No word on whether those contracts included replacements for the thousand or so computers they lost last year. Or the 235 night vision scopes they misplaced. Or the $116,349 international harvester truck they can't find. Maybe this is why they can't seem to muster the necessary resources to put even one percent of "known or suspected terrorists" on the no-fly list.

Your tax dollars at work:

Even when awarding contracts to companies without competitive bidding, federal agencies are supposed to follow certain rules and guidelines. But that has not been the case at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which gave out $3.4 billion in non-competitive contracts last year. The inspector general for DHS found that officials often failed to do sufficient research and document decisions when awarding these types of contracts. Consequently, DHS is at risk of wasting taxpayer dollars if work is given to businesses that aren't the most suitable.

Here's an article about how Napolitano ditched a hearing by the House Committee on Homeland Security, where she was scheduled to answer tough questions about the Christmas Day terrorist attack. PA Democrat Rep Chris Carney on the incident: "I am very dismayed that the secretary herself isn't here. I mean, it's probably fair to ask, 'Where the hell is Secretary Napolitano?'"

And here's a post about how she doesn't think that illegal immigration is "a crime per se." Both of which fit the tone she took during her confirmation hearings, when the words "terror" nor "vulnerability" were both excluded. Because we needed to get away from the "politics of fear."

And to think, some people doubt the Obama administration's seriousness when it comes to protecting our borders from terrorists.

References and related after the jump...

Because if there's one quality that the TSA has consistently demonstrated - from pranking coeds with fake drugs to harassing fans of rival sports franchises - it's seriousness. And professionalization. Seriousness and professionalization are the two qualities that the TSA has consistently demonstrated. Good times:

About 10,000 airport security workers will get access to secret intelligence that could help stop terrorist attacks on planes. The [TSA will give]... them more detailed information about tactics and threats... [TSA] hopes to empower its higher-level workers as part of an effort to professionalize airport security. The 10,000 people in line to get classified information are managers, supervisors and "behavior detection officers" who roam airports looking for suspicious people. They represent about 20% of the TSA's airport workforce and exclude screeners who scan passengers and bags... The information could include copies of terrorist training videos or tips vaguely describing a terrorism suspect, experts said. "Some classified information seems innocuous but is classified because it was derived from an intercepted phone conversation," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence-policy specialist for the Federation of American Scientists.

Seems fair. Insofar as TSA agents need to watch out for terrorists, it's a good idea to educate them about what terrorists look like (we weren't doing that already?) There are probably a few straightforward downsides Giving behavior profilers information about ongoing plots - if that's a part of this new plan - might throw them off their game by focusing them in a single direction. There's also an argument to be made that you don't "professionalize airport security" by giving the officers security clearance. That's usually a prerequisite.

But those are process considerations.

The real concern is that TSA has a habit of hiring and employing - sometimes for years at a time - out and out drug dealers. They've also recently taken to hiring convicted felons and then badgering airports into badging them:

The TSA hired a guy... to do security work at the airport. It turns out that Giancarlo committed a robbery when he was 17 and was convicted when he was 18. According to the TSA, that's not an issue. He was still qualified for the job. But the TSA doesn't do badging; the airport does. So, Giancarlo went to the airport to get his Security Identification Display Area (SIDA) badge which allows for access to all secure areas without an escort... [Richmond] airport uncovered the robbery in a background check, even though Giancarlo left it off his application, and refused to give him a badge... the TSA started threatening the airport until they buckled and issued the guy a badge.

An agency that won't and can't keep out petty criminals seems pretty vulnerable to, say, determined foreign double agents seeking data on what TSA "thinks a terrorist looks like." They already know some of that because of past TSA idiocy. But still.

References and related after the jump...

At least we can be sure they'll get a full pat-down on their way over. Maybe:

The State Department is planning to welcome thousands of immigrants from terror-watch list countries into the United States this year through a "diversity visa" lottery -- a giant legal loophole some lawmakers say is a "serious national security threat" that has gone unchecked for years. Ostensibly designed to increase ethnic diversity among immigrants, the program invites in thousands of poorly educated laborers with few job skills -- and that's only the beginning of its problems, according to lawmakers and government investigations.

The State Department, for its part, insists that it's awesome it is to bring in poor and uneducated - and often unassimilable - immigrants from countries crawling with jihadists. Because they won't be anything like that "model assimilated immigrant" in Denmark, who ended up shooting two Jews in a mall because they were just too Jewish. They're going to be different kinds of model assimilated immigrants.

On the upside, this isn't going to make or break American border security. It's pretty frustrating when you consider to whom the State Department is denying visas, but it's not nearly as damaging as the administration's broader anti-enforcement policies. And trust the Council on Foreign Relations to have someone who thinks that loosening border enforcement is the height of nuanced sophistication. From the policy community that brought you circa 2006 op-eds about how Ahmadinejad wasn't a problem, 2009 op-eds about how locking down our borders is a wingnut overreaction to 9/11:

The Obama administration quietly announced last week that it would overturn one of the harsh immigration enforcement measures enacted by the Bush administration following the 9/11 terrorist attacks... The measure is the latest in a string of little-noticed initiatives by the Obama DHS to reconsider some of the most controversial enforcement policies of the past decade. The administration in August launched an overhaul of the immigration detention system... The Obama administration's new policy, which will end such routine incarceration, had been urged by everyone from the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. And there is no reason to believe that the risks will rise significantly. There is considerable evidence, for instance, that alternative programs to monitor those released will ensure that they comply with whatever ruling a judge finally reaches.

Napolitano refused to even use the word "terrorism" during her March Congressional hearings, a lack of seriousness that more or less confirms Cheney's "they're trying to pretend we are not at war" criticism. From airline security to border security, it does kind of seem like they're happily traipsing through a pre-9/11 world.

Well, except for the 9/11 Commission's calls for new bureaucratic layers, federal expansion, and thousands of new government workers. That's a change Democrats - to judge by their weirdly coordinated defenses of Napolitano - seem to regard with something almost approaching warmth.

References and related after the jump...

An airline industry looking to "bounce back" in 2010 by bleeding $11 billion. A tourism industry coping with alienated Western travelers after Congress, at the behest of restaurant and hotel lobbies, imposed a $10 fine on incoming travelers to promote "Vegas-style tourism." And now this series of bizarre overreactions to the Detroit terrorism attack, which is being greeted with something less than fanfare on travel blogs and forums. Quoth the managing editor of several valuable online travel properties: "I just need the airlines to be honest with me: 'Do you guys want to be in business or not? If not, just let me know so I can start booking my cruise.'"

An Islamic male between the ages 18 and 45 was granted a visa despite known terrorist ties, because for some reason people on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list are "are not necessarily on the no-fly list." He smuggled contraband through multiple security checkpoints, moved about the plane unmolested despite likely being visibly high as a kite, and tried to blow up the flight during its descent.

The supple minds at TSA brought their incisive logical skills to bear on this near-disaster, abstracted the relevant principles, and concluded: what we need to do is ban tourists from peeing during the last hour of the flight! Ditto - per FlyerTalk - for blacking out in-flight GPS maps and prohibiting pilots from announcing things "if you look out to your left you'll see..." Because if terrorists don't know where they are they can't be terrorists! Next we'll learn that timers and watches are verboten.

This makes even less sense than the time the TSA and the FBI tried to legally persecute an American teenager for pointing out gaping holes in the no-fly list system. It even makes less sense than hiring digital document managers who release non-redacted "redacted" PDFs before unblinkingly spouting nonsense during TSA's subsequent whitewash.

You can't buy analytical skill like this. You certainly can't teach them. As a manager you just have to hope you're lucky enough to hire people born with them:

The full headline - describing the counterterrorism raid against the murderers of Meir Chai - is "3 Fatah activists killed in Israeli raid." It got picked up by WaPo with exactly that wording and by FOX News as "Israeli Troops Kill 3 Palestinian Activists." FOX has since changed their headline - Google cache has the original - to highlight the three additional Palestinians killed trying to infiltrate from Gaza.

Original AP story:

Israeli soldiers on Saturday shot dead three Palestinians who the military says were involved in a roadside ambush that killed an Israeli settler earlier in the week. The operation in the West Bank city of Nablus targeted three activists of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement. Palestinian witnesses said troops, many of them masked, opened fire while storming the homes of the men.

"Many of them masked," of course, is exactly the kind of detail that experienced anti-Israel agitators like Mohammed Daraghmeh - 5 years and running - know to include. Mere anti-Israel hobbyists take note. It's not enough to write biased headlines and throw in caveats like "the military says." You've also got to make Israeli Jews look dark and menacing.

One of the terrorists tried to use his wife as human shield during the raid. But for the skill of the IDF the headlines would have been about the poor wife and mother who got murdered by Israeli stormtroopers. Cf. the human shields who barricade themselves inside Hamas strongholds. Or in Reuters's parlance, "protesters."

References and related after the jump...

I posted theses quotes about Hamas - one from Larijani and the other from Ahmadinejad - on Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched? yesterday. But they're worth reposting here so that maybe we can puzzle them out together. Because Sunnis and Shiites don't cooperate, and yet here are Sunnis and Shiites seemingly cooperating. Mindbending:

Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani on Sunday defended his country's support for Hamas, during a high-profile visit to Cairo. Larijani told Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Teheran is proud of its "moral" support for Hamas. He also denied that Iran is undermining Egypt's efforts to reconcile between Hamas and Fatah. The Iranian official called his meeting with Mubarak "constructive," and noted that Iran and Egypt shared a "positive vision on bilateral relations," according to Iranian Press TV.

And:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday reiterated his support for Hamas, during a visit by the Palestinian group's Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal, according to Iran's official news agency. "The government and the people of Iran will always stand by the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian people," Ahmadinejad said during the meeting with Mashaal.

Larijani used similar language in February, saying "it's an honor to support Hamas." In March Iran confirmed that support by throwing a fundraising party for their Gaza proxies. In April month Egypt made clear that the two were linked, targeting Hamas as part of a broader anti-Iran regional push. And so on.

Of course there are 2007 papers outlining the full-blown Hamas/Iranian alliance, with Tehran's financial and military support transforming Gaza into a de facto Iranian statelet. Quite the opposite from being stymied by Sunni/Shiite tensions, Iran is positioning itself as the unique unifying force that transcends those tensions. Historical tensions do exist in the Muslim world. But they're the basis for Iran's pan-Islamist identity not a barrier to it:

Driven by its desire to achieve the status of a world Islamic power, Iran is now a uniting force between Sunni and Shi'ite radical groups. This new bloc of Iranian allies not only poses a threat to the West, it challenges the moderate states of the Middle East, who used to fear a "Shiite Crescent" spanning from Iran through Lebanon. Threats of a crescent are now replaced by a wider fear of Iran-sponsored radicalism that spans the region. Indeed, the influence of Iranian radicalism knows no boundaries, thanks to Tehran's increasingly pragmatic approach toward Sunni groups.

Liberal sophisticates who point to historical Sunni/Shiite dynamics as some kind of argument are - predictably - stalled at the beginning of a debate they think they're ending. Which doesn't stop the media from quoting them extensively. But at least it also makes them extra obnoxious!

References and related after the jump...

Asked...

The most interesting part of this is Fenstermaker's refusal to call 9/11 a case of murder. He could have conceded that it was while arguing that the defendants weren't responsible for it; the fact that he doesn't suggests at least the possibility that the defense will argue insanity or ... some form of justifiable homicide. Doubtless The One would love to see them try, as it would make conviction a foregone conclusion -- irrespective of how horrific relatives of 9/11 victims might find it.

... and answered:

At least one -- and possibly all five -- of the detainees with alleged ties to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, will plead not guilty in a "justification defense," arguing the attacks were responses to American foreign policy, according to a lawyer who met with one of the defendants. Attorney Scott Fenstermaker said he met with defendant Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility last week, and that when Ali and four other men face trial in New York, they likely will plead not guilty and then argue that the attacks were justified.

To repeat what I said over the weekend, it's interesting that we're supposed to listen intently to the pitter-patter of jihadi hearts when it comes to stopping our incredibly successful and cutting edge drone war. But when it comes to giving a gleeful jihadist the world's loudest megaphone to rail against the US, suddenly acknowledging the direction of jihadi sentiment is the height of cowardice. The contradiction almost gives the impression that it's actually the nature of the objectively anti or pro-terrorist action that's at stake for the left.

This is going to be spectacular:

Feeling a little nauseous? Coward.

References:
* O'Reilly to 9/11 defense lawyer: "You know people hate you, right?" [Hot Air]
* Lawyer: 9/11 suspect to plead not guilty, argue attacks justified [CNN]
* Watchers Council - The Left's Updated Definitions Of "Cowardice" And "Dangerous" [MR]
* Lawyer: 9/11 suspect to plead not guilty, argue attacks justified [CNN]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Islamic Terrorism
* Law
* American Politics

Each week, the members of the Watchers Council nominate one of their own posts and a second from outside the Council for consideration by other council members in a contest for the week's best post. Last week's submissions - helpfully rounded up by Council member Joshuapundit under the title "He's Bowing And Scrapin', We're All Watching Palin..." - set up a week of insane but not entirely unpredictable unhinged leftwing venom.

Just to sum up where the liberal catechism now stands, updated through last week: (1) it is vitally important to be concerned about the "hearts and minds" of Muslims who would have us abandon measures like drone attacks, where we kill terrorists (2) it is "cowardly" to be concerned about the "hearts and minds" of Muslims who welcome bringing KSM to NYC, a move jihadists are gleefully anticipating and (3) what's actually "dangerous" and worthy of non-cowardly fear - per the campaign brownshirts who became Obama's Organizing for America - is Palin's book tour.

Your intellectual and moral superiors at work.

Not coincidentally, the winners from last week's nominations revolved around this theme of deeply revelatory liberal incoherence. Bookworm Room had the top post, unpacking of how our super-keen Vulcan can be having so much trouble. The runner up was The Razor with a post about the ignorance of the Obama administration. Those are where you'll want to start, and all of the posts - listed after the jump - are worth taking a look at.

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show goes on the air in a little under an hour. Remember that to hear it live - and to participate - you need to go to the show's main page here. Continuing with this morning's "let's see how this goes" theme, I won't be doing a full guest interview for the first time ever. You're not totally getting abandoned - Dan Diker is still dropping in for 15 minutes of updates and analysis - but the rest of the show will be handed over to news and commentary.

Scheduled topics Dan will be discussing: (1) the renewed diplomatic push on Syria and why - if everything works out perfectly - it'll merely end up being a huge waste of time and (2) the train wreck that is zero Israeli public diplomacy plus the Goldstone Report plus a global anti-Israel delegitimization campaign of unprecedented venom. That would make this the third or fourth week in a row where a different security expert emphasizee that public diplomacy is a strategic necessity for Israel. On the plus side there's no way you're getting bored, since every time this comes up there's a different way Israeli oversights have limited the Jewish States's wartime options. So there's that.

The rest of the show will be the usual scattershot pile of international and domestic controversies, albeit with a skeptical eye towards arguments like "it's not Islam that's behind how the overwhelming number of terrorists are Muslims, it's just extremism in general." Definitely on the agenda: Obama's "dismay" that Jews would try to return to areas in East Jerusalem that Jordan had ethnically cleansed, the unhinged left's obsessive sexist hatred of Palin, the WH's weird habit of suppressing intelligence on Syria and Iran so liberals can keep up their engagement fantasies, and a bunch more. The words "bow" and "grovel" and the phrase "pathetic obsequious scraping" might come up.

The chat room will be open and the phone lines will be active. We're looking for questions, comments, and criticisms. In nothing else today's episode should give you a good idea on how you want to vote in the "What Should TOCS Change" poll.

References:
* Netanyahu To Obama: Actually, We're Going To Keep Letting Jews Build Homes In Jerusalem [MR]
* Progressive Democrats To Palin: Get Back In The Kitchen [MR]
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* American Politics Coverage
* Public Diplomacy Coverage

I wasn't going to do a 9/11 post because I kind of agree with Frank J. and I can't do better than Allahpundit. But I was tipped off to this idiocy by a liberal academic who couldn't believe how stupidly callous it is. The New York Times obviously had the anniversary front and center, as did the WaPo and the WSJ. The LA Times not so much. I'm grabbing these front pages from the Newseum and you can click through for full-sized images:

Now maybe - maybe - you could get away with arguing that after almost a decade 9/11 is mostly a Northeast and DC tragedy. It would be an insipid and cynical argument but from a certain fashionable 9/10 perspective it kind of makes sense. There's certainly a liberal strain that wallows in a sort of faux cosmopolitan provincialism: how else are you going to argue that the 1,000 year ebb and flow of Islam into the West is Bush's fault? So perhaps there's a regionalism excuse here.

Except here are the front pages of the Daily News and the Spanish language La Opinion, both out of LA and both with prominent front page stories on 9/11:

Isn't the LAT supposed to be more nationally focused than these two outlets? That's the excuse they always give for not covering local events, presumably because "we're bitter that we're not in New York so we'll pretend we are" just doesn't sound as sophisticated. What's their excuse on this one? "It's time to move on?" (h/t: GTG)

References:
* Thoughts on 9/11 [IMAO]
* Quotes of the day: Remembering 9/11/01 [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Staying Neutral the Los Angeles Times Way
* Los Angeles Times Moral Equivalence at Work
* Los Angeles Times Dishonest about Pentagon-Funded Report, Recommends Israel Disarm

Average temperature on the island nation of Palau: 82 degrees. If that's a little hot, residents and guests can cool off by swimming amidst the archipelago's famed coral reefs or wandering through endless acres of lush forests. The perfect place to send 17 bloodthirsty, radicalized jihadists:

The South Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to "temporarily resettle" the 17 Uighurs, or Chinese Muslims, currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, an official with the Palau government told FOX News. "Palau's accommodation to accept the temporary resettlement of these detainees is a humanitarian gesture intended to held them be freed from any further unnecessary incarceration and to restart their lives anew in as normal a fashion as possible," according to a press release provided to FOX News by the official. Two U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press, said the U.S. was prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in development, budget support and other assistance in return for accepting the Uighurs and as part of a mutual defense and cooperation treaty that is due to be renegotiated this year.

At least we finally have a solution to Reid's mindbendingly idiotic suggestion that we close Gitmo but keep all the detainees out of US prisons: we can just pay for them to live in paradise. That'll show them!

No word on how long it'll take these 17 to join the long line of Gitmo recidivists. Though Palau is a long way from Yemen. Or Afghanistan. Or Saudi Arabia. Or Iraq. Or whereever the hell it is that Al Qaeda makes their videos. So I'm thinking at least a couple months.

Of course Gitmo is even farther from those places than Palau. But Obama was clear that freed Gitmo detainees might attack us again, so that's hardly a surprise. Plus it's a small price to pay for upholding our values. Even though our values don't seem to include "not being attacked by fanatics."

References and previously after the jump...

Two questions about the AP's laughingly pathetic "Bin Ladin's Criticism of Obama a Sign He Is Worried" headline:

(1) Is the headline more or less obnoxious than their previous "Obama breaks from Bush, avoids divisiveness" headline?

(2) Is the headline more or less embarrassing by virtue of how it's apparently a shameless transcription of months-old State Department boilerplate:

"We have heard it. I think that is just another propaganda effort", said State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack on Wednesday... McCormack said Wednesday that Bin Laden's criticism of Muslim clerics, Israel, the United States, and president-elect Barrack Obama in his latest message reflects his "isolation" caused by the U.S.-led efforts to capture him.

Since this was a day before president-elect Obama became President Obama, maybe "Bin Laden is panicking" has always been State's official position. But that begs the question of why CNN's 2004 subheading "Bin Laden criticizes Bush" was followed by three paragraphs about My Pet Goat and a fourth paragraph on Bin Laden's "gold robe with a white headdress and white cloak."

It also doesn't answer why the Boston Globe choose to surround their "bin Laden criticizes Bush" section with statements like "reading calmly into the camera, looking older but relatively healthy, Bin Laden..." Or why the CBS had this extensive anti-Bush propaganda a few paragraphs above a description of how Kerry is committed to actually getting the terrorists:

The tape, released just a few days before the U.S. presidential election, showed bin Laden comparing the Bush administration to "corrupt" Arab governments... "We fought you because we are free ... and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours," bin Laden added. Bin Laden criticized Bush sharply, saying that the president is "still deceiving you and hiding the truth from you and therefore the reasons are still there to repeat what happened" on Sept. 11, 2001.

Incidentally, Google's new news timeline makes it easy to search for very specific phrases within very specific media. It's one thing to merely remember that the MSM spent half a decade trying kneecaping Bush. It's quite another to find them using the exact same phrases they were using in 2004, except now as homages to The One.

References and previously after the jump...

British troops are fighting jihadists with Yorkshire accents:

The Armed Forces are increasingly fighting British Muslims with Midlands and Yorkshire accents on the battlefields of Afghanistan. Intelligence reports show that rising numbers of home-grown jihadists have joined the Taliban so they can kill British soldiers. Senior military sources say UK troops are engaged in a 'surreal mini-civil war' in the dusty badlands of Helmand Province. The revelations came as the Ministry of Defence announced another three British soldiers had been killed in a roadside bomb attack in southern Afghanistan today.

The FBI has to track suicide bombers who were radicalized in Minnesota:

The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said Monday that a Somali-American man who was one of several suicide bombers in a terrorist attack last October in Somalia had apparently been indoctrinated into his extremist beliefs while living in the United States. The man, Shirwa Ahmed, was the first known suicide bomber with American citizenship. He immigrated with his family to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, Mr. Mueller said, but he returned to Somalia after he was recruited by a militant group. "It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota," Mr. Mueller said, speaking at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations. Minneapolis claims the country's largest Somali population.

For those of you keeping count, the current number of Somali refugees in the US is about 80,000:

Eighty thousand Somalis, almost all of them Muslims, have been allowed into this country. What they have done can be seen in Lewiston, Maine, where their enormous burden on the benefits system left so little for the native poor, who had been paying into that system for decades, that the Mayor of Lewiston publicly expressed his alarm at the Somali influx. For his pains he was mechanically, and roundly, denounced as a "racist." Or it can be seen in the places where some Somalis do work, rather than live on benefits, such as those meat-packing plants in Nebraska and Colorado where the non-Somali workers, who bear the brunt of the behavior and attitudes of the Somalis in their midst, revolted when the meat-packing company was prepared to supinely give in to Muslim demands, demands that would have given preferential treatment to Muslim workers.

On the plus side Obama's new adviser on Pakistan and Afghanistan thinks that we can solve Islamist violence by solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. Because that's what's causing comfortable Western Muslims to become jihadists and suicide bombers.

I'm actually glad to learn this. If it was an ideological issue we might actually have to reexamine placid Western multiculturalism. And then where would we be?

References:
* Armed Forces 'are fighting British Muslims with Yorkshire accents' in Afghanistan [Daily Mail]
* Militants Drew Recruit in U.S., F.B.I. Says [NYT]
* Fitzgerald: Who decided that we owed this to Somalis? [Jihad Watch]
* Obama's adviser: Solve Arab-Israeli conflict, end global jihad [Jihad Watch]

Previously:
* NYT Opinion Column: Obama Should Reject Link Between Islam And Terrorism, Become "Post-Civilizational" President
* Fifteen Minutes Of Unmitigated Muslim Hatred Toward Jews, Christians, Americans, Westerners, Etc. [Video]
* Diplomatic Sophistication Heartbreak: Tension Between Iranian Political Factions A Little Exaggerated

Nuclear-armed Pakistan went into a state of ‘high alert’ last weekend and was eyeing India for possible signs of military aggression, after a threatening phone call made to President Asif Ali Zardari by someone from Delhi who posed himself as the Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee. Whether it was mere mischief or a sinister move by someone in the Indian external affairs ministry, or the call came from within Pakistan, remains unclear... To some world leaders the probability of an accidental war appeared very high... an attempt was also made by the mysterious caller, claiming to be the Indian external affairs minister, to speak to the US Secretary of State, but due to specific checks laid down by the Americans, the call couldn’t get through to Dr Rice... [A]s admitted by a top official in Islamabad, the more serious issue was the by-passing of the standard operating procedure to put such a call through to the President almost directly without even verifying the identity of the caller.

Very funny except: (a) it could have triggered nuclear warfighting (b) it demonstrates that Pakistan's political institutions are staffed by morons and (c) the next threatening call from India might not be a hoax:

A week after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Indian officials on Friday stepped up their efforts to draw a connection between the violence and Pakistani government agencies. In New Delhi, a high-level source in the Indian government, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said India has "clear and incontrovertible proof" that an Islamist militant group based in Pakistan, Lashkar-i-Taiba, planned the attacks and that the group's leaders were trained and supported by Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. "We have the names of the handlers. And we know that there is a close relationship between the Lashkar and the ISI," the source said.

That declaration was pretty much inevitable but the terrorists had years of training - and since that happened somewhere with supplies from someone, Pakistan is probably involved. That - coupled with Islamabad's abrupt u-turns on cooperation - could not have warmed the hearts of Indian investigators.

References:
* Pakistan: "Nuclear missiles can be fired within minutes in case of war" [Spencer]
* A hoax call that could have triggered war [Dawn.com]
* Indian Official Points to Pakistan [WaPo]
* Finger Pointing Begins: How Much Is India's Govt On The Hook For Mumbai Massacre? [MR]
* India ready to inject surviving Mumbai jihadi with truth serum; Update: Jihadis’ website registered in U.S.? [Hot Air]
* Mumbai Whodunnit: Names vs. Networks [CT Blog]
* Pakistan U-turns on sending spy chief to India [JPost]

Previously:
* US Forces Israel To Ground Cutting-Edge Spy Satellite
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - If You're A Feminist Who Thinks That The Koran Should Give Women Rights, You May Have To Die
* Ongoing List Of Root Causes, Un-Islamic Religions Responsible For Mumbai Massacre

Within the last month Hamas has legislated sharia law in the Gaza Strip, embraced child martyrdom with ever greater enthusiasm, and gone out of their way to kill Jews. Within the last month Al Qaeda-style jihadists have imposed sharia law in Somalia, been discovered running a child suicide bomber camp in Iraq, and tortured and killed Jews in Mumbai.

But the child martyrdom stuff isn't exactly a surprise. And Gazan jihadists have been openly calling for a global Islamic state for months. So while this story is obviously true I'm not totally convinced it counts as news even if

Al-Qaida-type Salafi Islam is rising in popularity within the ranks of Hamas. This trend is particularly noticeable in the movement's armed wing, the Izzadin Kassam Brigades. Observation of this process shows that attempts to draw a clear dividing line between the "nationalist" Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Islamism of Hamas and the Salafi trend can no longer be sustained. The growth of Salafism within Hamas is part of a larger pattern of increasingly extreme Islamic piety and practice in Gaza... This friction notwithstanding, the rise of supporters of al-Qaida ideology within Hamas cannot be seen in a vacuum. Rather, it is an element of a broader process of the Islamization of many aspects of public life taking place in the Gaza Strip.

But you can see how it might seem surprising to people who rely on Hamas-sheilding news outlets like CNN:

Hey, turns out that Sunnis and Shiites do cooperate to attack Western targts and spread political Islam. You wouldn't expect that just because it's been confirmed by multiple speeches, statements, and declarations since the early 1990s:

Delivery of the letter exposed the rising role of Saad bin Laden, son of the al-Qaeda leader, Osama as an intermediary between the organisation and Iran... The letter, which was signed by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second in command, was written after the American embassy in Yemen was attacked by simultaneous suicide car bombs in September. Western security officials said the missive thanked the leadership of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for providing assistance to al-Qaeda to set up its terrorist network in Yemen, which has suffered ten al-Qaeda-related terror attacks in the past year, including two bomb attacks against the American embassy. In the letter al-Qaeda's leadership pays tribute to Iran's generosity, stating that without its "monetary and infrastructure assistance" it would have not been possible for the group to carry out the terror attacks. It also thanked Iran for having the "vision" to help the terror organisation establish new bases in Yemen after al-Qaeda was forced to abandon much of its terrorist infrastructure in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Sure AQ still gets most of their money from Saudi Arabia. But what al-Zawahiri is saying is that Iran funds smarter not harder - which, in addition to being true, is exactly the kind of thing that can reinvigorate the Iranian terrorist brand in a $50/barrel world.

References:
* Iran receives al Qaeda praise for role in terrorist attacks [Telegraph]
* Just A Reminder: Sunnis And Shiites Historically United In Anti-Western Global Jihad (Plus: "History" Also A Pretty Good Answer To Obama's Engagement With Syria) [MR]
* Guess who leads the world in terrorist financing? [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Iran: Of Course Sunnis And Shiites Cooperate, Iran Will Never Abandon Hamas
* Iran Misses Memo About How Sunnis And Shiites Don't Cooperate, Gives Syria Cutting Edge Offensive Missiles (Plus: Expert Sophistication Wrong On Iranian Nuclearization. Again)
* Guess who leads the world in terrorist financing?

The CIA has launched more than 20 drone attacks over Waziristan and has already nailed three of the biggest Al Qaeda fish. But Pakistan has been growing increasingly shrill in its opposition, demanding an end to cross-border drone activity. Fair enough:

The alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind of a 2006 transatlantic airplane bombing plot was killed in a US missile attack in northwest Pakistan early Saturday, officials said. Rashid Rauf died when a missile hit a tribesman's house in the village of Alikhel... Also among the five killed in the early morning incident was Egyptian Abu Zubair al-Misri, another wanted Al-Qaeda operative... "The transatlantic bombing plot alleged mastermind Rashid Rauf was killed along with an Egyptian Al-Qaeda operative in the US missile strike in North Waziristan early Saturday," a senior security official told AFP. A Western diplomatic source told AFP the missile was fired from a jet across the border in Afghanistan.... Washington has apparently stepped up its missile strikes against suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in tribal areas, however the Saturday morning attack appeared to be the first that was not fired by an unmanned CIA drone.

Almost impossible to believe that he grew up in Britain.

References:
* 10 More Dead as Drone War Over Pakistan Continues [Wired]
* Afghan Official: Coalition strike kills civilians [AP]
* Pakistan to U.S.: Call Off the Killer Drones [Wired]
* Terror plot mastermind killed by US missile in Pakistan: officials [AFP]
* Rashid Rauf: profile of a terror mastermind [Telegraph]
* I'm Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - Thousands Of UK-Born Jihadists In Enclaves Across All Of Britain [MR]

Previously:
* Global Outcry As Pakistan Pounds Terrorist Strongholds In Assassination Response
* Great News - Nuclear Armed Islamic Country With Notoriously Unreliable Safeguards Now Going Bankrupt
* LAT Discovers That Christians Are Being Run Out Of The Middle East, Blames Bush

And you were hoping he'd settle for just ignoring top military experts on missile defense. Here's CIA Director General Michael Hayden on Nov. 13, 2008:

Without directly referring to the CIA's offensive blitz of unmanned missile attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan, the CIA boss said the US had successfully isolated the al Qaeda leader bin Laden, referring to him in the present tense. "He appears to be largely isolated from the day-to-day operations of the organization he leads," Hayden said in a speech delivered to the Atlantic Council in Washington.

And now here's President-Elect Barack Obama three days later:

Kroft: Where does capturing or killing Osama bin Laden fall?
Mr. Obama: I think it is a top priority for us to stamp out al Qaeda once and for all. And I think capturing or killing bin Laden is a critical aspect of stamping out al Qaeda. He is not just a symbol, he’s also the operational leader of an organization that is planning attacks against US targets.

So either Bin Laden managed to reinsert himself into Al Qaeda's operational hierarchy in three days or Obama is so fixated on his "bomb nuclear-armed Pakistan" campaign bluster that he's ignoring security briefings. And since they don't really have wifi in isolated Waziristan caves... Perhaps self-declared "Adviser in Chief" Joe Biden - breathtakingly idiot that he is - is actually being allowed to speak regularly with the President-Elect. That would be unhelpful.

But what do I know? Obama is going to defeat anti-Western enemies by forcing them to embrace "new symbols." A guy like that - obviously he's got a good sense for the gravity of political Islam's challenge. Plus WaPo is quoting anonymous "senior U.S. military officials" who "welcome" his approach. So that's that.

How about a quid pro quo: Al Qaeda hands over Bin Laden and Obama keeps his promise to abandon Iraq like AQI wants him to? Everybody gets their "top priority" and nobody has to go home empty-handed.

The video of the interview is after the jump...

One of the more overarching ways that the Clinton administration kicked the can of terrorism down the road was by treating it as a criminal issue. The Justice Dept - thanks in no small measure to Jamie Gorelick - set up legal protections that prevented intelligence sharing between law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The White House's FBI-centric approach to individual terrorist attacks shielded Al Qaeda from the full force of US military power.

The Bush administration tried to change that culture, facilitating contacts between various agencies and - it turns out - signing orders authorizing Special Forces to hunt down Al Qaeda all over the planet:

The United States military since 2004 has used broad, secret authority to carry out nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks against Al Qaeda and other militants in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere... These military raids, typically carried out by Special Operations forces, were authorized by a classified order that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed in the spring of 2004 with the approval of President Bush... The secret order gave the military new authority to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world, and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States... Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A.

So naturally Obama is planning to spend his first few days in the White House reversing a broad swath of Bush's executive orders and potentially installing Gorelick as Attorney General:

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

At least Al Qaeda - having been handed a devastating battlefield defeat in Iraq due to Bush's steadfastness and despite the machinations of Obama and Biden - isn't desperately trying to launch a terrorist mega-attack. That would be awkward.

And when I said that liberal interest groups were pretty psyched about Obama's impending ultra-liberal administration, I meant pretty damn psyched.

References:
* Jamie Gorelick: Part of the Solution, or the Problem? [CQ]
* Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda in Many Countries [NYT]
* Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions [WaPo]
* The return of The Wall? [Hot Air]
* Warning of new bin Laden attack [The Age]
* Leftist Interest Groups Pretty Psyched About Ultra-Liberal Obama Administration (Plus: MR's Electoral Prediction) (UPDATE: MR's Electoral Map Identical To Rove's) [MR]

Previously:
* New EU Court Rulings Mean That Obama's "Strong Carrots, Strong Sticks" Iran Strategy Now Only Carrots
* Even Frivolous Liberal Enthusiasm Emphasizes Fascism (Plus: So Does Not So Frivolous Liberal Enthusiasm)
* Hezbollah Supporters Pretty Psyched That Their Guy Won

They made her dad watch while they ran her down with hungry dogs and then shot her:

A 17-year-old Pakistani girl was mauled by dogs and shot to death in front of him over a land dispute... Ibrahim Solangi, 28, has been in custody ever since Taslim's death... [he is also] her first cousin.... Taslim's father said he was locked up in his home and forced to watch from a window as dogs chased her and then mauled her when she fell down exhausted. She then was shot, he said... Zameer Hussain Solangi, the girl's father-in-law, claimed Monday that his son confessed to the killing under police torture and that the allegation regarding the dogs was "baseless." He said a tribal council later declared the dead woman an adulterer and compensated the husband with her jewelry.

Oh - well if a tribal council gave him her jewelry, then obviously it's just a big misunderstanding. Notice that the debate is over whether the victim was an adulterer and not over whether, say, we should use vicious dogs to hunt down adulterous women and then shoot them. See also: Somalia, where a sharia court just punished a woman by burying her to her neck and bludgeoning her to death in front of thousands of people in one of the city's main squares.

If I was this Pakistani guy, though, I'd be kind of upset that all I got was my murdered wife's jewelry. This other Pakistani guy - a 62-year old - not only got away with killing his wife. He also got the tribal council to award him three prepubescent girls from the family of the adulterous man - the man's 10 year old girl, plus two of the man's nieces. Plus 20 buffaloes:

A man who killed his second wife for allegedly having an illicit relationship with another received impunity... [the illegal tribal court] has also ordered the other party who allegedly had the relationship... to hand over three girls together with 20 buffaloes as compensation... Police arrested the killer but soon released him and have respected the decision of the Jirga. According to the information received, Mr. Sher Dil Jatoi, 62 years old, killed his second wife in an honour killing... The decision said Sher Dil Jatoi was the victim of honour and innocent in killing his second wife... "as Shahoo Jatoi developed the illicit relationship... [he] was order to compensate Sher Dil by handing over his three minor daughers". Since Shahoo has only one girl, a 10-year-old daughter, the Jirga decided that the brothers Mr. Miro Jatoi and Mr. Khanan Jatoi should give their daughters of ages between 13 and 11 years to Sher Dil. Besides, it also ordered Shahoo's family to deliver 20 buffaloes.

Or you could just let someone rape your wife and force her to become a suicide bomber. But come on - dogs? That's just primitive.

References:
* Pakistani Man Claims Teen Daughter Mauled by Dogs, Shot to Death in 'Honor Killing' [Fox News]
* Pakistan: Honor Killer Awarded 10, 11, 13-Year-Old Girls in Marriage From man who had "Illicit" Relationship With his Wife..... [Zippers]
* Love, blackmail and rape – how al-Qaeda grooms women as ‘perfect weapons’ [Times Online]
* Woman stoned to death for adultery after Somali court ruling [AFP]

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - If You're An American Woman Talking With A Guy In Saudi Arabia, You Might Have To Be Arrested And Beaten
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - If You're A Female Student Who Tries To Have Coffee With Your Professor, He Might Have To Be Lashed To Pieces (Also: If Your Man Is Neurotic And Impotent, You Might Have To Die)
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Great News! Islam Has Nothing To Do With Honor Killings.

A followup to yesterday's post about the probable hot pursuit raid of Al Qaeda operatives into Syr- wait, Al Qaeda's in Syria? Wasn't Biden obnoxiously smug about how they're only in Afghanistan? That's curious:

The US military incursion into Syria was aimed at the senior leader of al Qaeda's extensive network that funnels foreign fighters, weapons, and cash from Syria into Iraq, a senior intelligence official told The Long War Journal. US special operations hunter-killer teams entered Syria in an attempt to capture Abu Ghadiya, a senior al Qaeda leader who has been in charge of the Syrian network since 2005. US intelligence analysts identified Ghadiya as the leader of the Syrian network... The cross-border raid took place just three days after Major General John Kelly, the commander of Multinational Force - West, said Syria is "problematic." Kelly said the Syrian the government refused to secure the border and al Qaeda operatives are openly working inside Syria.

Go ahead and click through to the LWJ post. There're about a dozen paragraphs detailing the Syrian Al Qaeda network that the Democrats' top foreign policy genius doesn't think exists. Other US foreign policy academics are oscillating between explaining the attack as a Bush warmongering "freebie" or a ruthless neo-conservative plot. This leads them to cutting-edge analysis like "Syria will roll with it" and "gosh I hope Assad doesn't fall for this neocon bait." These people - and their intellectual ilk - are going to be running US foreign policy for the next 4-8 years. If I haven't made it clear, I'm pretty psyched about that.

In the meantime, the cyclical on again off again anti-Israel Syrian saber-rattling is probably off again in the near-term. Which brings up this bit of related reckless speculation, courtesy of Danger Room:

France:

A Paris criminal court convicted nine people on Thursday including a French-Algerian former prison inmate who admitted establishing an Islamic group that called for armed jihad in France... Two French converts to Islam — Stephane Hadoux, 40, and Emmanuel Nieto, 34, — were given three-year sentences, half of which were suspended by the court. Bourada was one of 36 Islamic militants convicted a decade ago for providing support for bombings that terrorized France in 1995. He received a 10-year term, but won early release in 2003 under police surveillance.

Iraq:

I hope our friends at the ACLU rest comfortably tonight, knowing their efforts sprung this maggot so he could go back to doing what he was meant to do: murder innocent people. The blood is on their hands. A Kuwaiti man released from the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay in 2005 has carried out a suicide bombing in Iraq, his cousin told Al Arabiya television on Thursday. A friend of Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi in Iraq informed his family that Abdullah carried out the attack in Mosul, his cousin Salem told the Dubai-based television channel.

Israel:

Some of you may be musing to yourselves: "sure Al Qaeda says that they did 3/11 and killed 191 people because the Moors were expelled from Spain 500 years ago, but no one is that insane." Turns out, they're exactly that insane:

So much for the notion that political concessions - such as withdrawing from Iraq - would make Spain safe from al-Qaedist terror strikes. A month after the Madrid bombings, the newly elected Socialist government withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq... Spain remains Al-Qaeda target... “Al-Qaeda has not lost sight of the global jihad and, in exchanges with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), it has told them to quickly attack local targets and reminds them that their real goal is to cross into Al Andalus,” it said... In September 2007, Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri called for Al Andalus to be restored to the Islamic world, saying the first step needs to be the “cleansing’ of Spaniards and French from the Maghreb.

Ah well - it was a good try. And in fairness, history is littered with examples of appeasement succeeding - so Spain really couldn't have known.

And this is the problem with international jihadists: no subtlty. It's always invade, conquer, kill infidels, kill apostates, invade, conquer, etc. If they had any sense they would follow the lead of those two Tunisians being held in Denmark for trying to kill a Mohammed cartoonist: ask for and recieve political asylum. And then once you have an EU passport, you can move to Germany and legally beat your wife because its in the Koran.

"Creeping Islamization in Europe" - well that's really much too much optimistic, now isn't it?

References:
* Spain (Andalus) remains Al-Qaeda target requiring "cleansing" [Spencer]
* Denmark Grants Asylum to Islamist who Plotted to Kill Mohammed Cartoonist..... [Zippers]
* GERMAN JUDGE:OK TO BEAT WIFE, IT'S IN THE KORAN [Atlas]
* WEST: Creeping Islamization in Europe [Wash Times]

Previously:
* EU: Best Way To Bolster Abbas Is To Bolster Hamas And The Population That Most Strongly Supports Hamas
* Paris Prosecutors: Muslim Attacks On French Jews Aren't Anti-Semitic (Plus: We Can't Convict Murderous Anti-Semites In The US Either)
* UK Muslims Split Between Supporting Domestic Terrorism And Demanding Less Airport Counterterrorism

Yeah - not exactly a shocker:

BBC director general Mark Thompson has admitted that the broadcaster has to tackle Islam differently to Christianity and is reluctant to broadcast jokes about it. He suggested that coverage needed to consider the feelings of Muslims because they are a religious minority... Mr Thompson was responding to comments made by comedian Ben Elton... [Thompson said] ... 'I don't want to say that all religions are the same. To be a minority I think puts a slightly different outlook on it.'... [Elton said] 'And I believe that part of it is due to the genuine fear that the authorities and the community have about provoking the radical elements of Islam," he said. '...It's because they're scared. I know these people.'

I'm not sure why this is so controversial. So the director of the BBC believes that Islam should be accorded special status, above and beyond what British society accords to Christianity. That's nothing that hasn't already been advocated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. And it's nothing that hasn't already been codified into British law:

The far left have had the UK firmly in their control for years - and they have been busy turning out legislation to make their leftist philosophy of multiculturalism the law of the land. So, to ask a Muslim woman simply to remove her veil is considered an act of religious harassment. And for such an act of religious harassment, a native of Britain, the father of a child, was ordered to jail today for a nine month sentence.

Whole swaths of the Britain are no-go zones for non-Muslims. After the jump, - a laundry list of failures, double standards, and surrenders that combine into an impression that Britain has more or less given up.

To the extent that I'm not particularly great at the sentimentalism thing, I'm going to focus my 9/11 post on antipathy and bile. Specifically, antipathy and bile toward mainstream media outlets and the people who consume them. Al Qaeda is in disarray...

Seven years after September 11, 2001, al-Qaida as an organization is seen by many analysts to be in some disarray. One prominent observer of the network depicts it as having been reduced to a core of 200-300 operatives. Yet al-Qaida as an idea and as a franchise remains healthy and is still a threat... The 9/11 attacks were meant to draw the United States into the Middle East, opening an extended war of attrition. Al-Qaida's model for this was the jihadis' war against the USSR in Afghanistan. Those attacks succeeded in drawing the US in. However, the score card so far is largely against the Sunni jihadists.

... and yet somehow that realization hasn't penetrated very far into the public consciousness:

In the new survey, 35% say Al Qaeda is weaker today than before September 11, 2001, while 26% believe the terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks is stronger. Twenty-nine percent (29%) think its strength is about the same now as it was then. See full demographic crosstabs.

Luckily, those mainstream media outlets will soon raise public awareness - presumably to a level somewhere above "objectively wrong" - by shifting terrorism reporters onto the Palin smear beat.

The good news is that much of the US public is merely misinformed. The rest of the world's beliefs about the WTC bombings are out and out batshit crazy. And the country that has the highest percentage of people blaming Jews for 9/11 - a whopping 43 percent - is naturally the one that's treaty-committed to cultural normalization. But what would Israel do with an oil-rich tract of land twice the size of the country, anyway?

References:
* Analysis: 7 years after 9/11, al-Qaida is in disarray [JPost]
* 54% Say U.S. Has Changed for the Worse Since 9/11 [Rasmussen Reports]
* Mainstream Media Diverting Terrorism Reporters Into Political Investigations [CT Blog]
* Poll: Majorities in only nine of 17 countries surveyed believe Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11 [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Mainstreaming Of Global Anti-Semitism, South Korea Edition
* The Paranoid Style in The Left's Anti-Palin Viciousness
* Arab and Muslim Conspiracy Theories - Iranian Holocaust Denial Edition

You might remember this classy gal from the time she sucked up to Islamists by inviting Ahmadinejad to present "various perceptions of the Holocaust" in Geneva. Or that other time when she sucked up to Islamists by embracing just a little bit of obsequious dhimmitude. So it's not really a surprise that she's sucking up to Islamists by, well, sucking up to Islamists:

Switzerland's foreign minister on Monday broke with the country's tradition of studiously discrete diplomacy by raising the possibility of direct talks with Osama bin Laden to tackle global terrorism. Micheline Calmy-Rey, who has raised both eyebrows and hackles with her controversial style, told Swiss ambassadors gathered in the capital Bern that they needed to talk to "heavyweight political figures" on the world stage even if they are considered persona non grata by other powers. "It is important to get away from a Manichean view of the world in black and white, where peoples and countries can only be allies or enemies," she said. If this view prevailed, Israel would never have held talks with the Palestinians, Nepal would never have talked to Maoist rebels -- and the international community would have boycotted the Olympic Games in Beijing, she said. "So should we listen to these 'wise figures'? Or should we continue dialogue without discrimination - even sitting down at the same table as Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden?," she asked rhetorically.

Absolutely right. If we had listened to the people who advised Israel against ceding land to the Palestinians, there wouldn't be peace in the Middle East right now. And then were would we be?

PS - she really is kind of execrable, isn't she?

References:
* Swiss President Invites Iran To Offer "Various Perceptions Of the Holocaust" At Conference [MR]
* Swiss Foreign Minister Dons Hijab, Tosses Iran An Economic Lifeline [MR]
* Switzerland does not rule out talking to bin Laden [AP]

Previously:
* Swiss Diplomats Bankrolling Iranian Economy: Why's Israel So Pissed Off At Us?
* Swiss Embrace Sophisticated Understanding of Hamas
* Bin Laden Calls For Jihad Against Darfur Peacekeepers. Because Why Not, Right?

Race-neutral giant attack rats would have been bad enough. But Israeli depravity knows no limits:

In fact, according to two Palestinian newspapers, their mortal foe has come up with a new plan to dislocate Jerusalem's Arabs from the area -- through the medium of supernatural rats.... According to the reports, these rats are twice as big as yer average rat, they are ferociously aggressive, they like to attack Arab children and they breed four times more often than a normal rat. The rats are apparently being introduced into the area by Jews "who bring them in huge cages and release them onto the streets to make living there a nightmare for Arabs". Terrifyingly, the rats even know the difference between Jew and Arab and they leave the Jews alone while terrorising the Arabs.

Because it wouldn't make any sense to deploy supernatural rats that don't even know the difference between Jews and Arabs. Working in that vicious "Jews as rats" motif that's become so popular in anti-Zionist Islamist propaganda - nice touch.

References:
* Save us from the Jewish rats [Independent.ie]
* Canadian Muslim Terrorists: Kill Rats or Jews, No Contest [Seraphic Secret]

Previously:
* Mainstreaming Of Global Anti-Semitism, South Korea Edition
* What International Anti-Semitism?
* As Far As Smirking Anti-Semitism Goes, UC Irvine Muslims Have Really Outdone Themselves

First there was the Onion's brilliant point/counterpoint on the question, where an AQ press rep got salty with a US Truther for trying to deny Sunni jihadists the credit they deserve:

And now there's reality:

Osama bin Laden's chief deputy on Tuesday denied a theory that Israel carried out the Sept. 11 attacks and blamed Iran and Shiite Hezbollah for spreading the idea to discredit the Sunni al-Qaida's strike against the U.S. The comments in a recording posted on an Islamic Web site reflected the increasing criticism by al-Qaida's No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri against Iran... One of the questioners asked about the theory that has circulated in the Middle East and elsewhere that Israel was behind the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Al-Zawahri accused Hezbollah's Al-Manar television of starting the rumor. "The purpose of this lie is clear - (to suggest) that there are no heroes among the Sunnis who can hurt America as no else did in history. Iranian media snapped up this lie and repeated it," he said.

Really? Really?

References:
* Al-Qaida No. 2 says 9/11 theory propagated by Iran [AP]

Previously:
* Iran, Hamas, And Islamic Jihad Meet In Syria To Plan Mideast Turmoil
* Clowns. Total Clowns (UN Speakers Edition)
* Hamas Media Lovefest Goes Awry As Green-Headband Wearing Farm Animals Begin Defecating, Having Sex

It's so cute when urban blue state bureaucrats get involved with gun safety regulations:

Transportation Security Administration rules are to blame for the conditions leading up to an accidental discharge of a US Airways pilot's pistol during landing, say airline pilots familiar with the program. On March 22, pilot James Langenhahn was stowing his Heckler & Koch USP .40, issued to him by the Department of Homeland Security... while his co-pilot prepared to land the plane. As he was placing the pistol... it discharged a single shot which exited the left side of the plane, doing little damage... Some pilots say it was an accident waiting to happen.

At issue is a highly unusual TSA requirement that pilots remove the guns from their belts and lock them up... a requirement that pilots say creates unsafe conditions. "The pilot was trying to lock his gun and remove the holster in an airplane going 300 miles per hour in preparation for landing and the padlock depressed the trigger," said a federal flight deck officer who declined to be identified. "TSA knew this could happen but didn't get rid of the requirement."... It's pretty obvious that nobody who knows anything about firearms had anything to do with setting up these procedures, because they would have instantly rejected them as unsafe... Pilots have been unable to criticize this arrangement publicly because the TSA had classified it; however, a group of federal air marshals met with the TSA last year to recommend that pilots carry their pistols in the same way that air marshals do.

Silencing dissent and actively incentivizing people not to point out security lapses is pretty much how the TSA runs things lately:

A passenger who went through an airport security checkpoint -- before remembering that he had a loaded gun -- is facing charges after going back to report his error, authorities said. Gregory Scott Hinkle, 53, of Davis, West Virginia, went through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport... he returned to the checkpoint and disclosed the weapon, authorities said. The TSA contacted airport police, who charged the man with possessing or transporting a firearm into an air carrier terminal where prohibited, a misdemeanor, and released him.

And not just lately - two years ago they were spending their time raiding and threatening to arrest teenagers who tried to publicize gaping holes in TSAs hackneyed and arbitrary security setup. Because setting up a system where people are better off not reporting flaws and oversights is the best way to catch and fix problems. Business consultants teach managers that all the time.

It's also a sign of a management that's really confident in the system they've set up. And with the rousing success they've had at airports like LAX - how could they now be proud? Now that direct flights are coming in from the UAE, we're more pleased than ever that TSA manages to catch almost 25 percent of the simulated bombs that go through LAX security. Less time stupidly slowing down passenger lines and incompetently serving up private data to identity thieves and more time worrying about explosives might not be the worst idea, yes?

References:
* TSA rules led to pilot's gun firing in flight [Homeland Stupidity]
* Loaded gun slips through airport security [CNN]
* Q: Could Airport Security Suck Worse? [MR]
* Emirates to make LAX its third US gateway [Business Traveler]
* LAX TSA Misses 75% Of Fake Bombs, Lets People With Bad Boarding Passes On Airplanes [MR]
* Transportation security's new blue-light special [LAT]
* TSA Traveler Website Exposed Private Citizens To Risk Of ID Theft [Consumerist]

Previously:
* TSA Web Site Hacked and Hijacked. Of Course It Was.
* HuffPo Blogger: Replace TSA With Blackwater Ops
* It's Time For Another Rant About the TSA - Hardline On 1oz Pepsi, Not So Much On Boxcutters [Video]

Remember earlier this week how the media reported - probably on the basis of false anti-Bush leaks from inside the Pentagon - that a new report cleared Saddam of ties to AQ? Turns out, not so much:

A new Pentagon report on Iraq and Terrorism has the news media buzzing. An item on the New York Times blog snarks, "Oh, By the Way, There Was No Al Qaeda Link." The ABC News story that previews the full report concludes, "Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda." How, then, to explain this sentence about Iraq and al Qaeda from the report's abstract: "At times, these organizations would work together in pursuit of shared goals but still maintain their autonomy and independence because of innate caution and mutual distrust"? And how to explain the "considerable overlap" between their activities which led not only to the appearances of ties but to a "de facto link between the organizations?"

At least the anti-Bush partisans sprinkled throughout the Pentagon are only politicizing intelligence about past conflicts. It would really suck if they intentionally manipulated something as important as Iran intel just to resentfully spite the Administration.

References:
* Saddam supported at least two al-Qaeda groups: Pentagon Update: What it means [Hot Air]
* The New Report on Iraq and Terror [Weekly Standard]
* WaPo: NIE Conclusions Were Engineered By Easily Identifiable, Hysterically Anti-Bush State Department Washouts [MR]

Previously:
* A Neoconservative Manifesto?
* Democrats Take a Brave Stand Against Israeli Self-Defense Israeli Self-Defense and Other Stuff Too
* Los Angeles Times Dishonest about Pentagon-Funded Report, Recommends Israel Disarm

That's some crack security we've got right there:

A government program set up to remove innocent people from terrorism no-fly and watch lists has been ineffective and riddled with problems, travelers and congressional leaders say. Jason Steele, a technology contractor in Colorado, discovered his name was on the watch list about four years ago and fought to get a letter from TSA clearing his name... He has gotten some relief from UAL Corp.'s United Airlines, which has identified Mr. Steele as cleared through his frequent-flier number, allowing him to check in online, use United's kiosks and avoid extra screening. On other airlines, Mr. Steele has learned that if he flies under his middle name, he doesn't get stopped. "The whole process is just cosmetic," he says.

These people could not be more myopic and incompetent if they tried. And hey - did you hear about the guy who tried to smuggle a boxcutter onto an airplane last week? He cut a secret compartment out of a book and hid it in there. Other books in his backpack: a Koran, several books glorifying Islam, and a Bible (for comparison, perchance?) What, you didn't hear about that at all?

Baines, 21, of Clearwater told investigators he forgot the box cutter was inside the copy of Fear Itself when he packed his bag for a trip to Las Vegas... He was charged with carrying a concealed weapon, a misdemeanor. He pleaded guilty Monday in Hillsborough County court and received a 30-day jail sentence. The U.S. Attorney's Office is looking into the case but has not filed charges. "What raises our concern is when an item is artfully concealed," said Christopher White, a spokesman for the Transportation Security Administration. "It's different than a box cutter inside a backpack."... Another TSA officer found the tool inside a "compartment" within the book. Baines told officers he cut out the pages to keep marijuana and money from being stolen by roommates. Inside the backpack were the Koran and Bible and the books Muhammad in the Bible,The Noble Quran and The Prophet's Prayer.

Probably nothing to worry about. Just a comparative religion scholar, no doubt.

References:
* When Your Name Is Mud at the Airport [WSJ]
* TSA Won't Let Parents Bring Extra Baby Food In Anticipation Of Delays [Consumerist]
* TIA Finds Cutter Hidden in Book [TSA]

Previously:
* It's Time For Another Rant About the TSA - Hardline On 1oz Pepsi, Not So Much On Boxcutters [Video]
* Monday Stupid - Helpful Form For TSA Encounters
* LAX TSA Misses 75% Of Fake Bombs, Lets People With Bad Boarding Passes On Airplanes

Say what you will about them - but when the Palestinians decide to incite violence against someone they don't stop at half-measures. After introducing their children to Assud the Jew-eating bunny...

... they turned him on the Danes and their cartoons of blasphemy:

Naturally, their contribution to this global jihad - and we thought it was a fight over territory - isn't limited to cute Jew-eating bunnies:

Vandals set off explosives inside the library of Gaza's YMCA early Friday, severely damaging the one-story building and shaking Gaza's tiny Christian minority. There was no claim of responsibility, but the attack came at a time of protests in the Muslim world against the reproduction of cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad in Danish newspapers. The attack on the YMCA was carried out early Friday. Masked gunmen came to the YMCA compound just after midnight and threatened two guards with pistols, said one of the watchmen, Rizek Ajrami. The attackers then set off what Ajrami described as two homemade explosive devices. One left a small crater in the floor of the library and tore holes into the walls and ceiling. Books were strewn on the floor, covered by chunks of plaster, wicker bookshelves were overturned and wires dangled from the ceiling.

The AP article on this actually uses the phrase "small group of extremists," thereby violating MR's strict rule that ideologues should be minimally aware of the other side's stereotypes and try to avoid actually being them. Regardless, the Danes are reacting to the entire controversy with something less than admirable resolve (h/t: Seth).

References:
* New Hamas TV show features 'Jew-eating' Bugs Bunny lookalike [Ha'aretz]
* Martyred Mouse and Killer Bee Replaced by Jew Eating Bunny [lookhearsee / YouTube]
* Hamas Bunny Threatens to Kill Danes over Muhammad Cartoons [lookhearsee / YouTube]
* Vandals trash library of Gaza City's YMCA, director says; no claim of responsibility [AP]
* Danish cartoonist kicked out of hotel over jihadist fears, now homeless [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Iranian Cartoons Are Anti-Semitic and Racist (And Something Else Too... Kinda) [Video]
* Compare And Contrast - Actors In Israel Kids' Show: "I Love You", Little Girls In Hamas Cartoon: "We Long For Martyrdom... Our Death Is Happiness" [Videos]
* Hamas Government Defying Itself With Suicide Bomber Mickey

Bracketing her hatred of Jews - not just Zionists, apparently - the remedy still seems somewhat extreme no?

A female teenager from east Jerusalem was arrested several weeks ago on suspicion of planning to carry out a suicide bombing, Police announced Thursday. The girl, approximately 17 years of age, had allegedly contacted Islamic Jihad operatives in the West Bank and offered to execute a bombing in the capital... the youth said she did it because of her hatred for Jews.

It must be that Israeli apartheid state. Bringing up little girls to be suicide bombers - that's how Mandela did it, right?

References:
* Police: East J'lem girl planned to carry out suicide bombing [JPost]

Previously:
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - Is It Treason Yet?
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch - Knesset Takes First Steps Toward Addessing Fifth Column
* Israeli-Arab Fifth Column Watch: Israeli-Arab Woman Spied For Hezbollah. This, Again, Does Not Bode Well For "Final Status"

Is anybody in charge around here?

Former terrorists Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zak Anani addressed cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, during their annual political forum. They shared their experiences as terrorists and helped cadets understand the Islamic fundamentalist mind set. During the event a Jordanian college student, identified as Omar Khalifa of Metro International, approached Kamal Saleem and spoke to him in Arabic, "you are an enemy of Islam and you must die." The incident was reported to Military Police, who investigated Khalifa's threat... "We have all been told that Islam has been hijacked by extremists," said Walid Shoebat. "Yet CAIR, who professes to be 'Moderate Muslims' are the Three Ex Terrorists biggest critics, and pull out all stops to try and keep out voices from being heard."

Click through for more fun and enlightening information about just how far CAIR is going to prevent former terrorists from speaking out against political Islam. Which makes a lot of sense, because obviously having people say "the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful but there are some extremists" is anti-Muslim bigotry. Then again, logic isn't exactly their CAIR's strong suit - cf. their intellectually dishonest defenses of polls showing broad support for suicide bombings among US Muslim youths.

References:
* Muslim Student Threatens Former Terrorist's Life at Air Force Academy Even [MMD]
* The Mysterious "1 Percent" Number That CAIR Keeps Quoting From the Pew Study - Unsurprisingly, Not Exactly Honest [Video] [MR]

Previously:
* Uh Oh - Looks Like Someone Didn't Get the "Koran Bans Forced Conversions" Memo
* CAIR Protest In So Cal
* American Muslim Organization Protects Readers from Women's Hair

This is exactly what happens in the Vatican on Christmas and in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. Exactly:

Filled with the spirit, Iranians chanted anti-US and anti-Zionist slogans at holy event. Iranian Republic News Agency reported: Disavowal of Pagans ritual ended in this sacred desert on Tuesday by issuing a five-article final resolution which stressed on unity among all Muslim nations. The ceremony was attended by a huge group of Iranian pilgrims who chanted anti-US and anti-Zionist slogans.

The Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei offered this blessing to the Hajj pilgrims, via IRNA: "Today, the treacherous enemies of the Muslim Ummah are the organizers of the hegemonic centers and expansionist and aggressive powers which consider the Islamic awakening as a great threat to their illegitimate interests and their oppressive domination over the Muslim world. All the Muslim nations led by their political and religious authorities, intellectuals and national leaders need to form a united Islamic front against this invading enemy with full strength.

You know what's so weird about this? We were totally convinced by the assurances of foreign policy elites and think tank sophisticates that Sunnis and Shiites hate each other way too much to cooperate against the West. They're very different you see. Not so different that they won't funnel money to each other and cooperate on international terrorism. But still very different.

References:
* Iranians Chant "Death to America" & "Death to Israel" at Hajj Ceremony in Saudi Arabia [Gateway Pundit]
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas [MR]

Previously:
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran
* The Denial of the Obvious By Reference to the Irrelevant: Center-Left Foreign Policy and Democratic Politics
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas

We haven't randomly expressed utter disdain for what passes as Palestinian pop culture. So here's a video of child jihadists lately. Charles has more information on this TV program, which is called "The Gifted". Of course it is:

Obviously, what they really need is a state.

References:
* Hamas Video: A Two-Year Old Jihadi [LGF]
* Hamas Indoctrinating Toddlers [InvestigativeProject / YouTube]

Previously:
* More Hamas Mickey Mouse Fun - Video And Comments From Moderate Democrats Added [Video]
* Stupid Campaigns and Stupid People
* UN: "Distractions" Are Causing Gaza Students To Flunk Math And Arabic [Videos]

At first blush this doesn't really seem security related. Except: these are the people in charge of airline security across the board. And they've got the IQ of houseplants:

The TSA is testing a new level of security screening at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport and it requires you to take every electronic component out of your carry-on luggage and put it in a separate bin, reader John tells us. He writes: "According to the TSA this is a new test program designed to speed up the screening of carry on-baggage..." "...but, based on my observations, it's not real clear on how this is going to speed things up as each bag had to be passed through the X-Ray, all of the electronics people forgot about removed and placed in a separate tray, then both the bag and the tray X-Rayed again.

These people's instinctive idiocy is going to get us killed. In the meantime, TSA incompetence entertainment:

It'd be more funny if it was less true.

References:
* New TSA Screening: Empty Out All Your Electronics [Consumerist]
* Reporters Expose Security Lapses By Smuggling Bomb On Plane, Blowing It Up [The Onion]

Previously:
* Q: Could Airport Security Suck Worse?
* HuffPo Blogger: Replace TSA With Blackwater Ops
* LAX TSA Misses 75% Of Fake Bombs, Lets People With Bad Boarding Passes On Airplanes

It's so nice to see two people who are perfect for each other get together. The Palestinians, very famously, heart Bin Laden for 9/11...

... and now he's officially letting the world know that he hearts them back:

The September 11 terror attacks in the US were carried out as revenge for treatment of the Palestinians and actions in Lebanon, al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden said in excerpts of a new audiotape aired Thursday on Al-Jazeera television. He also called on the Europeans to stop helping the United States in the war in Afghanistan, saying America is "ebbing."... "The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance's aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that," he said.

This is supposed to be his fourth message this year. Doesn't this guy have a mafia-style international terrorist organization to run? Can we get him a hobby or something?

By the by, how awesome is it that - in the eyes of the Bush Administration - the Palestinians have gone from "those people who were dancing on 9/11" to "very, very ready for a state."

References:
* Palestinians celebrating the fall of the twin towers on 911 [Yank507 / YouTube]
* '9\11 revenge for Palestinians, Lebanon' [JPost]

Previously:
* Naughty, Naughty - Three Palestinian Government Soldiers Captured Trying To Attack IDF
* High Ranking Member of Moderate Fatah Party Wishes Every Day Was 9/11 (Bonus Outrage: US Trained Him!)
* Wherein We Imagine Palestinian Negotiations

It's hard to find a government agency that exceeds the State Department's unique combination of self-importance, wrongheadedness, and incompetence. And yet somehow TSA manages again and again to impress us on that score. So the next time you're going through one of our oh-so-secure airports, slip this into your luggage (full pic behind the link):

The incompetence of these people is just astounding.

References:
* LAX TSA Misses 75% Of Fake Bombs, Lets People With Bad Boarding Passes On Airplanes [MR]
* HuffPo Blogger: Replace TSA With Blackwater Ops [MR]
* A handy guide for luggage inspectors [Upgrade]

Previously:
* Well then...
* Airport Security in This Country is a Bad Joke
* Northwest Airlines Caves To CAIR Boycott Threat And Apologizes, MR Caves To Our Worst Instincts And Publishes Conspiracy Theory Bait

The picture really does speak a thousand words. Here are a few more:

Scores of Fatah policemen who used to serve in the Palestinian Authority security forces in the Gaza Strip have now joined the al-Qaida-affiliated group calling itself the Army of Islam, sources in the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry told The Jerusalem Post Thursday... According to the sources Hamas's Interior Ministry, dozens of Fatah-affiliated policemen who recently lost their jobs have joined the al-Qaida-linked group. The Army of Islam is headed by Abu Muhammad al-Ansari, who is also known as Mumtaz Dughmush. Ansari is a former PA Preventive Security Service officer in the Gaza Strip. He belongs to the Dughmush clan, whose members have kidnapped several foreign nationals, including BBC reporter Alan Johnston, and bombed Internet cafes, hair salons and restaurants. The Army of Islam, which is described by some Palestinian security officials as al-Qaida's branch in Palestine, was one of three groups that participated in the kidnapping of IDF soldier Gilad Schalit in June 2006. The other two groups were Hamas and the Popular Resistance Committees...

A top Hamas official in Gaza City described Ansari as a "deranged and illiterate" man who was obsessed with [Jordanian arch-terrorist] Abu Musab Zarqawi, the slain leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "This man can't even read or write," he said. "But he's dangerous." The official confirmed that the Army of Islam had recruited scores of Fatah policemen. He said documents seized by Hamas showed that Ansari and his men were on the payroll of one of the PA security forces and that they had been receiving monthly payments of $27,000.

So we were only half-right a couple days ago about how paying Fatah police officers in Gaza helps terrorists by injecting hard currency into the Gaza economy. We didn't mention that it also helps terrorists by going directly to terrorists. Our bad. In fairness to us we've consistently said that US's insane "if it fails do it again with more enthusiasm" security assistance helps terrorists both because Fatah gives the weapons to terrorists and because they defect outright.

It'd be nice if this was just anti-Fatah Hamas propaganda, but that doesn't seem right. AQ's presence in the Strip has been of Abbas's earliest and most brutal accusations against Hamas. Hamas has consistently denied that AQ is entrenched because their excuse for the takeover was that they were restoring law and order. To the extent that AQ is in the Strip - which they are, which is why this story is believable - they openly work with Hamas. That means that Hamas - the most powerful Palestinian Sunni Islamist organization - would be admitting that the world's most notorious Sunni Islamist organization just got infilitrated by Hamas's Palestinian opponents. It would be a staggering admission of weakness - not the stuff good propaganda is made of.

Here's the other article about how Israel and the US are empowering Fatah policemen in the West Bank ahead of Annapolis. Because what could go wrong with empowering Fatah policemen?

References:
* Fatah policemen in the Gaza Strip 'defect to al-Qaida' [JPost]
* EU Demands That Israel Provide Fuel, Resources To Genocidal Lunatics Trying To Wipe Out Israel (Plus: Israel Pours More Money, Resources Into Gaza) [MR]
* US Unviels $410 Million's Worth Of Assistance That Will Shortly Be Siezed By Hamas [MR]
* US Government To Give Palestinian Terrorists Cutting-Edge Weapons [MR]
* Hamas: AQ Not In Gaza. Abbas, AQ Kidnapping Victim Alan Johnston: Yes They Are [MR]
* AQ Really In The Gaza Strip - No, Seriously [MR]
* 300 PA policemen to deploy in Nablus [JPost]

Previously:
* Hamas Has 200 Tons Of Explosives That The US Gave To Fatah (Plus: Egypt Says It's Israel's Fault) [MR]
* Hamas Has Smuggled 112 Tons Of Explosives Into Gaza, Preparing Bunker System For All Out War (Plus: Israel Suspends Decision To Cut Fuel On Humanitarian Grounds)
* Hamas Blocks Israeli Food Shipments, Intentionally Starves Gaza Civilians To Create A Humanitarian Disaster - Again!

What the hell? Are these people Batman villains? They've holding their own "well if you're not going to invite us we'll go to our own sandbox" conference?

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki met in Damascus Monday with Palestinian officials, including some from the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups, a week before a meeting in Syria meant to counter a U.S.-hosted Mideast conference in the fall. Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, said he and Mottaki discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip and the U.S.-sponsored conference which Washington hopes will relaunch negotiations on creating a Palestinian state. After the meeting between Mottaki and Hamas officials, members of other Palestinian factions, including the leader of Islamic Jihad in Palestine Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, met the Iranian foreign minister, according to a member of the Iranian delegation. The Iranian delegate spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to release the information.

But remember what liberal sophisticates say: Sunni and Shiite Muslims are different sects.

References:
* Iranian foreign minister meets Hamas officials in Syrian capital [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* Assad Was Planning To Use Nukes Against Israel (Plus: The Totally Awesome IAF Commando Operation That Slowed Him Down)
* Mass Graves Created By Syria Found in Lebanon, Israeli Arabs Don't Care
* Syria Modernizing Its Airforce With Russian Help - War With Israel On The Horizon

We're beginning to think that this guy isn't interested in flowers and candy:

Al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden called for a holy war against a proposed peacekeeping force in Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur... Bin Laden called on those living in the areas surrounding Darfur, particularly the Arabian peninsula, to drive out any foreign forces in the region. "It is the duty of the people of Islam in the Sudan and its environs, especially the Arabian Peninsula, to perform jihad against the Crusader invaders and wage armed rebellion to remove those who let them in," he said... al-Zawhiri, made a similar call for jihad in Darfur in a Sept. 20 video message.

And here we thought that jihad meant peaceful self-overcoming. We could have sworn that we heard that somewhere.

Also: anyone remember that halcyon time, so many years ago, when calling for violence against an international peacekeeping force designed to mitigate an ongoing genocide would have earned you active enmity from the left? Not any more - now there's Israel to be constantly condemned, and that leaves no time to condemn genocide or the people who support it. It's either that or you really believe Jimmy Carter when he says that the only reason he lets his focus on Israel trade off with his focus on Darfur is because Darfur's not a genocide.

References:
* Bin Laden calls for jihad against Darfur peacekeepers [JPost]
* UN Anti-Semitism Converges With Impotence On Darfur [MR]
* Jimmy Carter: The Only Reason It Seems Like I Ignore Darfur And Obsess About Israel Is Because Darfur Isn't A Genocide [MR]

Previously:
* Global Media Suddenly All Over This Darfur Thing - Turns Out, It's Israel's Fault
* Boston Globe Notices UN Is Not Entirely Fair To Israel (Plus: Lebanese Muslims Pissed That Even Israel Is More Humane Than Syria) [Video]
* SF Chron: 1948 Was "Ethnic Cleansing", 1967 War Was Israel's Fault

We've begun to notice a strong correlation between "posts about the peace process" and "posts that nobody bothers to click on." We attribute this ennui to confusion-driven disgust with all things State Department and Olmert, and dutifully promise to supplement it with relatively more familiar videos of Islamic radicals brainwashing kids to go kill other kids. In other news, we're beginning to suspect that the material we work with is not the kind that creates a jovial, enthusiastic reader base.

* Gaza: Hamas blames Fatah for bombings that killed Hamas members - Yet more flirting with civil war, yet more evidence that they will never build up the energy to actually have one

* PA blasts Israel for riot in Ketziot Prison, which leaves dozens hurt - Palestinian prisoners rioted, the oh-so-moderate Palestinian PM Salam Fayad called them "heroes," and then the Palestinians blamed Israel because people got hurt in the rioting. Seriously.

* If only.

* And now you understand why Israel doesn't have 4-way stop signs. The terrorists have been going about this all wrong. Instead of trying to terrorize Israelis to stay in their homes, they should be throwing street festivals.

* We're shocked that this didn't happen sooner. Better late than never though. When the right strategized about getting their own netroots in the aftermath of 2006, they didn't mean importing actual netroots cretins and having them register as Republicans. The sooner Ron Paul and his merry band of "AIPAC controls the US, man" hippies is drummed out of the Republican Party, the sooner they can start poaching Truthers and de facto pro-jihadists from Hillary.

* Bin Laden calls on Iraqi insurgents to unite in a new audiotape - cf. Hot Air for background, analysis.

* Bush asks Congress for $106 million for North Korean aid - NK promises that only $20-$30 mil - maximum - will go toward developing Syrian nukes.

Maybe there's some overlap between these numbers, but the timeline means that more than a few are new attempts:

President Shimon Peres expressed regret on Thursday that innocent Palestinians were being subjected to any form of maltreatment by Israel, but he added that over the past three weeks, six potential suicide bombers had been apprehended as they tried to enter Israel with explosives... Peres outlined his vision of the proposal for an industrial zone peace village that is supported by the Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian leadership and said the Japanese were giving $100 million and the Germans $30m. toward the project.

Give them a state. Now.

References:
* Israeli Security Foils 7 Suicide Bombings From Fatah-Controlled West Bank [MR]
* Peres: 6 would-be bombers caught in past 3 weeks [JPost]

Previously:
* Giving Land To Fatah Is Giving Land To Hamas - Fatah Still Losing In Gaza Edition (Plus: Giving Weapons To Fatah Is Giving Weapons To Hamas Too)
* Terrorism Figures Published
* Celebrity Concerts For Israeli-Palestinian Peace Canceled Because Of Terrorism Threats

Obviously, negotiating away Israeli security to Abbas in the process of subverting Israel's democratic institutions is exactly what Olmert should be doing right now:

The security forces thwarted seven suicide bombings in Israel in the last month-and-a-half, Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told the cabinet Sunday. Diskin said that the ongoing efforts of the IDF, the Shin Bet and the police were behind the apparent calm in the country recently. Diskin told the ministers that an IDF operation in the Beit Ilma village near Nablus prevented a large suicide bombing set to be carried out in Tel Aviv during the holidays. However, he added that the Shin Bet was concerned about the fact that the explosive belt was passed through several checkpoints undetected.

Now maybe Abbas has control over the West Bank, in which case he's responsible for the dispatching of suicide bombers. That'd be convenient for those of us on the center-right who think that the peace process is a recipe for disaster, but it's almost certainly not the case. It's far more likely that Abbas - despite endless American security assistance and the support of all the world's powers - is just too weak to determine what happens even in his own territory. At best he'll be able to hold on against Hamas a year or two after getting all his land, money, and weapons from Israel - and then Hamas will take it from him.

References:
* Olmert: Joint declaration with PA won’t require Knesset's approval [YNet]
* Shin Bet: 7 suicide bombings foiled during holidays [YNet]
* US To Bring Abject Failure Of Security Assistance To West Bank, Renew Pressure On Israel. What Could Go Wrong? [MR]
* Giving Land To Fatah Is Giving Land To Hamas - Fatah Still Losing In Gaza Edition (Plus: Giving Weapons To Fatah Is Giving Weapons To Hamas Too) [MR]

Previously:
* Mere Rhetoric: Palestinians Hold Funeral For Peace Process [Video]
* Giving Land To Fatah Is Giving Land To Hamas - Ramp Up To November Edition
* Thursday Link Dump - Peace Process Nonsense, Syria Nonsense, Republican Primary Nonsense (Plus: Good News - Things Just Fine With Iran)

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

Interesting in that "of course it matters how particular individuals in particular situations grew up" kind of way. The soft bigotry of multiculturalism is really great, right up until you need a particular historical and cultural background to be good at something:

Does culture play a role in aviation safety? Interesting question, particularly as American domestic airlines at the end of this week will--barring a last-minute disaster--achieve a 65-percent improvement in their safety record over the last ten years while foreign carriers better their safety records at a substantially slower rate... The opposite of Qantas cockpit socialization would be those products of strict and authoritarian societies, the Japanese and the Koreans. And yes, there have been several horrific crashes on Japanese and Korean carriers where it was made apparent that a copilot would literally rather die than wrest control from his captain... it's impossible not to be aware of the fact that some pilots for African airlines had never seen a piece of machinery in their lives before presenting themselves for flight training.

Though the article doesn't mention it, we imagine that there's such a thing as too much dissension and independent thinking in a cockpit. Now that we think about it, we're baffled at how El Al ever manages to land planes at all.

References:
* Does It Matter Where the Captain Grew Up? You Bet from 'The Perrin Post' by Conde Nast Traveler magazine. [Perrin Post]

Previously:
* Israeli Ambassador Displeased With Disgusting Celebration of Baby Killing, Expresses Displeasure Reasonably
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Joyful Israeli Girls A Stark Contrast To Girls In Arab And Muslim World
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - Either You Believe 'The Pope Made Them Attack Churches' Or You Know History

It's come to this:

Miliband also underlined the need for an urgent solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict to remove an "excuse" for al-Qaeda to foment unrest in Iraq and elsewhere. "Al-Qaeda are using the suffering of the Palestinians as an excuse for violence," he said in a keynote address to the ruling Labor Party's annual conference. "We need to remove the excuse. We need urgent progress to address Israeli security and Palestinian rights through the only solution, a two-state solution in the Middle East," he added

"We know that AQ is just using media-supercharged images of Palestinian suffering as one of many, many pretexts for their jihad against the West, but we need urgent progress against this particular excuse anyway." It's almost like everyone has already decided - for reasons that we're not allowed to speculate about - that Israel has to make concessions to the Palestinians. It's almost like they're just looking for thin pretexts to justify those decisions.

After the jump, something Miliband said that's even dumber.

Hey, just in case anybody is keeping track at home - yes, Palestinian terrorists are still trying to commit mass atrocities:

The soldiers of every other country on the planet would have shot the boy dead where he stood rather than risking their own lives. Every other country on the planet. The French? You think the French would risk their precious little hides just to prevent a teenage boy from killing himself? Let alone soldiers from the vast majority of the Arab world, who last we checked were strafing Palestinian refugee camps with helicopters to the total silence of the rest of the world. As to who cares more about the lives of Palestinian kids:

That incident was reported across the planet, by the by, as an implicitly vicious attack on Palestinian children. The part about how Hamas had assigned them to pick up rocket launchers so that they could be reused to attack Israeli schoolhouses and hospitals - that part got left out a bunch of times, mysteriously.

References:
* IDF troops foil suicide attack near Gaza border [JPost]
* Lebanese helicopter strafes militants [JPost]
* World Approves Of Israeli Defense Minister's Promise: We Will Kill 10 Terrorists For Every Soldier Killed, "Negotiations Are Out Of the Question" [Video] [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinian Tech Innovation: New And Better Suicide Belts
* Children Suicide Bombers
* AP Bias Alert Level: Obvious (Grandma Suicide Bomber Edition)

So of course Europeans are beginning to make noises about how the world simply has to appease Hamas and flood the Gaza Strip with money and resources. And of course a lot of those noises have to do with how AQ simply just can't be in the Gaza Strip and - if they are - they simply just can't have any ties to Hamas. And of course that's totally wrong:

A secular and democratic Palestinian state is just around the corner. All they need is a little tender loving care. Also: money and weapons.

References:
* Middle Israel: Europe's Islamic dissonance [JPost]
* "The Army of the Nation" - Another Al-Qaeda Affiliate in the Gaza Strip [JCPA]

Previously:
* AQ Complains That Hamas Is Not Insane Enough
* NBC Beirut Chief: AQ Fighters Making "Alamo-like last stand"
* Hamas: AQ Not In Gaza. Abbas, AQ Kidnapping Victim Alan Johnston: Yes They Are

We're not going to be formally back to blogging until late this weekend or Monday, but this just came into our inbox. We have no idea how accurate it is, but Allen and David are not among the more over-excitable bloggers in the world and so we figure we should pass it on:

Nothing on the national news yet as far as we can see, but we assume that One Jerusalem will be blogging updates - and that if it's on local NY news then the rest of the blogosphere will have it in a few minutes as well. Or at least, it will be on the right side of the blogosphere while the left side questions the timing and declares that there can't possibly be a threat (hopefully, at least as far as the latter point goes, they're right). There's nothing much we can contribute to this since we're limited to national stations, so you should head over there for updates.

UPDATE: Via Hot Air, the link to local New York news - "an unverified radiological threat was made against New York City Friday". One Jerusalem has also updated to say that Bloomberg's keeping the threat at Orange for now, so hopefully nothing will come of this...

References:
* New York Dirty Bomb? [One Jerusalem]

Previously:
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Mark Steyn
* One Jerusalem Conference Call - Former House Majority Leader Tom Delay
* One Jerusalem Conference Call: Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

But hey, at least Hamas apologetics have a colorable excuse to sneer at all of the unsophisticated warmongers who insist that maybe cozying up to genocidal terrorists is not just wrong but also counterproductive:

There's a comment in here about how the Palestinians have some of the dumbest terrorists on the planet. As if international forces have ever seriously interfered with armies or terrorists attacking Israel. UN and EU forces appear to be more of the "get out of the way so fast Israel is caught flatfooted" and "let supplies go missing only to turn out in attacks on Israel" schools of thought. The problem with focusing on the incompetence of Palestinian terrorists is that it gets in the way of tracking how much they lie, courtesy Anne:

Now how do you think that a sentence like "... but international observers pointed to the Johnston kidnapping as evidence of AQ's increasing role in Gaza" managed to avoid making it into the AP report? Why, to make way for this nonsense of course:

Yeah, tons of speculation. Alan Johnston had months and months to speculate about it, in fact.

References:
* UNIFIL Involvement in 2000 Kidnapping Not News. Involvement of UNIFIL Soldier Who Thought of Lebanon as "Second Homeland", However, Is.
* Al-Qaeda veteran led Johnston kidnap gang [AP]
* [BtB]

Previously:
* What's All This Talk About A "Hamas Coup"? Hamas Was Democratically Elected To Control the PA, Remember?
* At This Point, Journalists Are Literally Just Going Through The Motions Of Covering Up Their Bias
* European Media Bias - Really?

This was posted as a pro-Jihadi video on YouTube. That's how batshit crazy these people are:

Is that little girl holding a doll? We think she is. Hamas - of course - is famous for their excellent treatment of women of all ages.

This is as good a place as any to post that Tragic Death Of Palestinian Terrorist Mickey video that everyone on the planet has already gotten to:

Their state is going to work out super.

References:
* Anti-Zionist Forces of Hamas [Pennys1 / YouTube]
* Hamas Publicly Executing Little Girls, Teen Girls, and Grandmothers [MR]
* Palestinian Mouse Martyred! [lookhearsee / YouTube]

Previously:
* More Hamas Mickey Mouse Fun - Video And Comments From Moderate Democrats Added [Video]
* Head Of Palestinian Children's Organization: "We Teach Children Martyrdom" [Video]
* Like Hezbollah, Hamas Uses Children As Human Shields

This is a set of lectures making the rounds among Islamists on YouTube and beyond. We got it into our RSS reader from over a dozen feeds and keywords. This guy is just fantastic - the way he alternates between quite certitude and vicious anti-Semitism is just sublime. You really should listen to how he brags about the Islamist infiltration of global media networks. It sounds... familiar. You don't really have to listen to the video - we include it for the masochistic fact-checkers among you. Although if you haven't had your dose of crazy today, here's ten minutes of it:

"There shall come after that military kingdoms". The Religious of Peace, ladies and gentlemen. Fortunately, "there's something coming after that". Unfortunately, it sounds a lot like "nuking Israel".

Bonus listening exercise: did you catch the part where he was like "until now, all the good Islamic revivals have been in Libya and Sudan?" Awesome.

References:
* The Future Of Our Religion by Dr Tariq Swaidan (12 of 13) [jubair22 / YouTube]

Previously:
* Pakistan Reluctant to Accept Israeli Disaster Aid, Just Like US State Department
* That Famed British Charm
* Amir Abdel Malik Back On The UC Irvine Campus

We certainly had no idea that this happened until we went through this week's LAFD blog posts:

We couldn't figure out what was going on, since as near as we can tell South Loring is a quite pricey residential area. So presumably the target would have been a single person or family - not exactly the high body count MO of modern terrorists. Local news to the rescue: some insane animal liberation lunatics firebombed a researcher's BMW. So that happened, and good times were apparently had by all.

But we're still kind of confused about why there was a terrorism incident in LA this weekend that didn't get much play.

References:
* Statement Issued Regarding Domestic Terrorism Incident in Los Angeles [LAFD Blog]
* FBI Probes Attempted Attack On UCLA Researcher [CBS2]

Previously:
* Some Real Emergency Response In Los Angeles
* Public Security In Los Angeles Sucks Disgracefully
* Black Death Breaks Out In Los Angeles

Israeli and Jewish organizations are devoting enormous resources to countering the myriad British boycotts - from journalists and doctors and trade unions and academics - that have recently been leveled against the Jewish state. You know who doesn't have to worry about British boycotts? The Palestinians who strap suicide belts to British hostages and force them to plead for their lives in front of cameras:

It's almost like there's a double standard at work here. Or - even more unbelievably - that British animus towards Israel is being driven by something other than level-headed analysis regarding the genuine scope of imagined Israeli human rights violations.

While we're on the topic of hypocrisy, make sure you check out the photogallery of Hamas insanity that Anne has up at Boker Tov, Boulder. Safe for work and somewhat less nauseating than some of the other images that have come out of that train wreck - more "they're totally batshit crazy" than "that is a stomach turning and inhuman atrocity".

References:
* British Jewry in crisis [JPost]
* Suspiciously Inconsistent British Boycott Of the Day - Journalists Who Accuse Israel Of Endangering Reporters [MR]
* More Hypocrisy From Anti-Israel Medical Boycott Advocates [MR]
* UK Trade Union Demands Anti-Israel Boycott [MR]
* Israeli Public Diplomacy Expert : British Boycott Is Vicious Anti-Semitism [MR]
* Welcome Arab Quotes ... of the Day [BtB]

Previously:
* Britain Joins Most Of Europe, Asia In Embracing Hamas
* Bibi: "This Is Not One Of Britain's Finest Hours" [Video]
* We're Going To Miss Westminster Abbey - Sharia Courts Established In Britain

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Here's a wrinkle in the Amnesty debate that could stand a little more discussion: one of the fastest growing groups of Muslim converts in the US are poor immigrants from south of the border. We have a Muslim friend who is - well, not exactly moderate. He regularly talks about how his mosque does wildly successful missionary work in the poor Mexican communities in LA (he also claims that the anti-Semitism in those communities is through the roof, for what it's worth). Looks like those trends are not limited to LA:

Best line: "He points to Spain's historical ties with Islam". Which is kind of like talking about the recent ties that Eastern Europe has to Russia.

References:
* VOA News 200000 US-Hispanics converted to ISLAM [hamzat2006 / YouTube]

Previously:
* Russia Being Demographically Overwhelmed
* The Nation: So What If Europe Demographically Collapses? Stop Being Such A Nativist!
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Mark Steyn

Here's the thing about fences - they never work because you can just go over them. Well, you can go over them as long as you have magic powers that help you fly. Otherwise, you have to go through them. Then you get caught and die:

Yeah, it seems like it was a huge surprise to the IDF. They were so surprised that they prevented the infiltration and killed one of the terrorists, sustaining absolutely losses.

Update (08:35 PST) - We didn't see this little tid-bit in the JPost report, but Ha'aretz has this as a joint IJ-Fatah operation. Let's give Abbas more weapons, shall we?

References:
* Islamic Jihad gunman killed after infiltration attempt [JPost]

Previously:
* The Fence Is Mostly Chain-Link
* Did The NYT Just Admit That The Defensive Fence Works?
* Israel Might Help Russia Build Security Fence - Most. Ironic. Aid. Ever.

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

Watch CAIR Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar address the Pew results. Watch MSNBC's Amy Robach almost totally not see how she's being taken for a ride. The intellectual dishonesty on CAIR's part was probably unintentional - legally trained professional spokespeople are often sloppy with their language:

This 1 percent number is being parroted in other places. Ace has an intimidatingly comprehensive catalog of media lying with statistics, but we want to look specifically at this 1 percent argument that's getting thrown around. Here's what Iftikhar said:

Now listen to Robach's original lead-in:

She means 26 percent, but we'll let it slide. She's genuinely surprised when he quotes the 1 percent figure back at her, because she obviously has no idea where it's coming from. Her guess, for what it's worth, is only half right (and not the half that matters). Someone should have prepped her on the numbers, just on the slim possibility that CAIR would try to be intellectually dishonest. As it turns out, the trick here is pretty transparent. A little tip for public relations flaks: if you're trying to mislead people while maintaining plausible deniability, it's rhetorically inadvisable to almost exactly repeat a question, with only your critical change dangling in the wind. For example, if you're on the air and you need to fudge a statistic, you shouldn't repeat most the interviewer's exact phrase - "... that suicide bombings are justifiable" - while obviously inserting your own caveat - "... that suicide bombings would be often justified". It's just poor form.

Robach is talking about the percent of American Muslims who think that suicide bombings against civilians are "ever" justified. That's obvious to anyone who's read the report, but it's also pretty clear to anyone who's trying to understand the plain meaning of her question. The addition of the word "often" by apologists is not an accident. Here are the relevant tables (full Pew report here [PDF]):

The 1 percent figure comes from information outside the table, where the study authors specify that the breakdown for top table's 8 percent "Often/Sometimes" is 1 percent "Often" and 7 percent "Sometimes". So already you've got 8 percent of all Muslim Americans. The "Rarely" column adds another 5 percent. The total is 13 percent, which is the number that gets bundled into the "Ever" column of the second table.

So to be absolutely precise: the total percent of all American Muslims who think that intentional suicide bombings targeted at civilians are at least occasionally justified in defense of Islam is 13 percent. That's more than 1 in 10 - not exactly the comforting "percent of people who think the White House is controlled by Martians" line that CAIR is running.

That's just the rank intellectual dishonesty part of their defense. It's before we even get to what might be an honest debate - whether we should be looking at total respondents or the 18-30 year old bracket. That's on the second table, where the 26 percent comes from - this generation of Muslim-Americans who think that suicide bombings are justifiable. We think there are good arguments for emphasizing this number more than the total 13 percent number. But no one can have that debate because in the meantime apologists won't stop pushing this 1 percent number.

The 1 percent number is relevant only if you think anyone would be comforted by knowing that 13 percent of American Muslims only occasionally think that mass slaughter of civilians in defense of Islam is justifiable, but 1 percent want it to happen often. Since we don't think that anybody can really believe that that's what this debate is about, we're going to go with the "they're being intellectually dishonest" angle. But we're open to arguments about why they might just be egregiously stupid.

References:
* CAIR Rep Reacts to Pew Poll of American Muslims [CAIRtv / YouTube]
* U.S. Muslims reject extremism: Say happy with their lives [Medill Reports]
* Media Spins/Spikes Disturbing Finding That Quarter of American Muslim Young Men Support Terrorism [Ace]
* Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, May 22, 2007

Previously:
* Democrats Renew Effort To Undermine Electronic Surveillance
* Northwest Airlines Caves To CAIR Boycott Threat And Apologizes, MR Caves To Our Worst Instincts And Publishes Conspiracy Theory Bait
* CAIR Protest In So Cal

Here's the thing - when this little girl screams at the top of her lungs about beating the drums of jihad, do you think she's talking about jihad like peaceful self-overcoming jihad? Because many of our friends on the left insist that that's what she's talking out, so we're a little confused. Make sure you get to the part where she actually acts out how the Zionists have made the world's Arabs and Muslims blind and deaf. It's precious in that elementary school play kind of way:

We bet that she has a beautiful singing voice. We'd be worried about her voice - those rapturous screams at the end seemed kind of straining - but in a year or two she'll probably be married off. Then her vocal cords will get decades and decades of rest from having to do things like "vocalize a personal opinion" or "talk in public."

Oh, and before we forget: how typical or Arab and Muslim media.

References:
* Lebanese Girl: 'Jerusalem Awaits, Beat the Drums of Jihad' [MEMRIVideo / YouTube]
* Kids Being Brainwashed To Hate Jews In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Egypt, Iran, Etc Etc [Videos] [MR]

Previously:
* Fox Picks Up the I Want To Be A Sucide Bomber Like Mommy Video [Videos]
* List of Things That Would Cause Us to Have More Sympathy for Lebanon's Prime Minister
* More Hamas Mickey Mouse Fun - Video And Comments From Moderate Democrats Added [Video]

Anderson Cooper brings his perennially tear-brimmed baby blue eyes to bear on the shocking - shocking - news that many young Muslims in the United States support suicide bombing:

This is as opposed to the LA Times, which is dealing with this shocking - shocking - news by attacking the messenger. It's not even a good ad hominem - it's like they're not even trying any more.

References:
* 1/4 young American muslims support sucide bombing [YouTube]
* LA Times: LGF is 'Hoppin' Mad' [LGF]

Previously:
* Hitchens Discusses Atheism, But Is Not Interested In Al Sharpton [Videos]
* Cindy Sheehan: Probably Still an Anti-Semite
* Memo To Diplomatic Sophisticates: Ahmadinejad Did Not Get The Part Where You Meeting With Him and Being Nice To Him Was A 'Criticism'

Doug Farah describes the open and explicit emphasis that jihadists are placing on the recreation of the caliphate:

The sophisticated justification for appeasement goes something like this: going softline on jihad-sponsoring Muslim states and hardline on Israel won't placate the lunatics, but it will cut off their critical public support. But it seems like that support is for their goal of establishing a caliphate and not for resisting the US (in Hannibal Lector's immortal sneer, that is incidental). So if Israel is overrun by Islamic lunatics, it seems like popular belief in the ability of radicals to take over Western land and establish sharia would increase rather than decrease. Although maybe there are deaf, dumb, and blind Muslims in the Middle East who would be unaffected by the destruction of Israel. Good point: we hadn't considered that.

References:
* Once Again, the Caliphate [Douglas Farah]

Previously:
* John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish
* Public Diplomacy Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry
* Reuters Gives Advice: Want To Dampen Muslim Extremism? Support People Who Want To Commit Genocide.

AFP has a new story about Suicide Bomber Mickey, who is now telling kids to wage jihad on Israel and Spain. Fair enough. But we've been reading this AFP lede for the last five minutes, and it's kind of making our brain hurt:

"Hamas-run television defied... the Palestinian government" which is Hamas! Hamas is apparently defying itself. Because obviously the Legitimately Elected Government of the Palestinian People (tm) is a peace-loving one, so to the extent that it's not, it is. Ah, journalism.

References:
* Defiant Hamas TV airs resistance Mickey again [AFP]

Previously:
* NYT, LAT: Hamas Popularity is Israel's Fault
* Deal Reached On Hamas-Fatah Unity Government. World To Rejoice.
* Hamas Celebrates Unity Government, Diplomatic Thaw With Brazen Terrorism Against Israelis

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

A while back, one of our lefty friends told us that, of all the rightwing-ish language on MR, the phrase "fired at Israeli schools and hospitals" rings in a particularly artificial way. Artificial or not, it's true:

Try to wrap your mind around what's going on in Sderot. This is a town - filled with civilians - that is constantly getting bombed from the air. It's like being an actual hot war that has lasted a decade, where bombs are getting dropped on houses - and yes, on schools and hospitals. There's not a country on the planet that would permit this to go on if it was within their power to stop it. But Israel is expected to take it and roll because Palestinian civilians might hurt if Israel tries to root out the terrorists (or, if they're Hamas members, war criminals) that they allow to live in their midst.

But the Sderot residents that are literally getting bombed? That's the cost of living in Israel, apparently.

References:
* Jihad claims rocket that strikes Sderot home [Ha'aretz]

Previously:
* Fatah Group Declares "Summer Storm" Campaign, Calls On Palestinians To Burn Israeli Cities
* LA Times Can Give You Anti-Israel Cycle-Of-Violence Framing. Full And Accurate Reporting, However, Is Not Their Forte.
* Breaking: Palestinian Terrorists Still Trying to Murder Israelis

* Gateway Pundit has an afternoon in a Gaza arms bazaar. Why not? It's not like a suicide belt ever explodes while your son is playing with it. You know that sarcastic expression that people use about how things are "fun for the whole family" and how people should "bring the kids"? Less funny when you see it happening. This kind of helps to explain how the Palestinians managed to continue their 21 week streak of killing more Palestinians than the IDF.

* Here's a clip of a video game that just got posted on YouTube by a guy who supports the Islamic war against Jews. He thinks this is a good thing:

* In Iraq, they packed a girls' school with explosives. They strapped the explosives to propane tanks and waited for the school to open and for of little girls to start attending. US troops uncovered the plot and prevented an almost unimaginable atrocity.

References:
* An Afternoon at the Gaza Arm's Bazaar [Gateway Pundit]
* Suicide Belt Explodes While Bomber's Son is Playing With It [MR]
* PalArabs extend winning streak to 21 [Elder]
* US troops discover bombs built into Iraq girls school [Hot Air]

Previously:
* Video: Vicious Iranian Cartoons, Telling Kids To Become Suicide Bombers Edition
* Iranian Cartoons Are Anti-Semitic and Racist (And Something Else Too... Kinda) [Video]
* It's a Cycle of Cartoons

What does this even mean:

"Superman" has to be some sort of mistranslation. We've only ever seen it as a serious translation for ubermensch, and we seriously doubt that AQ terrorists have taken to quoting Nietzsche. It'd certainly a positive development if they have, but we're not hopeful. Anyway, we doubt that the UN will get around to declaring Mohammad a global superman by next Thursday, although it would be awesome if they held a celebration and put up a giant cartoon of him in the background. So looks like it's time to get ready for the end. Party at our house. (via: Jihad Watch)

References:
* Bangladesh railway blasts signed 'al Qaeda' [CNN / Reuters]
* "If Hazrat (Prophet) Mohammad is not declared the superman of the world by May 10, all non-governmental organizations will be blown up" [Jihad Watch]

Previously:
* LA Times Watch
* Who's Afraid of Israeli-Pakistani Relations?
* Uranium Stolen In India

Last March AQ was upset about the prospect of Hamas not trying to wipe out Israel for a month or two. It looks like the recent barrage of rockets aimed at Israeli hospitals and schoolhouses have convinced them that Hamas is still fighting the good fight. But apparently they want Hamas to try a little harder:

Which is, of course, exactly what Hamas intends to do. And their efforts to light up the entire Middle East will almost certainly end with a major confrontation in Gaza and many dead on both sides. There's only so long a modern democratic state can tolerate the low-level warfare that Hamas is inflicting on southern communities.

PS - the only way that anyone can argue that Israel and the US don't have a "common enemy" is if they don't think that AQ is an enemy of the US. Which, we understand, many of them don't. But it's good to clarify what the stakes are.

References:
* AQ Complains That Hamas Is Not Insane Enough [MR]
* Al-Qaeda video urges ‘bombs, fire’ on Israel [YNet]

Previously:
* Al Qaeda Says Israel is Next Target, Comments on Gender Roles
* 65% of Palestinians support Al Qaeda terrorism
* And the Wheels Come Off - (2) Gaza

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

He might not have associated with jihadists in life, but in death he's being claimed as one of them:

It's not as if you wouldn't expect enemies of America to celebrate when something bad happens to America. But there's something a little different going on when enemies of America claim any other enemy as one of their own. This isn't a matter of alliances or enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend-ism. Take the worst things that critics say about Bush's "you're with us or against us" line. Even in those cases, Bush isn't saying "you're either one of us or one one of them". But for the jihadists, there can't be anything like common interests or goals. You're either one of them all the way, or you're the enemy.

References:
* "The South Korean Shaikh, Abu Mus’Ab Al-Virgini”

Previously:
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Pathological Islamism in Germany
* Palestinian Soccer Players to be Punished for Playing With Israelis
* Christians Attack Muslims, Muslims Threaten to Kill Jews II - This Is Really Getting Pathological

And now another twenty or thirty self-styled sophisticates, determined not only to be smarter but also morally superior to all those warmongering pro-Israel rednecks, have their excuse:

Very well done. We're impressed - this is a neat trick:

(1) The UN convinces Israel to stand down in 1973, accepting particular terms grounded in particular resolutions that have nothing to do with the Right of Return
(2) Then, after a few years have passed, the UN turns on Israel and fails to legally pass new binding resolutions that would demand more than Israel would ever have accepted. Textbook case of trying to move the goalposts.
(3) This suddenly becomes the apex of moral and diplomatic authority.

Typical.

References:
* Arab Peace Initiative

Previously:
* Reuters Misleads Readers About Hamas's Treaty Obligations, Misses Everything That's Important About Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking
* Wherein We Express Skepticism About Britain's Commitment To Not Recognizing Genocidal Lunatics
* Reuters Misleads Readers About Hamas's Treaty Obligations, Misses Everything That's Important About Israeli-Palestinian Peacemaking

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

This is to both sides. Security minded experts and viral marketing hippies.

Knock it off.

First there was that idiotic stunt in Boston. Hey kids, let's strap wires and batteries to bridges. Then let's get all snarky when middle-aged Boston police don't laugh heartily at the obvious allusion to late night Cartoon Network programming watched exclusively by geeks and stoners. Douchebags.

Then there where the the CD players strapped to the to the bottom of church pews. Some insufferable little brat, infused with the kind of disaffection and smugness that only our best liberal arts colleges can infuse, hid obscenity-spewing CD players in a New Mexico church on Ash Wednesday. Then other snarky "the highest form of patriotism is dissent" geeks rushed to mock the police who called in the bomb squad to blow up the CD players. Maybe the cops over-reacted - but then again, maybe these cute little "pranksters" shouldn't have hidden what could have been bombs in a church on a major holiday. Because that's the kind of thing that, you know, terrorists might do.

Bonus frustration: if these CD players had been hidden in a mosque and not a church, this story would have (a) been in the New York Times not just tech blogs and (b) been about a "hate crime", not about a "prank"

And now we've got security officials leaving visibly leaving fake bombs out in the middle of malls:

The idea is to get people to be more aware of potential bombs. Except what it actually does is get people to ignore really obvious bombs. Now run a little thought experiment: what would happen if those bombs had been real bombs? Umm... nothing, because people would have thought that it's an asinine public safety stunt.

So here's our modest proposal: don't leave things that could be mistaken for bombs in public. Don't strap things with wires and batteries to bridges. Don't use hidden electronic devices to show your displeasure with religions that liberals are allowed to hate (hint: not Islam). And don't leave things with wires and timers in the middle of malls. That way people will be really suspicious every time they see anything with wires, batteries, or timers - which, we remind you, will be a good thing.

References:
* Roads closed amid Boston bomb probe [Breitbart]
* When Your Only Tool Is A Bomb Squad, Everything Looks Like A Bomb [Techdirt]
* RMall: It's this obvious if you are alert [Scary Ideas]

Previously:
* Los Angeles Times Dishonest about Pentagon-Funded Report, Recommends Israel Disarm
* Jihadists Hiding Bombs Among Pets, Children
* One Jerusalem Conference Call: Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

We're renaming it the "Saudi Suicide Pact". Except it's not really a pact, since only one side has to commit suicide. Remember how the Saudi Foreign Minister talked about dropping the Right of Return from the Saudi Suicide Pact? The idea was to back Israel into a corner by getting it to agree in advance to promise consideration for the plan. Consideration just "in principle" of course - that's how it always works, right:

Israel's enemies say "if we do X, would you do Y"
Israel says, "sure, if you do Y we'd strongly consider X"
Israel's enemies then refuse to do Y, and then scream incoherently about how "Israel already promised to do X"

This has been the pattern of Israeli-Arab negotiations at least as far back as the early 1990s. It's been so overwhelmingly consistent that even ever-naive Israeli negotiators have caught on to the trick. When the Saudi Foreign Minister did his little thought experiment about dropping the Right of Return last week, Israel basically said "first you do it, then we'll talk about concessions".

Turns out that was a smart move on Israel's part, since the Arab League obviously never had any intention of changing their demand for Israel to commit suicide:

How stupid do the Saudis think the Israelis are? This stupid:

"Accept that you don't have a right to exist, and then we'll negotiate about whether you have a right to exist". Only Israel's enemies - emboldened by overwhelming international hatred for the Jewish State - would dare to make such an offer to a country that was repeatedly victorious over them on the battlefield.

References:
* Arab League refuses to change plan

Previously:
* Debate On Saudi Peace Plan I - Arab States Still Committed To The Slow Destruction Of Israel
* AQ Complains That Hamas Is Not Insane Enough
* The Saudi Peace Initiative: A Discrete Way to Destroy Israel, Based on an Ethical Lie

Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister has threatened that Israel will face war and destruction unless it accepts the Arabs' ultimatum:

Hey, you know what's missing from this British Telegraph report about the Saudi ultimatum? The little detail about how the plan requires that Israel accept the Palestinian Right of Return, and thereby allow itself to be invaded and destroyed by three million of the most radical and anti-Semitic lunatics on the planet. Wonder how that didn't make it into the final cut of the report.

Incidentally, if Israel threatened the Palestinians with war if they didn't accept Israeli terms, the United Nations would be sitting in emergency session right now to condemn the Jewish State. But a "moderate" Arab state that's issuing ultimatums about wars that it wasn't involved in and territory that it has nothing to do with? Nothing to see here folks.

References:
* Accept peace plan or face war, Israel told

Previously:
* Saudi Arabia to Build Apartheid Wall
* Debate On Saudi Peace Plan II - Iran Won't Even Accept Slow Extermination of Israel
* Israelis Are Victims Of Global Apartheid

The video has been getting passed around the blogosphere like a joint at a Dead concert (almost 100,000 views), but we haven't had it up yet. So here it is:

Fox picked it up a couple nights ago, so here's the video for that. The commentary is probably more important than the video itself, since the video isn't telling you anything that you don't already know. Look out for Bridget Gabriel's explanation about why the dialect of the video is so important. It's at about 1:20:

"We are watching the making of an Islamofascist army"

Feel free to refer this to any "both sides are equally responsible" bleeding heart friends. Not that it'll help.

References:
* Daughter of suicide terrorist sings to her mother
* Bred For Death
* Kids Being Brainwashed To Hate Jews In Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Gaza, Egypt, Iran, Etc Etc [Videos] [MR]

Previously:
* Dumbest Quote About International Diplomacy. Ever.
* Video: Disney Cartoon Shows Nazi Brainwashing Of Children
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Sheik Talks About the Horrors Of Female Masturbation

The problem with Iran's crude anti-Semitic cartoons is that they're too vague. Sure, you have the hook-nosed Jew being irredeemably evil, but what if kids don't understand that they're supposed to blow themselves up to exterminate this Jew?

Those Iranians, they think of everything:

About that first, original cartoon we posted: we had to move to moderated comments on YouTube. Every day for about a week, a new vicious anti-Semite would find the video and post a screed about how it was all true and it was speaking truth to power. These people are insane, and their hatred makes them genuinely dangerous. And they're growing in strength.

References:
* Iranian Animated Film for Children Promotes Suicide Bombings [YouTube]
* Video: Vicious Iranian Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionist Cartoon [MR]

Previously:
* Nasrallah Is More Honest About Iran Than The British Press
* We Continue To Be Frustrated and Baffled By The World's Reaction To Iran
* Washington Post: We Were Wrong. Please Bomb Iran and Syria ASAP. Thank You.

Let's not kid ourselves. Life in Gaza sucks. A large majority has chosen to embrace a death cult of viciously Jew hating terrorists, and in response Jews have decided that they don't want anything to do with them (how unreasonable, right?) The result is that Gaza is overrun with armed gangs and systemic poverty because - well - let's just say that the Palestinians aren't particularly good at the civil management side of their glorious Israel-destroying revolution. But people aren't going to wrap their minds around what's going on until journalists ditch their pathos soaked depictions of economic deprivation. We're looking at you, New York Review of Books:

One might wonder about the juxtaposition between "accelerating poverty" and fifty-plus well-equipped, trained doctors. It might have something to do with how the Palestinians are the largest per capita aid recipients on the planet:

So is it misleading to imply that the Palestinians's problems come from economic deprivation rather than chronic corruption, mismanagement, and misallocation of resources? Yes. Is that going to stop the swamp of self-righteous blather that passes for depictions of the "plight of the Palestinians"? Obviously not.

References:
* Palestinians: The Crisis in Medical Care
* Foreign Aid To Palestinians Has Increased By 10 Percent Since Hamas Election [MR]

Previously:
* US Cuts Aid to Palestinians - But Only Kind Of
* Not Content With Not Cutting Off Palestinian Aid, US Will Actually Increase Funding to Supporters of Terrorism
* Technical, Academic Description of EU Justifications for Palestinian Aid

"I don't believe them because they are kuffaar and lying is part of their religion... these are pathological liars... we want to do away with the man-made laws... we hate the kufr".

It's not that anyone's shocked that Muslims are advocating conquering Britain through violent jihad, one in which the unbelievers are killed. No one's shocked about the sexism, the homophobia, or the bigotry. But that these things are said openly in one of the bastions of Western tolerance - and that it's continuing without major public action rather than hand wringing - is devastating:

It was such a nice country too.

Previously: British Muslim Leaders Issue Manifesto Calling For "Resistance", Steyn Rolls Up Newspaper, Hits Europe on Nose, Says "No", So, Uh, Britain's Pretty Much Given Up

Early reports are that Israel is mobilizing the IDF for operations in Gaza:

For those of you confused by what "a course of action" means, it basically means that the IDF will do nothing:

It's tough to know whether Olmert is maintaining the ceasefire because he just doesn't want to escalate or because Israel can't go into the Gaza Strip while the Palestinians are "on the brink of civil war". Either way, nothing is going to change because of this suicide bombing.

Previously: Terrorists Building Tunnels, Storerooms For War, Palestinians Probably Going about "Democratic State" Thing All Wrong - Letting in Terrorists Instead of Voters (Opps!), Israel Can't Go After Terrorists, But Hamas Is Allowed To Call For Genocide

Here's a fun game for JBloggers to play. How many articles from major news outlets can you find that correctly link the Al Aqsa Brigades to this morning's suicide bombing but that fail to mention that they are members of President Abbas's Fatah party? We'll start everybody off, with Richard Boudreaux's report for the Los Angeles Times.

The goal is an article that totally fails to note that the "moderate" Palestinian party was involved in this morning's bombing. It's not as easy as it sounds, because you can't just exclude Fatah from the search terms (ie Google News: "eilat 'al aqsa' -fatah") - all of the articles also mention tensions between Hamas and Fatah, so you don't get anything. But we're sure that there are tons of other articles out there like this. Because really - why should anyone need that kind of information? It'll just obscure the main point, which as we all know is: it's all Israel's fault

Previously: LA Times Headline Technically True, Totally Misleading, LA Times: What About All the Good Things Islamists Do?, LA Times Pretty Much Just Making Things Up Now

Could there be a more disgusting:

We've always said that the Palestinians will never go to civil war because every time they get to the brink, they'll be reminded that it's the Jews that they really want to kill. And everyone kind of knows that that's what can really bring Palestinian society together. But it's disgusting to actually hear it being said out in the open - for terrorist groups that Europe fawns over to declare that Jewish lives are so meaningless that they can be destroyed just to remind Palestinians that they're all one big, happy, genocidal family.

Which of course won't stop the press from carrying Hamas's statement that this was in response to unnamed (but simply assumed) Zionist crimes:

Hamas thinks that Jews are filthy Occupiers that should be pushed into the Sea. But if Israel says "well, if you don't like us then we're not going to have anything to do with you" then Hamas... declares that they're going to push the Jews into the Sea. They're well-armed, genocidal, petulant children - and the world caters to them as something in between legitimate statesmen and lambs being led to slaughter.

Previously: Updates About That Other Group of Genocidal Lunatics Currently Shooting, Bombing Israelis, Like Hezbollah, Hamas Uses Children As Human Shields, Treating Genocidal Fanatics Like Statesmen Is A Bad Idea (When Did This Become Controversial?)

And no sooner do we make light of how the Palestinians apparently have too much free time on their hands if they can kill each other and try to kill Jewish schoolchildren, the worst happens:

First thought: When they're not busy killing each other, they kill Jews.

Second thought: What the hell is Fatah doing wasting resources on suicide bombings when they're supposedly about to go to war with Hamas?

Third, much worse, thought: This could easily become how Fatah and Hamas end up settling their differences.

What's the quickest way for a terrorist group to boost their standing on the Palestinian street? Kill more Jews than the other terrorist groups:

Fatah and Hamas have basically fought each other to a military standstill, and honestly they can only go on fighting for so long without needing the US and Europe to give them more money and weapons (through "security aid", natch). But suicide bombings are a ticket to credibility, and a sure way to turn the arms spigot back on - because obviously Abbas will need to give his troops more arms to "bolster himself against the extremists"... who are also, coincidentally, his troops. We've been skeptical about a civil war between Fatah and Hamas because we don't think they have the energy to kill each other without remembering that it's the Israelis that they really hate. But we could easily envision a proxy civil war where the competition is over who can have the most suicide bombings in a week.

And of course, there's the added benefit we were talking about this morning: as long as the Palestinians are on "the brink of civil war", Israel more or less has its hands tied. It can't really go after terrorists in Gaza or the West Bank, because then whatever happens for the next half a year will be blamed on them. It's the same old same old of the US and Europe counseling Israel to "show restraint" while the Palestinians try to get their act together. Once again, Israeli blood will have to be spilled while the Palestinians struggle with how central a role genocidal intentions should play in a future Palestinian state.

Previously: IDF Targets Palestinian Terrorists that Palestinian Authority Won’t Arrest, Email of the Day: Suicide Bombing Was Not Act of Revenge, AP Gives Israel Security Advice, Says Self-Defense is Bad

At the beginning of the month it was toys:

Now it's pets:

We're not going to go the PETA route and say that it's worse to kill animals than humans because animals are uninvolved in the human-engineered conflict. We'll pose a more modest question: what kind of animal targets children and pets for deliberate destruction? We're not talking rationally on a scale of "well this group deserves this much violence, while this group only deserves this much violence..." Just on a visceral, human level - who the hell hides bombs in pigeon cages and toys? Who the hell wants to murder children and pets? There are very, very deep instincts buried very, very deep in humans that scream against this. In a very clinical sense, you have to be very sick - beyond help - to coldly do something like this.

We're trying to figure out a way that we can blame Israel for what these barbarians do, but we just can't come up with anything. No worries, we're sure that the left side of the blogosphere will come up with some reason.

Previously: In Which Mere Rhetoric Sympathizes With Terrorists, Arab Actor Refuses to Play Jewish Character, Hey Gals, Check This Out - Pathological Islamism in Germany

In the midst of the Papal Jihad, a Nigerian Muslim accused his Christian tailor of blasphemy. Before the ensuring riots were over, sixteen churches had been burned to the ground in a mysteriously coordinated campaign:

Hey. If Christians in any country went on a riot of any size and burned any mosques, we suspect we'd still be seeing stories. In fact, we know we'd still be seeing stories.

Previously: Funny or Not Funny (Papal Jihad Edition), NYT Editors Condescend to Pope Benedict XVI, Complain That His Really Good Points Hurt People's Feelings, The Guardian, For One, Welcomes Our New Islamist Masters (Plus: Karen Anderson Our New Most Hateful Journalist. Today)

When is a citizen in a Muslim country not a citizen worth protecting? When they're a Jew:

Oh, and one more thing:

Just another reminder: when the UN holds multi-day conferences on how Arabs were "forced" to leave Israel, there actually were about 600,000 Jews who were forced to leave Arab lands. Their "right of return" seems to have been forgotten, probably because the asterisk next to that part of human rights says "except, obviously, for persecuted Jews in Arab and Muslim lands".

Previously: The Saudi Peace Initiative: A Discrete Way to Destroy Israel, Based on an Ethical Lie, Mark Steyn Mocks, Laments James Baker, LA Times: What About All the Good Things Islamists Do?

Mark this as story number two on Nancy Pelosi undermining national security. Her hand-picked Intelligence Committee Chair is an idiot:

If nothing else, this shocking ignorance helps explain why so many Democrats keep saying that Islam is inherently a religion of peace. They simply don't know anything about anything.

Previously: Democrats Take a Brave Stand Against Israeli Self-Defense Israeli Self-Defense and Other Stuff Too, Tell Me Again About Why Democrats Can Be Trusted, Democrats are Vulgar, Republicans are Funny

Oh, the poor dear:

Hey, you know what matriarchs who lost grandsons haven't turned into murderous lunatics? Every. Single. Israeli. Grandmother. who's lost a grandson to Palestinian viciousness.

Ah - not only was she a suicide bomber this week, but last week she was a voluntary human shield. What a charming woman. Definitely a worthy target for journalistic fawning.

Previously: Moderate Fatah Party Announces Moderate All-Women Suicide Bombers Unit, Palestinian Tech Innovation: New And Better Suicide Belts So Women Can Blow Up Hospitals, Palestinian Mother Becomes Terrorist

Two days ago, Israeli authorities uncovered a terrorist cell designing almost undetectable suicide belts filled with liquid explosives.

Here's the fantastic thing about Palestinian terrorists. They don't make suicide belts for "martyrs" who are going to attack Israeli soldiers or anything silly like that. The suicide belts they make are designed to kill the most vulnerable members of Israeli society, whether they be children or hospital patients.

A little while back, they caught a female suicide bomber who was going to blow up a hospital - the same hospital that had brought her back from the edge of death months earlier, after she was the victim of a fire (our post on it here). In this scenario, Israeli doctors and nurses would have literally nursed back to life the woman who would return to violently murder them:

Not content with their mere "evil" status, the Palestinians are doing their best to achieve "super evil" and "nearly unprecedented levels of evil" levels.

Previously:
Moderate Fatah Party Announces Moderate All-Women Suicide Bombers Unit, Palestinian Mother Becomes Terrorist, Stabs Israeli Teenage Girl, Hamas Women Suicide Bombers: Suicide Belts For Love

Unapologetic, shameless liars. They really just making it up as they go along.

Financial Times headline and meme:

AP headline and lede:

Not even a single shred of shame. Check out the dates:

To quote Ms. Coulter, talking to liberals is much more fun now that we have Lexis-Nexis. Ditto for Google News.

But don't let that distract you. Because, you see, the story is kind of true in a very meta-sense. The Palestinians have found a renewed sense of unity and purpose. They're now all back to agreeing that mass murder is totally awesome:

So everywhere, the news is that the accident has ushered in a new age of Palestinian unity. The problem is that the only place where it's true is about Palestinian unity regarding suicide bombings - and there's really only so many times (two or three weeks, max) where you can remind people that the Palestinians solve their problems with suicide bombings. So how do you emphasize that Israel's mis-targeting caused Palestinian unity without mentioning that it's "unity" over genocide? Easy: find something else that Beit Hanoun caused unity about.

These stories choose to transmit the new-found sense of Israeli-caused unity in the context of government negotiations. Now you might think that this would be a problem for them, since that's "actually true" or "how history worked" or "something that makes sense". In the real world, the tragedy caused Hamas to suspend unity talks, not resume tem. Implying the otherwise is "a lie".

But if you look very carefully, you'll notice that the writers don't ACTUALLY write that the attack led to the unity talks. They just make a headline that says "Palestinians show renewed consensus after Gaza killings" - two definitely true things. They didn't force you to think that one thing was the cause of the other. It's just that you let the universal structure of grammar and language trick you into assuming cause and effect between two events that are described as being one right after the other. It's not the headline writer's fault you were sloppy, so don't go talking about bias or anything. If you've got complaints, address them with whatever deity, teleological force, or evolutionary dynamic you think created language and grammar.

Previously:
Why Everyone Knows That "Contacts Aimed at Moderating Hamas" Are a Joke and How Russia Doesn't Care,
The Less Than Compelling "Hamas Wasn't Elected Because of the Whole Palestinians Hate Jews Thing" Argument, Tell Us, President Abbas, How Can We Help You Today?

We'll confess: there were two awesome academia stories yesterday, and we only really covered one of them. Call us homebodies if you must. We were kind of partial to the UCLA swastika graffiti story over the links that we kept seeing to some guy at UPenn who wore a suicide bomber costume for National Dress Like A Slut Day. But that's before we realized that the President of the University posed with him:

What nobody on the right seems to understand is that it wasn't a terrorist costume - it was a freedom fighter costume! And he was very brave for wearing it, because obviously there's a ton of official opposition to this stuff on the UPenn campus.

Previously: University of Michigan Campuses Both Charming and Not Charming, Juan Cole Is Not "Wrong" - He's Just "Deploying the Technique of the Hermeneutical Circle", John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish