Tel-Chai Nation

In the past week or two, we saw as many as 500,000 illegal aliens and their sympathisers leading demonstrations in Chicago and even Los Angeles. But where did they come from? Neal Boortz finds the answers:

So just where did those thousands and thousands of protesters that showed up around the country to protest an immigration bill in Congress come from? Were they angry immigrants sitting in their government housing watching C-SPAN...only to become upset at a bill that was just out of committee? Not hardly.

The truth is starting to come out about just where these folks came from. They were protesting in the street because.....because they were told to. It turns out the Spanish media was stoking the fire. In fact, they went a step further...even telling them when and where to protest...what to wear and how to do it. It was an all-out propaganda war.

And just where will you hear this reported? Not in the mainstream media. They will report that the protests took place, then say nothing about how they got there. As it turns out, these were essentially rent-a-mobs..carefully coordinated over a period of weeks to show up and do their thing.

If the media really wanted to do their job, they would have sent a reporter into the crowd with a microphone to ask the protesters just which bill they were protesting and what the language of the legislation was. Good luck on that one.

I'd have to think that the Spanish language MSM exploited quite a few people, and is now probably laughing in their faces. As it so happens, this could actually end up harming the illegals more than it helps them.

To make matters worse, a few weeks ago, some Minutement in Indiana were assaulted by illegals at a bank supplying to them, and US flags were burned at one of the rallies, as Michelle Malkin notes here.

It seems that in all their arrogance, the pro-illegal immigration supporters have only ended up fanning the flames of incitement against the American continent, which is very grave and not helpful for them at all.

Labels: immigration

One of the reasons why the right lost the Israeli election was due to a startling display of hatemongering against Benjamin Netanyahu, even within his own party, which also caused defeat. David Bedein probably has one of the best explanations for the election fallout:

The Likud and Israel's National Union-National Religious Party lost because they gave the impression to the Israeli public that they cared only about themselves.

The disastrous results for the Likud and Israel's national-religious camp in the Israeli elections conveyed a clear message to the people who are associated with those two sectors: you are arrogant and you have isolated yourselves from the people of Israel.

The outreach campaign of the National Union and the national-religious camp articulately addressed the suffering of Israelis who were evicted from their homes in Gush Katif and Samaria; yet, they were without a word as to the suffering endured by economically depressed Israeli development towns that border Gaza in the Negev, which now live under daily artillery bombardment as a direct result of Israel's hasty retreat from Gaza six months ago. Pleas with the leadership of the Likud and the National Union-National Religious Party to hold public meetings with the victims of artillery attacks in the S'derot area fell on deaf ears.

Instead, the stated policy of the National Union-National Religious Party was to reach out only to the "right-wing" of Israeli politics and not to the people of Israel, not to reach out to people with integrity on the Israeli Left who became frustrated with the fallacies of Israel's so-called peace process.

There you have it in example. Because the National Union-NRP was acting so incredibly self-concerned, yet at the same time implying that they only cared about their own Knesset seats, they were damaged. But that said, even the Likud, it's true, failed to act properly by not holding any public meetings with the residents of towns and cities like Sderot and Ashkelon. And they wasted precious advertising time by refusing to address the solid issues behind what the Oslo agreement led to.

But I think it may also be because Likud members like Silvan Shalom, who's said to have some support there (maybe not much now), did not make any serious efforts to campaign among the residents of those places.

And while Netanyahu's financial cutbacks may have helped the country to some extent, and he did have a point that people should go out to work, the way he did it was apparently clumsy, and also a problem that led to undermining him, if not as much as the National Union did. Bedein says:

As far as the Likud is concerned, its fate was sealed in the spring of 2003, when Binyamin Netanyahu, as the minister of finance, slashed special public fund allocations for pensioners, for handicapped people and for children. When Netanyahu's director general was confronted with how the cut in child allowance would cause working families to lose vital income that they need for basic sustenance, his answer was that "they should go out to work." When confronted with the fact that the cutback of the child allowance affects people who are at work, his answer, once again, was that "they should go out to work."

A few weeks after the finance ministry's economic plan was announced, I forwarded a professional proposal to Netanyahu's chief social affairs advisor that for every program Netanyahu would cut in health, education and social service, he would ask corporations and philanthropists from Israel and from abroad to sponsor new health, education and social services. The precedent for such an idea occurred during the tenure of Israel's former finance minister, Avrhaham Shochat, who had arranged with United Jewish Communities philanthropists in the USA to sponsor security guard services in all of Israel's public schools, since Shochat was cutting this vital service. To this day, UJC plaques are posted at the guard house of schools throughout the country, to remind everyone that this vital security service, which the Israeli government could not afford, had been secured with private philanthropic funds.

Yet, while Netanyahu's social affairs advisor liked the idea of seeking private sponsors for every service that Netanyahu would slash, Netanyahu would not hear of any such idea. He simply fired his social affairs advisor.

So, there you have it. The Likud and the National Union-National Religious Party presented a clear, strong security program to the Israeli voter; yet, both parties neglected to address the vital health, economic and social disaster of the indigent sector of Israeli society.

Correction there, only the Likud actually did, with the National Union, it was simply dreadful, and didn't offer anything satisfying. That aside, I understand Bedein's argument on the financial issues.

Moreover, the problem with the NU was that they were stoking what was basically hatemongering against Netanyahu, and one advertisement they gave out, showing a teen girl sitting on the rubble of a wrecked house came close to exploitation. That's something for which they must apologize, and Benny Elon, plus anyone else who was taking part in their "anti-Bibi" campaign must step down.

Anshel Pfeffer in the Jerusalem Post says that we shouldn't write Netanyahu off just yet:

Netanyahu has three main factors working for him. First, his rivals are just as discredited as he is. Ex-ministers Limor Livnat, Dan Naveh, Yisrael Katz and, especially, Silvan Shalom don't enjoy sufficient support in the party right now to oust Netanyahu and are being accused today of not pulling their weight during the campaign.

Second, after the electoral humiliation, many on the right will begin to see him once again as a martyr who didn't give up on his ideals and was crucified in return by the media and the left-wing elite. His loyalists hope that, from the underdog position, he will be able to redeem himself in the eyes of the settlers and more resolute right-wingers, still angry at him for initially supporting disengagement.

There's just one thing: he didn't. He may have voted "in favor" of one of these "bills" in the Knesset two years ago because he was afraid he'd be fired from the cabinet by Ariel Sharon, and he wanted to keep the treasury out of Sharon's reach for good reason, but other than that, he did not support disengagement, most certainly not literally.

The third factor is Netanyahu himself. He is in the worst situation of his political career, since the aftermath of Yitzhak Rabin's murder, when he was treated like Yigal Amir's partner in crime. His steadfast determination enabled him to achieve an unbelievable comeback and win the elections six months later.

He believes he can do it again, and I would bet on his lasting as Likud leader until the next elections.

Which may come sooner than we think. And Netanyahu most certainly should not have to resign. While not without his own faults, it was not because of him that the Likud was damaged, certainly not by a longshot. No, it was because of the damage inflicted by those you'd think to be his "friends", and that includes even Yisrael Beitenu and Shas, who were also leading some very appalling campaigns in which they attacked him one-dimensionally too. In fact, people who care would do well to lobby Shas and their spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, not to join a coalition with Olmert. Six years ago, people wanted them to resign from the government with Ehud Barak, which they eventually did.

And the Likud will also have to take some steps to rebuild confidence by meeting with places that need their support, like Ashkelon and Sderot.

My fellow bloggers are right - aside from the fact that the election results were not as bad as I and some others might've thought, I shouldn't have to just quit blogging. No, that would be foolish.

So if I'm smart, I'd better recant what I said before. Good heavens. Sorry I said that.

Now to continue blogging properly and not trying to just back out because I'm depressed.

Simply devastating. The poll results so far? The Likud takes a downfall, to probably little more than 12 seats, and Yisrael Beitenu got more - 14. What does Kadima get? Something like 29 seats, and Labor 22.

And if this is what's to be, then as I told Allen Roth on One Jerusalem...I just can't blog anymore.

I have a little nephew whose life I fear for now, ditto his future, mine, and my family's.

Do I have a future? Does anyone else? I don't know. For now however, I just can't do it anymore.

I'm sorry.

I'm going to be spending my time now on books and visiting my nephew. But as far as blogging is concerned, I think that for now...it's over.

Again, I'm sorry.

I'd like to thank all visitors to this blog for their reading, and maybe someday, I'll come back to it. If there is a someday in the future.

For now...

Goodbye.

I'll just be adding one post for now.

Today is election day in Israel. I've already cast my vote. Yes, I voted for Likud, and the voting card for them is "Mahal" (in Hebrew, it reads like this: מחל)

There's no way of telling how this will turn out. I realize that. Will it be the right or the left that gets elected? Will Olmert get any votes? I don't know, and you can be sure that no one else can be sure of that either.

The large parties are rightfully worried about low voter turnout. Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be visiting twelve polling stations and Likud branches across the country today.

I'm hoping for the best, and I'm sure plenty of other people reading this are too. By ten o'clock this morning, ten percent had come out to vote. Despite what the Israeli MSM is trying to say, that is a lot of people, considering the time period of day.

So here goes, and tonight, we'll see what the results are to be.

Visiting the Western Wall today, Benjamin Netanyahu had the following to say:

(IsraelNN.com) In a last minute plea to the public, Likud leader MK Binyamin Netanyau said at a visit to the Western Wall: “Whoever wants to preserve Jerusalem will vote Likud.”

That's what I'm doing. Mainly because, if there's to be a strong right-wing coalition, that's why we need to vote for the Likud party.

See also this column by Caroline Glick about Harvard's recent anti-Israelist scandal, in which she too recommends voting for Netanyahu as the most ideal candidate for rebuilding Israel's foreign relations.

In this article, the reporter talks about how volunteers will safeguard the purity of Arab polling station ballots:

The request for volunteers, posted as announcements in specified areas around the country, states,
"Did you know that 11% of the votes for the Knesset come from the Arab and Bedouin sectors? The Bedouins have already promised their votes to Kadima, as Olmert has promised to 'launder' their illegal construction in the Negev. In many voting stations in the Arab and Bedouin sectors, only Kadima and Arab party members will be present to monitor. In these voting stations, it is very common to find that the numbers of votes are 'supplemented' by great percentages of votes of those who didn't actually vote. At least one Arab party is on the verge of not making it into the Knesset; distortions could make the difference between that party receiving 2-3 seats or nothing at all!"

One volunteer for the post of observer at these polling stations told Arutz-7, "The main value in our being there is that no one will be able to stuff the ballot boxes with fraudulent ballots of people who did not vote. Regarding false identities and the like, we will have less of a say; women, for instance, can vote without removing their face-covering." It has been learned, however, that as Moslem modesty laws allow women to uncover their faces in front of other women, a woman observer can check if the would-be voter matches the photograph on her identity card."

The volunteer said that the organization responsible for coordinating the volunteers had decided to send him to Nazareth in the Galilee:
"I was told that there are many polling stations in the Israeli-Arab city of Nazareth, and that I and several of my friends would be sent there. After speaking with the Central Elections Committee, I have learned that in each voting station, there are at least five officials. There is a three-member poll committee, made up of members of various parties, as well as a polling station secretary, who is a non-political representative of the Central Elections Committee. A policeman is also present. As observers, we have no official status, other than to be able to request that the secretary write in the protocol any events that we consider suspicious. But we can certainly prevent the submission of a couple of hundred of false votes."

The volunteers must be army veterans.

Good to know that there are people trying to make sure that no fraud is committed around the Arabic voting stations. It's also possible that Kadima might try to find ways to commit election fraud, and if so, make sure to be on the lookout for any dirty tricks that Olmert and his cronies might be up to as well.

I owe many thanks to the folks who work at the Shuk, the Jerusalem open-air marketplace, for letting me know that they understand the danger that Kadima poses. Tzipi Livni, the "foreign minister", attempted to visit the Shuk today, and was shunned by the crowd, both political activists and store managers. From YNetnews:

Livni planned a campaign tour of the open-air market, famously a right-wing stronghold, but angry anti-Kadima activists surrounded her and blocked her passage. The minister only managed to cover a few meters of ground before she was forced to leave the market. Police had to use force to scatter the crowd of activists.

Livni arrived at the market around 2:00 p.m. and was met with angry faces and loud jeers. Right-wing activists from the “Moving Right” movement along with merchants from the market said earlier in the afternoon that they would not let the visit pass quietly.

Meir, who sells fruit at the market, said if Livni “was coming to go shopping, no problem, but she might have a hard time getting in without the Shin Bet. Mahane Yehuda merchants don’t want Kadima. She can come to the entrance, but no further.”

Even before this, Gideon Ezra, the "internal security minister" got a very cold reception:

Two weeks ago Internal Security Minister Gideon Ezra toured the market to shouts of “Traitor!” and “Only Likud!”, although unlike Livni he managed to complete the tour as planned.

[...]

Meir, who owns a fresh juice kiosk, told Ynet, “Tzipi got a bad reception because Kadima is a party established by refugees from Labor and Likud that took an illegal mandate. The Likud platform isn’t great either, but for her to come here, where she stole the mandates from, is chutzpah.”

Another salesman added: “We don’t like her here. We are Likud. We are on the Right and not the Left. We are for the Greater Land of Israel.”

Thanks to everybody in the Shuk. If only we'd known about Ezra's visit earlier. But it certainly shows that Kadima simply isn't welcome around these parts, certainly not if they're going to steal someone else's mandates.

One Jerusalem also notes that Ehud Olmert's been avoiding serious screen time again. I also noticed that on Channel Two TV, which is one of the most fawning, favoritist-towards-Kadima members of the MSM in Israel, something that I'd also noticed last month: in a podium room where they were seemingly having a conference, they did not show the whole auditorium, keeping the camera focused almost entirely on the podium where the "party" members were sitting. Which tells us that Kadima didn't get much of an audience to attend, if at all. If they had, you can be sure that Channel Two would've done everything to exploit that for propaganda purposes.

And another interesting thing about the above is that, this time, Olmert did not speak within the auditorium itself, choosing instead to call by phone from another location. Not very tour-de-force for a political conference, eh?

From the March 25-26 issue of the Herald Tribune:

Ariel Sharon is lying "in a hospital on a hill high above Jerusalem".

Ahem. The hospital where he's been lying for almost three months happens to be low down in a valley, in the Jerusalem suburb of Ein Kerem, which is far below what the newspaper was saying.

Just goes to show that you can't trust the New York Times, nor their subsidiaries.

Labels: msm foulness

Hebrew University lecturer Dr. Mordecai Nissan gave the following speech recently:

"The Kadima Party is by far the most corrupt of all the parties running in the elections... There has never been as extreme an example of the crushing of democratic norms and governmental correctness as in the case of Kadima, via the actions of Ariel Sharon and his partners in that political crime... I am not referring to a particular action by a given Knesset Member. Rather, with Kadima, a blanket treachery occurred against the voters of the Likud via the mass desertion of those they elected, and with a total distortion of the national desire and the conventional rules guiding the relationship between citizens and their elected representatives.

"... Kadima, a party that did not run in the elections of 2003, has been occupying the government chairs for many months, without having ever been elected. in 2003, the voters overwhelmingly chose the Likud Party, out of a clear ideological solidarity with it. But these votes were later transferred, unjustly, to the Kadima Party. How is possible that this public rape occurred without a protest from the media or from the political arena?

"...Those who abandoned the Likud, such as Ehud Olmert, Tzippy Livny, Meir Sheetrit, Avraham Hirshson, Ze'ev Boim, Roni Bar-On, Ruhama Avraham and others, abused those who sent them with a disgraceful act, with total conceit and with no shame. This is a breach of the unwritten charter between voter and representative... The members of Kadima veered from the customary Likud policy, which supported the settlement enterprise and not withdrawing for nothing in return.

"...On March 28, the citizens of Israel will be able to settle accounts with the people of Kadima. This issue must stand at the center of the electoral campaign, in which the voter is asked to express his opinion on what this band of strong-armed politicians did to our cultural fabric and the political establishment. These vote-stealers, norm-destroyers and public liars deserve nothing less than total political exile."

Absolutely correct. They must be sent a clear message that we do not approve of the gross violations of law and democracy that they've committed in past months. Which is exactly why it is strongly advised to go and vote to make sure that the Kadima "party" is sent home.

In other news, MK Uzi Landau has accused Channel Two TV of a blatant bias against Netanyahu. The judge Dorit Beinish has already agreed with him on that, and reprimanded the TV station for their shamelessness.

The Hamas is promoting violence and hatred among children.

And, here's something good said by a Labor party member, of all people - that Kadima is panicking, for good reason:

(IsraelNN.com) MK Ofir Pines-Paz (Labor-Meimad) told a Labor Party campaign meeting Sunday night in Beit Shemesh that the Kadima Party has become hysterical due to its sudden falling in the polls.

"Have you noticed that Kadima is in hysteria? That they are panicking? That they are losing their heads? They have good reason to," Pines-Paz said, to a loud response from the crowd: "They are afraid!"

"I am embarrassed for Shimon Peres, who decided to attack the Labor Party. Shimon, I am embarrassed for you," Pines-Paz said, referring to the former Labor chairman who quit the party after losing to Amir Peretz despite polls predicting an opposite outcome.

Yes, they are panicking and embarrassed alright. Because by now, as they probably realize, the polls just aren't reliable, and it's apparent that Kadima just won't get the results they wish they would. But to make sure that they don't, that's why it's strongly advised to go to vote, to make sure that Kadima's members get the punishment they deserve.

Michelle Malkin brings good news that Abdul Rahman is to be freed. However, he'll have to leave Afghanistan ASAP, since his life can still be in danger.

I hope that he'll be able to retrieve his two daughters, who also deserve freedom. There should be a case made for getting them out of Afghanistan as well.

Labels: Afghanistan

Yet another rocket attack by the Hamas on Israeli communities. The IDF's chief of staff, however, made a very appalling statement:

Two Kassam rockets fired from formerly Jewish areas of Gaza struck Ashkelon Saturday night. IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz says Israel must remain "civilized" in its response to the rockets.

One of the rockets hit a building in the southern Ashkelon industrial area, damaging the building, but failing to injure anybody.

"The phenomenon of Kassam rocket fire has significantly expanded since the unilateral withdrawal," said Likud MK Gilad Erdan, in response to the attack. "Anyone who is considering supporting Olmert's unilateral surrender policy this Tuesday - to withdraw from most of Judea and Samaria - needs to take into consideration that what is happening in Ashkelon now will occur at Ben Gurion Airport and in additional cities along the coastal plain."

[...]

Friday night, IDF artillery forces shelled launching areas in northern Gaza – usually open fields. That shelling was in response to two rockets fired on Friday, in which no damage or injuries were reported.

Speaking at Bar Ilan University on Friday, IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz said that continued launching of Kassam rockets on Israel's civilian population would not cause him to recommend that fire be returned toward populated PA-controlled Arab areas. "We will find a full answer to the Kassams," Halutz assured the students present, "without crossing lines."

Asked why the IDF has not put an end of the rocket fire up to now, Halutz answered: "Life is about choosing between alternatives. There are those who will say 'let us conquer the Gaza Strip anew,' because that is one of the ways to combat the threat. I always remind them that we were in the Strip until eight months ago, and even when we were there we did not succeed in fully addressing every Kassam. This is because we behave as a civilized country and don't rush to cross lines in our operational activities."

What Halutz said there was a real cop-out. Let's be clear here: whether or not the rockets killed anyone today doesn't mean it won't happen tomorrow. Gilad Erdan is quite right when he, on the other hand, points out the dangers that the retreat ended up causing.

The Hamas has said that it will not arrest terrorists who attack Israelis:

Incoming Palestinian interior minister Saeed Seyam, chosen by Hamas to oversee three security services, said on Thursday he will not order the arrest of militants carrying out attacks against Israel. "The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation," Seyam said.

As the IRIS Blog says:

Tuesday's election is the last moment in history where this can logically be stopped. Afterwards, only God can prevent Armageddon.

To everyone in Israel, please make sure to vote to stop the Hamas fiends. The party I endorse in this election is the Likud.

Still more on Abdul Rahman, on trial in Afghanistan for converting to Christianity. The Political Pitt Bull (via Michelle Malkin) has a video of Dubya finally giving a speech but unfortunately delivering it very weakly. Denmark is showing much better strength on the subject, and Robert Spencer's got an article focusing on how in Afghanistan, it is still not the democracy many thought the raid on the country would bring.

Here's some more entries from Michelle Malkin covering the report, including a rally in his defense. It seems that even CAIR is calling for Rahman's release. But don't be fooled by them. Opportunism comes in many forms, including CAIR.

See also this report from WorldNetDaily, plus Joseph Farah's op-ed. Plus, here's Michelle's own op-ed from the Jewish World Review, and an editorial from National Review.

Others on the subject include California Conservative, Below the Beltway, Independent Conservative, Big Dog's Weblog, A Blog for All, Okie on the Lam in LA, A Lady's Ruminations, Wizbang, Small Town Veteran, Ordinary Everyday Christian, four topics from Rhymes With Right, Darleen's Place, Church and State, Freedom for Some, Hyscience, Ground State, SingleMind.Net, Pollywog Creek Porch, Sweet Spirits of Ammonia, Coalition of the Swilling, UrbanRepublican, NeoPhyte Pundit, The Hedgehog Blog, Right Minded, My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, JunkYardBlog, Verum Serum, The Dread Pundit Bluto, Myopic Zeal, Virtual Fret Noise, Magic Statistics.

Labels: Afghanistan

I was at the Jerusalem Conference held at one of the city's hotels, and got to hear Benjamin Netanyahu's discussion about the importance of stopping Hamas. And during the conference, he also brought up the history of Muslim conquest:

Netanyahu said that Islam tried, upon its founding, to conquer Christian Europe, but failed and was pushed back to Northern Africa. Another attempt hundreds of years later was similarly repelled. "For the last few centuries," Netanyahu continued, "we thought that religious wars were over - but suddenly, now, we see a third attempt by Islam. In 1979, two seminal events occurred, both of which continue to have a strong effect even now. One is the victory by Islamic mujaheedin in Afghanistan over Soviet forces, leading to the formation of Al-Qaeda, and then, shortly afterwards, the formation of the terrorist Islamic Republic of Iran. Some thought then that the Ayatollahs of Iran would become more moderate, but of course this did not happen, and now Iran's nuclear program and missiles threaten the entire world.

"Since then, more recently, two more important events have happened. One is the formation of another fundamentalist Islamic republic, in Afghanistan, with the Taliban, leading to 9/11; if they had had nuclear weapons, New York and Washington would not be around any more. The other event that occurred was with Israel's help: the formation of a Hamas regime in the Palestinian Authority. The Hamas entity is a daughter state of Iran, with the same policies, and talks openly of its goal of destroying Israel, using its code words of 'Right of Return' and 'continued resistance' - namely, terrorism. Israel is their first stop on the road to world conquest.

"We therefore face a danger of worldwide proportions - and yet there are those who feel that Hamas is not a strategic danger. [The reference is to Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of the Kadima party, running against Netanyahu and Amir Peretz of Labor for Prime Minister - ed.] All the experts say the opposite... yet there are those who think that the solution to this malignant growth is to do nothing, or else to give them more land.

"What was the result of the recent Disengagement? Shimon Peres once told me that the Arabs would build day camps for peace in Gaza - and he believed this. Yet this is not quite what happened. Over 400 Kassams have been fired from Gaza, and soldiers in nearby Zikim go to sleep in fear of the rain of rockets they face. One would expect a normal government to learn the lessons and not repeat the same mistakes - but no, this leadership wants to give even more land away - 95% of Yesha (Judea and Samaria)! Right here in this building [the Regency Hotel in eastern Jerusalem] would become Hamas-land according to them. But it's obvious that this will not satisfy the lion; instead, as Israel Zangwill once said, 'bad things have to be cut off and nipped in the bud.'

"It's still possible to stop Hamas - by standing firm in all of the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert, and by moving the wall in the west to the east, away from Ben Gurion Airport and away from Route 433. We also need to constantly and unceasingly pressure the international community not to support Hamas in any way or form. If humanitarian assistance must be given, then it must be done through channels other than the official Hamas regime. We must concentrate mostly on the United States and on public opinion there - Jews, Christians, Congressmen and other leaders - and ensure that no funding reaches Hamas. And of course - we have to make sure that we here in Israel do not fund Hamas! No one will defend us or make our claims for us if we do not do so ourselves!"

Quite right, our being able to defend ourselves is a most important fact.

Here's also a video page of the conference you can view.

The United Nazis continue to sink to new lows. Not content to just misuse the image of the Smurfs, as they did several months ago, they now turn to smearing Denmark's LEGO, one of my favorite toys from childhood, as racist, and certainly make an attempt to exploit it for the purpose of attacking Denmark even further. And to prove just how grimy they are, they even published an obscene advertisement in Arabic.

I can see now just how Denmark is becoming another Israel in its own way. If you ask me, they should pull out of the UN, just as America should be by now. Here's an article translated from Jyllands Posten:

LEGO on Racism Poster

UN's International Racism Day uses Lego block as focal point. Toy giant is extremely surprised.

The UN is now linking the Danish toy giant LEGO together with racism. It happened today- on the international day on racism- that the UN's High Commission for Human Rights used as a focal point for a wide global arrangement has launched a poster with the with slogan "Racism can take may forms". Right under the slogan, which is also produced in Arabic, is a picture of a LEGO block.

(Danish) Institute for Human Rights chairman professor Claus Haagen Jensen is shaken. "This is tactless and a stupidity. It's directed at when the cartoons were published, as the Jyllands-Posten pointed out. The UN human rights commission should therefore not misuse its mandate." He believes that there is reason to investigate this issue. "Is this supposed to be a little unfriendly greeting to Denmark? It is really extremely unfortunate", he said.

LEGO goes to the UN

LEGO is very surprised about the company's very recognizable product is being used in connection with racism. LEGO's communications chief Charlotte Simonsen explains that they will now get in touch with the UN. "This is problematic, to know that this poster should include LEGO connected with racism or as racists. We really have to wonder that the UN didn't let us know in advance when LEGO has previously worked together with the UN's Refugee Commisson on a campaign" said Ms Simonsen.

Danish Peoples Party leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, finds the UN poster unacceptable. "One would have to be more than usually naive to not see that this is an outrageous insult. It is my assumption that they have tried to symbolize the Mohammed-cartoon crisis as something very Danish". She feels that this is the latest example of how the UN has over time lost its founding values.

I should hope that the LEGO company will sue. What the UN did was violation of copyright, and without even asking permission to begin with, and worst of all, what they did was abuse a toy that's delighted many children everywhere. The UN then took the ad off their own website following complaints that were lodged, but it's too late; they should be told to pay the toy company billions in compensation.

Make sure you buy as much LEGO as possible for your children. Another Danish product that can certainly be bought.

Also available at bRight and Early, Is it Just Me, Point Five. Others rightfully angry at the UN for their latest attempt at obscenity include Agora, The American Thinker, Ace of Spades, Jesse Richardson, Rantings of a Sandmonkey, Euphoric Reality, Slapstick Politics, GZ Expat, Solomonia, Right Voices, Blogmeister USA, In the Bullpen, Secular Blasphemy, Vital Perspective, DPGI, Liberty Just in Case, Hashmonean.Com, Rhymes With Right, JunkYardBlog, Berkanalia, The Tech in Black, The Scratching Post, The Median Sib, Maggie's Farm.

Labels: Scandanavia, UN corruption

There's a lot more attention being given now to Abdul Rahman, who'd converted to Christianity almost two decades ago, and is now being tried in Afghanistan for daring to do so. Michelle Malkin has more news on the case, which the White House continues to either make very weak statements about, or is ignoring altogether. It's very scary what's happening, and shows, if anything, that the alleged lawmakers conducting this trial are as insane as can be.

If Afghanistan is to really be a democracy free from the tyranny the Taliban imposed upon it, that's exactly why Islam and Shari'a cannot be imposed upon anyone living there.

Others concerned for Rahman include Debbie Schlussel, Super Fun Power Hour, Mark Tapscott, Below the Beltway, Myopic Zeal, Mark My Words, A Lady's Ruminations, A Newer World, Everyday Thoughts Collected.

Labels: Afghanistan

It was a close call. The police captured ten terror suspects, one of whom was carrying an explosive belt.

A suicide bomber carrying 13.5 pounds of explosives was arrested Tuesday afternoon near the town of Sha’alvim along the Jerusalem Tel Aviv highway, narrowly averting a major terrorist strike.

Earlier in the day, police put Jerusalem and its vicinity on high alert when intelligence warned of an impending terrorist strike. All traffic on the Tel Aviv – Jerusalem highway (Route 1) was stopped (pictured above) until police at a highway roadblock halted a GMC van that was transporting ten Arabs, including the bomber.

Shortly afterwards, the suspect was arrested and his bomb was neutralized. Police suspect the bomber was on his way to carry out a major terrorist attack in the center of the country.

[...]

Heightened security remains in effect at roadblocks leading into the capital, as incoming vehicles are more thoroughly checked. The added security is expected to exacerbate traffic congestion into Jerusalem.

Israel’s security services currently have information relating to 70 potential terrorist threats. Thirteen of those threats are “specific,” meaning they relate to a specific place or time.

Authorities are worried that Arab terrorists will attempt to strike on or before Israel’s March 28 general election. The police will operate on an emergency footing on the day of the election.

One of the biggest problems Olmert's "policies" have caused is that there are many traffic jams as a result of police having to be on high alert for these kind of scum. That's not the kind of thing anyone wants to have to live in.

See also this report on terrorists who fired at Hawara checkpoint near Shechem, and a brief report on a firebomb attack.

Others on the subject include Israel Matzav, One Jerusalem.

Jimmy Carter, America's most dreadful president, continues to soil himself in print in this awful "op-ed" published in the UK Guardian (Hat tip: Joshuapundit), showing exactly why he's not worth listening to anymore:

"For more than a quarter of a century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the US and the international community. Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land - regardless of whether Palestinians had no formal government, one headed by Yasser Arafat, or one with Mahmoud Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and the cabinet."

Okay, let's see what we have here. Carter continues to go by the lie of there ever having been a "palestinian people", ignores the fact that those he describes as palestinians are as Arab and Islamic as just about any of the other 22 countries where Arabs and Muslims live, and also makes no attempt to credit Israel for their part in helping to defeat the Soviet Union back in the 80s, is that it? Unfortunately, that is the case we have here.

Read more of Joshua's dissection of the "op-ed" at his blog, where he does a good job in showing just what a phony Carter really is.

Channel Two TV in Israel, if you ask me, has one of the worst left-wing news stations in the country's MSM. They've led a constant bias in favor of left-wing parties, now including Kadima, and have also been quite hostile to Benjamin Netanyahu. Now, the Likud is protesting this bias. Here's the latest report:

MK Michael Eitan (Likud) has complained to the Public Elections Committee about alleged discrimination by Channel Two's news division against Binyamin Netanyahu and in favor of the Kadima Party.

MK Eitan asked the Committee head, Supreme Court Justice Dorit Beinish, to issue a restraining order banning Channel Two from broadcasting forbidden election propaganda.

The Likud petition quotes findings of the "Israel Media Watch" organization, which indicate a clear preference for Kadima on Channel Two broadcasts. Channel Ten, on the other hand, was found to be balanced in its election coverage of the various parties.

As an example, Eitan's complaint states that at the end of last week - a critical juncture in the election campaign - Channel Two broadcast two forbidden election propaganda clips. The first was what Eitan called a "one-sided and malicious character assassination of Binyamin Netanyahu." The clip contained "over 50 insulting, abusing, lying and subjective remarks about Netanyahu," the complaint charges, "which reflect only the personal positions of the news company."

[...]

This is not the first time that the Likud has complained against Channel Two. MK Gilad Erdan said that the station's political commentator Amnon Rabinovitch consistently airs his anti-Likud positions. Erdan's request that Channel Two balance its coverage was not fulfilled.

Channel Two is decidedly a station worth boycotting. No need to watch their news broadcasts, nor a lot of their "talk shows". It's unlikely that this very sleazy TV station will modify their positions or tone down their biases, and thus, they're not worth watching.

As for Channel Ten, while they may be more balanced to a certain extent, if you ask me, not entirely. They've given more interview time for Kadima representatives than for Likud's, and as a result, they're really not that much better than Channel Two.

In other election news, the National Union has continued to show why it's a bad party, as I've come to realize by now, and is also - yes, you guessed it - opportunistic. Much as I would like to respect Benny Elon, this interview with him shows just how dreadful he really is:

Asked if most of his efforts during this campaign are on behalf of his party, or for the sake of the right-wing bloc, MK Elon said, "It's a good question, because in fact we have two goals: to be the largest party within this bloc, and to make sure that it is strong and powerful so that it can be a real alternative. At the start of this electoral campaign, our parties attacked each other a lot, such as the Likud against Yisrael Beiteinu, and the like. I felt that this was very damaging, and I tried to change this, and I feel that these efforts have borne fruit, and we are realizing that we have to work in a more united way. After all, our common enemy is the feeling of despair among many of our voters, and the feeling that they are fed up with politics. The margins between the parties do not encourage people to come and vote - but when we present it as a race between the party blocs, and when they see that the gaps are narrowing, this wakes up people and they will realize that they have to get out and vote. We are trying to drum it in: Every vote makes a difference."

Yes, every vote makes a difference, but the way he's putting this across, I'm afraid to say, is very dishonest. First of all, he's lying if he's saying that he tried to change their approach. Today, I still found some ads in which they're still attacking even the Likud, without explaining exactly why. Second, he's really exaggerating if he thinks they're going to become the largest party overnight. That's wishful thinking, and it's not what should be the main concern just now either.

The National Union has also lied about Netanyahu supposedly supporting the pullout from Gaza. What really happened was that Netanyahu voted against the original retreat proposal, and after it had passed, he successfully got the cabinet to agree to separate the retreats from each distinct locality or settlement, by mandating a separate cabinet vote before retreating from each village, which would have delayed the process and would have allowed for it to be reversed. Unfortunately, by the time Sharon implemented the plan, the composition of the cabinet had changed, and the smaller cabinet ignored the previous decision proposed by Netanyahu. That is, those who became Kadima had the majority, and so, Netanyahu's efforts to help stop the retreat failed.

What a shame that Elon cannot be the powerhouse he could've been. He failed to do the most important thing for this campaign, which was to educate the public about the dangers of terrorism and international diplomacy that now threaten the country more than ever. As a result, all that he and the National Union have done is strengthen my decision to vote for the Likud.

VOA News (via Michelle Malkin and Below the Beltway) reports on an Afghani who faces death for converting to Christianity:

An Afghan man who recently admitted he converted to Christianity faces the death penalty under the country's strict Islamic legal system. The trial is a critical test of Afghanistan's new constitution and democratic government.

The case is attracting widespread attention in Afghanistan, where local media are closely monitoring the landmark proceedings.

Abdul Rahman, 40, was arrested last month, accused of converting to Christianity. Under Afghanistan's new constitution, minority religious rights are protected but Muslims are still subject to strict Islamic laws. And so, officially, Muslim-born Rahman is charged with rejecting Islam and not for practicing Christianity.

Appearing in court earlier this week Rahman insisted he should not be considered an infidel, but admitted he is a Christian. He says he still believes in the almighty Allah, but cannot say for sure who God really is. "I am," he says, "a Christian and I believe in Jesus Christ."

Rahman reportedly converted more than 16 years ago after spending time working in Germany. Officials say his family, who remain observant Muslims, turned him over to the authorities. On Thursday the prosecution told the court Rahman has rejected numerous offers to embrace Islam. Prosecuting attorney Abdul Wasi told the judge that the punishment should fit the crime.

He says Rahman is a traitor to Islam and is like a cancer inside Afghanistan. Under Islamic law and under the Afghan constitution, he says, the defendant should be executed. The court has ordered a delay in the proceedings to give Rahman time to hire an attorney. Under Afghan law, once a verdict is given, the case can be appealed twice to higher courts.

This is the first case in which the defendant has admitted to converting and is refusing to back down, even while facing the death penalty.

Rahman is very brave in his standings, and it'll be horrible if he ends up murdered. And what's really bad about this is that neither Dubya nor the Afghan "president" Hamid Karzai have spoken out against this discrimination. If this is what Dubya considers liberating a country from the grip of evil, he's failing now to convince.

Labels: Afghanistan

Israel National News just translated NFC webmaster Yoav Yitzhak's latest report on Ehud Olmert's corruption into English (Hebrew version is here), and a good point is made here that the latest findings should be published before, not after, the elections:

An offical report, allegedly implicating Olmert in corruption as Minister of Industry and Trade will be issued after the election. Independent journalist Yoav Yitzhak says delay is political.

The State Comptroller, charged with investigating allegations of inefficiency and corruption in the government, is investigating charges that Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (Kadima) used his position as Minister of Industry and Trade to make illegal appointments of cronies to top government jobs.

The report, which highlights Olmert’s involvement in the illegal appointments, is expected to be published by the comptroller’s office after the March 28 general election.

Yoav Yitzhak, an independent journalist whose frequent revelations of wrongdoings among Israel’s politically powerful have often rocked the establishment, contends that that the delay in publishing the comptroller’s report is politically motivated.

Yitzhak claims that State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrausse’s report shows that Olmert abused his privilege to make appointments by handing out jobs based on political or personal considerations. The appointments allegedly were put into place by the ministry’s director general, Ra’anan Dinur, himself an Olmert political appointee.

As the Likud says, the full report should be published prior to the elections:

The Likud party, one of the Kadima party’s chief rivals in the upcoming election, has demanded that the Comptroller publish his report before the election.

A Likud spokesman said that when the issue is the conduct of a candidate for prime minister, “the public has a right to know the facts” regarding that candidate before the election. “The public must know who Olmert is before the March 28 election,” said the spokesman.

Exactly.

Previous posts:
Ehud Olmert's connections with pre-liquidation scam
Another of Olmert's shady dealings has been discovered
Omri Sharon's calender reveals corruption in Kadima

The UK Times (via USS Neverdock) interviews Wafa Sultan, who's been making very impressive efforts to speak out against the abuse of women under Islam:

Sitting in the airy living room of the spacious modern home where Sultan and her husband live, it is hard to believe this small, neatly dressed woman could be at the centre of an international firestorm. Just as improbable is that the most important and controversial critics of Islamic fundamentalism, violence and intolerance are, like Sultan, women, mostly from Islamic countries.

They include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch politician, who has strongly criticised Islamic attitudes towards women and the widespread practice of female circumcision in Muslim north Africa; Irshad Manji, a Canadian lesbian of Pakistani descent, whose book The Trouble with Islam Today chastises Islam for its aggression towards women and for its anti-semitism; Amina Wadud, an African-American convert to Islam and Muslim academic and author, who has infuriated traditional Muslims by leading Friday prayer for Muslims in New York, a role traditionally taken only by male imams.

Other Muslim women in the front lines of the clash with Islamic governments are as diverse as Mukhtar Mai, the Pakistani village woman who was brutally gang-raped in 2002 as reprisal for an alleged transgression by her 14-year-old brother, and Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2003 for her defence of the rights of women and children in fundamentalist Muslim Iran.

“This was the turning point of my life,” says Sultan. She began to reread the Koran closely, gradually coming to the conclusion that the violence and oppression of most Muslim governments and some of those fighting against them stemmed directly from the teachings of Islam.

“I began to question every single teaching,” she says. She noticed that “there are too many verses in the Koran which say you must kill those who are non-Muslim; you must kill those who don’t believe in Allah and his messenger. I started to ask: is this right? Is this human? All our problems in the Islamic world, I strongly believe, are the natural outcome of these teachings. Go open any book in any class in any school in any Islamic country and read it. You will see what kind of teachings we have: Islam tells its followers that every non-Muslim is your enemy.”

Sultan, who worked as a family practitioner in Syria after qualifying as a doctor, also speaks about the virulent anti-semitism that was inculcated in her and all Syrian children. This made her so terrified of Jews that she refused to act the part of the Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in a school play.

“Until I came to United States I used to believe that Jewish people are not human creatures,” she says. “Unfortunately this is the way I was brought up, to believe that Jews don’t have our human features, they don’t have our human voices.”

Reading this shows that it is possible for someone raised under Islamic influence to see the light, and also to stand up and speak out against the indoctrination that goes on in Islamic countries. It's a real shame that the leftists and would-be western women's movements cannot do the same. I fully agree with Marc at the Neverdock that we need more people like Sultan who can help show us what it's like in Islamic countries, and figure out what to do about it.

Labels: islam, misogyny

Benjamin Netanyahu has said very accurately that the upcoming elections in Israel are a referendum (Hat tip: Menorah):

"The coming elections are a national referendum on the Olmert-Kadima plan to give away land to Hamas for nothing in return," Binyamin Netanyahu said last night [on Channel Two's Meet the Press program].

Dr. Aaron Lerner also agrees with this:

...Yes, Acting PM Ehud Olmert only said explicitly that he intended to tear down the Jewish communities located beyond an as yet to be finalized security fence -- and two of the Kadima party's senior security personalities, Avi Dichter and MK Gideon Ezra, have asserted that the IDF will not retreat from the rubble, but Olmert has carefully maintained his option to embrace DM Mofaz's position that once the homes are bulldozed that the IDF should high-tail it back behind the fence.

And since the retreat is just that -- a retreat, this "package" does not include any clear picture regarding what will transpire in the evacuated areas beyond the traditional secular messianic view that the IDF will be eternally able to prevail, at an acceptable cost, regardless of the opening conditions on the ground.

[...]

After the retreat the situation will be completely different. A nightmare in the very center of the country. A war of attrition that saps the country and a fighting force that in time of invasion can provide both a bridgehead for the invaders and divert vital Israeli forces needed at the fronts.

I wanted to send a simple message to my fellow countrymen who oppose the retreat but out of disgust for the politicians do not plan to vote: These elections are not about Netanyahu, or Silvan "Steve" Shalom, or various other politicians in the other parties in the national camp. These elections are a national referendum on retreat.

Staying at home is a vote for retreat. I have no illusions. There is no guarantee that the politicians will ultimately even honor the outcome of the "referendum". But it is our only shot. And sometimes in life you make an effort because an issue is so important even if you can't be certain that the effort will pay off.

What's we are voting for here is the platform, not the politician. And that's exactly why it's important to go and vote. For our future.

Some people I know have speculated, perhaps with justification, that if Kadima is elected to government in Israel, and if the state prosecutor were to bring charges against Ehud Olmert due to his illegal activities, and he had to resign, then Shimon Peres would use this as an opportunity to hijack the position he no doubt covets even now: to be prime minister of Israel.

This is only speculation of course, but even so, with the continuing discoveries of more illegal actions by Olmert (the latest news, on illegal steps he took to give political jobs to close associates of his, just came out, but is currently only available in Hebrew on NFC), who knows, maybe there's something to it. (Update: now it's available in English as well.)

Either way, considering that Shimon Peres is one of the worst, most opportunistic politicians in Israeli history, that's one more reason why Kadima is simply not worth voting for.

While we're on the subject, here's what the mayor of Ma'aleh Adumim recently had to say about Olmert's questionable committment to build the neighborhood connecting between Ma'aleh and Jerusalem (Hat tip: Menorah):

The mayor of Ma'aleh Adumim, Benny Kashriel, on Sunday cast doubt on a commitment Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made in newspaper interviews last week to construct a controversial building project between Jerusalem and Ma'aleh Adumim within the next four years.

"Out of experience, I am wary of believing pre-elections declarations," Kashriel said in a telephone interview with The Jerusalem Post.

[...]

"If he is really serious about building the area, then he should let us get started on the first step," he said, noting that Olmert had told him that he would only make a decision on the matter after the March 28 elections.

Olmert's pledges to build E1 within the next four years came six months after he became the first senior Israeli official to publicly confirm that Israel had frozen the controversial building plans in the wake of American pressure.

At the time, Olmert told the Post that Israel made the commitment to the Americans last year when final approval of the plan, known as E1, seemed imminent.

If Olmert is going to do everything according to what the US government says, well, I'm sorry to say, but, that's not the way to do business. And if he could bow to pressure as he did then, he could do so again.

I've visited the excellent Betsy's Page many times, and was shocked to discover that on Tuesday, it appeared to have been deleted. Then, Michelle Malkin explained what had happened: as Betsy Newmark explained to her in an e-mail, it was lost, and the next thing she knew, someone else had hijacked the URL.

I have no idea what went on the wake of the theft of the URL, but hopefully, enough controversy was caused that, as a result, Blogger seems to have responded by taking the URL offline until it can all be repaired. (when I try to access it just now, all I find is a "403 forbidden" message.)

Until everything's back in order, and I certainly hope it'll all be repaired, Duane at The Forest for the Trees has retrieved some of the data from Google's cache and put it on an alternate URL.

Others concerned about Betsy's misfortune include Flagrant Harbor, Musing Minds, AaronsCC, Sensible Mom, The Florida Masochist, Ed Driscoll, AbuseBlog.Org, A Certain Slant of Light, A Tic in the Mind's Eye, Tech Land of Ozz, Political Humor.

Update: it looks like Betsy's found some good luck: her blog is back! And now, I'm gonna do something I hadn't thought of before: I'm gonna add her URL to my own side list!

It's great to have you back, Betsy. Keep up the good blog.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer (via IRIS Blog) reports that Dubai is announcing their sale of the ports in the US within 4-6 months, but that they intend to keep running them "independently" in the interim.

From this, it's possible that they're hoping that the controversy will blow over by then, and that they won't have to sell, and are trying to use a stall tactic. One more reason why the public and Congress must keep paying attention to this case. As IRIS says:

Arab regimes have used this strategy many times. Recent examples include Iran bragging about dodging and stalling its way to nuclear capability and Syria's Assad stalling its way out of the pressure to step down after being caught red-handed assassinating Lebanon's Prime Minister. Abbas had been making renewed promises to dismantle Hamas before Hamas' landslide victory caused them to be forgotten.

So let's not be off our guard. The MSM is also at fault, because they usually tend to act oblivious to cases like these after awhile too, one more reason why we can't rely on them anymore.

Also available at Adam's Blog, Basil's Blog, Blue Star Chronicles, bRight & Early, Cao's Blog, Jo's Cafe, The Real Ugly American, Samantha Burns, TMH's Bacon Bits, Wizbang.

Labels: islam

The American Academy of Neurology recently published some discussions on Ariel Sharon's health situation. From leftist Haaretz (via IRIS Blog):

American doctors, among them senior neurologists, have joined the chorus of criticism of the medical care given to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by physicians at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, and his personal physicians at the Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer.

The negative assessment appeared in an article in the latest issue of Neurology Today, the official journal of the American Academy of Neurology, in interviews with four leading experts in stroke care and prevention.

The experts said they were not personally familiar with Sharon's case. However, on the issues raised in the article with regard to Sharon's treatment, the experts said treatment other than that given the prime minister would have been preferable.

Sharon's physicians said he had suffered a minor stroke and his general health was good. However, according to the article in Neurology Today, "Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had all the telltale risk factors for a massive stroke. He was 77 years old, severly obese, and he had had a minor stroke less than 30 days ago."

Haaretz learned following Sharon's second stroke on January 4 that his medical condition was much more complex than that presented by his doctors and advisers in two press conferences on the matter. Sharon suffered from various risk factors, including a blood vessel disorder, cerebral amyloid angiopathy. The morning after Sharon's massive stroke, senior physicians, even at Hadassah itself, raised serious questions about his treatment and the fact that he spent the night at his ranch in the south the night before his scheduled catheterization.

Now, senior U.S. medical figures are weighing in on the matter. "One striking part of Mr. Sharon's saga is that he was taken in an ambulance for a trip to an emergency room more than one hour away," said Dr. Stephan A. Mayer, associate professor of clinical neurology and neurosurgery and director of the neuro-intensive care Unit at Columbia University Medical Center. Mayer added that he hoped Sharon's tragedy would would help inculcate that "if you have signs of a stroke, call 911 and go to the closest ER."

Mayer said Sharon's treatment was "something we call the 'VIP Syndrome' where you do things with famous people that you wouldn't do with ordinary people."

What Mayer is saying is that people like prominent politicians seem to undergo special coverups about their health just as much as they can get better treatment. And while good medical treatment is a good thing, stonewalling and covering up what exactly has been going on, which is typical of what happens with a lot of VIPs, just simply isn't.

IRIS also notes that Kadima's corruption could also have had something to do with the coverup, but because of all the stonewalling, there's no real way to tell for sure.

The Age of Melbourne (Hat tip: Pedestrian Infidel) has a scary article about how illegal immigration under socialist premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has shot up at a frightening rate in Spain, and while it doesn't actually say Muslims in it, there are quite a few there now, and the number of illegals in Spain may now stand at as many 10 percent of the population, or worse, at 15 percent:

LOW-key ceremonies are being held today across Madrid to mark the second anniversary of the 2004 train bombings in which 191 people were killed. But two years after the worst terrorist attack on European soil, immigration is revolutionising Spanish society far more than the terrorist bombings ever could.

In 2000, there were 900,000 foreigners living in Spain. That figure has now risen to 3.7 million (8.5 per cent of the population), an increase of more than 400 per cent. By one estimate, Spain has received more immigrants in the past five years than France received in the previous four decades. Last year, Spain received 560,000 immigrants, one-third of Europe's total.

This massive demographic shift is starting to take its toll. A survey published in January found that 60 per cent of Spaniards believe that there are too many immigrants in Spain. In 1996, the figure was just 8 per cent.

The poll also found that almost twice as many Spaniards see immigration as a more important problem facing Spain than terrorism and there is a widespread perception that the riots that rocked France late last year may offer a vision of the country's future.

Low-scale riots in June in an outer Madrid suburb, prompted by the murder of a local youth by a South American gang, were described by one leading centrist newspaper at the time as the "neighbourhood rebellion against the immigrants". High-profile turf wars between the so-called bandas latinas (Latin gangs) on the streets of Madrid have also helped to make immigration the dominant topic of conversation in bars and restaurants across the city.

While Spain may have a lot of immigrants coming in from South America, they also have quite a few Muslims coming in from Morroco, now under the shield of the government itself.

In a related story, the UK Telegraph reports on how censorship has befallen a festival in Valencia (Hat tip: Drinking from Home):

An annual festival of satire in Valencia has fallen foul of censorship after more than four centuries following the furore over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed... But self-censorship has seen Muslim and Arab figures modified to avoid offence.

[...]

At least one well known local Fallas artist admitted to removing elements from his display of comic sculptures... The artist asked not to be named, partly for fear of reprisals, partly because he did not feel proud of such "self-censorship". But this year was "different", he said. Radical Muslim leaders appeared to be looking for excuses to cause trouble.

Indeed they are. And it does not bode well for Spain.

Labels: islam, Spain

Translated from the March 10, 2006 issue of Makor Rishon:

In 2001, just a few days before the September 11 terrorist attacks, hundreds of diplomats gathered in the company of thousands of members of non-governmental organizations in Durban in South Africa, for the United Nations conference against racism. The agenda and draft declarations had already been prepared - in a meeting in Iran. The goal was clear: to determine that Israel was an "apartheid nation", to prevent Israel from combatting terrorism - through exploiting international law, and imposing sanctions and boycotts on Israel.

A network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) which work under European government funding and under the camouflage of defending human rights, has become the flagship of the attack. The Israeli government did not recognize the danger of this political assault then - and is still having difficulty doing so.

The problem is that, with a would-be government like Ehud Olmert's in control, who knows if they even want to?

Labels: anti-semitism

In the following op-ed by the Women in Green movement's Nadia Matar, she talks about why we have to vote in the upcoming elections:

The elections are in two weeks, and I want to specially address those among us who declare that they don't intend to vote. I, too, feel only contempt and revulsion for the election campaign.

"Look," you say - and rightly so - "the last elections brought a presumably 'rightist' government to power, and it betrayed us, it deported thousands of Jews from their homes, and it handed over portions of the homeland to the Arab enemy, who turned the area into Hamastan." This is correct. Undoubtedly, with the exception of two, or perhaps three, members of Knesset, all the MKs disappointed, deceived, lied, betrayed, did nothing or did not do enough. The spontaneous response to this is: "If so, then why should I bother to go and vote? I'll stay at home, and I won't continue to take any part in this farce."

But after thinking for a while, we must understand that we don't have the luxury of staying home and not voting. What can we do? The upcoming election is really a referendum on the future of the settlement enterprise in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. It also raises the question of whether Israel is a Jewish state or a state of all its citizens. Accordingly, without discussing the question of whom to vote for, we must get out of our easy chairs and take part in the activity to persuade the majority of the people for whom not to vote. All our efforts must be directed to prevent Ehud Olmert and Kadima from winning the election. This cannot be achieved by staying home and not voting.

Quite right. That aside, there's a most interesting point to be made about why Israel didn't get the government it really deserved - Ariel Sharon prevented that. Back in late 2000, he had been manipulating things almost behind the scenes to prevent Netanyahu from being able to run again for premiership the way he'd wanted to, by seeing to it that the Knesset would not vote in favor of full dispersion. And, in the end, of course, Sharon violated the mandate he himself had gotten from the voters and exploited it for his own interests. It's not as if Netanyahu was at fault there. And when Netanyahu was prime minister, not only did he not have an honest and devoted coalition to back him, he was also betrayed by his would-be defense minister, Yits'haq Mordecai.

Another point that could convince all sectors of the population that it is essential that Olmert not be elected is to be reminded that Shimon Peres, who is despised by the people, is number 2 in Kadima. The same Shimon Peres who brought upon us the Oslo disaster, who brought the arch-murderer Yasser Arafat and his murderous gang here, who gave them weapons, ammunition and cities of refuge, and who is responsible for the thousands of victims of Oslo, is Olmert's right hand. Conspiracy theories are already current among the public that if, Heaven forbid, Olmert will be elected, the left will arrange to have Olmert removed from power somehow, either by putting him on trial for corruption or by any other way that the left knows. Shimon Peres, who is ready to make even more concessions to the Arabs than Olmert, has a distinct possibility to become prime minister.

If such nightmare scenarios are on the horizon, how can we stay home and not vote? At the very least, we should try and ensure that the Olmert-Peres party won't take power.

Yep, because with the corruption charges cropping up against Olmert, it's possible for Peres to exploit that by taking over the leadership, if Olmert has to step down, and then more or less grasp the power he's hoping for by being a prime minister.

So I hope everybody in Israel who understands the danger we're facing will be ready to vote to prevent this dastardly duo from coming into power.

From the leftist Jerusalem Post:

A female resident of east Jerusalem was arrested Wednesday under suspicion that she planned on carrying out a stabbing attack against Israelis in Ramat Gan.

A local police officer patrolling in the city noticed a suspicious private vehicle, which was located on Rehov Krinitzi. In the car were three Palestinians - two from east Jerusalem and the third from the Gaza Strip.

Police officer approached the car and told the three to exit the vehicle to be searched. The female in the vehicle then pulled out a large knife and tried to approach the policeman closest to her. A municipal worker who was nearby noticed the woman, and warned the policemen, who wrested the knife from her hand.

Following the incident, the three were detained for questioning by the Dan District Police. In the questioning, police discovered that one of the three was in Israel illegally, without an entrance permit.

Courtesy of Ehud Olmert's fumbling, of course. Another reason why we shouldn't let the raid on Jericho's "prison" fool us.

In a letter to Raleigh's ABC-TV affiliate (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin), the car-driving terrorist Mohammed Taheri-azar says the following:

The suspect in this month's attack on the UNC-CH campus has written a letter to ABC11 Eyewitness News. Eyewitness News received the letter Monday, in response to our request for an interview. It was sent from Central Prison in Raleigh and dated Friday, March 10. Addressed to ABC11 Eyewitness News anchor Amber Rupinta, the two-page letter includes Taheri-azar's explanation of what he was trying to accomplish in the attack.

"Allah gives permission in the Koran for the followers of Allah to attack those who have raged war against them, with the expectation of eternal paradise in case of martyrdom and/or living one's life in obedience of all of Allah's commandments found throughout the Koran's 114 chapters..."

"The U.S. government is responsible for the deaths of and the torture of countless followers of Allah, my brothers and sisters. My attack on Americans at UNC-CH on March 3rd was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and other Islamic territories. I did not act out of hatred for Americans, but out of love for Allah instead."

I think this pretty much says everything we need to know about the influence of Islam, now doesn't it? As Ranting Profs says - case closed.

See also Daniel Pipes' article about sudden jihad syndrome (also via Michelle). And, while the head of the Chapel Hill U. still isn't calling Taheri-azar what he is, experts on terrorism are, as the Raleigh News and Observer reports (also via Michelle), and an expert on terrorism from Israel is giving a lecture on the subject.

Others on the subject include Small Town Veteran, Owner's Manual, Slapstick Politics, John in Carolina, Publius Rendezvous, Ed Driscoll, The Nose on Your Face, A Blog for All, IMAO, Demonrats, Little Blue Alien.

Yesterday, the IDF made a successful raid on the Jericho prison holding the murderers of the late tourism minister Rechavam Zeevi to capture the them, lest they be released, as the PLO was planning to do:

The six murderers of former Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi surrendered Tuesday evening to IDF forces after a day-long siege on the Jericho prison where they were being held.

A special anti-terror police unit and the IDF Nahal Brigade charged the prison Tuesday morning after U.S. and Britain withdrew their observers “out of concern for the monitors’ safety.”

Ze’evi’s killers surrendered along with 202 other prisoners after nine hours of shelling with heavy artillery and machine gunfire. The six will be taken to a prison in Israel.

[...]

IDF Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz made a personal call to Ze’evi’s family to inform them of the capture. “This is a great day for Israelis,” said Palmach Ze’evi, the son of the murdered Tourism Minister. He also said, however, that Israel should have “settled the score right then and there” on the day his father was assassinated.

Quite right, it should've been done at least five years ago, when the crime first occurred.

Not too surprisingly, the Islamofascists in Gaza ran riot:

Arabs protested the action with riots and kidnappings throughout Palestinian Authority-controlled areas. During the day, 17 foreign nationals were kidnapped. Two Australians, an American lecturer and a Red Cross official were released shortly after they were abducted.

According to Israel Radio, armed terrorists were hunting for foreigners in local hotels. The Gaza police chief ordered his officers to fire on anyone who attempted to kidnap foreigners.

[...]

Some 15,000 Arabs protested in Gaza City against the Jericho operation, the British Cultural Center was torched and approximately 300 rioting Arabs broke into the European Union compound. In addition, gunmen burst into the German television network (ARD) offices, the same building that houses the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) studios. The office of AMIDEAST, a private nonprofit organization that provides educational support services, was also a target for armed Arab attackers. “We don’t want to see any Americans here,” one shouted at police who arrived on the scene.

The UN and the Red Cross both announced they were pulling their representatives out of Palestinian Authority-controlled areas temporarily in the wake of the kidnappings and other violence. Red Cross officials in Geneva later denied they had told their staff to leave.

European Union monitors also fled their posts at the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings with Gaza Tuesday afternoon at the instruction of their governments. Both crossings were closed as armed Arabs gathered at the sites. In addition, the Karni crossing was closed due to specific warnings of impending terror attacks.

Meanwhile, PA security forces did nothing to prevent the disorders taking place at the crossings. There was also concern that Arabs might try to break through the fence separating Egypt and Gaza. Egyptian and Israeli officials were continuing to exchange information on the situation.

Israeli officials exchanging info with a regime that's anti-Israel? How sad. That aside, this shows that the PLO is just unworthy of recognition as the Hamas is. And Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) blatantly condemned the raid:

Abu Mazen called the Israeli operation, which involved besieging the prison compound and gun battles with terrorists from various militias, "an extremely serious crime".

Look at yourself in the mirror, Mahmoud. Because the only extremely serious crime here is what your gang committed over the past 12 years.

A good question though, is if the raid would've actually been carried out if the Likud for one hadn't worked on pointing out how Kadima's been slow to actually approve these operations. One Jerusalem says:

We applaud Israel's action. We also believe that if Likud's campaign that has pointed out the government's weakness in dealing with Hamas was not successful it is likely this aggressive action would not have been taken. In recent days, Olmert has talked about saving settlements and defending Jerusalem. After the election we still believe Olmert will follow a path of appeasement, as he has for the last three years.

That's a good point, we can't let Olmert and the other would-be politicians he's leading fool us on this. They'd taken their time in responding to a lot of these attacks in past months, not doing anything serious until later on, enabling a lot of damage that could've been prevented to occur, including the rocket attacks that have taken place against Sderot, Ashkelon and a couple of other areas. And the murderers of Zeevi are not the only ones who need to be brought to justice, there's also murderers who took the lives of many other Israelis in past years. And lest we forget, that the PLO, just like the Hamas, is also a terrorist organization, and does not deserve to be in a position of power.

Others on the subject include Israpundit (plus, here's another one), IRIS Blog, Westbankblog, The Dry Bones Blog, Israellycool, Soccerdad (plus, another one), Wizbang, Power Line.

The IRIS Blog points to an AP article on Breitbart that reports about an e-mail obtained from a senoir DPW executive confirming the earlier analysis that Dubai's pullout from the port ownership is really just a fraud, certainly in Miami:

DP World: No Plan to Sell Miami Port Ops

The Dubai-owned company that promised to surrender its U.S. port operations has no immediate plans to sell its U.S. subsidiary's interests at Miami's seaport, a senior executive wrote Monday in a private e-mail to business associates.

Even if DP World were to sell its Miami operations to quell the congressional furor over an Arab-owned company managing major U.S. ports, "that would probably take a while," wrote Robert Scavone, a vice president for DP World's U.S. subsidiary....

Last week, DP World backed away from the deal further. It pledged to "transfer fully" its U.S. operations to an unspecified American company and said DP World will not suffer economic loss.

The company has steadfastly declined to clarify its statement or the timing of any possible sale....

Scavone told AP in an interview that his e-mail was intended to reassure officials at the Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co. which manages operations there and is half-owned by a DP World subsidiary that uncertainty surrounding the Dubai ports deal would not affect its work in Miami....

Scavone told the AP that under U.S. corporate laws, P&O's ownership in the Miami port company would not change even under DP World's planned divestiture.

"Just because a shareholder owns the top company of an elaborate network of corporations worldwide, it does not mean that what those corporations own changes hands," Scavone said.

And while Scavone may have denied so far that he sent the e-mail, the following should help tell that it's legitimate:

[Scavone] contacted a reporter less than one hour after AP's inquiry to explain the message's meaning. Another P&O executive, Frank Fogarty, said he received Scavone's e-mail and did not doubt Scavone sent it.

This is something that Congress would be advised to pay attention to, since we can't let them trick us or pull the wool over our eyes.

I've been looking at the televised ads run by the various parties running for Knesset, and it's simply amazing: the Likud has produced the best ones by far, explaining the dangers represented by Ehud Olmert and Kadima. One Jerusalem says:

Last night, Likud aired a television commercial that graphically demonstrated that if Olmert's border proposal is put into effect airplanes landing and taking off from Ben-Gurion Airport will be within range of terrorist attacks.

And it was by far the best, most informative commercial of all. The airport can be in danger of rocket attacks by the Hamas, who could use Strella missiles to launch long-ranging attacks that could murder innocent passengers and pilots on board airplanes taking off and landing at the field.

That said, it's a shame that a lot of the other party commercials don't measure up to theirs. The National Union's just lost my vote, in this case by making trumped up accusations against Netanyahu that he literally supported the expulsion plan, when here, he'd quit the government because of it (as for the National Religious Party which is now on their joint list, weren't they in the government until two years ago themselves?). So now, I'm putting my full backing with the Likud. If the National Union is going to act out of superficial grudges, wasting the valuble time they could use for educating the people about the history of the Land of Israel, and about the horrid effects of the Oslo agreements, then it's best to vote for parties like the Likud which are showing much more responsibility in their campaigns.

It should be noted that also, the National Union's is indirectly supporting Olmert. The mistakes they're making in fact, date back as early as 1992. The former MK Elyakim Haetzni did something similar in 1992, when he limited his campaign almost entirely to attacking the Likud, yet made no such attempt to take Labor to task for their supporting what's been going on in the past years even more than the Likud ever did. Thereby, Haetzni helped to bring about Oslo.

If they cannot or will not put aside their misgivings, and if they keep on letting their silly grudges cloud their better judgement, then the National Union are not fit to be politicians.

Update: Prof. Paul Eidelberg's got a pretty good take on both Benny Elon and Zevulun Orlev:

Instead of resigning from their parties and making room for a new leadership, NU and NRP chairmen Benny Elon and Zevulun Orlev held on to their treasured Knesset seats; and now they want you to help them retain their seats by voting for them on March 28.

Somehow, I think he's right! That they have not actually tried to seek out new, younger and more perceptive membership - if not leadership - for the party does seem to indicate that they've got a flaw of opportunism within them! By contrast, look at how the Likud wanted to seek out some brand new members who were younger and more inspiring, including Moshe Kahlon.

Hence, I can see now why the National Union, unless they start adapting to viewpoints that the public would appreciate, is not going to get anywhere in the Israeli elections. No wonder plenty of people are mad at them.

Caroline Glick talks about how Bush, in his arrogant attempt to gain approval for the seaport deal with Dubai that's more or less damaged his credibility, has succeeded in sending a wake-up call to Americans that even a president like him can be unreliable and/or do appalling things that go against the public interest, and also how the Bush administration's ties with Israel have not been positive, which could stem from the same positions that drove him to his attempt to push through the port deal that the public wasn't even informed about until the last minute:

US President George W. Bush is immersed in a political crisis of his own making. For the first time in his presidency, Americans trust the Democrats more than the president on issues of national security.

Well, not neccasarily. It could very easily be that the Dems pounced on this subject in what they hope will save their already flagging credibility with the public. If anything, let's not let the Dems fool us.

There is an Israel angle to Bush's current misfortunes. In fact, the nature of the mess in which Bush now finds himself explains a great deal about the nature of Israel's relationship with America. It also shows how that relationship is harmed by the expedient interests of both the Bush administration and the Israeli government.

Right you are there, Caroline. And in some of the following in the column, she helps us to understand why.

Last month, the administration announced it had approved a deal to place the management of 21 US ports in the hands of the United Arab Emirates-owned firm Dubai Ports World or DPW. This caused an uproar on Capitol Hill. Citing Dubai's documented connections to al-Qaida, legislators from both parties demanded the deal's cancellation.

Rather than bowing to pressure, Bush surprised his supporters by insisting the deal go through. Accusing its detractors of anti-Arab bigotry, Bush - who has never used his presidential veto - threatened to veto any bill that cancels the DPW deal. Bush's response precipitated several investigative reports in the US media that exposed wide ranging business connections between high level administration officials - including Treasury Secretary John Snow - and DPW.

The Jerusalem Post's report last week which exposed DPW's adherence to the Arab boycott of Israel caused the administration additional headaches. It is against US law to adhere to the boycott. In a stuttered response, administration spokesmen intimated vaguely that Dubai is being pressured to end its participation in the boycott.

According to polling data, by the end of last month, only 17 percent of Americans supported the deal with Dubai while 63% opposed it. Given its enormous opposition, Bush's refusal to set the deal aside has led several Republican lawmakers to openly criticize him. Indeed, Republican legislators are working steadily to kill the deal as quickly as possible to end their embarrassment.

To date, the deal's many opponents have suffered one major setback. It came from an unexpected source: Israel.

Last week, Idan Ofer, the CEO of Israel's shipping line Zim, wrote a letter to New York Senator Hillary Clinton in which he praised DPW and expressed his support for the deal. In Ofer's words, "During our long association with Dubai Ports World we have not experienced a security issue in these ports or in any of the terminals operated by them." He added, "We are proud to be associated with Dubai Ports World and look forward to continue working with it in the future." Given Dubai's adherence to the Arab boycott and the fact that in his letter Ofer acknowledged that Zim's ships are forced to fly under foreign flags in order to dock in Dubai's ports, opponents of the deal scratched their heads in puzzlement and exasperation at Ofer's move.

To comment on this, I am absolutely angry that Zim has been trying to whitewash any matters surrounding how they're able to sail to the docks of Dubai, or that they're even doing business with them to begin with! What disgust. Israelis should strongly censure Zim, and so should Jews everywhere.

The deal reportedly raised the hackles of Pentagon and FBI officials. They allege that since Sourcefire's software programs are used to protect US military and intelligence computer systems from infiltration, its acquisition by Check Point [Israeli software company] will seriously damage US national security. Just as the storm of protest against the DPW deal tells us something about the American public's view of the Arabs, so the FBI and Pentagon's objection to the Check Point deal and their support for the DPW deal tell us something about the state of the administration's relations with the Israeli government.

CFIUS's counterintuitive treatment of the DPW and Check Point deals tells us two things about how the administration makes its decisions. First, money talks. Not only is Dubai the banking capital of the Persian Gulf, flush with oil revenues, it has become an active investor in the US. In response to the uproar over the DPW deal, the UAE announced that if the deal is cancelled, it will reconsider its stance regarding its ongoing free trade negotiations with the US. UAE officials have also intimated in media interviews that they may limit its investments in the US if the deal does not go through.

So rather than addressing Congress's concerns about Dubai's links to Islamist terror, pledging not to take any steps that might endanger US national security, apologizing for its past support for Osama bin Laden or ending its participation in the boycott of Israel, Dubai is threatening the US with sanctions if Congress torpedoes the ports deal. And the administration has responded to those threats by endangering its political support base and marring its credibility as a champion of national security in order to defend Dubai.

The administration's support for Dubai shows that it respects power and those who wield it. Similarly, by treating Check Point as if it were an enemy state, the administration demonstrates its contempt for weakness.

Some good lessons to be learned here. As for Dubai and the rest of the UAE, if they want to pull out of their trade deals with the US and other such countries, they can go right ahead and do so, who needs them.

Now, here's what the administration's relations with Israel have really been like:

OVER THE past several years, Israel has demonstrated unprecedented weakness in its dealings with Washington. This weakness has caused a situation where Prime Minister Ariel Sharon acclaimed the Bush administration as the best friend Israel has ever had, while the administration ended Israeli participation in multiple joint military research and development projects.

The administration further demanded Israel accept encroachments on its sovereignty by forcing Israel to sign a commitment to give the US veto power over a significant share of its military exports. The economic consequence of this unprecedented step is that Israel must now receive the approval of its chief business competitor in the international arms market before concluding any major deal.

So in stark contrast to declarations by Israeli and American policymakers alike, Israel's relationship with the administration in recent years has not been particularly positive. Rather, its prominent features have been American intimidation and Israeli kowtowing. Sharon's desperate, irrational and personal need to feel accepted by Washington rendered him effectively incapable of representing Israel's interests to the administration. What Sharon craved was not substantive cooperation in war, but declarations of support in him personally by the Bush and his senior advisers.

In Sharon's absence, his Kadima party maintains the same dependence on expressions of support from the administration even when such declarations come at the price of undermining Israel's basic strategic interests. That is, under Sharon and Kadima, it has become possible to make a distinction between administration support for the Israeli government and administration support for Israel. Given this, it isn't difficult to surmise the background to Ofer's odd statement of support for the DPW deal. From all this we learn that like the Kadima government, the administration is fully capable of ignoring the US's national security interests when doing so advances its political interests.

Hmm, an interesting point indeed. I wouldn't be surprised if Ofer of the Zim company had any ties with politicians like those led now by Ehud Olmert. And no, the US administration's relations with Israel, and that includes Condi Rice, haven't been very positive or productive either.

What can be done to repair this situation? Caroline says:

In sharp contrast to the administration's counterintuitive and opportunistic preference for Arab despotisms over Israel, the American public follows its intuition and is generally unsupportive of the Arabs, whom Americans regard as their foes, and consistently supportive of Israel, which they regard as their ally in the war against the global jihad.

In the public's outcry against the DPW deal we see the vast potential for changing the administration's attitude towards Israel. Just as the American public decries the notion of turning America's ports over to Arab control, so too, the American public would back an Israeli refusal to transfer control over its national security to Hamas. And just as the public's rejection of the port deal will eventually force the administration to cancel it, so too, were Israel to decide to assert its rights as a sovereign nation in Washington by defining victory against the Palestinian terror war as its strategic aim, it would be able to tap into deep reservoirs of support in the US that would force the administration to back its moves.

Sadly, in what can only be judged as pathological opportunism, rather than encouraging its American supporters, Israel's government is undermining them by publicly siding with the administration in the Dubai port dispute. The government's behavior in this matter is reflective of the Kadima party's general policy. Kadima, like its founder Ariel Sharon, operates under the guiding assumption that Israel is weak and cannot defend itself without international support generally and American support specifically.

Like Israel's other leftist parties, Kadima assumes that the only way to receive the administration's support is by weakening Israel still further. This is why Sharon decided to withdraw from Gaza and northern Samaria and it is why Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert today claims that Israel must vacate most of Judea and Samaria, with the land to be transferred to Hamas, and continue enabling the transfer of "humanitarian aid" to the Hamas-led PA. That is, Kadima believes that its international support is dependent on weakening Israel and strengthening Israel's enemies. By all counts, it is right to believe this.

Today the Bush administration is aggressively backing Kadima in the elections. Last month, administration officials reportedly pressured PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to postpone the formation of the Hamas government until after the Israeli elections because they believed that doing so will help Kadima against the Likud.

In backing Kadima, a party committed to transferring lands and money to the Hamas-led PA, the US has effectively made strengthening the Iranian-backed Hamas its central aim in the region. From this it becomes apparent that Kadima's party interests are diametrically opposed to Israel's national interests.

What the adamant public opposition to the Dubai deal shows is that regardless of how the administration may presently be treating Israel, if Israel elects a different government this month, the administration will not be able to easily oppose it if it decides to actually advance Israel's national interests for a change. Indeed, as is the case with the DPW deal, if a new Israeli government projects a powerful image in Washington, accompanied by a dedication to the goal of ending the Palestinian war in victory, not surrender, the American people will intuitively support it and force the administration to support it as well.

I think that, if the good US public can help in pointing out that Kadima is as bad as it is, and help the Israeli public in seeing to it that such politicians get the drubbing they deserve, that can certainly help in fixing the situation. Naturally, the US public needs a clearer view of what Kadima is really like, and these topics here (and also this article about Amir Peretz from Labor) can help offer some insight.

Also, here's some more eyebrow-raising info about the port deal. From Bloomberg.Com (H/T: Debbie Schlussel):

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- A group representing U.S. companies in the United Arab Emirates said it will invite ``The Oprah Winfrey Show'' among other talk shows to the Gulf to alter American public opinion which helped block Dubai's takeover of five U.S. ports.

The American Business Group of Abu Dhabi, which has more than 500 members including Boeing Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp., wants Winfrey to host a show from the Persian Gulf sheikhdom as it seeks to convince Americans that the country isn't a threat to national security, Kevin Massengill, a board member of the group said in a phone interview yesterday from Abu Dhabi.

"We want to reach out to the average guy in the U.S. and explain why the U.A.E. is important,'' the former adviser to the U.S. Embassy in Abu Dhabi, who is among a delegation from the group that plans to visit Washington this month to discuss the blocked deal with lawmakers, said.

DP World, a ports company owned by the Maktoum family that rules Dubai, one of the seven sheikdoms in the United Arab Emirates, was forced to sell the U.S. port operations of Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. after Congressional leaders said it could open the U.S. to terrorist attack.

A CNN poll on March 2 showed that 75 percent of Americans believed the Dubai takeover of ports posed a threat to U.S. security. Two of the Sept. 11 attackers came from the United Arab Emirates, whose banks were used by the plotters to funnel money for the operation.

[...]

Dubai Port's $6.8 billion buyout of the U.K.'s P&O had been approved by President George W. Bush before a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers led by New York Senator Charles Schumer requested that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States investigate the purchase.

And, look at what Hugh Fitzgerald reveals:

A larger question in the now-dead Dubai deal revolves around the large number of people who received large sums of money, as always happens when the Arabs and petro-dollars are involved, to push for the deal. Madeleine Albright, of "the Albright Group," seems to have been in on it. Bill Clinton, he of the "Clinton World Initiative," also. I don't know if Kissinger of "Kissinger Associates" was in on it, but possibly Brent Scowcroft of that same "Kissinger Associates" was. Nor do I know about William Cohen of "The Cohen Group."

The scandal is that any high officials were paid anything to push for that Dubai port deal.

Clinton is now on his way to becoming one of America's least favorite presidents. Albright has slipped into obscurity, and would do best to remain there. That said, this is certainly telling quite a lot about the Democrats, and their gravitation towards the money pit (not that the Bush Republicans are any different).

Also available at Adam's Blog, Basil's Blog, bRight & Early, Cao's Blog, Is it Just Me, Jo's Cafe, The Liberal Wrong-Wing, NIF, Stuck on Stupid, Third World County, TMH's Bacon Bits.

Labels: RINOs

In the past, many prisons in the US had a problem with the Aryan Nation movement that was growing inside them. Now, it looks like Islam is becoming the new prison movement. And as the case surrounding the imam Umar Abdul-Jalil shows, this is something that should be banned in prisons just as much as Aryan Nation. From the New York Sun:

Extremist remarks made by the head imam of the city's jail system are generating alarm about whether inmates are being recruited as Islamic fundamentalists.

Mayor Bloomberg announced yesterday that the city has suspended Imam Umar Abdul-Jalil of the city's Department of Correction until officials can get more information about his remarks and determine whether he violated any regulations.

"We can't prejudge but we are going to look at it this afternoon," Mr. Bloomberg told reporters yesterday. "Having said that, this morning, so that he would not go back into the jails, we put him on paid administrative leave at least for the day."

The move by the city came after the New York Post reported that Mr. Abdul-Jalil declared in a speech that the White House is run by terrorists and that Muslims were tortured in Manhattan prisons after the World Trade Center attacks.

He also reportedly urged Muslims in America to stop letting "the Zionists of the media to dictate what Islam is to us." The Investigative Project on Terrorism obtained a recording of his speech, a senior researcher with the organization, Tamar Tesler, confirmed yesterday.

The imam, who has been with the department since 1993 and has been overseeing all clergy members at the agency since 2004, could not be reached yesterday. He did, however, publicly deny that he was promoting extremist views and said his comments were taken out of context.

The director of Simon Wiesenthal's New York Tolerance Center, Mark Weitzman, said, if true, the statements are cause for worry about possible recruitment of Islamic fundamentalists in city jails.

"It would not be novel," he said. "There have been a lot of reports of chaplains using prisons for recruitment. The chaplaincy is there to provide support for people of every religion, but not to provide a breeding ground for religious intolerance and hate."

Mr. Weitzman said he wants to know whether the imam used the same kind of rhetoric among inmates. He said he was glad that the city took quick action.

"If it's true the city needs to review its policies," he said. "You are not going to have a minister of the Christian Identity, of the Klan, as the Christian clergyman. You would not have a rabbi who's involved with extremist Jewish groups ministering to Jews in there. The same standard should apply across the board."

The director of the Anti-Defamation League's New York office, Joel Levy, said the organization was told that Mr. Abdul-Jalil is responsible for the "Islamic studies curriculum" at the Department of Correction. That curriculum needs to be reviewed, he said. "What views does he hold about Islam? I think somebody needs to investigate that as well," he said.

Mr. Levy said the case is troubling on several fronts. In addition to making "blatantly anti-Semitic" statements, he said it is "totally inappropriate" for someone working in law enforcement to say, "the greatest terrorists in the world occupy the White House" and to question the legitimacy of the American government.

Seeing that this Abdul-Jalil's been an imam since 1993, one can only wonder just how many recruits for jihad he's gathered since then. And this is but a reason as to why such practices may have to be banned in prisons altogether.

Labels: islam, United States

Yet more of those accursed kassam rockets were fired by the Hamas at Israelis:

Six Kassam rockets were fired from Gaza at Israeli territory during and just after the Sabbath. A 13-year-old girl was treated for shock last night after a rocket landed south of Sderot. A second Kassam fell between Kibbutz Carmia and Zikim, south of Ashkelon, causing no injuries or damage. Four Kassam rockets were fired at Israel on Friday, landing uneventfully. On Friday afternoon, PA policemen defused two Kassams found in a launch pad in northern Gaza.

I wouldn't be surprised if those PLO "policemen" were just doing a propaganda ploy.

To make matter worse, Iran and the al Qaida may have also infiltrated the area:

WorldNetDaily notes indications that elite Iranian soldiers have infiltrated Israel, establishing sleeper cells to be activated by Iran at a later date. The reports state that both Israeli and PA security services have searched Judea and Samaria for the Iranian soldiers, who may have infiltrated as long as three years ago.

The Lebanese terror organization Hizbullah has already moved its operational headquarters from Beirut to Gaza, and Al-Qaeda elements are already there.

The danger is increasing considerably.

Though Fjordman may have left blogging due to becoming busier in his daytime job, his research on the Muslim rape epidemic in Europe, which I spoke about earlier, has been expanded on by more writers, and now, Front Page Magazine presents a symposium on the subject (Hat tip: The Jawa Report), which interviews Pierre Rehov, Nancy Kobrin, Peter Radatz, Gudrun Eussner. And we get a pretty good explanation as to why would-be feminists are silent, and nobody should work for their organizations. As Eussner says:

As far as the Western feminists are concerned, they seem to be hovering in other dimensions, in absolute arrogance, learned from ethnologues like Claude Lévy-Strauss. For them, freedom is that each "culture" may it be as inhuman as can be, is entitled to prosper even on our soil. The next act in this surrealistic piece of stage play is the unlimited understanding that Norwegian Professor Ms. Unni Wikan, shows for Muslims raping Western women: Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes, as they are not dressing and behaving according to Muslim understanding. The Norwegian women, in her view, are to realize that they live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it, as Mark Steyn reported already in 2002.

Well, I figured that Norway's politicians were as bad as can be, and this Wikan is obviously no exception; clearly a non-feminine woman.

Rehov says:

In Muslim society the male is dominant and almighty since he is made after God, when women have been created as a necessary evil to tempt males. In other words, the female body is the closest thing to the Devil, something which has to be dominated as a proof a faith. We go back to the sacrifice of Eros to Thanatos, as one of the basic sacrifices of all monotheisms, where, since the origins of the Bible, first inspiration to the Koran, women have been the carriers of the original sin.

In such a pattern, a male will not only consider any suspect behavior, including the mildest one, as an evil temptation, but he might look forward to experiencing one, as a religious challenge. Whatever will happen then won’t be the result of his own will, but he believes in having received absolution in advance for an act that, he knows, is against his own religion. During these minutes of deception and absolute power, he is not abusing a woman but fighting the Devil inside.

Of course, primitive chauvinism is the second reason. Again, since males in chauvinist societies are deprived of all natural pleasures resulting from what we consider a normal relationship between men and women, beside sexual ones, the level of frustration is very high and the fear of impotency even higher. A male tempted must react. The automatic result to frustration and fear is usually violence. In this case, sexual violence.

A friend of mine is a retired chief of police, who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. He reported to me that his men had to face an average of 10 rapes a week, 80% made by Muslim young men. 30% being what we call, in French, a “ tournante “, meaning that the victim is being raped by an entire gang, one after the other, often during an entire night. My friend reports that, in many cases, he was able to locate and arrest the rapists, often very young ones, and, as part of the investigation, call the families. He was astonished that, in most cases, the parents not only would back up their rapist children, but also would not even understand why they would be arrested. There is an instant shift in the notion of good and evil as a major component of culture. The only evil those parents would see, genuinely, is the temptation that the male children had to face. Since in most cases the victims were not Muslims, the parents’ answer and rejection was even more genuine: how could their boys be guilty of anything, when normally answering to a provocation by occidental women, known for their unacceptable behavior?

A clue to why even some Muslim women may consider it acceptable, even against other Muslim women: they've been massively indoctrinated, to the point where they might not even be considered feminine themselves anymore.

And as Kobin warns, yes, this kind of demonic culture could happen in the United States:

There are several layers to this tragedy which will ultimately occur here in the United States, if it hasn’t already. Why? Because other aspects of Islamic practices in extremis, such as marriage under Sharia law but not civil law, polygamy and clan practices of female genital mutilation in the African Muslim immigrant populations persist even though FGM was outlawed in 1994.

I have it from first hand experience interviewing Muslim male immigrants that they hate it here in the United States because if they raise their hand, the women and children call the police. However, in the same breath, these same women will defend their men because it is part of the fused mentality and identification with the aggressor.

I interviewed Muslim women who justified wife beating because it is “educational.” These women were probably brutalized as little girls and are unable to know NOT to blame the unveiled woman victim. Every Muslim male and female that I have interviewed has experienced being beaten as a child and have witnessed the beating of their mother.

Rape is learned behavior in the home. Peter is absolutely correct in describing the insidious sexual dichotomy of Muslim male supremacy over the lowly denigrated female. Pierre underscored the degree to which a family will defend its own rapist because of alleged “honor.” Why should it surprise us that they have moved out into the streets and feel entitled to rape?

One example of an Islamist who committed rape within the US is Yusuf Ali Bey, a crimelord from Oakland, California. In Dearborn, Michigan, the Arab-Muslim population is about 100,000 or 200,000, and as Debbie Schlussel and some other experts on Michigan have pointed out, there have been quite a few crimes of various sorts pulled by such shady characters there too. And whether or not rapes have happened there yet, there most certainly is a chance that they could, and there could also be gangs there who could end up doing something like that. And even in other parts of the US where there are Muslims living.

That's why in the US and Canada, and even in south America, we've got to be on the lookout for if such crimes could take place.

Labels: islam, misogyny, Scandanavia

Jay Bennish, the anti-American teacher who was taped by one of the students in his geography classroom in Colorado while shoving one of his bigoted little lectures down the students' throats, has been reinstated in his job despite the obscene indoctrination he committed (Hat tip: Real Teen). Read more about what Bennish said at Michelle Malkin's blog.

I can't tell you just how much I too am disgusted that this vile and gross-looking man (if you've seen his pictures, you'll notice how greasy he looks in some of them) is being allowed to continue his job. Debbie Schlussel notes that the ultra-PC Detroit News has been going along writing sob stories about him and even writing what could be false reports that the parents of Bennish received phone call threats, while as for the student who boldly made efforts to tape the creep in action, he's been under threat of assault at the school, and the MSM doesn't care.

Interestingly enough, when hiring a lawyer, Bennish the Bigot turned to David Lane, who's a member of the ACLU, and who also served as an attorney to Ward Churchill.

I would recommend contacting the school in Colorado to protest this. See the info at Real Teen for more. Here's also another article from Front Page Mag about anti-American indoctrination in schools.

Others angry at the school's ignorant act include Stop the ACLU, The Dread Pundit Bluto, Donkey Stomp, MacStansbury.Org, Iowa Voice, Blue Star Chronicles, The Colossus of Rhodey, Big Dog's Weblog, Thunder Run, Random Thoughts of Yet Another Military Member, Severe Writer's Block, Slapstick Politics.

In a very good development, the US Congress has heard a testimony this week regarding the exaggerated demographics that the PLO's been coming up with in past years:

The United States Congress heard a damning report this week about U.S. aid being over-alotted due to deliberately inflated Palestinian population figures.

The findings of an exhaustive study on Palestinian Authority (PA) population statistics claims that the Palestinian Authority has deliberately misled U.S. and international humanitarian efforts by inflating their population figures to attract billions of dollars in relief funds.

Bennet Zimmerman, Project Leader of a recent study entitled "Arab Population in the West Bank and Gaza: The Million Person Gap," presented the findings to the Congress this week. Zimmerman addressed the House International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East which has been investigating U.S. funding of the Palestinian Authority.

"American tax dollars and other international humanitarian aid have been based on inflated population numbers which have been accepted without question by governments and aid agencies," he said in an interview with the World Net Daily. "Our researchers pointed out that money has been spent to help Palestinians who were double-counted, never born or not present in the West Bank and Gaza."

According to Zimmerman, the current official population for the West Bank and Gaza, which is listed as 3,279,141, is a highly inflated figure that does not reflect the demographic reality, which he estimates at 1.4 million in the West Bank and 1 million in Gaza, totaling 2.4 million. "The U.S. and Europeans have for years accepted entirely exaggerated data. Now Congress has some very tough questions to ask, including how its own State Department and the CIA could have been duped and what do to regarding future aid," stated Zimmerman.

Israeli demographic analyst Yoram Ettinger concurs with the findings in Zimmerman’s report and claims that there is no credence to the myth of a potential Arab majority in Israel. “And so it turns out that the demographic knife is not really hanging over our heads. In 1900 Jews constituted just eight percent of the population west of the Jordan, in 1948 it was 48 percent, and today we are 60 percent. Without Gaza, the Jewish majority is stable at 67 percent within [including] Judea and Samaria,” Ettinger maintains.

It should be noted that much of the monetary aid money that's been given to the PLO over the years has been used by the PLO for funding terrorism against Israelis, and not for building any economic infrastructure. One more reason why it would be strongly advised to cut the funding to them.

From Israel National News:

(IsraelNN.com) An anti-tank rocket was fired at an IDF vehicle north of Gaza earlier Friday morning. No injuries or damage were reported.

But if we don't look out, there could be. Besides missle launchers, the PLO/Hamas could also have anti-tank rifles in their armory as well.

Who would've thought that an Islamist was responsible for the dumbing down of American movie culture? But, as Mark Steyn shows us, that's exactly what Moustapha Akkad, a film executive for many years (and who also produced "Mohammed, Messenger of God" in 1977, spoken about in this earlier topic) did when he produced John Carpenter's Halloween in 1978.

When John Carpenter sold the idea for Halloween to Moustapha Akkad, he pitched it to him in one line: “Babysitter to be killed by the bogeyman.” “The babysitter part grabbed me,” said Akkad, “because every kid in America knows what a babysitter is.” The movie became the highest-grossing independent film to date and spawned the most successful of the several franchises in which undeserving victims are butchered at random in archetypal small towns.

By the time the bogeyman came for Moustapha Akkad, he had bigger fish to fry – mass slaughter not of stock types in hick burgs, but of powerful and well-connected elites in Amman’s western hotels. On November 10th, a team of suicide bombers dispatched by Abu Musad al-Zarqawi across the Jordanian border self-detonated at the Radisson, the Grand Hyatt and the Days Inn. Akkad was in the country for a high-society wedding and greeting his daughter Rima in the Radisson when Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari and his wife reached within the folds of their clothing for the explosives belts. The California-raised Rima died first, her father the following day from the wounds he received. And so the jihad claimed among its five dozen latest victims Hollywood’s most prominent Arab-American.

Like a lot of youngsters, Akkad decided early on that he wanted to be in pictures. The odds aren’t helped if you happen to be growing up in Aleppo, in French Syria. But at 19 his father packed him off to Hollywood with 200 dollars in one pocket and the Koran in the other, and the division of his coat contents neatly summed up his work over the next 50 years. Moustapha Akkad made two kinds of movies. As a producer, he delivered slashers to the teen market with an efficiency that made him a very wealthy man: the original Halloween cost $300,000 in 1978 and grossed $47 million. As a director, he wanted to be an Arab David Lean and specialized in films that used Hollywood stars to explain Islam to a wider audience – The Message was the life of Mohammed and starred Anthony Quinn; Lion Of The Desert celebrated plucky anti-colonial Bedouin fighters, played by Quinn, Oliver Reed and John Gielgud, with members of Arab Equity relegated mostly to the roles of excitable extras; and at the time of his death he was developing a film about Saladin with Sean Connery. It was Akkad’s misfortune to have the benign intentions of this side of his oeuvre perpetually tripped up on the way to the multiplex: The Message was targeted by angry Muslims who thought the infidel fornicator Quinn was playing Mohammed rather than his uncle, and Lion Of The Desert suffered in America from the twin PR setbacks of opening a few months after the Iranian hostage siege and being co-financed by Colonel Gaddafy.

Nonetheless, Akkad persevered. “Islam right now is portrayed as a ‘terrorist’ religion in the west and by doing this kind of movie, I am portraying the true image,” he said of his Saladin project. Long before September 11th, he was always good for a quote bemoaning how Hollywood only represented Muslims as terrorists. “We cannot say there are no Arab and no Muslim terrorists,” he told The New York Times in 1998. “Of course there are. But at the same time, balance it with the image of the normal human being, the Arab-American, the family man.”

He half got his way: movies about the Arab “family man” are still thin on the ground, but the Muslim terrorist has all but disappeared – the film of Tom Clancy’s Sum Of All Fears de-Islamicized the bad guys and turned them into German neo-Nazis, and Sean Penn’s The Interpreter eighty-sixed the Muslims and made them terrorists from the little-known African republic of Matobo. Post-9/11 Hollywood perversely recoiled from its preferred villains of the Eighties and Nineties and now your poor Arab thespian can’t even get gainful employment as a crazed jihadist. Meanwhile, Akkad saw the Islamophile half of his work gain a new lease of life, as Oriental works in an Occidentally accessible form: according to Queen Noor, the Pentagon bought “100,000 copies” of The Message to show to US troops before they left for Afghanistan.

And, in the end, for all his efforts, the fellows who murdered Akkad were the most stereotypical Muslim terrorists of all: they behaved more like the psychos in his slasher movies than the noble Bedouin in his Islamic-outreach pictures.

As the above shows, Akkad was absolute scum. This essay had me simply sitting with my mouth wide open in utter astonishment, because, like I said, who would've thought that an Islamist could've been behind the dumbing down of American cinema?

On the part about Muslim terrorists in film though, there's an extra point to made, that, while there have been a few sufficiently convincing examples of Islamofascism in film, even before 9-11, there were still quite a few movies that either capitulated to groups like CAIR, or that were so watered down, they had very little impact, if at all. (I seem to remember an episode of Cagney and Lacey from 1985 where an Arab girl who was murdered by her brother did not get very much time to present her own viewpoint to the camera, whereas the scumbag brother and his other sister actually did get to spout their biased, bigoted viewpoints far more; they were even depicted as refugees from Afganistan, where their parents had been killed by the Commies, and one could end up thinking that they were more the victims of the Commies than of the Religion of Peace that they adhered to. Update: then again, maybe I'm misremembering: this episode actually wasn't that bad. There was something else though from Stephen J. Cannell's company that really let me down.)

So let's not think that even before 9-11, things were going that well in terms of writing a convincing depiction of Islamofacsism on screen.

Also available at Adam's Blog, Basil's Blog, bRight & Early, Jo's Cafe, The Mudville Gazette, Point Five.

Labels: terrorism

The Washington Post (via Jihad Watch) has published a poll with ABC News that shows that the public's perception of Islam has become much more negative since 2001. That said, this is still a rather biased, apologist article, and like Robert Spencer, I too have to wonder if the WaPo really wants to write for adults.

And as for the Religion of Peace itself, to put it this way, it's also very hard to see how something founded on the actions of a man who'd committed rape and murder can be viewed as a masterpiece.

More evidence why the UAE should really be outlawed and penalized, and should most definately not be seen as an ally: they're one of the biggest supporters of Al Qaida. In 1994, a survey of Arab countries showed that many Islamists there were bin Laden supporters, with 19 percent in the UAE at the time, and in Jordan, fifty-five percent of Islamists supported bin Laden. Anti-Americanism was at a height of seventy-three percent at the time, and it's quite possible that things could've gotten worse since then.

It's good that the Dubai deal didn't go through, and it looks like their government's abandoned the attempt to take over the ports (link via Jihad Watch), but it would be even better if the UAE were to be boycotted altogether for aiding the enemies of democratic countries. They should not be recognized as allies or friends, and it would be advisable to also withdraw all diplomatic relations with them.

First, the AP Wire (via Michelle Malkin) reports that the House Republicans produced a landslide vote against the port deal:

In an election-year repudiation of President Bush, a House panel dominated by Republicans voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to block a Dubai-owned firm from taking control of some U.S port operations.

By 62-2, the Appropriations Committee voted to bar DP World, run by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, from holding leases or contracts at U.S. ports.

Bush has promised to veto any such measure passed by Congress, but there is widespread public opposition to the deal and the GOP fears losing its advantage on the issue of national security in this fall's elections...

...By its vote, the House committee attached the ports language to a must-pass $91 billion measure financing hurricane recovery and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The full House could consider that measure as early as next week.

While GOP Senate leaders hope to delay a quick showdown with Bush on the issue, the House panel, including members of Bush's own party, showed a willingness to defy him.

GOP member Jack Kingston also said on PBS that, should Dubya want to try and veto the vote, there are enough votes to override him.

As Michelle notes, there are already attempts to villify the Republicans as betraying(!) Bush, and even accusations of Islamophobia going around. But, as she says:

...if they are guilty of anything, the House Republicans who are revolting on this issue are guilty of doing something the incompetent staffers at the White House can't seem to do very well these days: listen and respond effectively to their constituents. When all is said and done, security-minded Americans would rather not see management of terminals at our U.S. ports in the hands of an Arab state-owned company whose government officials not only provided cover to Osama bin Laden before 9/11 and created a ripe environment that facilitiated al Qaeda financing and remained a logistical hub after 9/11, but who also still maintain a catch-and-release policy toward terror suspects, deny the existence of our established ally, Israel, and may be providing material support for terrorism even as they welcome U.S. military forces to their shores.

The catch-and-release policy is something that the PLO too has been doing for a long time. And if the UAE and Saudi Arabia are supporting anti-western sentiments and terrorism against Israel and western countries, then that's why, for as long as they continue to do so, they should NOT be recognized as legitimate sources.

Now, as Michelle announces, Dubai's backed away from the bid. But that doesn't mean we should let down our guard. As IRIS Blog notes, it's possible that it could in some ways be a trick. The Wash. Post says:

It was not immediately clear how the divesture would be handled or what U.S. company would take over the operation.

It should be hoped that a reliable American firm will be able to obtain the ports. That aside, it's actually a bad thing if legislation that could help to block such deals didn't go through, because what if the UAE and Saudi Arabia were to try something like this again in the future? Real Clear Politics asks:

Will this be the end of it? I suspect so. Bush saves face and doesn't have to make good on a veto threat. A Republican-led Congrees looks good to its constituents (and feels good about itself) for flexing its muscle and derailing the deal. DPW loses, at least for the moment (The statement was notably vague, so we'll have to wait and see if a restructured deal, of which they may have some connection, emerges at some point after the election).

As with the Harriet Miers nomination, in a few weeks the DPW deal will probably be reduced to a footnote. The question is whether Bush's standing will rebound fully or whether the Dubai Rebellion will take a further chip out of the President's credibility with the Republican base that he won't ever be able to recover.

There, see that? The question of if Dubai is still going to try and find a way to get hold of US seaports is still quite valid. And if Dubya was really determined to approve the deal with an enemy country like the UAE, then somehow, I doubt his credibility will be able to recover so easily.

Whatever, as Michelle's said, the work in Washington is not done, but it certainly is a harbinger of what's to come, and I think it can be said that his attempts to grant amnesty to illegal aliens is going to be rejected as well.

But of course, to ensure that, that's why we got to work hard to make sure that things'll turn out well.

Tim Chapman reports on Town Hall about a very positive development on Capitol Hill for defending bloggers and their rights.

This is very good, because it shows that there are politicians who understand and recognize the power of blogging, and that it's important for bloggers to be able to manage their writing without having to go through miles of red tape.

There are valid concerns of course about abuse of the laws, as one Republican representative pointed out. But other than that, it's good that there are people in Capitol Hill who understand why it's good to have rights to blogging without having to worry about too much red tape.

A few months ago, Daniel Pipes wrote two articles and a blog entry on converts to Islam, also pointing out that:

"Conversion to Islam substantially increases the probability of a person's involvement in terrorism."

And because it's certainly possible, that's why, as parents, we have to take care of and teach our children why they have to stay far away from Islamists just as much as cult leaders like David Koresh, Scientologists, neo-Nazis, or even Voodoo witch doctors.

Let's take the recent case involving Joel Henry Hinrichs III. While it's not clear to me just now if this was openly discussed, it's very likely that he was influenced by the 3-4 Pakistani students, at least one of whom he was sharing a room with, not just into converting to Islam, as the beard he grew implies, but also into committing an act of terrorism, as he attempted to do. And he also attended the local mosque in that area, which had been attended by Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9-11 hijackers.

More of an adult age was Muriel Degauque, the Belgian woman who blew herself up in Iraq. And also Richard Reed, the attempted shoe bomber, and John Mohammed, the serial sniper who murdered several people in Maryland and Virginia. A couple more examples of converts can be found here.

We who really love our relatives do indeed want to protect them from harm's way and the wrong crowd, which is why many parents with concern for their children's future try to protect them from being influenced by gangs or even drug addiction. And Islam too is something we've got to keep our loved ones from being influenced by, because what if they ended up becoming rapists, under the brainwashing of Sura 4:23-24? That's something we'd rather not have occuring either.

And that's why concerned parents would be strongly advised to pay careful attention to, and to teach and advise their children, about why they need to stay away from Islam.

Also available at bRight & Early, Free Constitution, Is it Just Me, NIF, Point Five, Stop the ACLU.

WRAL-TV (via Michelle Malkin) reports on the student protest that was organized to protest the university's not-too-surprising reluctance to label the Iranian student Mohammed Taheriazar's attack with an SUV on the campus as an act of terrorism, which is exactly what it was. The exact number of people whom Taheriazar struck was nine.

The U's newspaper, the Daily Tar-Heel, also reports the following:

A University graduate with at least one prior arrest, who careened a rented silver Jeep Grand Cherokee through the Pit about noon Friday, is being held on 18 felony counts under a $5.5 million bond in the Central Prison in Raleigh.

Campus police Chief Derek Poarch confirmed that Mohammed Reza Taheriazar, 22, a 2005 graduate, has been transported to Raleigh on nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with intent to kill. His first court date will be Monday in the District Criminal Court in Hillsborough.

Taheri-azar, who formerly lived at 3125 English Sparrow Lane in Charlotte, was taken from the Department of Public Safety to Central Prison last night. Poarch said Taheri-azar is Iranian but he has no information on his citizenship status. The police report lists him as a non-resident.

Make sure he cannot obtain any US citizenship now either.

The scum's been brought to court, and his trial is just beginning (also via Michelle):

Taheri-azar, 22, is scheduled to have a first appearance in Orange County Court in Hillsborough this morning, and is currently being kept in Central Prison in Raleigh on a $5.5 million bond.

Orange-Chatham District Attorney Jim Woodall said an attempted first-degree murder charge could carry a sentence of just over 10 years to 13 years per count. If a jury found aggravating factors, the judge could sentence someone for 16 to 18 years per count.

And hopefully in an isolated cell.

See also these two topics. During the trial hearing, the Islamoscum did the following:

Mohammad Taheri-azar, a 2005 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, smiled and waved before his hearing Monday. Taheri-azar told the courtroom that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah."

As he left court, Taheri-Azar told reporters, "the truth is my lawyer." When asked if he was trying to kill people, he said yes.

WRAL also reports that the police found a video of Navy SEALS and an application for a gun permit.

Let us be clear here: the man is a terrorist, ditto his actions. And if the MSM is trying to whitewash this whole case, as Newsbusters and Michelle found the NY Times doing, then they should be ashamed of themselves.

From Israel National News:

(IsraelNN.com) An Israeli woman was lightly injured this afternoon when Arab attackers threw rocks at her car near Betar Illit, in the Etzion Bloc southeast of Jerusalem. The victim was treated at the scene and then sent for further treatment at a medical facility in the capital.

The attackers apparently escaped detection by security forces.

No, the problem is that the government has shackled the army's influence. Otherwise, I'd say that they would've been able to prevent such attacks more easily.

Read the following transcript at Michelle Malkin's blog (and also view the video at MEMRI) for an interview with Wafa Sultan, who's taken Al Jazeera to task recently, and rightfully so.

More discoveries reveal yet more disturbing revelations about both Omri Sharon and the Kadima party itself. Israel National News provides info first broadcast on Israel's Channel 10 TV station that makes for more eye-opening discoveries (for Hebrew readers, here's the report from NFC):

The publication of Omri Sharon's appointment calendar "has exposed to all the way in which Kadima was formed. No honest person can identify with a movement with these values," says Likud MK Erdan.

Omri Sharon, son and behind-the-scenes schemer of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was instrumental in many official appointments - with the help of Ehud Olmert and other top Kadima figures.

Channel Ten exposed documents and an appointment calendar of former MK Omri Sharon, showing the extent of his involvement in appointments to governmental and official bodies. Ministers Olmert, Sha'ul Mofaz, Tzippy Livny and others were involved as well.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz has opened an investigation into the matter, after receiving several complaints and requests to do so.

The documents are from the year 2004, when Sharon Jr. was a Likud Knesset Member. In August of that year, he jotted down a list of important people he felt he needed in order to win an important upcoming Likud Central Committee vote. The issue to be decided was the inclusion of the Labor Party in the coalition government, without which the government was liable to fall.

The documents appear to show that Omri Sharon acted like the "Director-General" of the country, in the words of journalist Yoav Yitzchak: advancing certain people in exchange for their support for his father, "maintaining" the Likud, and then creating Kadima. His lists show that he was involved in tenders, municipal appointments, directorates, and the like.

The list included, next to the names, jobs that Omri planned to obtain for them. Sample entries: "A directorate for Yigal Yosef." "A directorate for Shlomo Ben-Amra." "Housing Culture Association position for Rachamim Eden - why was it not signed yet?" "meeting with Rachamim Eden, mix him a little longer."

In fact, shortly afterwards, Eden was appointed to the directorate of the Housing Culture Association - in addition to this position as Likud Chapter Head of Kfar Saba. Shlomo Ben-Amra, a Central Committee member from Kiryat Ono, was soon appointed accountant of the Be'er Sheva Religious Council.

Elsewhere in Omri Sharon's lists, he wrote that Yigal Yosef, the Mayor and Likud Chapter Head of Rosh HaAyin, should be assigned to the "Planning and Construction Committee." Another entry about Yosef says, "Meeting with Ehud [Olmert] about Yigal Yosef and in general."

In fact, Olmert's name appears many times in Omri's lists; Olmert was the Minister of Industry and Trade at the time, and he was in a position to provide Omri - who did not have the authority to make these appointments himself - with significant help in this area. Yigal Yosef, for instance, one of those whose favor Omri wished to cultivate, was appointed as head of the Industry and Trade Ministry's Regional Administration for Industrial Development.

Other ministers mentioned in Sharon's notes include Sha'ul Mofaz, Meir Sheetrit, Tzippy Livny and others - all of whom are today in the Kadima Party.

Goodness me, now this is really telling something about what Kadima, Ehud Olmert included, are really like. And it's one more reason why not to vote for them, because, as can be told from this report, they are some of the biggest opportunists in the political field next to the Labor party (and see this post about Amir Peretz for more on what he did as the head of the Histadrut).

See also:
Ehud Olmert's connections with pre-liquidation scam
Another of Ehud Olmert's shady dealings has been discovered

Also available at Basil's Blog, bRight & Early, Don Surber, Free Constitution, Is it Just Me, Jo's Cafe, The Liberal Wrong-Wing, NIF, Point Five, Samantha Burns, Stop the ACLU.

Whining, too. The leftist AP, on KEZI-TV (via Colossus of Rhodey and Little Green Footballs) reports about how the Oregon State University caved in to Muslim students who found an article in their campus newspaper, the Daily Barometer, which was titled "The Islamic Double-Standard" to be "insulting to their faith":

CORVALLIS, Ore. (AP) — A student’s column in the Oregon State University campus newspaper has prompted protests by Muslim students, who say it is offensive to their faith.

The piece headlined “The Islamic Double Standard” was written by OSU microbiology student Nathanael Blake and published in the Daily Barometer on Feb. 8.

The column accused Muslims of expecting special treatment after a Danish newspaper published cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Riots over the cartoons amounted to “savagery,” Blake said. “Bluntly put, we expect Muslims to behave barbarously,” his column said.

On Thursday, about a dozen students — including members of Muslim and Arab student groups — held a vigil on the campus to protest both Blake’s piece and the Danish cartoons. They handed out flyers that stated “While staying loyal to the main values of freedom of expression that founded this country, we also feel the need to reflect on the values of tolerance and acceptance on this campus.”

Among the students offended by the column was Nada Mohamed, a 20-year-old junior and the vice president of OSU’s Muslim Student Association.

“It was amazing to me that they (the campus newspaper) were allowed to publish this kind of stuff,” she told the Corvallis Gazette-Times. “Tears were flowing out of my eyes as I was reading,” she said. “I felt like somebody was ripping my heart out.”

At the Daily Barometer, editors said e-mail and phone calls poured in. Senior editors have met with the Muslim Student Association.

“The pain that it caused ... did not subside with time,” said DD Bixby, the Barometer’s editor-in-chief. “It kind of just festered.”

She said editors have been checking copy with Muslim students, and on Tuesday deleted one paragraph from a piece scheduled to be published the next day.

Bixby said her staffers are “all pretty much Oregon-type kids” who knew little about Islam and didn’t foresee how people would respond to the column.

Wow, is this biased alright, including the EIC's own statement. Oregon does seem to have quite a problem with moonbattery, and it also seems to figure here as well, with the EIC implying that the writers are dummies. Not good. Nor is the way that this so-called university is resorting to dhimmitude.

Labels: islam

It looks like the moonbat Air America Radio is going to lose its flagship station HQ in New York City. From The Radio Equalizer:

...In a development sure to rip the heart right out of the liberal radio network's already ailing body, it appears extremely likely their leased New York City flagship station WLIB-AM will soon abandon Air America programming.

Even worse, litigation looks probable over the station's lease.

While the network's last day on WLIB isn't known for certain, an internal source providing backing documentation points to the end of March. At this time, Air America parent Piquant LLC has no firm back-up plan for where in the nation's largest radio market its programming will now air.

Some inside the firm are already referring to WLIB in the past tense.

Without WLIB, Air America faces an immediate, crushing blow. Worth perhaps 100 small markets combined, an on-air presence in New York City is absolutely vital to the company's survival. If an immediate and suitable replacement isn't found, the consequences would be dire.

But with the way that AAR got itself into such a scandal before by trying to rip off the Gloria Wise Foundation, that's why it's unlikely that they'll be able to afford anything better than a run-down garage in which to broadcast, if they're able to continue even that far.

Labels: communications

The national camp in Israel is certainly working on some inspiring ideas for this coming election. From Israel National News:

Right-wing MKs, yeshiva students and other volunteers are working intensively together to increase support for the right-wing nationalist camp.

In some yeshivot, the students have been asked to volunteer two evenings of their busy schedule for the cause. Knesset Members of the right-wing parties are traveling around the country canvassing support for the initiative, and it is viewed as "the thing to do" in many Yesha communities and centers. What is it? The campaign to increase votes for the right-wing parties.

[...]

Susie Dym [coordinator of the Cities of Israel grassroots organization] herself says she finds the work rewarding and easier than she thought. "I hate calling," she told Arutz-7's Ruti Avraham, "and I thought it would be very nerve-racking, but it turned out to be the opposite. It went very smoothly, and I managed to make 48 calls in an hour and a quarter."

"I simply asked if we could count on their vote on Election Day. I felt that they were surprised and even moved to hear from a genuine volunteer in this period of corruption and cynicism. I think the fact that I was a volunteer made a better impression than any other argument I raised."

Man, that's good to know that she's found it easier than she may have first thought. Susie Dym is a most inspiring woman indeed.

If you're in Israel and would like to help out, the e-mail address to contact is: mattot.arim@gmail.com

In other news, there's Ehud Olmert's master plan to destroy Yesha communities, which, as the right wing parties rightfully warn, could be taken over by the Hamas. And if it is, then just like in Gaza, they could use the areas as places from which to fire kassam rockets at Israeli targets with even better range than before.

The Hamas is increasing its terrorist plotting activities in Gaza, and continuing to spread jihad:

The Hamas terror organization, which won control of the PA legislature in January elections, is setting up a standing army in Gaza based on its military wing, the Al-Kassam Brigades.

A senior official in the Hamas military, known by his nom de guerre, Abu Huzaifa, told the PA news agency, Duniya Alwatan, that since the disengagement, the Hamas has set up military bases in every city in Gaza. The bases have been training a new cadre of highly motivated fighters for the Jihad, or holy war against non Moslems, and in particular, against the Jewish state.

Recruits are sent to the camps for four months. The first month consists of basic training, and after that, recruits are taught more advanced military maneuvers.

More specifically, Abu Huzaifa said PA soldiers are taught a number of techniques including firing rifles, shooting Kassam rockets, crawling under fences, and climbing up and down buildings. The instructors are Hamas terrorists who received training abroad.

The goal, he said, was to turn the Al-Kassam Brigades into a full-fledged standing army. That army would be dedicated to eliminating Israel and replacing it with an Arab state ruled by the Hamas.

Abu Huzaifa said that military units were already working on developing more sophisticated rockets and explosive devices to advance the Jihad.

And if they're working in collaboration with Iran, then there's the danger of their trying to obtain chemical/nuclear weapons to use as well. Anything's possible, so we gotta be on the lookout.

Also available at Basil's Blog, bRight & Early, Cao's Blog, Church and State, Samantha Burns, Stop the ACLU, Stuck on Stupid, TMH's Bacon Bits, Wizbang.

There's a possibility that the following crime was committed in retaliation to the United American Committee's conference at the Irvine University in California, which was being held to discuss the Mohammad cartoons from Denmark: In North Carolina, a student named Mohammed Reza Taheriazar drove his Jeep Cherokee through the Chapel Hill campus, injuring at least five people (Hat tip: Pirates Cove). From the WRAL-TV report:

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Authorities say 23-year-old Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who drove a silver Jeep Grand Cherokee into The Pit at the UNC-Chapel Hill campus around noon Friday, may have acted to avenge American treatment of Muslims.

Police intend to charge Taheri-azar, who graduated from UNC in 2005, with nine counts of attempted murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, said Capt. George Hare of the UNC Department of Public Safety.

The FBI joined the case because Taheri-azar, a native of Iran, "allegedly made statements that he acted to avenge the American treatment of Muslims. The ongoing investigation will work to confirm this," said Special Agent Richard Kolko, an FBI spokesman in Washington.

The highlighted statement may be an apologist tactic, typical of the MSM. But as the following should show, this was no accident:

Several witnesses saw the SUV as plowed through that part of campus.

“He was speeding up and swerving to hit people. One person got knocked out of a wheelchair, and he didn’t care,” said student Lauren Westate, who saw the accident.

This is just simply filthy. And if WRAL is trying to excuse Taheri-azar's actions by implying that they sympathise with him, that's even worse.

This report from a local ABC affiliate should help show that it was as intentional as it sounds:

(03/04/06 -- CHAPEL HILL) - The driver of an SUV that plowed into a group of pedestrians at UNC-Chapel Hill on Friday told police it was retribution for the treatment of Muslims around the world, sources tell Eyewitness News and ABC News.

As The Jawa Report notes, it's hard not to come to conclusions on such cases when there's an Islamist involved. And in the case of this Taheri-azar, there's one who's certainly convicted himself of resorting to jihad in whatever form he can.

Also available at Adam's Blog, Basil's Blog, Bloggin' Out Loud, bRight & Early. Others on the subject include Michelle Malkin (plus, here's another important update), Ace of Spades, Confederate Yankee, Smooth Stone, Survival Theory, The Galvin Opinion, Canadian Sentinel.

The Saskatchewan University's newspaper, The Sheaf wouldn't publish the Mohammed cartoons "out of respect for Islam" as such whiny MSMers always seem to be saying, but was willing to publish some anti-Jesus cartoons. For more on that, here's the story from Lost Budgie Blog.

One of the editors of the paper, who discusses the topic at Wayward Reporter, had actually resigned over the refusal to publish the Mohammad cartoons, and to help inform and show the public that the fuss the Islamists are making is over something relatively mild. The U's president, however, in trying to argue, has flubbed it.

What a shame that yet one more apparently MSM-dominated newspaper has screwed up by acting as a favoratist, or acting as if "stereotypes are easy."

The Oklahoman's got another article on Joel Henry Hinrichs III (Hat tip: Mark Tapscott and Michelle Malkin), in which a member of the police bomb squad investigating the blowup outside the Norman stadium says that he believes Hinrichs did not intend to kill himself when bringing a bomb there. If not, then the reports of a suicide note being found now stand contradicted. From the report:

A Norman police bomb expert said Tuesday he does not believe University of Oklahoma student Joel Henry Hinrichs III committed suicide by blowing himself up outside a packed football stadium.

"I believe he accidentally blew himself up," Sgt. George Mauldin said.

Mauldin said Hinrichs, 21, an engineering student, had two to three pounds of triacetone triperoxide, commonly known as TATP, in a backpack in his lap when it exploded Oct. 1.

When asked if he believed Hinrichs meant to enter the stadium with the explosives, Mauldin replied, "I don't believe he intended for an explosion to occur at that spot (on the park bench)."

"Some of us will forever wonder what he (Hinrichs) was doing at that time, at that place," Police Chief Phil Cotten said.

Hinrichs was sitting on a park bench 173 yards from the OU stadium during the second quarter of OU's night game against Kansas State when the TATP inside his backpack detonated.

"Someone saw him fiddling with it (the backpack) shortly before the explosion occurred. I think he got cocky, and it went off," Mauldin said.

Yes, it could be possible that he panicked and accidentally pulled the trigger on himself if someone spotted him where he was sitting. And as for his plans regarding the bomb he was carrying in his knapsack, was he planning to hide it in the stadium, and then trigger it from a distance? Good question.

Cross-posted to Infidel Bloggers Alliance. Others covering the case include Small Town Veteran, Generation Why, Citizen Journal, The Jawa Report, A Blog for All, Mike's Noise, Canadian Sentinel, Flopping Aces, Peenie Wallie, Freedom Folks, Brown Hound.

An IDF commander made no serious attempt to pursue and investigate a case of an armed Arab who menaced residents of a hilltop farming community in Samaria:

As attacks increase in Judea and Samaria, residents of a hilltop community were shocked when the local IDF commander offered excuses instead of pursuing an armed Arab who threatened them.

Residents of the community of Adei Ad, near Shilo in Samaria, are complaining that the IDF refused to respond to an armed Arab man who trespassed on their agricultural fields.

The residents told Arutz-7 that an Arab man was trespassing on their farmland, and when they tried to get him to leave he fired a shot in the air and ran away.

The residents immediately alerted the security forces in order that the armed Arab be apprehended.

“The company commander that arrived in his jeep said that he had an order from higher up not to drive on dirt roads – entry to Adei Ad involves such a road,” residents said. “We told him that the IDF had the obligation to catch the shooter but he answered that he was unable to do it because of orders and procedures.”

Residents say that just two weeks ago, army forces came not far from Adei Ad in order to remove some small shacks and wreckage and the IDF vehicles traveled on the dirt road without any problems.

The IDF spokesman has still not responded to Arutz-7’s request for clarification.

This is nothing new, and the practice has even spread to other parts of the world, such as Australia, where police either couldn't or wouldn't do anything about Muslim gangs threatening Sydney residents.

The Likud's central commitee has approved what can certainly be helpful in the upcoming elections by enabling even rank-and-file voters to participate in choosing candidates for their list. From Israel National News:

The Likud Central Committee voted Wednesday evening to relinquish its power to choose the party's Knesset list. The Likud is the first Israeli party to choose its entire list via direct primaries.

Likud Party chairman Binyamin Netanyahu urged the 3,000 Central Committee members to approve the change - stripping them of the power to choose the party's MKs - in order to make the Likud a more democratic party. He stressed that the move would demonstrate to the country that the party now stands for accountability.

"The proposal I have put forward today is good for the Likud and also for all the parties," Netanyahu said. "I know that what I am asking of you is not simple. I know it is not easy. I know that many members have doubts, but I know that tonight you will display responsibility and will do the right thing for the Likud and for democracy and for the State of Israel."

And they did. It's a very good and interesting step to help curb political corruption and to display accountability to the voters. A most positive step in helping to make the political scene more impressive in Israel.

I was going to try and write about Amir Peretz's latest attempts to pretend that he's better than Ehud Olmert, but Israel Perspectives has done an even better job. From the ultra-leftist Haaretz, here's what Peretz said during a visit with Israeli residents of Judea and Samaria:

Labor Party Chairman Amir Peretz told settlers on Sunday that he would act for generous compensation and support by the state in exchange for voluntary evacuation of West Bank settlements...

"The time has come to treat settlers as human beings. They are the salt of the earth. We must build new towns and neighborhoods for them," Peretz said. "It's even worth giving the evacuees double the compensation, to prevent a confrontation and because it is an investment that pays itself off," he said.

Sigh. Poor Peretz. Like others of his now irrelevant Labor party, he too supports retreat, and little more. And let's not be fooled by his statement about building the people new neighborhoods and towns. With a record like his, it doesn't take much to figure out that he'd likely use it for his own greed-filled positions instead. And no, with all those other greedy guzzlers in the Labor party, some of whom are people with close connections to him when he was head of the Histadrut, I can't see him as willing to pay money to the Judean residents to compensate for the humiliation he'd most likely cause them as well.

So nope, I do not see Peretz as being any better than Olmert.

Similar questions could probably apply to their education curriculum as well, but anyway, here's something disturbing I found, about a case where a judge seems to have discriminated against a 17-year old rape victim who supposedly filed false rape charges. From The Oregonian on December 3, 2005:

BEAVERTON -- A municipal judge found a 19-year-old woman guilty Friday of filing a false police report after she said she was raped by three young men.

Even though the woman never said she lied or recanted her story, city prosecutors say they took the unusual step of filing charges against her because of the seriousness of her accusations.

The woman's attorney and advocates for rape victims say the prosecution sets a dangerous precedent and could discourage others from reporting sexual assaults.

"This will have a huge chilling effect on men and women across the board," said Erin Ellis, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource Center in Washington County. "We're sliding backwards."

After a day-and-a-half trial, Municipal Judge Peter A. Ackerman on Friday convicted the woman of filing a false police report, a class-C misdemeanor. Ackerman explained his decision, saying there were many inconsistencies in the stories of the four, but that he found the young men to be more credible. He also said he relied on the testimony of a Beaverton police detective and the woman's friends who said she did not act traumatized in the days following the incident.

The woman's lawyer, Jeff Napoli, said he plans to appeal the case to Washington County Circuit Court, where a new trial would be held.

And I should hope that there will indeed be a retrial for this case. Because it does seem to me to be a case of pro-male bias. This blogger, Kevin Hayden of The American Street, knew the victim and attended the trial. On the prosecutor at the trial, most troublingly enough, he says that:

It was especially interesting that the prosecutor kept referring to the three men involved as ‘boys’, when they were fully grown men. The woman was 17.

The judge found inconsistencies in all of the stories, thus establishing reasonable doubt in every story. Yet he convicted the victim. ‘Boys’ will be ‘boys’.

I would assume from this that the prosecutor was acting as if the violators were also 17 years old, just like the girl was too at the time.

Shakespeare's Sister, who makes some additional points about the case, also notes something about Oregon itself:

As it is, only 10% of victims of sex crimes in Oregon file reports with police.

And when seeing how it's possible that the judge used the fact that the victim's mother was an alcoholic with problems with prescription drugs, and whose own boyfriend was in prison for an attack on his own daughter, as an excuse to villify her, one can only wonder if Oregon's justice system is corrupt.

Once Upon a Time also notes (the exact topic is no longer available; I had to get the paragraph via Outside the Beltway, and I can't even say that I agree with what OTB's got to say!):

I think the ultimate root is the prevailing view of women that still dominates and saturates every aspect of our culture: that, in essence, women are the root of all evil. [...] The central point is simple: with regard to evil in the world, in all its manifestations and no matter what the evidence might suggest about other causes, women are the ultimate source of all evil. All of it, bar none.

When you consider that throughout history and into our own time, men have held all the positions of power and that men, and only men, control all major events, one might well wonder why men are so fragile and insecure that they cannot bear even to contemplate that anything might be their own fault. But no matter what happens, it is never their fault. It's always someone else's. If no other man is available to take the blame, then pick a woman -- any woman. They're inherently evil, so they can fit any bill of particulars.

Foot before Foot notes that this could be a politicized case. And in the case of Oregon, it should be noted that there, the judges are appointed by the city councils, which could also be part of the problem: if the councils are corrupt, could that also have what to do with the outcome of the trial?

The Heretik's got a roundup of some more discussions of the case.

There's also the state assisted suicide law, which, if it was approved by the state's electorate, disturbs me as well. More from NA Heath:

Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act was originally enacted in 1994 and was the U.S.'s first law authorizing physician assisted suicide. It allows physicians to prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances to terminally ill residents for the sole purpose of terminating life. This law established certain procedures to help protect vulnerable patients and ensure that their decisions were voluntary and informed. Oregon voters reaffirmed their support for the Death with Dignity Act on November 4, 1997, by defeating a ballot measure that sought to repeal the law.

Shortly after Oregon passed this law, several Congressmen, including then Senator John Ashcroft, urged then Attorney General Janet Reno to declare that physician assisted suicide violated the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). She declined to do so. On November 9, 2001 when John Ashcroft was appointed Attorney General, he reversed the position of his predecessor and issued the “Ashcroft Directive,” declaring that physician assisted suicide serves no "legitimate medical purpose" under DEA regulations. This directive made it unlawful for a physician to prescribe medications for assisted suicide and for a pharmacist to knowingly dispense medications for that purpose.

Be it far from me to judge, but Oregon doesn't sound like a place I'd like to visit if the people who live there are actually going to do something so creepy, by supporting a law like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure not every citizen there is a one-dimensional monster, and I did once know a guy from Portland via an old website I once read who was a very respectable Lutheran Protestant. However, I also once knew another Portlander on another website who was, and certainly turned out to be, a very obnoxious, racist moonbat. The Oregonian I speak of also suffered what seems to be a problem with a lot of moonbats, that he acted like a perfect genius, was very uppity, and even worst of all, in the case of the moonbat I speak of, he descended into bigotry denial in an argument we were once having. (I later discovered him on still another website showing support for a sexist book; he seemed very enthusiastic in whatever he said in relation to the discussion.)

And bringing up that Oregon moonbat there, I have to wonder if he was a product of the very same educational upbringing that seems to have bred some misogynists and suicide supporters in Oregon. Mind you, I'm not saying that such moonbats illustrate the entire state, but even so, when seeing the works of a few bloggers who were from Oregon, one whom I recall was supporting the lies being told by the left about where the government was going to drill for oil in Alaska, I'm left wondering if Oregon is plagued by the germ of moonbattery.

My point? It's that IMO, something is going to have to be done about the law and educational curriculum in Oregon before the state's citizens end up being damaged by corrupt lawmakers with no respect for women or human life either.

Labels: misogyny

Michelle Malkin's got three topics that show even more why we should not do business with Dubai: they're against free speech and opinion within their country, including hers, another blogger's, and ours. As a correspondent to her from the UAE informed, the UAE government-owned ISP, which controls all access, has banned her site from their servers (Tim Worstall also got a letter confirming that). Then, the BoingBoing website got banned, and shows that there's a special screen picture displayed on the UAE's servers that tells that the site is blocked (see also this topic, for how to get around some of these problems). Then, there's - who else? - Jews who aren't allowed to enter the country (via Fifth Virginia and also One Jerusalem):

"Yes, of course the boycott is still in place and is still enforced," Muhammad Rashid a-Din, a staff member of the Dubai Customs Department's Office for the Boycott of Israel, told the Post in a telephone interview.

"If a product contained even some components that were made in Israel, and you wanted to import it to Dubai, it would be a problem," he said.

A-Din noted that while the head office for the anti-Israel boycott sits in Damascus, he and his fellow staff members are paid employees of the Dubai Customs Department, which is a division of the PCZC, the same Dubai government-owned entity that runs Dubai Ports World.

Moreover, the Post found that the website for Dubai's Jebel Ali Free Zone Area, which is also part of the PCZC, advises importers that they will need to comply with the terms of the boycott.

In a section entitled "Frequently Asked Questions", the site lists six documents that are required in order to clear an item through the Dubai Customs Department. One of them, called a "Certificate of Origin," "is used by customs to confirm the country of origin and needs to be seen by the office which ensures any trade boycotts are enforced," according to the website.

A-Din of the Israel boycott office confirmed that his office examines certificates of origin as a means of verifying whether a product originated in the Jewish state.

On at least three separate occasions last year, the Post has learned, companies were fined by the US government's Office of Anti-boycott Compliance, an arm of the Commerce Department, on charges connected to boycott-related requests they had received from the Government of Dubai.

US law bars firms from complying with such requests or cooperating with attempts by Arab governments to boycott Israel.

Now if the UAE and also Saudi Arabia are going to forbid Jewish businesses, products and even physical entry, then, as Fifth Virginia asks:

If the deal goes forward, isn't the Bush administration violating a US law?

Yes, why is the Dubya administration keeping on with defending the deal?

CBS News reports that 70 percent of US citizens oppose the port deal:

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that now it turns out the Coast Guard had concerns about the ports deal, a disclosure that is no doubt troubling to a president who assured Americans there was no security risk from the deal.

The troubling results for the Bush administration come amid reminders about the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina and negative assessments of how the government and the president have handled it for six months.

In a separate poll, two out of three Americans said they do not think President Bush has responded adequately to the needs of Katrina victims. Only 32 percent approve of the way President Bush is responding to those needs, a drop of 12 points from last September’s poll, taken just two weeks after the storm made landfall.

Well if Bush is going to allow any funding to go to the PLO, as the State Dept reportedly told their officials, or even Sweden's government is going to (both links via IRIS Blog), which is clearly spiting its own citizens in Scandanavia, then is it any wonder that Americans would be let down? That money should be going to Katrina victims, and NOT to terrorists.

The American Spectator finds that the UAE's even allowed narcoterrorists to go free from jail.

And yet, despite these telling details which show that the UAE is a terrorist supporter and free speech suppressor, Dubya is still going along and defending it when he doesn't have to.

It should also be noted that the government did not do any of this publicly, which would've allowed the US public to judge for themselves, and that too should show why the port deal is a bad idea. Don't be fooled by the argument of one of Dubai Port World's knee-jerk officials, who argued that the deal "poses no threat to national security." If he said otherwise, it's quite possible that he'd lose his job, and it's possible that DPW may have ordered their US employee to defend the deal fully.

There was also another citizen murdered in Samaria. From Israel National News:

Two Arab terrorists murdered gas station attendant near Migdalim, in the western Jordan Valley. Two hours later, another Israeli was critically wounded in Samaria, east of Herzliya.

The first attack occurred shortly after noon. The two terrorists arrived on foot at the gas station, and began shooting. The victim, 48-year-old Eldad Abir, died of his wounds shortly afterwards. Abir leaves a wife and two kids, the younger one three years old.

The same road was the scene of large-scale stoning attacks Tuesday.

In another attack, an Israeli was shot in the neck near the entrance to Nebi Alias, east of Kfar Saba. The Arabs shot from a passing vehicle. A Magen David Adom team rushed to the scene, and the seriously-wounded victim was treated at the site.

In Migdalim, emergency medical teams hurried to the scene, and security forces began to comb the area for the terrorists. A helicopter took to the air, and roadblocks have been set up in the area.

Read the rest, and you'll see that there have been at least two more incidents involving knives going on as well.

There have also been more kassam rocket attacks recently, one aimed at the west end of the Negev, and another at the north end. And still more were launched as well in the past two days, one at Netiv Ha'Asarah, and three on March 2.

A dozen bold intellectuals have put together an important document that speaks out against Islamic totalitarianism, published in the Jyllands-Posten (Hat tip: Michelle Malkin):

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values. This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man's domination of woman, the Islamists' domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject cultural relativism, which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of "Islamophobia", an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.

Now this is what I call having guts. Two of the brave folks on board include Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

Danish blogger Agora reports that the French paper Charlie Hebdo's published it today, and is urging others to do the same in solidarity with freedom of speech. I fully agree, especially after reading this article from The UK Times (via IBA), that tells how badly free speech is in danger in places like Holland, and even Britain (and angeringly enough, it seems that Oriana Fallaci is to stand trial in a lawsuit for one of her latest books). We can't let the political dhimmis silence us to appease savages. So let's all take a stand for the sake of free speech.

Also available at Basil's Blog, Don Surber, Jo's Cafe, Third World County. Others standing bravely with free speech include No-Pasaran, Stockholm Spectator, Johan Norberg, Israpundit, The Jawa Report, All Things Beautiful, bRight & Early, Vince Aut Morire, House of the Dog, Atlas Shrugs, Deep Keel, A Tic in the Mind's Eye, Small Town Veteran, Anti-Corn Law League, Slapstick Politics, Eureka Iron Works, Fullosseous Flap's Dental Blog, Stop the ACLU, Tipping Points, Blue Star Chronicles, A Blog for All, Super Fun Power Hour, Wizbang, Sensible Mom, Simi Valley Sophist, Stuck on Stupid, The Dread Pundit Bluto, Urban Grounds, Political Pitt Bull, The Bodie Specter, Fish Taco Stand, Scipio the Metalcon, Canadian Sentinel, JunkYardBlog (plus, another one), Davids Mediankritik, Don Singleton, David Boyd, Protein Wisdom, Ace of Spades, Literal Barrage, Common Folk Using Common Sense, Outside the Beltway.

Labels: islam

Tim Blair reminds us of the time when a gang of Hanafi Muslims invaded the Bnai Brit offices in Washington DC in 1977, one of their demands being that the movie, "Mohammed, Messenger of God", not be screened for US audiences. In the time that Islamists are rioting over some mere cartoons, it's certainly surprising that this tragedy hasn't been recalled more widely.