From The Sunday Telegraph

British troops face such danger from their allies in the Afghan army and police force that they should carry a loaded pistol whenever they are working alongside them, a secret Nato report has warned.

More photos here (with thanks to the Skeptical Doctor website).

If this is how they treat their own history, imagine what comtempt they have for ours. From the Independent (when we grow up we want to be the Gruaniad)

Behind closed doors – in places where the religious police cannot listen in – residents of Mecca are beginning to refer to their city as Las Vegas, and the moniker is not a compliment.

Once a dusty desert town struggling to cope with the ever-increasing number of pilgrims arriving for the annual Hajj, the city now soars above its surroundings with a glittering array of skyscrapers, shopping malls and luxury hotels.

Yet growing numbers of citizens, particularly those living in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, have looked on aghast as the nation's archaeological heritage is trampled under a construction mania backed by hardline clerics who preach against the preservation of their own heritage. Mecca, once a place where the Prophet Mohamed insisted all Muslims would be equal, has become a playground for the rich, critics say, where naked capitalism has usurped spirituality as the city's raison d'être.

Few are willing to discuss their fears openly because of the risks associated with criticising official policy in the authoritarian kingdom. And, with the exceptions of Turkey and Iran, fellow Muslim nations have largely held their tongues for fear of of a diplomatic fallout and restrictions on their citizens' pilgrimage visas. Western archaeologists are silent out of fear that the few sites they are allowed access to will be closed to them.

But a number of prominent Saudi archaeologists and historians are speaking up in the belief that the opportunity to save Saudi Arabia's remaining historical sites is closing fast. "No one has the balls to stand up and condemn this cultural vandalism," says Dr Irfan al-Alawi who, as executive director of the Islamic Heritage Research Foundation, has fought in vain to protect his country's historical sites.

Sami Angawi, a renowned Saudi expert on the region's Islamic architecture, is equally concerned. "This is an absolute contradiction to the nature of Mecca and the sacredness of the house of God," he told the Reuters news agency earlier this year. "Both [Mecca and Medina] are historically almost finished. You do not find anything except skyscrapers."

The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of Mecca's millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades alone. The destruction has been aided by Wahabism, the austere interpretation of Islam that has served as the kingdom's official religion ever since the al-Sauds rose to power across the Arabian Peninsula in the 19th century.

In the eyes of Wahabis, historical sites and shrines encourage "shirq" – the sin of idolatry or polytheism – and should be destroyed. When the al-Saud tribes swept through Mecca in the 1920s, the first thing they did was lay waste to cemeteries holding many of Islam's important figures.

Those circling the Kaaba only need to look skywards to see the latest example of the Saudi monarchy's insatiable appetite for architectural bling. At 1,972ft, the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, opened earlier this year, soars over the surrounding Grand Mosque, part of an enormous development of skyscrapers that will house five-star hotels for the minority of pilgrims rich enough to afford them.

To build the skyscraper city, the authorities dynamited an entire mountain and the Ottoman era Ajyad Fortress that lay on top of it. At the other end of the Grand Mosque complex, the house of the Prophet's first wife Khadijah has been turned into a toilet block. The fate of the house he was born in is uncertain. Also planned for demolition are the Grand Mosque's Ottoman columns which dare to contain the names of the Prophet's companions, something hardline Wahabis detest.

Dr Alawi hopes the international community will finally begin to wake up to what is happening in the cradle of Islam. "We would never allow someone to destroy the Pyramids, so why are we letting Islam's history disappear?"

There is a school of thought in Egypt that would very much like to demolish the Pyramids, cf the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Watch, and listen, here.

There. I have said it. The local paper is vague, but the Secular Society says it. I don't have a great deal of time for the Secular Society as their efforts to undermine our Judeo-Christian heritage is one of the (numerous) factors that have allowed islamification in, but they do seem to be waking up that they now face a far greater threat. The blogs say it too.

From the Telegraph and Argus

Conflict between two faiths at a Bradford catholic school must be stopped before it escalates into full-scale gang war, a councillor has warned.

Imdad Hussain (Lab, Heaton) said he feared unrest at St Bede’s Catholic Grammar School could “trigger unwanted scenes”. He said: “That’s the last thing Bradford needs.” Coun Hussain wants the troubles “nipped in the bud” that started on Monday with a stand-off between two rival groups of youths at the school in Emm Lane.

A spokesman for the Leeds Diocese, which runs the school, confirmed there had been “some friction” between groups of students in the school.

Police were called to St Bede’s at lunchtime on Monday after reports of a stand-off and later that day, as school buses left the site, the vehicles were set on by a group of Asian pupils. Stones and half-bricks were thrown at the three buses and terrified pupils had to dodge the missiles which smashed windows causing up to £600 worth of damage.

I don't think the Asian pupils were Hindus somehow. And I don't think for one moment that the Catholic pupils have been fighting with a group of militant Methodists.

On Thursday evening I spoke to ACT! for America Chapter in Jonesboro, Arkansas. It is headed by Robert Norvell, a dynamic organizer and speaker, who generously arranged for me to come.

Rebecca Bynum and Robert Norvell, Sept. 22, 2011 Jonesboro, Arkansas

Earlier in the afternoon, I appeared on the Paul Harrell "Answer to Us" radio program.

The American heartland is organizing and is determined to resist Islamization even while Muslim immigration continues unabated. Jonesboro is home to Arkansas State University which, like many other universities in America, accepts quite a large number of students from Saudi Arabia (who naturally pay full tuition rates). Former President Bill Clinton lobbied the Saudis while he was governor for a twenty million dollar donation given to the University of Arkansas.

"It is a moment of truth and my people are waiting to hear the answer of the world," Mr Abbas said. "At a time when the Arab peoples affirm their quest for democracy - the Arab Spring - the time is now for the Palestinian Spring, the time for independence."

But the "Arab Spring" was never about the Western conception of "democracy" and "freedom" but about getting rid of obviously grasping despots and their courtiers, and that was all it was about. But who was the greatest crook of them all? It was Yassir Arafat, who stole billions in aid. He was, comparatively, far more of a crook than Ben Ali or Mubarak, or even than Qaddafy. And who was for decades the henchman, the chief courtier, of Arafat? It was Mahmoud Abbas, that is Abu Mazen.

He wears a suit and a tie, and apparently that, and his demeanor, is enough to make everyone forget that Abu Mazen is himself a crook -- look at the sums his children, now living in Dubai, or is it Doha, are playing with in their role as "businessmen." Look at his own aides, as crooked in their way as he was under Arafat. The dress, and the demeanor, should not make people forget what company he has kept for his entire life, and what propaganda he solicits and promotes (Der-Stuermer-like, which anyone can see, with a click, merely by going to Palestinian Media Watch or other sites that monitor, perhaps less thoroughly, what goes on in the "Palestinian" press, radio, television, and what is taught, inculcated, in the "Palestinian" schools.

The unthinking and grotesque applause, by people who have no idea what the Mandate for Palestine, or indeed any of the other mandates, were all about, who do not know the history of the Middle East (which has now become, for some, merely "the Arab world" to which the Jews, the Christians in a dozen varieties, and all the non-Muslim and non-Arab peoples, scarcely count, for it is the complete arabization, in the minds of many, of the Middle East and North Africa, territories in  which, a half-century and even more a century ago, all kinds of non-Arabs and non-Musilms could be found, and were written about, were reported on by travellers and diplomats), should not be forgotten.

Did the delegates from some countries not realize that Mahmoud Abbas' campaign at the U.N. is merely part of the diplomatic and propaganda jihad, that is not that of the "Palestinians" alone but, rather, part of the world-wide Jihad, most fervent among Arab Muslims but also the cause (see the Islamic Republic of Iran, see Erdgoan's Turkey, see hysterical Pakistan) of all those who take Islam to heart (as the Shah's regime did not, and as the Kemalists did not, but they are gone, replaced by Ahmadinejad, and Erdogan, and their ilk). Do they not know the history of the Middle East and of its minorities? Do they not know the history of every single agreement that Israel has signed with Arab neighbors, that have in ways large and small been broken by those neighbors -- save for the Armistice Agreement signed with Lebanon in 1949, which as long as the Christians dominated was kept, and when the demographic takeover of Lebanon was sufficiently advanced, then started to be violated by the Lebanese side?

Did any of those applauding delegates, say from such countries as India, or Thailand, or the Philippines, or Nigeria, give a thought to the Muslims in their own countries, and the threat they pose to their own non-Muslim peoples, the disruption they cause, the demands they make, the mayhem and even murder and even mass-murder of which those local Muslims are guilty? Did they dare, even for a fleeting moment, to wonder if perhaps there were some dots they had failed to but in the future would have to connect, as they came to grasp -- and the behavior of Muslims, not Israeli efforts, are what will finally make them connect those dots, and to see -- that the Jihad world-wide is prompted everywhere by the same texts, the same tenets, the same attitudes, the same atmospherics.

And did any of the delegates who applauded this mild-mannered but essentially sinister and wicked man (don't allow yourself to be fooled, not for a minute, and don't concede, not even rhetorically, an inch), this man who leads the local Arabs who were renamed, after the 1967 defeat, the "Palestinian people," in order to disguise the Jihad as a fight for "the national liberation" (as was then fashionable, given the Viet Cong being so much in the news) and then metamorphosed into an equalloy fashionable "struggle for the legitimate rights of the 'Palestinian' people" and now, in its latest form, has become a "struggle for the aspirations" --with that pacific and sad-eyed longing, that those awful Israelis so cruelly will not heed, and so viciously reject at every peaceful overture of the peaceful and patient and altogether put-upon "Palestinians" who want only to conduct their own lives, and haven't the slightest interest in harming Israel. What about the delegates from Great Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, and all the other countries in Europe now, and forever in the future, being harmed by the same  kind of people, the same people who are sincere and therefore permanently dangerous adherents of the Total Belief-System of Islam? Were there, among the clappers, some just a little uneasy, just a bit reluctant to join in the lynch-mob at the U.N. against Israel and in the choir singing the praises of the man chosen to lead the diplomatic Jihad, that gang-up by the Arabs and other Muslims that, after forty years of steady propganda, has worn away at5 memories (and many have died who knew the truth, who knew the facts) is now ready, at the U.N., under "Palestinian" guise, for its sinister close-up. 

They will regret it. Not because they may come to care about Israel. But because they are all victims, in posse or in esse, of the same Belief-System that animates the endless war, the Jihad, against Israel, that cannot and will not end so that the only thing that matters is whether Israel -- or any other non-Muslim state or entity or people -- can retain enough sanity to retain enough territory, to defend themselves against this monstrous ideology which, to the extent that it takes over a man, changes his grasp of reality, and his view of the Good, and makes him a permanent menace, whether he offers smiles to conceal what it is in his heart or does not, to all non-Muslims.

A victory over Israel -- the same victory which those mindless delegates were applauding -- will not sate, but whet, Arab and Muslim appetites. This those delegates do not yet know.

But they will.

Here is one not atypical take on the peace-performance of Abu Mazen ( his nom-de-guerre in the kunya system, by which he is known to fellow Arabs -- but for Western and outside consumption, that nom-de-guerre is carefully shelved for it does not accord with the image of the stolid and gentle accountant, that long-suffering Prince of Peace).

(UKPA) – September 24, 2011

Mahmoud Abbas' bold bid for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood is doomed to fail but has won him admiration at home and re-energised international efforts to seek a negotiated settlement.

Thousands of jubilant, flag-waving Palestinians watching on outdoor screens across the West Bank, cheered their president on Friday as he submitted his historic request for a UN nod.

In Nablus, the crowd roared ecstatically when Mr Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, told the UN General Assembly that he had submitted the request for full UN membership.

In New York, Mr Abbas' speech was interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause as he told the largely sympathetic gathering of world leaders that the Palestinians had had enough of negotiations that have foundered for nearly two decades and yielded few tangible results for the millions who live under Israeli occupation.

The new Palestine he envisioned would be in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in 1967.

"It is a moment of truth and my people are waiting to hear the answer of the world," Mr Abbas said. "At a time when the Arab peoples affirm their quest for democracy - the Arab Spring - the time is now for the Palestinian Spring, the time for independence."

UN chief Ban Ki-moon referred the statehood request to the Security Council, where US opposition is expected to shoot it down. The US - which maintains long-term peace can only be reached through negotiations - and Israel have also been pressuring council members to either vote against the plan or abstain when it comes up for a vote.

The vote would require the support of nine of the council's 15 members to pass, but even if the Palestinians could line up that backing, a US veto is assured.

The Security Council will meet on Monday to examine the Palestinian membership request.

Shortly after Mr Abbas submitted his formal application, international mediators called on Israelis and Palestinians to return to long-stalled negotiations and reach an agreement no later than next year.

Emin Pasha

Mehmed Emin Pasha (March 28, 1840 – October 23, 1892) — he was born Isaak Eduard Schnitzer and baptized (c. 1847) Eduard Carl Oscar Theodor Schnitzer — was a physician, naturalist and governor of the Egyptian province of Equatoria on the upper Nile. "Pasha" was a title conferred on him in 1886 and thereafter he was referred to as "Emin Pasha".

Eduard Schnitzer aka Emin Pasha

He was born in Oppeln, Silesia into a middle-class Germano-Jewish family, which moved to Neisse when he was two years of age. After the death of his father in 1845 his mother married a Gentile; she and her offspring were baptized Lutherans. He studied at the universities at Breslau, Königsberg, and Berlin, qualifying as a doctor in 1864. However, he was disqualified from practice, and left Germany for Constantinople, with the intention of entering Ottoman service.

Travelling via Vienna and Trieste, he stopped at Antivari in Montenegro, found himself welcomed by the local community and was soon in medical practice. He put his linguistic talent to good use as well, adding Turkish, Albanian, and Greek to his repertoire of European languages. He became the quarantine officer of the port, leaving only in 1870 to join the staff of Ismail Hakki Pasha, governor of northern Albania, in the service he travelled throughout the Ottoman Empire, although the details are little-known.

When Hakki Pasha died in 1873, Emin went back to Neisse with the pasha's widow and children, where he passed them off as his own family, but left suddenly in September 1875, reappearing in Cairo and then departing for Khartoum, where he arrived in December. At this point he took the name "Mehemet Emin" (Arabic Muhammad al-Amin), started a medical practice, and began collecting plants, animals, and birds, many of which he sent to museums in Europe. Although some regarded him as a Muslim, it is not clear if he ever actually converted.

Charles George Gordon, then governor of Equatoria, heard of Emin's presence and invited him to be the chief medical officer of the province; Emin assented and arrived there in May 1876. Gordon immediately sent Emin on diplomatic missions to Buganda and Bunyoro to the south, where Emin's modest style and fluency in Luganda were quite popular.

After 1876, Emin made Lado his base for collecting expeditions throughout the region. In 1878, the Khedive of Egypt appointed Emin as Gordon's successor to govern the province, giving him the title of Bey. Despite the grand title, there was little for Emin to do; his military force consisted of a few thousand soldiers who controlled no more than a mile's radius around each of their outposts, and the government in Khartoum was indifferent to his proposals for development. He showed himself a bitter foe of slavery.

The revolt of Muhammad Ahmad that began in 1881 had cut Equatoria off from the outside world by 1883, and the following year Karam Allah marched south to capture Equatoria and Emin. In 1885 Emin and most of his forces withdrew further south, to Wadelai near Lake Albert. Cut off from communications to the north, he was still able to exchange mail with Zanzibar through Buganda. Determined to remain in Equatoria, his communiques, carried by his friend Wilhelm Junker, aroused considerable sentiment in Europe in 1886, particularly acute after the death of Gordon the previous year.

The Emin Pasha Relief Expedition, led by Henry Morton Stanley, undertook to rescue Emin by going up the Congo River and then through the Ituri Forest, an extraordinarily difficult route that resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the expedition. Precise details of this trek are recorded in the published diaries of the expedition's non-African "officers" (e.g. Major Edmund Musgrave Barttelot, Captain William Grant Stairs, Mr. A.J. Mounteney Jephson, or Thomas Heazle Parke, surgeon of the expedition). Stanley met Emin in April 1888, and after a year spent in argument and indecision, during which Emin and Jephson were imprisoned at Dufile by troops who mutinied from August to November 1888, Emin was convinced to leave for the coast. They arrived in Bagamoyo in 1890. During celebrations Emin was injured when he stepped through a window he mistook for an opening to a balcony. Emin spent two months in a hospital recovering while Stanley left without being able to bring him back in triumph.

The introduction of sleeping sickness in Uganda was attributed to the movement of Emin and his followers. Prior to the 1890s, sleeping sickness was unknown in Uganda but the Tetse fly was probably brought by Emin from the Congo territory.

Emin then entered the service of the German East Africa Company and accompanied Dr. Stuhlmann on an expedition to the lakes in the interior, but was killed by two Arab slave traders at Kinena Station in the Congo Free State, near Nyangwe.

He added greatly to the anthropological knowledge of central Africa and published valuable geographical papers.

At a recent conference on ethnomusicology held in the U.S., I met an Arab researcher.  His paper on traditional Arab music was indecipherable and full of postmodern jargon.  After he finished his presentation, he confided to me in private, "We have to be careful what we say about music -- the fundamentalists are everywhere."  And they certainly are.  The tyrannies that control the Islamic world are at war with music and musicians, and they seem to be winning.

Jonas Otterbeck, a Swedish expert on the status of musicians in the Islamic world, writes, "States and local authorities have taken action against heavy metal musicians, female singers, music, videos and public concerts. Islamist and conservative Islamic organizations ... try to disturb and breakup [sic] concerts, demand censorship on recordings, or call for the punishment of individuals for being blasphemous. At times musicians are killed or attacked physically[.]"

When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, they tried to ban all music based on a Hadith (saying of the Prophet) that states, "Those who listen to music and songs in this world will on the Day of Judgment have molten lead poured into their ears."  And so, inspired by the Taliban, a radical Islamic group kidnapped the well-known Algerian Berber singer, Younes Matoub.  Before they killed him, he was told, "You are the enemy of God...you and your songs[.]"

To insure that this banning or strict state and religious control of the arts is secure from the intrusiveness of new technologies such as satellite TV and the internet, in February 2008, 21 information ministers from Arab countries agreed on new restrictions for satellite TV.  Their charter states that broadcasters should not damage "social peace and national unity and public order."  Only Qatar abstained, as its autocratic and non-democratic government is home to the notorious Al Jazeera station, staunch enemy of the West, Israel, and liberal democracies.

Such an environment of fear allowed for the arrest of men like Saudi journalist Rabbah Al Quwai'i, who protested in print against Muslim extremists who burn books and musical instruments.  He received death threats, his car was smashed, and he was arrested.  The grounds for his incarceration were "destructive thoughts."

Less violently but perhaps more absurdly, last year the Saudi government announced that there should be no music or dancing when young girls graduate from school.  And for those who thought that when King Abdullah took the throne in 2005, there would be greater artistic freedom in the kingdom, the Saudis have canceled their summer film festival.

In Egypt the government censors and the Islamic authorities provide licenses for musicians and performers that significantly restricts their artistic freedom in countless ways.  But this cannot guarantee the safety of Egyptian musicians.  The most recent example was the brutal assault of 23-year-old Ramy Essam, the famous anti-government protest singer of Tahrir square, who was attacked by police and soldiers and tortured with an electric detonator.

On May 18, 2010, Elton John, pop star and renowned gay activist, was set to play a concert in Cairo.  When the authorities heard that he had said that Jesus was gay, they canceled the event.  Unlike many pop stars, who endorse the craziest of causes, Sir Elton is very clear about the realities of life in the Islamic world.  He has said, "Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you are as good as dead

This year the Iranian government adopted a new censorship rule that bans love poetry that is secular, while also making the musical use of traditional Sufi love poems difficult for musicians to record or perform in public.  This strikes at the heart of the Iranian musical tradition, which has been immersed in Sufism and Sufi mystical poetry for centuries.  The Iranians also have a rule against female soloists.  Female voices must make Iranian men very, very upset (or excited).

Before their resounding electoral success, the Islamic government of Turkey promised musicians continued freedom of artistic expression. However, they seem to have made a major exception when it comes to Turkish citizens of Kurdish culture

Singer Ferhant Tunc received a 25-day jail sentence for comments that he made during a performance.  Other performers like Pinar Sag and Mehmet Ozcan were sentenced to ten months in prison for comments that they made during performances.  Three members of the Kurdish band Koma Aheng got ten months each for comments that they have made.

In the case of Pinar Sag, the Istanbul branch of the Contemporary Lawyer's Association have accused the state of "judicial terror," which is not a bad way of characterizing the rule of sharia law in the modern world.  In countries like Saudi Arabia, judicial terror is a way of life.  If the average Turk thinks that his new government is not headed in that direction, then he is living in a dream

So where do Arabs and other Muslims turn to when their tyrannical governments have uprooted the wellsprings of their music?  Israel, of course.  The rallying cry of the Syrian opposition to dictator Bashir el Assad is a song called "Zini Zini," written by the Israeli singer-songwriter Amir Benayoun.

Benayoun is an orthodox Jew whose family moved to Israel after the Algerian war of independence, during which Arab nationalists assassinated the great Algerian Jewish musician Sheikh Raymond Leyris (father-in-law of French pop star Enrico Masias) and which some say triggered the Algerian Jewish migration to Israel that caused Benayoun's parents to emigrate.

Since the early days of the state, Israel has had a thriving Near Eastern and Arabic musical culture.  Some of the most famous classical Arab musicians from Iraq and Kuwait were Jews.  When they came to Israel in the 1950s, many of the best got jobs with the Arabic orchestra of Israeli state radio.  One of the most famous was Daudi Al Kuwaiti (David the Kuwaiti), whose broadcasts of Arabic music on Israeli national radio during the sixties and seventies were listened to by millions of Arabs across the Middle East.

Israel's annual oud (Arabo Turkish lute) festival is a draw for those musicians from the Islamic world who know that the only free musical country in the Middle East is the state of Israel.  Israel also allows Arab protest singers to write and sing about "the occupation."

Israeli archives are full of Arab and Near Eastern music from Israel itself and all of the neighboring Islamic states.  It is also a world center for the free practice of ethnomusicology.  If the Arabs lose their broadcasting and other musical archives -- which is a distinct possibility, given current trends -- the Israelis, like the Irish monks of the middle ages, will preserve Arab and Islamic music for them in their archives and concert halls until the time when their Arab cousins reclaim their common Near Eastern cultural heritage. On that day, the musicians of the Islamic world will finally be free.

But do not despair.  There is a silver lining to this story.  The Saudis adamantly defend the broadcast of the song "Jingle Bells" on their airwaves, for their religious authorities have ruled that the song contains no hint of Christian religious symbolism.

First published in The American Thinker.

Simon Deng at Stand With Israel Demonstration UN 9-22-11

Simon Deng, a former South Sudanese slave taken by a neighbor as a young boy to Islamist Northern Sudan gave this impassioned speech at yesterday’s Durban Watch Conference in New York. He puts the lie to the Zionism is Racism canard of Durban III painting Israel as a pariah state. Rather as he points out it is the Arab Muslim Jihadis who have engaged in racial genocide of millions of Sudanese, whether Muslim or Christian.  As he further points out it is Israel that is the ultimate destination of Sudanese refugees, as Egypt has oppressed them.

Watch this PJTV video presentation by Simon Deng at the Durban Watch Conference.

What follows is Simon Deng’s prepared remarks  before the Durban Watch Conference on September 22, 2011.

_______________________________________________________

Thank you for those kind words:

I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. –I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel. The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state - Israel. Hitler couldn’t have been made happier.

The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

Please hear me out.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan -- Christians and Muslims alike --- has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.

The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them. and they are treated with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur? It is not a “tribal conflict.” It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam. In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans - Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin. But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish –led American Anti-Slavery Group -- sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees. Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong. When Egyptian security forces slaughtered twenty six black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel. Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area. Do you know what this means!!!?? And the Arabs say Israel is racist!!!?

In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.

So, yes … I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis -- all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a twelve year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir -- publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built--- not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth.

My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.

AM YISROEL CHAI!

The people of Israel lives!

Thank you

Salman Rushdie spars with Taslima Nasreen on Twitter

NEW DELHI: Days after he joined Twitter saying he was now in the "madhouse", author Salman Rushdie may be realizing that the social media site can be just that.

On Wednesday, Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen got into a micro-blogging spat, with the Bangladeshi writer accusing him of "begging" for followers and chasing women.

"Salman Rushdie is begging everyone to follow him on Twitter. He'll feel embarrassed if he doesn't get a million followers," she tweeted, adding, "Be aware of Salman Rushdie! He wants to get girls in his 'whipped cream range'."

Listen here.

From Hurriyet:

Sending non-Muslims away was a bad idea

September 9, 2011

Regional disparity is an important issue in Turkey. Take for example, the top 1,000 industrial companies list of the Istanbul Chamber of Industry (ISO-1000). Have you ever looked at the geographical location of the companies in the list? Let me tell you: There are no factories in the east of Turkey. Let me correct: If you look for provinces with at least three companies on the ISO-1000 list, then the whole east of Turkey looks empty. It is sad.

Why is that so? It looks as if the “capabilities sets” of those provinces do not allow them to host factories. Capabilities are not only about hardware such as electricity, roads and buildings. They are also about the software, such as a skilled labor force, availability of trade connections, technical know-how, etc. Software issues also include restaurants, shopping centers, quality schools and hospitals for the skilled “expat” workers who may choose to work there. Industrialization comes as a package. That package is the capabilities set of the geographical location. Those provinces that have gradually improved the capabilities set have developed industrial capacity in their towns. That is how industry has spread throughout Anatolia in the last two decades. Industrial development requires enrichment of the local capabilities set. But still the regional disparity is there to stay. The discrepancy is about capabilities sets.

Sumru Altuğ of Koç University in Istanbul is noting internal migration as a remedy for regional disparity in Turkey. That was mentioned in a May 2010 policy note from the TÜSİAD-Koç University Economic Research Forum. That is the urban-rural migration within the country. When I was born about 50 years ago, 30 percent of the population was living in urban centers. Now that has increased to 75 percent. There is a flow of migrants from poor rural to rich urban centers.

What is the impact of migration on the capabilities sets of migration-sending provinces? There lies the difference between the early-1900 and post-1960 migrations in Anatolia. Migration had corrosive effects on capabilities sets of sender provinces at the beginning of the 20th century. Then there was a sizable non-Muslim population in Anatolia contributing to the capabilities sets of their provinces. They had trade connections, commercial know-how and technical skills. And then they were gone. Now there are none. In the jingoistic atmosphere of the nation-building time, sending non-Muslims away looked like a good idea for our founding fathers. However, looking back now, it definitely had a corrosive effect on the capabilities set of migrant-sending provinces. Nation-building exercises in this neighborhood at the time had a detrimental effect on capabilities sets of many provinces and countries.

The post-1960 migratory trend from poor to rich provinces, on the other hand, is more neutral. That did not have a major impact on the skills set of the provinces providing migrants to the rich urban centers. Those who are migrating this time are already poor and have no skills whatsoever.

It is not only in Anatolia. Max von Oppenheim, the Pan-German contemporary of Kaiser Wilhelm, son of the Oppenheim banking dynasty, reporting on a wave of Lebanese Christian migration to America in spring 1903, noted with anger the economic impact of this brain drain on Beirut. It was everywhere in the Ottoman Empire at the same time. The fall of an empire is full of sorrows.

_____________________

Notice how the Turkish author, though he regrets the disappearance of non-Muslims (Armenians, Greeks, Jews) can't quite bring himself to explain why this happened, and instead he suggests that they simply "went away." He overlooks the massacres of the Armenians, possibly of 1.5 million of them, with others fleeing to the West, the massacres of the Greeks in Smyrna and elsewhere, and then the 1955 pogrom of Greeks in Istanbul; he overlooks the steady pressure on the Jews -- along with much sentimenalizing about "how well the Turks always treated the Jews" (yes, compared to the Nazis, they were just fine; compared to the Arabs, they were just fine; but compared to how Jews and other non-Muslims should be treated, that is with full legal and social equality, they were not treated just fine in the past and certainly are being made to feel most unwelcome and uneasy now, thanks to the hysterical hate, scarcely-contained, of Mr. Erdogan].

He misses the non-Muslims. Oh, in Iraq they are starting to miss the Christians (as some older Iraqis miss the Jews among whom, in Baghdad, they grew up). But why have more than 60% of Iraq's Christians left? Out of fear of what Muslims have done, are doing, and will do to them, if not held in check by a despot such as Saddam Hussein. And the same fear is now palpable among the Christians in Syria, and especially in Aleppo. where Armenians sense the hatred toward them of Sunni Arabs, a hatred given a hollow justification that "the Christians aren't joining us in protests." Why should they? They have much to fear from the loss of Alawite control of the country, even if they no doubt wish that the Alawites were headed by someone more politically adroit than Assad. And since the Iraqi Christians made up 3% of the pouplation, but 1/3 of the educated class of doctors, engineers, and other professionals, their loss will do great damage to Iraq's economy as well as to the tenor of life.

In Egypt, those "Egyptian intellectuals" or some of them, miss the ancien regime, the old days, but most of them can't quite understand why those old days ended. Could the seizure of all the property belonging to, and the expelling of, the Jews, the Greeks, the Italians and other Levantines who had lived in Egypt, in Alexandria and Cairo, for centuries, possibly have something to do with the ending of a lively cultural atmosphere, that does not exist, and will never return?

Is Lebanon better off now that the Christians, who were just a few decades ago in the majority, have had their numbers so reduced? What do Lebanese think? What would any intelligent person think?

This Turkish columnist sees the damage that Turkey has done to itself by having a diminishing number of non-Muslims. But he can't say, perhaps he can't even recognize, that the reason for this is that Muslims will always oppress non-Muslims, and in the modern world it is now easier for non-Muslims to pack up and leave. And they will continue to do so, in Iraq, in Syria, possibly in Egypt and Lebanon. And those countries, and the Muslims in them, will all suffer, in every way.

Tant pis for eux.

Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein

I listened to President  Obama’s rabbi call yesterday. The whole operation was managed by the Reform movement with leftist Rabbi David Saperstein acting as chairperson and droolingly thanking the President for all he had done. Rabbi David Saperstein is married to Ellen Weiss, formerly Senior Vice President for News of National Public Radio who was forced to resign after she summarily fired former NPR columnist Juan Williams for having said on the Bill O’Reilly show that he worried when he gets on an airplane and sees “people dressed in garb that identifies them first and foremost as Muslims.” (“Juan Williams: I Was Fired for Telling the Truth” ).  Agudat Israel, the Orthodox rabbinic group, was included but they were at the bottom of the list so that none of their rabbis had a chance to ask a question. This is hardly a surprise since Orthodox rabbis are least likely to be in Obama’s corner. Two questions were selected, one on the economy and the other on the Middle East. There were no surprises. It was an electioneering effort by the President which was warmly received by the rabbinic left. I noticed one thing that seemed to reflect the President’s mind set: He twice emphasized that the road to peace in the Middle East, especially between Israel and Egypt and Turkey, was through successful peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which, as we know, is nonsense. The Palestinians won’t make a genuine peace and the Israelis would be insane to give away an inch of territory after what they should have learned in Gaza, South Lebanon, and the Sinai. Moreover, Obama’s remarks seem to indicate that he believes the conflict is territorial rather than religious. A territorial conflict can be resolved through compromise and diplomacy, but not a genuine religious conflict. At least, Hamas speaks the truth on that issue.

Further straws in the wind: Today’s NYT editorial on the Middle East (“The Palestinians’ Bid”) asserts that Obama is doing the right thing in vetoing the Palestinian UN bid for statehood and asserts that peace is only possible between the interested parties. It then goes on characyeristically to blame Netanyahu for failure to reach an agreement with the Palestinians and urges Obama and/or the Quartet to formulate a plan and present it to Netanyahu, presumably with implicit “persuaders” attached. I would guess that Obama’s next move, perhaps through Hilary, will be to tell the Israelis, “Look what we’ve done for you. We can’t go on helping you forever so you had better come up with a plan that Abbas can accept. This may have to wait until term 2, if he has one, and he will then say that the US has done all it can but the Israeli “hard right” has not cooperated. Therefore, we have no choice but to support Palestinian statehood, putting all the blame on Netanyahu, with the Jewish left serving as the amen corner.

UCMuslim Student Defendents in Orange County Trial

The Orange County (CA) Register photo

Victory at last against Muslim intimidation of free speech on college campuses. The so-called UC Irvine Ten, who disrupted the speech on February 8, 2010 of Israeli Ambassador to the US, Hon. Michael B. Oren, were found guilty in a Santa Ana, California Superior Court trial. This was the culmination of a grand jury investigation into the incident at the UC Irvine campus instigated by student members of the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union and the UC Riverside Muslim student association. Both groups are Muslim Brotherhood fronts in America. 

The controversial trial was brought in February, 2011 by Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas despite threats of intimidation by CAIR and other Muslim Brotherhood groups that the students’ free speech rights were violated. We had posted on the trial background and developments, here.

The Orange County Register noted the jury’s decision, the prosecutors and defense attorneys’ reactions after the verdict was reached yesterday. The sentencing phase at a hearing today in the Santa Ana courtroom of Judge Wilson will determine whether students will be sentenced to serve up to six months for the misdemeanor.

A jury Thursday found 10 Muslim university students guilty of disrupting a speech by an Israeli diplomat at UC Irvine last year, in a case that focused on free speech.

The six-man, six-woman jury found the students guilty on all counts of misdemeanor disturbing a public meeting and conspiracy in connection with the Feb. 8, 2010, talk by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. Watch video

"We're delighted the jury saw this the same way we saw it," said Assistant District Attorney Dan Wagner.

The prosecution said the defendants used a "heckler's veto" to thwart the free speech rights of the speaker and others in the audience, while the defense countered what the protesters did was a lawful expression of their free speech.

Defense attorney Dan Stormer said he was honored to represent the students, but disappointed in the verdict.

The jurors left the courtroom without comment immediately after the verdict was announced.

Court will reconvene at 1:30 this afternoon for a possible sentencing.

After months of pretrial motion, the trial lasted eight days, including about two days spent on closing arguments by one prosecutor and six defense attorneys earlier this week.

Wagner told jurors the protesters actions amounted to censorship when they planned to disrupt Oren and tried to cover it up.

The right to free speech is not absolute, he said, and it does not include canceling out the speech of others.

"If heckler's veto was allowed, then no one would have the right to free speech," he said. "Freedom does not mean that no one can tell me what I can do. That's not freedom; that's anarchy."

The prosecutor urged jurors not to buy into the "alternate reality" created by the defense, saying the defendants "convicted themselves."

Defense attorneys for the students – seven from UC Irvine and three from UC Riverside – said their clients intentionally disrupted the speech, but they believed they were conducting a peaceful protest that did not break any laws.

University officials' zero tolerance for protest kept students from exercising their rights to free speech, defense attorneys argued.

And, they told jurors in Superior Court Judge Peter Wilson's court, officials were prohibiting the content of the protesters' statements at a controversial political speech and not simply their conduct.

One of the elements the prosecution needed to prove for the jury to find the students guilty was the students' conduct and not the content of their message disrupted the speaker.

"It was the message that was being targeted by administrators;" defense attorney Lisa Holder said, "The University was prohibiting (the students') unpopular pro-Palestinian message."

This verdict and sentencing in the Orange County Superior Court trial of the ten Muslim UC students might set a new standard by spiking other attempts at intimidating the rights of free speech in the academia. Those rights have been violated by Muslim Student campus groups across the US. Congratulations are due to Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas and Assistant DA Dan Wagner for bringing the action and conducting this successful prosecution. 

This decision will doubtless be an embarrassment to Orange County Jewish Federation Shalom Elcott, who thought the proceedings were “excessive punishment.”  The Orange County Superior Court decision in the trial of the UC Irvine Ten will be a vindication of local activists in both Orange County and UCIrvine. Among those are  Dee Sterling and Debra Glazer of Ha’Emet-The truth, UC Irvine Professor Amihai Glazer and UC Adjunct Professor, Gary Fouse and the more than 57 other faculty colleagues who signed a letter protesting Islamic anti-Semitism on the troubled campus. We hope that both the UC Irvine Chancellor Drake and UCAL Chancellor Yudoff take notice of this important decision and set new standards in the UCAL system for freedom of speech.

I don't believe in God -- never have and never will -- but on the off-chance that there is a God, I am fully prepared to, and do, believe, that He would certainly have promised the Land of Israel long ago to the Jewish people, the People of Israel.  And after all that has happened since, He would certainly have insisted they were entitled to keep it, to have and to hold, to  love and to cherish it,  no matter what the  grotesque demands and sly propaganda and  widely-induced amnesia of the Slow Jihadists and the Fast Jihadists in this world of latter-day feints..  .

Why should you believe in this Promised Land idea, or at least agree that you should support it and not scoff at it, you who refuse to believe in practically anything?  Out of your innate sense of Justice, and of Poetic Justice, and of Poetry.

That's why.

К МУЗЕf

Я помню твой приход: растущий звон,
волнение, неведомое миру.
Луна сквозь ветки тронула балкон,
и пала тень, похожая на лиру.

Мне, юному, для неги плеч твоих
казался ямб одеждой слишком грубой.
Но был певуч неправильный мой стих
и улыбался рифмой красногубой.

Я счастлив был. Над гаснущим столом
огонь дрожал, вылущивал огарок;
и снилось мне: страница под стеклом
бессмертная, вся в молниях помарок.

Теперь не то. Для утренней звезды
не откажусь от утренней дремоты.
Мне не под силу многие труды,
особенно тщеславия заботы.

Я опытен, я скуп и нетерпим.
Натертый стих блистает чище меди.
Мы изредка с тобою говорим
через забор, как старые соседи.

Да, зрелость живописна, спору нет:
лист виноградный, груша, пол-арбуза
и - мастерства предел - прозрачный свет.
Мне холодно. Ведь это осень, муза.

1929
Берлин

Listen here.

From a news item from September 15:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to speak before the UN General Assembly next week, before it votes on recognition of a Palestinian state on September 23.
 

Lori Lowenthal Marcus of Z Street

NYTimes photo

A tip of the chapeau to Judy B.

The New York Times has an article in today's edition, “Jewish Votes in Play”   citing a recent Gallup poll about the alleged steadfast support of likely American Jewish voters for President Obama in the 2012 election:

. . . a new Gallup poll shows that Jews are no more disillusioned than other Americans are with Mr. Obama. According to the poll, his Jewish support has declined since the election in 2008 — but at a rate no different from that of Americans as a whole. Even with that drop-off, 54 percent of Jewish voters told Gallup in August and September that they approved of the job the president was doing (compared with 41 percent of American voters overall). In fact, Jews continue to be far more enthusiastic about Mr. Obama than other Americans — a 13-point difference that has remained sizable throughout the president’s term.

President Obama is playing the “Jupus” card in his 2012 re-election campaign trolling for Jewish votes and money.  Jupus is a neologism defining the persistent attachment of predominately liberal American Jewish voters to Democratic candidates in Presidential and Congressional elections.  This is best captured in the fabled comment about this political science phenomenon by the late essayist, Milton Himmelfarb: “Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans”.  

The creator of the term "Jupus," Dr. Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance  of Boston defines it thusly.

In Lupus, an auto-immune disease, the body’s cells that are normally used to fight off external infections, have their function somehow inverted, and they begin to attack the host body itself.

In Jupus, the special inborn Jewish intelligence, provided by the Lord to help Jews survive on a hostile planet, especially perhaps to ward off dangerous anti-Semitic assaults, reverses its function and attacks the host Jewish community. It appears that the more advanced the intellectual gifts, the more extreme the disease, as in the Chomskyite strain. In its more common form, it is associated with simple leftism – a Jewish adaptation to persistent assault involving an attempt to submerge the attacked Jewish identity by adopting a universalist posture. On the religious plane, this is plainly observable in the growing phalanx of those who seek to substitute leftist ideals for Torah Judaism, a “we’re here to help the world” dodge -- Tikkun Olam uber alles, as it were. These can be appropriately described as “Tikkunistas.”

Let see how Obama is using Jupus in his re-election effort.

Yesterday, I walked into my synagogue in Florida’s Panhandle and asked our secretary where our new rabbi was? The answer, he was on a conference call with hundreds of rabbis across the country with  President, Barack Obama. That spoke volumes about the desperation within the Obama campaign.  After the  'earthquake' of the NY9th Congressional District  special election GOP victory, the Obama re-election team was jolted and redoubled efforts to keep liberal Jews close by invoking Jupus. This was a desperate move to prevent losing several hundred thousand Jewish voters in key battleground states distressed over the Administration’s faux Israel policy, hence the Wednesday speech at the UN General Assembly and the meeting and joint statement with Netanyahu on the return to the fiction of bi-lateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Those disaffected Jewish voters  in the suburban Philadelphia  community of Bala Cynwd cited in a related  New York Times article, “Fear Gnaws at Liberalism”  included  Z Street co-founder, Lori Lowenthal Marcus.  According to Richard Baehr of The American Thinker  those disaffected American Jews are likely Romney voters in 2012.

The Palestinians basically think they have all the cards for a UN General Assembly vote, but have a US veto staring them in the face at the UN Security Council. They will follow the strategy capsuled in the alleged fabled Taliban comment: "you may have a watch, but we have all the time."  That is why PA President Mahmoud Abbas will stride confidently to the podium this morning and in the words of Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “plant a flag at the UN” with his unilateral declaration of an ‘imaginary’ Palestinian state.  Their strategy is aimed at exposing Obama as not being a fair mediator and selling out both them and the restive Arab Muslim ummah. Dumb move on Obama's part after pandering to all of the Palestinian demands and isolating Israel. That is the opinion of Emanuele Ottolenghi, Brussels-based senior fellow of the Foundations for the Defense of Democracies, who commented in an interview to be published in the October edition of the New English Review:

If the Obama Administration is forced to use its veto once again on this issue what it comes down to is that despite all of his efforts, President Obama will be presented and described in the Arab world as the President who twice in his tenure used a veto to defend Israel against what Arabs perceive to be their fundamental and undeniable rights.  It is a move designed I think, more than anything else, to embarrass the US Administration and to make the case that the Palestinians are trying to make that the US is no longer a reliable mediator.  The Palestinians’ bottom line is to undermine 40 years of international diplomacy in the Middle East which were based on UN Security Council Resolution 242.  A resolution which sets the parameters for peace making in the region, the principle of land for peace through negotiations.  By going to the UN and asking the UN to proclaim a Palestinian state under borders that a Security Council Resolution will define, the PA is trying to alleviate itself from the duty and the burden of negotiations.   It is basically trying to push aside America as the principal mediator in that process.   Whatever way you look at it beyond the procedural issues this is a clear and clever ploy to corner the US and put the current Administration in a bind.  If they stand by their commitment to veto a resolution by the Security Council to recognize Palestine as a state the US standing as a mediator will be further undermined in the public opinion and among the governments in the Arab world. Of course the entire peace process will collapse as a consequence of this.

Yesterday, we posted on the newly formed National Conference on Jewish Affairs that has organized activities and protests at the 66^th session of the UN General Assembly in Manhattan this week.  The co-founders of the NCJA include Dr. Herb London of the Hudson Institute, Lori Lowenthal Marcus of Z Street and Beth Gilinsky of the Liberty Alliance.  These American Jews are not afflicted with Jupus. They see clearly through the diaphanous veil of President Obama’s failed policies towards Israel, our only reliable ally in the Middle East of the tumultuous Arab Spring.  Dr. Charles Jacobs in a phone call this morning   talked about his attendance at yesterday’s Durban Watch counter conference in Manhattan that I watched via a PJTV webcast. Jacobs said that he was pleasantly surprised that  a number of NCJA chapters have sprouted up across the country. So, are a lot of us, me included.  If those are realized and are joined by dozens more  the co-founders of the NCJA can thank pioneers like Ha’Emet -The Truth in Orange County, California, the Jewish American Affairs Committee of Indiana, Boston’s Russian Jewish Community Foundation and the JCCWatch.org in Manhattan.

May a hundred chapters of the NCJA bloom. They are the antidote to Jupus. They are in the vanguard of concerned American Jews seeking to thwart an Obama re-election in 2012.

Talking of water babies, Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid has stirred herself. Wikileaker Julian Assange is unhappy that his autobiography has been published without his permission. The last time Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid moved so effectively was when Josef Fritzl complained that his prison cell was too small.

Perhaps Mrs B is saving her energies for Islam, from which the gentler Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby is conspicuously absent.

From AFP

Police have arrested an eighth suspect in Birmingham as part of a major pre-planned counter-terrorism operation targeting Islamic extremists. Detectives swooped overnight Sunday to arrest six men and a woman -- all British passport holders -- on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism. Police sources said the operation targeted Islamists.

I'm glad they described them as 'British passport holders' and not 'British'. It is also interesting that most of the headlines, other than this one, say "Seventh MAN" arrested - completely forgetting that a woman is in the plot. Eight Muslims so far, and counting.

The 20-year-old was arrested at around 6:00pm (1700 GMT) "on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism in the UK (contrary to the Terrorism Act 2000). He was arrested at a police station, which he had agreed to attend.

"The six men arrested earlier in the week continue to be questioned. Officers have until Sunday night to charge or release them, or apply for a warrant of further detention."