What Is This World Coming To?

Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during drills Sunday by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the U.S. and its allies condemned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility that was being secretly constructed.

English-language Press TV reported the Fateh-110, Tondar-69 and Zelzal were test fired in a missile defense exercise, but did not give specifics on range or other details. All are short-range, surface-to-surface missiles.

Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force, told reporters Iran tested a multiple missile launcher for the first time. Press TV showed pictures of at least two missiles being fired simultaneously and said they were from Sunday’s drill in a desert in central Iran. In the clip, men could be heard shouting “Allahu Akbar” as the missiles were launched.

“The message of the war game for some arrogant countries which intend to intimidate is that we are able to give a proper, strong answer to their hostility quickly,” the Web site of state television quoted Salami as saying. He said the missiles successfully hit their targets.

Salami told reporters Iran had reduced the missiles and their ranges so they could be used in quick, short-range engagements. He also said Iran would test medium-range Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles on Sunday night and long-range Shahab-3 missiles on Monday, during the drill set to last several days. The Revolutionary Guard controls Iran’s missile program.

Whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, Cubans and Mexicans, along with tax-hating Americans were among several political leanings listed in the “Domestic Extremism Lexicon” that came out of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) in late March.

The lexicon lists definitions for key terms and phrases used by Homeland Security analysts “that addresses the nature and scope of the threat that domestic, non-Islamic extremism poses to the United States,” the report said.

A copy of the Homeland Security draft memo in PDF format can be downloaded here.  Be the first on your block to know the secret handshake!

Waterboarding KSM Saved Los Angeles, CIA Says

Less than a week after declaring that it was time for the nation to move on rather than “laying blame for the past,” Obama described what might be done next to investigate what he called the loss of “our moral bearings.”

Answering a reporter’s question, Obama said that it would be up to his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to determine whether “those who formulated those legal decisions” behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted.

The methods, described in Bush-era memos Obama released last Thursday, included such grim and demeaning tactics as slamming detainees against walls and subjecting them to water-boarding, which is simulated drowning. The harsher methods were authorized to gain information after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Obama said CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law as interpreted by Bush administration. Read the rest of this entry »

Iran is trying to replicate Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jewish people, Israeli deputy prime minister Silvan Shalom said Tuesday ahead of a Holocaust ceremony at a former death camp.

“What Iran is trying to do right now is not far away at all from what Hitler did to the Jewish people just 65 years ago,” Shalom told reporters before a ceremony at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Read the rest of this entry »

While the rest of the country stands frozen in astonishment at the Obama administration’s transformation of America into a fascist state, new Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel found it necessary to remind the White House that even a fascist state will need people to oppress.

Netanyahu gave an interview to the Atlantic in which he said, “The Obama presidency has two great missions: fixing the economy, and preventing Iran from gaining nuclear weapons,” Netanyahu said. “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

Team Obama has been flooding the airwaves with reports of great progress being made with Iran at the G-20 with substantive, cordial, face-to-face talks  between US diplomat Richard Holbrooke and Iranian Mehdi Akhundzadeh.  In Washington, the State Department insisted Wednesday that Holbrooke met with the Iranian envoy. 

In Tehran, the Iranians say an encounter in a hallway does not constitute substantive talks.  “Rest assured,” IRNA quoted Akhundzadeh, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, “that if there is a decision to have talks with U.S., like the talks on Iraq, all will be informed about it. There is nothing to hide.”

Iran has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel.  It has hosted conferences aimed at denying the Holocaust.  One of its conferences was entitled “A World Without Zionism and America.”

Other than that, Iran is perfectly positioned to be our new best friend.

Britain’s politicians care so much about constitutional protections for human rights that they have two sets of them–the centuries-old traditions laid out by parliament and precedent and the newfangled European Convention on Human Rights, written into British law in 1998. Neither of these stopped Britain from becoming the first European Union country to bar an elected European legislator from its territory for his political opinions on February 12. Read the rest of this entry »

Muzzammil Hassan came to America from Pakistan 25 years ago.  He became a successful banker in Buffalo, NY, but he was upset by what he called ‘negative perceptions of Islam’.

Hassan and his wife decided to start “Bridges TV”.   Hassan’s wife challenged him to start it.

“I had no background in television. I didn’t know anything about TV. Her comment was, ‘you have an M.B.A. (masters degree in business) why don’t you write a business plan?’”

And so he did. He quit his job at the bank and for the next two to three years worked almost non-stop in developing an English language television network that offers news and entertainment for Muslims.

Mr. Hassan hopes Bridges TV lives up to its name by uniting American Muslims and by helping non-Muslims overcome the negative images they may have of both Muslims and Islam.

After having dedicated his life to improving the negative images held of Muslims in America, his wife filed for divorce.

So he cut her head off.

But Hasan wasn’t totally unsuccessful.  I feel better about Islam. Before, I thought I might have been too hard on it.   I feel better knowing I haven’t been.

Two human rights groups on Monday decried widespread torture of political opponents by bitter Palestinian rivals Hamas and Fatah, and Associated Press interviews with three victims and a doctor backed the reports of abuse.

The Palestinian human rights group Al Haq said Monday that arbitrary arrests of political opponents have been common since Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, with each side trying to defend its turf.

“Arrests for political reasons haven’t stopped for a second,” Al Haq director Shawan Jabarin told reporters. He estimated that before the latest sweeps, more than 1,000 people had been seized by each side.

One detainee told of being beaten with pipes and having a screwdriver rammed into his back. Another said interrogators tied his hands behind his back then lifted him into the air by his bound wrists. Read the rest of this entry »

Department of Homeland Security officials are quite logically concerned that the upcoming political conventions, the Olympics and the November elections might present targets too tempting for al-Qaeda or other Islamic terror groups to ignore, reports ABC News.

Anti-terror officials in the U.S. cite this summer and fall’s lineup of two major political parties’ conventions, November’s general election and months of transition into a new presidential administration as cause for heightened awareness and action.

This is what the Department of Homeland Security is quietly declaring a Period of Heightened Alert, or POHA, a time frame when terrorists may have more incentive to attack.

According to drafts of government memos described to ABC News, the period would run roughly from this August through July 2009.

The United States is more vulnerable to attack in the period between now and the inauguration of a new president in January, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said last week.

Adm. Mike Mullen told soldiers at Fort Lewis, Washington June 24 that he has set up a transition team to be ready for the next administration.

“I have, in my current job, stood up a transition team because this is a great time of transition,” Mullen said. “A time of transition is very, very challenging for any institution much less an entire country. And in that time of transition, it’s my belief that we as a country will be more vulnerable.”
Read the rest of this entry »