The unwillingness of authorities to put a stop to their organized disruptions of other people’s lives, their trespassing, vandalism and violence is a de facto suspension, if not repeal, of the 14th Amendment’s requirement that the government provide “equal protection of the laws” to all its citizens.

How did the “Occupy” movement acquire such immunity from the laws that the rest of us are expected to obey? Simply by shouting politically correct slogans and calling themselves representatives of the 99 percent against the 1 percent.

But just when did the 99 percent elect them as their representatives? If in fact 99 percent of the people in the country were like these “Occupy” mobs, we would not have a country. We would have anarchy.

Democracy does not mean mob rule. It means majority rule. If the “Occupy” movement, or any other mob, actually represents a majority, then they already have the votes to accomplish legally whatever they are trying to accomplish by illegal means.

Mob rule means imposing what the mob wants, regardless of what the majority of voters want. It is the antithesis of democracy.

In San Francisco, when the mob smashed the plate-glass window of a small business shop, the owner put up some plywood to replace the glass, and the mob wrote graffiti on his plywood. The consequences? None for the mob, but a citation for the shop owner for not removing the graffiti.

When trespassers blocking other people at the University of California, Davis refused to disperse, and locked their arms with one another to prevent the police from being able to physically remove them, the police finally resorted to pepper spray to break up this human logjam.

The result? The police have been strongly criticized for enforcing the law. Apparently pepper spray is unpleasant, and people who break the law are not supposed to have unpleasant things done to them.

Which is to say, we need to take the “enforcement” out of “law enforcement.”

An older video which purports to show an Egyptian officer ordering a woman to take off all her clothes, is even worse, sparking debate anew. For the stripping is not a product of haste, blind-rage, or chaos—as apologists for the Blue Bra Woman incident argue—but deliberate, methodical, and sadistic.

According to a new report appearing yesterday on El Bashayer, Mohsin Bahsani, president of an Egyptian organization called Legal Assistance for Human Rights, has brought this video to the spotlight, saying he is preparing to submit a formal complaint to the Attorney General, asking for legal action to be taken, including identifying the perpetrators.

The video was earlier aired on the popular Egyptian program “90 Minutes” (click here; clip appears from around minute 1:45 to minute 4). It appears to be taped inside an apartment, where a man, dressed like an officer, threatens and slaps a woman around, bullying her to take off all her clothes. He constantly commands her to “strip” and orders the others in the room to keep the door closed.

First he gives her a hard, swift slap across the face when she refuses to take off her top; then she takes it off but he orders her to take her bra off as well. After protesting, she complies, but then covers her face for shame, all while sopping; he yells at her not to cover her face and gives her another hard slap. Then he resumes ordering her to continue stripping, i.e., take her pants—and presumably underwear, based on precedent—off. The video then cuts off.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism broke the story that McCarthy met with officials from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), where he promised that the Chicago Police Department would not use the surveillance tactics that CAIR has lashed out at the NYPD for using. Outrageously, McCarthy even agreed to speak at a fundraiser for CAIR’s branch in Chicago. The event will honor Kifah Mustapha, an imam whose bid to become the Illinois State Police’s first Muslim chaplain was torpedoed when his links to Hamas came to light.

CAIR was labeled by the federal government as an “unindicted co-conspirator”  in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity found to be a Hamas front used for fundraising. In 2007, the said that, “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists” and “the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”

In 2009, the FBI stopped working with CAIR on outreach to the Muslim community. CAIR lost its fight to have its designation as an “unindicted co-conspirator” lifted and on July 1, 2009, District Court Judge Jorge Solis ruled that there was “ample evidence” tying CAIR to Hamas to justify the label.

This did not stop all law enforcement agencies from working with CAIR. In October 2010, the FBI field office in New Haven, Connecticut used the Muslim Coalition of Connecticut, led by a former CAIR spokesman, to train its personnel in “Islamophobia.” CAIR helped organize the event.

Yet, CAIR still is able to influence the media, politicians and agencies involved in counter-terrorism.

In 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department caved to CAIR’s pressure over its plans to use mapping to analyze the threat posed by different areas of the Muslim community. A spokeswoman said, “There was a clear message from the Muslim community that they were not comfortable with it. So we listened.” Today, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca is among the most prominent defenders of CAIR and speaks at its fundraisers.

The pressure campaign against law enforcement, especially the NYPD, went into high gear in early 2011 after reports were published allegedly exposing the influence of “Islamophobes” on counter-terrorism training. By October, the FBI Director was ordering a cleansing of all “offensive content” from training materials with the help of unnamed outside organizations. The same orders were given at the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security.

It soon became apparent that the outsiders helping the U.S. government edit its materials included the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a group founded by Brotherhood ideologues and a close ally of CAIR. In October, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Counterterrorism Center distributed a document to all law enforcement agencies about how to craft its training programs. MPAC and Sheriff Baca were cited in the report. Words like “jihad” and “Islam” did not appear in the text.

In Hoke County, North Carolina, a four-year-old girl brought her homemade lunch to school.  It contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, apple juice, potato chips, and a banana.

All hell broke loose.

A state inspector pounced on the lunch as though he’d found a loose land mine in the pre-school.  He decided that the lunch didn’t contain all the relevant parts of the complete meal, and that the girl needed a full school lunch tray, including chicken nuggets, a fruit and a vegetable, and milk.  The girl, being a non-statist, peacefully resisted the vegetable, and downed the chicken nuggets.

The mother was outraged, as well she should be.  “I can’t put vegetables in her lunchbox,” she told the Civitas Institute.  “I’m not a millionaire and I’m not going to put something in there that my daughter doesn’t eat and I’ve done gone round and round with the teacher about that and I’ve told her that.  I put fruit in there every day because she is a fruit eater.  Vegetables, let me take care of my business at home and at night and that’s when I see she’s eating vegetables.”

But no.  This is not the way Big Government world works.  See, the more the government pays for, the more the government has an interest in all of your actions.  If the government is funding your nutritional needs, the government has an interest in you eating just the right amount; if you decide to toss your vegetables, someone else will have to pay the price, and we wouldn’t want that.  This is the same principle behind Obamacare – with everybody sponsoring everybody else’s healthcare, the state now has a compelling interest in telling you what, when, and how to eat.

There are two problems with this animal husbandry-style level of control.  First, it cuts against fundamental American freedoms.  White or black, rich or poor, if there’s one thing Americans won’t stand for, it’s namby-pamby liberals telling them to eat arugula.  One of the joys of living in a free country is deciding what to eat.  As visitors from poverty-stricken foreign lands what they admire most about America, and they’ll tell you it’s the variety of cuisine available at any time, day or night.  Force-feeding Americans soylent green for their own good isn’t going to mesh well with traditional notions of liberty.

I spent last week with my wife in Europe.  We spent a few days of that time in Italy, most in Rome, doing all of the touristy sight-seeing: the Coliseum, the Vatican, the Spanish Steps.  Essentially, we retraced Audrey Hepburn’s route in Roman Holiday.

And, of course, my wife wanted to buy a souvenir.  So we toured the myriad street markets of Rome, where street vendors hawked their wares: knockoff purses, paintings, cheap trinkets.  Despite the troubles with the euro, the dollar still compares poorly in terms of value (current exchange rate: 1 Euro to 1.3 dollars), so everything was relatively expensive.  But the markets were packed, and with good reason: Italy’s real economy is these off-books markets, paid for in cash.

Some economists estimate that a full 50% of the Italian economy is the black market.  Even the Fodor’s tour book is stunned by the sheer size of this underground market: “if the highest estimates are correct, Italy’s black market is about as large as the entire economy of Switzerland or Indonesia.  If the estimated black-market figures were added to the official GDP, Italy would likely leapfrog France, the U.K., and China to become the world’s fourth-largest economy.”  This has, of course, been a problem for Italy since the end of World War II; in 1951, Time reported, “Tax collecting in Italy is a cat & mouse game, well understood by both sides.  Italian taxpayers declare only a tiny fraction of their true incomes; the government in return automatically triples whatever declaration the taxpayer makes.”

There’s a reason the black market is so large in Italy: it’s the only way anybody can survive.  Housing prices in Rome are egregiously high, and taxes are even more extreme: the individual income tax rate tops out at 43%, and the corporate tax rate is 31.4%.  There’s also a 20% value added tax (sales tax).  No wonder so many businesses in Italy don’t open every day – why bother, when the government will punish you for obeying the law in the form of confiscatory taxation?

And yet Italy still can’t pay for its massive social safety net.  Italy’s debt to GDP ratio is now 120%.  Its average age is well above 40, and there is no robust new generation of children on the way.  Rome has become a gorgeous relic, not just in architecture, but in population.

While we were in Italy, the government had to ram through a $40.3 billion austerity measure; this week, they were only able to raise $9 billion in bond sales.  The government dumped its inflation-pegged payments to pensioners, which means that seniors effectively took what the Reuters called an “income cut” – though those seniors are not being paid for anything but sitting around drinking espresso.  In fact, pension age was raised to 66 by 2018 and incentives were put in place to keep workers employed until 70.  The Italian government also raised taxes yet again, this time in the form of a 1.5% tax on money sent back to Italy; the government also wants to raise the VAT another 2%.  So apparently, the solution to a horrible tax system driving people into an underground economy is to raise taxes.  The Italian government’s new slogan: veni, vidi, I tributarium.

If I were a liberal, I would have spent the last week in shock that a Democratic audience in Flint, Mich., cheered Vice President Joe Biden’s description of a policeman being killed. (And if I were a liberal desperately striving to keep my job on MSNBC, I’d say the Democrats looked “hot and horny” for dead cops — as Chris Matthews said of a Republican audience that cheered for the death penalty.)

Biden’s audience whooped and applauded last week in Flint when he said that without Obama’s jobs bill, police will be “outgunned and outmanned.” (Wild applause!)

I suppose liberals would claim they were applauding because they believe Obama’s jobs bill will prevent these murders. Which reminds me: Republicans believe the death penalty prevents murders!

Which belief bears more relationship to reality?

In a case I have previously mentioned, Kenneth McDuff was released from death row soon after the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 and went on to murder more than a dozen people.

William Jordan and Anthony Prevatte were sentenced to death in 1974 for abducting a teacher, murdering him and stealing his car. They came under suspicion when they were caught throwing the murder weapon from the stolen vehicle in a high-speed car chase with the cops and because they were in possession of the dead man’s wallet, briefcase and watch.

The Georgia Supreme Court overturned their capital sentences in an opinion by Robert H. Hall, who was appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Hall said that the death sentences had to be set aside on the idiotic grounds that the jurors had overheard the prosecutor say that the judge and state supreme court would have the opportunity to review a death sentence, which might have caused them to take their sentencing role less seriously.

(If the facts had been the reverse, the court would have overturned the death sentences on the grounds that the jurors did not take their sentencing decision seriously, under the misapprehension that no judge or court would second-guess them.)

Prevatte was later released from “life in prison” and proceeded to murder his girlfriend. Jordan escaped and has never been found.

As president, Carter appointed Hall to a federal district court.

“Good old Joe,” as Obama calls him. If only Joe Biden’s veracity matched his charming smile. But it doesn’t. Biden has a lengthy history of outright falsehoods as well as careless gaffes.

Biden warned earlier this month that more people would likely be raped and murdered if President Obama’s jobs bill wasn’t passed. The Weekly Standard quoted Biden as saying at a campaign event: “In 2008, when Flint (Michigan) had 265 sworn officers on their police force, there were 35 murders and 91 rapes in this city. In 2010 when Flint had only 144 police officers, the murder rate climbed to 65, and rapes…climbed to 229. In 2011, you now have only 125 shields. God knows what the numbers will be if we don’t rectify it” (by passing the president’s phony jobs bill, which includes $35 billion to supposedly avert police layoffs).

Biden repeated the dire warnings at a later Philadelphia event.

But according to Fact Check, Joe’s figures were way off base. They don’t “square with FBI data.” And since then he has said rapes in Flint have tripled and even “quadrupled.” But FBI data show that rapes, instead, have gone down 11 percent from 103 in 2008 to 92 in 2010.

As for the claim that the city’s murder rate has “tripled,” the city says there were a record high 66 murders that year, double, not triple the 32 murders that occurred in 2008.

Violent crime is “bad in Flint, no doubt, but Biden makes it out to be worse than it is.” A Fact Check update Oct. 23 found that the rape figures reported by Flint to the Michigan State Police confirm that rapes declined in the city from 2008 to 2010. “We also found that the broader category of criminal sexual conduct also was down.”

State police figures show a 10 percent reduction in total criminal sexual conduct reports between 2008 and 2010. Also murder, rape and robbery are declining this year in spite of police layoffs in Flint, according to the most recent official report by the State Police.

Biden was wrong when he said the murder rate has tripled.

Fact Check explained:

In 2008, there were 32 murders in a city of 113,462 people for a murder rate of .28 murders per 1,000 residents. In 2010, there were 66 murders and a population of 109,245 for a rate of .60 murders per 1,000. That’s an increase of 115 percent, more than double but not quite triple.

Could it be that Old Joe is confusing crime with the deficit and debt which has tripled and quadrupled since Obama and Old Joe took office?

Is a shortage of police a new phenomenon? Hardly. Back in 2003, for instance, the Hartford, Conn. police union griped that budget cuts plaguing the state had forced the city to hold off filling department vacancies. The union said there “are not enough officers to fill beats and not enough to back each other up.”

Hartford was not alone. “Other cities, including Bridgeport and New Haven are also down officers,” said a July 27, 2003 report in The New York Times.

In 2004, USA TODAY reported Cleveland’s mayor reported staffing problems in police and fire departments.

Barack Obama is a man of many talents. Some presidents might be content to wreck the nation’s finances and display confused impotence to our enemies, but Obama also takes the time to needlessly poison America’s cultural well. Last night, Sean Hannity took the president to task for including Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., AKA rapper/poet “Common,” on the docket of a White House celebration of American prose.

Common’s prose covers all the bases of lefty thug culture, including railing against supposed warmongers:

Burn a Bush cos’ for peace he no push

No button

Killing over oil and grease

No weapons of destruction

How can we follow a leader when this a corrupt one

And resentment of the law as the mortal enemy of blacks, who might want to consider packing heat, just in case:

Tell the law my Uzi weighs a ton

I walk like a warrior, from them I won’t run

On the streets they try to beat us like a drum

In Cincinnati another brother hung

Common is also a friend and defender of Obama’s old pal Jeremiah Wright—in 2008 he claimed what he “picked up from the pews…was messages of love.” Why, even love for the “US of KKK-A,” and those in the CIA who cooked up AIDS to decimate the black population! I don’t know about you, but I can certainly feel the love!

Of course, keeping in line with Wright, Common is also a racist. John Nolte revealed at Big Hollywood that Common disapproves of interracial relationships.

The usual defense of these guys is something along the lines of, “they may not be role models, but they’re not writing for kids.” Someone should tell that to Common himself, who says he is trying to “reach out and say something” inspiring to children, especially those who “don’t have parents around.” My hero.

In response to the uproar, the White House simply says that Common’s words has been distorted and that cop-killing isn’t the sum total of his work. Obama has never exactly been a crusader against filth in pop culture, but he did take a harder line as a candidate, when he called out rappers who degraded women and wrote in The Audacity of Hope (paperback pp. 60-61):

Progressives in particular seem confused on this point, which is why we so often get our clocks cleaned in elections. I recently gave a speech at the Kaiser Family Foundation after they released a study showing that the amount of sex on television has doubled in recent years. Now I enjoy HBO as much as the next guy, and I generally don’t care what adults watch in the privacy of their homes. In the case of children, I think it’s primarily the duty of parents to monitor what they are watching on television, and in my speech I even suggested that everyone would benefit if parents—heaven forbid—simply turned off the TV and tried to strike up a conversation with their kids.

Having said all that, I indicated that I wasn’t too happy with ads for erectile-dysfunction drugs popping up every fifteen minutes whenever I watched a football game with my daughters in the room. I offered the further observation that a popular show targeted at teens, in which young people with no visible means of support spend several months getting drunk and jumping naked into hot tubs with strangers, was not “the real world.”

It’s one thing that Barack Obama has been largely AWOL on race relations since becoming the nation’s biggest black role model, but now he’s elevating part of the problem. “Inspiring” black children with the message that the police everywhere are naturally inclined to oppress them not only stokes division and racial resentment, it can’t help but undermine the rule of law by conditioning mistrust for one of the government entities that actually is essential to society. The Common invite highlights how yet another of the promises of Obama’s election was never more than a pipe dream: the promise that he would lead America into a post-racial age.

Iran will step up measures to force retailers selling clothing to comply with "Islamic values," according to the police.

"Producing and distributing inappropriate clothes, those not complying with Islamic and Iranian culture, should be avoided," Abbas Miraei, who heads the Office of Supervision of the Public Sphere for the Iranian police, was cited as saying today by Iranian Labour News Agency. Further details weren't immediately available.

Iran has set aside $1.5 billion to promote "moral conduct," including enforcement of its dress code for women, "to solve the cultural and social ills" in society, Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar said on May 10. His comments followed the introduction of a code of conduct at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences that bans loud laughter, nail polish, high heels and immodest clothing for women and men.

The police will "deal firmly" with violators of Iran's laws on moral conduct, Mohammad Najjar said last month. A cleric at Tehran's main Friday prayers, Iran's largest, said in April that women who dress immodestly cause earthquakes.

Iranian authorities increase their enforcement of the women's dress code annually to prevent them from abandoning Islamic dress amid summer temperatures that can reach 42 degrees Celsius (107 Fahrenheit) in Tehran.

Under Shiraz University's code, in effect since Feb. 20, women must wear loose, long coats in subdued colors that go below the knee. Men aren't permitted to wear jewelry, except for a wedding ring, nor short-sleeve shirts, and their trousers should be loose. Shoes shouldn't have pointed toes, make noise or have heels higher than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches).

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (June 9) -- Gunmen torched more than 20 NATO tractor-trailers ferrying fuel and supplies into Afghanistan, killing at least seven people and leaving the charred convoy in shambles just six miles outside Pakistan's capital.

Capital city police said as many as 12 militants attacked the fleet while it was parked at a rest stop in Tarnol, using small arms and grenades to set ablaze oil tankers and military vehicles that were on their way to the Afghan border east of Peshawar. All of the attackers escaped.

Media reports differed on the number of NATO trucks involved, with Xinhua and Al-Jazeera saying more than 50 were destroyed. The Associated Press is reporting that in addition to fuel and other supplies, some of the trucks hauled trailers carrying military Humvees to troops in Afghanistan. The AP, citing police official Shah Nawaz, said the seven people killed were believed to be Pakistanis employed as drivers or assistants.

The Punjabi Taliban has taken responsibility for the attack, adding to fears among Pakistani officials that Punjab province, considered Pakistan's commercial and intellectual heartland, is increasingly vulnerable to militants. Islamabad, a virtual fortress city, has remained relatively peaceful in recent months, but the brazen midnight assault is a stark reminder that groups opposed to the war in Afghanistan can strike even minutes outside the safe zone....

Rioting was reported in the Stockholm suburb of Rinkeby on Tuesday night as 50-60 youths pelted police with stones and set alight to a building.

"It is a war zone out here, it is raining stones", said one witness who wished to remain anonymous to the Metro daily.

According to another witness a bus trying to enter the deprived area was forced to stop.

"Not a single window on the bus was intact," an eye witness said.

Police were given an indication that something was afoot earlier in the evening as youths gathered on the streets equipping themselves with paving stones.

"They did all they could to attract our attention," said Mats Brännlund at Stockholm police.

But police decided to react first when a building housing a mentor programme for young people in the area, burst into flames.

"We had to help the emergency services to get through," Brännlund said.

In total around 20 police patrols with dogs were present in the area throughout the night as they tried to restore calm. Police vehicles were also subject to stone throwing.

"If you attack the police with stones and set alight to buildings then I would venture to suggest that it can be classified as rioting," he said.

The fire services deployed 21 staff from three fire stations at the location, but none were reported to have been subjected to stone throwing.

A branch of the Nordea bank was attacked at around midnight with the local police station also the target of stone throwing youths. Two men were detained in connection with the police station attack....

PATTANI, Thailand - A drive-by bombing near a mosque wounded 23 people in Thailand's turbulent south in what police said Wednesday was an attack by Muslim insurgents.

Witnesses saw two men on a motorcycle throw an improvised explosive device at a government pickup truck in Yala town Tuesday evening, but the bomb missed the vehicle and landed just across the street from the mosque, Police Superintendent Col. Piyawat Chalermsri said.

Most of those hurt were Muslims. Two victims were in intensive care, including a 14-year-old girl in critical condition.

Thailand's southernmost provinces, the only ones with Muslim majorities in the predominantly Buddhist country, have been gripped for the past six years by a separatist insurgency that has claimed more than 4,000 lives.

Southern Muslims have long complained of being treated as second-class citizens, and the government has put more effort into suppressing the insurgency than dealing with the root causes of their disaffection.

In other words, they should play the dhimmi rather than meet violent intimidation with resistance.

Piyawat said he believed Islamist insurgents targeting the government were behind Tuesday's bombing. Surveillance video broadcast on Thai TV stations showed an explosion seconds after an army truck drove by a teahouse.

However, one analyst was skeptical about the government claim because no previous attacks had been carried out in that area of Yala, which is a wholly Muslim sector filled with people going to the mosque....

Last weekend, the feds popped two more US citizens who yearned to kill their fellow Americans for Allah.  They hoped to join al-Shabab, Somali’s ruthless jihadis, but fantasized about slaughter right here at home.

And, once again, any mention of Islamist extremism was absent from government statements, as if these guys were just angry about parking tickets.

The would-be Times Square car bomber, the guess-what’s-in-my-knickers Christmas Day airline bomber, no end of got-‘em-in-time apprehensions, plus the Ft. Hood butcher, Major Nidal Hasan…and even the media barely hint at what all these fanatics have in common.

Dare to suggest that radical Islam might be to blame, and you’re a bigot.  Just as pointing out that Palestinian terrorism led to Israel’s hard line stand makes you a fascist.  But those who reject radical Islam’s role as the driving force behind today’s terrorism must answer one obvious question:

Where are the Christian terrorists?

The ignored persecution, deprivation and massacres aren’t in Gaza, the global left’s favorite petting zoo.  The cover-up victims are the Middle East’s Christians.

Set aside for now the vast Christian communities that once thrived between Morocco and Mesopotamia.  The multiple holocausts they suffered for over a thousand years at Muslim hands doesn’t fit the White-House-approved narrative.

Let’s concentrate on today—when the only country left in the Middle East in which Christians enjoy complete freedom of worship, freedom from secret police surveillance, forced conversions, pogroms or civil strife, is Israel.

But that won’t do, either.  Can’t make Israel the good guy.  So how about those “suffering Palestinians?”  You know, the folks that chick-lit Che Guevara, Rachel Corrie, sought to rescue from an Israeli bulldozer…

Well, the Palestinians who’ve suffered the most have been Christians. And it hasn’t been the Israelis who’ve been persecuting them.

Take the West Bank city of Bethlehem, the literal cradle (or manger) of Christianity.  A half century ago, its Arab population was 80% Christian.  Today, Christians make up no more than 15% of the locals, and their numbers continue to shrink.

Throughout the Palestinian territories, the once-vibrant Christian population is estimated to have collapsed to a mere 25,000.  Muslim rapes, murders, kidnappings, extortion, death threats and property theft are to blame.

Where are the Christian terrorists?

In neighboring Egypt, Christianity’s intellectual center in its formative centuries, centuries of Islamization reduced, but failed to eliminate the Christian faith.

Coptic Christians, with their ancient traditions, still make up as much as 15% of Egypt’s population, which is nearing 80 million.  But the faith is under siege again.  The Mubarak regime appears to have decided to let its mortal enemy, the Muslim Brotherhood, have some leash in the persecution department.

Copts suffer village pogroms, ghettoization in cities, and kidnappings and forced conversions (often of marriage-age girls).  They’re prevented from constructing new churches and suffer general discrimination.  Killings of Copts go uninvestigated by Egypt’s police.

Where are the Christian terrorists?

Then there’s Iraq, where a tragic unintended consequence of the removal of Saddam Hussein–the region’s worst mass murderer–has been the destruction of ancient Christian communities.

Prior to 2003, there were about a million Christians in Iraq.  Most are now refugees.  Successive Iraqi governments have shown little interest in protecting those who remain.  Leading churchmen have been assassinated, Christian families have been slaughtered, churches have been bombed and burned.  And we’ve done nothing—to avoid irritating Muslims.

Where are the Christian terrorists?

Given the excuses made for Islamist terror, shouldn’t we have seen a violent response by now?

Of course, none of this is an issue in Saudi Arabia, where the Christian (and Jewish) communities that thrived at the dawn of Islam were wiped out centuries ago.  Even Lebanon, long a state where Christians enjoyed religious freedom, suffers from the grim Islamist contagion.

The absence of Christian terrorism in the savagely anti-Christian Middle East goes beyond Christ’s call to “turn the other cheek.”  It further highlights extremist Islam as the source of today’s terror.

But Washington will continue to shut its eyes and bluster about the “legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people,” etc., etc.  Dead Arab Christians are even less important than dead Jews.

Ralph Peters’ latest book is “Endless War.”

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.

(Photo courtesy Pamela Geller, who has many more here.)

They started showing up long before the rally began at noon today. They came from Washington state, California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, South Carolina, Florida, and elsewhere. They were Christians, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, atheists, Muslims of conscience. They were lovers of freedom.

An hour before the rally began, they numbered 1,000. Zuccotti Park's owners sided with the Islamic supremacists and withdrew their permit to allow us to gather there, and so the police repeatedly requested that people leave the park and move into the pens that the police had set up at Church and Liberty streets. Before noon, however, the pens were full -- and so, with free citizens having every legal right to be in the park, the park became a site for the rally despite the best efforts of its clueless dhimmi owners.

By the time the rally was in full swing, the crowd filled the pens, the park, and the other side of the street. Police estimated that 5,000 people were there, and other estimates ranged as high as 10,000. The crowd carried signs expressing their love for freedom, their contempt for Sharia, and their anger at Islamic supremacism and insult to the memories of those murdered on 9/11 that this mosque represents.

And we had a full spectrum of top quality speakers. There were 9/11 family members, including C. Lee Hanson, who lost his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter on 9/11. There were people who experienced the oppression of Sharia firsthand, such as the Egyptian ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish, the Sudanese ex-slave Simon Deng, and the Hindu human rights activist Babu Suseelan. There was Dennis McKenna, who worked recovering remains from the ruins of the World Trade Center; Alan T. DeVona, the patrol sergeant on duty on September 11, 2001; and Keith LeBow, an ironworker who was one of the first responders on the scene on September 11. There was Herb London of the Hudson Institute and Beverly Carlson of the Band of Mothers -- and a host of other speakers, all lovers of America and lovers of freedom.

The theme among all the speakers was common: the mosque is an insult to the Americans who were murdered there. It is a manifestation of a radically intolerant belief system that is incompatible with the freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. And even with all the political elites against us, and the mainstream media indifferent or compromised (5,000 to 10,000 people at the rally, and no mainstream media coverage!), we will prevail. All we have on our side is the truth.

Pamela Geller did interviews with Al-Jazeera, AP, Chilean television, Italian television and many others; I was interviewed by Italian television and TV Asia. ABC? NBC? CBS? CNN? Even FOX? AWOL.

And the truth is powerful. The forecast had called for rain, but it didn't start raining in New York until after the rally had broken up. Many took it as a sign that we represented the cause of right and justice. And even with all the indifference of the politicians and the media, we sent a signal today: we will not let this injustice stand. We will be rallying again in September, and again when construction begins on the mega-mosque. We will be filing suit against the Federal Government, asking that the Burlington Coat Factory site where the mega-mosque is going to be built be designated a war memorial, a la Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg, etc., because of the part of one of the 9/11 airplanes that crashed into the roof there, and that is in the makeshift mosque that Muslims are using there now.

And above all: we will never give up.

"Blasts, shootings kill five in Russia's N.Caucasus," from Reuters, June 4:

Near the town of Malgobek in Ingushetia, a policeman was killed and 25 people injured when a second bomb exploded in a shop bombed earlier in the day, a police spokesman told Reuters.

Police at the scene told Reuters an insurgent was also killed in a gunfight that ensued between officers and militants.

In a separate incident, a woman selling vodka from a kiosk was shot dead in Malgobek by unidentified gunmen, sources close to the police said.

The mainly Muslim North Caucasus is plagued by violence. Youths, driven by poverty and the ideology of global jihad, stage attacks almost daily. Many want to carve out a separate sharia state where strict Islam is practiced.

Kiosk sellers have been targeted in the past for selling alcohol by Islamist militants wanting to enforce sharia law in Ingushetia....

Saudi Arabia's religious police are investigating three young Saudis who challenged the country's strict laws in a TV programme.

The two men and a woman were featured in a MTV documentary talking about how they wanted to subvert the Islamic laws of the country.

In recent years the rulers of the oil-rich kingdom have said they want to instigate reforms.

But lawyers say the three could face stern penalties.

The Saudi judicial system is based on a strict Islamic code and can hand out jail terms and floggings for people who break them.

Segregation

In the programme - called Resist the Power! Saudi Arabia - a girl named only as Fatimah told how she disguised herself as a boy to ride a bicycle in the streets of Jeddah.

The 20-year-old also railed against the traditional women's dress - a black robe known as an abaya.

She said she made her own abayas in bright colours, which she sold to friends.

A young man, Aziz, talked about his attempts to break the strict segregation of the sexes in Saudi life - to meet his girlfriend for a date.

"We are not free to live as we like," said the 24-year-old.

That's Sharia for you.

The four part documentary, which was screened in the US, also followed a Saudi heavy metal band who struggled to find venues that would allow them to play.

An official at a court in Jeddah said the films were being investigated for the crimes of "openly declaring sin" and a decision would be made on whether to prosecute in the next few days, Reuters reported....

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?

ATHENS, May 31 (Reuters) - Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Europe and the Middle East on Monday, clashing with police as they protested against the Israeli storming of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla during which 10 activists were killed.

In Athens, some 3,500 protesters rallied outside the Israeli embassy, chanting "Hands off Gaza" and "Free Palestine". Several hundreds clashed with police, throwing chunks of marble, stones and bottles. Police fired teargas to disperse them.

"Demonstrators set barricades on fire, police chased them, there were a lot of stones and teargas and a few people had blood on their heads," a Reuters witness said, adding he saw four people injured. Police said they detained five protesters.

The Israeli marines' action in the eastern Mediterranean sparked street protests and government ire in Turkey, long Israel's lone Muslim ally in the region, and thousands of followers of an anti-U.S. cleric took to the streets in Baghdad.

Across Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, up to 8,000 Egyptians protested, demanding the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador in Cairo and called on the government to open its Rafah borders with Gaza.

The protests were organised by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition group which is affiliated to Hamas, the Islamist group that took control of the Gaza strip in 2007. Two Brotherhood parliamentarians were on board the convoy ships.

"Hamas you are the cannon and the Brotherhood is your voice," chanted thousands of Egyptians protesting in Cairo. The Brotherhood routinely organises protests demanding the lifting of the Israeli blockade on Gaza.

Police used teargas in Paris when about 2,000 people demonstrated near the Israeli embassy, hurling stones, waving Palestinian and Turkish flags and brandishing banners saying "Long live free Palestine" and "Criminal Israel."

Small, peaceful anti-Israel demonstrations were held in Rome and other Italian cities. "The Italian government needs to immediately call back its ambassador from Israel as other countries in Europe have done," said Paolo Cento, a leftwing politician among the demonstrators.

"This is extremely serious and has no precedent whatsoever in the history of international diplomacy."

Swedish police said more than 5,000 protesters marched from a central Stockholm square towards the Israeli embassy, carrying banners and shouting slogans.

Chanting "Boycott Israel", they held banners saying "Free Gaza", "Put Israel on Trial, "Israel to The Hague" and "Gaza Bleeds."

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan authorities suspended two Christian foreign aid groups Monday on suspicion of proselytizing in the strictly Islamic nation and said a follow-up investigation would include whether other groups were trying to convert Muslims.

U.S.-based Church World Service and Norwegian Church Aid will not be allowed to operate while the allegations, aired Sunday on Afghan television, are investigated, said Mohammad Hashim Mayar, the deputy director of the Afghan government office that oversees nongovernment organizations, known as NGOs....

Proselytizing is illegal in Afghanistan, as it is in many Muslim countries. It is a hot-button issue for many Afghans sensitive to the influence of the scores of foreign aid groups operating in the country to help it recover from decades of war.

The television report, which interviewed local police saying they had heard rumors of the charities' proselytizing, triggered a demonstration by several hundred students at Kabul University on Monday.

The group shouted deaths threats toward foreigners who seek to convert Muslims and demanded that the government expel anyone who tried, said Mohammad Najib, a professor at the school who witnessed the protest.

The group blocked the road outside the university's main gate for more than an hour before the demonstrators moved off peacefully, Najib said. Police stood by but did not intervene....