Friday, March 31, 2006

Arab journalism at its finest

It is good to know that Arab journalists are willing to ask the tough questions from the newsmakers.

Just check out this hard-hitting interview by Al-Arab to noted "historian", "Dr." David Duke.

INTERVIEWER: How would you advise independent journalists or editors to resist the strong influence of the Pro-Israel lobby? If people could get in trouble just talking about it, how do you propose they fight it? Also, there are many out there who are genuinely ignorant of the power of such lobbies, how could you go about enlightening them without sounding like a 'false prophet' of some sort? You know that mainstream media plays a 'labeling game' with all those who dare to point out that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes.

DR.DUKE: It's as Benjamin Franklin once said, “We must hang together or we will hang separately.” If most of the journalists, academics and politicians who know about the Jewish lobby would add their voice, the Jewish powerbrokers couldn't single out anyone for their dirty work. Most of the intelligentsia knows about the Jewish supremacy in the American political and media realm, but it’s the proverbial gorilla in the room that no one dares to speak about, pretending not to see it so as not to raise its ire.

Still many need to learn the truth. As for being a false prophet, anyone who exposes this Gorilla will be labeled such. The original label of "false prophet" was used by similar Jewish extremists against Jesus Christ. They have the power to say what they will. All we can do is have the courage to speak the truth.

INTERVIEWER: Where do you stand politically or otherwise? We have heard of what is said about you by those who wish to discredit you because of your beliefs, but how would you 'label' yourself? Do you have a specific opinion on races or religions?

DR.DUKE: Of course, they slander me unjustly, for I am no supremacist or anti-Semite. I want to preserve the independence, and heritage and freedom of the European American people and I support all peoples in the struggle for those basic human rights. I am no supremacist, I don't believe in suppression of people, globalism, or lording supreme over other nations, religions or peoples. I have been telling the truth about Zionism for many years, so I have earned the hatred of these extremist Jews who are themselves supremacists who seek supremacy not over simply Palestine and the Mideast, but over the political and media apparatus of the United States. Also, I am not an anti-Semite, it is the extremist Jews I oppose, not every Jew, and I respect greatly those Jews who themselves oppose the Jewish extremist elements. My latest book, Jewish Supremacism, is dedicated to a courageous Jew, the late Dr. Israel Shahak. Unfortunately the extremists control the organized Jewish community and through their power influence us powerfully as well....

We must not retreat. Those of us who know the truth must stand together and know that those whom the Jewish extremists hate the most are our best friends.

INTERVIEWER: We are much grateful that you have accepted to answer our questions. We thank you for your time and effort.

The KKK and the Arabs...a match made in jihad heaven.

The Today Show this morning, in its opening news roundup, didn't think that a Palestinian Arab terrorist pretending to be a religious Jewish hitchhiker and blowing himself up in the car of the grandparents who picked him up was worth mentioning as a major story.

Nor did they think that the approval of the new Palestinian government towards the terror attack was newsworthy.

Or the fact that the bomber had just been released from a Palestinian jail by the new PA government.

This suicide bombing was the cruelest and most cold-blooded in months but it isn't worth mentioning. At least according to the Today Show.

The "Humanitarian Aid" dodge

The Quartet has spoken:

International peace mediators said on Thursday the new Hamas-led Palestinian government had failed to commit itself to peace and warned that aid would inevitably be affected.
The Quartet of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations "noted with grave concern that the new government has not committed to the principles spelled out on Jan. 30," a joint statement said, referring to demands that it recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past peace deals.
"There inevitably will be an effect on direct assistance to that government and its ministries," the statement said.
It added that humanitarian assistance to meet the basic needs of the Palestinian people should continue.

OK, are the Palestinian Arabs starving? Do they live in thatched huts? Is there a comparison in "humanitarian aid" needed between these two groups of people?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development divides countries up by per-capita Gross National Income. It puts the Palestinian territories in the "Lower Middle Income" category of countries and territories. Lower on the list are:

Afghanistan
Angola
Bangladesh
Benin
Bhutan
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cape Verde
Central African Rep.
Chad
Comoros
Congo, Dem. Rep.
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gambia
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Haiti
Kiribati
Laos
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Maldives
Mali
Mauritania
Mozambique
Myanmar
Nepal
Niger
Rwanda
Samoa
Sao Tome & Principe
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Solomon Islands
Somalia
Sudan
Tanzania
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tuvalu
Uganda
Vanuatu
Yemen
Zambia
Cameroon
Congo, Rep.
Côte d'Ivoire
Ghana
India
Kenya
Korea, Dem.Rep.
Kyrgyz Rep.
Moldova
Mongolia
Nicaragua
Nigeria
Pakistan
Papua New Guinea
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
Viet Nam
Zimbabwe

Not to mention the dozens of other countries at the same rough level economically as the Palestinian territories.

So, when the Quartet "talks tough" to Hamas and still allows "humanitarian aid" into the terrortories, how much of it is really meant to be humanitarian and how much is just to get around the pesky fact that Hamas refuses to accept Israel and renounce terror? How much concern does the Quartet show for the humanitarian crises in sub-Saharan Africa compared to the well-dressed rock-throwing Palestinian youths?

The Palestinian Arabs are well-educated and healthy. They have electricity and clean water courtesy of Israel. They have a monetary and psychological support system of Arabs and Muslims worldwide. There is no humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian Arab territories.

They have taken in hundreds of millions in aid and have zero to show for it. Their major industries remain olives and building bombs. They've had sixty years to build themselves an economy and a future and they have consistently chosen to whine and seethe instead.

At some point, one has to wonder why exactly the West, in the triage of humanitarian aid dollars, decides that Palestinian Arabs are one of their top priorities.

Insane Muslim Protester of the Day 3/29 part 2

This didn't look that insane until I read the caption:

Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards beat themselves with chains during a religious gathering against cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, that were published in European newspapers, in Tehran, Iran March 29, 2006.

Maybe if we publish more cartoons they'll start shooting themselves.

70 Years Ago - Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

I thought that this series of three contiguous articles in the Palestine Post from March 30, 1936 was interesting.

A Muslim sheikh spreading incitement against Jews?
Preventing Jews from visiting holy places purely because they are Jews?
An Arab found with explosives?

Good thing we have advanced since 1936, right?

Insane Muslim Protester of the Day 3/29

You would think that the people who claim to have created algebra would know how to add 1+1.

Jersey City, 8:20 AM

The Yahoo MB refugee bloggers

I've mentioned before that I used to spend inordinate amounts of time on the Yahoo! news message boards, arguing about Israel with Jew-hating morons, before I switched addictions and now spend inordinate amounts of time blogging.

I just wanted to point out a few blogs from fellow Yahoo! refugees that are updated regularly:

A March of Folly
The Atheist Jew
Eye on the World

And updated a little less regularly:
Callie is Chatty
Carl's Blog

One of these things is not like the other

Our friends the Saudis have been playing interesting games again.

(Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington Turki al-Faisal) called on Israel to disarm to create a nuclear-free Middle East. “We all know that Israel has atomic weapons and that’s why removing these threats from the Middle East on a uniform basis would serve Israel’s purpose as well as the rest of the countries in the area,” he said.

In Seattle, he said

The development of nuclear weapons by any Middle Eastern country is "totally unacceptable."

And finally:

BERLIN (AFP) - Saudi Arabia is working secretly on a nuclear programme, with help from Pakistani experts, a German magazine reports in its latest edition, citing Western security sources.

The German magazine Cicero says that during the Hajj pilgrimages to Mecca in 2003 through 2005, Pakistani scientists posed as pilgrims to come to Saudi Arabia in aircraft laid on by the oil-rich kingdom.

Between October 2004 and January 2005, some of them took the opportunity to "disappear" from their hotel rooms, sometimes for up to three weeks, it quoted German security expert Udo Ulfkotte as saying.

According to Western security services, the magazine added, Saudi scientists have been working since the mid-1990s in Pakistan, a nuclear power since 1998 thanks to the work of the now-disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Cicero, which will appear on newstands on Thursday, also quoted a US military analyst, John Pike, as saying that Saudi bar codes can be found on half of Pakistan's nuclear weapons "because it is Saudi Arabia which ultimately co-financed the Pakistani atomic nuclear programme".

The magazine also said satellite images prove that Saudi Arabia has set up in Al-Sulaiyil, south of Riyadh, a secret underground city and dozens of underground silos for missiles.

Here's the Allah Fish!

Yes, a fish has been found in a British pet store that "clearly" has the Arabic words "Allah" and "Mohammed" marked on its sides. This is causing a stir in the Muslim 'ummah.

There is a video on the site as well that reverently describes the phenomenon, with awe-inspiring Arabic music.

Apparently, the fish has been sold. I hope it tasted good.

(Hat tip: LGF)

Saudi ambassador: Osirak bombing was a good thing

How funny is this?

Israel’s 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor was “probably” fortunate, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington said.

Asked March 23 whether Saudis now welcomed the attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor, given Iraq’s subsequent aggression against Kuwait, Turki al-Faisal answered, “Probably, yes.” Faisal appeared caught off guard by the question, which came when he called on Israel to disarm to create a nuclear-free Middle East.

I'm sure that the clarifications and corrections are imminent...

Hamas: Let the world destroy Israel for us

Hamas has out-Arafated Arafat.

They realize that they do not have to lie. All they have to do is make sure that their spokesmen wear suits, use the word "peace" incessantly when even they will admit that their idea of peace means that Israel doesn't exist, and let the world do what it does best: pressure the Jewish state to make more and more concessions.

Of course, terror apologists like AFP are more than happy to play along, with headlines like:

Hamas ready for international Mideast peace push

...when even in the contents of the article it says

Hamas government was ready to talk to the international community to end the Middle East conflict but would not change its hardline stance on Israel.

But that is enough to call it a "peace push!"

And as AFP goes, so goes Europe.

When one side makes its red lines clear to begin with, the international community has no choice but to pressure the side that really has none.

Feds stop Israeli company purchase

Checkpoint, the Israeli company that makes the most popular firewall product worldwide, has been effectively stopped from buying an American company, Sourcefire. Sourcefire creates Snort, an open-source intrusion detection software, as well as some commercial products that build on Snort.

It was done by the same government panel that approved the Dubai ports deal.

Forbes reported in early March:

The company was told U.S. officials feared the transaction could endanger some of the government's most sensitive computer systems.

The objections by the FBI and Pentagon were partly over specialized intrusion detection software known as "Snort," which guards some classified U.S. military and intelligence computers.

The contrast between the administration's handling of the $6.8 billion Dubai ports deal and the Israeli company's $225 million technology purchase offers an uncommon glimpse into the U.S. government's choices to permit some deals but raise deep security concerns over others.

The 45-day investigation into the Israeli deal still under way is only the 26th ever conducted in 1,600 business transactions reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. The panel, facing criticism by Congress about its scrutiny of the ports deal, judges the security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.

In private meetings between the panel and Check Point, officials from the FBI and Defense Department objected forcefully to permitting any foreign company to acquire some sensitive Sourcefire technology for preventing hacker break-ins and monitoring data traffic, an executive familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press. This executive spoke on condition of anonymity because government negotiations are supposed to remain confidential.

William Reinsch, a former senior U.S. official who participated in reviews under President Clinton, said the Israeli sale involves more dire security issues than the administration's recent approval for a Dubai-owned company to take over significant operations at six major American ports.

"This raises a lot more important issues," said Reinsch, a former Commerce Department undersecretary. "The most important case is where we're making an irrevocable technology transfer to a foreign party. Port operations raise security issues, but the ports are still in the United States."

Many things do not make sense about this:

Snort is open-source, meaning that the technology is completely open and transparent to the world. There is no additonal security risk to having Israel own the rights to the code that is already publicly known, even if the government is heavily using Snort. (The feds could take the open-source Snort and build new versions based on that, rather than use the new ones thast Checkpoint would come out with.)
The government already uses Checkpoint firewall software, and that in theory is far more problematic than intrusion detection software. For years, people who distrust Jews have spread rumors that Checkpoint put backdoors into the firewall software so they can break into computers at will. Of course it is untrue (the downside of having something like that discovered is so much worse than any perceived benefit as to make the idea ridiculous.)

Anyway, firewall software is in the critical path of data; intrusion detection systems are not. If the Israelis can be trusted with firewall code, there is no additional risk for IDS.
Anyone who thinks that trusting Arabs who support terror with port security makes more sense than trusting Israelis with perceived data security is insane.

So what's going on? Was it an overreaction to the criticism over Dubai? Was it latent anti-semitism in the FBI and Pentagon? Was it a complete misunderstanding of technology?

This is a bit troubling.