Month: May 2007

For this:

Iran, the 4th largest energy exporter in the world, says it needs nuclear energy for “peaceful” purposes. This recent picture from Tehran suggests a different motive. (photo ht Jeff via TROP)

No other country is threatened with death and complete annihilation while the rest of the world turns away. No other country is promised genocide, day in day out, week in, week out , year in year out, with no condemnation by the civilized men of the EU, UN, UNSC, OIC (ha!)

Divest the nuclear mullahs now. Read more at Front page

But who is to blame?

As always:

Iran’s former President Khatami blames West for nuclear standoff 

How could it be the fault of anyone else? From The Associated Press, with thanks to Jihad Watch

OSLO, Norway: Iran’s reform-minded former president on Tuesday blamed the West for failing to resolve a standoff over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program and said mounting pressure on Tehran would only make things worse.
Mohammad Khatami said that during his time as president, between 1997 and 2005, he came close to reaching an agreement with European nations that would have allowed Iran to develop nuclear power for peaceful purposes. But U.S. pressure forced the Europeans to back off, he said.

“I think our European friends made a mistake and the problem has become more complicated,” Khatami told reporters at a conference in Oslo….

“If more pressure is brought on Iran it will be more difficult for both sides,” Khatami said.

Khatami blamed the United States for fueling the spread of terrorism in the Muslim world and compared U.S. neo-conservative leaders to Islamic fundamentalists.

“Extremism has been strengthened in the Muslim world. If terrorism only existed in Afghanistan, it has been spread to Iraq because of the actions of the United States,” Khatami said. “Violence and extremism are dangerous whether followed by al-Qaida or hardline politicians like the neo-conservatives in the United States.”…

When asked whether he agreed with Ahmadinejad’s calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, he said: “Personally I don’t think any people or nation should be wiped out. But I do believe sometimes facts, what has happened in history, has to be taken into account.”

From the ‘Unbelief is worse than slaughter’ department.

Charles from LGF thinks it is Mental illness on a grand scale, brought to you by the despots and terror supporters of the Organization of the Islamic Conference: ‘Islamophobia Worst Form of Terrorism’

ISLAMABAD, 17 May 2007 — Foreign ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) yesterday expressed grave concern at the rising tide of discrimination and intolerance against Muslims, especially in Europe and North America. “It is something that has assumed xenophobic proportions,” they said in unison.

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr. Nizar ibn Obaid Madani gestures during his meeting with OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Islamabad on Wednesday. (AN photo by Siraj Wahab)

Speaking at a special brainstorming session on the sidelines of the 34th Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers (ICFM), the foreign ministers termed Islamophobia the worst form of terrorism and called for practical steps to counter it.

The ministers described Islamophobia as a deliberate defamation of Islam and discrimination and intolerance against Muslims. “This campaign of calumny against Muslims resulted in the publication of the blasphemous cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a Danish newspaper and the issuance of the inflammatory statement by Pope Benedict XVI,” they said. During a speech in Germany last year, the Pope quoted a 14th Century Christian emperor who said the Prophet had brought the world only “evil and inhuman” things. The Pope’s remarks aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world.

* He was not wrong…

“The increasingly negative political and media discourse targeting Muslims and Islam in the United States and Europe has made things all the more difficult,” the foreign ministers said. “Islamophobia became a source of concern, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the phenomenon was already there in Western societies in one form or the other,” they pointed out. “It gained further momentum after the Madrid and London bombings. The killing of Dutch film director Theo van Gogh in 2004 was used in a wicked manner by certain quarters to stir up a frenzy against Muslims,” the ministers pointed out. Van Gogh had made a controversial film about Muslim culture.

The OIC foreign ministers deplored the misrepresentation in the Western media of Islam and Muslims in the context of terrorism. “The linkage of terrorists and extremists with Islam in a generalized manner is unacceptable,” they said. “This is further inciting negative sentiments and hatred in the West against Muslims,” they said. The ministers also pointed out that whenever the issue of Islamophobia was discussed in international forums, the Western bloc, particularly some members of the European Union, tried to avoid discussing the core issue and instead diverted the attention from their region to the situation of non-Muslims and human rights in the OIC member states.

The foreign ministers said prejudices against Islam were not helping the situation. “Because of Islamophobia, millions of Muslims in the Western countries, many of whom were already underprivileged in their societies for a variety of reasons, are further alienated and targeted by hatred and discrimination.”

* He didn’t mention that these ‘poor underprivileged Muslims’ suck the hatred in with the mothers milk…

Brought to you by Arab News, of course…

* JW has an interesting take on this story here.. 

The worst form of terrorism. Worse than flying commericial airliners into high-rise office buildings. Worse than beheading preteen Christian girls on their way to school. Worse than launching attacks from civilian areas in order to use retaliatory actions to score propaganda points. The worst form of terrorism.

And with Ban Ki-Moon vowing to do the OIC’s bidding more zealously than ever, watch for the UN to call for muzzling of all “criticism of Islam,” i.e., exploration of the elements of Islam that the jihadists are using to encourage violence. And that will allow the jihadists to operate unhindered.

Of course! Its always the Jooozzz!

* The inside of a terrorists home:  They sure live in style, don’t they?  Did Condi pay for this or your taxdollars?

A Palestinian security force officer loyal to Fatah stands in the damaged house of Fatah security chief Rashid Abu Shbak after it was attacked by Hamas militants in Gaza City.
Photo: AP

“Hamas blames world, Israel and Arabs,”

from AP

Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of the political bureau of Hamas Islamic movement.
Photo: AP

The international community, Israel and Arab countries are to blame for the current inter-Palestinian fighting in the Gaza Strip for failing to lift an economic siege on the Palestinians, a senior Hamas official said Wednesday.

* He figured it all out by himself, imagine!

The remarks by Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas’ political bureau, came as fighting renewed between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza early Wednesday when Hamas gunmen stormed the home of a top Fatah official in Gaza City, killing five bodyguards inside, Palestinian security officials said….

“The international community and Arab countries shoulder part of the responsibility for the current events due to their attitudes toward the national unity government,” Abu Marzouk told The Associated Press by telephone in Damascus. “The continued financial and political siege has pushed matters to this simmering tension.”

* Withholding the Jiziyah makes them kill each other? I love it! Why don’t we stop the jiziyah altogether?

He also blamed Israel and Arab apathy toward the economic sanctions for the fighting.

“The Israelis are behind all these events,” Abu Marzouk said. “It’s illogical that the Arabs stand idle watching the Palestinian arena while it’s on the verge of explosion under the siege. … This is a constant pressure that has led to a real explosion.”

* Keeping the pressure up sounds like a good idea, don’t you think?

Read it all

Clashes overshadow Palestinian ‘Naqba’

Palestinian children hold maps of the Palestinian territories that includes Israel as they attend a rally to mark the 59th anniversary of the Naqba, or “The catastrophe” in the West Bank city of Nablus Tuesday May, 15, 2007
Photo: AP

Newest Hamas-Fatah truce collapses

 From Couriermail

A GROUP of right-wing politicians is gathering signatures to try to force a national vote on banning the construction of minarets in Switzerland.

* Wonder why they have to be titled ‘right wing’- is it because lefties see the Muhammedan scourge as natural allies?

The planned building of minarets, the towers attached to mosques from which the Islamic call for prayer is issued, in small Swiss towns has sparked local protests.

A group of politicians from the Swiss National Party and Federal Democratic Union are seeking to prevent the construction of minarets in national law, saying they are a symbol of power and threaten law and order in Switzerland.

The campaign has to gather 100,000 signatures by November 2008 to force a national vote on the initiative which, if it gains a majority vote, would then be written into law.

“We have no doubt that we’ll reach the goal,” Ulrich Schlueer, a Swiss National Party parliamentarian for Zurich who is heading the initiative, said.

“We’ve now been collecting for a week and we’ve already got 10,000 signatures.”

There are currently only two minarets in Switzerland, in Zurich and Geneva.

The call to prayer is not made from these minarets.

But Swiss President and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, a Social Democrat, said a ban on minaret construction would threaten the country’s security.

“Such an initiative endangers Swiss interests and the security of Swiss people,” Mr Calmy-Rey said.

“The liberty to practise a religion is guaranteed in Switzerland.”

The delusion of the lefties can be infuriating… 

You won’t see headlines like that in the MSM:

Here’s  Reuters Nidal Al Mughrabi:

GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas gunmen stormed the home of President Mahmoud Abbas’s top security chief in Gaza and at least nine people were killed in fierce factional fighting on Wednesday that pushed Palestinians closer to all-out civil war.

The raid on the home of Rashid Abu Shbak, one of the most powerful Fatah leaders, came shortly after mortars struck near Abbas’s Gaza office and gunmen attacked a Hamas position outside the Interior Ministry building.

Palestinian officials said the widening hostilities could bring down a two-month-old unity government formed between ruling Hamas Islamists and Abbas’s secular Fatah faction.

Fatah official said Abbas may declare a state of emergency, a move that could allow him to rule by decree for a limited period of time.

Terrified Gaza residents hid indoors as masked gunmen fought running battles street-to-street. Witnesses said militants were grabbing some civilians out of their cars to hold as hostages.

In one panicked call to a local radio station, a woman appealed to Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to act. “Do not leave us to die here,” she pleaded.

The rising death toll on Wednesday included four Fatah security guards at Abu Shbak’s home, a member of Abbas’s elite Presidential Guard and two member of the pro-Fatah Preventive Security service.

More… 

Israel launches air raid on Gaza after rocket fire 

by Charly Wegman

ERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel launched an air raid on an uninhabited area of Gaza on Wednesday after warning that it would respond “in a measured fashion” to continuing rocket fire from the lawless territory.

AFP Photo: Israeli police inspect the damage to a house in Sderot following a rocket attack

*

But Israel has for the moment ruled out a widescale incursion into the Gaza Strip, where escalating violence between rival groups has killed 30 people in four days.

“Our aircraft bombed uninhabited sectors of the Gaza Strip from where rockets have been launched against our territory,” an army spokeswoman told AFP. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

Israel had warned it would respond to the continuing attacks that have seen 21 projectiles land inside the country since the flare-up of Palestinian internecine violence on Sunday, wounding two civilians.

“We will respond, without allowing ourselves to get involved in an uncontrollable escalation of violence,” government spokeswoman Miri Eisin told AFP.

Five rockets were launched on Wednesday, with three landing inside Israel causing damage but no injuries.

Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement that is the senior partner in the Palestinian coalition cabinet, claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement.

“Israel will defend its nationals, but is a responsible state that wants to spare innocent victims among the Palestinians,” Eisin said. “Hamas will not dictate our actions and we will operate in a measured fashion.”

Defence Minister Amir Peretz, a resident of the town of Sderot that has borne the brunt of the fire, said Israel will react “severely.”

More… 

Hamas militants kill 6 Fatah bodyguards 

By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Hamas gunmen fatally shot six bodyguards from the rival Fatah movement Wednesday and mistakenly ambushed a jeep carrying their own fighters, killing five of them, in the bloodiest day of Palestinian infighting since violence erupted in the Gaza Strip four days ago.

Palestinian gunmen march during the funeral of security force officers loyal to the Fatah Movement that were killed during an attack by Hamas militants, in Deir Al Balah , in the central Gaza Strip

Militants from the hardline Islamist group also fired barrages of rockets at Israeli towns, an apparent attempt to draw Israel into the internal Palestinian conflict that has sent the coastal territory spiraling into chaos.

The streets of central Gaza City echoed with the rattle of gunfire, and were empty except for gunmen in black ski masks. Terrified residents huddled in dark homes after electricity to some downtown neighborhoods was cut off by a downed power line.

At midday Wednesday, policemen from the Fatah-allied Preventive Security organization arrested five Hamas men and were driving them through Gaza City when the vehicle was ambushed by Hamas fighters, Preventive Security officials told The Associated Press. Five of the Hamas men were killed, along with two Fatah men, they said. The exact circumstances of the incident were not immediately clear.

Hamas radio reported that a Hamas man was killed in another clash, and a nurse traveling in an ambulance was shot in the head after being caught in the crossfire, hospital officials said. Her family said she was brain dead and being kept alive by a respirator.

In four days of fighting, 41 people have been killed and dozens more have been injured. The majority of the fatalities have been from Fatah.

More… 

Thanks to LGF:

The Associated Press includes no information whatsoever about the attackers in their article about a bus hijacking in Italy, except that they were “gunmen:” Gunmen hijack bus in northern Italy.

Whenever I see such a deliberately uninformative and obfuscated report, I start suspecting that the media are covering up for Muslim terrorists again.

One line in the BBC’s article strongly suggests that’s the case: Armed men ‘hijack Italian coach’.

Three armed men seized a bus travelling on a motorway in northern Italy, injuring an off-duty police officer before abandoning the vehicle. All the passengers on the bus were released unharmed after the attack.

The attack took place on a stretch of motorway in the province of Alessandria, some 60 miles (90km) northeast of the city of Turin.

Police said they had captured one of the men and surrounded a farmhouse where the second was hiding. The third of the three men, all believed to be of North African origin, is reported to have escaped.

US to build Afghan super-madrassas

Mega-madrassha’s for 1000 future jihadists with American taxpayers money?

Once again, Fitzgerald nails it:

U.S. forces are building madrassas in Afghanistan.

“We are saying that we respect their culture and religion,” said naval commander Eduardo Fernandez, the man in charge of American aid efforts in the Sharana district of Paktika. “We have to give the religious leaders the respect they feel they deserve.” — from this article

Get that naval commander out of the Sharana district, out of Afghanistan, and possibly out of the navy, fast. Start educating the members of the armed forces on the tenets of Islam. Make them read, and reread, and reread, Qur’an, Hadith, and sira. Teach them about naskh, or abrogation. Teach them to distinguish the “authoritative” muhaddithin from the less authoritative ones, and the “authentic” Hadith from the kind that Karen Armstrong likes to quote. Expose every single one of the tricks of Muslim apologists and undercut them, including these:

1) That only someone who knows Arabic can comment on what is in the Qur’an, Hadith, and sira. Answer: If that were really true, then how can 80% of the world’s Muslims be regarded as Muslims, since they cannot understand Arabic?

2) That only Muslims can possibly understand Islam. Answer: Then no one who converts (“reverts”) to Islam has any idea what he is converting to?

3) That Islam says “there is no compulsion in religion.” Answer: To this one can offer up not only Muslim glosses on this line, but also 1350 years of the onerous burden placed on non-Muslims that, of course, led many to avoid such a burden (economic, social, political) by converting to Islam.

4) That Islam is a “religion of peace.” Answer: In fact, Islam is a Total Belief-System, and central to that Belief System is the uncompromising division of the world between Believer and Infidel. And between the two, Believer and Infidel, there exists a state of permanent war (though not always of active warfare — certainly not wherever other instruments of Jihad are more effective, or where it is impossible, because of Muslim weakness, to conduct Jihad to spread Islam at all).

And so on.

If this is the policy in Afghanistan, it is the wrong policy.

Read it all, right here

Hamas: “We obtained the US weapons and will keep hijacking any assistance the Americans provide to Fatah.”

* Neither of these groups should have ever been given weapons, money or training, the whole idea is absurd. All of it will be used against us, Israel and if they can’t find any Jews to kill they turn on each other.

But did anyone responsible for the original transfer foresee something like this? “Hamas seizes US weapons,” by Aaron Klein for World Net Daily:

Hamas ambushed a convoy in the Gaza Strip on Sunday and seized a stockpile of US weapons transferred in recent months to militias associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party, according to Hamas and Fatah sources.
“We obtained the US weapons and will keep hijacking any assistance the Americans provide to Fatah. Our fighters are aware of the American and Israeli conspiracies to topple our government. We’re trained and well prepared to defeat the American-backed (Palestinian) agents,” said a top member of Hamas’ military wing in the Gaza Strip.
According to Israeli and Palestinian security officials and Hamas sources, Hamas militias have taken almost complete control of the northern Gaza Strip in recent months, including areas from which rockets are regularly launched from the territory into nearby Jewish communities.
The officials said Fatah is restricted to acting in a half-mile radius in the vicinity of a major Fatah military compound. Hamas has set up roadblocks and checkpoints throughout northern Gaza to ensure Fatah militias remain near their compound.
After a Fatah gunman shot a Hamas member on Sunday, a Fatah convoy of three trucks was stopped by Hamas at a makeshift checkpoint at Dabit Circle, a northern Gaza town, according to Hamas sources. Hamas abducted 18 Fatah gunmen and seized stockpiles of American weapons that were in the vans, the sources said.

Hamas won most battles
The US has transferred large quantities of weapons to Fatah in recent months to back Abbas’ military organizations against Hamas. Fatah and Hamas engaged in months of factional clashes until the two forged a unity government in February. But renewed fighting in Gaza in recent days has threatened to torpedo the unity deal.
The last confirmed US weapons transfer to the Palestinians took place last May and consisted of 3,000 assault rifles, but WND reported multiple others transfers were since delivered to Fatah, including a cache of 7,000 rifles last January and about 8,000 assault rifles in February.
While the weapons were meant to bolster Fatah in Gaza, Hamas has reportedly won most battles against the US-backed militias. WND reported last month that a Fatah militia in Beit Lehiya, a major city in the northern Gaza Strip, surrendered to Hamas forces after reaching an agreement in which the Fatah militants stated they will evacuate the city and altogether depart the Gaza Strip.
This weekend, according to Palestinian security sources, Baha Abu Jarad, a Fatah strongman in Gaza, surrendered a large swath of territory to Hamas, nearly completing Hamas’ grasp on the northern Gaza Strip.
US sends aid to Fatah
The US Congress last month approved $59 million in aid to Fatah’s militias after an earlier Bush administration pledge of $86.4 million was blocked for fear the money might reach terrorist groups. The aid package contains a new qualification stipulating the money must not be used to purchase weapons.
The vast majority of the US aid is slated to bolster Abbas’ Force 17 security forces, which serve as de facto police units in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. But many members of Force 17 are openly members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror organization and Israel has arrested wanted terrorists from these units.
WND last month quoted Israeli and Palestinian security officials stating intelligence and security organizations associated with Fatah, including Force 17, are infiltrated by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist organizations.
Fatah infiltrated by Hamas
A top Palestinian intelligence official told WND: “We are leading a large number of investigations and some of the results prove that such an infiltration by Hamas (of Fatah’s security and intelligence forces) exists.
“I can say that in some cases we diagnosed a deep infiltration to high posts in some Fatah security services,” the high-ranking Palestinian intelligence officer told WND. “In some cases we believe there are officers that are exposed to very sensitive information.”
He said that since the US announced it is providing Abbas’ forces with additional funds, Fatah intelligence officials at the direction of American security coordinators here have been attempting to expel Hamas infiltrators. He said the past month “dozens” of members of Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and Islamic Jihad were found operating in the Fatah forces.

Read also: At least 16 killed in Hamas Fatah fighting

* Sure, the French who voted for Sarkozy are ‘oppressive’- in the eyes of the Islamo-fascists. Anything that slows the spread of Islam is ‘oppression’-and the ever pandering Segolene Royal would have fast-tracked the Islamization of France:

From AFP

DUBAI, May 15, 2007 (AFP) – An Al-Qaeda front group in Europe threatened on Tuesday to launch bloody attacks in France in response to the election of “crusader and Zionist” Nicolas Sarkozy as president.

“As you have chosen the crusader and Zionist Sarkozy as a leader … we in the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades warn you that the coming days will see a bloody jihadist campaign … in the capital of Sarkozy,” the group’s “Europe division” said in an Internet statement addressed to the French people.

* That should do it! No doubt French ‘crusaders’ will submit at once and submit to the moon-cult…

The campaign will be “against all those who allow themselves to follow the policy” of the US administration, said the statement whose authenticity could not verified.

The Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades takes its name from an Al-Qaeda commander killed during the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

The group previously claimed responsibility for the July 2005 terror attacks in London, as well those in Madrid in March 2004 and in Istanbul in November 2003.

Just after the London bombings, the group warned European nations to pull their troops out of Iraq within a month or face more attacks like them.

Hamas Jihad Rat creator:

“Islamic rule will benefit Christians and Jews “

* Yeah right, because slavery is wonderful. And who in his right mind wants to prevent  us from Islamic ‘liberation’ and a new ‘Golden Age’ of Islam?

With thanks to Jihad Watch:
This is in fact a standard view, articulated by Qutb and others. And for jihadists to believe anything else would be silly. Of course they believe that the rule of Islamic law is the rule of justice, or they wouldn’t be fighting for it. But the rule of Islamic law is not actually the rule of justice, precisely insofar as it (among other things) denies equality of rights to Christians and Jews, and that is why the jihadists must be resisted.

Mickey the Jihadist Rat Update. By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook for PMW:

The force behind Hamas TV’s controversial Mickey Mouse clone said today that his children’s television program will continue to promote worldwide Islamic supremacy, for everyone’s benefit, including Christians and Jews.
In a long interview on Hamas TV, Hazim Al-Sha’arawi, Deputy Director of Al-Aqsa TV and one of the creators of the Hamas children’s TV show Tomorrow’s Pioneers, said that using the program to promote Islamic rule over other religions is actually promoting “justice, goodness and world love.”…

Al-Sha’arawi said in yesterday’s interview that he wants to raise Palestinian children so that they can achieve “Islam’s natural place” of world rule – in essence saying that although the Christians and Jews do not understand this yet, Islamic world rule is really best for them as well.

From interview of Hazem Al-Sha’arawi, Deputy Director of Al-Aqsa [Hamas] TV:

“What is being asked, so that the Americans and Zionists will be satisfied with you, is to follow their lead … We [on this program] have a message, and we understood from the beginning that it is a difficult path… But we were sure that we had to go this way, because this [young] generation needs someone to direct it …and this generation is the most worthy of the position of leadership… Let’s ask history: …which time period was good to all communities? The Jews lived in the time of Islam [under Islamic rule] and were happy. The Christians lived in the time of Islam [under Islamic rule] and were happy. Look at the history, the prophet [Muhammad]… ordered the army: ‘Do not kill a monk in his prayer room.’ Even the Caliph Umar Bin Al-Khattab, [Islamic conqueror of Jerusalem in 638] when he came into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, he secured the churches and the prayer rooms. Therefore, when we talk [on the program] about the mission of the restoration of Islam to its natural place [of world rule], we [are] calling for justice, and for goodness, and for world love… so that the Christians will live in peace, and that even the Jews will live in peace and security.”
Yes, they were happy, and they knew peace and security, as long as they knew their place. Just like the slaves in the Old South.

Read the comments on Jihad Watch.

Some very funny stuff there…