Lashkargah, 9 June (AKI): Taliban fighters have hanged a seven-year-old boy, claiming he was passing information to foreign soldiers in the volatile southern province of Helmand, the governor's spokesman, Daud Ahmadi, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

"Volatile." And why is that?

The child's shocking murder took place in the Sarwan Qala area of Sangin district late on Tuesday. The boy, whose name was not immediately known, was abducted from the village of Heratyan, Ahmadi said.

While the slogan for the “The First National Jewish Anti-Zionist Gathering” isn’t actually “anti-Semites of the world unite!” that would have been a fitting choice, combining both of the “gatherings” two underlying themes: hatred of Israel and adoration of communism. The event is scheduled for June 19 through 22 and will be held, fittingly enough, in Detroit. The once proud and now crumbling Motor City is perhaps the nation’s best example of what happens when leftist dreams come true. Even better, from the organizers point of view, the Detroit metropolitan area is home to a large number of Muslims, so the jihadis living among them can be counted on to make the radical Jews who organized the event feel even better about their self-loathing.

Specifically, the organizers are the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the Middle East Children’s Alliance. Neither organization bothers to hide their radical, leftist world-view, a perspective that dovetails nicely into their sure and certain belief that Palestinians and Israelis could easily live in peace and harmony, if only Israel would grasp the hand that Hamas and Hizbullah have repeatedly extended in friendship and if only Israel would abandon its foolish alliance with those imperialistic Americans. Or, to put those concepts in less-comprehensible terms, here’s the conference’s official statement of purpose:

“To gather together as anti-Zionist Jewish (AZJ) activists committed to social justice and to challenging racism, colonialism and imperialism – first and foremost by contributing to efforts to overcome Zionism and decolonize Palestine. The Assembly hopes to provide a forum to share political perspectives, campaigns and other activities, culture and ritual, and build relationships toward collective work. Through building assessment of the current moment in the US and international Palestine solidarity movement, larger social justice movements and political context, we hope to build a shared direction for anti-Zionist Jewish organizing in the United States. This is in the interest of making our work more effective.”

To coin a phrase: dhmittude never sounded so good. But, with the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network leading the way, such sentiments are hardly surprising. The IJAZN was created in 2008 when Professor Moshe Machover and Selma James announced the adoption of the organization’s charter at a press conference in London. Machover and James’ extremist, radical views – and both would readily accept, indeed would be proud of, the use of those two adjectives to describe their views – have been well documented. While their organization serves as a lightning rod for anti-Semites of all cultures and faiths, one wouldn’t describe either Machover of James (both of whom are Jewish) as anti-Semites themselves. They are rather utopians of the communist variety, wholly incapable of understanding that the price one pays for pursuing the unachievable leftist nirvana is drenched in blood and soaked in misery.

Machover, born in Tel Aviv in 1936, is an unrepentant admirer of all things Marxist. He scorns representative democracy, because in his view our system of government doesn’t give appropriate weight to radical ideas. Oddly enough though, the one representative democracy that comes closest to getting it right in Machover’s world is the nation he hates most of all: Israel. In April 2010 he wrote: “But here is a rare, perhaps unique, exception: Israel has just about the most democratic electoral system possible in a bourgeois state: a consistent form of proportional representation… Minority voices, including that of the Arab national minority, have regularly been heard on the floor of that house.” Not that providing Arabs living in Israel with the very things that Arabs deny non-Muslims in every nation they control – a voice in government and freedom of worship – excuses Israel’s many sins in Machover’s world. Of course not.

Machover has also rewritten history in order to defame the father of modern Israel, saying: “Ben-Gurion preferred to invade Egypt, alongside France and Britain, rather than to make peace with Egypt”.  And, for Machover, the reason for ongoing conflict in the Middle East has nothing to do with Israel’s enemies. He has said: “…it became clear to us that the roots of the Israeli-Arab conflict lay, not in the conflict between Israel and the Arab states, but rather in the conflict between Zionist colonialism and the Palestinians over the land of Palestine and its independence.”

For her part, Selma James founded the “International Wages for Housework Campaign” in 1972. Under this scheme, governments would have had to compensate stay-at-home moms for their efforts. She’s also a buddy of Venezuelan tyrant Hugo Chavez and has been a member of Chavez’s socialist “Venezuelan Revolution” movement since 2002.

The Middle East Children’s Alliance is just as radical. Founder and Executive Director Barbara Lubin, a Norm Chomsky disciple, was abducted by Hizbullah in 1991. Recognizing that their captive was coming down with a bad case of Stockholm syndrome, the terrorist organization released her, prompting Lubin to observe that: “They’re just ordinary schleps like the rest of us.” Ordinary schleps armed with missiles and RPGs perhaps, but why quibble with a humanitarian like Lubin? She’s obviously a high-minded pacifist, is she not? Take a look for yourself.

Given the alternate universe in which the organizers flourish, it’s not at all difficult to predict the themes of The First National Jewish Anti-Zionist Gathering. According to their world view, the aggressors in the Middle East are nobly defending their rights and their land, while a nation under siege has somehow become an agent of American imperialism. What’s truly troubling is that, based on their words and deeds, there’s little doubt that the organizers actually believe that represents an accurate portrayal of the on-going struggle in the Middle East and that Machover, James and Lubin don’t know how they are being used – and will continue to be used – by terrorists bent on the destruction of Israel.

Seventy years ago an obscure, extremist, anti-Semetic Norwegian politician by the name of Vidkun Quisling helped undermine his nation and welcomed Nazi invaders with open arms. On June 19 another generation of Quislings will do their best to undermine the security of their people’s ancient homeland, not because they actively wish to see Israel destroyed and its people enslaved, but because their minds are so clouded by idyllic, extremist dreams of a leftist-utopia they are unable to comprehend that is exactly the kind of end result that they are in fact supporting.

This weekend I’ll be participating in the Is the (Real) News Dead? International Conference at Pepperdine University in Malibu.

The conference is being put on by American Freedom Alliance and the list of participants can be found here.

I’ll tentatively be speaking on two different panels:

The first is “Impact of the media on the political process,” a breakout panel in the morning.

The second is an afternoon breakout panel exploring social media: “News in 140 Characters or Less: What role does social media play in shaping the news?”

I have plenty of things to say on both subjects but if anyone has any ideas to suggest then please let me know in the comments below.

But wait! I thought all the learned analysts had assured us that there is no death penalty for apostasy in Islam! Isn't that right, Dr. Bassiouni? Mr. Kruse? Ms. Heagney?

"Afghan Parliamentarian Calls for Execution of Christians," from International Christian Concern, June 2:

Washington, D.C. (June 2, 2010) - International Christian Concern (ICC) has learned that an Afghan parliamentary secretary called for the public execution of Christian converts on the parliament floor.

On Tuesday, the Associated Free Press reported that Abdul Sattar Khawasi, deputy secretary of the Afghan lower house in parliament, called for the execution of Christian converts from Islam. Speaking in regards to a video broadcasted [sic] by Afghan television network Noorin TV showing footage of Christian men being baptized and praying in Farsi, Khawasi said, "Those Afghans that appeared in this video film should be executed in public, the house should order the attorney general and the NDS (intelligence agency) to arrest these Afghans and execute them."

The broadcast triggered a protest by hundreds of Kabul University students on Monday, who shouted death threats and demanded the expulsion of Christian foreigners accused of proselytizing.As a result, the operations of Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) and U.S.-based Church World Service (CWS) have been suspended over allegations of proselytizing. The Afghan government is currently undertaking an intensive investigation into the matter. According to Afghan law, proselytizing is illegal and conversion from Islam is punishable by death. ...

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.

In order to distract from the grave fiscal crisis caused by Greece’s cradle-to-grave socialism, Greek socialist prime minister George Papandreou is threatening to sue American banks.

Like his father before him who was also prime minister, Papandreou is the leader of the political party PASOK, which is the Panhellenic Socialist Movement. He is also president of the Socialist International. (The Socialist International’s affiliate in the U.S. is a group called Democratic Socialists of America, which in turn in closely tied to the Congressional Progressive Caucus).

“Greece will look into the past and see how things went,” Papandreou said. “There are similar investigations going on in other countries and in the United States. This is where I think, yes, the financial sector, I hear the words fraud and lack of transparency. So yes, yes, there is great responsibility here.”

So, not only is the United States involved in a futile scheme to bail out Greece’s basket case economy, but now that country’s leadership wants to shake down U.S. businesses for even more money. It’s as if the ruthless extortion artists at ACORN suddenly took over the government of the Hellenic Republic.

As I wrote previously, the U.S. is expected to kick in billions of dollars in order to prop up Greece’s failing welfare state via the International Monetary Fund.

It’s flushing money down a socialist toilet. And then the other fiscally doomed countries—including Spain, Portugal and Ireland—are going to whine and demand a bailout too. And knowing how much backbone President Obama has, we’re going to give it to them.

The Greek bailout will solve nothing. It will only delay the day of fiscal reckoning for the spendthrift Hellenic welfare state where hard work is for suckers.

Glenn Beck touched on the topic of excessive indebtedness on his TV show on May 5 (no video; link to transcript). He also noted that the rioters in the streets in Greece were left-wingers and union members, adding sarcastically:

In reality, we’re not going to let Europe go down. No, no, no. We can’t. They’re too big to fail. We’ll have to contribute more and more and more to prevent their demise. You’re already on the hook for this mess in Greece and Europe.

Well said Glenn.

What is most startling about the report of the heartless double bus bombings on May 2 that targeted and injured 80 Christian students traveling to northern Iraq's Mosul University was that the young Christians there attend university at all. Since the U.S. invasion, Iraq's Christians have been mostly driven out of the country by violence directed against them for their religion. Their communities are shattered. That these young people continued to dream of preparing themselves to serve their country signals that community's deep commitment to Iraq and a modicum of hope they still harbor for its future.

Unless the Obama administration acts fast to develop policies to help them, though, their hope will likely be in vain.

Relentless waves of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortions and rapes have triggered a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq over the past seven years. Since 2003, over half of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian, Syriac Orthodox, and Armenian Christians, as well as some Protestants have fled to Syria, Jordan and farther flung places. While only 3 or 4 percent of Iraq's pre-2003 population, they account for 40 percent of its refugees, the UN reported.

Christians remain the largest non-Muslim minority there but church leaders express a real fear that the light of the faith in Iraq that is said to have been kindled personally by Thomas, one of Jesus' Twelve Apostles, could soon be extinguished. Iraq's other non-Muslim religions, the much smaller groups of Mandeans (followers of John the Baptist), Yizidis (an ancient angel-centered religion), Bahai's and Jews are also all being forced out by violence.

Religious persecution in Iraq is so "egregious" that the country has now been included, alongside the likes of notoriously repressive Iran and China, on a recommended short list of "Countries of Particular Concern" under the International Religious Freedom Act, by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

No Iraq group, Muslim or non-Muslim, has been spared massive and appalling religiously-motivated violence; however, as the independent federal commission found, the one-two punch of extremist ruthlessness and deep governmental discrimination now threatens the "very existence" of Iraq's ancient Christian churches, some of whom still pray in Aramaic, the language of Jesus of Nazareth....

Read it all.

Although many substantive legal arguments support the right of Jews to build in Judea, Samaria (the West Bank) and the eastern part of Jerusalem, Israeli communities are accused of being “illegal” according to “international law”. But, what is this “law” and who decided that Israel was guilty?

UN resolutions are not laws, or sources of laws. The UN’s primary judicial organ, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issues advisory opinions which are only recommendations, and, although they are influential, are not proper legal decisions. Unable to get a fair hearing before the ICJ, Israel does not appear there.

In fact, the UN Charter (Article 10) does not grant the General Assembly, or the ICJ the authority to determine the ownership of disputed territories – although it does so anyway.

“The law” is the Fourth Geneva Convention (GC IV)  – one of the most important sources of conventional international and humanitarian law. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the official “guardian” of the GC IV, met secretly at their headquarters in Geneva in 1971 and unilaterally decided that Jewish communities built in areas acquired after the Six Day War were actually “illegal” because they “violated” GC IV. Because ICRC rulings are considered authoritative, they are used by the international community to condemn Israeli “settlements,” and “occupation.”

The legal status of Palestine, designated as the “Jewish national homeland,” was established by the League of Nations (1920), the San Remo Agreements (1920) and the British Mandate (1922), and endorsed by the US Congress; that was “the law,” and remains so today, despite the ICRC.

ICRC and UN Resolutions declared that “Israeli settlements are illegal.” They didn’t say, however, to whom this territory belongs. Palestinian leaders have said they will declare sovereignty and ask for UN recognition. But, with the Palestinian Authority (PA) divided between Fatah and Hamas, its leadership shaky, who rules? And who will rule in the future?

Arab leaders themselves can’t decide about a second Arab Palestinian state (the first was Transjordan, established in 1921, two-thirds of whose population is Palestinian) since that means accepting Israel. However, none are willing to give up the “Palestinian right of return,” in other words, the control of eastern Jerusalem and the elimination of settlements.

UN recognition of the PLO, beginning in 1974, six months after it massacred school-children in Ma’alot, provided legitimacy, but the PLO – “the sole representative of the Palestinian people” — has rejected the “two-state-solution” as an end-of-conflict. Its charter, calling for the elimination of Israel by force, remains unchanged.

The Oslo Accords (1993), Hebron Agreement (1997), Wye River Accords (1998) and Gaza Disengagement (2005), which gave the PA large areas of Judea, Samaria and all of Gaza and placed nearly all Arab residents of these areas under PA rule, provided the basis for self-government, and eventual statehood.

Legal questions regarding Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem remain; the ICRC’s decisions, therefore, are crucial. Since ICRC deliberations and protocols are secret, however, there is no way of knowing how they arrived at their decisions, nor is there any possibility of appeal.

The ICRC’s unique interpretation, contrary to the obvious intent and purpose of GC IV, was designed specifically to thwart Israeli settlements. It was never applied in a comparable situation elsewhere.

Opposing Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem may be politically expedient, a convenient charge to indict Israel, but assaulting their legality is baseless. Many prominent jurists and the Israeli government have rejected charges of “illegality” and “occupation,” arguing that the provisions of GC IV do not apply, and that, at best, these areas should be called “disputed,” subject to negotiations.

Despite the ICRC’s refusal to open its archives and explain itself, in defiance of all democratic and judicial norms of conduct, accountable to no one, and deliberately distorting facts, their decisions are widely accepted as law. We need to know how and why the ICRC made those decisions. What are they hiding, and why?

Moshe Dann is a writer and journalist living is Israel. He can be contacted at moshedan@netvision.net.il

Has the latest annual report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) caused any cognitive dissonance in Washington?

It should have: ten Muslim countries were among the 13 designated by the USCIRF last Thursday as Countries of Particular Concern (CPC): Eritrea, Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Along with those, the worst violators of religious freedom around the world, six other Muslim countries were on the USCIRF's watch list: Afghanistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Somalia, Tajikistan and Turkey.

Now wait a minute. Islam is supposed to be a religion of peace and tolerance. Isn't that what Barack Obama has been telling us (and George Bush before him)? The report was a bracing dose of reality to dispel this rosy view--and yet another reminder of how Obama's view of Islam and Muslim countries is unrealistic and damaging, and of what it might take to end the jihad against America and the West.

As I show in detail in my book The Complete Infidel's Guide to the Koran, the behavior of these Muslim countries toward non-Muslims is entirely in line with the hatred and contempt that Islam inculcates for the unbeliever, "the most vile of created beings" (Koran 98:6), and the Koranic directive to Muslims to be "merciful to one another, but ruthless to the unbelievers" (48:29).

It's damaging because Obama's oft-repeated desire to establish a new relationship with the Islamic world based on "mutual respect" is apparently incompatible with any concern for the victims of this pandemic religious oppression. In this Obama is, unfortunately, again following in the footsteps of Bush, who famously proclaimed Islam a "religion of peace" in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The USCIRF report "also criticized the current and former U.S. administrations for doing little to make basic religious rights universal," according to the ANSAmed news service.

And so while official Washington pretends that Islam teaches peace and tolerance, a Pakistani Muslim last week reportedly called two Christian boys in his employ, Waqas and Zeeshan Masih, a derogatory term for Christian, and then beat them with an iron rod for missing a day of work. He killed Waqas, 14, and seriously injured Zeeshan, 12. Meanwhile, a 14-year-old Christian girl, Sumera Pervaiz, endured five days of torture after being falsely accused of stealing from the home of her employer, a Wing Commander in the Pakistani Air Force....

Read it all.

The desperate economic situation in Iran is causing workers to lose their jobs or go months without pay, pushing them into the opposition camp. On International Labor Day on May 1, Iranians demanding freedom and better treatment of workers while the regime’s cronies live rich and comfortable took to the streets. With the exception of the Los Angeles Times, the Iranians also had to fight an inattentive Western media unwilling to help them by providing coverage.

Recent protests, including the ones on May 1, have failed to reach the levels seen after Ahmadinejad’s election “victory” was declared. The Iranian regime is taking aggressive measures to prevent the opposition from organizing and protestors from linking together into one mass. The Internet was dramatically slowed down, as has been done during previous times of unrest in an attempt to limit the amount of video, pictures and news leaving the country.

I received an enormous amount of reports in the week leading up to May 1 about factory workers being laid off and being mistreated. It is clear that the industrial base of Iran is crumbling, with unemployment quickly rising and factories constantly going out of business. Only brute force and a lack of outside support are preventing nationwide strikes from taking place.

Ahead of the protests, opposition leaders Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi released a videotape calling on workers and teachers to unite with the opposition, arguing that those fighting for democracy and workers fighting for fair treatment share the same struggle. The regime is frightened that the Green Movement could encompass these causes, and so they went after the largest teachers’ union by sending its director and spokesperson to Evin Prison, the notorious holding location of political prisoners where torture is routine. Schools are often used by students to stage protests, and if teachers unite with them, the entire education system could shut down.

Ten labor organizations united to make 15 demands of the regime as International Labor Day drew near. The demands included wage increases, stopping Ahmadinejad’s plan to decrease government subsidies, the right to form independent organizations, and an end to capital punishment and child labor. The unions were joined by the Council of International Workers’ Day that had eight of their own demands, which included the release of political prisoners.

Both groups announced their solidarity with teachers and other workers and “all freedom-seeking social movements.” The workers, teachers, and political activists are trying to create a common front. Should they effectively organize, it could paralyze the regime.

On May Day, a crowd estimated to be about 4,000 strong gathered on Azadi Street in Tehran and began moving towards the Labor Ministry, which was protected by about 600 security forces and helicopters keeping watch. The protests would have been larger if the regime had not forced buses full of workers headed to Tehran to turn around.

According to the reports I received, at least 30 protestors were arrested. They were treated well by the shopowners who gave them with beverages, sandwiches and ice cream until they were attacked for doing so. One owner of an ice cream shop said that stores were being required to hang posters of Ayatollah Khamenei inside, and he had to close his shop for ten days for refusing to do it. Taxi drivers on Azadi Street went on strike and did not take any passengers and teachers protested near Khamenei’s office. One person in Tehran said “There were groups of young men in military clothes at the corner of every alley standing next to black vans” that were used to drive those arrested to prison.

There were also hundreds of protestors at the local Labor Ministry building in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and at least 20 were arrested. About 8,000 workers protested at a stadium in Qazvin in the northwest, with workers claiming that they had not been paid for seven months and some said they hadn’t gotten the bonuses due them since 2008. In Shiraz in the southern part of the country, about 3,000 workers protested near the governor’s office. The stories of the workers remained the same, with telecommunication employees saying they hadn’t been paid in over a year.

Clashes between demonstrators and security forces were reported in Tehran and Isfahan. At around 5 PM in Isfahan, workers and students are reported to have surrounded and attempted to seize a command center used by security forces that had to open fire in order to stop them. Three of the regime’s thugs are said to have been disarmed and sixteen protestors were hospitalized.

Hundreds of students protested at Tehran University as well. At Ferdowsi University in Mashhad, intense security was reported. Some students went on a hunger strike and some classes were cancelled because students refused to attend.

The opposition is gearing up for major protests on the June 12 anniversary of when Ahmadinejad was declared the election victor. There is no doubt that the regime is aware that the opposition plans big events for that day and will use all of its resources to contain and extinguish any demonstration. The events on this year’s Labor Day show that the workers, teachers, and pro-democracy activists are forging stronger links.

President Obama and all the leaders of the West need to give them momentum ahead of June 12 by pledging our support to them. Obama and other officials need to call on labor unions and humanitarian organizations to support the people of Iran by providing them with resources and setting up a fund so that workers can feed their families if they go on strike. The West should call on members of the government to resist calls to oppress their Iranian brothers and sisters.

Sanctions on every Revolutionary Guards entity need to be implemented, as requested by Mousavi’s spokesman. And Congress needs to pass a bill proposed by Senators McCain and Lieberman that will require the President to publish a list of Iranians engaged in human rights abuses so their names will be known to everyone and their assets frozen. The Iranian people are looking forward to taking on the regime on June 12, and we should be on their side.

Gita Sahgal calls her entry into the world of journalism "sort of accidental," but her most recent news appearances have been entirely on purpose.

On Feb. 7, the Sunday Times of London published her sharp critique of Amnesty International's support for former Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg. She went public, the article says, because her internal warnings had been ignored.

Amnesty, the nearly 50-year-old rights group founded to speak on behalf of prisoners of conscience, has hailed Begg as a human rights defender, hosted him on speaking tours and included him in a meeting with politicians at Downing Street.

Sahgal has called him "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban." She points to passages in his 2006 autobiography, Enemy Combatant, where he describes moving to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to "live in an Islamic state--one that was free from the corruption and despotism of the rest of the Muslim world." He also ran a bookstore in Birmingham, England, that sold works by known al-Qaida mentor Abdullah Azzam.

Hours later she was suspended, with pay but without explanation, from her job.

On April 9, she and the organization parted ways. In a statement released that day, the organization cited "irreconcilable differences."

Sahgal served as Amnesty International's top gender specialist since 2002. Two days before her suspension, the organization had promoted her to the newly-created position of interim head of the Gender, Sexuality and Identity division.

"It tells you a lot about where women's rights stand at Amnesty International," Sahgal said in a phone interview in March. "When they had to make the choice between Begg and their most senior discrimination expert who also has researched fundamentalism, they chose Begg."...

"Somalia: Al-Qaeda video aims at child recruits," from AdnKronos International, April 16:

Mogadishu, 16 April (AKI) - Al-Qaeda recruiters are targeting children and aiming to make Somali suicide bombing a multi-generational family affair.

A new recruitment video by Al-Shabaab, the Somalia-based Al-Qaeda branch that operates in the Horn of Africa, opens with an image of a child playing with a toy gun.

He's not just any boy, but the son of the bomber who almost assassinated former Somali president Abdullah Yusuf when he blew himself up on 11 October 2007 at the parliament in the southern city of Baidoa. The attack is celebrated by Al-Shabab as part of an operation that allowed the terror group to expand in Somalia.

A message's meaning isn't easily lost when in the video an image of the toddler and deceased father are placed side-by-side while a voice in Arabic sings praises of the Baidoa attack.

"After four years since the Baidoa attack," say Al-Shabab leader Mukhtar Abu az-Zubair, "it's still possible to see the consequences. That operation laid the foundation to conquer the city. This is because our road to victory is paved with the blood of martyrs past and martyrs of the future."

"Unfortunately many children are trained by Al-Shabab, said Hasan Osman, director of Radio Shabelle, a popular radio station in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI). "Militant Islam began concentrating on recruiting children into combat when attacks became bolder and they decided to advance into the capital." [...]

Viewers of the new 28-minute recruitment video are encouraged to join the struggle with scenes of a room decorated for a party in Mogadishu, attended by children of dead jihadists and their mothers who are dressed in black.

Dozens of children, ages three to seven years old, hope to win plastic weapons as prizes, as well as balls and other typical toys in a type of quiz show for toddlers conducted by an international terrorists.

"Name the month in which you must fast?" goes one question. The questions increase in difficulty until the tiny contestants are asked to identify Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," the late founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, killed in 2006 in a US airstrike.

"Row over support for 'defensive jihad,'" by Hasan Suroor in The Hindu, April 2 (thanks to Twostellas):

LONDON: Leading South Asian rights campaigners have accused Amnesty International of "undermining'' the rights movement, especially the campaign against sex and gender discrimination, by working with extremist -- often misogynist -- groups engaged in what they claim is "defensive jihad''.

The row follows remarks by Claudio Cordone, its secretary-general, that "defensive jihad'' was not "antithetical'' to human rights. He made the comments in response to a Global Petition from rights activists questioning Amnesty's alliance with Cageprisoners, founded by Moazzam Begg, an ex- Guantanamo Bay prisoner and dubbed "Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban'' by a former Amnesty official.

"Moazzam Begg and others in his group Cageprisoners hold...views which they have clearly stated, for example on whether one should talk to the Taleban or on the role of jihad in self-defence. Are such views antithetical to human rights? Our answer is no, even if we may disagree with them ...,'' Mr Cordone wrote.

The initiators of the petition -- Amrita Chhachhi, Sara Hossain and Sunila Abeysekera, all prominent women's rights activists -- have called Mr. Cordone's remarks "shocking and incredible''.

"If this is the official position of the world's leading human rights organisation, this would gravely undermine the future of the human rights movement,'' they argued.

In a statement, they said that by endorsing "defensive jihad'', Amnesty was giving legitimacy to the arguments used by fundamentalist groups to justify their anti-human rights actions.

Silly and indefensible moral equivalence then wraps around a valid point:

"It is precisely 'defensive jihad' that the Taleban use to legitimise its anti human rights actions such as the beheading of dissidents, attacks on minorities, attacks on schools and religious shrines and the public lashing of women. A similar logic based on 'defence of religion' is used by the Christian right to justify the killing of doctors providing abortion services as well as by Hindutva fundamentalists to justify their violent attacks against Muslims and Christians in India,'' they said. Recently, Amnesty suspended the head of its gender unit Gita Sahgal after she went public with her concerns about its links with Mr Begg.

Islamabad, 30 March (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - The growing influence of the Taliban has forced cinemas to close in northern Pakistan despite support for the film industry from the secular provincial government in the North West Frontier Province. Many cinema owners are demolishing their theatres and replacing them with multi-storey commercial plazas.

Earlier restrictions imposed by the previous religious coalition Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) government on the display of the female form on cinema billboards have been lifted and cinemas are free to operate.

But most cinema owners are uncertain whether the Taliban might target their businesses or if a new government of any religious party in the future may affect their business.

So several cinema proprietors have moved to demolish their cinemas and are aiming to building multi-storey commercial plazas in and around the provincial capital, Peshawar.

The Falak Sher Cinema in Sadar Peshawar, Tasweer Mahal of Kabuli Bazaar in Peshawar , Novelty and Palwalsha cinemas in Peshawar are among the old cinemas which have been demolished in the last few years and all are being replaced by commercial buildings.

"There was a time in the 1960s and 1970s when cinema was the only entertainment in Peshawar where people used to go with family members or with friends," Peshawar journalist Nasir Dawar told Adnkronos International (AKI).

"However, video cassette recorders and video CD players changed the dynamics. People now prefer to watch the movies at home.

"The Taliban threat was an added woe which further discouraged cinema patrons. So cinema owners chose to demolish the buildings and convert them into commercial plazas.

"Cinemas were lost money for them but now with the commercial buildings they can earn millions of rupees from the rental money," he said.

Despite the Taliban's growing influence and a record number of bomb blasts and suicide attacks in the commercial markets and police posts in Peshawar last year, the famous Shama cinema, owned by a powerful federal minister's family, still shows what are considered to be pornographic English movies.

People flood the cinema every day and it does more business than a commercial market.

During the holy month of Ramadan, however, the Shama Cinema shows only Indian Bollywood movies which attract a comparatively thin crowd. During the sacred month of Muharram, the cinema is closed.

However, obscenity is not the only attraction in the cinema houses.

Well, that's good to know.

The Shabistan Cinema also draws audiences because it screens the latest Pashtu language movies.

Many renowned Pakistani screenwriters believe that cinema patrons lost their enthusiasm for cinema due to unpopular Pakistani films and obsolete cinema technology and the Taliban threat simply forced the cinema owners to switch to another business.

Following on the heels of the recent International Women’s Day comes the  DVD release of the remarkable and unforgettable film The Stoning of Soraya M. Based on the true story of a woman falsely accused of infidelity and stoned to death for it under Iran’s post-Islamic Revolution Khomeini regime, Soraya stands as condemnation of a barbaric punishment that, astoundingly, continues there today.

Soraya justifiably made numerous critics’ top ten 2009 film lists (including those of NRB’s David Swindle and Chris Yogerst - and reviewed here by Yogerst) and racked up a raft of awards, including, most recently, the NAACP Image Award for Best Foreign Motion Picture. And now it is becoming an underground hit and an inspiration in a country on the verge of a new revolution.

Not that this has inspired a feminist change of heart among Iran’s Islamofascist authorities. In ironic and brazen confirmation of their contempt for women’s rights, they have prevented Simin Behbahani, a prominent female poet and activist known as “the lioness of Iran“, from traveling to Paris to attend an event celebrating International Women’s Day.

Despite illness and advanced age (she is in her 80s), Behbahani nonetheless felt compelled to go to Paris because:

my passion and commitment to my country’s women… pushed me to take part in this ceremony to read a poem and talk about feminism.

Unfortunately for her and her country’s women, the clerics in Iran have a tad more passion and commitment to raging misogyny than to poetry and open discussions of feminism – a misogyny they justify by claiming that Iranian women are treated better and more respected than their Western counterparts, who are all reduced to being prostitutes, Hooters waitresses, or extras on Entourage.

Except that the Iranian authorities don’t so much place women on a pedestal as they do bury them in a pit and pulverize them with stones, like Soraya M., or rape and execute them to punish dissent, or haul them into jail for indecent Western hairstyles. I doubt that even the most under-tipped Hooters employee would want to trade in her Western sexual oppression for that kind of respect.

So don’t count on Iran making International Women’s Day a national holiday, as it is in such feminist Shangri-Las as China and Russia, anytime soon. For the time being, The Stoning of Soraya M. sits on Iran’s banned films list, and Ms. Behbahani sits on Iran’s no-fly-to-feminist-conferences list. But both stand, in their own way, as proud testaments against an Islamic regime that bears a positively medieval hatred toward women.

Click here to purchase “The Stoning of Soraya M.” now available on DVD and Blu-Ray.

"Saudi awards Turkey's Erdogan for 'service to Islam,'" from Middle East Online, March 10 (thanks to Twostellas):

RIYADH - Saudi King Abdullah presented Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with one of the country's most prestigious prizes on Tuesday for his 'service to Islam'.

Erdogan earned the King Faisal International Prize for having "rendered outstanding service to Islam by defending the causes of the Islamic nation, particularly the Palestinian cause and the just rights of the Palestinian people," said Abd Allah al-Uthaimin of the prize-awarding group.

"At the international level, he was a leading Muslim founder of the call for rapport between civilisations and a passionate advocate of constructive dialogue, openness, and principles of international understanding and cooperation."...

"Brit-Muslim leader forced to dress conservatively after receiving threatening calls," from Asian News International, March 7 (thanks to Watling):

London, Mar. 7 (ANI): A progressive Brit-Muslim woman councillor was forced to dress more conservatively after receiving death threats and sexually harassing phone calls.

Shiria Khatun, 38, told the police that callers threatened to kill her and her four young children.

In one call, they warned they would dig up parents' graves and bury her there instead.

The Labour councillor in the controversial borough of Tower Hamlets is considered one of the area's most progressive politicians.

She was elected in 2006, worked for Ken Livingstone as a transport adviser at London's City Hall and frequently campaigns for more Muslim women to enter politics.

However, over the past year she has been the victim of a "sick" harassment campaign.

At first she was "too embarrassed" to call the police, but when the threats, mostly made in the Bangladeshi dialect Sylheti, targeted her family she decided to act.

"As a councillor I'm meant to be a strong woman and I didn't want to show that I was bothered, but it's gone too far," the Daily Express quoted her, as saying.

"They're really disgusting. They would talk about my Western clothes, my tight jeans and my body parts," she added.

Rachel Corrie has attained sainthood only in those quarters where her real identity and agenda have been forgotten. Corrie was a pro-terror American-flag-burning undergraduate from Washington state, who committed suicide when she threw herself in front of an Israeli military bulldozer that was uncovering smuggling tunnels being used by Hamas terrorists in Gaza.  Corrie was in Gaza as part of the International Solidarity Movement or ISM.  Its intention was to use Corrie and her friends to stop Israeli anti-terror operations so that it would be easier for the Hamas terrorists to murder Israeli civilians. Her “martyrdom” is now celebrated by the likes of David Duke.

According to the press report, “An IDF investigation determined that the soldiers were  not to blame and said the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her and did not intentionally run her over.”  The Israeli army accused Corrie and the International Solidarity Movement of “illegal, irresponsible and dangerous behavior” as part of her attempt to prevent it from destroying houses hiding a smuggling tunnel, through which Palestinian terrorists were bringing in explosives to murder Jewish civilians.

Since her death, Rachel Corrie’s parents have traveled the globe as a two-person anti-Israel propaganda SWAT team in their quest for vengeance.  They have tried to ignite a boycott the Caterpiller company for the crime of selling bulldozers to Israel, some of which are used to fight terrorists.  They have filed suits in Israeli courts, which, until recently, were laughed out of court.  But there are now reports that the Obama administration has been putting pressure on Israel to let their suit go forward and even to allow other ISM collaborators with terrorism to enter the country as “witnesses.”  The Corries and their coterie are now scheduled to renew their efforts in Haifa in a court down the street from me on March 10.   I am hoping some students show up with photos of the other women named Rachel murdered by the terrorists that the Corries support.

Ironically, the Corrie parents were themselves briefly kidnapped by the Hamas terrorists a few years back when they were in Gaza to show the local jihadis their support.  Here is part of the news report:

“Palestinian gunmen burst into a Rafah house early Wednesday and tried to kidnap the parents of Rachel Corrie, who was killed in 2003 as she protested the impending demolition of a house in the southern Gaza town, according to a witness.  The five gunmen appeared to be affiliated with the Fatah movement, according to Samir Nasrallah, the Corries’ host. The gunmen eventually relented after being told who their targets were, he said.”

This might have been an opportunity for the Corrie parents to learn first hand just what Palestinian terrorism is all about and just why Israel needs to fight terrorism with a variety of means at its disposal, including bulldozers.   But instead they saw a quite different moral, summarized in the press release they issued blaming Israel: “The continued Israeli occupation undermines the ability of Palestinians to have a free society.”  This statement was reprinted in several media outlets, including the Guardian and the viciously anti-semitic Counterpunch magazine.

Now the Corries are coming to Haifa to renew their suit against Israel and to try to revise the history of their daughter’s death. Haifa, you recall, was the target of hundreds of rockets fired at it in the summer of 2006 by the Hezb’Allah terrorists, another group of “peace activists.”  In the name of all of us, the embattled citizens of Haifa, I have drafted a letter to hand Rachel Corrie’s parents when they arrive:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Corrie:

You are coming to our town to sue Israel, claiming that your daughter was “killed by an Israeli bulldozer.” We are, of course, sorry for your pain, but you say Rachel “had been working in Rafah with a nonviolent resistance organization, the International Solidarity Movement, trying to stop the demolition of Palestinian homes and wells.”  In the interests of the truth you say you are seeking, you should have mentioned the real circumstances under which Rachel was killed (and the fact that she died from her injuries while under Palestinian medical care).

Rachel was trying to prevent the demolition of tunnels used to smuggle weapons for Palestinian terrorists seeking to murder Jewish civilians. The group that sponsored her openly collaborates with terrorists.  It has hidden wanted terrorists and their weapons in its offices.   Two Arabs who entered Israel under its auspices blew up a Tel Aviv pub and murdered Jews.

Let’s be frank: your daughter was in Gaza to serve as a human shield to defend and promote Palestinian terrorism.  When you were nearly kidnapped, you were there for the same reason, which is the only reason you were released, rather than being killed or held for ransom.

You pretend that your daughter died trying to protect an “innocent house,” but in truth it was camouflage for a terrorist smuggling tunnel and the residents of that “innocent house” knew exactly what the tunnel was being used for.

Your daughter was in a war zone as a belligerent, as one who had – perhaps wittingly and perhaps not – allowed herself to be recruited by a genocidal movement seeking to destroy Israel and murder as many Jews as possible.   Your daughter died while interfering with an anti-terror operation carried out by an army in a land where she shouldn’t have been.  You demand that we feel your pain at the loss of your daughter.  We do, but we also know that she willingly became a conscript for those seeking to murder our children.  Why can’t YOU feel OUR pain?

Your daughter foolishly put herself in harm’s way by challenging a large bulldozer and placing herself in a position where the operator could not see her.  You know quite well that the bulldozer operator was not seeking to harm your daughter.  And you know quite well that no harm would have fallen her had she not decided to “play chicken” with the machine.

You smugly praise the propaganda play about your daughter in London, which ignored all the other Rachels, the Jewish women victims of terror in Israel, who were murdered by the genocidal terrorists with whom your daughter’s ISM friends collaborate.

Your daughter, and apparently you as well, never had any understanding of the Middle East conflict.  The Middle East conflict is NOT about the right to self-determination of Palestinian Arabs, but rather is about the right to self-determination of Israeli Jews.  For a century the Arabs have attempted to block any expression of Jewish self-determination, using violence, armed aggression, and terrorism.   The Arabs today control 22 countries and territory nearly twice the size of the United States.  They refuse to share even a fraction of one percent of the Middle East with Jews, a territory smaller than New Jersey.

Your write, “Clearly, our daughter has become a positive symbol for people.”   I am afraid you are mistaken.  Your daughter has become a symbol for dangerous foolhardiness.  She committed suicide as an empty gesture meant to assist murderers and terrorists.

You demand on the pages of anti-Semitic propaganda web magazines that the world mourn your daughter, but you do not have a single word of sympathy for the families of the thousands of innocent victims of the terrorists with whom your daughter chose to ally herself.

On behalf of the citizens of Haifa, all of whom your daughter’s Hamas friends are trying to murder, I ask you to stand back and consider the nature of the cause and the organizations to which you have turned, in your campaign to hold Israel responsible for your daughter’s death.

Signed, Steven Plaut

Israel praised an International Atomic Energy Agency report released on Thursday that says Iran may be developing a nuclear warhead.

"The new IAEA report deals more sharply and clearly than its predecessors with the military aspects of Iran's nuclear program," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement released on Friday.

Noting that the report is the first during the term of new IAEA chief Yukiya Amano of Japan, Israel said it "establishes that the agency has a lot of trustworthy information about the past and present activities that testify to the military tendencies of the Iranian program."

Among these activities were the recently declared decisions to enrich uranium to 20 percent and the continued construction of the Qom nuclear facility, kept secret until it was discovered by Western intelligence agencies and made public in recent months.

The UN nuclear agency report suggested for the first time that Teheran had either resumed such work or had never stopped when US intelligence thought it did....

Yet the Fantasy-Based Policymaking continues.

Sanaa, 18 Feb. (AKI) - Al-Qaeda has prepared "dozens" more bombs like the one used by the young Nigerian accused of trying to blow up an airliner in the United States on 25 December last year. The claim was allegedly made by the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula terror cell in a message posted in its online magazine 'al-Malamih'.

"We have dozens of sophisticated explosive devices which are similar to that used by the Nigerian,Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit," said the message in 'al-Malamih'.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula said in December it had provided Abdulmutallab with the explosive device he allegedly used to try to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with nearly 300 people aboard.

"The plan was to blow up the plane as it approached Detroit, so that it would fall onto buildings below and kill the maximum number of Americans," the message said.

Had it succeeded, it would have been the worst attack on the United States since Al-Qaeda's September 11 2001 assault.

"Four years ago, we began producing similar devices to that used by Umar Farouk," the 'al-Malamih' message said.

AQAP was officially formed in January 2009 from a merger of Al-Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi branches.

The message claimed that Abdulmutallab trained at camps in Yemen in the second half of last year and was eager to "go into action".

Abdulmutallab was "always quiet and thought a lot," kept to himself, read the Koran and fasted every Monday and Thursday, the message said.

The explosive material used in the device concealed in the Nigerian's underwear was 'Pent', it stated.

Just four grammes of the substance are needed to produce a major blast, it claimed.

"The reason we chose a flight that left from (the Dutch capital) Amsterdam, is that the Netherlands is a country that has offended the Koran and Islam," the message stated.

This may be a reference to late Dutch director Theo Van Gogh's film 'Submission' which was aired on Dutch TV in 2004...

And/or Geert Wilders' Fitna, though the jihadists' claim of revenge on Amsterdam through this act seems like a hollow excuse to agitate for the erosion of free speech in Europe. Never mind that the mandate for jihad to impose Islamic law exists regardless of excuse du jour offered in jihadist propaganda.