Turkish Christians Tortured Before Murder

Friday, April 20, 2007
Turkish Christians Tortured Before Murder

The three victims murdered at a Christian publishing house in Turkey were apparently tortured for hours before being slaughtered: Slain evangelists were tortured, says Turkish doctor.

Real torture. Not Andrew Sullivan-style torture.

MALATYA, Turkey — Three Protestants murdered at a Christian publishing house in Malatya, Turkey, were tortured for three hours before their assailants slit their throats, a press report said Friday, quoting one of the doctors involved in the grisly case.

Dr. Murat Ugras, a spokesman for the Turgut Ozal Medical center, told the daily Hurriyet of hospital surgeons’ fruitless efforts to save Ugur Yuksel, one of the three victims of the massacre at the Zirve (summit) publishing house, which distributed Christian literature.

“He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum, and his back,” Ugras said. “His fingers were sliced to the bone.

”It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him,” he said.

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=25192&only&rsssmall

China confirms terror camps in Pak

China confirms terror camps in Pak

Thursday, April 19, 2007 (Beijing)

Just hours after Pakistani Prime Minister Shoukat Aziz flew out of Beijing, there is acknowledgement from China that terrorists fighting in Xinjiang province received training in terrorist camps in Pakistan.

China’s oil-rich northwestern province of Xinjiang has witnessed a long-running insurgency by Muslim Uigur separatist fighters.

They train and take refuge in camps across the border in Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and now, as China says, in Pakistan.

The confirmation came in a court document in the trial of 37-year-old Uigur guerilla who was today sentenced to life imprisonment by a Chinese court in Xinjiang, for alleged terrorist and separatist activities.

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20070009242

Terror and the media: Are we neutral observers or participants?

Terror and the media: Are we neutral observers or participants?

I will be speaking today at a Washington seminar on the tricky subject of “Democracies Fighting Terror – What Can Israel and the United States Learn from Each Other’s Experience?” (a joint venture of IDI and TIP). The topic my panel is tasked with is: “The Media: A Neutral Observer or a Participant?” Here are a couple of paragraphs from my opening remarks:

So – are we a participant? In an article for the Naval War College Review, back in 2002, Douglas Porch wrote about the differences between the coverage of World War II and the Vietnam war – the war in Iraq can be another example to the same argument. It is not the presence of censorship in World War II making the coverage different, Porch wrote, but the absence of victory in the war that was covered less favorably – namely Vietnam.

But what about a war with no clear victory? What about a war in which soldiers play a secondary role and civilians are those paying the price? The natural tendency of the media is to gravitate toward the sources that are most obvious and available. Tyrants and terrorists like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic, and Osama Bin Laden learned to welcome reporters – to stage media events, some of them horrific in nature. The possibilities available to them for distortion, manipulation, and disinformation are growing. Can the media, should the media play a role in trying to prevent them from doing so?

In the case of terror, the dichotomy separating the “neutral observer” from the “participant” is false. When it comes to terrorism the observer is a participant whether he likes it or not, and the choices one has to make are not the grand, easy, choices of setting the strategy or the principals dictating the coverage. It is, rather, a daily struggle with smaller dilemmas, detailed decisions. Do you share with the readers the story about the head of the Palestinian bomber? And if you do, does it make you the neutral observer sharing the cold realities of the event with the readers? And if you don’t, does it make you a participant, conspiring to masquerade to horrific nature of the attack?

Such dilemmas are constant reality in a newsroom cursed with the reporting on terror attack. I remember many such dilemmas: in the so-called Ramallah lynch, in the early days of the intifadah, a Palestinian mob killed two Israeli soldiers who wondered mistakenly into Palestinian territory. They killed them, and then throw the bodies from the window in the second floor.

The photographers were able to document this terrible moment – and presented us in the newsroom with a problem: Do you print the photo of an Israeli soldier thrown out the window? Do you think about his family and friends? Do you think about morale? Do think about the implications it will have on the public mood?

This photo – which we did print on the front page – played an important role in the rapidly deteriorating situation between Israelis and Palestinians: it made Israelis angrier, more resilient, less likely to listen to reason. If you’re a man of peace you might not want such photo to be printed – if you’re a man of national pride you also might not want it printed. So – who were we serving here? What kind of role did we play? We were participants with no other choice because not printing the photo would also make us participants.

And there’s always this question that reminds me the days in the boys scouts when we were asked to say whether we are first “Israelis” or first “human beings.” Are we first journalists – or Israelis? Do we have to do our job forgetting that we have families and friends and society we belong to – or we have to think first about the interests of this society. Another grand – but false – choice.

Shmuel Rosner Chief U.S. Correspondent

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/rosnerBlog.jhtml?itemNo=850625&contrassID=25&subContrassID=0&sbSubContrassID=1&listSrc=Y&art=1

Google Maps: Real-Time Terrorism and Travel Danger Map

Google Maps: Real-Time Terrorism and Travel Danger Map

Global Incident Maps is addictive. The site uses a maps mashup to send out a bat signal to the world every time an incident of “global terrorism and other suspicious events” are recorded.

While responsible travelers can use the map to get a sense of what sort of sordid activity is going on around the world before they go, alarmist travelers and parents of travel addicted offspring are going to have a field day with this thing. Can’t you just parents saying “are you sure you want to go to fill-in-the-blank destination after what we just read on Global Incident Map?”

Here is what we learned today:

·Weapons seized at Makassar airport in Indonesia

·Muslim extremists are recruiting in Melbourne

·Shot gun shells were found in a trash can at Manchester Airport in New Hampshire

It is kind of like the Weather Channel for panicky travelers and their kin–informative, addictive, yet a touch apocalyptic. Genius.

http://www.jaunted.com/story/2007/4/18/152130/809/travel/Google+Maps:++Real-Time+Terrorism+and+Travel+Danger+Map

Desert Fever

Desert Fever

April 21, 2007: The sparring between Russia and the rest of the UN Security Council, over taking Kosovo away from Serbia, continues. While the US and the EU support Kosovo independence, while Russia opposes it—and Russia has a veto on the UN Security Council. Austria is taking the role of “buffer” by suggesting that the UN “go slow” on independence. The US supports Kosovo’s independence from Serbia because the alternative – some form of autonomy within Serbia—was more of a long term political risk. Russian believes that a unilateral declaration of independence (Kosovo from Serbia) would be a violation of international law. China is looking for a compromise on Kosovo. China has had good relations with Serbia. Austria has floated the idea that Kosovo could have special rights in Serbia and points to the South Tyrol (Alto Adige in Italy) as an example. The South Tyrol is a predominantly German speaking area in Italy. It was, in fact, once part of Austria. The Kosovo situation is not unique in Europe. However, what worries a lot of people is that Russia is assuming its traditional role as “defender of the Slavs.” World War I (and 73 years of hot and cold war) was triggered when Russia and Austria disagreed over how the Balkan Slavs should be treated.

Bosnia is experiencing increasing tension between Bosnian Muslims and what the Bosnians call “Wahhabis.” Wahhabi Islam is the sect preferred by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have funded many mosques throughout the world. Bosnia has increasingly been the scene of conflicts between Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) communities and radicals influenced by Wahhab clerics. Bosnia is fighting back, and recently stripped some 367 “foreign born” Bosnians of their citizenship. Most of these guys had fought with Bosnian Muslims in the 1992-95 war. It appears that the individuals involved are suspected of being involved in Islamic terror organizations.

April 19, 2007: The senior military officers from Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, and Turkey met in Greece as a confidence building measures.

April 17, 2007: Kosovo’s independence is a touchy topic in Serbia. Politicians in Serbia have accused the Serbian government of shifting its position regarding Kosovo independence. The Serbian government denies it has changed its position and is only willing to grant Kosovo special autonomy within Serbia. However, Radio Free Europe reported that the Serbian Pharmaceutical Agency recently “applied” to sell drugs in Kosovo and. referred to Kosovo as a “state.” This was one of the set off the arguments within Serbia.

April 15, 2007: Serbia is investigating three Kosovar Albanians suspected of committing war crimes. The three men are accused of kidnapping and killing a Serb policeman in 1998. The three Kosovar Albanians were all members of the Kosovo Liberaiton Army (KLA).

April 14, 2007: NATO/KFOR peacekeepers in Kosovo discovered two weapons caches, and arrested seven people suspected of involvement in an assassination attempt.

April 11, 2007: Serbia is interested in investing in Montenegro’s largest cargo port, Bar. About two-thirds of the goods shipped through the port come from Serbia. During the early stages of the Yugoslav War of Devolution, Serbia focused on retaining access to the sea. Serbia concentrated on the Croat port of Dubrovnik. The end of the Serbia-Montenegro (“rump” Yugoslavia”) left Serbia completely landlocked.

Three men fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the head of Kosovo’s telecommunications regulatory board. There may be an organized crime angle in the attack. The board is tasked with awarding mobile phone licenses and there is a debate in Kosovo over the recent assignment of a contract to a Slovenian company.

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/balkans/articles/20070422.aspx

AFP probes terrorist fundraising

AFP probes terrorist fundraising

THE Australian Federal Police have launched a wide-ranging investigation into suspected terrorist fundraising by Somali Islamic extremists in Australia.

The move reflects growing concerns that small groups of radicalised Somalis in Melbourne have been raising terror money and sending it to fund Islamic jihad in their war-torn homeland.

The east African nation has become a fertile ground for terrorists, with al-Qaeda using the lawless country to regroup and plot new attacks abroad.

Somali Community of Victoria president Abdurahman Jama Osman has said that a small group of Melbourne-based Somalis are suspected of helping to fund extremists in the capital, Mogadishu.

“There was a fundraising in Melbourne and they said they were going to give the money to the Arab parts of Mogadishu,” Mr Osman said.

“But many Somalis believe that the money was sent to the Islamic military in Somalia. I’m sure they were breaking the law, and if so, they have harmed our reputation.”

Australian laws on terrorism forbid raising money for extremists overseas.

Security sources say the alleged fundraising being investigated by the AFP took place while the former hardline Islamic government, known as the Islamic Court Union, was in power late last year.

The AFP has declined to make any comment on the issue and will neither confirm or deny that it is investigating the matter.

Mr Osman said only a small number of Australia’s 16,000 Somali immigrants were extremists, but that this small minority was hard-line.

“Our problem is that young people are in touch with Wahabis (members of a fundamental Sunni Muslim sect),” he told The Australian in an interview earlier this year. “There are very few but you cannot change their mind — nobody can change their mind.”

In December, a 25-year-old Somali man from Melbourne, Ahmed Ali, was killed after travelling to Somalia to join the Islamic jihad there.

Australia’s Somali community has grown rapidly in the past decade as thousands of Somalians have sought to escape famine and war in their homeland.

In a speech to Somali community members in Melbourne last week, Sydney Somali leader Herse Hilole warned that young Somalis were being seduced by Muslim extremists.

“We know there are supporters in Australia who want to recruit young Somalis to go back or support financially the Islamic Courts,” he said.

“The community must be made aware of this, and we must put a stop to it.

“Somalis who take up Australian citizenship should know they are now committed to obeying Australian law … under Australian law, it is forbidden to join jihad in any country, or join any war that is against the interests of Australia.”

Some Somali leaders believe more than a dozen young Somali men have returned to their homeland to take up arms for the Islamic jihad.

But Issue Musse, of the Werribee Islamic Centre in Melbourne, said the vast majority of the Somali immigrants in Australia were moderates.

He said the funds raised by community members in Australia were more likely to be sent to their families back home, rather than to Islamic or political causes.

“Many Somalis have people to support back home so they are more likely to raise funds for their families rather than for (the former government of) Somalia,” Sheik Musse said.

The US military has launched air raids against suspected Somali al-Qa’ida strongholds in the wake of the downfall of the Islamic Courts government, toppled in December by Ethiopian troops tacitly backed by the US.

Shelling has rocked Mogadishu this month as Ethiopian and Somali troops, backed by helicopter gunships, attacked Islamist rebels and militias.

Scores of civilians have been killed and hundreds wounded in what is seen as the worst fighting for more than 15 years.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21601871-2,00.html

Jihad and the Collapse of the Swedish Model

Jihad and the Collapse of the Swedish Model

I decided to write this essay following the riots in Malmö this weekend. Malmö is Sweden’s third largest city and by far the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim aggression. I read recently that an Arab girl interviewed in Malmö said that she liked it so much there, it felt almost like an Arab city. Native Swedes have been moving away from the city for years, turned into refugees in their own country by Jihad, not too different from the non-Muslims in some regions of the Philippines, southern Thailand or Kashmir in India, or for that matter Christian Serbs in Kosovo.
Sweden was presented during the Cold War as a middle way between capitalism and Communism. When this model of a society collapses – and it will collapse, under the combined forces of Islamic Jihad, the European Union, Multiculturalism and ideological overstretch – it is thus not just the Swedish state that will collapse but the symbol of Sweden, the showcase of an entire ideological world view. I wrote two years ago that if the trend isn’t stopped, the Swedish nation will simply cease to exist in any meaningful way during the first half of this century. The country that gave us Bergman, ABBA and Volvo could become known as the Bosnia of northern Europe, and the “Swedish model” will be one of warning against ideological madness, not one of admiration. I still fear I was right in that assessment.

Jonathan Friedman, an American living outside Malmö, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that “Sweden is a Multicultural society.” Notes to the Act also stated that “Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin.”

Native Swedes have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people’s history and culture.

Jens Orback, Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality from the Social Democratic Party said during a debate in Swedish radio in 2004 that “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.”

This is a government that knows perfectly well that their people will become a minority in their own country, yet is doing nothing to stop this. On the contrary. Pierre Schori, Minister for immigration, during a parliamentary debate in 1997 said that: “Racism and xenophobia should be banned and chased [away],” and that one should not accept “excuses, such as that there were flaws in the immigration and refugee policies.”

In other words: It should be viewed as a crime for the native population not to assist in wiping themselves out.

Orback’s attitude is what follows once you declare that culture is irrelevant. Our culture, even though we try to forget it, is steeped in a Judeo-Christian morality based on the Golden Rule of reciprocity: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Luke 6:31)

Muslims, on the other hand, are steeped in an Islamic tradition based on Muslim supremacy. Muslims view lack of force as a sign of weakness, and they despise weakness, which is precisely why Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for Islam, and thought it would be a better match for Nazism than Christianity, with its childish notions of compassion.

A Swedish man was nearly killed for the crime of wearing clothes with his own national flag while Sweden was participating in the 2006 football World Cup. Some “Multicultural youths” found this to be an intolerable provocation, and the 24-year-old man was run down by a car in Malmö, where Muhammad is becoming the most common name for newborn boys.

Feriz and Pajtim, members of Gangsta Albanian Thug Unit in Malmö, explain how they mug people downtown. They target a lone victim. “We surround him and beat and kick him until he no longer fights back,” Feriz said. “You are always many more people than your victims. Cowardly?” “I have heard that from many, but I disagree. The whole point is that they’re not supposed to have a chance.” They didn’t express any sympathy for their victims. “If they get injured, they just have themselves to blame for being weak,” said Pajtim and shrugged.

The wave of robberies the city of Malmö has witnessed is part of a “war against the Swedes.” This is the explanation given by young robbers from immigrant background in interviews with Petra Åkesson. “When we are in the city and robbing we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” This argument was repeated several times. “Power for me means that the Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.” The boys explain, laughingly, that “there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you’re robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you’ve succeeded, it simply feels good.” “We rob every single day, as often as we want to, whenever we want to. The Swedes don’t do anything, they just give us the stuff. They’re so wimpy.”

“Exit Folkhemssverige – En samhällsmodells sönderfall” (Exit the People’s Home of Sweden – The Downfall of a Model of Society) is a book from 2005 about immigration and the Swedish welfare state model dubbed “the people’s home,” written by Jonathan Friedman, Ingrid Björkman, Jan Elfverson and Åke Wedin. According to them, the Swedish Multicultural elites see themselves first of all as citizens of the world. In order to emphasize and accentuate diversity, everything Swedish is deliberately disparaged. Opposition to this policy is considered a form of racism:

“The dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state. The problem is that the ethnic group that are described as Swedes implicitly are considered to be nationalists, and thereby are viewed as racists.”

The authors fear that the handling of the immigration policies has seriously eroded democracy because the citizens lose their loyalty towards a state they no longer consider their own. “Instead of increasing the active participation of citizens, the government has placed clear restrictions on freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of congregation.”

Mona Sahlin has held various posts in Social Democratic cabinets, among others as Minister for Democracy, Integration and Gender Equality. Sahlin has said that many Swedes are envious of immigrants because they, unlike the Swedes, have a culture, a history, something which ties them together. Notice how Swedish authorities first formally state that Swedes don’t have a history or a culture, and then proceed to lament the fact that Swedes don’t have a history or a culture. A neat trick.

Sahlin has also stated that: “If two equally qualified persons apply for a job at a workplace with few immigrants, the one called Muhammad should get the job. […] It should be considered an asset to have an ethnic background different from the Swedish one.” In 2004, she was quoted as saying that “A concerted effort that aims at educating Swedes that immigrants are a blessing to their country must be pursued,” stressing that her compatriots must accept that the new society is Multicultural. “Like it or not, this is the new Sweden.”

Mona Sahlin was elected leader of the Social Democratic Party, as thus a future contender for the post of Swedish Prime Minister, in 2007.

Why does the government dispense with the social contract and attack its own people like this? Well, for starters, because it can. Sweden is currently arguably the most politically repressive and totalitarian country in the Western world. It also has the highest tax rates. That could be a a coincidence, but I’m not sure that it is. The state has become so large and powerful that is has become an autonomous organism with a will of its own. The people are there to serve the state, not vice versa. And because state power penetrates every single corner of society, including the media, there are no places left to mount a defense if the state decides to attack you.

It has been said jokingly that while other countries are states with armies, Pakistan is an army with a state. Likewise, it could be argued that Sweden started out being a nation with a bureaucracy and ended up being a bureaucracy with a nation. In fact, the bureaucracy formally abolished the very nation it was supposed to serve. Its representatives are no longer leaders of a people, but caretakers preoccupied only with advancing their own careers through oiling and upholding, if possible expanding, the bureaucratic machinery.

Swedes pay the highest tax rates of any (supposedly) free nation, and for this they get flawed social security, non-existent physical security and a state apparatus dedicated to their destruction.

Anna Ekelund in the newspaper Aftonbladet writes that: “We are a people who allow ourselves to be insulted by the government on a daily basis. We are not expected to be capable of thinking for ourselves, of deciding what we will read, or managing our own money. […] Swedes are as co-dependent as an alcoholic’s wife. Yet we do not hurry to the ballot box to remove the prevailing systems. Not because we don’t want to but because too many of us have painted ourselves into their corners.”

Moreover, Swedes are keenly aware of the fact that their country is viewed by many outsiders as a “model society.” Sweden is a deeply ideological state dedicated to imposing a certain world view on its citizens, and because the state is ideological, dissenters are quite literally treated as enemies of the state.

In the book The New Totalitarians, the British historian Roland Huntford in the early 1970s pointed out that it was easier to establish the Fascist model of the corporate state in Sweden than in Mussolini’s Italy for cultural reasons, since Sweden had a centralized bureaucracy whereas Italians are skeptical of state authority. Put simply: Swedes have tended to trust their bureaucrats, which no Italian in his right mind would ever do.

According to him, “The Swedes have a horror of controversy as something unpleasant, inefficient and vaguely immoral. They require for peace of mind, not confrontation, but consensus. Consensus guides everything: private conversation, intellectual life and the running of the State.”

The then Minister of Education, Mr. Ingvar Carlsson, defined the purpose of schooling: “It is to produce a well adjusted, good member of society. It teaches people to respect the consensus, and not to sabotage it” He also on one occasion said that “School is the spearhead of Socialism.” Mr. Carlsson was Swedish Prime Minister as late as 1996. In 2007, now as Sweden’s consul general in Istanbul, Carlsson said that the trend towards a Multicultural Europe is unstoppable; therefore, Islam must be recognized as a “domestic” European religion.

Mr. Carlsson’s mentor in the Social Democratic Party and predecessor as Swedish Prime Minister (1969 to 1986), Mr. Olof Palme, openly flaunted his disregard, if not contempt for, Western civilization: “The Renaissance so-called? Western culture? What does it mean to us?” Under the watchful eye of the Labor movement, Swedish education has for decades mounted deliberate attacks on Western culture, making it look suspect.

According to Mr. Huntford, “When the Swedes change ideas, they do it to the full, leaving no room for criticism or reservation. The country lacks intellectual defences; anything new will conquer without resistance being offered.” The consensus “assumes that technological advancement is the sole path to happiness, and the Gross National Product the only measure of national success. It also assumes that the good of the collective at all times must take precedence over the good of the individual. It prescribes that the fundamentals of Swedish society must never be questioned or discussed.”

This is how Mrs Maj Bossom-Nordboe, then departmental chief of at the Directorate of Schools, expressed it: “It’s useless to build up individuality, because unless people learned to adapt themselves to society, they would be unhappy. Liberty is not emphasized. Instead, we talk about the freedom to give up freedom. The accent is on the social function of children, and I will not deny that we emphasize the collective.”

Roland Huntford ended his book with a warning that this system of soft-totalitarianism could be exported to other countries. He has been proven right since:

“The Swedes have demonstrated how present techniques can be applied in ideal conditions. Sweden is a control experiment on an isolated and sterilized subject. Pioneers in the new totalitarianism, the Swedes are a warning of what probably lies in store for the rest of us, unless we take care to resist control and centralization, and unless we remember that politics are not to be delegated, but are the concern of the individual. The new totalitarians, dealing in persuasion and manipulation, must be more efficient than the old, who depended upon force.”

Following the September 2006 elections, Fredrik Reinfeldt became Prime Minister of Sweden, presiding over a center-right coalition government. This is, in my view, positive. Sweden has been described by some as a “one-party state,” since the Social Democrats have been in power for 65 of the last 74 years. However, the differences between the left-wing and the right-wing in Sweden are not always that big.

The last time these parties were in power, under the leadership of PM Carl Bildt from 1991 to 94, they presided over massive immigration, and have not been vocal in their opposition to the Multicultural policies since. The new Foreign Minister Bildt as a UN Commissioner to the Balkans called for recognizing Islam as a part of European culture.

PM Reinfeldt has stated that the original Swedish culture was merely barbarism: “It can sometimes be good to humbly remind of the fact that a great deal of what constitutes Sweden has been created in [a process of] evolution, exactly because we have been open to accept other people and experiences.”

Reinfeldt said this following a visit to an area called Ronna in Södertälje, near Stockholm. One year earlier a police station in Södertälje was hit by shots from an automatic weapon following a major confrontation between immigrant youths and police. The trouble in Ronna started after a Swedish girl had been called a “whore” and reacted to this. Ethnologist Maria Bäckman, in her study “Whiteness and gender,” has followed a group of Swedish girls in the immigrant suburb of Rinkeby outside Stockholm. Bäckman relates that several of the blond Swedish girls stated that they had dyed their hair to avoid sexual harassment.

I have called Sweden a soft-totalitarian country, but I am sometimes not so sure about the “soft” part. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations on immigration. Yet not one party represented in Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society.

Is it just a coincidence that the one country on the European continent that has avoided war for the longest period of time, Sweden, is also arguably the one Western nation where Political Correctness has reached the worst heights? Maybe the prolonged period of peace has created an environment where layers of ideological nonsense have been allowed to pile up for generations without stop. I don’t know what Sweden will look like a generation from now, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be viewed as a model society. And if the absence of war is one of the causes of its current weakness, I fear that is a problem that will soon be cured.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1821598/posts

Security Says Al Qaeda Group Active in Spain: Pais

Security Says Al Qaeda Group Active in Spain: Pais
By REUTERS

Filed at 12:48 p.m. ET

MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s security service has warned the government that Spain and France are most in danger of being attacked by a north African wing of al Qaeda and that the group is active in Spain, El Pais reported on Sunday.

Quoting recent reports from intelligence service CNI, El Pais said members of the newly named al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb were working in Spain to raise money and recruit fighters to send to Iraq and training camps in Africa.

The CNI report said the organisation, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), could absorb other groups in Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, and that they would be more dangerous united than if they were working individually.

Nobody at the government or interior ministry was immediately available to comment on the report.

North Africa was dotted with bombings earlier this month.

Twin explosions killed 33 people in Algiers, and suicide bombers blew themselves up in Casablanca, two outside U.S. diplomatic offices.

Al Qaeda has said it wants to regain once-Muslim lands like Al-Andalus — the southern swathe of Spain now called Andalucia.

After this month’s bombs, Spain was reported to have stepped up security in its North African enclaves Ceuta and Melilla and in southern coastal towns. The government said it was taking precautions but there was “no fear.”

Sunday’s El Pais said police and security services had not uncovered any concrete plans to attack Spain but said the country was at risk.

“The real danger of what happened this month in Maghreb is the Algerian GSPC. All our attention is on them,” the paper quoted an antiterrorism police chief as saying. “That was the work of professionals. Al Qaeda in its pure form.”

El Pais said France and Spain were working together to study how the al Qaeda group was financing itself in their countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-qaeda-spain.html?pagewanted=print

Let’s be realistic about reality

Let’s be realistic about reality

April 22, 2007
BY MARK STEYN Sun-Times Columnist

Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had
identified the problem: ”What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls
over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable
loss.”

According to the Canadian blogger Kate MacMillan, a caller to her local
radio station went further and said she was teaching her children to ”fear
guns.”

Overseas, meanwhile, the German network NTV was first to identify the
perpetrator: To accompany their report on the shootings, they flashed up a
picture of Charlton Heston touting his rifle at an NRA confab.

And at Yale, the dean of student affairs, Betty Trachtenberg, reacted to the
Virginia Tech murders by taking decisive action: She banned all stage
weapons from plays performed on campus. After protests from the drama
department, she modified her decisive action to “permit the use of obviously
fake weapons” such as plastic swords.

But it’s not just the danger of overly realistic plastic swords in college
plays that we face today. In yet another of his not-ready-for-prime-time
speeches, Barack Obama started out deploring the violence of Virginia Tech
as yet another example of the pervasive violence of our society: the
violence of Iraq, the violence of Darfur, the violence of . . . er, hang on,
give him a minute. Ah, yes, outsourcing: ”the violence of men and women who
. . . suddenly have the rug pulled out from under them because their job has
moved to another country.” And let’s not forget the violence of radio hosts:
”There’s also another kind of violence, though, that we’re going to have to
think about. It’s not necessarily physical violence, but violence that we
perpetrate on each other in other ways. Last week the big news, obviously,
had to do with Imus and the verbal violence that was directed at young women
who were role models for all of us, role models for my daughters.”

I’ve had some mail in recent days from people who claimed I’d insulted the
dead of Virginia Tech. Obviously, I regret I didn’t show the exquisite taste
and sensitivity of Sen. Obama and compare getting shot in the head to an
Imus one-liner. Does he mean it? I doubt whether even he knows. When
something savage and unexpected happens, it’s easiest to retreat to our
tropes and bugbears or, in the senator’s case, a speech on the previous
week’s “big news.” Perhaps I’m guilty of the same. But then Yale University,
one of the most prestigious institutes of learning on the planet, announces
that it’s no longer safe to expose twentysomething men and women to ”Henry
V” unless you cry God for Harry, England and St. George while brandishing a
bright pink and purple plastic sword from the local kindergarten. Except, of
course, that the local kindergarten long since banned plastic swords under
its own “zero tolerance” policy.

I think we have a problem in our culture not with “realistic weapons” but
with being realistic about reality. After all, we already “fear guns,” at
least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so
many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a “gun-free zone,” formally
and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer
kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a “gun-free zone” except for
those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second
Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to
do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a
would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed
their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.

But you can’t do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has
created a “Gun-Free School Zone.” Or, to be more accurate, they’ve created a
sign that says “Gun-Free School Zone.” And, like a loopy medieval sultan,
they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The
“gun-free zone” turned out to be a fraud — not just because there were at
least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense
that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of
the world.

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part
because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional
murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a
small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM
cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a
couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken
down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock
and told ‘em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to
be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot
in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased ‘em away. Eventually
they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and
New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid
leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked
it out: Where’s the nearest place around here where you’re most likely to
encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of
resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut
River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning
liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge
from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder
victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue
is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals
to everyone that you’re not in the real world.

The “gun-free zone” fraud isn’t just about banning firearms or even a
symptom of academia’s distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second
Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical
segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a
column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical
self-defense with “the erosion of intellectual self-defense,” and the
retreat of college campuses into a smothering security blanket of speech
codes and “safe spaces” that’s the very opposite of the principles of honest
enquiry and vigorous debate on which university life was founded. And so we
“fear guns,” and “verbal violence,” and excessively realistic swashbuckling
in the varsity production of ”The Three Musketeers.” What kind of
functioning society can emerge from such a cocoon?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/351710,CST-EDT-STEYN22.article

Hizbullah leader declares: We get our orders from Teheran

Behind the Headlines:
Hizbullah leader declares: We get our orders from Teheran
22 April 2007

In a 15 April interview with the Iranian Arabic language TV station ‘al Qawthar’, Hizbullah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Kassem, told the interviewer that suicide bombings, terrorist attacks and even artillery barrages against Israeli civilians all receive prior approval from the Ayatollahs in Teheran.

Iran is the major destabilizing force in the Middle East today. From supplying arms, money, training and support for terrorist groups such as Hizbullah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to the promotion of extremist Islamic revolutionary ideology, the clerical regime in Teheran is bent on sowing unrest throughout the region. Determined to cause the annihilation of Israel, suicide terrorism plays an important role in the Iranian regime’s war against Israel and the West. The regime’s spiritual theoreticians
utilize religion to both recruit suicide bombers and to justify their actions. Iran’s involvement in the actual operations has always been kept vague, in order to protect the regime’s image in the international arena.

But now, for the first time, a linkage officially confirming active Iranian support of these operations has been made public. The Lebanon-based Hizbullah terrorist organization has declared that all terrorist attacks, suicide bombings and other operations against Israel must first be authorized by the Teheran regime before they can be carried out. This, in effect, places the responsibility for these attacks squarely on Iran.

For many years, Hizbullah was careful not to implicate Iran in its terror operations. However, in a 15 April interview with the Iranian Arabic language TV station ‘al Qawthar’, Hizbullah Deputy Secretary-General Naim Kassem, told the interviewer that suicide bombings, terrorist attacks and even artillery barrages against Israeli civilians all receive prior approval from the Ayatollah’s in Teheran:

“The religious doctrine which dictates Hizbullah’s actions in general and those relating to the Jihad in particular, is based on the rulings of the spiritual leader in Teheran. The spiritual leader has the power to permit our actions, and the spiritual leader can forbid them.

“In order to know what is permitted and forbidden regarding the Jihad, we ask for and receive overall permission and only then do we carry out the operation.

“Even with regard to the suicide bombings, no one is allowed to kill himself without religious authorization.

“Even the rocket attacks on Israel, against the civilian population [Aug 2006] . in order to apply pressure, even this required overall religious authorization.”

After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s widely publicized denial of the Holocaust, his declared intention to annihilate Israel, and his declarations regarding Iran’s nuclear ambitions, these newest revelations leave little doubt that Ahmadinejad and his cleric regime are purposely pursuing a policy by which Teheran hopes to engulf the region in Jihadist violence.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Hizbullah+leader-+We+get+our+orders+from+Teheran+22-Apr-2007.htm