Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Terrorism. Show all posts
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Monday, May 2, 2011
Bin Laden: DEAD
Congrats to our military for delivering ultimate justice to that POS.
Enjoy this video:
Friday, November 19, 2010
Coercion is not Torture - Ghalani trial / verdict
Andy McCarthy has a bunch of good commentary @AndrewCMcCarthy :
Coercion Is Not Torture... http://tinyurl.com/29a4he5
One More on Ghailani: Mr. President, Stop Blaming Bush-- http://tinyurl.com/24pjaje
Ghailani: Why 285 Counts? http://tinyurl.com/2eueoqf
Ghailani and Inconsistent Verdicts-- http://tinyurl.com/2ewcj3b
Talking Ghailani at the NYTimes-- http://tinyurl.com/2d9camp
Justice Was Not Done-- http://tinyurl.com/2fml3bj
Obama Caves on Civilian Trial for KSM-- http://tinyurl.com/285xp4y
A Compromise Verdict, and No Winners-- http://tinyurl.com/24bjbex
Coercion Is Not Torture... http://tinyurl.com/29a4he5
One More on Ghailani: Mr. President, Stop Blaming Bush-- http://tinyurl.com/24pjaje
Ghailani: Why 285 Counts? http://tinyurl.com/2eueoqf
Ghailani and Inconsistent Verdicts-- http://tinyurl.com/2ewcj3b
Talking Ghailani at the NYTimes-- http://tinyurl.com/2d9camp
Justice Was Not Done-- http://tinyurl.com/2fml3bj
Obama Caves on Civilian Trial for KSM-- http://tinyurl.com/285xp4y
A Compromise Verdict, and No Winners-- http://tinyurl.com/24bjbex
Don't Touch My Junk !
November 19, 2010
Don’t Touch My Junk
Charles Krauthammer
The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy.
Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who’s ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube — where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a “flotation device” — has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac, and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French garrison in Brazzaville has a stroll on the tarmac thrilled so many.
Who cares that the crazed steward got arrested, pleaded guilty to sundry charges, and probably was a rude, unpleasant S.O.B to begin with? Bonnie and Clyde were psychopaths, yet what child of the ’60s did not fall in love with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty?
And now three months later, the newest airport hero arrives. His genius was not innovation in getting out, but deconstructing the entire process of getting in. John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him the benefit of Homeland Security’s newest brainstorm — the upgraded, full-palm, up-the-groin, all-body pat-down. In a stroke, the young man ascended to myth, or at least the next edition of Bartlett’s, warning the agent not to “touch my junk.”
Not quite the 18th-century elegance of “Don’t Tread on Me,” but the age of Twitter has a different cadence from the age of the musket. What the modern battle cry lacks in archaic charm, it makes up for in full-body syllabic punch.
Don’t touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm-election voter. Don’t touch my junk, Obamacare — get out of my doctor’s examining room; I’m wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don’t touch my junk, Google — Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don’t touch my junk, you airport-security goon — my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I’m a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?
In Up in the Air, that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line:
“They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love ’em.”
“That’s racist!”
“I’m like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster.”
That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; three-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives, when everyone — everyone — knows that none of these people is a threat.
We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to assure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety — 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals, and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling — when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable, and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.
The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.
But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else?
This time you have gone too far, Big Bro’. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time, and try my patience. But don’t touch my junk.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 the Washington Post Writers Group.
Don’t Shoot the Groper
November 19, 2010
By Mark Krikorian
Krauthammer’s “Don’t Touch My Junk” column is outstanding and I think he’s right that Americans’ tolerance for indignity to avoid the unthinkable prospect of profiling is exhausted. But I’m afraid some people are directing their anger at the wrong target. Ron Paul, for instance, has introduced legislation to remove TSA employees’ immunity from prosecution and arrest them for assault. Kick the Bureaucrat is a game conservatives love to play, and sometimes it’s justified, but this time it isn’t. The problem is the policy that the White House and its minions have instructed their subordinates in the civil service to carry out. And it’s not just the Obama folks; Bush insisted on this non-profiling approach, and Republicans ran Congress for four years after 9/11 and supinely permitted it.
I just heard Ann Coulter make this very point today, at David Horowitz’s shindig in Palm Beach (hey, a third-stringer like me can’t sneak onto the NR cruise, but this is a pretty good alternative!). Anyway, Ann said that the TSA people are actually big fans of hers, but they’ve been told to follow certain procedures, so what are they supposed to do? (She also suggested that everyone being groped should make “sex noises,” like in the “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in When Harry Met Sally.) Ironically, Ann’s fan base in TSA is likely due to the Democrats’ insistence that the function not be outsourced to private firms; this has meant that the TSA screeners are overwhelmingly Americans, often former military — almost the only Americans working at the big airports I’ve been to.
We see the same “kick the bureaucrat” thing in immigration — whether it’s overwhelmed Border Patrol agents or inspectors, or visa officers and USCIS adjudicators told to ignore fraud, it’s the hapless schmo carrying out the ridiculous policies of his superiors who gets blamed. The fish rots from the head down, and that’s where our ire, and our policy changes, have to be focused.
Don’t Touch My Junk
Charles Krauthammer
The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy.
Ah, the airport, where modern folk heroes are made. The airport, where that inspired flight attendant did what everyone who’s ever been in the spam-in-a-can crush of a flying aluminum tube — where we collectively pretend that a clutch of peanuts is a meal and a seat cushion is a “flotation device” — has always dreamed of doing: pull the lever, blow the door, explode the chute, grab a beer, slide to the tarmac, and walk through the gates to the sanity that lies beyond. Not since Rick and Louis disappeared into the Casablanca fog headed for the Free French garrison in Brazzaville has a stroll on the tarmac thrilled so many.
Who cares that the crazed steward got arrested, pleaded guilty to sundry charges, and probably was a rude, unpleasant S.O.B to begin with? Bonnie and Clyde were psychopaths, yet what child of the ’60s did not fall in love with Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty?
And now three months later, the newest airport hero arrives. His genius was not innovation in getting out, but deconstructing the entire process of getting in. John Tyner, cleverly armed with an iPhone to give YouTube immortality to the encounter, took exception to the TSA guard about to give him the benefit of Homeland Security’s newest brainstorm — the upgraded, full-palm, up-the-groin, all-body pat-down. In a stroke, the young man ascended to myth, or at least the next edition of Bartlett’s, warning the agent not to “touch my junk.”
Not quite the 18th-century elegance of “Don’t Tread on Me,” but the age of Twitter has a different cadence from the age of the musket. What the modern battle cry lacks in archaic charm, it makes up for in full-body syllabic punch.
Don’t touch my junk is the anthem of the modern man, the Tea Party patriot, the late-life libertarian, the midterm-election voter. Don’t touch my junk, Obamacare — get out of my doctor’s examining room; I’m wearing a paper-thin gown slit down the back. Don’t touch my junk, Google — Street View is cool, but get off my street. Don’t touch my junk, you airport-security goon — my package belongs to no one but me, and do you really think I’m a Nigerian nut job preparing for my 72-virgin orgy by blowing my johnson to kingdom come?
In Up in the Air, that ironic take on the cramped freneticism of airport life, George Clooney explains why he always follows Asians in the security line:
“They pack light, travel efficiently, and they got a thing for slip-on shoes, God love ’em.”
“That’s racist!”
“I’m like my mother. I stereotype. It’s faster.”
That riff is a crowd-pleaser because everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; three-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives, when everyone — everyone — knows that none of these people is a threat.
We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to assure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety — 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals, and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling — when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable, and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.
The junk man’s revolt marks the point at which a docile public declares that it will tolerate only so much idiocy. Metal detector? Back-of-the-hand pat? Okay. We will swallow hard and pretend airline attackers are randomly distributed in the population.
But now you insist on a full-body scan, a fairly accurate representation of my naked image to be viewed by a total stranger? Or alternatively, the full-body pat-down, which, as the junk man correctly noted, would be sexual assault if performed by anyone else?
This time you have gone too far, Big Bro’. The sleeping giant awakes. Take my shoes, remove my belt, waste my time, and try my patience. But don’t touch my junk.
— Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist. © 2010 the Washington Post Writers Group.
Don’t Shoot the Groper
November 19, 2010
By Mark Krikorian
Krauthammer’s “Don’t Touch My Junk” column is outstanding and I think he’s right that Americans’ tolerance for indignity to avoid the unthinkable prospect of profiling is exhausted. But I’m afraid some people are directing their anger at the wrong target. Ron Paul, for instance, has introduced legislation to remove TSA employees’ immunity from prosecution and arrest them for assault. Kick the Bureaucrat is a game conservatives love to play, and sometimes it’s justified, but this time it isn’t. The problem is the policy that the White House and its minions have instructed their subordinates in the civil service to carry out. And it’s not just the Obama folks; Bush insisted on this non-profiling approach, and Republicans ran Congress for four years after 9/11 and supinely permitted it.
I just heard Ann Coulter make this very point today, at David Horowitz’s shindig in Palm Beach (hey, a third-stringer like me can’t sneak onto the NR cruise, but this is a pretty good alternative!). Anyway, Ann said that the TSA people are actually big fans of hers, but they’ve been told to follow certain procedures, so what are they supposed to do? (She also suggested that everyone being groped should make “sex noises,” like in the “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in When Harry Met Sally.) Ironically, Ann’s fan base in TSA is likely due to the Democrats’ insistence that the function not be outsourced to private firms; this has meant that the TSA screeners are overwhelmingly Americans, often former military — almost the only Americans working at the big airports I’ve been to.
We see the same “kick the bureaucrat” thing in immigration — whether it’s overwhelmed Border Patrol agents or inspectors, or visa officers and USCIS adjudicators told to ignore fraud, it’s the hapless schmo carrying out the ridiculous policies of his superiors who gets blamed. The fish rots from the head down, and that’s where our ire, and our policy changes, have to be focused.
Monday, November 1, 2010
National Security in the aftermath of UPS ...
Obama's Foreign Policy & National Security Policies can best be described as Amateur Hour.
Time to Rethink Our National-Security Policies
November 1, 2010
By Victor Davis Hanson
If it is true that the State Department, in adolescent fashion, tweeted a birthday message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his 54th, and if it is true that the man believed to be responsible for the latest bomb plot, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, was behind or at least associated with the Christmas Day bomber, then some very real questions arise as to the sanity of our current policies. Evidently, the terrorists are getting a much different message than the one the Obama administration intended to send.
The list goes on and on: the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, the bowing, the euphemisms (“man-caused disasters,” “overseas contingency operations”), the president’s use of “enemies” for Americans rather than radical Islamists, the KSM trial gambit, the constant trashing of the Bush administration by John Brennan and others, Muslim outreach at NASA, the demonization of Guantanamo and the subsequent retreat from insistence on its closure, the criminalization of acts of war . . .
These actions have not deterred would-be terrorists intent on blowing up airplanes, Times Square, or U.S. service personnel. Moreover, they may be sending the message that we are less confident now that radical Islam is something that needs to be defeated and crushed. We surely didn’t get that sense of outrage last Christmas when the president characterized Abdulmuttalab’s foiled attempt with the legalistic adverb “allegedly.”
A leader who has promised to wipe out Israel — and is proceeding to find the means to do so — will not be flattered by a Twitter message. He can only have contempt for our frivolity and appeasement. Had Abdulmutallab immediately been arrested last Christmas as an enemy combatant (a phrase that has also been Trotskyized in the last 21 months) and promptly sent for interrogation at Guantanamo, would he have enlightened us about the nature of his bomb maker, and would that inquiry have led to some increased defense against Asiri’s handiwork? Would Asiri have gotten as far as he did in his latest terrorist attempt? This is not partisan inquiry, but legitimate questioning of the national-security policies that affect us all.
It is past time to cool the “reset button” rhetoric and get back to the serious business of protecting American lives against radical Islamic terrorists. As we have seen the last two years, they will step up their efforts to kill us until they accept that doing so is synonymous with their own destruction.
Amateur Hour at the State Department
November 1, 2010 12:56 P.M.
By Claire Berlinski
Denise recently asked whether Obama has put a “kick me” sign on our backs. I have a few thoughts about this.
I recently interviewed Turkey’s former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled — like many in Turkey — by the soft-headedness of the Obama administration’s diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama’s speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. “Obama can’t play the religious game,” he said. “He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism.”
It’s not merely the ideological color of the Obama administration’s diplomacy that worries me, but its incompetence. I’ve lately been examining in very close detail the events that led to Turkey’s “No” vote on the Iran sanctions package in the UN. I’ll be writing about this elsewhere, and the details are too complicated to summarize here. But one thing leaps out: our incompetence. How could there have been any ambiguity — and obviously there was — in our communication with Turkey about our negotiating position on the nuclear-fuel-swap deal? How is it possible that Turkey was receiving critically different messages from the White House and the State Department on an issue as significant as the Iranian nuclear program, for God’s sake? It’s inconceivable, but on looking closely at the evidence, it is clear that this is just what happened.
When the State Department spokesman sends a completely inappropriate birthday message to to Ahmadinejad via Twitter, it is, likewise, a symptom of utter amateurism. Apologists for this incident have suggested to me that this wasn’t such a big deal; it was sarcastic, they say, and it wasn’t a diplomatic note or official communiqué. I am guessing that had that Tweet said, “Tomorrow we bomb Iran into rubble,” the same people would have thought it quite a big deal indeed.
It is hugely significant when the tone coming out of the State Department is childish, inappropriate, and supine; it is fundamentally unserious to put such a message on Twitter; and it is beyond belief that anyone there would think “sarcasm” about this situation — we are talking about kidnapped U.S. citizens who are being held hostage in Iran — conveys American resolve. Signaling counts. Signaling that you are damned serious does not start wars, it prevents them.
Time to Rethink Our National-Security Policies
November 1, 2010
By Victor Davis Hanson
If it is true that the State Department, in adolescent fashion, tweeted a birthday message to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his 54th, and if it is true that the man believed to be responsible for the latest bomb plot, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, was behind or at least associated with the Christmas Day bomber, then some very real questions arise as to the sanity of our current policies. Evidently, the terrorists are getting a much different message than the one the Obama administration intended to send.
The list goes on and on: the al-Arabiya interview, the Cairo speech, the bowing, the euphemisms (“man-caused disasters,” “overseas contingency operations”), the president’s use of “enemies” for Americans rather than radical Islamists, the KSM trial gambit, the constant trashing of the Bush administration by John Brennan and others, Muslim outreach at NASA, the demonization of Guantanamo and the subsequent retreat from insistence on its closure, the criminalization of acts of war . . .
These actions have not deterred would-be terrorists intent on blowing up airplanes, Times Square, or U.S. service personnel. Moreover, they may be sending the message that we are less confident now that radical Islam is something that needs to be defeated and crushed. We surely didn’t get that sense of outrage last Christmas when the president characterized Abdulmuttalab’s foiled attempt with the legalistic adverb “allegedly.”
A leader who has promised to wipe out Israel — and is proceeding to find the means to do so — will not be flattered by a Twitter message. He can only have contempt for our frivolity and appeasement. Had Abdulmutallab immediately been arrested last Christmas as an enemy combatant (a phrase that has also been Trotskyized in the last 21 months) and promptly sent for interrogation at Guantanamo, would he have enlightened us about the nature of his bomb maker, and would that inquiry have led to some increased defense against Asiri’s handiwork? Would Asiri have gotten as far as he did in his latest terrorist attempt? This is not partisan inquiry, but legitimate questioning of the national-security policies that affect us all.
It is past time to cool the “reset button” rhetoric and get back to the serious business of protecting American lives against radical Islamic terrorists. As we have seen the last two years, they will step up their efforts to kill us until they accept that doing so is synonymous with their own destruction.
Amateur Hour at the State Department
November 1, 2010 12:56 P.M.
By Claire Berlinski
Denise recently asked whether Obama has put a “kick me” sign on our backs. I have a few thoughts about this.
I recently interviewed Turkey’s former ambassador to the United States, Faruk Loğoğlu. He is appalled — like many in Turkey — by the soft-headedness of the Obama administration’s diplomacy in this region. He finds Obama’s speeches about his personal warmth toward Islam ludicrous and inappropriate. “Obama can’t play the religious game,” he said. “He should be playing the security game. His policy toward Turkey is a bad imitation of the worst parts of Orientalism.”
It’s not merely the ideological color of the Obama administration’s diplomacy that worries me, but its incompetence. I’ve lately been examining in very close detail the events that led to Turkey’s “No” vote on the Iran sanctions package in the UN. I’ll be writing about this elsewhere, and the details are too complicated to summarize here. But one thing leaps out: our incompetence. How could there have been any ambiguity — and obviously there was — in our communication with Turkey about our negotiating position on the nuclear-fuel-swap deal? How is it possible that Turkey was receiving critically different messages from the White House and the State Department on an issue as significant as the Iranian nuclear program, for God’s sake? It’s inconceivable, but on looking closely at the evidence, it is clear that this is just what happened.
When the State Department spokesman sends a completely inappropriate birthday message to to Ahmadinejad via Twitter, it is, likewise, a symptom of utter amateurism. Apologists for this incident have suggested to me that this wasn’t such a big deal; it was sarcastic, they say, and it wasn’t a diplomatic note or official communiqué. I am guessing that had that Tweet said, “Tomorrow we bomb Iran into rubble,” the same people would have thought it quite a big deal indeed.
It is hugely significant when the tone coming out of the State Department is childish, inappropriate, and supine; it is fundamentally unserious to put such a message on Twitter; and it is beyond belief that anyone there would think “sarcasm” about this situation — we are talking about kidnapped U.S. citizens who are being held hostage in Iran — conveys American resolve. Signaling counts. Signaling that you are damned serious does not start wars, it prevents them.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Wishful Thinking about Jihadists and Radical Islam
Andy McCarthy nails it once again:
“Defensive” Jihad Is In the Eye of the Beholder
October 5, 2010 6:04 P.M.
By Andy McCarthy
As Dan reported here earlier, would-be Times Square bomber Feisal Shahzad was sentenced to life-imprisonment earlier today. Defiant and remorseless to the end, Shahzad made a number of chilling statements, but the most interesting moment came when Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asked him — in a “you can’t possibly be serious” sort of way — whether he really believed the Koran wanted him to kill innocent people. “The Koran gives you the right to defend,” he replied, adding, ”That’s all I’m doing.”
It would be nice if Western apologists for Islam and its sharia law would listen to that — even if the Saudis do pay them handsomely to turn a deaf ear. We constantly hear that the “true” jihad is really an internal personal struggle to become a better person (although the more honest apologists concede that this is a modern, revisionist construction that would have been rejected by Islam’s most renowned and respected scholars). To maintain some semblance of credibility, these Islamophiles concede, through clenched teeth, that while there exists a violent interpretation of Islam, it is a relic whose only conceivable legitimate invocation is in “defense” — i.e., when Islam is under attack. Thus, the argument goes, we needn’t concern ourselves with it.
Since I wrote my last book, The Grand Jihad, and participated in the recently released “Team B-II” study called “Sharia: The Threat to America,” I’ve heard a good deal of criticism along the lines of “Sharia doesn’t really say what he claims it says,” or “Some scholars offer a different, moderate interpretation,” etc. I humbly submit that this misses the point. I went out of my way in the book, and in the introduction to the study, to make clear that I do not presume (nor do my colleagues presume in the study) to pronounce on what the “true” Islam says, or on whether there even is a true Islam. Wholly apart from any jihad against the West, Muslims have been killing each other for 14 centuries, and most of the internecine warfare is over competing scriptural interpretations and claims of apostasy (a capital offense in Islam, according to the most authoritative sharia authorities). Obviously, there is plenty of internal Islamic controversy over what Islam and its law truly stand for. Americans should be very wary of people who claim to know, however well-meaning they may seem.
The point is that, whether they are right or wrong, there are millions upon millions of Muslims who believe exactly what Shahzad believes about the nature of jihad and the demands of sharia. It is of no moment to them that we do not see ourselves as at war with Islam, or that we see the victims of terrorism as “innocent.” They see things as Shahzad sees them, even if they are not willing to go the next step of commiting acts of terrorism, as Shahzad is.
From the perspective of American national security, it does not matter if those Muslims are wrong about Islam. What matters is that there are a lot of them and they constitute a mainstream current of Islamic thought. They have the support of influential Islamic scholars who tell them Islam is under siege, and they don’t care in the slightest whether Western intellectuals (at whom they scoff) or Muslim reformers (whom they regard as apostates) think they have interpreted Islam incorrectly.
Eventually there will be another Shahzad, a competent one. When he strikes, it won’t do much for our security to hear a President, a federal judge, a Homeland Security Secretary, an Attorney General, and a bunch of academics from Harvard and Georgetown tell us that a bad “extremist” has “perverted” or “hijacked” the “true Islam.” High-minded wishful thinking about how tiny the threat to us is won’t actually make it tiny.
“Defensive” Jihad Is In the Eye of the Beholder
October 5, 2010 6:04 P.M.
By Andy McCarthy
As Dan reported here earlier, would-be Times Square bomber Feisal Shahzad was sentenced to life-imprisonment earlier today. Defiant and remorseless to the end, Shahzad made a number of chilling statements, but the most interesting moment came when Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum asked him — in a “you can’t possibly be serious” sort of way — whether he really believed the Koran wanted him to kill innocent people. “The Koran gives you the right to defend,” he replied, adding, ”That’s all I’m doing.”
It would be nice if Western apologists for Islam and its sharia law would listen to that — even if the Saudis do pay them handsomely to turn a deaf ear. We constantly hear that the “true” jihad is really an internal personal struggle to become a better person (although the more honest apologists concede that this is a modern, revisionist construction that would have been rejected by Islam’s most renowned and respected scholars). To maintain some semblance of credibility, these Islamophiles concede, through clenched teeth, that while there exists a violent interpretation of Islam, it is a relic whose only conceivable legitimate invocation is in “defense” — i.e., when Islam is under attack. Thus, the argument goes, we needn’t concern ourselves with it.
Since I wrote my last book, The Grand Jihad, and participated in the recently released “Team B-II” study called “Sharia: The Threat to America,” I’ve heard a good deal of criticism along the lines of “Sharia doesn’t really say what he claims it says,” or “Some scholars offer a different, moderate interpretation,” etc. I humbly submit that this misses the point. I went out of my way in the book, and in the introduction to the study, to make clear that I do not presume (nor do my colleagues presume in the study) to pronounce on what the “true” Islam says, or on whether there even is a true Islam. Wholly apart from any jihad against the West, Muslims have been killing each other for 14 centuries, and most of the internecine warfare is over competing scriptural interpretations and claims of apostasy (a capital offense in Islam, according to the most authoritative sharia authorities). Obviously, there is plenty of internal Islamic controversy over what Islam and its law truly stand for. Americans should be very wary of people who claim to know, however well-meaning they may seem.
The point is that, whether they are right or wrong, there are millions upon millions of Muslims who believe exactly what Shahzad believes about the nature of jihad and the demands of sharia. It is of no moment to them that we do not see ourselves as at war with Islam, or that we see the victims of terrorism as “innocent.” They see things as Shahzad sees them, even if they are not willing to go the next step of commiting acts of terrorism, as Shahzad is.
From the perspective of American national security, it does not matter if those Muslims are wrong about Islam. What matters is that there are a lot of them and they constitute a mainstream current of Islamic thought. They have the support of influential Islamic scholars who tell them Islam is under siege, and they don’t care in the slightest whether Western intellectuals (at whom they scoff) or Muslim reformers (whom they regard as apostates) think they have interpreted Islam incorrectly.
Eventually there will be another Shahzad, a competent one. When he strikes, it won’t do much for our security to hear a President, a federal judge, a Homeland Security Secretary, an Attorney General, and a bunch of academics from Harvard and Georgetown tell us that a bad “extremist” has “perverted” or “hijacked” the “true Islam.” High-minded wishful thinking about how tiny the threat to us is won’t actually make it tiny.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Obama's Terrifying, Blase views on Terrorism
Bob Woodward has a new book.
Barrack Obama has some scary, downright idiotic comments attributed to him.
I guess we should not be surprised.
Read on ....
Obama’s Non-Wars
September 22, 2010
By Victor Davis Hanson
I have not read Obama’s Wars. I am not a fan of Bob Woodward’s methodology of using almost exclusively unnamed sources, which, on one hand, encourages concerned players to be preemptive and get their one-sided stories out as “background” or face slander from others who beat them to the punch, and on the other hand, reports thoughts and unspoken impressions in the manner of a novelist.
That said, the initial reports from the book reveal two very disturbing presidential admissions that, if true, Robert Gibbs should quickly address: Obama’s purported toss-off that the U.S. could absorb another 9/11-like terrorist attack (a very callous and cruel editorial about the 3,000 who were so savagely killed and are no longer with us), and his studied avoidance of any notion of “victory” (as in, How quaint) in Afghanistan.
If these are accurate admissions, then we all better pray for salvation, because we won’t find it from the White House. The entire post-9/11 national-security doctrine was to be offensively minded, and to fight terror abroad rather than merely react to it serially at home. Afghanistan may be messy, confused, and non-traditional, but “victory” is no construct; it is a timeless military reality of making an enemy concede through force and diplomacy to your political objectives — in this case, a stable consensual government in Kabul, and the Taliban and its terrorist allies denied the use of Afghan soil to launch further attacks on Western interests. If Obama does not believe such a victory is possible, then he should not ask American youth to die in the next year as he finds a politically expedient method to back out of the theater.
When all this is collated with the arbitrary withdrawal dates, the McChrystal mess, the confusions and flip-flopping on everything from Guantanamo to the KSM trial, the plethora of regional czars at the expense of the secretary of state’s traditional portfolio, the weird remarks like “allegedly” after the Mutallab attempt, the deliberate distortions of the issues involved in the Ground Zero mosque, the Cairo speech myth-making, the initial al-Arabiya review, the silence after the Iranian protests last years, and much more — then we, our allies, and our enemies all get the impression that Obama is uninterested in national-security issues, resents the position that he is put in by a war against terror and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and seems to think that at some abstract level past American culpability has provoked radical Islamists to lash out, requiring us to absorb rather than preempt their blows.
This trumps even Carterism and is a prescription for national suicide.
Barrack Obama has some scary, downright idiotic comments attributed to him.
I guess we should not be surprised.
Read on ....
Obama’s Non-Wars
September 22, 2010
By Victor Davis Hanson
I have not read Obama’s Wars. I am not a fan of Bob Woodward’s methodology of using almost exclusively unnamed sources, which, on one hand, encourages concerned players to be preemptive and get their one-sided stories out as “background” or face slander from others who beat them to the punch, and on the other hand, reports thoughts and unspoken impressions in the manner of a novelist.
That said, the initial reports from the book reveal two very disturbing presidential admissions that, if true, Robert Gibbs should quickly address: Obama’s purported toss-off that the U.S. could absorb another 9/11-like terrorist attack (a very callous and cruel editorial about the 3,000 who were so savagely killed and are no longer with us), and his studied avoidance of any notion of “victory” (as in, How quaint) in Afghanistan.
If these are accurate admissions, then we all better pray for salvation, because we won’t find it from the White House. The entire post-9/11 national-security doctrine was to be offensively minded, and to fight terror abroad rather than merely react to it serially at home. Afghanistan may be messy, confused, and non-traditional, but “victory” is no construct; it is a timeless military reality of making an enemy concede through force and diplomacy to your political objectives — in this case, a stable consensual government in Kabul, and the Taliban and its terrorist allies denied the use of Afghan soil to launch further attacks on Western interests. If Obama does not believe such a victory is possible, then he should not ask American youth to die in the next year as he finds a politically expedient method to back out of the theater.
When all this is collated with the arbitrary withdrawal dates, the McChrystal mess, the confusions and flip-flopping on everything from Guantanamo to the KSM trial, the plethora of regional czars at the expense of the secretary of state’s traditional portfolio, the weird remarks like “allegedly” after the Mutallab attempt, the deliberate distortions of the issues involved in the Ground Zero mosque, the Cairo speech myth-making, the initial al-Arabiya review, the silence after the Iranian protests last years, and much more — then we, our allies, and our enemies all get the impression that Obama is uninterested in national-security issues, resents the position that he is put in by a war against terror and operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and seems to think that at some abstract level past American culpability has provoked radical Islamists to lash out, requiring us to absorb rather than preempt their blows.
This trumps even Carterism and is a prescription for national suicide.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Andy McCarthy on the Threat posed to the USA by Shariah
Shariah Threat Report Annoying All the Right People
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
One of the members of our “Team B” on the aforementioned report on the sharia threat is Patrick Poole, one of the country’s most informed authorities on the Muslim Brotherhood. He has an article at Human Events this morning about ruffled feathers at the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association.
What is the CMSA? As Patrick explains, it’s an internal Hill group organized to assure bipartisan congressional leadership that sharia and Islamist ideology are nothing to fret about. And why shouldn’t our top lawmakers listen to them? After all, CMSA is best known for its Friday services at the Capitol, for which the group brought in to lead prayers none other than Anwar al-Awlaki — the al Qaeda recruiter who ministered to the 9/11 hijackers, inspired the Fort Hood massacre, and may well have had a hand in the attempted Christmas bombing of a airplane in Detroit.
In one video clip of Awlaki leading prayers (the clip was unearthed by Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism), Patrick notes that we see Nihad Awad, a founder of CAIR (the infamous Muslim Brotherhood off-shoot identified by the Justice Department as an unindicted coconspirator in the recent Hamas financing case); Randall “Ismail” Royer, a CAIR official now serving a 20-year sentence after his terrorism conviction; and CMSA founder Jameel Alim Johnson, a one-time chief-of-staff to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., NY). (Johnson tried in 2007 to arrange an Islamic conference on the Hill that was cancelled by Congress’s sergeant-at-arms when it was determined that some of the Islamists on Johnson’s dance card were known to be on terrorist watch lists.)
The influence of the CMSA raises nary an eyebrow in the halls of government, yet a report suggesting that we might want to take a harder look at the ideology that fuels the threat against our nation is thought controversial. All the more reason why we need the report.
Sharia Report Press Conference
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
A YouTube of my opening remarks at yesterday’s press conference is posted here.
More on the Sharia Report
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
Family Security Matters has posted a very thorough synopsis of the “Team B” report on sharia, here.
Religion of Peace Alert: FBI Advises ‘Draw Muhammad’ Cartoonist to Disappear
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
Fox News reports that, at the urging of the FBI, Molly Norris, the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” cartoonist from Seattle, has gone into hiding and changed her name after being threatened with death for insulting Islam. Maybe he can hide at Justice Breyer’s house.
As I mentioned in Tuesday’s column, the Obama administration last year co-sponsored a UN resolution to encourage countries to enact laws that would make it illegal to criticize Islam. The president was on the “Repeal the First Amendment” bandwagon before the justice hopped aboard. But if top levels of government are going to signal that Islam should get special immunity, and states like New Jersey are going to follow suit by firing people from state jobs for criticizing Islam, the FBI better be prepared to reassign a few thousand agents to the new “We Can’t Protect You” division.
That Sharia Report
September 16, 2010
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Pete Hoekstra just issued a press release encouraging people to read it:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that a report released by the Center for Security Policy on Shariah provides a timely and important look at the seldom-covered threat posed by Shariah and radical Islam.
“The center’s ‘Team B II’ report provides a strong and detailed look at aspects of Shariah and the Caliphate and how radical jihadists are using violence as a means to achieve them,” Hoekstra said. “So many years after 9/11, there is still a lack of critical understanding of the motivating force behind radical Islam and the terrorists that attacked our nation that day. This lack of clarity begins at the top with the Obama administration that seems conflicted over whether we are engaged with a real threat to national security or dealing with a legal issue.”
The CSP report takes a close look at the Muslim Brotherhood and its ties to radical Islamist organizations abroad and in the United States, including CAIR, the Muslim Student’s Association, and the Holyland Foundation. The report also looks at how U.S. administrations have mishandled the threat from Shariah and radical Islam and makes clear that the federal government must take steps to address Shariah more urgently.
“I encourage my colleagues in Congress and citizens interested in learning more about Shariah to read this important report,” Hoekstra said. “Shariah runs counter to our longstanding American principles of freedom and liberty. The recent spate of terrorist attacks in our homeland, the increased persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the growing number of threats against individuals and property in response to perceived slights stem from a radical interpretation of Shariah and should be a cause for concern for all Americans.
“Our nation continues to sacrifice but fails to identify the threat as clearly as those countries closest to the source of the problem. They call it radical Islam, and we should learn to understand and speak as clearly about the problem. The ‘Team B II’ report is an excellent place to begin building that knowledge.”
CLICK HERE for a link to the report.
‘Shariah: The Threat to America’
September 16, 2010 7:21 A.M.
By Andy McCarthy
That’s the name of a report I’ve been working on for several months, along with a team of national security experts led by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, Generals Jerry Boykin and Ed Soyster, Claremont’s Brian Kennedy, and serveral other notables. The idea was to try to replicate the “Team B” of a generation ago, which questioned U.S. policy regarding the Soviet Union (particularly detente). It’s far from a perfect analogy — for one thing, we were not invited by the government to render a second opinion and consequently were not given access to classified information. But that’s not much of a hurdle. As I’ve argued in The Grand Jihad and Willful Blindness, the information Americans need to know is ready to hand — the problem is that people in the ruling class choose not to deal with it.
The report is now available at the CSP website, here. It’s about 180 pages long, but it starts with an executive summary, prefaced by an introduction I wrote with Director Woolsey and Gen. Soyster. (We turned the intro into an essay, published Wednesday by the Washington Times – as noted in the NRO web briefing). The ”Team B – II” report is also being published in segments at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace site. Frank just did his radio show (“Secure Freedom Radio”) on the report, featuring interviews with Gen. Boykin, me, and a couple of other members of the team, my friends Diana West and Steve Coughlin.
At a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon, we presented the report to three members of the House who have been stalwarts on the challenge posed by Islamist ideology, Trent Franks (R., AZ), Pete Hoekstra (R., MI) and Michele Bachmann (R., MN). You can find coverage at Fox, CBN, and by Connie Hair at Human Events.
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
One of the members of our “Team B” on the aforementioned report on the sharia threat is Patrick Poole, one of the country’s most informed authorities on the Muslim Brotherhood. He has an article at Human Events this morning about ruffled feathers at the Congressional Muslim Staffers Association.
What is the CMSA? As Patrick explains, it’s an internal Hill group organized to assure bipartisan congressional leadership that sharia and Islamist ideology are nothing to fret about. And why shouldn’t our top lawmakers listen to them? After all, CMSA is best known for its Friday services at the Capitol, for which the group brought in to lead prayers none other than Anwar al-Awlaki — the al Qaeda recruiter who ministered to the 9/11 hijackers, inspired the Fort Hood massacre, and may well have had a hand in the attempted Christmas bombing of a airplane in Detroit.
In one video clip of Awlaki leading prayers (the clip was unearthed by Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism), Patrick notes that we see Nihad Awad, a founder of CAIR (the infamous Muslim Brotherhood off-shoot identified by the Justice Department as an unindicted coconspirator in the recent Hamas financing case); Randall “Ismail” Royer, a CAIR official now serving a 20-year sentence after his terrorism conviction; and CMSA founder Jameel Alim Johnson, a one-time chief-of-staff to Rep. Gregory Meeks (D., NY). (Johnson tried in 2007 to arrange an Islamic conference on the Hill that was cancelled by Congress’s sergeant-at-arms when it was determined that some of the Islamists on Johnson’s dance card were known to be on terrorist watch lists.)
The influence of the CMSA raises nary an eyebrow in the halls of government, yet a report suggesting that we might want to take a harder look at the ideology that fuels the threat against our nation is thought controversial. All the more reason why we need the report.
Sharia Report Press Conference
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
A YouTube of my opening remarks at yesterday’s press conference is posted here.
More on the Sharia Report
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
Family Security Matters has posted a very thorough synopsis of the “Team B” report on sharia, here.
Religion of Peace Alert: FBI Advises ‘Draw Muhammad’ Cartoonist to Disappear
September 16, 2010
By Andy McCarthy
Fox News reports that, at the urging of the FBI, Molly Norris, the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” cartoonist from Seattle, has gone into hiding and changed her name after being threatened with death for insulting Islam. Maybe he can hide at Justice Breyer’s house.
As I mentioned in Tuesday’s column, the Obama administration last year co-sponsored a UN resolution to encourage countries to enact laws that would make it illegal to criticize Islam. The president was on the “Repeal the First Amendment” bandwagon before the justice hopped aboard. But if top levels of government are going to signal that Islam should get special immunity, and states like New Jersey are going to follow suit by firing people from state jobs for criticizing Islam, the FBI better be prepared to reassign a few thousand agents to the new “We Can’t Protect You” division.
That Sharia Report
September 16, 2010
By Kathryn Jean Lopez
Pete Hoekstra just issued a press release encouraging people to read it:
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said that a report released by the Center for Security Policy on Shariah provides a timely and important look at the seldom-covered threat posed by Shariah and radical Islam.
“The center’s ‘Team B II’ report provides a strong and detailed look at aspects of Shariah and the Caliphate and how radical jihadists are using violence as a means to achieve them,” Hoekstra said. “So many years after 9/11, there is still a lack of critical understanding of the motivating force behind radical Islam and the terrorists that attacked our nation that day. This lack of clarity begins at the top with the Obama administration that seems conflicted over whether we are engaged with a real threat to national security or dealing with a legal issue.”
The CSP report takes a close look at the Muslim Brotherhood and its ties to radical Islamist organizations abroad and in the United States, including CAIR, the Muslim Student’s Association, and the Holyland Foundation. The report also looks at how U.S. administrations have mishandled the threat from Shariah and radical Islam and makes clear that the federal government must take steps to address Shariah more urgently.
“I encourage my colleagues in Congress and citizens interested in learning more about Shariah to read this important report,” Hoekstra said. “Shariah runs counter to our longstanding American principles of freedom and liberty. The recent spate of terrorist attacks in our homeland, the increased persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the growing number of threats against individuals and property in response to perceived slights stem from a radical interpretation of Shariah and should be a cause for concern for all Americans.
“Our nation continues to sacrifice but fails to identify the threat as clearly as those countries closest to the source of the problem. They call it radical Islam, and we should learn to understand and speak as clearly about the problem. The ‘Team B II’ report is an excellent place to begin building that knowledge.”
CLICK HERE for a link to the report.
‘Shariah: The Threat to America’
September 16, 2010 7:21 A.M.
By Andy McCarthy
That’s the name of a report I’ve been working on for several months, along with a team of national security experts led by Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), former CIA Director Jim Woolsey, Generals Jerry Boykin and Ed Soyster, Claremont’s Brian Kennedy, and serveral other notables. The idea was to try to replicate the “Team B” of a generation ago, which questioned U.S. policy regarding the Soviet Union (particularly detente). It’s far from a perfect analogy — for one thing, we were not invited by the government to render a second opinion and consequently were not given access to classified information. But that’s not much of a hurdle. As I’ve argued in The Grand Jihad and Willful Blindness, the information Americans need to know is ready to hand — the problem is that people in the ruling class choose not to deal with it.
The report is now available at the CSP website, here. It’s about 180 pages long, but it starts with an executive summary, prefaced by an introduction I wrote with Director Woolsey and Gen. Soyster. (We turned the intro into an essay, published Wednesday by the Washington Times – as noted in the NRO web briefing). The ”Team B – II” report is also being published in segments at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Peace site. Frank just did his radio show (“Secure Freedom Radio”) on the report, featuring interviews with Gen. Boykin, me, and a couple of other members of the team, my friends Diana West and Steve Coughlin.
At a press conference on Capitol Hill yesterday afternoon, we presented the report to three members of the House who have been stalwarts on the challenge posed by Islamist ideology, Trent Franks (R., AZ), Pete Hoekstra (R., MI) and Michele Bachmann (R., MN). You can find coverage at Fox, CBN, and by Connie Hair at Human Events.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Nine Years Since 9/11
Remember.
and Read Clifford May.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245985/nine-years-9-11-clifford-d-may?page=1
and Read Clifford May.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245985/nine-years-9-11-clifford-d-may?page=1
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Great Piece by Cliff May on GZ Mosque, etc.
and how the media has the wrong focus / storyline.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244803/muslims-mainstream-media-madness-clifford-d-may?page=1
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/244803/muslims-mainstream-media-madness-clifford-d-may?page=1
Friday, August 20, 2010
Dumbass Judge in Somali Piracy Case
Judge: Somali Pirates Who Fired on U.S. Navy Are Not Really Pirates
August 20, 2010 7:16 PM
By Andy McCarthy
Putting federal judges in charge of national security — what could go wrong?
Federal judge Raymond A. Jackson has dismissed piracy charges against six Somali men who are alleged to have fired on U.S. naval warships on the Indian Ocean. Why? Because the attacks failed to ravage our vessels — indeed, they were captured and brought to Judge Jackson’s civilian court in Virginia. According to Judge Jackson (appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1993), to be prosecuted for piracy (under Section 1651 of the federal penal code), pirates have to succeed in carrying out a robbery on the high seas. If they try but we capture them, they can’t be charged.
Makes perfect sense, right?
The judge’s daylight to make mischief here is caused by Congress’s definition of piracy. Rather than spell out what sorts of acts (and attempts, and conspiracies) constitute piracy, Congress referred to “the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations.” The judge looked at a Supreme Court case from 1820 (United States v. Smith) that involved robbery on the high seas, in which the Court ruled that such a robbery fit the law of nations concept of piracy. But that doesn’t mean it was the only kind of forcible act that would fit the concept — much less that because those pirates happened to succeed, pirates who try but fail aren’t pirates.
The really galling thing here, though, is how politically willful the courts have become. When they want to create a new offense that is not actually recognized by American law, they claim to find it in … the law of nations. So, for example, the Ninth Circuit attempted a few years back to claim that “arbitrary arrest and detention” was actionable under its evolving understanding of this amorphous international law concept. But now attacks on international waters — which is one of the few matters for which there is any reason to have a “law of nations” — are not piracy.
Find the pearls of Judge Jackson’s wisdom at Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism.
August 20, 2010 7:16 PM
By Andy McCarthy
Putting federal judges in charge of national security — what could go wrong?
Federal judge Raymond A. Jackson has dismissed piracy charges against six Somali men who are alleged to have fired on U.S. naval warships on the Indian Ocean. Why? Because the attacks failed to ravage our vessels — indeed, they were captured and brought to Judge Jackson’s civilian court in Virginia. According to Judge Jackson (appointed to the bench by President Clinton in 1993), to be prosecuted for piracy (under Section 1651 of the federal penal code), pirates have to succeed in carrying out a robbery on the high seas. If they try but we capture them, they can’t be charged.
Makes perfect sense, right?
The judge’s daylight to make mischief here is caused by Congress’s definition of piracy. Rather than spell out what sorts of acts (and attempts, and conspiracies) constitute piracy, Congress referred to “the crime of piracy as defined by the law of nations.” The judge looked at a Supreme Court case from 1820 (United States v. Smith) that involved robbery on the high seas, in which the Court ruled that such a robbery fit the law of nations concept of piracy. But that doesn’t mean it was the only kind of forcible act that would fit the concept — much less that because those pirates happened to succeed, pirates who try but fail aren’t pirates.
The really galling thing here, though, is how politically willful the courts have become. When they want to create a new offense that is not actually recognized by American law, they claim to find it in … the law of nations. So, for example, the Ninth Circuit attempted a few years back to claim that “arbitrary arrest and detention” was actionable under its evolving understanding of this amorphous international law concept. But now attacks on international waters — which is one of the few matters for which there is any reason to have a “law of nations” — are not piracy.
Find the pearls of Judge Jackson’s wisdom at Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Obama Backs Ground Zero Mosque (surprised ? nope).
shall I just say that Obama "acted stupidly" with his comments.
Having now sided w/ jihadists over the 70% of Americans that oppose this mosque / community center's proposed location too close to Ground Zero, he is now backtracking (like the politician that he is).
Here's some commentary:
9/11 Families Stunned by President’s Support of Mosque at Ground Zero
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243733/president-stands-sharia-andy-mccarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243736/obama-shrinks-america-kathryn-jean-lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243740/ramadan-dinner-kathryn-jean-lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243743/how-stupid-does-obama-think-we-are-andy-mccarthy
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamas-Clintonian-speech-pulls-rug-from-under-mosque-supporters-100716539.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/unshakeable_bam_latest_shaky_stand_JDfYCppVHIc8gX2PNzlGPK/1
Having now sided w/ jihadists over the 70% of Americans that oppose this mosque / community center's proposed location too close to Ground Zero, he is now backtracking (like the politician that he is).
Here's some commentary:
9/11 Families Stunned by President’s Support of Mosque at Ground Zero
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243733/president-stands-sharia-andy-mccarthy
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243736/obama-shrinks-america-kathryn-jean-lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243740/ramadan-dinner-kathryn-jean-lopez
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/243743/how-stupid-does-obama-think-we-are-andy-mccarthy
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Obamas-Clintonian-speech-pulls-rug-from-under-mosque-supporters-100716539.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/unshakeable_bam_latest_shaky_stand_JDfYCppVHIc8gX2PNzlGPK/1
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Mosque Controversy near Ground Zero
Q. Why is Mayor Mike Bloomberg such a tin-eared elitist schmuck ?
Andy McCarthy: http://article.nationalreview.com/439002/more-moderate-muslims/andrew-c-mccarthy
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever decides to stop buying his way around New York City’s term-limit law, he’d be a perfect fit at the State Department.
Hizzoner was not content with having embarrassed himself by predicting that the attempted bombing of Times Square — the heart of a city that has been a jihadist target for 17 years — would prove to be the work of a disgruntled right-winger upset over the health-care bill. Bloomberg has now treated us to a cri de coeur in favor of the Ground Zero mosque. Funding sources for this project, originally known as the “Cordoba Initiative” in honor of the caliphate that conquered Spain, remain unknown. What is known is that the gigantic Islamic center would be located near the crater where Islamist terrorists killed more than 2,700 Americans while destroying the World Trade Center.
Mayor Bloomberg is clearly ready for prime time in the State Department’s production division: It was only last year that our foreign service used your tax dollars to broadcast, on its website, a little movie called “Eid in America.” Eid, the occasion for this exercise in cinematic hagiography, is the feast that ends what our government takes pains to call “the holy month of Ramadan” and commemorates with gala dinners around Washington. The star of the video was the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center — and accompanying mosque — in Falls Church, Va.
[much more; read the whole thing]
NY Post : Mosque Nanny
It’s one thing for Mayor Bloomberg to play nanny and hector New Yorkers about smoking and trans fats, as he never stops doing. But it’s quite another for him to grab the flag and start scolding foes of that planned mosque near Ground Zero, as he did Friday.
The mayor was way, way out of line.
“A handful of people ought to be ashamed of themselves,” he huffed.
Well, we know one person who should be ashamed: him.
Bloomberg got downright apocalyptic, calling the controversy “[as] important [a] test of the separation of church and state . . . as we may see in our lifetimes.”
“Do you really want every time they pass the basket in your church, and you throw a buck in, they run over and say, ‘OK, now, you know, where do you come from?’ ” Hizzoner asked.
Of course not. But that misses the point by a mile — and he well knows it.
The notion that the mosque controversy is a battle over religious freedom is utterly bogus. And it glosses over New Yorkers’ entirely legitimate concerns.
Nor is there a question of whether the mosque should be forced to reveal the sources of its funding — though its failure to do so certainly heightens suspicions.
Let’s face it: The majority of New Yorkers who oppose the project have every right to do so — unless Mayor Religious Freedom doesn’t believe in freedom of speech, or freedom of opinion.
And New Yorkers have every right to be curious about this project, especially.
The mosque’s leader, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, claims to seek “interfaith understanding” — but just how “moderate” is it to launch a project he knows will inflame passions? Plus, he reportedly has ties to radical Islamists and refuses to label Hamas a terrorist group.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been dedicated to spreading the Wahhabi ideology that spawned al Qaeda — and 9/11. If Saudi money is meant to make this mosque part of that cause, don’t New Yorkers (of all people!) have a right to know?
We don’t begrudge Bloomberg his opinion, of course — wrong as we think it is. But he has no right to begrudge others of theirs. And surely no right to insult them.
Give it a rest, Mr. Mayor.http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/mosque_nanny_m5JtsJMGHTZ1RVUjganFML#ixzz0w3cbclCX
A Muslim victim of 9/11: Build your mosque somewhere else http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080603006.html
Christopher Caldwell: A mosque that wrecks bridges.
Andy McCarthy: http://article.nationalreview.com/439002/more-moderate-muslims/andrew-c-mccarthy
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg ever decides to stop buying his way around New York City’s term-limit law, he’d be a perfect fit at the State Department.
Hizzoner was not content with having embarrassed himself by predicting that the attempted bombing of Times Square — the heart of a city that has been a jihadist target for 17 years — would prove to be the work of a disgruntled right-winger upset over the health-care bill. Bloomberg has now treated us to a cri de coeur in favor of the Ground Zero mosque. Funding sources for this project, originally known as the “Cordoba Initiative” in honor of the caliphate that conquered Spain, remain unknown. What is known is that the gigantic Islamic center would be located near the crater where Islamist terrorists killed more than 2,700 Americans while destroying the World Trade Center.
Mayor Bloomberg is clearly ready for prime time in the State Department’s production division: It was only last year that our foreign service used your tax dollars to broadcast, on its website, a little movie called “Eid in America.” Eid, the occasion for this exercise in cinematic hagiography, is the feast that ends what our government takes pains to call “the holy month of Ramadan” and commemorates with gala dinners around Washington. The star of the video was the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center — and accompanying mosque — in Falls Church, Va.
[much more; read the whole thing]
NY Post : Mosque Nanny
It’s one thing for Mayor Bloomberg to play nanny and hector New Yorkers about smoking and trans fats, as he never stops doing. But it’s quite another for him to grab the flag and start scolding foes of that planned mosque near Ground Zero, as he did Friday.
The mayor was way, way out of line.
“A handful of people ought to be ashamed of themselves,” he huffed.
Well, we know one person who should be ashamed: him.
Bloomberg got downright apocalyptic, calling the controversy “[as] important [a] test of the separation of church and state . . . as we may see in our lifetimes.”
“Do you really want every time they pass the basket in your church, and you throw a buck in, they run over and say, ‘OK, now, you know, where do you come from?’ ” Hizzoner asked.
Of course not. But that misses the point by a mile — and he well knows it.
The notion that the mosque controversy is a battle over religious freedom is utterly bogus. And it glosses over New Yorkers’ entirely legitimate concerns.
Nor is there a question of whether the mosque should be forced to reveal the sources of its funding — though its failure to do so certainly heightens suspicions.
Let’s face it: The majority of New Yorkers who oppose the project have every right to do so — unless Mayor Religious Freedom doesn’t believe in freedom of speech, or freedom of opinion.
And New Yorkers have every right to be curious about this project, especially.
The mosque’s leader, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, claims to seek “interfaith understanding” — but just how “moderate” is it to launch a project he knows will inflame passions? Plus, he reportedly has ties to radical Islamists and refuses to label Hamas a terrorist group.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been dedicated to spreading the Wahhabi ideology that spawned al Qaeda — and 9/11. If Saudi money is meant to make this mosque part of that cause, don’t New Yorkers (of all people!) have a right to know?
We don’t begrudge Bloomberg his opinion, of course — wrong as we think it is. But he has no right to begrudge others of theirs. And surely no right to insult them.
Give it a rest, Mr. Mayor.http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/mosque_nanny_m5JtsJMGHTZ1RVUjganFML#ixzz0w3cbclCX
A Muslim victim of 9/11: Build your mosque somewhere else http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080603006.html
Christopher Caldwell: A mosque that wrecks bridges.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Andy McCarthy on Arizona; Obama's Lawsuit & Terrorism
So, Will Holder Tell Arizona that the States Are Pre-empted from Defending Themselves from Hezbollah, Too? [Andy McCarthy]
Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that the Hezbos are at the Mexican border — and we're not talking here about those "moderate elements" of Hezbollah that Obama's counterterrorism czar is searching for; we're talking about the jihad's A-Team (i.e., the guys al Qaeda goes to for training).
As IPT relates:
Hizballah is setting up shop along the American border with Mexico, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Seyassah reports. In an exclusive story, the Kuwaiti daily revealed that Mexican officials have arrested a Mexican national with ties to the Shiite terrorist group.
The militant, Jameel Nasr, was reportedly under police surveillance for a while, with authorities explaining he had traveled from Lebanon to countries throughout South and Central America, eventually gaining citizenship and a job as a graphic engineer in Mexico. While in Mexico, Nasr reportedly traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hizballah commanders.
The issue of border security for the United States, both to the North ad the South, is not new. We recently reported on an investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security that confirmed the threat is only increasing. In June, Congresswoman Sue Myrick wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano about this issue, asking that a task force be dedicated to the issue because, in the words of former Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michael Braun:
"Hezballah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartel…They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another they are all connected."
Steve goes on to explain that the "report cited Mexican authorities as saying that Nasr had been 'entrusted with forming a base in South American and the United States to carry out operations against Israeli and Western targets.'"
This is not new news (see, e.g., this 2009 Washington Times report). And let's not forget that, in 2006, FBI Director Bob Mueller testified to a House Appropriations subcommittee that Hezbollah had a smuggling ring on the Mexican border and had already succeeded in infiltrating a number of its operatives into the U.S. (It would be foolish to think the rings we know about are the only rings that exist.)
As I've indicated (see, e.g., here), I don't think the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona passes the laugh test. More gravely, it would be a dangerous rupture in the social contract on which our republic is based to tell a sovereign state that (a) the federal government will not act to defend it from a foreign threat such as rampant illegal immigration, and yet (b) that the state, by having joined the union, has forfeited its own natural right of self-defense — such that it must passively allow itself to be overrun (and to pay for the privilege).
But even if you bought the Obama Justice Department's ludicrous premises regarding routine Mexican illegal-immigration, would anyone seriously suggest that a sovereign state cannot protect itself from the threat of international terrorism by a jihadist organization that (1) is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization under federal law, (2) has killed hundreds of Americans, (3) is the forward militia of Iran, an enemy whose national motto is "Death to America," and (4) is setting up shop on the southern states' doorstep?
Steve Emerson's Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that the Hezbos are at the Mexican border — and we're not talking here about those "moderate elements" of Hezbollah that Obama's counterterrorism czar is searching for; we're talking about the jihad's A-Team (i.e., the guys al Qaeda goes to for training).
As IPT relates:
Hizballah is setting up shop along the American border with Mexico, the Kuwaiti newspaper al-Seyassah reports. In an exclusive story, the Kuwaiti daily revealed that Mexican officials have arrested a Mexican national with ties to the Shiite terrorist group.
The militant, Jameel Nasr, was reportedly under police surveillance for a while, with authorities explaining he had traveled from Lebanon to countries throughout South and Central America, eventually gaining citizenship and a job as a graphic engineer in Mexico. While in Mexico, Nasr reportedly traveled frequently to Lebanon to receive information and instructions from Hizballah commanders.
The issue of border security for the United States, both to the North ad the South, is not new. We recently reported on an investigation by the House Committee on Homeland Security that confirmed the threat is only increasing. In June, Congresswoman Sue Myrick wrote to Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano about this issue, asking that a task force be dedicated to the issue because, in the words of former Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, Michael Braun:
"Hezballah relies on the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartel…They work together; they rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another they are all connected."
Steve goes on to explain that the "report cited Mexican authorities as saying that Nasr had been 'entrusted with forming a base in South American and the United States to carry out operations against Israeli and Western targets.'"
This is not new news (see, e.g., this 2009 Washington Times report). And let's not forget that, in 2006, FBI Director Bob Mueller testified to a House Appropriations subcommittee that Hezbollah had a smuggling ring on the Mexican border and had already succeeded in infiltrating a number of its operatives into the U.S. (It would be foolish to think the rings we know about are the only rings that exist.)
As I've indicated (see, e.g., here), I don't think the Justice Department's lawsuit against Arizona passes the laugh test. More gravely, it would be a dangerous rupture in the social contract on which our republic is based to tell a sovereign state that (a) the federal government will not act to defend it from a foreign threat such as rampant illegal immigration, and yet (b) that the state, by having joined the union, has forfeited its own natural right of self-defense — such that it must passively allow itself to be overrun (and to pay for the privilege).
But even if you bought the Obama Justice Department's ludicrous premises regarding routine Mexican illegal-immigration, would anyone seriously suggest that a sovereign state cannot protect itself from the threat of international terrorism by a jihadist organization that (1) is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization under federal law, (2) has killed hundreds of Americans, (3) is the forward militia of Iran, an enemy whose national motto is "Death to America," and (4) is setting up shop on the southern states' doorstep?
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Video worth watching re: Gaza Hate Boats / The Truth about the Mavi Marmara
A video about the Gaza flotilla incident, "Maritime Martyrs: The Truth about the Mavi Marmara," was produced by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for internal uses. A copy has been made available to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and can be viewed here.
What the video suggests will not surprise my readers:
The objective of the flotilla dispatched by the Free Gaza Organization and the Islamist IHH movement (Insani Yardim Vakfi) was not to provide humanitarian aid, it was to create a public relations dilemma for the Israelis as a way to break the embargo against the delivery of missiles and other weapons to Hamas.
What the video suggests will not surprise my readers:
The objective of the flotilla dispatched by the Free Gaza Organization and the Islamist IHH movement (Insani Yardim Vakfi) was not to provide humanitarian aid, it was to create a public relations dilemma for the Israelis as a way to break the embargo against the delivery of missiles and other weapons to Hamas.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Gaza Flotilla Hamas Terror Supporters Update
"We Con the World" [Andy McCarthy]
PJTV has made available Caroline Glick's "We Are the World" parody, dedicated to the "peace flotilla."
You should watch.
Also:
Video footage taken by shipboard cameras and released by the Israel Defense Forces shows activists suiting up in bulletproof vests and assaulting Israeli commandos with metal bars and clubs as they tried to board the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish “aid” ship Burney describes in his YouTube interview. Other footage, taken from Israeli helicopters, shows the “activists” assaulting an Israeli commando as he is rappelling down to the ship and tossing him off the deck of the ship. The primary weapon the Israeli commandos used during the boarding operation was a Tippman 98 Custom — a paintball gun.
Testimony one of the commandos released later described how the “activists” shot this commanding officer in the leg and stabbed him in the stomach before tossing him off the deck. Other “activists” on the lower deck then dragged the officer inside, taking a knife to expand the wound in his stomach. “They cut his ab muscles horizontally and by hand spilled his guts out,” the soldier said. “When they finished, they raised him up and walked him on the deck outside. He was conscious the whole time. If you are asking yourself why they did all that here comes the reason. They wanted to show the soldiers their commanders’ body so they will be demoralized and scared,” the soldier said. “Luckily, when they walked him on the deck, a soldier saw him and managed to shoot the activist that was walking him down the outside corridor. He shot him with a special non lethal bullet that didn’t kill him. My commander managed to jump from the deck to the water and swim to an army rescue boat (his guts still out of his body and now in salty sea water). That was how he was saved. The activists that did this to him are alive and now in Turkey and treated as heroes.”
PJTV has made available Caroline Glick's "We Are the World" parody, dedicated to the "peace flotilla."
You should watch.
Also:
Video footage taken by shipboard cameras and released by the Israel Defense Forces shows activists suiting up in bulletproof vests and assaulting Israeli commandos with metal bars and clubs as they tried to board the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish “aid” ship Burney describes in his YouTube interview. Other footage, taken from Israeli helicopters, shows the “activists” assaulting an Israeli commando as he is rappelling down to the ship and tossing him off the deck of the ship. The primary weapon the Israeli commandos used during the boarding operation was a Tippman 98 Custom — a paintball gun.
Testimony one of the commandos released later described how the “activists” shot this commanding officer in the leg and stabbed him in the stomach before tossing him off the deck. Other “activists” on the lower deck then dragged the officer inside, taking a knife to expand the wound in his stomach. “They cut his ab muscles horizontally and by hand spilled his guts out,” the soldier said. “When they finished, they raised him up and walked him on the deck outside. He was conscious the whole time. If you are asking yourself why they did all that here comes the reason. They wanted to show the soldiers their commanders’ body so they will be demoralized and scared,” the soldier said. “Luckily, when they walked him on the deck, a soldier saw him and managed to shoot the activist that was walking him down the outside corridor. He shot him with a special non lethal bullet that didn’t kill him. My commander managed to jump from the deck to the water and swim to an army rescue boat (his guts still out of his body and now in salty sea water). That was how he was saved. The activists that did this to him are alive and now in Turkey and treated as heroes.”
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Helen Thomas -- Put This B**tch Out To Pasture
She certainly should be finally and permanently "retired" from the White House Briefing Room for these charming comments:
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDRiMzU4ZTVlN2UwYzliNDE4YWJlM2Y3YzUyYTQxMjQ=
Helen Thomas to Jews: 'Get the Hell Out of Palestine' [Daniel Foster]
Helen Thomas had a message for Israel during a Jewish Heritage Celebration held at the White House on May 27:
“Get the hell out of Palestine. Remember these people are occupied, and it’s their land.”
Where should the Jews go, Helen?
“Go home,” to “Poland and Germany.”
Give Peace a Chance [Mark Steyn]
In contrast to the general directions of Helen ("Go back to Germany and Poland")
Thomas, the peace-lovers aboard the Mavi Marmara were more specific:
In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they are approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara respond, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11".
Such amusing conversationalists.
These are not "humanitarian" "peace" "activists". These are, in any objective sense, a party to the conflict. They're not trying to bring "peace", they're trying to help their side win. That's their choice, and may the best man win, but the media collusion in presenting them as "humanitarian" "aid" workers is Orwellian - and all the more so in a world in which the Turkish Prime Minister accuses Israel of killing children on the beach and in which the doyenne of the White House press corps no longer recognizes Israel's "right to exist".
Now the Israeli navy is beseeching the MV Rachel Corrie (an Irish ship funded by the Malaysian government) to land in the port of Ashdod, where the authorities will deliver the (entirely unneeded) "humanitarian aid" to Gaza. The Rachel Corrie is flipping 'em the bird and saying "Gaza, here we come."
This ship is merely the latest memorial to Miss Corrie, a foolish young American killed while enjoying the frisson of vacationing in someone else's despair. There's never been a better time to read Tom Gross' piece on "The Forgotten Rachels":
Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002.
Rachel Corrie's diaries have been published in book form, turned into a hit London play at the Royal Court, and her name has been cited in The Guardian alone hundreds of times ("Remembering Rachel", "Rachel's War", "Rachel Corrie: A True Martyr", "The Lonesome Death Of Rachel Corrie", "Rachel's Words Are A Spur To Action", etc).
By contrast, Rachel Thaler was a British subject. Yet not a single British journalist has ever mentioned her, profiled her, interviewed her parents or other British relatives, or published her diary in a Fleet Street newspaper - except for a single solitary mention by the great (Jewish) comedienne Maureen Lipman noting that nobody ever mentioned her, or the other victims of Palestinian terrorism.
Ah, but Israel is an "apartheid state", and the Palestinians are the Europeans' unending adopt-a-Third-World-pet project. I write in the new National Review (on sale now-ish) that, if old-school judenhass was a by-product of more or less traditional racism and conventional nationalism, the new judenhass advances under the cover of "anti-racism" and "multiculturalism". The oldest hatred didn't get that way without the ability to adapt.
Re ‘Give Peace a Chance’ [Jay Nordlinger]
I so appreciated this post — would add a couple of details. Onboard the MV Rachel Corrie is Denis Halliday, the U.N. man who was in charge of the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. He resigned, saying U.N. sanctions were “genocide.” He is not the type to be concerned about what the likes of Saddam Hussein do. Also onboard the Corrie is Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976. She and Betty Williams won for opposing the violence in Northern Ireland: It was a worthy award.
Maguire is an old anti-Israel hand. She accuses Israel of running an “apartheid system.” She was hit by a rubber bullet when protesting the Israelis’ security fence. She has made a pet of Mordechai Vanunu, the man who spilled Israel’s nuclear secrets: met him upon his release from prison. She accuses the Israelis of “ethnic cleansing.” Blah, blah, blah. You know the type: Maguire is hard-core, like Helen Thomas.
And her views of America are essentially those of Noam Chomsky. You can see this, hear this, in most any of her speeches. She even opposed the Nobel prize to Barack Obama, vociferously! She said, “Giving this award to the leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will be rightly seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country’s aggression and domination.”
And her co-laureate, Betty Williams? You may remember her from the George W. Bush years. In 2006, she told Australian schoolchildren, “I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence,’ because I don’t believe that I am nonviolent. Right now, I would love to kill George W. Bush. I don’t know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize . . .”A one-time deal, a crazed moment? Well, she performed an encore the next year, in Dallas, speaking to the International Women’s Peace Conference: “I mean, right now, I could kill George Bush, no problem. No, I don’t mean that. I mean, how could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.” Big laughs — from her and the audience.
Charming, these Irish ladies who win the Nobel Peace Prize.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDRiMzU4ZTVlN2UwYzliNDE4YWJlM2Y3YzUyYTQxMjQ=
Helen Thomas to Jews: 'Get the Hell Out of Palestine' [Daniel Foster]
Helen Thomas had a message for Israel during a Jewish Heritage Celebration held at the White House on May 27:
“Get the hell out of Palestine. Remember these people are occupied, and it’s their land.”
Where should the Jews go, Helen?
“Go home,” to “Poland and Germany.”
Give Peace a Chance [Mark Steyn]
In contrast to the general directions of Helen ("Go back to Germany and Poland")
Thomas, the peace-lovers aboard the Mavi Marmara were more specific:
In response to a radio transmission by the Israeli Navy warning the Gaza flotilla that they are approaching a naval blockade, passengers of the Mavi Marmara respond, "Shut up, go back to Auschwitz" and "We're helping Arabs go against the US, don't forget 9/11".
Such amusing conversationalists.
These are not "humanitarian" "peace" "activists". These are, in any objective sense, a party to the conflict. They're not trying to bring "peace", they're trying to help their side win. That's their choice, and may the best man win, but the media collusion in presenting them as "humanitarian" "aid" workers is Orwellian - and all the more so in a world in which the Turkish Prime Minister accuses Israel of killing children on the beach and in which the doyenne of the White House press corps no longer recognizes Israel's "right to exist".
Now the Israeli navy is beseeching the MV Rachel Corrie (an Irish ship funded by the Malaysian government) to land in the port of Ashdod, where the authorities will deliver the (entirely unneeded) "humanitarian aid" to Gaza. The Rachel Corrie is flipping 'em the bird and saying "Gaza, here we come."
This ship is merely the latest memorial to Miss Corrie, a foolish young American killed while enjoying the frisson of vacationing in someone else's despair. There's never been a better time to read Tom Gross' piece on "The Forgotten Rachels":
Rachel Thaler, aged 16, was blown up at a pizzeria in an Israeli shopping mall. She died after an 11-day struggle for life following a suicide bomb attack on a crowd of teenagers on 16 February 2002.
Rachel Corrie's diaries have been published in book form, turned into a hit London play at the Royal Court, and her name has been cited in The Guardian alone hundreds of times ("Remembering Rachel", "Rachel's War", "Rachel Corrie: A True Martyr", "The Lonesome Death Of Rachel Corrie", "Rachel's Words Are A Spur To Action", etc).
By contrast, Rachel Thaler was a British subject. Yet not a single British journalist has ever mentioned her, profiled her, interviewed her parents or other British relatives, or published her diary in a Fleet Street newspaper - except for a single solitary mention by the great (Jewish) comedienne Maureen Lipman noting that nobody ever mentioned her, or the other victims of Palestinian terrorism.
Ah, but Israel is an "apartheid state", and the Palestinians are the Europeans' unending adopt-a-Third-World-pet project. I write in the new National Review (on sale now-ish) that, if old-school judenhass was a by-product of more or less traditional racism and conventional nationalism, the new judenhass advances under the cover of "anti-racism" and "multiculturalism". The oldest hatred didn't get that way without the ability to adapt.
Re ‘Give Peace a Chance’ [Jay Nordlinger]
I so appreciated this post — would add a couple of details. Onboard the MV Rachel Corrie is Denis Halliday, the U.N. man who was in charge of the Oil-for-Food program in Iraq. He resigned, saying U.N. sanctions were “genocide.” He is not the type to be concerned about what the likes of Saddam Hussein do. Also onboard the Corrie is Mairead Corrigan Maguire, who was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1976. She and Betty Williams won for opposing the violence in Northern Ireland: It was a worthy award.
Maguire is an old anti-Israel hand. She accuses Israel of running an “apartheid system.” She was hit by a rubber bullet when protesting the Israelis’ security fence. She has made a pet of Mordechai Vanunu, the man who spilled Israel’s nuclear secrets: met him upon his release from prison. She accuses the Israelis of “ethnic cleansing.” Blah, blah, blah. You know the type: Maguire is hard-core, like Helen Thomas.
And her views of America are essentially those of Noam Chomsky. You can see this, hear this, in most any of her speeches. She even opposed the Nobel prize to Barack Obama, vociferously! She said, “Giving this award to the leader of the most militarized country in the world, which has taken the human family against its will to war, will be rightly seen by many people around the world as a reward for his country’s aggression and domination.”
And her co-laureate, Betty Williams? You may remember her from the George W. Bush years. In 2006, she told Australian schoolchildren, “I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence,’ because I don’t believe that I am nonviolent. Right now, I would love to kill George W. Bush. I don’t know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize . . .”A one-time deal, a crazed moment? Well, she performed an encore the next year, in Dallas, speaking to the International Women’s Peace Conference: “I mean, right now, I could kill George Bush, no problem. No, I don’t mean that. I mean, how could you nonviolently kill somebody? I would love to be able to do that.” Big laughs — from her and the audience.
Charming, these Irish ladies who win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Friday, May 28, 2010
We Don't See No Jihadists -- Obama's Top Advisor Brennan
What an outrage ! This bozo testifies that Jihadists are NOT the enemy. Jihad is a "legitimate tenant of Islam".
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/27/counterterror-adviser-defends-jihad-legitimate-tenet-islam/
He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not "terrorism," because terrorism is a "tactic," and not terror, because terror is a "state of mind" -- though Brennan's title, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word "terrorism" in it.
But then Brennan said that the word "jihad" should not be applied either.
"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children," Brennan said.
What an idiot ! This is Obama's Top National Security Advisor ?? Fire him now !
Michelle Malkin on Andy McCarthy's new book, "The Grand Jihad"
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/05/25/exposing-the-grand-jihad/
His latest piece at NRO asks trenchantly as always: How long can a people remain a People when its leaders side with its foes?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/05/27/counterterror-adviser-defends-jihad-legitimate-tenet-islam/
He repeated the administration argument that the enemy is not "terrorism," because terrorism is a "tactic," and not terror, because terror is a "state of mind" -- though Brennan's title, deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security, includes the word "terrorism" in it.
But then Brennan said that the word "jihad" should not be applied either.
"Nor do we describe our enemy as 'jihadists' or 'Islamists' because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam, meaning to purify oneself or one's community, and there is nothing holy or legitimate or Islamic about murdering innocent men, women and children," Brennan said.
What an idiot ! This is Obama's Top National Security Advisor ?? Fire him now !
Michelle Malkin on Andy McCarthy's new book, "The Grand Jihad"
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/05/25/exposing-the-grand-jihad/
His latest piece at NRO asks trenchantly as always: How long can a people remain a People when its leaders side with its foes?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Terror supporters at US universities ....
There is an interesting video to watch here, as David Horowitz makes a speech at a "college" in CA and takes Q&A from ignorant supporters of terrorism and genocide.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzI5YmEwYjZmNGVhZmQ4NTIwNmM4MjRhZmJjMDg4M2Y=
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzI5YmEwYjZmNGVhZmQ4NTIwNmM4MjRhZmJjMDg4M2Y=
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
