Hit 'em with your handbag

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi calls for Jihad against Switzerland. America jumps into action in defence of civilisation–and apologises to Gaddafi.

That's what I love about Mr Barack Hussein Obama; his steely resolve in the face of the enemy.

Waiting for the other half

From the BBC:

An influential Muslim scholar is to issue in London a global ruling against terrorism and suicide bombing.

So far so good as it stands. The "influential" Muslim scholar has condemned the Jihadists' methods, but is he also condemning the goals?

Malmo: Judenfrei

It's been said that the Jews are the canaries in the coal mine of Europe, in which case it's time to start running for the exits. If anyone had told me thirty years ago that Jews would be fleeing from Malmo in fear of their lives, I'd have told him to stop smoking the cheap stuff they sell down the docks.

Sweden becomes a dangerous place for Jews thanks to open collaboration between Jihadists and Leftists, Norwegian women are urged to wear hijabs "for their own protection", gangs of "youths" turn car burning into a French pastime, self-censorship is the order of the day across the Continent, and a member of the Dutch parliament is on trial for what amounts to violating Sharia. And in the middle of all this, the common message of government and media is, "Move along; nothing to see here." I've been saying for years that the longer we leave the problem of Jihadism in Europe and keep pretending that multiculturalism and unrestricted immigration will do nothing but provide exciting cuisine, then bad choices will only give way to intolerable choices, and then having impossible choices thrust upon us. After that, the only choice left will be stand or run–and that applies to moderate Muslims who wish to remain free as well as Infidels.

Welcome to the road to civil war.

The Infidel

Satarist David Baddiel makes a comedy mercilessly mocking Jihadists.

That sound is his enormous brass balls clanking together.

But we're still going to kill you

Mark Steyn on The One's "I wish it would go away" reaction to the underpants bomber:

The election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the U.S. electorate.

As the kids say, read the whole thing.

Update: Even Barack Hussein Obama's supporters are starting to notice.

Update: That includes Maureen Dowd, which is a bit like discovering that the Moon has left its orbit to nip down to the shops.

A pattern emerges

The Fort Hood shootings, the underpants bomber, a deadly shootout in Detroit, mass terrorist trials in the United States and abroad, former Guantanamo inmates showing up as Al Qaeda leaders in Yemen, CIA agents killed by a triple-cross suicide bomber, churches in Malaysia put to the torch, and defendants in a British court not only refusing to rise.

The amazing thing about all this resurgent Jihadist activity is that the last is the most ominous. Not their refusal to stand, but judge allowing them to get away with it. That is nothing less than abject surrender to the barbarians. In a more civilised age, such defiance would have been met with this simple paraphrasing of Sir Charles James Napier:

It is your custom not to show respect to an infidel court of law. Very well. It is our custom in England that when defendants fail to rise to find them in contempt of court and throw them in jail. You may follow your custom and we will follow ours.

A remarkable recovery

In August, convicted Lockerbie Jihadist and mass murderer Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi was given compassionate leave by a Scottish government that had so thoroughly taken leave of its senses that it's a wonder that devolution was allowed to stand. Mr al-Megrahi allegedly was suffering from prostate cancer and had only three months to live, but here it is almost Christmas and the remarkable Mr al-Megrahi is not only alive, but well enough to have done a runner on his house arrest.

The age of miracles is not passed.

Exploding donkey

The Taleban use exploding donkeys against British troops.

If this keeps up, who knows where it will end.

Otherwise, it was a perfect cover

Jihadists always make that one fatal mistake that gives them away. Major Hasan's was that he had business cards printed up saying he was a Jihadist.

These aren't the Jihadists you're looking for

Adding to the impenetrable enigma of why Major Hasan gunned down over two score people at Fort Hood while wearing Salafi garb and screaming "Allah akbar", we learn that the Major earlier tried to contact Al Qaeda. Why he would do such a thing certainly makes no sense to the FBI, who are so locked once again in 9/10 thinking that they couldn't track a bleeding radioactive elephant in the snow wearing a GPS tracker and a giant neon sign say "Hey, I'm an elephant".

It's enough to make strong men weep.

Jihad? What Jihad?

While the Americans reel from the Fort Hood attack, a school teacher in the Philippines has been beheaded by Jihadists, though if you read the BBC's coverage, you'd be hard pressed to know this unless you read between the lines in an oblique reference to "feared that the kidnappings would discourage others from teaching underprivileged youths in Muslim areas".

Why so? As far as the report is concerned, the beheaders could have been Methodist "militants".

When I was a professional actor, I was once in a production of Ten Little Indians and my character was killed off early on and so I had plenty of time to chat with the other victims in the dressing room until curtain. During this, we came up with an alternative version where the victims, not hearing the crucial gramophone record, were unaware of the murderer in their midst and the whole thing descended into a Roadrunner cartoon where the villain was forever trying to unsuccessfully kill people who were utterly oblivious to his intentions. What our murderer went through must be the basic mindset of the Jihadists of today. You can bomb trains and buses, stab filmakers, beheaded reporters and teachers, slaughter schoolchildren, murder nightclubbers, ram planes into skyscrapers, and shoot up military bases while screaming "Allah akbar" and the MSM stand mystified as to your motives and rabbits on abut the Religion of Peace without a second thought.

What does a Jihadist have to do to get any respect?

Wilful blindness

I am gobsmacked by the BBC's coverage to the Fort Hood shooting. The official Party line politically correct narrative of the motives of Major Hasan for killing 13 people and wounding 30 others has already emerged: He's insane and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Never mind that PTSD is very likely a political construct all on its own with no real medical value. There's also the fact that Major Hasan is a medical officer who has never seen combat, so (and I'm not making this up) some claim he's suffering from pre-traumatic, prospective-traumatic, or even proxy-traumatic stress disorder.

The BBC, however, have gone one step further. They've not only consigned Mr Barack Hussein Obama's infamous "shout out" moment to the memory hole and overlooked his "let's not jump to conclusions" moment (he did, after all, spend a private moment paying respects to the fallen dead with the White House press corp in tow), but they dismissed entirely any idea that Major Hasan's motive might have something to do with the "M" word. Markl Mardell in his blog is utterly mystified by the event and calls Hasan's running about in traditional Muslim garb while murdering his fellow soldiers "a red herring". Good Lord, what does the man want for proof? Hasan shouting "Allah akbar" as he blazed away at his victims? Oh, wait. He did that!

I am eternally grateful that this was the work of one man and not three as originally reported. If that had been the case, we'd have faced the fact that we were up against Jihadist cells inside the US military itself, but this is not much better. The more I learn about Major Hasan, the less I believe that he's mad. He is perfectly sane. He may not be a card-carrying Al Qaeda member (as far as we know), but he's bought into their sick dream and he's definitely a murderer and a traitor. If he lives to stand trial and he isn't put in the dock on a treason charge, then I have real doubts about our ability to win this war.

As far as Mr Obama is concerned. First, learn the difference between the "Congressional Medal of Honour" and the "President's Medal of Freedom". Second, no one "wins" the former. Third, when the medal in question is one you bestowed yourself, it is bad form to gush over the recipient, and fourth, if you regard sucking up to a pressure group to be more important than your primary job as commander in chief, I suggest you try another line of work.

And for Muslim "leaders" who are quick to condemn Major Hasan's methods, but not explicitly his goals, you aren't fooling anyone.

Update: Major Hasan's connection to the 9/11 terrorists. The "lone nutcase" theory is starting to look a bit thin.

Update: Mark Steyn on fears of a hypothetical atrocity. I love this parody headline:

British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow's Train Bombing

Fort Hood Shooting

ABC reports three gunmen killed twelve people and wounded 31 others at Fort Hood Army base in Texas. The US Army confirms that the three were all soldiers and at least one was an officer. One gunman is reported killed and the other two are in custody.

This is one of those incidents where the importance lies not so much in what as in who. Given that the officer has been identified as Major Malik Nadal Hasan, I doubt if he's a Presbyterian and I'm provisionally marking this one down as Enemy Action. If that pans out, then my prediction of what would happen under Barack Hussein Obama has come to pass and we're in the worst mess the West has seen since September 11th.

This is one time when I would be very, very happy to be proven wrong.

Update: It seems now that Major Hasan was working alone.

Update: Major Hasan not dead.

Update: Meanwhile, the MSM are leaving no stone unturned–except one.

Update: Alleged quote by Major Hasan:

Muslims should rise up against the aggressors.

Somehow I doubt post-traumatic stress syndrome is involved.

Update: As night follows day, we're warned of the inevitable, yet never materialises "anti-Muslim backlash".

Anti-Jihad bear

Is the Pope Catholic? Does a bear kill Jihadists who try to hide in his cave?

So transgressive, so cowardly

After all, some things are sacred.

In his upcoming film 2012, instigator of random chaos director Roland Emmerich happily destroys the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro ("Because I'm against organized religion."), but he baulked at showing the Kaaba in Mecca getting trashed because:

Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit, but my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. ... We have to all ... in the Western world ... think about this. You can actually ... let ... Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is.

Good Dhimmi. Here's a biscuit.

Update: Meanwhile, standby for the $150 million biopic of the life of Mohammed.

Without Mohammed.

Or his life.

Just a misunderstanding

It's been a busy time for Jihadist activities lately with a major bomb attack in Iraq, Taleban resurgence in Afghanistan and Pakistan while The One dithers, and a string of arrests in the United States culminating in a fatal shootout with a Jihadist leader in Detroit.

Still, we mustn't make too much of this. After all, it isn't as if there were people openly working to, say, place Britain under Shariah law, turn Buckingham Palace into a mosque and melt down the Crown Jewels.

Oh, wait...

And for those pointing out, quite rightly, that the "Let's turn Buck House into a mosque" group aren't advocating violence, I'd reply that this isn't a war against means, it's a war against ends.

Sinking the fleet

Demonstrating that it will succeed where Phillip II of Spain, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Hitler, Hirohito, and the Argentinian Junta failed, New Labour is reducing one of the two aircraft carriers on order for the Royal Navy to a helicopter carrier and cancelling her JSF fighters.

Meanwhile, the US Navy is ordering more of one type of warship than Britain has for her entire combat fleet.

Pardon me while I open the windows. There's a stench I want to get rid of.

Update: Maybe they'd have the money for the fleet if they'd stop spending it on groups that openly advocates murder and treason.

An incident in a farway land

The Taleban attack a check point near a Pakistani nuclear weapons facility.

That's hardly worth the attention of the Western media, so it's... WHAT?!?!

Partying like it's 9/10

Move along, people. Nothing to see here.

Update: On the other hand, New Labour gets a well-deserved thumb in the eye.

Never Forget

Eight years ago, a group of murderers bent on destroying our civilisation ploughed two planes full of passengers into the World Trade Center, another into the Pentagon, and a third crashed in a field in New England thanks to the heroic efforts of the passengers who saved the Capitol or the White House from a similar fate. In all, some 3000 people were murdered. It wasn't the first shot in this war. That happened with the takeover of the American embassy in Tehran in 1979, but it is the first where we recognised that we were at war.

In the aftermath, Coalition forces lead by the United States and Great Britain liberated Afghanistan and Iraq, smashed Al Qaeda's networks, sent the Taleban on the run, and scared the crap out of the world's dictators so bad that Libya handed over its nuclear weapons programme without condition before we even knew it existed. On the downside, mistakes were made, as is always the case, in the execution of the war. We lost the momentum that should have seen a free Syria, Iran, and Pakistan and a quiet Saudi Arabia by now and while we have thwarted many plans, we have lost more innocent lives at places like Bali, Beslan, London, Amsterdam, and Madrid.

Eight years on, things have changed and not for the better. Now Colonel Qadaffi is so confident that he swaggers on the world stage like a superannuated Michael Jackson. Now Iran all but flaunts its nuclear weapons programme. Now Kim Jong Il lobs missiles over the Pacific and terrorists are freed on the flimsiest of excuses while the American President and British Prime minister are "disappointed". Meanwhile, the war is being lead by two men who refuse to even recognise it as a war. One sees it as an "overseas contingency" that is nothing but a political embarrassment and a distraction that he'd rather would fade away so he can concentrate on being the first god president and the other thinks the Jihadists are mere criminals and that he can starve the armed forces of equipment, manpower, and leadership while expecting them to lay down their lives for a queen and country he stopped believing in decades ago.

Eight years ago, we had no idea what was coming next and I well remember sitting in my living room having a very serious discussion with a friend about what handguns we should buy. Now I have the horrible feeling that we'll be having that conversation again in the near future.

Update: James Lileks has his own take on the day:

Mixed war news

How is the war against the Jihadists going? Swings and roundabouts, really. On the one hand, Iraq looks to be more or less stable, Australia foils a Jihadist attack on an army base, and the Coalition is still pounding away at the Talaeban despite British equipment problems and foot-dragging NATO (for want of a better word) "allies". On the other hand, Yale University Press publishes a book on the Danish cartoons without the cartoons and burkinis are required even for infidels at British swimming pools.

With so many in the West so eager to surrender I sometimes wonder why the Jihadists even bother to plant bombs any more.

What Jihad?

There is no war. There are no Jihadists. Who knew you could simply define an enemy out of existence?

God help us all.

Priorities

Muslims are demanding an apology from Spain for mistreatment of Muslim converts to Christianity in the 17th century. Though what the mistreatment of Christians by Christians has to do with Muslims is beyond me.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Spaniards withhold any apologies until the Muslims apologise and pay substantial reparations with interest for invading the peninsula in the 8th century in the first place; plunging the region into six hundred years of war, tyranny and turmoil while threatening the rest of Christendom with the same fate until turned back at Tours.

I'm not holding my breath, though.

War? What War?

Now that terrorism has been redefined as "man-caused disaster" it shouldn't be surprising that the Barrack Hussein Obama administration is changing the "Global War on Terror" to "Overseas Contingency Operation".

With their heads jammed so deep in the sand, I'd say that the only thing that's keeping the Jihadists from carrying out another 9/11 is the hope that Mr Obama will stay out of the military's way so they can keep mauling the bastards.

De Nile Is Not Just In Egypt

In a move more worthy of the British Home Secretary, Janet Napolitano, the American Secretary of Homeland Security, has announced that terrorist attacks will no longer occur. Instead, they will be called, wait for it, "man-caused disasters".

Aside from being unacceptably sexist and heteronormative, this idea that is so blinkered that it doesn't even regard terrorists as criminals. Now they're just something that just sort of happens like a piano landing on your car. In other words, save your breath, Bin Laden; the Messiah & Co. are sticking their fingers in their ears and humming as loud as they can.

Foreseen Consequences

Closing Guantanamo: What's the worst that can happen?

Sixty times.

So Far.

A Different World

The Religion of Peace at work. From The Telegraph:

A group of around 20 men in traditional Islamic dress held up banners and placards that read: "Anglian Soldiers Butchers of Basra", "Anglian Soldiers Criminals, Murderers Terrorists" and "Baby killers".

It didn't last long, though:

The initial shoving was definitely out of line, but its good to see this sort of bigotry against our soldiers given the bird. Freedom of speech is not freedom from shaming.

Snowball Would Be Proud

I'm not an admirer of Geert Wilders and I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but I pay attention when he speaks because it always strikes me as something that is dismissed as "fringe" today, yet will be echoed in every pub within five years if the problems of a growing, unassimilated Muslim population that seems comfortable with radical Islam isn't addressed forthrightly and honestly. Unfortunately, that seems highly unlikely when Wilders, a democratically elected Dutch legislator, is denied entry to Britain allegedly because it "would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK" when in reality it stems from official fear of the likes of Lord Ahmed, a Muslim Life Peer, who threatened to bring 10,000 Muslims down on the Palace of Westminster if Parliament viewed Wilder's film Fitna–a threat that at least one commentator has pointed out fits the legal definition of treason.

This sort of cowardice on the part of New Labour makes one almost wish that the ban had been done out of the Brown government's usual prissy moral posturing. At least that had a slight tinge of honesty about it. What we have instead is something that hollows out Britain's ancient liberties a bit more while pouring another can of petrol on an already growing fire.

Update: Wilders arrested trying to enter Britain.

Where Do I Sign Up?

One of the Jihadists captured after the Bombay massacre claims that a female FBI agent tortured him with sex.

When the Left say that torture just acts as a recruiting tool for the terrorists, I don't think that this is what they meant

Be Prepared

One mystery of the Bombay attacks is why the police just stood around and didn't return fire on the Jihadists. Now this story from the Times of India sheds some light:

In the absence of a firing range and of ammunition for practice, members of the law enforcement agencies have not opened fire in the last ten years. ‘‘I’ve been in the police force for a long time, but I had no occasion to open fire for practice,’’ a senior inspector of police said.

Good Lord.

Cassandra Crossing

When Barack "He whose middle name may not be uttered" Obama was elected I had a private reservation that it would mark a resurgence of Jihadist attacks. Wanting to give the benefit of the doubt, I kept this pretty much to myself (i.e. my immediate family and anyone in shouting distance down the pub), but events in Bombay moved faster than I'd expected. I'd thought the Jihadists would at least wait until Mr. Bush left office, though Iowahawk claims the whole thing is a mix up.

(Ajmal Ami) Kasab, who is personally suspected of killing over 30 victims at point-blank range in a posh Mumbai hotel, was at a loss to explain how he and other members of the terrorist assault team remained unaware of the historic U.S. election results that many American analysts predicted would lead to an immediate and permanent outbreak of rapturous harmony and transcendent brotherly love throughout the universe.

"Jeez, I'm... I don't know, I just never got any kind of memo," said Kasab. "The ironic thing is that just the other day, when we were ritually shaving our testicles for final martyrdom, a bunch of us were talking about how great and symbolic it would be if the American infidels would only elect an handsome, articulate young African-American infidel. That way we could just lay down the suicide belts and scimitars and suitcase nukes and finally get involved in the positive aspects of community activism, like raising awareness for breast cancer research. Look, I know it's a cliche to point fingers at the IT department, but our email system really sucks. And it's hard to find a decent wi-fi hot spot in Northwest Pakistan."

Now we find this little gem of comfort:

The United States can expect a terrorist attack using nuclear or more likely biological weapons before 2013, reports a bipartisan commission in a study being briefed Tuesday to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

And then there's Iran, where Mr. Obama has promised to hold direct talks with the Mullahs:

Intelligence estimates indicate that Iran is producing 2.5 kilograms of additional enriched uranium daily, officials say. Do the math, and you'll see that Iran may amass enough low-enriched uranium to have the capacity to make a weapon by the end of 2009.

"Change" is on it's way one way or the other.

Bombay Blast

The news out of Bombay (Or "Mumbai", as the press insists on calling it even though the inhabitants rarely do so) has been horrific. A fishing boat hijacked; the crew missing or dead; over a dozen Jihadists attacking 20 targets in Bombay–including two hotels, a railway station, a hospital and a Jewish community centre; some two hundred known dead and maybe another two hundred before this is over; Americans and British hunted down; the involvement of Al Qaeda, the Indian Mafia, elements of the Pakistani military; and all of it converging in a three-day firefight that ended with one captured terrorist admitting that the goal was to slaughter 5000 people.

This ghastly episode is the worst Jihadist attack we've seen since Breslan and the truly frightening thing isn't the scale, but the change in tactics. In 2001, we thought that the ultimate in terrorism was suicide bombers ramming planes into buildings and maybe following it up with bombings and anthrax attacks. Now we see a paramilitary raid against multiple targets over a matter of days before the last barbarian could be ferreted out of his hole. With enough men and guns plus a bit of organisation it's a tactic that is impossible counter by x-raying shoes or setting up bollards and makes anyone who thinks that this is a law enforcement matter look like someone waiting for the happy, fluffy fun-bunny express to arrive.

As Mark Steyn said in a recent column,

What’s relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin’s New Orleans. All you need is the manpower. Given the numbers of gunmen, clearly there was a significant local component. On the other hand, whether or not Pakistan’s deeply sinister ISI had their fingerprints all over it, it would seem unlikely that there was no external involvement. After all, if you look at every jihad front from the London Tube bombings to the Iraqi insurgency, you’ll find local lads and wily outsiders: That’s pretty much a given.

In other words, even though we've had remarkable success in fighting the Jihadists, including recently driving them from Iraq, this war is very far from over and there is no guarantee that it will stay "over there" for very long.

Loose Lips

From CNN (emphasis added):

The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward. Bob Woodward's book, "The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008," came out Monday. The program -- which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb -- must remain secret for now or it would "get people killed," Woodward said Monday on CNN's Larry King Live.

Nice to see you're keeping it under your hat then, Bob!

Doggy Dhimmitude

From the Daily Express:

Police sniffer dogs trained to spot terrorists at railway stations may no longer come into contact with Muslim passengers – after complaints that it is against the suspects’ religion.

Perhaps the best response to this sort of complaint is that being blown up by Jihadists is against our religion* and that a sense of perspective is in order.

*I trust that I don't have to explain that "our religion" includes all creeds subscribed to by civilised men whether followers of cross or crescent.

Bin Laden's "Right Hand" Slaps Common Sense

A British court has granted Jihadist cleric Abu Qatada bail pending an extradition hearing.

If New Labour had been fighting the Nazis Rudolph Hess would have been put up at the Savoy rather than the Tower.

Hug a Jihadist

I thought it was a sign of pure moral cowardice when the British government decided to pretend that the Jiahdist War was a police matter and started turning the screws on the general public to the point where anti-terrorism laws were used to spy on illicit dog poo, but it's now clear that it's a case of New Labour being barking mad. What other conclusion can there be when the next bright idea is not to lock up Jihadists, but to give them therapy to "de-radicalise" them.

Bear in mind that this is not Room 101 style political re-education that you or I would receive under "hate crime" legislation if we offended the tender sensibilities of some Anti-Semitic imam who calls on the Faithful every Friday to commit mass murder. We're taking something more along the lines of a nice cup of tea and some sympathetic chat. This will cost, by the bye, £12.5 million.

I do wish that someone would point out to Gordon Brown et al that the Jihadists are the baddies.

The Medium is the Message

From The Times:

Britain made a fresh appeal today for the release of five British men who were kidnapped exactly one year ago from a finance ministry building in Baghdad.

Unless that message is delivered by a squad of Royal Marines with the safeties off, I doubt if it will get much attention.

Wonder How Long This Euphemism Will Last

From the BBC:

Harassment fear in bomb community

Ah, yes. The inevitable-but-never-evident anti-bomb community backlash.

Exeter Update

A video report on the Exeter bombing from The Telegraph. Apparently the mentally retarded man was getting text messages of "encouragement" from his "friends". To quote a police source,

This really does mark a low point for Muslim extremists. We are all horrified by what has happened here.

Some are More Equal Than Others

Why we can outgun the Jihadists in the field a thousand to one, but can still lose the war on the home front:

One of the world's most dangerous terror suspects was last night preparing for a life on benefits in Britain after judges ruled that his deportation would breach human rights law.

It gets worse:

The rulings mean that - despite Tony Blair's promise in the immediate aftermath of the 7/7 attacks that the "rules of the game have changed" - not a single international terrorist has been forcibly removed from this country.

Sir Winston is corkscrewing in his grave.

Abu Obaida al-Masri RIP

Abu Obaida al-Masri, Al Qaeda's senior planner in Afghanistan is dead. To sum up:

RESULT!

Justice is Blinkered

The full might of English law will be brought to bear against those who would make war against the Realm, Her Majesty or her subjects.

Unless the prisons are a bit crowded, in which case you get out early.

Danish Courage

The Danish national library will house the Danish Mohammed cartoons so that they will be "kept safe for future generations."

I think I'll nip out for some Heineken.

A Matter of Priorities

Twelve Pakistanis in Spain have been arrested on terrorism charges and the BBC looks at the impact... on Pakistanis.

No mention, however, on why Jihadis keep getting rounded up in a country that rolled over and did as it was told after the Madrid bombings. Maybe appeasement doesn't work?

War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery

Daily Mail headline:

Government renames Islamic terrorism as 'anti-Islamic activity' to woo Muslims

In addition, water is dry, fire is cold, and up is down.

I was going to do this as an update to this morning's previous post on New Labour covering its eyes and hoping the Jihadists will go away, but this Orwellian touch deserves a post of its own.

Made in Britain

One of the ironies of the Jihadists is that on the one hand they are spilling blood left, right and centre to impose a hopelessly puritanical society on the whole of humanity, yet the Jihadists in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are notorious for their drinking, drug taking, and whoring wherever they hold power.

Some of these men will admit they were insurgents who switched sides because they realized that they are more likely to get what they want with a stable government. Al Qaeda promised them everything under the baking sun, yet al Qaeda killed people who smoked—and Iraqis like to smoke. They killed people who had satellite dishes or televisions, but al Qaeda would be drinking and with prostitutes. Iraqis have told me some interesting anecdotes about the religious technicalities of prostitution. They are not supposed to have sex out of wedlock, so they marry the prostitute (and the house of ill-repute has the proper religious authority present to make the marriage), and then they divorce the prostitute after completing their business. Another rumor in the area is that al Qaeda tried to force shepherds to make their female sheep wear underwear.

Counterinsurgency/FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5

The frightening thing about this is that it gives a better insight into the mind of Jihadist recruits in Britain and Europe better than all the blather about disaffection, foreign policy and the like. According to Mary Jackson at The New English Review, it isn't a question of potential Islamofascists rejecting Western culture, but of assimilating only the worst parts of it.

Don’t mess with us, they say. We know our rights. For Britain, once home to the stiff-upper lip, now has a rights culture. And British Muslims scream “Islamophobia” if they don’t get their rights: the right to special food or clothing in schools, the right to be spared any kind of real or imagined offense, the right to a job – on their terms, however unreasonable - and above all the right to welfare payments, which they receive in disproportionately high numbers.

These demands, this sense of entitlement, should worry us far more than niqabs, gangsta rap, or even drugs. Welfare scrounging is not peculiar to Muslims, but Islam alone demands tribute from non-believers in the form of a special tax or jizya. This “right” is set out in the Koran, as part of the rules of jihad. Muslim scrounging is an act of jihad, and payment of benefits an act of dhimmitude.

Or, as Mark Steyn put it:

More than three years ago, I wrote about the "tournante" or "take your turn" -- the gang rape that's become an adolescent rite of passage in the Muslim quarters of French cities - and similar phenomena throughout the West: "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture - the subjugation of women -- combine with the worst attributes of Western culture -- licence and self-gratification. Tattooed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of northern England areas are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort." Islamofascism itself is what it says: a fusion of Islamic identity with old-school European totalitarianism. But, whether in turbans or gangsta threads, just as Communism was in its day, so Islam is today's ideology of choice for the world's disaffected.

One of the disturbing truths of this war is that the real threat is not the enemy without or the enemy within, but the brutal fact that in a war of ideologies the West has ceded so much ground without a shot being fired. In a single generation we have dismantled so many of our vital institutions; spurned so many traditions; rejected high culture until only the transient ephemera of pop remains, turned our back on the faith of our fathers to the point where Christianity is often treated as something disreputable; swapped virtues for "values"; exalted the material, the carnal and the perverse without a moments reflection on what that means; sneered at innocence as naiveté; made chastity into a joke; promoted the most graphic of violence as entertainment in a manner that would give Caligula pause; championed tolerance above all else until it becomes an instrument of intolerance, divided race against race and sex against sex in the name of equality; and wallowed in irony until it has seeped into our souls that it is little wonder that so many second generation Muslims in the Britain and Europe grow up to be 7th century fanatics with 21st century vices or that even after six years of war we are still so ill prepared against these monsters. When you yourself reject the best and what is decent that your culture has to offer, don't be surprised if those that come after only assimilate the worst.

I was thinking about this the other day when I was getting ready to post the new Future Cinema section. So many of the films there have been dismissed in recent decades as "propaganda" and "Utopian" and (worst of all modern sins) "naive", but having reviewed a number of them over recent days, the conclusion I have come to is that, whatever their faults, our fathers and grandfathers lived in a time when people were given armour to protect them as plain, yet as strong as that of the first Crusaders, while ours provides us with gaudy crepe costumes that couldn't protect us against a cold east wind.

That allusion? It's from "An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which end with this from Holmes:

There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it’s God’s own wind none the less, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.

That was in 1916 and that wind ended up blowing for a generation and beyond. I wonder how we will fare against this one.

Don't Mention... Anything, Really

Iowahawk looks at the logical outcome of the Gordon Brown approach to Jihadis:

British public safety officials today increased the national alert level to "Quite Elevated Indeed" -- the highest category possible -- and appealed to UK citizens to "keep a sharp lookout for diverse people engaged in activities."

"We ask the public to report any behaviors by various people that may or may not be of a suspicious nature," said Lt. Clive Jameson of the Metropolitan Police Service. "We further ask the public to be especially vigilant for activities of broad stratas of people who may be from countries of some sort, especially those within the eastern and/or western hemisphere."

Tip o' the hat to Charles Palmer.

Don't Connect the Dots

MI5 reports that there are 2000 terrorists in Britain actively supporting Al Qaeda.

But remember, this is just a police matter; we are not at war.

And maybe I'm a Chinese jet pilot.

Abu Izzadeen arrested

Abu Izzadeen and five others in Britain have been detained on terrorism charges.

Always a good day when one of the bigger fish gets netted.

Al Qaeda's Hiroshima

From the Daily Telegraph:

Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning the first "large-scale" terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on "a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki" in an attempt to "shake the Roman throne", a reference to the West, according to The Times newspaper in the UK.

We can hope that this is just bluster and wishful thinking. We can also stick our heads in the sand and hope it all goes away. As 9/11, 7/7, Madrid, Bali, Breslan and other plots too numerous to mention from Baghdad to Canada illustrate, for Al Qaeda and their ilk it isn't a matter of motives, but of means.

Sexing a Tomato

Tomato cucumber salad: The light lunch of Crusader depravity

From the AP on Al Qaeda in Iraq:

American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

The question is, which one gets the burkha?

Larry and Bob were unavailable for comment.