A U.S. Marine who served in Iraq is suing the federal government for distributing billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to the Shariah-supporting American International Group.

The lawsuit, Murray v. Geithner et al., was brought against the Fed and the Treasury by the Thomas More Law Center on behalf of Kevin Murray, a former Marine who served honorably in Iraq to defend the United States from Islamic terrorists.

Murray argues that he is being forced as a taxpayer to contribute to the propagation of Islamic beliefs and practices predicated upon Shariah law, which he says is hostile to his Christian religion.

He is represented by Thomas More attorney Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi, an associated attorney who is an expert in Shariah law and Shariah-compliant financing, as well as general counsel to the Center for Security Policy. They filed the initial complaint in December 2008.

On June 7, Murray's attorneys filed a motion for summary judgment asking federal District Court Judge Lawrence Zatkoff to rule against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and the Federal Reserve Board.

The Thomas More Law Center explained the motion for summary judgment is based on depositions of Treasury officials, court-sealed affidavits of AIG officials and sworn declarations of two notable experts on Islamic law and terrorism: Stephen C. Coughlin and Robert Spencer.

Coughlin, a lawyer and decorated Army Reserve officer, is a leading Pentagon expert on the link between Islamic law and jihad. He explained that by engaging in Shariah-compliant financing, AIG and the federal government - which owns 79.9 percent of AIG - are engaging in the religious practice of Islam.

Islam teaches hostility and discrimination against Jews, Christians and anyone who doesn't accept the Quran as the "word of Allah," he said, explaining that the indoctrination stems from the same law that motivated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.

As WND reported, Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, has studied Islamic theology and history for 30 years. He is author of "Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs,""The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam and the Crusades" and eight other books dealing with Islam. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the U.S. Central Command, the U.S. Command and General Staff College, the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the U.S. intelligence community.

Spencer explained that by offering Shariah-compliant financing, AIG is promoting religious behavior that teaches hatred and discrimination against Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims....

Indeed I did. Read it all.

The common political agendas of the legal left and their terrorist clients, along with their hypocrisy in opposing the Patriot Act are exemplified by Lynne Stewart, the attorney for the “blind sheik” who masterminded the first World Trade Center attack. Since her indictment by the Ashcroft Justice Department, Stewart has become their martyr and icon.

Lynne Stewart is a protégé of William Kuntsler and Ramsey Clark who was the person who originally suggested that Stewart sign on as attorney for the blind sheik. Following her indictment for providing material support for sheik’s terrorist activities, Stewart — like Sami al-Arian before her — received full support from her political comrades. Her decision to aid and abet her terrorist client was defended as a civil liberties matter by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Bar Association, the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights. She was invited by radical law professors to speak at law schools across the country including Stanford, Seattle and William Mitchell, where she addressed a “Social Justice Dinner,” sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild. These accolades encouraged leftist law students at the City University of New York to attempt to present her with the school’s Public Interest Lawyer of the Year Award at graduation ceremonies in 2003. A petition including 73 names—more than half the graduating class— was sent to administrators. But after the award was leaked to the press, CUNY law school dean Kristin Booth Glen informed students via e-mail that Stewart would not be honored. The reason given was not that she had betrayed her country or broken the law, but that the award “could lead to consequences that could be damaging.”

Stewart was a speaker at the Socialist Scholars Conference, an annual gathering of the intellectual left, where she shared a panel with Columbia professor Todd Gitlin and others. She was a featured speaker at the anti-war demonstration sponsored by United for Peace and Justice on February 15, 2003. The sentiments she expressed on these occasions were the banal and vulgar clichés of the anti-American and Communist left. As the final keynote speaker at the National Lawyers Guild National Convention in 2003, Stewart described the enemy – corporate capitalism — as “a consummate evil that unleashes its dogs of war on the helpless; an enemy motivated only by insatiable greed…In this enemy there is no love of the land or the creatures that live there, no compassion for the people. This enemy will destroy the air we breathe and the water we drink as long as the dollars keep filling up their money boxes….” The enemy was the Great Satan, the same enemy that motivated Stewart’s client to plot the destruction of the World Trade Center and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.

Lynne Stewart’s rant reflects not only the shared anti-American agendas of Islamic jihadists and the radical left, but also the hypocrisy it displays in its complaint against the Patriot Act — that it violates First Amendment rights. In her Monthly Review interview, Stewart was asked to imagine that she was part of a revolutionary government that had “liberated” its people from the horrors of capitalism. If Stewart herself were to become part of such a government, the interviewer wanted to know, was there a point at which she would think that monitoring and controlling the counter-revolutionary adversaries of that government was acceptable? Her answer: “I don’t have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people’s revolution.” 340 In other words, totalitarian repression – complete with firing squads and gulags — is fine for Communist states, but criminalizing acts that aid and abet terror in a democracy is not.

– Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left

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In any future agreement with the Palestinians, Israel has a critical need for defensible borders. Watch this new video, produced by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, that outlines the threats to Israel from terrorist rockets, ballistic missiles, and conventional ground and air threats from the east:

On 9/11 radical Muslims murdered almost 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam. Now, Islam is going to be allowed to profit from those attacks? Manhattan liberals say “yes,”

A New York community board has resoundingly backed a controversial plan for an Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero.

The non-binding vote by the Manhattan community board late Monday passed 29:1 with 10 abstentions in a strong endorsement of the planned project.

The equivalent of this would be building a “tribute to Japanese military history” at Pearl Harbor.

Read the Rest at Right Wing News.

Rauf says ”United States policies were an accessory” to 9/11, and “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.” Now he wants to build a massive Islamic Center near Ground Zero.

To read the complete Feisal Abdul Rauf profile, click here.

Community Board 1 will meet Tuesday to vote on the Cordoba House - a planned 13-story Islamic community center and prayer space near Ground Zero.

While approval from the 50-member board is not needed to build the center, the vote may indicate how residents of lower Manhattan feel about the idea....

The board's 12-member Financial District committee unanimously voted in favor of the project earlier this month. "From my perspective, there's not a lot to dislike about the project," said Ro Scheffe, 59, a member of the committee who runs a communications firm and lives three blocks from Wall St. Foes - including some members of the board - argue an Islamic community center so close to Ground Zero is insensitive to the families of people who died on 9/11.

Two board members who asked not to be identified told the Daily News that they're against the project, but won't come out against it publicly. Instead, they want to table the vote indefinitely.

"It's not right to build it so close to Ground Zero, and it's not right for this board to vote on a religious center," one member said.

Now that it has been revealed that not one, but two mosques are planned for the area around Ground Zero, the supremacist and triumphalist character of this effort is clearer than ever. Is the Muslim population of lower Manhattan so huge that one projected mosque--even one so large as to be housed within a 15 story Islamic Center--would immediately be bursting at the seams, and thus yet another is required even before the first is built?

Of course not. Muslims are already praying at the projected site of the massive Islamic Center, an old Burlington Coat Factory outlet that was damaged by a piece of one of the hijacked airplanes fell through the roof on 9/11. (A Muslim real estate company paid $4.85 million in cash for the building. Where that cash came from has not been explained).

That building doesn't appear to be overflowing, although Muslims are reportedly holding prayers on the sidewalk outside another lower Manhattan mosque, apparently in order to give the impression that they're in dire need of more space. This is, however, more for show than for necessity.

The placement of mosques throughout Islamic history has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in order to proclaim Islam's superiority to Judaism. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was built over the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque, to express the superiority of Islam over Christianity. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason.

But the Ground Zero mosque, or mosques, won't be another example of that Islamic supremacism, will they? After all, the mosque initiative's organizer, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, has said that the building of the mosque by the World Trade Center site was intended to make "the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11."

The group behind the 15 story Islamic Center sent a statement to Mike Huckabee's show on Fox News (declining an opportunity to meet my colleague, Pamela Geller, to discuss the mosque issue), claiming that the planned mosque was "a project to honor those who were harmed on September 11. It is a project to proclaim our patriotism to this country and to stand side-by-side all men and women of peace."

And Ground Zero is not a holy site, so the symbolism of Islam conquering and replacing other religions isn't there--or is it?...

Read it all.

On May 7, 2010, UCLA’s Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies co-sponsored the lecture, “Rethinking Arab Women as ‘Subjects.’” The talk was delivered by Suad Joseph, a Lebanese-born professor of anthropology and women’s studies at UC Davis, and president-elect of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the principal professional organization for scholars of the region. Joseph, who has co-edited a book with CNES director Susan Slyomovics, is considered a pioneer in the field of Middle East women’s studies, accolades which—as is, sadly, often the case—translates into apologetics for the oppression of Middle Eastern women.

Joseph announced she was perturbed about the title of her lecture; she couldn’t decide whether “Arab” was an appropriate term to use for identification purposes. Yet, she contradicted herself (and followed the Arabist practice of her discipline) by referring to the Middle East exclusively as the “Arab world” and by questioning the identities of Jews, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and other distinctive, regional minorities. She wondered why these groups perceive themselves as separate from Arabs when the answer is readily apparent both in the distinctive histories of theses peoples and in their persecution at the hands of Arab Muslim majorities. The very term “Arab”—often used arbitrarily to describe anything Middle Eastern—is loaded with a perilous and extreme nationalism that has made ethnic minorities such as Mizrahi Jews and Assyrians victims of the majority.

Joseph questioned, and at times denounced, studies examining the status quo of women in the Middle East. She argued that the representation of Arab women as subjects is a “problematic category and necessary one,” and that there is serious fault with characterizations—particularly in Western research and media—of Arab women as the victims of patriarchy, culture, politics, and religion. Instead, Joseph contended, notions of self are changing and malleable.

Predictably for contemporary Middle East studies, Joseph paid tribute to Edward Said’s deeply flawed book Orientalism, which helps explain her rejection of any implied Western superiority regarding women’s rights. In asserting that Westerners shouldn’t assume women in the Middle East wish to imitate secular, Westernized women, she encapsulated the ideology widespread on college campuses: multiculturalism, a form of cultural relativism that denies the ability to judge non-Western cultures on their merits, and which, in practice, judges all non-Western cultures as superior. She made no reference to universal human rights or to the possible reasons for rising Arab immigration to secular European nations and to North America.

Joseph asserted that Arab women are the “most relationship-driven” of any with which she has worked. She described Americans, in contrast, as less “relationship-driven” and American women as having fewer expectations than their Arab counterparts. Joseph offered no factual evidence for either of these preposterous claims. Given the grave circumstances under which many Arab women live, one would think it is they who are forced to have fewer expectations and not, as Joseph contended, Western women.

Incredibly, Joseph theorized that Arab women want to be claimed by men, and therefore have no objection to being subjects of a patriarchal and theocratic society in which their individual rights are abridged. The audience, which appeared to consist mostly of Center for Near Eastern Studies and Women’s Studies faculty, nodded their heads in agreement with this troubling statement. In fact, those gathered reacted favorably to the lecture overall and asked no challenging questions of the speaker. Overwhelming (if understated) evidence of the systematic and institutionalized abuse of Middle Eastern women didn’t seem to factor into the equation.

In many regions of the Middle East, the basic standing of women and the attitude of men towards them are pre-modern. Were this not so, there would be no honor killings, female genital mutilation, child marriage, or legitimized wife-beating. Moreover, the West should consider the disturbing social implications for its societies as these barbaric customs are imported through Muslim immigration.

If I may end on a personal note: As a woman of Middle Eastern origin, the situation of women in the Middle East has always fascinated and troubled me. Although I come from a very traditional Middle Eastern family—albeit Jewish—the women in my family have always been empowered and independent. Therefore, I find it extremely difficult to come to terms with the theory that Middle Eastern women are a different breed who welcome abuse for some twisted concept of maintaining a “relationship-driven” society.

If one believes, as I do, in fundamental human rights, there are moral principles that define our basic freedoms. Middle Eastern women’s rights activists such as Shirin Ebadi and Ayaan Hirsi Ali do not excuse the misogynistic and theocratic elements in their native countries. Instead, they demand freedom, even in the face of their abusers and of Western apologists.

Unfortunately, Joseph’s lecture belongs in the latter category, demonstrating yet again that Middle Eastern women who seek intellectual and moral support from Western professors of Middle East studies will come away disappointed.

Reut Cohen is a journalist, researcher, and the publisher of ReutRCohen.com. She wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.

Lowlife

That's the quote of the night, and maybe of the year: "I'm shocked and stunned but I'm not surprised because he was such a low-life."

Anyway, perhaps Ouazzani was too busy with his auto parts dealership to figure out how to understand the Religion of Peace™ correctly. "Mo. auto dealer pleads guilty to aiding al-Qaida," by Bill Draper for Associated Press, May 19 (thanks to Davida):

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A Kansas City auto parts dealer who had sworn allegiance to al-Qaida pleaded guilty Wednesday to taking part in a conspiracy to provide financial support to the terrorist group.

Khalid Ouazzani, 32, a Moroccan native who became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2006, admitted that he sent $23,500 to al-Qaida between August 2007 and mid-2008.

Although Ouazzani talked with others about ways to support al-Qaida, including plans for them to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia, U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips said he did not pose a threat to the Kansas City area, where he briefly operated a business that sold auto parts and used vehicles.

"At no point prior to his arrest was he any threat to cause imminent harm or danger to the citizens of our community," Phillips said at a news conference.

Of course not! I've seen so many of these stories come down the pike over the years, and these guys never posed any danger to the community. Ever! The day I see a story about a jihadist getting arrested that has the U.S. Attorney saying, "This guy could have killed thousands," I will faint dead away.

Ouazzani was arrested in February on 33 counts contained in a sealed grand jury indictment charging him with bank fraud, money laundering, interstate fraud and making false statements to the government. There was no mention of any terrorism charges in the initial indictment.

He pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and one count of bank fraud and to an additional count of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization.

Prosecutors said Ouazzani, who became a permanent U.S. resident in July 2004 and became a citizen about two years later, provided false information to obtain a $175,000 line of credit commercial loan in April 2007 to run his business, Truman Used Auto Parts.

In May 2007, he wired $112,830 of the loan to a bank account in the United Arab Emirates, where it was used to purchase an apartment. In June or July 2008, he sold the apartment for a $17,000 profit, which was sent by a co-conspirator to al-Qaida, court records say.

He also agreed in August 2007 to send al-Qaida an additional $6,500 through a co-conspirator, who paid the money on his behalf, and in November 2007, Ouazzani repaid the co-conspirator through a wire transfer to a bank account in the United Arab Emirates, court records show.

Phillips said the $6,500 came from the sale of his business. She declined to comment on the co-conspirator or say how long Ouazzani had been in Kansas City prior to his arrest....

At least this is refreshing: the usual "neighbor said he was a quiet, friendly guy" stories get a twist in this one:

Dennis Hogan, who rented a salvage yard building to Ouazzani for his auto parts business, said Ouazzani owes him about $17,000 in back rent.

"I'm shocked and stunned but I'm not surprised because he was such a low-life," Hogan told The Associated Press. "Once he got in, he stopped paying his bills almost immediately."

Hogan said it was always a hassle to deal with Ouazzani and that other creditors in the Kansas City area were looking for him.

Hogan said that when he first met Ouazzani, he asked him if he was a terrorist, then immediately regretted the question.

"He looked at me and seemed real taken aback, and he said, 'Are you?'" Hogan said.

Mustafa Hussein, director of the Islamic Society of Greater Kansas City, said Ouazzani's wife came to the center after her husband was arrested in February and asked if the center could help him. Hussein told her that if the charges were politically motivated, there are organizations that could help, but "if he's guilty, there's nothing we can do."

"She was crying, very upset," Hussein said. "She did not come back to talk about it."

Hussein, who acknowledged that he knew Ouazzani only through brief encounters at the center or mosque, said Ouazzani seemed like a normal family man and didn't show any signs of extremism....

Of course! No one ever does!

New York (CNN) -- The man accused of attempting to set off a car bomb in Times Square considered other targets in and around New York before the failed attack, an investigator said.

Faisal Shahzad, 30, pondered attacks on Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal, the World Financial Center and Connecticut helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky, going so far as to case some of the targets, a senior counterterrorism official with oversight of the investigation said Tuesday.

Dressed in a gray sweatsuit, free of handcuffs, Shahzad appeared before a federal magistrate on Tuesday afternoon to hear the charges against him. As he walked into courtroom, Shahzad gave a slight smile to his public defender, Julia Gatto. At the end of the hearing, Gatto requested that Shahzad be served halal food -- prepared according to Islamic dietary laws -- while jailed.

That is: "Please go to extra trouble on the taxpayer dime to respectfully accommodate the belief system under whose orders (cf. Qur'an 9:5, for starters) my client tried to commit mass murder."

Of course, the politically correct dogma currently in force prevents most in the justice system from acknowledging that Islam has anything to do with jihadist terrorism. But, if for no other reason than fiscal responsibility: How about some Tofurky?

A massive fifteen-story mosque and Islamic Center going up in what was once the shadow of the World Trade Center claims to offer "the opposite statement to what happened on 9/11." The Center organizers, the America Society for Muslim Advancement (ASMA), have worked hard in the media to portray themselves as Islamic moderates working for peace on the exact spot where their belligerent coreligionists perpetrated murder and mayhem in the name of their religion. But the words and deeds of the leader of the effort, the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, suggests a more ominous reality: Abdul Rauf is a master of deceptive, Orwellian use of language, manifesting a deep contempt for non-Muslims and full accord with the supremacist goals of the 9/11 hijackers.

So anxious were they to secure the location at Ground Zero that a Muslim real estate company paid $4.85 million in cash for the building, with part coming from Abdul Rauf's other Islamic group, the Cordoba Initiative. It is unnerving - the deliberate speed and anxiousness that the leader of the American Society for Muslim Advancement has demonstrated in working to open a mosque at the gaping wound of Ground Zero. He claims that it will heal that wound. But how will it do that? How will a mosque, the place where jihadis go for spiritual sustenance, at Ground Zero help stop jihad terrorism? Even the name of the initiative - Cordoba - speaks volumes. While Islamic Spain is held up today as a proto-multiculturalist paradise, in reality non-Muslims there suffered under the discrimination prescribed in Islamic law for dhimmis, non-believers who were subjugated as inferiors and denied equality of rights.

Read it all.

JERUSALEM 11.5.10: With two months until the end of the school year, several students at the religious AMIT high school of Sderot found themselves fulfilling a lifelong dream.  Rotem Timsit and nine other Sderot girls, high school-aged actresses, who are part of Sderot Media Center’s Community Treatment Theater, got to perform in the Knesset this past Tuesday.

In front of a full house which included Knesset speaker and MK Reuven Rivlin, former Defense Minister Amir Peretz and other MKs, as well as students from Boyar High School of Jerusalem, the girls performed Children of Qassam Avenue. A theatrical production that tells the story of teenage girls growing under rocket fire, the play is based on the true life experiences of the Sderot girls, who spent a year undergoing drama therapy to overcome PTSD symptoms resulting from rocket terror. “This is more than just a play,” said Noam Bedein, director of Sderot Media Center. “The idea of this production is to inspire a change in perception of the Sderot-Gaza conflict. The past decade of rocket attacks, and the tremendous psychological damage done to a population of young children and teenagers, is often completely ignored or overlooked by mainstream media both in Israel and internationally.”

“The first place to begin this change of perception is in the Knesset,” said Bedein.  “We hope that our political leaders recognize the powerful advocacy tool we have established in this community theater concept. This is the only platform out there presenting Israel’s side of the Sderot-Gaza conflict through the voices of Israeli youth who have suffered from Gaza rocket attacks. ”

Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin who invited the Sderot girls to perform in the Knesset stated that he personally appreciated the girls coming to share their painful reality through the art of theater.

“This production is something that was able to draw us all into a reality that is foreign to most of us. The war that took place in Sderot and the western Negev felt like a war taking place in another country,” Rivlin stated. “The girls showed great talent in their performance but even more importantly they demonstrated to us what these Qassam rockets can do, that they are lethal and terrifying.”

Former Defense Minister Amir Peretz, himself a resident of Sderot, noted that the rocket terror could have impacted the girls in two different ways: ”the situation could have led them to a complete breakdown or generated resilience and strength as demonstrated here today.”

“This message of resilience is for the entire state of Israel–we must remember that Sderot, a city of working class citizens, was able to withstand a terrible test while demonstrating unique courage in the face of continued rocket attacks,” said Peretz.

Students of Boyar High School of Jerusalem who come from all over Israel, sat quietly during the entire performance, as many for the first time witnessed what life was like for fellow Israeli teenagers growing up in the rocket zone of Sderot and the western Negev. During the question-and-answer discussion after the performance, a Boyar student asked if any of the girls would remain in Sderot to raise their families and children. Sixteen-year old tenth grader, Rotem Timsit answered, “we still love our city and will continue to live in Sderot, and yes I can see myself raising my kids there.”

For Rotem, the performance in the Knesset was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, which she hopes will continue. “We came to share our story and show the rest of Israel and especially our political leaders how a decade of rocket terror, condensed in this one-hour show, will not drive us out of Sderot.”

Special thanks goes to Janet Lehr of New York for providing the funds for the Sderot Community Treatment Theater program. Sderot Media Center is currently looking for sponsors to continue the financial operation of the theater program.

Photo Credit: Jacob Shrybman, Sderot Media Center

The Community Board for New York City's financial district last week unanimously approved the construction of a 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center right across from Ground Zero.

One might think that the Muslim community might be capable of some sensitivity, considering what a sensitive bunch they are about everything. Every time there is a jihad attack (which is happening with increasing frequency), they start wailing about Muslim sensitivities, and lecturing us about imaginary affronts and insults.

What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack?

Worse still, the design for the Ground Zero Mosque is a mockery of the World Trade Center building design. Islamic jihadists took down those buildings when they attacked and murdered 3,000 people in an act of conquest and Islamic supremacism. What better way to mark your territory than to plant a giant mosque on the still-barren land of the World Trade Center?

Any decent American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in eye of America.

Joan Brown Campbell, director of the Department of Religion at the Chautauqua
Institution in upstate New York and former general secretary of the National Council of Churches, admitted that a mosque at Ground Zero could anger infidels. But it was worth it, she said: "Building so close is owning the tragedy."

This best demonstrates the territorial nature of Islam. The very idea of building a mosque at Ground Zero is a manifestation of Islamic domination and expansionism....

Read it all.

NEW YORK, May 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The human rights group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) is hosting a rally at Ground Zero to protest the construction of a mosque at the site of the Islamic terror attack that brought down the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. SIOA is one of America's foremost organizations defending human rights, religious liberty, and the freedom of speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation and attempts to bring elements of Sharia to the United States.

Join SIOA's Facebook page here.

Victims of 9/11 - those who lost family or friends, or who were injured on that day - are especially invited to attend the rally.

The SIOA No 9/11 Mosque Rally will be at Ground Zero on June 6 at 12 noon. Supporting groups (partial list): ACT for America (ACT Manhattan chapter); Z Street; Freedom Defense Initiative; No Mosque at Ground Zero; Faith Freedom International; Stuart Kaufman; American Bulldogs; VAST; and the Center for Security Policy.

SIOA executive director Pamela Geller commented: "What could be more insulting and humiliating than a monster mosque in the shadow of the World Trade Center buildings that were brought down by an Islamic jihad attack? Any decent, American, Muslim or otherwise, wouldn't dream of such an insult. It's a stab in eye of America."

"We chose June 6 as the rally date," Geller explained, "because it's D-Day. In 1944, Americans acted against the evil of Nazism. Now it is time for Americans to stand up against the evil of Islamic jihad terrorism and Islamic supremacism."

Said Geller: "The only Muslim center that should be built in the shadow of the World Trade Center is one that is devoted to expunging the Koran and all Islamic teachings of the violent jihad that they prescribe, as well as all hateful texts and incitement to violence."

Speakers at the No 9/11 Mosque will include Nonie Darwish, ex-Muslim and author of Now They Call Me Infidel; Simon Deng, the Sudanese ex-slave and campaigner for human rights for Sudanese Christians; James Lafferty of the Virginia Anti-Shariah Task Force; and Anders Gravers of Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE). Hosting the event are Geller, the popular blogger and columnist who publishes the acclaimed AtlasShrugs.com blog, and SIOA associate director Robert Spencer, the bestselling author and director of JihadWatch.org. Geller is the author (with Spencer) of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America (Foreword by Ambassador John Bolton), coming July 27 from Simon & Schuster.

As a manifestation of Islamic domination and expansionism, mosques have frequently been placed on the sites of the holy places of other religions. The Al-Aqsa Mosque, built on top of the Temple of the Jewish people, which is located in Jerusalem, is the most famous example. Many famous churches have been turned into mosques, including the Aya Sofya Mosque in Istanbul, which until the Islamic conquest of Constantinople of 1453 was the grandest church in Christendom. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was, before the Islamic conquest, the Church of St. John the Baptist. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over two thousand mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples.

Rally speakers and participants will stand with those who lost loved ones on 9/11, and call for an end to plans for this mosque that insults the memory of those who died on that day.

Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has blamed the West, rather than Islamic jihadists, for terrorism on several occasions. He has said, according to Australia's Sun-Herald, that "the U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end." On another occasion he said that "Western active involvement in shaping the internal affairs of Islamic societies have contributed to the creation of terrorism done in the name of Islam."

Abdul Rauf has also called Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' endorsement of the implementation of Sharia courts in Britain "forward thinking" - despite Sharia's denial of basic freedoms including the freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights of all people before the law.

For more information, contact Pamela Geller at writeatlas@aol.com.

But there are two problems here: 1. Islamic jihad was the motivation behind those attacks, and 2. it is Islam that has a problem with tolerance, as is made clear by its own texts and teachings (one may start with Qur'an 9:29, 98:6), and the abundance of Islamic nations cited as "Countries of Particular Concern" in the annual report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom.

Lastly, the fact that this project is called the "Cordoba House" adds a certain level of insult to injury. In that vein, someone might ask Imam Rauf about the Hagia Sophia sometime.

"New Yorkers Wary Of Future Ground Zero Mosque," from CBS, May 6:

NEW YORK (CBS) ― In a building damaged by debris from the Sept. 11 airliners that brought down the World Trade Center and soon to become a 13-story mosque, some see the bridging of a cultural divide and an opportunity to serve a burgeoning, peaceful religious population. Others see a painful reminder of the religious extremism that killed their loved ones.

Anything having to do with that day, that place, carries enormous meaning. Now two Islamic organizations have partnered to build something that they say will bring some good from something very bad.

Organizers say the project will create a venue for mainstream Islam and a counterbalance to radicalism. It earned a key endorsement this week from influential community leaders.

"This is a community center, a community and cultural center, which would include certainly prayer space for Muslims and we hope for non-Muslims as well, to bring about a new discourse in the relationship between the United States, New York City, and the Muslim world," said Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf of the Cordoba Initiative.

He's hoping the 13-story, $100 million Islamic center will join the other buildings; the banks, offices, and apartments, going up at ground zero. It will serve a growing Muslim population in lower Manhattan.

The closest mosque to this area is a dozen blocks away and very over-crowded, but this site was also chosen for exactly what happened here on 9/11, and what America stands for, Rauf told CBS station WCBS-TV in New York City.

"Definitely, this is a victory of American tolerance over hatred," Rauf said.

But some 9/11 victims' families say the issue isn't tolerance.

It's sensitivity.

"I don't like it," said Evelyn Pettigano, who lost a sister in the attacks, during a phone interview on Thursday. "I'm not prejudiced. ... It's too close to the area where our family members were murdered."

"I lost my brother, Sean. He was a fireman," Rosaleen Tallon said.

"As an American I am so proud of our freedom of religion, but I also think we have to be historically sensitive to what happened in that area," Tallon said.

Tallon wants to teach her son, Paddy, to be tolerant of other religions. But she wonders if other religions, like Islam, are teaching their children to be tolerant of hers. There are other places in the city, she said, for another mosque.

"I don't think that they would build a German cultural center right near Auschwitz. Just because you're looking at what happened to the people that died there. That's all that should be focused on," Tallon said.

The organizations publicly unveiled the preliminary plan for the project, known as the Cordoba House, on Wednesday at a meeting of the finance committee of the local community board, which is composed of influential stakeholders in lower Manhattan. While the agency has no authority over what can be developed at the site, their support is viewed as key to gaining acceptance from residents....

Wednesday marked a day that legends are made of in the annals of American Law Enforcement.  President Obama gave a speech at the Oakley Lindsay Civic Center in Quincy, Illinois.  World Net Daily’s Chelsea Schilling reports that a group of about 200 Tea Party protesters, many of them grandmotherly types, gathered outside the auditorium.  They were carrying signs that had slogans like “Give Us Liberty, Not Debt” written on them.  They wore red, white and blue shirts.  I know, I know- it is very shocking for you to learn that American grandmas would behave in this fashion.

Not about to allow this kind of dangerous and disruptive behavior with the President, Himself, in town, the Secret Service ordered these radical grandmothers to go across the street.  So, across the street they went – and began to sing songs - like “God Bless America” and “The Star Spangled Banner.”  I hope your children are not looking over your shoulder as you read all this horror.

Well, that just did it.  The Quincy Deputy Chief of Police, Ron Dreyer, ordered a fully armed, helmeted, baton-wielding SWAT Team to march in close order drill formation and place themselves between the Tea Party Grandmas and the auditorium wherein The President was situated.  Thank goodness.

Schilling’s report, along with embedded video of the valiant SWAT Operation is here:

“When hundreds of tea-party protesters – including many elderly women – gathered outside a civic center where President Obama was giving a public speech Wednesday, they were surprised to be greeted by police dispatched in full riot gear…

… About 200 protesters peacefully rallied outside the civic center, carrying signs that read “Give Us Liberty Not Debt” and yellow “Don’t Tread On Me” flags, the Quincy Herald-Whig reported. Protesters waved U.S. flags and shouted “Remember in November” and “You work for us.”…

… After Obama’s motorcade arrived, a Secret Service agent instructed protesters to move across the street. The crowd began singing “God Bless, America” and the National Anthem. Quincy Deputy Police Chief Ron Dreyer ordered police in full riot gear to march up the street and stand between the tea partiers and the civic center.

Snipers were also spotted on the rooftop of the building….”

Watching that SWAT Team video comforts me, seeing what a great nation can accomplish under a Dear Leader like President Obama, assisted by police who are fearless in the face of overwhelming odds and the imminent threats to our national security posed by groups such as The Singing Tea Party Grandmas.

Ah, me.  We can all sleep well tonight.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - Thousands of Muslim extremists attacked a Christian educational center in Bogor regency, West Java province, Indonesia. The toll from yesterday's attack is three destroyed cars and several buildings damaged or burnt. The wrath of fundamentalists was unleashed, and encouraged by the local Council of Ulema (MUI), by unsubstantiated rumours that the Christian community BKP Penabur were planning "to build a place of worship" within the complex.

Targeted attacks against the Christian community continue in the regency of Bogor, coupled with the impotence of the Indonesian authorities unable to stop the violence with a religious background. Yesterday morning, thousands of Islamic extremists attacked and set fire to the center of the Foundation Penabur BPK, despite the garrison erected earlier by hundreds of police.

The fundamentalists destroyed and burned three cars a part of the 10 buildings that make up the whole Christian complex. The Muslims anger was spurred on by rumours that the leaders of the foundation wanted to construct a chapel. The rumours were groundless, but were enough to ignite minds and incite the crowd. Local sources, on condition of anonymity, tell AsiaNews that the attackers were "people from the neighbouring sub-districts Cisaura and Ciawi. One detail that, in reality, shows the attacks were well orchestrated....

President Obama feasts on all kinds of cooked frogs.

David Brooks’ recent New York Times article (“The Government War”, April 22, 2010) illustrates the muddled brain by which many so-called centrists, independents, and other “middle-of-the-roaders” seem to operate. In Brooks’ case, he refers to himself as a self-styled “Progressive Conservative” (“. . . I try to give voice to a philosophy you might call progressive conservatism.”), and represents his latest political transmogrification which he rather cavalierly acknowledges as “silly”:

This general philosophy puts me to the left of where the Republican Party is now, and to the right of the Democratic Party. It puts me in that silly spot on the political map, the center, or a step to the right of it.

If his “silly spot” proceeds from his palpitating “philosophy”, then is it any wonder why his brain produces a new oxymoronic sunburst that he speaks of as “progressive conservatism”?

Lest anyone misunderstand Brooks’ true political posture underlying his alleged “new” conservatism, he goes on to say

The center has been losing political power pretty much my entire career. But I must confess that about 16 months ago I had some hope of revival . . . . The country had just elected a man who vowed to move past the old polarities, who valued discussion and who clearly had some sympathy with both the Burkean and Hamiltonian impulses. He staffed his administration with brilliant pragmatists whose views overlapped with mine, who differed only in that they have more faith in technocratic planning.

Ahem. Let’s see. As a proponent of “progressive conservatism” Brooks means that he is a right leaning centrist who placed “hope” in a Leftist (i.e., Progressive, i.e., Liberal Democrat) with a political track record, albeit short and unimpressive, laden with radical left or polemical political positions, not to mention the radical Leftists with whom he has ensconced his administration. These latter types are sometimes referred to as “advisors” or “czars”. (N.B. See for instance, the departed, self-admitted Communist, Van Jones). Perhaps Brooks’ “silly spot” has obscured his physical or intellectual vision, and it alone caused these whimsical ramblings. No matter. They are only a prelude.

Thereafter, Brooks carps through a number of disjointed, elementary musings which are summarized by him saying “. . . when the country is wrapped up in a theological debate about the size of government, people like me are stuck crossways, trying to make distinctions no one heeds.” Oh my, he is offended because his vapid centrist “silly spot” goes unnoticed. Apparently, he has never considered that this supposed middle-of-the-road posturing is not addressed because it is not vested in anything coherent, and simply relates mostly to the rambling visceral “knee-jerk liberalism” espoused for decades. Because the “centrism” of his politics has neither a reasoned foundation nor a reasonable arrangement of political principles, a new attempt is made to cloak “silliness” in a phony oxymoronic stoop he calls “progressive conservatism”. To me, it appears as another fantasy version of Lewis Carroll’s White Queen who could sometimes believe “. . . as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Brooks’ political posturing reminded me of an email conversation I had some months ago, and I include a piece of it in order to illustrate what strikes me as the intellectual insobriety of many centrists, middle-of-the- roaders, and independents, to wit:

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ME: “What continues to boggle my mind is how or why “older” people (exactly what age differentiates “older” from “younger” people in this regard is another subject matter altogether) never seem to be able to figure it out. They have spent probably decades watching and hearing these Leftist progressives practicing the same old “shop worn” deceptions, and never seem to “get it.” Maybe it’s a measure of some form of mental illness, personality disorder, or character flaw.”

REPLY: “A frog in a cooking pot”?

ME: “If only that were true!

It might mean that slowly cooked frogs would learn, jump out of the pot, and thereafter stay out of the pot.

However, my experience suggests that these frogs are fashioned after one-celled amoebas that will, after having been jarringly jolted on their South Poles by an electric cattle prod, reflexively lurch in the opposite direction only to return to the tepid pot for the next slow cooking.

I suspect that this is especially true of old frogs that have been cooked multiple times, so much so that they actually seem to enjoy the sport of willingly jumping into the pot because, maybe this time, the pot might chill and not turn hot.

Now, if that be true, then would it be a manifestation of amphibian mental illness, personality disorder, or character flaw? Or, perhaps _________?

Or, put another way: How many times must a cooked frog be cooked before a cooked frog knows it’s being cooked?”

_________________________________________

It may be that the “Or Perhaps?” query is not difficult to answer in Brooks’ case. He might be a columnist for whom serious politics has become a game, and he plays it as a sport. As such, his livelihood primarily depends on simply playing the sport, independent of the outcome, and he is never required to be “on his game” let alone to have a fully vested real game. If so, and unfortunately for him, under the press of deadline or simply because he may be politically scatterbrained, his misperception of a president who leads from the Left now propels Brooks from moronic to oxymoronic ideas. If this be true, then his published notions would seem to represent nothing more than a muddled puddle of “silly” journalistic pap.

On the other hand, it is likely that Brooks is more akin to the countless number of people referred to in the email above who “. . . have spent probably decades watching and hearing these Leftist progressives practicing the same old ‘shop worn’ deceptions, and never seem to ‘get it.’” I am reminded of a personal experience some time back occurring in the locker room of a fitness center I frequent regularly. An elderly fellow (mid70s) mentioned to another old trooper that “A lot of senior citizens I know regret voting for Obama.” Being somewhat long of tooth myself and always available for political comment, I looked at him and volunteered that “I hope you kicked them in the a*s and told them to ‘pay attention’ next time.” My guess is that most of them will return to the pot to be “cooked” again.

Whatever be true, someone close to David Brooks should . . . well, as Paul Harvey used to say, “. . . you know the rest of the story.” Every “cooked frog” occasionally requires a well placed jolt. Now, that might bring “Change We Can Believe In.”