Duke Robillard and The Pleasure Kings
Do The Memphis Grind
All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can't get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
'Even if you give up all the land, it won't solve the problems in the Mideast' Israel Hayom, June 28, 2013 (thanks to Andrew Bostom)
An interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of "Infidel" • "From the perspective of the Arab leaders, reaching a two-state solution is to betray God. If you want peace and not merely a process, you must make peace with the people. The negotiators themselves are of no importance."
There is something dignified in the quiet, determined manner of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as she rises from the audience and walks towards the podium to deliver her lecture. Ayaan Hirsi Ali's intricate history starts in Somalia, where she was born to a Muslim family. At the age of five she underwent female genital mutilation. By her teens she was a devout Muslim. In her early twenties, upon learning of plans for an undesirable arranged marriage, she made her way to Holland, where she applied for asylum. Hirsi Ali studied at Leiden University and began publishing critical articles about Islam, the condition of the Muslim woman, and so forth.
She wrote the script for the Dutch movie "Submission" for director Theo van Gogh, who was subsequently murdered by a Muslim assassin. Hirsi Ali joined the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy and in 2003 was elected to the Dutch parliament. A few years later she moved to the United States, where she became a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. She published some books; notably, an autobiography titled "Infidel" that became an international bestseller. Already in 2005, Time magazine named Hirsi Ali among the 100 most influential people in the world. The internet abounds with information about her, with articles and videos of her lectures.
She is doubly courageous: in her stand against Islam, leading to threats on her life, and vis a vis the Western liberal elite, which disapproves of criticism of multiculturalism and the blindness afflicting Western society in grasping the strategic threat to its existence as a free society.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was visiting Israel for the recent Presidential Conference in Jerusalem.
Israel Hayom: In your lectures you made numerous references to the situation in the Middle East. You claim that people in the West do not understand that what is taking place in the Middle East is not a dialogue.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: More than one issue is at stake here. Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian context, the main problem is that you may speak of a peace process, but what you get is a process, not peace. And why is this process so prolonged? Because for the Israelis this issue is a territorial problem. For the Palestinian negotiators, on the other hand, it is not a territorial problem but a religious and ethnic one, It is not only about Palestinians but about all Arabs. Most of all, it is a religious problem.
From the perspective of the Arab leaders, reaching a two-state solution is to betray God, the Koran, the hadith and the tradition of Islam.
Israel Hayom: Even though they are portrayed as secular?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The presumption that the Palestinian negotiators are secular is not supported by facts. Were they secular, there would already be a settled territorial agreement of some kind. But there is no agreement as of today, because on one side it has become religious jihad of all or nothing, while on the other side it is still a territorial issue. Of course I know that there are Israelis who also perceive this as a religious problem; but their numbers pale in comparison to the Muslim side. Reaching a settlement that brings about two states is a religious betrayal -- not only for the leadership but for most Muslims today. The West does not understand this.
Israel Hayom: Why? After the many years you have lived in the West, how can you explain this?
The conception of religion in the West in the 20th and 21st century differs from that of Middle Eastern Muslims. The West successfully separated religion and politics, but even in places in the West where there is no distinct separation, still the concept of God and religion, even in the 13th or 15th century, differs to the current reality in the Middle East.
Islam is an Orthopraxy, Islam has a goal. So if you are a true Muslim, you must fight for that goal. You can achieve a temporary peace or truce, but it is not ultimate, not everlasting. It is not just about the territory. Because the territory does not belong to the people; it belongs to God. So for a Palestinian leader -- even if he is secular, even an atheist -- to leave the negotiating room with the announcement of a two-state solution would mean that he would be killed the minute he walks out.
•Senior official says soldiers will be needed for extra three to five years
•Prime Minister visited frontline troops to mark British Armed Forces Day
•He has announced plans for a permanent Afghan war memorial in the UK
•UK plans to end combat operations in the country in December 2014
•Taliban prisoners to be released into the Afghan military under peace deal British troops will be in Afghanistan until the end of the decade a senior military figure has admitted.Despite the start of political reconciliation, a senior commander has conceded that British troops will have to stay for 'three to five years' after the UK ends combat operations in December 2014. That means British forces could still be in the war zone in December 2019. It came as David Cameron visited the frontline today to mark Armed Forces Day and announce plans for a permanent Afghan war memorial in the UK.
But a senior diplomat admitted that political gains - including six million children now attending school - are 'not irreversible', though politicians hope that the younger generation of Afghans will resist a slide back to the old warlord culture.Diplomats also admit that the Taliban are likely to win greater power after 2014. Talks are under way to change the Afghan constitution, which gives 'godlike' powers to the President. Changes would make it easier for the Taliban to control the Southern and Eastern parts of the country.Read the full story here.
JTA — An Orthodox Jewish patrol group in London said it would protect a mosque after a rise in hate crimes against Muslims.
The Shomrim patrol group accepted a request for protection by the North London Community Centre in Cazenove Road, an Islamic institution situated in the heavily-Jewish Borough of Hackney in northern London.
The deal was brokered at a recent meeting coordinated by Ian Sharer, a member of the local council, the Hackney Gazette reported this week.
It came following a rise in anti-Muslim attacks after the slaying of a British soldier on May 22 in London.
The suspect, a 22-year-old Muslim extremist, was filmed holding a large knife over the soldier’s decapitated body. A second suspect was charged with attempted murder and is believed to have acted as an accomplice.
Tell Mama, a watchdog on hate crime, recorded 212 incidents in the nine days that followed the murder, including 120 online. In 2012, the same group documented 12 anti-Muslim incidents per week on average and 624 in total.
Sharer, who is Jewish, told the Gazette that he was asked by “Muslim friends to chair the meeting. The meeting was a great success.
The Shomrim patrols have agreed to include the local mosques and other buildings as part of their routine patrols.”
The local Shomrim group, numbering 22, was set up in 2008 in part as a reaction to anti-Semitic incidents, the Gazette reported. Members of the 24-hour patrol group have been trained by Hackney police, and have neighborhood patrol badges and uniforms.
Chaim Hochhauser, 33, one of two Shomrim supervisors said the request from protection came from the Muslim community through Sharer. “We told them what we could do. We are pleased the Jewish community wanted to help.”When has a Muslim group ever helped Jews? I'd like to be hopeful and believe that this hand extended by the Jewish community is going to set a precedent leading to reciprocal help going in both directions, but my years of doing this have made me realize that every time I begin to have hope for Muslims in general, that hope is dashed by their continued adherence to the Koran itself
Offices of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) in different Egyptian governorates were reportedly raided and torched on Friday.
Protesters have put up 18 tents so far at the Ittihadeya presidential palace in Cairo's Heliopolis district, in preparation for mass demonstrations planned for Sunday aimed at forcing President Mohamed Morsi to step down.
The Department of Defense is blocking online access to news reports about classified National Security Agency documents made public by Edward Snowden. The blackout affects all of the department’s computers and is part of a department-wide directive.
“Any website that runs information that the Department of Defense still considers classified” is affected, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart told U.S. News in a phone interview.
According to Pickart, news websites that re-report information first published by The Guardian or other primary sources are also affected.
“If that particular website runs an article that our filters determine has classified information… the particular content on that website will remain inaccessible,” he said.
Pickart said the blackout affects “millions” of computers on “all Department of Defense networks and systems.”
The spokesman told U.S. News that original reports about the leaks may be specifically targeted for the blackout. He admitted that “automated filters are never perfect,” and some reports may slip through the cyber blockade. [...]
The Monterey Herald reported Thursday that the Army was restricting access to The Guardian’s website. A spokesman for the Army Network Enterprise Technology Command confirmed that the policy affected The Guardian, but the scope of the military’s blackout wasn’t immediately clear.
By banning from the country as extremists the American anti-jihadis Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Home Secretary Teresa May has not only made herself look ridiculous but has sent the enemies of the United Kingdom the message that they have it on the run.
I do not support the approach taken by either Geller or Spencer to the problem of Islamic extremism. Both have endorsed groups such as the EDL and others which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic.
The result has been a serious blow to the credibility of these two writers, with particular damage being done to Spencer whose scholarship in itself is scrupulous. It has also split the defence against Islamic extremism, and handed a potent propaganda weapon to those who seek falsely to portray as bigoted extremists all who are engaged in the defence of the west against the Islamic jihad.
Nevertheless, the decision to ban this duo from Britain is unjustified, oppressive and comes perilously close to lining up the British government alongside those who wish to silence defenders of the west against the jihad, making a total mockery of Britain’s understanding of just who presents a danger to the state. Neither Geller nor Spencer remotely presents such a danger.
So why did Mrs May ban Spencer and Geller? Was it because of the petition to do so by Hope not Hate -- which misrepresented and smeared them by claiming they called all Muslims savages (they did not)? Was it in response to one of the signatories to this petition, Tony Lloyd, Greater Manchester’s Police and Crime Commissioner (who Spencer and Geller say also misrepresented what they have said) who termed them ‘hate preachers – every bit as bad as those who use the name of Islam to propagate hatred’?
What an extraordinary thing to say. Geller and Spencer don’t go round calling for people to be killed, or preaching genocide or holy war, or spreading conspiracy theories and lies to foment hysteria and hatred. But when he was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Tony Lloyd led a delegation to Gaza to meet leaders of Hamas, where he was photographed fraternally shaking the hand of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
So Lloyd is happy to meet with a group whose leader has called Israel a ‘cancerous tumour that must be removed’ and whose officials have said ‘the Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah…
Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world’
and
‘...the Jewish faith does not wish for peace nor stability, since it is a faith that is based on murder: “I kill, therefore I am”... Israel is based only on blood and murder in order to exist, and it will disappear, with Allah's will, through blood and shahids [martyrs]’
– and yet he called for Spencer and Geller to be banned as ‘hate preachers’, a demand which the Home Secretary agrees was justified even as she allows real hate preachers to spread their poison around Britain.
Has Britain now totally lost the plot?