Nice Note: We received our first positive blog from Natalie Solent of Biased BBC:

"Go see new blog The Ultra Moderate. Check out the cool statement of belief top right."

Thanks Natalie. That's the point! Meanwhile, I'm trying to get things working better on this site. Blogger's template language is driving me nuts! Tomorrow, a report on the Tatiana Meneker fiasco. But tonight, it's a writing assignment for the magazine. (Yes, I really am a working -- yuck -- journalist.)

BBC Watch: It never stops. Natan Sharansky has attacked the BBC's coverage of the latest boy suicide bomber -- the 16 year old slow-witted one, not the eleven year old, there are so many -- charging that the BBC employs a "gross double standard to the Jewish state" that smacks of anti-Semitism. According to the JPost Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky charged in a letter he sent to the British news service Tuesday morning. He was reacting to its coverage of the IDF's arrest of a 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber last week.

BBC biased? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. And to think they've appointed a Middle East Ombudsdonothing.

Bad Typography Watch: Jeesh, finally fixed the lousy typeface this template came with. This typeface is called Georgia. By the way, Blogger is NOT easy to work with. It contains lots of proprietary items not covered in my HTML class. I'll try to fix the rest soon enough. It would be nice if Blogger provided a front end that allowed duffers like me to automatically feed such things as links. Sigh...

Radical Watch: Check the picture of the "anti-War" poster at Little Green Footballs It's a sort of hip-hop hitler thing. It was inevitable. The reds, the greens and the browns -- the left, the islamists, the fascists -- have all teamed up, everyone who hates demoncracy and freedom has found common cause.

Islamist Watch: Ritt Goldstein, writing from Stockholm, of all places, writes in Asia Times, one of the few truly independent and anti-Idiotarian papers in the world, that the CIA has discovered an Islamic extremist ("Salafist" -- remember that term) documend indicating that the movement considers the al-Qaeda war to be a gross mistake:

A recently released Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) provided document affords some remarkably critical and militant Islamic perspectives on the "war on terror". Highlighting the unique nature of the document's perspective, it addresses an analysis of al-Qaeda's efforts by al-Jama'ah al-Islamiyah, a faction which is designated by the US State Department as a terrorist organization. The fact of the document's release by the CIA speaks volumes about its interest.

Providing an equally surprising parallel, in December the US Defense Department's Strategic Studies Institute released a report describing the objectives of the Bush administration's war efforts as "politically, fiscally and militarily unsustainable". Al-Jama'ah observed essentially the same of al-Qaeda. And according to the CIA translation, al-Jama'ah argues that al-Qaeda "entangled the Muslim nation in a conflict that was beyond its power to wage".

Al-Jama'ah is Egypt's largest Salafist group on the US terror list, allegedly complicit in the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center, as well as numerous acts of violence within Egypt. Their goal has been stated as the removal of secular government and restoration of an Islamist state. The group's spiritual leader, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, was convicted for his alleged Trade Center bombing role by a US court.

The militant Egyptian Salafist groups are reportedly Islam's oldest, tracing their roots to the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928, five years after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The encroachment of Western secularism spawned the Brotherhood, but al-Jama'ah's activity dates from the 1970s.

Islamic Jihad, Egypt's other major Salafist group on the terror list, was reportedly responsible for the assassination of the late Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Ayman al-Zawahiri, now allegedly Osama bin Laden's second in command, was reportedly one of Islamic Jihad's two leaders. Al-Qaeda itself is sometimes referred to as a militant Salafist group.

The CIA's original document appeared as an Arabic-language review of a book by al-Jama'ah's leadership, their work entitled: "The Strategy and Bombings of al-Qaeda". It was published by the influential and Saudi-owned London daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat.

Footnoting this, al-Sharq al-Awsat is known for publishing material that coincides with Saudi perspectives. And Salafist is a term which many of the Wahhabi denomination of Sunni Islam use to describe themselves, Wahhabism being the strict branch of Islam most often associated with Saudi Arabia.

But in 1997, al-Jama'ah's leadership reportedly began an initiative to end violence. Their present writings intimate that a policy of confrontation fed anti-Islamic currents within the US, shifting America away from a policy of Islamic accommodation when it suited US objectives.

"The official religion of the United States is its interests," note the authors. They also see the US pursuing an opportunity for "hegemony on the world, global sovereignty, and decisive victory over all rivals".

Their text is noteworthy for its illustration of perceptions within the militant segment of the Islamic community. Al-Jama'ah doesn't take exception to al-Qaeda's motivations, but does to their methods and strategy, al Qaeda's giving "preference to the logic of defiance over the principle of calculations".

The authors blame anti-US violence (including the Trade Center bombing) for casting Islam as "the green peril". They portray a shift in US perception as transpiring during the period when America was attempting to define its "new enemy" following the Cold War.

Particularly singled out as evidence of this American development are the works of Francis Fukuyama The End of History and Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations). However, the authors pointed out that even during this period, the US sought an accommodation with the Taliban, demonstrating "the supremacy of the US self-serving logic on US strategy". But concurrently the authors saw an al-Qaeda policy of confrontation lead to the foregoing of unique opportunities that may never recur.

According to the text, because of US geostrategic (oil and gas) interests, the Taliban were offered "US$3 billion as a free grant and $300 million annually in return for leasing the pipeline transporting natural gas from the Caspian" to Pakistan. This was in reference to the trans-Afghan pipeline the US had long desired.

Al-Jama'ah cites Islamic history to make the point that mutually advantageous accommodation is not sacrilegious.

The authors note that instead of the assets and stability the proposed pipeline revenue held for both Afghanistan and Pakistan, there have instead been substantive setbacks for the global Islamic community. The siege al-Qaeda is under, as well as the increased pressures on those who are fighting traditional struggles of liberation, were seen as but one part of a much broader fallout. Particular note is given to the extreme nature of September 11, and the West's reaction to it...

On the other hand, the Salafists never renounce their goals of world domination, do they?

Gentle Readers: This font looks absolutely terrible when displayed in Italic. I'm still learning, and these templates are horribly complex, so please forgive me. I prefer to use a traditional serif font, such as Times Roman or Garamond instead of Lucida.

My problem appears to be a template-connection between body text and the description at the top of the page, which is i would like to remain sans-serif.
Any ideas? -- The Ultra-Moderate, Middle-of-the-Road Extremist.

LA Whale Watch: You've been watching the unfolding story on ABC (the American version, not the Australian) about that Palestinian boy killed by the Palestinian bullet that ricocheted off an Israeli vehicle, well guess what? This is how the LA Times/The Whale spins the story for its Palestinian clients:

Also Saturday, a Palestinian boy reported to be either 6 or 7 was killed by a stray bullet as Israeli jeeps were driving through a refugee camp in the tense West Bank city of Nablus in search of a militant (sic) suspected of smuggling explosives.

Just a stray bullet -- that's it. And just so you know they didn't do it by mistake, they did it in the caption, which isn't available on the web:

Young Victim: The body of Khalil Walwil is carried by his uncle after the boy was hit by a stray bullet during an Israeli patrol at a refugee cap in the West Bank town of Nablus. The child had been inside his second-floor apartment at the time of the shooting.

Notice the similar passive phrase? Was killed by, was hit by. Same author, most likely. No mention that it really, really, really, was a ricochet, caught on film. Jackasses. They knew they would be caught on this one, and they will be, and still they did it. It's not incompetence. It's not a mistake that slipped by. It's an outright lie, a deliberate distortion designed to create sympathy for The Whale's side in all this. By the way, this is how Hebraphobe-in-Chief Kapo Nicholas Goldberg, their Op-Ed editor, views the swatting of "spiritual leader" Shriek Yassin, Rotting In Hell in his piece, The Subtle Shades of Villainy:

I don't feel sympathy for Yassin (sure you don't -- you just called him a "spiritual leader"), he was a soldier (oh, yeah? where was his uniform?) in a war of his own choosing (at least you got that right), and it killed him (BWAAAA-HA-HA-HA!). But the cause of peace is not served by provocative, macho and arguably illegal moves (who says? at least the Japanese admiral Yamamoto wore a uniform), and it's hard to see how Yassin's assassination qualifies as anything else. Peace may seem distant, but it is still the goal, isn't it?

Of course "it's hard to see," Nicky-pants, that's how you got your job!

And Notice the name of his piece? The Subtle Shades of Villainy. In other words, moral equivelence -- both sides are the same -- one of the nastiest isms i know. Nothing subtle about that!

al-Jezeera Watch:

Last week, the US handed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak a disturbing present – copies of Iraqi documents indicating that the Egyptian government and the Qatar based el-Jezeera “news” organization were riddled with Sadam’s agence. Debka, an Israeli organization that releases intelligence that the government wants to reveal to the public, states that: After opening his gift, Mubarak called an emergency session in the presidential palace of his key advisers…

The documents spelled out in detail how Farhan Hassan, Iraq’s deputy ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, turned his office into a center of espionage and recruiting post for Iraqi agents in Egypt, the United States and the Gulf…. Mubarak ordered his security forces to start rounding up all the Egyptians listed in the documents as agents of Hassan’s Iraqi network. Some 120 people were picked in the first wave.
The package also contained Hassan’s reports to Baghdad. Under the codename “Number 3” attested to his ranking in the Iraqi hierarchy, he filed directly to Saddam Hussein.
Number 3 described in detail how he bought the loyalty of “several prominent Egyptian journalists”, among them popular columnist Sayid Nasser, who were willing to publish articles shooting Saddam’s propaganda line. One report outlined Hassan’s steps for the recruitment of Shuwaike Abu Zayad, the wife of one of Egypt’s top diplomats. She passed to Number 3 all the Egyptian foreign ministry’s top-secret cables and documents.
Number 3 was particular fond of boasting to Saddam that he had recruited about 20 Egyptian generals who had been transferred to the reserves and farmed out to administrative jobs in Egypt’s military industries. They positively gushed with information on their former units and new jobs.
Hassan also intervered with the Iraqi opposition, recruited Eastern Europeann diplomats, smuggled goods and money, and ran al-Jezeera.
Hassan got first look at intelluigence gathered by (al-Jezeera) and paid its staffers to tout the Iraqi line. This operation was a great success. Hassan’s people managed to enlist the services of Faisal al-Qassam, one of the station’s best-known broadcasters. Qassam, a Syrian, edits and moderates al Jazeera’s popular daily phone-in show, “Counterpoint”. Only a few of the dozens of callers who telephone from across the Arab world to discuss current events get on the air. But before every show, Number 3 or one of his minions decided with Qassam on the issue to be discussed and handed him a list of viewers who would call in with the questions they would ask. Those viewers were, of course, Iraqi intelligence agents from across the Arab world who read out the questions dictated from Baghdad.

Note to Mr. Hewitt over at 60 Minutes, care to re-edit your fluff piece about al-Jezeera, Der Sturmer of the Gulf? I thought not.

Supply-Side Watch: (Please remember, gentle readers, that we're strictly non-partisan debunkers.) Well, the Republican Congress is promising to close the budget deficit, well, cut it in half, they say, but you know that means – it won’t actually happen. According to the Associated Press:

House Republicans have pushed through a $2.4 trillion budget that slims the tax cuts proposed by President George W. Bush and claims to cut the deficit in half within four years. That would leave a deficit of more than $230 billion in 2008.
The party-line vote now sets up a battle between the House and Senate. The Republicans control both bodies, but the Senate has passed a measure making it harder to pass future tax cuts without first paying for them.
That proposal passed the Senate despite opposition from the Bush administration, but did not make it in the House version. The two bodies must hammer out one final bill.

Notice that the Republicans oppose paying for tax cuts? These guys are simply addicted to tax cuts ad infinitum, no matter the cost, and no matter the bitter experience of the 1980’s the first time they pulled this stunt. The idea is this: According to Prof. Arthur Laffer’s loony toon theory of “supply side economics,” tax money will fall from the skies, like manna from heaven -- if the government lowers taxes (on the rich). The theory is that if the rich spend more, they will invest more, presumably not all of it on yachts, and tax revenue will automatically, ahem, magically, go up. Yeah, and credit cards pay YOU interest. While deficits can be used to kick-start an economy in deep recession or depression, tax cuts simply can’t force the economy to do better, and businessmen to buy domestically produced products. It’s pure baloney.

Anti-Semitism Watch: Poor saintly old Yassin was crucified by those murderous Jooooo's. Damien isn't sure if Jews of Christians should be more offended.

Islamism Watch: LGF notes that islamists in Istanbul are Seething against the assassination Shreek Yassin. I wouldn't worry about those particular islamists too much. (I'll get on their case soon enough) They're being carefully watched by very diligent, and highly motivated military and police.

Many Turks, including the ruling secular nationalists, are favorably disposed to Jews and Israel. The sympathy for Israel in Turkish military circles is stong, long-standing, and and visceral, the result of two long-standing beliefs, that:

* Jews created the Turkish Republic to defend the country against the Greeks.

* Askenazi (European) Jews are descendents of the great Turkish Khazar Empire.

Most secular Turks believe Ataturk and much of the Turkish Republican leadership were of Donmeh descent -- the Donmeh being an obscue Sephardic Jewish sect founded in the 1600's. Being legally Muslims, but not really, the Donmeh were able to move into official government circles, but beling also Jews (although not really any more), they were very, very useful.

The Donmeh were motivated by a deep hatred of the Greeks, who conquered their holy city of Salonika, burned it to the ground, renaming it "Thessaloniki" and by a general sense of Turkish nationalism. (Ataturk was a blond native of Salonika, but probably not a Donmeh...)

In fact, one islamist leader complained that "the Jews founded two countries in twentieth century, Israel and Turkey..."

It is one reason why many Turks, including the ruling secular nationalists, are favorably disposed to Jews and Israel.

Another is the history of the great Khazar Empire, a huge empire of Turkish Jews that ruled much of what is now Ukraine and southern Russia for hundreds of years until betrayed by the Byzantines and the Russians.

Secular Turks constantly refer the Khazars as a Turkish Golden Age, while glowing in the reflected glory of Israeli victories over the Arabs.

When listening to secular Turks, one hears constantly a dream of Turkish and Israeli forces linking up in Damascus.

However, it should be noted that while the Donmeh's contribution to Turkish history is astounding, it should be noted that Ataturk was a typical Euopean Turk, probably blond due to centuries of slaving by Ottoman conquerers.

And the Khazars were definitely not the ancestors of Ashenazi Jews, despite the ravings of Arthur Koestler in "The Thirteenth Tribe." There are a few thousand probable descents of the Khazars, Turkish speakers in Odessa and Lithuania whose ancestry can be traced to the bodyguards of Lithuanian princes, but DNA evidence shows conclusively that Ashkenazi Jews are a mixture of Judean and central European stock. Not Turkish, alas -- which might be cool.

Which goes to show, all isms, even positive ones, use convenient false foundations. If Turkish and Israel interests didn't coincide, nothing the Donmeh ever did would say a thing to either Turkish Nationalists.

Meanwhile, check Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) for more Islamist outrages.

Canadian Nationalism Watch -- With "friends" like these... "Teen booed off stage for U.S. flag" A U.S.-born teenager carrying an American flag in a multiculturalism parade was reduced to tears and booed off a stage by fellow students at a Montreal high school on Thursday, in an apparent protest against the Iraq war. A parade of flags representing every nationality at the school -- 39, this year -- is an annual event at Wagar High School, the most ethnically diverse English high school in Montreal. The girl, a Grade 9 student, "was very upset," said Juanita Meikle, a parent who is chairwoman of Wagar's governing board.

For some reason, once upon a time i completed an honors program in Canadian History at Cal State Northridge. As one of maybe 12 Americans ever to have done such a silly thing, it became clear why Americans don't pay much attention to the Great White North: The only two facts that matter about Canada is that statistics usually divide by ten,their dollar is worse less than real money, and that the more you learn about our Friendly Neighbor to the North, the less there is to know!

SF State Watch. Things get nastier and nastier at America's most corrupt major university, the only university I know of whose leaders actually financed a campaign of extortion and arson against its students. The first university in modern times to have a full-fledged, anti-Semitic pogrom -- only two years ago.

Fifty years ago this May , in Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled 9-0 that "separate but equal" treatment in schools and elsewhere could no longer be tolerated. It took a lot of doing, but a half century later, we no longer require little girls to walk 21 blocks to school because they are of the wrong race.

Instead, to prove that we oppose racism in all its forms, we encourage certain people to be racist, to insult, chase, harass, and intimidate others. Just certain people, of course. The politically correct: Radical leftists, black goose-steppers, Mexican Aztlanists, and now, Palestinians. (SF State is the alma mater of Sa'eb Erekat, the Palestinian Minister of Lies, the creator of the infamous "Jenin Massacre.")

And those other people, the ones that the politically correct are allowed to insult, chase, harass, and intimidate -- they have to be certain people too, those who can be relied on not to fight back. Whites in general, and now, Jews.

And those who don't like being insulted, chased, harassed, or intimidated, well SF State's rulership knows precisely what to do: It expels them.

Take the case of Tatiana Menaker, an older Russian-Jewish student who spent many years fighting the former Soviet regime, only to find herself in a world much like the one that fell with the Berlin Wall.

The rulership recently ordered her summarily "suspended" for mouthing off at a professor -- for five years. Some "suspension"! During the riot years, the rulership never suspended anyone, not even for bombing my dorm. But Jews are different. The rulership expects them to behave according to a "higher standard," e.g., a double standard.

According to my sources, Tatiana is something of a pain in the neck, used to a confrontational approach with authorities, but given the rulership's history of groveling before ethnic fascists, it's reasonable to assume that an illegal double standard was at work here. Tatiana plans to appeal. We'll see what happens.

Mad Mel to make a "Maccabi Western". According to the Jerusalem Post, Mel Gibson's next "Jews did it" flick is going to be aboud Chanukah.

Mad Mel says, "The Maccabees family stood up, and they made war. They stuck by their guns and they came out winning. It's like a western."

ADL director Abe Foxman replies, "Thanks but no thanks. The last thing we need in Jewish history is to convert our history into a western."

Maybe he thinks he can buy us off by stabbing an elephant in the belly, but he already did almost the same thing in Braveheart. Penny gets a dime he makes it in Italy, home of the Romans, where he made passion, or in an Arab country.

Penny gets a dollar that the Jewish community won't stand up to this.

The following is a link to a BBC interview of Palestinian hijacker Leila Khaled and IRA spokesman Danny Morrison on the difference between their "activism" and Israeli "terrorism."

Absolutely astonishing, and absolutely typical of Moonbeams -- nothing my cause ever does is wrong because I have the truth directly from heaven.

Try to listen -- but have someone tie you down first. You might want strangle your computer. It's truly that revolting.