Burka Buster Update

Remember those wine shoppes in Sringanar? Remember the Mariyam Squad?

The-e-ey're ba-ack!!!
Eight veiled women gather outside a shop selling alcohol on the ground floor of a hotel in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir and start ransacking it.
They chant Islamic slogans.

One of them lights a match to set the shop on fire but is stopped by others for fear that the fire might engulf the entire complex.

"According to the Koran, liquor is the mother of all vices. We have been requested by the local residents to destroy this liquor shop here," she says.

The Dukhtaran-e-Milat launched a campaign for the wearing of the burqa (veil) by Muslim women in the early 1990s.

Its activists sprayed paint on women who did not wear a burqa.

The campaign succeeded but its success was short-lived.

A large majority of women have abandoned the veil.

Aw heck, read it all here.

Adorers of the Cross Unite!

I kind of adore this cross!





Zarqawi group vows to avenge deadly US air strikes in Iraq

The Al-Qaeda group of Iraq's most wanted man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi vowed in an Internet statement published Wednesday it would avenge deadly US air strikes in Iraq on suspected militant hideouts.

"The American crusader forces, enemies of God, carried out an odious crime against the Muslims of Al-Qaim," said a statement in the name of the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Land of Two Rivers.

The US military launched air strikes on suspected Al-Qaeda hideouts in the Al-Qaim area near the Syrian border on Tuesday, killing at least 56 people. The military claimed the attacks were thought to have killed Abu Islam, a reported Al-Qaeda operative, and several associates.

"We tell you, adorers of the cross, you will not escape," according to the website statement whose authenticity could not be verified.

Al Zarqawi's boys have their turbans in a wad because of this.

Bwa-ha-ha!

You know, how much I love it when they nail the money man!

Rs 63 lakh seized from Kashmiri youth in Delhi

NEW DELHI, Aug 30 (UNI): Police have arrested a Kashmiri youth and recovered a large amount of Hawala money, reportedly meant for terrorist activities, from his possession.

I love this "arrested by the sleuths of the Special Cell" - it sounds so Hollywood.

Sources said Aslam, who resided in South Delhi's posh Greater Kailash area, was arrested by the sleuths of the Special Cell following a tip-off.

An amount of Rs 63 lakh, channeled through 'Hawala', was recovered from his possession. During interrogation, the accused said he received the money from a country in West Asia. Working as a conduit for Kashmiri militants, Aslam had earlier 'transported' Rs 2.25 crore to his benefactors in Kashmir.

Well, not knowing a lakh from a crore, I had to go looking for some currency conversion tables. I found a spot rate and using it and the formula found here I came up with a rough idea how much US (maybe I should say - real money) money this scumbag had. According to my calculations he had $ 1.5 million in his possession and had "transported" an additional amount in excess of $5.6 million.

About Hawala: hawala is an underground banking system based on trust whereby money can be made available internationally without actually moving it or leaving a record of the transaction. Which is the main reason terrorists use it.

That's a lot of suicide soldier fodder passing through illegal channels. Good I'm glad they 'im. I hope they round up a bunch of his friends too.

Burkas or bust!

I saw this headline "Concern over 'moral degradation'in Valley" and said to myself, "You know what? I smell a radical islamofascist." And you know what? I was right:

This from the Kashmir Times.

SRINAGAR, Aug 30: The chairperson of Dhuktaran-e-Milat (DeM), Asiya Andrabi today said that the "Maryami Squad" of DeM has carried out some raids in Srinagar city during which some girls involved in immoral practices were captured.
During an informal chat with the media she said, "The squad raided a residential house, used as a brothel, at Sonwar-Srinagar.

The Tribune of India has more detail on the story and according to the Tribune the Mariyam Squad raided a number of hotels, restaurants and cybercafes all to "curb the growing flesh trade" in the valley.

"Activists raided the Civil Line areas, including Lal Chowk, Court Road, Regal Chowk, Lambart Lane, Moulana Azad road and Residency road. Daughters of faith in “burqa” were seen advising people, including women, present in these hotels and centres, to avoid visiting these places.

You are warned not to visit these areas again, this is first warning and second time you will have to face consequences, they were heard telling customers present in restaurants and cyber cafes."

They also told the owners not to allow any boy-girl couples to sit together.

The Daughters have lots of rules.
They have banned cable tv due to it's detrimental effect on society.
They've banned birth control and abortion.
They've called for all women to wear the burka.
They've even asked people to contact them and rat people out for any violations of their rules.

Their leader is wanted for serving as a financial conduit for the Jumait-ul-Mujahideen and was banned by the central government in 2002 under India's Prevention of Terrorism Act. (POTA)

Oh, and for your folks who like to have a refreshing cocktail now and again. Sringanar is where this happened:

The state government earlier this month issued licences for opening of more wine shops in the valley, prompting the people to take to streets in these areas.

Someday my prince will come???

I vaguely remember the new ambassador from Saudi Arabia being named - but there certainly wasn't any big hullaballoo about it that I recall. (I perked up when this crossed my radar screen over at the CounterTerrorism Blog. I kind of dig that Steve Emerson over there. He, along with Patrick Al Kafir, are on the manifest for Dinah's Flight of Fantasy interview, but more about that later.)

Back to Prince Turki al Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

In a case of it's-a-small-world-after-all we discover that Prince Turki went to Lawrenceville Prep. Lawrenceville Prep is located just down the road from the Lord estate and is known as the Princeton of Prep Schools. I don't know what the heck they are teaching there if Prince T went there and is now saying things like Douglas Farah tells us. What happened to the prince at Lawrenceville that would have turned him into such a sneaky, low dealer? Because it looks like Prince Turki has been getting his hands dirty when it comes to the affairs of the United States.

According to Global Security:

It is important to understand that Prince Turki not only has ties to U.S. intelligence dating back to the BCCI scandal of the 1980s. But more importantly, he was was head of Saudi intelligence for 24 years, and as such one of the chief propagators of the spread of wahhabism around the world. He also supported radical Islamic and wahhabist causes without hesitation or reserve. He resigned his intelligence position a month before 9-11, and, since 2002 was Saudi ambassador to Great Britain.

He was one of the primary architects and bagmen for the Saudi funding of the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan. He supervised the purchase of some 400 pickup trucks for the Taliban's final push to victory in 1996, and worked closely with Pakistani intelligence to arm, train and supply the Taliban long after the Taliban took in Osama bin Laden as a special guest. He has helped spread around the world the wildly anti-Jewish hate literature that the Saudi government prints and Saudi intelligence helps distribute. This includes calls to kill all Jews, along with calls to wage war against Christianity. These are not passing references, but the heart of wahhabi teachings, which Prince Turki has overseen and spread.

Douglas goes on to wonder where's the outrage and Dinah Lord has to join him. Where's the outrage is right!

Geez-this guy has been around getting his hands dirty in US business since the BCCI affair? Remember that old chestnut?

His connections to OBL date back to 1978 when Turki was the head of the Saudi security service. In 1979, OBL, in a fury because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, took Prince Turki's advice to aid the Afghan resistance. OBL went to Pakistan and launched his jihad from there.

In 2002 he has this to say about US Intelligence:

"In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, [the American] intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting communism and established what was called the Safari Club."

And who were the members of The Safari Club?

France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran.

Quite a line up and not a true friend to the US amongst them. Source Watch has this to say about the club:

Organized with the blessing of Henry Kissinger, U.S. Secretary of State for the Nixon and Ford administrations, the Safari Club was the brainchild of French spy chief Comte Claude Alexandre de Marenches and consisted of France, Egypt, Iran, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Information about the group came to light after the 1979 Iranian revolution exposed previously secret documents of the former Iranian regime's Foreign Ministry.

What was their mission?

We would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence ... The main concern of everybody was that the spread of communism was taking place while the main country that would oppose communism was tied up. Congress had literally paralyzed the work of not only of the US intelligence community, but of its foreign service as well.

He goes on to brag:

And so, the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at the time when the United States was not able to do that. ..... In 1980, when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, we in the Kingdom, with the United States, initiated a program of countering the Soviet invasion and helping the Mujahideen to repel the Soviets. I was directly involved in that situation ...

And the Prince is right in the middle of the Clintonian bungles to get OBL in the run up to 9/11.

In early 1996 Sudan had offered to extradite bin Laden to Saudi Arabia. President Clinton, hoping the Saudis would take bin Laden and swiftly execute him, called Prince Turki bin Faisal, to consider the plan. The Saudis said no, but Bin Laden soon left Sudan for Afghanistan.

Prince Turki followed up in meetings during the summer of 1998 with Mullah Omar and other Taliban leaders. Employing a mixture of possible bribes and threats, he received a commitment that Bin Ladin would be handed over.

By some accounts a moderate group within the Taleban wanted to get rid of Osama bin Laden and establish relations with the United States. Under their pressure, Mullah Omar made a secret agreement to send the al-Qaida leader to Saudi Arabia to stand trial for treason. Prince Turki bin Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence, says it was a done deal - soon to be undone.

After the Embassy bombings in August 1998, Vice President Gore called Riyadh again to underscore the urgency of bringing the Saudi ultimatum to a final conclusion. After the al-Qaida bombing of two US embassies in Africa, the Clinton administration retaliated with a missile attack on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan and alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. That put an end to Taleban moderation.

Then there's this cluster f(*&:

In September 1998 Prince Turki, joined by Pakistan's intelligence chief, had a climactic meeting with Mullah Omar in Kandahar. Omar reneged on his promise to expel Bin Ladin. When Turki angrily confronted him, Omar lost his temper and denounced the Saudi government. The Saudis and Pakistanis walked out.

Geez. Imagine everyone's surprise when Turki left the Saudi Intelligence service. He wasn't promoted. He wasn't fired. He left of his own accord. Ten days before 9/11. What a coinky-dink.

"The resignation came to some as a surprise, though others familiar with the Minister's situation expected the resignation eventually, after a quarter of a century on the job. The precise timing was said to derive from [unstated] circumstances in the Minister's immediate family. The surprise departure came only four months after King Fahd had issued a Royal Decree reconfirming him in the post for four more years. His close ties to Crown Prince Abdallah made him a useful ally and a bulwark against Prince Sultan’s influence.

Other speculation focused on the fact that his departure came a few days before September 11th. One conjecture suggested that Turki had found out about the planned attacks and was trying to dissuade bin Laden. His failure to do so, or his failure to report his prior knowledge, could have precipitated his dismissal as intelligence chief."

It is reported he was among the 31 Saudi nationals departing the US on a special flight. What's that tell you?

In November 2001, he voiced support for the Americans in Afghanistan by saying this:

"America is not there to occupy Afghanistan," he said. "It is there to fulfill a certain purpose stemming from the events that occurred over a month ago."

He also "told the New York Times that while Saudi Arabia country regarded Saddam Hussein as one of the world's most active terrorists, it would not support any attack on Iraq by coalition forces. "You target Saddam Hussein, and no one will object. But bombings like the ones we saw against Iraq in 1998, or like the ones we've seen now in Afghanistan, with so-called collateral bombings, when bombs hit innocent people, will have very bad implications," he said.

He was one of the three princes named in a suit for allegedly helping to finance the terrorist attacks of 9/11.(Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz and Prince Mohammed bin Faisal were the other two.)

"The suit alleged that Prince Sultan "publicly supported and funded several Islamic charities that were sponsoring Osama bin Laden" and that Prince Turki negotiated a deal in which Al Qaeda agreed to end efforts to subvert the Saudi monarchy in exchange for a Saudi promise not to extradite terrorist leaders."

To be fair, Prince Turki made this comment in the independent, pro-government, English-language, Arab News on 9/18/2002, but is it taquiyyah?

"Saudi Arabia has worked with the United States for the past 70 years. Both countries have benefited from this enduring partnership. Remember that we face the same threat: Bin Ladin targeted Saudi Arabia before he targeted America. Al-Qa'ida has thousands of followers from more than 60 countries, including those of many U.S. allies. That he chose 15 Saudis for his murderous gang, many of whom, he boasted, did not even know the ultimate goal of their mission, can only be explained as an attempt to disrupt the close relationship between our two countries.... There are those in America who condemn all Saudi Arabians as uncivilized, close-minded and barbaric. But such blanket accusations are not worthy of the American people.... Let us deny extremists the victory of undermining our partnership. Instead, let us remain strong, and, whatever shortcomings we see in each other, let us confront them and overcome them together in a spirit of mutual respect and openness."

In 2003 he was named the Saudi ambassador to the UK.

In 2004 German intelligence reports revealed that a pair of private Saudi companies linked with suspected Al Qaeda cells in Germany and in Indonesia had connections to Prince Turki bin Faisal.

In 2005 a US federal judge dismissed the Saudi princes from 9/11 suits ruling he had immunity from litigation.

In July 2005 he was named US ambassador.

On a cultural note: He is a founder of the King Faisal foundation and chairs the King Faisal centre for research and islamic studies.

His Royal Highness is involved in a number of cultural and social activities. He is one of the founders of the King Faisal foundation and is the Chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies,

a group founded in 1983 to promote an expanded dialogue within Islam and between Islamic and Christian and Jewish groups.

Oh and he and Prince Charles are close. He is Chairman of the board of The Prince Charles Visual Islamic and Traditional Arts Centre.

He's a Davos Diva, too, chairing the C100 Group which has been affiliated with the World Economic Forum since 2003.

This made me laugh:

Some accounts claim that Prince Turki is affiliated with the fundamentalist and anti-American wing of the royal family, with sympathies to Osama bin Laden, but these seem to be in error. Indeed, he must be considered one of the most Westernized of the Saudi leaders.

But leave it to the http://www.americanthinker.com/comments.php?comments_id=2960 to really get down to it:

Whitewashing the green flag of Saudi Arabia


The New York Times has reached a new low, if that is possible. Interviewer Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Magazine interviews Prince Turki, new Saudi Ambassador to the US.

Here are the two smartest questions of the interview:

Q: I don't mean to make you feel unimportant, but aren't you one of some 6,000 Saudi princes?

A: I haven't counted, so I don't know.

Q: Before I go, I have to ask you, why is green the national color of Saudi Arabia?

A: Because we are a desert country whose ultimate ambition is to turn green.

Of course, as a woman she could have asked about the condition of women in the Kingdom or education but no, she'd rather stick to the question of the green flag. By the way the real reason it's green is that is the color of Islam....

You're kidding me right?

To read more check out Wild Turki and Jive Turki.

And the libs had their panties in a wad because of John Bolton going to the UN? While Prince Turki comes waltzing onto our diplomatic scene like he owns the joint?
Where's the outrage?

Vacation musings

Just stepped out onto the back deck to water my plants. It's like a sewer out there, hot, humid and skanky. The pond is down and full of algae which adds to the general atmosphere of fetid, standing water - I can only imagine what those poor peeps down in Katrina's path are going through. The funny thing is - the husband and I were scheduled to head down that way. We were supposed to leave Saturday morning and were going to be joining our dear friends, the Popes, for a celebratory gin bowl. We had been kind of following Katrina as she came in across Florida but thought it's path was going to be through the Florida panhandle, not NOLA. We decided not to go because the NM start-up the husband was working on cratered in a big way. Neither of us were in too good a mood after that and the thought of making the long drive into that NO heat wasn't too appealing.

We would have been staying at the yummy Windsor Court Hotel so you know we just weren't in the mood. I hate to think what's happened to the Windsor Court. It's located off Canal down by the Harrahs. There's even a Saks Fifth Avenue across the way. Or there was. You can see how close to the water it is located.

We finally got a hold of the Popes last night. They are evacuees and are staying in a motel in Alexandria. They are staying in a freeway motel that is jammed to the rafters. Pets are allowed and last night there was a big dogfight in the corridor outside their room. They are getting booted today, but don't know where to go. They've got Mrs. Pope's 88 yo mother with them, Mr. Pope's parents visiting from California and their son, Jason. They feel fortunate to have escaped the storm's damage but are chomping at the bit to see if they have homes left.

We're keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.

From hisba to eternity...

I was reading the WSJ this morning and back in the International Section is this article: Islamists Lose Ground in Pakistani Elections. I would link it but I can't get my new WSJ password to work. (Story of my technical life) The good news is that the more secular political parties running for office in two border provinces have gained ground on the pro-Taliban Islamic fundamentalists.

Towards the end of the article, hisba is referenced. Curious, and wanting to increase my knowledge. I went on a search and found out that the North West Frontier provincial government in Pakistan passed a so called HISBA or accountability law, last month.

hisba = accountability
Read this Taipei Times article to get the full flavor of the legislature, but here's a tidbit to entice you. This will tell you what Hisba is:

Since coming to power in state elections nearly three years ago, a coalition of radical Islamist parties here in North-West Frontier province has faced a few stumbling blocks on the road to creating a model Islamic state.

First, they made it illegal to play music on city buses, but that law seemed to fall flat on its face. Caravans of luridly painted buses still cruise the streets of Peshawar, tinny pop music pouring out of their windows.

Then they banned mannequins in shop windows, but shopkeepers shrugged it off. The mannequins quickly returned to the bazaar, displaying stiff smiles.

The Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal, as the coalition of religious radicals is called in Urdu, did succeed in closing the two pubs that served alcohol (though only to non-Pakistani foreigners). Some of their foot soldiers went on a free-for-all, vandalizing advertising billboards that displayed pictures of women. And the coalition banned musical performances at a government-owned concert hall.

I'm telling you, this hisba sounds like a real kick in the pants.
How does hisba work? Here's a little background from the Central Asia - Caucausus Institute

Under the new law, the North West Frontier Province government would appoint ombudsmen (mohtasibs) – those who hold others accountable – at provincial, district and village levels to ensure that people respect the call to prayers, pray on time, and do not engage in commerce during the Friday prayers besides stopping unrelated men and women from appearing in public places together, and discourage singing and dancing. With a religious police under his command as an enforcement arm, the army of newly-appointed mohtasibs would also monitor the media to ensure ‘useful for the promotion of Islamic values’

What about the North West Frontier Province?

The Frontier province, is the only one amongst Pakistan’s four federating units to be ruled solely by the Islamists while the same alliance is a coalition partner with the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League in Balochistan province which also borders Afghanistan.

For the first time in the country’s history, the religious parties grouped together ahead of the 2002 electoral alliance in reaction to the invasion of Afghanistan by United States and its allies. The religious-political alliance managed to gain an unexpected number of seats, predominantly in the NWFP and Balochistan provinces. Besides playing on the anti-US and anti-Musharraf sentiments, the MMA leadership promised replacing all secular laws and practices with the Islamic ones once they were voted to power.

It sounds like some folks have calmer heads:

Although the law and order situation in the MMA-led province has by far been the best over the past three years, there has been little change in the standard of living of the common man in the Afghan refugee-infested province. While the alliance’s leadership mulls creating an Islamic society, their chosen chief minister and some of his cabinet members are being alleged to have involved in corruption and nepotism. “To cover up their failings and weakness, once again the mullahs are hiding behind Islam,” said Asma Jehangir, former chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.

Although, I can't believe this:

Except cricket hero and philanthropist Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf party, every political circle in the country is questioning the timing of the move.

No wonder that little hottie Jemima Khan kicked him to the curb for Hugh Grant. (Now, I'm a sucker for a Brit everytime myself and I know getting out from under Imran's muslim thumb has to be invigorating, but having sex with Hugh Grant in front of the neighbors?) Oh god, a dhimmi can only dream...
But, back to our topic at hand, hisba is an open abrogation of the Pakistani constitution adopted in 1973.
Possible sign that the Pakistani constitution is working?

Although the passage of Hisba bill has temporarily united the anti-Musharraf forces, the same circles continue to blame the country’s military elite for creating an enabling environment for the MMA’s advances in the 2002 general election.

Instead of the Blame America crowd, we got the Blame Pakistan crowd...
and we got the, 'Anybody but Musharraf' crowd, too.

Many analysts blame the Musharraf regime for deliberately failing to engage the MMA government in talks but instead to opt to confront a democratically elected provincial government. “The insecure general needed something fresh to remind the west how volatile the situation in the frontline state is and how indispensable he remains as war on terror goes on without an end in sight,” says Tariq Mahmood, former judge and president of Supreme Court Bar Association.

This goes onto highlight the importance of Musharraf's recent election gains:

Politically speaking, the implications are serious for the camps, pro-Musharraf and the Islamists with local bodies’ elections just around the corner in August

The author goes on to opine:

The MMA’s move to enact the Hisba Bill has more political undertones than theocratic; yet civil society activists are harping to create a paranoia amongst their ‘valued audience’ in the western capitals.

This valued audience is not paranoid. Hisba is evil and women everwhere should be speaking out against it.
They should speak out against it in:Nigeria

Hisba is the name used to refer collectively to gangs of Islamic fundamentalist vigilantes in Northern Nigeria, who take it upon themselves to oversee the implementation of Islamic law, or Sharia, in the region.

Punishable offenses include drinking or selling alcohol, having premarital sex (most often revealed when the women gets pregnant), or soliciting a prostitute. Hisba members also ensure that the buses in Northern Nigeria are segregated by gender. Although the methods of the Hisba are often violent and arbitrary, the military and official police turn a blind eye towards their activities. Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has declined to interfere in either the Sharia controversy, or the Hisba issues, because of the intense emotions on both sides.

They should speak out against it in Egypt:

They should speak out against it in Canada where they sell a book that about hisba.

Al-Hisba is a moral as well as a socio-economic institution in Islam through which public life is regulated in such a way that a high degree of public morality is attained and the society is protected from bad workmanship, fraud, extortion and exploitation.

Yeah, let's hold off on the bad workmanship, shall we?

They should speak out against it in Saudi Arabia, too (God bless you, MEMRI):

But this I really found interesting. Evidently, hisba has crept back into Iraq

A year ago Haditha was just another sleepy town in western Anbar province, deep in the Sunni triangle and suspicious of the Shia-led government in Baghdad but no insurgent hotbed.

Then, say residents, arrived mostly Shia police with heavyhanded behaviour. "That's how it began," said one man. Attacks against the police escalated until they fled, creating a vacuum filled by insurgents.

Alcohol and music deemed unIslamic were banned, women were told to wear headscarves and relations between the sexes were closely monitored. The mobile phone network was shut down but insurgents retained their walkie-talkies and satellite phones. Right-hand lanes are reserved for their vehicles.

This will make you sick:
The court caters solely for divorces and marriages. Alleged criminals are punished in the market. The Guardian witnessed a headmaster accused of adultery whipped 190 times with cables. Children laughed as he sobbed and his robe turned crimson.

Two men who robbed a foreign exchange shop were splayed on the ground. Masked men stood on their hands while others broke their arms with rocks. The shopkeeper offered the insurgents a reward but they declined.

DVDs of beheadings on the bridge are distributed free in the souk. Children prefer them to cartoons. "They should not watch such things," said one grandfather, but parents appeared not to object.

One DVD features a young, blond muscular man who had been disembowelled. He was said to have been a member of a six-strong US sniper team ambushed and killed on August 1. Residents said he had been paraded in town before being executed.

U.S. authorities deny this occurred.

Muslims Weekly, has another opinion all together and publishes this editorial. Hang onto your wighat, Lucille. This is a doozy:

Think for a moment that the U.S. Congress or the U.K. Parliament passes a law that protects females, minorities and children, discourages lavish spending on weddings, and discourages corruption among the government officials, and passes a law to protect the entire society from evil and injustices. There should be a positive reaction locally, nationally, and globally to such an act of U.S. Congress or the U.K. Parliament. The reason for such reaction is obvious -- The law protects the oppressed and discourages social ills.

Who will oppose or react negatively to the passage of this type of law? Exploiters of females, minorities and children, corrupt government officials and lavish spenders of public money. On which side should the ruling elite of the U.S. or U.K. be? It should be on the side of the legislature.

But this does not happen when something happens in the Muslim World. If a Muslim nation wants to protect females, minorities and children, discourage lavish spending, discourage corruption among the government official, perverted secular (self-acclaimed enlightened) heads of the states all over the world, perverted secular segments of societies all over the world, perverted secular global media all over the world starts yelling from the tops of the roofs. They cry that ‘personal freedom' is at the chopping block; ‘freedom' of women is in danger and "civil liberties" are under "assault."

Currently, this is happening in one part of the Muslim World. In one province of Pakistan, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the elected members of the legislature dared to pass a bill. They did not upset anything which is positive. They did not want to hurt any law abiding residents of their province. They just wanted to clean the society from social ills. They only wanted that the residents of the province live with the values that are the basis of their religion. They only wanted that females, minorities and children not be exploited by anyone - from family members to the government agencies. According to the bill, if a husband divorces his wife, unlawfully and unjustly, he will be punished and sent to jail. The bill also discourages lavish spending on weddings.

Oh really? I wonder if this couple had a lavish wedding?

This doesn't sound like a lavish wedding: Woman Sentenced to 500 Lashes for Immoral Conduct

JEDDAH, 18 November 2003 - A Jizan court has sentenced a young woman to 500 lashes for allegedly spending time alone with a young man and marrying him hours after divorcing her former husband, Al-Madinah reported on Sunday.

According to the court ruling, the groom will also get 500 lashes while the mazoun who married them will get 30 lashes for violating Shariah rules.

The woman was on bad terms with her former husband and entered into a romantic relationship with the young man. But under Shariah, she was required to wait for three months before marrying another man, the paper said

More reflections

Okay. I know I said I was going to get all navel gazer on my blogging public, but since I'm on vacation and since I have no readership, I figure I can take some time to let it hang out a little bit.

I'm still no further in resolving my blogging dilemma - what kind of blog is this? I think it's my main mission to find the off-beat, quirky and little known stories about radical Islam and put them out there. Inform, Enlighten, Entertain.

Does that mean the IDD Roundup v000000 is no more? No, I think I'll keep doing that, I just won't do that daily - maybe just weekly and in a more abbreviated format?

But I digress. Let's talk timing because I think part of my problem is timing. I want to write every day - so it just figures I should have the goal of updating my blog once a day. I just don't want to take all day doing it like I do now.

First of all, I probably don't get up early enough. Secondly, I try to take that afternoon bud nap which cuts some time out of the writing day. Thirdly, I don't even exercise anymore and I want to start doing that again - which will also cut into my writing time. I like to read my blogrota over my morning coffee. That takes a pile of time. One good thing I do have figured out :I figure that if it hits the morning bloggers I read - I don't need to be writing about it, too. I like LGF - for breaking events during the day, but it's all too easy to get sidetracked reading mindless comments when the comment section deteriorates into a personal chat room for some of the Lizards. I just discovered Free Republic and I can see where that could be another mistake. It's taking all my will not to hop over there right now and peek in. That could result in more wasted time.

In the evening I like to check the UK, Australia and the Pacific Rim.

All during the day I like to read blogs, too. The Corner is one of my faves. I can see one big glaring problem staring me in the face - I read too many dang blogs. That's for certain. No wonder I can't get anything done.

Well, this was another unhelpful exercise. Guess I'll sign off this dreck and try and work on something more interesting. Hah. I'm boring myself with this blog.

Well, its the weekend and I am officially on vacation...

No big plans, although I am hoping to get down to the Yankee Doodle Tavern down at the Nassau Inn to slobber all over Secretary of State Don Rumsfeld's college pic and knock back a couple of bourbon old fashioneds in honor of our troops. (Maybe I can get into a fracas with some Princeton Libs while there.)

Hubby is contemplating a little jaunt down to the cradle of liberty, Philadelphia, for a little quality Four Seasons time. We hope to visit The National Constitution Center to learn a little bit more about our constitution and to improve our ability to expound on the Iraqi document.

Blogging will be...light and no doubt confused for the next week - 10 days. As no one knows(because hopefully no one's reading)I am just starting out on this odyssey and I'm still struggling a bit with writing type things.

To further complicate matters, I am also coming out of a prolonged writing drought so it's still a little more rough and herky-jerky than normal. I'm feeling like I'm kind of all over the lot with my content and that causes me to lose focus which causes me to lose speed, which causes me to not be current with stuff that's going on, which causes me to have all these rough, researched half assed, yet pertinent and interesting story ideas piled up in my blog editor. Then, the next morning I get up and start checking my blogs with my morning coffee. (I gave up on the MSM and the NY Slimes a long time ago) What do I see? Stories just like the same stories I have sitting in my blog editor, only these are really good and FINISHED! Sheesh.

For example, last night I had this really bad Moqtada Al Sadr jones and I had this really interesting piece tying in the Qawliya massacre with the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade clashes. Bingo. The next morning I check out Right Wing Nut House and there those guys are with and excellent piece of the same dang thing.

Then I had this pic all lined up for some "Hijab Kebab" fun. Huh. The next morning I wake up and click on The Corner - and poof! There's the same pic posted by KLo. It's the archive so you have to scroll down to find it, but trust me it was there.

There are at least three other instances of something like this happening in the brief history of my blog and quite frankly it is a tad discouraging.

Mainly because it is also the story of my literary life. I get started on some project and then boom! I go to Barnes & Noble five chapters in and boom! There it is! My idea, great story, different author. I don't know - this has to happen to other people out here slogging it out on the fringes of the blogosphere. I attended a writer's conference once and someone had this list of themes in literature boiling them all down to something ridiculous like nine or something. So all of literature in their essence came down to these nine themes. Man, this is bugging me now. I want to go to look through my notes - which have been no doubt been tossed, but still I want to go see if I can find it.

Which brings us to my other problem...I have a tendency to get distracted and start multi-tasking then getting nothing done. Case in point?

This very post I am working on started yesterday and didn't get finished. And then when I did come back to it - I was already bored with it and wanted to move on.

So here we are. (interrupted by life)

I've done about a hundred things around the casbah since writing that last sentence. With this being a long post that is only getting longer, I guess I should just get to the point of this exercise, what I had originally planned to do.

My plan was to sit down at the keyboard and seriously think about the reasons I've started this to begin with. As I recall, there were several seminal moments. The first event was the brutal murder of reporter Steven Vincent R.I.P. I had discovered his blog and had just discovered this piece which I thought would be helpful for my character development process in one of my many unfinished manuscripts. And then he was dead. It just hit me hard - reading his blog and his work had given me such a personal connection, I really felt bad for him and his family. This kind of sent me spinning off into the blogosphere. Searching, searching, searching. Reading, reading, reading. Thinking, thinking, thinking.

I ran across this from Mark Steyn:

"We have to destroy the ideology, or at least its potency — not Islam per se, but at the very minimum the malign strain of Wahabism, which thanks to Saudi oil money has been transformed from a fetish of isolated desert derelicts into the most influential radicalising force in contemporary Islam, from Indonesia to Leeds. Europeans who aren’t prepared to roll back Wahabism had better be prepared to live with it, or under it."

For some reason the phrase "A fetish of isolated desert derelicts" just stuck with me. I agreed with the sentiment and the sound of it just rang true. I read on...
Running across Snooze Button from that handsome Patrick Al-Kafir at Clarity and Resolve. He concludes this thoughtful piece by saying - Well, he's got a big copyright on the article and since I already got into trouble with him because of my errant trackback, I think I'll just say - hop on over and read the whole thing on his blog.

These three events pushed me out of my languor and back onto the keyboard and A Fetish of Isolated Desert Derelicts was born. I wanted to learn more about the Koran, the Haditha, the Islamic Jihad and the threat facing us. I wanted to add my voice to those raised against the haters who advocate it, the appeasers who excuse it and the apologista that blame western civilization for it. I wanted to inform and enlighten. I wanted to get western women more involved with the plight of their Muslim sisters and I wanted to take those same sisters to task for not speaking out against the homicidal maniacs. I wanted to rip the veil off Islam.

And I wanted to do it with humor, class and some irony. Oh, and I wanted to support our troops.

I had originally thought about coming up with a couple of different features to do this. For example: The Hijab Kabob, The Fetish of Fatuous Fatwas, The Fantasy Flight Interview, Who's Your Bad-daddy?, Virgin Suicides, and as yet to be named love and marriage features. The blog was definitely going to have a feminine slant...and here I am - writing this.

I thought writing all this out was going to help me get me more focused but it's still not happening. I was hoping I would be able to sort out my thoughts. I think part of my problem is a lack of focus - I'm trying to be all things to all blogs in one blog. And it's overwhelming me? Or am I just on the lazy side? Or do I need some of that blog crack that I swear some bloggers must be smoking because they are posting morning, noon and night!

On the other hand, since I'm not likely to I am writing again. That's one good thing. Heck, that's a big thing for me. I can't tell you how long it has been since I've had a chance for some quality writing time. I should just be happy with this - and don't get me wrong I am. But you know my literary issues. If I get an idea I better jump into the creative stream and get wet because if I don't I'll see the damn story somewhere else in five chapters!

So, I guess I'll be happy with this for now. Maybe'I'll blog a little bit later and see how it shakes out. Right now, there's a Champ road race in Montreal on the tube, so I'm going to curl up on the sofa with an afghan and The Seven Pillars Of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence to watch it.

Blogging is like crack to me...

I normally write historical fiction, painstakingly researched, endlessly edited, long books. In comparing the writing of historical manuscripts to this blog I am finding that writing a book is like a fine snifter of cognac, while blogging is like, crack. Or what I would imagine it to be.

Here's what happened. I couldn't leave Al Jazeera alone. First of all, front and center they had a big, fat pic of W with a Cindy Sheehan quote plastered over it. Talk about giving aid and comfort to our enemies. Bleh.

Then I came across this and realized that blogging must be like taking crack.
But I couldn't help myself.

I promise this is the last one for today.

That brings us to our favorite picture of Dick Cheney! and this article.

Who's the Secret Planner for the Coming War with Iran?

The U.S. Vice President has instructed the Air Force to start putting plans for an air strike on Iran's nuclear sites using the excuse of the next “terrorist attack”, according to CIA counterterrorism officer Philip Giraldi, now a partner in Cannistraro Associates.

Leave it to Al Jazeera, they go on to mention Scott Ritter. ugh. that child molesting nuclear weapons expert traitor. Listen to him dribble.

Last April, former Marine and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter wrote an article saying that Air Force officers had told him that they were working on plans for war against Iran, that are supposed to be ready by June of this year. Ritter also stated that the invasion will come from U.S. bases in Azerbaijan, and that the U.S. is already flying drones in Iranian airspace. He writes: "Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran. As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream."

Of course, Al Jazeera is incensed at that!

Why would Iran attack the U.S. when they have been doing everything possible to avoid a war that would absolutely devastate their country?
But the U.S. government is following the same script as with Iraq: ‘This Axis of Evil member has ties to “terrorism” and a nuclear weapons program, the UN won't act, so we have to attack them from the air, if not invade them to plant the flag of “liberty and democracy”’.

Wait one cotton picking minute! What about the Jooooos!!!!!

Again, there’s a convergence of interests between those who have a long-term energy strategy and those whose primary objective is protecting Israel.

They go on to point out:

Invading Iran through Iraq would be impossible, as Iraq’s Shiites would finally be unleashed against U.S. forces, who would then have to fight from both front and rear. Also a general Shiite uprising in Iraq would be a likely result of bombing Iran. If the U.S. attacked the Bushehr reactor, not only would radioactive particles blast into the air and fall back down to earth and cause great harm to the environment, but numerous Russians would also be killed. How is the U.S. going to react if the Russians in retaliation bombed a reactor full of Americans in, say, India?

Who's smoking crack now?
I say let's pull a little Tom Tancredo on them. Go ahead. Make my day. Make Mecca Glass.

Ex-cuuuuse me! I stand corrected. It's POLYGYNY

not POLYGAMY.

Funny that Bill Clinton should come up in tandem with polygamy. Hmm. Can you imagine him telling Senator Clinton that he wanted THE SECOND WIFE?
"Hillary, honey..."

This from a fascinating piece over at themuslimwoman.com

The Second Wife
I heard a commentary the other day which hit home like little else has in a long time. A news commentator had just finished interviewing some local youngsters on the impact that the Clinton/Lewinsky affair had upon them. Most of the young people said the same. "It is personal." "Let him be." "No one is perfect." and so forth... The commentator, when summing up his report said, "The President is supposed to represent the morals and values of the society that he represents." He paused and then said, "Maybe that is the problem."

That pretty much summed it up. Clinton represents the morals and values of America. He is the poster-child for the greedy, over-indulgent American who is concerned with nothing more than self gratification. So why do so many Muslims idealize this society? Why are so many of us so enamoured with the values of these people that we either appologize for or even deny basic tenents of our belief?

One such tenent is polygyny. Polygyny is the practice of marrying more than one wife. Unfortunately, often the term polygamy - the practice of marrying more than one spouse is used to describe the practice in Islam. This is incorrect. Islam allows more than one wife, up to four.

You can read the rest of it here if you like.

If you are anything like me you'll be looking for a hot shower and a double bourbon old fashioned afterwards. I think a trip to the Yankee Doodle might be in order.

Polygamy helps keep spinsters from becoming aged virgins!

Now, let's take a little trip from the sublime (Donald Rumsfeld) to the absurd (Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat - pictured at left).

Polygamy is common in Malaysia with its 60% Muslim population and as you can imagine, where there's polygamy, there's problems. Nik Abdul Aziz Nik Mat is a radical Muslim cleric whose party has governed the province of Kelantan for 15 years. Nik was commenting on two recent problems where good Muslim polygamists had tried to save an old virgin and got a faceful of acid from their loving Muslim first wives. Nik is well known for his off the wall remarks about women. Here's one: Stop wearing lipstick and perfume to reduce your risk of being raped.

Read all about it here.

Who is this handsome man?

It's Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Handsome lad, isn't he? You can see this picture in the Yankee Doodle Tavern at the Palmer Square Hotel in Princeton NJ. Everytime I visit, it takes all my will not to smother it with kisses. Not a good idea in the oh-so proper Princeton. Princeton's colors may be orange and black, but it is a blue town in a blue state. You can imagine how the sight of the Rum-meister can pick up a girl's spirits after a day spent among the libs. The Bourbon Old Fashioneds at the bar don't hurt either. Behind the bar is a wonderful Norman Rockwell mural of Yankee Doodle Dandy and at one end of the room there's a fireplace big enough to stand in. And Rummy as a young man. Me and Midge Decter, our hearts belong to Rummy.

I started this Rummy rant for another reason. Listen to his response to a reporter about Chuck Hagel's recent quagmire pontifications. (From the 8/23 DOD press conference.)

Q And what do you say to Senator Chuck Hagel, a prominent Republican, Vietnam War vet, who over the weekend compared what's going on in Iraq now to the Vietnam War?

SEC. RUMSFELD: The differences are so notable that it would take too long to list them.

Rummy strikes again.

Round'em up! v.082505

From Major K - March 25 2005
Arhabi

It is pronounced: ahr-HAH-bee. It is the Iraqi arabic word for terrorist. 2LT C. does not like it because "it just doesn't sing. I learned this word from our interpreters and use it often. I never use mujahedin or jihadi, because they imply a measure of respect due an actual warrior. After all, both of those terms mean "holy warrior." This distinction is also very important to the Iraqis. They have told me repeatedly that these guys are cowards who will not even stand and fight. They kill innocent people, and bomb indiscriminately. They have been their own worst enemy in the public relations department. Even though 2LT C. likes to refer to them using the A-word,(describing a posterior extremity) he would like to find something more catchy. I am content to use arhabi. It lets the locals know exactly who we are after, and what this really is about - not oil, not religion, but security and the hope for a better future

And if you thought that Major K was kidding about that Arhabi business, look at this piece of dreck at arhabi.org.

Hey, Painday, what's in a name?
Afghan raids kill eleven Taliban rebels

"among them a famous Taliban commander called Mullah Painday Mohammed."

At Islamonline.net they put this spin on the Bangladesh gang bombing of Dhaka.Bangladeshi bombs to send message, not kill: Experts
As if that makes any difference! They are still bombs. Sheesh. Here's a sampler:

"Judging from the limited impact of the blasts and the use of home-made bombs, the attackers wanted to send a clear message rather than cause a carnage." The bombs, which killed a man and a 10-year-old boy and wounded more than 100 people, exploded in all but a few of the country’s 64 cities between 10:30 am and 11:30 a.m. Although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the orchestrated nationwide attacks, police said they have found leaflets bearing the name of the recently banned Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen
group. Police said Thursday they had rounded up almost 90 people in the wake of the attacks, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP). "One of them has confessed that he was Jamayet-ul-Mujahideen's local leader and that he carried out an attack here," said Abdur Rahim, superintendent of police in Satkhira district, where two people were detained.

Jamayet-ul-Mujahideen is led by the so-called "Bangla Bhai" who has been on the run since his group was banned in February, according to IOL’s Correspondent...

Bangladesh is the world's third largest Muslim-majority nation with a population of 140 million. Asked what might have driven the group to use violence, Al-Sawi cited "rampant economic and political corruption in Bangladesh ."

Bangladesh has a long history of political violence, labor strife and gang warfare, according to IOL’s Correspondent. But Wednesday's blasts turned the focus on the presence of extremist group, who have been blamed in the past for bomb explosions at religious shrines and rallies. Early this year, former Bangladesh finance minister S.A.M.S. Kibria, was killed by militants, sparking protests by opposition against violence in the region. In another carnage last November, former prime minister Sheikh Hasina herself was injured.

And you knew it was coming. Here come's the ROP mantra.

"The nation will not tolerate any sort of extremism in the name of religion. Our religion Islam is a religion of peace and it opposes terrorism," Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, a senior minister and secretary-general of the BNP, told a rally.

Don't tell me it was the Jooooos!

Opposition parties have also called for a day-long countrywide protest strike on Saturday. "The bomb attacks were a conspiracy against the nation. A vested quarter deliberately did it to brand Muslims as terrorists," Mohammad Hanif, a leader of Awami League, told another rally.

Slim pickings in the J & K but hey, it includes members of the Jamiat ul Mujahideen. Which I believe to be the same of the Bangladeshi group listed as Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen/Jamayet-ul-Mujahideen listed above. (Dang all these crazy muslim versions of spelling the same thing.)

SRINAGAR: Six persons, including two militants, were killed in separate incidents, while security forces seized a huge cache of arms and explosives in Jammu and Kashmir since Wednesday night. Two militants affiliated with the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen were killed in an encounter with security forces during search operations in Karmulla forest in the Tral area of Pulwama district on Wednesday night, a police spokesman said. A civilian, Mohammad Shaban of Mandoora, was injured in the crossfire and was hospitalised, he said. Two AK assault rifles and three magazines were recovered from the militants— PTI

And now - this time it really was the Joooos!
IDF kills Jihad, Hamas terrorists in Tulkarm

"Four Islamic Jihad and Hamas terrorists were killed in a gun battle with IDF forces in the West Bank Palestinian town of Tulkarm Wednesday night. Among the dead was the commander of the military wing of Hamas in the city, Army Radio reported. According to officials in Israel's security
services, the four had taken part in terror attacks against Israelis, including the attack at the "Stage" club in Tel Aviv, at Hasharon Mall and at Shavei Shomron. The IDF was operating in Tulkarm in order to arrest wanted activists.

The city of Tulkarm declared a general strike Wednesday night in protest over the deaths."

Chinese Detainees Are Men Without a Country
15 Muslims, Cleared of Terrorism Charges, Remain at Guantanamo With Nowhere to Go

"Hey, Hey we're the Uighers. People say we Uigher around, but we're too busy uighing to put anybody down"...

"In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials."

"For the Chinese Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gurs ), there is no end in sight. About 20 countries -- including Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Turkey and a Latin American country -- have turned down U.S. overtures to give them asylum, according to U.S. officials."

Uighurs are a Muslim minority whose heartland is in northwestern China. They are a Turkic people who speak a language similar to others in neighboring Central Asian nations and have long sought autonomy in China's Xinjiang province -- a region Uighurs refer to as East Turkistan.

Ironically, many view the United States as a "beacon of hope" that "will assist in the Uighurs' quest for fundamental freedom and human dignity," said Nury Turkel, a U.S.-trained lawyer and president of the Uighur American Association in Washington.

"They are not soldiers. They are not criminals. They are just Uighur people," Willett argued in court. ". . . There might not be a more pro-U.S. Muslim group in the world. The Uighurs have traditionally suffered under religious and political oppression at the hands of the Communist Chinese, and I can remember a time when that made a person someone we liked in this country."
Read the rest for more of the Uighers side of the story...

The Twilight Struggle...

Twilight Water by Charles Kolnik





Today, Wretchard over at The Belmont Club offers up this post entitled, The Dark Frontier. It refers to the Muslim Triangle in South America and highlights remarks from a presser held by Donald Rumsfeld during his recent sortie to South America.

It's interesting, provocative and hits the mark with a red-hot bullet.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's press conference enroute to Paraguay is interesting for a number of reasons -- the first being Paraguay itself. The Power and Interest News summarizes the region's strategic importance to the US. South America is wracked by a confluence of resurgent Marxism, fueled by Venezuela and Cuba; failing states and coca. Of particular interest is the Tri-Border area, centered on the town of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay on the border of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. The Associated Press described it as "a key South American point for Islamic terrorist fund raising to the tune of $100 million a year." The Tri-border area is sometimes described as the Muslim Triangle and is alleged to be one end of a conveyor belt leading to the US southern border.

He goes on to point out:

Rumsfeld's press conference produced another gem on the arming of the Iraqi insurgency by Iran. After the media asked precisely one question about the Tri-Border area ("Q: Will you be talking about the tri-border issue in Paraguay? A: I think the cooperation that the countries in the tri-border area have demonstrated has been a useful and constructive thing. It's been good. ...") they skipped straight to the subject of the Middle East.

Media: There have been reports about Iran specifically facilitating -- I mean you've addressed them a little bit. But over the weekend there was an even more detailed report in Time Magazine about Iran’s Revolutionary Guards setting up a specific unit in Iraq to carry out car bombings against Coalition forces. Are you aware of those kinds of reports? Do you think Iran's involvement is getting more intensive as the process of writing the constitution goes along?

You should read the full text of the article for the flavor of his response, but basically, Rummy punted with a non-answer.

Don't get me wrong, one of the reasons I dig the Rum-meister is his ability to tie the press in knots, but in this instance it just serves to reinforce this bad feeling I've been getting lately.

The feeling that we aren't really that serious about this War on Terror maybe.

Read on:

Some Belmont Club readers have repeatedly written to ask why Secretary Rumsfeld would be at pains to downplay Iranian intervention in Iraq -- both before and after Operation Iraqi Freedom -- when these revelations would serve to strengthen the linkage between terrorism and it's state sponsors, a connection whose existence has been repeatedly denied. (Speculation alert) One possible reason for turning a public blind eye to Iranian belligerence is that any administration which very strongly emphasized it would logically be compelled to do something about it, a step which the Bush administration may be unprepared to take or believes cannot be sustained by domestic political consensus.

Wretchard goes on to provide a historical parallel for us to chew on by looking at the Spanish Civil War and the non-response of Great Britain, France and Russia to the torpedoing of merchant ships by Germany and Italy.

"Despite the fact that no major power would acknowledge belligerent acts by Italy and Germany against neutral shipping, the "international community" of the 1930s went on to negotiate the Treaty of Nyon proscribing acts of "piracy" without naming the pirates.

In order to prevent matters from being brought a to a head, Britain and France simply pretended they didn't know who was sinking neutral shipping and instructed their naval forces to conduct a secret war at sea against an enemy they would not acknowledge until two years later. Nor were they alone in this charade. The US Naval Institute has an interesting article describing FDR's undeclared naval war on Germany in 1940, not knowing that the hunt for German and Italian warships in the northern Atlantic."

Then like now, wishy-washy world wide public opinion has prevented politicians from showing the will to take on:
-the Iranian and Syrian interference in Iraq.
-the unending stream of Saudi suicide bombers.
-the burgeoning Muslim Triangle of South America.

Nobody says this better than our man, Wretchard.

Policy is consequently being made in fits and starts in the tug-o'-war between the sides, essentially awaiting events before taking a categorical direction. Whether that direction will be a genuine "peace for our time" or a new Pearl Harbor is unknown. Until history resolves the dilemma the twilight struggle will continue all over the world, from the Tri-Border area to the Iranian frontier.

In this political climate, what will it finally take to send us in a categorical direction, you wonder.

9/11 evidently wasn't enough.

Will it be a nuclear event?

How long are we going to struggle in the twilight?

Leave it to Wretchard to pull it all back into perspective and in the comments section, no less.

The failure by the democracies in the 1930s to act decisively cost millions of lives in the 1940s. Historians have argued that neither FDR nor Chamberlain could have done much more, given the pacifist tide of the time. Even after Munich, Chamberlain continued to try to buy off Hitler with loans and disposable countries, the so-called "silver bullets". One wag retrospectively called the policy suicide committed out of the fear of death.

In the end it was not the Western politicians, not even FDR with his great skills that convinced the public to take up arms but the Fascists themselves. The democracies had to endure near-mortal hurt before awakening to the danger. Then, as now, it was largely the Left that plied the soporific, assisted ironically enough, by the extreme Right who peddled the 'Fortress America' line.

It's dangerous to draw too many parallels with the past, but perhaps it is even more dangerous to draw none at all.

That Handsome Patrick al-Kafir Gets Down

That handsome Patrick Al-Kafir gets down to the real nitty gritty with his insightful piece over at Clarity and Resolve.

I chose that name for this humble blog because I am convinced that those two attributes are what is required to fight and to win the war on jihad. One must clearly understand ones enemy to fight him effectively, and one must remain resolute to secure victory. It will not be easy. So few of us properly grasp the nature of Islam's jihad culture, and I sometimes fear that it will take more—and worse—cataclysmic Islamic terror attacks on our soil before Americans dispense with the petty, asinine divisiveness, and unite to go the distance on this one.

I don't care if you hate President Bush, conservatives, Republicans, hawks, neocons, whatever... If you want to call yourself a good American who loves America and its core principles, you are obligated to learn about this enemy, to gain an understanding of its nature in the context of history and recent events, and to get behind any politician who is committed to bringing powerful American deterrence and attrition directly to them.

There is no right/left dichotomy in shari'ah law.

Patrick, you continue to inspire me.

How much do you love Mark Steyn?

Bomb us, and we agonise over the "root causes" (that is, what we did wrong). Decapitate us, and our politicians rush to the nearest mosque to declare that "Islam is a religion of peace". Issue bloodcurdling calls at Friday prayers to kill all the Jews and infidels, and we fret that it may cause a backlash against Muslims. Behead sodomites and mutilate female genitalia, and gay groups and feminist groups can't wait to march alongside you denouncing Bush, Blair and Howard. Murder a schoolful of children, and our scholars explain that to the "vast majority" of Muslims "jihad" is a harmless concept meaning "decaf latte with skimmed milk and cinnamon sprinkles".

Mark Steyn

IDD Roundup v.082305

Hey! China has isolated desert derelicts, too. Plus the 2006 Olympics in Shanghai. China cracksdown on terror.

China has set up a new police force in large cities, equipped with helicopters and armoured vehicles, to combat the threat of terrorism and the rising incidence of rioting and social unrest across the country.

The squads, to be stationed in 36 large cities, reflect the need for a more professional police force amid concerns that it is currently ill-equipped to manage such issues, scholars and analysts said on Thursday.

Speaking of China Xinhua.net is reporting that a bunch of IDD's were rounded up in a Afghan tribal area by the Pakistanis. The good news - they were acting on tips received from locals. And get this, not only did they find a sizeable weapons cache, they also found ladie's costumes and wigs. Kind of kinky, eh?

Aussie Treasurer tells Radical Muslim Clerics to get the heck out.

"If you don't like those values, then don't come here. Australia is not for you," Mr Costello said yesterday. "This is the way I look at it: Australia is a secular society, with parliamentary law, part of the Western tradition of individual rights."

The UK is getting it's act together and will issue a plan to boot radical muslim clerics that preach hate.

Jordan nabs boat bomb terror mastermind. Adios IDD!

A televised statement named Mohammed Hassan Abdullah al-Sihly, a Syrian, as prime suspect for the attacks. Three others accused of involvement in an Iraq-based terror group fled into Iraq on Friday, the statement said. One rocket narrowly missed a US warship in port, another hit a hospital and a third landed in Israel. According to the statement, Mr al-Sihly planned and carried out the attacks alongside two of his sons and an Iraqi man. They are thought to be the three men who escaped into Iraq on Friday, the day after the attacks, using forged identity documents and passports.

Bummer. Beirut Shopping Mall bombed.

Zalka, on the Mediterranean coast, is a mixed residential and commercial area on a main street that leads to Lebanon's Christian heartland. The area has several cafes _ including a Starbucks coffee shop _ and restaurants and other nightspots that were full of patrons.

Bad guys were nabbed:

Security forces were seen rounding up several suspects, including five men with their hands tied behind their backs. The were taken to a military vehicle.

Good.

Iraqis blame Saddam's family in Jordan for funding terror.

"It is regrettable to say that until now there are big numbers of elements, not only former regime elements, but supervisors of some terrorist groups who are now in Jordan," government spokesman Laith Kubba told reporters. Kubba accused Saddam's relatives in Jordan of using "huge amounts of money" to "support the efforts to revive Baath Party organizations", without specifying the names of the relatives. Saddam's two oldest daughters are now living in Amman, the capital of Jordan."

Meanwhile Saddam is blowing smoke...

The Scots are getting feisty.

"SCOTLAND'S most senior churchman says extremist Muslim clerics should leave the country, and has branded them "hypocrites" who treat their neighbours as "enemies".

Russian Muslims split over calling for Jihad. I say Bite me.

MOSCOW - The two top leaders of Russia's Muslims split Thursday over the question of whether to proclaim a jihad against the United States. Supreme Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin, the leader of an Islamic council claiming to represent all Russia, announced that the council's 29 Islamic departments had voted unanimously by fax to declare a holy war. The mufti announced the decision before an anti-war protest by some 2,000 students in Ufa, the largely Muslim capital of the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan. While declaring a holy war, he did not say in detail what the council was asking ordinary Muslims to do, beyond contributing money for Iraqi war relief and weapons purchases. At the same time, the chief mufti of Russia, Ravil Gainutdin, rejected any call for a holy war "even though the situation in Iraq is deteriorating." "We must be realists," he told the Interfax news service. "Jihad against the U.S. has been declared by Saddam Hussein. This is enough." .

US to train East African counter terror troops. Round 'em up, boys.

And in show business news: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes plan Arabian Nights Nuptials.

"Superstar Tom Cruise is planning to marry fiancee Katie Holmes in a multi-million dollar "Arabian Nights" style wedding in Mexico's Maroma resort. He wants a "event of the decade". According to British newspaper the Sunday Mirror, 43-year-old Cruise was inspired when he witnessed a $1 million wedding at the resort."

Lisa Ramaci-Vincent rips Juan Cole a new one

and it's about time. Read about it here at Murdoc Online.

I would like to refute this shameful post against a dead man who can no longer defend himself against your scurrilous accusations, a dead man who also happened to be my husband. Steven Vincent and I were together for 23 years, married for 13 of them, and I think I know him a wee bit better than you do.

About the Iraqi constitution...

Iraqis beat the deadline – but will they make this one stick?

Parliamentary speaker Hajim al-Hassani told members a text of the document had been received but said the final wording would have to be worked out within the coming three days.

Whoa Nelly, no they won’t make it stick!

Iraqi leaders finished their draft constitution Monday and prepared to submit it to parliament — but withdrew it in the final minutes in order to give time to win over the Sunni Arab community, whose support is key to ending the insurgency.

Stay tuned...

The Girl on the Crane

City of Neka, Iran.

In August 2004, Afefeh Rajabi, was tried for acts incompatible with chastity (aka premarital sex).

She could have got off w/100 lashes with a whip like her partner, although he ended up only getting 75. Instead, she stood up for herself in the courtroom, asserting she had been subject to the molestation of an older man, getting so upset she snatched the hijab from her head.

Well, that did it.

The judge, Haji Rezaii, snapped.

Atefeh Rajabi had gone too far and she would hang for it.

From a crane.

In the main square of Neka.

For 45 minutes.

Atefeh was pretty and wild, there was no denying that. By the age of 16, she had been jailed x5 for having sex with unmarried men. She was thrown in jail and felt the lash (100 strokes x5) each time. Her father,an absentee, deadbeat, drug addict dad. Her mother had died years before. Her elderly grandparents had a hard time caring for themselves, much less a headstrong, spirited teenager. She was abused by a close relative as a child but had no one to tell. Teachers called her a whore. Tell the police? You are locked up and raped. She still had nightmares about her stints in Benshahr Prison.

She never had a lawyer at any stage of her due process.

Amnesty International claimed she was mentally incompetent. Bi-polar?

From the dock the judge said she had a sharp tongue. It is rumored that he wanted to engage in muta, or temporary marriage with her.

Needless to say, Atefeh wasn't having any part of the judge.

The ruling clergy of the town forged documents, changing her age from 16 to 22, ensuring she'd be death penalty eligible.

The judge received letters from the town governor congratulating him on his 'firm approach'.

He put the rope around her neck himself.

After her execution, he said publicly that he taught her a "lesson" because of her sharp tongue.

The night she was buried her corpse was stolen by unknown individuals.






Atefeh Rajabi. Never Forget.

Update: Saw this over at Regime Change Iran and thought I'd post it in honor of Atefeh Rajabi's memory.

An Iranian judicial spokesman called on Friday for taking legal action against women who do not observe hijab (the Islamic dress code), stressing that women who reveal part of their hair have breached the law and must be prosecuted.

Jamal Karimi-Rad also told ISNA that the judiciary agents have a duty to confront Islamic dress code violators, adding that these agents include the law-enforcement forces, the Basijis (volunteer forces, members of the Islamic Revolution's Guards Corps and some members of the armed forces).

Under Article 15 of the Penal Code, the judiciary agents are tasked with conducting preliminary interrogations, finding evidence, preventing the accused from hiding, etc, he said, adding that if judiciary agents violate the law, they will be sentenced to six months in jail.

Karimi-Rad said those who are accused of crimes, including violation of Islamic dress code, could be detained for 24 hours before a proper decision is taken by judicial officials.

>
Iran: A rigid, theocracy with institutionalized misogynistic laws and practices.

Yeah, let's let these guys have nukes.

Who's Your Bag-daddy?

Time for a little "Who's Your Bag-daddy?" You know Dinah Lord is always happy when the terrorist funding, scumbag, money men are brought to heel.

"When functioning as a correspondent or intermediary institution for funds transfers, the New York branch of Arab Bank failed to implement sufficient internal controls and testing procedures to ensure compliance with the act, for transactions involving beneficiaries that did not maintain an account directly with the branch," the agencies said in a joint statement following their decision.

I wash my hands, said the Arab bank:

The Arab Bank said in response that it did not believe the law required the same anti-money laundering controls to be applied to wire transfers, in which the branch had only an intermediary role.

"The Arab Bank neither admits nor denies any wrongdoing," the bank said in a statement. "We have agreed to the consent orders and will pay the fine in order to put this behind us."

"We're glad that's all you found," they muttered after the meeting.

Tipping point

"Balance" by Quincy Anderson.










I know I've talked about Kimberly at Mother of All Blogs before. If you aren't reading her, you should be. Her most recent post is about the memorial service held for fallen Marines. Talk about heart wrenching. Read it and weep, then bookmark, MOAB.

"Monday, for the second time in a matter of days, I was amid hundreds of Marines standing straight and tall in a perfect alignment. Only this time, it was to say goodbye. I had wanted to stay with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines for this service, to witness how they would remember the men who lost their lives during the ambush of six snipers Aug. 1, a suicide car bombing that took one in Hit, and the attack of the amphibious assault vehicle by triple-stacked mines that claimed 14 on Aug. 3."

She interviews one of the Marines, Sgt. Francis about the loss of his best friend, Sgt. Bradley:

Francis segued to the topic of troop strength in the region, unprompted. I’m finding it’s a concern for most, these days. Maybe if there had been more Marines on the ground they would have been able to find that mine before the amtrac Bradley was riding in did. I don’t care if I get in trouble for saying it, he said. If we’re going to do this, then we need to do it. "Reduction of troops is not going to help us," Francis said.

Sgt. Francis, you shouldn't get in trouble for saying that, you should get a medal.

Now Dinah is no military expert, she didn't serve in the military (but she wanted to), she'd join today if she could. She has seriously thought about getting a job with Halliburton/KBR. She still might. Her expertise lends itself more to fashion and style but she has other skills that would be handy in the field. For example, one of these. LONG STORY SHORT, she has come to the conclusion that we don't need to be withdrawing troops, we need to be adding troops. We need to bite the bullet and shut down the flow of the terrorists cannon fodder from Syria and Iran and according to Lanchester's Law, the only way we can do that is by increasing the number of troops. (And I never thought I would agree with Chuck Hagel on anything.)
Here's some more troop strength talk:

U.S. may bump up troop strength in Iraq

Armed Forces Troop Strength as of June 30 2005.

Bush downplays troop reduction by spring.

No decision on troop strength.

Troop cut talk dismissed.

Army says, "Four More Years."

Steven Vincent R.I.P.

Discarded Lies has a post from Lisa Ramaci-Vincent, Steven Vincent's wife that is a must read. Please remember her in your prayers.

And Queen Amidela has an update on his interpreter's condition after the shooting. Queen is an interesting Iraqi woman. Her posts are terrific.

I started writing Isolated Desert Derelicts because of Steven Vincent. (Although mentioning his name and my blog in the same sentence is kind of a joke. He was a world class journalist and I can only aspire to his level of excellence.) May God bless Steven, Lisa and Nour.

Late Night Roundup v.081905

Faith and Begorra: Islamic cleric says Ireland is a 'legitimate target'

A notorious British-based Islamic extremist has said Ireland is a "legitimate" target for al-Qa'ida terror attacks. Anjem Choudary, who has close links to the infamous hate preacher, Omar Bakri Mohammed, said the use of Shannon Airport as a stop-off for US warplanes justifies Ireland being attacked. The solicitor (38) said: "If your government wants to support the atrocities in Afghanistan they can expect some repercussions," and added that Ireland had "opened itself" to attacks from radical Muslims linked to al-Qa'ida.

"He also criticises Irish Muslims, saying they've been "stripped of their Islamic personality through secular education. On the one hand they're not willing to speak up and on the other hand they're intimidated into being docile."

For those who think that our enemies aren't paying attention. Look at what is prominently displayed at Muslim Woman.

"Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America, a guide and pillar of stability for many of our people..." Hillary Rodman Clinton, Los Angeles Times.

"Already more than a billion-people strong, Islam is the world's fastest-growing religion." ABCNEWS

I wonder when Cindy Sheehan will hit the site.

Well, I'm sorry to hear this: Two UK terror suspects are released.

Two men arrested under Section 15 of the Terrorism Act have been released.
The men, aged 48 and 23, from the West Midlands, were questioned about the alleged funding of terrorist activity.

They were detained along with two women at Manchester Airport on Sunday. Police raids on three properties in Dudley were carried out after the arrests.

But police were forced to release them because they could not assure courts that their inquiries would be completed before the maximum time allowed.

The Terrorism Act, under which the men were arrested, allows suspects to be detained for two weeks on the granting of warrants for further detention by a judge

And then there's this guy:

Who's Your Chaplain?

Shakeel Syed is a bigwig in the Los Angeles Muslim community. He’s one of the official go-to guys for the FBI.

He’s also a contract chaplain for the California Penal System. In that capacity, he took part in a CAIR press conference today, dealing with the recent exposure in Torrance of a possible terrorist plot connected to Folsom Prison.

And here are some of the articles that Mr. Syed has published on the internet:

Nine Eleven “changed everything” has become a popular saying among some. In fact, nothing has changed since 1775. The imperialist mindset remains unchanged. The then founders killed the Native American Indians and believed that they are giving themselves a free America. The current (hopefully outgoing) President apologized to a powerless King, instead to the victims. Their pain is only compounded when the President distances himself from the rhetoric that that behavior was merely the “wrongdoing of a few”. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, indicates that the torture was cleared with lawyers. Al-Jazeera, May 30, 2004

Sooner than we think the old footage of blind folded American hostages and the Islamic government of Iran (more democratically elected than the US President) will overwhelm the airwaves. And the global dissent of good people will be ignored to yet another preemptive invasion of Iran and they will be made to forget the bigger monster, Israel from the very discourse of “axis of evil.” Al-Jazeera, November 27, 2004

The United States of America tends to glorify, simplify and sanitize more than two and a quarter centuries of its horrid past. The Declaration of Independence states “all men are created equal,” but that was not the case in 1776. Two hundred twenty eight years later, the Declaration still could not home itself in the hearts of all Americans. The 228th year of freedom must see beyond the mundane rituals of afternoon barbecues and evening fireworks.

The lonely Native American female warrior as the statue of freedom atop the Capitol Dome was casted in bronze by a Foundry that housed enslaved labor. Slaves who were paid only in the coins of pain in fact built the house that claims to now home the lady liberty. The Milli Gazette, July 31, 2004

Is he full of taquiyyah or what?

Courtesy of LGF