 By Madeleine Gruen and Edward Sloan Through careful study of terrorist incidents and investigations and study of the histories of the terrorist groups, U.S. law enforcement officers, security officials, and intelligence analysts have developed an understanding of the tactics, techniques and procedures used by terrorists preparing for and conducting attacks. Professionals can usually distinguish between a truly suspicious incident and benign behavior. However, there is a third category of non-violent activities that is more difficult to identify, which we will refer to as "acts of staged controversy." There are some cases where witnesses describe actors' behavior as "odd" yet very overt—behavior apparently designed to attract attention. Viewed under differing prisms, the behavior could be classified as either benign or as some type of terrorist activity. Decision makers and practitioners should consider the possibility that certain incidents are staged or that they are escalated by manipulation of the media and the legal system to create controversy and to provoke a response to serve strategic purposes. It is very difficult to prove ulterior intentions behind what we are referring to as "acts of staged controversy." Perhaps these acts are deliberately provocative. Or, it is possible these are innocent events that may be seized upon by advocacy groups for political gain. We present this hypothesis to provide an alternative way of analyzing these types of incidents. Read more ...Source: IPT News
 US actress Annette Bening, right, listens to fellow US actress Alfre
Woodard, left, as Iranian actress Fatemeh Motamed Arya, looks
on at center, during a seminar 'Acting for Film' given by Bening
and Woodard, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 1, 2009.A delegation of Hollywood dhimmis is going to Iran to open up talks with the friendly old mullahs, as Pamela reported yesterday. But here again we see that appeasement only emboldens the one who is being appeased: it isn't enough for the dhimmi stars to legitimize the oppression and brutality of the mullahs' Sharia regime; they also have to apologize for how mean, mean, mean Hollywood has been to Iran. Apologize for 300! And The Wrestler! There are plenty of Hollywood films that the filmmakers should apologize for, but those two are not among them. The art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged a visiting Hollywood delegation to apologise for "insults and slanders" about Iranians in films, the ISNA news agency reported on Saturday.
"(Iranian) cinema officials will only have the right to have official sessions with... Hollywood movie makers when they apologise to the Iranians for their 30 years of insults and slanders," Javad Shamaghdari said.
"The Iranian people and our revolution has been repeatedly unjustly attacked by Hollywood," he said, citing '300' and recent Oscar nominated movie 'The Wrestler' as among offending films.
In 2007, the war epic '300', a smash hit in the United States for its gory portrayal of the Greco-Persian wars, drew the wrath of Iranians for showing their ancestors as bloodthirsty.
Similarly 'The Wrestler', was booed in Iran and heavily criticised for the scene of breaking and tearing of the Iranian flag by the picture's star, 2009 Oscar nominee Mickey Rourke.
"We will believe (US President Barack) Obama's policy of change when we see change in Hollywood too, and if Hollywood wants to correct its behaviour towards Iranian people and Islamic culture then they have to officially apologise," Shamaghdari added.... Read more ... Source: AFPH/T: Jihad Watch
A "fatwa" against Yemeni law setting minimum age for marriage The norm sets the limit at the age of 17, but according to Islamic figures, this goes against Sharia, and therefore Parliament cannot legislate on the matter. Meanwhile, lawmakers have decided to delay by two years the political elections scheduled for April.
Sana’a (AsiaNews) - Some Yemeni religious figures have launched a "fatwa" against the law recently approved by Parliament that sets the minimum age for marriage at 17. The statement, signed by the rector of Al-Eman University, Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, and by representatives of the party Islamic Islah, is aimed at eliminating the minimum age limit.
The question of the minimum age for marriage in Yemen was brought to the attention of world public opinion last April, following the case of Nojud Mohammed Ali, an 8-year-old girl who requested and obtained a divorce after being forced to marry a 30-year-old man.
News Yemen reports that the 17 signers of the "fatwa" claim that the law has no Islamic foundation and violates Sharia, the Islamic law, which the Constitution of the country affirms as the basis of all of its laws. "The marriage age," says the assistant secretary general of the Islah party, Mohammad Assadi, "is an Islamic rule, and political parties cannot intervene in such affairs."
But there are also some who are asking that the minimum age be raised to 18. One researcher on Islamic questions, AbdulAziz alAsali, also a member of Islah, maintains that girls need to be given time to complete high school, and that "at 18 years they are mentally and physically ready for marriage."
For its part, the National Women's Committee has asked Parliament not to respond to the lawmakers who are asking for the marriage age limit to be lowered to 12.
In any case, it is unlikely that the issue will be examined immediately. Yesterday, the Yemeni Parliament decided in practice to delay by two years the political elections scheduled for next April. Members of Parliament, in fact, approved a document initiating the procedures necessary to modify the articles of the Constitution establishing the duration of the parliamentary mandate. The decision was made to allow the introduction of the amendments necessary "for political and electoral development," including the proportional system.
The decision was made following threats by the opposition to boycott the vote if the electoral law were not modified.
Source: http://new.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=14588&size=
 DOHA: Nearly 50 percent of Arabs living in the Middle East believe that Islam is heading for a clash with the West, according to the latest poll commissioned by the Doha Debates.
A further 30 percent of respondents felt that “political Islam” poses a threat to the West, with a majority identifying the promotion of jihad as the principal threat.
The results mirror the vote at a recent session of the Doha Debates, where audience rejected a motion questioning whether political Islam is a threat to the West by 51 percent to 49 percent. The poll, conducted by YouGovSiraj, was carried out between January 26 and February 1 and surveyed the views of 970 Arabs in the Gulf, North Africa, and Levant.
Forty seven percent of the respondents believe that the current political climate is encouraging support for political Islam. A similar proportion is also of the opinion that Islam is heading for a clash with the West. However, opinions on this are largely divided with an almost equal number of people (42 percent) disagreeing with this notion.
Eighty five percent of those polled stated their perception of political Islam groups as either popular or extremely popular. As for the reasons of their popularity, 25 percent believe that they are the only alternative to the regimes while 23 percent said that they are not corrupt.
When asked which groups they consider as representative of political Islam, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hezbollah were most commonly cited. Interestingly, 26 percent of those interviewed didn’t see any of the listed groups as examples of political Islam.
A majority of the respondents- 60 percent- believe that Islam has been hijacked by extremists. One quarter of Arabs think political Islam is more of a threat to Muslims than it is to the West, with nearly a half believing it is tainting the religion’s good name.
Sixty eight percent of the surveyed said that they didn’t believe politics and religion should be separated in the Muslim world. Source: The Peninsula
  By Jeffrey Imm There are no "good" or "moderate" supremacists. Supremacists may employ more or less destructive tactics, but their adherence to a supremacist ideology itself is never "good" or "moderate." History has shown that supremacists consistently reject the idea that humanity has an inalienable right to equality and liberty. By definition and as shown by history, every identity-based supremacist group rejects such human rights -- including such supremacists as white supremacists, Aryan Nazi supremacists, and Islamic supremacists. Therefore, American government leaders who are responsible for equality and liberty should categorically reject such supremacist groups, nations, and adherents, right? Yet, in the case of Islamic supremacism, our governmental leaders continue to fail in this responsibility. Moreover, it is not only just American government leaders in denial about such supremacism, but also American mainstream media, foreign policy groups, and other aspects of society have joined an army of appeasement on Islamic supremacism which threatens the very foundation of equality and liberty on which our nation exists. In the past several weeks, we have seen American government officials calling for "reconciliation" with Islamic supremacists in Afghanistan, and listening to the counsel of those who state that America must negotiate with "reconcilable" aspects of the Islamic supremacist Taliban. We have seen American government officials alternately ignore and defend Pakistan's surrender to the Islamic supremacist Taliban in the northwest portion of Pakistan, where Pakistan has agreed to the Taliban's demand to implement Islamic supremacist Sharia law. We have heard the deafening silence by such American leaders as Pakistan Islamic supremacists denounce democracy and advocate global Islamic supremacist rule, with such Pakistani "peace" negotiators echoing the very sentiments of Al-Qaeda itself -- as Osama Bin Laden seeks "the greater state of Islam from the ocean to the ocean, Allah permitting." Read more ...Source: Anti-Jihad League of America
 I have burned many electrons over the years highlighting reports about the abuse of financial aid to the Palestinians. The Funding for Peace Coalition probably did the most comprehensive job back in late 2004 with their report Managing European Taxpayers' Money: Supporting The Palestinian Arabs - A Study In Transparency. Not much seems to have changed since then. The Palestinian Authority continues to be led by the same corrupt cronies, and continues to provide “terrorist insurance” payments to imprisoned murderers and their families. The Abbas led PA continues to incite violence against Israel through its public statements, television shows and hate education. And the JCPA reports that the internationally funded PA still has Hamas and other terrorists on the payroll. In Gaza, the criminal Hamas government has been caught red handed time and again stealing international aid – either selling it back to the people to fund their war crimes, or diverting it directly to their guerilla terrorist forces. And Hamas keeps firing rockets into Israeli towns using their own human shields every day. And the smuggling tunnels bring in more weapons all the time. James Lindsay, former legal counsel for UNRWA, issued a report Fixing UNRWA: Repairing the UN's Troubled System of Aid to Palestinian Refugees, where the recommendations are more than telling. He argues that implementing them would return Palestinians “to what most of them so desperately seek: normal lives.” Lindsay directly and indirectly argues that much of the UNRWA budgets are spent providing services to people who simply don’t need the charity, and many are not refugees, and some are not even Palestinians. Read more ...Source: David Frankfurter
If you chose "No," please consider providing your solution to Gaza crisis in the comments.
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 Charlotte Bronte cautioned that "prejudices … are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow there, firm as weeds among rocks." But sometimes educators are the ones planting those prejudices. The Islamic Religious Community in Austria (IRCA) — the sole legally recognized body that represents Muslim interests before the government and in which all Muslims automatically receive membership — has been providing Islamic education in public schools since 1982. Mouhanad Khorchide, a professor of sociology, recently published the first major study of this program, which has processed more than thirty thousand pupils. The disturbing results offer yet another warning to states about the groups they empower to speak on behalf of Muslims: Khorchide, himself a Muslim, said 22.6 percent of the 210 Muslim teachers he had surveyed had "fanatical attitudes" and 21.9 percent rejected democracy as incompatible with Islam.
The older the teacher, Khorchide said, the more likely he was to reject the principle of the rule of law.
According to Vienna weekly Falter, the study shows 8.5 percent of the Muslim teachers said it was understandable for violence to be used to spread Islam, 28.4 percent said there was a contradiction in being both a Muslim and a European, and 44 percent said they had to make their students understand they were better than non-Muslims. Read more ... Source: Islamist Watch Blog
 Scottish Daily Mail 28-02-09By Dean Herbert Police in Scotland have been ordered to give special priority to crimes where the victims are Muslim. In a move that last night sparked a fresh row over political correctness, a senior officer revealed that the race and religion of a victim has now become a crucial factor in how police respond to crime. Inspector Tom Galbraith, of Lothian and Borders Police’s diversity unit, told a conference on tackling terrorism that it was important to stop Scottish Muslims feeling “vulnerable” in case they were driven towards radicalism. Mr. Galbraith said the force encouraged officers to consider the religious or ethnic backgrounds of victims to assess their needs in dealing with hate crimes. He said that both an attack and a perceived lack of action by police could turn Islamic youths into future terrorists. Mr. Galbraith also revealed that police officers, Special Branch and BAA security staff were being given special lessons about Islamic culture after Muslims complained that being questioned when entering the country about whether they pray and attend mosques was offensive to their faith. Read more ...Source: The Frozen North
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- A Muslim advocacy organization said Friday that American Muslims are feeling "anger, disillusionment and mistrust" toward the FBI in the aftermath of reports that it used an informant to infiltrate Southland mosques. "The American Muslim community has never wavered from its commitment to keeping America safe, nor has it hesitated from cooperating with various law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, in ensuring the security of all U.S. citizens," the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement. Read more ...Source: NBC LA
... "In a report today, well-informed journalist Hamid Mir discloses that the Taliban leadership has decided to send fighters to Islamabad and has warned Islamic scholars in the federal capital to support the Taliban or leave the city.The Taliban have listed the names of the Islamic scholars who are refusing to support them on their hit list. "For a long time, I have been expressing the view that all Pakistan's cities are within the Taliban's reach. Lahore, Faisalabad, Karachi, Hyderabad, Rawalpindi and Islamabad - indeed, there is no big city that has no madrassa in its populace. These madrassas have hundreds to thousands of students; a large number of them come from backward areas and impoverished families. Even in madrassas, they lead a life of deprivation; these students consider even the ordinary homes of the lower middle classes as wealthy. They think a television and a refrigerator are a luxury. Read more ... Source: MEMRIH/T: Weasel Zippers
 GROZNY, Russia: The bullnecked president of Chechnya emerged from afternoon prayers at the mosque and with chilling composure explained why seven young women who had been shot in the head deserved to die. Ramzan Kadyrov said the women, whose bodies were found dumped by the roadside, had "loose morals" and were rightfully shot by male relatives in honor killings. "If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them are killed," Kadyrov told journalists in the capital of this Russian republic. The 32-year-old former militia leader is carrying out a campaign to impose Islamic values and strengthen the traditional customs of predominantly Muslim Chechnya, in an effort to blunt the appeal of hardline Islamic separatists and shore up his power. In doing so, critics say, he is setting up a dictatorship where Russian laws do not apply. Some in Russia say Kadyrov's attempt to create an Islamic society violates the Russian constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and a separation of church and state. But the Kremlin has given him its staunch backing, seeing him as the key to keeping the separatists in check, and that has allowed him to impose his will. Read more ...Source: APH/T: Weasel ZippersRamzan Kadyrov
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
 The American Civil Liberties Union is not happy. Late yesterday, they issued a statement blasting a law enforcement intelligence bulletin that they say, basically, encourages police to unnecessarily hassle pro-Muslim lobbying groups and anti-war activists. So what's all the fuss about? At issue is an item in the Feb. 19 "Prevention Awareness Bulletin," created by the North Central Texas Fusion System, warning law enforcement about Islamic infiltration in the U.S. Our local fusion system, located in the Collin County Justice Center in McKinney, is one of 58 such operations around the country. Overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, it is a product of the post-9/11 push to have more inter-agency cooperation and information sharing -- all of which was sorely lacking in the runup to the 2001 terrorist attacks. The center's massive computers inhale bits of data and intelligence, then analysts package it and pass it along to up to 125 local participating police agencies. More than 3,000 people receive the weekly awareness bulletins, according to the fusion system's site. The intelligence can range from urgent tips about potential terrorist plots to, for example, an analysis of one county's "animal-agriculture disaster response plan." Bulletins can also include analysis that is basically nothing more than a clip job using open source, or publicly available, Internet articles, which is basically what was included in the Feb. 19 missive. The bulletin, labeled "for official use only" but leaked on this site, says that "Middle Eastern terrorist groups and their supporting organizations have been successful in gaining support for Islamic goals in the United States and providing an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish." It cites as an example the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, which is often criticized by conservative and pro-Israel counterterrorism bloggers. Read more ...Source: ACLU H/T: Weasel ZippersFBI
Latest recipient of The MASH Award
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