Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Democrat of Brooklyn, was pleased with the decision.

"I was gratified to have the opportunity in Albany to work on the Assembly side to organize people against the U.N.'s doing anything in New York," Mr. Hikind said. "I'm so delighted, on behalf of my community and New Yorkers, to tell the U.N. to go to hell, plain and simple. They want to expand? Forget it!" he added. "Let them move to Mozambique, or Paris, or God knows where."

State Senator Martin Golden of Brooklyn was quoted by the AP yesterday as saying that Americans "have been insulted by the U.N. repeatedly since September 11, 2001, as we have sought to defend ourselves from terrorism. This is hardly the time to assist the United Nations with expansion efforts on American soil."

And state Senator Serphin Maltese, a Republican from Queens, also weighed in on the embattled U.N.: "It has evolved into an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic group of petty, sniping bigots who are pursuing an anti-freedom, antidemocratic, anti-American agenda. To authorize an expansion of their headquarters would be a slap in the face of American citizens."
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To Mr. Hikind, however, the "U.N. is a cesspool." He declared, "It's the most corrupt organization if the history of the world. Why any of us in New York would want to support this organization's being here, on principle, is beyond me."

"The U.N. is evil, it is racist, it is anti-American," he added. "New York will do very, very well without them."

- posted by Jean @ 7:27 AM |

Several Muslims in the Netherlands are seeking a court injunction to prevent MP Ayaan Hirsi Ali making a sequel to the short film "Submission".

Lawyer Robert Moszkowicz said Tuesday that the group he represents also want Hirsi Ali banned from making hurtful remarks about Muslims and Islam.

Moszkowicz noted Hirsi Ali recently described Islam as "deadly dangerous" without making a distinction between fundamentalist Islam and Islam in general.

It is expected the case will be heard by a court in The Hague, but it is unclear when this will take place.

If I were to say the things that I say now in the Dutch Parliament in Somalia, I would be killed.

I wish I could go back, and I would love to go back, even if it's just to see my parents and brother.

But I can't go back, because the situation is that I have said things about the Islamic religion, I have said things about my past, I have said things about the Prophet Mohammed and his message about women.

By saying these things, I think I would be seeking danger if I went back to Somalia.

I'm not intimidated by the threats and the attempts to make me shut my mouth, because living in a rich western European country like this one, I have protection that I otherwise would not have in Somalia or in Africa or in any other Islamic country.

So I am going to make use of this huge opportunity - that I am protected and I can say what I want, that it gets published and spread, and that I am a voice in parliament for these women.

- posted by Jean @ 1:57 PM |

You cannot fight a war without many brave men taking risks with their lives in order to try to accomplish their mission. Yet can you name a single American hero in either of the two wars going on today in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Chances are you can't -- not if you rely on the mainstream media. You may be able to name someone from the little band of people involved in the prison scandal in Iraq or perhaps Jessica Lynch who was rescued, but not those who rescued her.

There are apparently no heroes among the more than 100,000 men and women fighting for us overseas -- only victims. At least, that is how the news gets filtered and spun in most of the media.

- posted by Jean @ 9:55 AM |

The first nationwide American Muslim TV network has begun operations: on Tuesday, Bridges TV began broadcasting on the GlobeCast World TV satellite system.
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Hassan [the founder] decided to present a more positive view of Islam: Bridges TV declares that its intention is to “fuse American culture with the values of Islam in a healthy, family-oriented way.”
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But what kind of voice? ... It’s impossible to tell so early in the network’s life, but in the meantime, the Bridges TV website asks inquirers to “check the legitimacy of Bridges TV” with, among others, Nihad Awad, Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR); Aleem Rahman, President & CEO of IslamiCity.com, which it identifies as “the largest Muslim Web site in North America”; and Alex Kronemer, who created and produced the PBS documentary Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet.
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Aleem Rahman’s IslamiCity.com, meanwhile, sells auto pioneer Henry Ford’s notorious hate screed The International Jew, which draws abundantly from other classics of hatred and incitement such as the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The edition IslamiCity.com carries contains the Protocols as well. Nor is this farrago of lies and forgery presented as a historical artifact; the IslamiCity ad copy asserts that “in the so called ‘democratic, pluralist’ America this book has been systematically suppressed. The International Jew is a magnifying glass applied to the hidden sources of immorality, vile degeneracy, and subversion. … By reopening this debate this book exposes the inherent danger of unchecked Zionism.”

- posted by Jean @ 9:29 AM |

When not in Iraq, Abdullah cuts meat for a living. He is a Syrian cook at the Kingdom of God restaurant in Damascus, in a bustling suburb dominated by Iraqi exiles.

For the past year Abdullah has also been on the payroll of Iraqi resistance forces fighting coalition troops. Like many Syrians he is convinced that his country will be invaded next and that it is only by keeping America bogged down in Iraq that Syria will be spared. "All we know is that Syria is the next station in the American plan. The Americans are all Jews and unbelievers,'" said Abdullah.

In April, the 23-year-old boarded a convoy of vehicles in Aleppo, northern Syria, with 10 other fighters from the area. He had been recruited at a mosque 30 miles south of Aleppo, built last year by a local sheik with business interests in Iraq and strong sympathies with the resistance. It is brazenly entitled the "Mujahedeen Mosque."

Abdullah, originally from the Aleppo area, and the other fighters, were provided with Iraqi passports and weapons. Abdullah was given a bazooka to carry.

They were told they would be relieving Syrian mujahedeen already in Iraq, part of a regular "troop" rotation, and would be expected to fight until they in turn were either killed or replaced.

In return Abdullah's family would be paid $3,000 a month by the mosque, more than most American soldiers in Iraq, and a fortune in Syria.
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"I don't feel scared, I feel satisfied," he said.

"We are Muslims, we should do jihad. We should go to Palestine but it is difficult to enter - but in Iraq it is easy to kill the Jews."
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Several prominent mosques in Damascus, including the large Bilal al-Hashemi mosque, have reputations as staging posts for Syrian fighters, suggesting a logistical and financial operation beyond the ability of any one tribal leader. The America military believes there may be as many as 2,000 foreign fighters in Iraq, mostly from Syria.

They do not operate in a vacuum. Iraqi exiles - those who fled the Saddam regime and more recent arrivals, supporters of the old regime - live in separate quarters of Damascus.

- posted by Jean @ 8:45 AM |

Currently, from immigration enforcement to intelligence gathering, government officials continue to compromise national security in order to avoid accusations of "racial profiling"—and in order to avoid publicly acknowledging what the 9/11 Commission finally said: that the "enemy is not just 'terrorism,' [but] Islamist terrorism." This blind anti-discrimination reflex is all the more worrying since radical Islam continues to seek adherents and plan attacks in the United States.

The anti-discrimination hammer has hit the airline industry most severely—and with gruesome inappropriateness, given the realities of 9/11 and the Islamists' enduring obsession with airplanes. Department of Transportation lawyers have extracted millions in settlements from four major carriers for alleged discrimination after 9/11, and they have undermined one of the most crucial elements of air safety: a pilot's responsibility for his flight. Because the charges against the airlines were specious but successful, every pilot must worry that his good-faith effort to protect his passengers will trigger federal retaliation.

The DoT action against American Airlines was typical. In the last four months of 2001, American carried 23 million passengers and asked ten of them (.00004 percent of the total) not to board because they raised security concerns that could not be resolved in time for departure. For those ten interventions (and an 11th in 2002), DoT declared American a civil rights pariah, whose discriminatory conduct would "result in irreparable harm to the public" if not stopped.
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American's defense pointed out the behavioral warning signs that had led to the 11 removals. But fighting the government civil rights complex is futile; in February 2004, the airline, while vehemently denying guilt, settled the action for $1.5 million, to be spent on yet more "sensitivity training" for its employees. American's pilots were outraged. "Pilots felt: 'How dare they second-guess our decision?' " says Denis Breslin, a pilots' union official. "We just shake our heads in shame: 'How could the government be so wrong?' "

Not satisfied with just one scalp, the Transportation Department lawyers brought identical suits against United, Delta, and Continental Airlines. While maintaining their innocence, those carriers also settled, pledging more millions for "sensitivity training"—money much better spent on security training than on indoctrinating pilots to distrust their own security judgments.
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In addition to individual discrimination suits, the government has continued to sic "disparate impact" analysis on anti-terror measures. One of the most destructive innovations of the rights lobby, such analysis—which assigns bigotry to neutral policies if they affect different demographic groups differently—is suicidal in a war-fighting situation. It rules out every security procedure that might actually be useful in combating Muslim terrorists, since a screening device for Muslim terrorists cannot by definition have the same effect on non-Muslims.
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The skittishness of an airline executive about the possibility of behavioral profiling at American airports should be a thing of the past. Edmond Soliday, former United Airlines Vice President of Safety, lauds Israel's intense scrutiny of passengers. Soliday says he was "profiled" in Israel. "I was a single man alone, with no checked baggage, in that airport for the first time, wandering aimlessly looking for a pay phone. Security hit me." He was intensively questioned, and not just with "seven canned questions preapproved by the Department of Justice, as here." That kind of intervention found two suicide bombers in the Tel Aviv airport, who were walking on the concourse with identical gym bags but pretending not to know each other. Security sweated them and found explosives in their bags. Why don't we do what the Israelis do? I asked Soliday. "I'd be in jail in a week," he replied.

- posted by Jean @ 7:57 AM |

Inspectors from the U.N. nuclear watchdog would like to visit a secret military site in Iran that an exile group said was a nuclear weapons site, but they lack the legal authority to go there, U.N. diplomats told Reuters.
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The New York Times reported Thursday that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) believes satellite photographs show that high explosives are being tested and that procurement records show equipment has been bought that can be used for making bomb-grade uranium, citing unnamed diplomats.
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But the military sites the inspectors would like to inspect -- the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran and Lavizan II in northeastern Tehran -- are legally off limits to the IAEA, which only has the right to monitor civilian nuclear programs.

"The IAEA simply has no authority to go to sites that are not declared nuclear sites," a diplomat close to the IAEA inspection process told Reuters. He said that the IAEA had not asked to inspect Lavizan II, although they would like to.
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"If a country has a strategy for hiding its nuclear program, then the Additional Protocol is of little use," a U.N. diplomat said, adding that the IAEA would not have been able to prove that Libya had an atomic arms program if Muammar Gaddafi had not confessed and handed over his atom bomb designs.

- posted by Jean @ 7:42 AM |