Milano: 

Egyptian father shoots, then slits throat of his elementary-school son; Italian wife says he threatened her many times. 

Treviso: 

Moroccan man slits the throats of his ex-companion, Elisaveta Leder, and their two-year-old daughter Arianna.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/3392771/liberal-fascism.thtml

If the American government wished to fight a war of self-defense against those who wage Jihad, not only against America, but against all non-Muslim states and peoples, sometimes across national borders, sometimes within Infidel states, it would surely take the time to identify the possible points of purchase that would help to divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam.

Since 80% of the world's Muslims are non-Arabs, and since in Islam the Arabs are the best of peoples, and the Sunnah merely reflects the customs of seventh (or eighth or even ninth) century Arabs, and since, furthermore, Muslims are supposed to read the Qur'an in Arabic (the only version that truly counts), and take Arabic names, and face Mecca, in Arabia, five times a day, and in many other ways become sedulous apes of the Arabs, it would surely be useful to make those non-Arabs Muslims aware, by speaking and writing openly about, the linguistic and cultural, and other forms of imperialism by the Arabs, for which Islam is, and always has been, the vehicle.

Take the Berbers, for example, and their campaign, especially in the Kabyle region of Algeria, to be able to speak and be taught in their own language, Tamazight. The riots in Tizi-Ouzou and elsewhere for such linguistic rights (now finally, and reluctantly, granted by the Algerian Arabs), the Berber websites that rightly denounce the Arabs and their "invasion" of North Africa, the way in which Christianity is spreading among some Berbers, because resentment of the Arabs nautrally weakens the hold of Islam,  all of this causes the Arabs to worry. And in France itself, it is among the Berbers that the French intelligence services, have found the recruits necessary to monitor the larger Muslim, chiefly Arab, population.

Here, from www.MEMRI.org, is a piece that reflects the worry of the Arabs over where the Berber loyalty lies. Does it lie, blindly, in reflexive hatred of the Jews? Is the Arab war on Israel really the war of the Berbers? Even as early as the 1960s a Berber writer was expressing sympathy for Israel. Should not this kind of thing be noted, and in every way encouraged? Do the Infidels not have a stake in spreading the word, everywhere, that Islam is a handmaiden of Arab imperialism, and then in spelling out -- it's not hard to do -- exactly how it performs that function? For no Berber, no Kurd, no black African Muslim in Darfur can deny that the Arabs have treated them badly, even at times engaged in murder or mass murder. Let the reasons for this Arab supremacist attitude, rooted in the texts and history of Islam, be more widely understood.

Go to it, Pentagon, go to it, State Department. You have nothing to lose, and a world to win.

From Russia Today
Russian Muslims should boycott all Dutch-made goods, including the world-famous tulips and roses grown in the Netherlands, representatives of the Muslim spiritual authority of Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region said.
The call for the social ostracism was explained by the fact that the Netherlands is going to show a film which allegedly makes offensive depictions of the wives of Prophet Mohammed.
In his address Deputy Head of the Regional Mufti Council on educational work Abdulbari Muslimov said that to respond to such an offence, “Muslims of the world have decided to boycott goods made in Holland, and the film authors and an MP will bear responsibility for all consequences of this action”,
He  has not specified what film the Muslim Directorate refers to, but supposedly it is the 14-minute-long film ‘Interview with Mohammed’ created by Iranian-born ex-Dutch politician Ehsan Jami.
The main issues touched upon in the film are the position of women in Islamic society, former Muslims and relations with Jews.

From LiveScience.com:

A game of Scrabble might not have been all that different in Stone Age times.

Using a computer simulation, a British researcher says he's examined the rate of change of words in languages to reveal the oldest English-sounding words, which would have been used by Stone Age humans 20,000 years ago.

Among the Stone Age words that presumably would've sounded then much like they do now in the English language: I, we, two and three.

The study concludes that the frequency with which a word is used relates to how slowly it changes through time, so that the most common words tend to be the oldest ones. While it cannot necessary predict exactly what words were used 20,000 years ago - there's little to go on, since writing was invented only about 5,000 years ago - it makes some interesting guesses.

"We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word," said Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, in a BBC article. "We have descriptions of the ways we think words change and their ability to change into other words, and those descriptions can be turned into a mathematical language."

The ability to speak arose about 300,000 years ago, scientists think, thanks to a pair of anatomical changes that separate humans from other primates: the development of the hyoid bone, which supports the tongue, and a drop in the larynx that made it easier to choke but also easier to speak (in newborn humans, the larynx sits high in the nasal cavity, so babies can drink and breathe at the same time).

The computer program's reasoning, arguably speculative, predicts words that will eventually become extinct too, because they are changing rapidly nowadays: squeeze, guts, stick and bad.

"You type in a date in the past or in the future and it will give you a list of words that would have changed going back in time or will change going into the future," Professor Pagel told BBC News.

Pagel thinks some of the simple words (like the first list above) involve sounds that may have been in use 40,000 years ago.

For the record, the most common five words used in English today, according to "The Reading Teachers Book of Lists": the, of, and, a, to.

Read here:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/23/2498576.htm?section=justin

In calling for an arms embargo on Israel, because of its incursion into Gaza -- an incursion, or invasion, or battle, or war, that was characterized by heroic Israeli effortsto limit civilian casualties, in hellishly difficult conditions (made still more hellish by the deliberate attempt of Hamas to increase those casualties in any way it could, including keeping Arab civiilans from leaving their own houses once they had been warned by the Israelis, through leafletting and telephone calls, that an Israeli attack would soon be coming)--Amnesty International not only makes a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, but overlooks the fact that nearly two dozen Arab states, and an Iran armed to the soon-to-be nuclear teeth, will not be subject to similar embaroges. In callilng for an arms embargo on Israel, Amnesty International is calling for the unilateral disarming, sooner or later, of the tiny and permanently imperilled Jewish state. Amnesty International is, then, calling for the murder of Israel, and of its Jews. For their mass-murder would follow upon any Arab military victory, and no doubt be enthusiastically joined in by many local Arabs as well.

Today at Slate, Timothy Noah explores the idea that terrorists basically stupid and that 9/11 was a fluke caused by numerous intelligence failures that are unlikely to happen today, so we don't have to worry (much).

One could easily make the same argument about Hitler. Toward the end of the war, assassination plots were called off by the British, because he was more valuable for the allied side alive and giving idiotic orders to the Wehrmacht than dead, in which case the German generals could have prosecuted the war according to sound military strategy.

Stupid, silly, laughable man that he was, Hitler still managed to start a conflagration that killed 50 million people and exterminated half the Jews of Europe. His stupidity is no consolation.

This is from Infidel Bloggers Alliance:

Tonight I had the great pleasure of seeing Geert Wilders speak at the Ahavath Torah congregation in Stoughton, MA (which is south of Boston). Augean Stables was there and will probably have more complete coverage, and the temple plans to make the video available on the internet as well.

We were spared the usual Islamist conga line of protestors out front. The 300 or so people at the event were stunned by the powerful message of Fitna, which was followed by a standing ovation as Wilders came to the podium to deliver his talk. He finished up with his reference to General McAuliffe, at the Battle of the Bulge, responding to a German demand for surrender with the one word dismissal "NUTS". Which is what we should tell the enemies of freedom when they try to turn secular democratic Europe into Sharia-bound Eurabia.

It was an interfaith audience with both yarmulkes and Ash Wednesday forehead smudges to be seen. As one audience member commented, the Stoughton school system would have done well to recommend high school students attend this meeting, but there were only a few school-age attendees. Questions focused on how to get both politicians and fellow citizens to wake up to the danger posed by Islamism. Wilders acknowledged that it is not easy but we must do all we can to get the message out, because we are in a war for the survival of our civilization.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who will be presenting to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today in a blatant effort to undercut Senator Kyl and his presentation with Geert Wilders, is a member of the U.S Muslim Engagement Project as is Dennis Ross. Jeffrey Imm has compiled the following list of stands taken by this organization.

U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report on Iran:
--- Engagement with the Islamic supremacist nation of Iran (page 4) is necessary "to explore the potential for agreements that could increase regional security"
--- Believes that "[t]he strongest source of U.S. leverage with Hamas may be a U.S. dialogue with Iran, discussed earlier, that could lead to a reduction in Iranian support for Hamas' military operations." (page 44)
--- Calls for America to get Iran involved "in stabilizing Afghanistan" (page 48)

U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report on Muslim Brotherhood:
-- "The U.S. must also consider when and how to talk with political movements that have substantial public support and have renounced violence, but are outlawed or restricted by authoritarian governments allied to the U.S. The Muslim Brotherhood parties in Egypt and Jordan are arguably in this category." (page 60 and 61)
-- if America doesn't "work with" "Islamist parties, notably the Muslim Brotherhood," then the U.S. is not serious about political reform (page 54)
-- the "moderate" Muslim Brotherhood and "Islamist political parties" should be encouraged by America (page 56)

U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report calls for U.S. to assess "engagement with political representatives of armed and activist movements"
-- Recommends that the United States "[a]ssess the value of engagement with political representatives of armed and activist movements case-by-case, based on their principles, behavior, and level of public support" (page 59)
-- Group complains that U.S. has failed to engage with terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas, calling them "illegitimate," "when political openings allowed militant movements..." "to gain popular support through elections" (pages 52, 53, 54)
-- "the Group has reached consensus on a set of criteria that the U.S. can use to judge whether, when, and how to engage in dialogue with armed political groups and movements: Does the group or movement have a substantial base of legitimate public support, demonstrated by membership, electoral success, and/or mass mobilization?" (pages 59, 60)

U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report says Americans not concerned about "Islamism"
--  regarding the concerns of "most Americans".... "They are not deeply concerned about 'Islamist' parties coming to power, as long as those parties do not advocate violence and do respect basic human rights." (page 51)
-- By using the term "Islamist," rather than "Islamic supremacist," the group misuses the term "Islamist" to obfuscate about such a supremacist ideology; the 9/11 Commission report called "Islamism" - "an Islamic militant, anti-democratic movement, bearing a holistic vision of Islam whose final aim is the restoration of the caliphate," while this group then pretends that "Islamists" respect "basic human rights."

U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project report promotes the Islamic supremacist Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
-- the report calls for "Reapplication of Islamic Principles to Meet the Challenges of the 21st century" (page 53)
-- the report promotes the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and its website, a group that has consistently sought to promote Islamic supremacism and silence any challenge of such supremacism (page 53)
-- the OIC's 2005 Mecca Declaration calls for promotion of "human rights" based exclusively on Islamic supremacist Sharia law, in accordance with the so-called "Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam," which denies the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty - except as defined by Islamic supremacists; the OIC's 2005 Mecca Declaration also seeks to implement it in all OIC member nations, and it seeks "deterrent punishments" for those engaged in "Islamophobia"

The battlelines could not be more clearly drawn. In defense of our Constitution and the inalienable right to freedom of speech and of thought stands Senator Kyl. On the side of appeasing totalitarianism through the only way it can be appeased, by the gradual relinquishing of our rights, stand Senator Kerry and Former Secretary of State Albright.

Voice your support for Senator Kyl:

Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
730 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: (202) 224-4521
Fax: (202) 224-2207

Here is his website where you can send him an email:
http://kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm

Wendy Richard, who died this morning, was 19 when she made this in 1962 with Mike Sarne a British pop singer who never achieved the fame of Cliff Richard (no relation) Tommy Steele or Marty Wilde.
I liked her best as Miss Brahms in Are You being Served.
Her role as Pauline in East Enders became such a miserable one, athough she played it with, to me, frightening accuracy, her accent, mannerisms and gestures being very reminescent of women of my aquaintance of that age.  Seeing her in the launderette scowling at all and sundry it was easy to forget the glamorous sex symbol of  Ladieswear, the foil to formidible Mrs Sloecombe.

There seems to be no footage of them performing this song live on the internet. For some reason I tried to find some last year when I was in nostalgia mood.  This clip from You Tube has some decent still photographs.

There are two diverse events on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC today. Senator John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has convened a hearing on “Engaging with Muslim Communities Around the World”. That’s at 2:30PM in Room 419 Dirksen Senate Building . Kerry’s staff has arranged for two panels of witnesses that include:

The trial of the 8 men charged with plotting to blow up airliners in the mid Atlantic has begun again at the Crown Court Woolwich.
A foreign mastermind plotted to use "home grown" British suicide bombers to blow up a number of transatlantic airliners, a court has heard.
Woolwich Crown Court was told orders came from Pakistan for eight men to smuggle bombs disguised as soft drinks onto flights from London to the US.
Prosecutor Peter Wright QC told the court in London: "He received his instructions from elsewhere. Those responsible for making significant decisions in terms of the implementation of the plot, the utilisation of the active cell of bombers, the date, that was all to be decided overseas.
"Ali maybe did research but he was not the one who was in total control. This was not some half-baked plot by any group of enthusiastic amateurs dreaming up schemes over a kitchen table in east London.
"This was being orchestrated from overseas using the resource of a home grown coterie of radicalised men susceptible to the overtures of Mr Ali and his cohorts."
It is alleged there was enough material to make 20 bombs. Mr Wright said: "This was no hoax, no joke. It was a determined effort on the part of these men to bring about this particular act of carnage."
He said the group did not research timers at any point because they were on a suicide mission.
"They didn't have timers because they were going to be present when the bomb was detonated. They were going to detonate them.
"It wasn't the case that they were going to leave it ticking away somewhere while they made off to a safe distance because there was no safe distance."
In a later conversation Mr Ali and Umar Islam, 30, from Plaistow, east London considered taking their young children on the suicide mission, the court heard.
Jurors were given details of martyrdom texts, and material including beheadings and executions found on the laptop of Ibrahim Savant, 28, from Stoke Newington, north London.
Mr Wright said: "Ibrahim Savant was preoccupied with death, with martyrdom, with perceived glory. He was the perfect candidate to be invited to join this particular cell or to join it willingly."
The prosecutor said six members of the gang made suicide videos and extremist material was found at the homes of Mr Islam and Waheed Zaman, 24, from Walthamstow.
The jury has heard extracts from the films, which were all recorded against the backdrop of a black flag with Arabic script.

Two articles from this mornings Times.
The only Mumbai gunman to be captured alive told interrogators that he was promised 150,000 Pakistani rupees — about £1,300 — for carrying out the terrorist attacks in November that claimed more than 170 lives.
Details of the payment emerged yesterday as police formally charged Azam Amir Kasab, accused of helping to murder more than 50 people at the city’s main railway station, for the first time. Kasab, 21, who was described as “the baby-faced killer” after being caught grinning on CCTV while brandishing an AK47 gun and carrying a haversack full of ammunition, was charged with several crimes including waging war on India and murder. He faces the death sentence if convicted.
The Pakistani was part of a cadre of ten Islamist militants who attacked India’s financial capital after being trained in Pakistan by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist faction, police claim.
A criminal investigation has identified a further 37 suspects wanted for their alleged involvement in a plot that struck ten targets across Mumbai, including two luxury hotels and an ultra-Orthodox Jewish centre, terrorising the city for 60 hours. All but two of the suspects are Pakistani. “We are very confident of our case. The boys have worked very hard, there’s a lot of evidence,” Rakesh Maria, Mumbai’s joint police commissioner, said. (he) also indicated the possible involvement of the Pakistani Army.
He said that those named in the charge sheet included “two supposedly army names with designations. Whether they are serving or in the Lashkar hierarchy, it is not known”.
Kasab, described by the Indian police as the highest-value witness that they have dealt with, did not appear in court yesterday amid concerns for his safety. It is feared that the criminal network run by Dawood Ibrahim, South Asia’s most notorious underworld leader, might try to silence him before he can testify.
Ibrahim, one of the world’s five most wanted men, is regarded widely as a prime suspect for organising the “Mumbai connection” — local logistics, daily reconnaissance of the targets and possibly financing — for the attacks in November.
The huge charge sheet was filed before a metropolitan magistrate in Mumbai. It is expected that the case will be transferred to a special court inside the city’s high-security Arthur Road jail, where Kasab is being held.
The document details the alleged roles played by two Indian nationals — Faheem Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed — in supplying reconnaissance before the attacks. It also names Yosuf Muzzamil and Zaki-ur-Rehman, two members of the LeT, which India alleges has close links with Pakistan’s powerful spy agency, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The name of Colonel R Sadatullah appears in an 11,200-page document that lists the charges against Azam Amir Kasab, who police claim is the sole surving gunman of the November attacks in which 170 people died.
Police believe that Colonel Sadatullah is a serving officer in the Pakistan Army’s Special Communications Organisation, an offshoot of the force’s signals corps. It is alleged that an official government e-mail account linked to Colonel was used to send at least one message related to the attacks.
His naming represents the most specific allegation of Pakistan's involvement in the attacks and will put more strain on India's relationship with its nuclear-armed neighbour.
Police also suspect the involvement of another army officer, who is referred to only as the “major general” in telephone calls between the ten Islamist gunmen who carried out the attacks and their alleged handlers in Pakistan, Mr Mariah added.

From The Australian
THE head of Iran's atomic agency said today that it was now operating 6000 centrifuges to enrich uranium, defying international calls that it halt the sensitive nuclear process.
"We have 6000 centrifuges working and we plan to increase them. In the next five years we plan to have 50,000 centrifuges," Atomic Energy Organisation Gholam Reza Aghazdeh said.
He was speaking in the Gulf port of Bushehr where Iran began testing its first nuclear power plant, which has been built by Russia.
In November, Aghazdeh said that Iran was operating more than 5000 uranium enrichment centrifuges at its facility in Natanz.
Last week, the UN's atomic watchdog said in a report that Iran was continuing to enrich uranium, a process potentially used to make an atom bomb, but has slowed down the expansion of its activities.
"Contrary to the decisions of the Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities," the International Atomic Energy Agency wrote in its latest report on Tehran's contested nuclear drive.
Iran vehemently denies it has nuclear weapons ambitions and has defied five UN Security Council resolutions calling for a freeze in enrichment activities, including three imposing sanctions.

And the reason they disagree with terrorism is not that it is immoral, rather because it is ineffective. World Public Opinion (with thanks to Jeffrey Imm):

...In nearly all nations polled more than seven in 10 say they disapprove of attacks on American civilians. "Bombings and assassinations that are carried out to achieve political or religious goals" are rejected as "not justified at all" by large majorities ranging from 67 to 89 percent. There is a growing belief that attacks on civilians are ineffective, with approximately half now saying that such attacks are hardly ever effective.

At the same time large majorities endorse the goal of al Qaeda to "push the US to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries," including 87 percent of Egyptians, 64 percent of Indonesians, and 60 percent of Pakistanis.

Asked specifically about the US naval forces based in the Persian Gulf, there is widespread opposition across the Muslim world. Across eight Muslim publics on average, 66 percent said it was a bad idea; only 13 percent called it a good idea. Opposition is largest in Egypt (91%) and among the Palestinians (90%), but opposition is also large in America's NATO ally Turkey (77%).

Significant numbers approve of attacks on US troops based in Muslim countries, presumably as a means to apply pressure for their removal. Respondents were asked about US troops based in Iraq, the Persian Gulf, and Afghanistan. Large majorities approve of attacks in Egypt (78-83%), the Palestinian territories (87-90%), and Jordan (66-72%). In Turkey and Pakistan views are more divided. However, only minorities support attacks in Indonesia and Azerbaijan.

Opposition to US military presence appears to be related to largely negative views of US goals in relation to the Muslim world. A key belief is that the US has goals hostile to Islam itself. Large majorities ranging from 62 percent in Indonesia to 87 percent in Egypt say they believe that the United States seeks "to weaken and divide the Islamic world."

Many also perceive the US having goals of economic domination. Large majorities say that it is a US goal to "maintain control over the oil resources of the Middle East" ranging from 62 percent in Pakistan to nine in 10 in Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Jordan, and the Palestinian territories.

Views of al Qaeda are complex. Majorities agree with nearly all of al Qaeda's goals to change US behavior in the Muslim world, to promote Islamist governance, and to preserve and affirm Islamic identity. However, as mentioned, only minorities say they approve of al Qaeda's attacks on Americans. Consistent with this apparent ambivalence, views of groups that attack Americans and Bin Laden are mixed or lukewarm.

Support for Islamist groups participating in the political process, though, is quite strong. Respondents were reminded that "in some countries there is a debate about whether Islamist political groups should be allowed to organize parties and run candidates in elections," and then asked to choose between two statements. Majorities or pluralities in every country chose the statement "All people should have the right to organize themselves into political parties and run candidates, including Islamist groups," including Pakistan (83%), Indonesia (81%), Azerbaijan (75%), Palestinian territories (69%), Turkey (53%), and Jordan (50%). Few chose the statement "Islamist groups should not be allowed to organize and run candidates because their ultimate goals are not consistent with democracy."

In all Muslim publics polled, majorities see US support for democracy in Muslim countries as conditional at best. Only very small minorities say "the US favors democracy in Muslim countries whether or not the government is cooperative with the US." The most common response is that the US favors democracy only if the government is cooperative, while nearly as many say that the US simply opposes democracy in the Muslim countries.

The surveys were conducted July through September 2008. As part of an ongoing study, in-depth surveys were conducted in Egypt (1,101 interviews), Indonesia (1,120 interviews), and Pakistan (1,200 interviews). This research was supported by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland. Additional polling, as part of a WorldPublicOpinion.org network survey, included Azerbaijan (sample size 600), Jordan (583), the Palestinian territories (638), and Turkey (1,023). All of these samples were national probability samples conducted through face-to-face interviewing. Margins of error range from +/- 3 to 4 percentage points. Muslims in Nigeria were also polled.

For more information, see the full report (PDF) or the questionnaire (PDF).

From The Times
The Labour life peer Lord Ahmed was today sentenced to 12 weeks in jail for dangerous driving after he admitted sending text messages from behind the wheel before a fatal road accident.
Lord Ahmed had sent several long text messages on December 25, 2007 while driving at 60mph on the M1 motorway near Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Martyn Gombar, 28, a Slovakian man from Leigh, Lancashire, died when Lord Ahmed's Jaguar hit an Audi car that had crashed into the central reservation and was lying stationary across the middle and outside lanes.
Lord Ahmed pleaded guilty to dangerous driving but Mr Justice Wilkie made it clear that the offence had no causal link with the fatal accident.  Which is why the sentence was so leinient. Had the charge been causing death by dangerous driving the sentence would have been longer. Even for the offence for which he pleaded guilty it could have, and should have in my opinion been longer.
It was now "well established that reading and composing text messages over a period of time constituted a gross, avoidable distraction and amounts to driving involving deliberate disregard for the safety of others".
From This is London
In jailing the life peer Mr Justice Wilkie accepted the text messaging had finished and played no part in the fatal accident.
But the sentence is a severe embarrassment to Justice Secretary Jack Straw who is considering kicking peers out of the House of Lords if they are convicted of criminal offences, following claims that Labour peers had accepted money to change legislation.
Mr Straw has indicated that measures to exclude peers could be introduced before the next general election.
Sentencing Lord Ahmed, the judge said: "I have come to the conclusion that by reason of the prolonged, deliberate, repeated and highly dangerous driving for which you have pleaded guilty, only an immediate custodial sentence can be justified."
Police had established no link between the texting and the crash but the judge said: "It is of the greatest importance that people realise what a serious offence dangerous driving of this type is."
In addition to the 12-week sentence, the judge imposed a one-year driving ban and ordered the peer to pay £500 prosecution costs. The peer stared straight forward in the dock as the judge passed sentence.
Lord Ahmed pleaded guilty in the Sheffield Magistrates Court. The Magistrates courts have limited powers to pass a sentence of imprisonment so it is common for the Magistrates to send a case which they feel merits a substantial custodial sentence to the Crown Court. In the Crown court such a sentencing would usually be dealt with by a circuit judge or a recorder. The fact that this has gone to a High Court Judge suggests the seriousness of a public figure setting such a bad example.
From the BBC
Outside court Lord Ahmed's solicitor, Steve Smith, said he thought his client had been used as a "scapegoat" by those attempting to drive home the message about not using a mobile phone while at the wheel.
He said he was launching an immediate appeal against the sentence.
He said: "I've been with him. He's very philosophical. He's approaching it with great dignity."
Members of Mr Gombar's family said they were not happy with the sentence.
His cousin, David Cicak, said he was hoping for a long prison term."He could be out in six weeks, that's nothing." I agree.

 The following is a letter sent to FBI Director Mueller from Senators Kyl, Schumer and Coburn:

Feb 24, 2009

Mr. Robert Mueller
Director
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Mueller,

Over the past couple of weeks, we have read with interest reports that the FBI has severed it ties to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). We certainly support that action, and it would be helpful for us to understand the situation more fully.

For example, would your field offices have the same policy and are there any reservations or exceptions in your policy? And since the Bureau has taken a leadership role, do you know whether other federal governmental agencies still have ties to CAIR and are they aware of the Bureau’s decision? Obviously, we believe this should be government-wide policy.

Finally, given CAIR’s status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, we would like to know more about other unindicted co-conspirators. Does the Bureau have contacts with organizations or individuals identified by federal prosecutors as unindicted  coconspirators in terrorism finance investigations and were those contacts affected by the decision to sever ties with CAIR?

We have appreciated the opportunity to work with you in the past and hope to continue to provide the tools you need to keep this country safe.

Sincerely,

Senator Jon Kyl

Senator Charles E. Schumer

Senator Tom A. Coburn

War is deceit from Islam4 the UK. The Harrow Times 
A GROUP calling for the imposition of Islamic law in the UK is advertising a conference in Wembley on Sunday.
Islam For The UK is hosting a talk on the Islamic State, described on its website as a “magnificent superpower”, with speakers discussing how “its destruction led to mankind’s present suffering”.
Amjem Choudary, a spokesman for the group, said the wrong venue had been deliberately advertised to stop the event being banned.
The venue is listed as Vale Farm Sports Centre, in Watford Road, and Mr Choudary said it will actually take place somewhere nearby.  He refused to say where.
He said: “What we tend to do is book two venues - one where we don’t want the event to take place and one where the event is going to take place, which we don’t advertise.
“There are people who don’t want it to take place.”
Brent Council, which runs the leisure centre, was forced to put a statement on its own website denying the reservation.
It reads: “The centre has not been booked to hold this event and promotions stating this are misleading and inaccurate. Please do not attend this venue for such an event.”
The organisation’s website states: “On the 3rd March 2009 C.E. it will have been 85 years since the destruction of the Islamic State, or in other words 85 years of tyranny, oppression and injustice.
“For over 1300 years this magnificent superpower dominated world affairs and introduced a law and order that lifted the masses from the darkness of man-made law and into the light of al-Islam.
“This special conference will be dedicated to providing an in depth overview of the Islamic State, its past, present and future as well as emphasise the need for all Muslims worldwide to struggle as much as they can for the sake of Allah (SWT) to implement the Shari'ah on the earth.”

I recently posted on the AIPAC case and whether it would fold based on the possible evidence of an expert witness whom the presiding Federal District Court Judge, T.S. Ellis in the Northern Virginia District had lauded. I also asked whether the the former AIPAC officials, Rosen and Weissman might be vindicted. But, I also suggested that former Pentagon Iran analyst, Larry Franklin, convicted under pressure from the FBI and Federal prosecutors and sentenced to 13.7 years, should have his sentence commuted and perhaps even pardoned.

This matter, pending for over four years, may not come to trial in April given today’s Federal Appeal’s court ruling in Richmond. If that happens, the anti-Semites in the FBI and the Federal prosecutors will have black marks in their copy books for bringing this ridiculous action. Now, the 4th Circuit Court in Richmond has ruled against the Federal prosecutors in an opinion that butresses Judge Ellis’s earlier ruling in 2006. Note this from the JTA report:

The three-judge appeals court panel called the U.S. government’s effort to overturn Ellis’ decision, handed down in 2006 in an opinion that rejected a defense motion to dismiss, as “improper.” Pretrial prosecution appeals in classified information cases are meant to strictly address questions of which classified evidence is admissible, the appeals court said, calling the attempt to reverse a major decision “piggybacking.”

“This appeal is limited to the evidentiary rulings” in an order Ellis handed down nearly a year ago determining admissible evidence, the appeals court said. “This is a tremendous victory for the defendants,” said Baruch Weiss, who represents Keith Weissman, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s former Iran analyst.

Abbe Lowell, the attorney for Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s former foreign policy chief, said the ruling “is just the latest confirmation that this is a misdirected case brought under a misdirected theory where the government continues to be reminded that they are wrong.

Prosecutors have suggested that Ellis’ restrictions on the 1917 statute create a high barrier to surmount in a trial that has been delayed multiple times over four years. It is now set for April 21.”

This special Mail investigation reveals how thousands of men are milking the benefits system to support several wives.
Yet his story, unravelling at an ordinary weekday hearing at Taylor House, an asylum appeals' centre in North London, is just one example of the growing phenomenon of multiple marriage in Britain.
Officially, such unions are punishable by up to seven years in prison. They were first declared illegal in England and Wales in 1604, when the Parliament of James I took action to restrain 'evil persons' marrying more than one wife. Parliament ruled that anyone found guilty of the crime would be sentenced to death.
In the four centuries since, bigamy (having two wives) and polygamy (more than two) has been frowned on by the state, the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church.
Yet it is clear that officialdom is turning a blind eye to such marriages.
A recent review by four Government departments  -  the Treasury, the Work and Pensions Department, the Inland Revenue and the Home Office  -  has concluded that 1,000 men in the United Kingdom are now polygamists, although some say the figure is higher.
What is more, the review found, a Muslim man can claim state support of more than £10,000 a year to keep his wives, if the wedding took place in one of those countries where polygamy is commonplace, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia and across huge tracts of Africa.
For example, a man can receive &£92.80 a week in income support for wife number one, and a further £33.65p for each of his subsequent spouses.
Therefore, if he has four wives  -  the maximum permitted under Islamic teachings  -  he can claim nearly £800 a month from the British taxpayer.
Controversially, a polygamist is also entitled to more generous housing benefits and bigger council houses to reflect the large size of his family. He is also able to claim £1,000 a year in child benefit for each of his growing brood.
However, it's little wonder that critics claim our generosity simply encourages more Muslim men to keep several spouses. Supporters of polygamy claim the Koran states unequivocally that a Muslim man can marry up to four women so long as he treats them equally.
But the Taxpayers' Alliance, a lobby group, has complained: 'Polygamy is not officially condoned here, so why should British taxpayers have to pay for extra benefits for men to have two, three or four wives?'
During this investigation, I spoke to health workers and benefits officers who have seen at first-hand the scale of polygamy in Britain.
An NHS district nurse working in Tower Hamlets, East London, explained that it was now commonplace. He said he knew of a Bangladeshi-born male patient with two wives and 13 children aged between three months and 15 years.
'The women have council flats, each paid for by the local authority. The elderly husband collects benefits for both women, who are in their 30s.
The male nurse said this family set-up was not unusual. 'I know of others that comprise of one husband, a number of wives and numerous children.
'It is not difficult to conclude that if there were no state benefits, a man could not afford to live like this, especially here in London.  The system is at fault. The men want more wives for their sexual pleasure, but also because it is lucrative.'
Yet there is another issue to be raised. Are the Government figures of around 1,000 foreign men living polygamously a gross underestimate?
But what, indeed, of the wives living in polygamous marriages themselves?
In an age of supposed sexual equality, how can they accept what many will feel is the degradation that goes hand in hand with polygamy?
Not surprisingly, few dare to speak out publicly for fear that they will be ostracised by their families.
But one 34-year-old mother who lives in the Bangladeshi community of East London rang the Mail because she said she wants to reveal the truth of what is happening.
Sitting in her kitchen in Newham, she reeled off a list of male relatives and friends who have two or three wives.
What is more, the woman  -  who does not want to be named for fear of attacks on her and her family  -  said that polygamy is tacitly encouraged by our benefits system, where few questions are asked or checks made.
Yet despite such emotional cruelty, there are those who say polygamy should be legal in multicultural Britain. A leading Muslim academic at Cambridge University has claimed that men are biologically designed to desire more than one woman and that, therefore, polygamy should be legalised.
Meanwhile, a primary school teacher in Birmingham recently spoke publicly about his contented life with two wives and six children, all living in the same house.
Even a prominent female member of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain  -  set up in 1992 to debate Islamic issues  -  has claimed that she knows of many very happy polygamous marriages in Britain.
Back at the immigration appeals centre at Taylor House, which heard the case of Somali-born polygamist Abdi, a Home Office lawyer took me aside and whispered: 'This man's not the only husband doing this.
'Last week, there was one man who was born in Pakistan and arrived to settle here only four years ago. He brought in one wife legally. They arrived as asylum seekers. The next wife came in on a student's visa. The third pretended to be visiting relatives in Southwark, South London. She had a sixmonth tourist visa but overstayed and was about to be deported.
'She ended up here, begging to remain in Britain with her husband.'
But British taxpayers footing the bill may beg to disagree.

This time last year I posted about the new baby aardvark born to Oq and Adella at Colchester Zoo. That baby was a boy later named Kiyo. The breeding programme at Colchester is proving very successful as Oq must be a very good mother. We went over the weekend and there she was with another new baby born on 14 January. The family were very lively that afternoon; the little one was scampering about then settled down for a feed. My husband took the best picture out of all of us which is below.

Sammy Benoit, editor of Yidwithlid, writes at American Thinker:

Ben Smith has confirmed that Chas Freeman has been offered and accepted President Obama's invitation to be the Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the intelligence community's primary big-think shop and the lead U.S. governmental body in producing national intelligence estimates.

For the last dozen years, Freeman, the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has been President of the Middle East Policy Council (formally known as the American Arab Affairs Council) a lobbying group for the Arab world. One of the group’s primary functions is to publish a quarterly journal called Middle East Policy. The journal is filled with anti-Israel messages that are beyond even the broadest definition of mainstream of U.S. thinking on the region. As the President of the organization responsible for this vicious and biased journal, the appointment of Freeman as a gatekeeper for U.S. intelligence is a very disturbing matter.

The Chairman of the National Intelligence Council is just like the editor of a journal. He must review, edit, add context to, and decide what to present to the President in terms of good intelligence. Therefore it is reasonable to predict Freeman's handling of the NIC job by looking at his work as President of MPEC and the journal that is published under his authority, Middle East Policy.

As you are about to see,  the vicious and distorted polemics that have passed through his editorial desk prove that  Freeman is not qualified to be the "editor" of America's intelligence.

In MIDDLE EAST POLICY, VOL. XV, NO. 3, FALL 2008, the Editor's Note perpetuates the anti-Israel slander that the Iraq war was waged for Israel:

...beginning that the war was an excuse to enlarge the U.S. strategic “footprint” (as neocon William Kristol calls it) on top of the lakes of oil in the Gulf region and make life safer for Irael, starting with the easiest problem case, Iraq. If the governments in the area did not come around, no problem; American troops were there in any case and would protect Israel....In a New York Times op-ed (July 18), Benny Morris put the matter to Bush/Cheney crudely: bomb the suspected sites now or Israel will have to use nuclear weapons on Iran later. Call it extortion, if you will. But perhaps a better term is moral hazard: having been “insured” by the United States, Israel does not have to be cautious or even sensible. The Georgians seem to have learned this lesson too, and without having to pay the high premium that a first-class standing army of lobbyists requires. Anne Joyce August 15, 2008

In another Editor's Note (July 07 ) IDF is depicted using Nazi military tactics during the Six-Day-War:

As regime-change advocates would have it, real peace talks cannot happen first; a deal with Syria involving an exchange of land for peace would cement in place the ruling Baath party of Bashar al-Asad. If he were to regain through negotiations the Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since its Blitzkrieg of June 1967, he would be a god to his people, having set right what his father could not. A popular leader is very hard to topple, even in a weak state...

That same editorial goes on to say that political campaigners do not criticize Israel for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic:

Honest debate in this election season is hampered, as always, by the political correctness (or, rather, the abject fear) of mainstream political figures, both neoconservative and neoliberal, and the media will not get out ahead of them. They all have to protect themselves from the charge of antisemitism, which has now been successfully conflated with criticism of the State of Israel...

This Editor's Note from the Fall 2007 issue accuses the US of working to protect Israel’s "victim status:"

This hamstrung U.S. diplomacy but protected Israel's victim status and left it free to annex as much Palestinian land as possible (see articles on the current lack of peace by Kelman, Kasrils and Peled-Elhanan). We still allow Israel to call the shots. Ehud Barak, a contender for power again, has said that talking to Hamas had to wait until Israel had a military deterrent to the low-tech missiles that have been lobbed into Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip. There is no sign that the U.S. government, whichever party leads it, will talk Israel down from this position. And the current fiasco in the making buying off Fatah and starving Hamas is an Israeli plan that Washington has had to accept…

For those wishing to dig deeper, the MEPC website can be found here...

Apparently it is not only his association with Bar Rafaeli, but also DiCaprio's presumed or assumed conversion to Judaism. That is intolerable. For no one should change his religion. Unless he's changing it to Islam. In which case everything is fine.

He arrived in Italy from Spain, another part of Schengenland. How did he, this Pakistani, arrive in  Spain? What was his route? Who failed to stop him? 

At the very end of the article, one may read about the Mumbai terrorists asking for instructions from the "Caller" ("Chiamante") and also receiving encouraging praise for their deeds of Muslim derring-do: 

"Chiamante: «Fratello Abdul, i media hanno paragonato la tua azione all'11 settembre. Uno dei capi della polizia è stato ucciso». Abdul Rehman: «Sono tra il 10? e l'11? piano. Ho cinque ostaggi».
Chiamante: «Tutto viene registrato dai media. Bisogna infliggere il massimo danno. Date battaglia, non lasciate sopravvissuti».
Chiamante: «Ammazza gli ostaggi tranne i due musulmani. Prendi il telefono e accendilo in modo da farci sentire gli spari».
Fahadullah: «Io ho tre stranieri incluse le donne, da Singapore e dalla Cina».
Chiamante: «Ammazzali ». Annota la polizia indiana: «Si sente la voce dei due terroristi che intimano agli ostaggi di mettersi in fila e ai due musulmani di stare di lato. Poi si sentono gli spari».Chiamante: «Fratello Abdul, i media hanno paragonato la tua azione all'11 settembre. Uno dei capi della polizia è stato ucciso». Abdul Rehman: «Sono tra il 10? e l'11? piano. Ho cinque ostaggi».
Chiamante: «Tutto viene registrato dai media. Bisogna infliggere il massimo danno. Date battaglia, non lasciate sopravvissuti».
Chiamante: «Ammazza gli ostaggi tranne i due musulmani. Prendi il telefono e accendilo in modo da farci sentire gli spari».
Fahadullah: «Io ho tre stranieri incluse le donne, da Singapore e dalla Cina».
Chiamante: «Ammazzali ». Annota la polizia indiana: «Si sente la voce dei due terroristi che intimano agli ostaggi di mettersi in fila e ai due musulmani di stare di lato. Poi si sentono gli spari».

A bit at the end is translated below"

Abdul Rehman: "I'm between the 10th and 11th floors. I've got five hostages."

Caller: "Kill all the hostages except for the Muslims. Put the phone up so the shots can be heard."

Caller: "Brother Abdul, the media are comparing your actions to September 11th. One of the heads of the police was killed.Fahadullah: I've got three foreigners, including women, from Singapore andfrom China."

Caller: "Kill them."  [the Indian police say that at this point one can hear the terrorists ordering the hostages to get in a row, and telling the two Muslims to stand to one side. Then the sound of shots.]

http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD225809