The police in France get their man.

Profiling - the Dry Bones Blog

As Michael Gurfinkiel tells the story of the recent Jihadist murders in France:

According to French Interior Minister Claude Guéant, the similarities between the assassination of soldiers in Toulouse and Montauban and the eerie butchery at Ozar Hatora were “compelling.” Moreover, investigators established that the criminal used the same weapon, a World War II 11.43 gun, in all three instances. What remained unclear, according to police, was the number of killers and whether they had received support from a larger criminal network. Motive also remained a mystery.

For 48 hours, many speculated about a neo-Nazi psychopath, some sort of French Tim McVeigh or Anders Breivik. What seemed to encourage this view was the fact that the shooter targeted only non-Caucasian soldiers and Jews and that a neo-Nazi network had been investigated and prosecuted among the Montauban military four years ago.

In fact, the police already knew their suspect: one single killer, a jihadist. The man — Mohammed Merah, a French citizen of Algerian origin — was not even hiding. Confident that police sought a neo-Nazi, he stayed at his unassuming home in Toulouse. Tuesday evening, the Raid huntsmen and dozens of other police personnel circled the building. At 3:00 AM they tried to apprehend him alive. He fired on them, wounding two. By 6:00 PM local time, the police expect him to surrender soon.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-jihad-in-france/?singlepage=true

Profiling, of course, is the essence of all police and security work.  That profiling is, today, definitely not PC is just another sign that political correctness is about destroying the basis for any real society, in favor of some Utopian fantasy, i.e. bloodshed.  Ironically, however, in this case PC may have helped the French police get their man.  The early consensus that the murderer was some kind of "Nazi", the all-purpose, or only allowable, profile of evil for an age that otherwise refuses to profile, may have led Mohammed Merah to think he was not being followed, so he could let his guard down.

Does murderer Merah's mind now race through the possibility that if only the liberal elite in the media and political class had been more forthcoming that the more likely profile for the killer in this case was some kind of Islamist who wouldn't, as most of his kind don't, have qualms about killing "Muslims" (i.e. apostates, because French soldiers, in the Jihadist's eyes), as well as Jews, he might have gotten away with more murder? One could argue the point about the most likely profile in various ways, but the basic point is that Jihadist murder and criminality in today's world outnumbers "neo-Nazi" murder somewhat exponentially. Instead, the media and the French political class wished to point a finger at "neo-Nazis" and continued in their normal condescending refusal to consider seriously the ethical claims of Islam,  i.e. to see Muslims as moral agents who have to come to terms with holy texts and daily rituals that obsessively divide the world into true Believers (who are also ideally warriors) and infidels. As Jonathan Narvey asks, Why Not Blame Islam?  If we are to blame murderers and their motivations, as a general principle, the only alternative is to blame the Jews or white supremacists (if that isn't redundant in the thinking of much of today's left) for somehow setting the stage for Mohammed Merah's emotional outburst.  No one can seriously think these killings are just the sign of one uniquely-corrupted mental universe.  But many will no doubt say as much.

As Barry Rubin puts it:

What is needed is not more hypocrisy or professions of innocence — or expensive conferences where long speeches are made about the evils of antisemitism by those who do nothing but get free plane tickets and nice hotel rooms — but a real change in the behavior of the mass media that pours out lies, the academics who slander and distort, and the governments that cannot even stand with a country and people beset by terrorism and once again by the world’s oldest hatred.

Oh, and one more thing is needed: the admission that the greatest threat of hatred, “racism,” dehumanization of the “other,” and threat of persecution today — as the statistics for Europe and North America show — is not “Islamophobia” but antisemitism.

And none of those things are going to happen because the liars, haters, apologists, and enablers will not acknowledge their own behavior while those who are supposed to supervise them will not act. Hating and lying about Israel and the Jewish people is too useful politically and too entwined with the version of left-wing ideology, not to mention Islamism and the dominant interpretation of Islam, currently so powerful in the world.

It would be an exaggeration to say that Europe is no longer a safe place for Jews to live. Yet it is accurate to say that it is becoming an unsafe place for Jews to live, and certainly for those who wish to express mainstream Jewish views and to practice their religion openly. Meanwhile, the EU and various governments dare not admit that the principal cause of antisemitic activity is radical Islam, and the principal inspiration for popular antisemitism is trendy leftist ideas that now dominate much of that continent and are spreading in North America.

Thus, Jewish children are deliberately murdered by a terrorist in the midst of France. In response come get the formal statements and the crocodile tears. Yet at the exact same time as the bullets are entering the children’s bodies, as the victims fall to the ground, as the ambulance sirens sound, the incitement and the lies and the slanders continue, laying the groundwork for more hatred and more murder.

Bat Ye'or reviews Richard Rubenstein, Jihad and Genocide

Excerpt:

Rubenstein pleads for recognition that the world is engaged in a religious conflict. Here he candidly touches on the great taboo, the truth hidden at all costs: neither Israel nor the West have been willing to recognize the religious dimension of the conflict. Given the nature of their societies, they fear that they have no viable solution. But falsehoods do not change the nature of the conflict; they only enable it to simmer and strengthen from Chechnya to India, from Nigeria to Finland, from Spain to Armenia.

Meanwhile we see the Islamist Turkish regime loosening its ties with Israel and joining the OIC Islamist front in view of bringing the restoration of the Caliphate that dominates already at the UN and has taken Europe hostage. Blinded by a vicious repressed antisemitism, the West supported jihad against Israel and consequently failed to suppress an ideology that targets itself and the world with the same, if not greater, violence. Riddled with an immigration that fuels social conflicts within its population, surviving on disinformation and security ransoms, it has become at best the auxiliary of the OIC.

Written in a clear style, Rubenstein’s book evokes in simple language, the most crucial issues of our time: is the West repeating the scenario of the 1940s, organising through a UN, dominated by the OIC – particularly the UN Human Rights Council – a worldwide campaign of demonization of Israel in order to justify its destruction? The Council’s acceptance of the Goldstone Report condemning Israel for self-defence adopts the Islamic view in which jihadist attacks are commended but the resistance of those aggressed upon is taken to be aggression against Allah’s rights. Having lost its legitimacy according to the permanently valid concept of dar al-Harb, Israel is thus alleged to be guilty of the “war crime” of defending itself against its own destruction. In effect, this view condemns any resistance to terrorism and gives a free pass to terrorists. What does this policy tells us about the West, and particularly Europe’s own policy? Does its mean that the West approves the jihadist strategy of world Islamization while self-defence is prohibited? Has the West already adopted this policy for itself as the politically correct culture, as the sanctions against ‘Islamophobia’ seem to suggest? In this case, we have to reflect on the spiritual and political meaning for us of the current anti-Israel hatred and policy in the West, and Rubenstein’s book is an indispensable start.

The Bloody Cost Of Willful Denial

Writing from a nation at war with itself, Pakistani blogger Nadeem F. Paracha's passionate post reminds us that the world is filled with souls at war with reality, and how tragically common it can be for the human mind to imprison itself within a cage of lies, binding itself into a slumber so deep that neither bullets, burnings nor bombs can successfully wake it from a living dream of willful denial.

A Nation Of Sleepwalkers:

...
Take for instance the recent case of a famous TV anchorman who visited a devastated area in Peshawar that was bombed by a remote-controlled car bomb. He talked to about 10 people at the scene. More than half of the folks interviewed spouted out those squarely unproven and thoroughly clichéd tirades about RAW/CIA/Mossad being the ‘real perpetrators’ and that ‘no Muslim is capable of inflicting such acts of barbarity.’
...
I felt bad for the few bystanders at that Peshawar bombing site who kept contradicting their more gung-ho contemporaries by reminding them that for months the shopkeepers where receiving threatening letters from the Taliban warning them that they should stop selling products for women and ban the entry of women in the area.

One shop-owner who said he lost more than millions of rupees worth of goods in the blast was slightly taken aback when the anchor asked him who he thought was behind the bomb attack. For a few seconds he looked curiously at the anchor’s face, as if wondering why would a major TV news channel be asking a question whose answer was so obvious. ‘What do you mean, who was responsible?’ he asked. ‘The Taliban, of course!’

Fasi Zaka wrote a scathing piece on the floozy response of some students who chanted slogans against the Kerry-Lugar Bill outside the freshly bombed Islamic University. He was battered with hate mail, even from those who did agree with him that it were the Taliban who bombed the unfortunate university. But these folks turned out to be even worse than the deniers. They are apologists of all the mayhem that takes place in the name of Islam in this country.

Every time the barbarians set themselves off taking innocent men, women, and children with them, these apologists suddenly emerge to write letters to newspapers and try to dominate internet forums explaining the intricate ‘socio-economic problems’ that are turning men into terrorists.

Saturday Night Stirrings

A sobering shower of grey stories, fallen from the margins of headline news, for late-night contemplation on a wet autumn evening.

Generation Of Ingrates: Shocking statistics from the UK, with the infuriating revelation that Britain's war memorials are being increasingly desecrated by thieves and vandals at the rate of more than one a week:

Most of the vandals are never caught, and those who are face little deterrent. Offenders found guilty of criminal damage under £5,000 can only be dealt with in a magistrates' court, where the maximum sentence is six months' jail.
MPs and military campaigners yesterday voiced disgust at the trend and expressed concern that the incidence of desecration is growing when British soldiers are fighting and dying on the front line in Afghanistan.
The figures have been compiled by the Tories. Defence spokesman Dr Liam Fox said: 'At a time when we are honouring those who have sacrificed themselves for our security, this sick and despicable trend is a miserable commentary on contemporary Britain.'

Islamists' War On Women: While US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was visiting Pakistan in late October, a car bomb targeting Peshawar's women erupted in the Mina Bazaar, a market selling wedding dresses, toys and food to the poorer residents of the northern city. Over 100 people were killed, of which at least 60 were women and their children.

This grim figure is double that of the death toll from a car bomb driven by an islamist through Peshawar's busy Khyber Bazaar in early October. 49 people were killed and over a hundred wounded when explosives diabolically laced with bearings and shells erupted next to a bus filled with women and children.

In reading the regional media we can see how the scale of the islamists' attacks may change, but the hatred towards the intented targets remains the same.

Two girls' school were bombed last week in Pakistan's Khyber Agency; it's startling to learn how common such horrors have now become:

Militants have destroyed hundreds of schools, mostly for girls, in the northwest of the country in recent years.
Nearly 200 schools were destroyed in the Swat valley alone during a two-year Taliban uprising to enforce sharia law in the district.

On Wednesday, two women teachers driving home from school were dragged from their car and sprayed with machine gun fire in the Bajaur Agency, in the northwestern corner of the FATA, Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

Earlier Saturday, "suspected militants" threw a grenade into a girls' school in a Quetta suburb, injuring two teachers and an 8-year old student.

Grenade and bomb explosions and drive-by shootings are fairly frequent in impoverished Baluchistan province, which is gripped by an insurgency.

16 bodies are still missing from the forementioned late October Peshawar market bombing. It takes a strong heart to read through recent accounts of loved ones still holding out hope that they might recover the remains of their missing families. It is feared that the massive fire unleashed in the crowded marketplace as a result of the bombing has probably burned the missing bodies to unrecognizeable ashes.

"Finding the dead bodies of these missing people is equal to impossible", says a Peshawar public official. Finding a way to understand the depth of the evil triggering these innumerable cruelties seems equally impossible.

Does the freedom of the internet limit or realize the Islamic terrorist cause?

In the long run, if the Caliphate and Sharia are to rule the world, the internet will presumably have to be destroyed. In the short term, the Jihad can't live without it.

How messed up or empowered can the Jihad become by using the internet, with all the freedom it provides for fostering our desires, including the many desires we didn't know we had until we do? No doubt it depends on how those who fight to destroy the Jihad use this same freedom. Kathy Shaidle reviews some of the possibilities in her latest: Islam in America Series: Internet Jihad | / | Homeland Security

During the Islamic terror attack in Mumbai, India last year, tech-savvy terrorists used BlackBerries and Google Earth satellite-imaging to plan and carry out their atrocities.

Once again, the West's enemies were employing 21st century technology to spread its dangerous 8th century ideology.
[...]
The web's international reach means that online jihad has no boundaries, making it even harder to police. A recent study by the UK's Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), called "Virtual Caliphate," revealed that British Muslim radicals are using Internet tools for recruitment, training and propaganda.

Particularly revealing was the revelation that well-known spokesman Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a regular media guest and "moderate" Muslim, was using Facebook to "openly glorify terrorism" and post anti-semitic screeds.

Other experts warn of Hezbollah's use of Israeli soldiers' Facebook account information as a source of intelligence, and a possible way to trick soldier's into meeting a Facebook "friend" in person who turns out to be a Hezbollah terrorist.

Meanwhile, a pro-Israel Facebook group page called "I Wonder How Quickly I Can Find 1,000,000 People Who Support Israel," was hacked and defaced by a pro-Hizballah group calling itself "Lebanese Shee'a Hackers."

Because Facebook is so ubiquitous, it has actually been used by investigators to track down jihadists. Earlier this month, the FBI looking for a group of Somali immigrants to who left Minneapolis to join an overseas terrorist group were tracked down through their Facebook pages.

As one expert told FoxNews.com, sites like Facebook can help spread radicalism, but that shouldn't "overshadow all the ways it has helped to stop radicalism. The benefits far outweigh the risks, and we are doing all we can to [mitigate] the risks."
[...]
Lynch also points out that debates between radical Muslim members on online forums and chat rooms can actually "undermine moral or turn into open dissent, to the dismay of movement leaders." ("Plus," Lynch adds, video download sites "often feature ads for pornography (...) while you're waiting... I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a glitch or a feature for the jihadists downloading their bin Laden videos.")

Perhaps to get around these and other drawbacks, Hamas actually tried to start their own version of YouTube.com last fall.

The site, called AqsaTube, came complete with a ripped off version of the American site's famous red logo. But instead of the cute cat clips and stealth campaign videos you'll find on YouTube, however, AqsaTube was "devoted entirely to propaganda and incitement," according to the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (IITIC).
[...]
Israeli journalist Amir Mizroch noticed the troubling fact that AqsaTube was generating revenue by selling ad space through Google's ubiquitous AdSense program - including ads for Israeli companies. He confronted Google via email and a few days later, Google removed its ads from the Hamas site.

Then, after Mizroch's story eventually appeared in the Jerusalem Post and was picked up by other news outlets, AqsaTube website, then reappeared online looking very different indeed, its violent videos (and its stolen YouTube logo) nowhere to be seen.

Yet for every site that is pulled down by its service provider, many other Muslim terrorist websites remain online. In fact, those same websites and chatrooms were rife with speculation that the FBI had been behind the AqsaWeb takedown, when the real culprit was one curious Israeli blogger and his subsequent newspaper story.

Terrorists in Iraq and elsewhere "don't exist without the Web and the Net," explained Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla in Technology Review. "A networked insurgency doesn't have anything like a traditional leadership. Most of the leadership they get is by going on websites, where they share information very quickly" - especially, it should be emphasized, among populations in which illiteracy is rampant.
[...]
John Arquilla has a particularly interesting suggestion. He told Technology Today that since the United States is,

"...spending so much on military affairs, maybe some of that should be directed towards technologies that will break our opponents' communications. In World War II, there was an investment in creating the first high-performance computers, for that very purpose. Today, it may be an investment in creating the most effective quantum computing or figuring out how to structure the vast ocean of data that masks the movements of al-Qaeda on the Net and the Web. We need a new Bletchley Park [the country house where the German WWII codes were broken], if we're going to win this war."

I tend to doubt that we can hope to shut up the Jihadis by keeping on top of all their communications. I would put more faith in tactics that seek constantly to engage those conversations, to expose, measure, and challenge their primitive ideology with the pornographic and other realities of our modern world that the orthodox, violent Jihad wishes to destroy because it has no real hope of understanding or integrating in orthodox Islamic terms. When we try to measure or test what people really believe or desire about our shared modern reality, we will find out how many ostensibly orthodox Muslims really believe in Jihad now and how many will find excuses to take from or side with the un-believer. And then we will have real information to further justify and focus our tactics of engagement, to expose and turn and fight. Winners force choices on opponents so as to remake reality. War is seemingly chaos that winners find ways to inflect and channel and shape; they don't simply try to control reality or insist it conforms to pre-established models and justifications.

Talk of an Australian forest fire jihad on the web...

Australia's enemy within: The 'mass murderers' and 'terrorists' behind the wall of fire that killed up to 200 people | Mail Online

Police say they have seen no indication that the Victorian blazes were a 'forest jihad', launched by a group of Islamic extremists using fire as a form of terror against Western communities - despite South Australian Premier Mike Rann labelling the perpetrators as 'terrorists'.

The suggestion of a jihad emerged from a website, identified by U.S. intelligence channels, calling on Muslims in Australia, America, Europe and Russia to start forest fires.

The website claimed that 'scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands.'

MINA Breaking News - Australia targeted for 'Forest Fire' jihad?

Here is the story from January, and another from September 2008 that is encouraging a lot of the web speculation.

Police block identity of man charged with arson over Australian bushfire - Times Online

An Australian man has been charged with arson over one of the country’s deadly bushfires, but his identity has been suppressed and police have moved him to a secret location amid fears of a backlash by victims seething with grief and anger.

The 39-year-old has been charged with lighting the Churchill-Jeeralang bushfire in the LaTrobe valley region of Gippsland. The suspect is a local man. Twenty-one people died in the eastern Victorian region where the Churchill fire began.

The man appeared in the regional Morwell Magistrates Court on Friday afternoon charged with three counts – one of arson causing death, one of intentionally or recklessly causing a bushfire, and one of possessing child pornography.

There are fears of an enormous backlash by mourning members of the Churchill community, angry over the fact that one of their own has been charged with the fire that devastated 36,000 ha of land, destroyed hundreds of homes and killed dozens of their friends and neighbours.

As a result, the court hearing was closed and a suppression order was imposed on all details of his identity. The man was secretly transferred to Melbourne on Friday afternoon where he is expected to face court again on Monday.

An enormous backlash against an arrested individual, his family, or what? Sounds like some possible journalistic obfuscation, to me.

Here are some bloggers speculating on a new kind of left-Islamist alliance:
Who Helped Enviromoonbats Cause the Massive Australian Bushfires? - Right Wing News (Conservative News and Views)

Real World Libertarian: Victorian fires, Jihad, and the Yanks are coming.

What should a free man do?: Is it just me, or is it getting warm out here?

In a free society the government must tell the truth and help lead an appropriate, non-violent response. The result of covering up any political violence, in the long run, will only be worse violence. Let's hope that if Australia is facing any kind of Jihad fires that they will have the good sense to deal with it in a thoughtful, deliberate, fashion.

Grand Wizards of Oz

A picture of a few words is worth a ... well, a lot. Thanks to Gramfan at JihadWatch.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/nazis_needed/

Pro-Hamas Demos Turn Ugly Throughout Belgium; Pro-Israel Rallies Don't

One side burns flags, the other waves them. In Belgium, however, the flag-burning side are escalating the flames of rage beyond mere symbolic acts... What follows are a series of translated articles from the Belgian media over the last week on the bad fruit falling from the pro-Hamas tree.

Things are getting so bad that it has resulted in the government having to raise the threat level scale normally used for measuring terrorism:

The [Foreign Affairs Crisis Center] decided to raise the level of alert due to the impact that Israel's actions in Gaza are having in Belgium. "The participation in the organized protests increases with each day. We recognize that the situation is becoming more explosive", notes Peter Mertens. He therefore decided to increase attention and keep a closer eye on Israeli and palestinian interests in Belgium.

Concretely, this means that "the police presence would be redirected and added to, as necessary." A meeting will be held [last Tuesday] with the Anvers and Brussels police to determine which groups might require additional security precautions.

Mr. Mertens specifies that the threat level has nothing to do with risks from terrorism, and is more the case of a threat against public order.

No doubt incidents like the one taking place on Friday, January 2nd, led to this decision to ratchet up security precautions throughout the nation. At an anti-Israel demonstration of a thousand people on the steps of the Brussels Stock Exchange Friday afternoon, young protestors launched a volley of stones that damaged six cars. A store window was also smashed after the protest. No arrests were made.

The Belgian city of Charleroi, previously given its 15 minutes of infamy through the shocking 2004 suicide bombing of Charleroi resident Muriel Degauque in Iraq, saw the results of this increase in security in action, as the forces of law and order succesfully prevented several dozen masked youths from engaging in vandalism at the tail-end of an anti-Israel protest:

A pro-palestinian protest gave way to several outbursts Saturday afternoon, in the neighborhood of Ville-Haute, in Charleroi ...
Several hundred protestors first gathered together while displaying banners at la place Charles II. A delegation submitted a statement of protest to burgomeister Jean-Jacques Viseur.
This part of the protest went without incident.
However, as the protest dispersed, several dozen youths, several with their faces masked, hurtled down the nearby rue de la Montagne, threatening to smash windows, but were prevented from doing so.
The police had taken the precaution to equip themselves with water pumps but these ended up not being necessary.... Local police made several arrests likely to lead to a hearing by the deputy public prosecutor in court.

Last Monday, January 5th, unknown persons started a fire in front of a Brussels synagogue, blackening the front door. Investigators were not certain about how the fire started, but discounted the possibility of it being a molotov cocktail. The spokesperson for the police suggested, through a tactless analogy, that it might simply be a case of practical jokers taking advantage of the situation in Gaza to throw a little "oil on the fire"...

2 molotov coctails were, however, found among the 93 protestors arrested at a spontaneous, unauthorized "peace" protest in Antwerp two days before, on Saturday January 3rd. They had text-messaged each other about the protest, but made no provisions with authorities to seek the proper permits for their public demonstration; the police, in consultation with Anvers mayor Patrick Janssens, told the gathered crowd to leave, arresting those who would not disperse as directed.

This protest ended better than the one which took place in Antwerp on Wednesday December 31st. Anti-Israeli protestors descended upon Antwerp's Jewish community, which had been heavily defended by a strong police presence. (Watch the following (Flemish-language?) tv news account of the incident, as of the 1:00 mark...)

A protest undertaken on January 9th with the participation of a left-wing Belgian political party turned into a bit of a mess thanks to the undisciplined exuberance of the "anti-violence" protestors in attendance. Almost a thousand people had assembled on that late Friday afternoon at the place du Marché in Liège, where the crowd's spontaneous pro-jihad chants drowned out the official speakers' standard anti-war rhetoric:

The protest went on through a certain confusion, as the organizers' speeches were rendered inaudible by the more virulent cries coming from a core group of young protestors. In-between the "Israel assassin", "Zionist terrorist", "Bush, Olmert, assassins", one could also hear praising the glory of hamas, hezbollah and jihad. ...

The Ecolo party had announced its participation in the protest... the green party announced that they had proposed a resolution demanding that Europe put pressure on Israel for an immediate cease-fire, a proposition that will be tabled in the Chamber's foreign relations commission this coming January 13th.

Police in Brussels are very concerned about a scheduled protest this coming Sunday, January 11th. Over 100 organizations, including Belgian political parties such as the environmentalist Ecolo party, the center-left cdH (Humanist Democratic Centre) and the Socialist Party, are participating in an event expected to draw several thousand protestors. Expectations from the organizers are that the numbers will in fact top those of their previous protest in Brussels on Wednesday December 31st. Because of the bad publicity resulting from their previous efforts, thoughtful guidelines are being established by the organizers:

The League of Belgian Muslims (LMB) has asked the participants to not burn flags during the protest, and to not shout "certain slogans".
...
Policing measures will be very important. Sensitive areas such as synagogues and certain embassies will be secured...

In the middle of all this flag-burning, stone-throwing, and pro-jihad chanting, Belgium's Jewish community organized a demonstration in support of Israel. The CCOJB ("Comité de Coordination des Organisations Juives de Belgique", the "Coordinating Committee of Jewish Organizations in Belgium") held a pro-Israel rally in front of Iran's embassy in Brussels. From the CCOJB's official site:

1,000 people were in attendance to denounce the responsability of Iran in supporting the terrorist organization Hamas. CCOJB President Joel Rubinfeld and federal deputy Denis Ducarme delivered speeches offering their support for the populations [Israeli and Palestinian] in the region who are taken hostage by Hamas and its backers in Iran.

Need we even ask, if police found any molotov cocktails among these protestors..? Was there even a remote chance that they would burn flags, riot, and storm the embassy in a fit of violent rage..?

"By their fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs from thistles?
Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit..."
__Matthew 7:16-18

The Other

Could be anywhere, could be anyone, could be sometime.

Doctors working in a hospital where all the bodies, including that of the terrorists, were taken said they had not seen anything like this in their lives.

"Bombay has a long history of terror. I have seen bodies of riot victims, gang war and previous terror attacks like bomb blasts. But this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said.

Asked what was different about the victims of the incident, another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words," he said.

Asked specifically if he was talking of torture marks, he said: "It was apparent that most of the dead were tortured. What shocked me were the telltale signs showing clearly how the hostages were executed in cold blood," one doctor said.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/023716.php

Could be some indefinite event, but we know it's not. We know that there lays in the mind the capacity to do great evil; but seldom does it arise in this unrestrained mode, and then it has to be raised consciously by training and practice. Even savages have an innate restraint.

Islam is a training for jihad. Islam is only one form of politically motivated violence one among many, to be sure, but today it's the most lethal and the most common. Islam is an immediate menace to Humanity. Islam as poligion has the deepest potential for the practice of unrestrained violence. For the most part, Islam is a mere programme for conquest by Muslims. No other religion has such a programme for its adherents. The core of Islam is jihad. The history of Islam is jihad. The essence of Islam is jihad and islam, the latter being "slavery." There is nothing else like it. Savage violence is common enough. Islam is unique.

Islam is unique as a violent poligion. It creates its own counter-forces, though. There's nothing unique in that.

Mumbai Terrorists Attack Hospital Maternity Ward

Just when you think that there's no lower point to reach on the scale of human evil, the stories coming out today from this week's Mumbai massacres reveal the limits of your imagination. What kind of bestial mind can conceive plans like this one, to launch an armed attack on a hospital's maternity ward:

Two terrorists had entered the hospital from the back entrance with hand grenades and AK-47 assault rifles at around 0230 hours killing two security personnel, Bhanu Narkar and Baban Ugade, eyewitnesses said.
The terrorist duo, while continuing to fire indiscriminately, went up to the fourth and fifth floors, which house the maternity ward at the five-storey hospital.
One of the two maternity wards was locked from the inside while the terrorists tried to break into another which had been fastened by the women occupying it using a cloth.
Twenty-five women, along with their newborn babies and three other men locked themselves inside a safety room within the maternity ward, refusing to open despite several threats by the terrorists.

The choir of crying babies born that day, lying innocently in their beds as heroic hospital staff improvised their survival, serve as a reminder to us all of the unfathomable chasm existing between the culture of death that has declared endless war on our side, the culture of life. Separated as we are by oceans and language and history, we still clearly share a common tapestry of humanity with the cloth-bearing defenders whose love of life proved stronger than the nihilists' lust for death.

In a story so steeped in villainy, it's good to also reflect on the acts of sacrificial love emerging in its shadow, in the shadows of all tragedies and nightmares, and, today of all days, to be grateful for them.

India Assam Bombings: Whose Blood Is On The Street

"I looked back, ran to the shop and found my brother lying in a pool of blood. He was dead among seven others."

The aftermath of the October 30 serial bombings in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam brings with it stories from survivors, victims and families of those blown to bits by islamist terrorists. Of the thirteen explosions, one took the life of 32-year old Ajay Das on the eve of finalizing his wedding date:

His grieving family said Titon, as Ajay was fondly called, had dropped out of school at a tender age to help his father and elder brother in their family business in Kokrajhar town. After years of hard work, the Das family had just begun to lead a comfortable life and was planning to marry off Titon. But Thursday's terror attack dashed all their hopes.

Parents of younger children were panic-stricken when their frantic calls to elementary schools went unanswered; were their children safe? Had schools been targeted? Would they be? After the first bomb went off in Ganeshguri at 11:15 am, no parent could know how many more would explode before school was set to send students home later in the afternoon.

"With cellphone networks jammed, I was getting desperate with every passing minute," said Sonali Burman, mother of a kindergarten student. "I called up the school, but the lines were clogged."

...
Sudhin Paul, a businessman, was terror struck when he learnt that an explosion had rocked Panbazaar area — his daughter studies in a school there.
"My wife was the first to react. She took my scooter and rushed to the school," he said. School and college authorities were desperate to keep campuses free from the tension and chaos outside.

As police and other emergency responders arrived to offer assistance to the survivors of the 13 bombs that went off over a 45-minute period, they faced a crowd that unleashed all their pent up frustrations with their government's inability to keep them safe:

[A]ngry protesters hurled bricks and stones at policemen, screaming against the administration's security failure. "We want justice. The Tarun Gogoi government has failed to protect us," the crowd shouted every time they rushed in to confront the police.

"Why not? We have lost our near and dear ones," a young engineering student from Lichubagan area said. The blast had killed six persons from his locality.
Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the mobs. The smell of the gas, however, was not strong enough to cover the stench of burnt flesh that lingered in the area. Pieces of human flesh covered with flies still lay littered in the area.

As the days go on we'll learn more tragic details about the men and women, the children and the aged, whose lives were cut short from timed bombs hidden in automobiles, motorcycles, bikes and rickshaws, bombs hidden by monsters masquerading as civilized human beings.

As yet, circumstances make it difficult for the media to report such biographical details to any great degree:

Some victims were charred to death in their vehicles, and clouds of black smoke towered over Guwahati as the streets filled with the screams of the injured and the dying.

Many of the dead were literally torn apart and vehicles in the target zone were turned to charred heaps of metal.

More Bombings In India; 77 Dead

More carnage in India, as several bombs went off Thursday across the north-eastern Indian state of Assam, killing 66 people outright, with another 11 dying from their wounds during the night. Indian media place the total number of wounded at a ghastly 450.

13 explosions rocked the districts of Guwahati, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Barpeta. Six bombs were set off in Guwahati alone, causing so many casualties that hospital driveways "turned slushy with blood as a stream of victims were brought in."

The descriptions of the aftermath of the bombings sound like reports from a battlefield... which, in a sense, they are:

Black smoke billowed from the deputy commissioner's office housing the district courts, which bore the brunt of the attacks in Guwahati, as vehicles, including a number of cars, turned into mangled heaps of metal. ...

"Bodies of the many of the dead were charred beyond recognition. The blast sites were stewn with severed limbs and blood of the victims.

India has seen many terrorist bombings this year alone (64 blasts in the last six months), but this week's explosions were followed by an ominous response from the citizens of the cities under attack: they vented their frustration in a riot:

People poured into the streets of Guwahati immediately after the blasts inspite of the curfew, and attacked policemen shouting slogans against the administration for ‘‘failing to protect the city’’. Several fire engines and police vehicles were burned. Police, who were themselves left shell-shocked by the blasts, struggled to rein in the mobs. They had to fire in the air at some places to disperse the crowds.

A television station received a message from a group calling itself the "Islamic Security Force-Indian Mujahideen (ISF-IM)" on Friday, bragging about their successful slaughter, while warning of future slaughters to come:

"We, ISF-IM, take the responsibility of yesterday blast. We warn all of Assam and India for situation like this in future. We thank all our holy members and partners. AAamin" .

Godspeed to the grieving families of India... when will these massacres end??

For reports on some of the other recent attacks in India, please read our previous posts on India's war on terror:

The early September bombings in Delhi, and the email from hell taking responsibility for the destruction, as well as the price paid in blood for the butcher's bill.

Then there were the bombings in late September in Delhi, smaller in scale but no less horrible.

9-Year Old Terror Bombing Victim Killed For His Kindness

Two deaths and over twenty wounded: the latest butcher's bill from today's bomb attack in India. Once again, India's capital city of Delhi was targeted for terror, this time on a much smaller scale than the last horrific attack two weeks ago.

The bomb exploded at a crowded flower market at Mehrauli, south Delhi, early Saturday afternoon:

Mukesh Hans, owner of a paint and hardware shop that was right next to where the blast happened, was sitting in his shop at 2 pm. "There was a deafening sound and everything became dark. I came out and saw complete chaos with injured people on the street and blood everywhere. There were at least 12 persons being sent to the hospital by the local people. As I stepped out I also saw the body of a girl who was in her schooldress,'' he said.

For one family, the bombing brought about the epitome of terror; imagine their hopeless despair upon hearing that their child could have lived if only he had been raised to be as heartless as the demons whose bomb took his life:

According to eyewitnesses, the electronic goods market was packed with shoppers when a black Pulsar motorbike went through the narrow lane intent on its deadly business. It had two helmeted riders, who dropped the polythene bag with its deadly payload in the middle of the road, in front of a shop, Anisha Electronics.

Out on an errand, the nine-year-old boy, Santosh, thought the men had unknowingly dropped the bag. In a heartbreaking act of kindness to strangers, Santosh rushed to pick it up, running after them as he shouted for them to stop. It was then that white smoke began to pour out of the bag. The little boy dropped it, but too late to save his own life.

The young child was in the market in the first place because he was running an errand for his older brother:

... "My brother's head exploded with the bomb. The poor child didn't even have a chance because the explosion took place right next to him." Bumbum, a rickshaw-puller by day, runs an omelette-and-tea stall at night. He had sent Santosh to Sarai market to pick up a crate of eggs for the evening's business. "Before he left, we were joking about how many eggs he could carry, and within minutes, we heard he had died," said a sobbing Bumbum.
...
Rekha Devi, his grandmother could not even speak — she just howled and beat her chest. "My poor child, he did not deserve to die like this. May God take care of his soul."

How does a family get over an event such as this? I guess you never really "get over it" at all, you just commit to renewing the love you have for those who remain, and one day enough new affection can arrive to raise you out of the living death that is a life lived without hope.

Easier said than done... which is why it pays to strive to find each and any example of sacrificial love, however small, that falls within your orbit. Sometimes, the reasons to renew our hope can be found in the very shadow of the evil that caused our despair in the first place, such as the courageous passersby who helped the blast victims:

Standing in blood-stained clothes, some of them even waited till after the police reached to see if their assistance was still required and then, just quietly walked away.

... [While the rest of the people ran away from the spot fearing the possibility of another blast, having a fresh memory of the recent series in Karol Bagh and Connaught Place, [Tilak Raj and Sanjay Sherawat] ran towards the centre of all action and helped the local shopkeepers in moving the bodies.
...
"The scene was horrific. Initially, we thought around three to four dead bodies were lying around, but the police is saying only one child died. There was blood all around and we got plenty on our clothes as we carried the injured to the vehicles. The local shopkeepers acted immediately and got their cars ready. We then drove the injured to the hospital,'' said Sherawat.

Godspeed to the good people of India in their time of grief.

French Kissing The Taliban

On August 18, 10 French soldiers were killed in an ambush by Taliban jihadists in Afghanistan. The attack also left another 21 French soldiers wounded.

Last week, investigative reporters working for the French weekly news magazine Paris-Match tracked down the Taliban terrorists who participated in the slaughter, and... interviewed them.


The chilling interview reads like a chat between a sports journalist and the coach of a rival team at playoff time.


Translated from the original French: Exclusive: our journalists found the talibans who shot the ten French soldiers.

Eric de Lavarène met one of the attackers who set the fatal trap for the men of the 8th Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment on last August 18th, in Afghanistan.

The man who commanded one of the groups responsible for the terrible attack on the French soldiers is known as commander Farouki. He says he is from the [Afghan] province of Laghman. He is approximately 30-35 years old, as are the majority of his troops. There are more than 500 of them. The interview would last a few minutes. No one lingers, in these parts.

Paris Match: Why did you take on the French military?

Commander Farouki: They trespassed over the line by coming near here.The Uzbin valley belongs to us. It's our territory. A few days before, villagers had warned them: do not go beyond this zone, it's dangerous. They did not listen to them. So, we attacked them. It was a legitimate defense.

Paris Match: Had you obtained intelligence about this patrol, before the ambush?

Commander Farouki: The ambush was not planned. We had just been warned shortly before the attack of the presence of foreign soldiers in our territory. Then, we acted very quickly. It was not complicated. We have caches of arms almost everywhere and of course we are very familiar with the terrain. We were in position before they arrived. One hundred and forty well trained fighters. If night had not fallen, we would have killed them all.

Paris-Match: Did you torture the soldiers who had fallen into your hands?

Commander Farouki: No. These men are dead because of Bush and your president. We did not want to kill your husbands or your sons. We don't have anything against the French. If they leave, then all will be well. So long as you stay here, we will kill you. All of you.

Paris-Match: What will you do, in the future, if they return?

Commander Farouki: We'll do it again. With this attack, we wanted to show the French soldiers that they must stop helping the Americans.
And believe me, this was just a warning. The next time, we will attack them directly where they are holed up, in Tagab and elsewhere. And we'll strike against French interests all over the world. We have the means. We are not alone or isolated in these mountains.

Paris-Match: Do you have the support of the people:

Commander Farouki: The people do not really support us. We let them alone and they don't betray us. But more and more youth are joining us because of the NATO bombings. A bombed house, and it's a new fighter at our side. It's called the spirit of vengeance. It's normal. Especially here.

Paris-Match: Do you have the support of foreign groups?

Commander Farouki: We are all afghans. We do not need the others. We are defending our country. It's a war of liberation. That's all. But there are links between groups, right up to the frontier. Arms, money, fighters passing from one region to the other. From one country to the other. Easily.

Paris-Match: Would you be ready to negotiate with the authorities in Kabul?

Commander Farouki: No negotiations while the foreigners are on our territory. We will strike at your soldiers, we will strike at your humanitarian organizations. We will continue to defend our country. To the end. To the last man. You will have to kill us all to end our movement. And believe me, we are many.

In a related article, the maganize offers a video interview of Véronique de Viguerie, the mercenary photographer who helped set up the meeting with the Taliban jihadis. What a puff-piece. The probing questions include: How did you make contact with this group; Were you given guarantees for security during the meeting; In order not to be discovered, did the taliban set limits for the photography; Will you return to Afghanistan.


I won't bother to translate her matter-of-fact responses, it's just trivia: driving here, talking to this person about talking to that person... mind you, the banality of her amoral answers send as many chills down my spine as the jihadi's earlier cold-blooded threats of dying to the last man. And her eyes... these are the eyes that could look at a bloodied corpse and only wonder, what angle would offer me the best light...


I will translate one of her answers, the second-to-last one. At the 3:00 mark of the video, Mme de Viguerie is asked whether intelligence agencies tried to talk to her about this interview. She gives a gallic shrug of the shoulders as she purrs:

"Well... Let's just say... I imagine that... the secret service must know where these taliban are, it's... not that hard to discover. [softly] But this is not my line of work at all. As well, the fixer who brought me to see them, he is at Quitta [sp?], his family is at Quitta, the taliban know his family, so if in the following days, something should happen, it is he who will be held responsible for that, and it will be his family that will pay the consequences. Therefore... no."

[Hat Tip to Tiberge at GalliaWatch, who also translates a sampling of the French outrage at this unscrupulous approach to journalism.]

[UPDATE: A French journalist working for the left-leaning Liberation newspaper blogs that the taliban barbarians slit the throat of a wounded French soldier during the ambush in question. Maybe next time the Paris Match pretty people who walk between the raindrops can ask the taliban coach if slicing the throat open was the handywork of a new recruit from the farm team, or maybe that of a hot player picked up in an off-season trade...]

More analysis of Normal Schizophrenic Canadian Vacationing in Denver Found Dead with Pound of Cyanide, Not a Jihadi

Dag wrote about the "Normal Schizophrenic Canadian" tourist here.

Pastorius at IBA has posted the latest analysis from Ilana Freedman:

Denver Police have closed their investigation into the mysterious death of an indigent man in a suite of a luxury Denver hotel. They announced that his death was suicide, and that there was no link to terrorism. An FBI spokesman has also stated that the incident has no apparent terrorism connection.

The man was Saleman Abdirahman Dirie and, the coroner's verdict notwithstanding, his death raises far more questions than have been answered by the Denver police, who seemed quite happy to wash their hands of the whole affair. But the story surrounding Dirie's death is bizarre, and needs to be unraveled.

The facts, as far as they have been released, are these: Saleman Abdirahman Dirie was a 29-year-old Canadian citizen, a Muslim, and a former refugee from Somalia with no visible means of support and no money. He came to Denver from Ottawa by bus and checked into an upscale hotel (where the least expensive rooms rent for nearly $250 a night) for which he paid cash. There are reports that several thousand dollars in cash were also found in his room. He was not seen again until his body was found six days later next to a one pound jar of sodium cyanide crystals.

Read the whole thing...

Dedicated Follower of Phashun

Those who know me personally are forever saying, "Dag, you are such a hep-cat!" And don't I know it. I mean, I spend a lot of my time figuring out just how to affect the right image for my presentation to the world, dressing just so, making sure my every accessory is the right piece to give the right impression to the admiring masses. It's a "thing" with me. So you'll see below why I am so encouraged that all the babes who flock to me are now starting to pay attention too to their image, to making sure that when they follow some discrete distance behind me they look "just so" too. And that is? Well, the latest is the Burn Victim look. Yup, all covered up in the latest and the finest. These babes want to be seen with me, they gotta look right. Cause I'm a hep cat.

Babes? Are you ready for this?

Headscarves, the new trend

Headscarves are becoming the new hot trend in Western fashion, with famed designer labels and industry biggest names explaining the appeal of the headwear as a comeback of elegance and chastity to the runways.


"We wanted to revamp the headscarf," Domenico Dolce, co-founder of the Italian fashion house Dolce and Gabana, told The Telegraph on Wednesday, July 16.


"[We want to] give it a new life and introduce it to a younger generation."


The famous Luxury fashion house D&G and other big names in the industry, like Paul Smith, Vera Wang and Jean Paul Gaultier, are now leading the new fad with their designs.


On the catwalks for autumn/winter, many of the industry's noted brands offered the headscarf.


"Our aim was to give it a modern and cool twist," says Dolce.


The trend is also appealing to the customers.


Hermès, the French high fashion house renowned for its range of designs of silk headscarves, has seen a rise in the sales recently.


Vivienne Alexander says the company has been selling out to "a much younger crowd than usual."


And with the rocketing demand, designers are coming out with a wider variety of the head covering in their collections.


"I do think we will be seeing a fair amount of headscarves around over the next few months," says Gaia Geddes, executive fashion editor of Harper's Bazaar.


Industry experts agree the new headscarves trend is about bringing a touch of modesty and chic to the runways.


According to Dennis Nothdruft, curator of London's Fashion and Textile Museum, the headscarf resurgence is about a new sense of "chastity" in fashion.


He affirms that the trend is not all new after all.


"Women wore headscarves in medieval times to maintain their modesty," he explains.


Others believe the headscarf is lending a sense of elegance to woman's appearance.


They contend that customers want to imitate the caliber of famous women who have emphasized the headscarf's glamorous and sophisticated look, like the American movie star Grace Kelly.


Alexander, of Hermès fashion house, says that a sizable proportion of their customers are Muslims, who wear their products as hijab, Islam's obligatory code of dress for women.


But she affirms that the large bulk of the clients are non-Muslims who are seeking a modest, elegant look.


"This is more about a return to that elegant Grace Kelly era than anything else."

Thanks to Esther at: http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2008/07/headscarves-new-trend.html

from: Source: Islam Online (English)

Yup, I'm thinking Grace Kelly.

Be sure to see the latest in up-and-coming. Stylin'. http://thehijablog.wordpress.com/

Ladies, I'm only marrying the first four of you who turn me on at the moment; but take it easy because when I get tired of them I'll turf them for four new ones, and you might be one of those lucky gals if you don't make it first time out. It's 'cause I'm a hep cat.