Shari'a Means Death to the West

The Beauty of Sunlight

2007-05-03T13:49:00.001Z

Why CAIR Dropped Its Lawsuit Against Andrew Whitehead

By Joseph Puder
FrontPageMagazine.com | April 26, 2007

Andrew Whitehead, a former serviceman with the U.S. Navy has a website named Anti-CAIR on which Whitehead accused CAIR of partially funding terrorist organizations. CAIR routinely tries to intimidate the likes of Whitehead in the hope of stifling any criticisms and/or allegations made against it.

On March 31, 2004 CAIR filed a lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead in the Virginia Beach Circuit Court demanding $1 million in damages from Whitehead for what it called "libelous defamation." The lawsuit, scheduled to begin in the summer of 2006 was dismissed in April 2006.

Last Thursday, April 12, 2007, the Philadelphia/South Jersey chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) under the leadership of Regional Director Scott Figelstein, hosted a program with Reed Rubinstein, Esq. of the Washington, DC-based law firm of Greenberg Taurig. The RJC serves as a liaison between the Jewish community and Republican decision makers.

Reed Rubinstein, with the backing of his law firm, provided pro-bono counsel for Andrew Whitehead in the CAIR v. Whitehead lawsuit. Rubinstein is credited with defeating the defamation suit "by an Islamic extremist group against the U.S. Navy enlisted man."

[...]

The "false and defamatory" statements irking CAIR officials made by Whitehead were: CAIR is a "terrorist front organization that is partially funded by terrorists"; CAIR is an "organization founded by Hamas supporters which seeks to overthrow the constitutional government in the U.S"; and, "Why oppose CAIR? CAIR has proven links to, and was founded by, Islamic terrorists…CAIR is here to make radical Islam the dominant religion in the U.S…In addition, CAIR receives direct funding from Islamic terrorist-supporting countries."

Whitehead, not easily intimidated, responded by filing over 300 separate interrogatories, requests of documents and requests for admission. CAIR then filed an amended "motion for judgement" dropping the allegations regarding CAIR's ties to Hamas and terror were false and defamatory, some discovery answers, and a motion for protective order. Whitehead then filed a motion to compel, seeking a court order obligating CAIR to answer his information requests.

In court, CAIR was asked to admit that "Hamas murdered innocent civilians" to which it replied: "Objection, calls for legal conclusion…" Questioned as to whether CAIR has had "one or more communications with Abu Musa Marzook?" The Plaintiff's reply was, "To be subject to Plaintiff's motion for Protective Order…", restricting the response to Whitehead's counsel.

Called to confirm Article Seven of the Hamas Charter which states that "the Hamas has been looking forward to implementing Allah's promise whatever time it might take. The Prophet, peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews, until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" CAIR again refused to respond by stating: "CAIR objects because the Hamas Charter speaks for itself and because the Plainiff is without means to obtain current, accurate, and reliable copy of the Hamas Charter."

Shortly before the court hearing on the motion to compel the case settled. There was no apology, and no retraction. The "false and defamatory" allegations remain posted on Whitehead's website. CAIR simply did not wish to supply the requested documents.

[...]

Why did CAIR drop its lawsuit against Andrew Whitehead? Apparently it feared exposure that would reveal its leaders connections to terrorist groups like Hamas. If that is the case, namely, CAIR's fear of exposure, why has the media been silent on this matter? Rubinstein explained, "CAIR is protected by the mainstream media," which he said, "has studiously ignored a decade of evidence, and has, instead, adopted a 'see no evil, speak no evil' stance."

Read the whole thing. And then email the link from FrontPage to all of your contacts.

Fighting Shari'a in North Carolina

2007-04-14T11:13:00.000Z

Via Jihad Watch:

Here's some encouraging news. Bravo, Sue Myrick.

From Investor's Business Daily, with thanks to all who sent this in:

War On Terror: Maintaining a high level of vigilance against an enemy is wearisome business, especially in this war. We salute those who have not succumbed to 9/11 fatigue.

One tireless watchdog is Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., who earlier this year founded the Anti-Terrorism/Jihad Caucus to educate fellow lawmakers and Americans in general about the threat from militant Islam.

"The general public doesn't understand the threats we face from radical jihadists — who they are, what they want and what we can do about the threat," the feisty Myrick says on her Web site. "Americans are not being properly informed about the nature of the jihadist threat and their plans to do us harm."

This is an understatement. The media and academia have whitewashed jihad or ducked the issue entirely, petrified as they are of looking intolerant toward Muslims. Meantime, well-funded apologists such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations have gone on the offensive against the few critics who have spoken out, further confusing Americans about the gravity of the threat.

"The jihadists have become incredibly advanced in their public relations efforts," Myrick lamented. And we have limited tools to counteract their propaganda, thanks to institutionalized religious tolerance even for creeds hostile to our way of life.

Read it all.

Shari'a in Tennessee and Other Thoughts

2007-04-14T10:48:00.000Z

Bacon is the new hate crime. Here come the thought police.

Now that the Left is eating its own, watch for another onslaught against Free Speech.

Cross-posted at Hidden Dragon Politics.

The Words that Cannot Be Spoken

2007-04-14T10:39:00.000Z

(With a tip of the hat to Ayn Rand)

Scott Ott posts a speech from President Bush that will never see the light of day:

PRESIDENT BUSH:
Lately, some in Congress have attempted to alter the language of our fight. They don’t like the phrase “global war on terror” and prefer to talk of isolated conflicts — of wars in this country or that region.

I can agree with them on one point: ‘Global War on Terror’ is not an adequate phrase, because it fails to name the enemy. The United States of America is not at war with terror any more than we’re at war with the AK-47 assault rifle or the improvised explosive device. We’re at war with people who employ these tools as they attempt to terrify us into submitting to their will.

It’s hard to know what to call these people. They march under the banner of Islam, but some Muslims say the terrorists have twisted the religion of Mohammad to justify their godless thirst for power. And yet there is no concerted effort among the world’s Muslim leaders to stamp out the brush fire of radicalism that threatens to turn their so-called ‘peaceful religion’ into a blazing crusade against the infidels — that means you and me. There is no significant coalition of Islamists working to bring justice to those who have so perverted their religion that a militia operates from a mosque under the blessing and command of the Imam. The failure of so-called moderate Muslims to take action against in their radical brethren is more telling than their infrequent condemnations of terror as a tool to advance their faith.

Our fight is a global war on terror in the sense that terror tactics aim to inspire fear. President Franklin Roosevelt wisely pointed out that our only formidable enemy during the darkest days of World War II was that paralyzing emotion that clouds our vision, wearies our muscles, staggers our steps and waters down our resolve.

In this battle against the principalities of fear, we fight no nation. We aim to conquer no ethnic or religious group. We desire to occupy not one inch of soil beyond our borders.

Some have said that the global war on terror is unwinnable, but I believe that it is unloseable. In other words, we must not lose this war for Western civilization.

And we will not lose, because Divine Providence rules in the affairs of men, because righteousness trumps wickedness, because freedom overshadows slavery, and because — despite all of our faults — the United States of America is the greatest nation the world has ever seen, and the only human hope for humanity. This is not an arrogant statement. It’s a humble recognition that God has seen fit to bless this experiment in citizen-rule with unprecedented prosperity, opportunity, joy and strength.

The enemy longs to strip the people of their God-given rights and power. But we love these treasures more than they hate them. We will guard them. We will not permit them to be plundered, even if it takes our last breath and our last drop of blood. Because to live in the world that our enemies envision is to live not at all.

Calling it the ‘global war on terror’ is accurate in this respect: This is a not a national conflict. It belongs to no country and respects no borders. No legitimate claim to sovereignty exists. When we triumph over the terrorists, no nation of people will be humbled. The losers will be the terrorists. No sensible person in any nation will mourn their loss. And some who now cower in caution, appearing to give tacit approval to the terrorists, will dance with joy on their graves.

Some think that the battle in Iraq is unrelated to the global war on terror. In this, they not only disagree with me, but they’re at odds with the terror leaders themselves who have poured millions of dollars and thousands of lives into the effort to raise the dark flag of fear over the heads of 25 million Iraqis. The terrorists fight in Iraq as if their future depends on it. It does.

They’d like nothing better than for us to view the conflict as a centuries-old civil war among a primitive people that cannot be resolved by any means.

If the attempt by our opponents to reclassify this global battle as a series of unconnected dots is successful, the terror leaders will check off another box on their to-do lists, and celebrate another milestone.

Much of the talk among politicians and pundits of all political stripes reflects an ignorance of history and of warfare.

The crucial element in time of war is not perceived troop morale or somebody’s gut feeling about how things are going. The crucial factor is victory always — and victory alone.

Victory means the enemy must surrender, his ability to wage war must be destroyed, his ambitions definitively denied. His commanders must be tried and punished, or slain on the field, and his troops disarmed. The streets of the war zones must be made safe for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The purpose of waging war is not to keep our troops out of harm’s way or even to bring our troops home. It is to defeat the enemy.

No soldier, Marine, seaman or airman wants to leave the theater of battle without the laurel of victory. No true American will countenance surrender, or anything like it. When our opponents here and abroad speak of anything short of victory, realize that it is nothing but defeat draped in the costume of fine words and empty diplomacy. Viewed in the full light of history, it is little short of treason.

The stakes could not be higher.

When our enemies believe that we don’t have the stomach to fight, they know that they have not only won the war, they have effectively ended the era of the American republic. We have become their colony, subject to their rule, and to their dark vision of a future under their law. We may be allowed to maintain our standing army, to conduct our legislative and judicial activities, but real executive power shall have been transferred to them.

This must never happen. We will not permit it.

Changing the name of the global war on terror does not end the war, anymore than a child covering her eyes makes the scary thing disappear.

May God grant us the wisdom to answer our calling to fight for something greater than our ambitions, and to do so with unshakable resolve toward ultimate victory.

Thank you. God bless you, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.

That is too bad, I'd love to see this instead of the insipid drivel we get day after day. Unfortunately this is found on a satire site, when nothing could be further from the truth. Where is Ronald Reagan when you need him?

Fatah al Islam to Attack in US

2007-03-16T22:29:00.001Z

From JihadWatch:

TRIPOLI, Lebanon — Deep in a violent and lawless slum just north of this coastal city, 12 men whose faces were shrouded by scarves drilled with Kalashnikovs.

In unison, they lunged in one direction, turned and lunged in another. "Allah-u akbar," the men shouted in praise to God as they fired their machine guns into a wall.

The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Qaeda.

He has solid terrorist credentials. A former associate of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia who was killed last summer, Mr. Abssi was sentenced to death in absentia along with Mr. Zarqawi in the 2002 assassination of an American diplomat in Jordan, Laurence Foley. Just four months after arriving here from Syria, Mr. Abssi has a militia that intelligence officials estimate at 150 men and an arsenal of explosives, rockets and even an antiaircraft gun.

During a recent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Abssi displayed his makeshift training facility and his strident message that America needed to be punished for its presence in the Islamic world. "The only way to achieve our rights is by force ," he said. "This is the way America deals with us. So when the Americans feel that their lives and their economy are threatened, they will know that they should leave."

Mr. Abssi's organization is the image of what intelligence officials have warned is the re-emergence of Al Qaeda. Shattered after 2001, the organization founded by Osama bin Laden is now reforming as an alliance of small groups around the world that share a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam but have developed their own independent terror capabilities, these officials have said. If Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who has acknowledged directing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and a string of other terror plots, represents the previous generation of Qaeda leaders, Mr. Abssi and others like him represent the new.

[...]

In a 90-minute interview, his first with Western reporters, Mr. Abssi said he shared Al Qaeda's fundamentalist interpretation and endorsed the creation of a global Islamic nation. He said killing American soldiers in Iraq was no longer enough to convince the American public that its government should abandon what many Muslims view as a war against Islam.

"We have every legitimate right to do such acts, for isn't it America that comes to our region and kills innocents and children?" Mr. Abssi said. "It is our right to hit them in their homes the same as they hit us in our homes.

"We are not afraid of being named terrorists," he added. "But I want to ask, is someone who detonates one kilogram a terrorist while someone who detonates tons in Arab and Islamic cities not a terrorist?"

KSM vs America and the West

2007-03-16T19:02:00.000Z

From OpinionJournal:

What his confession says about our enemy--and us.

In Cairo last year, Deputy Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Habib told us that the 9/11 attacks were "great crimes," but that he doubted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were responsible. It's probably too much to expect that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession that he "was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z" will sway minds like Mr. Habib's. But for the rest of us, the testimony by bin Laden's top operational lieutenant is a jolting re-education in the enemy we face.
"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew," he boasted to a U.S. military tribunal on March 10, referring to our colleague Daniel Pearl. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."
One lesson of his testimony is the scope of his terror success, and his even larger ambition. Among the 31 actual events: The February 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, chiefly carried out by his nephew Ramzi Yousef; the October 2002 nightclub bombings in Bali, in which 202 were killed and another 200 injured; the killing of two U.S. GIs in Kuwait the same month; the November 2002 hotel bombings in Kenya, in which 13 Israelis and Kenyans died; and the November 2003 attacks in Istanbul against Jewish and British targets, which killed 57 and wounded 700. That's roughly 3,280 murders.

But even this pales next to what might have happened had the U.S. not arisen from pre-9/11 complacency and gone on offense. By his own admission, KSM also planned attacks on targets in South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, Israel, the Straits of Hormuz and Gibraltar, the Panama Canal, Brussels and London. He made extensive plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II during the pope's visit to Manila in 1995. He attempted to destroy an American oil company in Indonesia "owned," as he put it, "by the Jewish former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger."
Among other U.S. targets, there was "Shoe Bomber" Richard Reid's failed attempt against American Airlines Flight 63 in December 2001, schemes to assassinate Presidents Clinton and Carter, and a "new wave" of attacks after 9/11 targeting skyscrapers in L.A., Chicago and Seattle, New York's suspension bridges and stock exchange, and nuclear power plants in "several U.S. states."
Perhaps most ominously, KSM also admitted to being "directly in charge" of "managing and following up on the Cell for the Production of Biological Weapons, such as anthrax and others, and following up on Dirty Bomb Operations on American Soil." Given such a confession, is it too much to ask the FBI to reconsider its dogmatic view that the 2001 anthrax attacks could only have had a domestic source?
No doubt many terror experts will declare that much or all of this is boasting, and perhaps some of it is. We can only hope so. And no doubt the truly credulous will assume it is largely a product of CIA coercion, as if the attacks KSM claims credit for had some other provenance.
But we think KSM's world of war makes clear that, if anything, President Bush understated the danger posed by the 14 "high-value" enemy combatants he transferred to Guantanamo last autumn. And it reveals just how terribly mistaken was the view of those who told us, pre-9/11, that terrorism was merely a law enforcement threat like any other.
That view permeated the CIA, where Paul Pillar helped run the Counterterrorist Center and wrote that "There is no . . . BinLadentern" akin to the old Communist Comintern. He denounced "overheated rhetoric that has spun out ever more frightening and unusual ways in which terrorism might inflict large numbers of casualties." And he deprecated President Clinton for ordering government agencies to examine the plausibility of a biological attack on New York City after he'd read "The Cobra Event," Richard Preston's 1998 novel on the subject.

When the 9/11 Commission concluded that the failure to avert that awful day was above all "a failure of imagination," the Pillar world view is Exhibit A. And we mention it here because now, after five years without a terror attack on U.S. soil, that view is making a comeback in the growing opposition to holding enemy combatants in Guantanamo or to warrantless wiretaps of al Qaeda.
As KSM makes clear, bin Laden and his acolytes declared "war" on the U.S. in his fatwa of 1998, a fact the U.S. only figured out on September 11. He professes to regret the death of women and children, but calls such indiscriminate killing "the language of any war" and justified by his religious motivation.
"For sure, I'm American enemies," said KSM in his broken English. For sure, too, he is a reminder of the evil that still confronts us in this conflict with radical Islam, and one that we underestimate at our existential peril.

Cross-posted at Hidden Dragon Politics

Creeping Sharia

2007-03-13T18:29:00.001Z

From LGF:

At "The American Muslim," Issa Smith describes the plan to establish shari'a law in the United States—and yes, he is talking about shari'a for everyone: Native American Courts: Precedent for an Islamic arbitral system. (Hat tip: The Gathering Storm.)

This is the violence-deferred front of the global jihad—the attempt to use our own democratic institutions to subvert themselves and institute a Dark Ages legal code, first for themselves, but in the long run for the entire country. It's Islamic supremacism in a Trojan Horse disguise of free speech.

Although the Muslim community in North America is vastly different from the Indian community, I feel that in developing a plan for the implementation of Muslim family law, we can in some ways imitate the paradigm of the tribal court system and its supporting network. In particular, I recommend that as a first step, supporting organizations dealing with Islamic family law be established immediately. A professional association of Muslims in the law field (of whatever specialty) is a must. A law school students' support group should be formed, and Muslim youth should be encouraged to enter this field. A second step would be to establish institutes in the U.S. which can supplement legal education with courses in Islamic family law. At the same time, pressure should be put on law schools to include courses in Shariah taught by Muslims. An idea suggested in several quarters and being developed by the American Muslim Council, is the moot court where students and legal experts can act out Muslim family court scenarios. … The process of implementing Muslim family law will not be accomplished overnight. Changes of their type take place very slowly in American society, and our community is far from being prepared for this task. I commend the continental council of Masajid for organizing this conference, and bringing together so many workers and thinkers. I pray to Allah the real decisions are made here that can be implemented by those ready to work. However, I strongly urge that consideration be given to political realities and the sensitivities of the American public. Such a radical change in American law—allowing Muslims to take control over their family law issues - must be initiated from the indigenous Muslim community here in the United States. To have it seem that this initiative is originating from overseas or from organizations financed overseas, would create a very negative impression that would likely destroy this effort.

Note: this article was originally published in 1993, and we've seen the efforts already bearing fruit.

If the US Wins in Iraq, Will the MSM Report it?

2007-03-12T18:53:00.000Z

From Captain Ed at Frontpage Mag:

The Washington Post, among other news outlets, made a stink last week about the lack of a publicly-stated Plan B in the event the surge strategy failed to make a difference in Iraq. However, with preliminary indications showing success, Robert Kagan wonders whether journalists have a Plan B for themselves:

Leading journalists have been reporting for some time that the war was hopeless, a fiasco that could not be salvaged by more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy. The conventional wisdom in December held that sending more troops was politically impossible after the antiwar tenor of the midterm elections. It was practically impossible because the extra troops didn't exist. Even if the troops did exist, they could not make a difference.
Four months later, the once insurmountable political opposition has been surmounted. The nonexistent troops are flowing into Iraq. And though it is still early and horrible acts of violence continue, there is substantial evidence that the new counterinsurgency strategy, backed by the infusion of new forces, is having a significant effect. ...

Apparently some American journalists see the difference. NBC's Brian Williams recently reported a dramatic change in Ramadi since his previous visit. The city was safer; the airport more secure. The new American strategy of "getting out, decentralizing, going into the neighborhoods, grabbing a toehold, telling the enemy we're here, start talking to the locals -- that is having an obvious and palpable effect." U.S. soldiers forged agreements with local religious leaders and pushed al-Qaeda back -- a trend other observers have noted in some Sunni-dominated areas. The result, Williams said, is that "the war has changed."

It is no coincidence that as the mood and the reality have shifted, political currents have shifted as well. A national agreement on sharing oil revenue appears on its way to approval. The Interior Ministry has been purged of corrupt officials and of many suspected of torture and brutality. And cracks are appearing in the Shiite governing coalition -- a good sign, given that the rock-solid unity was both the product and cause of growing sectarian violence.

The defeatists have received large boosts from journalists all too willing to write about the successes of the insurgents but mostly silent on the successes of the Coalition. This may have been especially true in 2006, which did not go well for the Coalition, but got portrayed as an unmitigated failure in the American media during the 2006 election campaign. It made little difference in the end -- the Republicans did more to ensure their defeat domestically than anything that happened in Iraq -- but the result has left the media screeching like harpies that the mission in Iraq is doomed. Democratic leadership has taken the ball and wants to run with it in Congress, but only if they can do so without actually accepting responsibility for the retreat they demand.

If the surge succeeds, journalists won't be the only people who need a Plan B.

Wars occasionally produce negative, short-term results -- occasionally as in "frequently". The point of a war isn't to win every gun battle and force a surrender within 30 minutes. Iraq is not Grenada, and if it were, it wouldn't matter nearly as much to our national interests and global security.

The mission in Iraq is critical, and failure fatal. The collapse of Iraq would create a terrorist haven exponentially more dangerous than Somalia or Afghanistan, with oil revenues gorging terrorists on the hard currency they need to launch attacks all over the world. That's the reality now, the one we have to face, and that means we have to find ways to defeat the insurgencies and allow the elected, representative Iraqi government to gain enough strength to take control on their own.

Petraeus' counterinsurgency strategy seems to be showing remarkable results. Talking about defeat and retreat while we have not finished playing out our hand would represent an unprecedent capitulation by the US to an enemy in the field -- and not an enemy like Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, or the Soviets, with a military that should frighten us -- but an enemy that has so little support and so few combatants that they dare not show their face to American troops in the streets of their own cities.

Plan B should be victory by another means, not defeat by surrender to terrorists.

The Answer is More Islam

2007-03-12T18:50:00.001Z

More from Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

As I show in The Truth About Muhammad, this is a belief that goes back to the Battle of Badr, the first great victory in Islamic history. And if losses follow, they will not lead to a reexamination of the assumption that faith and victory are tied together, but will be ascribed to lack of faith, and more Islam will be prescribed as the remedy.

From AFP, with thanks to Sr. Soph:

KANDAHAR - Top Taleban commander Mullah Dadullah says faith and popular support will see his men fight off an offensive in southern Afghanistan by NATO and Afghan troops.
The troops Tuesday kicked off what NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) called their biggest offensive yet against the Taleban and their allies, focused on the lawless northern part of Helmand province.

Coalition war planes struck Taleban compounds and armouries and dropped "precision-guided munitions" on a Taleban militant who had been helping move anti-aircraft weapons, military statements said.

Two British soldiers and an unknown number of rebel fighters have died in various clashes.

Dadullah, who is reported to be the Taleban's military operations chief for southern Afghanistan, acknowledged the superior might of ISAF in a telephone interview Saturday with AFP but said he was undaunted.

"No one in the world has better weapons than NATO. They have got better weapons, but we will defeat them with the power of faith and belief," Dadullah told an AFP reporter who has spoken to him several times and knew his voice.

"The entire nation is with us: the people give us food, fruit and money. The people are fed up with infidel, invading troops and their puppets," he said.

He claimed to be in Helmand province.

"We have enough men to fight this battle," he said. "Some foreign mujahedin (holy fighters) are also fighting alongside our mujahedin.

Dadullah said Taleban fighters were being backed by Al Qaeda-linked foreign jihadists, including from Chechnya and the Palestinian territories.

"We have relations with Iraqi mujahedin—we send fighters to them, they send to us," he added.

Hamas Still Seeks Destruction of Israel

2007-03-12T18:47:00.000Z

From Jihad Watch:

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas rejected on Monday criticism by al Qaeda's second-in-command and said it was still committed to Israel's destruction despite a power-sharing deal with the Fatah faction.
"We will not betray promises we made to God to continue the path of Jihad and resistance until the liberation of Palestine, all of Palestine," Hamas said in a statement, in a clear reference to Israel as well as to the occupied West Bank.

In an audio recording posted on the Internet on Sunday, al Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahri accused Hamas of serving U.S. interests by agreeing to respect past Palestinian peace accords with Israel in a recent Saudi-brokered unity government deal with moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah.

The coalition agreement fell short of meeting demands by the Quartet of peace mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the
United Nations and Russia -- to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept existing interim peace deals.

Zawahri said the Mecca accord, which calmed weeks of Hamas-Fatah warfare in which more than 90 Palestinians were killed, was part of an attempt by Washington to offset Muslim anger at what he described as its bias toward Israel.

"It is an American scheme to hit the Islamic jihadist resistance against the Crusader-Zionist campaign. America wanted a sham solution to the Palestinian issue to remove the biggest reason for Muslim hatred (of the United States)," he said.

The biggest reason for Muslim hatred of the U.S.? Hmmm. I thought we were supposed to believe that that was Britney Spears and Survivor.

Obama Debunks Madrassa Info via CNN

2007-02-15T15:37:00.000Z

From Osama-bama's website:

Debunked Insight Magazine and Fox News Smear Campaign

In the past week, many of you have read a now thoroughly-debunked story by Insight Magazine, owned by the Washington Times, which cites unnamed sources close to a political campaign that claim Senator Obama was enrolled for “at least four years” in an Indonesian “Madrassa”. The article says the “sources” believe the Madrassa was “espousing Wahhabism,” a form of radical Islam.

Insight Magazine published these allegations without a single named source, and without doing any independent reporting to confirm or deny the allegations. Fox News quickly parroted the charges, and Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy went so far as to ask, “Why didn’t anybody ever mention that that man right there was raised — spent the first decade of his life, raised by his Muslim father — as a Muslim and was educated in a Madrassa?”

All of the claims about Senator Obama raised in the Insight Magazine piece were thoroughly debunked by CNN, which, instead of relying on unnamed sources, sent a reporter to Obama’s former school in Jakarta to check the facts.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/22/obama.madrassa/

Video: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/01/22/cnn-obama-debunk/

If Doocy or the staff at Fox and Friends had taken the time to check their facts, or simply made a call to his office, they would have learned that Senator Obama was not educated in a Madrassa, was not raised as a Muslim, and was not raised by his father – an atheist Obama met once in his life before he died.

Later in the day, Fox News host John Gibson again discussed the Insight Magazine story without any attempt to independently confirm the charges.

All of the claims about Senator Obama’s faith and education raised in the Insight Magazine story and repeated on Fox News are false. Senator Obama was raised in a secular household in Indonesia by his stepfather and mother. Obama’s stepfather worked for a U.S. oil company, and sent his stepson to two years of Catholic school, as well as two years of public school. As Obama described it, “Without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks.” [The Audacity of Hope, p. 274]

To be clear, Senator Obama has never been a Muslim, was not raised a Muslim, and is a committed Christian who attends the United Church of Christ in Chicago. Furthermore, the Indonesian school Obama attended in Jakarta is a public school that is not and never has been a Madrassa.

These malicious, irresponsible charges are precisely the kind of politics the American people have grown tired of, and that Senator Obama is trying to change by focusing on bringing people together to solve our common problems.

So Senator Obama states that he was "raised in a secular household", but if you read the whole article you get this as the very last sentence:

Obama has noted in his two books, "Dreams From My Father" and "The Audacity of Hope," that he spent two years in a Muslim school and another two years in a Catholic school while living in Indonesia from age 6 to 10.

So, for the record Senator, which is it? A public Indonesian school, or a Muslim school?

From the Examiner.com:

“What your grandfather respected was strength. Discipline,” Obama quoted his grandmother as telling him. “This is also why he rejected the Christian religion, I think.

“For a brief time, he converted, and even changed his name to Johnson. But he could not understand such ideas as mercy towards your enemies, or that this man Jesus could wash away a man’s sins.

“To your grandfather, this was foolish sentiment, something to comfort women,” she added. “And so he converted to Islam — he thought its practices conformed more closely to his beliefs.”

When Obama was 2 years old, his parents divorced and his father moved away from the family’s home in Hawaii. Four years later, his mother married an Indonesian man, Lolo Soetoro, who moved his new wife and stepson to Jakarta.

“During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighborhood Catholic school and then to a predominately Muslim school,” Obama wrote in “Audacity.” “In our household, the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf.”

Obama’s stepfather was a practicing Muslim.

[...]

Although Obama wrote of “puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin’s call to evening prayer,” he was not raised as a Muslim, according to the senator’s office. Nor was he raised as a Christian by his mother, a white American named Ann Dunham who was deeply skeptical of religion.

“Her memories of the Christians who populated her youth were not fond ones,” Obama wrote. “For my mother, organized religion too often dressed up closed-mindedness in the garb of piety, cruelty and oppression in the cloak of righteousness.”

As a result, he said, “I was not raised in a religious household.”

Later in life, however, he was drawn to the writings of an influential American Muslim who served as the spokesman for the militant Nation of Islam.

“Malcolm X’s autobiography seemed to offer something different,” Obama wrote. “His repeated acts of self-creation spoke to me; the blunt poetry of his words, his unadorned insistence on respect, promised a new and uncompromising order, martial in its discipline, forged through sheer force of will.”

He added: “Malcolm’s discovery toward the end of his life, that some whites might live beside him as brothers in Islam, seemed to offer some hope of eventual reconciliation.”

While working as a community organizer for a group of churches in Chicago, Obama was repeatedly asked to join Christian congregations, but begged off.

“I remained a reluctant skeptic, doubtful of my own motives, wary of expedient conversion, having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won,” he wrote.

[...]

In “Audacity,” the senator wrote that such believers insist “not only that Christianity is America’s dominant faith, but that a particular, fundamentalist brand of that faith should drive public policy, overriding any alternative source of understanding, whether the writings of liberal theologians, the findings of the National Academy of Sciences, or the words of Thomas Jefferson.”

As for the Democratic Party, Obama observed that “a core segment of our constituency remains stubbornly secular in orientation, and fears — rightly, no doubt — that the agenda of an assertively Christian nation may not make room for them or their life choices.”

Although the overwhelming majority of Americans describe themselves as Christians, Obama does not believe that any one religion should define the United States.

“We are no longer just a Christian nation,” he argues in “Audacity,” which was published last year. “We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.”

"...may not make room for them or their life choices."

Well, Senator, I have to agree with you on this point. The 'Christian America' (and most other Americans, I would say) is not willing to make room for people whose life choices include suicide bombing, treating women as property, pedophilia, and other sexual deviants who are trying to undermine the fundamental institutions of the traditional Western world.

The Western tradition has created the most vibrant and tolerant civilization in the history of our planet. Yes, there have been mistakes, misunderstandings and conflicts. Power corrupts, you know. But for the most part an earnest Christian is not going to kill you for disagreeing with him. Which is why it is acceptable to continue to call the US a 'Christian Nation'. Because the fundamental principles apply to all people, regardless of their faith. No one is sentenced to death for leaving Christianity and converting to Buddhism, unlike in Islamic states under Shari'a law, where apostasy is punishable by death.

Bag the PC platitudes, Senator, and hold a press conference. Tell us the truth and it will set you free.

The Osama-bama Floodgates are Open

2007-02-12T13:10:00.000Z

More and more on Barak Hussein Osama-bama is being exposed:

Brookesnews.com ~

The opportunity in this is not accusing him of being a closet Moslem. It requires taking him at his word that he has become a Christian for that means he is an apostate. There is no dispute among either ancient or modern Moslem scholars that under Islamic law, a murtadd, one who turns his back on Islam, an apostate, must be put to death. Irtidad, apostasy, is committing treason against God, and traitors deserve to be killed.

Should Obama deny he ever was a Moslem, it will compound the problem in the eyes of Moslems. He was born of a Moslem father, raised by a Moslem stepfather, and received his first education at a Moslem school. That he subsequently went to a Catholic school in Jakarta before living with his mother's parents back in Honolulu makes no difference. In the eyes of Moslems, he originally was a Moslem. How can he not be in those eyes, with a Koranic first name and his middle name that of the grandson of Mohammed? For him to become a Christian means he is, for them, a murtadd, an apostate.

Which provides the perfect opportunity for an enterprising journalist to ask him at a press conference if he is: 1. Afraid of Moslem assassination attempts as punishment for being in Islamic eyes an apostate? 2. Willing to publicly call upon all Moslems around the world to renounce such punishment and declare instead that Moslems are fully free to convert to another religion?

The odds are high that he will answer no to the first and yes to the second. As an oily politician, he will try to squirm out of a clear definitive yes with no wiggle room. But it should not be difficult for a smart journalist to get him to agree without reservation that Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states...

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. This right includes freedom to change his religion or belief.

...applies to Muslims

Once Obama condemns the Moslem tradition of death for apostasy, then he can be asked:

The Koran famously quotes Allah as saying in chapter (sura) 2, verse 256 that there should be no compulsion in religion.' Yet numerous sayings of Mohammed known as hadith which form the basis of Islamic Sharia law quote Mohammed as saying If a Moslem discards his religion, kill him.' So are you telling Moslems that Allah was right but Mohammed was misquoted, and their Sharia law tradition on apostasy is wrong?

You can see how much fun there is to be had with this.

Islamonline ~

The Infiltration begins
Posted: Jan 20, 2007 7:56 PM

Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., a black Muslim from Nyangoma-Kogel, Kenya and Ann Dunham, a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas.

Obama's parents met at the University of Hawaii.

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced. His father returned to Kenya. His mother then married Lolo Soetoro, a radical Muslim from Indonesia. When Obama was 6 years old, the family relocated to Indonesia.

Obama attended a Muslim school in Jakarta. He also spent two years in a Catholic school.

Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim. He is quick to point out that, he was once a Muslim, but that he also attended Catholic school.

Obama's political handlers are attempting to make it appear that Obama's introduction to Islam came via his father, and that this influence was temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya soon after the divorce, and never again had any direct influence over his son's education. Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, introduced his stepson to Islam. Obama was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the radical teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

The Google search for "Obama Apostate" yields 65,000 hits. This is not going to go away.

Obama Says Voters Curious on His Faith

2007-02-12T12:53:00.000Z

There is an article from the AP that admits ~~Osama~~ Obama's Muslim origins:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Sunday he does not think voters have a litmus test on religion, whether evangelical Christianity or his childhood years in the Muslim faith.

"If your name is Barack Hussein Obama, you can expect it, some of that. I think the majority of voters know that I'm a member of the United Church of Christ, and that I take my faith seriously," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

[...]

Obama's religious background has come under scrutiny because he attended a Muslim school in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, lived in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather from 1967 to 1971 and subsequently returned to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents.

So, a Muslim apostate is running for President. This is what Wikipedia says about Islamic Apostasy:

Today apostasy is punishable by death in the countries of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan, Mauritania, the Comoros and, most likely, Iraq.[10][11] Similarly, blasphemy is punishable by death in Pakistan. In Qatar apostasy is a capital offense, but no executions have been reported for it.[12]

The hadith "Whosoever changes his religion, Kill Him", has been used both by supporters of the death penalty as well as critics of Islam. Islamic scholars point out it is important to understand the hadith in proper historical context. The order was at a time when the nascient Muslim community in Medina was fighting for its very life, and there were many schemes, by which the enemies of Islam would try to entice rebellion and discord within the community.[13] Clearly any defection would have serious consequences for the Muslims, and the hadith may well be about treason, rather than just apostasy. It must also be pointed out that under the terms of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, any Muslim who returned to Mecca was not to be returned, terms which the Prophet accepted. Despite this historical point Islamic law as currently practiced does not allow the freedom for the individual to choose one's religion.[emphasis mine, ed.]

There are an awful lot of Muslims, all around the world, that believe that apostasy should be punished by death. One must wonder how the leaders of people with that mindset would respond to an apostate American President? Or go back to 2000 and think on Joe Lieberman's candidacy, and how that might be perceived today (post 9/11).

Hmmmmmm.

An Email I Have Received

2007-01-30T14:28:00.001Z

I am attempting to verify this email, but for now I will post it in
case anyone out there has any information regarding its contents.
Especially the part about attending the madrassa.

Read it with an open mind, and please comment if you have more
information to share.

::: Be careful, be very careful. :::

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein
Obama Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya,
and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist ).

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father
returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim --
moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six
months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language Obama spent two
years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school in
Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a
Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that
damning information by saying that for two years he also attended a
Catholic school.

Obama's father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a radical Muslim who
migrated from Kenya to Jakarta, Indonesia. He met Obama's mother, Ann
Dunhamaea a white atheist from Wichita, Kansas at the University of
Hawaii at Manoa. Obama, Sr. and Dunham divorced when Barack, Jr. was
two.

Obama's spinmeisters are now attempting to make it appear that Obama's
introduction to Islam came from his father and that influence was
temporary at best. In reality, the senior Obama returned to Kenya
immediately following the divorce and never again had any direct
influence over his son's education. Dunham married another Muslim,
Lolo Soetoro who educated his stepson as a good Muslim by enrolling
him in one of Jakarta's Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical
teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad
on the industrialized world.

Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when you are
seeking political office in the United States, Obama joined the United
Church of Christ to help purge any notion that he is still a Muslim.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Barak Hussein Obama - Sleeper Agent?

2007-01-29T13:07:00.000Z

This post will begrowing over the next few days, as I compile the evidence that points to the danger of accepting Osama-bama as a legitimate Presidential candidate.

First an article from the Daily Herald in Utah:

Barack Obama has built a solid liberal record

KURT ERICKSON AND ED TIBBETTS - LEE NEWS SERVICE

U.S. Sen. Barack Obama appeals to a cross-section of America as an eloquent speaker with the potential to bridge a political battlefield bloodied by years of fighting.

But underlying the Chicago Democrat's sudden rise to fame over the past two years is a solid liberal record built over 10 years in Springfield, Ill., and Washington, D.C.

It's the kind of record that, no doubt, will help him in such places as Iowa's first-in-the-nation caucuses should he run for the presidency. But it could leave some people questioning his ability to narrow the partisan divide.

Obama, who objects to ideological labels, wins high marks from progressives on environment, abortion and labor issues, as well as on civil liberties and education, all of which are vital to winning the Democratic Party's presidential nominating process.

[...]

As a member of the Illinois Senate, Obama supported a single-payer health care plan run by the state and voted for an increase in the minimum wage. He also endorsed embryonic stem cell research and, in 2003, co-sponsored legislation that would have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.

He voted against allowing people to claim self-defense if they used a gun in their home. The measure would have affected only residents of towns where local handgun bans were in effect.

So, to review:

Socialist health care - check
Crush small business by setting wages - check
Use "embyos" for research, paid for by taxpayers - check
Limit the Second Amendment and the Castle Doctrine - check

Well, the Liberal record is right where we expected it to be. Next up, where did Osama-bama go to school in Indonesia?

Fighting the Next World War, Today

2007-01-29T10:50:00.000Z

From Ynet news.com, a couple of stories that indicate just what we are up against. As if any of the regular readers need reminding. Go ahead and email this link to the mailing list, and let's see if we can't change some minds.

First, former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy gives an interview where he sounds an awful lot like President Bush, and many US lawmakers (at least when they were for the war, before they were against it):Former head of Israel's intelligence service tells Portuguese newspaper it would take at least 25 years before battle against fundamentalist terrorism is won; says nuclear strike by Muslim terrorists 'very likely'

'The world does not understand. A person walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Buenos Aires and doesn’t get the sense that there is a war going on,’ said Halevy who headed Mossad between 1998 and 2003.

‘During World War I and II the entire world felt there was a war. Today no one is conscious of it. From time to time there is a terrorist attack in Madrid, London and New York and then everything stays the same.’

Violence by Islamic militants has already disrupted international travel and trade just as in the previous two world conflicts, he said.

Secondly, the Muslim Terrorists show us once again what they mean by 'truce' and 'negotiations': Palestinian factions agree to tense truce, with Egyptian mediation; nonethless, Palestinians keep dying in Gaza, at least 10 Hamas members kidnapped in Nablus

A 19 year old Palestinian was killed during exchanges of fire between Hamas and Fatah near Khan Younis. A few hours earlier, Sunday afternoon, a member of a Hamas-led police force was shot dead, despite a theoretical mediated a few hours earlier by an Egyptian security delegation between various Palestinian groups. Kidnappings by both sides continued in the West Bank.

Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas force, blamed members of Fatah's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades for the shooting, which took place shortly after a top intelligence official loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was abducted.

[...]

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas called on Palestinians to stop the internal fighting. At the opening of a Palestinian government meeting, he said: "I have asked again and again and again. Stop this war. Stop the violence, preserve national unity."

Haniyeh also appealed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to order the Palestinians security forces to remove gunmen from the streets and get rid of the barricades currently dotting Gaza roads.

Sure, give these folks a state. They just need more understanding and we need to get to the root causes of the violence. Like US Imperialism? Or maybe Western parochialism? Or maybe the root cause is just something simple, like good old vengeance:

the Hamas gunmen had been firing into the air and proclaiming revenge on those involved in the Friday kidnapping of nine members of Hamas security forces.

Check it out.

Jordan to Go Nuclear!

2007-01-19T15:10:00.000Z

From jihadwatch.org:

JERUSALEM - Jordan wants to develop nuclear power for peaceful means, King Abdullah II said in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz daily published on Friday.

‘The Egyptians are looking for a nuclear program. The GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) are looking at one, and we are actually looking at nuclear power for peaceful and energy purposes. We’ve been discussing it with the West,’ he said.

‘I personally believe that any country that has a nuclear program should conform to international regulations and should have international regulatory bodies that check to make sure that any nuclear program moves in the right direction,’ he told the liberal daily.

‘The rules have changed on the nuclear subject throughout the whole region. Where I think Jordan was saying, ‘we’d like to have a nuclear-free zone in the area,’ after this summer, everybody’s going for nuclear programs,’ the Jordanian king said.

Nice going, Jimmy Carter.

The Second Holocaust is Looming

2007-01-19T15:08:00.000Z

By Benny Morris at FrontPageMag.com

The Nazis, of course, industrialized mass murder. But still, the perpetrators had one-on-one contact with the victims. They may have dehumanized them, over months and years of appalling debasement and in their minds, before the actual killing. But, still, they were in eye- and ear-contact, sometimes in tactile contact, with their victims. The Germans, along with their non-German helpers, had to round up the men, women and children from their houses and drag and beat them through the streets and mow them down in nearby woods or push and pack them on cattle cars and transport them to the camps, where 'Work makes Free', separate the able-bodied from the completely useless and lure them into 'shower' halls and pour in the gas and then take out, or oversee the extraction of, the bodies and prepare the 'showers' for the next batch.

The second Holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or ten years' time, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will covoke in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Ahmedinejad, by then in his second or third term, the go ahead. The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa, and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases. Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads. Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries and Home Guard units.

With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 8,000 square miles), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel. A million or more Israelis, in the greater Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem areas, will die immediately. Millions will be seriously irradiated. Israel has about seven million inhabitants. No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli. It will be quite impersonal.

Read the whole thing, I suspect that you will be shocked by the information there. My only suggestion is that I believe that the attack described will come much sooner than 'five to ten years' from now.

God Bless us all.

How French Muslims Celebrated New Years Eve

2007-01-03T14:45:00.000Z

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs:

January 01, 2007 10:18pm
Article from: Reuters

VANDALS set fire to about 400 cars overnight and police said they arrested more than 250 people, as violence marred France's New Year celebrations.

However, a police spokesman said there were fewer problems than in 2005, when youths attacked trains in the Paris region and southeast of the country.

25,000 police were on duty throughout the country during the night, including 4500 in Paris, where the authorities banned fireworks and firecrackers.

Police said that they had arrested 258 people nationwide by early morning, including two children aged eight and 10 who set fire to dustbins in the eastern city of Strasbourg.

Three children aged between 10 and 12 were arrested in a Paris suburb after they were caught carrying cans of petrol.

In the capital itself, almost 400,000 people welcomed in the New Year on the Champs Elysees and at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where no serious incidents were reported.

Setting cars on fire has become a regular event in France during New Year's Eve celebrations, especially in the deprived suburbs that ring many cities.[emphasis mine, ed.]

"...the deprived suburbs...", yah, right. Great E.U.phemism for Muslim freeloaders who won't assimilate, learn the language and culture, or get educations or jobs. At least is was better than last year. Maybe for next year they can keep it down to 300 cars.

A Response to Achmananinidoodoo

2007-01-03T14:13:00.000Z

Political Dishonesty has an open letter to Mahmoud and Iran. Check it out.

Seeing the Big Picture

2006-12-20T03:16:00.000Z

Orson Scott Card has done it again. His perceptiveness is what makes him one of my favorite authors. May I present How Our Civilization Can Fall:

Welcome to My Nightmare

Here's how it happens: America stupidly and immorally withdraws from the War on Terror, withdrawing prematurely from Iraq and leaving it in chaos. Emboldened, either Muslims unite against the West (unlikely) or collapse in a huge war between Shiites and Sunnis (already beginning). It almost doesn't matter, because in the process the oil will stop flowing.

And when the oil stops flowing, Europe and Japan and Taiwan and Singapore and South Korea all crash economically; Europe then has to face the demands of its West-hating Muslim "minority" without money and without the ruthlessness or will to survive that would allow them to counter the threat. The result is accommodation or surrender to Islam. The numbers don't lie -- it is not just possible, it is likely.

America doesn't crash right away, mind you. But we still have a major depression, because we have nowhere to sell our goods. And depending on what our desperate enemies do, it's a matter of time before we crash as well.

Why? Because we're that Syrian village. Except that what we make is food -- enough to feed half the world.

What we don't make for ourselves anymore is ... everything else. We don't produce steel. We don't make most of our own computer equipment. We have exported our textile industry.

Some of these industries could recover. But they would be producing only for domestic consumption. We'd have nowhere to sell anything except to ourselves. That's when we find out just how much of our new "service" economy is smoke and mirrors, dependent entirely on the surpluses generated by the global system of trade.

And our own oil production cannot meet the demands of transportation and production at current levels. Rationing will cripple us. We will not be able to maintain our huge fleet of trucks. Air travel will becoming shockingly expensive and airlines will fail or consolidate. We won't even be allowed to drive our cars on long trips because gasoline will be rationed.

We will go back to the rails. Only we won't have the money to rebuild and refurbish the railroad system -- it will only be able to limp along.

It will look, even inside the United States, amazingly like the shrinkage that happened at the time of the fall of Rome.

Then, and only then, will America look -- and be -- vulnerable to any kind of intervention from the south. Economies that are still somewhat primitive will recover faster than economies that are absolutely dependent on specialization.

It takes two generations for the dark ages to reach America. But they will come, if we allow this nightmare to begin. Because once you reach the tipping point, there's no turning back, as the Emperor Justinian discovered.

Read it all. You will be tested, in fact, you are being tested right now. And you failed the Pop Quiz on November 7th.

Cross-posted at Hidden Dragon.

Shari'a Advances in Michigan

2006-12-11T13:08:00.000Z

From Western Resistance:

News from Grand Rapids Press and from Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune and Seattle Post Intelligencer:

Once more, a Muslim who refuses to act like other citizens has forced another institution in America to rethink its rules. This time, the security policy of a bus company in Michigan has been scrapped because of one Muslim woman who refused to remove her veil.

On Friday, the Rapid bus system in Grand Rapids stated that it would end its policy of barring people who covered their faces from boarding public transit vehicles. The decision stems from an incident in July when a Muslim woman wearing a full face-veil, or nikab, was refused entry onto a bus, because her face was not visible.

Robbers, bandits, rapists and thieves rejoice! Now you can ride the bus with a facemask or bandana and claim protection under Shari'a law!

Read the post at Western Resistance and follow the links.

Straight from the Koran

2006-12-06T10:52:00.000Z

Posted at Masada2000:

FROM THE KORAN ITSELF...

"HEIL HITLER" Now Upgraded to "ALLAH AKBAR?"

You may already know about this one: O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for friends. [al-Ma'idah 5:51.11]

But did you know that there are 123 verses in the Quran concerning fighting and killing for the cause of Allah? Here are but a few passages:

-Muslims are encouraged to be wholly occupied (Sura 2:273) with fighting for Allah's cause.

- Allah will give "a far richer recompense to those who fight for him" (Sura 4:96).

- Regarding infidels (unbelievers), they are the Muslim's "inveterate enemies" (Sura 4:101). Muslims are to "arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere" (Sura 9:5) for them. They are to "seize them and put them to death wherever you find them, kill them wherever you find them, seek out the enemies of Islam relentlessly" (Sura 4:90). "Fight them until Islam reigns supreme" (Sura 2:193). "Cut off their heads, and cut off the tips of their fingers" (Sura 8:12).

- If a Muslim does not go to war, Allah will kill him (Sura 9:39). He is to be told, "the heat of war is fierce, but more fierce is the heat of Hell-fire" (Sura 9:81).

- A Muslim must "fight for the cause of Allah with the devotion due to him" (Sura 22:78)

- Muslims must make war on the infidels (unbelievers) who live around them (Sura 9:123).

- Muslims are to be "ruthless to unbelievers" (Sura 48:29).

- A Muslim should "enjoy the good things" he has gained by fighting (Sura 8:69).

- A Muslim can kill any person he wishes if it be a "just cause" (Sura 6:152).

- Allah loves those who "fight for his cause" (Sura 61:3).
Anyone who fights against Allah or renounces Islam in favor of another religion shall be "put to death or crucified or have their hands and feet cut off alternative sides" (Sura 5:34).

- Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him. Sahih Al-Bukhari (9:57)

- Slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush. (Koran 9:5)

- Take him and fetter him and expose him to hell fire. (Koran 69:30-37)

- I will instill terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, Smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger tips of them. (Koran 8:12)

- They should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides. (Koran 5:33)

- Know that paradise is under the shades of swords. Sahih al-Bukhari Vol 4 p55

And Speaking of Paradise...

"There will be "gushing fountains" and everyone "shall recline on jeweled couches face to face, and there shall wait on them immortal youths with bowls and ewers and a cup of purest wine." Suras (or chapters) 55 and 56 of the Quran.

"Therein are bashful virgins whom neither man nor jinnee will have touched before ... virgins as fair as corals and rubies," sura 55. A few lines later, you might remind them of "virgins chaste and fair ... they shall recline on green cushions and fine carpets."

"The smallest reward for the people of Paradise is an abode where there are 80,000 servants and 72 wives, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from Al-Jabiyyah [a Damascus suburb] to Sana'a.'"

It will be the day, God willing, you spend with the women of paradise...Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty, and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out, "Come hither, friend of God."

The Ranks of the 910 Group Swell

2006-12-06T04:05:00.000Z

Just say no to Islam! See this post!

Islam Means Submission

2006-12-01T13:07:00.000Z

...to the insane idea that everything that happens is the will of Allah. It's raining, it's the will of Allah; the traffic on your way to work, it's not because of the broken water main, it's the will of Allah. Did your car break down? It's not because the alternator wore out, it's the will of Allah.

So why should you do anything? Why learn and record any knowledge? Why study music or art or literature? Why excercise and stay healthy? Whatever happens is the will of Allah. Just pray five times a day, enslave your wife and daughters, and kill those who don't believe what you do, because it's the will of Allah.

Excerpts from a column at The American Thinker:

We know that we are being lied to. Sometimes we just don't realize how much we are being lied to.

The more sordid the Islamic present seems, the more we are told of the glories of the Islamic past. And the most glorious of the glories of Islam, the most enlightened of its enlightenments, are the "Islamic science" and "Islamic philosophy" of the Golden Age.

So what does Islamic law say about this science and this philosophy? According to Reliance of the Traveller: The Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law by Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368), they are unlawful, serious affronts to Islam, a form of apostasy. Apologists for Islam in the West brag about the "Islamic science" and "Islamic philosophy" that their accomplices in the Islamic world condemn.

{snip}

There is, however, a still closer connection between the philosophy and "the sciences of the materialists" declared unlawful by Reliance of the Traveller. Without a notion of cause and effect, science is impossible, and the acceptance by Islam of al-Ghazali's views meant that science in the Islamic world could develop only in opposition to a fundamental tenet of Islam.

If the true cause of events is the will of Allah, and if the will of Allah is inscrutable, then the causes of events are inscrutable and science a vain pursuit. The issue is ultimately whether the universe and its creator are in any way intelligible. The West, with its traditions of natural law and natural theology, agrees for the most part that the universe is astonishingly intelligible and God somewhat so. Islam, at least at its most rigorous, denies any intelligibility whatsoever to either.

{snip}

The importance of "occasionalism," the doctrine that events are brought about by the direct will of God, not by natural causes, for Islam and for the West's differences with it is emphasized in the following statement of Majid Fakhry:

In fact it is no exaggeration to say that a number of distinctively Islamic notions such as fatalism, utter resignation to God, the surrender of personal endeavour, belief in the unqualified transcendence of God, etc., cannot be fully understood except in the perspective of the occasionalist world-view. (Islamic Occasionalism)

This doctrine is at the heart of Islam. Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, and Aquinas warned us against it, but now university, scientific establishment, media, State Department, and even corporate America, elites of every sort, pretend that Avicenna and Averroes are the paragons of Islamic philosophy and Maimonides and Aquinas their best pupils and thus in debt to Islam. If we are going to escape humiliation, madness, and death, we are going to have to educate ourselves and fight for even the simplest and most obvious of truths. The establishment is certainly not going to do it for us.

"Science a vain pursuit", this is truly madness.

Check it out.

The Coalition to Preserve Civilization

2006-11-30T11:47:00.000Z

A new post at Gates of Vienna, which outlines everything that we are doing to save the West from the horrors of Shari'a, Muslim Terrorists, and the threat of worldwide Islam.

A snippet:

The Great Islamic Jihad is certain that Western Civilization is about to come to an end.

Islamic Fascism looks forward to the rule of the new Caliphate, in which the whole world will swear submission to Allah and bow five times a day towards Mecca. It aims to kill or enslave every person who will not accept its twisted vision of Islam. With the help of its allies among the world’s dictators and within our own media, it is confident that it will achieve its goal.

But even as this beast tears at our throats, a new defensive force is being born, a determination to preserve all that is good and right and true within the Western world. Even as we are abandoned by our leaders, by the sophists in our academies, and by the propagandists of our major media, ordinary people are connecting with one another, and are ready to stand up and defeat those who would destroy us.

Check it out.

What We Can Do

2006-11-25T12:47:00.000Z

Check out this site for some tips and links for helping out in the battle against Muslim Terrorists.

For example:

Politics

Help ignite your elected officials

Your views as a citizen are important to your elected representatives. Organize letter writing campaigns to your elected officials raising awareness about Islamist incitement, and encouraging them to be pro-active about the issues. You can write a short, personal email with a subject line like: "Thank you for standing up for Western ideals."
When you see legislation that benefits radical Islamic groups and terror supporting regimes, but does nothing to help the populations being abused by them, help your friends and colleagues write letters to your elected officials, telling them to oppose such legislation.
Volunteer for a campaign, and raise this issue to the candidate you are supporting.

The beginning of the end of Western civilization

2006-11-25T11:50:00.000Z

Posted: November 23, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Michael Youssef, Ph.D.

Western civilization – life as we know it – is under attack, and
indeed has even reached a very dangerous point. Some may even think it
is a point of no return.
Not just because in recent months Muslim groups around the world
insisted that the pope apologize for merely quoting someone else. No,
not just because the prime minister of Denmark had to grovel to the
Muslim nations for a cartoon that appeared in a Danish newspaper, over
which he had no control whatsoever. No, not even just because
President Bush rushed into a Muslim mosque in Washington, D.C., after
Sept. 11, 2001, declaring that Islam is a religion of peace.

These are merely modern-day indications that Islam's 1,400-year-old
method of attempting to reign and rule by intimidation and fear are
reaching new heights. Throughout their history, the followers of Islam
have attempted to practice the very core of their religious worldview
– namely, to see to it that their religion, which they view as
superior to all other religions, overwhelms the followers of all other
religions.

(Column continues below)

In days gone by when they had no political or military (terrorist)
voice, they were biding their time. But now, as is confirmed daily in
our newscasts, we know that they command numerous foot soldiers and
cells in Europe and North America. Surely, they feel that their day
has come. The day of successfully intimidating and gaining more
concessions, and thus more ground toward realizing their
1,400-year-old dream of world domination, is within their reach.

How can we know this? After extensive time examining self-confessed
radical or revolutionary Islamic groups, I've discovered a root of
resentment deeper than that of mere opposition to colonialism.

To most of these people, the Crusades were not just events in history
that took place nearly eight or nine hundred years ago; instead, the
Crusades signify a perpetual desire on the part of the Christian West
to dominate them and prove their religion inferior. Thus, it is
essential to explore even beyond the Crusades to comprehend fully the
undercurrents of today's Islamic resurgence. Current Islamic thought
as expressed in al-Jihad is a stream flowing out of a peculiar
interpretation of Islam.

Even a casual observer must be asking, "Why do they 'violently and
murderously' object to others pointing out the violent nature of the
founding of their religion?"

Well, this is just the point. When you deem your religion to be
superior, you can torture, maim and kill your enemy, whom you view as
inferior, without a need for explanation. On the other hand, those who
are viewed as inferior by them dare not even be associated with the
slightest bit of criticism of them.

Alas, the beginning of the end of Western civilization as we know it
did not begin with modern-day examples of bullying into submission
those whom I mentioned above. But rather, if you ask any of the
reliable leaders in the Middle East, as I have, they will tell you it
began during the Carter administration.

When Muslims held Americans hostage in Tehran, Iran, for nearly a year
and a half, and the most powerful nation in the world (the "Great
Satan") acted impotently, there were a million hurrahs rising from
Morocco to Indonesia. As they say in the Middle East, "The cow is down
and what is needed are more butchers with sharp knives."

There is no escape from this historical disaster. Reagan and George W.
tried to reset the clock, but sadly it appears too late. I am no
politician and I do have a genuine love for the Muslim people, but the
facts are stubborn and will not go away.

Short of unity among the Western leaders to speak the truth with moral
clarity – a miracle that even those of us who believe in miracles
doubt greatly – there can be no future for Western civilization as we
know it.

There is one dim hope, however. Our only hope it is that the moderate
leaders of Arab nations can lead the charge against religious
imperialism with courage and without fear. Only then will the Western
leaders rise in unity from the graves of apathy and support these
leaders in their endeavor in order to resuscitate Western civilization
as we know it.

Six Steps to Help 'the Troops'

2006-11-25T11:39:00.000Z

From the Weekly Standard:
It's long, but worth reading.

The bottom-up plan to defeat the insurgency.
by Eric Egland
11/16/2006 12:00:00 AM

IN THIS POLITICAL season, the debate about Iraq has become almost completely backward looking. It has degenerated into finger pointing and partisan sniping--stuck between a false choice of "cut and run" versus "more of the same."

Failure in Iraq is not an option, because it would spell disaster for U.S. national security and foreign policy credibility, not to mention military morale. Our mission in Iraq continues to move forward, and U.S. forces have successfully defeated the insurgents in several areas, yet the enemy has proven resilient and effective. Thus, we must succeed in Iraq by changing the status quo.

The plans for victory so far have fallen short. They have come, top-down, from the Pentagon or the palaces-turned-coalition headquarters in Baghdad. Now, American leaders, especially the nominee for secretary of defense, should consider a bottom-up plan to win that taps the collective grass-roots wisdom of successful battlefield innovators. In particular, there are six course corrections that can be taken almost immediately.

1. Encourage innovation by emphasizing small-scale technological solutions and rejecting peacetime bureaucracy.

The White House, Congress, and the Pentagon earn commendations for their commitment to winning in Iraq. Steadfast leadership, generous supplemental spending, and a streamlined acquisition process have resulted in the rapid fielding, on a massive scale, of critical defensive equipment such as body and vehicle armor, as well as jammers to impede the enemy's use of remote-detonated IEDs.

While these measures have helped us defensively, a more entrepreneurial approach is needed to field capabilities that enable offensive success against an adaptive enemy. Deploying unit commanders, most of whom have already served at least one tour in Iraq, must have direct input into how supplemental funds are invested in new technologies. Technology providers should conduct road shows to earn at least some funding approval and priority from ground commanders.

In Washington, there remains too much focus on massive technological efforts that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take years to develop, test, and field. Meanwhile, low-cost programs like remote handheld cameras, biometrically-capable, Wi-Fi enabled PDAs, and tethered blimps with mounted cameras are put on the back burner. To inspect suspicious objects that could be roadside bombs, troops have resorted to spending their own money to buy remote-controlled cars with jerry-rigged mounted cameras because the thousands of remotely controlled robots in Iraq are held by specialized bomb disposal units.
Without such an option, they are told to "guard" possible IEDs until the heavily tasked bomb disposal experts can arrive, often hours later. This creates a situation where our troops lack needed gear and are exposed, on the defensive, at a time and place of the enemy's choosing. U.S. troops should no longer be required to stand guard over enemy weapons, and they should be empowered to rapidly acquire the tools they need to do their job without exposing themselves unnecessarily.

We must also eliminate the peacetime bureaucratic hurdles that keep useful innovations from getting fielded to help our troops. In early 2005, the military demonstrated a peacetime bureaucratic mentality by placing a 'safety hold' on an urgent request from Iraq for thousands of powerful handheld lasers. Field commanders wanted to broaden the success achieved by a few units that employed the lasers to alert local drivers of upcoming checkpoints and approaching patrols. In those areas, the measure was dramatically reducing 'escalation of force' incidents, where troops are forced to open fire, assuming non-compliant vehicles to be car bombs. Yet, the lasers never came because bureaucrats declared they were not 'eye safe'--as if the alternative, a .50 caliber slug, were. The deaths of many innocent Iraqis caused by these incidents, while legally justifiable, scar our troops emotionally, weaken support for the new government, and fuel the insurgency.

2. Improve pre-deployment training realism and abandon Cold War-era checklists.

When troops were first preparing to deploy to Iraq, they followed the same checklists that had been used in the Cold War and Gulf War that focused on the conventional military's core mission: "high-intensity conflict." Once the invasion was successful, though, the threat facing our troops changed as the insurgency started using ambush tactics, but the training and preparation that our troops receive has not kept pace.

"Train how we fight" is a mantra in the military, and for good reason. Training intensity and realism is the number one predictor for combat success, especially when facing a thinking, adaptive enemy who observes our patterns and exploits perceived vulnerabilities.

There is another training mantra, however, that ends up inviting attacks from such an enemy because it creates predictability: "We don't train to time, we train to standard." Translation: "No matter how long it takes, soldier, you will perform this task exactly how we trained you until it becomes second nature." Ask a soldier returning from combat in Iraq which mantra best describes their pre-deployment training experience and the latter is chosen overwhelmingly.

While repetition is a useful approach for maintaining a vehicle or a rifle, it is the wrong approach for training troops how to maneuver when on the roads of Iraq. Repetition means the more we train, the more predictable we become, and the easier it is for the enemy to exploit. The enemy exploits how we maneuver on the roads and react to roadside bombs, templating our previous reactions to set up follow-on attacks that create significant casualties because responding troops are often out of their vehicles and more vulnerable to a blast or small arms fire.

According to one soldier in Iraq, his unit spent days going over how to clear a foxhole, something many had already trained to do numerous times in their careers. The problem is that the enemy we face in Iraq is not entrenched in foxholes, but moves fluidly and blends into the civilian population. While clearing a foxhole is an important capability, he acknowledged, "We probably would have been better off taking that time to work on IEDs."

Training requirements for deploying units should be stripped and rebuilt with a focus on the current threat in Iraq and with significant input from the deploying units themselves.

3. Allow local commanders to buy what they need and nationalize the war effort by connecting the American public with the troops and their mission.

The troops need more support, from both the military and the American people, and the ground commanders must be empowered to lead our national effort to support them. The localized insurgency, coupled with an adaptive, resilient enemy means the troops on the ground best understand how to win. Our support should fulfill their stated needs, not what Congress, the Pentagon--or even the generals in Baghdad--think they ought to need.
We need to expand "commander discretionary funds" to give each battalion commander a large budget, on the order of $3 million, to spend as they see fit both before they deploy and while in country, with appropriate accountability. This would allow commanders to take action that will help the mission, but which bureaucratic practices currently prevent. For example, they could buy video cameras and phones to give to locals so that they can film and report insurgent activity; or hire military-aged males to clean roads and dig trenches that improve security while providing jobs to men who would otherwise be recruited as insurgents. It would also allow ground forces to reward a neighborhood chief with a few electric generators for his support of our mission, or to hand a $20 bill to a local who identifies a bomb that could have killed several soldiers.

Similar general staff policies sound effective, but fail in practice. For example, there is a "small rewards program" (SRP) in Iraq that allows cash incentives for supportive locals. The problem is that the units have not been trusted to handle the cash themselves, so a unit that wants to reward a helpful local has been required to give a coupon redeemable at the front gate of the nearest American base.

This "reward coupon" is of little value to Iraqis, so they lack incentive to cooperate. Locals often lack transportation and justifiably fear that the enemy will observe them outside the base and retaliate against them and their families. Plus, the SRP money requires detailed paperwork from the units, and is reimbursed only after a one-month delay. So, neither the troops nor the locals like or use the SRP. Still, many enlisted soldiers--whose families are strapped for cash back home--use their own money to provide small rewards because the technique, when properly executed, is highly effective.

One innovative battalion commander knew the value of small on-the-spot cash rewards, which provide a powerful, immediate incentive for locals to turn in insurgents and their weapons. So he started using "commander discretionary funds," a more readily accessible but still limited account, to give cash rewards. He then reimbursed the account when the SRP money finally arrived.

In essence, a bureaucratic mindset has undermined mission success. The Pentagon trusts the troops with deadly weapons and million dollar vehicles, but not a few dollars in their pockets. This forced one of the best battalion commanders in Iraq to "cook the books" and lie to his superiors in order to simply achieve what the rewards program claimed to do in the first place.
Still, not everything can be done by the military alone. A major problem with Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan as well, is that the American people, while supporting the troops with prayers and bumper stickers, do not feel connected to the effort because they do not know what they can do to help. They must be given more opportunities to directly support the troops on the ground--as the unmatched generosity of the American people remains a highly underutilized resource in this conflict.

We need to establish sister city relationships between battalions that are preparing to deploy or are already in Iraq and American cities--not just the towns around military bases. The Pentagon should expand on the success of existing grass-roots organizations such as AnySoldier.com and SoldiersAngels.org that allow private citizens and organizations to send the troops the items they need, whether for themselves or for the Iraqi people.

Just as an engaged couple sets up a wedding registry for loved ones to buy them what they need, so the relationship should be between deployed units and Americans back home, using places like Wal-Mart, Ebay, Radio Shack and Target. Added elements that could make the program even more effective could be: competition between cities to see who can marshal the most support per capita, broadcasting the results, and awarding tangible recognition for cities that exceed certain thresholds.

A group of spouses of deployed Minnesota National Guard soldiers set up a program to make and ship dolls to Iraq so the unit could give them to the Iraqi girls in the neighborhoods they patrolled. One soldier explained, "We tried candy and toys, but found that dolls are the only thing that the Iraqi boys won't steal from the Iraqi girls." As part of a broader effort to build relationships with locals, this unit was able to tap civilian resources and support and saw a significant decrease in insurgent activity in their area as a result.

Truly supporting the warfighter means more than lip service. It requires listening to the needs of the ground units, then doing everything possible--as a nation--to deliver.

4. Strengthen intelligence sharing between tactical and national levels, and develop a national insurgent database.

We must have better intelligence on the enemy, especially human intelligence. Our existing intelligence technologies were designed during the Cold War to spy on conventional armies that use bases, have tanks and aircraft, and communicate on identifiable radio frequencies. In Iraq, however, the enemy lives in civilian neighborhoods, drives civilian cars, uses weapons composed of readily available materials, and communicates via civilian mobile phones and the internet.

In a Cold War scenario, the U.S. intelligence community would collect intelligence about enemy activity that would subsequently filter "down" to the maneuver units. Today, however, the case is often reversed. Ground units get the first information about an enemy, often by going on a raid and learning about the individual's ties to other insurgents. As that intelligence is sent "up," the national organizations focus collection efforts accordingly.

There are success stories in Iraq where units have provided tactical intelligence to a national organization, then national came back with amplified intelligence that led the unit in a successful operation against more insurgents. This model can and should be applied more broadly.

There have also been instances of tremendous successes in cooperation between three critical components of the overall effort: national intelligence organizations; the special operators who are present in small numbers but receive sensitive, actionable intelligence; and the conventional forces who have the manpower to act on the intelligence. This type of cooperation enables units to achieve significant operational success without compromising some of our most sensitive intelligence programs.

Still, American forces lack a national insurgency database to enable the pattern analysis that is a critical element of fighting an insurgency. While there have been numerous efforts to improve data collection, there remains no central database for information about enemy activity and attack patterns. Again, multiple reporting chains, proprietary databases, and top down solutions hinder our ability to understand our enemy.

Compounding the problem of not having a complete picture of enemy activity patterns is that many tactical units simply use their own programs and templates that are often not compatible with neighboring units or the data at the palaces in Baghdad. While those programs and templates often end up being useful for that unit, the data is often lost once they depart Iraq, leaving the replacement unit to come up with its own standard operating procedures for storing intelligence--without the benefit of databased enemy knowledge from their predecessors. Furthermore, many key tactical details of most attacks are not recorded, and a large share of IED attacks that cause no damage or injury are not reported at all because the troops see it as an administrative hassle rather than a pattern analysis opportunity.

Along with hiring the information pros at Oracle, Google and Microsoft, we can model the databases used by some fire departments. One solution is to use a geo-referenced graphical data input interface that is imagery-based with pop-up and drop-down menus to allow the troops to quickly record the critical tactical details that facilitate meaningful pattern analysis. Once data input is made quick and accessible for the troops, commanders must explain the need to record data on enemy attacks, and hold units accountable for doing so
.

5. Take the offensive by reducing predictable patterns on the ground while conducting operations that hunt, rather than chase, the enemy.

U.S. forces need to reduce the predictability of their movements. To do this, generals in Baghdad should stop requiring units to report the number of patrols conducted, and instead focus on effective offensive operations. The current emphasis on gauging unit effectiveness by the quantity of patrols conducted keeps the troops too busy to conduct quality operations that offensively hunt the enemy.

Accordingly, the generals should forbid a common practice that needlessly endangers our troops. "Presence patrols" are a legacy from Bosnia, where many of today's lieutenant colonel battalion commanders conducted peacekeeping operations as junior officers. Presence patrols involve troops simply driving around to show a military presence that ostensibly deters one side from attacking another.

The problem is that Bosnia is not Iraq, where the enemy just wants to attack U.S. forces, so we end up needlessly giving them opportunities to do so. While some units have stopped using the phrase "presence patrol," the emphasis on quantity of patrols still results in U.S. forces going out on the roads without a meaningful offensive purpose in mind.

Also, our most vulnerable movement patterns are the product of administrative convenience rather than strategic considerations. For example, enemy attacks throughout Iraq remain concentrated along the seams of the operational boundaries shared by different U.S. units.

A watchful enemy quickly determines where units operate and where they turn around on a given stretch of road. They then exploit the seams, knowing that it is easier to conduct attacks in an area where a unit does not regularly operate.

Similarly, they can identify which units shoot back when engaged and which ones try to speed away, focusing efforts on the latter. In any given area, U.S. forces that are transiting are consistently attacked at a much higher rate than the combat units responsible for the area. The enemy learns that transiting units are less familiar with the terrain and thus less likely to shoot back--or hunt the enemy down tomorrow to settle the score.

Often, the enemy enjoys freedom of action on roads representing the boundaries between U.S. units. No one feels responsible for the deadly attacks taking place on the roads because they area busy patrolling nearby areas, and no one is held accountable for allowing the enemy to attack. One combat battalion operations officer was visited by an advisor who noticed that U.S. units transiting the area, such as military police, bomb disposal teams, and logistics movements, were suffering enormously high casualties, while his unit had hardly been touched, even though they were operating in the general area every day.

"Well, the guys getting hit are usually combat support guys who have bad tactics," he explained. When queried as to what specific tactics his own unit uses to achieve such success, he admitted, "Well, we don't go out on that part of the road." Why not? "Because it's dangerous," he replied.

A fundamental tenant of warfare is that someone should be responsible for any key terrain feature, such as a ridgeline, river, or road. Almost all U.S. casualties in Iraq occur on one key terrain feature: the roads. So the generals in Baghdad must put specific units in charge of the roads and then let the units themselves develop appropriate plans for success.

We must also seize the "smart offensive" on the ground. The enemy knows that the U.S. excels at traditional offensive maneuvers initiated by clear commands, such as "take Haditha," so the enemy hides when this happens, waiting instead to attack our patrols and convoys later. Amazingly, the attacks from roadside bombs, which have long accounted for the vast majority of coalition casualties, occur not only in the same areas, but often in the same exact spot, with the hole from one blast being re-used to hold a larger and more deadly bomb the next time.

Instead of being told to offer themselves up as targets on "presence patrols," the troops should be empowered to adopt a "hunting" mindset that seeks to identify enemy patterns and create conditions that draw the enemy into our traps.

U.S. forces that adopt the hunting mindset in Iraq tend to do well against the enemy. One of the first units to successfully engage the roadside bomb threat in their area of operations was a National Guard unit from a state in the Deep South. They were new to Iraq but took it personally that the enemy was conducting so many deadly attacks against passing U.S. forces in the area for which they were now responsible.

They used intelligence showing the enemy attack patterns and figured out when and where the enemy was most like to attack next. One night they set up ambush positions in the area. Many hours later, they patiently watched through gun sights as the enemy prepared the attack site and emplaced several explosive charges. Just as the enemy team had finished its emplacement work, they engaged successfully.

When U.S. explosives experts arrived later and detonated the charge, it took out a twenty-foot section of road--a planned attack that likely would have killed several U.S. soldiers had their comrades not decided to take the fight to an elusive enemy. They subsequently managed to engage another insurgent team, and their success stopped not only those insurgents, but drove down insurgent activity in their entire area of operations. As one of them later said, "It's just like huntin' deer."

This type of offensive success has been achieved by other tactical units as well, and consistently drives down enemy activity in the affected area. But until similar offensive solutions are carried out as part of a broad plan, overall attacks will continue to increase as the enemy simply shifts operations to nearby areas--a phenomenon sarcastically referred to as "whack-a-mole." If neighboring units were led to conduct such operations on a broad scale, however, the result would likely be analogous to playing whack-a-mole as a team, with one mallet per mole.

6. Accept the realities of warfare in the media age by decentralizing the sharing of information with both the Iraqi and the American public.

The government and military must better communicate its message--to both Iraqis and the American public. The hurdles posed by political correctness and self-imposed bureaucratic constraints must be cleared in order to balance the insurgents' current control of the airwaves. Their "flaming car bomb-a-day" television propaganda campaign has dominated the media debate since late 2004, negating or neutralizing any reports of positive news.

The lack of reporting on the incredible progress being made in Iraq every day is the media equivalent of trees falling in the forest but no one hearing them. In today's media environment, progress only counts when it is filmed and reported.

Also, it is clear that "good news" must come directly from the units on the ground or the Iraqis themselves. Anything coming from higher headquarters or the Pentagon is dismissed, fairly or unfairly, as propaganda. Recent reports that the Pentagon is building its public relations efforts, including "message development" teams and "surrogate" spokesmen, demonstrate an awareness of the problem. More Pentagon talking heads, however, will have less impact on broadcasting a more balanced message than authentic reporting from the troops.

Some units have embraced the internet to communicate their message, even going so far as to promote soldiers blogging on a personal website to the unofficial position of "unit blogger." In one case, this not only helped unit morale by keeping friends and family back home better informed, but it also improved local media coverage around that unit's home base because there was more complete coverage of progress and setbacks, rather than just the "flaming car bomb-a-day."

Thus, the Pentagon should abandon its reflexive instinct toward control of information that has led it to seek to ban personal cameras and blogs. Instead, a "unit blogger" approach should be applied across Iraq, with appropriate guidance and training to preserve operational security. Tactical units should each have two members who are trained in public relations and equipped with high-quality cameras and laptops with video editing software, and offered incentives and rewards for effective reporting. They should record unit activities in writing and video, and share them with the American people via sites modeled on wildly successful pro-military websites, such as Blackfive.net and MoveAmericaForward.org.

Also, the embed process that helps journalists visit ground units must be streamlined. The general staff in Baghdad should measure the success of its public affairs effort by how many journos get out on the ground, in contrast to recent reports of the staff making life difficult for proven combat communicators like Michael Yon to embed with units. Yon, a former special operator, does so much to report an authoritative, balanced perspective from Iraq that the generals should instead assign him his own helicopter, and perhaps a limo.

Along with sharing more information with the American and Iraqi public, U.S. forces should also be empowered to share more information directly with locals in Iraq. The messages U.S. forces often share, however, are those that have been approved for nationwide dissemination by staffers in Baghdad and are therefore vague and generic.
Surprisingly, units are not permitted to create and distribute their own flyers without approval from the generals in Baghdad, which is a non-starter, because they are understandably concerned that troops would distribute inappropriate flyers that would end up on the news and create a public relations nightmare.

But, instead of solving that by banning the flyers, more effective leadership would give guidelines and provide samples of acceptable flyers. In short, empower the units to develop and share a message that works in their neighborhoods. Better communication between tactical units and Iraqi locals will help to build on the existing success that has led to significant growth in the quantity of intelligence tips received per month from Iraqi locals, from about 400 in early 2005 to over 4,000 in 2006, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index.

While the U.S. stutters and stammers with the Iraqi and American people, the enemy waxes eloquent, masterfully sharing its message to the people of Iraq and the rest of the world. Specifically, the enemy maximizes the exploitation of their attacks for purposes of propaganda and recruitment.

We must improve our ability to get our visual message out, while contesting the enemy's current domination of the visual information environment. Recently, the Minnesota National Guard offered a striking example with their powerful visual rebuttal of a US senator's slander of the troops.

THE U.S. MUST win in Iraq. This can be achieved sooner by making these six key course corrections. The top U.S. Army general recently announced plans to have the same number of troops in Iraq until at least 2010, so there is time to change regardless of what happens in the next congress, and change is urgently needed as public figures show October was the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq.

Even when the U.S. draws down its forces in Iraq, these steps will be crucial to improving U.S. conduct in future counter-insurgency efforts as potential adversaries seek to emulate insurgent successes in Iraq. Examining the many unstable parts of the world today, coupled with the current dominance of the U.S. military in large-scale conventional conflicts, it seems likely that future operations over the next two decades will largely resemble what we face in Iraq today. This makes it all the more important that we consider a grass-roots solution and make key course corrections now, so America can succeed in Iraq and start to bring the troops home.

Eric Egland is a major in the military reserve and has served on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. The recommendations in this article were distilled from a broad array of combat innovators with whom he worked while patrolling with combat units, field testing new technology, designing new training scenarios, and briefing generals in Baghdad and Washington. He previously served in a counter-terrorism role.

Author's Note: Please forward this to someone who has been on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Encourage them to offer a supporting anecdote, contrary view, or a better idea, so this can become the best plan possible. In the spirit of finding grass roots solutions to major challenges, send comments to SixStepsInIraq@hotmail.com.

© Copyright 2006, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

(see Author's note re 'Spreading the word')

More from the Religion of Death

2006-11-21T12:59:00.000Z

That you will not hear about in the NY ~~Slimes~~ Times or on SeeBS.

Atlas Shrugs has the whole thing. Here is a sample:

Yes, those are severed heads.

These killers hate all Christians and Jews, and this is the fate that they have in store for you, if you do not submit to Allah (who can bite my a**).

Primer on Islamic Imperialism

2006-11-21T11:50:00.000Z

From the American Thinker:

November 20th, 2006

One of the alleged sins held against the West by Islamic radicalism – which has declared war on us through Osama bin Laden’s fatwa issued in 1998 in London – is imperialism: the imperialism of the Dutch, the British and the French from the 17th to the 20th centuries. (For some reason, Russian imperialism in Central Asia gets a pass – so far.) Israel is allegedly an outpost of European imperialism.

The original western imperial enterprise in the radical Islamic narrative was the Crusades. The First Crusade began in 1095. The Crusades were undertaken to reclaim the Holy Land for Christendom. Reclaim it from whom? From the Muslims.

But Mohammed died in Medina in 632 as ruler of the Hijaz, the northwest section of Arabia along the Red Sea which includes the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. But if they only controlled the Hijaz in 632, what were the Muslims doing in Jerusalem in 1100?

Of course, they were there by conquest! They were they by virtue of Islamic imperialism – the extension of the Land of Islam (Dar al-Islam) by holy war: jihad (notwithstanding the other meanings of this term).

Let’s review. Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was a warrior and ruler who conquered Mecca and the Hijaz from his base in Medina. Following The Prophet’s death in 632, Islam was spread by Arab and Muslim conquest. There are Muslims who are not Arabs, but the first phase of expansion was Arab expansion. The ruler of the Muslim world, the successor to Muhammad, was the Caliph – “the shadow of God on earth.”

The Caliph was both the religious and political head of the Muslim world which, unlike the Christian world, draws no distinction between the two. In North Africa and the Middle East, the lands that the Arab Muslim world expanded into were controlled by the Byzantine Empire, the successor to the Roman Empire, with its capital at Constantinople. These were Christian lands. To the East, between the Middle East and India, was the Persian Empire with a different religious tradition.

At the death of Muhammad in 632, the realm of Islam consisted of northwest Arabia. To the north and west is Christian Byzantium, to the east is Persia. Neither of these were Arab; neither of them were Muslim. But within 100 years, the territory from Persia to Spain was controlled by Muslim Arabs. How did this happen? Egypt, for instance, was not in 632 an Arab country. It was of a different ethnic stock and had been in existence for 3600 years.

What happened was conquest, one of the most impressive in history. Here is a very brief timeline:

1. 630 – Muhammad conquers Mecca from his base in Medina.

2. 632 – Muhammad dies in Medina. Islam controls the Hijaz.

3. 636 – conquest of Syria. Victory in battle over the Byzantines gives Syria and the surrounding lands, all Christian – including Palestine and Iraq – to the Caliph.

4. 636 – 642 Persia conquered by the Muslims.

5. 642 – conquest of Egypt. The Arab/Muslim conquest moves west along North Africa into hitherto non-Arab/non-Muslim lands.

First Muslim invasion of Europe: from the West

6. 711 – Tariq (after whom Gibraltar is named: the Rock of Tariq – Gib al-Tariq) invades Spain. The Muslim conquest moves into Europe.

7. 718 – conquest of Spain complete.

8. 732 – Muslim invasion of France is stopped at the Battle of Poitiers (also called the Battle of Tours). This is regarded as one of the turning points in world history. The Franks, under their leader Charles Martel (the grandfather of Charlemagne), defeat the Muslims and turn them back out of France.

Thus, in exactly 100 years, from the death of The Prophet in 632, to 732, the Arab/Muslim realm had extended from the Hijaz, a province in Arabia, to encompass Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Persia, Egypt, the North African littoral, Spain and, temporarily, part of France.

The first European interaction with Islam is with Islam in the role of a conquering army, and, in the case of Spain, one that comes to stay. Spain became a Muslim colony. Over several hundred years, Spain was reconquered – the reconquista – for Christendom. The last Moors are expelled in 1492 by Ferdinand and Isabella.

In the 1300’s, the Turks took over leadership of the Muslim world from the Arabs. They established the Ottoman Empire with its capital at Christian Constantinople after conquering it in 1453. The Muslim world under Ottoman leadership began incursions into Europe from the East.

Second Muslim invasion of Europe: from the East

9. 1453 – Muslim Turks conquer Christian Constantinople and make it the seat of the Caliphate

10. 1456 – Muslims conquer Athens

11. 1478 – Serbia, Bosnia, Crimea come under Ottoman control

12. 1480 – Otranto in Italy taken by the Ottomans

13. 1529 – Vienna besieged by the Ottomans

14. 1683 – Battle of Vienna. The Turks are defeated by the Polish king Jan Sobieski leading a combined Polish-Lithuanian army. This is the high-water-mark of Turkish/Muslim conquest of Europe from the East.

1683 is an important year, because after that the Muslim Empire had no further military successes over the West. Thus, while this date seems lost in the mists of time to most Westerners, it remains a vivid memory in Islamic history. It marks the beginning of a downward slide in military fortunes that ended with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the British and French in World War I, the occupation of Muslim lands by the European states, and finally the abolition of the Caliphate itself by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) in 1924.

But in the 1980’s, something important happened. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the U.S. decided that it would support the native Afghan resistance, the mujahedeen. This resulted in a massive arms support operation by the CIA, funneled through the Pakistani intelligence service the ISI.

Thus, the American hand was concealed from the mujahedeen. When, particularly with the help of the Stinger missile, the Russians were defeated by the mujahedeen, this represented in their own eyes a victory of Islamic forces over those of a modern state – indeed, a superpower – something not seen since the 17th century in the Muslim world. Here was a model to be built on.

15. 1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan

16. 1988 – Soviet Union leaves Afghanistan, defeated by the Muslim mujahedeen. A victory for Islam over the “West.”

17. 1991 – Soviet Union disintegrates. Who can say that its defeat by the Muslims was not its mortal blow?

Third Muslim invasion of Europe: from the South

And now we find ourselves confronted by a third Muslim attack on the West – a third “invasion of Europe” (if “Europe” is expanded to mean culture as well as geography, and includes North America) by an expansionary Muslim philosophy – by Islamic radicalism. The first Muslim attack was from the West in the 700’s; the second was from the East in the 1400’s – 1600’s; the third began with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1988 in Afghanistan and its subsequent collapse and is in the form of mass immigration.

The philosopher and economist Thomas Sowell instructs us to ask “as compared to what?” when evaluating and criticizing human enterprise. It is pointless to compare human enterprise to some abstract ideal that has never existed. As Sowell points out, if the standard is set high enough, anything will fail.

Was the British Empire – the archetype of Western imperialism – a bad thing?

As compared to what? As compared to the Muslim Empires? As compared to them, the British Empire was a model of enlightenment. The Muslims pride themselves on their tolerance of minorities. But that tolerance came at the cost of dhimmitude – second-class citizenship and payment of tributes. The British Empire was, yes, established by force, but it was not sustained only by force. It was also sustained by consent. And it left behind a number of the freest, richest, most liberal countries on earth. As compared to the Muslims, the British look pretty good.

But it is not the point of this article that Arab/Muslim imperialism was an evil, or at least was not a unique evil. It was a human enterprise with its strengths and weaknesses. Muslim culture at its highest was high indeed. The Muslims preserved and passed on the learning of the Greeks. The Arabs developed Arabic numerals, and invented the number zero (or the next best thing, recognized the significance of the Indians having done so), the basis of modern mathematics. Algebra is an Arabic word: al-gebera. Muslim letters, science, medicine and architecture were at the highest level of achievement.

But so are our own. Today. We can’t have a double standard here – being impressed by the achievements and conquests of Arab/Muslim civilization but at the same time embarrassed by the even more impressive achievements and conquests of the West. If conquest is something to be embarrassed by, if it is a moral disqualification, then the Arab/Muslims are at the head of the line; Europe is well back on the list! And whatever the achievements of medieval Muslim culture, and they were many, they are in the past. There are few achievements today, and none to compare with those of the West.

Yes, one can certainly ask about spiritual achievement. If the Muslims wish to live in the 8th century, nobody is stopping them. Just as nobody stops the Amish from living in the 18th century. But if the standard is living in the 21st century, then it is clear that the West is a superior culture in all respects – in comfort of living, in science, in medicine, in human rights, in the rights of women to name just a few.

We are in a fight for our lives against Islamic radicalism. We cannot unilaterally disarm ourselves morally because of some imagined slights offered to Muslim culture by the West. Yes, we are the stronger, but that was not always so. When Muslims were the stronger, they prided themselves on their conquests and their cultural and political dominance, which still shape the world in which we live.

Greg Richards is an occasional contributor to American Thinker.

Greg Richards

The Truth about Islam, US Education

2006-11-20T11:56:00.000Z

Two great posts over at What Would Charles Martel Do?

Re-examining Islam as Heresy and Blasphemy:

Islam is, in my opinion and the opinion of many, nothing more than a cult of personality surrounding a man suffering from increasing delusions of grandeur as his career as an erstwhile "prophet" continued, and I see no reason for this view to become the dominant view for both Jews and Christians. The idea of "interfaith" discourse is absurd when one of the faiths involved blasphemes and threatens the other two, not to mention the other religions of the world. Historically, the relationship between Judaism and Christianity has not at all times been a pleasant one, yet the one is an offshoot of the other.

Our Great Mis-education:

I would, however, like to see someone who holds a grudge against this country, as little "dilbertgeg" over at YouTube seems to, realize for once that they are couching their arguments in the very same Western-ccentric terms that they otherwise rail against. And why? They know nothing else.

" WW1, WW2, Tonkin, Gulf War, and Sept 11 all based on LIES. Right now, US supports MEK terror group, just like US supported Al-Qaeda". ALL based on actions of Western countries, specifically the US. Does anyone even think for a second that this moron knows of the internal wars in China that have raged for millenia? Or of war waged by Japan? Of the constant warfare of the Iriquois? He could have used those examples, he could have used any examples from the ancient world, but he could not. He didn't have them in his head, wasn't even acquainted with them. So he, like others, hyperfocus on US history of the last 100 years. Not that it isn't pertinent and to be understood, but why limit one's knowledge there?

No, if we are to be fully armed in the war of ideas, words, and eventually greater fights for our own civilization, we must know it well but also be able to step outside of it and see those other civilizations for what they are/were. We MUST be able to understand the non-Western perspective, to fully arm ourselves in what may end up academic pursuits.

Read all of it.

The Truth About Islam

2006-11-20T11:26:00.000Z

More truth about the religion of death called Islam, this time from the blog Ironic Surrealism:

Islam is a caustic blend of regurgitated paganism and twisted Bible stories. Muhammad, its lone prophet, conceived his religion solely to satiate his lust for power, sex, and money. He was a terrorist. And if you think these conclusions are shocking, wait until you see the evidence.

The critics of this work will claim that Prophet of Doom is offensive, racist, hatemongering, intolerant, and unnecessarily violent. I agree—but I didn’t write those parts. They came directly from Islam’s scriptures. If you don’t like what Muhammad and Allah said, don’t blame me. I’m just the messenger. More here and continued here.

Go read it all!

Will All Be Well

2006-11-17T12:02:00.000Z

Conservative Beach Girl has an excellent post here:

Let me put this as plainly as I can - if Western Civilization folks of European ancestry - Italians, Spaniards, the English, the French, those of Eastern Europe, the Australians, the Germans, the Austrians, the Swiss, the Danes, the New Zealanders, the Swedes, the folks from Finland, and the many others who follow the tenets of Judeo-Christian beliefs who visit this blog - deny their heritage and culture, and submit and subjugate themselves - in small ways or in large - to the expressed superiority of Islam, then, and only then, will all be well?

Read the whole thing.

Hot for Martytrdom

2006-11-17T11:33:00.000Z

From Michael Coren, National Post - originally published: Friday, November 03, 2006"

Dr. Tawfik Hamid doesn't tell people where he lives. Not the street, not the city, not even the country. It's safer that way. It's only the letters of testimony from some of the highest intelligence officers in the Western world that enable him to move freely. This medical doctor, author and activist once was a member of Egypt's Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya (Arabic for "the Islamic Group"), a banned terrorist organization. He was trained under Ayman al-Zawahiri, the bearded jihadi who appears in Bin Laden's videos, telling the world that Islamic violence will stop only once we all become Muslims.

. . .

"The deliberate and determined expansion of militant Islam and its attempt to triumph not only in the Islamic world but in Europe and North America. Pure ideology. Muslim terrorists kill and slaughter not because of what they experience but because of what they believe."

. . .

"North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.

"Islam condemns extra-marital sex as well as masturbation, which is also taught in the Christian tradition. But Islam also tells of unlimited sexual ecstasy in paradise with beautiful virgins for the martyr who gives his life for the faith. Don't for a moment underestimate this blinding passion or its influence on those who accept fundamentalism."

Read the whole thing. There is nothing we can do or say to make the Muslim Terrorists stop killing, stop attempting to destroy the West, short of killing them first.

The Muslim Brotherhood & "The Project"

2006-11-16T11:48:00.000Z

There is a very dangerous plan that has been put in place over the past twenty years by the Muslim Terror oganization called the Muslim Brotherhood. Info from FrontPage :

One might be led to think that if international law enforcement authorities and Western intelligence agencies had discovered a twenty-year old document revealing a top-secret plan developed by the oldest Islamist organization with one of the most extensive terror networks in the world to launch a program of “cultural invasion” and eventual conquest of the West that virtually mirrors the tactics used by Islamists for more than two decades, that such news would scream from headlines published on the front pages and above the fold of the New York Times, Washington Post, London Times, Le Monde, Bild, and La Repubblica.

If that’s what you might think, you would be wrong.

For those who have read The Project, what is most troubling is not that Islamists have developed a plan for global dominance; it has been assumed by experts that Islamist organizations and terrorist groups have been operating off an agreed-upon set of general principles, networks and methodology. What is startling is how effectively the Islamist plan for conquest outlined in The Project has been implemented by Muslims in the West for more than two decades. Equally troubling is the ideology that lies behind the plan: inciting hatred and violence against Jewish populations around the world; the deliberate co-opting and subversion of Western public and private institutions; its recommendation of a policy of deliberate escalating confrontation by Muslims living in the West against their neighbors and fellow-citizens; the acceptance of terrorism as a legitimate option for achieving their ends and the inevitable reality of jihad against non-Muslims; and its ultimate goal of forcibly instituting the Islamic rule of the caliphate by shari’a in the West, and eventually the whole world.

...the Muslim Brotherhood has spread its network across the Middle East, Europe, and even America. At home in Egypt, parliamentary elections in 2005 saw the Muslim Brotherhood winning 20 percent of the available legislative seats, comprising the largest opposition party block. Its Palestinian affiliate, known to the world as HAMAS, recently gained control of the Palestinian Authority after elections secured for them 74 of 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council. Its Syrian branch has historically been the largest organized group opposing the Assad regime, and the organization also has affiliates in Jordan, Sudan, and Iraq. In the US, the Muslim Brotherhood is primarily represented by the Muslim American Society (MAS).

The english translation of this document is here.

You can read more about this from Patrick Poole here.

You can join in the fight against Muslim Terrorists and the Caliphate with the 910 group. And read "The Eurabia Code" here.

Why Do The Muslims Hate Us?

2006-11-14T10:32:00.000Z

From Jihad Watch, 95 reasons for hate:

“The American presence in Iraq fuels Muslim extremism.”
-- a conclusion concluded from the National Intelligence Estimate by many concluders in solemn conclusory conclave assembled.

Ninety-Five Other Things That Also Fuel Muslim Extremism:

1. Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses.”
2. The British government’s protection of Salman Rushdie.
3. The American coup against Mossadegh in 1953, cited by some Iranians as the direct cause of the takeover of Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini more than 25 years later.
4. The remarks of Pim Fortuyn about Muslim attitudes toward liberal Dutch mores.
5. The movie by Theo van Gogh about the subjection of women in Islam.
6. The election of Ayaan Hirsi Ali to the Dutch Parliament.
7. Hindus passing by mosques as Friday Prayers end.
8. The failure of Americans in Iraq to sufficiently subdue the Sunni insurgents.
9. The failure of Americans in Iraq to sufficiently subdue the Shi’a militias.
10. The failure of Americans in Iraq to sufficiently subdue the Kurdish desire for independence.
11. The failure of Americans in Iraq to give Baghdad an instant makeover so that it resembles the most prosperous and advanced American city.

Read it all.
And check out the 910 Group to get more information.

The Eurabia Code

2006-11-13T01:50:00.000Z

A page posted at Hidden Dragon contains the entire text of the Eurabia Code by Fjordman. Read the whole thing:

What follows is a brief outline of the thesis put forward by writer Bat Ye’or in her book Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. My information is based on her book (which should be read in full). In addition I have drawn from some of her articles and interviews. I republish the information with her blessing, but this summary is completely my own.

In an interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Bat Ye’or explained how French President Charles de Gaulle, disappointed by the loss of the French colonies in Africa and the Middle East as well as with France’s waning influence in the international arena, decided in the 1960’s to create a strategic alliance with the Arab and Muslim world to compete with the dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union.

“This is a matter of a total transformation of Europe, which is the result of an intentional policy,” said Bat Ye’or. “We are now heading towards a total change in Europe, which will be more and more Islamicized and will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world. The European leaders have decided on an alliance with the Arab world, through which they have committed to accept the Arab and Muslim approach toward the United States and Israel. This is not only with respect to foreign policy, but also on issues engaging European society from within, such as immigration, the integration of the immigrants and the idea that Islam is part of Europe.”

The Caliphate

2006-11-13T01:34:00.000Z

From the website caliphate.eu: Some propaganda:

The Caliphate is a unique political system from the ideology of Islam that bears no resemblance to any of the Muslim Governments today. It is a government built upon a concept of citizenship regardless of ethnicity, gender or creed and is totally opposed to the oppression of any religious or ethnic grouping.

Allah (swt) says in the Holy Qur'an:
“O You who believe! Indeed We have created you from a single male and female and We have made you into nations and tribes so that you know each other, Verily the noblest among you in the sight of Allah is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold Allah is all knowing, all aware.”
[TMQ 49:13]

Non-Muslims have an honourable status in the Caliphate. They are referred to as dhimmi (people of contract), which means they are equal citizens with the Muslims and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Unlike in Britain they are not given derogatory names like “ethnic minorities” or “immigrants”, that implies they are 2nd class citizens and not really welcome. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) said: “Whoever harms a dhimmi has harmed me.”

He (saw) also said: “The one who kills a Mu'ahid (people with whom the State has treaties) without right he will not smell the fragrance of jannah (heaven) even if its smell was forty years travelling distance.” [Reported in the Hadith book Ahmed]

Of course we also have this:

Islamic State Part 20 - The Disintegration Of The Islamic State

uploaded 07 Nov 2006

Chapter 39

The intellectual weakness of the Islamic State began in the fifth century Hijri when some scholars called for the phasing out of ijtihad. This signalled the downfall of the State. Although there were still some mujtahideen left, intellectual weakness had already taken root and this affected the State enormously. Disintegration began creeping in and the State waned. By the time the crusaders came the State was in no position to repel the danger. The State became engaged in continuous battles with the crusaders which were to last for two centuries. The crusaders emerged victorious at first and managed to occupy parts of the Islamic State, then the State managed to recapture the occupied land and vanquish the crusaders. Rule and authority were taken over by the Mamluks who neglected the Arabic language and the intellectual and legislative side of ruling. The door was slammed in the face of ijtihad and the understanding of Islamic concepts weakened considerably, as a result. Scholars were forced to content themselves with taqleed (imitation) and the ailment worsened. This, however, only affected the State from within, since the State remained strong and its international standing remained intact. The Islamic State remained a superpower feared by all other nations, occupying the largest and strongest part of the inhabited world at the time. The ‘Uthmani State took over control of most of the Islamic world. In the 9th century Hijri (15th century CE) it united the Arab lands under its rule and its dominion stretched over wide areas of land. The ‘Uthmani State concentrated on its military might and the expansion of its authority as well as the glamour of its rule and power. It also concentrated its efforts on the conquests and neglected the Arabic language despite the fact that it is essential in order to understand Islam and one of the conditions necessary in order to effect ijtihad.

From Khilafah.com.

A Philosophy and a Synergy

2006-11-10T21:48:00.000Z

A while back I read a couple of books that really had a profound influence on my life and the way that I saw the world. I noticed immediately that these two in particular had a synergy that I needed to explore:

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This exploration led me to a pretty detailed outline of how to incorporate these ideas and tools into my daily life, my goal setting, and setting my priorities. The complete outline is below, and a download-able Word document is at the end. I welcome comments and discussion.

(I know that this will look like a lot to live up to, and I do not live up to these ideals every day. I am not trying to set myself up as some type of 'holier than thou', I just believe that this is a good framework , or starting point, if you will.)

Philosophy & Strategy for Living

I. Be Proactive - I will prioritize my time and efforts in order to make the most of my work and activity. I will focus on Prevention, Relationships, Planning and Recreation, in order to minimize the effects of Crises, Problems and Deadlines. By spending my time on issues of high importance and lower urgency, I will then have time for responding to issues of high urgency when they do appear.

A. I will seek Wisdom: I will train my eyes and ears to read and listen to materials that will bring positive changes in my personal relationships and a greater understanding of my fellow man. No longer will I bombard my mind with materials that feed my doubts and fears. I will choose my friends with care. I will listen to the counsel of wise men. I will be as a servant to others. He who serves the most, grows the fastest.

But if any of you lacks Wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. James 1:5

B. I am a person of action: My future is immediate. I will grasp it with both hands and carry it with running feet. When faced with a choice of doing nothing, or doing something, I will always choose to act. I seize this moment. I choose now. I will walk with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. My own activity will create a wave of success for the people who follow me. I am a leader. I do not fear opinion, gossip, or the idle chatter of monkeys - all are the same. I do not fear failure, for it exists only in the mind of the person who quits.

Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered, and that my life is fleeing away. Psalm 39:4

C. I have a decided heart: Criticism, condemnation, and complaint come and go on the wasted breath of lesser beings. The power to control the direction of my future belongs to me. I am passionate about my vision for the future. My daily thoughts and actions, from morning until night, will work in a forward motion. I have a great dream to fulfill and I will never apologize for it. My prayers, my passions, my visions for the future are my very existence. All of my problems become smaller when I confront them. I have charted my course and I will not wait.

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord…They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat, nor worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they go right on producing delicious fruit. Jeremiah 17:7 - 8

D. I will identify patterns from the past: I will look at and learn from things that I have done before. I will be able to anticipate situations, and respond to them with integrity. Learning from mistakes made by me and others will give me the power to direct the outcome of crises and obstacles.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12: 1-2

II. Begin with the end in mind - I will start each day with a vision of what I intend to accomplish. The greater Purpose of my life will be its ruling principle. My life was planned for God's pleasure. I was formed for God's family. I was created to become like Christ. My life is shaped for serving God. I was made for a mission.

A. Learn - I will explore a variety of methods for achieving the end that I seek. Others have faced this situation, and I will discover how they handled it to best achieve my own success.

B. The buck stops here - I accept responsibility for my own past. To create my own future my thoughts will be constructive, never destructive. I will seek to associate with those that are working and striving to create positive changes in the world. I control my own thoughts and emotions. I am responsible for my success. The ability to make and keep promises is central to this success. I will keep my word, despite obstacles, opposition, and pain.

C. I will persist without exception - No longer will I live in a dimension of distraction, a state of chronic partial attention. I know the outcome I desire. I hold fast to my dreams. I stay the course and will not quit. Average people will accept exhaustion and compare themselves to other people. I will compare myself to my potential. I am not average, as I see exhaustion as a precursor to victory. I have faith in the certainty of my future. Faith is a sounder guide than reason, as faith has no limits. To see the future that I believe in come into being is the reward of this faith.

III. Put First Things First

A. Connect to your mission. Take time to organize my thoughts, clear my mind, and prepare to begin my day with mindfulness.

B. Review roles to be filled

C. Identify goals to be completed

D. Organize a schedule on a weekly basis

E. Exercise integrity in making decisions

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a price on its goods. Thomas Paine

IV. Think win/win

A. Today I will choose to be happy. Happiness is not an emotional phantom, floating thither and yon, but a choice. It is the end result of specific thoughts and activities which actually bring about a chemical reaction in my body. This reaction is totally under my control. I will greet each day with cheerfulness, and people will be drawn to me because I have laughter in my heart. God has bestowed upon me many gifts, and for these I will be grateful. I will thank God every day for these blessings and ask him in prayer to look upon those less fortunate than myself. I possess a grateful spirit and will smile at everyone that I meet.

B. I will greet this day with a forgiving spirit. I will forgive even those who do not seek it. I know the difference between Right and Wrong. I know what is best for the future of my family, and I will work and sacrifice to attain it. Misguided opinion and unjust criticism will not alter my course, as I am called to a higher purpose. I will forgive myself to erase the doubts, fears and frustrations that have kept my past in the present. My history will no longer control my destiny.

C. I will examine my motives - am I serving others or serving myself? I will review and evaluate the consequences of my choices and actions every day, every moment. Service to others is the greatest gift, the investment of highest return.

V. Seek first to Understand, then to be Understood

A. I will listen more than I speak.

B. My speech will be right, thoughtful and conscientious.

C. I will take adequate time for contemplation and reflection.

D. I will avoid the state of "Continuous Partial Attention".

We are what we think,

All that we are arises with our thoughts

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with an impure mind

And trouble will follow you as the

Wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

Dhammapada I

VI. Synergize All of my activities must be entered with a pure heart, and should all be coordinated to move toward accomplishing my ultimate goal.

A. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses.

B. Create an environment of trust and cooperation.

C. Practice mindfulness in all things.

VII. Sharpen the Saw Building time into my schedule for personal growth and improvement, for recreation, for study and fun will make my life fulfilling. The four dimensions of my human nature must be exercised regularly and consistently in wise and balanced ways. The measure of a man is the spiritual and emotional health of his family. I will stay focused, keep my word, and overcome obstacles despite opposition, pain and loss.

A. Physical: begin and maintain an exercise program. Look ahead, watch over my wife and family, provide Order, Mercy, and Justice under orders from God.

B. Spiritual: begin and maintain a schedule of bible study and prayer life. I am a Mentor for my family, a teaching heart models, explains, and trains. One of my most basic duties is to teach Life.

C. Mental: read and write, learn something new every day. Teach someone something new every day.

D. Social/Emotional: make contributions and have meaningful projects that are personally exciting and contribute to and bless the lives of others. The ability to make and keep promises is central to manhood, and provides a stabilizing force for everyone around me.

This is the Word Document:

the-seven-gifts-of-the-highly-efective-traveller.doc

Please Note: A lot of the preceding consists of direct quotes from the books mentioned above, as well as some quotes from other sources. They have been mixed and edited together, and I can't say for sure what comes from where sometimes. None of this is meant as a challenge to the copyright holders.

test post

2006-11-10T18:47:00.000Z

this is a test