23 April 2007 @ 8:44AM >> In this Front Page Magazine interview, I discuss the inspiration behind my first video, Protesting the Protesters; politics, human rights, the global Jihad & the Middle East; McCain/Feingold and Michael Moore (there is a connection!); the one-party state of Hollywood and academia; and, finally, my upcoming film Indoctrinate U.

8 April 2007 @ 6:15PM >> London’s Telegraph reports on more bias at the BBC:

Amid the deaths and the grim daily struggle bravely borne by Britain’s forces in southern Iraq, one tale of heroism stands out.

Private Johnson Beharry’s courage in rescuing an ambushed foot patrol then, in a second act, saving his vehicle’s crew despite his own terrible injuries earned him a Victoria Cross.

For the BBC, however, his story is “too positive” about the conflict.

The corporation has cancelled the commission for a 90-minute drama about Britain’s youngest surviving Victoria Cross hero because it feared it would alienate members of the audience opposed to the war in Iraq.

I wonder if the BBC has ever cancelled a project because it might alienate people who support the war in Iraq.

Call me cynical, but for some reason, I doubt it.

4 April 2007 @ 8:59AM >> Just last year, Yale University was engaged in what it portrayed as a valiant fight against discrimination. You see, the school wanted to receive federal tax dollars, but it did not want the federal government’s military recruiters to have the same access to graduating students that private companies have.

Their rationale was that the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy enacted by the Clinton Administration voilated the school’s non-discrimination policy by preventing gays from serving openly in the military. But rather than stand on principle and reject the federal funding, the school wanted to take the money and to tell the military to take a hike at the same time. So Yale fought the government all the way up to the Supreme Court (and lost).

Still, let’s give Yale the benefit of the doubt and assume that they really are concerned with discrimination. If that’s the case, then why is Yale thinking of opening up a satellite campus in the United Arab Emirates? Not only is it a country that won’t even allow Israeli citizens to set foot within its borders, but it bans homosexuality by law. In the U.A.E., gays are arrested, imprisoned, subject to therapy and even hormone treatments.

Certainly, that’s quite a bit more discriminatory than the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, but standing on principle against the U.A.E. is apparently not nearly as satisfying to the folks running Yale as grandstanding against the U.S. military. Hence the school’s evasive explanation for why it is proceeding with its plan. The Yale Daily News reports:

Other universities have been wary of dealing with the United Arab Emirates. The University of Connecticut’s plans to open a satellite campus in Dubai were set aside recently because of concerns about discrimination against Israeli citizens.

[Deputy Provost Barbara] Shailor said Yale is taking these concerns seriously, but that they have not stopped the University from moving forward with its talks with Abu Dhabi’s government.

“There are lots of issues,” Shailor said. “Certainly if you think about our interactions with China or with India, one could express some more concerns across the board. So what one would do is to look at all of these concerns, see exactly to what extent they seem to be justified, and then to weigh the positive aspects of having a relationship and building a relationship with not having a relationship.”

Well, at least now we know the truth: Yale doesn’t give a damn about discrimination. They just wanted an excuse to give the middle finger to our military.

2 April 2007 @ 9:19AM >> Germany’s Der Spiegel asks “Does Germany already Have Sharia Law?“

And in another piece, the widely-read pan-European magazine looks at anti-Americanism in German society, noting that Germans now “believe that the United States is a greater threat to world peace than Iran.” Perhaps part of the reason Germans don’t perceive Iran as a threat is that the country, like the rest of Europe, has carefully avoided inflaming Iran for decades:

The German political establishment, which will no doubt loudly lament the result of the poll, is largely responsible for this wave of anti-Americanism. For years the country’s foreign ministers fed the Germans the fairy tale of what they called a “critical dialogue” between Europe and Iran. It went something like this: If we are nice to the ayatollahs, cuddle up to them a bit and occasionally wag our fingers at them when they’ve been naughty, they’ll stop condemning their women to death for “unchaste behavior” and they’ll stop building the atom bomb.

That plan failed at some point — an outcome, incidentally, that Washington had long anticipated. Iran continues to work away unhindered on its nuclear program, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reacts to UN demands with an ostentatious show of ignorance. The UN gets upset and drafts a resolution.

[...]

For us Germans, the Americans are either too fat or too obsessed with exercise, too prudish or too pornographic, too religious or too nihilistic. In terms of history and foreign policy, the Americans have either been too isolationist or too imperialistic. They simply go ahead and invade foreign countries (something we Germans, of course, would never do) and then abandon them, the way they did in Vietnam and will soon do in Iraq.

[...]

Iran is a different story. The last time someone made a joke on German TV about an Iranian leader, the outcome was not pleasant. Exactly 20 years ago, Dutch entertainer Rudi Carell produced a short TV sketch portraying Ayatollah Khomeini dressed in women’s underwear. Carell received death threats. The piece, which lasted all of a few seconds, led to flights being cancelled and German diplomats being expelled from Tehran. Carell apologized. Jokes about fat Americans are just safer.

Fast forward to the Cartoon Intifada, the rioting, the burning embassies, and the death toll that arose out of cartoons in a newspaper, and you can see why the trembling Europeans are reluctant to say anything critical about Iran or radical Islam. But they might not see Iran as a threat, much in the same way that a compliant gradeschooler doesn’t see the local bully as a threat as long as he hands over his lunch money whenever he’s asked.

Say what you want about the Americans, though, because your head won’t get chopped off as a result. So it’s easy, although shortsighted, for you Europeans to direct your anger at the United States. There are no consequences for it. We’ll still come to your defense when your cities start falling to your own home-grown Jihadists in a generation or two, just as we provided for the common defense of Europe for the half-century bounded by World War II and the fall of the Soviet Empire, allowing you to spend next to nothing on your own defense and build up your lavishly unproductive welfare states.

But by engaging in this ostrich act whenever confronted with reality, Europe is not only postponing the inevitable, but making it inevitably worse. Because today’s schoolyard bully doesn’t have a nuclear weapon...yet. But it may soon, no matter how many worthless pieces of paper the U.N. issues. So when the bully graduates to mass murder of unspeakable proportions, there will be those of us who said we told you so. And we’ll remember all those nasty words you said about us. And then we’ll help, because this is our fight too.

We just wish you’d wake up and see it for yourselves.

7 March 2007 @ 9:19AM >> More apalling news from our “allies” in Saudi Arabia:

A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes — for meeting a man who was not a relative.

[...]

After driving off together from a shopping mall near her home, the woman and the man were stopped and abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took them to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors.

[...]

“G” said one of the judges told she was lucky not to have been given jail time. “I was shocked at the verdict. I couldn’t believe my ears,” said the woman, who has appealed against her sentence.

The woman also told the paper she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.

[...]

There are severe legal restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia, including a strict dress code required outside the home and a ban on driving.

In the 1980s, scores of activists and celebrities spoke out quite publicly against the racial aparthied system in South Africa. But today, an apartheid of gender exists throughout much of the Middle East, and these activists are largely silent.

The only explanation I can think of is that it requires real courage to stand up for human rights in the Middle East.

Lots of people are willing to speak out when there’s no risk. But when standing up for the rights of women in the Middle East can get you killed in the middle of a Western city, the brave activists start scurrying for cover.

Where are the feminists when you need them?

24 February 2007 @ 5:50PM >> Contrary to the widely-held Western belief that terrorism arises when impressionable, impoverished teens look towards a future without hope, Islamic terrorists tend to come from the better-educated, wealthier segments of society. Investor’s Business Daily reports on a Gallup poll of some 10,000 members of the Muslim world, saying that “[t]he most radical among Muslims — those who support jihad — earn more and stay in school longer.”

IBD cites anecdotal evidence that bears this out:

• Bin Laden, the son of a Saudi billionaire, studied engineering.
• His deputy Ayman al-Zawahri is an eye surgeon.
• Mohamed Atta, the son of a lawyer, earned a master’s degree in urban planning.
• 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed graduated from an American college with an engineering degree.
• Flight 93 pilot Ziad Jarrah’s father is a Beirut bureaucrat who drove a Mercedes and put his son through prep school.

Some of the London bombers had college degrees. One was a schoolteacher. Another’s father owned a store.

Many of the Saudi hijackers were the best and brightest in their towns. Hani Hanjour, who crashed the plane into the Pentagon, studied English at the University of Arizona. Family members were wealthy merchants from Taif, a resort city in Saudi Arabia.

Marxism made popular the idea that all political turmoil was the result of clashes between socioeconomic classes. Although Marxism ultimately failed, that core tenet became the default thinking of many Westerners.

We perceive the motivations of the Jihadists through a distinctly Western lens. We’re projecting our beliefs onto them, and assuming that their behavior must be motivated by what our teachers taught us was the source of all conflict. Marxism may not have destroyed the West economically, but it could destroy the West psychologically, by preventing us from seeing the threat as it is.

Just because we learned in school that all conflict results from friction between the classes doesn’t make it so. This conflict stems from a profound cultural difference, one that can’t be papered over by feel-good policies like increased foreign aid.

Take Egypt, for example. Since 1975, Egypt has gotten well over $50 billion in U.S. foreign aid. Has this money made Egypt any less beholden to the Jihadists?

Not if the treatment of Abdel Kareem Soliman is any indication. This past week, the Egyptian blogger was sentenced to four years in prison for insulting Islam and the president of Egypt. An abridgment of freedom that—in the U.S.—would send lawyers scurrying to television cameras was instead met with a shrug:

As the court hearing ended, the media moved to the street in front of the courthouse and started interviewing people about what they thought of the trial. With the exception of human rights activists and bloggers, the Egyptian public seemed satisfied with the verdict, if not disappointed it wasn’t longer.

Many people expressed the view that Abdel Kareem should be killed for what he wrote, and each of them shared their preferred way to kill him: stabbing, hanging, and of course, the classic beheading. One actually asked a lawyer if it was legal to now kill him, since this verdict clearly brands him as an apostate, and the Sharia punishment for an apostasy is death. People were talking about killing him in the most casual manner, as if he was no longer a human being to them.

As I said, today’s conflict with the Jihadists arises from a profound cultural difference, not from America’s past foreign policy or failure to hand out even more money around the globe. But for some reason, many of us prefer to point the finger back at ourselves and ignore the real source of the problem. Simply put, finding fault with other cultures just isn’t politically correct.

But in war, refusing to understand the enemy is suicidal.

22 February 2007 @ 8:49AM >> A female government minister in Pakistan was shot in the head and killed for not wearing a veil:

Zilla Huma Usman, the minister for social welfare in Punjab province and an ally of President Pervez Musharraf, was killed as she was about to deliver a speech to dozens of party activists, by a “fanatic”, who believed that she was dressed inappropriately and that women should not be involved in politics, officials said.

Mrs Usman, 35, was wearing the shalwar kameez worn by many professional women in Pakistan, but did not cover her head.

[...]

The gunman, Mohammad Sarwar, was overpowered by the minister’s driver and arrested by police. A stone mason in his mid 40s, he is not thought to belong to any radical group but is known for his fanaticism. He was previously held in 2002 in connection with the killing and mutilation of four prostitutes, but was never convicted due to lack of evidence.

Mr Sarwar appeared relaxed and calm when he told a television channel that he had carried out God’s order to kill women who sinned. “I have no regrets. I just obeyed Allah’s commandment,” he said, adding that Islam did not allow women to hold positions of leadership. “I will kill all those women who do not follow the right path, if I am freed again,” he said.

[...]

Ms Usman, a married mother of two sons, joined the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League after being elected in 2002. A strong supporter of the President’s policy of “enlightened moderation” - designed to tackle extremism - she was appointed to her current post in December last year according to her government biography.

In April 2005, she encouraged the holding of a mini-marathon involving female competitors in Gujranwala - an event which led to riots after police intervened to stop armed Islamic activists from disrupting the race. She also ran a small fashion business from her base in the town.

[...]

General Musharraf, whose support for the US-led war on terror has caused consternation among Pakistan’s hardline elements, has promised to address women’s rights as part of his more moderate agenda.

But analysts said that the murder of the female minister highlighted the failure of his government in curbing Islamic extremism. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in a recent report said that violence against women had increased alarmingly, with some of the incidents incited by Mullahs opposed to women’s emancipation.

15 February 2007 @ 8:12AM >> The New York Sun reports:

The letter “X” soon may be banned in Saudi Arabia because it resembles the mother of all banned religious symbols in the oil kingdom: the cross.

The new development came with the issuing of another mind-bending fatwa, or religious edict, by the infamous Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — the group of senior Islamic clergy that reigns supreme on all legal, civil, and governance matters in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The commission’s damning of the letter “X” came in response to a Ministry of Trade query about whether it should grant trademark protection to a Saudi businessman for a new service carrying the English name “Explorer.”

[...]

Among the commission’s deeds is the famed 1974 fatwa — issued by its blind leader at the time, Sheik Abdul Aziz Ben Baz — which declared that the Earth was flat and immobile. In a book issued by the Islamic University of Medina, the sheik argued: “If the earth is rotating, as they claim, the countries, the mountains, the trees, the rivers, and the oceans will have no bottom.” Another bright light of the commission, Sheik Abdel-Aziz al-Sheikh, recently stopped a government reform proposal aimed at creating work for women by allowing them to replace male sales clerks in women’s clothing stores. Sheik al-Sheikh damned the idea, saying it was a step “towards immorality and hellfire.” The underlying logic is breathtaking: Women are more protected by buying their knickers from men! Over the years, the commission has rendered Saudi Arabia a true kingdom of darkness. Movie theaters are banned, as are sculptures, paintings, and music, and the mixing of sexes in public.

The commission really has it in for women. They must don the all-enveloping veil, or niqab, in public; they cannot drive themselves nor ride anywhere without a male guardian, and they cannot travel alone domestically or abroad.

The commission also excels at banning the construction of houses of worship — other than mosques — even though the majority of the 8 million expatriates working in the kingdom come from Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist faiths. Indeed, celebrating a private Sunday Mass inside a home could lead to jail, public lashings, and expulsion.

One of the most criminal travesties committed by the commission’s foot soldiers, the Mutawaeen, or religious police, was dramatically reported by the muzzled Saudi press itself on Friday, March 15, 2002, when the Mutawaeen forcibly prevented girls fleeing a burning school from leaving the building because they were “improperly dressed.”

The day after, the Saudi Gazette newspaper quoted witnesses as saying the police stopped men who tried to help the girls, warning the men: “It is sinful to approach them.”

Of the 800 teenage pupils in Mecca, 15 burned to death and more than 50 were injured. Yet, the commission and its royal enablers thrive.

5 February 2007 @ 3:54PM >> Every year, seven times as many Americans are killed by doctors’ sloppy handwriting than are killed in Iraq.

31 January 2007 >> “[A]t least a dozen Democratic senators who in the past have called for more troops in Iraq,” the Washington Times reports, “now support a resolution condemning President Bush’s plan to do just that.”

If the Democrats win the White House in 2008, what will the party’s foreign policy be? Without President Bush to reflexively oppose, I don’t think they’ll have any way to figure it out.

23 January 2007 >> It looks like our old friend is at it again:

Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria’s foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report.

“Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives,” the Iranian president was quoted as saying.

[...]

The Iranian president also directly tied events in Lebanon to a wider plan aimed at Israel’s destruction. He called on “regional countries” to “support the Islamic resistance of the Lebanese people and strive to enhance solidarity and unity among the different Palestinian groups in a bid to pave the ground for the undermining of the Zionist regime whose demise is, of course, imminent.”

Ahmadinejad has threatened the State of Israel with annihilation several times in recent months, and has recently added the US and Britain to the list of countries he says will be destroyed.

Why can’t we just talk to Ahmadinejad? I’m sure if we sent pleasant-looking ambassadors to sit down with him, smile politely, and ask him in kind, measured tones to give up his nuclear plans and his apparent desire to see our country destroyed, maybe the nice man would find it in his heart to spare our deaths. Maybe at the very least he could be convinced to delay our deaths by a few weeks.

All we are saying, Mahmoud, is give peace a chance.

He has to listen to reason.

Doesn’t he?

21 January 2007 >> At the end of last year, I wrote about the elusive Jamil Hussein, a supposed Iraqi police captain quoted in at least 61 stories by the Associated Press. A number of bloggers digging into the story started expressing skepticism about Hussein after various governmental instutitions in Iraq found no one with that name working in the police force. AP has since admitted that the name attributed in their stories was in fact a pseudonym, even though no such acknowledgement was ever made in the many stories in which he was quoted.

Recently, Michelle Malkin went to Iraq to investigate the story that led to the questions surrounding Jamil Hussein. Her report, published in the New York Post, indicates that AP’s troubles go far beyond the true name of Jamil Hussein:

[O]ne story [Jamil Hussein] told the AP just doesn’t check out: The Sunni mosques that as Hussein claimed and AP reported as “destroyed,” “torched” and “burned and [blown] up” are all still standing. So the credibility of every AP story relying on Jamil Hussein remains dubious.

Let’s take it from the beginning.

When the AP ran its headline-grabbing and horrifying account of alleged atrocities in Baghdad last Thanksgiving, its main source was an Iraqi police captain, one Jamil Hussein.

[...]

AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll indignantly attacked those who had questioned the global news organization’s reporting: “I never quite understood why people chose to disbelieve us about this particular man on this particular story,” she told Editor and Publisher. “AP runs hundreds of stories a day, and has run thousands of stories about things that have happened in Iraq.”

Well, Bryan Preston and I visited the area during our Iraq trip last week. Several mosques did, in fact, come under attack by Mahdi Army forces. But the “destroyed” mosques all still stand. Iraqi and U.S. Army officials say that two of them received no fire damage whatsoever. Another, which we filmed, was abandoned and empty when it was attacked.

We obtained summary reports and photos filed at the time by Iraqi and U.S. Army troops on the scene. They contain no corroborating evidence of Hussein’s claim that “Shiite militiamen grabbed six Sunnis as they left Friday worship services, doused them with kerosene and burned them alive near Iraqi soldiers who did not intervene.”

One of the mosques identified by the AP, the Nidaa Alah mosque, had been abandoned and vacant at the time it was hit with small-arms fire, say Iraqi and U.S. Army officials. Two of its inside rooms were burned out by a lobbed firebomb, according to an Army report.

Three other mosques in the area - the al Muhaymin, al Mushahiba and Ahbab Mustafa mosques - sustained small-arms fire damage to their exteriors; the Mustafa mosque also had two rooms burned out by a firebomb.

Contrary to Hussein and the AP’s account, military reports note that Iraqi Army battalion members were on the scene - pursuing attackers, securing the area, calling the fire department, providing support and an outer cordon.

Neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post was able to confirm AP’s story.

The AP quoted one corroborating witness, Imad al-Hasimi, a Sunni elder in Hurriya, who “confirmed Hussein’s account” of the immolated Sunnis on Al-Arabiya television. When Al-Hasimi later recanted, AP implied that it was due to pressure from Iraqi government officials. The other possibility: He recanted because it wasn’t true.

Capt. Aaron Kaufman of Task Force Justice, which works closely with the Iraqi Army battalion that was on the scene and monitored events as they happened, told us: “It was blown way out of proportion, there was nobody lit on fire.”

Capt. Stacy Bare, the civil-affairs officer who took us on patrol in Hurriya, concurred: “There were no six Sunnis burned.”

---

Update: Michelle Malkin has posted a video report containing images of the still-standing mosques that were supposedly “destroyed.”

16 January 2007 @ 11:19AM >> As president in the late 1970s, Jimmy Carter was a leader of legendary impotence. For the last 444 days of his presidency, Islamic revolutionaries in Iran held Americans hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. According to the hostages, one of those terrorists was a man named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Today, Ahmadinejad is the president of Iran. And Jimmy Carter is an apologist for terrorists. In his new book, which compares the state of Israel to the segregationist apartheid regime that once ruled South Africa, Carter writes:

It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel.

In other words, keep those attacks coming until Israel does what is demanded by “the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups.”

I can only imagine that by venturing into the territory of pure wingnuttery, Carter’s book is part of some elaborate scheme to make the foreign policy of his administration seem sensible by comparison.

11 January 2007 >> There’s something about our psyche which seems to make self-criticism the new national pastime. Naturally, our political leaders know this. They know that when hundreds of newspapers and television stations align in a daily tearing-down of the war effort, the American people will eventually lose their nerve and want to give up. Others know this, too, which is why al Qaeda distributed copies of Black Hawk Down as a means to understand how the media can be used to amplify a relatively minor military failure and drive the United States from the field of battle. If terrorists provide enough negative footage to our media, they know we’ll turn and run. But if we fight too vigorously, that will be held up by our own media as evidence of our inherent evilness. More >>

29 December 2006 @ 12:54PM >> Another media scandal refuses to die:

The AP claims [Jamil] Hussein is a captain in the Iraqi police force and works in the Baghdad region. Between April and November, he was used as a source in 61 AP stories. In one of his last starring roles, he provided an account of an alleged Shiite militia attack on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad on Nov. 24.

According to that AP dispatch, 50 men blew open the front of a mosque and dragged six Sunni worshippers outside, where they poured kerosene on the six and set them on fire. If true, the story would seem to be yet another incident that reflects badly on the U.S. efforts in Iraq. It feeds the media-generated perception that Iraq is a Vietnamlike quagmire from which we cannot escape.

There’s evidence, however, that the story might have been embellished, because Capt. Jamil Hussein of the Iraqi police force may not exist. U.S. military officials told the AP in a letter that they checked out the captain and were told by the Iraqi Interior Ministry that no one by the name of Jamil Hussein works there or as a police officer.

Armed forces officials also said the U.S. was unable to confirm the media reports that the six Sunnis were burned to death. Military officials further said in the days after the alleged incident that neither Iraqi police nor coalition forces had reports of the event.

So far, no Iraqi authorities have been able to confirm the existence of Jamil Hussein, a man the Associated Press says is an Iraqi police captain. Nor have any authorities been able to confirm the story of six Sunnis being dragged from a mosque and burned to death. And despite a month of investigation into this story, the Associated Press has still been unable to prove he even exists, despite their continued insistence that he does.

More made up news from the establishment media? As each day passes with no sign of Jamil Hussein, that’s looking more and more likely.

28 December 2006 @ 1:46PM >> From Canada’s National Post:

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

[...]

He is now 45 years old, and has had many years to reflect on why he was willing to die and kill for his religion. “The first thing you have to understand is that it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with poverty or lack of education,” he says. “I was from a middle-class family and my parents were not religious. Hardly anyone in the movement at university came from a background that was different from mine.

“I’ve heard this poverty nonsense time and time again from Western apologists for Islam, most of them not Muslim by the way. There are millions of passive supporters of terror who may be poor and needy but most of those who do the killing are wealthy, privileged, educated and free. If it were about poverty, ask yourself why it is middle-class Muslims — and never poor Christians — who become suicide bombers in Palestine.”

[...]

He leans back, takes a deep breath and moves to another area, one that he says is far too seldom discussed: “North Americans are too squeamish about discussing the obvious sexual dynamic behind suicide bombings. If they understood contemporary Islamic society, they would understand the sheer sexual tension of Sunni Muslim men. Look at the figures for suicide bombings and see how few are from the Shiite world. Terrorism and violence yes, but not suicide. The overwhelming majority are from Sunnis. Now within the Shiite world there are what is known as temporary marriages, lasting anywhere from an hour to 95 years. It enables men to release their sexual frustrations.

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

A pause. “I know. I was one who accepted it.”

[...]

“The sexual aspect is, of course, just one part of this. But I can tell you what it is not about. Not about Israel, not about Iraq, not about Afghanistan. They are mere excuses. Algerian Muslim fundamentalists murdered 150,000 other Algerian Muslims, sometimes slitting the throats of children in front of their parents. Are you seriously telling me that this was because of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians or American foreign policy?”

He’s exasperated now, visibly angry at what he sees as a willful Western foolishness. “Stop asking what you have done wrong. Stop it! They’re slaughtering you like sheep and you still look within. You criticize your history, your institutions, your churches. Why can’t you realize that it has nothing to do with what you have done but with what they want.”

5 December 2006 @ 8:32AM >> Blogger Bill Rogio is embedded in Iraq:

While waiting to manifest on the flight to Fallujah, CNN played a news segment of President Bush announcing there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq, and that we’d stay until the mission was complete. Two sergeants in the room cheered. Loudly. They then scoffed at the reports from Baghdad, and jeered the balcony reporting.

In nearly every conversation, the soldiers, Marines and contractors expressed they were upset with the coverage of the war in Iraq in general, and the public perception of the daily situation on the ground. The felt the media was there to sensationalize the news, and several stated some reporters were only interested in “blood and guts.” They freely admitted the obstacles in front of them in Iraq. Most recognized that while we are winning the war on the battlefield, albeit with difficulties in some areas, we are losing the information war. They felt the media had abandoned them.

During each conversation, I was left in the awkward situation of having to explain that while, yes, I am wearing a press badge, I’m not ‘one of them.’ I used descriptions like ‘independent journalist’ or ‘blogger’ in an attempt to separate myself from the pack.

What a terrible situation to be in, having to defend yourself because of your profession. I’ve always said that the hardest thing about embedding (besides leaving my family) is wearing the badge that says ‘PRESS.’ That hasn’t changed. I hide the badge whenever I can get away with it.

13 November 2006 @ 8:13AM >> Yesterday, just in time for last Tuesday’s election, the New York Times editorial page finally admitted something I have contended for quite a while: that—for all their criticism—the Democrats have no real plan for Iraq:

Americans are waiting to hear if [Democrats] have any good ideas for how to get out of Iraq without creating even wider chaos and terrorism.

[...]

The Democrats will also need to look forward — and quickly. So far they have shared slogans, but no real policy.

[...]

Voters gave the Democrats the floor — and are now waiting to hear what they have to say.

Waiting to hear what they have to say? Isn’t that what campaigns are for? You’d think the Times would have noticed that the Democrats had nothing to say before the election, but for some reason the paper thought that minor detail wasn’t worthy of coverage until now. I wonder why that is.

5 November 2006 >> Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe reports on a few fronts in the global Jihad:

Australia: Australia’s foremost Muslim cleric triggers an uproar when he likens women who don’t wear an Islamic headscarf to “uncovered meat” and blames them for attracting sexual predators.

Afghanistan: The kidnappers of Italian photojournalist Gabriele Torsello threaten to murder him unless Abdul Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert, is returned to Afghanistan and handed over to an Islamic court.

Iran: The president of Iran calls Israel “a group of terrorists” and threatens to harm any country that supports the Jewish state. “This is an ultimatum,” warns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for the elmination of Israel and the United States.

Thailand: Islamist terrorists bomb a column of Buddhist monks as they collect offerings of food in Narathiwat, a city in southern Thailand. One person is killed; 12 are injured.

France: “We are in a state of civil war, orchestrated by radical Islamists,” says police union leader Michel Thoomis. “This is not a question of urban violence any more. It is an intifadah, with stones and firebombs.”

Britain: In a “true Islamic state,” sexually active homosexuals would be executed, says Arshad Misbahi, an imam in Manchester’s Central Mosque.

Meanwhile, Muslim Kurds in Iraq prefer to live in peace:

There are no insurgents in Kurdistan. Nor are there any kidnappings. [...] Iraqi Kurdistan is optimistic, full of hope, infused top to bottom with a go-go, build-build attitude.

Who would have thought that a glimmer of hope for peaceful coexistence with our Muslim brothers could be found in—of all places—Iraq?

20 October 2006 @ 8:45AM >> First, they came for the satellite dishes. Now they come for the broadband Internet connections:

Iran’s Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links.
In a blow to the country’s estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran’s telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.

You’ve got to wonder about a government that believes the only way to survive is to cut off its citizens from the outside world.

19 October 2006 @ 8:22AM >> Reporters often spout noble-sounding platitudes when defending decisions to publish sensitive national security information, but at the BBC, “the public’s right to know” is apparently not absolute:

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.

The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.

The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.

The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.

Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

In Britain, anyone with a television must pay an involuntary tax—the “license fee”—in order to fund the BBC and other outlets. It’s too bad the BBC doesn’t think those taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent.

18 October 2006 >> Several months after Reuters cameraman Adnan Hajj was caught doctoring photos to make an Israeli air strike look broader than it actually was, another Reuters cameraman has been arrested for apparently inciting Arab rioters to attack Israeli vehicles:

The cameraman, Imad Muhammad Intisar Boghnat, was arrested and charged as a result of violent riots in the Arab village of Bil’in, in the Modi’in region, on October 6, 2006. A videotape that the prosecution presented to the judge shows Boghnat encouraging and directing rioters in Bil’in to throw large chunks of rock at Israeli vehicles in such a way as to cause maximum damage. The accused is heard shouting, “Throw, throw!” and later, “Throw towards the little window!”

Boghnat is a resident of Bil’in, so it can be assumed that he either sympathized with the rioters or was attempting to stage the event for maximum visual impact, a tactic that isn’t a new phenomenon among the establishment media.

Either way, Reuters needs to take a serious look at the people it hires to cover events in the Middle East.

4 October 2006 @ 9:42AM >> Apparently, Osama and his deputies have been having a tough time lately. Al Qaeda commanders describe their organization as being “weak” and in “a state of paucity.” The laments of the terrorists were communicated to the now-dead leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a letter that originated from bin Laden and his inner circle, PowerLine reports.

Perhaps there are better ways to fight al Qaeda. (Although I have yet to hear them.) Still, if al Qaeda’s leaders are complaining of weakness and a lack of recruits, then we must be doing something right.

28 September 2006 @ 3:08PM >> There have been a lot of press reports lately claiming that by waging a vigorous campaign against terrorists, we’re simply creating more terrorists. Leaving aside the fact that the alternative would seem to be surrender, a recent poll of Iraqis indicates that the press speculation isn’t based on reality:

Overall 94 percent [of Iraqis polled] have an unfavorable view of al Qaeda, with 82 percent expressing a very unfavorable view. Of all organizations and individuals assessed in this poll, it received the most negative ratings. The Shias and Kurds show similarly intense levels of opposition, with 95 percent and 93 percent respectively saying they have very unfavorable views. The Sunnis are also quite negative, but with less intensity. Seventy-seven percent express an unfavorable view, but only 38 percent are very unfavorable. Twenty-three percent express a favorable view (5% very).

Views of Osama bin Laden are only slightly less negative. Overall 93 percent have an unfavorable view, with 77 percent very unfavorable. Very unfavorable views are expressed by 87 percent of Kurds and 94 percent of Shias. Here again, the Sunnis are negative, but less unequivocally—71 percent have an unfavorable view (23% very), and 29 percent a favorable view (3% very).

If our military actions in the Middle East are creating more terrorists, you’d think the place you’d see this most is in Iraq. But I guess not.

24 September 2006 @ 5:45PM >> Pajamas Media has an interesting report on the number of embedded reporters in Iraq. There are none from The New York Times, the Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times. There aren’t any from CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, PBS, MSNBC or Fox News.

In fact, there are only nine embedded reporters in Iraq, and four are from armed forces outlets, leaving a grand total of just five embedded reporters. Of those five, three are from relatively small outlets—The Charlotte Observer, Polish Radio, and the Italian media network RAI—leaving just two major media companies with embedded reporters: the BBC and the Associated Press.

It makes you wonder where much of the Iraq War reporting is coming from. In some cases, the answer is local stringers whose loyalties and biases are—to be charitable—unclear. It’s interesting that the media is willing to utilize reporters embedded with terrorists and insurgents, but seems less interested in having reporters accompany our own military.

19 September 2006 >> Time and time again, we’re told that there were no connections between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda, and that any such claims are merely Bush Administration fabrications. However, two years before President Bush took office, CNN reported:

Osama bin Laden, the Saudi millionaire accused by the United States of plotting bomb attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa, has left Afghanistan, Afghan sources said Saturday.

Bin Laden’s whereabouts were not known, said the sources who declined to be identified.

[...]

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.

Saddam offered asylum to Osama? And Osama openly supports Iraq? That can’t be right, at least not according to the official mantra that the establishment media has been repeating for the last five years.

So what explains this find? The only logical explanation is that President Bush traveled back in time and brainwashed the reporter, or that Karl Rove has been hacking into CNN’s computer system. Either way, it’s all part of the conspiracy!

(Hat tip: Gateway Pundit.)

16 September 2006 @ 7:53PM >> According to Rocco DiPippo of a blog called The Autonomist, the story I covered in “The Taliban’s Free Pass” on Thursday may not be accurate. DiPippo contacted an official at the U.S. Military’s Central Command who said, “Normally cemeteries and other religious places and spaces would be areas where we would try to avoid given their religious and cultural sensitivity, but there is no blanket prohibition, circumstances always vary.”

The CENTCOM official, Major Matthew McLaughlin, said that the sensitivity to sites like cemeteries “was not the driving force behind the decision not to engage this target — inappropriate to say any more on the rationale.”

It is understandable that the military would like to avoid attacks in sites that would be perceived as culturally inflammatory, and it makes sense to treat such sites with greater caution. But it would border on military malpractice to let high-value targets elude us because of that alone. Although it sounds like that may not have happened in this case, Major McLaughlin implies that the military’s default position is to stand down whenever the enemy occupies certain hallowed ground. I’m sure members of the Taliban and al Qaeda are aware of this, and I’m sure they take advantage of it.

I would hope that the rules of engagement allow such decisions to be made quickly enough that they could be acted upon before the opportunity slips away. How many layers in the chain of command need to sign off on a strike in this type of situation? How much time could that process take? As a civilian, I’d be curious to know.

Because my current impression is that we’re still holding back against an enemy that sees our restraint as weakness. And I’m not sure they’re wrong. Sensitivity is not necessarily a helpful trait in war.

14 September 2006 >> If you watched The Path to 9/11, you may be surprised to hear that this sort of thing is still happening:

Taliban terror leaders who had gathered for a funeral - and were secretly being watched by an eye-in-the-sky American drone - dodged assassination because U.S. rules of engagement bar attacks in cemeteries, according to a shocking report.

U.S. intelligence officers in Afghanistan are still fuming about the recent lost opportunity for an easy kill of Taliban honchos packed in tight formation for the burial, NBC News reported.

The unmanned airplane, circling undetected high overhead, fed a continuous satellite feed of the juicy target to officers on the ground.

“We were so excited. I came rushing in with the picture,” one U.S. Army officer told NBC.

But that excitement quickly turned to gut-wrenching frustration because the rules of engagement on the ground in Afghanistan blocked the U.S. from mounting a missile or bomb strike in a cemetery, according to the report.

[...]

Agonizingly, Army officers could do nothing but watch the pictures being fed back from the drone as the Taliban splintered into tiny groups - too small to effectively target with the drone - and headed back to their mountainside hideouts.

It’s another small sign that we’re still not 100% serious about fighting the war on terror.

---

Update: Major Matthew McLaughlin of U.S. Central Command disputes the accuracy of this report, saying that the location “was not the driving force behind the decision not to engage this target.”

12 September 2006 >> Not only did Saddam Hussein have CNN’s chief news executive covering for him, it now appears that Saddam had a spy inside the Associated Press who was supplying the Iraqi dictator with information on U.N. weapons inspection plans.

AP bills itself as “the backbone of the world’s information system serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television and online customers” and “is the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving as a source of news, photos, graphics, audio and video for more than one billion people a day.”

An organization that large is vulnerable to infiltration, and a lone Iraqi spy inside AP is not necessarily a sign of a systemic problem. Still, it makes you wonder who else has infiltrated the world’s big media outlets, and whether they’re having any effect on coverage. (In the case of AP rival Reuters, we already know the answer.)

28 August 2006 @ 2:02PM >> Item 1: Despite the fact that a previous U.N. resolution ordered the disarmament of all non-governmental militias in Lebanon, Secretary General Kofi Annan says that the U.N. will not disarm Hizbollah. “Troops are not going in there to disarm — let’s be clear,” the U.N. leader said. Lebanon’s army is expected to disarm Hizbollah, the U.N. says, even though Lebanon’s own president says that his government will do no such thing. So, in other words, Israel settled for a cease-fire in which the U.N. gives Hizbollah more leeway than it had before the war. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Item 2: A United Nations group called UNIFIL, the same group whose positions were used by Hizbollah to launch rockets into Israel, broadcast real-time Israeli troop and armaments movements during the recent war. Oddly, the U.N. group offered no such level of detail about Hizbollah’s operations, even though Hizbollah has a history of operating within several yards of UNIFIL. Anyone with an Internet connection could find this treasure-trove of military intelligence, but the information was really only valuable to people interested in fighting the Israeli army. Who wants to bet that UNIFIL is in Hizbollah’s bookmarks folder?

Long ago, the United Nations passed the point of being a joke. Now it’s a tragedy.