Somali militants fire at U.S. lawmaker

Yahoo News
from Reuters
By Abdi Sheikh and Abdi Guled
April 13, 2009

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somalia's militant Islamist rebel group al Shabaab said Monday it fired mortars at a plane carrying a U.S. lawmaker, a day after U.S. snipers killed three Somali pirates and freed the American ship captain they had been holding hostage.

An al Shabaab spokesman said his group fired at the plane carrying Representative Donald Payne as he left the anarchic Horn of Africa country following a rare one-day visit by a U.S. official. Payne's plane took off safely and no-one was hurt.

The successful rescue of Captain Richard Phillips, who had been held by pirates for five days in a drifting lifeboat after their attempt to hijack the U.S.-flagged container ship Maersk Alabama failed, was hailed in the United States as a "feel-good" story that temporarily lifted the country's spirits in gloomy economic times.

Three U.S. snipers each fired a single shot virtually simultaneously, each killing his target. A fourth pirate was captured alive.

The successful conclusion boosted President Barack Obama, who had authorized the U.S. navy to use force if the commander on the spot felt Phillips's life was in danger.

Obama, in brief comments Monday, called Phillips a hero and reiterated that he was resolved to work with other countries to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia.

"We're going to have to continue to work with our partners to prevent future attacks," Obama said. "We have to continue to be prepared to confront them when they arise."

More than 250 hostages of many nationalities are still being held along the Somali coast by pirates who have seized dozens of vessels, from tankers to yachts, in recent months.

Helicopters once again flew over pirate bases near Eyl on the Somali coast overnight after Phillips' rescue.

"They killed our friends on the lifeboat and we thought helicopters would bomb us in Eyl last night," a pirate in Eyl, who called himself Farah, told Reuters.

"We were mourning for dead friends and then roaring planes came -- grief upon grief. America has become our new enemy." [I would think that after "Black Hawk Down" we were already your enemy - my comment]

Al Shabaab, which condemns both piracy and anti-piracy patrols by international navies off Somalia, said the attack on Payne's plane was a message to the United States but did not directly link it to the hostage issue.

ENCOURAGE PROSECUTION

State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Washington was encouraging states to prosecute suspected pirates and working with the shipping industry to avoid future hijacks. He cautioned that the problem would not be solved overnight.

Responding to threats by the pirates' to kill foreign hostages in retaliation for the rescue, Wood said: "These folks are bandits. They're lawless."

Phillips was the first American taken by pirates who have plundered ships in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean for years.

The U.S. Navy said the decision to shoot his kidnappers was a split-second one, taken because he appeared to be in imminent danger.

"They were pointing the AK-47s at the captain," Vice Admiral William Gortney, head of the U.S. Naval Central Command, said.
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Motoonist says BBC "appeasing Muslim fanatics"

from Jihad Watch.com
April 3, 2009

Striking fear in the hearts of the BBC

The BBC? Appeasing Islamic jihadists? Naaah -- that couldn't happen! "Mohammed cartoonist accuses BBC of 'appeasing Muslim fanatics by not showing interview,'" by Paul Revoir for the Daily Mail, April 3 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The BBC has been accused of appeasement of radical Islam by the artist behind one of the infamous cartoons of Mohammed.

Kurt Westergaard claims the corporation's decision not to air a recent interview with him came because they are petrified of upsetting Muslims extremists.

Westergaard was one of the 12 cartoonists commissioned by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005 to produce caricatures of the Muslim prophet.

Islamic tradition says no image of him should be produced or shown....

Mr Westergaard, 73, gave his first-ever English interview to BBC journalist Malcolm Brabant four weeks ago.

It had been expected to go out on BBC World, the BBC News channel, across radio services and on its website. But the corporation has kept the report under wraps amid claims it is frightened that it will 'inflame' Muslims around the world.

Mr Westergaard told the Daily Mail last night: 'I am disappointed on behalf of the freedom of speech. Every time you are afraid I think you make a step backwards. That is depressing me.'

He compared the BBC's behaviour with the way countries tried to appease Hitler before the Second World War and added: 'If you have an appeasement policy towards the radical Muslims then you are on a very wrong way and you have to
start marching backwards.'...

Uh, yeah.

Click to read the article and comments

UN panel passes a One religion-defamation resolution

from Hot Air

March 27, 2009

by Ed Morrissey

The UN Human Rights Council (oxymoron) has passed the resolution calling for an end to critcism of religion around the world. Actually, to be fair, that’s not entirely accurate. They want an end to criticism of one particular religion — and we all know which religion that will be:

The U.N.’s top human-rights body approved a proposal by Muslims nations Thursday urging passage of laws around the world to protect religion from Criticism.

The proposal put forward by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic countries — with the backing of Belarus and Venezuela — had drawn strong criticism from free-speech campaigners and liberal democracies.

A simple majority of 23 members of the 47-nation Human Rights Council voted in favor of the resolution. Eleven nations, mostly Western, opposed the resolution, and 13 countries abstained.

Opponents of the resolution included Canada, all European Union countries, Switzerland, Ukraine and Chile.

“It is individuals who have rights and not religions,” Canadian diplomat Terry Cormier said.

India, which normally votes along with the council’s majority of developing nations, abstained in protest at the fact that Islam was the only religion specifically named as deserving protection.

I wrote about this earlier in the month, so this resolution comes as no shock to Hot Air readers. Nor should its passage surprise anyone who has kept abreast of the UN’s efforts on “human rights”. The HRC and its predecessor have obsessed themselves with anti-Israel and pro-Islam initiatives, and have made a mockery of efforts to oppose racism at its Durban conferences.

Cormier provided one of the few voices of sanity at the HRC. As I noted on March 3rd:

Where does this stop? Will the UN next declare monarchy as a protected class of beliefs, about which criticism should be treated as a hate crime? Fascism? White supremacy? How about American exceptionalism? What about Hinduism, a polytheistic belief system that Islam frequently and bitterly criticizes? …

The notion that ideas and belief systems have “rights” goes against
every step towards liberty that mankind has taken. Individuals have
rights; ideas and belief systems have values and policies that should remain
open for debate, criticism, satire, and ridicule. Without that essential
freedom, people will fall under the thrall of whatever belief system or ideology
can exert the most force over them — a strategy practically designed by and for
the radical Islamist extremists to whom the UN panders in this declaration.

This also gives us another reason to oppose initiatives like Kyoto and Copenhagen. Along with endemic corruption and a chronic lack of accountability, the UN’s values are flat-out antithetical to America’s. We value individual rights and free speech, and the rights of people to speak trump the nonexistent right to be free from offense — as they must, if we value free speech at all. Pakistan and the other Islamic nations want to silence the opposition to Islam. They’re not interested in “human rights” in the sense that Westerners see them (as individually based).

The resolution carries little effect, but it reveals the wide chasm between the West and those who hate freedom and liberty. The latter won at the HRC, but they can only beat us here if we let them.

Click to read the article and comments

Christian extremist kills 48 at Pakistan mosque -- no, wait...It was actually a Muslim

More Muslims Killing Muslims
from Jihad Watch.com
"A government official accused Islamist militants of carrying out the bombing in revenge for a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting the major supply route for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that passes in front of the mosque."

Remember this one the next time you hear a story about Muslims outraged over Americans, or Israelis returning fire from a mosque, or over alleged desecration of a Qur'an, etc.

by Riaz Khan
from Associated Press
March 27, 2009

PESHAWAR, Pakistan – A suicide bomber demolished a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers attending Friday prayers close to the Afghan border, killing at least 48 people and injuring scores more, officials said.

The attack in the Khyber region was the bloodiest in Pakistan this year and came hours before President Barack Obama was due to unveil a revised strategy expected to emphasize the need to eradicate militant havens along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier.

A government official accused Islamist militants of carrying out the bombing in revenge for a recent offensive aimed in part at protecting the major supply route for NATO and U.S. troops in Afghanistan that passes in front of the mosque.

"Residents of this area had cooperated and helped us a lot. These infidels had warned that they will take revenge," said Tariq Hayat, the top administrator of the Khyber tribal region. "They are the enemy of Pakistan. They are the enemy of Islam."

Rising violence in Pakistan is fueling doubts about the pro-Western government's ability to counter Taliban and al-Qaida militants also blamed for attacks on Western troops in Afghanistan.

The bomber hit the mosque, a popular stop for travelers motoring between Pakistan and Afghanistan, when about 250 people were attending Friday prayers, said Hayat....
Click to go to the article

Obama's Mistaken Persian Gambit

This is an excellent article.
Rees

from Joshua Pundit
by Rob Miller
Monday, March 23, 2009



As you all know by now, President Obama broadcast an extraordinarily video to the government and the people of Iran, ostensibly in honor of Nahruz, the Persian New year, which is celebrated annually at the spring equinox:

I avoided writing about this thus far because I wanted to see the reaction...both from the Mullahs and from several other players in the region.

The extraordinary spectacle of the president of the United States, a nation Iran has considered itself in a state of war with for thirty years grovelling in this fashion shows that President Obama has absolutely no clue as to how to deal with these people.

In particular, it's noteworthy that this was addressed not only to the Iranian people, but to the regime.He specifically referred to Iran as an Islamic Republic and called for it to 'take it's rightful place among th4e nations of the world.'

The mullahcracy of Iran is a brutal, totalitarian regime that cheerfully hangs homosexuals, beats women on the streets who the basij , the regime's brown shirts, feel are immodestly dressed and `uppity', and leads the world in juvenile executions. Torture and beatings in secret prisons are the norm.

They train, support and finance terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, who like Iran are officially committed to annihilating Israel, teaching children the glories of 'martyrdom' and in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, committing genocide against Jews world wide.

And they've been in a declared war for thirty years against the 'Great Satan' - that would be America - that has included targeting America servicemen and civilians over the years, including the bombing of a marine barracks in Beirut that cost 240 lives, the torture murder of Colonel William Buckley, the abduction and execution style killings of four American officers and arming and training our enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not only is Obama prepared to ignore all that, but he's also apparently prepared to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, and expressly took any forceful response off the table stating that the US was 'fully committed to a diplomatic solution'.

Obama in his video talked a great deal about our “common humanity,” and made a point of discounting dismissed “those who insist we be defined by our differences..”

There are striking resemblances to a speech made a long time ago by another world leader attempting to placate a militant dictatorship : “We are determined to continue our efforts to remove possible sources of difference, and thus to contribute to assure the peace… “ That was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, when he returned from Munich in 1938 — in the statement Chamberlain made that promised “peace for our time.”

The Iranian response was swift and fairly predictable, as Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran responded:

Khamenei set the bar impossibly high, demanding an overhaul of U.S. foreign policy, including giving up "unconditional support" for Israel and halting claims that Iran is seeking nuclear arms. Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes.

"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials?" Khamenei said in a speech in the northeastern city of Mashhad. The crowd chanted "Death to America."

"He (Obama) insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed..

"Still, Khamenei left the door open to better ties with America, saying "should you change, our behavior will change, too."

This is far from a kiss off, by the way. There would be absolutely no value in that for Iran. Khamenei is using a classic Persian bazaari gambit of tossing the first offer to do business back at Obama and in essence asking him how far Obama is prepared to go to make a deal.

What the Mullahs want at the very least is to eat up additional time in 'negotiations' to allow them to finish nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Once that's done, the regime is going to be solidly in place, with the ability to black mail the west by threatening to shut off Persian Gulf oil at any time.
Click to read the rest of the article and comments

All In The Name of Honor? - Jordanian Father Beats To Death His 19 Year Old Daughter For Wearing Makeup!

Having two children of my own, it is inconceivable to me that a Father can consciously kill their daughter, all in the name of honor. This ‘honor’ thing is obviously part of their religion. It goes along with their willingness to sacrifice their children as suicide bombers. If these Muslim men believe so strongly in killing all the infidels, why don’t they become a suicide bomber and let their children live longer? They’ve obviously been on this Earth a lot longer than their children.

These Muslim men supposedly believe life after this existence is Paradise, and that there will be 72 virgins waiting for them. They profess that they are willing to martyr themselves for Allah. If they truly believe in that mythical hereafter, why are they still here? Why? It’s because they love life more than their religion and they are afraid to die!

Bottom line about Muslim men is this:

- They love their religion more than they love their children!
- They love their own life more they love their religion!
- They want everyone else to be the suicide bombers!
- They are cowards who are afraid to die!

One more question. Why don’t we hear about honor killings that involve their sons? Is there nothing there sons can do to dishonor them?
Rees

Sunday, March 22, 2009
from Holger Awakens

by Holger Danske

And wouldn't Mohammed be so proud. The disgusting news came out yesterday, seen here in this article at Yahoo News, that a Jordanian father (with the help of his two sons) beat to death his daughter for leaving the house with makeup on and for speaking to a stranger. Once again, upholding the "honor" of Islam has taken the life of one of the world's innocents. Here's some of the disgusting details:

Jordan's prosecutor has charged a man and his two sons for the premeditated murder of his 19-year-old daughter Saturday, in the latest "honour killing" to take place in this conservative desert kingdom.

The man and his two sons were charged with beating to death the daughter for leaving the house in makeup and talking to a stranger, according to prosecutor Salah al-Taleb's indictment sheet.

The father brought his daughter to the hospital after she lost consciousness and turned himself in.Autopsy showed severe injuries to the head which caused brain hemorrhage and the body was covered with bruises.

Now, I don't know when the last time was I heard of an honor killing in Jordan so one might think this is a bit out of the ordinary....well, look at this line from the article:

In Jordan, an average of 20 women are killed by male relatives each year.

And that's REPORTED figures - I wonder how many young women and girls are killed in Jordan in this same manner and their deaths are reported as murders by strangers? And since we are talking about this maniacal killing of these innocents, these young girls and women...just where is the outrage from the women's groups in America? Are they scared of taking on Islam? I don't see American women's groups backing down from attacking Christians in America who may have objections to abortion in this country but I hear crickets when it comes to them attacking the islamists for this 8th century practice of honor killings.

Let's face it...these groups in America will march in the streets in defense of a woman's body in respect to her reproductive "rights" but when it comes to defending a woman's right to live, they are no where to be found. And that, to me, is even more disgusting than this poor woman's murder.

Click to read the rest of the article and comments

The Afghanistan War Story That MSNBC 'Missed' This Weekend

from Holger Awakens

Fort Dix jihad attacker rejects American legal system, calls on judge to convert to Islam

from Jihad Watch
March 21, 2009

Not that this has anything to do with Islam!

Fort Dix Jihad Update: "Convict in Fort Dix plot case tries to oust lawyer," from Newsday, March 20 (thanks to Samir):

CAMDEN, N.J. - One of the five men convicted in the Fort Dix trial wants to fire his lawyer and waive his right to appeal.

Eljvir Duka (el-VEER' DOO'-kah) wrote the judge on Thursday that he wants to give up his rights because he rejects the American legal system. He calls it a system of "injustice."...

It's Duka's second letter to the judge in a week. Earlier, he wrote that the judge should convert to Islam.

Duka, his two brothers and two other men were convicted in December of conspiracy to kill military personnel....
Click to go to article

Holder Opens Doors To Terrorists

March 19th 2009
Posted by: Laer at 12:04 pm
from Cheat-Seeking Missles

Terrorists … no wait, let me look up the right word … uh, man-caused disaster causers … may soon be released by our Atty Gen onto our shores, in a move that’s just sure to increase our safety. (Why didn’t Bush think of that? He was sooo concerned about terror … uh, man-caused disasters.) Here’s the report:

Some of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners could be released into the United States while others could be put on trial in the American court system, Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday. …

Holder told reporters at the Justice Department that the administration’s review, made on a case-by-case basis, would determine whether the prisoners need to be put on trial or whether they can be released.

“For those who are in that second category, who can be released, there are a variety of options that we have. Among them is the possibility that we could release them into this country,” he said. (Reuters)

That’s such a swell idea! We can show them our way of life and how open and tolerant we are, and it’s just sure as fleas on dogs to win them over to our side, where they’ll be nice, complacent citizens contributing to the national well-being.

Or they just might blow a bunch of us up.

Tough call - but apparently an easier call for Holder to make than the call to keep open the one place on the planet that’s perfect for these thugs, Guantanamo. And if the Islamists every stop their war against us and agree to live in peace, we can let them go, just like we let go of our German, Italian and Japanese prisoners when WWII ended.
Click to go to the article