Dr Andrew Boston on CSpan2 right now

As previously announced, Dr Andrew Bostom is appearing on Book TV right now and Monday, July 14, at 1:00 AM Eastern to talk about his new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.

Dr. Bostom was my podcast guest last May, when we also talked about his book.

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History is an anthology of unaltered and complete historical accounts on the subject from primary sources, and a must-read.

More exciting blogging news later today. Stay tuned!



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Support Harry’s Place Blogburst

Support Harry’s Place Blogburst

Harry’s Place, a UK blog dedicated to promoting the ideals of freedom and democracy, is being sued by Mohammed Sawalha, the President of the British Muslim Initiative, which has been linked to Hamas and the Islamic Brotherhood, both terrorist organizations. The blog reports that Mr. Sawalha, according to the BBC…

"master minded much of Hamas' political and military strategy" and in London “is alleged to have directed funds, both for Hamas' armed wing, and for spreading its missionary dawah”.

In their revelation of the impending lawsuit against them leveled by Mohammed Sawalha, they write:

Mr Sawalha claims that we have “chosen a malevolent interpretation of a meaningless word”. In fact, we did no more than translate a phrase which appeared in an Al Jazeera report of Mr Sawalha's speech. When Al Jazeera changed that phrase from "Evil Jew" to "Jewish Lobby", we reported that fact, along with the statement that it had been a typographical error.

Mr Sawalha has been the prime mover in a number of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood associated projects. He is President of the British Muslim Initiative. He is the past President of the Muslim Association of Britain. He was the founder of IslamExpo, and is registered as the holder of the IslamExpo domain name. He is also a trustee of the Finsbury Park Mosque….

…Mr Sawalha says that the attribution of the phrase "Evil Jew" to him implies that he is "anti-semitic and hateful". Notably, he does not take issue with our reporting of the revelation, made in a Panorama documentary in 2006, that he is a senior activist in the clerical fascist terrorist organisation, Hamas.

It looks like Harry’s Place is going up against some pretty top-notch lawyers on this one, and they’ve got guts, but as the post goes on to say:

If Mr Sawalha persists in attempting to silence us with this desperate legal suit, we will need your help.

We won"t be able to stand up to them alone.

This is why we've started this blogburst, to get the word out that we won't let members of Hamas or any radical terrorist group censor us or any of our fellow bloggers.

If you’d like to add your site to the blogroll, simply email us at admin@neoconstant.com, and include your site’s URL.

Then copy and paste this entry into one of your posts. Future posts will be emailed to you. Thanks, and don’t forget to head over to Harry's Place to show your support of their freedom of speech!

WE SUPPORT HARRY’S PLACE

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Today at 10AM Eastern: Second Draft's Dr Richard Landes and Yaacov Ben Moshe

UPDATE
You can listen to the podcast here
Today at 10AM Eastern (special time) we continue our series on Israel, the Middle East, and media propaganda with Dr Richard Landes and Yaacov Ben Moshe of Second Draft.

Chat's open at 9:45AM and the call-in number is 646 652-2539. Join us!

Upcoming: Dr Andrew Bostom on Book TV

Dr Andrew Bostom is going to appear on Book TV next Sunday July 13, at 7:00 AM and Monday, July 14, at 1:00 AM Eastern to talk about his new book, The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History.

Dr. Bostom was my podcast guest last May, when we also talked about his book.

The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History is an anthology of unaltered and complete historical accounts on the subject from primary sources, and a must-read.



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US removes uranium from Iraq

From Associated Press, that arm of the vast right wing conspiracy:
US removes uranium from Iraq.

Let's pay attention to that: The United States military have removed

550 metric tons of "yellowcake" - the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment

which was stored at the nuclear facility in Tuwaitha, Iraq, some 12 miles south of Baghdad.

Again:

• Saddam Hussein had a nuclear program
• At the Tuwaitha nuclear complex just south of Baghdad
• Which included 550 metric tons (over 1.2 million pounds) of "yellowcake", or concentrated uranium
• And multiple devices that could be used in a nuclear weapon

The AP does not say alleged nuclear program. It does not add "according to military experts." It simply says "Saddam Hussein's nuclear program."

Other important points:
1. The yellowcake removed is the last mayor remnant of Saddam's nuclear program. There was more.
2. The military had removed earlier this year four devices for controlled radiation exposure which "contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon".
3. The yellowcake was sold to Cameco, which may have been involved in the Oil-For-Food scam, and is a company in which Soros Fund Management LLC owns a substantial portion.

It Must Suck Being Joe Wilson Today - Joe, you’ve been punk'd!

In other news, Iraqis lead final purge of Al-Qaeda, Islamism is discredited, and We're winning this War on Terror.

The Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean will be up in a couple of hours. Bear with me - with the rescue of the Colombian hostages, it's going to be huge!

Special thanks to Hip Hop Republican and Larwyn.

Crossposted



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Embassy Attack in Pakistan Kills 4

The NYT today, Embassy Attack in Pakistan Kills 4, and the article mentions,

The bomb was the second effort to target foreigners in Islamabad in the last few months and came as the civilian government has signed a series of peace deals with Islamic militants in the nation's tribal areas.

Appeasement never works.

Then there is the old Mohammed cartoons excuse: Bloomberg

Denmark's three biggest newspapers, and about a dozen regional ones, on Feb. 13 reprinted an image of the Prophet Muhammad by cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, after police said he was the target of a terrorist-related murder plot. The publication of cartoons has triggered widespread protests in Pakistan, where 97 percent of the population is Muslim.

Gates of Vienna points out that,

Ever since their recent ban on the wearing of headscarves in courtrooms by judges, the Danes have been expecting trouble from the world’s 4.9 octillion outraged Muslims.

Trouble finally arrived today in the form of a car bomb detonated in front of the Danish embassy in Pakistan. Preliminary reports indicate that no actual Danes were injured or killed in the attack. Like so many other expressions of Muslim indignation, the work of the terrorists has had the primary effect of killing and maiming other Muslims.

The Beeb has the weirdest headline: Blast by Pakistan Danish embassy. Blast by? Do they mean to imply that the Danish embassy is to blame? As you can see in their own video report, the explosion was at the embassy site.

Or can't the Beeb get themselves to call an attack an attack?

UPDATE, Wednesday June 4
Pakistan ambassador to Denmark: 'Are you satisfied?'

(The Carnival of Latin America will be up in an hour or two. Please bear with me.)



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Willful Blindness reviewed

Via Memeorandum, Thomas Joscelyn reviews Andrew McCarthy's book, Willful Blindness: Memoir of the Jihad. McCarthy was the prosecutor responsible for leading the investigation of Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and others involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Joscelyn's review shows an overview of that case, but more importantly (emphasis added),

Had McCarthy stopped at telling the story of the many tactical failures that allowed Rahman's terrorists to menace America in the early 1990s, Willful Blindness would have been an invaluable addition to the literature of 9/11. But he takes his argument a step further, showing how these tactical failures were merely symptoms of a larger strategic failure to comprehend the nature of our terrorist enemies. In the process, McCarthy has given us one of the most important books on jihadist terrorism.

The strategic failure McCarthy exposes is ongoing, and extends even to something as basic as naming the enemy. Just as Willful Blindness was released, the State Department and other agencies published an edict banning the use of the word "jihadist" (as well as similar terms) from the government's lexicon. The thinking is that the terrorists like to call themselves "jihadists," thereby appropriating an Islamic term which can have far more benevolent meanings, such as the struggle for spiritual betterment or simply to do good.

It is true that, in some Islamic traditions, "jihad" has been endowed with such inoffensive meanings. But as McCarthy rightly argues, "jihad" has far more frequently been used to connote violent campaigns against infidels since the earliest days of Islam. When Sheikh Rahman called on his followers to wage "jihad," they knew that their master did not mean for them to become absorbed in prayer.

Moreover, Washington is apparently too obtuse to notice that Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda's terrorists, Tehran's mullahs, and Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi clerics have called for a militant brand of jihad persistently over the past several decades. All of these parties know how their words will be interpreted by the Muslim masses, and no fiat from the Washington bureaucracy will undo this widely accepted meaning.

Not only does Washington have a hard time properly naming our jihadist enemies, it still fails to understand that terrorist-sponsoring regimes have long backed them. Here, McCarthy has been at the forefront of explaining how jihadist terrorism is frequently, but not exclusively, a tool of hostile regimes: Writing in these pages in 1998 ("The Sudan Connection"), he explored the many ties between the 1993 plotters and the Sudanese regime then led by an Islamic radical named Hassan al-Turabi. Indeed, Turabi and Rahman were longtime friends and allies. McCarthy returns to this aspect of the story in Willful Blindness to show how Sudan's U.N. delegation provided material support to Rahman's terrorists as they plotted to blow up New York's landmarks. (The Clinton administration even expelled two Sudanese delegates because of their involvement.)

Sudan's sponsorship went far beyond Rahman's goons. In the early 1990s Turabi forged a broad terrorist coalition that included Osama bin Laden's core group of followers, all of al Qaeda's affiliates, and a number of other organizations. Turabi envisioned bringing all of these parties together in one grand anti-American terrorist coalition. And he received the support of the two leading state sponsors of terrorism: Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the mullahs' Iran. Out of this witch's brew of state and nonstate actors grew the network that we commonly call "al Qaeda."

It is beyond my scope here to summarize all of the evidence that supports this thesis, but suffice it to say that McCarthy is exactly right when he asserts,

It is not difficult to find some current or former intelligence official ready and willing to opine that Sunnis [such as Rahman and bin Laden] would never cooperate with secularists or Shiites--overlooking abundant evidence of the Ba'athist Saddam Hussein coddling Sunni jihadists and a years-long history of collaboration between al Qaeda and Shiite Hezbollah.

McCarthy argues that, more than a decade after the Blind Sheikh was convicted of inspiring terrorism on American soil, America remains largely blind. Even the September 11 attacks did not fully awaken our nation, or its leaders, from their slumber. An implacable hate drives our enemies to never-ending violence. For them, we are the "other," infidels who deserve to be slaughtered as victims of a religious jihad, and there are many who are willing to support their war on us.

Scott Johnson at Powerline points out that

In the Bush administration, the "willful blindness" takes the form of political correctness. This political correctness, however, is more than an intellectual failure. On the one hand, the administration has supported the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and the naming of CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America as HLF's unindicted co-conspirators supporting Hamas. On the other hand, the adminstration continues to treat CAIR and ISNA, for example, as respectable organizations and occasional partners.

On the Democratic side, the failure runs deeper. Listening to the Democratic debates over the past year, one could not help but be struck by the candidates' understanding of the Bush administration as an enemy far more formidable than any we are facing beyond our borders. Next to the Bush administration, the threats posed by Iran, Syria and their terrorist proxies pale in comparison. Should the Iranian Revolutionary Guard be designated a terrorist group? According to Barack Obama, this is going too far: the Bush administration is merely engaged in "saber rattling." He would prefer to rattle the tea cups with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

Scott quotes from Bruce Thorton's review,

This jihadist ideology motivated Abdel Rahman and the 9/11 jihadists, and continues to motivate Islamic terrorism today. But, then and now, this obvious traditional belief is ignored or rationalized away by those entrusted with our security: The secretary of state publicly croons that Islam is the "religion of peace and love," and the State and Homeland Security departments instruct their employees not to use words like "jihad" or "mujahedeen" (holy warrior) in their communications. In contrast to this delusional thinking, McCarthy bluntly, and correctly, states the obvious: "Islam is a dangerous creed. It rejects core aspects of Western liberalism: self-determination, freedom of choice, freedom of conscience, equality under the law." We refuse to face the truth about Islam, and thus we disarm ourselves before "a doctrine that rejects our way of life and a culture unwilling or unable to suppress the savage element it breeds wherever it takes hold."

In yesterday's podcast Dr. Andrew Bostom discussed his book The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History where he examined a vast amount of Middle Eastern Islamic anti-Semitic literature that has endured through the ages, literature that goes ignored. From the Middle East through Europe, the US and Latin America, the Jihad continues.

We are blinding ourselves again and again to the reality of Jihad. When will we wake up?



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Today's podcast at 10:30AM Eastern, and an article in the HufPo

Sam Harris, writing at the HufPo (h/t Judith), recognizes how we are cowering:
Losing Our Spines to Save Our Necks

I could list other examples of encounters with editors and publishers, as can many writers, all illustrating a single fact: While it remains taboo to criticize religious faith in general, it is considered especially unwise to criticize Islam. Only Muslims hound and hunt and murder their apostates, infidels, and critics in the 21st century. There are, to be sure, reasons why this is so. Some of these reasons have to do with accidents of history and geopolitics, but others can be directly traced to doctrines sanctifying violence which are unique to Islam.
...
The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute. It's not that critics of religion like myself speculate that such a connection might exist: the point is that Islamists themselves acknowledge and demonstrate this connection at every opportunity and to deny it is to retreat within a fantasy world of political correctness and religious apology. Many western scholars, like the much admired Karen Armstrong, appear to live in just such a place. All of their talk about how benign Islam "really" is, and about how the problem of fundamentalism exists in all religions, only obfuscates what may be the most pressing issue of our time: Islam, as it is currently understood and practiced by vast numbers of the world's Muslims, is antithetical to civil society. A recent poll showed that thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) believe that a person should be killed for leaving the faith. Sixty-eight percent of British Muslims feel that their neighbors who insult Islam should be arrested and prosecuted, and seventy-eight percent think that the Danish cartoonists should have been brought to justice. And these are British Muslims.

Additionally,

This is what we owe the true moderates of the Muslim world: we must hold their co-religionists to the same standards of civility and reasonableness that we take for granted in all other people. Only our willingness to openly criticize Islam for its all-too-obvious failings can make it safe for Muslim moderates, secularists, apostates--and, indeed, women--to rise up and reform their faith.

In today's podcast at 10:30 AM Eastern, we'll be talking to Julie of Happy Catholic about art.

At 11AM Boston University professor Dr Richard Landes and Yaacov Ben Moshe of Second Draft join us again to talk about how political correctness is leading us (to use Harris's phrase) to lose our spines to save our necks and why that won't work.

Chat will open at 10:15AM, and the call-in number is (646) 652-2639. Join us!

The Taliban are just a bunch Lutherans

More crap parading as art, this time in Stockholm:
Artist Rosa Liksom tries to tame the burkha. Apparently she had to go to a gallery in Sweden to try that.

Finnish Liksom doesn't volunteer to wear a burka, because she doesn't have to; that doesn't prevent her from promoting the repressive garment:

Burkhas in Finnish nature are part of the Finlandia exhibition by artist Rosa Liksom, which has opened in Stockholm.

"I have used women in burkhas in my comic strips already from the 1990s", Rosa Liksom says. From there they came to my paintings, and now into videos and photographs.

"When painted or drawn, the image of a burkha has not raised any passions at all", Liksom says.

Of course, how much talent does it take to draw a burka? Particularly when it affords an opportunity for moral equivalence?

Women in Finnish surroundings dressed in burkhas were immediately taken as a very political artistic statement.

Rosa Liksom does not agree.

"I was born in the far north, in a small village, where most of the people were members of the Conservative Laestadian sect. There women were always dressed in black, and they wore black scarves, showing only their faces."

Of course! The Finnish Lutheran revivalists are just the same as the Taliban. Aren't they?

If you look at the photo in the Wikipedia entry for Conservative Laestadianism you'll find an integrated congregation worshiping at a service where none of the women are covered. Could it be that Laestadian women aren't forced to cover themselves, and when they do is because it's darned cold in Northern Finland?

I'd like to know what the Laestadian men are wearing. Are they showing only their faces? Or do they choose to freeze their nuts off while walking about in Hawaiian shirts, shorts, and flip-flops as if they were waiting in line in Disneyworld instead of plodding through the tundra?

The article continues,

Then Liksom became inspired to examine landscapes, and especially the concept of a "national landscape".

"I thought what would fit with it as an element of alienation, and I came up with the burkha. Its blue colour calls to mind the Finnish flag. It is both graphic and figurative as a material."

"And naturally, it is something that raises powerful emotions", Liksom adds.

"Islam is so demonised in the West that I wanted to tame the burkha.

Get a rise out of your audience, undemonize a repressive garment, and stick it to The Man.

Groovin' to the powerful emotions, indeed.

(h/t F.Desouche, via the Baron)


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Libel Tourism: The Soft Jihad

From Pajamas Media, highlights of the conference:

Don't miss Roger Kimball's article on the Free Speech on the Age of Jihad conference, and my September 26, 2007 podcast of Rachel Eherenfeld and Cinammon Stillwell talking about libel tourism.



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Fitna removed from LiveLeak

Yesterday LiveLeak showed the film Fitna in its site.

Today Michael VanderGalien tells me they have removed it due to death threats:

Official LiveLeak statement

Following threats to our staff of a very serious nature, and some ill informed comments from certain members of the British media that could directly affect the safety of some staff members, liveleak has been left with no other choice but to remove Fitna from our servers.

This is a sad day for freedom of speech on the net but we have to place the safety and well being of our staff above all else. We would like to thank the thousands of people from all backgrounds and religions, who gave us their support. They realised LiveLeak.com is a vehicle for many opinions and not just for the support of one.

Perhaps there is still hope that this situation may produce a discussion that could benefit and educate all of us as to how we can accept one another’s culture.

We stood for what we believe in, the ability to be heard, but in the end the price was too high.

You can watch the statement here.

Gates of Vienna has a list of sites where you can watch the film. Atlas Shrugs and Jawa also have it.

UPDATE
Alfahosting (alfahosting.be) has also suspended Michael's PoliGazette's account and email.

Phyllis Chesler has more. Little Green Footballs has the video, too.
Don't miss The Psychotic Core (h/t Larwyn).



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Mughniyeh Killed in Damascus

From Belmont Club,

Imad Muganiyeh, known to Americans as the man who killed Navy diver Robert Stethem; the man who tortured and killed CIA station chief William Francis Buckley, and possible mastermind of the 1983 Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut died in car bomb explosion in a posh suburb of Damascus.

Mughniyeh is also believed to have been behind the 1992 bombing of Israel's embassy in Argentina in which 29 people were killed, and the blast at a Buenos Aires Jewish center two years later that killed 95.

Recently Argentina has been investigating the 1994 explosion, which is the largest terrorist attack ever staged in Latin America against a Jewish group.

Wretchard points out that Mughniyeh's demise came on the anniversary of Rafik Hariri's death.

Coincidence? Not at all. To the contrary: this is a message, loud and clear. As Wretchard said,

...one of the things Hezbollah might reflect upon as they regard the charred and mangled corpse of Mughniyeh is that while one can evade payment for a time, the repo man always comes in the end.

The Guardian has a Profile: Imad Mughniyeh. The (London) Times asserts that "His death is a huge blow to the Iranian-backed militant group, given Mughniyeh's years of experience and organisational skills."

UPDATE
Phillip Jacobson says Mossad did it, but I think Mughniyeh had enough enemies that one can't rule out anyone, including the Iranians themselves.
Update 2
If the Israel's Mossad got him, they killed a number of birds with one stone.
One more rat sent to Hell



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