A NEW ALLY AGAINST TERROR!!!!

America gained an import new ally in the War on Terror yesterday, with the swearing in of Asif Ali Zardari as Pakistan’s new president. Appropriately, the ceremony took place before a portrait of another steadfast Pakistani supporter of the United States: Zardari’s late wife Benazir Bhutto, who led the Pakistan People’s Party until her assassination last year by Islamic terrorists.

Zardari’s ascendance heralds a welcome development. The previous president, Pervez Musharraf, took a lukewarm stance toward the growing Islamist threat in Pakistan. By contrast, Zardari has vowed to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces occupying the country’s frontier provinces.

Zardari has no illusions about the difficulty of the task. “We are in the eye of the storm,” he said yesterday. “I consider that an opportunity. I intend to take that and make it our strength.” Zardari’s predecessor, to be sure, made similar promises, but repeatedly failed to act. Why should the new president prove different?

One reason is that, for Zardari, the struggle against the Islamists is as much a personal battle as a struggle for security. Terrorists not only murdered his wife, but they also attempted to kill Yousef Gilani, Pakistan’s prime minister last week. Moreover, Pakistani civilians are now under brutal attack from jihadists who launch daily bombs into cities from their outposts in Pakistan’s North West province and tribal areas. On election day last weekend, one truck bomb killed more than 30 people. The attack was interpreted as a message to Zardari. Thus, while Zardari is realistic -- “I think at the moment [the terrorists] definitely have the upper hand,” he soberly told the BBC – there is every reason to think that he will make good on his pledge to face down the jihadists.

Pakistanis certainly seem to think so. Zardari’s tough stance against Islamic extremism helped earn him the highest approval rating of the three candidates for the presidency, according to a Gallup poll – not surprising when one considers that Islamist terrorism is the Pakistani people’s greatest concern after their country’s crumbling economy. Facing a daily bombing barrage, Pakistanis welcome any attempt to stop the attacks and sympathize with a leader who knows firsthand what it’s like to lose a loved one to the killers.

Zardari’s willingness to confront Islamic terrorism has endeared him not only to America and her NATO allies but also to Pakistan’s immediate neighbors, including India and Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai, had famously feuded with Musharraf, accusing the Pakistani of doing nothing to stop Pakistan-based attacks against his country. But Karzai seems much more impressed with Zardari. A White House spokeswoman confirmed Monday there was now “increased co-operation” between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

As president, Zardari will make a good civilian complement to General Ashfaq Kiyani, who became Pakistan’s military chief last November. Like Zardari, Kiyani also believes in waging all-out war against the jihadists and launched an impressive, initial offensive against them several weeks ago in Pakistan’s rugged, mountainous tribal areas, killing hundreds.

For all his virtues, some questions remain about Zardari. For instance, critics cite his well-known, but unproven, penchant for corruption, for which he served 11 years in prison and earned the nickname “Mister Ten Percent,” as a disqualification from office. Further fueling such suspicions, a Swiss bank recently unfroze $60 million from one of Zardari’s accounts, helping substantiate the belief he and his late wife, supposedly his equal in corruption, stole as much as $1.5 billion dollars when she was in power.

Troubling though it is, this history should be considered in context. Corruption is rampant in Pakistani politics, a feudal and tribal business in which large and important families and clans vie for power. What is regarded as corruption in the West is simply patronage politics as usual in Pakistan. The notion of civic mindedness is foreign, explaining why Pakistan is ranked 140 out of 180 countries on the global Corruption Perception Index.

Additionally, Pakistan is a difficult country to rule. With 160 million people, it is the second most populous Muslim country in the world after Indonesia. Besides the growing Islamist insurgency, an undeclared civil war exists between Sunnis and Shiites in some parts of the country as well as a militant independence movement in Baluchistan. Well-organized and large criminal syndicates also contribute to the country’s instability and corruption problem.

On top of this, Pakistan’s economy is failing so badly due to the political instability and violence that the International Monetary believes it will soon require outside assistance. All of these problems have helped earn Pakistan a top ten ranking among the world’s most dysfunctional states in one foreign policy publication.

Zardari, however, may be just the person to tackle these seemingly insurmountable difficulties. He apparently engineered Musharraf’s resignation and made the necessary deals and compromises to get elected president. Even his critics concede that he showed unusual political skill and toughness in rising to the president’s office in such a short period of time.

With his deal-making abilities, Zardari could conceivably end the parliamentary parties’ constant partisan quarrelling and get something accomplished. In the past in Pakistan, such governmental paralysis and economic mismanagement have always led to military takeovers. Zardari will hope that he can end this cycle.

Already he is making progress. By turning the Pakistani army’s weapons away from India and towards the internal Islamist danger, Zardari has put the jihadists on the defensive, at least for the time being. Zardari’s success as a president, however, will depend on his ability to build on these initial victories. One analyst calls this looming, military confrontation his “real test,” on which Zardari will “stand or fall.” One might say the same thing about his country.

RUSSIA-CUBA "BACK TOGETHER" AGAIN!

Following the 1959 communist revolution led by Raul and Fidel Castro, Cuba served as the Soviet Union’s strategic partner and proxy, due to its key location just 90 miles off the coast of Florida. Now, under an increasingly assertive and authoritarian Russia, the classic Cold War alliance appears to have been renewed.

For evidence of the warming ties, look no further than a tropical storm. When Hurricane Gustav recently cut a destructive swathe through the Caribbean, Cuba rejected Washington’s offer of immediate aid. Instead, Cuba’s state-run television showed two cargo planes, said to be Russian, landing at Havana’s Jose Marti Airport, then tents and construction materials being unloaded by soldiers. All in all, Russia sent 200 tons of emergency aid to Cuba in the wake of Gustav’s damage to the island. The Cuban newspaper Granma reported that Russian President Dmitri Medvedev called Cuban president Raul Castro in a show of “solidarity.”

Not since the collapse of the Soviet Union has Cuba received such generous and highly visible aid from its former communist patron. But the development has been on the horizon at least since the Russian Security Council announced that the two countries planned to “restore traditional relations in all areas of co-operation.” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin added bluntly, “We need to re-establish positions on Cuba and in other countries.”

The United States, of course, has had a very different approach to the island. President Kennedy imposed an economic embargo on Cuba in 1962, and the 1996 Helms-Burton Act forbade U.S. citizens from conducting business with the country. (The European Union’s economic sanctions, introduced in 2003 and lasting until this summer, are less frequently discussed.) Later, President Clinton loosened restrictions to permit US companies to sell certain products to Cuba, which now receives close to 5 percent of its imports from the United States.

In response to U.S. sanctions, the Soviets under Premier Khrushchev provided Castro with aid, trade opportunities and agricultural subsidies, in exchange for a Soviet missile base on Cuban territory, a development that eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fears that the Soviets would use Cuba as a staging ground for attacks on America faded after that, but never completely disappeared.

And with good reason. As a Soviet client state, Cuba posed a threat to America’s neighbors in the southern hemisphere. Sure enough, communism – and with it, virulent anti-Americanism – spread throughout Latin America after the 1959 revolution. In many instances, these developments were openly and passionately supported by Democratic politicians and American leftists, who romanticized dictators like Nicaragua’s Daniel Noriega as colorful, peasant revolutionaries inspired by Catholic “liberation theology.” The facts on the ground gave the lie to this fantasy, as millions in Latin America became mired in Soviet-sponsored poverty and war. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Latin America showed signs of assigning communism and socialism to the “ash heap of history,” and Cuba was left without the billions of dollars in Soviet aid that had kept its doomed command economy treading water. Instead it relied upon handouts from Venezuela and China.

But the reemergence of Russia as a regional power casts the Russo-Cuban relationship in a troubling new light. Not only have Cuba and Russia renewed their Cold War partnership but they also have reasserted their influence in Latin America, while cultivating troubling alliances around the world. According to military analysts, Havana and Venezuela are circulating rumors that Russia is planning to put a military base – specifically, a refueling base for nuclear capable bombers – in one or both of their countries, an obvious reaction to the recent U.S.-Poland missile base deal.

Stratfor analysts report:

“So far, much of the talk has been just that — and for good reason. Actually attempting to host a base in Latin America would be logistically problematic, expensive and would entail significant military vulnerability. But a center of operations is not the only option for Russia. Following the pattern of the Soviet Cold War tactics in Latin America, Russia can also leverage small amounts of aid and support across the region to generate instability.”

As well, Latin America is sending its support to Russia during its incursion into Georgia last month. On September 3, Nicaragua became one of the first nations, along with Venezuela, to recognize “independent” South Ossetia.

According to one analyst, Daniel Ortega’s newfound assertiveness is “sure to grab Russia’s attention at a time when Russia is looking for ways to keep the United States firmly focused anywhere but on Russia itself. A bit of Russian involvement in Nicaragua would certainly do that. But the Americans will not stand idly by, and Ortega might soon regret his decision.”

Reports of renewed Russian and Cuban alliances, with Nicaragua’s Ortega piping up from relative obscurity, certainly call to mind the 1980s at the end of the Cold War. However, new players in the drama, such as Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, add a new spin to a familiar story.

So does the emergence of Iran’s new alliance with Cuba. Beginning in 2006, Iranian Expediency Council Chairman Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani expressed his desire to improve Tehran-Havana relations by helping meet the “technical and engineering requirements” of Cuba and other states in Latin America. The Iranian-Cuba connection runs deep, since Cuba has become dependent on Iranian oil, not to mention a generous line of credit. In return, “Iran has used Cuba’s electronic transmissions jamming expertise and the Chinese equipped electronic warfare base near Havana, to interfere with U.S. sponsored pro-democracy broadcasts into Tehran.”

When a decrepit Fidel Castro last year ceded power to his brother Raul, there was widespread hope that Cuba would move in the direction of political liberty, democratic government, and improved relations with the West. The reconstituted alliance with Russia suggests, however, that Cuba is bent on refighting the Cold War under the shield of Moscow. That approach is unlikely to serve the country any better the second time around.

MORE LIBERAL HYPOCRISY!!!!

With their stony silence in the midst of Russia’s brutal attack against the Republic of Georgia, the organizations that spearhead the contemporary “peace” movement have spoken volumes about the true nature of their core motives. They are united, above all else, by their unwavering conviction that a racist, imperialist United States is the chief wellspring of evil on earth—guilty of unspeakable and unrivaled atrocities, past and present, foreign and domestic.

The “peace” for which these groups agitate generally requires the U.S. and its close ally, Israel, to refrain from defending themselves against enemies sworn to their destruction—all in the venerated name of “peace,” of course. By contrast, these champions of “nonviolence” rarely have a word to say about the military pursuits, however unjustified or heavy-handed, of America’s (and Israel’s) adversaries. This assertion is entirely demonstrable if we examine how some of the leading “anti-war” organizations in the U.S. reacted to America’s post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan (in 2001) and Iraq (in 2003), and then compare those reactions to the non-response to Moscow’s current offensive.

After 9/11, Global Exchange, headed by the pro-Castro radical Medea Benjamin, advised Americans to examine introspectively “the root causes of resentment against the United States in the Arab world—from our dependence on Middle Eastern oil to our biased policy towards Israel.” And after the subsequent U.S. incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq, Global Exchange impugned the Bush administration for having “responded to the violent attack of 9/11 with the notion of perpetual war … [which] led to the killing and maiming of thousands of civilians.” “We must insist that governments stop taking innocent lives in the name of seeking justice for the loss of other innocent lives,” said Benjamin.

And what has been Global Exchange’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Georgia? Unbroken silence. Since the launching of that attack on August 8th, Medea Benjamin’s group has issued only one press release—a promotion for an August 13th event titled “We Want More from Our S’mores.” “Fans of this summery [chocolate] treat will unite in support of Fair Trade Certified farmers,” said the release, “while condoning the persistent problems of chronic poverty in cocoa-growing communities …”

In other words, while thousands of Georgians lay dead, and tens of thousands more have fled their Russian attackers, Global Exchange is talking about chocolate. Interesting.

United For Peace & Justice (UFPJ), led by another pro-Castro socialist, Leslie Cagan, has similarly opposed America’s every military measure since its founding in 2002. Some of its anti-war rallies in 2002 and 2003 drew hundreds of thousands of participants. But today, while Russia’s proverbial boot is poised upon Georgia’s proverbial throat, Cagan and her cohorts are focused entirely on urging their supporters to make plans to gather at the sites of the Democratic and Republican national conventions (in Denver and St. Paul, respectively), to “send a strong and clear message to party candidates: the war and occupation of Iraq must end now!”

Moreover, while chastising the United States for continuing “to rely on the threatened first use of nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of its national security policy,” UFPJ has had nothing whatsoever to say about Russia’s recent threat to use nuclear weapons against Poland as punishment for that country’s missile-defense accord with the U.S.

Code Pink for Peace, headed by Jodie Evans (a great admirer of Hugo Chavez) and the aforementioned Medea Benjamin, in 2003 sponsored a delegation of fifteen American women who traveled to Baghdad to publicly denounce a greedy America’s “war for oil.” In conjunction with Global Exchange and United for Peace & Justice, Code Pink in 2004 helped establish Iraq Occupation Watch, whose objective was to thin out U.S. forces in Iraq by persuading soldiers to seek discharges and be sent home as conscientious objectors.

In stark contrast to these unambiguously anti-American measures, Code Pink has buttoned its lip about the Russian invasion of Georgia. Rather, its chief concern currently is for the U.S. to engage in “diplomacy with Iran” — the same Iran that has pledged its divine commitment to wiping both America and Israel off the face of the earth. A military strike against Ahmadinejad’s nuclear program would be unacceptable, says Jodie Evans’ group, because “Americans will not stand for ongoing war, occupation, and killing.”

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) excoriated the Bush administration after 9/11 for “embracing militarism and unilateral preemptive military strikes to answer threats to U.S. interests”; for “undermin[ing] the foundations of international law, arms reduction treaties, and diplomacy in the post-World War II era”; for refusing to allow America’s “military supremacy to be challenged, as it was during the Cold War”; and for creating “an atmosphere of threats and intimidation that encourages other countries to pursue military solutions.”

If you look for AFSC’s comments about the Soviet invasion of Georgia, however, you’ll come up empty. But perhaps you’ll find comfort in discovering that this “peace” organization continues to exhort Americans “to write to their congressional representatives” and demand that they “defund the war in Iraq.” The top story on AFSC’s website today applauds the California Legislature’s recent adoption of a resolution (co-sponsored by AFSC) aimed at preventing health professionals from engaging in coercive interrogations of detainees at Guantánamo and other U.S. military prisons. “The resolution calls attention to the intolerable dilemma that torture presents when those who are supposed to be the healers in our society are involved in the abuse of prisoners,” said AFSC regional director Eisha Mason.

International ANSWER, controlled by Ramsey Clark’s International Action Center and the Marxist-Leninist Workers World Party, organized massive protests against the looming U.S. attack on Iraq in 2002 and early 2003; some of those events drew more than a half-million attendees. The threat of war was first and foremost on ANSWER’S mind.

And today, with Russian tanks rumbling over the Georgian landscape, ANSWER’s focus remains steadfastly, and exclusively, fixed on America’s alleged transgressions. The predominant slogans on its website are these: (a) “U.S. Out of Iraq & Afghanistan Now!”; (b) “Stop Threatening Iran!”; (c) “Full Rights for All Immigrants! Stop Raids & Deportations!”; (d) “Money for Jobs, Health Care & Education—Not War!”

Peace Action, whose Executive Director Kevin Martin has condemned America’s “shameful status as arms merchant to the world,” had lots to say when the U.S. was contemplating retaliation for the 9/11 attacks. Seven days after the fall of the World Trade Center, Peace Action Board member Rania Masri wrote that any U.S. military action against Iraq would be unjustified because during the 1991 Gulf War, American troops had “massacre[d]” more than 200,000 Iraqis. “And the massacre continues,” said Masri. “… Every day, approximately 150 Iraqi children under the age of five die due to the effects of sanctions.” Less than three weeks later—on October 7, 2001—Peace Action issued this statement vis a vis America’s military retaliation against Afghanistan:

“We urge the president … instead to seek an end to terrorism through international legal cooperation. Treating the heinous acts of September 11 as an act of war, and waging war in response, will only escalate the violence and loss of life. The … perpetrators of the crimes should be brought to justice through the international legal system.… Terrorism will only be defeated by a long-term commitment to building democracy, respect for human rights, and economic and social development in impoverished areas of the world.”

Today Peace Action is soundless regarding Russia’s incursion into Georgia. The organization’s only audible message consists of its ever-so-familiar mantras: (a) the U.S. must lead other nations by example toward “nuclear abolition”; (b) Americans must “tell Bush to stop beating the war drums”; and (c) the “unjust” war in Iraq must be brought swiftly to a close.

Sojourners, a Washington, DC-based Christian evangelical ministry, published a March 2003 article declaring that a U.S. war against Iraq “would be unjust and immoral”; “would dishonor our nation, disregard morality, and violate international law”; and would represent “a drive for cheap oil and for increased control over the oil-producing world.” “We urge all U.S. military personnel,” said Sojourners, “… to refuse to participate in this immoral war.”

Yet Sojourners has been mute as regards the current Soviet bombing campaigns in Georgia. The organization’s focus instead is on the notion that America has corrupted its own “national soul” by engaging in “torture” against captured terrorists in recent years.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) issued a post-9/11 statement that read, in part: “[O]ur country has to address the reasons behind the violence that has now come to our shores.… As long as U.S. foreign policy continues to be based on corporate exploitation and military domination, we will continue to make more enemies in the poor, underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

What, you may wonder, does this same organization say about the current Russian offensive in Georgia? Not a thing. Instead it is actively promoting an upcoming “seminar on organizing for justice for Vietnamese and U.S. Agent Orange victims” who were harmed in Southeast Asia three to four decades ago. Says VVAW:

“As the U.S. backs out of Iraq—somehow, but not nearly soon enough—there will be an opening for the U.S. government to redeem its self image by doing something real for Vietnam. Now it's up to the U.S. people! Our ability to win this struggle is part of healing the wounds of war with Vietnam and also assuring that current and future victims of U.S. chemical warfare receive the justice and compensation they deserve!”

The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom has consistently condemned America’s military presence in Iraq, asserting that “this illegal war” has destabilized “the entire Middle East region” and destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure, “politically and physically.” “The Bush administration created the so-called ‘War on Terrorism’ to instill fear as the premise for U.S. foreign policy,” said WILPF. “Basic human rights are being curtailed in the U.S. and abroad to propagate this lie.”

But as regards the Russian invasion of Georgia, WILPF, like its aforementioned comrades in the “peace” movement, has elected to swallow its tongue. Focusing instead on events that took place more than six decades ago, the WILPF website currently features “Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days” — a lamentation over the atom bombs that America dropped on Japan to end World War II in August 1945.

This, then, is the modern “peace” movement. Its members are bound to one another by their common hatred of America more than by any shared commitment to “peace.” Their overriding objective is to relentlessly demean and discredit the United States for its every failing—real and imagined, ancient and current. This tactic is intended for one overriding purpose: to gradually, incrementally demoralize the American people, and to convince them that their society is so loathsome as to be utterly unworthy of defending with any vigor. Meanwhile, as Russian forces overrun a tiny neighboring nation that is friendly to America, the so-called champions of “peace” refrain from whispering even a syllable in protest.

OUR TEACHERS UNION AT WORK

Some
of the almost 10,000 members of the National Education Association
(NEA) attending the teachers union's annual conference this week in the
nation's capital spoke out on the issues they hope their lobbyists will
fight for during next year's legislative session, including the
establishment of a peace academy, in-state college tuition and a path
to citizenship for illegal immigrants who graduate from high school.

Susie
Jablinske, a first grade teacher at Central Elementary School in
Edgewater, Md., said children who are in the country illegally should
have the same educational rights as American children.

She
proposed that the NEA add the following words to its resolution to
develop programs to help minority students become college graduates,
regardless of immigration status: "Access to higher education and
in-state tuition, regardless of immigration status, as well as paths to
legalization to undocumented high school graduates," Jablinske proposed.

She said as many as 65,000 graduates from U.S. public high schools are "undocumented," even if they don't know it.

"Many
of them actually didn't even know they were undocumented until they
started applying for a driver's license or financial aid for college,"
she said.

Outgoing NEA President Reg Weaver, in an interview with The Hill
newspaper in February, said that the NEA - with a membership of 3.2
million - plans to spend $40-$50 million to help get candidates who
will help advance its agenda in the 2008 election, including the
union's endorsement and support for Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

"We
plan to be very aggressive," Weaver said in the interview, citing at
least 25 House and nine Senate races around the country the NEA
supports.

"We also knew that our commitment to public education
would require us to employ new strategies in the political arena,"
Weaver said in his keynote address at the start of the NEA
Representative Assembly of delegates on Thursday.

"So we had
the courage to create a campaigns and elections department, which
helped us win important battles last year in states like Utah,
Kentucky, Virginia, Washington state and others," he added.

Members
who spoke at a legislative hearing on Wednesday told lobbyists what
they hoped would be priorities in the 111th Congress, including the
creation of a federal post-secondary institute devoted to peace.

Ken
Curtis, a retired teacher from Missouri, said he wanted to amend the
NEA's "Good Public Policy" legislative platform to include a "peace"
academy that would hold the same status as its military counterparts,
including offering degree programs.

"I've had the good fortune
in the last four or five years to visit a number of countries, and I'm
disturbed about the image the United States has in terms of being an
advocate of peace," Curtis said. "We have somehow developed a
reputation that we are not a peace-loving country, and I think that
this would be a step in the right direction."

Curtis said a peace academy would send the right message to the world.

"Look,
we're in favor of establishing a peaceful community worldwide, and
we're trying to do that right here in the United States," he said.

The
session's moderator agreed it would be a step in the right direction,
but that it would most likely take "a new attitude at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue" to take that step.

Delegates at the conference elected
officers and updated its core mission statement, or Resolutions, on a
wide range of educational and other issues, including human rights - a
topic addressed by one of the delegates at the legislative session in
another proposed amendment of the "Good Public Policy" section of NEA
Resolutions.

"The NEA opposes torture and other cruel, inhuman,
or degrading treatment or punishment of persons in the custody or under
the physical control of the United States government, regardless of
nationality or physical location," the delegate said.

A 45-page report detailing the NEA's vision for the future of public education also was unveiled at the conference.

"Great
Public Schools for Every Student by 2020; Achieving a New Balance in
the Federal Role to Transform America's Public Schools," spells out
that vision, including a condemnation of the No Child Left Behind
policy, a cornerstone of the Bush administration.

In the
introduction to the report, William Blakely, chairman of the board of
the Council on Legal Education Opportunity or CLEO, offered advice to
the winner of the 2008 presidential election.

"The National
Education Association has taken a bold step and articulated a brave
vision for redefining the federal role in education for the next
president of the United States," Blakely said.

"(The report)
challenges the nation by outlining a vision for educating America's
children and assuring the nation will provide 'liberty and justice' for
all. Our next president would do well to heed the words and wisdom
reflected in this important document," he added.

JORDAN'S LEGAL JIHAD !!!!!

n a
brazen attempt to stifle free speech in the West, a Jordanian court
recently summoned twelve European citizens to answer criminal charges
of blasphemy and inciting hatred.

Among those sought by the court is Geert Wilders, the Dutch liberal politician who made the anti-Islamist film, Fitna.
Released last March, the Dutch MP’s production caused an uproar in
Islamic countries, since it equated Islam with violence. Now a Middle
Eastern court would like to prosecute Wilders for the “crime.”
(Ironically, a Dutch court dropped charges against him for inciting
hatred against Muslims with his film the day before the Jordanian court
issued its subpoena.)

The Jordanian court’s move is only the most ambitious attempt to
silence debate about Islam. Until now, the preferred strategy has been
to file civil lawsuits in western courts to intimidate critics. The
latest version of what may be called the legal jihad is even more disturbing.

In one subpoena, issued in early June, the Jordanian court ordered
ten Danish newspaper editors to travel to Jordan for the “crime” of
having republished the “Mohammad cartoons” last February. The cartoons,
first published in 2005, were also greeted with disturbances in Muslim
lands. Seventeen Danish newspapers republished the controversial
cartoons as a response to the discovery of an Islamist plot to murder
Kurt Westergaard. Westergaard, a caricaturist, drew the most famous of
those cartoons in the form of Mohammad wearing a bomb-shaped turban,
for which he is also included in the summons.

This new campaign of intimidation against the West is being mounted
by a Jordanian organization calling itself “Messenger of Allah Unite
Us”, which is made up of “… media outlets, professional associations,
parliamentarians and thousands of volunteers.” This organization,
according to one account, arose as a “civilized response” to the
Mohammad cartoons’ republication in 17 Danish papers last winter, after
which it took the matter to a Jordanian court and successfully had
charges pressed against the Danes, and later against Wilders.

The subpoenas will be sent to the twelve Europeans through their
embassies in Jordan. If they do not appear within 15 days, the
Messenger of Allah group says it will seek international arrest
warrants through Interpol.

But while Denmark and Holland will not forcibly send innocent
citizens to Jordan, this new, “legal jihad” tactic of criminalizing
those believed to have insulted Islam constitutes a threat on an
unprecedented level against freedom.

Citizens of western countries who criticize Islam, and are even
willing to face lawsuits in civil courts their own countries for doing
so, may now exercise restraint if they risk facing criminal charges in
a Muslim country. Especially if the charge is blasphemy and it is being
tried by a sharia court, which can impose a death sentence (The Danes
and Wilders, a Jordanian lawyer said, are facing a maximum of three
years in jail).

As well, critics of Islam who have outstanding warrants against them
from courts in Muslim countries will have their freedom of movement
restricted, since travel abroad will now be problematic. Wilders
expressed this sentiment, saying he will be careful when he travels
now. Such targeted individuals, like Wilders, will obviously have
reservations travelling to a third country where Jordan could file an
extradition application or may already have an extradition treaty in
place.

But what is most disturbing is that an Islamic country would dare
subpoena citizens of another state for an action not committed within
its borders but in a land where no laws were broken. Besides being
meant as a weapon of intimidation, this tactic also represents a
frightening extension of Islamic law into the heart of western
countries.

But perhaps most ominously, this incredibly brazen measure shows
that even a small Islamic country like Jordan has no fear of Europe.
And, indeed, no retaliatory response met the Jordanian court’s action
against European citizens.

Europe’s appeasement is also evident in the second part of Messenger
For Allah group’s anti-blasphemy campaign. This part calls for a
commercial boycott of all Danish and Dutch products in Jordan and of
anything associated with the two countries, such as airlines and
shipping companies. The boycott campaign actually began late last
February but was suspended due to the losses Jordanian importers were
incurring that had large stocks of unsold Danish and Dutch products.

The boycott, however, was resumed June 10. One million posters
containing the logos of banned Dutch and Danish products will
eventually hang in Jordanian businesses under the title “Living Without
It.” The boycott will also be spread by television and radio ads,
t-shirts, and bumper stickers.

Dutch and Danish companies were instructed they could get their
products off the boycott list if they, essentially, betrayed their
nations’ values and their countrymen. The affected companies, according
to The Jordan Times, were told to denounce the Dutch film and the
Danish cartoons in the media both in Jordan and in at least one
publication in their own country, support the Jordanian legal action
taken against Wilders and the Danish newspaper people as well as the
creation of an international anti-blasphemy law.

Several companies have already complied. When informed of the
stipulation that requires a denunciation be published in a Dutch
newspaper, a spokesman for a Dutch food company that exports to Jordan
said his company “…would print it if needed.”

But such groveling will only buy these companies a little time, as
another Dutch company discovered. It had immediately distanced itself
from Wilders and Fitna after the film’s release last March but still
had products placed on the boycott posters.

The Dutch government did not fare much better in its appeasement
efforts. One Dutch embassy official in Jordan said he was surprised his
country was included in the boycott in the first place since his
government had already printed statements in the Jordanian press
distancing itself from Wilders’ film.

And, naturally, the Jordanian blackmailers’ demands have not
stopped. Only last week, Dutch and Danish companies were told to put
the boycott posters up in their own countries if they did not want
their products blacklisted.

Perhaps to further intimidate Holland’s and Denmark’s populations,
the Jordanians are also claiming their boycott campaign is causing
these countries huge financial losses of over four billion Euros in
four months. A Danish official, however, says that is ridiculous since
his country only exported about $50 million worth of goods to Jordan in
2007.

The overall goal of the Messenger of Allah group’s legal and
commercial campaign against the two European states, it says, is the
enactment of “a universal law that prohibits the defamation of any
prophet or religion”, especially of the Prophet Mohammad. Islamic
countries are already pushing for such a law at the United Nations.

“The boycott is a means but not an end,” said Zakaria Sheikh, a
spokesperson for Messenger of Allah Unite Us. “We are not aiming at
collective punishment, but when the Danish and Dutch people put
pressure on their governments to support the creation of an
international law, we are achieving our goal.”

Well, there you have it. The Muslim organization wants Denmark and
Holland not just to muzzle themselves but to help it muzzle the rest of
the world as well.

But just the opposite should occur. All western countries should
help put a muzzle on Jordan’s ridiculous campaign to squelch free
speech, meddle in the internal affairs of two sovereign, western states
and intimidate their citizens. In terms of financial measures, Denmark,
showing its usual mettle, has already led the way when it told the
Sudan it would have to repay a $500 million debt the Scandinavian
country was considering cancelling, if it joined the boycott.

It should also be pointed out in the West that Jordan, which is
demanding respect for its religion, does not respect other religions
equally. While the practice of other faiths is not forbidden in the
Middle Eastern country, none are allowed to proselytize, and converts
from Islam to other religions are prosecuted by Jordanian sharia
courts.

Moreover, the Jordanians should be told that if they want to
extradite inciters of hatred to their courts, then citizens of their
country, and of other Islamic countries for that matter, who have
advocated killing Jews and other the infidels will be extradited to
face western courts. In the end, if legal jihad is not recognized as
the danger to the West that it is, and vigorously opposed, it will wind
up punishing more than just two small European countries.

HAS PRESIDENT BUSH LOST HIS MIND????

YOU KNOW THE BUSH administration’s North Korea policy is fatally flawed when even Barack Obama, last heard pledging to meet with the world’s dictators “without preconditions,” judges it naïve.

And yet, the presumptive Democratic nominee sounded all too sensible yesterday when he suggested that the Bush administration’s baffling decision to strike Pyongyang from the U.S. list of terrorism-sponsoring states and to lift trade sanctions against the tyrannical regime – in exchange for an alarmingly incomplete “declaration” of its nuclear plants and materials – may have been premature. Concessions to Kim Jong Ill, Obama stressed, should be “based on North Korean performance.”

The Bush administration favors a different metric: wishful thinking. How else to explain that it has generously rewarded North Korea for repeatedly flouting nuclear agreements – not least agreements it has signed with the administration as recently as last fall? Under the terms of an October 2007 agreement, after all, North Korea by the end of last year was supposed to provide a “complete” inventory of its nuclear programs and weaponry while demonstrating that it had shut down its nuclear plants. By the time the deadline arrived on December 31, however, Pyongyang was nowhere near satisfying its obligations under the pact. For that intransigence, it has now been given two gifts by the administration.

This is not the course negotiations were supposed to take. Back in December, State Department officials were warning that North Korea’s failure to come clean would prompt the U.S. “reevaluate and look to other options.” At the time, that sounded like a threat – and a warranted one. In the years before the pact, North Korea had made a menace of itself on the international stage, beginning with its expulsion of U.N. nuclear monitors in late 2002. The following year, North Korea declared itself free from the obligations of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and restarted the nuclear weapons program it was supposed to have suspended under a 1994 agreement with the Clinton administration.

Escalating tensions further in 2005, North Korea bragged that it had finally gotten “nukes” and had no more use for silly disarmament talks. So that there would be no doubt about its seriousness, in October of 2006 North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, immediately hailed by the country’s government-run news agency for bringing “our people huge joy.” (By “our people,” it presumably did not mean the thousands of Koreans rotting in Soviet-style prison camps for “anti-communist” crimes.) If additional proof of Pyongyang’s intentions were needed, it was supplied by revelations that the Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by Israel last September had been constructed with North Korean assistance. “Other options” were indeed in order.

It now turns out that the options the U.S. had been contemplating were designed not to punish North Korean duplicity but to encourage it. So it is that, despite its recent collaboration with Hezbollah-sponsor Syria – to say nothing of its intent, in the run-up the Iraq war, to sell $10 million worth of medium-range missiles to Saddam Hussein for use against coalition troops – North Korea no longer will be designated a terrorist state. Never mind that the country has yet to come clean about its nuclear program. In the eyes of the Bush administration, North Korea has been given a clean slate.

And legitimacy. Notwithstanding its defiance of every nuclear treaty it has ever signed – a habit of violation that continues in its latest declaration, which reportedly discusses only plutonium processing activities and not the uranium enrichment and nuclear capabilities that were supposed to have been declared – North Korea is being treated as a credible partner in negotiations instead of the extortionist state that it clearly is. Fool the Bush administration once, the lesson appears to be, and you wind up in the “axis-of-evil.” Fool it repeatedly, and all is forgiven.

As always with North Korea, there are token concessions. To demonstrate its sincerity, Pyongyang has invited foreign TV crews to broadcast its demolition of the cooling tower at the notorious Yongbyon nuclear plant. It promises to be quite the affair, though one would have to be really taken in by spectacle to forget that the plant was already supposed to be completely disabled in the 1990s and, more recently, by the end of 2007. Nor will the made-for-the-cameras moment prove that North Korea has nothing to hide. The facility at Yongbyon is believed to have been shuttered last year, having already produced enough weapons-grade plutonium to build, by some estimates, at least nine nuclear bombs. To see the destruction of this Potemkin reactor as a sign of genuine progress is to yield to illusion.

So much the stranger, then, that this week’s deal has been touted as a triumph by the formerly clear-eyed Bush administration. Since 2002, when the administration first moved, in the face of substantial criticism, to ostracize Kim Jong Ill’s regime, North Korea has confirmed its worst suspicions. Now the administration has repented for its prescience by granting the regime an undeserved reprieve. Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton may be overstating the case when he calls the new agreement the “final collapse of Bush’s foreign policy.” But it is certainly true to say that it marks a rejection of the principle of accountability in international affairs that the administration once championed.

President Bush stressed several times this week that he is “under no illusions” about the dangers of nuclear North Korea. That is heartening to hear. Would that it were reflected in his foreign policy.

MOSLEM TERRORISTS SETTING UP TRAINING CAMPS IN THE COUNTRY SIDE!!!!

Porton Down

LONDON – The British intelligence service MI5 has redrawn its electronic map of Britain's "hot spots" terrorist targets – to include provincial university towns, colleges and picturesque villages close to high-security installations. Among these are the Government Communications Center in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds and Porton Down, the top-secret Chemical/Biological Defense Establishment, alongside the traditional English countryside of small towns, villages and farms, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.

The Security Service fears such peaceful locations could serve as cover for target recognition by al-Qaida associated groups.

Already MI5 confirmed it has more than 2,000 suspects under surveillance. But they mostly are in London and other major cities. Now the fear is that terrorists have moved out into the countryside, posing as tourists or students to look for suitable targets.

"While it would be virtually impossible for them to penetrate high security establishments like GCHQ or Porton Down, to carry out a terrorist outrage in their vicinity would still cause havoc," an MI5 source said.

The warning follows the attempted attack on a shopping center restaurant in Exeter and the discovery in Bristol of a bomb factory in the city's suburbs.

Both cities have a large university population whose students include a substantial number of Muslims and members of Islamic societies.

"Our concern is that those societies are promoting al-Qaida. Until recently the country areas have been near empty when we assessed hot spots. Now we have set up counter-terrorism units across not only the West Country, but also in Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester. All have campuses which now need to be more closely watched," the source said.

The new hot spots have increased the number to more than 100 areas of the country.

The West Country – where the Ministry of Defense has a number of high-security establishments – had until now only been considered "a low risk."

But the attempt by Nicky Reilly, a 22-year-old mentally disturbed Muslim convert, to blow himself up in an Exeter restaurant has stunned counter-intelligence officers.

Another convert, Andrew Ibrahim, a 19-year-old former drug addict, was discovered in an MI5-led raid to have turned his home into a bomb-making factory in a Bristol suburb.

MI5 have now begun a hunt through provincial university files to check on the backgrounds of students who have contacts with Islamic organizations.