Srinagar, June 5: The alleged blasphemous images of a mosque on undergarments sparked protests in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir on Saturday with the protestors clashing with police and paramilitary soldiers, who fired tear smoke shells and resorted to cane charge.

And it turns out it wasn't even a mosque:

Police said after verification it was found that the image does not resemble to any Muslim religious place or building.

The protests started in Nowhatta area of Srinagar after some people spotted brown colored sketch of a building with a huge dome fitted with a cross mast and a transept imprinted on an undergarment. Some people termed it as blasphemous depiction of holy Al-Aqsa Mosque. The residents in Nowhatta and the adjoining localities of the old city started gathering and started protesting against the incident.

Terming it the blasphemous depiction of holy Al-Aqsa Mosque, the residents of the area and adjoining localities took out a protest march and staged demonstrations. Chanting pro-Islamic, anti-Israel and anti-India slogans, the agitating people alleged that conspiracies against Muslims are being hatched across the globe.

Just to reiterate: It's a pair of underwear.

"The images of sacred places on the undergarments have hurt our sentiments. It is a conspiracy of America, Israel and other Western countries to hurt Muslim sentiments," said a protestor Javed Ahmad.

He said Muslims cannot tolerate such indecent acts.

As the protestors amidst chanting of anti-India and anti-Israeli slogans tried to march towards city centre, police and paramilitary soldiers swung into action. They fired tear smoke shells and resorted to heavy baton charge to disperse the agitating people.

The clashes also broke out between the cops and protestors at Nowpora, Khayam, Rainawari, Maisuma, Koker Bazar and other other places in Indian Kashmir. At least a dozen persons including some protestors were injured in the clashes that continued for quite some time.

The shopkeepers in old city and some other parts of Indian Kashmir closed shutters of their business establishments as a mark of protest against the alleged blasphemous images.

However, police spokesman said the undergarment did not bear imprints of any Islamic workshop place.

"The underwear garment in question was produced and examined and it was found that it carries the imprints and sketches of various buildings on it which resemble places like Big Ben in London, St. Paul's Cathedral of London and other places. No sketch has any likeness to any Muslim religious place or building. The attempt to create tension in the society is a deliberate move to disturb the situation by indulging in blasphemous rumors.

St. Paul's Cathedral? When was the Christian riot? Oh, wait...

The general public is advised to remain calm and caution against such elements," he said.

Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh), June 01:In an alleged attempted "honour killing", a man poured acid on his daughter and threw her into a canal for planning to marry a man from another religion Tuesday, police said. The girl is in critical condition in hospital.

Gulistan, 18, daughter of Asghar Ali of Charaura village in Bulandshahr district, 350 km from Lucknow, fell in love with Ravinder, 20, who ran a medical store in the village and often came to their house to deliver medicines.

The couple eloped 10 days back but were traced to Delhi and Gulistan was taken back to the village. Her parents then pretended that they had agreed to let her marry Ravinder and asked her to come with them to Delhi to buy clothes for the marriage.

War Is Deceit, after all. And make no mistake: as far as this family is concerned, this is war.

The girl left with her father and brother. When they reached near the upper Ganges canal on Grand Trunk Road, they stopped and dragged her out. First they poured acid on her face, strangulated her and then threw her in the canal. Assuming that she had died, they left the place.

However, Gulistan revived in the water and shouted for help. Some local boys of nearby villages, playing there, rescued her and informed police, who admitted her to hospital.

Asghar has been arrested and a search is on for his son, Superintendent of Police (City) J.K. Sahi said.

"On the spot from where the girl was rescued, she said her father was annoyed over her love affair with the local Hindu boy but when her statement was recorded before the magistrate in the hospital, she shifted from her original statement made before the police and said after getting angry at her father's objection, she poured the acid on herself," Sahi said.

It seemed she was trying to mislead police with her declaration, he added....

No kidding, really? And why might she be interested in doing that?

The entire piece describes how Pakistan and Pakistanis, over many decades the recipients of tens of billions of dollars in economic and military aid from the United States, are consumed with conspiracy theories. These theories squarely place the blame for all of the country's woes, real and imagined, on others - on India, the ancient enemy (but India does not make war on Pakistan; it is, rather, Pakistan that makes unceasing war, through terrorist groups and propaganda among Muslims in India, on India), and tiny distant Israel or, rather, those all-powerful "Zionist groups" (not all-powerful enough, apparently, to control any votes at the U.N., though that is said to be just one of the places those "Zionists" control), and, more and more, the most hated and feared of all, pari passu with the aid it gives, the United States.

And the United States is a country that since 2001 has plowed tens of billions of dollars in economic and military aid (much of it hidden in the larger Pentagon budget) into Pakistan. The United States has done this despite the decades of Pakistani treachery, in flouting all the rules that as an aid recipient it had solemnly agreed to observe and then constantly ignored, a situation that finally led to the Pressler Amendment in the Senate.

That Amendment was designed to force the Executive branch of the American government to stop ignoring Pakistani actions and breaching of agreements. The Pressler Amendment, however, did little to keep successive American Presidents from indulging Pakistan, little to keep American generals from trusting those pukka-sahib Pakistani generals. It did nothing whatever to prevent the use of American aid to finance Pakistan's entire nuclear bomb project, from the first thefts of nuclear secrets from Western labs by A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist, to the production of bombs - the "Islamic Bomb" is what the Pakistanis proudly called it - and then the attempt to sell nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and perhaps others.

Yes, the Great Satan for Sunni-dominated Pakistan, as for Shi'a Iran, is the United States. Yet that country has also permitted hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis of no proven economic or other value to settle, and even now has, for nearly a decade, plowed more money into Pakistan. It has done so even as that country behaves with a meretriciousness that even the most trusting and foolish American policy-makers now understand, amd not only in its mere pretense of dealing adequately with the Taliban. Pakistan is finally taking a harder stance only because now the Pakistani Taliban has shown itself, in Swat, to threaten the interests of rich Pakistani landowners, and hence of Pakistan's ruling class.

Notice how the Americans have become the arch-villains, though other villains - India and Israel - sometimes replace America as moving members of the Infidel Conspiracy. It does not matter that Israel is halfway around the world, and has its hands full merely trying to stay alive. It is an enemy of Islam because the Arabs say it is, and they say it is because it exists on land once possessed by Muslims. Thus, on the To-Do List of the world's Muslims, it is territory that ideally should be recovered before going on to conquer the rest of the world, that is, the lands where heretofore Islam never held sway.

India is next door, but India has never made war on Pakistan, except when goaded beyond endurance. It is Pakistan that defines itself entirely as a state based on religion. India does not. It is Pakistan where non-Muslims have seen their percentage of the population go down to one-tenth what it was at the time of the Partition, while in India the percentage of Muslims has gone up since Partition. It is Pakistan that wages war, sometimes through proxies, in Kashmir and in India extra-Kashmir, and Pakistan that is consumed with the idea of "recovering" first Kashmir and then, after that, the territories that once were ruled by Muslim Mughals - that is, most of India.

But right now it is the Americans who conspire and conspire, even as they keep shoveling money into the Pakistani maw.

And who in America is doing the conspiring against Pakistan? Who was it who actually was the master puppeteer who manipulated Faisal Shahzad, the son of a high Pakistani military man? Shahzad was allowed to settle in the United States, allowed even to acquire American citizenship. The same Faisal Shahzad, disappointed in his lack of success in America, ruminated and brooded, brooded and ruminated, and returned with fresh fanaticism to that old-time religion, which in his case meant Islam. And in that case it meant, as a Simple Solution to the Universe, that he simply had to kill some Infidels to justify his existence in the pitiful failure and mental disarray of his sublunary existence among infidels.

So who was behind Faisal Shahzad? Certainly not any of the many Pakistani terror groups that have said they wish to kill Americans. That would be too obvious. That would be to take those millions upon millions of Pakistanis seriously, to think that Lashker-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad and Sipah-e-Sahaba and the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistani succursale of Al Qaeda, and a dozen other groups that neither you nor I can keep straight, actually meant what they said. (And why should we have to keep them straight, after all, since they all desire, less and mostly more, the same thing?) The Pakistani generals who wrote about Jihad meant what they said. What has been said and written and done in Pakistan to Christians and Hindus inside the country, and what Pakistanis abroad have said about the Infidel nation-states within which they have been allowed to settle, actually mattered.

Some -- even many -- Muslims in Pakistan know perfectly well that all this is merely the acting out of what Islam inculcates. Not everyone in Pakistan chooses to act on the teachings of Islam. Some prefer to consider first their own self-interest. If you are in the West, and thriving, you may be less likely to wish to endanger your own little position, even if it means that, for now, you will not engage in the kind of acts that, as a good Muslim, you will at other times realize it is your duty to engage in. Or you may think that you can better further the goals of Jihad not by participating directly in violent Jihad, that is, acts of terrorism, but by supporting financially, and through moral support ("moral" support!), those who do so participate. Or you may wish to engage in other forms of Jihad that you deem more effective in the long run, and that includes all the smiles and wiles and distractions and confusions with which you hope to permanently confuse and thus to paralyze the Infidels.

Yes, as Sabrina Tavernise reports, in Pakistan today it is all the rage to lay the blame for Fahsal Shahzad not on what he learned in madrasa and mosque -- no one wishes to discuss that for, really, how can they do so truthfully? -- but rather on those shadowy American Think Tanks. Never mind that Brookings and Heritage and a dozen others exist precisely in order to publicize, and hence be conduits for the eager grasping grant-getting members of those Think Tanks, who are always trying to be quoted by the media because this is a way to demonstrate their influence, their supposed importance, their value for money, and thus to keep those all-important grants, and that easygoing well-paid existence, continuing without interruption. Far from being shadowy, American Think Tanks live in the light, and keep seeking, though not in the Goethean deathbed sense, more and more of that light or rather spotlight.

Here is how Tavernise reports it:

Americans may think that the failed Times Square bomb was planted by a man named Faisal Shahzad. But the view in the Supreme Court Bar Association here in Pakistan's capital is that the culprit was an American "think tank."

No one seems to know its name, but everyone has an opinion about it. It is powerful and shadowy, and seems to control just about everything in the American government, including President Obama.

"They have planted this character Faisal Shahzad to implement their script," said Hashmat Ali Habib, a lawyer and a member of the bar association.

Who are they?

"You must know, you are from America," he said smiling. "My advice for the American nation is, get free of these think tanks."

Yes, we must "free ourselves of those think tanks" that "planted this character Faisal Shahzad." Who is saying this? Not some illiterate, but a leading lawyer, one Hashmat Ali Habib, a smooth anglophone who is perfectly capable of reading the American press, watching American television.

And yet this is what he, and tens of millions of others in Pakistan, so devoutly believe.

Tavernise explains:

Conspiracy theory is a national sport in Pakistan, where the main players -- the United States, India and Israel -- change positions depending on the ebb and flow of history. Since 2001, the United States has taken center stage, looming so large in Pakistan's collective imagination that it sometimes seems to be responsible for everything that goes wrong here. "When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America," said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore.

The problem is more than a peculiar domestic phenomenon for Pakistan. It has grown into a narrative of national victimhood that is a nearly impenetrable barrier to any candid discussion of the problems here. In turn, it is one of the principal obstacles for the United States in its effort to build a stronger alliance with a country to which it gives more than a billion dollars a year in aid.

Tavernise notes that there are a very few who recognize, imperfectly, even dimly, that the constant blaming of others has become an epidemic, and that it prevents any clear-minded analysis of what is wrong with Pakistan:

Lawyers in Pakistan have a strong streak of political Islam. Mr. Habib, who has had militants as clients, argues that Al Qaeda is an American invention. Their pronouncements are infused with anti-Semitism, standard for Islamic groups in the region.

"The lobbies are the Jews, maybe some Indians, working in the inner core of the American administration," said Muhammad Ikram Chaudhry, vice president of the bar association.

And along with the examples Tavernise offers of anglophone lawyers, that is, she offers more from those at the top of the social and political heap -- along with the zamindars and generals -- who are fomenters and encouragers of this nonsense and these lies, but also leading figures in the Pakistani media.

There is, for example, Zaid Hamid, a major figure in the Pakistani media who only now has had his wings clipped by the real rulers -- the generals and zamindars -- whose own wealth and power they now see as being threatened by the Taliban, as lately in the temporary takeover in Swat. Here is Hamid:

One of those pundits is Zaid Hamid, a fast-talking, right-wing television personality who rose to fame on one of Pakistan's 90 new private television channels. He uses Google searches to support his theory that India, Israel and the United States -- through their intelligence agencies and the company formerly known as Blackwater -- are conspiring to destroy Pakistan.

For Mr. Hamid, the case of Mr. Shahzad is one piece of a larger puzzle being assembled to pressure Pakistan. Why, otherwise, the strange inconsistencies, like the bomb's not exploding? "If you connect the dots, you have a pretty exciting story," he said.

And what do the Pakistani "liberals," the ones who deplore these conspiracy theories, have to say?

One unnamed but high-ranking Pakistani diplomat "who asked not to be named because of the delicate nature of the topic" admits that "people want simple explanations, like evil America, Zionist-Hindu alliance....It's gone really deep into the national psyche now."
And other "liberals on Pakistan's beleaguered left see the xenophobic patriotism and conspiracy theories as a defense mechanism that deflects all responsibility for society's problems and protects against a reality that is too painful to face."

"It's deny, deny, deny," said Nadeem F. Paracha, a columnist for Dawn, an English-language daily. "It's become second nature, like an instinct."

Mr. Paracha argues that the denial is dangerous because it hobbles any form of public conversation -- for example, about Mr. Shahzad's upper-class background -- leaving society unequipped to find remedies for its problems. "We've started to believe our own lies," he said.

And then there is Pervez Hoodbhoy, a physicist who deplores the collapse of whatever once existed in Pakistan of what was inherited from the period of British rule, that is, some semblance of sane intellectual life, of the possibility of a least a few (such as Pervez Hoodbhoy himself, who is now a very lonely man) ignoring the madness of conspiracy theories, and not only conspiracy theories, in Pakistan's public life.

But notice what is not said by that "unnamed Pakistani diplomat" nor by Nadeem Paracha, nor by Pervez Hoodbhoy.

Not one of them dares to connect this crazed conspiracy-theorizing with Islam itself. But it is Islam itself that explains, in large or perhaps complete part, such conspiracy theories. For Muslims cannot allow themselves to see that a society, a state, a civilization, that is suffused with Islam and only Islam, that attacks and keeps out, or offers only hysterical opposition to, anything that smacks of or comes from or can be claimed to come from the world of non-Islam, that is, of Infidels, is a society that is smothering in its own ways, and cannot intellectually breathe.

And when the ideology of Islam, that is not merely a faith, a "religion" as we in the West interpret or understand that word, but rather a Total Belief-System, that is, something that provides a Complete Regulation of Life down to the tiniest detail of What Is Commanded and What Is Prohibited, and at the same time (at no extra charge) provides a Complete Explanation of the Universe, and furthermore requires of Believers that they acquire and maintain the habit of mental submission so that they never ever allow themselves to question any of the Received and Immutable Truths of Islam, as set out in Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and become used to such a mental attitude, one of total and unquestioning respect for whatever Islam is said to dictate even if those dictates make little or no moral or other kinds of sense, then naturally you will raise up people who are ripe for Conspiracy Theories.

Muslims in Pakistan have a mental grid prepared, or perhaps more accurately a prism, through which they view the universe, and apprehend it in ways that ensure that no matter what happens, the Infidel will be there to be blamed. That Infidel may variously be called America, or Israel, or India, or any number of other names. It doesn't matter as long as it is, indeed, an Infidel or Infidels who are to be blamed.

And even those -- Paracha and Hoodbhoy and that diplomat -- who see the problem do not dare to admit to themselves that the real problem is Islam. For Islam's canonical texts are immutable, and the Gates of Ijtihad slammed shut more than a thousand years ago. There is nothing they can do about it, and they must, some of them, obscurely realize that the mental formation that Muslims naturally acquire makes them incapable of recognizing that there is something terribly wrong with Islam itself. So they must blame the Infidels.

Sabrina Tavernise is a mere reporter, not an analyst. But even as a mere reporter she has a duty to attempt to make sense of what she reports, and she did not ask anyone outside of Pakistan as to the reasons why these conspiracy theories are so rampant. Nor did she go into another matter, which is why one observes such conspiracy theories among other Muslim peoples, and especially among the Arabs who are, with the Pakistanis, those Muslims who take Islam most to heart, with no other softening or nuancing that comes from local history or custom. Many of those who identify themselves as ethnic Arabs, as possessors of 'Uruba or Arabness, naturally support or promote Islam even when they are not Muslims. Even many Christian Arabs (not the Copts or the Maronites, who know that though they use Arabic they, as peoples, pre-date the arrival of both Islam and the Arabs, in their lands) may so identify with Islam as to become what I have termed "islamochristians."

And the Pakistanis identify themselves as Muslims living in a country set up for one purpose only: to keep those who are Muslims, the "Pure" in the "Land of the Pure," safe from Hindi and other non-Muslim influence, power, and presumed aggression. Pakistan has no reason for being other than Islam.

The Arab countries are riven with conspiracy theories too. Remember when, during the Six-Day War, Nasser could not face the fact of his defeat, and so he, and the Syrians and Jordanians too, concocted tales of British and American pilots, flying their own planes, who had supposedly attacked the Egyptian Air Force? It would not have been possible to admit to the humiliation of a defeat so total at the hands of the despised Jews; nor would it do to accept the fact that the Egyptians had been defeated fair and square. There had to be a conspiracy. In Iraq today, despite the two trillion dollars spent by the Americans to rescue Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and to try -- vainly -- to ignore or overlook Islam and to create something much better -- any failures in Iraq are blamed now, ultimately, and quite naturally, on "the Americans. " The Sunni Arabs blame the Americans for not supporting Allawi. The Shi'a Arabs blame the Americans for not allowing the majority Shi'a, who outnumber the Sunni Arabs 3 to 1, to retain power through some kind of alliance between Maliki and other Shi'a. The Arabs blame the Americans for giving the Kurds ideas about autonomy, or even independence. No matter what happens, America will be blamed.

Nor is it only the Muslim Arabs and Muslim Pakistanis who engage in these conspiracy theories. In Afghanistan, whenever he feels threatened Karzai rants against the Americans, though it is he and his family who are sickeningly corrupt, and he who is incompetent, he who is most responsible for the utter mess in Afghanistan. Yet he can invoke American perfidy because he knows such charges will immediately find a response, as do all the conspiracy theories all over the Muslim world, when Infidels are blamed for every conceivable ill. For decades, in Iran, the left did not merely attack the Shah, but attacked the Shah as a puppet of perfidious Albion. No one could think straight because even the most secular of the Shah's opponents kept insisting that all the country's ills stemmed from the Anglo-Ameican coup against weepy Mossadegh in 1953. A quarter-century after Mossadegh's departure, they were still harping on that event, blaming the Infidels (though they did not use that particular lexicon -- underneath the veneer provided by socialism or Marxism, one could find the imagery, the concepts, of Islam).

Islam discourages, and even punishes, free and skeptical inquiry because, in the first place, such free and skeptical inquiry is a threat to the mental stranglehold of Islam on the minds of its keenest followers, those keen enough to begin to question the Received Version of Islam. In the mental and physical freedom, and freedom from fear, in the West, the most outstanding and brilliant and morally advanced of those who were born into and raised within Islam naturally have chosen to jettison Islam. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Magdi Allam, Nonie Darwish -- these are some of their names, but there are others, many others. The very best people born into Islam, when they have the possibility of jettisoning Islam, may do so. But these are, as I have said, the very best people, and these are necessarily few.

But their numbers are less likely to increase, and the understanding by Infidels of the otherwise strange conspiracy theories and mental constructs of those Muslims who, outwardly, may smile and be plausible, and seem to inhabit the same mental and moral planet with us, the Infidels, but in truth do not, is not made more possible or even easier, when journalists such as Sabrina Tavernise offer a phenomenon that they can no longer ignore, but merely report on, and offer no plausible explanations for.

But it's okay, I suppose. This isn't the first time I've done Sabrina Tavernise's work for her, fulfilled the task that she left undone.

And I doubt if it will be the last.

The National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the Barack Obama administration on May 27 is not so much a look forward as a look back. It is an attempt to return to the optimistic days following the end of the Cold War when it seemed a peaceful new world order was possible. In 1999, President Bill Clinton claimed “perhaps for the first time in history, the world’s leading nations are not engaged in a struggle with each other for security or territory. The world clearly is coming together.” President Obama says essentially the same thing in the opening paragraph of his cover letter to the NSS when he notes that “globalization”—the buzz word of the post-Cold War era — has “made peace possible among the major powers.” The dangers that remain are of a different sort, “from international terrorism and the spread of deadly technologies, to economic upheaval and a changing climate.”

That the world looked like the classical liberal model expounded by Clinton in 1999 was doubtful even then. A decade later, the cracks are even larger. Five months before the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, a Chinese fighter rammed a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea, an area Beijing has been trying to claim as sovereign territory. The rise of China and the emergence of other ambitious powers herald not a new world but a new cycle in the old world of international rivalry. The NSS explicitly rejects the “world as it is” in its attempt to fashion “the world we seek.” But the NSS does not lay out a path between worlds; it simply assumes the new world already exists.

There are still a few odds and ends to be cleaned up from the Bush administration, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The NSS pledges “a focus on defeating al-Qa’ida and its affiliates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and around the globe” but sees no real dangers after that which would require a military effort. Though the NSS identifies the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear and biological) as problems, the two most menacing rogue states, North Korea and Iran, are to be dealt with through diplomacy. As the NSS states on page 23, “If North Korea eliminates its nuclear weapons program, and Iran meets its international obligations on its nuclear program, they will be able to proceed on a path to greater political and economic integration with the international community. If they ignore their international obligations, we will pursue multiple means to increase their isolation and bring them into compliance with international nonproliferation norms.” This is at best a containment policy.

But how can Pyongyang or Tehran be contained, let alone “isolated” when they have friends among the other major powers? The NSS depends on there being a consensus among the powers on issues like non-proliferation within a general spirit of cooperation. That is not how world politics is evolving.

According to the NSS, “The European Union has deepened its integration. Russia has reemerged in the international arena as a strong voice. China and India—the world’s two most populous nations—are becoming more engaged globally. From Latin America to Africa to the Pacific, new and emerging powers hold out opportunities for partnership, even as a handful of states endanger regional and global security by flouting international norms.” Under the Obama policy, “We are working to build deeper and more effective partnerships with other key centers of influence—including China, India, and Russia, as well as increasingly influential nations such as Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia—so that we can cooperate on issues of bilateral and global concern, with the recognition that power, in an interconnected world, is no longer a zero sum game.”

The integration of the EU is being called into question by the sovereign debt crisis that has ripped through Greece and has threatened to spread to Spain, Portugal, and Ireland. The single euro currency, once thought to be an alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, is in free fall. Euro skeptics in England, France, Holland and Germany are balking at “saving” the Mediterranean and Eastern members of the bloc.

The NSS singles out Brazil for special praise saying, “We welcome Brazil’s leadership and seek to move beyond dated North-South divisions to pursue progress on bilateral, hemispheric, and global issues.” Yet, Brazil just brokered a deal with Iran over its nuclear enrichment program meant to shield it from a new round of UN sanctions being pushed by the U.S. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had told President Obama personally at the Nuclear Security Summit that he would not back additional sanctions on Iran, and repeated this stance when meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Brasilia immediately after the two leaders left Washington. The Hu-Lula meeting took place within the larger context of a BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) summit where the emerging powers coordinate policies formulated primarily against the positions of the United States and EU.

South Africa joins the mix in BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India, China), a coalition at the UN that opposes the American and European demand for mandated limits on green house gas emissions to fight alleged global warming. Supported by Russia and the group of 77 developing nations, BASIC represents the world’s rejection of President Obama’s obsession about climate change that appears repeatedly in the NSS as a priority global threat.

The core value of BASIC and its allies is unrestricted economic growth, which means intensified competition in domestic and world markets. For some time, American officials have made it clear that unless China, India and Brazil provide substantial market access to U.S. exports commensurate with their high economic growth rates, there can be no conclusion to the Doha Round of trade talks. These negotiations have been stalled virtually from their inception in 2001 due to a fundamental clash of national interests.

The Obama administration has hailed China and Russia for supporting a draft sanctions proposal against Iran at the UN. Yet, Beijing and Moscow watered down the resolution to prevent it from crippling the Tehran regime. Most importantly, Russia and China will be allowed to continue investing in Iran’s energy sector, which will boost the country’s revenues which the mullah’s use to finance their aggressive foreign policy as well as nuclear development. To improve relations, the Obama administration dropped sanctions against Moscow’s state arms export agency and three Russian entities previously found to have transferred technology or weapons to Iran. The UN sanctions proposal would also allow the Russians to sell S-300 air defense missiles (which have an anti-missile capability) to Tehran. So even if the UN Security Council adopts the resolution, it will not “isolate” Iran from its main international backers.

Nor is international rivalry confined to economics and rogue states. China’s massive military modernization program, led by new weapon systems designed to attack U.S. and allied forces across Asia, is not mentioned in the NSS. To do so would have undermined the fanciful vision of a peaceful, cooperative world. It would also have called into question why the Obama Pentagon is cutting back on the high-end conventional forces, from armored units and air superiority fighters to missile defense and naval shipbuilding, that would be needed to not only counter rising “peer” competitors like China but to defeat major regional powers like North Korea and Iran.

The NSS attempts to conjure up a world in which an NSS is not needed, but the Obama administration does not have the power to change the true, dangerous nature of global politics. What the NSS reveals is the unwillingness of President Obama to deal with the world as it is. Thus, America will remain vulnerable, as its leaders are continually blindsided by the strategies of adversaries they cannot bring themselves to think about.

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.

You might think that being a Supreme Court justice would be the top of the line job for someone in the legal profession. But, many Supreme Court decisions suggest that too many justices are not satisfied with their role, and seek more sweeping powers as supreme policy-makers, grand second-guessers or philosopher-kings.

The latest example of this is the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Graham versus Florida. The issue was whether the Constitution permitted a state to impose a sentence of life without the possibility of parole when the criminal was a youthful offender. The Supreme Court voted 6 to 3 that this was a violation of the Constitution.

If your copy of the Constitution doesn’t say anything about youthful offenders, do not worry that you have a defective copy. There is no such statement in the Constitution. What the justices cited as the alleged basis for their decision was the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments.”

Since 37 out of the 50 states permit sentences of life without the possibility of parole, such a sentence is not unusual. How about cruel? If it is cruel, then why is it OK to impose that sentence on people who are not youthful?

The case of Graham versus Florida involved a 16-year-old repeat offender, who was convicted of a home invasion robbery while on probation from a previous felony. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The Supreme Court then over-ruled that decision.

The role of an appellate court is not to simply second-guess the decision of the trial judge and jury, much less usurp the responsibility of legislatures to make social policy. But the pretense of applying the Constitution gives appellate judges the power to do both.

The bolder justices go further, citing practices in other countries as supporting their decisions that are supposedly based on the Constitution of the United States. If justices can pick and choose which legal principles and practices they will follow, from the many widely varying principles and practices in countries around the world, then they can find a basis for doing just about anything they feel like doing.

This too goes counter to the very basis of American government, as a system in which “We the people” ultimately govern ourselves through representatives of our own choosing and the officials appointed by them.

Once appellate judges are free to base their rulings on what people do in India, Egypt or Germany, Americans are no longer a self-governing people.

As if to add a touch of farce to lighten the tragedy of the dismantling of the Constitution, Supreme Court justices on opposing sides of the case of Graham versus Florida cited statistics seeking to show that there was national consensus for or against life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Appellate courts, including the Supreme Court, are not institutions equipped to make policy judgments like that. Legislatures exist to make policy judgments— and to be voted out of office if these policy judgments turn out to produce results that the electorate do not want. But there are no such corrective mechanisms in place if Supreme Court justices misjudge.

Finally, there is the old, moth-eaten argument cited by Justice John Paul Stevens, that the society is evolving and therefore the interpretation of the Constitution must evolve with it.

Nobody— from the moment that the Constitution was adopted in the 18th century to the present— has ever denied that societies evolve, and that their laws must evolve to meet changing circumstances. But, unless Justice Stevens is either stupid or dishonest, he cannot leap from a need for laws to change to the conclusion that it is judges who must be the ones to make those changes.

Just saying the magic word “change” does not justify judges grabbing the power to make whatever changes they please in the law. There are, after all, two other branches of the federal government, specifically charged with legislative and executive responsibilities and powers, not to mention the Constitutional Amendment process.

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.

More recently, the arrest of Faisal Shahzad in the attempted bombing of Times Square forced American officials to look closely at links between the suspect, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, and militants in the thriving southern port city, which is closer to the border with India than Afghanistan.

One of Shahzad's Pakistani contacts -- a member of the Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group called Mohammad Rehan -- was subsequently picked up by Pakistani intelligence officials in Karachi. Jaish-e-Mohammad is among the Islamic groups with a history of sending volunteers to fight for the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as with Islamic separatists in India's predominantly Muslim border state of Kashmir.

Rehan is being questioned on his role in facilitating a visit by Shahzad in the summer of 2009 to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, previously known as the north west frontier province (NWFP), along the Afghan border. Investigators believe he met there with hardcore Taliban militants who taught him how to build crude bombs. A senior Karachi police official says the arrest of as many as eight suspects, including Rehan, is at the center of Pakistan's ongoing investigation into Shahzad's Pakistan links.

"We all want to know exactly how these people facilitated Faisal Shahzad," the official told CBS News on condition of anonymity. "Once we have a solid knowledge of the way these people operated in Faisal Shahzad's case, and in other cases of militancy too, our ability to penetrate militant groups will undoubtedly improve."...

Combined with these practical, if circumstantial, red flags, is strong anti-U.S. sentiment in parts of Karachi, particularly in the poverty stricken neighborhoods. Though statistics on the number of poor people in Karachi have not been compiled formally in recent years, local officials say anywhere between a quarter to a third of the city's residents live in poverty.

Typically, these are people who face daily electricity cuts that can last eight hours, many are unemployed, and there's no air conditioning in their homes as summer daytime temperatures in Pakistan's tropical south soar above 104 degrees.

That's why there are so many suicide bombers in Haiti.

On Thursday, protesters gathered in Karachi's streets to demonstrate against Facebook, the social networking site which has infuriated many Muslims by hosting a web page featuring caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Images of Muhammad are strictly forbidden by the tenets of Islam, and illegal under Pakistan's Islamic government.

The rage expressed by the Karachi residents underscored the anti-Western sentiment, and the deep tension festering in the city.

"America is against Muslims and we are now protesting because Facebook, which is based in America, has insulted Muslims," Sabir Umar, a Karachi shopkeeper, told CBS News. "I am a poor man, but I shut down my shop to join this protest because it is time for us to demonstrate against the Americans." he said.

That's not poverty-breeds-terrorism, which is what CBS News is trying to establish here. That's terrorism-breeds-poverty.

Sami Khattak, a bicycle store owner who also joined the protests, went a step further. "If I had to help my brother Muslims from Afghanistan or Iraq, where the U.S. has attacked Muslims, I will of course do everything to help them. That is my right and also my duty."

That's standard and universal Islamic doctrine: if a Muslim land is attacked, defensive jihad becomes an obligation of every individual Muslim.

Such feelings show a potential sympathy for Islamic hardliners prevalent in many Karachi neighborhoods....

No kidding, really?

President Obama has been helping his former employer ACORN — in India, of all places.

As I wrote at The Daily Caller, President Obama’s ambassador to India, Timothy J. Roemer, has lent his name and the prestige of the American government to ACORN India’s efforts to agitate among rag-pickers in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay). Roemer used to be a Democratic congressman from Indiana.

The former congressman turned ACORN-propagandist met with rag pickers in Dharavi, a Mumbai slum, to give a publicity boost to ACORN India’s local campaigns. The local U.S. consulate in also co-sponsored an event with the Indian branch of the organization for community organizers.

According to ACORN India’s website the group was formed in order to assist in defending the “socialist legacy” of Jawaharlal Nehru, a leftist who served as Indian prime minister of India from 1947 to 1964. That “legacy” is “now in danger from the onslaught of the march of global corporatism,” the website says.

There was an emotional ceremony at the White House on Monday when President Obama welcomed slain journalist Daniel Pearl’s surviving family members to witness the signing of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act.

Pearl, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was brutally murdered in Pakistan as he was following up some leads on al-Qaeda financing in early 2002. Four Pakistanis were convicted in Pearl’s murder in July of that year. The mastermind of the kidnapping and murder, however, may have been Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who confessed to the murder under interrogation by the CIA.

According to the New York Times, the Freedom of the Press Act “requires the State Department to expand its scrutiny of news media restrictions and intimidation as part of its annual review of human rights in each country. Among other considerations, the department will be required to determine whether foreign governments participate in or condone violations of press freedom.”

This is certainly good news. According to Freedom House’s annual surveyof press freedom in 196 countries, the indicators fell for the 8th straight year:

• Significant declines outnumbered gains by a 2-to-1 margin. Notable regional declines were registered in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, as well as the Middle East.
• Declines in important emerging democracies demonstrate the fragility of press freedom in such environments. Namibia and South Africa, two of the new democracies, dropped from Free to Partly Free. Worrying declines were also registered in Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal.
• The only area to show overall improvement was the Asia-Pacific region, spurred by notable gains in South Asia that included status changes in Bangladesh and Bhutan from Not Free to Partly Free and a numerical score jump for the Maldives.
• Governments in China, Russia, Venezuela, and other countries have been systematically encroaching on the comparatively free environment of the internet and new media. Sophisticated techniques are being used to censor and block access to particular types of information, to flood the internet with antidemocratic, nationalistic views, and to provide broad surveillance of citizen activity.
• Journalists are increasingly the victims of assault and murder, a trend fueled by impunity for past crimes.

We give Egypt billions of dollars in aid every year and yet, President Mubarak and his security services have gotten into the very bad habit of arresting journalists and even bloggers who write on subjects that the state deems “dangerous.” It’s certainly dangerous to the journalists but beyond that, there doesn’t seem to be much rhyme nor reason to the practice except to clamp down on dissent.

Of course, you take your life in your hands if you write anything against the regime in Iran. Entire newspapers have been shut down by the mullahs since the disputed election last year and there is no sign that they are letting up in their campaign to silence critics.

Perhaps President Obama will want to do something about his friend Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, who has shut down opposition TV stationsand engaged in media intimidation. Freedom House lists Venezuela as “Not Free,” ranking it a dismal 163 our of 196 nations. Just don’t let Sean Penn hear you call Hugo a “dictator,” though. He favors having journalists arrested who call Chavez the “D” word.

Mexico, South Africa, India, and Italy are all listed as “Partly Free.” Freedom House uses a broad range of criteria to determine it’s rankingsbased on a point system. The legal, political, and economic environment for the press in each country is given a numerical score of 0-40 in each. The totals reveal whether a country is “Free,” “Partly Free,” or “Not Free.” Only 69 countries are judged as having a “Free” press in their 2010 survey.

While a welcome addition to our criteria for giving aid and adjudging a level of support our State Department can offer a nation, one has to wonder how seriously the president and his appointees will actually take this new law. As Jennifer Rubin points out in a piece in Commentary’s Contentions blog, this administration has fallen down in its support for press freedom in countries where the weight of our words is desperately needed:

Has Obama done anything about the suppression of media critics in Egypt (other than prepare a lucrative financial package for the Egyptian government)? Has Obama made this a priority with any thugocracy? No. And when signing a bill in the name of someone who elevated and personified the freedom of expression, Obama at least could have departed from his campaign to delete the name of our enemies from the public lexicon.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations, it’s business as usual for the enemies of the free press. Anti-blasphemy measures are being pushed by the usual suspects in the Muslim world in a clear effort to stifling criticism of Islam.

In addition, the UN Human Rights Council has drafted rules designed to “protect” Islam from “political cartoonists and bigots.” This attitude seems widespread at the United Nations, who recently celebrated “World Press Freedom Day” on May 3rd. How devoted the UN is to press freedom is a matter open for debate. UNESCO, sponsor of World Press Freedom Day, defines “Fundamental Principles concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media” in what must be considered a novel manner:

2. Access by the public to information should be guaranteed by the diversity of the sources and means of information available to it, thus enabling each individual to check the accuracy of facts and to appraise events objectively. To this end, journalists must have freedom to report and the fullest possible access to information. Similarly, it is important that the mass media be responsive to concerns of peoples and individuals, thus promoting the participation of the public in the aggregation of information.

3. With a view to the strengthening of peace and international understanding, to promoting human rights and to countering racialism, apartheid and incitement to war, the mass media throughout the world, by reason of their role, contribute to promoting human rights, in particular by giving expression to oppressed peoples who struggle against colonialism, neo-colonialism, foreign occupation and all forms of racial discrimination and oppression and who are unable to make their voices heard within their own territories.

We Americans prefer the simple, “Congress shall make no law…” found in the First Amendment. It would appear that UNESCO has narrowed that definition considerably.

This is important because of the Obama administration’s clear preference for bending to the will of the United Nations on a variety of issues, most recently when Iran was given a seat on the UN Commission on Women’s Rights and President Obama remained silent. If we acquiesce on this, what other nonsense will the Obama administration put up with?

Despite its noble goals, it would seem to be a pipe dream to expect the State Department to do more than go through the motions when it comes to fulfilling the requirements of the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act. Given the large number of states who routinely violate that freedom, we should expect a business as usual attitude, especially from this president, whose outreach to thugs and tyrants around the world regardless their treatment of journalists – or their people – continues.

Mumbai: Noted lyricist Javed Akhtar received a spate of death mails, following his strong views against the Deoband seminary in UP, which recently came out with a fatwa against working women.

The All-India Milli Council (AIMC), All-India Sunni Jamaitul Ulema and Raza Academy said that women should dress according to the Islamic laws. Talking to a news daily, Moonisa Bushra Abedi, an AMIC member, said, "Purdah is an integral part of Islam. Women should dress modestly and cover themselves if they have to work. It is unlawful if they work and talk to men who are strangers without wearing a veil."

Talking about working women, Abedi continued, "Their earnings are not 'haram' but if they do not follow principles while working, then it is."

However, Javed Akhtar strongly condemned such uncalled remarks, following which the scriptwriter was told to apologise or face strict action. "Both he and his wife do not follow Muslim law or consider themselves Muslims, why should they talk on Islam," said Abdul Qayyum Shaikh of the All- India Milli Council, which further added that Muslims working in films are 'haram.'

Earlier, on a news channel, Javed Akhtar had called muftis "insane".

Not insane. Just evil.

Whether you like it or not – Obamacare is now the law of the land. Whether you felt in your heart that you were being cheated by your government, or witnessed your liberal neighbor drool while gazing in admiration at the ubiquitous images of “The New Messiah” signing the treacherous bill, this mendacious monstrosity, these 2000 pages of lies and distortions are now the law. And all that’s left for you, a betrayed citizen of this great nation, is to sit in gloom and despair, thinking: “what could be done? What must we do in order to stop and reverse this brazen socialistic assault on our liberty?”

To run to the nearest court? Well, more than a dozen brave State Attorney Generals have done that already. (See, for instance, a May 12 article in www.detnews.com devoted to the imminent legal confrontation over the bill in the Federal District Court in Detroit). In their voluminous court papers they argue – in my view, absolutely convincingly – that the Commerce Clause of our Constitution does not allow the federal government to punish American citizens for failing to purchase a medical insurance. In other words, punishing them for doing nothing. As Nevada Governor Gibbons said recently:

“It’s a brand new precedent-setting erosion of the limitation of federal power by forcing you to buy federally approved health insurance… That’s wholly unconstitutional on its face.”

But what are your chances of winning in the courts? Slim, I would say. Courts, especially progressive courts, are notorious for their rather liberal interpretation of the Commerce Clause. In one infamous instance, a court even prohibited a farmer from growing wheat for his own consumption since this act would allegedly influence interstate commerce negatively.

What then? Could conservatives take back Congress come November? As we all know, the chances of that happening are rather slim. Besides, even if they would there is no doubt that the Chicago-machine-trained socialist Obama wouldn’t hesitate a second before vetoing any attempt to repeal his beloved deficit-increasing, tax-imposing, senior citizen-robbing, medical quality-obliterating piece of legislation.

Lastly, passing state laws in contradiction to this bill wouldn’t help, since, according to Constitution, federal laws trump state laws.

Then what should be done?!

In my humble opinion, you must do the following:

Go to the nearest library, and take Henry David Thoreau’s famous essay Civil Disobedience. Read it from the first page to the last, memorize it, discuss it with your family and your friends, go to your club, or church, or synagogue, and bring a copy of that book with you, and tell people who are as distressed and angry as you are that you have found a guide, a Gospel… Do this repeatedly, until you feel that people’s minds and souls are flooded with the simple and obvious truths contained in that passionate call of the great American patriot.

Then, follow his call, do not deviate from it one bit and, at the end, you will appear victorious. Obamacare will be crushed. Your country will be saved from this abominable attempt to make it European-style socialistic.

Recall what Thoreau, that great writer and philosopher, wrote in 1849, justifying the citizen’s right for civil disobedience, and what he would’ve repeated today were he alive:

“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice, then, I say, break the law.”

“I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  It is not so desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.”

Three great men followed his gospel for civil disobedience, and all three have succeeded spectacularly: Mohandas Gandhi in India, Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and Martin Luther King in America.

Lastly, remember what Gandhi once said:

An unjust law is itself a species of violence.

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.

Before any real investigation had been carried out into the attempted terrorist bombing on New York’s Times Square last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano had almost immediately dismissed it as a “one-off” thing. General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, was also quick off the mark, saying the terrorist behind the plot, Faisal Shahzad, 30, who traded his Pakistani citizenship for American last year, was a “lone wolf.”

But last weekend the truth came out when Attorney-General Eric Holder was forced to admit what many suspected all along. It was another act of international Islamic jihad against the United States, and faceless murderers in Taliban/ al Qaeda terrorist organizations, based in Pakistan and motivated by their undying resolve to kill as many Americans, were the string-pullers.

“We’ve now developed evidence that shows that the Pakistan Taliban was behind the attack,” Holder said on the ABC program, This Week. “We know that they probably helped finance it. And that he (Shahzad) was working at their direction.”

With Holder’s admission, the question remains as to why a government that told people not to jump to conclusions concerning a connection between the Fort Hood massacre and Islamist terrorism was so quick to erroneously declare the Times Square bombing a solo, one-time operation? In the Fort Hood killings, Major Nidal Malik Hasan was also initially described as a lone gunman, whose motives were unclear, although he was shouting “Allahu Akbar” during his murderous rampage. President Obama himself cautioned against any premature judgement, even though his own intelligence agencies knew for months Hasan had been trying to make contact with al Qaeda-connected people.

“We don’t know all the answers yet,” Obama said at the time. “And I would caution against jumping to any conclusions until we have all the facts.”

But in the case of the failed Times Square bombing the facts were already in, some of them for a long time. The United States is in a worldwide war with radical Islam, a concept some still have difficulty with. As a result of this war, according to one analyst, America was the target of about a dozen terrorist attacks within its borders last year alone. Only the Fort Hood strike was successful, costing 13 lives while another 30 were wounded.

In one of the thwarted attacks, also potentially the most deadly, an Afghan residing legally in the United States, Najibullah Zazi, 25, was arrested last September along with two others for planning three suicide attacks on the New York subway. Zazi, like Shahzad, had also received weapons and explosives training at a terrorist training camp in Pakistan. Zazi pleaded guilty last February and will be sentenced in June.

However, it was the arrest of two men of Pakistani origin in Chicago last year on terrorism charges that indicated how deeply the al Qaeda/ Taliban terrorist network had spread in America. Rather than use the two Chicago residents, David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, the former an American and the latter a Canadian citizen, to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States where they lived, an easier proposition, the terrorist leaders sitting in Pakistan confidently used them to help carry out the most devastating terrorist attack of 2008: Mumbai.  Headley, using his American passport and Rana’s business as cover, traveled several times to India to scout out potential targets before the attack and to gather information. The two men’s sinister activities remained undetected in both India and America.

Headley would also travel to Pakistan where he would drop off his reports to Ilyas Kashmiri, the mastermind behind the Mumbai attack and allegedly the head of al Qaeda’s military operations. When arrested, Headley and Rana were carrying out reconnaissance in Denmark for another Kashmiri-planned terrorist attack, this time against the Danish newspaper, the Jyllands-Postens, which printed the Muhammad cartoons. Kashmiri was indicted at the trial that saw Headley plead guilty to terrorism charges last March.

When the investigation is complete concerning the failed Times Square bombing, it would not surprise if Ilyas Kashmiri’s name pops up once more. South Asian affairs analyst B. Raman describes Kashmiri as seeing himself as another Khalid Sheikh Mohammad who wants “to carry out a spectacular terrorist strike in a Western country.”

American intelligence indicated Kashmiri’s importance by subjecting him to three drone attacks in the past. Kashmiri, who also heads al Qaeda’s secretive 313 Brigade, granted a Pakistani journalist an interview last October after his death was reported in the third attack to prove he was still alive and planning further terrorist strikes in India, Europe and North America.

“They are right in their pursuit. They know their enemy well. They know what I am really up to,” he told the interviewer with pride.

The fact the Pakistani Taliban rather than al Qaeda at first took credit for helping Shahzad and then later retracted its claim is probably an attempt to deceive. Raman writes there is really no knowing what the relationship is between the Pakistani Taliban, Ilyas Kashmiri and his 313 Brigade. He further observes that the terrorist scene in Pakistan is “getting murkier and murkier” and not even Pakistan’s leaders know exactly what is going on.

The fact that so many terrorist plots in America and elsewhere have led back to Pakistan, why then would Napolitano and General Petraeus hastily conclude the Times Square bombing was a “one-off”, “lone wolf” deed?  What drives such speedy, and misleading, utterances and presidential warnings not to jump to conclusions is the White House’s fear of a backlash against Muslims living in America. Such a backlash, it is believed, would not only play into the Islamists’ hands and adversely affect the War on Terror, but would also jeopardise Obama’s stated desire to build bridges to the Islamic world.

But while such fear may be understandable, it only serves to hinder people from drawing the proper conclusion: Islamic terrorism is a very real danger to Americans and the threat is growing.  And that is something that can’t be denied.

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan has test-fired two ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the military said Saturday.

Both the Shaheen-1, which can hit a target 400 miles (650 kilometers) away, and the Ghazvani, with a range of 180 miles (290 kilometers), were fired successfully, Pakistan military officials said.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, who witnessed the event with several senior military officials, said that the nation had developed a strong nuclear deterrence capability, according to a government statement.

He said that Pakistan's armed forces were "fully capable of safeguarding Pakistan's security against all kinds of aggression," according to the statement.

Gilani mentioned last month's Nuclear Security Summit hosted by President Obama in Washington, an event aimed at enhancing international cooperation to prevent nuclear terrorism. Much of the event focused on Iran's nuclear program, which has drawn deep concerns from the West.

However, the international community also has had concerns about the stability of the Pakistani government and the security of its nuclear arsenal, questioning whether it's safe from the hands of the Taliban.

Gilani on Saturday said the world can now move "beyond safety and security concerns," the statement said. "These were laid to rest at the Nuclear Security Summit where Pakistan forcefully projected a forthright stance on the issue and the world expressed satisfaction at Pakistan's nuclear security arrangements."

Estimates of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal currently range from 60 to 100 weapons. It first declared its status as a nuclear power in 1998, testing five bombs in an exchange with its south Asian archrival, India.

JHANG: It's a troubling trend in Punjab; leaders are tolerating and in some cases promoting some of the country's most violent extremist militant groups.

Provincial officials have ignored repeated calls to crack down on militant groups with a strong presence in the province, with one senior minister campaigning publicly with members of an extremist group that calls for Shia Muslims to be killed.

Some of the militant groups are allied with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which claimed responsibility for a failed car bombing in New York last week. Jaish-e-Muhammed has also been implicated as having possible links to one of the people detained in Pakistan in connection with the bombing attempt.

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif even asked militants not to attack his province - because he was not following the dictates of the US to fight them - much to the dismay of the federal government. "It makes Punjab a de facto sanctuary for militants and extremists that the Pakistan Army is fighting in the frontier and in the Tribal Areas," said Aida Hussain, a former ambassador to the US. "In fact this is an undermining of the Armed Forces of Pakistan and it is an undermining of constitutional governance."

Critics believe the policy of tolerance is a short sighted bid by the Sharif brothers for political support in the predominantly Sunni province.

Reopen: In Jhang, the outlawed Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan has been emboldened by conciliatory signals from local authorities. After being courted for votes last March, the group ripped off yellow government seals and reopened its offices. Just a few kilometres from Lahore is the headquarters of the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, which is banned in Pakistan, India, the US and other countries, but is now under provincial government protection. India blames the group for the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai and routinely harangues Pakistan for allowing its leader, Hafiz Saeed, to remain free.

And in Bawahalpur is the headquarters of Jaish-e-Muhammed, the group possibly linked to a suspect in the Times Square bombing case.

Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah defended his decision to campaign alongside members of the SSP in March. The minister said the organisation represents thousands of votes and cannot be ignored.

Moderate turn: He said groups like Jaish-e-Muhammed and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba were not taking part in the war against the Taliban, but only resisting Indian control of Kashmir. And he said the Punjab government was hoping to moderate such groups.

"If they change their direction, become more progressive, that is good," he said.

Avner S., 26, is a handsome young man with a smooth face that gives him the appearance of a teenager. He is, in spite of his soft exterior, a hardened ex-combat soldier who served in the top combat unit of the Israel Defense Forces – Sayeret Matkal. Both Avner and his colleagues are wearing helmet-like skullcaps and tzizits, which are flowing out of their T-shirts. The roofers, busy putting on red tiles, and the other two dozen workers, all of whom are veterans, are now on a new mission- to build up the land of Israel.

This group, led by Avner, and many others like them, have began a movement that is reminiscent of the early 20th century. An idealistic and pioneering movement of Jewish Labor, inspired by the philosophy of A.D. Gordon. Unlike many secular-leftist, post-military service young men who let themselves go and use drugs in Thailand or India’s Goa, Avner and his crew are being true to a paraphrased rendition of JFK’s famous words: “See what you can do for your country, for your ancestral heartland.”

While the kibbutz youth, who once symbolized Israeli idealism and self-sacrifice, have left the kibbutzim in droves moving either to Israel’s cities or abroad, the young men of the West Bank settlement communities stay where they were born and raised and raise large families. They are reviving today’s sagging idealism and bringing back the old values of self sacrifice that characterized Israel’s pre-state era and the early decades of its existence, in the 1950′s and 1960′s. And they are doing it in the face of cynicism and malice coming from the Israeli urban and leftist elites who control the media and academia.

Globalization and Americanization have left many of Israel’s secular and urban youth in an almost nihilistic state. Youthful Israelis living in the cities seem to have more in common with their rudderless peers in Western Europe and the U.S. than with their fellow Israelis in the settlements. When they are not occupied with drugs, sex, and other hedonistic pursuits, they seek lucrative jobs in high tech industries abroad that provide them with a luxurious lifestyle. Edna G., 21 is typical for her generation. Originally from Beersheba, in the Negev, she moved to Tel Aviv six months ago after completing her military service. She is now hoping to move to New York to study and, she hopes, to “make money and live the good life…”

In the leftist, post-Zionist, bastion of Shenkin Street in Tel Aviv, idealism is dead. The talk in the popular coffee-houses is about government corruption, but animus towards the settlements and settlers is ready to burst out at a moment’s notice. Young people here have more sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza than for the settlers in the West Bank. Their Judaism has long ago turned into some form of universalism, and the Torah is simply meaningless to them. They are cynical about patriotism and believe in nothing else but living for today.

Sweating in the midday heat Avner comes down on a ladder from the rooftop to get his jug of water. What about Tel Aviv and its post-Zionism, I ask? He thinks for a moment and replies in a quiet and assured voice, “Our mission of rebuilding the country and bringing back its idealism will not end at Yitzhar, we plan to go to Tel Aviv and build there too – not only houses but souls as well.”

“And what about the Arab-Palestinians surrounding you,” I continue? “We respect them as people, and they respect us.” Unlike the Jewish developers in cities of central Israel who hire and exploit mostly non-Israeli labor, Avner and his ilk believe in Jewish Labor – to “Build and be built by it” as a well-known old Zionist pioneering song goes.

The Arabs from the surrounding villages are ambivalent about these hard working Jews who cultivate the land and build their own homes. In their hearts, the Arab villagers admire the fortitude these young Jews display. At the same time they resent the fact that the Jewish Labor movement is denying them construction jobs. Still, commercial activities between Jewish settlers and local Arabs in the West Bank benefit both communities. Tension and acts of terror arise primarily when the local Arabs are incited by visiting officials of the Palestinian Authority or by radical Islamist activists.

The land that Jewish settlers live and build on is government ownded, not taken from local Arabs. Although pioneers like the legendary Moshe Zar of Karnei Shomron, a community not far from Itzhar, would buy land for cash from Arab landlords occasionally, there are few, if any cases of Jewish settlements built on “stolen” Arab land as the anti-Israel movement abroad often charges.

The young men of Jewish Labor are not only reviving the idea of Jewish manual work, a long forgotten pursuit by ordinary Israelis, they are also creating a defensive and strategic shield for Israel by building a chain of hilltop settlements that control the passages from the Jordan Valley to Israel’s coastal communities and that surround Palestinian cities like Nablus, Jenin, Kalkilya, and Tulkarm. The Jewish settlements in the West Bank are the first line of defense for the State of Israel.

History seems to repeat itself. The kibbutzim of the pre-State era formed the front line of defense for the Yishuv – the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine, against Arab attackers. Nowadays, the Jewish settlers in the West Bank have taken up their roles. Similarly, the idealism of Jewish Labor once practiced by the Kibbutzim is now carried on by practical and idealistic young men like Avner and his friends.

It was payback.

The Connecticut man charged yesterday with the botched Times Square car bombing confessed to trying to slaughter innocent people in retaliation for US drone attacks that wiped out the leadership of his beloved Taliban, The Post has learned.

Admitted terrorist Faisal Shahzad -- who copped to training in explosives in the past year with Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, the leading extremist Islamic group in his native Pakistan -- said he was driven to evil by the slew of deaths among leaders of the terror group, law-enforcement sources revealed yesterday.

His training came in a tribal area where American drone aircraft have pummeled members of the Pakistan Taliban and al Qaeda in the past year.

Sources said he was an eyewitness to the onslaught throughout the eight months he spent in Pakistan beginning last summer.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the Times Square bombing attempt immediately after it occurred, saying it was in response to the drone killing of one of its leaders in August -- but that claim had been roundly discounted by US authorities at the time.

But by yesterday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Makhdoom Qureshi said, "This is a blowback. This is a reaction. This is retaliation. And you could expect that," according to CBS News.

"Let's not be naive. They're going to fight back."...

When grilled by investigators, Shahzad "admitted he had attempted to detonate a bomb in Times Square. He also said he had recently received five months' worth of bomb-making instruction in Waziristan, Pakistan," a criminal complaint says....

Among those arrested in Pakistan was Tauhid Ahmed, with whom Shahzad had been communicating via e-mail and whom he'd met at least once.

Also busted was Muhammad Rehan, who was picked up at a mosque associated with militant activity. Shahzad during his trip to Pakistan had met with Rehan.

Investigators were also looking at possible ties between Shahzad and David Headley, another Pakistani American, who pleaded guilty to the 2008 bombings in Mumbai, India, The Daily Beast Web site reported....

"Pak producing 10,000 jihadists a year: Report," from Indian Express, May 5:

Pakistan is still producing an estimated 10,000 potential jihadis a year despite claims made by Islamabad of taking strong action against terrorists in the country.

"Pakistan is still producing an estimated 10,000 potential jihadis a year out of 500,000 graduates from Pakistan's 11,000 madrassas - young gung-ho boys, mostly 16-year-olds..." wrote Arnaud de Borchgrave, foreign affairs columnist and editor-at-large at The Washington Times.

"A true-green jihadi believes the enemies of Islam (principally the United States, India and Israel) are on a crusade to push back the frontiers of Islam and deprive the Muslim world of its principal means of defence - Pakistan's nuclear arsenal," Borchgrave wrote in hard hitting column.

Borchgrave said the motto of the Pakistani army is "faith, piety and jihad in the path of Allah."

A military manual on jihad, "The Quranic Concept of War," is required reading at officers training schools....

And so we have 10 Muslim countries among the 13 most severe violators of religious freedom. Somehow they seem to have missed the memo about Islam's respect and tolerance for non-Muslims. And of course in reality, their behavior here is entirely in line with the hatred and contempt that Islam inculcates for the unbeliever, "the most vile of created beings" (Qur'an 98:6), and the Qur'anic directive to Muslims to be "merciful to one another, but ruthless to the unbelievers (48:29).

"Turkey On US Watch List For Violating Religious Freedoms," from ANSAmed, April 30 (thanks to Insubria):

(ANSAmed) - ANKARA, APRIL 30 - Turkey remains on a US panel's watch list of 12 countries for its violations of religious freedoms, Today's Zaman daily newspaper reports. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report on Thursday, designating 13 Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) in terms of such violations while also putting 12 others on a watch list for close monitoring in that regard. Turkey remains on the watch list this year also. It was designated for close monitoring for the first time in 2009. The fact that very little has changed in terms of restrictions imposed on people has resulted in it retaining its status as a violator country in the view of the USCIRF. According to the report, this year's CPCs are Myanmar, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Vietnam. In addition to these 13 countries, designated the worst violators of religious freedoms around the world, the 2010 watch list includes Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan and Venezuela as well as Turkey with respect to "the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by the governments." The panel's report also criticized the current and former US administrations for doing little to make basic religious rights universal.(ANSAmed).

That's because both the current and the former U.S. administrations were committed to the notion of Islam as a Religion of Peace™, and didn't dare call any serious attention to the routine violations of religious freedom in so many Muslim countries -- to have done so would have created cognitive dissonance.