Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Republican-American

Ask the average Joe where he thinks most of America's hate crimes occur, and he's apt to guess Mississippi, Alabama or another state stereotypically overrun with redneck lynch mobs. He would dismiss as preposterous the idea that such enlightened, diverse states such as New Jersey, Michigan, Minnesota and Connecticut are bastions of bigots.

Out of the 19 states and the District of Columbia that voted for John Kerry for president in 2004, 15 were among the top 25 in hate crimes. All six New England states landed in the top 25, with Massachusetts leading the way at No. 6; Connecticut was 21st with a rate 23 times higher than Alabama's and Mississippi's.

If there is a silver lining in these statistics, it's this: The FBI logged 7,649 hate crimes in 2004, which represent one-half of 1 percent of all violent crimes and a meaninglessly small percentage of all crimes that year. More than twice as many Americans were victims of homicides than bias crimes. Though the liberals and the mainstream news media want the public to believe hate crimes are epidemic in this country, the statistics refute that notion even as they reveal where America's real bigots live.

Interesting article.

The Waterbury Connecticut Republican-American

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

August 30, 2006, 5:03 PM

By Burak Akinci

ANKARA: An attack by Islamists on a young Turkish woman wearing a bikini on a beach has reopened the question of the direction that the country, overwhelmingly Muslim but traditionally secular, is now taking.

The incident happened earlier this month at the resort of Karaburun, near Izmir in the west of the country, the most Europeanized part.

The young woman had asked a group of headscarf-wearing women and their families not to soil the beach with the used diapers of their children, only to be called a prostitute because she was wearing a bikini. She was then attacked by the men in the group.

The affair might have been dismissed in a couple of paragraphs in the local press but the woman filed a complaint. Furthermore she is the daughter of a journalist on the mass-circulation Hurriyet newspaper which picked up the story and attacked the departure from secular, non-religious principles.

The attack became big news in a country where since the Justice and Development party (AKP), which has Islamist roots, came to power in 2002.

The powerful secular lobby, which includes the armed forces, has repeatedly condemned what it sees as the galloping Islamization of the country.

Luxury hotels have opened on the coast, which apply strict Islamist rules, offering guests, for example, beaches and swimming pools segregated by sex.

Sales of hasema swimming costumes that cover religiously observant women from head to toe and include a head covering are booming.

 The Religion of Peace^TM

The Manila Times 

PARKSVILLE, British Columbia (AP) -- If you're interested in a three-hour tour, George Schultz has just the boat for you.

For $99,000 Canadian (US$89,400), you can buy the boat famous for setting aground on an uncharted desert isle to set the stage for the 1960s television classic "Gilligan's Island."

The S.S. Minnow supposedly off for a three-hour tour when, as the theme song explained, "The weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow would be lost."

The real-life Minnow also ran aground.

The twin-diesel, 36-foot (11-meter) mahogany Wheeler Express Cruiser hit a reef in Hecate Strait as the former owner was taking the vessel down the coast from Alaska. Scotty Taylor of Parksville said the owner sold the 46-year-old boat to him for salvage on condition that he promise to restore it.

Schultz, a boat broker, estimated Sunday that the work cost more than $180,000.

Kind of like the old definition of a boat as a hole in the water into which to pour money?

"You better believe it!" Schultz said with a laugh.

Taylor is selling the storied vessel because he is tired of it.

"He's going on 70 now and doesn't want to bother with it anymore," Schultz said. "It would make a great investment for a three-hour tour."

According to the Gilligan's Island Web site (www.gilligansisle.com), the boat is the third of four vessels used in the show. Taylor's Minnow was used in the opening credits of the second season.

Caliphate News Network 

MARK STEYN

There are a few differences  though. 

First .. this is the age of (argggghhhhhhhh!!!!!)&nbs p; GLOBAL WARMING!  Now never mind the evidence.  The anti-capitalist environmental moonbats have decided that we have caused significant global warming ... and that the global warming is caused by Americans driving SUVs. 

Secondly ... we have Katrina.  Watch the TV newscasts and weathercasts very carefully.  Everyone seems to have received the memo.  We are at the one-year anniversary of Katrina, and Katrina must be mentioned in all stories dealing with Ernesto.  It matters not that Ernesto looks like a weakling ... with every newscast you have to somehow make people believe that they are going to see another disaster of the Katrina scale. 

Remember ... all of the broadcast and cable news networks have positioned very expensive satellite trucks throughout the Florida Keys.  They're paying big bucks to get their reporters down there so that non-stop images can fill your TV as the storm approaches.  Remember, this is all about images --- and these images are expensive. 

How do they pay for this expensive equipment and these high-priced personnel?  With advertising, of course!  And the more people they have watching, the higher the ratings.  The higher the ratings, the more they can charge for the advertising.  So the game here is to make sure you keep glued to the TV screens.  To do this they will spend the next day or so trying to scare the absolute goose squeeze out of you until (1) Ernesto actually turns into a threat and they can report the news as it is instead of how they want it to be; or, (2) Ernesto fizzles and goes away.

Now .. it's not only the media that's in full-blown panic mode.  Count government in also.  Florida has declared a state of emergency.   Ernesto is only a tropical storm, and Jeb Bush is declaring a state of emergency.  In 2004 Florida had four separate hurricanes.  Not once was a state of emergency declared for any of those storms when they still categorized as tropical storms and the winds were only 50 miles per hour.  Hell ... why don't we just keep Florida in a continuous state of emergency?  After all, almost any thunderstorm -- and Florida has more of them than any other state -- can put out 50 mph winds.

Now ... for all you hurricane junkies out there, here's an excellent site with more information than you really need!

Nealz Nuze 

How the Media Legitimized an Anti-Israel Hoax and Changed the Course of a War

+ Introduction

On the night of July 23, 2006, an Israeli aircraft intentionally fired missiles at and struck two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances performing rescue operations, causing huge explosions that injured everyone inside the vehicles. Or so says the global media, including Time magazine, the BBC, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and thousands of other outlets around the world. If true, the incident would have been an egregious and indefensible violation of the Geneva Convention, and would constitute a war crime committed by the state of Israel.

But there's one problem: It never happened. 

Of all the exposés and scandals surrounding the media's coverage of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, The Red Cross Ambulance Incident stands out as the most serious. The other exposés were spectacular in their simplicity (photographers staging scenes, clumsy attempts at Photoshopping images), but often concerned fairly trivial details. What does it matter whether there was a big cloud of smoke over Beirut, or a really big cloud of smoke, as one notorious doctored photograph showed? The fact that the media was lying was indeed extremely important, and justified the publicity surrounding the exposés -- but what they were lying about was often minor, a slight fudging of the visuals to exaggerate the damage.

The ambulance incident, however, was anything but trivial. The media accused Israel of the most heinous type of war crime: intentionally targeting neutral ambulances which were attempting to rescue innocent victims. If true -- and it is almost universally accepted as true -- then Israel would lose any claim to moral superiority in the conflict. The commanders who ordered the strike should be brought up on war-crimes charges. As it is, the worldwide outcry over Israel's purported malfeasances grew so strident that the country was pressured into a ceasefire. The media's depictions of Israel's actions so influenced public opinion that Israel felt compelled to end the fighting right at the moment it was starting to gain the upper hand. And as a result, Hezbollah has now claimed victory.

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident was perhaps the most damning of all the evidence against Israel, and the most morally indefensible. Other incidents were open to debate: in those cases where Israel bombed buildings that turned out to have civilians inside, Israel claimed either that it didn't know the building was occupied, or that it was trying to hit a Hezbollah stronghold elsewhere in the same building; or that the strike was a mistake, an errant missile. But targeting clearly marked ambulances, and hitting them directly -- there's no possible excuse for that. So this specific incident contributed to the outrage over the war, eventually causing Israel to stand down.

Which makes it all the more shocking to learn that the attack on the ambulances most likely never occurred, and that the "evidence" supporting the claim is in fact a hoax. 

Excellent work by Zombie.  I encourage you to go read it, and judge for yourself.

Zombietime

(2006-08-23) — The latest poll of al Qaeda members worldwide shows that 91 percent see no link between the global fight against Islamic terrorists and the ongoing U.S. effort to establish a free and democratic Iraq.

The results follow release of a New York Times/CBS News poll showing 51 percent of Americans also fail to see the connection.

“The al Qaeda public is simply not buying President Bush’s argument that a free Iraq will make the world more secure by denying safe-haven to terrorists,” said an unnamed spokesman for al-Razmuhsan, the polling division of al-Jazeera. “Our survey shows that the average al Qaeda man on the street is much like the average American. He has no fear that Islamic fascists plan to use Iraq as a base from which to fight their jihad to establish a global Muslim caliphate.”

In other results that parallel U.S. public opinion, the poll shows that the overwhelming majority of al Qaeda members think that “planting the seeds of democracy in the Arab world” is not worth the cost in American lives and money, and most believe that a hasty retreat of American forces will not embolden the terrorists.

The al-Razmuhsan poll was conducted over the past three weeks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq, Indonesia, Great Britain, Russia, France and the U.S., by contacting al Qaeda cell leaders via satellite phone or donkey courier.

Link 

Group says it's trying to spread awareness; others call journey insulting.

By Jeremy Schwartz
MEXICO CITY BUREAU

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

IXMIQUILPAN, Hidalgo — On a misty, moonless night, the group scurried down the canyon wall, their feet slipping in the ankle-high mud. The sirens grew louder as their guide, clad in a ski mask and known only as Poncho, urged them to run faster. "Hurry up! The Border Patrol is coming!"

A couple in matching designer tennis outfits loped awkwardly along, the boyfriend clutching a digital video camera and struggling to keep the pop-out screen steady.

The 20 or so people fleeing the fictional Border Patrol weren't undocumented immigrants; they were tourists about 700 miles from the border. Most are well-heeled professionals more likely to travel to the United States in an airplane than on foot.

They've each paid 150 pesos — about $15 — for what is perhaps Mexico's strangest tourist attraction: a night as an illegal immigrant crossing the Rio Grande.

Advertising for the mock journey, which takes place at a nature park in the central state of Hidalgo, tells the pretend [illegal -ed.] immigrants to "Make fun of the Border Patrol!" and to "Cross the Border as an Extreme Sport!"

As craven as the advertising sounds, the organizers say they are trying to build empathy for [illegal -ed.] migrants(sic) by putting people in their shoes.

And the organizers, members of a Hnahnu (pronounced nyah-nyoo) indigenous community, speak from experience. Leaders estimate that as many as 90 percent of the 2,500-person community have made the journey to the United States, most ending up in Las Vegas. [Illegally? -ed.]

"We do this to show the people what it's like, to make them more conscious," said Hnahnu elder Luis Santiago Hernandez, who has crossed the genuine border more than five times.

Hernandez said that although they try to make the experience authentic, "It's not even 10 percent of the real thing."

The trip also seeks to educate participants on Hnahnu culture and represents a source of income for the community, leaders said. The Mexican government helped finance the creation of the Eco Alberto nature park, which is communally owned.

Participants in the mock [illegal -ed.] border crossing said they were lured by the realistic experience promised by the nearly six-hour nocturnal walk.

"It was like being in their flesh and bones," said Oswaldo Martinez, a 31-year-old computer security technician from Cuernavaca.

"It was cool; it was very fun," said his friend Mauricio Palacios, 30. "I never imagined it would be like that."

Until almost 2 a.m., the group scaled walls, hid in tunnels, jumped into pickups and followed a path through a cornfield. The trip ended with a blindfolded ride to a Hnahnu holy place where Poncho, whose real name is Alfonso Martinez Flores, asked the group to be more honest and sincere in their lives.

Word of the tourist attraction has provoked much head-scratching among real [illegal -ed.] immigrants and advocates in the United States.

Some called the risk-free adrenaline rush insulting. Others said it could improve the often-conflicted attitudes of Mexicans toward their compatriots who [illegally -ed.] migrate.

The Austin American-Statesman 

Simply Astounding.  What's next?  A mock drug gang war?

By Brenda Strohmaier

Who planted the bombs on German trains? Depends who you ask. Many Muslims in Germany think it's a government conspiracy. Just like with Sept. 11. And London....

This just in: The Lebanese men suspected of having deposited bombs on German trains last month were hired hands -- in the employ of the German government itself.

That, at least, is what one 27-year-old from Saudi Arabia believes. "It's all a Protestant crusade," the man explains. "All of northern Germany is Protestant, isn't it? And so is President Bush." Then the man launches into a melange of confusing arguments and historical facts. The bubonic plague, Martin Luther and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl all make a cameo. It's all connected somehow, the man is sure of it.

The young Saudi Arabian's views may make little sense from a Western point of view, but you can meet him and talk to him at a street corner in the middle of Hamburg, right by the central station. Foreigners from all over the world live in this neighborhood, called St. Georg, and a large number of them are Muslim. Several mosques have been built in the neighborhood. Many nearby stores carry no alcohol -- but they do have electronic memory aides for Koran students on offer.

And then there are the conspiracy theories. They are everywhere -- dozens of them -- including some to explain away Germany's recent terror scare. The others -- some mutually contradictory -- have pat explanations for what's really going on in the world.

The Saudi Arabian's crusade theory is being hotly debated on Steindamm, one of the main streets in the neighborhood. "It's not about religion, it's about money," says an Algerian wearing a Lacoste shirt. A man from Tunisia immediately agrees and asks, "Why else have German soldiers been sent to Congo?"

In their struggle for money and oil, Western states will use whatever means they can, according to the theory. That the USA knew about the September 11, 2001 attacks before they happened but chose not to prevent them is a widespread view. "We think the United States needed those attacks so they could start the Iraq war," explains Mahran Abdulwahab, a Lebanese graphic designer with a Hamburg accent.

OOOOOOKKKKK.....

Spiegel Online

Police end funeral striptease acts

STRIPTEASE send-offs at funerals may become a thing of the past in east China after five people were arrested for organising the intimate farewells, state media reported.

Police swooped last week after two groups of strippers gave “obscene performances” at a farmer's funeral in Donghai County, Jiangsu province, Xinhua news agency said.

The disrobing served a higher purpose, the report noted.

“Striptease used to be a common practice at funerals in Donghai's rural areas to allure viewers,” it said.

“Local villagers believe that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honoured”.

Wealthy families often employed two troupes of performers to attract a crowd. Two hundred showed up at last week's funeral.

Five strippers were detained and local officials “issued notices concerning funeral management”, Xinhua said.

Now, village officials must submit plans for funerals within 12 hours after a villager dies. And residents can report “funeral misdeeds” on a hotline, the report said.

Ahem.  Well, that will certainly increase attendance at your funeral...

The Australian 

By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Cursing Saddam Hussein, a Kurdish woman told the former Iraqi leader's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons.

"I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all," said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of the trial.

Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from previous attacks.

"We smelt a peculiar smell. It was rotten apple ... My daughter Nargis said she had pain in the stomach and in her eyes. She was vomiting. All my children were vomiting. I too felt like that and started vomiting," Bayez said.

The testimony was similar to the recollections of other witnesses to the events of April 16, 1987, nearly a year before the formal launch of the Anfal -- Spoils of War -- campaign in the Balisan valley, north of Sulaimaniya.

Bayez, the wife of the trial's first witness, Ali Mustafa Hama, said she suffered two miscarriages and had an infant die at the age of three months following the attack.

Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, are charged with genocide over the seven-month operation. Majid earned his nickname "Chemical Ali" after poison gas attacks in the north.

...Bayez said that once the bombardment ceased, a helicopter hunted the villagers as they fled into the mountains. Those that escaped took refuge in caves.

"We were wounded, sick, but still fled. By now I was vomiting blood. My children were blind. My skin on the body had peeled off," she told the court, speaking Kurdish and wearing traditional black dress.

Saddam's soldiers soon rounded them up, shipping them to Arbil, where they were held with no medical treatment until being moved again, she said.

"After nine days guards said 'all the wounded come to the courtyard of the detention center'. I was screaming as my leg was burned. I was unable to walk. My skin was peeled off, my children ... their skin was peeled," she said.

After photographing the captured Kurds, the men were separated and led away and the women and children were transported back to the countryside, where they were dumped.

Al-Reuters 

There is poor reasoning, and then there is head-spinningly, jaw-droppingly poor reasoning. U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's angry 44-page ruling against NSA terrorism surveillance is the latter, and constitutes little more than a political stunt, with ever-so-helpful declarations like "There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." The American Civil Liberties Union forum-shopped this lawsuit, handed it to a reliably left-liberal Jimmy Carter appointee in Detroit and got its desired result. It probably didn't count on the extreme intellectual embarrassment of Judge Diggs Taylor's opinion, however, which is now being noted by left and right alike.

The New York Times, of course, could be counted on to call the ruling -- which declares NSA surveillance unconstitutional, sides with the journalist-academic-lawye r plaintiffs who alleged that their rights were being monitored and issues a permanent injunction against the NSA program -- "a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion." But aside from the NYT-ACLU-Democratic Party axis, just about everyone commenting on the legal worth of the opinion acknowledges its exceptional logical poverty.

The Washington Post called the opinion "neither careful nor scholarly" and "long on throat-clearing sound bites." A writer for the hard-left Web site Daily Kos called it "poorly reasoned and totally unhelpful." "[A]n atrocity," wrote the liberal blogger Publius: "[p]remature, unsupported, and in violation of elementary civil procedure." "[T]here's no question that it's a poorly reasoned decision," Wake Forest University national-security law professor Bobby Chesney said. "[A] few pages of general ruminations about the Fourth Amendment (much of it incomplete and some of it simply incorrect)," wrote the legal scholar Orin Kerr. "I wouldn't accept this utterly unsupported, constitutionally and logically bankrupt collection of musings from a first-year law student, much less a new lawyer at my firm," wrote Brian Cunningham, a lawyer who served under both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

The Washington Times 

I always thought the shame of slavery would forever be our low point. That was right up until Jimmy Carter took office in 1977 and again last week when he spewed his hate-filled venom against his country and its president in Der Spiegel magazine. Jimmy, you are a disgrace to our nation.

The byline of the article read: ''Former U.S. president speaks with Der Spiegel about the danger posed to American values by George W. Bush, the difficult situation in the Middle East and Cuba's ailing Fidel Castro.'' Carter should have been front and center condemning such a headline. In any other time, with any other president, this would have been unheard of, but not from the new voices coming from the Bush-haters in the Democratic Party. Al Gore does it. Howard Dean does it. Maxine Waters does it. But that doesn't make it right. Jimmy Carter has allowed partisan attacks to escalate to dangerous levels.

So, I thought a stroll down memory lane would be appropriate. In the mid-1970s, Jimmy Carter, a fine peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, ran for the highest office in the land and won. Congratulations Jimmy. Jimmy Carter appeared not to be your garden-variety politician and the country welcomed his down-home country approach. Within a year however, the welcome wore off. Carter's legacy is now inextricably linked to the ''Misery Index.'' No president in the history of the country had a Misery Index as high as Jimmy Carter's. Carter had an average Index of 16.27 percent during his term (1977-80). When he finally left Washington in 1980 is was at an all-time high of 21.98 percent. Not a record I would be proud of if I were you Jimmy.

Of course, who could forget the 444 days America was held hostage by Iran? The now-famous program, ABC's Nightline, was birthed to cover the day-to-day events. Each night we would watch the news, counting the days our captured Americans were being held by radical Islamic terrorists while President Jimmy Carter sat by powerless and did nothing. The appeaser didn't want to upset the Ayatollah Khomeini. The leader of the free world had been reduced to a thumb-sucking peacenik by a gang of 7th-century hoodlums.

Suffice it to say, the Carter years were very bad for our nation. 16 percent inflation, 22 percent interest rates, and 70 percent marginal tax rates did little to endear Jimmy to the hard working people he claims to now protect against George W. Bush. Today, under Bush, we have 2.7 percent core inflation rates, historically low interest rates and 35 percent marginal tax rates. Looks like Jimmy is jealous.

I have to stop myself from going any further, for if Carter's own words are not enough to show his stupidity and hatred for our country and the president then nothing will. Jimmy Carter has done more than any single president to hurt this nation, not only while in office, but even more so since he was booted from office in complete humiliation. The American people rejected him and his insane policies. We in America couldn't get rid of this guy quick enough. His anger toward the country and its current leader is no surprise given how soundly he was rejected. He needs therapy to heal, not worldwide attention.

Carter is the first former president I can think of who has openly attacked a sitting president. Carter should thank his lucky stars Nixon, Ford and Reagan were men of character, for if they operated like Carter and Gore he would have been under an attack that would have made his head spin. And he would have actually deserved it.

World Net Daily 

Feds show CAIR latest screening steps,
sensitive counterterrorism procedures

© 2006 Wor ldNetDaily.com

The Department of Homeland Security took a Muslim group with known past ties to terror organizations on a VIP tour of security operations at the nation's busiest airport at the same time British authorities were working to break up a plot to blow up U.S. airlines.

On June 21, a senior DHS official from Washington personally guided Muslim officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations on a behind-the-scenes tour of Customs screening operations at O'Hare International Airport in response to CAIR complaints that Muslim travelers were being unfairly delayed as they entered the U.S. from abroad.

CAIR is a spin-off of the Islamic Association for Palestine, identified by two former FBI counterterrorism chiefs as a "front group" for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Several CAIR leaders have been convicted on terror-related charges.

During the airport tour, CAIR was taken on a walk through the point-of-entry, Customs stations, secondary screening and interview rooms. In addition, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents were asked to describe for CAIR representatives various features of the high-risk passenger lookout system.

In a meeting, Brian Humphrey, Customs and Border Patrol's executive director of field operations, assured CAIR officials that agents do not single out Muslim passengers for special screening and that they must undergo a mandatory course in Muslim sensitivity training. The course teaches agents that Muslims believe jihad is an "internal struggle against sin" and not holy warfare.

Customs agents involved in the CAIR tour at O'Hare tell WorldNetDaily they were outraged that headquarters would reveal sensitive counterterrorism procedures to an organization that has seen several of its own officials convicted of terror-related charges since 9-11.

"Isn't that nice of CBP," one agent said, to provide a "group like CAIR with a guided, behind-the-scenes tour of our customs facilities, explaining how programs designed to catch Muslim terrorists work."

CAIR says the tour allayed its concerns about profiling and that it "looks forward to continuing the relationship with U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices in the region, and to furthering understanding between the organizations as well as facilitating future communication in order to eliminate problems for Muslim travelers before they even arise."

The Muslim-sensitivity training course at O'Hare is taught by Margaret Nydell, an Arabic professor at Georgetown University, home to a large Saudi-financed center on Islamic studies.

A Customs and Border Protection supervisor described Nydell's instruction, along with CBP's companion training manual and video, as "politically correct drivel."

"It's all about how Islam means peace and tolerance," he told WorldNetDaily. "We're told how to deal with Arabs and Muslims, that they are loving people and not terrorists. That jihad is struggle with sin and has nothing to do with violence."

The Department of Homeland Security invites CAIR itself to conduct sensitivity training for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and supervisors (CBP's counterparts) in Chicago. The course is taught by local CAIR officials Christina Abraham and Mariyam Hussain. More than 30 ICE staffers have gone through the CAIR awareness program so far.

CAIR – which is bankrolled by the Saudis and the United Arab Emirates, two countries that formally recognized the Taliban – also offers religious and cultural sensitivity training about Islam and Muslims to the military. In June, for example, CAIR trained more than 300 military personnel at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Ariz.

Also in June, CAIR was invited by the Pentagon to a ceremony dedicating the first Islamic center in Marine Corps history at Quantico headquarters outside of Washington.

Washington-based CAIR also has regular meetings with the FBI and Justice Department. In fact, FBI case agents complain the bureau rarely can make a move in the Muslim community without first consulting with CAIR, which sits on its advisory board. CAIR in the past has cried racism and bigotry when the bureau has moved unilaterally with investigations and raids in the community.

Un.  Freaking.  Believeable.

World Net Daily 

Friday, August 18, 2006

Copyright © 2006 Republican-American

Life is about contrasts. Happy and sad. Winners and losers. Pleasure and pain. Without bad days, how will you recognize good days when they come around? But to self-esteem despots, life is a even-steven proposition. Everyone, regardless of talent or temperament, perseverance or personality, is treated equally, even when they manifestly are not.

Homosexuality is illegal in conservative Saudi Arabia, which metes out strict punishments based on sharia, or Islamic law. - Sapa-AFP [Yeah, like death... -ed.]

So, I assume members of ACTUP are winging their way to the Magic Kingdom as we speak?  No?

Via:  IOL 

For half a century, the Cold War and the fight against communism had us in its grip. But despite the persistent threat of nuclear war with the Soviet bloc, the sense of fear wasn't nearly as pervasive and relentless as it is now with the war on terrorism.

Even as children performed "duck and cover" drills at school and the world was catching its breath after the Cuban Missile Crisis, people sat in movie theatres laughing at actor Slim Pickens' character riding the H-bomb down to global destruction in Stanley Kubrick's movie, Dr. Strangelove.

Our enemy today isn't big on comedy, and can be as hypersensitive as an Oprah show audience. Some Danish cartoonists tried to lighten things up, but now they're in hiding and fearing for their lives.

Here are some other reasons the war on terrorism is scarier than the Cold War:

* During the communist threat, we could take comfort in the fact that authorities had a pretty good idea where the communists were: Russia (and Hollywood). In this new war, the threat comes from Muslim extremists. So naturally, our authorities are focused on confiscating prune juice from little old ladies at airport security. That would be great if there was any evidence the Golden Girls were plotting to blow up planes.

* We knew we won the Cold War when Russia's economy collapsed along with the Berlin Wall. Today, we can't measure success because the media only gives us two numbers in the daily play-by-play: Western "military" deaths and Mideastern "civilian" deaths. One has to assume "civilians," includes "terrorist scumbags" because I don't see that team anywhere else on the media scoreboard.

* During the Cold War, you didn't have to take the guy wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt on the subway seriously. The people worth worrying about typically wore uniforms and at least had some sense of decorum. In the terror war, it's tough to distinguish a flake from a threat.

* Consider British terror suspect Donald Stewart-Whyte, a 21-year old Muslim convert described by his ex-girlfriend as someone who "used to smoke 20 a day, usually roll-ups. And he liked a bit of weed and loved drinking Stella." In the Cold War era, brain cells are about the only things a kid like this would have destroyed. Now a Daily Telegraph report describes British universities as prime recruiting grounds for terrorists. I guess being a communist at university isn't original enough anymore.

* U.S. President John F. Kennedy wasn't contemplating the communist threat in Cuba and thinking, "It's hot down there. I wonder if it's hotter in Havana than it was a thousand years ago?" Today's liberals say there's no connection between 9/11 and Iraq, but they have no problem connecting global annihilation to the guy who drives his SUV to work every day. If liberals were in a plane blown up by Muslim radicals, I wonder if their last thought would be, "Oh no! All this burning jet fuel is releasing an excess of aromatic hydrocarbons into the earth's atmosphere!"

Despite all the reasons for white-knuckling this war, for our sanity's sake, we can always make like the erratic driver who was recently pulled over by my police officer friend. Pointing to the steering wheel, he shrugged, "I can't control that thing!" -- then got right back on the road and kept on going.

Via:  The Toronto Sun 

ROME, Aug 16: The killing in Italy of a young Pakistani woman by her own family has shocked Italians and prompted a discussion about integration, just as the government pushes through legislation making it easier for immigrants to obtain citizenship.

The stabbed body of 21-year-old Hina Saleem, whose boyfriend — a 33-year-old divorced and re-married Italian — raised the alarm to police about her disappearance, was discovered on Saturday buried in the garden of the family home at Sarezzo, near the north-eastern city of Brescia.

The killing was “a kind of punishment inflicted by her father because she did not respect the rules of their ethnicity and culture,” Brescia prosecutor Giancarlo Tarquini said at a news conference.

The father and brother-in-law of the young woman were charged with murder and concealing the body, while a third male family member was still being hunted by police on Wednesday.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the murder was premeditated, a hypothesis supported by the fact that the women and children of the family appeared to have been removed from the house before the murder.

The father told police that he killed his daughter because he did not want her to “become like the others.”

He has remained silent since then and his lawyer has described him as an extremely pious man “who respected the Quran to the letter”.

“Hina was very beautiful. She used to wear mini-skirts or show her belly button like all girls of her age, and she spoke Italian very well,” a woman living next door to the flat the young woman shared with her boyfriend told news agency ANSA.

A spokesman for the Brescia Pakistani community, Mohammed Tofi, condemned the murder.—AFP

Via:  Dawn 

Ran across this over at Mambo's blog:

DemocracyNow and AFP [Should have stopped reading right there... -ed]
13th August 2006
AFP Story:

The US government was closely involved in planning Israel's military operations against Lebanon's Hezbollah militia even before the July 12 kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, a US magazine reported.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh writes in The New Yorker magazine that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were convinced that a successful Israeli bombing campaign against Hezbollah could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prototype for a potential US preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations.

Citing an unnamed Middle East expert [Emphasis mine. Apparently, "journalists" don't need no steekin' credible sources... -ed.] with knowledge of the current thinking of the Israeli and US governments, Hersh said Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah -- and shared it with Bush administration officials -- well before the July 12 kidnappings.

"When they grabbed the soldiers in early July, that was then a pretext" for Israel's assault on Hezbollah, Hersh said Sunday on CNN television.

Generally, liberal rants posing as new stories don't raise my blood pressure all that much, however, the following comment on the "source" site left me speechless:

"I have typed and retyped my response to this article so many times now but I simply cannot get across my sheer anger, sadness, frustration, despair and disgust at what can only be described as the most appaling waste of human life in the history of our planet.

I am almost at a loss for words as to how repugnant this is all getting.

I have little to say other than read the following and get ready for yet another war in yet another Muslim nation with yet further huge human and financial cost.

And remember, all of these pre-planned and pre-scheduled wars are taking place IN YOUR NAME.

If you know a soldier in either the US, UK or Israel then ask them, no, BEG them to resign their position or, if necessary, go AWOL. If these bastards have no soldiers left to sacrifice with no thought for their families then there cannot be another war, can there?

To be honest, I am sick and tired of hearing about all of the soldiers who are dedicated family men and women.

Family men and women do not go to other countries to kill other family men and women, leaving their families behind to pick up the pieces once they are dead. [Emphasis mine. -ed.]

STOP FIGHTING FOR THEM AND THEY CANNOT START ANY MORE WARS."

Signs of the Times (Snicker)

Wow. The stupidity of this statement just astounds me.

I maintain, you spoiled little shit, that a *lot* of Family Men have put on a uniform, taken up arms, and faught and died to give you the right to make an absolute ass of yourself. Maybe you should move out of Mom's basement, and read a bit of history, needledick.

God I wish 14 year olds would stay the hell away from the Internet...

In a spasm of celebration for Hezbollah’s monthlong battle against Israel, many parents in Gaza City have named their children after the Islamic militant group and its leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.

In Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, six Palestinian women have named their babies Hassan, Nasrallah, or Hassan Nasrallah, according to maternity records from when fighting began July 12 to when a cease-fire took effect Monday.

Answering ‘nationalist spirit’
“My wife wanted to call the baby Nasrallah, but I wanted Hezbollah — to commemorate the entire resistance,” he said smiling.

“My friends said with this name he won’t be able to work, or travel abroad. I have business in Israel as well — but you know, there is a nationalist spirit in me,” he said.

Ghurani said he also tried to change his 6-year-old son’s name from Islam to Nasrallah, but “couldn’t find the right papers.”

“The next son — we’ll call him Ahmadinejad,” Ghurani said, in honor of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the complete annihilation of Israel.

Yeah.  Maybe we should dialogue with them some more...

PMSNBC

NEW YORK (CNN) -- CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen says the notion that Osama bin Laden once worked for the CIA is "simply a folk myth" and that there's no shred of evidence to support such theories.

Q: If it's true that bin Laden once worked for the CIA, what makes you so sure that he isn't still?
Anne Busigin, Toronto, Canada

BERGEN: This is one of those things where you cannot put it out of its misery.

The story about bin Laden and the CIA -- that the CIA funded bin Laden or trained bin Laden -- is simply a folk myth. There's no evidence of this. In fact, there are very few things that bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and the U.S. government agree on. They all agree that they didn't have a relationship in the 1980s. And they wouldn't have needed to. Bin Laden had his own money, he was anti-American and he was operating secretly and independently.

The real story here is the CIA didn't really have a clue about who this guy was until 1996 when they set up a unit to really start tracking him.

Caliphate News Network

 Wow.  I can hear the heads of conspiracy theorists exploding now...

Scholars of the Enlightenment should be in high demand these days. For the political and media responses to the plot to bomb up to ten U.S. airliners in mid air above the Atlantic reflect its two-faced intellectual and philosophical heritage. There is that great optimism in human nature, the belief in rationality and science, the conviction that everything has an explanation and that every problem has a solution. There is the unbending belief that “all men are created equals,” that we are entitled to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Then there is the dark side, not of Locke and Montesquieu, not of the American Revolution and the Federalists, but of the French terror, of the tyranny of ideas over the liberty of men, of the totalitarian regimes that sprang out of Enlightenment philosophy no less than liberal democracies did.

Some, in Europe and the U.S., have already understood terrorism’s true nature: the tool of a totalitarian murderous ideology, which must be confronted for what it is, not for what we wish it to be, if liberty is to survive.

But others are trying to play down this characterization, for fear of the consequences of putting radical Islam in the same category as Fascism and Communism, especially given that Islam is not a distant reality of the East, but it now dwells in the heart of Europe.

... Western impulses to explain away the threat of terror and seek a solution to the problem are empowering in a way. We have a diagnosis and we have a cure. But they are also misleading. For why should it be logical or even understandable that Muslim anger at Western foreign policy solicits terrorism? Should anger at high taxes, inefficient health care, poor environmental standards, or disagreeable op-eds solicit “understandable&rdq uo; similar responses? Should we condone people blowing up airliners because they think the highest tax bracket should not be higher than, say, 30 percent? Should we “address their grievances”? By, say, lowering taxes? What if someone decides to blow up, say, the Guardian because they are fed up with the political inclination of its Comment section? Should the Guardian address their grievances by becoming right-wing? Can we not call it blackmail, instead, as it should be the case? Can we not say that differences of opinion are only legitimate when voiced in the peaceful forms amply provided by the open societies we are part of? That what makes people angry is no excuse for killing people?

The “root-cause” argument boils down to excusing the inexcusable. It also ignores the plain facts: The foiled plot to blow up airliners was not hastily planned in response to Israel’s war on Hezbollah, or U.S. and British reluctance to stop Israel. The planning began months before those events. The real cause is a totalitarian ideology that uses grievances as excuses but has goals we can never accede, if the West is to stay true to its values and beliefs, let alone interests, as an open society.

Emanuele Ottolenghi GETS it.
 

By LARRY MARGASAK

Copyright © 2006 AP Wire

WASHINGTON -- The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources.

But that hasn't stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves.

Agency documents detail the luxuries that executives of the Legal Services Corp. have given themselves with federal money -- from $14 "Death by Chocolate" desserts to $400 chauffeured rides to locations within cab distance of their offices.

The government-funded corporation also has a spacious headquarters in Washington's tony Georgetown district -- with views of the Potomac River and a rent significantly higher than other tenants in the same building.

And board members wrote themselves a policy that doubled the amount they could claim for meals compared with their staff.