A common and increasing indicator is the number of persons selected for jury duty from the voter rolls who beg off because they are not citizens. The 1993 "Motor-Voter" legislation accelerated the trend: it provided registration virtually by default, with affirmation of citizenship left to an honor system. The risk of detection of this fraud has waned with the increasing use of absentee and mail-in voting, which precludes personal inspection at the polls by election officials.

Anecdotal evidence tells us only that illegal voting happens around the country, not how much. But there is overlooked data that define, if not the exact number of alien voters, at least the order of magnitude and extent of the practice.

The explosive growth of the Latino electorate in south Florida after "Motor-Voter" resulted in a registration rate among Miami-Dade county's putatively voting-eligible population some 30 percentage points higher than the national registration rate for Hispanics, suggesting a heavy presence of ineligibles on the voter rolls.

A Public Policy Institute of California survey in 2007 found 31 percent of the state's immigrant population was registered. This fraction, however, would be a population larger than the state's naturalized citizens shown by surveys to be registered. Some 300,000 to 450,000 registrations of non-citizens would be needed to bring total registrations up to 31 percent. Also in California, a poll by a Los Angeles university think tank in 2007 found that 12 percent of non-citizen respondents acknowledged being registered, implying 155,000 ineligible voters in Los Angeles County.

Assuming the 12 percent registration rate applied to the nation's adult non-citizens, there would be 2.3 million ineligible aliens on U.S. voting rolls.

An examination of voter registration rates in immigrant-rich congressional districts and counties in California, Texas, Florida, and New York show high numbers of registered voters disproportionate to their vote-eligible populations. In several districts and jurisdictions the number of registrants even exceeded the total number of eligible voters.

Intense political mobilization and registration drives by ethnic groups in preparation for the 2008 elections-some of them aggrieved by tightened immigration policy-may well further enlarge the alien electorate.

An estimated two to two and a half million ineligible voters may seem insignificant in an overall electorate that could reach 130 million in 2008. But in three presidential elections since 1960, the principal contenders have been separated by margins far less than two million. The concentration of those non-citizen votes in just a few states disproportionately increases their leverage in state and local contests and in the Electoral College.

Can U.S. residents who are prohibited from voting, but vote anyway, affect the political future of the country or its political subdivisions?

If you believe the word of open suffrage nonprofit organizations1 and think tanks,2 such as those whose challenge to Indiana's voter identification (ID) laws was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2008,3 the number of non-citizens who vote is negligible. Dismissing the lax voter registration process ushered in by the 1993 Motor-Voter law, those advocates argue that non-citizens have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by illegal voting, such as loss or delay of naturalization or, if illegal aliens, detection and deportation.

Those claiming the number of proven cases of fraud is inconsequential often cite a Department of Justice (DOJ) five-year campaign begun in 2002 in which only 120 people have been charged and 86 convicted. These are cases in which DOJ was involved. The scoffers often ignore the sizable number of cases investigated at the state level, including those handled quietly and without criminal penalties in administrative processes.

Statements of various U.S. Attorneys involved invoke a permissive legal doctrine that discourages prosecution of non-citizen voting fraud, such as absence of "concerted effort to tilt elections," little evidence of "widespread, organized fraud," "mistakes or misunderstandings by immigrants, not fraud," and no indications of "conspiracy." Apparently, citizens must tolerate the spreading access of ineligible voters to the ballot boxes as long as it is "disorganized, not concerted, lacking criminal intent, and non-conspiratorial."

Some cases since 1995 in which community and ethnic nonprofit groups have been caught registering non-citizens, such as Hermandad Nacional Mexicana, DemocraciaUSA, or the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN), are, according to these arguments, just the result of honest mistakes or confusion among the non-citizen registrants themselves about the citizenship requirement or their own status.

Some of these non-compliant groups have been beneficiaries of federal grants. But Americans favoring more, not less, ballot security remain convinced that non-citizen voters in 1996 provided the narrow winning margin in Democrat Loretta Sanchez's upset of long-time incumbent Republican Bob Dornan in California's 47th Congression-al district (Orange County). They believe that the incident was not isolated and that it presaged a growing threat to good government in general and the Republican party in particular. Few accept the official 1997 finding of a California grand jury that the 624 proven votes by ineligible aliens-out of more than 4,000 claimed by Dornan's attorneys-would not have altered the outcome.

Those arguing for added safeguards against ineligible voters have provided abundant anecdotal cases of non-citizen registration and voting, but few macro-statistics showing national or regional dimensions of the practice. Much of the evidence tends to be circumstantial.

For example, U.S. Census data show that 41 percent of Hispanics and 33 percent of Asians are non-citizens. Yet a national survey of reasons for not voting showed 13.8 percent of Hispanics and 13.1 percent of Asians gave "ineligibility" as their reason for not registering. How much of the gap can be attributed to the unfamiliarity of newcomers with the terms and regulations?

Cases numbering in the hundreds have surfaced in which non-citizen registered voters have admitted non-citizenship to escape a summons to jury duty. But such scattered cases are little help in projecting overall numbers for the nation or its major political subdivisions.

The lack of data is not surprising. It is not something busy voter registrars in high immigration states want to examine carefully. To do so risks the hostility of open suffrage and ethnic political advocates who impute racism or oppression of the poor to rigorous voting rules. The former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)-now the Citizenship and Immigration Service (CIS)-has shown distaste for being drawn into investigations, alleging lack of useful data to prove non-citizenship.

In another example of reliance on the honor system, the current naturalization application form used by CIS, the N-400, asks applicants if they have registered or voted in a U.S. election. CIS so far has declined to disclose the number answering "yes." Any such a number would have questionable validity, given the possible complications for the applicant who admits having voted.

But indicators of significant registration of non-citizens continue to pop up. The current vast voter registration campaigns of Hispanic and Asian ethnic interests since Congress's 2006 rejection of mass amnesty may force local registrars to increase their rubber-stamping of applications, producing new legions of non-citizens to try to vote in 2008.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART SIX

2008-07-30T10:52:00.003-05:00

U.S. Intel: Iran Plans Nuclear Strike on U.S.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008 9:00 AM

by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Iran has carried out missile tests for what could be a plan for a nuclear strike on the United States, the head of a national security panel has warned.

In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee and in remarks to a private conference on missile defense over the weekend hosted by the Claremont Institute, Dr. William Graham warned that the U.S. intelligence community “doesn’t have a story” to explain the recent Iranian tests.

One group of tests that troubled Graham, the former White House science adviser under President Ronald Reagan, were successful efforts to launch a Scud missile from a platform in the Caspian Sea.

“They’ve got [test] ranges in Iran which are more than long enough to handle Scud launches and even Shahab-3 launches,” Dr. Graham said. “Why would they be launching from the surface of the Caspian Sea? They obviously have not explained that to us.”

Another troubling group of tests involved Shahab-3 launches where the Iranians "detonated the warhead near apogee, not over the target area where the thing would eventually land, but at altitude,” Graham said. “Why would they do that?”

Graham chairs the Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack, a blue-ribbon panel established by Congress in 2001.

The commission examined the Iranian tests “and without too much effort connected the dots,” even though the U.S. intelligence community previously had failed to do so, Graham said.

“The only plausible explanation we can find is that the Iranians are figuring out how to launch a missile from a ship and get it up to altitude and then detonate it,” he said. “And that’s exactly what you would do if you had a nuclear weapon on a Scud or a Shahab-3 or other missile, and you wanted to explode it over the United States.”

The commission warned in a report issued in April that the United States was at risk of a sneak nuclear attack by a rogue nation or a terrorist group designed to take out our nation’s critical infrastructure.

"If even a crude nuclear weapon were detonated anywhere between 40 kilometers to 400 kilometers above the earth, in a split-second it would generate an electro-magnetic pulse [EMP] that would cripple military and civilian communications, power, transportation, water, food, and other infrastructure," the report warned.

While not causing immediate civilian casualties, the near-term impact on U.S. society would dwarf the damage of a direct nuclear strike on a U.S. city.

“The first indication [of such an attack] would be that the power would go out, and some, but not all, the telecommunications would go out. We would not physically feel anything in our bodies,” Graham said.

As electric power, water and gas delivery systems failed, there would be “truly massive traffic jams,” Graham added, since modern automobiles and signaling systems all depend on sophisticated electronics that would be disabled by the EMP wave.

“So you would be walking. You wouldn’t be driving at that point,” Graham said. “And it wouldn’t do any good to call the maintenance or repair people because they wouldn’t be able to get there, even if you could get through to them.”

The food distribution system also would grind to a halt as cold-storage warehouses stockpiling perishables went offline. Even warehouses equipped with backup diesel generators would fail, because “we wouldn’t be able to pump the fuel into the trucks and get the trucks to the warehouses,” Graham said.

The United States “would quickly revert to an early 19th century type of country.” except that we would have 10 times as many people with ten times fewer resources, he said.

“Most of the things we depend upon would be gone, and we would literally be depending on our own assets and those we could reach by walking to them,” Graham said.

America would begin to resemble the 2002 TV series, “Jeremiah,” which depicts a world bereft of law, infrastructure, and memory.

In the TV series, an unspecified virus wipes out the entire adult population of the planet. In an EMP attack, the casualties would be caused by our almost total dependence on technology for everything from food and water, to hospital care.

Within a week or two of the attack, people would start dying, Graham says.

“People in hospitals would be dying faster than that, because they depend on power to stay alive. But then it would go to water, food, civil authority, emergency services. And we would end up with a country with many, many people not surviving the event.”

Asked just how many Americans would die if Iran were to launch the EMP attack it appears to be preparing, Graham gave a chilling reply.

“You have to go back into the 1800s to look at the size of population” that could survive in a nation deprived of mechanized agriculture, transportation, power, water, and communication.

“I’d have to say that 70 to 90 percent of the population would not be sustainable after this kind of attack,” he said.

America would be reduced to a core of around 30 million people — about the number that existed in the decades after America’s independence from Great Britain.

The modern electronic economy would shut down, and America would most likely revert to “an earlier economy based on barter,” the EMP commission’s report on Critical National Infrastructure concluded earlier this year.

In his recent congressional testimony, Graham revealed that Iranian military journals, translated by the CIA at his commission’s request, “explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States.”

Furthermore, if Iran launched its attack from a cargo ship plying the commercial sea lanes off the East coast — a scenario that appears to have been tested during the Caspian Sea tests — U.S. investigators might never determine who was behind the attack. Because of the limits of nuclear forensic technology, it could take months. And to disguise their traces, the Iranians could simply decide to sink the ship that had been used to launch it, Graham said.

Several participants in last weekend’s conference in Dearborn, Mich., hosted by the conservative Claremont Institute argued that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was thinking about an EMP attack when he opined that “a world without America is conceivable.”

In May 2007, then Undersecretary of State John Rood told Congress that the U.S. intelligence community estimates that Iran could develop an ICBM capable of hitting the continental United States by 2015.

But Iran could put a Scud missile on board a cargo ship and launch from the commercial sea lanes off America’s coasts well before then.

The only thing Iran is lacking for an effective EMP attack is a nuclear warhead, and no one knows with any certainty when that will occur. The latest U.S. intelligence estimate states that Iran could acquire the fissile material for a nuclear weapon as early as 2009, or as late as 2015, or possibly later.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first detailed the “Scud-in-a-bucket” threat during a briefing in Huntsville, Ala., on Aug. 18, 2004.

While not explicitly naming Iran, Rumsfeld revealed that “one of the nations in the Middle East had launched a ballistic missile from a cargo vessel. They had taken a short-range, probably Scud missile, put it on a transporter-erector launcher, lowered it in, taken the vessel out into the water, peeled back the top, erected it, fired it, lowered it, and covered it up. And the ship that they used was using a radar and electronic equipment that was no different than 50, 60, 100 other ships operating in the immediate area.”

Iran’s first test of a ship-launched Scud missile occurred in spring 1998, and was mentioned several months later in veiled terms by the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, a blue-ribbon panel also known as the Rumsfeld Commission.

I was the first reporter to mention the Iran sea-launched missile test in an article appearing in the Washington Times in May 1999.

Intelligence reports on the launch were “well known to the White House but have not been disseminated to the appropriate congressional committees,” I wrote. Such a missile “could be used in a devastating stealth attack against the United States or Israel for which the United States has no known or planned defense.”

Few experts believe that Iran can be deterred from launching such an attack by the threat of massive retaliation against Iran. They point to a December 2001 statement by former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, who mulled the possibility of Israeli retaliation after an Iranian nuclear strike.

“The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while [the same] against the Islamic only would cause damages. Such a scenario is not inconceivable,” Rafsanjani said at the time.

Rep. Trent Franks, R, Ariz., plans to introduce legislation next week that would require the Pentagon to lay the groundwork for an eventual military strike against Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and EMP capability.

“An EMP attack on America would send us back to the horse and buggy era — without the horse and buggy,” he told the Claremont Institute conference on Saturday. “If you’re a terrorist, this is your ultimate goal, your ultimate asymmetric weapon.”

Noting Iran’s recent sea-launched and mid-flight warhead detonation tests, Rep. Franks concluded, “They could do it — either directly or anonymously by putting some freighter out there on the ocean.”

The only possible deterrent against Iran is the prospect of failure, Dr. Graham and other experts agreed. And the only way the United States could credibly threaten an Iranian missile strike would be to deploy effective national missile defenses.

“It’s well known that people don’t go on a diet until they’ve had a heart attack,” said Claremont Institute president Brian T. Kennedy. “And we as a nation are having a heart attack” when it comes to the threat of an EMP attack from Iran.

“As of today, we have no defense against such an attack. We need space-based missile defenses to protect against an EMP attack,” he told Newsmax.

Rep. Franks said he remains surprised at how partisan the subject of space-based missile defenses remain. “Nuclear missiles don’t discriminate on party lines when they land,” he said.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, a long-standing champion of missile defense, told the Claremont conference on Friday that Sen. Obama has opposed missile defense tooth and nail and as president would cut funding for these programs dramatically.

“Senator Obama has been quoted as saying, ‘I don’t agree with a missile defense system,’ and that we can cut $10 billion of the research out — never mind, as I say, that the entire budget is $9.6 billion, or $9.3 billion,” Kyl said.

Like Franks, Kyl believes that the only way to eventually deter Iran from launching an EMP attack on the United States is to deploy robust missile defense systems, including space-based interceptors.

The United States “needs a missile defense that is so strong, in all the different phases we need to defend against . . . that countries will decide it’s not worth coming up against us,” Kyl said.

“That’s one of the things that defeated the Soviet Union. That’s one of the ways we can deal with these rogue states . . . and also the way that we can keep countries that are not enemies today, but are potential enemies, from developing capabilities to challenge us. “

© 2008 Newsmax.

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART TWELVE

2008-06-08T12:25:00.002-05:00

Christians Accused Of Hate Crime

by Chad Groening - 6/5/2008 10:00:00 AM

One of the nation's leading Islamic critics says he is not surprised that two Christian evangelists were recently threatened with arrest for committing the "hate crime" of handing out gospel tracts in a predominately Muslim area of Birmingham, England.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, are both American but have lived in the United Kingdom for many years. They have launched legal action against the West Midlands Police, claiming an officer infringed on their right to profess their religion.

In February, the two men say they were told by a police community support officer that they were in a Muslim area and were, therefore, not allowed to spread their Christian message. They also were told they were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam. The ministers also say the officer told them, "You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned."

Robert Spencer is the Director of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He believes this was a de facto imposition of Islamic law in Britain.

"Obviously English law has no restrictions on Christian evangelization or Christian proselytization of any kind. But Islamic law forbids Christians to proselytize, especially among Muslims. So this is a de facto imposition of Islamic law in Britain," Spencer contends.

Spencer says this is all part of the Islamic supremacy movement which very few westerners really understand. "Islamic supremacism is the impulse to impose Islamic law over non-Muslims. Since we're only concentrating as a society and in terms of law enforcement on terrorism, we are not resisting in any way the non-violent initiatives. And that means they'll just continue to advance," Spencer explains.

As a result, Spencer thinks it is more likely that the two evangelists will be punished and not the police officer.

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART ELEVEN

2008-05-01T13:21:00.008-05:00

Prince William County, Virginia Softens Policy On Immigration

The Washington Post

The Prince William County supervisors abolished a key part of the county’s illegal-immigration policy last night by directing police officers to question criminal suspects about their immigration status only after they have been arrested.

In October, the Board of County Supervisors directed officers to check the legal status of crime suspects, no matter how minor the offense, if they think the person might be in the country unlawfully.

“The basic policy is fundamentally the same. We just changed the way it’s implemented,” Supervisor Martin E. Nohe (R-Coles) said. “We want to give officers discretion in the field to use their judgment about when they ask and when they don’t. This allows them to make their own call.”

He said less-aggressive street enforcement limits the county’s risk of a lawsuit.

Chairman Corey A. Stewart (R-At Large) said the change will not amount to any “appreciable difference in the number of people arrested.”

“Every single person who is arrested will have their immigration status checked,” he said. “Officers will continue to have the discretion to check the status of anyone detained by them, even for minor infractions.”

The board unanimously supported changing course after slashing $3.1 million from its budget to install video cameras in police cars to enforce the county’s illegal-immigration policy. Police said they needed cameras to protect officers from accusations of racial profiling.

The board’s change in the immigration policy came before it considered the county budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The supervisors approved a fiscal 2009 budget of $893 million. That brings the property tax rate to 97 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, amounting to a 5 percent increase in the tax bill of the average homeowner.

The supervisors cut an additional $1.2 million in related police, foster care and protective services for the children of deported illegal immigrants last week. Other cuts included a reduction in proposed fire and rescue staffing.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART FIVE

2008-05-01T13:05:00.006-05:00

CIA Chief Sees Unrest Rising With Population

The Washington Post

Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday.

The population surge could undermine the stability of some of the world’s most fragile states, especially in Africa, while in the West, governments will be forced to grapple with ever larger immigrant communities and deepening divisions over ethnicity and race, Hayden said.

Hayden, speaking at Kansas State University, described the projected 33 percent growth in global population over the next 40 years as one of three significant trends that will alter the security landscape in the current century. By 2050, the number of humans on Earth is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion, he said.

“Most of that growth will occur in countries least able to sustain it, a situation that will likely fuel instability and extremism, both in those countries and beyond,” Hayden said.

With the population of countries such as Niger and Liberia projected to triple in size in 40 years, regional governments will be forced to rapidly find food, shelter and jobs for millions, or deal with restive populations that “could be easily attracted to violence, civil unrest, or extremism,” he said.

European countries, many of which already have large immigrant communities, will see particular growth in their Muslim populations while the number of non-Muslims will shrink as birthrates fall. “Social integration of immigrants will pose a significant challenge to many host nations - again boosting the potential for unrest and extremism,” Hayden said.

The CIA director also predicted a widening gulf between Europe and North America on how to deal with security threats, including terrorism. While U.S. and European officials agree on the urgency of the terrorism threat, there is a fundamental difference - a “transatlantic divide” - over the solution, he said.

While the United States sees the fight against terrorism as a global war, European nations perceive the terrorist threat as a law enforcement problem, he said.

“They tend not to view terrorism as we do, as an overwhelming international challenge. Or if they do, we often differ on what would be effective and appropriate to counter it,” Hayden said. He added that he could not predict “when or if” the two sides could forge a common approach to security.

Free Market Forces At Work?

2008-04-25T08:30:00.010-05:00

Dual-Use Deceptions

April 12, 2008

A French company, Cryostar, pled guilty this week to a plot to smuggle cryogenic pumps from the U.S. into Iran. The pumps were manufactured by a U.S. corporation called Ebara, which pled guilty in 2004, and sent to Cryostar in France, who then changed the labeling and sold them to another French company, which sent them on to Tehran. Originally it was feared that the pumps were destined for Iran’s nuclear weapons program, but our government later learned they were going into a new offshore petrochemical station.

That story could have been much worse, but it’s frightening how many people around the world were in on this scheme and willing to run sensitive technology around our blockade of Iran. Bill Gertz suggests that some of the brass of Ebara’s parent company in Japan knew about the deception as well.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, an American citizen has been charged with running dual use electronic switches–used in nuclear detonators– into Pakistan.

Marisa Sketo was arrested in November nearly four years ago after Cape Town businessman Asher Karni was arrested on the same charge in the US.

It was alleged Sketo had worked with Karni, who pleaded guilty in the US Federal court and who was sentenced to three years in prison.

During Karni’s trial it had emerged he had imported triggered spark gaps, which have medical applications but may also be used to detonate bombs.

He said they were going to be used in a Johannesburg hospital in a machine that helped break down kidney stones but Karni passed the spark gaps on to Pakistan.

According to Sketo’s charge sheet, between June and November 2003, she had “intentionally and unlawfully imported and exported” 66 triggered spark gaps while working for a Green Point company owned by Karni.

This is an ongoing story that doesn’t get much press; the Pakistani businessman who was importing these devices is a fugitive at large. And again, it amazes me the risks these fools take to sell dangerous munitions to untrustworthy regimes.

Lenin is supposed to have said “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”. He may have gotten the “we” wrong – Communism never quite got the job done – but the rope market is going strong.

EURABIA COMETH!

2008-03-03T22:18:00.009-05:00

The Vienna Conference On Euro-Islam

What follows is a translated feature from the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad published January 11, 2008.

It is surprising that the conference about Euro-Islam in Vienna last year has not attracted more attention than it did, as the conference was in fact a Moslem declaration of war on the original European population.

Last year a conference was held in Vienna about the so called Euro-Islam. Here the prominent Moslem delegates formulated a common future vision about Europe under the power of Islam. On that occasion, Mustafa Ceric, the Bosnian grand mufti, described “a future Islamic epoch which, with Moorish Spain and Osmanli South Europe as models, should replace Christianity”.

Among the participants was also the omnipresent professor Tariq Ramadan. He pronounced that the plans about the islamization of Europe ought to be kept a secret to the public.

They also agreed that the first step to be taken was to ensure the rights of Sharia in Europe thus stating “that at least as a start Sharia should be introduced as a parallel legal order into the European countries”. As to the details of Sharia they should be kept away from public discussions as much as possible.

It is surprising that these declarations made at the conference have not called forth much attention with the public. Either such future goals about Islam seem too imaginative to be taken seriously. Or the reality fit so badly with the picture of Islam that prevails in the “superior knowing” European cultural elite in particular, that they choose to repress what is in fact being said.

That goes for the problematic professor Tariq Ramadan, too, whose declarations were the most troublesome. He declared that his real intentions about Euro-Islam must be kept a secret to the public. What a strange hard-boiled declaration at a meeting which he must know will be reported by the press. Does he just calculate quite cynically on the general repression mechanism of the “unbelievers”?

Although a lot of heavy criticism about Tariq Ramadan and his version of Euro-Islam have been made public it has only had little effect on his reputation as a modern, moderate, European Moslem who seriously works for a peaceful integration of Moslems in the Western world. Tariq Ramadan is still a dear guest who is often invited to official conferences all over Europe, especially in Scandinavia where, among other things, he is being consulted as an expert in measures to be taken as to problems of the radicalization of Moslem youth, and he is very much respected among young, well educated, Danish Moslems.

It should be mentioned in particular that Tariq Ramadan has influence on the organization “Critical Moslems” whose leader is Sherin Khankan, and “Moslems in Dialogue” with prominent members such as Mona Sheikh 1, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid 2 and Abdul Wahid Pedersen 3.

Actually, it is not permitted Moslems to live in a country of the unbelievers. Only if they declare their belief in Allah and Mohammed in public it can be allowed. That means in order to act as missionaries. This is done first and foremost by making Islamic confessions at the same time rendering themselves visible in the public room. Tariq Ramadan also suggests that instead of the name “The House of War”, which is traditionally the name of the areas reigned by the “unbelievers”, it must now be called “The House of Confession”. He thinks that this name indicates that there is a mission going on, and not a real war. Tariq Ramadan’s method shows a certain difference from that of militant Islamism, but the goal is quite the same. Both parties want Europe under the power of Islam. Tariq Ramadan is against the use of violence in Europe because it may spoil the chances to obtain Euro- Islam in the end. However, Tariq Ramadan?s utterances as to islamization by violence are very ambiguous indeed.

Qaradawi is one of the most influential Sunni Moslem savants in the Middle East who has been attached for many years to the fanatical organization The Moslem Brotherhood. This was founded by Tariq Ramadan’s grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, in 1928 in Egypt. Add to this, that he is a prominent member of the European Council of Fatwa and Science which is trying to play a powerful role as head council for European Moslems. Qaradawi has said that the goal of Islam is to conquer Europe as well as the USA by way of missions, propaganda, and get influence by way of pressure groups.

It is said that Qaradawi has made crucial finger prints on a paper called “The Project”, dated 1982, which outlines a long, detailed schedule (over a period of 100 years) for the infiltration and final conquer of Europe and the USA. This schedule concurs precisely with the declarations made at the conference in Vienna last spring.

The paper was found when a luxury home in Switzerland was searched in November 2001. Its owner was Youssef Nada, a friend of the Ramadan family for many years, international manager of the Moslem Brotherhood, and managing director of the Al-Taqwa-bank in Lugano which, as it seems, has been financing Islamic terrorism such as al-Qaeda and Hamas.

According to Tariq Ramadan he missionary task will give back Moslems in Europe their self-esteem, dignity, and sense of life which so many Moslems do not have. Moslems must come out of their position of self- defence and jump into the public stage as active citizens letting their Moslem voices sound in the national parliaments claiming justice. When Tariq Ramadan uses the word ?justice? it must be noticed that he means Islamic justice, i.e. Sharia. This is the law of Allah which is ruling legal matters, as well as religious and social matters. Also “The Project” encourages Moslems to participate as active citizens as one of their crucial strategies of infiltration.

Tariq Ramadan’s encouragement to active citizenship, confession (as missionaries), and political combat for more “Moslem justice” has been very important to many young Danish Moslems who promenade the streets with eagerness these years showing their religious affiliation to the public.

When Asmaa Absol-Hamids insisted on wearing scarf in the Folketinget (Danish Parliament) it was just an Islamic political guinea pig to see how far Islam can go with the Sharia. The scarf is the very radical symbol of the acceptance of the Sharia as a whole, and it is spreading wherever the ideology of the Brotherhood gets devotees. Control of women is completely fundamental to political Islam. In this connection it is interesting to notice with “The Project” that one of the paragraphs of their schedule is to abuse the political left wing in Europe (temporarily) as a first step and as an allied on the way to the islamization of the Western world. Concealment and denial of their true goal are also items clearly mentioned in “The Project”.

The original idea about Euro-Islam, which was first introduced by Bassam Tibi, former professor in Göttingen, was that Islam in Europe should comply with the democratic and cultural European traditions by which they could further a political clash and thus enforce the introduction of Sharia as law of the land. Tariq Ramadan and the islamo- fascistic Brotherhood took up the idea but turned the whole thing up and down with the result that today the adherents of Euro-Islam clearly show their visions about an Islamic religious and political control of Europe.

Imaginative? Certainly, but an imaginative will to power has surprised Europe in her bed before. The new thing is that the vision of a future Islamic conquer is based on migration which in number and size has never been seen before in world history. Actually, the meeting in Vienna last spring was a Moslem declaration of war against the original European populations. When will the responsible, intellectual, and political elite in Europe be able to see the writing on the wall? Maybe the ruin of Europe can still be prevented.

1 Mona Sheikh, member of Hitzb-ut-Tahrir, often interviewed by the press

2 Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, member of Enhedslisten (political left wing party), tried to get into Danish Parliament and created some alarm with the public.

3 Abdul Wahid Pedersen, a Dane who has converted into Islam and has become an important agitator of Islam.

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART TEN

2008-03-03T19:15:00.005-05:00

Can of Worms: Mufti Wants Moratorium on French Law Separating Church and State

From the desk of Tiberge on Fri, 2008-02-01 13:06

The mufti of the Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, has dropped what amounts to a political and religious bomb. He proposes a moratorium on the French law of 1905 separating Church and State, because not enough mosques are being built in France.

Besides his position as mufti, he is the president of the CFCM (French Council of the Muslim Faith), an association officially established in 2003 thanks to the efforts of Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy.

Questioned by Le Monde, Mr. Boubakeur set forth the idea of a “moratorium of 10 to 20 years” on the 1905 law, which forbids all public funding of places of worship, so that Islam can “catch up” on its needs. “The associations that administer houses of worship need to be given air to breathe,” he says.

This has to be one of the most daring statements made yet by a Muslim leader in France. There are at least 1500 mosques and prayer rooms in France, 75 in Paris alone.

Dalil Boubakeur’s proposal to suspend the 1905 law has incensed France’s radical secularists, the advocates of “laïcité,” who see in his words a predictable maneuver, welcomed by the State and Churches alike, for the purpose of restoring the power of religion to all spheres of French life.

Militants of “laïcité” are convinced that Nicolas Sarkozy intends, through modifications to the existing law, to impose his view of the equality of all religions onto the French people, instead of maintaining the strict separation that has been enforced until recently when Islam came into the picture.

The blog Riposte Laïque writes:

"Sarkozy, through his speeches in Rome and then in Ryadh rolled out the red carpet to the Churches, and someone had to go into the breach. This role fell to the freedom-destroying mufti of the Paris mosque, since Islam is the spear-head of this offensive."

Their fear, despite what they say about Islam, is of the return of Christianity, especially Catholicism, to the decision-making process of the government, as the following statements attest:

"Furthermore, in Europe, 20 countries out of 25 are signatories of concordats with the Catholic Church. Now they want all of France to be aligned with those countries."

Riposte Laïque calls for a massive protest, first at the local level, then a march towards Paris. Among the organizations cited as participants in this protest are the Grand Orient of France (Freemasons) and the Ligue de l'Enseignement (League of Teachers).

Sarkozy has (knowingly?) opened a can of worms with his initiatives on religion. But the essential problem remains Islam. The advocates of “laïcité” seem to forget that there can be no separation of Church and State in Islam and that if Islam is going to be given privileges, it automatically means the end of the law of 1905. Sarkozy is banking on the fallacious notion of “equality” of religions and is throwing all religions together in the same arena to find a way of co-existing.

This article reproduced from The Brussels Journal.

America Commits Cultural Suicide

2008-02-18T11:06:00.018-05:00

A Whole New World - Along the U.S.-Mexican border, where hearts and minds and money and culture merge, the Century of the Americas is born.

by Nancy Gibbs for Time

Some places the border is a muddy river, too thin to plow, too thick to drink. Other places it's just a line in the sand. Over the years mapmakers redrew it, wars moved it, nature yanked it all around as the course of the Rio Grande shifted. But what would it take to make it disappear altogether? If today is like any other day, this is what is going to come across the line from Mexico: a million barrels of crude oil, 432 tons of bell peppers, 238,000 light bulbs, 166 Volkswagen Beetles, 16,250 toasters, $51 million worth of auto parts, everything from the little plastic knob on the air conditioner to your cell-phone charger. It all comes in trucks and boxcars and little panel vans, and that's just the stuff that Customs can keep track of. There is also the vast shadow market, not just the cocaine and heroin and freshly laundered money, but cut-price Claritin and steroids and banned bug killers and boots made from the flippers of endangered sea turtles.

And then there are the people, more than 800,000 crisscrossing legally every day, some walking, more driving, not to mention the 4,600 or so who hop the fence and get caught a few minutes or hours later. The ones who make it are on their way to jobs as meat-packers in Iowa and carpetmakers in Georgia and gardeners in Pennsylvania. They want to come here so badly, they will risk the scorpions and the rattlesnakes, the surveillance cameras and underground sensors; they will fold into hidden compartments in the dashboard of a car or in the belly of a tanker truck. They know they can get a job no one else wants, save some money, send some home, maybe find a way to bring their families—because someday, this border may not look anything like what it does now: a barbed-wire paradox, half pried open, half bolted closed.

So how much has to cross a border before it might as well not be there at all? There is no Customs station for customs—for ideas and tastes, stories and songs, values, instincts, attitudes, and none of that stops in El Paso or San Diego anymore. The Old World fades away—salsa is more popular than ketchup; Salma Hayek is bigger than Madonna—and the border is everywhere. One day soon it may seem a little backward not to speak some Spanish, even the hybrid Spanglish of the Southwest: "Como se llama your dog?" Signs appear in the store windows in Garden City, Kans., that say, se habla español, and you can buy extremely fresh mangoes at bodegas all over that town. Dalton, Ga. (pop. 27,900), has three Spanish-language newspapers. Says longtime resident Edwin Mitchell, 77: "We're a border community—1,000 miles away from the border." Already, we are living in a whole new world.

Sometime in the next few years, Mexico will pass Canada as America's top trading partner. Hispanics have overtaken African Americans as the country's largest minority, the swing vote to woo, the sleeping giant to waken. If Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox manage to solve the problems of two countries that need each other but don't completely trust each other, the American Century could give way to the Century of the Americas, and the border might as well have disappeared altogether.

America's 4,000-mile border with Canada is basically defended by a couple of fire trucks, and most Americans think that's about all we need. The southern border is half as long, has the equivalent of an army division patrolling it, and many Americans say it should be buttoned down even tighter. At the beginning of a new century, there may be no country on earth with as much potential as Mexico to destabilize the U.S.—and to preserve its standard of living. No wonder people can't decide how much the border should be a barrier, how much a bridge.

From the moment you set foot in the boomtowns of the Rio Grande Valley, you sense you are watching the gold rush, headlong and free spirited and corrupt and ingenious. Stand on a corner some morning in Laredo, and watch the first of 8,000 trucks a day hauling the global economy north and south, 18-wheelers full of bulldozer claws and baby cribs, all passing through a town that once didn't bother to pave the streets. Now it can't pour concrete fast enough. The banks are open 7 to 7, seven days a week; the pager shops are everywhere. Every road is being widened, the road shoulders littered with pieces of blown-out tires.

Locals say you are not really a borderlander until your windshield has been broken at least once, from all the rocks flying out from under the big rigs. Much of the border is still desperately poor—McAllen, Texas, at the heart of the fourth fastest growing metro area in the U.S., is America's poorest city, the Commerce Department announced last month, with average per-capita income of $13,339 a year. But people on both sides are helping one another do the deals, cut the corners, take a region that was forever left behind and turn it into the New Frontier. The nafta prospectors saw in the opening of the border a chance to make a killing, take factories that would otherwise head to Malaysia and plunk them down right across the border, where the average Mexican worker earns slightly more in a day than an American makes in an hour, and where the highways run all the way to Canada.

That means that both countries are growing more dependent on this relationship every day. Mexicans all across the interior follow the North Star, chasing the jobs. There are now four or five cities the size of Cleveland sitting right next door, and 25 years from now as much as 40% of the entire Mexican population may be living on the border. The region is Mexico's economic engine, a huge commercial classroom where the unskilled workers who were making gauze eye patches in 1980 now make atms and modems and the most popular Sony color TV sold in the U.S.

As for the U.S., we import not just the gizmos and gadgets but also a way of life, thanks to a shadow labor force that lets us eat out once a week because restaurants can hire dishwashers for sub-minimum wage. We depend on the maids and gardeners and carpenters and home-health-care workers whose children will probably become teachers and technicians and surgeons and Senators. If they all put down their tools tomorrow, we wouldn't be arguing about whether we are in a recession.

It's often said that the border is its own country, "Amexica," neither Mexican nor American. "The border is not where the U.S. stops and Mexico begins," says Laredo mayor Betty Flores. "It's where the U.S. blends into Mexico." Both sides regard their sovereign governments as distant and dysfunctional. They are proud of their ability to take care of themselves, solve their problems faster and cheaper than any faraway bureaucrat. The Brownsville fire trucks answer sirens on the other side; in Tijuana, health clinics send shuttle buses every morning to meet people coming over for everything from dentistry to dialysis. The school district in Mission, Texas, among the state's poorest, sends its old furniture over the border to help Mexican schools that are lucky to have roofs, much less desks and chairs. El Paso is redesigning the kilns of Juarez brickmakers to cut the soot from burning old tires; the twin cities have signed more treaties than their national governments can keep track of, much less ratify. "The only way the cities in this region can make it," says Juarez mayor Gustavo Elizondo, "is to forget that a line and a river exist here."

And yet for all the frontier pioneer spirit, local leaders do draw a line: Why should the whole country benefit from the blessings of free trade, if the border region pays the price? It costs border counties $108 million a year in law enforcement and medical expenses associated with illegal crossings, money most of these poor counties can't afford, to enforce immigration policies over which they have no control. Yes, there is a shortage of truck drivers, but there is also a shortage of judges to hear all the drug and smuggling cases. Arizona ambulance companies face bankruptcy because of all the unreimbursed costs of rescuing illegals from the desert. Schools everywhere down here are poor, overcrowded and growing. Truck traffic is good for your business but bad for your health; many border cities routinely fail to meet federal air quality standards. Border agents get sick from standing on the bridges and inhaling diesel exhaust all day.

Good health care has always been scarce here, but the border boom makes it worse: a third of all tuberculosis cases in the U.S. are concentrated in the four border states. Among the hospitals in El Paso, 50% of the patients are on some kind of public assistance, mainly Medicaid. Just about the only patients paying full freight, up front, are rich Mexicans who cross over to see a specialist. "Border towns have a double burden of disease," says Russell Bennett, chief of the U.S.-Mexico Border Health Commission: "those of emerging nations, like diarrhea, as well as [First World] diseases like stress and diabetes."

The poor on both sides are united by a struggle just to survive what most Americans can barely imagine. In the rural El Paso outpost of Revolución, mothers cross into Juarez to buy methyl parathion, a pesticide so lethal it is banned in the U.S.; they sprinkle it around their shanties, and it kills the roaches and tarantulas for a year. But their children play in that dust and dirt, and when they get sick, their parents take them to Juarez doctors, who are cheaper and stay open into the night. If the children die, they are buried across the border; it costs about $150, instead of the $2,000 for an American grave.

Local officials are forever pestering the feds for help: If you don't build another bridge and put more Customs people on the ones we have, how can we solve our pollution problem, with 15-year-old cars idling in lines that stretch for miles? How can you order us to educate any child who appears on our school doorstep but not give us the money to do it? Where are we going to find enough water? The congressional Hispanic caucus wants $1 billion in spending on roads and bridges and Customs officers; El Paso state senator Eliot Shapleigh and other Texas lawmakers have called for a Marshall Plan for the border; El Paso Congressman Sylvestre Reyes wants Bush to appoint a border czar who could cut through the red tape and make things happen.

For the first time in years, maybe ever, both the U.S. and Mexico have leaders who understand this region, know that in some ways their hemisphere's economic future may depend on whether they can fix what is broken here. Bush met with Fox three times in his first 100 days, blowing away the old once-a-year tradition. Fox dreams of a day when the border is open, and his countrymen no longer flee to survive. As Fox told Ernesto Ruffo, his top aide on the region, "Put holes in the border."

But that's not going to happen until Mexico goes straight, cleans up its justice and banking systems. Even some American borderlanders who cheer integration in public go off the record to talk about what's wrong, admit that they rarely visit the other side or whisper quietly that they haven't felt the same about the place since a friend's car was hijacked a few years ago, and they never saw him again. You can sense the same mysterious half silence no matter where you go; Mexicans call it Article No. 20, as in, which of the $20 is for me? Police and Customs people pay for their government jobs so they can get in on the mordida, the payoff system. Midwives in Brownsville, Texas, sold thousands of birth certificates to be used as proof of U.S. citizenship. The Arellano Felíx brothers, the Tijuana drug kingpins known for torturing, carving up and roasting their rivals, are paying $4 million a month in bribes in Baja California alone, just as the cost of doing business. The $4 million reward for their capture is one of the highest the U.S. has ever offered, and something of a bad joke under the circumstances. There hasn't been a single nibble in four years. What good is the money if you're dead?

And as lucrative as the drug-smuggling business is, the people-smuggling cartels are prospering as well. The more the U.S. cracks down on illegal immigration, the more expensive crossing becomes. The border patrol has a mission impossible: no matter how many surveillance cameras and motion detectors it installs, still the immigrants come. It's harder to cross and easier to die trying. In some ways it's the lucky ones, say the border agents, who get caught. "Everything out here will either bite you, burn you or arrest you," says the Rev. Robin Hoover, of the First Christian Church in Tucson, Ariz. The Mexican government is considering handing out survival kits, complete with snake-bite antidotes and rehydration tablets, for people intending to set out across the desert—a plan U.S. officials think amounts to an official blessing for breaking American law.

Up and down the border, everyone skirts the fence in his own way. A professor in south Texas says he pays someone $50 a month to smuggle his mom over in a boat for Sunday dinners. He doesn't worry, though, because a federal agent down the street does the same for his housekeeper. "Trying to stop this migration is like trying to stop a wave with a Dixie cup," says Raul Berrios, whose wife Karen runs the popular Renaissance Cafe in Bisbee, Ariz. "It's going to be impossible." There is a whisper network in Bisbee, of codes and messages telling weary crossers where they can stay, safely hidden from the border patrol.

Sometimes nature lends a hand. Highway 4 through Brownsville ends with a stop sign that needs to be taken seriously. The asphalt turns into beach and leads straight into the sea. But turn right, and you can drive down the beach like the old days at Daytona, on fine, hard-packed sand, hugging the Gulf of Mexico. It's a place to appreciate a pristine view: no condos, no concession stands, no concessions at all to anything except the fact that the border begins where the Rio Grande pours into the sea, and so it has to be guarded carefully.

For the first time in 500 years, the river is so low that it just dries up altogether about 50 ft. from its destination and turns into a salt flat. Two alien weeds, hydrilla and hyacinth—border officials don't know how they got there—are growing so fast they have blocked the flow of the river. Fighting them would require approval from both sides, which is practically impossible to get. And so here, all that is left of the border are four metal stakes in the sand, tied with orange ribbons whipping in the gulf breeze.The border patrol has had to make a little sand berm to keep the smugglers from just driving across. The Mexicans, in their window-darkened Pontiacs, drive right up to the very sticks themselves, and the border patrolmen in their Suburbans get out their binoculars, look across the beach and wait to be relieved at midnight.

Just at the moment when, all up and down the river, cities are arguing about where and whether to build more bridges, haggling over diplomatic papers and environmental clearances and political payoffs, all in order to build another truck bridge over a creek—here, nature just went ahead and did it, all on its own.

Reported by Hilary Hylton - Laredo, Tim Padgett - El Paso, Julie Rawe - New York, Elaine Rivera - Nogales and Cathy Booth Thomas - McAllen

A Hispanic nightclub owner in Reno, Nevada flies his true colors, showing where his real loyalties lie ! Viva La Reconquista!

[So-called 'Open Borders' have become all the buzz among the intellectual and political elite in our country. And it is the mantra of politicians on both sides of the aisle. Globalists want it because the endless supply of cheap labor fuels skyrocketing profit margins beyond their wildest speculative dreams. Liberals want it because it dovetails with their utopian fantasies of a borderless world without injustice and poverty in which everyone sits around holding hands and singing...shiny happy people indeed. But those of us with minds which are a bit more earth bound can see it for what it truly is - the death knell of Western civilization. Apparently, the elite in the US have not learned from the European experience - DEMOGRAPHY MATTERS! No matter how many photo ops they may appear in, Vincente Fox and Felipe Calderón are NOT friends of America or our way-of-life. Their country is in shambles, with terrorists, thugs and drug cartels operating with impunity and the best law enforcement money can buy. Their economy is a wreck, with runaway inflation and squalid standards of living. And they are busily exporting that same chaos here. Witness the immigrant fueled crime wave in SoCal and other southwestern states. The crisis in social services brought on by the flood of illegals cashing in on the freebies. The growing boldness of Hispanic street gangs who rule inner urban streets. The overall disregard for the rule of law so prevalent in our teeming ethnic ghettos. It may be too late for Brussels or Paris, but I truly hope and pray that the grassroots in America (hint: that means you dear reader) will wake up, realize what's happening, and take assertive action. Now is the time for "we the people" to exercise our prerogative, take our country back from The Professional Political Class, and secure the borders. Protect our borders to preserve our culture! Otherwise, watch closely what is happening in the American southwest. The Reconquista will be televised. Amexica is the wave of the future. - Martel]

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

2007-08-24T21:45:00.000-05:00

CAIR Goes Back To School
by Patrick Poole

As children all over the country prepare for the annual American rite of the beginning of school, hundreds of school children and their parents from the Columbus, Ohio Somali refugee community may be getting far less than they bargained for, as well as Ohio taxpayers.

These children will be attending two publicly-funded K-8 charter schools, International Academy of Columbus and Westside Academy, schools are sponsored under an Ohio Department of Education contract with the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation and operated by a politically-connected group of Islamic extremists associated with both the national and Ohio chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). At least one of the taxpayer-financed schools has been used during the last school year to play host to an anti-Israel CAIR-OH “teach-in”.

Even though many of the new students are learning English as a new language, an essential tool for helping them integrate into their new community, the schools instead focuses on Arabic as part of their core curriculum. As a result, standardized test scores for the schools are well below state standards; and yet Ohio educrats continue to give the project new life, pumping millions of taxpayer dollars into each school every year to keep the schools open and renewing their contracts. One board member for both schools has even co-authored an article advocating an educational policy of “selected acculturation” and “accommodation without assimilation” to “encourage Somali youth to develop an adversarial identity that will put them at odds with mainstream society” – thus trapping the students in a cycle of perpetual cultural alienation and isolation.

The student population of both schools is overwhelmingly drawn from the Central Ohio Somali community, which itself is comprised of refugees who fled their war-torn country to escape from the warlords and clan warfare that have torn the country apart since 1991. Sadly, these refugees have arrived only to find the warlords and clan leaders in charge of the very public and private institutions here in the US intended to help them resettle and adjust to life in their new home.

One of the new educational warlords these unsuspecting Somali families are encountering is Ahmad Al-Akhras, CAIR national vice chairman, who is listed as one of the incorporators of both charter schools, and who is listed as the treasurer of International Academy. Joining him on the board of both schools is Abukar Arman, the Somali terror apologist who was recently forced to resign from the Central Ohio Homeland Security oversight board following my FrontPage exposé regarding his published statements of support for terrorist organizations and individuals (see, “Hometown Jihad: The Somali Terror Apologist Next Door” and “Terror Sympathizer Tossed from Homeland Security Oversight Panel”). Arman identifies himself as the board president of Westside Academy and March 2005 press release announcing his appointment to a government board lists him as “building director” of International Academy.

Because the number of Somali refugees attending these two schools, both qualify for tens of thousands of dollars in federal grants under Title III. According to the US Department of Education, the Ohio Title III Director just happens to be none other than Al-Akhras and Abukar Arman business partner, Abdinur Mohamud, who also is listed as director of the Ohio Department of Education’s Lau Resource Center. (More on Mr. Mohamud’s financial ties to this operation and his partnership with Al-Akhras and Arman below.)

The other board members of both institutions are a collection of CAIR-OH officials and board members, and business partners and associates of Al-Akhras, many of whom have served or presently serve on the board of Sunrise Academy, the only full-time Islamic school in the area. In fact, the website for Westside Academy features a link to the Islamic school, even though the charter school claims to be non-sectarian. Sunrise Academy has also been the subject of a recent FrontPage exposé, “Hometown Jihad: The School Gym that Terror Built”, following their multiple fundraising events featuring Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and an advocate of replacing the US Constitution with shari’a law.

Ahmad Al-Akhras is one of Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman’s closest advisors, and Coleman has rewarded his political partner by appointing him to the city’s Community Relations Commission, along with several other city government boards and working groups. This despite the public support that Al-Akhras has given to two convicted Columbus-area Al-Qaeda operatives, another who was recently indicted for supporting terrorist activity, and his self-described longtime friendship with convicted and deported Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative, Fawaz Damra, who received considerable support from CAIR-OH and the national organization prior to his deportation (see, “Hometown Jihad: Getting By with a Little Help From His (Terrorist) Friends”). And in the current HAMAS/Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial in Dallas, where CAIR has been named unindicted co-conspirator, testimony by a FBI agent has placed two close associates of Al-Akhras, CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Nihad Awad, at a critical 1993 HAMAS strategy meeting in Philadelphia designed to support the terror organization’s efforts to derail the Oslo Peace Accords. Those terrorist ties notwithstanding, Al-Akhras’ extensive political connections and business relationships seem to have paid off in getting the schools approved.

Apart from the operation of the schools by extremists, the poor academic performance of the schools ought to be cause for concern for parents, taxpayers and education officials alike. The recently released Ohio Department of Education 2006-2007 report card for International Academy shows that it meets only 2 out of 19 state indicators for proficiency – 7th grade writing and attendance (report cards are also available for 2005-2006 and 2004-2005). Westside Academy has not had a published report card yet because it has only had one year of operations.

Some additional findings from the most recent International Academy state education report:

* Since International Academy opened in 2003, it has never met the federal Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirement and it has never met more than 2 of the 19 state proficiency indicators.

* While the school’s performance index has crawled up slightly over the past three years, with a score of 72.2, it is still well short of the state goal of 100 out of 120.

* More than half of the students (54.9 percent) are rated as less than proficient.

* This year, in every single grade except the 3rd grade, proficiency in mathematics declined from the previous school year.

* While in the 2005-2006 school year, one-third (33.3 percent) of 5th grade students were rated as proficient in math, those same students dropped to one-quarter (25 percent) proficiency in 6th grade this past school year. This past year’s 5th grade scored only 11.1 percent in math proficiency.

* While 6th grade reading scored an impressive 83.3 percent proficiency in 2005-2006, rating higher than the state standard of 75 percent, those scores dropped precipitously this past year to 37.5 percent. Math scores also dropped in that grade from 38.9 percent in 2005-2006 to 25 percent last year. The 6th grade students who performed above the state standard in reading during 2005-2006, are now back below the state standard in the 7th grade at 64.3 percent.

* Students staying at International Academy for more than three years appear to fall further behind in academic proficiency the longer they remain with the school. According to Ohio Department of Education data, proficiency for students with three years attendance at the school is less than one year in four out of five categories. Even after three years at the school, all proficiency scores are still below state standards.

Even as these students fall further behind their peers academically, the educrats at the Ohio Department of Education continue to rubberstamp new contracts for these schools. Rather than wait for the school to improve at the expense of their children’s education, many parents have instead voted with their feet. Enrollment at International Academy has steadily declined since 2004-2005, when the average daily student enrollment was 227. The number of students dropped to 213 in 2005-2006, only to drop further to 193 during the last 2006-2007 school year. Both schools will reopen after Labor Day.

Ohio educrats are also apparently at ease with both schools taking time every day requiring the students to learn Arabic, which a August 2005 article in the Columbus Dispatch, “Seven New Charter Schools Seek Students, Staff, Buildings”, confirms that the language, which is foreign to virtually every Somali, is part of the schools’ core curriculum. The time spent on this Arabic foreign language instruction could otherwise be spent strengthening the schools’ lagging reading and math instruction; or instead, focusing on English proficiency, something the students use every day.

Leaders of the Somali community might be concerned about the open profiteering by the school’s board members and employees from their enterprise. A 2003 Ohio State Auditor’s report on International Academy noted (p. 17) that the school paid $83,500 to Strategic Education and Economic Development (SEED) for teacher training, curriculum development, financial management and State relations. According to filings with the Ohio Secretary of State, SEED was a trade name for the Consolidated Investment Group, Inc., which had the following incorporators: Ahmad Al-Akhras, Abukar Arman, Abdinur Mohamud (the Ohio Dept of Education Title III Director), and International Academy Principal Mouhamed Tarazi. The state legislature closed that loophole in 2003 preventing charter school developers and board members from profiting from their positions in this manner.

However, a bit of digging demonstrates that the profiteering may not be entirely over. The Franklin County Auditor’s property tax records shows that the building currently occupied by Westside Academy is owned by Unified Investment Corp., which lists its place of business as Mouhamed Tarazi’s home address and Tarazi is the listed as the business agent. The 2004 Ohio State Auditor’s report notes in addition (p. 22) that a corporation that Tarazi was a partner of, Sali International, was also paid $140,386 by International Academy.

One wonders how the Somali community would receive the news that these gentlemen had profiteered from the very same schools that have academically failed the children it claims to serve.

Extremist politics, rather than education concerns, seems to be the driving factor of the schools. One of the leaders of the two schools admits to creating a program designed to keep students from integrating into the “racist” American mainstream. In a published education article, “Educating Immigrant Youth in the United States”, Abukar Arman and his co-author lay out an educational plan of keeping Somali children from integrating into their new culture, and cite the experience of International Academy as the best example of their recommended “selected acculturation” educational philosophy in practice.

Another indicator of the partisan political and sectarian use of these schools is in an anti-Israel “teach-in” sponsored by CAIR-OH held at International Academy in September 2006, entitled “Palestine 101”. The event was co-sponsored by a number of Marxist and extremist organizations: The Committee for Justice in Palestine, International Socialist Union, World Can’t Wait-Columbus, and Not In Our Name-Columbus. CAIR national official and school treasurer Ahmad Al-Akhras served as one of the panelists.

From all the Ohio Department of Education data currently available for these schools, it is abundantly clear that in academic terms CAIR’s publicly-funded schools are failing students and their families miserably. But the anecdotal evidence also indicates that academics takes a back seat to the financial interests, political agendas, and alienating educational philosophies of the board members – all of whom are active with CAIR and other extremist groups whose views depart radically from the moderate and mainstream views of most members of the Columbus Somali community.

This situation is clearly not what Ohio taxpayers and state legislators had in mind when they approved charter schools; rather than improving performance, the data suggests that these schools are mired in chronic failure. All the while, Ohio educrats and the political friends and allies of Ahmad Al-Akhras seem reluctant to intervene in this deplorable situation. Don’t expect the ACLU to intervene, either, as Al-Akhras sits on their state board as well.

Ohio taxpayers, too, should be aware of this situation as they pour millions into the two existing schools, and while Ahmad Al-Akhras and his fellow educational warlords have incorporated yet another school, Eastside Academy, in the hopes of expanding their enterprise. Evidence suggests that the Somali refugee community would be better served by having their children in public schools, where they would be able to get the academic attention and assistance they needed to academically compete with their peers, instead of being pawns in service to an Islamic extremist cultural agenda. And while some of the families have understandably walked away from the program, all of the students surely deserve better.

Patrick Poole is an author and public policy researcher. He also maintains a blog, "Existential Space," where he writes on a number of cultural, political and religious issues. This article is posted courtesy of FrontPage Magazine.

[Once again, the fine folks over at FrontPage Magazine "dig the dirt" and expose the myriad of complex political machinations which are at work just behind the curtain allowing our enemies to operate with impunity underneath our collective noses. The connections between the leftists and the jihadists are extensive, and no one has done a better job of documenting and exposing them than Mr. Horowitz and company. Long may they blog! - Martel]

I KNOW MICKEY...AND YOU'RE NO MICKEY

2007-05-19T10:30:00.001-05:00

As Hamas Grooms Next Generation Of Killers, The World Must Wake Up And Stop Pacifying Foes

by Michael Goodwin

You hear it all the time: If only the Israelis and Palestinians would make peace, the rest of the world would follow. The next time you hear it, remember that the Palestinian version of Mickey Mouse preaches death to Jews and Americans.

There can be no peace with a culture like that.

The article about Farfur, the clone of Walt Disney's gentle Mickey, in the New York Daily News on Tuesday was a shock to many New Yorkers. He sings and dances on Hamas' children's TV show "Tomorrow's Pioneers" about the need to eat right, pray — and kill. That Hamas comprises most of the Palestinian government shows Farfur is no rogue character — it is sponsored by the very people Palestinians elected to represent them.

Farfur Video 1

Farfur Video 2

To those who monitor the sewage spewing from Arab media, the only shock about the report is that many Americans don't grasp the depth of depravity. Television, newspapers and the Internet daily urge violence in the name of Islam. Cartoons and music videos are used to brainwash children.

The goal, openly stated, is to enlist children in the "culture of martyrdom" — to die fighting and killing the enemies of Islam. Suicide bombers are glorified and promised everlasting paradise. Grade-school textbooks fill children with dreams of a glorious death.

There is nothing remotely like it in our culture. Violence, especially ethnic, racial and religious violence, is universally condemned and carries extra punishment in America and much of the West. Even nasty speech is a no-no. Don Imus got booted to the curb even though he apologized for his overtly racist and sexist barbs. In most Mideast countries, Imus would be called a Western lackey, a sympathizer with the infidels, if that's the best he could come up with.

Organizations such as the Middle East Media Research Institute (www.memri.org) and Palestinian Media Watch (www.pmw.org.il) have been warning for years about the twisted nature of public discourse in Arab and Muslim countries. Their Web sites, complete with videos and translations of material from Muslim media, offer chilling examples of the daily diet of the death culture. I have visited those sites and it is absolutely shocking to see how Arab and Iranian mainstream media promote violence and anti-Semitism.

The sheer volume of this sickening garbage makes it clear that we are a long way from peace. The images, which shift easily from cartoon violence to grisly videos of the real thing in Iraq and elsewhere, illustrate the linkage. While we in the West endlessly study and debate the impact of video games on children's behavior, the merchants of hate in the Mideast have no doubt. They know that using violent images is a surefire way to raise a new generation of madmen.

What can we do about it? Maybe nothing — except be smart. We can start by dropping any pretense that we are not at war, or that Islamic terror will stop if only we get out of Iraq. The problem preceded our invasion, and it will last beyond the resolution. Whatever we do in Iraq, we shouldn't fool ourselves about the nature of the enemy or its goals.

We also have to accept that it is wrong and hypocritical to blame Israel for Arab violence and to insist that the solution is for Israel to make concessions to pacify its enemies. Israel's first duty is to protect itself. If Palestinians want peace, they have to abide by the basic rules of civilization. Playing Mickey Mouse games with violence isn't one of them.

[I often tell people in my lectures as well as in private conversation that Westerners commonly make the deadly mistake of projecting their own values upon other cultures, assuming that all men everywhere think like we do and are, at heart, just like us. This is a myth which must be exposed for what it is...naive at best and dangerous at worst. As I have often said, this is a clash of worldviews. Worldviews which are diametrically opposed to one another and cannot peacefully co-exist. Except of course in the blithe fantasy world of Hollyweird. Make no mistake about it, this is war. And the sooner the West rouses from it's slumber and wipes the sleep from it's eyes the better. However, in the West, both the media and the academy continue to perpetuate the lie of worldwide universal brotherhood. Peace and harmony are just a Coke and a smile away. However, this is a foolish Madison Square pipe dream masquerading as foreign policy. In this era when men are saying "peace peace when there is no peace", it falls to us in The Counter Jihad to sound the alarm and, if necessary, the call to arms. - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART NINE

2007-05-19T09:56:00.000-05:00

The Islamic States of America?
by Daniel Pipes

The hardest thing for Westerners to understand is not that a war with militant Islam is underway but that the nature of the enemy's ultimate goal. That goal is to apply the Islamic law (the Shari‘a) globally. In U.S. terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur'an.

This aspiration is so remote and far-fetched to many non-Muslims, it elicits more guffaws than apprehension. Of course, that used to be the same reaction in Europe, and now it's become widely accepted that, in Bernard Lewis' words, "Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century."

Because of the American skepticism about Islamist goals, I postponed publishing an article on this subject until immediately after 9/11, when I expected receptivity to the subject would be greater. I argued there that

The Muslim population in this country is not like any other group, for it includes within it a substantial body of people—many times more numerous than the agents of Osama bin Ladin—who share with the suicide hijackers a hatred of the United States and the desire, ultimately, to transform it into a nation living under the strictures of militant Islam.

The receptivity indeed was greater, but still the idea of an Islamist takeover remains unrecognized in establishment circles – the U.S. government, the old media, the universities, the mainline churches.

Therefore, reading "A rare look at secretive Brotherhood in America," in the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 19 caused me to startle. It's a long analysis that draws on an exclusive interview with Ahmed Elkadi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader in the United States during 1984-94, plus other interviews and documentation. In it, the authors (Noreen S. Ahmed-Ullah, Sam Roe, and Laurie Cohen) warily but emphatically acknowledge the Islamists' goal of turning the United States into an Islamic state.

Over the last 40 years, small groups of devout Muslim men have gathered in homes in U.S. cities to pray, memorize the Koran and discuss events of the day. But they also addressed their ultimate goal, one so controversial that it is a key reason they have operated in secrecy: to create Muslim states overseas and, they hope, someday in America as well. …

Brotherhood members emphasize that they follow the laws of the nations in which they operate. They stress that they do not believe in overthrowing the U.S. government, but rather that they want as many people as possible to convert to Islam so that one day—perhaps generations from now—a majority of Americans will support a society governed by Islamic law.

This Brotherhood approach is in keeping with my observation that the greater Islamist threat to the West is not violence – flattening buildings, bombing railroad stations and nightclubs, seizing theaters and schools – but the peaceful, legal growth of power through education, the law, the media, and the political system.

The Tribune article explains how, when recruiting new members, the organization does not reveal its identity but invites candidates to small prayer meetings where the prayer leaders focus on the primary goal of the Brotherhood, namely "setting up the rule of God upon the Earth" (i.e., achieving Islamic hegemony). Elkadi describes the organization's strategic, long-term approach: "First you change the person, then the family, then the community, then the nation."

His wife Iman is no less explicit; all who are associated with the Brotherhood, she says, have the same goal, which is "to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state."

In addition to Elkadi, the article features information from Mustafa Saied (about whose Muslim Brotherhood experiences the Wall Street Journal devoted a feature story in December 2003, without mentioning the organization's Islamist goals). Saied, the Tribune informs us, says

he found out that the U.S. Brotherhood had a plan for achieving Islamic rule in America: It would convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office. "They're very smart. Everyone else is gullible," Saied says. "If the Brotherhood puts up somebody for an election, Muslims would vote for him not knowing he was with the Brotherhood."

Citing documents and interviews, the Tribune team notes that the secretive Brotherhood, in an effort to acquire more influence, went above ground in Illinois in 1993, incorporating itself as the Muslim American Society. The MAS, headquartered in Alexandria, Va. and claiming 53 chapters across the United States engages in a number of activities. These include summer camps, a large annual conference, websites, and the Islamic American University, a mainly correspondence school in suburban Detroit that trains teachers and imams.

Of course, the MAS denies any intent to take over the country. One of its top officials, Shaker Elsayed, insists that

MAS does not believe in creating an Islamic state in America but supports the establishment of Islamic governments in Muslim lands. The group's goal in the United States, he says, "is to serve and develop the Muslim community and help Muslims to be the best citizens they can be of this country." That includes preserving the Muslim identity, particularly among youths.

Notwithstanding this denial, the Tribune finds MAS goals to be clear enough:

Part of the Chicago chapter's Web site is devoted to teens. It includes reading materials that say Muslims have a duty to help form Islamic governments worldwide and should be prepared to take up arms to do so. One passage states that "until the nations of the world have functionally Islamic governments, every individual who is careless or lazy in working for Islam is sinful." Another one says that Western secularism and materialism are evil and that Muslims should "pursue this evil force to its own lands" and "invade its Western heartland."

In suburban Rosemont, Ill., several thousand people attended MAS' annual conference in 2002 at the village's convention center. One speaker said, "We may all feel emotionally attached to the goal of an Islamic state" in America, but it would have to wait because of the modest Muslim population. "We mustn't cross hurdles we can't jump yet."

These revelations are particularly striking, coming as they do just days after a Washington Post article titled "In Search Of Friends Among The Foes," which reports how some U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials believe the Muslim Brotherhood's influence "offers an opportunity for political engagement that could help isolate violent jihadists." Graham Fuller is quoted saying that "It is the preeminent movement in the Muslim world. It's something we can work with." Demonizing the Brotherhood, he warns, "would be foolhardy in the extreme." Other analysts, such as Reuel Gerecht, Edward Djerejian, and Leslie Campbell, are quoted as being in agreement with this outlook.

But it is a deeply wrong and dangerous approach. Even if the Muslim Brotherhood is not specifically associated with violence in the United States (as it has been in other countries, including Egypt and Syria), it is deeply hostile to the United States and must be treated as one vital component of the enemy's assault force.

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART THREE

2007-02-03T00:36:00.000-05:00

Iran's Secret Plan For Mayhem
by Eli Lake
January 3, 2007

WASHINGTON — Iran is supporting both Sunni and Shiite terrorists in the Iraqi civil war, according to secret Iranian documents captured by Americans in Iraq.

The news that American forces had captured Iranians in Iraq was widely reported last month, but less well known is that the Iranians were carrying documents that offered Americans insight into Iranian activities in Iraq.

An American intelligence official said the new material, which has been authenticated within the intelligence community, confirms "that Iran is working closely with both the Shiite militias and Sunni Jihadist groups." The source was careful to stress that the Iranian plans do not extend to cooperation with Baathist groups fighting the government in Baghdad, and said the documents rather show how the Quds Force — the arm of Iran's revolutionary guard that supports Shiite Hezbollah, Sunni Hamas, and Shiite death squads — is working with individuals affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq and Ansar al-Sunna.

Another American official who has seen the summaries of the reporting affiliated with the arrests said it comprised a "smoking gun." "We found plans for attacks, phone numbers affiliated with Sunni bad guys, a lot of things that filled in the blanks on what these guys are up to," the official said.

One of the documents captured in the raids, according to two American officials and one Iraqi official, is an assessment of the Iraq civil war and new strategy from the Quds Force. According to the Iraqi source, that assessment is the equivalent of " Iran's Iraq Study Group," a reference to the bipartisan American commission that released war strategy recommendations after the November 7 elections. The document concludes, according to these sources, that Iraq's Sunni neighbors will step up their efforts to aid insurgent groups and that it is imperative for Iran to redouble efforts to retain influence with them, as well as with Shiite militias.

Rough translations of the Iranian assessment and strategy, as well as a summary of the intelligence haul, have been widely distributed throughout the policy community and are likely to influence the Iraq speech President Bush is expected to deliver in the coming days regarding the way forward for the war, according to two Bush administration officials.

The news that Iran's elite Quds Force would be in contact, and clandestinely cooperating, with Sunni Jihadists who attacked the Golden Mosque in Samarra (one of the holiest shrines in Shiism) on February 22, could shake the alliance Iraq's ruling Shiites have forged in recent years with Tehran. Many Iraq analysts believe the bombing vaulted Iraq into the current stage of its civil war.

The top Quds Force commander — known as Chizari, according to a December 30 story in the Washington Post — was captured inside a compound belonging to Abdul Aziz Hakim, the Shiite leader President Bush last month pressed to help forge a new ruling coalition that excludes a firebrand Shiite cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr.

According to one Iraqi official, the two Quds commanders were in Iraq at the behest of the Iraqi government, which had requested more senior Iranian points of contact when the government complained about Shiite death squad activity. The negotiations were part of an Iraqi effort to establish new rules of the road between Baghdad and Tehran. This arrangement was ironed out by Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, when he was in Tehran at the end of November.

While Iran has openly supported Iraqi Shiite militias involved in attacks on American soldiers, the Quds Force connection to Sunni insurgents has been murkier.

In 2003, coalition forces captured a playbook outlining Iranian intentions to support insurgents of both stripes, but its authenticity was disputed.

American intelligence reports have suggested that export/import operations run by Sunni terrorists in Fallujah in 2004 received goods from the revolutionary guard.

"We have seen bits and piece of things before, but it was highly compartmentalized suggesting the Iranian link to Sunni groups," a military official said.

A former Iran analyst for the Pentagon who also worked as an adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority, Michael Rubin, said yesterday: "There has been lots of information suggesting that Iran has not limited its outreach just to the Shiites, but this has been disputed."

He added, "When documents like this are found, usually intelligence officials may confirm their authenticity but argue they prove nothing because they do not reflect a decision to operationalize things."

A former State Department senior analyst on Iraq and Iran who left government service in 2005, Wayne White, said he did not think it was likely the Quds Force was supporting Sunni terrorists who were targeting Shiite political leaders and civilians, but stressed he did not know.

"I have no doubt whatsoever that al-Quds forces are on the ground and active in Iraq," he said. "That's about it. I saw evidence that Moqtada al Sadr was in contact with Sunni Arab insurgents in western Iraq, but I never saw evidence of Iran in that loop."

Mr. White added, "One problem that we all have is that people consistently conduct analysis assuming that the actor is going to act predictably or rationally based on their overall mindset or ideology. Sometimes people don't.

"One example of a mindset that may hinder analysis of Iranian involvement is the belief that Iran would never have any dealings with militant Sunni Arabs. But they allowed hundreds of Al Qaeda operatives to escape from Afghanistan across their territory in 2002," he said.

THE GLOBALIST AGENDA - PART TWO

2007-01-29T16:53:00.000-05:00

On The Re-Making Of The West
by Fjordman

As I’ve said before, Political Correctness was pioneered by feminists, including the totalitarian changing of the language to make it more gender-neutral and less “oppressive.” Those who successfully manage to enforce their definition of words win the ideological contest.

There was an interesting book called The New Totalitarians written by British historian Roland Huntford about Sweden in the early 1970s. It is especially noteworthy how the Socialist government deliberately broke down the nuclear family. This was presented as liberation from the oppression of women, but was in reality about tearing down the religious fabric of society and eliminating the Church and Judeo-Christian thinking as ideological competitors.

It was also about increasing state control over all citizens by breaking down a rival institution that obstructed the uninhibited state indoctrination of children. Besides, the state could foment animosity between men and women and step in as an arbitrator, thus further enhancing its powers. During the past few elections in Sweden, there has been virtually no debate about mass immigration, but a passionate debate about “gender equality” in which almost all contestants call themselves feminists, and only debate which ways to implement absolute equality between the sexes.

Mr. Huntford demonstrated how, when it was decided that a woman’s place was not at home but out at work, there was a rapid change in the language. Page 301:

“The customary Swedish for housewife is husmor, which is honourable; it was replaced by the neologism hemmafru, literally ‘the-wife-who-stays-at-home’, which is derogatory. Within a few months, the mass media were able to kill the old and substitute the new term. By the end of 1969, it was almost impossible in everyday conversation to mention the state of housewife without appearing to condemn or to sneer. Swedish had been changed under the eyes and ears of the Swedes. Husmor had been discredited; the only way out was to use hemmafru ironically. Connected with this semantic shift, there was a change in feeling. Women who, a year or so before, had been satisfied, and possibly proud, to stay at home, began to feel the pressure to go out to work. The substitution of one word for the other had been accompanied by insistent propaganda in the mass media, so that it was as if a resolute conditioning campaign had been carried out. Very few were able to recognize the indoctrination in the linguistic manipulation; in the real sense of the word, the population had been brain-washed.”

For my own part, I find it interesting that the same people who, in the 60s and 70s, broke up the traditional family structure in Western countries and warned people against the dangers of overpopulation, telling people to lower their birth rates, come back a few years later and say that we have to import millions of immigrants because we have such low birth rates.

Author Daniel Horowitz has written about the highly influential American feminist Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book “The Feminine Mystique” is widely seen as marking the beginning of the Second Wave of feminism. Horowitz documents how Friedan had for decades before this been a hardened Marxist. It is revealing that she tried to hide her background, presenting herself only as an average suburban housewife. In the early drafts, Friedan quoted Friedrich Engels, but these quotations were cut out before the book was published. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels had called for the abolition of family. Friedan denounced the American suburban family household as “a comfortable concentration camp.”

Roland Huntford noticed that the teaching of history was severely curtailed in Swedish schools because it was “impractical.” Religion, and Christianity in particular, was presented as superstition designed to fool the masses, which had been liberated from this ancient oppression by the Labor movement.

As he noted, “Scrapping historical knowledge deprives pupils of the instrument for criticizing society here and now. And perhaps that is the intended effect.” Journalist Christopher Hitchens later wrote that “For true blissed-out and vacant servitude, though, you need an otherwise sophisticated society where no serious history is taught.”

“The State,” in the words of Mr Ingvar Carlsson, then Minister of Education, “is concerned with morality from a desire to change society.” Mr. Carlsson, who was later Swedish prime minister until 1996, also stated on one occasion that “School is the spearhead of Socialism.”

According to Huntford, the word “freedom” was almost entirely confined to the sexual field in Sweden:

“The Swedish government has taken what it is pleased to call ‘the sexual revolution’ under its wing. Children are impressed at school that sexual emancipation is their birthright, and this is done in such a way as to suggest that the State is offering them their liberty from old-fashioned restrictions.”

He describes a meeting with Dr Gösta Rodhe, the head of the department of sexual education in the Directorate of Schools. She stated: “You see, since there’s a lack of tension in Swedish politics, younger people have got to find release and excitement in sexual tension instead.”

Herbert Marcuse, one of the major theorists of the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxism, identified faith-based morality as the chief obstacle to a Socialist society. In his 1955 book Eros and Civilization, he argued for freeing sex from any restraints. He made a huge impact in the 1960s. Although he may not have coined the term “Make love, not war,” he undoubtedly endorsed it.

Mr. Huntford ended his book with a warning that this system of soft-totalitarianism could be exported to other countries. This was in the early 1970s, and he has been proven right since:

“The Swedes have demonstrated how present techniques can be applied in ideal conditions. Sweden is a control experiment on an isolated and sterilized subject. Pioneers in the new totalitarianism, the Swedes are a warning of what probably lies in store for the rest of us, unless we take care to resist control and centralization, and unless we remember that politics are not to be delegated, but are the concern of the individual. The new totalitarians, dealing in persuasion and manipulation, must be more efficient than the old, who depended upon force.”

“As political and economic freedom diminishes” said Aldous Huxley’s in Brave New World, “sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase.” This fits perfectly with Huntford’s description. The state strips away your personal, economic and political freedom, yet grants you sexual freedom in return, boldly hailing itself as your liberator.

Language is underestimated as a source of power. Those who control the language and the school curriculum control society.

George Orwell said: “If freedom of speech means anything at all, it is the freedom to say things that people do not want to hear.” In his book 1984, a totalitarian Party rules much of Europe. Their three slogans, on display everywhere, are: War is peace, Freedom is slavery and Ignorance is strength. It’s the ultimate glossocracy, even creating an entirely new language called Newspeak:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”

I love Orwell’s book, but frankly, it fits an openly totalitarian society more than it does Western nations. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, with its hedonistic society where people derive pleasure from promiscuous sex and drugs, is closer to the mark.

[This brilliant analysis of The New World Dis-Order and the agents of chaos who are it's architects is excerpted from the article The Rise Of Glossocracy by Fjordman which was recently posted at Gates Of Vienn a and is reproduced here with full attribution. The fine people at GOV are outstanding fellow laborers in the ongoing battle for the imperiled soul of Western civilization and their site is a virtual repository of vital infomation. - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART EIGHT

2007-01-29T16:16:00.000-05:00

Mexican Illegals Versus American Voters
by Tony Blankley

It's lucky America has over two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary committeemen -- and probably a majority of the Senate -- are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them.

National polling data could not be more emphatic -- and has been so for decades. A Gallup poll (March 27, 2006) finds 80 percent of the public wants federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3, 2006) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses).

Time magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26, 2006) found 74 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, and 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism. Fifty-seven percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.

NBC/Wall St. Journal's poll (March 10-13, 2006) found 59 percent opposing a guest worker proposal. Seventy-one percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.

An IQ Research poll (Mach 10, 2006) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of The White House and Congress.

Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.

I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of."

The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.

But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town).

It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. (I guess ignorance loves company.)

Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and the Washington Post -- Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively -- laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.

Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes:

"Gosh, they're all bad ideas...we'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking; many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate; many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished...[it] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico...The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers...Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits. [Moreover] It's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants. The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force."

For all of Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, 2006, from which this is taken.

Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote:

"Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive...As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came."

Krugman also observed -- citing a leading Harvard study -- "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays -- and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants."

Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals.

Under such circumstances, advocates of guest worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic. When the slandered ones include not only the Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics.

The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph. So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators, and hasten your political demise.

Tony Blankley is a nationally syndicated columnist as well as the author of 'The West's Last Chance: Will We Win the Clash of Civilizations?' published by Regnery Publishing.

Copyright 2006 Creators Syndicate

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART THREE

2007-01-29T14:43:00.000-05:00

Scenes From The Global Jihad

Australia: Australia's foremost Muslim cleric triggers an uproar when he likens women who don't wear an Islamic headscarf to "uncovered meat" and blames them for attracting sexual predators. "If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or the park...and the cats come and eat it," says Sheik Taj al-Din Hilali, "whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat? If [the woman] was in her room, in her home, in her headscarf, no problem would have occurred."

Afghanistan: The kidnappers of Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello threaten to murder him unless Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert, is returned to Afghanistan and handed over to an Islamic court. Rahman lives in Italy, which granted him asylum earlier this year, when he faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's sharia law for converting from Islam to Christianity.

Iran: The president of Iran calls Israel "a group of terrorists" and threatens to harm any country that supports the Jewish state. "This is an ultimatum," warns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the elimination of Israel and the United States. "Don't complain tomorrow." Days later, the deputy director of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization confirms another stride forward for the country's illicit nuclear program: With the injection of gas into a second cascade of centrifuges, Iran has doubled its uranium-enrichment capacity.

Thailand: Islamist terrorists bomb a column of Buddhist monks as they collect offerings of food in Narathiwat, a city in southern Thailand. One person is killed; 12 are injured. The attack is the latest in a bloody week that has included multiple shootings and another fatal bombing.

France: Another Muslim intifadah rages in France. Hundreds of cars are torched nightly and passenger buses set ablaze with Molotov cocktails. One such fire in Marseille leaves a 26-year-old woman in a coma with burns covering 70 percent of her body. "We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists," says police union leader Michel Thoomis. "This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifadah, with stones and firebombs." So far this year, more than 2,500 police have been wounded in clashes with rioters.

Britain: In a "true Islamic state," sexually active homosexuals would be executed, says Arshad Misbahi, an imam in Manchester's Central Mosque. According to interviewer John Casson, the imam explains that while executions "might result in the deaths of thousands," they would be worthwhile "if this deterred millions from having sex and spreading disease."

But there can't be much question that at this point in the war against radical Islam, the radicals are on the march. From Ahmadinejad's swagger to Hezbollah's war on Israel to the plot to blow up jetliners leaving London, our enemies are aggressive, relentless, and unequivocal in their determination to defeat us. Meanwhile, Western Europe is turning into Eurabia before our eyes, as a fading native population with its effete secular culture of pacifism and relativism is superseded by a surging Muslim cohort. Most Muslims are not Islamists or terrorists, of course. However, most of them keep quiet in the face of the radical offensive. That is all the radicals need to keep driving the jihad forward.

[When Muslim riots in France broke out last year, it drew worldwide media attention. The ongoing riots which have occurred thus far this year have hardly caused a ripple in the world press. Where are our valiant guardians of journalistic integrity and freedom? Why so silent in the face of the rising tide of global Islamofascism? Because our media watchdogs have become passive lapdogs. Which is all the more reason why we in The Counter-Jihad must be ever vigilant. With so much at stake, not just for America but for the world, we cannot afford to remain silent. - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART SEVEN

2007-01-29T11:53:00.000-05:00

Toy Soldiers On The Border
The Washington Times - January 9, 2007

It sounds like Iraq or some other foreign land, but it happened on U.S. soil last week. Outside Sasabe, Ariz., a band of armed assailants stormed a National Guard border post and forced the Guardsmen to retreat without a shot. It was a personal affront to the Guardsmen, who should never have been in the unnatural position of being incapable of defending themselves in the first place. But they were, thanks to the Bush administration's look-tough, act-weak immigration policy.

The observation post fell because most Guardsmen at the border are not even allowed to carry loaded weapons, much less defend themselves. The attackers, in this case probably drug or alien smugglers, quickly returned to Mexico after the assault. It's past time to rethink this policy of placing Guardsmen at the border but defanging them with overly restrictive rules of engagement, which now results in a humiliation for the Guard, and for the rest of us.

The center of the problem is President Bush's "Operation Jump Start," which is showcased as a supposed key element of the administration's generally toothless border policy. This farcical "initiative" has placed 6,000 Guardsmen on the border but disallows them the ability to do much of anything -- not even defend their positions. No wonder the uniformed personnel we know are so angry.

In May, when the president announced that these 6,000 Guardsmen would be deployed, some heralded it as a step in the right direction. Then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert called the decision to send the Guard "the shot in the arm we need to strengthen our borders and protect our families."

Well, no. The opposite was true. Even the president said as much. "Guard units will not be involved in direct law enforcement activities -- that duty will be done by the Border Patrol," Mr. Bush said as he announced the move. The Guardsmen would assist the Border Patrol by "operating surveillance systems, analyzing intelligence, installing fences and vehicle barriers, building patrol roads and providing training." But they won't be able to enforce the law or guard the border.

"The nanny patrol" is how unnamed Border Patrol agents have described the current arrangement to Jerry Seper of The Washington Times, and little wonder. We should point out that this is no fault of the Guardsmen, who are simply trying to do their jobs. Rather, the administration is at fault for depriving them of the means of fending off an attack. Administration policy makes a kind of costume of their uniforms -- just for show.

If the administration can present any evidence whatsoever that "Operation Jump Start" is not simply a gimmick to look tough on illegals, it should do so now. We haven't seen any. Instead, we've seen an utterly ineffectual border policy and an "Operation Jump Start" which places Guardsmen in harm's way without allowing them to defend themselves. That's an abuse of the Guard.

Let the Guardsmen carry loaded weapons, and let them defend themselves. Anything less makes them playthings in the administration's immigration policy.

MR. ELLISON GOES TO WASHINGTON

2007-01-05T00:41:00.000-05:00

Keith Ellison's Friends...Our Enemies
by Joe Kaufman for FrontPageMagazine
January 4, 2007

Today, Keith Ellison will be sworn in as United States Congressman from Minnesota's 5th District, a prestigious title indeed. But prior to him getting to this position, he has carried much radical Islamist baggage, the kind of baggage that could make him (or anyone else) unworthy of such a title. Considering his actions with America's live-in enemies, whilst running for office and even after being elected, we can most probably expect these dangerous associations of Ellison to continue well into his term.

During Ellison's campaign for U.S. Congress, the issue of his relationship with the Nation of Islam (NOI) was brought up repeatedly. NOI, under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan, for decades, has been the perpetrator of countless verbal and written attacks against the Jewish community. Full documentation of Ellison's involvement with NOI can be found at the Power Line blog.

On May 26, 2006, Ellison sent a letter to the Executive Director of the local Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) acknowledging his participation in the hate group. In the letter, Ellison wrote, "I have long since distanced myself from and rejected the Nation of Islam due to its propagation of bigoted and anti-Semitic ideas and statements, as well as other issues. Like most people, I look back at my mistakes with regret. That said, my mistakes have not been futile because I have learned from them."

However apologetic Ellison appeared to be, his words ring false, as he proceeded to cavort with those that not only exhibit the same kind of hatred as the NOI, but that have longstanding ties to terrorist groups as well. And he continues to do so.

Much of the money that was funneled into the coffers of Ellison�s campaign can be traced to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that has ties to Hamas. In June of 1994, three leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a group that was the brainchild of Hamas deputy Mousa Abu Marzook (Marzouk), incorporated CAIR. One of the leaders was CAIR's Executive Director and, himself, a Hamas supporter, Nihad Awad.

Awad, who stated at a September 2000 rally, "The Jews have a saying next year in Jerusalem; we say next year to all Palestine" personally gave thousands of dollars to Ellison's campaign. The other head of CAIR, the group's National Chairman, Parvez Ahmed, also gave large sums to Ellison. In addition, CAIR sponsored numerous fundraisers for Ellison, including secret fundraisers held outside the candidate's state where the group raised tens of thousands of dollars for him.

In October of 2000, then-candidate for U.S. Senate Hillary Clinton announced that she was returning $50,000 in campaign donations raised by the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), due to the group's support for terrorism against the state of Israel. Not only did Ellison not give back CAIR�s money, but following his election, he spoke at the group's November banquet (via video).

At the same time the CAIR banquet was taking place, Ellison found himself speaking at another organization�s event in Minnesota. That organization was the North American Imams Federation (NAIF). This was discovered shortly after six imams coming from the conference were removed from a U.S. Airways flight headed to Arizona. One of the imams, Omar Shahin, was formerly a representative for KindHearts, a "charity" that was shut down in February for raising millions of dollars for Hamas.

On the program for the conference, Ellison's picture is found alongside two other individuals. One is Siraj Wahhaj, who is currently the imam of the At-Taqwa Mosque in Brooklyn, New York. Wahhaj's name was placed on the U.S. Attorney's list of potential co-conspirators to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Wahhaj, soon after, served as a witness for Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the spiritual leader of the attack, during the bombing trial.

The other individual in question is Mazen Mokhtar, currently the Youth Director for the New Jersey chapter of the Muslim American Society (MAS-New Jersey). Mokhtar, prior to 9/11, created a mirror website for one of the main sites raising funds and recruiting fighters for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, Jihad In Chechnya. The site was also a portal to the official website of Hamas. In addition, Mokhtar has posted numerous statements on the web in support of Hamas and suicide bombings.

On Sunday, December 24, 2006, Ellison was the keynote speaker at yet another Islamist venue, the national convention of MAS and the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), held in Dearborn, Michigan. Both MAS and ICNA have their roots in the violent Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Pakistan, respectively. Mokhtar was also featured at this event, along with a former official from the IAP, Raeed Tayeh. Tayeh, in November of 2001, was fired from his job as a speechwriter for then-United States Representative Cynthia McKinney for referring to the United States Congress as "Israeli-occupied territory".

One cannot help but question Keith Ellison's motives for participating in events such as these. In front of crowds, he speaks of tolerance and justice. On his website, he discusses bringing peace to the masses. Yet his actions say something entirely different.

Keith Ellison spent 10 years of his life associating with the Nation of Islam. Since running for office, it seems, he has traded his loyalties to that group for organizations and individuals that are at least equally dangerous. When Congressman Ellison places his hand, today, on the Quran, to which people is he swearing an oath to protect? Is it the American public many of which went blindly into the voting booths to choose him? Or is it his friends, our enemies?

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART SEVEN

2007-01-05T00:10:00.000-05:00

Terror Links Of The Tottenham Ayatollah

Nick Fielding for The Sunday Times

Once glibly described as the “Tottenham Ayatollah” and often portrayed as a figure of fun, the radical Islamist preacher Omar Bakri Mohammed has an increasingly strong claim to the title of the godfather of British terrorism.

It is becoming clear that al-Muhajiroun (ALM), the group formed by Bakri in London less than a decade ago, has played a pivotal role in radicalising young Britons who have gone on to wreak terror in Britain and across the world.

The Sunday Times has identified more than a dozen members of ALM who have taken part in suicide bombings or have become close to Al-Qaeda and its support network. It has also established that:

# At least one of the bombers who killed himself and six other people in the Edgware Road Underground blast two weeks ago associated with ALM acolytes in Britain and Pakistan.

# British-born ALM recruits have travelled abroad to commit suicide bombings and other terrorist acts in Pakistan and Israel.

# ALM money raised in Britain supported military training camps in Pakistan and Kashmir.

# British-based ALM members have been responsible for assaults on police and an attack on an army base in Britain.

Like other British radicals, Bakri has long been regarded as little more than a loudmouth by parts of the British media and the intelligence services. With his sidekicks Anjem Choudhury, leader of ALM, and Hassan Butt, Bakri has been seen more as an irritant than a threat.

The authorities may have been lulled into a false sense of security because Bakri, who acts as ALM’s spiritual leader, insisted that his followers obey a “covenant of security” which, while encouraging terror abroad, forbade them from carrying out attacks in Britain.

Seven days after the September 11 attacks Bakri issued a fatwa (religious ruling) containing a death threat against President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan. Last week, in an address to the nation about the London bombings, Musharraf referred to it with indignation.

“There are extremist organisations in the United Kingdom — Hizb ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun — who operate with full impunity,” he said. “They had the audacity to pass an edict against my life . . . I know that they also give sermons of hate, anger and violence. Therefore I would like to say that there is a lot to be done by Pakistan and may I suggest that there is a lot to be done in England also.”

M J Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Institute agrees. “Al-Muhajiroun is involved in the softening up process, preparing and indoctrinating people so that they are susceptible when the Al-Qaeda recruiter comes along,” he said.

Last November Bakri announced that ALM was disbanding. Three months later he said the “covenant of security” was no longer in force. Experts note that the London bombings followed four months later.

A Sunday Times investigation shows that long before the bombings ALM supporters had built a reputation for violence and religious intolerance. Among its members are:

# Abdul Rahman Saleem, known as Abu Yahya, who admitted undergoing military training in Afghanistan and to recruiting Britons to be trained abroad.

# Sulayman Keeler, who was imprisoned for 28 days for assaulting a police officer at a demonstration outside Downing Street.

# Amer Mirza, who was sentenced to six months for petrol bombing a Territorial Army base in west London.

More worrying is the number of ALM members associated with violence abroad. One journalist who visited an ALM safe house in Lahore before the authorities closed it said that recruits from Britain referred to Indians as “subhumans” and were violently opposed to homosexuals and Jews.

The house was run by Sajeel Shahid, known as Abu Ibrahim, who holds a computer science degree from Manchester. In January he was freed after three months in jail and expelled from Pakistan for his alleged support of Al-Qaeda.

Back in London, Shahid told an Arabic newspaper that he was a close friend of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, a computer expert now in a Pakistani prison, who planned to launch a bombing campaign in London. The plot was foiled when the London cell was arrested last year.

One of those who passed through the house is Bilal Mohammed from Birmingham, who in 2001 blew himself up in an attack on an Indian barracks in Srinagar, Kashmir.

Others in Pakistan with close links to ALM include Zeeshan Siddiqui, from Hounslow, west London, who is thought to have been in contact with the London suicide bombers. He was arrested in Pakistan in May. Siddiqui was also a close friend of Asif Hanif, one of two British-born suicide bombers who attacked Mike’s Place in Tel Aviv in 2003, killing three and injuring 60. Hanif, too, was an ALM member.

JIHAD IN AMERICA - PART FOUR

2006-12-23T20:08:00.000-05:00

Islamic Group Has Mastered Victimization Game, Critic Says

by Randy Hall for CNSNews

The Republican lawmaker who sparked a storm with comments about Muslims and the need to tighten immigration laws is the latest target of an Islamic advocacy group's "victimization game," a political analyst said Thursday. It's a game that the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has "mastered," said Daniel Pipes, a critic of the group and director of the Middle East Forum.

CAIR is calling on Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) to apologize for writing in a letter to constituents that says, "we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt" strict immigration policies.

Pipes said CAIR was "perpetually on the prowl for any incidence of anti-Muslim sentiment, real or imaginary, spontaneous or provoked, major or minor." The organization's goal, he said, was "to make the United States like so many other countries - a place where Muslims, Islam and Islamism cannot be freely discussed. It is imperative for Americans to retain their freedom of speech about Islam -- as it exists in relation to other religions -- and resist these many demands for remorse."

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said Thursday the organization had "a long history of disagreement" with Pipes.

"He's free to have a hostile view towards the American Muslim community," Hooper said. "He's free to say, as he did to the American Jewish Congress on Oct. 21, 2001, that the growth and enfranchisement of American Muslims is a threat to this country. He's free to do all these things, and we're free to defend against defamatory attacks on our faith and community."

In his Oct. 2001 address, Pipes said: "I worry very much, from the Jewish point of view, that the presence, and increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims, because they are so much led by an Islamist leadership, that this will present true dangers to American Jews."

Amplifying later, Pipes said: "You must note that this was spoken to a Jewish audience. I make the same point respectively to audiences of women, gays, civil libertarians, Hindus, Evangelical Christians, atheists, and scholars of Islam, among others, all of whom face 'true dangers' as the number of Muslims increases."

The latest CAIR controversy began when Rep. Goode wrote a letter in response to a constituent's concern about reports that Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, may take the oath of office with his hand on the Koran rather than the Bible. "When I raise my hand to take the oath on swearing-in day, I will have the Bible in my other hand," Goode wrote. "I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district, and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran," he said. "I fear that in the next century, we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped," Goode wrote.

According to Goode spokesman Linwood Duncan, the letter was sent in error to the chairman of a Sierra Club group in central Virginia, who had written to Goode about environmental issues. The Sierra Club member then made the letter public.

The national legislative director of CAIR, Corey Saylor, called the remarks "Islamophobic" and said they "send a message of intolerance that is unworthy of anyone elected to public office."

The call for an apology from isn't the first time CAIR has pressed for action regarding the Ellison issue. When radio talk show host Dennis Prager wrote in a commentary last month that the Minnesota Democrat should not be allowed to take the oath of office using a copy of the Koran, CAIR called for Prager to be removed from the governing council of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policymaking position at a taxpayer-funded institution," it said of Prager. Despite the Muslim group's letters to the museum's council chairman, Fred Zeidman, to President Bush and to members of Congress who serve on the museum board, Prager remains on the council, although the museum's board did vote Thursday to distance itself from his remarks.

Prager told Cybercast News Service he did not understand how such activities fit CAIR's mission "to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding."

"I don't believe it's a moral organization," Prager said of CAIR. "It says it represents Muslims, but it has caused more friction than love between Muslims and non-Muslims. It seeks to find Islamophobia among the American people, the most tolerant, open people in the world."

CAIR has sought apologies and other specific actions from several individuals and organizations during 2006, with mixed results.

Earlier this month, the group called on Wal-Mart to stop selling the "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" video game because it promoted a message of "religious intolerance." The nation's largest retailer is still selling the product.

In October, CAIR complained to KDWB-FM in Minnesota after the radio station broadcast a segment entitled "Muslim Jeopardy" that had such contest categories as "Infamous Infidels" and "Smells Like A Shia." After the station managers apologized for the skit, the group thanked them for "reacting positively" to the situation.

Ken Murray, the mayor of Redding, Calif., drew the organization's wrath in September, when he told an audience attending a 9/11 commemoration ceremony: "Either the Judeo-Christian philosophy will survive, or the Islamic philosophy will survive." CAIR called on Californians to repudiate Murray's comments.

The group succeeded in March in having a four-minute video entitled "Hadji Girl" pulled from the youtube.com website.

It also received an apology in February from Bill Handel of KFI-AM after the California talk show host made what it called "insensitive remarks" about a human stampede that killed more than 300 people during a pilgrimage in Mecca.

CAIR has also targeted President Bush several times during the past 12 months. In January, the group warned him to avoid using "loaded and imprecise terminology" when referring to Islam in his State of the Union address.

In August, the group criticized Bush for saying America was "at war with Islamic fascists" after U.K. authorities arrested 24 British Muslims suspected of plotting to bomb transatlantic flights. CAIR said the president's "hot button" terminology put the name of Islam and the Muslim community at risk.

One month later, Bush told a group of military officers that five years after the 9/11 attacks, "the terrorist danger remains." CAIR said that by focusing on al Qaeda, the president granted "undeserved legitimacy to extremists."

[Of course, anyone who is at all informed knows full well what CAIR is all about. Don't be fooled by their public rhetoric. CAIR is nothing more or less than the propaganda arm of Islamofascism in America....an Islamic Pravda. - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART SIX

2006-12-23T19:35:00.000-05:00

Can Infidels Be Innocents?

by Daniel Pipes

Three so-called fatwas came out in July condemning the 7/7 attacks in London.

* British Muslim Forum: "Islam strictly, strongly and severely condemns the use of violence and the destruction of innocent lives." (July 18, 2005)

* 120 Canadian Imams: "Any one who claims to be a Muslim and participates in any way in the taking of innocent life is betraying the very spirit and letter of Islam." (July 21, 2005)

* Fiqh Council Of North America: "Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives." (July 28, 2005)

Non-Muslims can be forgiven if they assume these references to "innocent lives" might include those traveling on the Underground and bus lines in London. But apparently the term "innocent lives" has a much more restricted in application, as a fascinating article in The Times (London) makes clear.

Titled Undercover In The Academy Of Hatred, it is based on the covert research by Ali Hussain of the newspaper's Insight team. Ali joined the Saviour Sect in June, a few weeks before the 7/7 bombings and took along his tape recorder. What he heard is hair-raising.

"It is imperative for Muslims to instill terror into the hearts of the kuffar...I am a terrorist...as a Muslim, of course I am a terrorist...they will build tall buildings and we will bring them down...the bombings were a good start...and Allah should bless those involved" - Omar Bakri Mohammed, leader of the Saviour Sect.

He also heard two speakers discuss whom they consider to be innocent.

Zachariah, referring to the London passengers: "They're kuffar [infidels, kafirs]. They're not people who are innocent. The people who are innocent are the people who are with us or those who are living under the Islamic state."

Omar Bakri Mohammed, the sect's leader, who on July 20 publicly condemned the deaths of "innocents," but at the Selby Centre in Wood Green, north London, on July 22 referred to the 7/7 bombers as the "fantastic four" and explained that his grief for the "innocent" applied only to Muslims: "Yes I condemn killing any innocent people, but not any kuffar."

Whatever else we may glean from this article, one thing is clear. Muslim statements condemning the killing of "innocents" cannot be taken at face value but must be probed to find out who exactly are considered innocent and who not. In brief, can infidels be innocents?

Anjum Chaudri (a.k.a. Anjem Choudhury) is a follower of Omar Bakri Mohammed and UK leader of the radical al Muhajiroun, appeared on the BBC program HARDtalk where the following exchange took place with the host, Stephen Sackur:

Sackur: I just wonder why you won't condemn it when your own leader, Omar Bakri, said quite simply, "I condemn the killing of innocent people," on the 20th of July. Why won't you say what he said?

Chaudri: No, at the end of the day innocent people - when we say innocent people we mean Muslims. As far as non-Muslims are concerned, they have not accepted Islam, and as far as we are concerned, that is a crime against God.

Sackur: I want to be clear about what you are saying – this is very important – you are saying that only Muslims can count as innocent people?

Chaudri: As far as far as Muslims are concerned , you are innocent if you are a Muslim – then you are innocent in the eyes of God. If you are a non-Muslim, then you are guilty of not believing in God.

Comment: "When we say innocent people we mean Muslims." – One cannot put it more clearly or starkly than that.

In a bellicose interview in Lebanon (where he may feel he has nothing to lose in being more candid), Omar Bakri Mohammed publicly came close to confirming the above sentiments. He was questioned by Sanaa al Jack of Ash-Sharq al-Awsat:

(Q) you said that you are against killing innocent people and have nothing to do with the Al-Qaeda Organization. Now you are calling for jihad. How do you explain your position?

(A) I have often repeated that I am against the killing of innocent people anywhere in the world but who are the innocent? I keep the answer to myself

(Q) Who do you define as innocent?

(A) The innocent people are specified by Islam. I denounce killing innocent people regardless of who kills them. However, who are the innocent? I do not have to explain this issue.

(Q) Does this mean that you support killing those whom you consider guilty and those whom Islam as you understand it describes as not innocent?

(A) I support what the Sunni Muslim youths in Lebanon believe in.

(Q) What about killing in general?

(A) Sister, I do not say that I support killing in general. You said that.

(Q) But you alluded to a classification of innocent people. Does this mean that you support jihad in certain areas because of things that are being done against Islam?

(A) Do you think that the Palestinian resistance is not right?

(Q) I am not giving an opinion, I am asking about your point of view.

(A) I am against killing innocent people and I repeat this everywhere. This is my personal position.

[Devilish double-speak! These fork-tongued agents of chaos are living among us and are committed to the long term strategy of all Islamofascists everywhere...patiently waiting in silence and hiding until the time is right to strike. The fact that these loving followers of The Religion Of Peace have not been tenderly kicked out on their collective asses is a mute testimony to the weak-willed worthlessness of Western politicians. - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART FIVE

2006-12-23T19:21:00.000-05:00

Sex In The Park - The Latest Doings Of The Danish Imams

by Henrik Bering

11/27/2006

Copenhagen - You have to hand it to them: Few men in recent history have been more successful in creating mayhem than the small group of Denmark-based imams who turned the appearance of cartoons of Muhammad in a Danish newspaper into a world event. In a recent Egyptian opinion poll of nations seen as most hostile, Denmark registered third, right behind the United States and Israel, an impressive score for a small Nordic country that is normally known for its pacifism and humanitarian efforts.

Pretending to be on a mission to create understanding and dialogue, the imams set out from Denmark for the Middle East last December, where they spread false rumors of the Koran being burned on the streets of Copenhagen and otherwise did their best to incite violence against their host nation, resulting in attacks on embassies, trade boycotts, and flag burnings. They were later caught on hidden camera by a French documentary filmmaker, bragging about their exploits.

Not ones to rest on their laurels, this band of bearded brothers have continued to enjoy great success at getting their names into the headlines; their activities have been followed with particular interest by the Jyllands-Posten, the paper that originally published the cartoons and has had to live under a strict security regimen ever since. As always, there is an element of Monty Pythonesque farce in these imams posturing as holy warriors while being welfare-state spongers, and constantly tripping up in their own lies. Farce, that is, if it were not so deadly serious.

First a bit of good news: As reported in the Jyllands-Posten, Sheikh Raed Hlayhel, who has been in Denmark since 2000 and was the prime instigator behind the cartoon protest, recently announced that he had had it with Denmark and was leaving to settle down in his hometown of Tripoli in Lebanon. "And I am not coming back," he fumed, as if depriving the country of some tremendous cultural asset.

As a commentator noted, Hlayhel has not exactly been a model of successful integration. Having received his religious training in Medina in Saudi Arabia--where he imbibed pure, unadulterated Wahhabism--Hlayhel applied for asylum in Denmark and was at first denied. But as his young son suffers from spina bifida, and the Danish authorities felt the boy could not get the proper treatment in Lebanon, he was allowed in on humanitarian grounds.

Hlayhel thus did not have Danish citizenship and did not speak a word of Danish. But in Denmark's fundamentalist parallel society, Arabic will do just fine, especially when you preach jihad. The center of Hlayhel's activities was the Grimhøjvej mosque in the small town of Brabrand in Jutland, which has been closely monitored by Danish intelligence.

Among the users of the mosque were Slimane Hadj Abderrahmane, the so-called Guantánamo Dane--a holy warrior of Danish/Algerian parentage who was caught by American troops in Afghanistan--and Abu Rached, who has been identified by Spanish prosecutors as one of al Qaeda's main operatives in Europe.

What prompted Hlayhel's decision to pull up his tent pegs? He lost his lawsuit against the Jyllands-Posten for having printed the cartoons. And in matters like these, family considerations are clearly secondary. About his invalid son, who was receiving free care from the Danish national health system, Hlayhel stated, "His Muslim identity is more important than his treatment. I think all Muslims should live in a Muslim country. Farewell Denmark."

But before the Danes get too relieved, intelligence experts cited in the Jyllands-Posten warned that the sheikh can still make mischief from the Middle East. In his last prayer in Denmark, Hlayhel denounced the pope, warned against repetitions of the cartoons, and threatened retaliation: "We are people who love death and will sacrifice ourselves before Allah's feet. Do not repeat the tragedy, or else it will become a tragedy for you and the whole world."

Meanwhile, Hlayhel's fellow demagogue Ahmed Abu Laban, a Palestinian refugee who came to Denmark in 1984 and who is also not a Danish citizen, has written a book about the traveling imams' achievements entitled The Jyllands-Posten Crisis, which has come out so far only in Arabic and has been published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Masri al-Youm.

Laban rails against a new group in Denmark called the Democratic Muslims, which was created in the wake of the cartoon crisis and whose leader, Naser Khader, he describes as "a rat" and "an apostate." This, according to a scholar cited in the Jyllands-Posten, amounts to a death threat, as in the fundamentalist view apostasy is a capital crime. Democratic Muslims are further characterized in the book as "such nice people, clean shaven, very clever, who are ready to have sex in the park, whenever they feel like it." The phrase "sex in the park" is common Arab code for homosexuality, which in sharia law also merits a death sentence.

Laban's name has been linked to Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric who in 1993 was behind the first bombing of the World Trade Center; to Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the planners of 9/11; and to Mohammed al-Fizazi, who was responsible for the 2003 Casablanca bombing. Laban at one point also claimed knowledge of an imminent terror operation on Danish soil.

His purpose with the book is to strengthen his own claims to leadership in the highly competitive world of extremist imams. Laban has also threatened in the past to leave Denmark, but, alas, thought better of it.

Downy bearded youth was also represented in the traveling cartoon road show in the person of 28-year-old Ahmed Akkari, who makes up for his tiny stature and squeaky voice with his great persistence. Akkari was born in Lebanon but has obtained Danish citizenship and is fluent in Danish. Among his political prognostications is that the leader of the Democratic Muslims would be blown up, should he ever become a government minister.

Most Danes were of the impression that Akkari had left the country last year to settle with his girlfriend in Lebanon, as he, too, felt insufficiently appreciated in Denmark. But lo and behold, when Denmark arranged for an evacuation of 5,000 people during this summer's war in Lebanon, who was among the rescued but Akkari, his girlfriend, and his little daughter. The Jyllands-Posten carried a telling photograph from the rescue operation with Akkari seen against the Danish flag gently wafting in the breeze--the very flag that he and his friends had caused to be burned all over the Middle East.

Predictably, Akkari found fault with the caliber of the Danish rescue mission. In the Extra Bladet, a Danish tabloid, he stated indignantly, "You should write about the horrible plane the Danish Foreign Ministry first wanted to send us home in. It was Jordanian and so old that it was life threatening."

In letters to the editor, Danes wondered the obvious: Why would a man who has so much to complain about want to return? They were also astounded by the number of Danish resident aliens found in Lebanon during the evacuation. There were calls to investigate how many were actually living in Lebanon while claiming unemployment benefits in Denmark. Predictably, the Danish liberal press deemed such questions crass and insensitive towards people who had been so massively traumatized by Israeli bombardments, but the issue will be debated in parliament in December.

Finally, the Danes have learned that Abu Bashar, a Syrian cleric living in the regional capital of Odense and working as a prison chaplain, has been fired after complaints from inmates at Nyborg State Prison that he was inciting hatred of Denmark, and after his statement in an article in the Fyens Stiftstidende that "Denmark is the next terror target."

Bashar's claim to fame stems from the cartoon crisis, when he showed a photograph of a man in a pig's mask on BBC television, and afterwards slipped it in among the material being presented by the touring imams in the Middle East, though it had nothing to do with the cartoons. It turned out to be a photo of a French comedian in a pig-calling contest. Bashar later claimed that he was misinterpreted and that the photo had been sent to him anonymously, showing how Muslims were insulted in Denmark. His forked tongue has severely damaged his credibility here.

To no one's surprise, Bashar claimed that his firing from his prison job was political. However, as a man who did not hold grudges, he was willing to forget the incident, if he could have his job back part-time, with disability pay. His knee was troubling him something awful. Sorry, no go.

The question remains why the Danish government puts up with these scoundrels and does not simply boot them out. France has rid itself of more than 20 extremist imams, as has Germany, while Spain and Italy each have deported four, and Holland three. Denmark so far has kicked none out. Surely, enough is enough.

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART FOUR

2006-12-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

Allah’s England

by Daniel Johnson

In some ways, the new anti-Semitism is much like the old. Consider Jenny Tonge, a legislator from the Liberal Democratic party who gained notoriety two years ago by empathizing publicly with Islamist suicide bombers. She thereby distinguished herself even among the ranks of her fellow Liberal Democrats, who have seized on resentments against Israel and the U.S. with all the zeal of a third party struggling to get noticed in a two-party system. Removed from her party post, though by no means disgraced, she was subsequently honored with a peerage. This summer’s war in Lebanon enabled her to go a crucial step beyond extolling suicide bombers by attacking not only Israel but Jews in general. “The pro-Israel lobby has got its grips on the Western world,” she said in a speech at a party conference in September. Pausing for effect, she added: “its financial grips.” Another pause. “I think they’ve probably got a certain grip on our party.”

A second example comes from the other side of the political spectrum. Sir Peter Tapsell, a senior Conservative member of parliament, claimed at the height of the Lebanon crisis that Blair was colluding with President Bush “in giving Israel the go-ahead” to commit “a war crime gravely reminiscent of the Nazi atrocity on the Jewish quarter of Warsaw.” ...

Not only do the Tapsells and Tonges go unreprimanded these days, they are admired and imitated. The loathing of Israel, once confined to oppositional groups, has penetrated to the very core of the British establishment. At the height of the Lebanon war, two peers of the realm reportedly came to blows within the hallowed precincts of the House of Lords. Apparently, Lord Janner, a prominent spokesman for Jewish causes, said something about Israel’s right to self-defense that so enraged the octogenarian Field Marshal Lord Bramall that he was moved to assault his seventy-eight-year-old interlocutor. One might have supposed that, like misogyny, anti-Semitism had ceased to be a characteristic vice of the English upper class; this incident suggests that it is back with a vengeance.

[History will remember these politicians as the Quislings of this generation. Appeasement is the name of the game. And, in a move so typical of the progressive establishment, the aggressor is portrayed as the victim and the victim is portrayed as the oppressor. What's next I wonder? And who will be the first of these gutless wonders to propose another 'Final Solution'? - Martel]

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART THREE

2006-12-21T20:16:00.000-05:00

The Future Belongs To Islam

Mark Steyn

Sept. 11, 2001, was not "the day everything changed," but the day that revealed how much had already changed. On Sept. 10, how many journalists had the Council of American-Islamic Relations or the Canadian Islamic Congress or the Muslim Council of Britain in their Rolodexes? If you'd said that whether something does or does not cause offence to Muslims would be the early 21st century's principal political dynamic in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, most folks would have thought you were crazy. Yet on that Tuesday morning the top of the iceberg bobbed up and toppled the Twin Towers.

This is about the seven-eighths below the surface -- the larger forces at play in the developed world that have left Europe too enfeebled to resist its remorseless transformation into Eurabia and that call into question the future of much of the rest of the world. The key factors are: demographic decline; the unsustainability of the social democratic state; and civilizational exhaustion.

Let's start with demography, because everything does:

If your school has 200 guys and you're playing a school with 2,000 pupils, it doesn't mean your baseball team is definitely going to lose but it certainly gives the other fellows a big starting advantage. Likewise, if you want to launch a revolution, it's not very likely if you've only got seven revolutionaries. And they're all over 80. But, if you've got two million and seven revolutionaries and they're all under 30 you're in business.

For example, I wonder how many pontificators on the "Middle East peace process" ever run this number:

The median age in the Gaza Strip is 15.8 years.

Once you know that, all the rest is details. If you were a "moderate Palestinian" leader, would you want to try to persuade a nation -- or pseudo-nation -- of unemployed poorly educated teenage boys raised in a UN-supervised European-funded death cult to see sense? Any analysis of the "Palestinian problem" that doesn't take into account the most important determinant on the ground is a waste of time.

Likewise, the salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history: most of us have seen a gazillion heartwarming ethnic comedies -- My Big Fat Greek Wedding and its ilk -- in which some uptight WASPy type starts dating a gal from a vast loving fecund Mediterranean family, so abundantly endowed with sisters and cousins and uncles that you can barely get in the room. It is, in fact, the inversion of the truth. Greece has a fertility rate hovering just below 1.3 births per couple, which is what demographers call the point of "lowest-low" fertility from which no human society has ever recovered. And Greece's fertility is the healthiest in Mediterranean Europe: Italy has a fertility rate of 1.2, Spain 1.1. Insofar as any citizens of the developed world have "big" families these days, it's the anglo democracies: America's fertility rate is 2.1, New Zealand a little below. Hollywood should be making My Big Fat Uptight Protestant Wedding in which some sad Greek only child marries into a big heartwarming New Zealand family where the spouse actually has a sibling.

As I say, this isn't a projection: it's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: by 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noel Coward once remarked in another context, "Funiculi, funicula, funic yourself." By mid-century, Italians will have no choice in the matter.

Experts talk about root causes. But demography is the most basic root of all. A people that won't multiply can't go forth or go anywhere. Those who do will shape the age we live in.

Demographic decline and the unsustainability of the social democratic state are closely related. In America, politicians upset about the federal deficit like to complain that we're piling up debts our children and grandchildren will have to pay off. But in Europe the unaffordable entitlements are in even worse shape: there are no kids or grandkids to stick it to.

You might formulate it like this:

Age + Welfare = Disaster for you;

Youth + Will = Disaster for whoever gets in your way.

By "will," I mean the metaphorical spine of a culture. Africa, to take another example, also has plenty of young people, but it's riddled with AIDS and, for the most part, Africans don't think of themselves as Africans: as we saw in Rwanda, their primary identity is tribal, and most tribes have no global ambitions. Islam, however, has serious global ambitions, and it forms the primal, core identity of most of its adherents -- in the Middle East, South Asia and elsewhere.

Islam has youth and will, Europe has age and welfare.

We are witnessing the end of the late 20th- century progressive welfare democracy. Its fiscal bankruptcy is merely a symptom of a more fundamental bankruptcy: its insufficiency as an animating principle for society. The children and grandchildren of those fascists and republicans who waged a bitter civil war for the future of Spain now shrug when a bunch of foreigners blow up their capital. Too sedated even to sue for terms, they capitulate instantly. Over on the other side of the equation, the modern multicultural state is too watery a concept to bind huge numbers of immigrants to the land of their nominal citizenship. So they look elsewhere and find the jihad. The Western Muslim's pan-Islamic identity is merely the first great cause in a world where globalized pathologies are taking the place of old-school nationalism.

For states in demographic decline with ever more lavish social programs, the question is a simple one: can they get real? Can they grow up before they grow old? If not, then they'll end their days in societies dominated by people with a very different world view.

Which brings us to the third factor -- the enervated state of the Western world, the sense of civilizational ennui, of nations too mired in cultural relativism to understand what's at stake. As it happens, that third point is closely related to the first two. To Americans, it doesn't always seem obvious that there's any connection between the "war on terror" and the so-called "pocketbook issues" of domestic politics. But there is a correlation between the structural weaknesses of the social democratic state and the rise of a globalized Islam. The state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood -- health care, child care, care of the elderly -- to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct. In the American context, the federal "deficit" isn't the problem; it's the government programs that cause the deficit. These programs would still be wrong even if Bill Gates wrote a cheque to cover them each month. They corrode the citizen's sense of self-reliance to a potentially fatal degree. Big government is a national security threat: it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you'll be able to summon the will to rebuff it. We should have learned that lesson on Sept. 11, 2001, when big government flopped big-time and the only good news of the day came from the ad hoc citizen militia of Flight 93.

There were two forces at play in the late 20th century: in the Eastern bloc, the collapse of Communism; in the West, the collapse of confidence. One of the most obvious refutations of Francis Fukuyama's famous thesis The End Of History -- written at the victory of liberal pluralist democracy over Soviet Communism -- is that the victors didn't see it as such. Americans -- or at least non-Democrat-voting Americans -- may talk about "winning" the Cold War but the French and the Belgians and Germans and Canadians don't. Very few British do. These are all formal NATO allies -- they were, technically, on the winning side against a horrible tyranny few would wish to live under themselves. In Europe, there was an initial moment of euphoria: it was hard not be moved by the crowds sweeping through the Berlin Wall, especially as so many of them were hot-looking Red babes eager to enjoy a Carlsberg or Stella Artois with even the nerdiest running dog of imperialism. But, when the moment faded, pace Fukuyama, there was no sense on the Continent that our Big Idea had beaten their Big Idea. With the best will in the world, it's hard to credit the citizens of France or Italy as having made any serious contribution to the defeat of Communism. Au contraire, millions of them voted for it, year in, year out. And, with the end of the Soviet existential threat, the enervation of the West only accelerated.

In Thomas P. M. Barnett's book Blueprint For Action, Robert D. Kaplan, a very shrewd observer of global affairs, is quoted referring to the lawless fringes of the map as "Indian territory." It's a droll joke but a misleading one. The difference between the old Indian territory and the new is this: no one had to worry about the Sioux riding down Fifth Avenue. Today, with a few hundred bucks on his ATM card, the fellow from the badlands can be in the heart of the metropolis within hours.

Here's another difference: in the old days, the white man settled the Indian territory. Now the followers of the badland's radical imams settle the metropolis.

And another difference: technology. In the old days, the Injuns had bows and arrows and the cavalry had rifles. In today's Indian territory, countries that can't feed their own people have nuclear weapons.

But beyond that the very phrase "Indian territory" presumes that inevitably these badlands will be brought within the bounds of the ordered world. In fact, a lot of today's "Indian territory" was relatively ordered a generation or two back -- West Africa, Pakistan, Bosnia. Though Eastern Europe and Latin America and parts of Asia are freer now than they were in the seventies, other swaths of the map have spiralled backwards. Which is more likely? That the parts of the world under pressure will turn into post-Communist Poland or post-Communist Yugoslavia? In Europe, the demographic pressures favour the latter.

The enemies we face in the future will look a lot like al-Qaeda: transnational, globalized, locally franchised, extensively outsourced -- but tied together through a powerful identity that leaps frontiers and continents. They won't be nation-states and they'll have no interest in becoming nation-states, though they might use the husks thereof, as they did in Afghanistan and then Somalia. The jihad may be the first, but other transnational deformities will embrace similar techniques. Sept. 10 institutions like the UN and the EU will be unlikely to provide effective responses.

We can argue about what consequences these demographic trends will have, but to say blithely they have none is ridiculous. The basic demography explains, for example, the critical difference between the "war on terror" for Americans and Europeans: in the U.S., the war is something to be fought in the treacherous sands of the Sunni Triangle and the caves of the Hindu Kush; you go to faraway places and kill foreigners. But, in Europe, it's a civil war. Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as "a faraway country of which we know little." This time round, for much of western Europe it turned out the faraway country of which they knew little was their own.

Four years into the "war on terror," the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: "the long war." Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower. The longer the long war gets, the harder it will be, because it's a race against time, against lengthening demographic, economic and geopolitical odds. By "demographic," I mean the Muslim world's high birth rate, which by mid-century will give tiny Yemen a higher population than vast empty Russia. By "economic," I mean the perfect storm the Europeans will face within this decade, because their lavish welfare states are unsustainable on their post-Christian birth rates. By "geopolitical," I mean that, if you think the United Nations and other international organizations are antipathetic to America now, wait a few years and see what kind of support you get from a semi-Islamified Europe.

The question for today's Europe is whether the primary identity of their fastest-growing demographic is Muslim or Belgian, Muslim or Dutch, Muslim or French.

That's where civilizational confidence comes in: if "Dutchness" or "Frenchness" seems a weak attenuated thing, then the stronger identity will prevail. One notes other similarities between revolutionary America and contemporary Europe: the United Empire Loyalists were older and wealthier; the rebels were younger and poorer. In the end, the former simply lacked the latter's strength of will.

Europe, like Japan, has catastrophic birth rates and a swollen pampered elderly class determined to live in defiance of economic reality. But the difference is that on the Continent the successor population is already in place and the only question is how bloody the transfer of real estate will be.

If America's "allies" failed to grasp the significance of 9/11, it's because Europe's home-grown terrorism problems had all taken place among notably static populations, such as Ulster and the Basque country. One could make generally safe extrapolations about the likelihood of holding Northern Ireland to what cynical strategists in Her Majesty's Government used to call an "acceptable level of violence." But in the same three decades as Ulster's "Troubles," the hitherto moderate Muslim populations of south Asia were radicalized by a politicized form of Islam; previously formally un-Islamic societies such as Nigeria became semi-Islamist; and large Muslim populations settled in parts of Europe that had little or no experience of mass immigration.

On the Continent and elsewhere in the West, native populations are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic. Time for the obligatory "of courses": of course, not all Muslims are terrorists -- though enough are hot for jihad to provide an impressive support network of mosques from Vienna to Stockholm to Toronto to Seattle. Of course, not all Muslims support terrorists -- though enough of them share their basic objectives (the wish to live under Islamic law in Europe and North America) to function wittingly or otherwise as the "good cop" end of an Islamic good cop/bad cop routine. But, at the very minimum, this fast-moving demographic transformation provides a huge comfort zone for the jihad to move around in. And in a more profound way it rationalizes what would otherwise be the nuttiness of the terrorists' demands. An IRA man blows up a pub in defiance of democratic reality -- because he knows that at the ballot box the Ulster Loyalists win the elections and the Irish Republicans lose. When a European jihadist blows something up, that's not in defiance of democratic reality but merely a portent of democratic reality to come. He's jumping the gun, but in every respect things are moving his way.

You may vaguely remember seeing some flaming cars on the evening news toward the end of 2005. Something going on in France, apparently. Something to do with -- what's the word? -- "youths." When I pointed out the media's strange reluctance to use the M-word vis-à-vis the rioting "youths," I received a ton of emails arguing there's no Islamist component, they're not the madrasa crowd, they may be Muslim but they're secular and Westernized and into drugs and rap and meaningless sex with no emotional commitment, and rioting and looting and torching and trashing, just like any normal healthy Western teenagers. These guys have economic concerns, it's the lack of jobs, it's conditions peculiar to France, etc. As one correspondent wrote, "You right-wing shit-for-brains think everything's about jihad."

Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.

In June 2006, a 54-year-old Flemish train conductor called Guido Demoor got on the Number 23 bus in Antwerp to go to work. Six -- what's that word again? -- "youths" boarded the bus and commenced intimidating the other riders. There were some 40 passengers aboard. But the "youths" were youthful and the other passengers less so. Nonetheless, Mr. Demoor asked the lads to cut it out and so they turned on him, thumping and kicking him. Of those 40 other passengers, none intervened to help the man under attack. Instead, at the next stop, 30 of the 40 scrammed, leaving Mr. Demoor to be beaten to death. Three "youths" were arrested, and proved to be -- quelle surprise! -- of Moroccan origin. The ringleader escaped and, despite police assurances of complete confidentiality, of those 40 passengers only four came forward to speak to investigators. "You see what happens if you intervene," a fellow rail worker told the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "If Guido had not opened his mouth he would still be alive."

No, he wouldn't. He would be as dead as those 40 passengers are, as the Belgian state is, keeping his head down, trying not to make eye contact, cowering behind his newspaper in the corner seat and hoping just to be left alone. What future in "their" country do Mr. Demoor's two children have? My mother and grandparents came from Sint-Niklaas, a town I remember well from many childhood visits. When we stayed with great-aunts and other relatives, the upstairs floors of the row houses had no bathrooms, just chamber pots. My sister and I were left to mooch around cobbled streets with our little cousin for hours on end, wandering aimlessly past smoke-wreathed bars and cafes, occasionally buying frites with mayonnaise. With hindsight it seemed as parochially Flemish as could be imagined. Not anymore. The week before Mr. Demoor was murdered in plain sight, bus drivers in Sint-Niklaas walked off the job to protest the thuggery of the -- here it comes again -- "youths." In little more than a generation, a town has been transformed.

Of the ethnic Belgian population, some 17 per cent are under 18 years old. Of the country's Turkish and Moroccan population, 35 per cent are under 18 years old. The "youths" get ever more numerous, the non-youths get older. To avoid the ruthless arithmetic posited by Benjamin Franklin, it is necessary for those "youths" to feel more Belgian. Is that likely? Colonel Gadhafi doesn't think so:

There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe -- without swords, without guns, without conquests. The fifty million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the American mainland was attacked for the first time since the War of 1812. The perpetrators were foreign -- Saudis and Egyptians. Since 9/11, Europe has seen the London Tube bombings, the French riots, Dutch murders of nationalist politicians. The perpetrators are their own citizens -- British subjects, citoyens de la République française. In Linz, Austria, Muslims are demanding that all female teachers, believers or infidels, wear head scarves in class. The Muslim Council of Britain wants Holocaust Day abolished because it focuses "only" on the Nazis' (alleged) Holocaust of the Jews and not the Israelis' ongoing Holocaust of the Palestinians.

How does the state react? In Seville, King Ferdinand III is no longer patron saint of the annual fiesta because his splendid record in fighting for Spanish independence from the Moors was felt to be insensitive to Muslims. In London, a judge agreed to the removal of Jews and Hindus from a trial jury because the Muslim defendant's counsel argued he couldn't get a fair verdict from them. The Church of England is considering removing St. George as the country's patron saint on the grounds that, according to various Anglican clergy, he's too "militaristic" and "offensive to Muslims." They wish to replace him with St. Alban, and replace St. George's cross on the revamped Union Flag, which would instead show St. Alban's cross as a thin yellow streak.

In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?

"We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Excerpted from America Alone by Mark Steyn - Regnery Publishing © 2006

[My Comments - 'Nuff said! - Martel]

A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES - PART THREE

2006-12-20T22:41:00.000-05:00

Congressman Criticized For Muslim Letter

by Frederic J. Frommer for The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A Republican congressman has told constituents that unless immigration is tightened, "many more Muslims" will be elected and follow the lead of a recently elected lawmaker who plans to use the Quran at his ceremonial swearing-in.

Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., made the comments in a letter sent earlier this month to hundreds of constituents who had written to him about Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat and the first Muslim elected to Congress. Goode's letter triggered angry responses from a New Jersey congressman and an Islamic civil rights group.

In the letter, Goode wrote, "The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran." Goode said the U.S. needs to stop illegal immigration "totally" and reduce legal immigration.

Goode added: "I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped."

Ellison was born in Detroit and converted to Islam in college. He did not return telephone messages left Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., D-N.J., wrote to Goode on Wednesday saying that he was "greatly disappointed and in fact startled" by Goode's letter. "I take your remarks as personally offensive to the large community of Muslim-Americans I represent in the Eighth District of New Jersey," Pascrell wrote.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Goode to apologize. "Representative Goode's Islamophobic remarks send a message of intolerance that is unworthy of anyone elected to public office," CAIR's national legislative director, Corey Saylor, said Tuesday night. "There can be no reasonable defense for such bigotry."

Goode spokesman Linwood Duncan said Wednesday that no apology was forthcoming.

"The only statement the congressman has is that he stands by the letter," Duncan said.

[My Comments - Any enemy of CAIR is a friend of Western Civilization. Bravo Congressman Goode. This friend of liberty salutes you! - Martel]

THE GLOBAL CALIPHATE - PART TWO

2006-12-19T23:08:00.000-05:00

Al Qaeda's Western Recruits

Along the ungoverned border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is training would-be jihadists from the West to attack their home countries.

by Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau And Mark Hosenball

Newsweek

Dec. 25, 2006 - Jan. 1, 2007 issue - For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person. One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with close Taliban and Qaeda ties, spoke to NEWSWEEK recently in southern Afghanistan, demanding anonymity because he doesn't want the Americans looking for him. He says he met the 12 recruits in November 2005, at a mud-brick compound near the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. That was as much as the tight-lipped former detainee would divulge, except to mention that Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the notorious fugitive "American Al Qaeda," was with the brothers, presumably as an interpreter.

Another Afghan had more to say on the subject. Omar Farooqi is the nom de guerre of a former provincial intelligence chief for the Taliban; he now serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan. He says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers. The 12 included two Norwegian Muslims and an Australian, along with nine British subjects, says Farooqi. Their mission, Farooqi told NEWSWEEK, will be to act as underground organizers and operatives for Al Qaeda in their home countries—and their yearlong training course is just about finished.

U.S. and British security agencies have known this threat would come sooner or later. While saying he could not confirm the English brothers' case specifically, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office (unnamed as a matter of standard policy) calls it "common knowledge" that jihadist recruits have been traveling from Britain to Pakistan for indoctrination and training. The existence of a Qaeda pipeline between those two countries has grown harder to deny with every new terrorism story that has broken since the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 subway and bus passengers on July 7, 2005. Each new case that emerges features at least one or two suspects with ties to Pakistan—such as an alleged plot that began before 9/11 to bomb financial buildings in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, and this past summer's alleged plot to blow up airline flights from Britain to the United States.

A few weeks ago Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British security service M.I.5, publicly disclosed that British authorities are monitoring 200 networks and 1,600 individuals "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas." A "substantial" fraction of those 1,600 people have connections to Pakistan, says a British official, declining to be named because the subject is sensitive. The M.I.5 chief added that her investigators had identified nearly 30 separate plots "that often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here."

Indeed, while often thought to have become mostly an inspiration to jihadists around the world, Al Qaeda appears to be gaining strength along the unruly Afghan-Pakistani border. Within the past year, M.I.5 has produced detailed reports about a group of British men, ethnic Pakistanis, who traveled to jihadist training camps in Pakistan by way of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Afghanistan, according to a counterterrorism official in London who requested anonymity because of the sensitive subject. And the scariest part is not what M.I.5 knows but what it doesn't know: there's no way the authorities can watch more than a tiny percentage of the 400,000 British residents who visit Pakistan every year.

U.S. security agencies are no less worried. American intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that their people are definitely concerned about terror suspects and operatives shuttling back and forth between Britain and Pakistan. One particular worry is that under current practice, British visitors to the States are not required to apply in advance for temporary visas, which are routinely granted to any British passport holder who is not on a watch list. In other words, the door is wide open for Britain's growing ranks of young jihadists, even those who have attended Qaeda training camps, if they are unknown to intelligence agencies. U.S. officials are discussing how the visa system could be tightened. "For the most effective background checks on passengers, the United States needs information and assistance from the country where the traveler resides," says Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke, adding that such help should be "routine."

While the Americans talk, Al Qaeda is pressing on with its training plans, Farooqi says. He confidently described those plans to a NEWSWEEK correspondent at a mud-brick house in Paktia province, not far from the Pakistan border, mentioning the English brothers almost in passing as an example of the jihad's recent successes. The specifics of his story could not be independently corroborated. But one gunman among the dozen or so guarding the house, with most of his face hidden by a black-and-white kaffiyeh, appeared to be a European with light-colored eyes; Farooqi later confirmed that the guard was one of the brothers. An open notebook lay on the carpet where Farooqi sat, and the NEWSWEEK correspondent caught a fleeting glimpse of scrawled names and phone numbers, including several that were preceded by the United Kingdom's country code: 44.

Farooqi says he first met the brothers, all of them in their 20s, soon after they reached Waziristan in October 2005. He recalls one of them, known as Musa, telling him that the 7/7 bombings in London "were just a rehearsal of bigger acts to come." A few, he couldn't say how many, had arrived in Pakistan by air, but most had taken a clandestine overland route across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, escorted by a network of professional smugglers. As NEWSWEEK has reported previously, Al Qaeda uses the same underground railroad to transport Iraqi bombmakers and insurgent trainers to share their skills with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

According to Farooqi, the brothers' travel arrangements were made by Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, one of Al Qaeda's top operations men and a liaison with insurgents in Iraq. (His name has also cropped up in an ongoing British criminal trial in which seven London-area defendants of Pakistani descent are accused of conspiring to bomb British targets with homemade explosives. Prosecutors have alleged that Abdul Hadi's deputy even visited Britain and prayed at a mosque near London with one of the suspects.) The transcontinental journey took a month to complete, but Farooqi claims the brothers left no official traces of their passage, slipping past every border-control post without showing any travel documents. Once they get home, there may be no record that they ever visited Pakistan.

That's something a British Qaeda operative would certainly want to keep secret. A newly issued International Crisis Group report on the tribal areas says the militants have been able to "establish a virtual mini-Taliban-style state there" where they can "provide safe haven to the Taliban and its foreign allies." In the words of a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad, who asks to remain nameless to avoid offending his hosts: "The Pakistanis simply don't control the territory in any meaningful way, and that means a common enemy has a place [to operate]. You have to assume Al Qaeda will make the most of it." Before September 11, Al Qaeda had no network inside Pakistan and only limited contact with Pakistani militants. Now the group has close support on both sides of the border.

Inside Afghanistan, Taliban field commanders depend on regular visits from their Qaeda paymasters. Guerrillas in eastern Ghazni province say the Arab money teams ride in from the direction of the Pakistan border astride motorcycles driven by Taliban fighters. The Qaeda men ask each local commander what weapons, money and technical assistance he needs—and then deliver the aid that is required. According to Zabibullah, a senior Taliban official who has been a reliable source in the past, Al Qaeda has more than 100 specialists, mostly Arabs, helping support Taliban forces in Afghanistan.

Still, Al Qaeda took no chances with the English brothers' safety. They received much of their training behind mud-brick walls in the sprawling compounds that are typical of Pakistan's tribal areas. The idea was to keep the men hidden from U.S. and Pakistani reconnaissance planes. Farooqi says the recruits were taught a wide variety of subjects, from religious and ideological doctrine to the art of molding, assembling and detonating state-of-the-art Iraqi-style shaped-charge IEDs. They learned how to make and use suicide-bomb vests, how to rig car bombs, how to motivate other men to sacrifice their lives for the jihad and how to maintain communications with Al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. They're not meant to be suicide bombers themselves, Farooqi says; they are far too valuable to waste. The recruits that M.I.5 was tracking also seemed bound for bigger things than cannon fodder.

Some counterterrorism experts argue that Al Qaeda has become only a figurehead, with no real control over the local terrorist cells it has spawned around the world. The English brothers—and the Pakistan pipeline—are signs that the organization is still in action. Farooqi says he believes, based on overhead conversations, that Al Qaeda is planning for the very long term, a decade into the future. He says the terrorist group is talking about gradually fielding more than 1,000 operatives in Europe over the next 10 years. From what he has heard, only 10 percent of those jihadists are in place so far. Based on information from M.I.5, the British Home secretary, John Reid, recently warned that a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom could be highly likely during the holidays.

The English brothers completed their Waziristan stay in October, Farooqi says, but before going home, they had one final assignment. Their Arab handlers separated them into several smaller groups and sent them into Afghanistan to see the jihad firsthand, embedded with Taliban units in Khowst and Paktia provinces. The unit commanders were warned to avoid putting them in any danger. After that, the brothers were supposed to return to Britain the same way they got to Pakistan. That means most of them could be getting home any day now—if they aren't there already.

With Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Emily Flynn Vencat in London

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16240565/site/newsweek/

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART TWO

2006-12-18T20:24:00.000-05:00

Mujahedin Fighters Return To Spain From Iraq (AFP)

17 December 2006

MADRID - Mujahedin fighters have returned to bases in Spain after gaining combat experience in Iraq and are now a potential threat to European security, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Sunday. According to El Pais the fighters worked alongside cells controlled by late Al Qaeda senior leader and Jordanian extremist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, killed in June.

‘They are the new Trojan horse of Al Qaeda and its satellites on our territory and they are already preparing themselves,’ deputy director of the European police network Europol, Mariano Simancas, told El Pais. ‘They represent a serious threat for the countries of the European Union,’ Simancas added.

El Pais quoted anti-terrorist sources as saying that an unspecified number of formerly Spanish-based Algerians and Moroccans who had gained experience in handling arms and explosives in Iraq had now returned.

‘But they are doing nothing for the moment. They are biding their time, which complicates things when it comes to making arrests,’ one unnamed expert told El Pais.

Two years ago, Simancas told a parliamentary investigation into the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombings that Islamic terrorism was an ongoing major security threat and that it was not possible to know ‘100 percent’ where radical groups might strike.

In midweek Spain arrested 11 suspected Islamist militants in Spain’s north African enclave of Ceuta on suspicion they were planning attacks ‘of a terrorist nature.’

[My comments: Of course, not a WORD is breathed about the West's idiotic "open borders" policy which is what allows this practically unrestricted flow of human traffic in the first place. We can't talk seriously about "security threats" until we close our porous borders and stop the enemies of civilization from traveling about freely in the Western world. Yet the liberal 'idiotigensia' in Europe and America has a love affair with the Utopian dream of open borders and loathes any security effort which smacks of "racial profiling". So we are presently at an impasse, hamstrung by a poisonous political correctness. Meanwhile, our borders continue to leak like a sieve and our security is compromised. But hey, at least 'The Wandering Arab' is free to visit any port-of-call. Such blatant stupidity only encourages greater brazenness and will inevitably lead to disaster. - Martel]

THE GLOBAL CALIPHATE - PART ONE

2006-12-18T18:21:00.000-05:00

Terrorism's Triple-Border Sanctuary: Islamist World Terror From Argentina, Brazil And Paraguay

by Thomas Muirhead

Since the demise of two of the world's more supportive regimes, that of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, which finally drew to its inevitable close with his recent capture, Islamic terrorism's traditional sources of income and harbour are dissipating. Terrorism is being forced to adapt and adopt new channels of revenue and new havens within which to scheme. A recent example of this, which is rapidly attracting attention away from the long-established hotspots of Central Asia, the Sudan etc., is the infiltration of known terrorist cells into the region known as the triple border in South America. This area provides such groups with both the desired seclusion, due to the wild inhospitality of the Patagonian desert, and the means to fund their organisations, due to the rampant smuggling and increasing narcotic trafficking which pass over the three borders.

Since the terror of September 11, governments of many countries, not merely the occidental West, have altered their views towards terrorism and its supporters. Attempts to reduce the part played in these organisations by national governments across the world have been undertaken by many international leaders, most adamantly George W. Bush. The most obvious of these attempts is that of the dismantling of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. An international coalition recognised the open support of terrorist groups by that regime and condemned such support. The regime had to change or be destroyed. Although not so openly encouraging as the Taliban, Saddam's Iraq was doing little to eradicate the training camps and other terrorist cell establishments within their borders and were in no way hostile to any members of such organisations. Whether this was the primary cause of the 'liberation' of Iraq is irrelevant, it has resulted in the destruction of an enthusiastic backer. Apart from these illuminated examples of the international War on Terror, countless pressure has been placed on most governments assumed to either consciously support terrorism or prone to turning a blind eye. Countries from the extremes of Pakistan to Great Britain have introduced new legislation amending everything from immigration policy to the right to habeas corpus in an attempt to hinder the progress of terrorist groups. The flow of funds from national governments and international organisations has slowed significantly due to the threat of military intervention if evidence of collaboration is unearthed.

This rescinding of terrorism's established backers has forced these groups to find new grounds in which to flourish. African countries such as Sudan are well known for being chaotic, unstable lands where a man can easily go about his business unperturbed, but a disquieting addition to the list of 'safe' regions where organisations can reside undetected is the triple border area of South America. It surrounds the meeting point of the borders of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, encompassing the cities of Ciudad del Este (Paraguay), Puerto Iguazu (Argentina), and Foz de Iguazu (Brazil). In this area terrorists have found paradisiacal circumstances. Throughout his reign from 1954-89 the Paraguayan dictator, General Alfredo Stroessner actively encouraged the growth of a contraband based economy centred in the border town Ciudad del Este, which, as a result, has grown from a small village named after him called Puerto Stroessner to a city of 200-250 000 people. This has been based mostly on illegal trafficking of everything from pirated cd's, to arms, drugs and laundered money. It is hardly surprising that little has been done to curb illicit trade when the sentiments shown by Paraguayan officials as recently as 1998 show a lax attitude to the illegitimate shenanigans; "It's not really contraband--it is commerce of all types, if the buyers sneak their purchases into another nation without paying taxes, that's the problem of the buyer, not the seller here." as Interior Minister Jorge Garcete put Paraguay's official position.

Terrorists, unfortunately, are rarely stupid. They have recognised the vast advantage of one of the world's largest and unrestricted black markets being populated by a community of between 15,000 and 20,000 persons from, or descendants of persons from, Middle Eastern countries like Lebanon and Syria, as well as West Bank and Gaza. An indicator of the established nature of the community is the two Arabic-language television channels. Quite clearly a flourishing trading community and large Arab population makes transient Arab men a commonplace occurrence. For government organisations intent on tracking and curtailing terrorists made up mostly of men from Middle Eastern, Arabic countries, such a region must hold innumerable difficulties. As well as providing human camouflage, the area is notoriously under-policed and law enforcement agencies from the surrounding countries are infamously tolerant of fattened envelopes. The geographical set up allows easy access to two large, powerful, market countries and a third, poor, malleable country. These countries also provide large, uninhabited (almost uninhabitable) areas in which operations could take place unbeknownst to anyone. Examples include the close at hand Paraguayan Chaco, recognised as one of the least populated, most inhospitable environments on earth, or the Brazilian rainforest, with an abundance of hidden refuges.

In reaction to the growth of terrorist connections in the area all three of the countries involved have begun to take the situation seriously. All three have made border controls tighter and the issuing of visas has become a more thorough affair. In recent years, the antiterrorist departments of the three countries' police forces (the so-called "Tripartite Command") have worked jointly to exert stricter controls on the activities of foreign nationals in the area. However the biggest real threat to the operating cells in the area is the new found interest the United States is taking in the area. Paraguay's foreign minister, Jose Antonio Moreno, recently stated that 40 FBI agents had arrived in Paraguay and were headed to Ciudad del Este. It has also been suggested that US troops are working with the respective national military in both training and active faculties. We can only wait and see if these acts will prove sufficient to curb terrorist activity in the region.

There have been some successes though. Evidence of many different groups has been uncovered by the varied international intelligence agencies concerned with the development of the area. A list that contains amongst its members organisations such as Hizballah, Al- Qaeda, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Gamaat, Al Islamiyya, to name a few. Without doubt the two most prominent of these are the Lebanese Shi'ite Islamist movement Hizballah, and the Sunni Islamist group that requires no introduction, Al-Qaeda.

A number of prominent Hizballah activists have been captured, although most manage to escape justice and hide in Brazil. In February 2000 Paraguayan authorities arrested Ali Khalil Mehri, a 32 year-old Lebanese businessman. He is an example of the new members of these groups who work under nominally legal identities in varying places and send the money back to the organisations. He was accused of running a pirated software operation worth millions of dollars a year. Evidence was discovered in his shop in Cuidad del Este, of money transfers to Lebanon, as well as terrorist propaganda for the extremist group Al-Muquwama, a wing of Hizballah. He escaped to Brazil whilst on bail.

Assad Ahmad Barakat, the alleged ringleader of Hizballah's financial network in the Triple Border is residing untouchable in Brazil. However two of his employees, Mazen Ali Saleh and Saleh Mahmoud Fayed have been arrested. The raid uncovered documents showing regular contributions of $25,000-50,000 to Hizballah as well as videos and literature meant to encourage the creation of suicide bombers. Hizballah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has been quoted as saying that he "is one of the most thankful for the contributions Assad Ahmad Barakat has sent from the Triple Border". Carlos Cálcena, Asuncion's public prosecutor for drug trafficking and terrorism, has claimed that Barakat's contributions to Hizballah has totalled up to $50 million dollars since 1995. The ambassador of Lebanon for Argentina and Paraguay, Hicham Salim Hamdam, recently acknowledged that Barakat had sent funds to Hizballah, but stressed that it was intended for "humanitarian aid for orphans of Muslims killed in action."

Al-Qaeda has also been found to be operating in The Triple Border. According to Brazilian police and military intelligence sources Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Khalid Sheikh passed through the region in or around 1995. Although many residents of the area claim that there are no terrorists in the area, and certainly no connection to Al-Qaeda this remarkable story seems to refute this. A week before the attacks on September 11th a young Moroccan, Abdel Fatta, residing in the area of the triple border handed a letter to his lawyer with instructions for it to be delivered to the United States embassy. The letter contained a warning of attacks that were going to take place on the 11th of September. The young man was a recent Al-Qaeda operative who had a change of heart around the time of the attacks and gave himself up. He remains in jail in Brazil on other charges. He must have been a very well informed young Arab resident if Al-Qaeda doesn't happen to be active in the region.

A worrying development in the workings of both these organisations was recognised by the Argentine Secretariat of State Intelligence when they, "detected the presence of agents from the organization of Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden in the border area, and had discovered that, for the first time in history, extremist Sunni and Shi'ite groups were working together in Ciudad del Este and Foz do Iguacu." Such collaboration signifies a leap from the stern ideologies that kept the distinct sects of Islamic terrorism from any form of interaction. We can only hypothesise as to the reasons behind this compromising of beliefs, but it is possible that the end of damaging the shared enemy target overrides the ideological differences present in the means.

As we have briefly seen above the new location is not only providing the terrorist organisations with a place of refuge but an increasingly lucrative source of income. Ambassador Francis X. Taylor, Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State stated, "We know, from close cooperation with your law enforcement officials, that Hizballah members in the tri-border engage in document forgery, money laundering, contraband smuggling. We understand that there may be reason for concern about involvement in weapons and drug trafficking." This apprehension as to drug trafficking is further confirmed by Asa Hutchinson, administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration,

"The two major terrorist organizations in the tri-border area are Hizballah and the Islamic Resistance movement known as Hamas. It is suspected that their illegal activities range from producing counterfeit U.S. currency to smuggling illegal substances through the tri-border area." It seems that even the resident criminals are becoming aware of the market share being taken by such groups. In an interview with a Brazilian newspaper, former Brazilian drug tsar Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch claimed that Osama Bin Laden was setting up an al-Qaida cell in the triple border region.

These illicit trades are very lucrative and allow vast funds to be channelled back to the centres of the organisations. This seems to be another recent change in the workings of these religion based fundamentalist groups. They are willing to compromise their ideological objections to such an extent as to encompass otherwise forbidden behaviour as the drug trade. The flow of money and the access it can buy must justify the means.

It seems that the face of terrorism has been forced to change. I do not wish to suggest that the fall of the Taliban and the capture of Saadam have immediately required all Islamic terrorists to find new homes. The process has been underway for years now and the lack of traditional sources of harbour for these groups has brought it to our attention that they have expanded their networks and horizons. Does this new awareness of the terrorists locations mean that the legs of the organisations are being methodically cut away or does it signify something much more ominous? Does it bring to our attention the emergence of well-organised, flexible, international coalitions of terrorists, more akin to organised crime than liberation armies? Should we be relieved or threatened by Islamic fundamentalism's new home?

HOW THE WEST WAS LOST - PART ONE

2006-12-17T21:23:00.000-05:00

Letter From Londonistan: In The War On Terror Britain Still Thinks It's 1999

by Irwin M. Stelzer

Myths are not the stuff of which sensible policy is made. So it is important to scotch the myth that Britain and America have similar and equally effective responses to the terrorist attacks they have suffered. The hard fact is that America has decided that it is engaged in a war, while Britain has decided that it is confronted with what the leader of the Tory party (historically the foreign policy tough guys) calls a "criminal conspiracy" and the Economist calls a "'war on terror,'" complete with quotation marks. Put differently, 7/7 has evoked a policy response very different from 9/11.

It is, of course, true that the citizens of New York and London reacted similarly to the attacks on them: with remarkable courage and heightened civic solidarity. But similar reactions by individuals caught up in the terrorist storm do not necessarily make for similar reactions by governments. President Bush responded to the destruction of New York's World Trade Center by proclaiming through a bullhorn, "The people who knocked these buildings down will hear from all of us." And they did--the Taliban no longer control Afghanistan. Tony Blair, a stalwart when confronted with the idea of taking the attack on terror to wherever terrorism flourished, responded to the bombing on London's tube with eloquent appearances before the television cameras and the House of Commons, by convening meetings with leaders (although exactly who they lead remains uncertain) of the Muslim community to enlist their aid, and with his ministers to begin preparation for legislation that will be introduced, but not until some time in October, after the long, leisurely summer parliamentary recess. Bush critics wish that the president possessed Blair's eloquence; Blair critics wish that the prime minister possessed Bush's willingness to act.

One reason for the widely different responses is that America was attacked by foreigners, whereas Brits were horrified to learn that they had been attacked by fellow citizens. Americans know it is "us" against "them," whereas Brits know that "they" are also "us." Pete Hamill, that astute observer of New Yorkers, had it right when he wrote in his wonderful Downtown: My Manhattan, "Where I come from, the rules were relatively simple. . . . Don't look for trouble, because in New York you can always find it. But don't back off either."

As Robert Conquest once observed, "Our cultures, our histories, grasp us with a thousand invisible fingers." British history and culture are different, and hence have produced a different reaction to terror. British history is replete with instances of the defiance and eventual defeat of those who would destroy the country, and with examples of the famous stiff upper lip that makes American-style shouting extraordinarily difficult. But more recent history has tended to equate defiance with a shrug and an ability to show that "we can take it," rather than with an accompanying willingness to destroy the enemy on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields--well, you know.

British culture now dictates a confused response to terrorists. Start with the unwillingness of the majority of the British people to recognize that they are indeed in a war. The flak-jacketed, heavily armed men and women lining my road to Heathrow last week were cops, not troops. America is at war, Britain is playing cops and criminals. These are very different things, with important implications for policy. Just as the Clinton administration decided to respond to terror attacks as if they were bank heists--he sent the FBI overseas--Britain has insisted on applying the law and procedures of the criminal justice system to terrorists. The entire panoply of legal procedures that prevent detention, deportation, and arrest of Muslim clerics calling for the blood of Britain's infidels is available to the as-many-as 3,000 terrorists whom the authorities estimate live in Britain, many trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or with actual battle experience in Iraq. Whatever rights U.K. law doesn't confer are available to the fledgling jihadists as a result of Blair's decision to sign on to Europe's Human Rights Act. Britain makes available to terrorists and preachers of mayhem, often at government expense, an entire industry of human rights lawyers and support groups. These resources will remain available to those who challenge the new powers the government will seek to curb the preaching of violence. The government also provides substantial housing and health care benefits to many men who reciprocate by trying to destroy it.

As if the decision to treat terror as a criminal matter did not place a large enough impediment in the path of the security forces, we have the infatuation of the British establishment with multiculturalism, and the pride with which its members and the left-wing press point out that 300 languages (soberer sources put the number at half that) are spoken in London.

The consequences of this equation of multiculturalism with the virtue of tolerance began with a refusal of the Blair government to get control of Britain's borders. As a result, there are hundreds of thousands--no one, including the government, knows for sure just how many--of illegal immigrants roaming around Britain. And many of these are not at all like the Mexicans who come to America to find work. They are attracted by the generous welfare payments to which they seem to have immediate and unrestricted access, and in many cases by the freedom to preach jihad. Britain, after all, is the country in which Abu Hamza al-Masri preached jihad to Zacarias Moussaoui. One of the attendees at a July 10 lunch the queen gave for some 2,000 World War II veterans in the garden of Buckingham Palace--84-year-old Colonel Peter Hodgson, who fought his way across Europe--probably violated the spirit of the celebration when he told reporters, "This hopeless government . . . let bad ones into the country and we have no idea who they are."

More important to radical Muslims is the unwillingness of the Blair government to extradite illegal immigrants and terrorists who are wanted by the authorities in their home countries. London is known in international security circles as Londonistan because of the haven it offers international terrorists--men who in some instances entered Britain illegally but cannot be deported because the Human Rights Act prohibits extraditing wanted criminals if they might be treated harshly in their home countries. That indeed is their likely fate in Morocco, Egypt, and other countries eager to apply home-grown justice--including what Pakistan's government calls "intensive interrogation"--of the sort that makes British elites squeamish.

But neither is the United States an acceptable deportation destination, since the Human Rights Act does not allow extradition to a nation that allows the death penalty. Deportation to France also seems to be off the table. The Economist reports that "Islamists" responsible for the 1995 bomb attacks on the Paris metro, "to French disgust, later found refuge in London." Whether last week's deal with Jordan--Britain is to extradite bad guys wanted in Jordan in return for a promise by the Jordanian government to treat returnees tenderly, and not execute them--will withstand judicial scrutiny and become a model for further such deals is difficult to determine.

So British policy remains: easy entry for potential terrorists; benefits for them while they are in the country; and relative safety from deportation and detention as enemy combatants. Little wonder that Britain's security services say another strike, more lethal than the one last Thursday, is a virtual certainty.

PROVIDING HAVEN FOR TERRORISTS is apparently a small price for the London glitterati to pay for the advantage of feeling proud of their multiculturalism. Their children are sheltered from the massive influx of Muslims into some schools, and their own neighborhoods and social services are unaffected by the pressures created by an unassimilated immigrant population.

And continued belief in multiculturalism by the elites suits many Muslims just fine. Unlike immigrants who come to America in pursuit of the American dream, many Muslims come to Britain and other European countries determined not to assimilate into cultures they despise. They insist that neither British food is served, nor traditional British tolerance practiced, in the schools their children attend, demands the authorities find reasonable. Many of those children, unlike first-generation Americans, hold to their traditional ways with greater tenacity than their parents. This is especially true of young Muslim men eager to maintain their traditional dominance over women, a role threatened by the fact that Muslim girls are outperforming boys in school and in the workplace. Why Blair thinks that he can reach this group through the mostly moderate Muslims that constitute the outreach "network" or "task force" that he has established is unclear.

Indeed, Blair seems to share the view of all of the policymakers with whom I have spoken. They believe that the planners of the 7/7 attack had as their goal inducing a draconian reaction by the government so that Muslim youths will be further alienated from British society. As the ever-consistent Guardian put it two days after the attack, "Whitehall's national community tensions team . . . always recognized that a public backlash could be as damaging to civic life as the terrorists' bombs. Particular concern focused on any mischievous linking of the words Islam and terrorism." The alternative to this "softly, softly" approach would be the extensive use of wartime-like measures such as detention. This would fly in the face of the belief of British officials that a crackdown would "play into the hands of terrorists" by alienating young Muslims even more than they now are.

And many indeed are alienated, either because they have been unsuccessful in work or school, or because their version of Islam precludes adopting British mores. Take that alienation of young Muslim men from British society, add jihad-preaching clerics and the uninhibited right of British Muslims to return to Britain after attending radicalizing madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan, mix in the unwillingness of British leaders to seem hostile to Muslims, and you get some strange happenings--happenings that further distinguish British from American policy.

Britain, with the wreckage of 7/7 only recently cleared, even now is willing to allow Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Muslim cleric who defends suicide bombings, to enter the country to attend an August 7 conference. This cleric has justified the killing of Israeli women because they are "militarized. . . . I consider this type of martyrdom operation as an indication of the justice of Allah Almighty." He has backed the execution of homosexuals "to maintain the purity of Islamic society," called for the killing of Jews when "the Hour of Judgment" arrives, and says that wife-beating is acceptable with "the hand, but not with the stick." He is barred from entering the United States because of terrorist connections. Absent a change of position by the Blair government, Sheikh al-Qaradawi will soon share a Manchester platform with speakers who claim that the Bush administration assisted the 9/11 terrorists, and that Israeli security had advance knowledge of the 7/7 attack but refused to tip off the British authorities.

Al-Qaradawi's reception on his last visit tells us a great deal about the differences between Britain and the United States. London mayor Ken Livingstone, a hard-left politician who blames the 7/7 bombings on U.S.-U.K. foreign policy, embraced al-Qaradawi, told him that he is "truly, truly welcome," hailed him as a "leading progressive Muslim," and denounced al-Qaradawi's critics for fanning the flames of "Islamophobia." Contrast that with New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's decision to have Yasser Arafat removed from a 1995 concert at the Lincoln Center when the Palestinian terrorist ignored a list, sent to the U.N. by the city's host committee, of countries not to be invited.

None of this is to argue that the policymaking elite is completely unrepresentative of the broader British electorate. Most Brits do understand that not all of their country's some two million Muslims (about 3 percent of the population) are terrorists, and very few have attempted to retaliate against mosques and Muslims since July 7. Like the elite, a majority now believes that Blair's decision to go to war in Iraq alongside America incited the terrorists to strike, no matter how many times Blair reminds them that several terror attacks, including the one on the World Trade Center, preceded the entry of coalition forces into Iraq.

So the prime minister is in a tough spot. Unlike Bush after 9/11, Blair after 7/7 could not count on broad support for a crackdown. He is meeting resistance to any plans to tighten the antiterrorist laws not only from the usual suspects on the left of his party, but from the Tories. He is inheriting the whirlwind of his refusal or inability to constrain illegal immigration, or close Britain's gates to newcomers from lands in which terror is preached. He has tied his hands by signing on to Europe's Human Rights Act, giving British judges a weapon with which to prevent detention and deportation. And he has contributed to the creation of a sense that multiculturalism is an unalloyed virtue.

No one surpasses my admiration for Tony Blair's principled stand on Iraq, a stand for which he has paid a high political price. Blair likes to say that his party is best when it is bold. So is he--and when he has an unconflicted view of the right and wrong of an issue. That was true when it came to Iraq: He saw what he thought was right, and he did it. But when it comes to issues such as immigration, extradition, and the application of the power of the state at home, he is torn between humanitarian and civil rights principles, and the need to wage war against Britain's domestic enemies. So although he was "totally opposed" to allowing al-Qaradawi to use Britain as a platform for his views, the prime minister felt bound by legal processes not to use the powers he has to exclude the cleric. That is just one example of the extent to which he is the prisoner of a dominant political class that is preventing Britain from responding to the threat the nation faces--and that threatens the durability of the Anglo-American alliance.

Blair is not at his best when his vision of what is right is blurred. Perhaps a summer's reflection will provide him with a clearer view of what he must do to win the battle on his home front.

Irwin M. Stelzer is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, director of economic policy studies at the Hudson Institute, and a columnist for the Sunday Times (London).

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART TWO

2006-12-06T21:45:00.000-05:00

Re-Electing The Devil
by Sean Daniels
FrontPageMagazine.com
December 6, 2006

This Sunday, Hugo Chavez recaptured the reins of power in Venezuela, winning a landslide presidential victory and revealing how anti-Americanism can be exploited on our southern front. Claiming “his real opponent” as the “imperialist government of the United States,” Chavez blasted his centrist challenger Manuel Rosales as nothing more than “an American puppet.” With 61.3 percent of the vote to Rosales’ 38.4 percent, Chavez solidified his hold over Venezuela for the next six years, claiming to have once again thwarted American power and struck a blow for “justice” – a boast seconded by Iran, which declared Chavez’s win as a victory against the United States.

For many Americans, Chavez’s hatred of America and his now infamous slander of President Bush as “the Devil” before the UN General Assembly in New York came as a shock. But Chavez has made it abundantly clear, time and again: he envisions himself as a peoples’ champion putting into motion a design to “finish off the U.S. empire” altogether, as he announced this July alongside Islamist ally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Chavez’s romance with the Iran theocracy is the continuation of a disturbing trend where he has expressly embraced two of the most significant terror regimes on stringently anti-U.S. grounds. Earlier this year, he conducted his well-publicized relationship with Ahmadinejad as an act of defiance for any Western attempts to curb the mullahs’ nuclear ambitions. And, in his recent trip to Syria, he announced his steadfast friendship with Bashar Assad as a means to denounce the U.S. and criticize Israel’s “war crimes.”

While many dismiss his extravagant showmanship, Chavez’s strategy has begun to ricochet far beyond oil-rich Venezuela and succeeded in building regional and international alliances based on anti-U.S. sentiment, striking fears that the Axis of Evil will ally itself with a growing nexus of socialist power in our southern hemisphere.

Under the tutelage of presently ailing Fidel Castro, the Venezuelan president appears to be on the verge of achieving what Castro and his chief executioner Che Guevara failed to do some 50 years ago.

Bolivia’s Evo Morales was first to follow Chavez’s lead. Winning election in December of 2005 and proposing stringent restrictions on the press some two months later, Morales seeks to ape Chavez’s previous autocratic, socialist “reforms” in Venezuela by nationalizing Bolivia’s oil industry and attempting to rewrite its constitution, a move that may be tearing the country in two.

Last month, two more countries fell under leftist sway. Most recently, leftist economist Rafael Correa won election in Ecuador. And, largely bankrolled by Chavez, Daniel Ortega, the infamous Sandinista leader, was swept back into power in Nicaragua. Even Mexico’s bitter divide surrounding its recent elections has led to an uneasy “peace” where leftists provoke violence and refuse to recognize the conservative President Calderon.

More troubling still, Chavez actively pursues bolstering his military might, and Russia and China are reinforcing his ambitions. As various press outlets have reported, “Venezuela recently closed deals with Russia worth roughly US$3 billion (euro2.4 billion) for 24 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets, 53 military helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. Venezuela is also obtaining a license for the first Kalashnikov rifle factory in Latin America.”

In addition to this, “Venezuela will soon install Chinese-made radar and an advanced air-defense system equipped with anti-aircraft missiles capable of shooting down approaching enemy warplanes.” Chavez has also outlined plans to “increase the size of the army reserves from 50,000 to 1.5 million.” In a country of 25 million, this increase is sizable indeed.

While U.S. Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, chief of U.S. Southern Command, and other officials recently downplayed the prospect of “the creation of an anti-U.S. military coalition with other leftist countries in the region,” Chavez’s strategy of “cooperation” draws a new division bell between America and its enemies, extending beyond the Atlantic to one of the most unstable and anti-Western regions in the world.

Chavez’s financing of terror is also a subject of much speculation. As high-level military defectors claim, “Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States.” In addition to this, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-TX, accuses Chavez of “providing identification documents to individuals from other parts of Latin America and from countries overseas that can be used to facilitate entry into the U.S. in a seemingly legal manner.”

The difficulty for America in addressing Chavez’s bid to “finish off the U.S. empire” lies in his now total control of the oil wealth of Venezuela, the world’s fifth richest exporter of oil and the fourth largest supplier to America itself. It is this oil-power with which Chavez mocks this country, vilifying Americans as “cynical, hypocritical, [and] full of […] imperial hypocrisy,” even while offering New York’s poor discounted oil in a supposed humanitarian gesture of compassion and fraternity.

As President Bush recognized in his last State of the Union address, we cannot continue to fund the countries that most want us destroyed. With this, combating Chavez and his ilk comprises more than just a military option. It forces us to reconsider our oil addiction and, once again, to test our ingenuity in the face of our enemies. It is a lesson we are learning in the Middle East and will continue to face until we have freed ourselves of our dependency on those who seek our destruction.

[Might I just add that I find it truly difficult to take President Bush's rhetoric very seriously as long as his administration continues unabated on their present course, pushing their reckless "free trade" agenda and taking no action whatsoever to counter those nations who want us destroyed. If he truly believes that we cannot continue to fund our enemies, then why do we continue one more day importing multiplied billions in retail goods from China? Why don't we cut off all oil purchases from Venezuela? Indeed, why doesn't he take action to shut down Citgo in the United States? Such actions would be economic shots heard round the world and would not require one single drop of American blood to be shed. However, the beat goes on. Talk is cheap Mr. President. Your actions speak more loudly than your words. - Martel]

A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES - PART TWO

2006-12-03T22:01:00.000-05:00

America, Not Keith Ellison, Decides What Book A Congressman Takes His Oath On

by Dennis Prager

Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.

He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.

First, it is an act of hubris that perfectly exemplifies multiculturalist activism -- my culture trumps America's culture. What Ellison and his Muslim and leftist supporters are saying is that it is of no consequence what America holds as its holiest book; all that matters is what any individual holds to be his holiest book.

Forgive me, but America should not give a hoot what Keith Ellison's favorite book is. Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don't serve in Congress. In your personal life, we will fight for your right to prefer any other book. We will even fight for your right to publish cartoons mocking our Bible. But, Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath.

Devotees of multiculturalism and political correctness who do not see how damaging to the fabric of American civilization it is to allow Ellison to choose his own book need only imagine a racist elected to Congress. Would they allow him to choose Hitler's "Mein Kampf," the Nazis' bible, for his oath? And if not, why not? On what grounds will those defending Ellison's right to choose his favorite book deny that same right to a racist who is elected to public office?

Of course, Ellison's defenders argue that Ellison is merely being honest; since he believes in the Koran and not in the Bible, he should be allowed, even encouraged, to put his hand on the book he believes in. But for all of American history, Jews elected to public office have taken their oath on the Bible, even though they do not believe in the New Testament, and the many secular elected officials have not believed in the Old Testament either. Yet those secular officials did not demand to take their oaths of office on, say, the collected works of Voltaire or on a volume of New York Times editorials, writings far more significant to some liberal members of Congress than the Bible. Nor has one Mormon official demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon. And it is hard to imagine a scientologist being allowed to take his oath of office on a copy of "Dianetics" by L. Ron Hubbard.

So why are we allowing Keith Ellison to do what no other member of Congress has ever done -- choose his own most revered book for his oath?

The answer is obvious -- Ellison is a Muslim. And whoever decides these matters, not to mention virtually every editorial page in America, is not going to offend a Muslim. In fact, many of these people argue it will be a good thing because Muslims around the world will see what an open society America is and how much Americans honor Muslims and the Koran.

This argument appeals to all those who believe that one of the greatest goals of America is to be loved by the world, and especially by Muslims because then fewer Muslims will hate us (and therefore fewer will bomb us).

But these naive people do not appreciate that America will not change the attitude of a single American-hating Muslim by allowing Ellison to substitute the Koran for the Bible. In fact, the opposite is more likely: Ellison's doing so will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones, as Islamists, rightly or wrongly, see the first sign of the realization of their greatest goal -- the Islamicization of America.

When all elected officials take their oaths of office with their hands on the very same book, they all affirm that some unifying value system underlies American civilization. If Keith Ellison is allowed to change that, he will be doing more damage to the unity of America and to the value system that has formed this country than the terrorists of 9-11. It is hard to believe that this is the legacy most Muslim Americans want to bequeath to America. But if it is, it is not only Europe that is in trouble.

Dennis Prager is a radio show host and contributing columinst for Townhall.com.

HONEST MONEY - PART ONE

2006-12-03T01:21:00.000-05:00

ARE MONETARY AND BANKING CRISES INEVITABLE IN THE NEAR FUTURE?

by Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D.

Contrary to a widespread belief, socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe did not collapse because of the clever geostrategic maneuvers of the Reagan Administration. Neither did the East Bloc break up because its leaders were incompetents who put into practice the wrong plans. Particular politicians and policies--East or West--had next to nothing to do with it.

The East Bloc fell apart--and had to fall apart, no matter what anyone did--because of an obscure principle of economics known as "the impossibility of rational economic calculation under bureaucratic central planning". Socialism failed--and must always fail--because, without prices for goods and services generated by a free market, central planners cannot allocate resources and manpower intelligently. But central planners cannot allow a free market to set prices (otherwise there could be no central planning). In the long run, this self-imposed bureaucratic blindness to the real values of people and things results in monumental waste, the failure of central plans to deliver sound capital investments and advancing standards of living, and finally the collapse of those societies that allow politicians and bureaucrats, rather than free entrepreneurs and workers, to direct the course of economic affairs.

Although this principle had been recognized by other economists for almost a century theretofore, it received systematic exposition in Ludwig von Mises's seminal treatise, Socialism, first published in the 1920s. So, during the heyday of central planning from the 1920s to the 1980s, no one should have been unaware of the problem. Nonetheless, the political elite and the intelligentsiia ignored it, just about everywhere. In the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, where Stalin and his successors imposed industrial-strength central planning through police-state terrorism and slave labor in the Gulag, the price was higher than in (say) the United States, to which Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to administer only a diluted dose of the same poison. But a price there was paid, as usual, by common people.

Economic theory also teaches that any scheme of fiat currency and fractional-reserve central banking is just as inherently flawed, incapable of permanent existence, and inevitably doomed to disaster as all-around, full-blown socialism, because fractional-reserve central banking systematically subverts the free market's structure of prices through expansion of currency and credit--which results in redistribution of wealth, misallocation of scarce capital, and collapse in either depression or hyperinflation followed by depression. This is no new insight. The problems fractional-reserve banking causes were widely discussed in the 1800s; and the whole subject of political versus free-market money was exhaustively examined by Ludwig von Mises, in his treatise The Theory of Money and Credit, first published in the 1920s. (Probably the best book on this subject now available for the average reader is Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking.) But, throughout the Western world during the 1900s and even unto the present moment, the political elite, high finance and big business, and their hired intelligentsiia have generally ignored these problems--doubtlessly because irredeemable currency and fractional-reserve central banking have served their short-term interests, and the costs of the system have always been paid by picking the pockets of the common man.

For this country's system of fractional-reserve central banking, though, Americans cannot blame some foreign dictator such as Stalin, but instead need to indict their own home-grown usurpers and tyrants: primarily, Presidents Woodrow Wilson (who signed the Federal Reserve Act in 1913), Franklin Roosevelt (who outlawed private possession of gold for use as currency in 1933-1934), and Lyndon Johnson (who repudiated the government's promise to redeem its paper currency in silver coin in 1967-1968). Some people also assign a large share of responsibility to Richard Nixon, who terminated redemption of Federal Reserve Notes in gold for foreign banks in 1971. This, however, is unfair. By "closing the gold window", Nixon extricated this country from an especially expensive variety of parasitism by the Federal Reserve System: its ability to prop up the value of Federal Reserve Notes by looting America's gold reserves. Indeed, such was Nixon’s legal duty. Because the Federal Reserve System as a whole is unconstitutional, paying out this nation's gold in redemption of Federal Reserve Notes is unconstitutional, too. (Nixon, of course, was far from being a constitutionalist. But, as folk wisdom teaches, "God writes straight with crooked lines".)

In the case of the Federal Reserve, economic history all too strongly confirms economic theory. In 1913, the Federal Reserve's touts predicted that it would allow bankers and politicians to "manage" currency "scientifically", and thereby to end business cycles, eliminate inflation, and forefend depressions. Yet, the country soon suffered a sharp, albeit short depression in 1920-1921, followed by the horrendous collapses of the stock market and the banks in 1929-1933, and the Great Depression that festered for the remainder of the 1930s. And since World War II, Federal Reserve Notes have lost more than 90% of their purchasing power--which is a serious consequence of inflation by any reasonable standard.

Moreover, since 1933 the Federal Reserve System has been anything but strengthened, because every link between Federal Reserve Notes and gold or silver coin has been severed. Today, (in the words of former high-level banker John Exter) Federal Reserve Notes are an "I owe you nothing" currency. True, the Treasury and the banks will redeem Federal Reserve Notes for "lawful money"; and the Treasury must receive Federal Reserve Notes in payment of taxes. See Title 12, United States Code, Section 411. But the "lawful money" paid out consists only of base-metallic coins. See Title 31, United States Code, Section 5118(b, c). So redemption amounts to exchanging intrinsically valueless rag currency for almost valueless slugs. And a right to use Federal Reserve Notes to pay taxes is of dubious economic benefit to the taxpayer whose wealth is expropriated through that very payment.

Because Federal Reserve Notes are irredeemable in silver or gold, or any commodity other than the Treasury’s base-metallic slugs (and even then at no permanently fixed ratio of exchange), their purchasing power in the free market ultimately depends upon public confidence--or, more realistically, public gullibility. That is, the Federal Reserve System is a confidence game, in both senses of that term. What should give every American pause is that the powers that be--who are most intimately acquainted with the problem because they are its cause and the reason it is not being solved--lack confidence themselves.

For the most pertinent example, a statute recognizes and provides for the possibility, if not the likelihood, of a recurrence of what happened in 1929-1933:

During such [financial] emergency period as the President by proclamation may prescribe, no member bank of the Federal reserve system shall transact any banking business except to such extent and subject to such regulations, limitations and restrictions as may be prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury, with the approval of the President. - Title 12, United States Code, Section 95(a)

As this statute proves, the political and economic Establishment is prepared for banking and currency crises so severe that a national financial dictatorship will be necessary to deal with them.

The Federal Reserve System is a confidence game, not only domestically, but on a global scale as well, because of the status of Federal Reserve Notes as the premier world reserve currency and preferred medium of exchange in international trade. This status, however, is becoming increasingly tenuous--as even a cursory study of today's financial media will disclose. If unsophisticated Americans allow themselves to be misled by rosy propaganda flowering from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, the rest of the world does not. The instability of Federal Reserve Notes and the Federal Reserve System as a whole is becoming increasingly apparent to foreigners. And knowledge of this increasing instability is itself further increasing instability in the vicious circle characteristic of the break-up of all Ponzi schemes. This auto-catalytic process threatens to generate an accelerating downward spiral of crises, until America’s monetary and banking systems are either reformed or self-destruct. If economic history is any guide, as this process works itself out gold and silver will appreciate step-by-step with the depreciation of Federal Reserve Notes.

More ominously, powerful forces are even now working for major reduction of the role of Federal Reserve Notes as a world reserve currency and medium of international exchange. In Europe, politicians in the European Union desire as much as possible to replace Federal Reserve Notes with the Euro. To the extent the Euro is successful in this competition, the purchasing power of Federal Reserve Notes, at least in international markets, will drop significantly--because, as demand for that currency declines, its supply remaining the same, its value must also decline. And in Asia, Red China--for geostrategic as well as economic reasons--is likely to adopt policies that will diminish the role of Federal Reserve Notes, and therefore decrease their purchasing power, in that huge market, too. Although these actions will threaten Federal Reserve Notes and the Federal Reserve System in particular, they will not necessarily undermine fiat currency and fractional-reserve central banking in principle. Europe, Asia, or both will simply substitute some other fiat currency for Federal Reserve Notes, and rely on some fractional-reserve central banks of issue other than the Federal Reserve. However, the displacement of Federal Reserve Notes and the Federal Reserve System from their leading positions in world finance cannot but throw into serious question the stability of other fiat currencies and the fractional-reserve banks that emit them. Very likely, this will lead to a general increase in the values of gold and silver as against all fiat currencies.

Far more dangerous than these possibilities is the call by radical intellectuals in the Islamic world for more than a billion Muslims to reject all forms of Western fiat currency, and adopt instead the Islamic gold dinar and silver dirhem coins as their exclusive media of exchange, both perforce of their religious duties under Islam and as a means to strike at the Great Satan's greatest vulnerability. Were this movement to take hold, it would drive the values of gold and silver to unprecedented heights, and the values of Federal Reserve Notes (and all other fiat currencies as well) to unheard-of lows. One need be no expert trader of precious metals to imagine what would happen if (say) 500,000,000 Muslims suddenly entered the markets, each seeking just an ounce of gold, an ounce of silver, or both! And a month later, did the same thing...and so on. Such an eventuality could presage the beginning of the end, not only for irredeemable Federal Reserve Notes, but also for all fiat currencies, and even for fractional-reserve central banking (which is prohibited under Islamic law).

So, the question is not, "Will there be monetary and banking crises in the foreseeable future?" but, "What can common Americans do about them - preferably, before they break out?"

© 2005 Edwin Vieira, Jr. - All Rights Reserved

JIHAD IN AMERICA - PART THREE

2006-12-02T18:14:00.000-05:00

Muslims Of The Americas

Muslims Of The Americas (MOA) is an Islamic fundamentalist group which claims to have offices in six U.S. cities and Toronto and maintains secluded residential communes in various rural areas throughout the US.

MOA was founded and is led by the radical Pakistani cleric El Sheikh Sayyid Mubarik Ali Jilani (aka Sheikh Jilani or Sheikh Gilani). Based in Lahore, Pakistan, Jilani established MOA in 1980, after arriving in the United States for the first time. In the 1980s, Jilani, who claims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, actively recruited American Muslims to fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The group also runs a Web site and an e-mail list. The group's Web site and e-mails have featured writings by notorious anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers, including Michael Hoffman and former Klansman David Duke.

The available evidence strongly suggests that MOA also serves as a public front for another more secretive group also founded by Sheik Jilani, Jamaat Al-Fuqra. Al-Fuqra is a known terrorist organization which has carried out firebombings and murders in the United States.

Of course, both Sheikh Jilani and MOA spokespersons deny that Jamaat Al-Fuqra even exists. And MOA claims to be a "peaceful" organization. However, one need not dig too much to find rather damning evidence to the contrary. For example, the following is just a small albeit representative example of the material published on the group's website.

"Jews are an example of human Satans. This is why Jews are the founders of Satan worship and Masonic lodges, and are now trying to take over the entire globe in which the global religion is to be Satanism….In the US there are now thousands of temples where Satan is worshipped. This Satanism has now become the ultimate tool in the hands of Zionists."

"The Ummah cannot afford to sit back complacently as an idle observer witnessing his own destruction. Along with a return to Allah, Muslims are required to sacrifice and aid those who are in the forefront in the field to guard the Ummah and Islam. Sallallahu-'Alayhi-Wa-Sallam said 'that there will always remain a small devoted band of his followers who will remain ever vigilant, holding aloft the Standard of Islam...exposing themselves to dangers and sacrificing their all for the Love of Allah...Muslims who are unable to enter into this field of effort and sacrifice are at least required to aid this Holy Task with their Du'as [prayers] and financial resources and with whatever other means they possess. If the Muslims fail in this duty, they will most assuredly be apprehended by the Punishment of Allah."

Hmmm. Just the kind of thing you might find in the bulletin at the local Baptist church eh?

Although group members claim their communal lifestyle is based on a desire to withdraw from the corruption of Western society and live holy lives of separatism, even a superficial investigation reveals that the truth is far more sinister.

One of these "communities" is located in Charlotte County, Virginia about 30 miles south/southeast of Lynchburg near the tiny town of Red House. The commune (or compound, as one federal prosecutor called it) was established in the mid-1990s on 44 acres in this rural county of about 12,400 people. Most of the homes there are trailers, and about 20 families were estimated to live there at the time. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, three residents of the community were indicted on criminal charges. Federal prosecutors alleged that those indicted had ties to Al-Fuqra. Two of the three residents were convicted of Federal firearms violations (read: they possessed fully automatic weapons without a license and/or documentation of purchase).

In Octrober of 2005, Baron Bodissey of Gates Of Vienna fame decided to go on the anti-jihadist equivalent of a magical mystery tour, tooling across the Western Virginia countryside in search of the elusive MOA commune. His adventures are documented here for your further enlightenment. At one point, the good Baron is interviewing one of the Red House locals about her interactions with MOA and it's various members. I found these particular comments to be most interesting indeed.

"Shirley said that there are other Jamaat locations besides the compound. One of her hobbies is historical research, and recently she was tracking down old homesteads in the wilds of Charlotte County. Her maps led her down a back-country lane, a non-state route through the wilderness that required a four-wheel drive to negotiate. When she neared the old homesteads she was looking for, she was surprised to find an establishment with a sign that identified it as a 'Training Camp for Young Muslim-American Men'. There were a lot of men there, and some boys, and they came up to us to ask us what we were doing. I was a little bit scared, you know, asking their permission to go back and look at the ruins of the house. They weren’t real helpful, just pointed us in the general direction. We never did find the place. This 'training camp' was across Route 615 and a couple of miles from the main compound on Rolling Hill Road. According to Shirley, Jamaat ul-Fuqra operated some kind of jewelry-and-essential-oils business at a kiosk at a Lynchburg Mall. A friend of hers who worked at UPS reported that the men running the kiosk would come in to collect C.O.D. packages from New York, and pay for them with large amounts of cash. Her friend didn’t understand how they could acquire such quantities of money from the kind of business they ran at the Mall."

Wonder what they're up to? Training those boys how to tie a clove hitch or fly fish? Selling Amway? Shaklee? Mary Kay? Please! Even a liberal can connect dots that big!

But perhaps no one in blogland has done more homework on the subject of those peace loving Muslim back-to-the-garden hippies at MOA/Jamaat Al-Fuqra than PolitcalCP. His comprehensive series of articles are a cyberspace clearinghouse of invaluable information about the group and it's activities, not just in Virginia, but all across the US. He has tracked down literally dozens of compounds and training centers scattered across the country, almost all of them located in remote rural areas. Thus far, he has published several posts containing more detailed information about compounds in the following states.

Colorado

California

South Carolina (with an update here)

New York

Virginia (mentioned above)

Georgia (Compound 1 and Compound 2 and Atlanta)

Tennesee

He has even unearthed evidence of MOA/Jamaat Al-Fuqra presence in Canada. And he has also pointed out the close proximity of various MOA compounds to key infrastructure targets.

My hat is off to all of these friends of freedom who are sounding the alarm to peace loving people everywhere. May their tribe only increase. And may God help us to awake from our apathetic and stupified state. It's time, past time, to look around recognize the gathering storm.

Sleep with one eye open my friends. The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance. - Martel

IN DEFENSE OF BORDERS

2006-12-01T00:43:00.000-05:00

Homeland Security Report: Hezbollah Has Already Entered Through Porous Border

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) today commented on the Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Homeland Security Report on border violence. "This report is alarming and eye opening to say the least," said Tancredo, Chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. "The report confirms our worst fears and shows that we must focus on border security now, and a guest worker plan later, much later. The only thing compromised will be the lives of the American people if we continue to allow big business and unions to force the issue on the guest worker aspect of the immigration/border security debate" added Tancredo.

The report confirms:

* U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations have revealed that aliens were smuggled from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and South America, before being smuggled illegally into the United States

* Members of Hezbollah have already entered the United States across the Southwest border.

* U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used to obtain a U.S. visa and enter the country.

Tancredo concluded, "The report unfortunately confirms once again what the American people have known for years – that our porous borders are a welcome mat for terrorists."

A free copy of the report titled "A Line In The Sand: Confronting The Threat At The Southwest Border" is available for download here.

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THIS...

2006-12-01T00:17:00.000-05:00

Russia Tied To Iraq's Missing Arms
by Bill Gertz

Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned.

John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad.

"The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units." Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloging the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration.

Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said. The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX, is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said. The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment.

The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material.

Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said. "That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there." The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday.

A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA. The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6.

"The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said. The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime.

According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken. It is not known whether the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003.

A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria. The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not persuade Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said.

A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said. However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program.

"The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said. The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country. Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots. The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said. Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq.

The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said. Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said. "Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said. Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said. The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said.

Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003. The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said. Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing. The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive.

Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.

THE GLOBALIST AGENDA - PART ONE

2006-11-30T22:48:00.000-05:00

In a recent speech entitled "The Gathering Storm Of The 21st Century" Senator Rick Santorum fired off a powerful broadside against Islamofacism and it's allies on the radical left. Among the better salient points of his speech were the following.

"I am here again today talking about this issue because Islamic Fascism continues to rear its ugly head. And because it is being joined by others, becoming a hydra. The war is at our doorsteps, and it is fueled, figuratively and literally, by Islamic Fascism, nurtured and bred in Iran...Our growing challenge, however, is that Iran is not alone in its rhetoric, intent or capacity to threaten the security of the U.S. It is important for Americans to know that the threat is more complex, and has grown more complex. The enemy that has to be named is greater than Islamic Fascism...If we really understood the threat at hand, we would not be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs...Are we willing to see the storm gathering around us and act before it is too late? Was 9-11 not enough? Have our memories faded? Or will it take something even more devastating? When Winston Churchill wrote his great history of the Second World War, he began the first volume - 'The Gathering Storm' - with a short description: 'How the English-speaking peoples through their unwisdom, carelessness, and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm.' We were part of that moment of folly, and we paid a terrible price for it on the battlefields of that war. We are running the same risk today, and we are again acting carelessly, unwisely and we are permitting the wicked to grow stronger and stronger...Many Americans are sleepwalking, just as they did before the world wars of the last century...It's time to wake up...I think people are indeed concerned, and they are right to be concerned. About our enemies...You are sleepwalking into a nightmare. It's time to wake up."

All of this is quite well said. And most of us on the frontlines of the anti-Islamofascist movement would agree heartily. Had he stopped there, all would have been well. However, Mr. Santorum goes further and in so doing reveals just how terribly wrong headed his policy actually is.

"Just as we have seen our neighbors' economies grow as well as our own - we need to work diligently to forge free trade agreements with other countries, as we have seen impressive results with free trade agreements in Israel, Canada, Mexico, Jordan, Singapore, Chile, Australia, Bahrain, and Morocco. Our current partnerships with these countries account for more than $900 billion in two-way trade, which is about 36 percent of total U.S. trade with the world. U.S. exports with FTA partner countries are growing twice as fast as U.S. exports to countries that do not have agreements with the U.S."

Does Mr. Santorum truly not see the inherent contradiction here? The entire "free trade" agenda is all part and parcel of the damnable open borders movement which is hell bent on destroying US sovereignty and merging our nation into a borderless global conglomerate. As Lou Dobbs has so rightly warned us : "The Bush administration's open-borders policy and it's decision to ignore the enforcement of this country's immigration laws is part of a broader agenda. President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States."

The agreement Dobbs was talking about was crafted over a year earlier. On March 23, 2005, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox met with President Bush in Waco, Texas, to discuss plans for integrating Canada, the United States, and Mexico. During that meeting, the three heads of state argued that the three nations are "mutually dependent and complementary" and need to work together more closely on a range of issues. "In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient," the three leaders said in a joint statement.

This standard diplomatic language was a prelude to a radical proposal calling for the merger of the three nations in several important ways. Under a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the nations will no longer have separate borders, but will "implement common border-security." The three nations will no longer respond on the national level to emergencies but will have a "common approach to emergency response." And, in a move that has tremendous implications for the growing immigration crisis, the three leaders agreed that the United States' north and south borders would be eliminated. Under the SPP plan, the three nations will "implement a border-facilitation strategy to build capacity and improve the legitimate flow of people and cargo at our shared borders."

This plan is nothing short of revolutionary. As Dobbs put it on his CNN program, it is "an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value." Though the plan sounds like a new innovation, it is not new. It is the next step in a progression of steps that, in a manner very similar to the process used in Europe to supplant individual nations with the European Union, will ultimately lead to the formation of a new government for the United States, the North American Union. If not stopped, the plan for a North American Union will supplant the former independent states of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. And this is not conjecture. The North American Union is official U.S. policy.

And perhaps worst of all, neo-cons like Santorum are blithely promoting the party line walking in lockstep with the globalist vision. One has to wonder what has happened to conservatism. Once the party of limited goverment and national sovereignty, the Republicrats of today sound more and more like socialistas by another name. Contrary to what Mr. Santorum and his fellow travelers in the neo-con movement would have you believe, the real answer to the crucial issues faced by Western civilization does not lie in turning our world into a political and cultural melting pot. On the contrary. The answer lies in strengthening our sovereignty. In closing our borders. In becoming internally self-sufficient. In rebuilding an economy which has literally been gutted by the free trade movement. In short, in circling the wagons and weathering the storm together. Does Mr. Santorum really and truly believe that the people of Mexico and it's leadership have our best interests at heart? What a joke. If he believes that, then his naivete is shocking at best and disturbing at worst and makes me question his fitness for leadership. If he doesn't truly believe it, then one has to wonder what his true agenda is.

Furthermore, I must beg to differ with the glowing picture of prosperous "two-way trade" which Mr. Santorum presents. The reality is somewhat grimmer. Our trade deficit now stands at about $4 trillion in external debt. We have to borrow nearly $3 billion a day to support it. The dollar has plummeted. And as we go deeper in debt, we continue to lose jobs and diminish our manufacturing base. Many people want to talk about our dependency on foreign oil, and it's a legitimate and real concern. But so is our dependency on the rest of the world for our clothing, our food, our computers, our consumer electronics. The list goes on and on. Our dependency isn't just on foreign oil; we can't even clothe ourselves. Free-trade economists will tell you we're a technology economy, but we don't even produce the technological components that are the foundation of a technology economy. Still others will say we're a service based economy. But the service industry is outsourcing at an alarming rate. The bottom line? Outsourcing is GREAT...if you sitting on the board of directors or holding huge shares. But if you're in the workforce? It's the "giant sucking sound" of your job going down the toilet.

I am truly grateful that Mr. Santorum has awakened from his slumber with regard to Islamofacism and is now sounding the alarm and trying to wake others. Now if we can just awaken the Western world to the deadly danger of globalism and break the vise grip which this ideology has on our political system then we can start to lay a foundation for a stronger, freer, peaceful and more prosperous future. - Martel

A PASSIVE PONTIFF?

2006-11-30T21:02:00.000-05:00

Pope Makes Turkish Mosque Visit

Pope Benedict XVI has visited one of Turkey's most famous mosques in what is being seen as an attempt to mend relations with the Muslim community. During his tour of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, the pontiff paused in silent prayer alongside senior Muslim clerics.

It marks only the second papal visit in history to a Muslim place of worship.

Earlier, the Pope visited the nearby Hagia Sophia Museum - a site heavy with Christian and Muslim symbolism - drawing around 150 protesters. The Pope spent half an hour in Hagia Sophia, a domed complex that was once a Christian centre before becoming a mosque and eventually, a museum.

The protest outside was linked to an Islamist-nationalist party, which said the pontiff's tour was an affront to the secularism enshrined in Turkey's constitution, as well as an attempt to stake a Catholic claim to the site. The demonstrators warned that any hint of a prayer there would be deeply offensive, but the Pope refrained from any religious gesture, such as praying or crossing himself.

The tour of the Blue Mosque - across the square from Hagia Sophia - was a last-minute addition to the schedule. Having removed his shoes, the Pope paused for a full two minutes, eyes closed in prayer, standing side-by-side with the Mufti of Istanbul and the Imam of the Blue Mosque.

Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II, is the only other pontiff to have visited a mosque, during a trip to Damascus in 2001. The visit by Pope Benedict was seen as an attempt to repair the damage his comments on Islam in September caused across the Muslim world.

Speaking to an academic audience in Germany, the Pope quoted a Byzantine emperor who characterised Islam as a violent religion. While the Pope insisted the remarks did not reflect his personal views, the speech was widely reported and caused anger across the Islamic world.

Since arriving in Turkey on Tuesday, he has offered wide-ranging messages of reconciliation to Muslims, including appeals for support for Turkey's bid to join the EU - which would make it the first member with a majority Muslim population.

Story from BBC NEWS.

[Sigh. And I had such high hopes for this guy. He got off to such a great start. Oh well. Meet the new Pope...same as the old Pope. It would seem that the apostles of appeasement have already cast their spell over our man in The Vatican. As the de facto spokesperson for millions of Catholics, not to mention the man seen by many worldwide as the public voice of Christendom, no one is in a better position to speak out against the evils of Islamofacism. But instead, he betrays the legacy of the Christian faith and the entire Western world. And what a bitter betrayal it is. No one knows better just how many Christians have been slaughtered by the gentle prophet's religion of peace than the Pope. And that just IN OUR LIFETIME! From the Ivory Coast to the Sudan, from Indonesia to Pakistan, from Lebanon to Eritrea. The death toll is staggering. And yet Benedict plays politics and makes nice with the ancient enemies of Christianity...and indeed of all Westerners everywhere regardless of their religious creed. Does he truly think that radical Islam is remotely interested in peacemaking? The silent witness of 1500 years of blood soaked history is a stark and undeniable testimony to the contrary. When will the West awake from her dreamy slumber? The jihadists are only interested in "peace" when they are in the minority and can use it to their political advantage. But let them gain the cultural high hand, and the true face of their ideology is revealed. Sadly, at a time when the world is in dire need of senior statesmen with lion-like boldness, our leaders have all alike turned into pussyfooting wimps. Where are the thundering orators, the fearless voices of defiance, the Elijahs who dare to spit in the bloody and murderous eye of the false prophets? Where is Churchill when we need him? - Martel]

THE RELIGION OF PEACE JUST LOVES THE LADIES

2006-11-30T18:05:00.000-05:00

Banning Women from Mecca: Saudi Arabia Ponders More Misogyny

As if Saudi Arabia weren't already misogynistic enough in its laws, culture, and religion, some officials are actually considering banning women from being allowed to say any of the five daily prayers (required by Islam) in the immediate vicinity of the Kaaba in Mecca. Some even claim that this policy has already been instituted on an unofficial basis. I wish I could say any of this were surprising.

Women in Saudi Arabia are naturally upset about this. They don't see this as an isolated, if annoying, move; instead they fear that this is a step in the direction of limiting women’s roles in Saudi society even further than it already is. When religious conservatives are faced with modernization and outside influences, retreating even further inward and becoming even more reactionary is a common response. Is that what's going on here?

The chief of the King Fahd Institute for Hajj Research, which came up with the plan, told The Associated Press Thursday that the new restrictions are already in place. There have been word-of-mouth reports of women being asked to pray at new locations away from the white-marbled area surrounding the Kaaba in recent weeks.

But Sheik Youssef Khzeim, deputy chief of the Presidency of the Two Holy Mosques Affairs, a Saudi government organization in charge of implementing the proposal, denied the reports, saying the old arrangements that allow women to pray in the Kaaba’s vicinity are still in effect. He said if any woman were asked to move to the back “it’s only to maintain order.”

Mecca is Islam’s holiest city and the Kaaba is Islam’s holiest shrine. All Muslims are expected to make a pilgrimage to the Kaaba at least once in their lives and most make the effort, despite the costs.

Non-Muslims are already forbidden from entering Mecca because it is believed that they would undermine the city’s religious purity. If women are banned from praying around the Kaaba, it would probably be based upon similar arguments: women are so impure that their very presence would be harmful to the Kaaba and/or to the religious purity of Muslim men in the vicinity. It’s thus not surprising why this would be so upsetting to women — it’s not so much like being sent to the back of the bus as being kicked off the bus lest they contaminate the rest of the riders.

Fortunately, women aren’t the only ones who are upset with this — some Muslim men reject it as well. “The prophet, who is the first leader of Muslims, didn’t do it,” said Mohsen al-Awajy, an Islamist lawyer and cleric. “Those who are proposing the change after him have to come up with legal justification for it.”

Al-Awajy urged the Saudi government to put an end to “such a rigid and austere mind-set that could become the core of a violent trend in the future.”

The Grand Mosque, where the Kaaba is located, is one of the few places where Muslim men and women can pray and worship publicly together.

[The ways of Islam are hard. The ways of dhimmitude are even harder. If this is how their own women are treated, just imagine what they'd do to the i-can-do-anything-better-than-you femdoms of the West. Better yet, don't imagine. Just keep sleeping while they overrun Western culture. Then see for yourself...up close and personal. - Martel]

WAR OF THE WORLDS - PART ONE

2006-11-30T00:18:00.000-05:00

Chavez Vows To Beat "The Devil"

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez on Sunday promised hundreds of thousands of supporters he would win a resounding victory in his December 3 reelection bid he describes as a challenge to Washington.

The former soldier and self-styled revolutionary is favored in the polls to beat rival Manuel Rosales after building a solid political base through a social development campaign financed by oil revenues.

Chavez supporters flooded Caracas thoroughfares waving flags and banners, congregating in different parts of the downtown a day after Rosales sympathizers held a similar march to close his campaign in the capital city.

"We are confronting the devil, and we will hit a home run off the devil next Sunday," said Chavez, who ruffled feathers in October by calling President Bush the devil in remarks at the United Nations. "On December 3 we're going to defeat the most powerful empire on earth by knockout," Chavez said.

Donning red like most of his supporters, Chavez delivered a two-hour speech marked by his signature combination of fiery leftist rhetoric and crowd antics typical of pop music concerts. He spent nearly ten minutes trying to see which of four groups of demonstrators could cheer louder -- then told them all to be quiet. "Whoever talks first will turn into a donkey," he thundered, only to break into his unmistakable giggle.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld toured South America recently, trying to garner support against Chavez’ growing influence. But Washington's concern has been too little too late. Chavez is strengthening his ties to Cuba and, bankrolled by massive oil profits, he has a plan to create a new block of Leftist-run, anti-American states across Central and South America. He sits atop one of the largest oil reserves in the world. Venezuela owns CITGO. And as America's fourth largest oil supplier, he believes he has the U.S. by the throat. And he just might.

Internally, Chavez has already rewritten the constitution, stacked the courts and begun throwing political opponents into jail. And some say he is now looking beyond Venezuela's borders. With billions of dollars in oil profits, Chavez is buying advanced Russian fighter planes and helicopters, dramatically increasing the size of his armed forces.

Chavez calls this revolution "Bolivarian," named after the South American liberator, Simon Bolivar. But for his opponents, this revolution has been anything but liberating. Maria-Corina Machado, opposition leader and mother of three, faces prison time for simply taking grant money from the National Endowment for Democracy, a program of the United States Congress. "This is a country where anyone who dares to think and speak differently from the government,” said Machado, “is seen as an enemy."

Machado's group Sumate used the money to educate citizens in democracy. But the Chavez government accused Machado of plotting with the U.S. to overthrow it. Machado commented, "I have three kids and I tell my kids that their mom could go to jail because of conspiracy, treason to my country, rebellion. These are the kinds of charges put against us."

Opposition figure Enrique Capriles has already spent four months in jail. He was only released because the street protests over his jail sentence had become an embarrassment to the government.

And at the TV channel Globovision, TV talk show host Leopoldo Castillo has had to learn to keep his acid tongue in check. There is a new censorship law against insulting President Chavez. Castillo remarked, "David Letterman, every day, in tonight's show, he makes fun of President Bush. Nothing happens. Here, with a new law, if you make fun of the president, of the senior officer of the Supreme Court, of any minister, you can go to jail.”

But if you travel to the barrios of Caracas, you hear a different story. Because here you get the feeling that Chavez is the revenge of the poor on a society that before never seemed to care about them. Many living in grinding poverty believe Venezuela's brand of corrupt capitalism is the reason they are poor. Chavez means hope. Here, he is no dictator. The Chavista, or followers of Chavez, say they hope Chavez rules forever. Last year, Chavez spent four billion dollars in oil profits on social programs, like a sewing co-op, which also includes political indoctrination every morning. State money also funds neighborhood food programs. Young Chavistas "belong to the revolution." And if this is starting to sound to you like Cuba, that's just what a lot of Venezuelans have been thinking, too.

Adolfo Taylhardat should know. He used to be Venezuela's ambassador to Cuba. "I'm very much familiar with the internal situation in Cuba. And what I see is that Chavez slowly has been introducing all the elements of the Cuban regime, Cuban system into Venezuela. He wants to make Venezuela be as similar to Cuba as possible. And he wants to present Venezuela as a victim of U.S. imperialism."

In this typical diatribe, Chavez compared capitalism to Count Dracula, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler, but then added that Capitalists are much worse than those monsters. Not a single poor person we talked to, no matter how much love they expressed for Chavez, said they wanted Venezuela to turn into Cuba. But that is clearly the direction the country is headed. Chavez has kicked out American military advisors and brought in Cuban officers. We interviewed a former Venezuelan Army officer, now seeking political asylum in the United States.

Speaking by phone from the Krome Detention Center in Miami, Lieutenant Jose Colina told us, "I was present in meetings in which members of the Cuban government were trying to change the ideology and indoctrinate officials of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, especially those of the National Guard. Without a doubt they were pointing out that we had to fight imperialism, capitalism and its top representative, the United States - which is also the main cause of poverty and misery in Latin America."

Chavez has been called the "anti-Bush." He has embraced virtually every enemy of the United States, past and present, from Saddam Hussein to Moammar Khaddafy to the Taliban and Iran. An important early advisor to Chavez was Argentine Holocaust denier and Neo Nazi, Norberto Ceresole. Ceresole believed that Latin America must forge alliances with Arab nations to fight against the United States and what Ceresole called "the Jewish financial mafia." And a few months ago, Chavez played a major role in the first South American-Arab Summit in Brazil, which attacked both the United States and Israel as the chief enemies of Latin America.

And although his government repeatedly denies it, a large body of evidence suggests that Chavez is harboring and supporting the FARC guerillas of neighboring Colombia, one of the largest and most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world.

Chavez calls the United States the world's greatest menace and says he simply wishes to be left alone to do his work. But there is a growing fear that Chavez is preparing to export his Bolivarian revolution to his neighbors. Why else would he need 100,000 recently purchased Russian AK-47s? Why announce plans to increase the size of the army reserves from 50,000 to 1.5 million? Why the ties to guerilla movements?

Chavez says the arms buildup is defensive. His opponents disagree. Taylhardat says, "He wants to do now what Castro failed to do in the 60s, when he sent out Che Guevarra to export the Cuban revolution to the rest of the continent."

Chavez says, "The U.S. administration is behind the opposition in Venezuela, and Mr. George Bush has a black hat, black horse and black flag. He is the main instigator and the main planner of all the movements that have attacked us." Chavez says the U.S. is plotting to have him killed, and he says if that happens, oil shipments to the U.S. will stop. It is a strange relationship between business partners. But get used to it. Hugo Chavez remains the most popular politician in Venezuela. And he shows no sign of going away. He states, "I bet a dollar to Mr. Bush to see who will last longer, him there in the White House or this Venezuelan, Hugo Chavez, here in the Miraflores Palace. Let's see who lasts longer, Mr. Bush."

In his fight with America, Chavez intends to be the last man standing.

[The Third World is coming together in common cause...that cause being the destruction of the West. Individually these two-bit dictators and hateful imams don't amount to much. But let them form an pan global alliance and all bets are off. Never underestimate the power of unity. Especially when the key players in the game are flush with multiplied billions in oil profits. Cash is king. And those who have enough of it can buy anything they want, from nerve gas to biological agents to tactical nukes. Imagine a world in which Chavez and his cronies are successful in rallying Central and South America to their cause. Then our southern border (which is already a joke) would become a point of entry for guerilla fighters and commando units with only one mission...sow chaos in the US. But on second thought, sleep on America. All of this is just the paranoid rambling of some far right nutcase. That could never happen. Not in a million years. - Martel]

TOWARD A BORDERLESS WORLD

2006-11-29T22:58:00.000-05:00

"Transnationalists" Don't Take Immigration Reform Seriously

by John Leo

In his 1995 book "The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy," the late Christopher Lasch argued that America's political and cultural elites had opened up a gap between themselves and ordinary Americans. "Many of them have ceased to think of themselves as Americans in any important sense, implicated in America's destiny for better or worse," he wrote. They are increasingly detached from their fellow citizens and drawn to an international culture, Lasch said, or what we would today call a transnational culture.

Consider the current immigration debate in this light. In the transnational view, patriotism, assimilation and cultural cohesion are obsolete concerns. Borders and the nation-state are on the way out. Transnational flows of populations are inevitable. Workers will move in response to markets, not old-fashioned national policies on immigration. Norms set by internationalists will gradually replace national laws and standards. The world is becoming a single place. Trying to impede this unifying process is folly.

The term "transnationals" specifically refers to those working in and around international organizations and multinational corporations. More broadly, it indicates a cosmopolitan elite with a declining allegiance to the place where they live and work, and a feeling that nationalism and patriotism are part of the past.

To some extent, their worldview cuts across Democratic-Republican and liberal-conservative lines, and reinforces the other concerns that prevent immigration control: the desire for cheap labor and Hispanic votes. Old-line one-worlders and enthusiastic supporters of the United Nations hear the siren call. So do many academics, judges and journalists who attend international conferences and tend to adopt a common consciousness and world outlook.

The interplay between immigration and transnationalism is a flourishing subspecialty in the academic world. Ethnic studies departments, once conceived as a sop to campus minorities, increasingly stress transnationalism, though exactly what professors mean when they use the word is often not very clear. It is now common to hear that transnationalism will be to the first quarter of the 21st century what multiculturalism was to the last 25 years of the 20th.

The large-scale movement of populations is often seen as an indicator of the coming world society. To transnationalists, it is a positive development that reveals the weakness of the nation-state and adds to that weakness. Loyalties and commitments are diffused. One transnational scholar writes, "Traditional notions like citizenship, political activity, entrepreneurship and culture are de-linked from specific places and spaces."

This theme hums through some of the immigration debate, but transnationalists have hardly been frank in discussing their views. What appears to be primarily a problem of labor, border control and one particular failed economy -- Mexico's -- is to some people an inevitable and welcome stage in the decline of the nation-state. Besides, large-scale immigration helps to deconstruct the traditional historical narrative of the target nation, a traditional item on the multicultural agenda.

Partly because of immigration, the British government appointed a commission on the future of multiethnic Britain. It concluded that "Britishness" had "has systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations." The report said Britain should be formally "recognized as a multicultural society" whose history must be "revised, rethought, or jettisoned."

John Fonte, of the Hudson Institute, notes that "transnationalism," like "global governance" and "multiculturalism," are presented by advocates as irresistible forces of history. Not so, he says. They are "ideological tools, championed by activist elites."

The astonishing aspect of the immigration debate is that the elites think they can override the clear and huge resistance of the American people. As columnist Tony Blankley wrote last week, the Senate was prepared to "legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public."

Lopsided majorities, which normally stay the hand of Congress, want the federal government to take charge and get tougher on illegal immigration. In last month's Quinnipiac University poll, 88 percent of all respondents said illegal immigration is a serious problem (57 percent "very serious," 31 percent "somewhat serious"). Among immigrants or their children and grandchildren, the figure was 83 percent. "Red state, blue state and purple state. Illegal immigration is a serious problem," said Maurice Carroll, the director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. If the majority really wants to win on this, all it has to do is raise the heat on Congress and defeat the amnesty-light non-reforms.

John Leo is a columnist and editor for U.S. News & World Report.

[He's also obviously a clear-minded thinker. - Martel]

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

2006-11-29T21:58:00.000-05:00

How The Imams Terrorized An Airliner

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated with a security probe by terrorists and were not merely engaged in prayers, according to witnesses, police reports and aviation security officials.

Witnesses said three of the imams were praying loudly in the concourse and repeatedly shouted "Allah" when passengers were called for boarding US Airways Flight 300 to Phoenix. "I was suspicious by the way they were praying very loud," the gate agent told the Minneapolis Police Department.

Passengers and flight attendants told law enforcement officials the imams switched from their assigned seats to a pattern associated with the September 11 terrorist attacks and also found in probes of U.S. security since the attacks - two in the front row first-class, two in the middle of the plane on the exit aisle and two in the rear of the cabin.

"That would alarm me," said a federal air marshal who asked to remain anonymous. "They now control all of the entry and exit routes to the plane." A pilot from another airline said: "That behavior has been identified as a terrorist probe in the airline industry."

But the imams who were escorted off the flight in handcuffs say they were merely praying before the 6:30 p.m. flight on Nov. 20, and yesterday led a protest by prayer with other religious leaders at the airline's ticket counter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

[In the immortal words of Paul Harvey : "Now you know the REST of the story." - Martel]

A LAW UNTO THEMSELVES - PART ONE

2006-11-29T12:52:00.000-05:00

The End Of One Law For All?

by Innes Bowen Producer, Law In Action

Ethnic and religious courts are gaining ground in the UK. Will this lead to different justice for different people? Aydarus Yusuf has lived in the UK for the past 15 years, but he feels more bound by the traditional law of his country of birth - Somalia - than he does by the law of England and Wales.

"Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law. It's not Islamic, it's not religious - it's just a cultural thing."

The 29-year-old youth worker wants to ensure that other members of his community remain subject to the law of their ancestors too - he helps convene an unofficial Somali court, or "gar", in south-east London.

Aydarus is not alone in this desire. A number of parallel legal universes have been quietly evolving among minority communities. As well as Somali customary law, Islamic and Jewish laws are being applied and enforced in parts of the UK.

Islamic and Jewish law remains confined to civil matters. But the BBC's Law in Action programme has learned that the Somali court hears criminal cases too. One of the most serious cases it has dealt with was the "trial" of a group of young men accused of stabbing a fellow Somali.

"When the suspects were released on bail by the police, we got the witnesses and families together for a hearing," says Aydarus. "The accused men admitted their guilt and apologised. Their fathers and uncles agreed compensation."

So how did this court come about? Some academic lawyers see these alternative legal systems as an inevitable - and welcome - consequence of multiculturalism. Dr Prakash Shah, of London's Queen Mary University, advocates this "legal pluralism". "Tribunals like the Somali court could be more effective than the formal legal system in maintaining social harmony."

Former judge Gerald Butler QC says that while courts such as the Jewish Beth Din can work properly, it's essential that all of the involved parties "freely and voluntarily agree to the jurisdiction... and that they conduct their proceedings fairly and properly". He adds: "What they mustn't do - and this must never happen - is to stray into the field of criminal matters. That simply would never be acceptable."

While religious leaders in the UK's Jewish and Muslim communities have not sought to enforce their own versions of criminal law, they have steadily built up their capacity to deal with civil matters within their own religious codes. What's more, they are doing it with the help of English law.

The Beth Din is the most formally entrenched of these minority courts. The UK's main Beth Din is based in Finchley, north London. It oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes. The court cannot force anyone to come within its jurisdiction. But once someone agrees to settle a dispute in the Beth Din, he or she is bound in English law to abide by the court's decision. This is because under English law people may devise their own way to settle a dispute before an agreed third party.

Crucially, the legislation does not insist that settlements must be based on English law; all that matters is the outcome is reasonable and both parties agree to the process. And it's in this space that religious courts, applying the laws of another culture, are growing in the UK.

"Orthodox Jews go to the Beth Din to settle their disputes," says Jonathan Greenwood, a solicitor who represents many Jewish businessmen at the court. "They believe it is a religious obligation to go there [and seek redress under Jewish law] rather than the secular courts. But it is also usually quicker and cheaper."

Amongst the UK's Muslims there are sharply contrasting views about Sharia or Islamic law in the UK. Sharia is the historic legal foundations of the Islamic world - like English law, it has developed over centuries but is based on simple principles.

In an ICM survey of 500 British Muslims carried out in February 2006, 40% of respondents said they would support the introduction of Sharia in predominantly Muslim areas of Britain. The UK's most prominent Muslim organisation, the Muslim Council of Britain, opposes the idea, saying it will not support a dual legal system.

But some of Britain's Islamic scholars have called for a different approach - Sharia legal code in areas such as family and inheritance, applied through the secular courts.

Mohammed Shahid Raza, a leading Islamic scholar, claims this is a workable model with a British precedent: "When Britain was ruling India, there was a separate legal code for Muslims, organised and regulated by British experts of law." There is already a network of Sharia councils in the UK. They are not recognised as courts but are seen as essential by those Muslims seeking advice and religious sanction in matters such as divorce.

Ayesha Begum sought an Islamic divorce from the Muslim Law Shariah Council in west London. "I had obtained a divorce in the secular courts but my husband refused to divorce me Islamically. In English law I was seen as a single woman but by Islamic law I was still married to him. "I'm a practising Muslim and I wanted to do the right things in the eyes of God. It was very important I obtained an Islamic divorce."

But Cassandra Balchin, a convert to Islam and spokeswoman for the group Women Living Under Muslim Laws, is concerned about the growth of these minority legal systems. "Very often traditional forms of mediation can disadvantage vulnerable groups, such as women, within a community. "I'm concerned about how much choice the weaker party would have in submitting to the governance of these alternative forums."

Despite Ms Balchin's fears, Sharia councils have already begun to follow the Jewish model of turning themselves into recognised courts of arbitration. Faisal Aqtab Siddiqi, a commercial law barrister and head of the Hijaz College Islamic University in Warwickshire, says he has already adjudicated in a number of contractual disputes. "Because we follow the same process as any case of arbitration, our decisions are binding in English law. Unless our decisions are unreasonable, they are recognised by the High Court."

[My Comments : Awash as we are in a flood of multicultural jibber jabber, this kind of thing passes right by most people without so much as a blink. Not even a whisper from the MSM. However, it is just one more milepost on the road to cultural surrender. The Muslim populations of Europe have absolutely NO intention of assimilating into Western culture. Instead, they plan to build great teeming ghettos walled off from the culture of the host country and seething with anti-Western hostility. From within these fortified enclaves they may well launch a campaign of terror that drives a dagger straight through the heart of European democracy. Or, they may simply wait patiently, biding their time until immigration and birthrate deliver a voting majority, at which point Europe will become dhimmi by default. Anyone who doubts this can happen desperately NEEDS to read Bruce Bawer's excellent While Europe Slept and/or Mel Phillips equally powerful Londonistan. Both books document in disturbing detail how European liberal democracies are being transformed by (largely) Muslim immigration. Read. Reflect. Then find comfort in telling yourself : "It can't happen here." - Martel]

JIHAD IN AMERICA - PART TWO

2006-11-28T22:17:00.000-05:00

Excerpt taken from Unholy Alliance

Osama (Sami) al-Arian was a Palestinian professor of engineering who operated out of the University of South Florida. Al-Arian created two non-profit organizations, a think-tank associated with the University called the World Islamic Studies Enterprise (WISE) and the Islamic Committee for Palestine, which raised funds and recruited soldiers for Islamic jihad. Al-Arian’s Islamic Committee had featured the blind sheik, Omar Abdul Rachman, as a guest speaker while Tarik Hamdi, a board member of WISE was known by authorities to have personally delivered a satellite telephone and battery pack to Osama bin laden in Afghanistan in May 1998.

Sami al-Arian was, in fact, the North American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the principal terrorist organizations in the Middle East, responsible for suicide bombings that took the lives of more than a hundred people including two Americans, aged 16 and 20, before he was arrested in February 2003. An FBI surveillance video of al-Arian’s fund-raising tour of American mosques shows al-Arian being introduced as “the president of the Islamic Committee for Palestine. … the active arm of the Islamic Jihad Movement.” While others in the video praise the killing of Jews and Christians, al-Arian states, “Let us damn America … Let us damn [her] allies until death.” In another speech al-Arian said, “We assemble today to pay respects to the march of the martyrs and to the river of blood that gushes forth and does not extinguish, from butchery to butchery, and from martyrdom to martyrdom, from jihad to jihad.”

In 1997, Al-Arian created another organization, the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom. He appointed Kit Gage a member of the National Lawyers Guild and a veteran of the anti-Vietnam left to be its executive director. The specific purpose of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom was to oppose the “Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act”—the predecessor to the Patriot Act—which had been passed in 1996 following the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a terrorist atrocity which killed 175 innocent people. Pursuant to the Act, Palestinian Islamic Jihad was declared a terrorist organization. The Act made “material support” for terrorist organizations illegal and authorized the use of secret evidence in terrorist cases. Sami al-Arian’s brother-in-law Mazen al-Najjar was arrested under its terms, held for three and a half years and eventually deported after 9/11. His attorney was David Cole, the Center for Constitutional Rights counsel in the Los Angeles Patriot Act case and the Ford Foundation’s legal scholar and advocate against post-9/11 immigration controls.

Among the organizations supporting al-Arian’s “civil liberties” crusade against the terrorist legislation were the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the ACLU, the American Muslim Council and the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations (CAIR), two radical Islamic groups which also pretended to be civil liberties organizations. CAIR is an offshoot of the Hamas-created Islamic Association for Palestine and several of its leaders have been arrested as terrorists. The American Muslim Council is the “founder, corporate parent and supporter of several militant Islamic groups, while its leaders have openly championed Hamas terrorists, defended Middle Eastern terrorist regimes, [and] issued anti-Semitic and anti-American statements.”

The 120-page indictment of Al-Arian issued by the Ashcroft Justice Department was based on a seven-year investigation including extensive wire-taps of al-Arian’s conversations with Hamas terrorists in Syria and the Middle East. Among the 200 specific acts connecting al-Arian to the terrorist organization listed in the indictment were a fax sent “to Saudi Arabia, [that] inquired about obtaining palletized urea fertilizer [a chemical compound used in explosives] in fifty kilogram bags suitable for ocean transportation,”[4] and telephone calls arranging payments to the families of suicide bombers, which was one of al-Arian’s responsibilities as financial head of the terrorist organization.

Sami al-Arian was arrested for his terrorist activities in February 2003. He had been under investigation by the FBI since 1996 and had long been publicly identified as a terrorist by close observers of the Islamic jihad movement like Steven Emerson. The basis for their suspicion was fairly transparent. For example, one board member of al-Arian’s think-tank (WISE), a Palestinian academic named Khalil Shiqaqi, was the brother Fathi Shiqaqi the well-known founder of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. When Fathi Shiqaqi was assassinated, he was replaced as head of the terrorist organization by Ramadan Abdallah Shallah who was the director of al-Arian’s think-tank and a board member of WISE himself. At the same time, Al-Arian’s non-profit—the Islamic Committee for Palestine—was involved in raising money and recruiting at public events across America to “sponsor” Palestinian martyrs and featuring appeals by fundraisers “who begged for $500 to kill a Jew.”

When Emerson began warning the public about al-Arian’s terrorist recruitment efforts and his connections to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, he was ferociously attacked for “Muslim-bashing” and “McCarthyism” by prominent figures in the political left, among whom al-Arian was by now a familiar colleague. On September 26, 2001 al-Arian made the mistake of appearing on the FoxNews Channel’s O’Reilly Factor. The host confronted al-Arian with his public calls for “Death to Israel” and declared, “If I was the CIA, I’d follow you wherever you went.” The ensuing public uproar produced enough embarrassment to University of South Florida officials that they finally suspended al-Arian from his professorship, albeit with pay.

Al-Arian immediately adopted the posture of the victim: “I’m a minority,” he said. “I’m an Arab. I’m a Palestinian. I’m a Muslim. That’s not a popular thing to be these days. Do I have rights, or don’t I have rights?” The American left sprang to al-Arian’s defense. Their efforts included articles in The Nation and Salon.com, whose reporter Eric Boehlert called it, “The Prime Time Smearing of Sami al-Arian” and explained, “By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria, NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves—and ruined an innocent professor’s life.” Others who joined the al-Arian defense chorus included the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the University of South Florida faculty union, and the American Association of University Professors. The leftist head of Georgetown’s Middle East studies program, John Esposito, expressed concern that al-Arian not be a “victim of … anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry,” and Ellen Schrecker, the foremost academic expert on the McCarthy era (who regards American Communists as well-meaning social reformers and innocent victims of government persecution) called al-Arian’s suspension “political repression.”

After the O’Reilly show and just before al-Arian’s indictment, Duke University held a symposium on “National Security and Civil Liberties.” Al-Arian was the featured (and university-sponsored) speaker. After his arrest, a report on his appearance at Duke was posted on the leftist website CommonDreams.org. It was written by Sarah Shields, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of North Carolina: “Professor Sami al-Arian made an impassioned plea for free speech. An immigrant, a professor, a leader of his Muslim community, al-Arian had campaigned against the use of secret evidence in court, embracing the democratic guarantees of a constitution designed to protect the innocent. Professor al-Arian had seen first hand the triumph of our most valued principles. At a time when Americans needed the information about the growing number of Muslims in this country, he helped found a think-tank [WISE] devoted to the study of Islam in this country. … Sami al-Arian has spent the past decade arguing passionately for the freedom of conscience, for the protections against arbitrary imprisonment that form the very foundations of our civilization. Now he is locked up, unable to appear in court in his own defense, awaiting trial under conditions uncommon for even the worst convicted criminals. … When I was in preschool, I heard fairy tales about all-powerful kings who arbitrarily threw people into dungeons. When I was in Hebrew school, I learned how Jews were rounded up by rulers during times of instability. … And today I wonder: was there a warning in those fairy tales, those stories about bad kings, evil advisors, and their dungeons?”

Sami al-Arian was arrested five months after the O’Reilly episode. The arrest took place seven years after the FBI investigation began, and was made possible only by provisions adopted in the Patriot Act. The reason for the long delay was the existence of a government rule that created a wall between criminal and intelligence investigations, and barred agents of the FBI and intelligence agencies from communicating with each other. It was this rule that had prevented FBI agents in Minneapolis from breaking into the computer of Zacarias Moussaoui—the so-called “20th hijacker”—a month before 9/11. Had the FBI agents been given permission to search Moussaoui’s computer, two of the 9/11 hijackers would have been identified along with the Hamburg cell that planned the attack, and it is possible that the 9/11 tragedy would have been averted.

The rule erecting a barrier between intelligence and criminal investigations had been put in place by Attorney General Janet Reno in July 1995. Referred to as “the wall,” it caused a breakdown in the collaboration between investigators that national security officials had long realized was a danger to public safety. In the words of Mary Jo White, a Clinton-appointed U.S. Attorney who was the most seasoned al Qaeda prosecutor before 9/11: “The walls are the single greatest danger we have blocking our ability to obtain and act on [terrorist] information.” One of the important innovations of the Patriot Act was to eliminate these walls. This made possible the collaboration between intelligence agencies and the FBI and led directly to the arrest of Sami al-Arian and his associates.

[My Comments : No single person has done more to "connect the dots" between the various players plotting the demise of Western civilization than Mr. Horowitz. He knows where the bodies are buried...and he knows who buried 'em. To read his books is to have a veil lifted from your eyes as he exposes the networks and shines the cold light of truth on the shadowy and often complex web of conspiracy and secrecy which the MSM simply ignores. For that, we all owe him a debt of deepest gratitude. - Martel]

JIHAD IN AMERICA - PART ONE

2006-11-28T07:32:00.000-05:00

Imam Barred From US Airways Flight Joins Interfaith Clerics and NAACP Leader for Press Conference, Prayer, and Flight on US Airways

MAS Freedom Conducts Airport 'Pray-in' and Press Conference

11/22/2006 5:20:00 PM

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- On Monday, November 27th, 8:15 AM, at the US Airways ticket counter located in the Reagan National Airport, Imam Omar Shahin, one of the six Imams removed from US Airways flight 300, will join Imam Mahdi Bray, executive director of the MAS Freedom Foundation, Rabbi Arthur Waskow of the Shalom Center of Philadelphia, Rev Graylan Hagler of the United Church of Christ, Hillary Shelton, director of the NAACP-Washington National Office, and other interfaith members for a press statement, public prayer, and flight departure on US Airways.

The "pray-in" is in response to US Airways' removal of Imam Omar Shahin and five other Imams traveling from a religious leader's conference in Minnesota. Three of the Imams were observed praying prior to departure. Subsequent to boarding the plane, the six were removed from the flight, handcuffed, and detained in the airport for questioning for over five hours. Upon release, US Airways and other airlines refused to allow them to purchase tickets for other scheduled flights to Phoenix.

"The detention of these religious leaders, and the refusal of the airline to allow them travel, is a gross example of blatant Islamophobia and the violation of the civil rights of Muslim passengers", said Imam Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.

"The last time I checked, public prayer was still protected by the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion and speech. It's a shame that as an African-American and a Muslim I have the double whammy of having to worry about driving while Black and flying while Muslim. We charge the airline with not only discrimination, but with an action that is insulting and demeaning to these Muslim religious leaders, and to all people of faith."

The MAS Freedom Foundation, and many in the interfaith and civil rights community, feel strongly that in addition to religious discrimination, the issue involving the six Imams is also a religious freedom issue. We have forwarded the case to several prominent civil and constitutional rights attorneys and legal scholars.

[My Comments : Ahh yes. The familiar braying of Mahdi. And isn't it just like our eagle eyed corporate media, ever the vigilant public watchdog, to give Bray a public platform from which to posture as a spokesperson for the "peace-loving" Muslim community? Never mind his sinister associations with the dark underbelly of Islamofascist terrorism. No sir. Mr. Bray is a fine upstanding member of our immigrant community and a model "citizen". What's that you say? The MAS (aka The Muslim Brotherhood in America) is a Jihadist front organization which lends aid and support to the very terrorist groups with which we in the West are engaged in a life and death struggle? No way! That can't be OUR Mr. Bray! He's a friend of the oppressed and a lover of small dogs and children everywhere.

Of course, all of this has already been carefully documented elsewhere. Go here to read Hugh Fitzgerald's excellent profile of Mahdi Bray. You will come away better informed about the good imam's true intentions. Or, if you (like me) want your information voluminous and footnoted, then Steve Emerson's Jihad Incorporated and American Jihad are a must read. Both books are excellent primers on how to start and manage your very own homegrown fund raising front for your favorite terrorist organization. And of course, if you're not inclined to support those nasty capitalist bookmongers over at Amazon, you can always check out either or both books at your local public library. See? It's possible to be informed and still uphold your socialist principles. Ain't America GRAND?

Of course, all of this begs the larger question. And it's the one question which probably causes most of the public to collectively scratch their puzzled noggins. Just how did Left wing clerics and the darlings of "social justice" (read: reparations for slavery) get in bed with a religion so fundamentalist, so reactionary, indeed so inimical to all of the ideals which progressives claim to believe? On the surface of it, they couldn't possibly be more polar opposite. I mean, you don't see the American Council of Churches and the NAACP falling all over themselves to join hands with evangelical Christians in support of school prayer. So what gives here?

I believe the answer is ideological rather than logical. The common thread which links these disparate groups together, as David Horowitz has so penetratingly observed, is their anti-Americanism. They all identify America in particular and Western democracy in general as 'The Great Satan' and the great oppressor of downtrodden peoples worldwide. The heroes of their faith are Pol Pot and Bin Laden, FALN and Hezbollah. The Left and the Islamofascists share one unifying ideal, a hatred of Western capitalism. Western democracies are the enemy which must be undermined and destroyed in order for "liberation" from imperialism and worldwide justice to prevail.

And remember...as always your national media serves up the very finest in news, all carefully screened and vetted for political correctness because YOU can't handle the real truth. - Martel]