Good News

From the Washington Post today.

An organization of top American Muslim religious scholars plans to issue a formal ruling today condemning terrorism and forbidding Muslims to cooperate with anyone involved in a terrorist act, according to officials of two leading Islamic organizations.

Safi, who heads the society's Leadership Development Center, said yesterday that "the statement prohibits Muslims from giving any support to terrorist groups who have carried out attacks against unarmed civilians. Groups like al Qaeda have misused and abused Islam to fit their own radical and criminal agenda, and I feel the statement is an important step to repudiating such groups."

Although the fatwa is important, Safi added, "there is a need to become more proactive in addressing the issue of terrorism by American Muslims."

Good news, indeed.

Muslim leader says U.S. behind Sept. 11

Were we also behind the singing and dancing in the streets of some Arab neighborhoods when the towers fell? Was that also part of our Grand Plan?


"We believe they are willing to sometimes sacrifice their own people for the objective to control the whole world," Abu Hamza, president of the Islamic Information and Services Network, told the Melbourne Herald Sun.

Read it here.

Presidential Election Protests

Radical Lefties are shocked, shocked and outraged. Why, how dare the FBI track them during the Presidential election. After all, what American in his right mind would find it justifiable to allow people to threaten violence and disruptions against a political party? Don't we still have the First Amendment? Can't I threaten to shut down a city, scare the hell out of delegates, burn a Presidential contender in effigy, agitate for violent protests and all in the name of Peace and Justice? Isn't that my right?

Turns out, no (and for the better, by the way).

article here

Blair's Words

On Islamic extremism...

"What was Sept. 11 the reprisal for? Why even after the first Madrid bomb and the election of a new Spanish government were they planning another atrocity when caught? Why if it is the cause of Muslims that concerns them do they kill so many with such callous indifference?"

"Their cause is not founded on an injustice," he said. "It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such it can't be moderated. It can't be remedied. It has to be stood up to."

Here

Chinese Saber Rattling

An article in todays NY Times, Chinese General Threatens Use of A-Bombs if U.S. Intrudes, mentions the comment from a Major General from the so-called People's Army. He openly advocates the PRC's nuclear first-strike capability against the US in a Sino-US struggle over Taiwan. He wants to change the PRC's official policy against using nukes first. Keep in mind that it is generally believed that the PRC has nuclear-tipped ICBM's that could reach Western coastal cities of the US.

I would note that the Party leadership and their cronies in the military (or is it the other way around?) are good at beating their swords against their shields, especially in the face of mounting domestic unrest and international pressure. "When in doubt, threaten Taiwan" seems to be the mantra of the PRC for more than fifty years now. So we must take this rationally while also realizing that China is a nuclear power with a sizeable pool of citizens to draw into a traditional military draft if they so choose.

It's all games with the Communist Party, but we should up the ante and nip this talk in the bud. There will be no quarter for talk--veiled or not--of annihilating our cities as we defend their brethren across the Taiwan Strait. And we are quite vocal in an all-options military policy when it comes to threats to our security. The general seemed to offer up all the cities east of Xian (the first Imperial capital of China), which is basically all of China's cities! Interesting.

MEMO TO BEIJING: We're not willing to offer up any of our cities nor the democratic and free city of Taipei!

A Message from the New World Order

China and Russia, those happy bastions of freedom and democracy, non-interference and human rights, have issued a joint communique today that implicitly sticks a big middle finger in the direction of their overbearing western neighbour (no, not Japan).

In it, they maintain

Differences and disputes must be solved through peaceful means rather than through unilateralism or coercion. There should be no use or threatened use of force, says the joint statement.

Only on the basis of universally recognized tenents and norms of international law, and under an impartial and rational world order, can problems facing mankind be solved, says the document.

All countries should strictly observe the principles of mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence, it says.

Unless, of course, you are Taiwan. Or Tibet. Or part of the Korean peninsula. Or a Japanese island grouping near lots of oil. But everyone else is probably ok. Unless we get mad at you. Or you get in our way. Or we find you to be an inconvenience to our plans for peaceful reunification of a never-existant homeland. Or you criticize our government.

More China News

From today's Washington Post:

In China, the divide between rich and poor is greater than before the peasant-led revolution that brought the Communist Party to power in 1949. Last month, China's government announced that the income gap had widened in the first three months of the year, with the richest 10 percent of the population controlling 45 percent of the country's wealth and the poorest 10th holding little more than 1 percent, according to the official New China News Agency.

In Beijing, concern mounts that the rural poor are falling so far behind as to challenge the legitimacy of the party. Demonstrations have become near-daily occurrences as farmers protest loss of land to development and excessive taxation. In response, the central government has rolled back taxes on peasants.

China's response to this internal problem will be the driver for its relationship with the US. The more torn the Communist leadership becomes over  the pros and cons of its integration into a capitalist global economic order, the more likely it is that they will engage in erratic and potentially self-destructive behaviour.

Think about the various groups in China (military, economic, peasants, coastal elite, party supporters) acting in opposition to one another, largely so that each can secure a future for its own interests. This infighting may see an economic elite offering concessions to US businesses, attempting to calm ruffled feathers. The military, meanwhile, would continue to increase its spending exponentially in the belief that a war is on the horizon. Peasants would demand a change in the political and economic order, something that liberals would interpret as a move away from Communist orthodoxy, while the military and party would see as a clear signal for a re-invigorated Maoist nation.

Continue to add tension, maybe a provocative claim from a Taiwanese leader, for example, and China explode with the passions of 1 billion souls. The US is an easy scapegoat in this scenario. After all, who brought these problems into China in the first place? Who brought factories and marketing, and exporting, and social alienation and and and...

You read it here first.

Bombings in London

Looks like al-Qeada's M.O. Watch the European Left blame us.

Link

Radical Muslim News

Attackers attempt to take Ayodha, a central flash-point of inter-religious conflict in India between Hindus and Muslims.

Militants [thought to be Pakistan-based Muslims -Ed] blew up a security wall with a car bomb and stormed a Hindu shrine at the heart of India's biggest religious controversy Tuesday, triggering a gunbattle in which security forces killed five attackers.


Meanwhile teachers in southern Thailand will soon be allowed to carry guns to keep from being sent on unanticipated (and undesired) early retirement by Muslim radicals.

More than 700 people, including at least 24 teachers, have been killed since January 2004 in unrest which the government blames on Islamic militants. Teachers are often targeted as they are seen as symbols of Thailand's Buddhist authorities.


In Iraq, acid attacks are increasing against immodest women.

A month ago I was walking from my college to my house when I was abducted in the street by three men. They dropped acid in my face and on my legs. They cut all my hair off while hitting me in the face many times telling me it’s the price for not obeying God’s wish in using the veil," Hania Abdul-Jabbar, a 23-year-old university student, recounted.

"Today I cannot see out of one eye because the acid made me lose my vision. I am afraid to leave my house. Now I am permanently disfigured with a monster face," she added with tears rolling down her swollen and scarred cheeks.

Also in Iraq, insurgents are killing barbers for shaving beards or removing facial hair from their customers.


These stories were pulled from only two Google news searches this morning. Here we have attacks by Muslims against other Muslims for not being religious enough, against Hindus and Buddhists for not being Muslims, and generally against anything that does not have a Wahhabist seal of approval.

Does anyone else see these incidents as a religious fad that will eventually bring most Muslims into disrepute, no matter how loudly they complain about misrepresentation in the media? How about some forceful opposition to these radical acts by responsible Islamic leaders? I

Syrian Firefight

Militants engaged in shoot-out with Syrian security forces.

Sana reported that security officers had been on the trail of the men for several days, and that some of the men who fought the security services were believed to have been former bodyguards of Saddam Hussein.

Minor note to the overall Islamic Insurgeny, but interesting nonetheless.

Happy 4th of July, New Republicans!
Bourgeois