The abortionist and the soldier

Over the past week, two high-profile murders took place which would have otherwise been almost not worthy of national news. In one case, a guy in Wichita was gunned down in church. In the other, a guy was shot to death at a Little Rock strip mall.

But Dr. George Tiller in Wichita ran one of three remaining clinics in the US which still administered late-term abortions and was killed by an anti-abortion activist, and Pvt. William Long in Little Rock was a US Army soldier, murdered by a recent convert to Islam.

My views on abortion aren't shared by most self-described conservatives. I'm opposed to abortion as a method of birth control and I'm dead-set against late-term abortions, but I do think abortion is an option women need to have in the very early stages of pregnancy. While late-term abortion may still be legal, I consider the practice immoral and reprehensible, and I don't mourn Dr. Tiller's death. But the "service" he offered is still legal, and even if it wasn't, his murderer, Scott Roeder, is still a murderer...vigilante murder is still murder.

In the case of Pvt. William Long, his murder was also ideologically motivated, here by Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, an American convert to Islam who'd studied jihad in Yemen, and possibly Somalia. Mujahid, by the way, is the singular form of Mujahedeen...holy warrior.

And yet the pro-abortion crowd holds candlelight vigils for Tiller. They blame right-wing commentators for Tiller's death, yet ignore left-wing anti-military and pro-jihadi propaganda while they studiously ignore Pvt. Long's death.

'The normalization of evil'

Judea Pearl, father of the late Daniel Pearl who was murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002, takes a whole host of people to task in a Wall Street Journal column, including Barack Obama prototype Jimmy Carter.

...somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.

[ ... ]

This mentality of surrender then worked its way through politicians like the former mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. In July 2005 he told Sky News that suicide bombing is almost man's second nature. "In an unfair balance, that's what people use," explained Mr. Livingstone.

But the clearest endorsement of terror as a legitimate instrument of political bargaining came from former President Jimmy Carter. In his book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," Mr. Carter appeals to the sponsors of suicide bombing. "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Road-map for Peace are accepted by Israel." Acts of terror, according to Mr. Carter, are no longer taboo, but effective tools for terrorists to address perceived injustices.

[ ... ]

The media have played a major role in handing terrorism this victory of acceptability. Qatari-based Al Jazeera television, for example, is still providing Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi hours of free air time each week to spew his hateful interpretation of the Koran, authorize suicide bombing, and call for jihad against Jews and Americans.

[ ... ]

At my own university, UCLA, a symposium last week on human rights turned into a Hamas recruitment rally by a clever academic gimmick. The director of the Center for Near East Studies carefully selected only Israel bashers for the panel, each of whom concluded that the Jewish state is the greatest criminal in human history.

Read the whole thing.

'Many sons, and a lot of guns'

Via my brother Chuck.

Ever wonder how it is that every swingin' dick in Pakistan and Afghanistan is armed to the teeth? Well, wonder no more. In the Durra province of Pakistan's ungoverned (and apparently ungovernable) tribal areas, they're cranking out a thousand weapons a day. By hand.

Fascinating (and scary) stuff.

Obama's influence

My brother Mark sent me this pic from Jerusalem Post, which appears to be from some pro-Palestinian demonstration.

How about a response: "Jihad. Yes we JDAM!"

Jihadi invasion of Facebook repulsed

A Facebook group known as Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra has been shut down by the company after being tipped off to their presence by Fox News.

A quickly growing jihadist group that used Facebook to spread its radical message has been shut down by the popular Web networking site after FOXNews.com alerted the company to the group's activities.

Facebook blocked the group, Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra — Arabic for "Knights in Support of the Invasion" — Thursday evening after the group swelled to about 120 members in just over one week.

The group had been exhorting its members to wage "Jihad to aid the religion of Allah and his Prophet."

Too bad. I would like to have written something on their wall.

Dude looks like a lady

A little Aerosmith in honor of this guy:

Six women and 12 children left the building, but while soldiers were questioning the women they discovered one was actually a man dressed in a burqa, the traditional all-encompassing dress that most Afghan women wear. The man, later identified as the targeted commander Haji Yakub, tried to attack the soldiers and was killed, the military said.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Black Knight

*yawn* The al-Qaeda number 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri, released another tedious diatribe-on-tape proclaiming that a Muslim victory is near, American gains in Iraq are temporary, al-Qaeda caused the global financial meltdown, the West will accept Islam, and zzzzzz...oh, sorry...where was I?

Every time this goat-raping tool opens his mouth, I'm reminded of the Black Knight from Monty Python And The Holy Grail:




"It's just a flesh wound!"

Mumbai trutherism...already

The situation in Mumbai hasn't even finished playing out yet, and already there are people wondering if the attack might have been an American plot. The screen shot above is from my SiteMeter referral log where some douchebag in India googled the words "mumbai attack is an american conspiracy".

I wonder if these lunatic conspiracy theories will stop once Obama takes office. Eh, probably not even then.

Mumbai attack: New and improved terrorism

The situation in Mumbai hasn't yet wrapped up, with hostages being still held at the Oberoi Hotel. I've been watching streaming video from CNN/IBN, so hit the link if you want to track the situation.

It seems that several terrorist teams arrived on small Zodiac-type boats which may have been launched from a cargo ship anchored off Mumbai. All signs point to an operation by the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is responsible for a long string of terror attacks in India. The main axe they have to grind is India's sovereignty over parts of the disputed Kashmir region, yet the terrorists are reported to have specifically targeted American and British hotel guests for capture.

In any event, this style of terrorism truly represents a shift in tactics from the usual random bombing attacks and is unlike anything we've seen in recent years.

Update: Fixed the cargo ship link...it now links to a longer article, but the mention of Indian navy boarding a cargo ship is further into the article.

Escalation

I've been following off and on for the past year and a half or so the growing trend in acts of sea piracy off the coast of Somalia, but I had no idea it was this bad. The image above is a zoom of the Google map at the link. Each marker represents a hijacking or attempted hijacking this year.

Now these guys have captured a super tanker and will, in all likelihood, get the ransom they want. As I've said before, this huge increase in piracy got going in full swing after western governments started choking off funds to al Qaeda and their affiliates, and almost certainly represents a new way of putting money into their pipeline.

It's well past time to get serious about stopping this.

Funding the jihad

Let's say there was one street in your town which was well-known for its high rate of armed robbery and nearly complete lack of police presence. Let's also say that on occasion, you had no choice but to travel this street. You just couldn't avoid it. How would you do it? Well, you'd probably do it armed to the teeth (let's assume for the sake of discussion that the robbers on this street are, in general, armed with nothing more than a knife) and you probably wouldn't do it alone. You'd have every buddy of yours with you, and they'd be armed to the teeth, too.

One thing you know you wouldn't do is waltz down the street naked waving your wallet in one hand and your Rolex Submariner in the other, yet that's pretty much what international shipping companies do every day off the coast of Somalia. The most recent cases are described here.

It seems that in most cases I've read about over the past few years, the ship and crew are released unharmed after a ransom is paid by the shipping company or by the government of the shipping company. It seems that the risks and the ransom are viewed as simply a cost of doing business. But in shrugging off these hijackings, the shippers and their governments are aiding and abetting international terrorism. I mean, seriously...where do they think this money is going? Mansions and Ferraris for the hijackers? Please. This is fucking Somalia we're talking about. While I'm sure some ringleaders are being handsomely paid off, it's a sure bet that the lion's share of the ransom money is going into the international Jihadi treasury.

Think about it for a minute. How many of these hijacks-for-ransom did you hear about six, seven, eight years ago? Not a whole lot. But since western nations started getting sophisticated about shutting off the sources of financing for al Qaeda and their ilk, these hijackings have become a nearly daily occurrence.

While the US and other NATO countries have dispatched ships to the waters off Somalia to counter the hijackings, it's time to get tough. Not just with the hijackers, but with the shipping companies. Put them on notice that if a ship is hijacked, we won't permit a ransom to be paid. An effort will be made to rescue the ship and crew but failing that, the ship - along with its crew and the hijackers - will be sunk.

This may sound harsh, and it is. But since it's more likely that these ransoms are paid through murky international funds transfers than by suitcases full of cash, this will have to do until international banking laws catch up with the times and can stop the new flow of money to the jihad.

Update: It seems the pirates are making themselves rich from the ransom money. But I think it's still safe to say that the bulk of the money is going to international terrorism.

Bali bombers executed - Indonesian Islamists freak

Three co-conspirators in the October, 2002 Bali bombing which killed over 200 people were executed by firing squad. Predictably, their co-religionists are freaking out.

Wild scenes erupted and cries of 'death to infidels' – Westerners – rang out in a village today as the bodies of two of the executed Bali bombers returned home for burial.

'Smiling Assassin' Amrozi and his brother Mukhlas, shot by a firing squad, were carried by helicopter to their village of Tenggulun in central Java – and it was there that a 500-strong crowd unleashed their fury over the executions.

They cried for a holy war and threatened to avenge the deaths of 'our brothers'.