Predator 3 Terrorists 0

AIR FORCE PREDATOR UAV ENGAGES INSURGENTS PLACING IED

Release Date: 3/29/2006

Balad Air Base, Iraq -- An MQ-1B Predator unmanned aerial vehicle engaged three anti-Iraqi forces in the process of placing an improvised explosive device along a road near Balad Air Base yesterday evening. The Predator launched an AGM-114 Hellfire missile against the group.

The Predator monitored the three individuals for about half an hour while they used a pick ax to dig a hole in the road, placed an explosive round in the hole and strung wires from the hole to a ditch on the side of the road. When it was clear the individuals were placing an IED, the Predator launched the 100-pound Hellfire missile, resulting in the deaths of all three insurgents.

“This is a prime example of how airpower is supporting the fight on the ground,” said Brig. Gen. Frank Gorenc, commander of the 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing at Balad. “We’re able to provide a persistent view of the battlefield to commanders on the ground, and if called upon, put a weapon on a target within minutes.”

Using joint Army and Air Force trend analysis and past incident reporting from the area, the Predator was assigned to monitor the general location where the insurgents were ultimately found.

“Based on the information we had available, we had a pretty good idea there might be some activity in the area, and we were right,” said General Gorenc. “This strike should send a message to our enemies that we’re watching you, and we will take action against you any time, day or night, if you continue to stand in the way of progress in Iraq.”

Lock & Load

Muslim jihadists 'moving in'

Greg Roberts, Kiunga, Papua New Guinea
March 27, 2006

MUSLIM extremists from The Philippines and elsewhere are claimed to be setting up bases in Papua with the blessing of elements of the Indonesian military.Papua New Guinean Catholic bishop Giles Cote said the extremists were entering Papua to fight supporters of the separatist Free Papua Movement (OPM).

"Our information indicates that jihad militants are in Papua to do the dirty work of the police and military," said Bishop Cote, who diocese of Western Province borders Papua.

As anger in Jakarta mounted over Australia's decision to issue temporary protection visas to 42 of 43 Papuans who arrived in a boat on Cape York in January, Indonesia rejected Bishop Cote's claims. "It is not true that there are any religious militants backed by the TNI (Indonesian military) in Papua," said Dino Kusnadi, a spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra.

Bishop Cote told The Australian in the PNG town of Kiunga that he believed the Muslim extremists came from the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, and Sulawesi and other islands in northern Indonesia. He doubted Indonesia's repeated assurances to Canberra that Papuan asylum-seekers would not be harmed if forced to return home.

The Catholic Church is assisting 6000 Papuans living in 17 refugee camps in PNG.
"These people are afraid to go back," Bishop Cote said. "They fear they will be jailed or worse. Our information suggests it is not safe for them to be returned."

Bishop Cote believed several thousand Indonesian troops had been relocated from Aceh - where Jakarta last year resolved a longstanding separatist rebellion - to Papua. "I am concerned that soon we will have another wave of refugees coming across the border for protection."

Free West Papua Campaign Australian organiser Nick Chesterfield said Bishop Cote's comments supported OPM claims that Muslim extremists were being armed by the TNI to form militias to crack down on the pro-independence movement.

He said separatists believed militias were responsible for a spate of killings in recent weeks around the town of Timika, which services the giant US-run Freeport copper and gold mine.

Mr Chesterfield said the bishop's comments also supported claims by the OPM that Indonesian troops were airlifted from the Lhoksamawe district of Aceh late last year to the Papuan towns of Enarotoli, Nabire and Manokwari.

However, Mr Kusnadi said no troops had been relocated, and Muslim extremists were not encouraged to establish themselves in Papua.

"I am not questioning the credibility of the bishop but perhaps you can question his sources," Mr Kusnadi said.

"There is no new military push in Papua. Indeed, there never has been a military push in Papua."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra declined to comment on Bishop Cote's claims.

Shoe Bomber Dickhead

BAD ASS

Verdict in Shoe Bombing Terrorist

Remember the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and tried to light it?
Did you know his trial is over?
Did you know he was sentenced?
Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV/Radio?

Didn't think so. Everyone should hear what the judge had to say.

Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court.Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say.

His response: After admitting his guilt to the court for the record, Reid also admitted his "allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah," defiantly stated "I think I will not apologize for my actions," and told the court "I am at war with your country."

Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below:January 30, 2003, United States vs. Reid. Judge Young:"Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to the sentence the Court imposes upon you. On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life in prison in the custody of the United States Attorney General. On counts 2, 3, 4 and 7, the Court sentences you to 20 years in prison on each count, the sentence on each count to run consecutive with the other.That's 80 years. On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30 years consecutive to the 80 years just imposed.

The Court imposes upon you each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000 for the aggregate fine of $2 million. The Court accepts the government's recommendation with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines. The Court imposes upon you the $800 special assessment.The Court imposes upon you five years supervised release simply because the law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no further. This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.

Let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here and I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court, we deal with individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals. As human beings, we reach out for justice.You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist.

You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or if you think you are a soldier. You are not----- you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I've know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted murders.

In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were, and he said: "You're no big deal."You are no big deal.What your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific.

What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing. And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you, but as I search this entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious.

You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very wind carries freedom. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely.

It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their representation of you before other judges.We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bare any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow, it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure.

Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done. The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America.

That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag stands for freedom. And it always will.Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down.So, how much of this Judge's comments did we hear on our TV sets?We need more judges like Judge Young. Everyone should and needs to hear what this fine judge had to say.

Powerful words that strike home.

God bless America.

Victory on Terror? from the U.S.

A Very Important Message- By todays leaders in understanding & teaching on the subject of Terrorism & Islam. Applies World Wide not just the U.S.A.

Victory over Terror?

Here is a transcript of the panel discussion at Restoration Weekend on February 24. The topic was "The War on Terror -- Are We Winning?" I spoke along with Daniel Pipes, Phyllis Chesler, and Steve Emerson. From FrontPage Magazine:

This panel discussion took place as part of "Restoration Weekend," on February 24, 2006, at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix -- The Editors.

Lt. General Thomas McInerney: We’ve got four panelists here. I’m going to give very light introductions. I want to say a few things about the intelligence summit and we’ll go in. They’ll devote their times, about 5-10 minutes, because we really want to thrust it back to you so we have strong audience participation. They’ll speak from sitting down. They’ll have a mike.

We’ve got Daniel Pipes, whom all of you know. Simply said, Daniel’s the foremost Middle East expert. Robert Spencer, who’s the director of the Jihad Watch. Phyllis Chesler. Phyllis has got 13 books. Robert only has 5. Finally, Steve Emerson, whom Bill O’Reilly always calls on when he wants to have an answer on the jihad.

Clearly their concerns are with what’s going on in Iraq today and yesterday and that will certainly update whether we are winning. I can only say, when I was over there in mid-December, I had two questions and they are (1) Was it worth it? and (2) Are we winning? I came back with a resounding yes, but we’ll listen to the speakers because we’re talking about the overall global war on terror.

Let me say something quickly about the intelligence summit this weekend at Crystal City, that I think is very important. Paul Biali was there and a few others. The important thing regarding the Saddam tapes: they had 12 hours, from 1992 to 2000. Bill Tierney, who was the translator and was also an UNSCOM inspector over there, did the translations. Obviously we read the excerpts of what the translations were because it wouldn’t have made any difference if I listened to Saddam Hussein, it wouldn’t have stuck. But we read the transcripts that he put up.

My good friend Wes Clark—or, as Rush Limbaugh calls him, “Ashley Wilkes,” said that Iran is really more important than Iraq and that we should have focused on Iran. Again, Ashley got it wrong and here’s why: because Saddam did have nuclear weapons. He was still developing nuclear weapons. He had chemical and biological weapons. In his own words. In a discussion with Saddam, Tariq Aziz said to him, “We could put nuclear weapons or biological in the United States, have them detonated by proxies and there wouldn’t be any fingerprints,” because, as he said, “we couldn’t get by with an explosion.” So I found it extremely interesting that he felt that they could get by with a biological attack because of the Fort Dietrich efforts that the U.S. are doing.

They also discussed how their deception against UNSCOM was so successful, because they knew which sites the UN inspectors were going to before they got there. From this, I’m going to make a supposition, which is mine only, a personal opinion. I now believe that the anthrax attack on Capitol Hill was probably carried out by Iraq. The FBI hasn’t found anybody else and I do believe that probably Iraq was as good a possibility as any because of the high degree of purity of that anthrax.

The WMD was moved out by the Russians. Primakov went there in December, but he had a colonel general there, a former airborne commander, who led the Spetsnaz team in combination with GRU and they went down there and moved the WMDs into Syria during the October to December 2002 timeframe. Three locations in Syria and one into the Baca Valley. This was exposed by a former deputy assistant secretary of defense, Jack Straw. A Ukrainian chief of intelligence who has very close ties with the Russians, who exposed that in a meeting with MI6 in London, Jim Clapper, who’s the head of the National Geospace Intelligence Agency, former chief of DIA, Retired Air Force three star.

So that was the fourth source I had heard it from. But I had heard it from three other sources that they’d moved the WMD out. I never saw any evidence that Saddam did have WMD except that it just disappeared. It must impress you that the Iraqi survey group found zero evidence of WMD. Now if they found parts around, it would say, okay, you know, they have destroyed something. But when you find zero, that is a clean indication that it was very thoroughly done.
The finally thing that came out of this regards the Russians, who since the Cold War have been brilliant in maskirovka, or deception. Once the Iraqi survey group didn’t find WMD, which they already knew, then they carefully weaved into the capitals in Europe and in UN, “See? there was no WMD.” And that stuck.

Now these tapes have come out. Remember, this is just a small part. They’ve only gone through 4% of the over two million documents that we’ve captured. Now that these tapes have come out, the mainstream media cannot say there were no WMD. Because, if there were in fact WMD in Iraq, for the liberals, the Left, it would mean that going to Iraq was the right thing to do.
What I’m saying is, it was the right thing to do, whether or not the mainstream media will ever acknowledge it. It was the right thing to do because Saddam was a key leader in dealing with terrorism and an enabler. I don’t believe anybody should apologize for that.

Now I’m going to turn it over to Daniel. Daniel, go ahead and tell us,

“Are we winning?”
Daniel Pipes: In brief, no.

I think it’s a wonderful question, however, because it goes to the heart of our situation. Before explaining why I answer as I do, I’d like to give you some background about the nature of warfare and how it’s changed.

Traditional warfare, that is to say, pre-1945 warfare, was easy to assess because one looked at such factors as control of land, the state of the arsenal, the state of the economy, military personnel and the like. One could put flags, one could put numbers. It was, in large part, an objective assessment. Today, instead, we find that since 1945, in particular, I’m thinking of the French war in Algeria, our war in Vietnam, the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Israeli war against the Palestinians, warfare is lopsided, to the extent that looking at such factors as land, economy, and arsenal are meaningless.

Instead, one has to look at more subjective factors, such as the understanding on the part of the population of the war, the morale, the solidarity. In short, instead of hardware as it used to be, it’s now software. In particular, this means that allegiances are now in play. It used to be assumed that the people of this country were loyal to their leadership and people of the enemy country were loyal to its leadership.

Now that is no longer the case. If one thinks back three years ago to the skirmishing before the war in Iraq began, there were some ten million Europeans agitating against the war, in effect, objectively speaking, on the side of Saddam Hussein. And, to the contrary, it was a war goal of ours that we would work to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqis. So the key now in many ways is allegiance. Whose side are you on? And, from that point of view, we have to assess, I believe, how the current war is going. And it’s not going very well. It’s not going very well in two regards: one Muslim, one Western, these being the two main parties to the war.

Among Muslims, I hardly need point out, there is a very widespread feeling of solidarity. The few voices standing up for us are isolated, are weak, whether it be the Iraqi elections, the Palestinian elections, the Egyptian elections; one finds time after time that those people who think like we do, do very poorly. Survey poll after survey poll reinforces this understanding.
Secondly among Westerners, while there was, in particular after 9/11, a sense of solidarity, you may remember the slogan “United we stand,” that has long ago dissipated and we are in an intramural kind of argument that is far more intense than it was before.
What do we need to do to changes those allegiances, those outlooks?

Well, for Muslims, it means showing them that radical Islam is a failure. To show them, as we showed the adherents of fascism, in the 1940s, whether they were Italian, German or Japanese, that fascism was a failure. Or as we showed Communists in the 1980s, whether in China, Russia or elsewhere, that Communism was a failure. In like fashion, we need to show Islamists that radical Islam is a failure. At the same time, we need to help non-Islamist Muslims develop an alternate paradigm, a version of Islam that is not radicalized and not hostile towards us.

Towards Westerners, what does one do with the severe divisions in our society? The roughly half/half division, where half of us believe, as do presumably most people in this room, that we are in a life-and-death struggle, and half believe that, well, the problem we face is comparable to gambling and prostitution, it’s something that we can manage. I don’t quite know how we deal with that. There’s only one way we can and that is by exploiting the tragedies that have befallen us and will befall us as educational episodes from which they can learn.

So, to return to the question, in the Muslim world, one finds opinion solidly against us. In the Western world, one finds opinion very much divided. This, I believe, is the problem and not the actual battlefield, not body counts, not financial flows, not weapon developments. It is morale, it is solidarity. It is understanding that is key and unfortunately we’re not doing well in that regard.

Robert Spencer: I would agree with Daniel that we’re not winning the War on Terror and one of the primary reasons why that is so, is that the whole thing has been misconceived from the beginning.

The whole idea of a war on terror is a war on a tactic, not on an opponent. Terror is not something that was invented by Osama bin Laden on September 11, 2001. It has been used by various different armies and various different groups throughout history. It does nothing to indicate who exactly is using the terror and for what means. It was not until several years after 9/11 that the President actually explained this in greater detail and told us, a few months ago, that we are fighting against a unified global movement that wants to institute Shari’ a law, Islamic law, over a unified Islamic state, stretching from Spain to Indonesia. Of course, he could have added the Americas, since the Islamists have made it abundantly clear that their goal is global.

But we have been focused so much on the means by which they are pursuing the struggle—that is, terror—that we have lost sight of their goals. We cannot possibly defeat an enemy that we are unwilling to name and unwilling to come to grips with what exactly they are trying to do and how they are trying to do it.

Now, the primary example of this, I think the most stinging example of this, is right here in our country. The President has said correctly that the Islamists, the jihadists, want to establish an Islamic state. They first want to reassert Islamic law in the Muslim world, where it is only fully enforced today in Saudi Arabia and Iran, and then carry it out by means of jihad warfare to the rest of the world.

Ibrahim Hooper, the spokesman for the Council on American/Islamic Relations, is on record saying that he would like to see the United States become an Islamic state sometime in the future, which is exactly the same goal as Osama bin Laden. But Hooper insists that he will pursue this goal, and he’s doing so very well, very skillfully, by peaceful means. And because he has insisted that he is doing it by peaceful means and because that it is in fact the case, he has been classified as a “moderate” Muslim spokesman and given that kind of appellation in the major media and even in law enforcement. Of course, the Council on American/Islamic relations has even had access to the White House.

Now this is the most ridiculous sign of mistaking of means for goals. Hooper is not planting any bombs anywhere or blowing up any buildings with airplanes, therefore, he’s a moderate. When actually he himself has said that he wants to see exactly the same kind of world that Osama bin Laden wants to see. No one in official Washington, no one in any policymaking areas, has acknowledged this or has acknowledged the fact that it’s not only Hooper and Osama bin Laden who have nurtured those same goals, same ideas, same hopes, but they are also held by a very large number of Muslims in the United States, Muslims in Europe, and Muslims around the world. Not a tiny minority of extremists, but, as Dr. Pipes points out, the fact that they win elections all the time, the fact that the Muslim world is so unified against us, is an indication that this is mainstream thought within the Islamic world today. It is mainstream in the United States. It is mainstream elsewhere.

The only difference is one of tactics. Because we are not recognizing that, we are not able to guard against it and we are losing. Every day brings new confirmation of this. For example, immediately after the Golden Mosque was blown up, George Bush and Tony Blair both assured the world that they would give money to the Shiites to help rebuild it forthwith. Who is behind the Iraqi Shiites? Iran. What is Iran trying to do? In effect, by helping to rebuild the Golden Mosque, we are aiding the Iranian war effort that is intent on destroying us.

But this comes from this fundamental unwillingness or inability to come to grips with the larger goals of the jihadists. The Shiites have been enthusiastic about democracy in Iraq because they know that holding a majority there will be able to come to power there by means of the ballot and then to institute an Islamic state after the manner of Iran.
But people are content just to say, “Because they’re voting, everything’s all right.” And they don’t recognize that this ideology is what is always going to win any voting, in Iran and elsewhere, as it did in the Palestinian Authority. The rage and the global riots about the cartoons. What is the goal? What are they trying to accomplish by appearing to act so irrationally about these cartoons in a Danish newspaper?

The goal has become clear with some actions in Norway and elsewhere in Europe, where there are already calls to institute blasphemy laws according to the model of Islamic Shari’a in European states and to limit the freedom of speech that was born in the European context so as to prevent this kind of insult to Islam and to the prophet.
Now, what was the goal of Osama bin Laden? To institute Islamic law. What does Islamic law say? That non-Muslims are forbidden, on pain of death, to insult Allah or the prophet. So the push for blasphemy laws in Europe, which is very likely to go through in Norway and probably some other countries as well, is a first step towards instituting Islamic Shari’a law there, in other words, to implementing Osama bin Laden’s goal.

And yet, the major media and the commentators on this have rarely, if ever, connected the cartoon controversy, although it was something that was decided by the organization of the Islamic conference, 56 Muslim states and the Palestinian Authority, in Mecca in December. It was decided that they were going to stir this up in order to counter the democracy project in Iraq.
Nonetheless, there has been virtually no connection of this with the global jihad agenda, although the connection is clear.

If we wish to win the War on Terror or to begin to turn this around, then there has to be an acknowledgement by Washington and by the European states that we are fighting a jihad. That we are defending ourselves against a jihad effort that is attempting to not just sow undifferentiated mayhem or knock down some of our buildings, but to institute Islamic states in the West. And that they are willing to do violence for that end. Of course, that’s fanciful in Washington.

It is by no means fanciful in Western Europe that they could attain this goal and that they could attain this goal in the next few decades in some of the Western European states.
If officials in these states and in Washington were able and willing to identify the enemy properly, as being those who are pursuing this jihad agenda, then our foreign policy could be adjusted accordingly. Obviously there should be no more aid to groups that are in the hip pocket of Iran.

In a broader sense, there should be no more aid to states that support the jihad, that allow the jihad ideology and the ideology of the subjugation of Jews and Christians, of atheists, of other non-Muslims as second-class citizens in the Islamic state. Any state that teaches these things should get no penny of American aid. That goes for Egypt, that goes for Pakistan, that goes for so many states that are now on the American foreign aid bankroll.

If we identified the enemy properly, they would get nothing until they acted aggressively to stop the spread of these teachings and to end the institutionalized oppression of non-Muslims in their societies. This is even aside from the Manhattan project that needs to be initiated in order to free us from dependency on oil so that it cannot be used as a means to manipulate American foreign policy any longer. But that step, as well as all the others, cannot be taken until the problem is identified correctly and our unwillingness or inability to identify the problem correctly is currently hamstringing us to such a degree that all the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan could come to naught and the problem could grow exponentially worse in the coming years.

Phyllis Chesler: I’m afraid I agree with my two copanelists thus far, that it’s not the War on Terror, it’s combating an ideology of hatred, of extreme hatred that is our enemy. The hot war is the culture war, the war of ideologies, and this will decide whether Western Civilization lives or dies.

This is a war that we have not begun to fight. It’s a war that Stalinists actually launched against the West beginning with Israel, 50-70 years ago, give or take and that now is flourishing, not just through the United Nations and international human rights organizations, but on the Western campuses in both Europe and North America.

As everyone knows, I was once held captive in Afghanistan and it forged the kind of human rights activist and feminist and intellectual that I am. I can talk about it if anybody wants to hear, the lessons to be learned from direct experience of living under Shari’a law.
I want to focus for a moment on the Western university system, which has been thoroughly Palestinianized. It began in earnest in the 1960s and 1970s where initially very ground-breaking views about racial and gender inequality became increasingly influenced by Marxist views against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and organized religion. It gradually came to constitute what is now known as the “post-colonial” and “post-modern” academy. Race replaced both class and gender as primary concerns and, over time, even feminists became more obsessed with the occupation of Palestine than with the worldwide occupation of women’s bodies.

Sad, but true.By the late 1990s, Palestinians, not Tibetans or Kurds or Bosnians or Rwandans, came to be viewed as the symbolic victims of the world, by those academics who considered themselves anti-racists, ant-violence, and anti-misogynist. These, by the way, are our fifth columnists. These are the people who have turned generation upon generation of Westerners against the West and against Western ideals. And, in a very Orwellian world of doublespeak and groupthink, Palestinians became the new black South Africans and Israel became the new white Afrikaner apartheid regime.

Politically correct Western academics and activists romanticized terrorists, beginning with Palestinians, but now including Osama bin Laden.

Many Western intellectuals on the Left, including feminists, have told me to my face that 9/11 is cosmic blowback for all the crimes committed by the CIA, by America, in Guatemala. Some have insisted. So it’s a pathology, actually, and we’re really dealing, I believe, since the calls for boycott and divestment in Israel, since the anti-American rallies and teachings and conferences have not slowed down, even slightly, post-9/11, or post 3/11, or post 7-7. I then began to understand that we’re looking at a cult that passes for what we hoped was free and independent and diverse thinking in the West, among our intellectuals and public intelligentsia. This is a cult and the brainwashing that they have endured they are now visiting upon the next generations in the classrooms.

Here’s where I agree with David Horowitz: we no longer have an ideologically or intellectually diverse academy at all. That flows into the media, which once may have been liberal but which is now increasingly hard Left and therefore, by definition, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-American. And definitely anti-Israel.

In my opinion, these days, to be anti-Zionist is to be a racist and the new anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism. This is something that I wrote about in the new anti-Semitism three years ago. At that time, nobody was saying it. Now some more people are saying it. But that message, that understanding, has not carried the day.

The culture war is a very hot war. There are no prisoners taken. Here I don’t need a bodyguard. Here we’re safe to say this truth. But telling this kind of truth about Islam, about jihad, about terrorism as a tactic to subdue. Often Israel is attacked as the largest apartheid state. No, the largest practitioner of both religious and gender apartheid in the world is Islam. This needs to be taught on campuses. It needs to be said out loud. When I have tried to do so, I need bodyguards. I then also get branded, as we all have, as racists and neoconservatives, which is even worse than being called a racist. The crime du jour, the thought crime of the day is to be a neoconservative. It’s a real thought crime. Today, it’s equivalent to telling the truth. That’s what it is.

You might be sued if you tell the truth and you might be exiled. You certainly won’t get quoted and you might not get published in the usual places. I bless Front Page for that very reason because here we are telling the truth. The first weapon, by the way, in this culture war is the misuse of language so that you have mainstream and liberal newspapers who talk about insurgents, not terrorists. They describe killers as martyrs or as freedom fighters. They don’t say that the masterminds of jihad are serial killers and that these are crime scenes and that it should be analyzed in just this way. But it isn’t. These are well-educated, well-funded, evil men.

They are not impoverished residents of refugee camps for whom our hearts must bleed.
Since our own intelligentsia is so corrupted and the scholarship is so shoddy and the ideology is so hard-hearted and doesn’t change as reality floods in upon us, what must be done? What must be done?
Well, anyone who has a large family fortune, don’t give it to the Western academies anymore. I think that the conservative think tanks need to be funded so that they accredit students and that these can become the universities of the future.

We have to rescue language. It has to bear some relationship to the truth and to morality. Not everything is relative. It is not all Roshoman. I am not a cultural relativist. We have to take back the campuses and that was one way of thinking about it. We have to keep reading and listening to my copanelists, who are on the front line, who are in the vanguard of this truth-telling without which we’re not going to win this war. Everything is a stake. We have to all be heroes. We have to stand up to evil as best we can, even if we can’t win a particular skirmish or trench warfare, we have to be standing and fighting, at least by telling the truth. If we fail this opportunity, we will betray everything that we believe in and stand for as a free people.

Steve Emerson: The question about whether we’re winning the war is an interesting question. One part is “who are ‘we’?” and the other is “what war?” I would say the bottom line is that it’s basically one step forward, two steps backward.

I was in Australia for the last week and a half. Before I left on Monday, there was a front page story in the Australian and the headline was “Prime Minister Hits at ‘Jihad Muslims.’” I just want to read you two paragraphs:

“John Howard has strongly criticized aspects of Muslim culture, warning that they pose an unprecedented challenge for Australia’s immigration program. ‘I do think there is this particular complication, because there is a fragment which is utterly antagonistic to our kind of society. You cannot find any equivalent in Italian or Greek or Lebanese or Chinese or Baltic immigration to Australia. There is no equivalent of raving on about jihad. But that is the problem.’”

What wonderful plain talking and recognition that we would love to see, but do not see, from our own elected officials in the United States.

Let me just go into the specifics of where we are in the war on terrorism. This past week was an interesting week. There was the announcement on Sunday of the shutting down of Kind Hearts Charity. That’s a nonprofit militant Islamic charity whose assets were frozen in Toledo, Ohio because of the suspicion that it was funneling money to Hamas. Three days, an announcement that three jihadis in Toledo were arrested for plotting to carry out jihad against American troops in Iraq and they were actually going to set up training camps in the United States.

There’s currently a trial in Lodi, California, where there are jihadists who have admitted or at least been confronted with evidence that they planned to carry out terrorists attacks in the United States. There’s another trial in upstate New York of Muslim radicals who are acquiring weapons. The other day, there was a front page story in the Memphis Commercial Appeal about a major terrorist suspect who was arrested a former University of Memphis student who actually had plotted to carry out a series of terrorist attacks. He had in his possessions uniforms from pilots, GPS systems, and planned possibly to actually hijack a plane.

So these are indications that the FBI, together with the Department of Justice, Treasury, are doing a good job in the field, in terms of interdicting or recognizing an actual terrorist threat.
At the same time, however, the failure to recognize the larger jihadist culture gnaws at the very success of these initiatives. For example, yesterday or two days ago, the L.A. Times had an article, really more of a press release, announcing the Muslim-American Homeland Security Congress, which is an initiative designed to spread the notion that Muslims in the United States are thoroughly coordinating their actions with law enforcement on the war on terrorism.

The only problem was that the participants from the Muslim side included CAIR, MPAC and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, groups that have all lobbied on behalf of Islamic terrorists or who had officials connected to terrorism, or had organizational demonstrations in support of jihadists around the United States who have been arrested, or, most commonly, have portrayed the war against terrorism as a war on Islam. The same type of portrayal that Osama bin Laden has been using in his rhetoric.
More troubling was the fact that there were public officials associated with this, including Sheriff Lee Baca from Los Angeles, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, as well as Congresswoman Jane Harmon.

The interesting thing is, one of the people interviewed, Shakeel Syed, head of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, complained that law enforcement had tried to deport two innocent imams. One of those imams was Wagdy Ghoneim. We have tapes of him calling at least a dozen times in the United States for suicide bombings. The head of this organization, who contends that this man has been unfairly deported, is in bed with the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, the Sheriff of Los Angeles, and several other U.S. officials.
Other items that are on the politically damaging list in terms of where we’re stepping backwards. Karen Hughes has been running around the world conducting outreach to the Muslim Brotherhood. It started off in the United States last September, where she ran to Chicago to go meet with the Islamic Society of North America, which is a de facto arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the Muslim Student Association, which is even more radical in terms of their promotion of jihadist views. She has also run off to Egypt, where she’s met with Sheik Tantawi, head of al-Azar University. She portrayed Sheik Tantawi as a wonderful man of tolerance, even though he has issued fatwas calling for suicide bombings against Jews and against Americans.

FBI headquarters in Washington have conducted outreach programs with CAIR and with other radical Islamic groups that were involved in this major initiative. I differentiate between FBI headquarters and the FBI field. But FBI headquarters was involved in this major initiative to fund a group that was cosponsored by George Soros in terms of conducting outreach to Islamic groups whose basic message was, “There’s not a problem with Islamic extremism. There’s only a problem with Islamophobia.” The FBI was going to pour in more than $6 million into this program. The program was nixed. However there’s still a possibility that the program can be revived.

Criticism by the media or U.S. government officials of treatment of radical Islamic groups continues to beset us. The State Department since 9/11 has brought in dozens and dozens of Islamic clerics and Islamic officials as part of an outreach program to visit the United States. Interestingly enough, at least 15-20 of these clerics have been associated with the Muslim Brotherhood or the Jamad Islamia or other radical Islamic groups. In addition, organizations who are meeting with them in the United States at the behest of the U.S. government are mostly radical and some have actually supported bin Laden.

The Muslim Brotherhood, unfortunately, is not recognized as a threat and this goes to the heart of the problem in terms of the War on Terrorism. We understand what terrorism is when somebody pulls a pin out of a hand grenade or is caught on a wire saying, “I’m gonna carry out an attack,” or is caught on video plotting to carry out an act of violence.

What we fail to understand, and what we are blind to, is the degree to which the soft jihadists—what I call the cultural jihadists, the ones who wrap themselves under the mantle of being the victims of human rights abuses—have figured out that grand deception works perfectly in the United States.

In 1993, there was a seminal meeting in Philadelphia of Hamas leaders in the United States, as well as from outside the United States. It was a meeting that the FBI actually had wired and it’s been declassified since then. What was most interesting at this meeting was the general complaint among Hamas officials that they couldn’t raise money in the United States very effectively because Hamas had a “bad reputation.” Wonder why? One them said, “What do we do? We need to create a new entity.” I’ll paraphrase what one of them said, “Well, I know what we’ll do. We’ll create a human rights group because Americans are suckers for human rights.”

And in fact that’s exactly what they did. They created CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was morphed out of the Hamas organization in the United States.
Unfortunately, when we think of the word “mainstream Islamic groups,” we automatically associate that word with “moderate.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Nine of the top ten “mainstream Islamic groups” are tethered to the Muslim Brotherhood—ideologically, spiritually, or actually financially.

That is the problem that we face in the War on Terrorism. It’s the inability to recognize the larger jihadist culture that doesn’t carry out attacks but rather pretends to operate under the laws of the United States, or contends that they are actual victims of human rights abuses, when in fact they’ve inverted the moral equation. They’re the perpetrators. I note very ironically that CAIR, MPAC and these other groups are very quick to condemn the United States when it comes to Abu Ghraib or any “human rights violations,” pointing out that this is a major problem, that they’re really concerned with U.S. image issues, which they then advertise around the world as a problem of massive U.S. violations of Islamic human rights. This by the way is not dissimilar from the message that Al Gore announced just recently.

The reality is that these same Islamic groups who know how to generalize when it comes to the United States or the West, can’t generalize when it comes to Islamic terrorism. Because when it comes to Islamic terrorism, they’re the first ones to claim, “Oh, it’s just a small minority.” Or “it’s just an aberration.” Or “there’s no support in the community.” Or “This is just an anecdotal piece of evidence.” But in fact, Islamic terrorism is far more representative of the jihadist mentality prevalent among Islamic organizations than any type of construction of an argument that somehow torture is part of U.S. policy. The reality is, the New York Times goes along with this, the L.A. Times goes along with this, this ruse, this deception, by portraying these groups as innocent.

Most recently there was a rally in New York against the cartoons by several thousand Muslims. While one of the people leading the rally was Seraj Warraj. The New York Times failed to include a very interesting fact: Mr. Seraj Warraj was an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was portrayed simply as a mainstream Islamic leader.
Another individual who was quoted in the New York Times was an official of the Islamic Circle of North America, again portrayed as a mainstream group. What they didn’t reveal is the Islamic Circle of North America is a Jamad Islamia group, which is on record as calling for jihad in the United States, to promote the notion of an Islamic world. ICNA also published something very recently saying that they are against suicide bombings, except when it comes to killing Israelis. This was a declaration that was actually put out in the Islamic conference about three weeks ago, showing the deception practiced by these groups and being able to maintain an image of being “moderate” and yet in fact harboring and espousing a secret agenda.

So all in all, we have I think a major problem in terms of recognizing the jihadist culture or what I call soft jihad or cultural jihadism, that is far more rampant, that has to be discredited, that has to be delegitimized. At the same time, while we need to genuinely empower authentic Islamic moderates who renounce jihad, who renounce Islamic terrorism, and who are not afraid, as we have seen with several genuine moderates, to admit the fact that Islamic extremism is rampant within the institutionalized hierarchy of the Islamic organizations in the United States.

Vatican: Crusades "Noble Aim"

Vatican change of heart over 'barbaric' Crusades
From Richard Owen in Rome

THE Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.

The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.

The late Pope John Paul II sought to achieve Muslim- Christian reconciliation by asking “pardon” for the Crusades during the 2000 Millennium celebrations. But John Paul’s apologies for the past “errors of the Church” — including the Inquisition and anti-Semitism — irritated some Vatican conservatives. According to Vatican insiders, the dissenters included Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI.

Pope Benedict reached out to Muslims and Jews after his election and called for dialogue. However, the Pope, who is due to visit Turkey in November, has in the past suggested that Turkey’s Muslim culture is at variance with Europe’s Christian roots.
At the conference, held at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University, Roberto De Mattei, an Italian historian, recalled that the Crusades were “a response to the Muslim invasion of Christian lands and the Muslim devastation of the Holy Places”.

“The debate has been reopened,” La Stampa said. Professor De Mattei noted that the desecration of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Muslim forces in 1009 had helped to provoke the First Crusade at the end of the 11th century, called by Pope Urban II.

He said that the Crusaders were “martyrs” who had “sacrificed their lives for the faith”. He was backed by Jonathan Riley-Smith, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge University, who said that those who sought forgiveness for the Crusades “do not know their history”. Professor Riley-Smith has attacked Sir Ridley Scott’s recent film Kingdom of Heaven, starring Orlando Bloom, as “utter nonsense”.

Professor Riley-Smith said that the script, like much writing on the Crusades, was “historically inaccurate. It depicts the Muslims as civilised and the Crusaders as barbarians. It has nothing to do with reality.” It fuels Islamic fundamentalism by propagating “Osama bin Laden’s version of history”.

He said that the Crusaders were sometimes undisciplined and capable of acts of great cruelty. But the same was true of Muslims and of troops in “all ideological wars”. Some of the Crusaders’ worst excesses were against Orthodox Christians or heretics — as in the sack of Constantinople in 1204.

The American writer Robert Spencer, author of A Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, told the conference that the mistaken view had taken hold in the West as well as the Arab world that the Crusades were “an unprovoked attack by Europe on the Islamic world”. In reality, however, Christians had been persecuted after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem.
CONFLICT OVER THE HOLY LAND

· Historians count eight Crusades, although dates are disputed: 1095-1101, called by Pope Urban II; 1145-47, led by Louis VII; 1188-92, led by Richard I; 1204, which included the sack of Constantinople; 1217, which included the conquest of Damietta; 1228-29 led by Frederick II; 1249-52, led by King Louis IX of France; and 1270, also under Louis IX

· Until the early 11th century, Christians, Jews and Muslims coexisted under Muslim rule in the Holy Land. After growing friction, the first Crusade was sparked by ambushes of Christian pilgrims going to Jerusalem. The Byzantine Emperor Alexius appealed to Pope Urban II, who in 1095 called on Christendom to take up arms to free the Holy Land from the “Muslim infidel”

Gaming Skills being used

Gaming Experience is being used for remote control gun turrent - Too Good!

Video Games Can Save Your Life
March 10, 2006:

The U.S. Army has discovered a remote control gun turret that works, and cannot get enough of them. The army wants over 9,000 CROWS (common remotely operated weapon stations), but is only getting 15 a month. There should be about a thousand CROWS in service by the end of the year.

The idea for CROWS has been around for nearly half a century. Years of tinkering, and better technology, eventually made the remote control gun turret effective and dependable. CROWS us a real life saver, not to mention anxiety reducer, for troops who drive through bandit country a lot, and have a turret mounted gun (usually in a hummer).

The guy manning the turret mounted machine-gun is a target up there, and too often, the bad guys get you. Not with CROWS. The gunner is inside the vehicle, checking out the surroundings on a computer monitor (with night vision and telephoto capabilities).

CROWS also has a laser rangefinder built in, as well as a stabilizer mechanism to allow more accurate fire while the vehicle is moving. The CROWS systems cost about $260,000 each, and can mount a variety of weapons (M2 .50 caliber machine-gun, MK19 40-mm automatic grenade launcher, M240B 7.62mm machine-gun and M249 5.56mm squad automatic weapon).

But there's another reason, not often talked about, for the success of CROWS. The guys operating these systems grew up playing video games. They developed skills in operating systems (video games) very similar to the CROWS controls.

This was important, because viewing the world around the vehicle via a vidcam is not as enlightening (although a lot safer) than having your head and chest exposed to the elements, and any firepower the enemy sends your way. But experienced video gamers are skilled at whipping that screen view around, and picking up any signs of danger.

Iraqis are amazed at how observant CROWS is. Iraqis tend to just wrote this off as another example of American "magic." But the troops know better.

Video games can save your life.

Increase Awareness Needed

Third of Aussies ignorant about Islam: survey
SydneyMarch 20, 2006 - 12:36AM

One third of Australians are completely ignorant of the Islamic faith, with women and people without tertiary training the most likely to lack knowledge, a new study shows.

The survey, conducted by Roy Morgan research, involved 1300 Australians.

UNSW geographer Dr Kevin Dunn was commissioned to analyse the results, which have been published in the Journal of Islamic Studies.

The survey revealed only one in six Australians had a decent understanding of Islam, while one third claimed to be completely ignorant of it.

More than 55 per cent of respondents - mainly women, people with no tertiary training and those aged over 50 - reported having no contact with Muslims.

People who had no contact with Islam were twice as likely to be ignorant about the faith compared with those who were linked to it in some way, the study also showed.

It also found that whether people felt threatened by Islam depended on their knowledge of the religion.

A staggering 56 per cent of those surveyed, who admitted having no knowledge of the faith, reported feeling threatened by it, while 61 per cent of those with a little bit of knowledge still felt it posed a risk.

Even 46 per cent of those polled who claimed they had a reasonable understanding of the Islam faith still felt threatened.

The most common negative stereotype associated with the religion was that it was fundamentalist, with 27 per cent saying this was their belief.

Meanwhile 11 per cent said Islam was fanatical and hostile to women.

The published results come weeks after federal treasurer Peter Costello invited anyone who wanted to live under shariah to find another country, prompting Muslim leaders to accuse him of Islamophobia.

It also follows the first meeting of Prime Minister John Howard's hand-picked Muslim advisory committee and Sydney's race riots last December, which involved Muslim youths.

Dr Dunn said he was not surprised by the results.

But he said they were alarming as education was the best weapon in the fight against discrimination.

"And going the other way, ignorance is further ground for any sort of ideas or stereotypes to take root," Dr Dunn said.

He said many current initiatives, including comparative religion studies and new learning objects introduced in schools about Islam were "on the right track".

"(But) I'm a bit more concerned about people who are beyond the education system and how to reach them," Dr Dunn said.

"I don't think there's any other way than through popular culture and through the media."
AAP

Part 2 Oriana Fallici

The Enemy We Treat Like a Friend
By Oriana Fallici

PART II


Will the massacre touch us too?--will it really touch us the next time? Oh, yes. I haven’t the slightest doubt. I’ve never had the slightest doubt. I’ve been saying this, too, for the last four years. And I add: They have not yet attacked us [only] because of their need for a landing zone, a bridgehead, a handy outpost named “Italy.“ Geographically handy because it is the closest one to both the Middle East and Africa; that is, to the countries that supply the greatest number of troops. Strategically handy because we offer succor and collaboration to those troops.

But soon, they will go on a rampage. Bin Laden himself has promised it--explicitly, clearly, precisely. More than once. His lieutenants (or rivals) have done likewise. The Corriere itself demonstrates this with its interview with Saak Al-Faqih, the exiled Saudi who became friends with Bin Laden during the conflict with the Russians in Afghanistan and who, according to the American secret services, a financer of Al Qaeda.

“It is only a question of time. Al Qaeda will strike you soon,“ said Al Faqih, adding that the attack upon Italy is the most logical thing in the world. Is not Italy the weak link in the chain of allies in Iraq? A link comes soon after Spain and was preceded by London only out of pure convenience. Then [he said]: “Bin Laden well remembers the words of the Prophet: “You will force the Romans to surrender. And he wants to force Italy to abandon its alliance with America.“
In sum, [and] emphasizing that similar operations will not be carried out [by Muslims] who have just arrived at Lampedusa or Malpensa; but instead after having achieved a mature familiarity with the country, after having penetrated its social fabric: “[The only problem with] recruiting the needed manpower will be the embarrassment of riches.“

Many Italians still don’t believe this. Notwithstanding the declarations of the Minister of the Interior, Rome and Milan are at risk; and look out--so are Turin, Naples, Trieste, and Treviso; not to mention the cities of art like Florence and Venice. [But] the Italians carry on like children for whom the word “death” has no meaning. Or like the scatterbrained to whom death seems to be a stroke of bad luck that only happens to other people. In the worst case, a stroke of bad luck that will save them for last. Worse: they believe that to avoid it they only need to be clever; that is, to kiss butt.

Vittorio Feltri was right when he wrote at “Libero” that the decadence of Westerners is to be identified with their illusion of being able to deal amiably with the Enemy, and even less with their fear. A fear that induces them to meekly host the enemy, to attempt to conquer him with sympathy, hoping that he will allow himself to be absorbed; while [the enemy] is the one who wants to absorb.

And this does not even take into account our familiarity with being invaded, humiliated, and betrayed. Like I said in “The Apocalypse,“ [it’s] the general attitude of resignation. Resignation generates apathy. Apathy generates inertia. Inertia generates indifference and, besides impeding moral judgment, indifference suffocates the of self-defense; that is, the instinct to fight back.

Oh, that for a week or a month they might understand that they are hated and despised by the enemy that they treat like a friend, and that he is completely indifferent to the virtues known as Gratitude, Loyalty, [and] Mercy! They would indeed be roused from their apathy, their inertia, their indifference. They would indeed believe in the announcements of Saad al-Faqih and the explicit, clear, [and] precise warnings pronounced by Bin Laden and Company.

They would avoid taking underground trains. They would travel by automobile or bicycle. (But Theo van Gogh was killed while riding his bicycle.) They would knock off the good-naturedness (or servility) They would trust the immigrant who sells them drugs or cleans their houses a little less. They would be less cordial towards unskilled workers who, waving a worker’s visa in our faces, claims to want to be like them, but in the meantime beats the hell out of his wife--his wives--and kills his daughter [for wearing] blue jeans.

They would even renounce the litanies of the “Voyages of Hope,” and perhaps they would realize that, in order not to lose Liberty, sometimes you have to sacrifice a little bit of liberty. That self-defense is legitimate defense, and that legitimate defense is not barbarism. Maybe, they would even cry out that Fallaci was right; that she didn’t deserve to be treated like a delinquent. But then, they would begin anew to treat me like a delinquent. To call me a retrograde xenophobic racist, etc. And when the attack will come, we’ll hear the usual nonsense:

It’s the Americans’ fault; it’s Bush’s fault.
***

When will the attack come? How will it come? Oh, God; I hate being a Cassandra. I hate being a prophetess. I am not a Cassandra; I am not a prophetess. I am only a citizen who reasons; and by reasoning foresees things that will happen according to logic. But one who hopes that she is wrong and, when they happen, curses herself for not being wrong. Nonetheless, regarding an attack on Italy, I fear two things: Christmas and the elections.

We might slide by for Christmas. Their attacks are not rude, showy strikes. They are refined crimes, well-calculated and well-prepared. They need time to prepare themselves, and I don’t think they’ll be ready by Christmas. But the will be ready by the 2006 elections--the elections they want to see won overwhelmingly by pacifism. And of us, I fear, they will not be content [just] to massacre people. Because this is an intelligent and well-informed Monster, my dears. A Monster who (on our dime) studied in our universities, our renowned colleges, our luxurious schools. (With the money of their parents; be they sheikh or honest day-worker). A Monster who is not only knowledgeable about engineering, chemistry, physics, airlines, and subways: he is also knowledgeable about Art.

Art, that their presumed “Beacon of Civilization” has never known how to produce. And I think that, along with our people, they want to massacre come work of art. How hard would it be to blow the Cathedral of Milan or Saint Peter’s Basilica sky-high? How hard would it be to blow Michelangelo’s David, the Uffizi, and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence--or the Palace of the Doges in Venice--sky-high? How hard would it be to blow the Leaning Tower of Pisa--a monument recognized in every corner of the world, and therefore even more famous than the Twin Towers--sky-high?

But we cannot escape. We can confront the monster with honor, [with] courage; and by remembering the words that Churchill said to the English when he went to war against Hitler’s Nazism. He said “We will pour out tears and blood.” Oh, yes: we too will pour out tears and blood. We are at war: do we or do we not want to get this through our heads?!? And in war, you cry. Period.

Thus I had already concluded four years ago in this newspaper.
***

Yes, it’s true: Now, thorough searches are being made in the cases of the accused Muslims; suspects are arrested; perhaps it will even be decided to expel them. But in substance, nothing has changed. Nothing.

From anti-Americanism to anti-Westernism to philo-Islamism everything goes on as before. Even in England. On Satruday, June 9--that is, two days after the massacre--the BBC decided to no longer use the word “terrorist,” word-that-bears-overtones-of-the-Crusades, and chose the word “bombers.“ Bombardiers, bombarinos. On Monday, July 11--that is, four days after the massacre--the Times published on its opinion page the most dishonest and unfair political cartoon I have ever seen, in which alongside a suicide bomber with a bomb is depicted an Anglo-American general with an identical bomb.

Identical in size and shape. On the bomb was written, “Indiscriminate killer who targets urban centers. The cartoon was entitled: “Spot the difference.” At almost the same time, on American television, I saw a journalist from the Guardian, the daily of the extreme English Left, who was giving the same explanation for the crime that was being given by the Muslim newspapers of London.

And that, de facto, attributed all of the blame to Bush, the criminal, the greatest criminal in History, George W. Bush. “You must understand them,“ she prattled on. “American politics have exasperated them. Had it not been for the war in Iraq…“ (Little missy, on September 11 there was no war in Iraq.

On September 11 they declared war on us. Did you forget that?) And at the same time, I read an article in La Repubblica that declared that the attack on the London subway wasn’t an attack on the West. It was an attack that the sons of Allah carried out against their own phantoms. Against a “lecherous” Islam (I suppose it meant to say “Westernized”), and a “secularized” Christianity.

Against Hindu pacifists and the-magnificent-variety-that-Allah-has-created. In fact, it explained, in England there are two million Muslims, and in the London Metro, you could not find one Englishman if you paid him gold. All in turbans, all in keffiya. All with long beards and djellabahs. If you were to find a person with blond hair and blue eyes, he would be a Circassian. (Oh yeah?!? Who could have known?

In the photos of the wounded I notice neither turban, nor keffeya, nor long beard, nor djellabah. Nor even a burka or chador. I see only Englishmen like those Englishmen in the Second World War who were dying under the Nazi bombardments. And in reading the names of the missing, I see Phil Russell, Adrian Johnson, Miriam Hyman, along with an occasional German, Italian, or Japanese name. To this day, the only Arab name I have seen is that of a young woman named Shahara Akter Islam.)
***

The folderol of “moderate” Islam also continues; the comedy of tolerance, the lie of integration, the farce of multiculturalism. The mosques they demand and that we build are worth discussing. In the course of a debate on terrorism in the city council of Florence on Monday, July 11, the leader of the Leftist Democrats [DS] declared: “It’s time we had a mosque in Florence.” Then he said that the Islamic community had long expressed the desire to build a mosque and an Islamic cultural center similar to those in the DS-dominated Colle val d’Elsa, [in] the DS-dominated province of Siena and its philo-DS Monte dei Paschi; already the bank of the PCI [Italian Communist Party] and now that of the DS [as well].

Almost no one was opposed. Even the leader of the Margherita [Center Left party] spoke favorably [of the proposal]. Almost everyone applauded the proposal to contribute municipal funds (that is, funds of the citizens) to the project, and the assessor for town planning added that from the point of view of zoning, there is no problem. “Nothing could be easier.“

A episode from which you may deduce that the city of Dante, Michelangelo, and Leonardo, the cradle of Renaissance art and culture, will soon be defaced and made into a laughingstock by its Mecca.
It gets worse: The Political Correctness by which judges are ever ready to send me to jail and, in the meantime, absolve the sons of Allah continues. It continues to forbid their expulsion, to annul the rare harsh sentences, as well as tormenting the Carabinieri or policemen who, to their great displeasure, arrest them.

In Milan, in the afternoon of July 8--that is, the day after the London massacre, 42 year-old Mohammed Siliman Sabri Saadi, an Egyptian and illegal immigrant, was caught without a ticket on the number 54 bus. In order to make him pay the fine, the two ticket takers make him get off of the bus and get off with him. They ask him for some I.D., and he reacts by starting a brawl. He injures one of them who winds up in the hospital. He escapes, leaving his passport behind. A police unit finds Saadi and stops him.

Notwithstanding his resistance, they handcuff him in front of a small crowd. And in that very same moment, here comes a lady all in a huff who volunteers to be a witness in the event that the poor man is arrested and charged with resisting arrest. The police answer with lady-let-us-do-our-job. And at that point, she produces her I.D. which reveals that she is a judge. So, being a little embarrassed, they take Mohammed to the station and here…Well, instead of taking him to the temporary permanence center where (instead of prison) illegal immigrants are put, they let him go, inviting him to show up in court the following week where he will be charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a public official. Saadi leaves and disappears (will we ever see him again?). And guess who the lady was--who was all in a huff because the policemen cuffed him according to standard procedure: The same judge who, seven months ago, had her fifteen minutes of fame for having completely exonerated three Muslims accused of international terrorism and for having added [in her decision] that in Iraq there is no terrorism, but rather guerilla warfare; that in sum the head-choppers are part of the Resistance. The same person whom the keenly intelligent Lega Nord politician Borghezio defined as “a shame for Milan and the magistrate.“ And guess who praises her, defends her, declares that she did the right thing: the Leftist Democrats, the Communists, and the usual Greens.

Another thing that continues is the big lie that Islam is a religion of peace, that the Koran preaches kindness, love and mercy. As if Mohammed had come into the world with an olive branch in his mouth and had died on the cross with Jesus. As if he had never been a head-chopper and, instead of hordes of soldiers with scimitars, had left us Saint Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John occupied with writing their Gospels. Yet another lie that continues is that of Islam as victim-of-the-West. As if for fourteen centuries the Muslims had never touched a hair on anyone’s head; and that Spain, Sicily, North Africa, Greece, the Balkans, and Eastern Europe as far as the Ukraine and Russia had been occupied by my Waldensian great-grandmother. As if the Sisters of Saint Ambrose and Benedictine monks had besieged Vienna.

And thus continues the lie, or illusion, of Moderate Islam and, with it, the attempt to make us believe that the enemy is composed of a tiny minority; and that said tiny minority lives in countries far from us. Well, the enemy is not, in fact, a tiny minority. And he is very near. He was near on September 11, 2001; that is, in New York. He was near on March 11, 2004; that is, in Madrid. He was near on the first, second, and third of September of last year at Beslan when he amused himself by targeting children who fled terrorized from the school and killed 150 of them. He was near on July 7; that is, in London, where the suicide bombers were born and raised; where they had gone to school, where they grew up in a civil society, where--right up until the night before the attacks, enjoyed playing games of soccer or cricket.

He has been near for over thirty years, for God’s sake! And he is an enemy who, at first glance, does not seem to be an enemy. Without a beard, in western dress, and like his accomplices--in good faith or bad--perfectly integrated into our social system. That is, with a green card. With a car. With a family. Never mind that the family is often composed of two or three wives; never mind that he beats his wife (or wives); never mind that he occasionally kills his daughter for wearing blue jeans; never mind that now and then his son rapes a 15 year-old girl from Bologna while she was going for a walk in the park with her boyfriend.
***

This is an enemy we treat like a friend. Who nevertheless hates and despises us intensely. With such intensity that one is spontaneously moved to cry out: “If we’re so awful, so evil, so sinful, why don’t you go back to where you came from? Why are you here?

To slit our throats or blow us sky-high?”

An enemy, moreover, who in the name of humanitarianism and political asylum (but what political asylum for what political reasons?) we take in by the thousands at a time even though the processing stations for immigrants are overflowing, bursting at the seams, and we don’t know where to put them anymore.

An enemy who, in the name of “necessity“ (but what necessity--the necessity to fill our streets with itinerant vendors and drug dealers?) we invite through our Constitutional Olympus. “Come, dears, come. We need you so much.“

An enemy who doesn’t need fertility drugs or stem cells in order to give birth. His birth rate is so high that, according to the National Intelligence Council, by the end of this year the Muslim population of Eurabia will have doubled.

An enemy who transforms mosques into army bases, into training camps, into recruiting stations for terrorists; and who blindly obey the imam (but woe unto you if you arrest the imam. And greater the woe if it was done by some CIA agent with the tacit consent of our own secret services).

An enemy who, by virtue of the freedom of circulation demanded by the Treaty of Schengen travels all over Eurabia as much as he pleases, going from London to Marseilles, from Cologne to Milan or vice-versa, without having to show any documents. He may be a terrorist who moves about in order to organize or plan a massacre; he might be carrying around all the explosives he could want: no one will stop him; no one will touch him. (But when, following the London massacre, France excused herself from the provisions of the Treaty of Schengen, and even Zapatero‘s Spain thought about doing the same, Italy and the other European countries responded with a scandalized “no, no.“)

An enemy who, as soon as he has inserted himself in our cities or our countryside indulges in bullying and demands free or almost-free lodging, as well as citizenship and the vote. He obtains everything he needs without difficulty.

An enemy who, protected by the Caviar Left, the Fois Gras Right, and the Prosciutto Center prattles on, in fact, about integration and multiculturalism but, in the meantime, imposes his rules and customs on us. Who banishes pork and pork products from our school cafeterias, from our fabrics, from our prisons. Who assaults a teacher or a principal because a student politely offered a rice fritter to her Muslim classmate that had been made with Marsala; that is, “with liquor.” And-you’d-better-not-repeat-the-offense.

An enemy who, in our kindergartens, wants to abolish--actually, is abolishing, the Creche and Santa Claus. Who takes the Crucifix out of our classrooms; who throws it out of hospital windows, calling it “a little naked cadaver put there to scare Muslim children.“ (I am referring to the Arab of Italian citizenship who had me charged with publicly defaming Islam; who about me wrote a filthy and illiterate libel where, listing four Suras from the Koran, he called on his coreligionists to eliminate me, who has never been charged with a crime for his evil-doing.) An enemy who, in England, filled his shoes with explosives in order to blow up a jumbo jet on a Paris-Miami flight (I am referring to the Arab with English citizenship who by a sheer miracle was caught on the American Airlines flight trying to do just that.)

An enemy who, in Amsterdam, killed Theo van Gough--guilty of having filmed documentaries about the slavery of Muslim women--and who, after having killed him, sliced open his guts and stuck a letter containing a death sentence for his girlfriend inside. (I am referring to the Arab with Dutch citizenship who probably--no, I hope--will be condemned to life in prison and who, at the trial had hissed at Theo’s mother: “I don’t feel any pity for you, because you are an infidel.”)

In sum, an enemy for whom you will always find a clement judge; that is one ready to set him free. And that the Eurobean governments (N.B.: that’s not a typo--I mean precisely to say “Eurobean,“ not “European”) will not expel; not even if he is an illegal alien.
***

The discourse of the Dialogue of the Two Civilizations also continues. And watch all hell break loose if you dare to ask what that other civilization is; if you ask what is civil in a civilization that does not even know the meaning of the word “liberty.“ For which liberty--”hurryya”--means “emancipation from slavery.“ Which coined the word “hurryya” only at the end of the nineteenth century in order to be able to sign trade agreements.

Which sees Satan in democracy and fights against it with explosives and beheadings. Which concerning the Rights of Man--loudly trumpeted by us and scrupulously applied to Muslims--does not even want to hear them spoken of.

In fact, it refuses to subscribe to the Human Rights Charter compiled by the U.N., and substitutes it with the Human Rights Charter compiled by the Arab League. And watch all hell break loose if you dare to ask what is civil in a civilization that treats women the way it treats them. Islam is the Koran, my dears.

In every way and everywhere. And the Koran is incompatible with freedom; it is incompatible with Democracy; it is incompatible with Human rights. It is incompatible with civilization.

And now that I have touched on this argument, pay close attention to me, mister judge of Bergamo who wanted to incriminate me for defaming Islam, but who has never been incriminated for defaming Christianity. Not even for incitement to homicide. (Mine.) Listen to me, and go ahead and condemn me. You can even condemn me to three years in prison; a punishment that Italian judges would not even inflict on Islamic terrorists caught with explosives in their cantinas.

Your trial is pointless. As long as I have breath left in me I will repeat what I have written in my books and what I am writing again here. I have never allowed myself to be intimidated--not by death threats, not by persecution, not by denigration, by insults against which you made sure to protect me even as a simple citizen.

So figure if I’m going to allow myself to be intimidated by you--you who negate my constitutional right to think and express my opinion. But before the trial starts, I must ask you something that I’ve been very curious about. Will you leave me alone in my jail cell, or with Carabinieri that the Italian State courteously imposed upon me so I don’t end up murdered like Biagi or Theo van Gough?

I ask because our Minister of the Interior says that more than fifty percent of the prisoners in our prisons are Muslims, and I’m guessing that I would have more need of the protection of those Carabinieri in jail than in my own home. (And the same goes for you, lords of Parliament; congratulations for having rejected the proposal by the Minister of Justice to abolish the crimes of opinion. And particular congratulations go to the honorable National Alliance party which, besides having negotiated that rejection, also asked to abolish the crime of defending Fascism).

The indulgence that the Catholic Church (of all, the greatest sustainer of The Dialogue) professes in regards to Islam. That is, her steadfast, unyielding will to emphasize the “common spiritual patrimony furnished to us by the three great monotheistic religions. The Christian one, the Jewish one, the Islamic one. All based on the concept of one God; all three inspired by Abraham. Good Abraham who, in order to obey God, was about to slit his son’s throat as if he were a sacrificial lamb. What common patrimony?!?

Allah has nothing in common with the God of Christianity. With God the Father, the Good Lord, the affectionate God who preached love and forgiveness. The God who in men saw his children. Allah is a master God, a tyrant God. A God who in men sees his subjects; no, his slaves.

A God who, instead of love, teaches hate; who through the Koran calls those who believe in another God infidel dogs and orders them to be punished. To be subjugated, to be killed. So how can you place Christianity and Islam on the same plane?!?

How can you Jesus and Mohammed equally?!? Does the matter of the One God really suffice to establish a concord of concepts, of principles, of values?!?

"The interests of Muslims and the interests of the socialists coincide in the war against the crusaders"
Osama Bin Laden, Feb. 14, 2003

-------

“The hate for the West swells like a fire fed by the wind. The clash between us and them is not a military one. It is a cultural one, a religious one, and the worst is still to come.”--
Oriana Fallaci

Sudden Jihad

F-117 Nighthawk

Sudden jihad syndrome?
By DANIEL PIPES


Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.
I wrote those words days after 9/11 and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March 3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not go far enough.
That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, 22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none were severely injured.

Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising future. In high school, he had been student council president and a member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the Los Angeles Times that he "was a serious student, shy but friendly." One fellow student, Brian Copeland, "was impressed with his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding "He was kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent." The university chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if "totally a loner, introverted and into himself."

In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal, not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a random assortment of students? Taheri-azar's post-arrest remarks offer some clues.

• He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to "punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world."

• He explained to a detective that "people all over the world are being killed in war and now it is the people in the United States['] turn to be killed."

• He said he acted to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world."

• He portrayed his actions as "an eye for an eye."

• A police affidavit notes that "Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the United States government had been killing his people across the sea and that he decided to attack."

• He told a judge, "I'm thankful you're here to give me this trial and to learn more about the will of Allah."


IN BRIEF, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It's not hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of Islamist ideology, its immense reach, and its resonance among many Muslims.

Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam, one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?

THIS IS what I have dubbed the "Sudden Jihad Syndrome," whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.
This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the "new anti-Semitism, or "Islamophobia" is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of "Germanophobia" or anti-communists of "Russophobia." Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of "infidels."
The writer, based in Philadelphia, is director of the Middle East Forum. www.DanielPipes.org

M - 32

Mohammad Don't Surf

New Toy grenade launcher

Staff Sgt. James C. Sanchez aims in with the M-32 Multiple shot Grenade Launcher, an experimental six-barreled weapn that can deliver six 40 mm grenades in under three seconds. Marines are fielding the new rapid-fire weapon to troops to boost small-team capabilities to deliver greater indirect firepower. Photo by Gunnery Sgt. Mark Oliva

The M-32 MGL looks like something straight out of an action movie or a weapon ginned up by designers of futuristic video combat games. It’s a bare-bones, shoulder-fired weapon with a bulging six-barreled cylinder.

There’s no bones about it. This thing’s all business when the trade is knocking out bad-guys at a distance.“You can put six rounds on target in under three seconds,” Flanery said.

“I thought this thing was sick. ”Sick might be right for the insurgent on the other end of the sight.

U a peace activist?

Somebody Has To Say It

Tom Fox, the "peace activist" who was captured, tortured, then murdered by his "poor, oppressed, disadvantaged, disenfranchised, marginalized" terrorist friends, is all over the blogosphere. However, everybody seems to be dancing around what he was, at least according to the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
Fox was a traitor. He committed treason. And he got what was coming to him.

He was not a "human rights activist," a "peace activist," or a "hero." He did not "give comfort, hope and relief to the families so devastated by the violence of each day's struggle"; he gave comfort to the enemy, to terrorists. He was a traitor — nothing more, and nothing less.

And while he was murdered by savages (not poor oppressed disadvantaged disenfranchised marginalized little brown people), his death only points up the stupidity and the utter amorality of these so-called "Christian" leftists.

No tears here.

Linked to Michelle Malkin
Tom Fox, traitor, treason, peaceniks

Jizyah- Infidel Humanitarian Aid payment for Protection from Muslims

It's a FACT! Under Islamic law Hand & Foot Cutting as punishment.

from www.jihadwatch.com

Fitzgerald: Call humanitarian aid what it really is: jizyah

Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald renews his plea for an end to the jizyah:

The Jizyah -- that is, the payment by Infidels to Muslims, in order to buy a temporary "protection" from Muslims themselves that will cease just as soon as the payment of that Jizyah ceases -- needs to be stopped everywhere.

To be stopped, however, it first needs to be seen as Jizyah, which is exactly what it is, although it is described as "foreign aid" or "humanitarian aid." "Humanitarian aid" goes to those who have suffered some disaster -- drought, say, or tsunami. It is a temporary thing.

It is given because the people who receive it will gratefully take it, use it to get back on their feet (or should), and certainly not pocket it as if it belongs to them by right and can rightfully be taken from those whose laws, customs, and manners they have been instructed since birth to hate and to wish destroyed. That is absurd.

There are many examples of this Jizyah being paid. To Egypt, not our "ally." To Pakistan, not our "ally." To Jordan, not our "ally." Most of the Muslim inhabitants of Egypt, Pakistan, and Jordan, as well as of other states that have been receiving the Jizyah, do not support, and are not genuinely friendly towards the Infidels.

That doesn't mean they don't want to move to the Lands of the Infidels, and in those lands to earn money, to settle in, and to behave as no other immigrants voluntarily allowed to settle in history have behaved: as entitled to transform the societies, in order to remove any barriers to the spread of Islam and the power of Muslims, so that "Islam may dominate and is not to be dominated."

This is something a great many people cannot quite understand. They cannot quite figure out how it is that, for example, a few hundred thousand impoverished Somalis, who would seem to be reasonable recipients of visas, turn out to bring with them in their mental baggage an alien and a hostile creed -- a creed hostile, in the first place, to the idea of the worth and significance of the individual, and of the rights that, consequently, have been established to protect individuals.

The most egregious and outrageous example of the Jizyah is that which goes to the local Arabs who after 1967 renamed themselves, for clearly political reasons. Google "Zuheir Mohsen" and "There is no such thing as the Palestinian people" to see what the leader of one of those terror groups admitted in a moment of candor.

It should be stopped. These people hope, dream, and intend sooner or later to wipe out Israel and to seize the Holy Land for Islam. Hamas has failed to disguise, when given opportunity after opportunity, its clear intent. Only a complete fool could fail, at this point, to grasp that intent, and only an antisemite could ignore it.

Huge sums are now being paid, all over the Western world, to monitor Muslim communities. Huge sums are being paid for security measures, for guards at churches and synagogues and Hindu temples, for guards at airports and metro stations and bus stations. For guards at every government office building and high-profile target.

For monitoring the Internet, for tapping phones, for doing all the things we are now forced to do, and would wish did not have to be done, but from now on out will have to be done. Why?

Because of the presence of that population that unlike all others, did not jettison that hostility when it arrived. And, indeed, many of those who may have come only with economic improvement in mind have turned out to produce children who, in their inability to adopt or adapt, always seem to return to Islam -- the full Islam. And that is something we can't tolerate, and should not be asked to.

Meanwhile, Muslim-majority states make up 10 of the 11 members of OPEC. Arab and Muslim states have received, for nothing at all, for not a single effort by a single Arab or Muslim, more than 10 trillion dollars since 1973.

They have helped to make the entire world more unpleasant, expensive, and dangerous. We have just spent $400 billion trying, trying, trying, to bring some slight decency to Iraq. This will fail.

Among those who were behind this policy, their initial messianism has sunk into mere sentimentalism about how "everyone loves freedom." Yet despite all this money, all this effort, ultimately the sectarian and ethnic fissures that were not brought into being or even exacerbated by the Americans (unless one counts the removal of the murderous despot who held things in check through murder), but have existed since virtually the beginning of Islam, will simmer. Then they will perhaps explode.

Let the "poor" "Palestinians" get no Jizyah. Period. Not from the E.U. Not from the United States. Not from any Infidels. Let them go to those fabulously rich fellow members of the umma al-islamiyya, the daggers-and-dishdasha boys in Saudi Arabia, the louche wheeler-dealers of the U.A.E., the real estate moguls, putting up their Persian Gulf versions of Las Vegas-cum-Disneyworld-cum-Rodeo-Drive, giving the lie to all those who keep telling us that Islam is "unmaterialistic" unlike other religions. No end to this nonsense.

There is no distinction between "humanitarian" aid and other kinds in this case. The aid is meant to sustain a warlike and violent group who at this point cannot be transformed, but can be weakened, can be made to work merely to survive so that there will be no time whatsoever for fun-and-games with black balaclavas and kalashnikovs.

Make them beg from the Saudis. Make them go to work. Make them leave the area in search of work elsewhere, the way people have done since the beginning of time, and the way some of their ancestors, who arrived earlier in this century from Iraq and Egypt, or those who arrived in the last century with the veterans of Abd el Kader and Mehmet Ali, or who were transplanted by the Ottomans from Muslim villages in Europe, did. Only this time in reverse.

There are many people worthy of charity. Bolivian Indians. Black Africans in the Sudan and Congo. Hindus being murdered in Bangladesh. The Arab Muslims, all or any of them, the recipients of the greatest unearned transfer of wealth in human history, are at this point not among them.

Stop the Jizyah. And put whatever money is saved into solar and wind energy projects, and whatever else comes fittingly to mind.