Friday Afternoon Roundup - A New Year, a New Terror

Barely has 2010 begun and we've already had multiple terror arrests, one after another. And then we've had multiple arrests that aren't even being described as terror related.

Just today, we've had two more arrests out of New York of friendly religion of peace folks. Only a few days before that, a Palestinian Arab Muslim who owns a mosque was taken off a plane for shouting that he wanted to kill Jews. The media however is dismissing it as nothing more than a drunken incident. Debbie Schlussel has video footage of his court appearance.

The latest Pentagon report shows that the Gitmo terror returnee rate is up to 20 percent. And again, those are only the ones the Pentagon knows about. Worse yet many of the returnees from Gitmo are actually playing key roles in Al Queda, particularly in Yemen. This is significant because liberal pundits and lawyers often made the argument that these were small fry who just happened to come to Afghanistan and wanted nothing more than to go home.

Well they came home and began the Jihad all over again. Which naturally those same pundits and lawyers claim was only attributable to how much we humiliated them at Gitmo.

Then there was the Westergard ax attack, a shooting in a church in Egypt and all the usual roundup of terrorist attacks in areas in Afghanistan, Russia's Islamic republics, Israel, Kashmir and all the other parts of the world that Muslims have turned into a war zone.

All in a matter of a few days.

The sobriquet, tiny minority of extremists has become an obvious joke. And Muslims insist on reminding those who forget of the consequences of ignorance.

And the Tolerance March of Death continues. In Malaysia, tensions are overflowing because non-Muslims are daring to use the word Allah.

The absurdity of Muslim hypocrisy on the subject is that Muslims routinely demand that Allah be translated as god in the West, assuring us that it's a universal idea. But at home Muslims demand to be the only ones with the right to use Allah. What this translates to is an attempt to monopolize the very idea of god, as being the property of only Islam.

And that is the endgame for the blasphemy laws being passed in Europe as well. We haven't gone all the way yet, even in Michigan a man who posted anti-Islamic cartoons isn't actually being charged. Not because the politicians don't want him charged, but because the laws don't actually exist. Yet.

Investigators say the man told them that Muslims are "anti-Christian" and that he found the images online and thought it would be "cool" to post them on utility poles in the St. Cloud area.

"While I do not condone the crude and distasteful messages which the suspect in this case attempted to convey, criminal prosecution under the statutes available to this office would not be successful,"

Kendall wrote that the cartoons were political speech, and that the suspect was educating people rather than threatening them.

Petersen told the paper he had not decided on whether to file other charges.

And so for now the man isn't headed to jail. For now.

Side note: Muslim claims that IDF dogs are trained to attack anyone shouting Allahu Akbar, a cry commonly used by terrorists just before they begin their slaughter.

The opening of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has gotten the usual stars and spangles coverage, while no one in the media has bothered to examine Dubai's virtual slavery in the construction industry. Or just how much of the money being spent was based on investor gullibility.

There is naturally no coverage of the fact that the UAE is an Islamic tyranny. That it sponsors terrorism. That in Dubai a female British tourist was arrested after being raped.

The 23-year-old Londoner says she was attacked by a waiter in a hotel toilet after celebrating her engagement to her boyfriend with drinks, The Sun reports.

But after she admitted drinking alcohol and sharing a hotel room with her fiancé, police in the strict Islamic state arrested her for "illegal drinking" outside licensed premises and having sex outside marriage.

Her 44-year-old fiancé, also from London, was charged with the same offences. Both were thrown in police cells by officers who paid little heed to the rape.

The devastated couple are understood to be on bail awaiting trial and have had their passports confiscated. They could be jailed for up to six years if found guilty of the illicit sex charge.

British embassy officials in the desert emirate are helping them.

A diplomatic source said: "There have been some truly appalling injustices in Dubai but this one tops the lot.

"A desperate, distressed rape victim went with her boyfriend to report the attack to police. And both wound up behind bars.

"The police and authorities in Dubai have shamed themselves by yet again displaying a breathtaking lack of compassion and humanity."

...

Her attacker, who is understood to be Syrian, is believed to have denied rape. He claimed the Briton consented but has also been charged with "illegal sex".

That of course is how Muslim countries have effectively legalized rape. And tourists foolish enough to try and deal with the Emirati police, which despite the glittering architecture, is just a bunch of thugs employed by the desert rat sheikhs running Dubai, get a one way trip to a jail cell.

The British embassy officials, whose main function there is visiting trafficked Ukranian prostitutes and promoting business deals with British companies will of course "help out". After enough helping out, which will consist of them crawling on their knees before the sons of desert bandits and suggesting delicately that English ignorance of Islam's fair and honest laws may create a negative image for Dubai, the couple will be expelled to England, the rapist will not be charged with anything (nor is this the first time he likely did something like this) and foreign tourists will once again get a lesson they will soon forget about not visiting Islamic countries.

Despite all this, there is of course no talk of boycotting Dubai. Andrew Sullivan who demands that US troops invade Israel to create a Hamas state, isn't concerned about a dictatorship where a few percent control a labor work force that comprises much of the country.

Naturally not.

Dubai is an illusion and a lie created to attract Western tourists and investors. It is a modernist facade built on a primitive and backward fundamentalist society that trades oil and luxuries to the very infidels it despises, repaying them with Jihad and oppression.

Beneath the skyscrapers, Dubai is no more modern than Cairo or Karachi.

United Arab Emirates--Dubai just opened the ultimate trophy building -- the world's tallest skyscraper, which soars a neck-craning 2,717 feet into the air -- but just try getting there from the airport.

Your polite, epaulette-wearing cabdriver screeches down a 12-lane highway and -- with the tower in plain sight -- he goes miles past it, leading you to wonder whether he's lost his way or is ripping you off. Only when he finally reaches an interchange and then doubles back to the tower do you realize what's going on: Dubai wins no medals for urban planning.

...

At ground level, the fronds are packed with high-priced villas while the stemlike road leading to them is lined with monolithic rows of hulking apartment buildings. These look as though they were designed by architectural refugees from East Germany who added a few Islamic touches.

Multiply this gap between image and reality a hundredfold and you have the Dubai that was taking shape before the global recession of 2008 and the emirate's debt crisis. It is a city of isolated enclaves, lacking convenient connections to one another, and brutal linear strips, exemplified by the eyesore high-rises along the emirate's main drag, a superwide highway called Sheikh Zayed Road.

All of Dubai is one great big Potemkin village.

Meanwhile Guliani's comments have stirred up a storm.

First up Daniel Friedman points out the false AP Headline on the story.

Here's the headline and lede of an AP top story being carried verbatim by the media across the country this morning:

Giuliani: Obama 'turned the corner' on terrorism

WASHINGTON – Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Friday he believes President Barack Obama "turned the corner" on understanding the nature of terrorism when he publicly declared the U.S. at war.

Here's video of the full "Good Morning America" interview with Giuliani that the AP purports to be referencing, which ABC News titles, Rudy Giuliani Criticizes Terror Trial.

The Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart went another route by questioning Giuliani's patriotism. (Remember when liberals were boiling mad at even the idea of anyone questioning their patriotism?)

In a post titled, "Rudy Giuliani fails citizenship test", Capehart proves that

A. He doesn't know what a citizenship test is

B. Compares anyone who criticizes Obama to an Al Queda terrorist

"But anyone who dabbles in the irresponsible chatter that Obama and his administration couldn't care less about protecting Americans is, like an al-Qaeda foot soldier"

Now this is a fantastic quote because when conservatives said things like this a few years back about groups that actually worked to undermine America and help terrorists... such as anti-war protesters (a group that includes Obama) and the ACLU... they were accused of fascism and McCarthyism.

But McCarthyism is cool at the Washington Post when it's Capehartiasm.

And in a citizenship competition between Giuliani and Jonathan Capehart, whose only contribution is being one of Obama's many barely distinguishable bootlickers, does he really think he's going to win?

The only thing significant here is that the Obama media is very predictably redefining patriotism as support for anything Obama does.

Moving on with the roundup now, Debbie Schlussel points out that the CIA bomber was actually a Palestinian Arab, though of course most of Jordan is Palestinian Arab.

But after Nidal Malik Hasan and Mansor Mohammad Asad, Balawi makes 3.

In NJ, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who I'm not a fan of but is correct in this case, is battling Libya.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, best known as the author of Kosher Sex, lashed out on Tuesday at a US congressman who was quoted as saying residents of Englewood, New Jersey, should be "good neighbors" to a Libyan diplomat planning to move to the New York City suburb.

Boteach accused Rep. Steve Rothman of brokering a closed-door deal for Libya to buy a mansion in Englewood in 1982.

Coming a day after the Democratic congressman issued his own press release criticizing Boteach, the rabbi fought back, asking: "Will he really defend the right of an envoy of a terror-sponsoring government to live in our midst, spending millions of dollars on his home while refusing for more than a quarter of a century to pay even one dollar in taxes?"

In an interview with the New Jersey Jewish Standard, Rothman said: "The George W. Bush administration reestablished diplomatic relations with the Libyan government and removed Libya from the list of state sponsors of terrorism... Up until this moment the Englewood police chief has advised me that he sees no problem in allowing the ambassador and his wife and children to occupy the residence. And so, I hope everyone will be appropriately good neighbors."

Sure. Shouldn't we be good neighbors with a terrorist state. Shocking from Steven Rothman, a Democratic congressman with a lifetime rating of 82.54% with Progressive Punch.

Meanwhile since there is a small cottage industry dedicated to claiming that Jews had it great under Islamic rule before the creation of the State of Israel, two small tastes of what religious freedom for Jews looks like under Islam, at a time when there are virtually no Jews living anymore under Islamic rule.


Israelis make pilgrimage to rabbi's tomb in Egypt

Hundreds of Israelis came to Egypt earlier this week for an annual pilgrimage to the tomb of a 19th-century Jewish holy man in Egypt's Nile Delta, airport officials said...

In past years, Egypt limited the number of pilgrims visiting the tomb of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira near the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. But Israeli newspapers reported that President Hosni Mubarak accepted a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he visited Egypt last week to allow unlimited numbers.

Since Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty in 1979, Jewish devotees, mostly of Moroccan origin, have been flocking to the site for a ceremony at his tomb. But Egypt has limited the numbers of pilgrims. In 2001, a Court in Alexandria ruled to ban the ceremony after complaints by opposing groups.

Some residents claim the shrine is not the tomb of a Jew.

Egypt guards the stone tomb, which stands in a small chamber, and allows visitors only for the January anniversary of Abuhatzeira's death.

The tomb is a vestige of Egypt's once-prosperous Jewish community. Jews in Egypt go back to the time before Moses. And by the founding of Israel in 1948, they numbered about 80,000 people. But the Arab-Israeli wars, and the resentment and expulsions that they engendered, have reduced Egypt's Jews to about 60 people, living in Alexandria and Cairo, according to the Israeli embassy.

By contrast, mind you, Israel has allowed Muslims to regularly maintain mosques built over Jewish holy sites in the cave of the patriarchs at Hevron and at the Temple Mount.

Secondly over in Iraq, Muslims are doing to the tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel, exactly what they do to every holy site they get their hands on. Tearing it apart and replacing it with a mosque.

Early reports that Iraq plans to retain the Jewish nature of the Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel are apparently false. Sources in Baghdad say that the government plans to turn it into a mosque and erase all Jewish markings

Since then, however, reports have surfaced that the government is actually planning to build a mosque there, including removing the ancient Hebew inscriptions that adorn the site. Some reports say that all or some of the lines of Hebrew script have already been erased...

Shelomo Alfassa, Director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, reports that Islamic political parties have pressured the government to remove the Jewish inscriptions. He quotes the Iraqi news agency Ur News as reporting that the writing and ornamentations “are being (or have been) removed… under the pretext of restoring the site.”

Alfassa quotes sources to the effect that Iraq’s Antiquities and Heritage Authority “has been pressured by Islamists to historically cleanse all evidence of a Jewish connection to Iraq - a land where Jews had lived for over a thousand years before the advent of Islam.”...

Though well over 100,000 Jews lived in Iraq a few decades ago, this number has now been decimated to no more than eight, Prof. Moreh said. “There are others,” he added, “but they barely know that they are Jews; in many cases, their parents did not tell them.”

Alfassa concludes: “Iraq - the Biblical Mesopotamia -is almost as rich in Jewish history as the Land of Israel. The tomb of the prophet Ezekiel dates back to the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BCE. It was there in Iraq that Abraham discovered monotheism, and it is where the prophets Ezra, Nehemiah, Nahum, Jonah and Daniel are all buried.”

Continuing the roundup, Jerry Gordon at Red County looks at another unforeseen development produced through Muslim immigration to America. Clan warfare.

Yesterday, two Somali Cousins , owners of a corner grocery and Halal market in the Seward section of South Minneapolis, and a customer were savagely killed. ...

Given the backdrop of the Al Shabaab recruitment of Somali émigré youths and recent indictments of 14 persons of interest by federal prosecutors in Minneapolis, one might speculate that the violence of clan warfare that has torn apart Somalia might have also spread to America. Could that be the unmentionable motive behind the Seward section Somali murders in Minneapolis? From the comments in the news conference by Minneapolis Police Chief Dolan are any indication, perhaps the ‘other agencies’ involved might be the FBI Counterterrorism task force. We also speculate whether the unsaid specter of clan warfare may behind killings and gang activities in other major Somali émigré communities in the US.

Ted Belman at Israpundit posts a speech asking reasonably enough why we fund NGO's in the first place

I’m certainly not opposed to the existence of groups that denounce the neo-liberal agenda, run radical boot camps, declare carbon holidays in the name of God or think Israel is the worst country on Earth. I just don’t think they should do it with our money. If they’ve got causes they believe in, good for them. Just let them pay for it themselves, like the rest of us.

Ah but that's where the wealth redistribution comes into the picture.

Finally for those in the LA Area, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors will be holding an important panel discussion on the Goldstone report featuring Richard Landes of Augean Stables and Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric, as well as the Israeli Deputy Consul General in LA (see full notice here at the CJH site)

The Jewish State in 2009 is under attack from the broadest and most sustained delegitimization campaign since before the founding of the modern Jewish State, bringing together journalists, academics, jihadists, diplomats, totalitarian thugs, and human rights activists in a coordinated effort to erode Israel's freedom to defend itself. The widely criticized Goldstone Report, accused Israel of war crimes during its defensive Cast Lead operation while ignoring Hamas' deliberate use of its own population as human shields, and downplaying the role of almost a decade of documented rocket attacks on Israeli civilians from Gaza, is at the center of this global anti-Israel campaign.

The panel will explore the flaws in the Report, the potential consequences of its implementation, and the responses of its critics.

Considering that a clause in the Goldstone report could open the door to international sanctions, as was recently reported in the Jerusalem Post, that makes such an event all the more important.