Infidels Paradise

Okay, here’s what I do sometimes, especially surfing the internet very late at night. If I come across something of interest I’ll email myself the link and look for it in the email box the next day, especially if it’s a slow news day.

Welllllll, sometimes the next day news gets busy, and the self-sent email with story link sits … and sits in the in box. So, I’m sifting through my email to clear it out a bit and came across those ‘left behind’ story links. Here are a few you might want to catch up on (some maybe a couple days old, and some weeks or a month behind …).

When irony collides with prescience in a very old un-PC Warner Brothers cartoon … a lot of hidden stuff in here. Pork, humping camels, suicide bombers, and Arab protesters:

With all the debate about military tribunals or civilian trials for terrorists, we have been hearing the, of course, warped figures coming out of the left, and the supposedly responsible and stand-up administration, in arguing how many terror convictions in civilian trials there have been:

A new study should finally put to rest the nonsense claim by President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and others in the administration that “hundreds” of terrorists akin to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad were convicted in the civilian justice system during the Bush administration. The number thrown around by the administration has varied widely from 300 to 190 to assorted spots in between. The point of quoting these figures was to make Americans think that trials of people accused of the most serious terrorism offenses, on par with the 9/11 attacks and those the other Guantanamo detainees are accused of committing, have been routine in civilian courts. So what’s the big deal?

We’ve said that this bloated number is not an apples-to-apples comparison, because it sweeps in large numbers of defendants whose crimes — such as supporting terrorism through financial or immigration fraud — are not even remotely comparable to those of the terrorists who are held at Guantanamo Bay (like KSM), or of the underwear bomber, who was caught trying to bomb an airplane as an act of war on behalf of al-Qaeda.

Well, according to PolitiFact.com, based on an analysis by New York University’s Center on Law and Security, the real apples-to-apples number of major Islamist terrorists who have been convicted in civilian courts is . . . less than a dozen, over seven years. Evidently it’s not so routine after all.

There have been three military-commission trials, but the military-commission process was on hold for years as court challenges were worked through. It didn’t really start getting off the ground until 2008.

And, of course, the number of al-Qaeda terrorists detained by the Bush administration at Guantanamo and elsewhere overseas greatly exceeded the number held in the criminal-justice system. That is for good reason — the Bush administration viewed the vast majority of al-Qaeda terrorists as enemies of the United States, not common criminals.

The NYU study does point out that federal courts can play an important role in bringing terrorists to justice. We agree. Indeed, as we have discussed, the Bush administration used a phased approach to handling many terrorists, which permitted their interrogation for intelligence purposes first, followed by a trial in civilian court or by military proceedings.

In our view, however, war criminals should be tried in military commissions created by Congress for that specific purpose. War criminals, particularly non-citizens like KSM or the underwear bomber, are not entitled to civilian trials under our Constitution or the laws of war, and it is dangerous and wrong to act as if they were.

Obama tells NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” … Here’s the thing, however … We already see the way the Muslim culture/religion demands not only it be accomidated so that it can be followed and practiced, but how they insist anyother religion is offensive to it and cannot be tolerated, i.e., coexist in the same time/space continuum (occupy the same space at the same time). I won’t even go into the security issues on this one:

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“In addition to the nations that most of you usually hear about when you think about the International Space Station, we now have expanded our efforts to reach out to non-traditional partners,” said Bolden, speaking to a lecture hall of young engineering students.

Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change.

“We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education [and] other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there,” Bolden said.

As a presidential candidate, Obama espoused a space program that invited more participation from the international community and Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver said recently that the next time NASA lands on the moon it would be part of an international exploration effort.

And while we are at it, CNN wants you to know the Muslims have invented things to help shape the world … but nothing much in the last several centuries … Well, the jihadis have gotten good at IEDs (do I sound bitter? I don’t care):

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top 10 outstanding Muslim inventions:

1. Surgery

Around the year 1,000, the celebrated doctor Al Zahrawi published a 1,500 page illustrated encyclopedia of surgery that was used in Europe as a medical reference for the next 500 years. Among his many inventions, Zahrawi discovered the use of dissolving cat gut to stitch wounds — beforehand a second surgery had to be performed to remove sutures. He also reportedly performed the first caesarean operation and created the first pair of forceps.

2. Coffee

Now the Western world’s drink du jour, coffee was first brewed in Yemen around the 9th century. In its earliest days, coffee helped Sufis stay up during late nights of devotion. Later brought to Cairo by a group of students, the coffee buzz soon caught on around the empire. By the 13th century it reached Turkey, but not until the 16th century did the beans start boiling in Europe, brought to Italy by a Venetian trader.

3. Flying machine

“Abbas ibn Firnas was the first person to make a real attempt to construct a flying machine and fly,” said Hassani. In the 9th century he designed a winged apparatus, roughly resembling a bird costume. In his most famous trial near Cordoba in Spain, Firnas flew upward for a few moments, before falling to the ground and partially breaking his back. His designs would undoubtedly have been an inspiration for famed Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci’s hundreds of years later, said Hassani.

4. University

In 859 a young princess named Fatima al-Firhi founded the first degree-granting university in Fez, Morocco. Her sister Miriam founded an adjacent mosque and together the complex became the al-Qarawiyyin Mosque and University. Still operating almost 1,200 years later, Hassani says he hopes the center will remind people that learning is at the core of the Islamic tradition and that the story of the al-Firhi sisters will inspire young Muslim women around the world today.

5. Algebra

The word algebra comes from the title of a Persian mathematician’s famous 9th century treatise “Kitab al-Jabr Wa l-Mugabala” which translates roughly as “The Book of Reasoning and Balancing.” Built on the roots of Greek and Hindu systems, the new algebraic order was a unifying system for rational numbers, irrational numbers and geometrical magnitudes. The same mathematician, Al-Khwarizmi, was also the first to introduce the concept of raising a number to a power.

6. Optics

“Many of the most important advances in the study of optics come from the Muslim world,” says Hassani. Around the year 1000 Ibn al-Haitham proved that humans see objects by light reflecting off of them and entering the eye, dismissing Euclid and Ptolemy’s theories that light was emitted from the eye itself. This great Muslim physicist also discovered the camera obscura phenomenon, which explains how the eye sees images upright due to the connection between the optic nerve and the brain.

7. Music

Muslim musicians have had a profound impact on Europe, dating back to Charlemagne tried to compete with the music of Baghdad and Cordoba, according to Hassani. Among many instruments that arrived in Europe through the Middle East are the lute and the rahab, an ancestor of the violin. Modern musical scales are also said to derive from the Arabic alphabet.

8. Toothbrush

According to Hassani, the Prophet Mohammed popularized the use of the first toothbrush in around 600. Using a twig from the Meswak tree, he cleaned his teeth and freshened his breath. Substances similar to Meswak are used in modern toothpaste.

9. The crank

Many of the basics of modern automatics were first put to use in the Muslim world, including the revolutionary crank-connecting rod system. By converting rotary motion to linear motion, the crank enables the lifting of heavy objects with relative ease. This technology, discovered by Al-Jazari in the 12th century, exploded across the globe, leading to everything from the bicycle to the internal combustion engine.

10. Hospitals

“Hospitals as we know them today, with wards and teaching centers, come from 9th century Egypt,” explained Hassani. The first such medical center was the Ahmad ibn Tulun Hospital, founded in 872 in Cairo. Tulun hospital provided free care for anyone who needed it — a policy based on the Muslim tradition of caring for all who are sick. From Cairo, such hospitals spread around the Muslim world.

Yeah, more Muslim stuff … Seems Russia is now experiencing a “creeping” jihad insurgency:

The Islamist insurgency in Russia’s North Caucasus region appears to be mutating from a grassroots separatist movement toward global jihad or holy war, whose goals, propaganda and patronage point abroad.

In February Russia’s most wanted guerrilla, Chechen-born Doku Umarov, vowed on Islamist websites to spread his attacks from the Muslim-dominated North Caucasus into the nation’s heartland, wreaking havoc through jihad.

His pledge follows escalating violence in the form of shootings and suicide bombs targeting authorities over the last year in the mountainous North Caucasus — particularly Chechnya, site of two separatist wars since the mid-1990s, and the provinces flanking it, Ingushetia and Dagestan.

Regional Muslim leaders and rebels revile each other as blasphemous and criminal. But after years of the Soviet Union suppressing religion, both welcome a Muslim revival that has brought elaborate new mosques, government-sponsored hajj trips to Mecca and a bubbling interest in Arabic.

Alexander Cherkasov, who has closely followed the North Caucasus for 15 years for rights group Memorial, said whereas in the past rebels wanted freedom from Russia, a struggle that dates back over 200 years, now they are influenced by jihadism, a global fight against alleged enemies of Islam.

“Part of it is homegrown. Corruption leads many to seek out what they call true Islam, but political Islam, by way of foreign financing and insurgents, is certainly playing a role,” he told Reuters.

AL QAEDA LINKS?

In early February, Russia said its forces had killed the al Qaeda operative and Egyptian militant Makhmoud Mokhammed Shaaban in Dagestan, who the FSB security service said had masterminded several bombings.

A myriad of web sites that have come to characterize the insurgency show videos of “martyrs,” something unheard of in the region five years ago. They feature mostly local men, framed by Caucasus flags, chanting in Arabic ahead of suicide missions.

Over the last year, public statements of support for Doku Umarov and other Caucasus rebel leaders have come from a leading al Qaeda mentor, Jordanian Sheikh Abu Mohammad al-Maqdisi.

U.S. intelligence officials say Maqdisi is a major jihadi mentor who wields more influence over Islamist ideology than leading militants such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri.

In an open letter to Umarov last year, which was posted on unofficial Islamist websites, Maqdisi said “it is my great pleasure to express my alignment with, patronage for, and support to the Mujahideen of the Caucasus.” (CONTINUE)

CPAC was last month, and Pam Geller and Robert Spencer launched the Freedom Defense Initiative, a new activist group, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2010, with a conference entitled “Jihad: The Political Third Rail — What They Are Not Telling You.” :

The jihad against America is more active and assertive than ever — and hardly anyone is talking about it. It is time to take action.

Over one-third of the attempted and successful jihad attacks on American soil since 9/11 took place in 2009. This sharp uptick comes at a time when conservative organizations and media figures are talking about jihad and its root causes in Islamic texts and teachings less frequently and less honestly than at any time since 9/11. At the same time, there is a global initiative at the U.N. and elsewhere to muzzle critics of Islam, criminalizing even honest discussion of the Islamic doctrines that terrorists use to justify jihad violence and Islamic supremacism.

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Our nation is at war, and yet our politicians pretend that that war isn’t happening. Barack Obama is intent upon trying enemy combatants in that war in civilian courts and making concession after concession to our enemies as if those concessions will make them love us. The mainstream media, both liberal and conservative, and the entire government and law enforcement apparatus appear determined to obfuscate and deny the truth about the enemy’s ideology and belief system. This has the effect of minimizing in the minds of Americans the threat just as it is greater than ever and of rendering us blind to very real threats from people and groups that officials seem intent upon assuming to be innocuous.

Like it or not, we are engaged in a defense action against an Islamic jihad — one whose goals and motives are spelled out in the Koran and the teachings of Islam. Politically correct dissembling about this only makes Americans more vulnerable than they could be or should be. [...]