#1
From the article: "Comparing Syria and America: I was born and raised a Muslim for 32 years in Syria where life is hell all the product of Islamic teaching. If you give any man or woman from any Islamic country the chance to immigrate to a western country, they wouldnt miss the chance EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE CONSUMED WITH HATRED FOR THE WEST!!!
In 1989 I left Syria . The first time outside of Islam..different culture, different belief system, I felt it was different from the first day! I had 3 children and $100 in my pocket so I worked as a cashier in a gas station---one of the richest experiences of my life! It restored my dignity and human rights! Everyday I met Americans at every level and learnt how Americans treat each other and their women and children! Men opened the door for womenbeyond my comprehension!
I was treated better as a cashier in America than as a medical doctor in Syria! My husband left 8 months before me to America and I needed to get passports for my children. As a mother, I had no custody over my children...the passport man said who cares...I had to find some male with the same last name to come and give permission...I found a distant relative, a drunk and paid him money to come and give permission....
Women are filthy: As a child I would avoid passing my father while he was prayingif a dog or woman pass by he has to wash himself and start all over again!"
#2
If you aren't going to believe this woman, who will you believe? Direct quotes:
She regards Mohammad as evil and believes the Koran cannot be reformed.
Re interfaith: It is Taqiyya.
Islam-political ideology: Islam is not a religion, it is a political ideology
If you give any man or woman from any Islamic country the chance to immigrate to a western country, they wouldnt miss the chance EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE CONSUMED WITH HATRED FOR THE WEST!!!
I was treated better as a cashier in America than as a medical doctor in Syria!
Islam is NOT a religion! Islam is a political ideology.
Sharia doesnt respect human life!
ISLAM IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM!
Muslims are allowed to lie and cheat to deceive you to reach their agenda to control you
Being a broken woman is the product of my religion.
We (Muslims) dont have any positive points to hold on to!
Are there moderate Muslims? There are NO moderate Muslims.
I believe the majority (of Muslims) in the west feel lost between me and Osama bin Laden...Which force is going to be stronger? I believe the majority are in danger and are ready anytime to be ACTIVATED because they share the same beliefs!
Time for reciprocity: Why allow Islam here when no churches, synagogues etc are allowed in Saudi Arabia!
Because he's resigning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales won't have much chance to exercise his powers under the Protect America Act. The new law charges the attorney general with determining which international communications involving people in the U.S. will be subject to warrantless surveillance.
Members of Congress were so distrustful of Gonzales that they insisted he share this authority with the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. But while McConnell, the apolitical expert, may enjoy a better reputation for honesty and independence than Gonzales, the longtime Bush crony, the two men seem to have similar instincts about privacy and executive power.
In a recent interview with the El Paso Times, McConnell regrets the debate about the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program: "The fact (that) we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die," he says. "Because it's so public."
McConnell is trying to frighten Americans into supporting President Bush's anti-terrorism policies. Worse, he is charging critics of those policies with complicity in murder.
As Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, observes, "He's basically saying that democracy is going to kill Americans." And not just democracy but constitutional government of any kind, because by McConnell's logic, anything that interferes with the president's unilateral decisions regarding national security "means that some Americans are going to die."
McConnell wants to have it both ways: Terrorists are so sophisticated that the government needs broad surveillance powers to thwart them, yet they are too stupid to realize someone might be listening to their phone calls or reading their e-mails. Evidently the possibility occurred to them only after they read about it in the newspaper.
Because the discussion of NSA surveillance has not revealed information specific enough to help terrorists escape detection, it seems clear McConnell's real concern is that public debate might impede Bush's policies. This is a new twist on the old argument for secrecy: Information must be kept from the public not just to keep it from our enemies but to prevent the public from objecting to measures the president considers necessary to protect national security.
Providing further evidence that he sees classification as a way to avoid the inconvenience of defending the administration's policies, McConnell uses the interview to confirm something the administration has long insisted it could not discuss safely: that telecommunications companies helped the NSA conduct its warrantless surveillance. Although that much may have seemed obvious, the Justice Department has tried to stop lawsuits against the cooperating carriers by arguing that even acknowledging their help would endanger national security.
But now that Bush wants Congress to give the companies retroactive immunity from liability for aiding and abetting the illegal snooping, McConnell is suddenly more forthcoming. "Under the president's program," he says, "the private sector had assisted us." Now those assistants need assistance, he explains, because "if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies."
Judging from this example, Bush administration officials feel duty-bound to withhold information when it might be useful to critics of the president's anti-terrorism policies, because those policies are necessary to protect national security. But they believe the very same information can -- indeed, should -- be released at a more opportune time, when it will help the president pursue his policies.
In the interview, McConnell makes a point of describing himself as "an apolitical figure" who has voted for candidates from both major parties and is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He means to reassure us that we can trust him, a nonpartisan professional, to make decisions about whose communications to monitor.
But McConnell is a professional spy. He naturally wants to do his spying as free from restrictions as possible. We would not trust prosecutors to say what due process is, and we should not trust spies to define the limits of our privacy.
My favorite quote from Ben Franklin seems apropos:
"Those who would give up essential liberty, for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
#2
McConnell is trying to frighten Americans into supporting President Bush's anti-terrorism policies. Worse, he is charging critics of those policies with complicity in murder.
If common sense and good judgement fails to work effectively, fear is a damn good motivator.
#6
McConnell is trying to frighten Americans into supporting President Bush's anti-terrorism policies. Worse, he is charging critics of those policies with complicity in murder.
The bureaucrats in the FBI who failed to act upon warnings, the staffers who built the wall in information sharing, and those who failed to carry through with charged tasks to hunt Benny should have faced accessory charges in 9/11. Just as at Abu Ghrib the command chain paid for their pathetic supervision, instead of handing out rewards and decorations, those bureaucrats should have been hammered, publicly and harshly. As the French would say, pour encourager les autres. The 'critics' can reside in the next circle of hell. Although there may be a specific circle awaiting the operators and owners of the NYT.
#7
McConnell wants to have it both ways: Terrorists are so sophisticated that the government needs broad surveillance powers to thwart them, yet they are too stupid to realize someone might be listening to their phone calls or reading their e-mails. Evidently the possibility occurred to them only after they read about it in the newspaper.
Well, it might occur to them that *someone* could be listening, but now they know. Spot the difference?
Posted by: The Doctor ||
08/30/2007 13:07 Comments ||
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#8
Last I heard, Gonzo fired 9 prosecutors, while Janet Reno canned 93. Guess who received the worst publicity?
#9
McConnell wants to have it both ways: Terrorists are so sophisticated that the government needs broad surveillance powers to thwart them, yet they are too stupid to realize someone might be listening to their phone calls or reading their e-mails. Evidently the possibility occurred to them only after they read about it in the newspaper.
I suppose it never occurred to the author how there are so many terrorists that monitoring them requires more effort than simple manpower can economically provide. Ergo, "broad surveillance" is most certainly warranted. So far, terrorists have also shown a distinct immunity to common sense that continues to justify such surveillance methodologies. Finally, concealed language, code, cryptography or whatever still does not fully obscure the chain of physical, telecom or Internet addresses that then provide physical links in connecting up these aspiring mass murderers.
While direct military intervention is much more effective, without that option being fully employed this sort of monitoring is vital in the extreme.
Franklin didn't live in a time where a single person could kill tens of thousands people.
This goes to the heart of other discussions I have had with friends. One of them maintained that America's Founding Fathers simply could not have anticipated the advent of such a monstrous evil as Nazism and therefore it was well worth considering a constitutional ban on all forms of it.
I will venture that the exact same may apply to Islam as well. Both ideologies entertain a vast catalog of undeniable human rights violations and both of them aspire to violent world domination via genocide and military conquest.
There is absolutely no reasonable explanation for why it is important that either concept be granted credibility or legal protections. Either one would just as quickly abolish constitutional law and the unalienable rights of free men. Permitting such inimical forces to permeate our society serves no useful purpose. Much as there are constraints upon conspiracy to commit mass murder, overthrow of government and similar criminal acts, Nazism and Islam both qualify for similar proscriptions.
Wednesday's communal violence in Muslim-dominated areas of Agra is indicative of the fragile peace that prevails in many places across the country. It also shows that all it takes is an incident as far removed from Muslim issues as a road accident for the community's goon brigade to go on the rampage, secure in the knowledge that they shan't be punished for their criminal behaviour. It will be recalled that after Saddam Hussain was hanged in Baghdad, Muslim hoodlums owing allegiance to the Samajwadi Party had gone berserk in Agra, stoning buses and setting upon tourists while pretending outrage over a fallen dictator's execution in a foreign land. On that occasion, too, the political leadership of the day and a pliant district administration had silently watched goons claiming to represent the Muslim community running amok, causing destruction if not death. This time, it is worse. A truck accidentally hit four Muslim men riding a motorcycle in violation of all traffic rules; they were ostensibly observing Shab-e-Barat although it defies imagination as to how a night of prayers for departed souls can be equated with shocking hooliganism in the streets and on highways, as was witnessed on Tuesday night all over the country. Soon after the road accident, no doubt caused by the recklessness of the four men who died in the incident, large gangs poured out into the streets of Muslim-dominated mohallas of Agra, stormed the police station where the truck had been parked, set it ablaze along with other passing vehicles, attacked Hindu homes and terrorised their occupants in an orgy of pre-planned violence. If the accident had not occurred, the mobs would have manufactured some other reason.
Such was the ferocity of the mobs that the police initially took shelter behind closed doors and the District Magistrate had to cower in a locked room. By the time the police regrouped and tried to restore order, the damage had been done. That the Director General of Police and the Home Secretary of Uttar Pradesh, who had gone to assess the situation, had to sneak out from the Circuit House which had been surrounded by a murderous mob led by BSP MLA Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto speaks volumes about the law and order situation. We will no doubt hear the champions of 'secularism' argue that such appalling arson, loot and vandalism are expressions of legitimate Muslim angst; we can also be sure that the facts will be lost in the clamorous defence of Wednesday's hooliganism that will be put up by the Samajwadi Party, the Congress, the Left and, not to be ignored, the BSP - after all, the villain of the piece is a ruling party legislator.
Yet, it would be in order to suggest that the Uttar Pradesh Government should not be seen to be succumbing to Wednesday's crass expression of communalism, fuelled and fanned by malcontents within the Muslim community. This is an opportunity for Chief Minister Mayawati to demonstrate that her Government, unlike the previous regime, will not be found wanting in using force to put down trouble-makers and ensuring peace prevails. Neither Mr Bhutto nor his supporters should be allowed to hold Agra to hostage and thus instigate violence elsewhere. A second point that needs to be made unambiguously is that the men who ran riot in Agra do not represent the Muslim community, nor are they interested in protecting the interests of Muslims. But to underscore this point, saner Muslims must speak up and ensure their voice is heard.
Posted by: john frum ||
08/30/2007 06:20 ||
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#1
Rioting is jihad, which is like breathing to a slave of allah the moon god.
#3
If the accident had not occurred, the mobs would have manufactured some other reason.
Sorta whittles away all the bullshit in just one sentence.
That was either one big motorcycle or a circus act in training.
Quite obviously you have not traveled to any of the Asian nations. In Taiwan, motorscooters are the cockroaches of street traffic. Once the green light appears they scurry forth into intersections with astonishing numbers.
It is not unusual to see an entire family of four or five riding upon a single scooter. Pop will have one or two astride the gas tank in front of him and sitting behind him will be mom with another tyke on her lap as well. Bracketing this human cargo on all sides and in defiance of most physical laws will be either an entire week's worth of groceries or the complete inventory of their roadside flea market stall.
The decision by Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to declare a hudna order his militia to draw in their claws is a shrewd tactic aimed at positioning himself for a wider political role while ridding himself of rogue elements, analysts said on Thursday.
"He's a very, very shrewd and calculating politician," Adel Darwish, veteran Middle East commentator, said of the influential black-turbaned cleric. "He'll stay quiet for six months or a year," Darwish said by telephone from London. Sadr was likely to make his first move when British forces withdraw from Basra in southern Iraq, said Egyptian-born Darwish who has written two books on Iraq, including one on executed dictator Saddam Hussein. Once the troops have left, "very quietly he'll move in," he predicted.
In the longer term, Sadr is biding his time until the inevitable pullout of all US-led forces from war-ravaged Iraq, said Darwish. "He's just waiting for the American withdrawal &0151; once the coalition forces are out they can do whatever they like."
A firm grasp of the obvious, has this expert.
Sadr on Wednesday ordered his Mahdi Army to suspend all armed action for six months after his fighters were suspected of involvement in deadly gunbattles during a Shiite religious festival in the city of Karbala.
Gunbattles that are apparently continuing...so who knows how much control he really has...
The anti-American firebrand denied any role in the violence but went on to order a freeze on the thousands-strong militia, once described by the Pentagon as the biggest threat to stability in the war-ravaged country.
The events at Karbala were an embarrassment to Sadr, according to Joost Hiltermann, the chief Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group think-tank. "He doesn't want to be seen fighting Shiites right beside the shrines of Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas," said Hiltermann, referring to Shiite Islam's holiest sites in Karbala. "There are too many loose elements (in the Mahdi Army) and he wants to regain control," he added. "This is purely an internal matter."
Sadr, he said, has no intention of ever disbanding his militia, which according to a December 2006 report by the Iraq Survey Group boasts about 60,000 fighters. "He needs the Mahdi Army," said Hiltermann. "As long as he has access to violence, the other parties will let him in. He has always played a dual role."
Hmmm. Get access to violence, and you play with the big boys. Hmmm.
Hiltermann said Sadr's longer term goal was to continue the mission his father, the revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, had begun &0151; speaking up for Iraq's poorer voiceless classes of Shiites. "His longer term goal is to confront the Shiite establishment to ensure that the lower or working classes get a fair share of the pie. This is essentially the beginning of a social revolution &0151; the lower classes against the merchant or middle classes. It was started by his father."
No, he's a thug, more than willing to allow his 'supporters' to wallow in their own s**t if they'll pick up a rock or a gun for his glory.
Iran arranged for a indigenous guerrilla army Sadr organised his Mahdi Army complete with matching black pajamas made in Iran long before shortly after the US-led invasion in 2003. Since then the militia has become the most active and feared armed Shiite group, blamed by Washington for death-squad killings of thousands of Sunnis. More recently, however, it has been accused of launching attacks on fellow Shiites in a battle with the powerful Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council for control of towns and cities in the mainly Shiite south.
Analyst Nabil Mohammed Younis, professor of strategic studies at Baghdad University, agreed that the Karbala bloodbath was the catalyst for Sadr's move. "I think after Karbala he was keen to calm down the activities (of the Mahdi Army) for a while so that no one finds him responsible for what is happening," said Younis. "He no longer maintains authority over his followers... there are many, many leaders who are acting according to their own interests," he added. "They are not very disciplined and this is part of the problem."
The professor said he believed Sadr will make a move on the political front in the coming months. "I think he is going to make a decision to go for a position either in the government or parliament, depending how things go in the next few months," he said. "He will be watching the military situation regarding withdrawal of the American troops," said Younis. "He will take his time, he will watch the happenings on the ground. He will find a suitable time to make such a decision."
#1
"He's just waiting for the American withdrawal &0151; once the coalition forces are out they can do whatever they like."
I hope the original plan still holds: once Iraq has settled down to a level of disorder that can be handled by properly trained locals, the somewhat reduced US forces withdraw to permanent bases, much like was done in Germany and Japan after the second world war. At which point dear Mr. al Sadr can wait for the several generations it seems to take for a region to settle down.
#1
The abject cowardice of these [Fatah] Good terrorists speaks volumes about their character and motivation and that of their leadership. Apparently they are only proficient at murdering hapless, defenseless innocents and at running away.
But ... but ... but ... it's what they do best!
I can report that the American visitors are getting a real world education from meeting with the Palestinian Authoritys high and mighty. That education is how to deal with terrorists. There are six rules:
1. Don't;
2. Don't;
3. Don't;
4. Don't;
5. Don't: and
6. Don't.
"Rule number seven? There is no rule number seven!"
In that cause of securing that Fools Gold, Fatah members convicted of acts of terrorism are released from Israeli prisons as a unilateral goodwill gesture aimed at propping-up the Fatah Good terrorist government. Fatah members being hunted by Israeli security for having committing acts of terrorism, including some of the leaders of the most murderous terror calls, are given pardons in exchange for signing a pledge renouncing terrorism and turning-in a weapon for which they are mightily compensated. Its a kind of Good terrorist gun buyback program. Well, yesterday the Fatah Good terrorists declared dead the merely 6 week-old amnesty deal and launched an attack on an IDF patrol in Ramallah. Those new M16s and AK-47s and American training are already being used against Israel. But plans continue apace to supply the Palestinian Authority with more of both. Nor is the training about to be provided to the Palestinian Authority Security Services Good terrorists limited to even advanced police subjects.
Much as others, including myself, predicted upon hearing news of this abject farce.
Now I do not expect that this gang of murderers is going to be provided with the Playbook for protecting the President of the USA. But I suspect they are going to be taught lots of "inside information" about "how to." And VIP protection includes advanced sniper training among the other various means and methods and techniques and doctrines to be taught. Good Lord, how long do you think it will be before the information is passed along to Hamas, PFLP, al-Quida, Hezbollah, etc. I assume the terrorists do not know everything. Hell, if the terrorists, Fatah included, already know what they are about to be taught, then why spend our taxpayer dollars on teaching it to them? And if they don't know, once we have taught them, we had better never use it anywhere ever again ourselves. Or is it that, after the terrorists graduate and get nice certificates of course completion and take a class photo, the State Department just wants to send some of its own here to get them killed?
People continue to deny the monolithic nature of Islam. Regardless of sectarian intramural strife, the communication of Western methods amongst terrorist organizations represents such a significant threat whereby these groups may as well be monolithic. The unifying field of terrorism is so pervasive in Islam that we ignore it at our own peril.
Irans president said on Tuesday that diminished US political influence in the Middle East was creating a power vacuum that would benefit Iran and other countries in the region.
Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad went on to say that that the USs weakening of the Iraqi government an apparent reference to recent criticism of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki by senior US politicians would not help the US maintain control over the country. The comments are a reminder of Irans long-standing ambition to be the top power in the Persian Gulf, as it was before the 1979 Islamic revolution a nightmare scenario for some of the other countries in the region.
Posted by: Fred ||
08/30/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
Read various articles on Moud latest diatribes agz Dubya + USA on IRNA.
. . . A spate of scandals recently has put British TV at low ebb. A BBC promotional clip suggested the Queen had walked out in anger from a photo shoot with photographer Annie Leibowitz. False. Programs on other channels involving viewer telephone participation in quiz shows have been exposed as fraudulent. The BBC's news has been embroiled in controversy over the impartiality of its coverage, notably in the Middle East. Similar smelly bubbles reached the surface of the media swamp here during the 2004 election, when CBS and Dan Rather were unable to verify the authenticity of documents questioning George W. Bush's National Guard service.
All this has gotten the media into high anxiety over the one thing it presumes to value most: the public's trust. "The defining problem of contemporary television," the BBC's Mr. Paxman told the TV professionals last week, "is trust: Can you believe what you see on television, does television treat people fairly, is it healthy for society?" . . .
But for the media ponderers there's a more troubling issue than the restoration of trust. It's the possibility that too many people now simply don't much care about the major media anymore. Normally the great media combines would overcome periods of lassitude by forming up focus groups to tell them what to do next. Hah! They want "Survivor"! Alas, living as we do now in a world of seemingly infinite choice, it is possible not to care for a seeming infinity of reasons, which is why the established media are having such a hard time knowing what to do.
Mr. Paxman identified one reason not to care: "In the last quarter century we've gone from three channels to hundreds. . . . The truth is this: the more television there is, the less any of it matters." Once there was a time when TV announcers used to say, "Stay with us." Now no one stays. They go surfing, endlessly seeking a five-minute wave of TV that will take them just a little higher than the five minutes they just watched.
More difficult are the I-don't-care revolutionaries, who argue that digitization has reversed the media world's authority and power. The old aristocracy of programmers and editors has been overthrown by average people who now blog new political priorities, download media and form themselves into clickable communities. The Snowman wins. Get over it.
One part of me likes this scenario. Some say we're living out Marshall McLuhan's long-ago forecasts, such as, "The circuited city of the future . . . will be an information megalopolis." Could be. If it is so that these new technologies are redistributing power into millions of liberated hands accessing "what I want, when I want it," then we are also cruising toward what another seer predicted in three words: "Free to choose." That seer, of course, was Milton Friedman.
If indeed the Web and microprocessors have brought us to the doorstep of a Marshall-meets-Milton world of individual choice as a personal ideology, then record companies, newspapers and old TV networks aren't the only empires at risk. Public-school systems run by static teachers unions may find themselves abandoned by young parents from the Snowman's tribe, "accessing" K-8 education in unforeseen ways. Whose politics will that serve? . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
08/30/2007 06:24 ||
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#1
Whose politics will be served? "Free to Choose", compared to "I'll Choose for You, Because You're too Dumb"?
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/30/2007 6:45 Comments ||
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#2
Public-school systems run by static teachers unions may find themselves abandoned by young parents from the Snowman's tribe, "accessing" K-8 education in unforeseen ways. Whose politics will that serve?
More likely the parents' and students' than the power hungry teaching thugs and their greedy union bosses. Get over it.
A few times Ive flashed the press badge, and the reaction is always the same: okay, but dont go lying about me, or anything. People automatically assume theyre fodder. Wonder how that happened.
(Richard Jewell to the white courtesy...oops. Sorry.)
Later in the day, toward the top of Lileks's post:
Todays person who reacted to the sight of a press badge as if Id just pulled out a piece of liver and addressed it as my precious little kitty: the Marine at the physical-education challenge booth. Some people really dont like the press.
#6
Or... why won't the media trust the public? To make up it's own mind when presented with facts, informed opinion (not opinion dammit, but informed opinion) and balanced reporting?
#7
See # 1 TW. Wew're just too childlike or naive at best, but most likely just too boorish, stupid, and uneducated to understand their nuanced positions. So we have to be led by the nose.
Some folks, Democrats come to mind, seem to like it.
Posted by: Bobby ||
08/30/2007 16:24 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The decision by Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to 
