Iran accused of setting $1,000 bounty on U.S. soldiers 'This ruthless Islamist regime's program for terrorism and mass murder knows no bounds

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is being accused of setting – and paying – bounties of $1,000 for each U.S. military member killed in Afghanistan.

The accusations are outlined in an amended lawsuit prepared for filing in federal court in Washington as a followup to a complaint filed last year that accused Ahmadinejad of the torture death of an Iranian freedom fighter who was imprisoned.

Larry Klayman, founder of Judicial Watch and also of Freedom Watch USA, told WND he's announcing the new filing in a news conference tomorrow in New York. He's there because he plans to serve Ahmadinejad with notice of the new claims while the Iranian president is visiting the United Nations this week.

Dig into the secrets of Washington, in "WHORES: Why and How I Came to Fight the Establishment"

The original case was filed a year ago in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and names Ahamdinejad, the Islamic Republic of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameinei, the nation's Revolutionary Guard and others as defendants.

The case explains it was brought on behalf of the family of Akbar Mohammadi, an original founder of the modern Iranian freedom movement who was murdered in Evin prison in Tehran after he was arrested.

(Story continues below)

The case "will now be expanded to include charges that A-mad [Ahmadinejad] and his Islamic extremist cohorts have placed a bounty on the head of each U.S. serviceman murdered by the Taliban and other terrorist groups," Klayman confirmed.

He also has prepared a motion for the court seeking permission to file the updated claim.

"President Obama and his administration, and even some establishment Republicans, have advocated appeasement of the Islamic regime, resulting in certain acceleration of death and destruction for the Persian people, and the creation of a severe nuclear threat to the world," Klayman said in a prepared statement.

"This policy of appeasement has not worked, and we have recently learned that a bounty for slaughter has been put on the heads of American servicemen by the so-called Islamic Republic of Iran. Now that the Iranian tragedy is so clearly and directly touching Americans, 'We the People' must stand up for human rights in defense not only of those brave Persians who are fighting for freedom, but also of U.S. servicemen and women who are being targeted for butchery ... by an evil, barbaric Islamic tyranny," Klayman continued. "This ruthless Islamist regime's program for terrorism and mass murder knows no bounds, and now touches us all – and I for one will not sit back and let it run rampant!"

The original complaint, which seeks in excess of $10 billion in damages, sought justice for Nasrin Mohammadi, whose brother, Akbar, was a protester for freedom and rights during the 1990s.

Original claims for freedom fighters

According to the filing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Akbar Mohammadi was a student at the University of Tehran and a critic of the Iranian regime. He was arrested during protests that followed the closure of a reformist newspaper.

"The protests were non-violent, but this did not stop the Iranian police and government agents from using violence and force to disperse and punish the protesters. … Akbar was taken into custody," the lawsuit explains.

"While in prison, Akbar was subjected to repeated bouts of torture and cruel and unusual forms of punishment, causing him to go deaf, and be in a constant state of agony. … It was recommended by doctors that he be transferred to other countries for treatment … but this request was denied."

Eventually his medications even were denied him, the claim states.

"Finally on July 31st, 2006, Akbar was murdered in Evin prison during a torture session, his long grueling prison term mercilessly ended by the regime," it states.

Akbar Mohammadi's sister, Nasrin, a plaintiff in the action, experienced the torture of her brother "through visits with him and communications back and forth."

She "has been a witness to the brutality that was inflicted upon her brother," the case says.

Klayman told WND the Iranian people are considered a key to Middle East reform.

"They deserve the right to be free," he said. Nasrin Mohammadi, he said, is a hero.

"She is putting herself out for brother, who she loved deeply," he said.

The lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act and cites allegations of supporting terror, torture, assault, battery and wrongful death.

'$1,000 bounty on American soldiers'

The amended complaint explains, "Defendant Ahmadinejad is believed to be mentally unstable if not insane, and has denied publicly the established historical event of the Holocaust, which ironically he is carrying out of sorts on his own people through the use of intimidation, torture and mass murder."

It explains opponents of Ahmadinejad have been subjected to "public floggings, imprisonment without charge, solitary confinement, torture, and even death."

"In addition, it has recently come to light that defendants have been directly and proximately involved with and planned and caused the death of United State servicemen stationed in the Middle East, among whom are the members of the class of plaintiffs herein. Intelligence sources in Afghanistan have revealed to the media (including the Sunday Times) that defendants have built camps in Afghanistan for terror activists. Specifically, it has been revealed that defendants pay terrorist organizations a $1,000 bounty for each American soldier who is murdered and $6,000 for each American Army vehicle that is destroyed."

Klayman alleges that at least five Iranian companies are sending money to Islamist terror groups in Afghanistan.

"The Iranian financing is so large that one Taliban money-handler has claimed that he alone has collected nearly $80,000 in the past six months. Afghani intelligence and Taliban officials have revealed how the money is transferred from Iranian straw-men companies to Afghani rebels," he explained.

WND reported earlier when Klayman took on another dictator, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez.

His lawsuit filed on behalf of a class of torture victims in Venezuela later was expanded to add the CITGO corporation as a defendant, a move the attorney for the plaintiffs said will provide a source of damage payments.

The case originally was filed against Chavez by Klayman seeking damages for "assault, supporting terrorism, crimes against humanity, violations of civil and human rights, torture" and other crimes.

The case was filed on behalf of a class of victims in Venezuela who allegedly were subjected to torture, threats and massive rights violations by the defendants "and their agents, and also acting in concert with, aiding, abetting, facilitating, soliciting, directing, orchestrating and conspiring with the Colombian paramilitary group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaida and the Taliban, and other terrorist groups, nation states and their collaborators in those atrocities

Bill Clinton suggested that the Islamic center near Ground Zero should be dedicated to the Muslim victims of 9/11.

Talk about the height of idiocy and insensitivity and submission. I am sure he is including the 19 jihadist murderers as well.

Former President Bill Clinton offered a suggestion to the builders of Park51 to help defuse the controversy.

By Julie Shapiro

LOWER MANHATTAN — Former President Bill Clinton strongly supports Park51, the mosque and community center planned near Ground Zero, he said in an interview posted on YouTube Sunday.

"I believe people should be free to practice their faith," Clinton told Steve Grove, YouTube’s head of news and politics.

"What the Muslim group wants to do is to build a community center near Ground Zero," Clinton continued. "It’s clearly a decision for the city of New York to make. The mayor supports it and they’ve gotten the requisite approvals, so I think they ought to be able to do it."

Clinton also had a suggestion for the builders of Park51

"Much or even most of the controversy…could have been avoided, and perhaps still can be, if the people who want to build the center were to simply say, 'We are dedicating this center to all the Muslims who were killed on 9/11,'" Clinton said.

Dedicating the center to the Muslim victims would show that "not all Muslims are terrorists," Clinton said, and it could help unite all the family members of 9/11 victims in a common cause of remembrance. Many 9/11 family members have been outspoken in opposition of the center.

"We’ve all forgotten: There were a lot of Muslims killed on 9/11," Clinton said.

Clinton’s comments were part of a larger 25-minute interview with Grove. The question about Park51 was submitted by a San Diego resident.

Your welcome leave your address and phone number - Muslims are here to help

During the weekend of October 22-24, mosques are asked to hold open houses and welcome non-Muslims to visit and learn more about Islam….

Well, you have to admire the sheer moxie of these subversives. The answer to the 97% of Americans who oppose the Ground Zero mosque because of location is -- proselytizing to Islam. I kid you not. The Muslim Brotherhood axis are asking all mosques to throw open their doors to non-Muslims (non-Muslims are only allowed in mosques by invitation only and for proselytizing). They are emboldened and they are digging in their heels. The decent thing to do would be to move the Ground Zero mosque and show consideration and kindness to those deeply hurt and offended by this Islamic supremacist mosque at Ground Zero. Show the West reciprocity. Mutual respect. Mutual understanding. Not possible for Islamic supremacists.

One opponent of the project dismissed the upcoming week of events at mosques as a “complete diversion.” Jim Riches, whose son, a firefighter, died on Sept. 11, said he wasn’t interested in getting an education on the Muslim religion.

“They’re not addressing the issue. The issue is there’s 9/11 families whose sons were murdered by Muslims,” Riches said. Opposition to Park51 is “not anti-Muslim, it’s anti-location,” he added. (more here)

For a look at the players in this subversive summit, go here. These are the leading Muslim Brotherhood proxies in the United States.

Imam Feisal ducked this presser due to "security concerns." Give me a break. we are getting the death threats and this stealth jihadist is whining about security concerns. Sick. And Feisal didn't show up in court yesterday (he is being sued in Union City for being a slumlord) because he was -- get this -- "stressed out" (must be all those exhausting puff pieces in the NY Times, CNN, Larry King, Christiane Amanpour). The man has never had a tough interview. Sheesh.

During the weekend of October 22-24, mosques are asked to hold open houses and welcome non-Muslims to visit and learn more about Islam….

Notice how Nihad Awad, cofounder of the unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-linked CAIR, spews that "misunderstanders of Islam" all over us.

"Park51 is not a case, it is a cause," said Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We believe the entire nation has been engulfed into misunderstanding and misinformation. There has been a campaign against this project that we believe is unfair and unnecessary."

National Muslim Leaders Call For Increased Interreligious Dialogue

By: NY1 News

Muslim leaders from across the country are asking for a "National Week For Dialogue" next month, in reaction to the controversy over a proposed Islamic cultural center near the World Trade Center.

Members of 20 of the nation's leading Muslim organizations asked for tolerance and said that Americans of all faiths have the right to build houses of worship where they please.

During the weekend of October 22-24, mosques are asked to hold open houses and welcome non-Muslims to visit and learn more about Islam.

"It is a hope and desire that these events will help to allay tensions in society caused by the Park51 controversy and will build bridges of understanding that unite and strengthen our nation," said Imam Al-Amim Latif of the Islamic Leadership Council.

"Park51 is not a case, it is a cause," said Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We believe the entire nation has been engulfed into misunderstanding and misinformation. There has been a campaign against this project that we believe is unfair and unnecessary."

The organizations gathered in Queens yesterday to discuss the controversial Park51 project.

The developer of the community center, Sharif El-Gamal, attended the summit. The proposed center's imam, Faisal Abdul Rauf, did not attend due to security reasons.

The coalition is also encouraging Muslims to reach out and attend services of other religions to increase understanding.

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad warned on Tuesday that an attack on his country’s nuclear facilities could spark a war with “no limits,”

The genocidal Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned that if the US starts a war against Iran it will – in his words – know “no limits”.

Ahmadinejad Warns of Capitalism's Defeat

"The discriminatory order of capitalism and the hegemonic approaches are facing defeat and are getting close to their end," Ahmadinejad said at a summit meeting assessing progress on achieving U.N. goals to drastically reduce poverty by 2015.

"The undemocratic and unjust governance structures of the decision-making bodies in international economic and political fields are the reasons behind most of the plights today humanity is confronting," he said, according to an English translation of his prepared remarks.

In an interview with PBS, he accused Israel of being a "Zionist and racist regime that occupies, creates wars, terrorizes, and destroys the homes of people, and prevents people from accessing water, medicine, and food in their own home, attacks its neighboring countries, and threatens everyone around."

He added: "A Jewish state means a racist regime." More here at FOX news.

Not only is this madman begging for the free world to take him out, his own people are begging us to do it. Today Rabbis and other members of various churches protested the annihilationist (no sign of CAIR, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA, or the Muslim Brotherhood axis or other Islamic supremacists. Where was peacemaker Rauf?). Pamela H. covered the Rabbis' protest:

New York Board of Rabbis Human Chain in Protest at United Nations

"This is a Day of Outrage"

On TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2010 @ 9:45 AM, at the SOUTHWEST CORNER OF 40TH & 1ST AVENUE, the New York Board of Rabbis (NYBR) gathered at 1st Avenue and 40th street to protest the President of Iran .

“There is no place for this evil-entity to be at the U.N. A sad day for New Yorkers and Americans.”

“There is no place for this evil-entity to be at the U.N. A sad day for New Yorkers and Americans.”

"Ah'jad, a man who brutalizes the opposition. A tyrant . A murderer who is being given an honorable welcome by the U.N. , when he should be locked away.; put on-trial and locked away for the crime of genocide."

They gathered at the UN to protest and to voice their condemnation of the madman of Tehran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad being granted a platform at the United Nations. "This is a sad day for people of all faiths."

The night before Ah'jad refused to even say the name of Israel, using instead "the Zionist entity". "This protest is about doing what is right. It is about the Decent vs the un-Decent."

The Rabbis were joined by the Inter-Faith Community, no sign of CAIR, ISNA, ICNA or other Islamic surpremacists. Where was peacemaker Rauf?

Muslim hypocrisy of the left is limitless and timeless

The hypocrisy of the left is limitless.

Prof calls fellow academics ‘sanctimonious bigots’

The refusal of women’s studies professors to publicly condemn honor killings, or academic advocates of gay rights to speak out against the treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries, is just about as hypocritical as it gets. Their loathing (dare we call it hate?) of the UN-created Jewish state is so deep that it “trump[s] their professional interests,” leading them into a “ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making,” Prof. Gottheil added.

Leftists so cling to their Jew-hatred that they will sacrifice their women, their bogus "sanctity," their non-existent humanity, to advance their hate and genocidal aspirations. This report defies any semblance of reason or compassion:

Arabs Harass Female 'Peace' Activists; Left Silences Victims

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

Roni Aloni Sedovnik, a feminist activist, penned an article in News1 – an independent website run by respected investigative reporter Yoav Yitzchak – under the heading “The Left's Betrayal of Female Peace Activists Who were Sexually Assaulted.”

“A nauseous atrocity has been going on for a long time behind the scenes at the leftists' demonstration at Bil'in, Naalin and Sheikh Jarrah [Shimon HaTzaddik],” she writes. “A dark secret that threatens to smash the basic ideological values upon which the demand to end the occupation of the Territories rests.”

It turns out, she explains, that when female peace activists from Israel and abroad come out to Judea and Samaria and demonstrate against the Israeli “occupation,” they are assaulted sexually by the Arab men whom they have come to help. These are not isolated incidents, Aloni-Sedovnik stresses. Rather, this is an “ongoing and widespread” phenomenon that includes verbal and physical abuse. She accuses the 'peace' camp of purposely covering up the trend so as not to offend “the Palestinians and their heritage, which sees women as sexual objects.”

Media cover-up
Aloni-Sedovnik cites two specific cases which she has knowledge of – one is a case of rape and another is “severe sexual harassment.” The attackers in both cases, she stresses, were familiar with the victims and knew that they were “peace activists.”

The rape occurred several months ago in the village of Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem. The victim, an American activist, wanted to press charges but leftist activists put pressure on her not to do so, so as not to damage the struggle against the 'occupation.'

The second case involved an Israeli activist who took part in the demonstrations at Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, where the High Court ruled that Jewish families may move into homes that they have owned for generations. This woman filed a complaint with the police but retracted it after “severe and unfair pressure” from the demonstrations' organizers, according to Aloni-Sedovnik. Furthermore, the organizers appealed to demonstrators to dress modestly when they come to the Arab neighborhoods and suggested that they wear head scarves.

Aloni-Sedovnik accuses the Israeli media of complicity in the cover-up.

“How is it that we do not hear the voice of the radical feminists who repeat, day and night, that occupation is occupation, and it does not matter if it is a nation that is doing the subjugation, or a man who is subjugating a woman?

"It appears that there is a gap between the radical-leftist feminist theory about the active resistance to the occupation of the Territories, and the stuttering self-annulment in the face of the violent conquest of women.”

The Umm Salmona case was reported in Haaretz as an attempted rape but does not seem to have made it beyond the blog pages.

Foreign women raped and subjugated
Earlier this year, a blogger and literature buff named Yehudah Bello, who writes in various venues about history and the theory of evolution, wrote a blog post with the striking title: “The Female Leftist Activists are Raped Day after Day, Night after Night.” Bello is no ultra-nationalist, and he supports the creation of a PA state – a fact which makes his claims all the more believable.

Most female leftist European activists, writes Bello, are brainwashed in their youth into hating Israel, and then sent directly into Judea and Samaria, without spending a single night in Tel Aviv, lest they see civilian Israeli society for themselves and find that they like it. They are whisked off to Shechem, Jenin and other PA towns and housed in Arab educational or cultural facilities, or private homes. Local Arab girls are sent to befriend them and they have no choice but to trust them.

It is is easy, explains Bello, “to carry out a sexual crime against a foreign girl, in her first days away from her family, in a place where no police have ever visited. And this is what happens, and has happened.”

"I was told of such rape cases by women who are not Jewish: a female European leftist activist, a female Red Cross volunteer and a young Arab woman from Yafo,” he says. He says that he met these women when he carried out IDF reserve duty, and met them afterward as well. “They told me what goes on there, in the Palestinian villages, far from any prying eye.”

"These are not just cases of rape carried out to satisfy lust,” he writes. “Usually, they are carried out systematically in order to make the girl pregnant and then take her as a wife – after she converts to Islam, of course. We know about this system from the stories of women who underwent a similar process within Israel and escaped to Europe. But it is hard to escape from the Palestinian territories. Sometimes these women – some of whom are no longer young – are never allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied, in order to forestall their escape.”

If someone were to compare the list of foreign female activists who enter Judea and Samaria to the list of those who leave, Bello claims, the magnitude of the phenomenon would be proven. “Everyone knows about it, but no one dares talk about it. The Palestinians have been turned into martyrs. In the Middle Eastern television channels, IDF soldiers are represented as the brutal rapists, who rape Palestinian women.”

New Israel Fund involvement
The reports by Aloni-Sedovnik and Bello are of particular interest because feminist groups have been spearheading leftist activism in Israel for many years. According to Gila Svirsky, the former director of the New Israel Fund in Israel and founder of NIF-sponsored Women's Coalition for Peace, “women’s peace organizations, known collectively as the Israeli women’s peace movement, became the most vibrant and persistent part of the peace camp in Israel.” These groups espouse an ideology which equates militarism (by Israelis) with male domination of women. Far from being a fringe element, leftist-feminists of this ilk are a dominant force in the Israeli academic world, the press, the Knesset and the judicial system.

Prof calls fellow academics ‘sanctimonious bigots’

The refusal of women’s studies professors to publicly condemn honor killings, or academic advocates of gay rights to speak out against the treatment of homosexuals in Muslim countries, is just about as hypocritical as it gets. Their loathing (dare we call it hate?) of the UN-created Jewish state is so deep that it “trump[s] their professional interests,” leading them into a “ideologically discriminatory trap of their own making,” Prof. Gottheil added.

Leftists so cling to their Jew-hatred that they will sacrifice their women, their bogus "sanctity," their non-existent humanity, to advance their hate and genocidal aspirations. This report defies any semblance of reason or compassion:

Arabs Harass Female 'Peace' Activists; Left Silences Victims

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

Roni Aloni Sedovnik, a feminist activist, penned an article in News1 – an independent website run by respected investigative reporter Yoav Yitzchak – under the heading “The Left's Betrayal of Female Peace Activists Who were Sexually Assaulted.”

“A nauseous atrocity has been going on for a long time behind the scenes at the leftists' demonstration at Bil'in, Naalin and Sheikh Jarrah [Shimon HaTzaddik],” she writes. “A dark secret that threatens to smash the basic ideological values upon which the demand to end the occupation of the Territories rests.”

It turns out, she explains, that when female peace activists from Israel and abroad come out to Judea and Samaria and demonstrate against the Israeli “occupation,” they are assaulted sexually by the Arab men whom they have come to help. These are not isolated incidents, Aloni-Sedovnik stresses. Rather, this is an “ongoing and widespread” phenomenon that includes verbal and physical abuse. She accuses the 'peace' camp of purposely covering up the trend so as not to offend “the Palestinians and their heritage, which sees women as sexual objects.”

Media cover-up
Aloni-Sedovnik cites two specific cases which she has knowledge of – one is a case of rape and another is “severe sexual harassment.” The attackers in both cases, she stresses, were familiar with the victims and knew that they were “peace activists.”

The rape occurred several months ago in the village of Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem. The victim, an American activist, wanted to press charges but leftist activists put pressure on her not to do so, so as not to damage the struggle against the 'occupation.'

The second case involved an Israeli activist who took part in the demonstrations at Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, where the High Court ruled that Jewish families may move into homes that they have owned for generations. This woman filed a complaint with the police but retracted it after “severe and unfair pressure” from the demonstrations' organizers, according to Aloni-Sedovnik. Furthermore, the organizers appealed to demonstrators to dress modestly when they come to the Arab neighborhoods and suggested that they wear head scarves.

Aloni-Sedovnik accuses the Israeli media of complicity in the cover-up.

“How is it that we do not hear the voice of the radical feminists who repeat, day and night, that occupation is occupation, and it does not matter if it is a nation that is doing the subjugation, or a man who is subjugating a woman?

"It appears that there is a gap between the radical-leftist feminist theory about the active resistance to the occupation of the Territories, and the stuttering self-annulment in the face of the violent conquest of women.”

The Umm Salmona case was reported in Haaretz as an attempted rape but does not seem to have made it beyond the blog pages.

Foreign women raped and subjugated
Earlier this year, a blogger and literature buff named Yehudah Bello, who writes in various venues about history and the theory of evolution, wrote a blog post with the striking title: “The Female Leftist Activists are Raped Day after Day, Night after Night.” Bello is no ultra-nationalist, and he supports the creation of a PA state – a fact which makes his claims all the more believable.

Most female leftist European activists, writes Bello, are brainwashed in their youth into hating Israel, and then sent directly into Judea and Samaria, without spending a single night in Tel Aviv, lest they see civilian Israeli society for themselves and find that they like it. They are whisked off to Shechem, Jenin and other PA towns and housed in Arab educational or cultural facilities, or private homes. Local Arab girls are sent to befriend them and they have no choice but to trust them.

It is is easy, explains Bello, “to carry out a sexual crime against a foreign girl, in her first days away from her family, in a place where no police have ever visited. And this is what happens, and has happened.”

"I was told of such rape cases by women who are not Jewish: a female European leftist activist, a female Red Cross volunteer and a young Arab woman from Yafo,” he says. He says that he met these women when he carried out IDF reserve duty, and met them afterward as well. “They told me what goes on there, in the Palestinian villages, far from any prying eye.”

"These are not just cases of rape carried out to satisfy lust,” he writes. “Usually, they are carried out systematically in order to make the girl pregnant and then take her as a wife – after she converts to Islam, of course. We know about this system from the stories of women who underwent a similar process within Israel and escaped to Europe. But it is hard to escape from the Palestinian territories. Sometimes these women – some of whom are no longer young – are never allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied, in order to forestall their escape.”

If someone were to compare the list of foreign female activists who enter Judea and Samaria to the list of those who leave, Bello claims, the magnitude of the phenomenon would be proven. “Everyone knows about it, but no one dares talk about it. The Palestinians have been turned into martyrs. In the Middle Eastern television channels, IDF soldiers are represented as the brutal rapists, who rape Palestinian women.”

New Israel Fund involvement
The reports by Aloni-Sedovnik and Bello are of particular interest because feminist groups have been spearheading leftist activism in Israel for many years. According to Gila Svirsky, the former director of the New Israel Fund in Israel and founder of NIF-sponsored Women's Coalition for Peace, “women’s peace organizations, known collectively as the Israeli women’s peace movement, became the most vibrant and persistent part of the peace camp in Israel.” These groups espouse an ideology which equates militarism (by Israelis) with male domination of women. Far from being a fringe element, leftist-feminists of this ilk are a dominant force in the Israeli academic world, the press, the Knesset and the judicial system.

We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever. . . we'll just be stronger

A new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward describes the Obama administration as barraged with warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. President Obama told Woodward in an interview for his "Obama's Wars," "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever. . . we absorbed it and we are stronger." More at washingtonpost.com

I have been researching this man for years (read the book) and this is by far, the scariest and creepiest thing of all.

It's as if ...............he wants it

A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here "a potential game changer."

"Coward alert (and remember he campaigned on war in Afghanistan, that was where we really needed to be - the good war)... Ugh

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Is it any wonder our troops are dying at record levels?

According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

Food for your mind

Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to a Mega-Mosque

Today, Americans for Peace and Tolerance released a video showing 6th graders from Wellesley, MA as they rise from prostrating themselves alongside Muslim men in a prayer to Allah while on a public school field trip to the largest mosque in the Northeast. Teachers did not intervene. Parents have not been told.

The video was taken inside the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center – Boston’s controversial Saudi-funded mega-mosque – during a Wellesley Middle School social studies trip to the mosque, ostensibly taken to learn about the history of Islam first-hand. Yet the video reveals that the students are being blatantly mis-educated about Islam. A mosque spokesperson is seen teaching the children that in Mohammed’s 7th century Arabia women were allowed to vote, while in America women only gained that right a hundred years ago. This seems to be an increasingly recurring theme in American schools – the denigration of western civilization and the glorification of Islamic history and values. In fact, just recently, the American Textbook Council revealed that the New York State high school regents exam whitewashes the atrocities that occurred during the imperialistic Islamic conquest of Christian Byzantium, Persia, the African continent, and the Indian subcontinent, even as it demonizes European colonialism in South America.

The mosque spokesperson also taught the students that the only meaning of Jihad in Islam is a personal spiritual struggle, and that Jihad has historically had no relationship with holy war. As far as we know, the school has not corrected these false lessons.

For the past three years we’ve been sounding the alarm about the radical leadership and Saudi funding of the Boston mega-mosque and the organization that runs it, the Muslim American Society, which has been labeled by Federal prosecutors as “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”

The Islamic Society of Boston was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, who is currently serving 23 years in jail on terror charges. For years, its board of trustees included Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was banned by Bill Clinton from the United States in 1999. Qaradawi now chairs the Muslim American Society’s university, which offers classes inside the mosque. Over half the mosque’s $15.5 million price tag was funded by wealthy Saudis and since it opened, several of its leaders, donors and members have been implicated in Islamic extremism.

Oussama Ziade, a big donor to the mosque, is now a fugitive in Lebanon after being indicted in 2009 for dealing in the assets of an Al Qaeda financier. Ahmad Abousamra, the son of the Boston Muslim American Society’s former vice-president Abdulbadi Abousamra, is now a fugitive in Syria, fleeing the country before being indicted in 2009 on charges of aiding Al Qaeda. One of the mosque’s imams, Abdullah Faaruuq, was captured on tape in 2010 telling followers to “pick up the gun and the sword” and to defend another local terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from the U.S. government. Siddiqui, who was one of the imam’s congregants, is an MIT graduate and Al Qaeda memberawaiting sentencing for attempting to murder FBI agents in Afghanistan while shouting “death to America.” (LINK)

The mosque leadership continues to be embraced by top Massachusetts political and religious leaders. These include Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, as well as a group of local progressive rabbis and Christian clergy, who all insist despite evidence to the contrary that the mosque is moderate and its critics are just bigots.

Indeed, this is a familiar refrain by leaders nationwide in response to the increasing public realization that Islamic leaders are not as moderate as they present themselves. Radicalism is growing and many moderate Muslims have been silenced. In various parts of the country, public schools are allowing Muslim extremists to promote Islam to our children. Something’s broken here. Our leadership is failing. It’s now up to ordinary citizens to fix it.

Islam is all about peace! They are very understanding of others

They no doubt want to kill him because of his Regensberg address, in which he quoted the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos: "He said, I quote, `Show me just what (Islamic Prophet) Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.'" And so to prove that Muhammad didn't bring what was evil and inhuman, they want to murder the Pope.

That'll show us, all right.

"Pope visit: Five suspected Islamist terrorists arrested over assassination plot," by Duncan Gardham in the Telegraph, September 17 (thanks to Weasel Zippers):
Police have arrested five suspected Islamist terrorists planning to assassinate the Pope.

The men were arrested during raids at 5.45am at a business premises in central London based on an intelligence tip off received overnight.

The suspects, aged 26, 27, 36, 40 and 50 were arrested by officers from Scotland Yard's Counter Terrorism Command on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.

They are said to be from a variety of nationalities including a number of Algerian origin.

The men have been taken to a central London police station where they will be interviewed by detectives.

Searches are being carried out under the Terrorism Act 2000 at the business premises and at residential premises in north and east London....

Touble ahead,touble behind the US in Turkey part 2

Now, you’ll recall that after the “Flotilla” incident this summer, in which Turkey sent a war convoy to Israel, the name Mohamad Sabbagh came up. Sabbagh is a Bosnian citizen of Syrian origin who has been operating in Bosnia for years, including in affiliation with the Turkish “charity” IHH that organized the convoy. IHH burst onto the scene in 1992 Bosnia to support the separatist regime. It was one of the “humanitarian” organizations “keeping alive the Bosnian jihad and enabling it to succeed against the Serbs,” as retired Indian cabinet secretary B. Raman noted in the Sri Lankan Guardian earlier this summer. Also working through IHH in Bosnia (under the joint auspieces of Britain’s MI6) was Omar Sheikh, who organized journalist Daniel Pearl’s kidnapping.

So sure enough, the Turkish IHH is repeating its anti-Serb model against Israel now. But this goes deeper, with the involvement of Sabbagh being key, which could explain the Bosnian urgency to get him out of Israeli custody after the flotilla arrests. According to the two Defense & Foreign Affairs extracts below, the flotilla incident was a joint Syrian-Turkish war provocation against Israel, hatched in Bosnia — facts that remain unknown to the public, partly because the Balkans is precisely the place where one can operate in the shadows, thanks to public and media disinterest in, and ignorance of, the region. (Little wonder that it was the choice haven for an unknown number of fugitives from the 1993 WTC bombing.)

Did Turkey Declare War on Israel … and the West?
Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, Global Information System/Defense & Foreign Affairs. June 7, 2010

…The Turkish Government has increasingly, over the past two decades, taken an active role in facilitating and supporting jihadist groups based out of the former Ottoman Empire territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo (and elsewhere in Serbia, as well as Albania, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the like). This has not only meant working with Iranian and Saudi elements in financing, and providing logistical support to, terrorist groups aimed at the West, but more importantly — from Ankara’s viewpoint — facilitating the movement and support of jihadist terrorists out of the Balkans (groups such as Kvadrat, which Defense & Foreign Affairs was first to identify) via safe havens in Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus, to fight the Russians in Chechnya and elsewhere in the Caucasus. This could not have occurred without official Turkish Government involvement, and included the group which organized — again with Turkish Government participation — the “Gaza flotilla” which appeared in late May 2010.
…
Now, finally, the Turkish Government has admitted that it supports and has worked closely with the terrorist support organization, Insani Yardim Vakfi (IHH), which sponsored the Gaza flotilla. IHH has a long history of involvement with the jihadist movement, including those linked to al-Qaida, in the Balkans. This means that Ankara has admitted, finally, that it has been supporting the international jihadist movement against the West, and Russia.

Still, there is always one party at a divorce which observes: “So, you‟ve hated me for years.”

New Evidence Points to Syrian Intelligence Involvement in the “Gaza Flotilla” Incident; Links to Bosnian/Viennese Jihadi Networks Emerging
Analysis.

By Jason Fuchs, UN Correspondent, and Gregory Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign
Affairs. June 15

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources in Croatia confirmed on June 14, 2010, that a key Syrian intelligence officer had been onboard the Turkish ship, the Mavi Marmara, during its attempt to break the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip on May 31, 2010. The agent, named Jaser Mohamed Sabag, was a Syrian native and naturalized Bosnian citizen.

It is understood that Sabag works directly for the Syrian Military Intelligence Service, Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-’Askariyya.

According to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources, Sabag had worked in the Balkans liaising with regional Iranian intelligence (Vezarat-e Ettela’at va Amniat-e Keshvar: VEVAK) networks to coordinate support for Balkan jihadist networks, including the Turkish IHH (İnsan Hak ve Hürriyetleri ve İnsani Yardım Vakfı), which purchased the Marmara for $800,000 in April 2010 and — ostensibly — spearheaded the so-called Gaza flotilla.

This had, as outlined in the Defense & Foreign Affairs report of June 7, 2010, confirmed the Turkish Government’s linkage to the terrorist support work of IHH in the Balkans, during which time the jihadist terrorist groups there, using the IHH links, had been used against Western targets. But more importantly, it highlighted the links between the Turkish Government — via the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı: MİT) — with the Syrian Mukhabarat for many years in jihadist support operations, pre-dating the break-up in Turkish-Israeli relations. [FOOTNOTE: As well, (MIT) was clearly linked to the Bosnian terrorist/jihadist movement through the Kvadrat movement, which operated terrorist training in Bosnia, moving its operatives into the Russian Caucasus, to Chechnya, via safe-havens in Northern Cyprus, controlled by the Turkish Armed Forces, and then into the Russian Federation via Turkey…]

The presence of Sabag onboard the Marmara raised a number of questions about the true nature of how the flotilla had been organized, funded and directed. It indicated, at a minimum, Syrian Government involvement, and, at most, that unwittingly many of the flotilla’s passengers had been used as cover in the intelligence gambit by Damascus and Ankara.

By the first week of June 2010, Sabag had already been deported by Israeli authorities to Turkey and GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources reported that by June 12, 2010, Sabag had left Turkey and returned to Sarajevo, along with Mukadera Tankok-Tanovic, a Turkish national and IHH “coordinator”. The daily newspaper Fokus, published in Banja Luka, Republica Srpska, Bosnia & Herzegovina, further reported that before working with jihadist networks in the Balkans, Sabag had been in charge of “intelligence affairs” for the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) where he established an effective working relationship with Halil Badia, the daughter of Abu Nidal (born Sabri Khalil al-Banna). Halil Badia, the report continues, assumed control of the ANO following her father’s death in Baghdad on August 16, 2002, and has since become “a main financier of the Wahabbist [sic] movement in B-H (Bosnia & Herzegovina)”.

GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs sources confirmed that while Badia had been unable to access her late father’s Swiss bank accounts — which had been blocked several years ago as part of Western counterterrorism efforts — she and her family “managed to withdraw a substantial part of the money from Austrian banks”. It was believed that a significant portion of this money had been redirected to Balkan-based networks.

That the money had flowed through Austria was not merely a coincidence: the Viennese Islamist community had, for some time, played a central support role in organizing jihadist activities in Bosnia.
…
The still emerging evidence of connections between Syrian intelligence operations in the Balkans, Bosnian jihadists, and the voyage of the Marmara raised serious questions for the West and particularly for NATO of which Turkey is a member about the extent to which the Turkish Erdogan Administration had been aware of these linkages when it gave permission for the Gaza flotilla to set sail. If, in fact, Prime Minister Reçep Tayyip Erdogan had known about the presence on the Marmara of a Syrian intelligence agent with deep, long-standing ties to the global jihad movement, further questions would be raised about the extent to which Istanbul has chosen to reorient its strategic posture.

However, there can be no doubt that the long-standing relationships between MIT, IHH, and the Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-’Askariyya — along with the relationships which all three have had with the various Saudi and Iranian organizations in the Balkans — facilitated, or at least led to, the Marmara provocation.

And so, in very recent news we see the shifting and/or tightening of Israel’s alliances in the Balkans. While Benjamin Netanyahu was visiting Greece a couple weeks ago to discuss matters of the two countries’ military alliances, these were some of the other Israel-Balkans headlines:

“Israel understands Serbs in Bosnia”
17 August 2010 | Source: Tanjug

BANJA LUKA — Republic of Srpska (RS) Prime Minister Milorad Dodik stated that Israeli President Shimon Peres understands the position of the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Dodik, who is on a visit to Israel, said that the Israeli president had said that the wish and aspirations of the peoples in Bosnia-Herzegovina have to be respected and that stability and peace have to be preserved.

Dodik also said that he discussed the situation in the Balkans, and that he was informed about the situation Israel is being faced with in its efforts to preserve stability and its state identity.

“This was an opportunity for me to underscore that it is evident that the international community and its high representative had carried out political and legal violence in the RS and that it had altered the Dayton Agreement,” said Dodik.

Dodik reiterated that he and President Peres had a lot in common on all issues, particularly those relating to Turkey’s growing engagement in the Balkans, noting that Turkey is being engaged on the side of a the Bosniak people alone.

Bosnia “Increasingly Can’t Survive”

…Dodik said that his recent visit to Israel, where he met with the country’s top officials, was one of the most important trips he has had lately, in view of the fact that Jerusalem conducted a “balanced policy in the complex conditions of the Middle East relations”.
…
He also noted that Bosnia-Herzegovina on several occasions voted in favor of UN Security Council resolution that “put Israel in a complex position”, and that this came as a result of activities by Muslim and Croat members of the Bosnian presidency Haris Sijaldžić and Željko Komšić, and FM Sven Alkalaj [a Jewish Bosnian].

Dodik once again accused Turkey of meddling in Bosnian affairs, and to support only the Muslim (Bosniak) side.

Dodik Condemns Turkey’s Activities In Bosnia (AFP, Aug 16, 2010)

…“We resent the fact that Turkey wants a unified and centralized Bosnia, favoring only one of the peoples” living in the country, Dodik told Bosnian state radio from Israel, following talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

Dodik said he had told Lieberman that the Bosnian Serb community “resented Turkey’s strong presence in Bosnia motivated only by support for the Bosnian Muslims, without any willingness to comprehend the context in which Bosnia exists.”

“I told the minister that it is not possible to accept an intermediary role by Turkey,” he said, without elaborating.
…
Bosnian Serb leaders have constantly opposed further centralization, as demanded by the Muslims–who are a majority in Bosnia as a whole and seek to dominate. Serbs say such a process would reduce their autonomy. […]

Israel supportive of Bosnian Serbs
Aug 17, 2010

Bosnian Serb Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik, said that Israel has expressed its full support and understanding of the Bosnian Serb Republic and its efforts to fully implement the Dayton Peace Accords that are to govern Bosnia.

“We feel that Turkey desires to create a unitary and centralized Bosnia for one ethnic group only. We cannot accept such role of Turkey in Bosnia, especially because of its biased position,” said Dodik.


Dodik, on the right, in a meeting with the Israeli delegation.

…Dodik said that he explained to Israel that recent Bosnian anti-Israeli votes in the UN do not reflect the opinion of Bosnian Serbs whose foreign policy is constrained and dominated by Bosnian Muslims.

“How is it possible for Bosnia to vote against the interests of Serbs, first of all, when we are not seeking to vote for anything that would impede on the Israel’s security,” said Dodik.

Bosnia consists of three “constitutive” ethnic communities but Bosnian Muslims desire to dominate them. Dodik invited Israeli investors to come to the Serb Republic.

“We told them to invest in Serb Republic, despite the crisis that dominates in all countries,” Dodik said.

The Prime Minister specified that Israel expressed its greatest understanding on the dangers of terrorism in Bosnia.

Earlier this year, Israel warned that Islamic terrorists are actively recruiting Bosnian Muslims and ethnic Albanians in the Balkans for terror. Israel also warned that the Balkans is the next area that Islamic terrorists have set their sights to.

Days ago, authorities in the Serb Republic [arrested] 5 Islamic extremists of whom one was an ethnic Albanian. The arrested men had weapons and machetes used for Islamic ritual of beheading.

Dodik said that a visit by the Israeli delegation to the Serb Republic is possible because both sides have expressed desire to expand economic activities.

Dodik said that the Serb Republic and Israel will continue to cooperate and keep in contact on various diplomatic levels.

Republika Srpska Premier Dodik Discusses Position of Serbs in Bosnia with Israeli President Peres

…Dodik reported that the Israeli president had declared Bosnia-Herzegovina must respect the will and desires of the people and preserve stability and peace.
…
Dodik pointed out that he and Israeli president Peres saw eye to eye on many issues, especially in connection with Turkey’s engagement in the Balkans, which is evidently growing…

“We agreed that Turkey had likely drawn up an action plan in order to allegedly preserve Bosnia-Herzegovina’s territorial integrity, but actually promoting the principle of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s centralized government, which Turkey believes should be strengthening and creating a unitary state in this region,” Dodik said.
…
“This was a good opportunity for me to explain that the Serb side was not behind [the UN vote against Israel]. It transpired once again that Bosnia-Herzegovina is not well coordinated, in view of the fact that voting in the UN is conducted without an agreed procedure and coordination of policy…”

Related: Cyprus says will not allow Gaza-bound aid ship (Aug. 20, 2010)

NICOSIA (Reuters) – Cyprus will not allow a ship carrying women activists and aid for the blockaded Palestinian territory of Gaza to sail from its ports, the island’s police said on Friday.

Women activists said they planned to take aid to Gaza next week and their vessel, the Mariam, would set sail from Lebanon for Cyprus on Sunday.
…
“Our position is clear. The arrival and departure of vessels to or from Gaza via Cyprus ports is prohibited and we will implement that decision,” Cypriot police spokesman Michalis Katsounotos told Reuters.

In New York, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gabriela Shalev sent a letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and her Russian counterpart Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the Security Council this month, complaining about the aid ship and the reported approval of its departure by Lebanon.

Shalev said the organizers were “individuals with suspected ties to the Hezbollah terrorist organization” who intended to break through the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
…
“Such confrontational actions by the organizers of these vessels, as well as those that offer their consent, is deeply troubling and requires the attention of the international community,” Shalev added.

Cyprus was used as a launch pad for activists to reach Gaza by sea from 2008 until mid-2009. Authorities introduced a ban last year, citing the island’s national interests.

To close up this post about the resurgent Ottomans in the Balkans, we have a revealing 2006 text from author Srdja Trifkovic, demonstrating that before our eyes is unfolding the fruition of a plan long in the making:

…A decade ago an Orientalist who was at that time Yugoslavia’s ambassador in Ankara, Darko Tanaskovic, came across an interesting little brochure in a second-hand book shop in Istanbul. It was a very old propaganda pamphlet issued by an Albanian émigré organization, and it contained a simplified colored map of the Balkans. The map showed a green arrow emanating from Turkey, thrusting through the Muslim-populated parts of the Balkans (Thrace, Macedonia, Kosovo, Sanjak, Bosnia), severing the links of the unbelievers’ defensive steel chain, and victoriously heading to the north-west, towards the heartland of Europe. This geopolitical idea, known for decades as the Green Route (“Zelena transverzala”) both by the advocates and opponents of Islamic inroads into Europe, was simple but very suggestive…

As Yugoslavia started disintegrating in the early 1990s, most Western analysts of world affairs promptly categorized the Green Route thesis as a crude, anti-Muslim conspiracy theory, mainly propagated by nationalist Serbian academics. Then along came Huntington’s Clash of Civilisations and his subsequent book of the same name. The supporters of the Green Route thesis welcomed Huntington’s work because he used the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-95) as a key illustration of the Christian-Muslim “fault-line wars.” The proponents of a pro-Bosnian Muslim, pro-Kosovo Albanian policy in Washington, by contrast, insisted that helping Muslims in the Balkans was the best way of courting favor for the United States in the Islamic world.

The Green Route theory has gained fresh credence, in Europe at least, after 9-11. It is by now hard to dispute that the radicalisation of Islam in the Balkans — deliberate or not — turned out to be the net result of the actions of the “international community” during the Yugoslav crisis. In fact, “If Western policy in the Balkans was not meant to facilitate the Green Route, the issue is not why but how its effects paradoxically coincided with the enduring aspirations and goals of pan-Islamism, including its extremist and even terrorist manifestations.”

After 9-11, nothing was supposed to be as before, but the U.S. policy in the Balkans has inexplicably retained its Islamophile bias, so remarkably persistent during the Clinton years. In the meantime, the Green Route has morphed from an allegedly paranoid Islamophobic propaganda ploy into a demographic, social and political reality…

We are witnessing this in the tragic fall of "moderate" Muslim democracy, Turkey - Trouble ahead and Trouble Behind the US

It seems, yet again, that history is repeating itself. That any attempt at separating mosque and state eventually becomes just another blip on the historical landscape. We are witnessing this in the tragic fall of "moderate" Muslim democracy, Turkey. Ataturk is going the way of the horse and buggy. The enormous leaps Turkey took into modernity after removing the shackles of the sharia will recede into oblivion like the basic human rights afforded non-Muslims living under Islamic rule.

Many of us saw this coming with the Prime Ministerial election of the devout Erdogan. I called it immediately upon Erdogan's win in August 2007 (here). The Turkish military (responsible for holding to Ataturk's secular model) warned then of "threats to the secular constitution."

While participating in a Middle East panel of the Academy of Achievement in Chicago in September of 2007, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned against religious definitions of terrorism and specifically objected to the phrase "moderate Islam." Erdogan said, "Turkey is not a country where moderate Islam is sovereign. First of all, the 'moderate Islam' concept is wrong. The word 'Islam' is a simple word -- it is only Islam. If you say 'moderate Islam,' then an alternative is created."

Religious study is now mandated in state schools in Turkey.

The Judiciary becomes subservient to the government (The PM).

Further, in 2007, Turkey and Iran formed a military alliance. Ryan Mauro has a look at Turkey’s Islamization: One Step Closer (hat tip Armaros)

Ahmadinejad erdogan

"If there is not a change in personality, then Turkey will become Iran No. 2"

And Obama is chuffed. "Israel analysts see Turkey radicalizing, becoming 'Iran No. 2,'" from the World Tribune, September 15 (thanks to all who sent this in):
TEL AVIV -- Israel's defense community has assessed that Turkey was moving toward becoming a radical and nuclear Islamic state.

Officials and leading analysts asserted that the government of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan was rapidly dismantling the secular Turkish state. They said Erdogan could turn Turkey into another Iran, a radical Muslim state with nuclear weapons.

"There could be a deep strategic change," Amos Gilad, a senior Defense Ministry official, said.

Officials cited Turkey's referendum that would revise the secular constitution. They said the 26 amendments approved by 58 percent of voters on Sept. 12 would significantly increase the authority of Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party while marginalizing Turkey's military.

Leading officials expressed concern over Erdogan's growing power in Turkey and his success in intimidating the once-powerful Turkish military. They said Erdogan could use his referendum victory to expand Turkey's alliance with neighboring Iran and Syria while fomenting another crisis with Israel....

"If there is not a change in personality, then Turkey will become Iran No. 2," former National Security Council director Uzi Dayan said.

UPDATE: And this from Julia Gorin: "Please note that the 'flotilla' incident was in fact a joint Syrian-Turkish military operation. And the link to this is a Syrian intel guy who has been operating for years in Bosnia."

As Turkey Brazenly Reestablishes its Caliphate in the Balkans, a Bosnian Muslim ex-Ambassador Asks: JUST WHAT IS ISRAEL UP TO IN THE BALKANS?!

Bosnia’s former ambassador to Turkey — who, surprise-surprise, now lives in Turkey — is further stoking Turks (and anyone else who’ll listen) against Israel.

In what might be the mother of all hypocrisies, former ambassador Hajrudin Somun — who served under the fundamentalist wartime Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic — tries to cast suspicion on Israel for turning its diplomatic attentions to the Balkans, where Turkey has been operating unimpeded for decades.

After Turkey’s and Syria’s joint act of war against Israel this summer — which prompted Israel to make an overdue reassessment of, and shift in, its alliances in the Balkans — this Bosnian transplant to Turkey is deflecting attention from Turkish provocations against Israel and some Balkan entities, and directing it to Israel’s diplomatically sound reactions to those provocations, as well as to its warnings to the region and its standard diplomatic visits. In Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman, Somun paints Israeli visits with Balkans leaders as conniving and underhanded, and demands to know Israel’s “designs” on the region. In fact, Israel is discussing common security concerns given Islamic designs on the region, albeit with precious little attention paid to specifically Turkish designs. After all, the Balkans is the Ottomans’ to reclaim!

What is Israel aiming for in the Balkans? by Hajrudin Somun (Aug. 17)

Something strange has been going on in the course of events that have been unfolding over more than half a year in Israel’s policy and position in the Balkans, from its Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warning that the Balkans are the next target in a global jihad to the Israeli attack on a flotilla carrying peace activists [sic] in international waters off the coast of Gaza.

If we cannot make a clear correlation between these events, we could at least ask about Israel’s aims in the Balkans. The flotilla episode was just the latest, but also a sure sign that a breaking up of relations established decades earlier in the region wider than the Middle East is going on and that Israel is having a hard time [acclimating] to such developments.

Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s visit to Israel in the first days of 2010 was marked by a warning he was given by Foreign Minister Lieberman in Jerusalem. Gruevski was cautioned that Macedonia must be “suitably prepared” in order to prevent what happened in Africa and South America from happening in the Balkans. Lieberman learned that “current data testify to the fact” that the Balkan region is “global jihad’s next destination for creating an infrastructure and recruiting activists.” He added that “jihad in the Balkans is funded by Iran and radical Saudi Arabian elements” and that “they recruited Bosnian Muslims and Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia to wage terror.”
…
[Lieberman] did not retreat from using Islamic jihad’s “encroaching threat” to persuade Macedonia and other countries in the region to improve their relations with Israel.

Israel’s relations with most countries in the Balkans were determined by the so-called Middle East crisis for almost half a century. Of all states ruled by communists, only Romania did not break diplomatic relations with Israel after the wars in the Middle East. Although not communist, Greece was a good example in that regard. Contrary to its reservations about Israeli policy and its traditionally good relations with Arabs, and in particular its great sympathy for the Palestinian cause, Greece has over the past few years improved its relations and cooperation with Israel, even in the military sphere.

Bulgaria is an even better example of such improvement. Its prime minister, Boyko Borisov, visited Tel Aviv last January, only a week after his Macedonian colleague. There he met with President Shimon Peres, who recalled how Bulgaria had prevented the deportation of its Jews to Nazi concentration camps during World War II and praised cooperation between the two countries “in all fields, including fighting terrorism and climate change.” After signing an agreement on military cooperation, Prime Minister Borisov discussed the possibility of Israeli aircraft using Bulgarian bases in training exercises.

The improvement of relations between Israel and Serbia and the establishment of special ties with Bosnian Serbs have its roots in the Slobodan Milosevic regime’s aggression [sic] against Croatia and Bosnia in the 1990s and was explained best by Igor Primoratz, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “From the outset,” he wrote, “Israel’s stand on the Balkan conflict has been quite different from that of most of the world, including the Jewish Diaspora: it has been clearly and consistently pro-Serbian.” He found the explanation of such an approach in Israel’s history. “Israel was [created],” he says, “at the price of turning the larger part of the native Palestinian population into expellees of refugees. Its continued existence as an ethnic, Jewish state is predicated on not readmitting the exiled Palestinians.”

During Israel’s offensive against Gaza at the end of 2009…[w]hile Serbian President Boris Tadic was more restrained, and Bosnian Foreign Minister Alkalaj urged Israel to stop its attacks on Gaza, Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik went so far as to send a letter of support to President Peres. He offered full support to Israeli efforts to “ensure security and peace” for the Israeli people.

Croatia, Montenegro and even Kosovo are also included in Israel’s diplomatic efforts to enhance its relations with the region. High-ranking officials from Israel and most Balkan states exchanged visits in 2009 and 2010. These visits were more frequent than in previous decades. Apart from the abolition of visa restrictions, military cooperation and the “fight against terrorism” were the most frequent subjects of talks and agreements.

The May 31 flotilla raid was, apart from other repercussions, a second “Gaza indicator” of Israel setting its sights on the Balkans. The immediate regional reaction was more that of surprise than condemning the Israeli attack on the aid ships. Some countries treaded cautiously due to their national interests, while others did not want to harm their already improved relations with Israel.

Relying on earlier sympathies and similarities that led some observers to call it the “Israel of the Balkans,” Kosovo still hopes it will be recognized by Israel. Greek officials did condemn Israel’s use of “deadly force on an aid flotilla” and scrapped the Greek-Israeli air force exercise “Minas 2010” short[ly] after the raid, but relations between the two countries were not interrupted. President George Papandreou visited Israel already in July, where he said that “the strengthening of bilateral relations is our steadfast policy.”

Due to their particular interests, Bulgarian officials did not even hide their sympathies for the Israeli military’s action. First, Israeli Welfare Minister Isaac Herzog went to Sofia at the beginning of June to inform his hosts that “Israel is ready to divert up to 400,000 tourists to Bulgaria from Turkey.” Then Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov in July went to Tel Aviv, where he spoke about the “strong, emotional connection and responsibility on our part to ensure Israel’s safety and its future.” He also said that Turkey had reacted to the Israeli raid of the flotilla “a little bit too strongly.”

By mentioning Turkey, I am finally reaching the most sensitive point of Israel’s sudden and keen interest in the Balkans.

First, losing Turkey as the main regional strategic ally, Israel was forced to search for whatever alternative — if not a country, then at least a region. There was no other direction to go in than towards Southeast Europe. Israel found itself isolated in the region, having only a weak partner in Egypt and facing small, but dangerous, enemies in Hamas and Hezbullah. By trampling and devastating Gaza, Israel also became more isolated in the world and more criticized by its main ally, the United States. The deterioration of its relations with Turkey was perhaps the major political consequence of Israel’s military adventure in Gaza.

… Israel is urging some Balkan countries, including Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, to improve their military cooperation with Israel and open their airspace to Israeli aircraft. In that sense Israel perhaps hopes that Kosovo will become a military substitute for Turkey because there is already a heavy US military presence there.

Trying to [make neutral-seeming] its main aims in the Balkans, Israel is putting them not only in an economic, but also a historical, religious and “terrorist” context as well…Being aware that they will have the support of many Christians in the region, Israeli politicians are also stressing the religious factor. When they speak about the threat of terrorism, they mean “Islamic terrorism.” During the Gaza events, a Bosnian Serb website, “Serbian Cetnik,” offered “full support to the Israeli people from Republika Srpska” and stressed, “We have the same enemies!” In Serbia [sic], Serbiana.com [sic] made known that “during the raid on the Muslim terror ship, Israeli commandos arrested a Bosnian Muslim national of Syrian origin.” There was a reflection of such an approach even in Russia. During the attack on Gaza, Moscow’s Pravda, under the headline “Israel, you are Serbia now!” called on Israel “to grow up and face reality.” “You already have the double advantage, having one in three of your citizens of Russian background,” so that “there is only one block of nations with whom you have any chance: the Orthodox nations.”

Getting back to Lieberman’s warning to the Macedonians about the threat of a global jihad recruiting “Bosnian Muslims and Albanians in Kosovo and Macedonia,” it reminded me of the so-called “Green Transversal,” almost the same geographic line invented in Belgrade before the wars of the 1990s. It was the direction from which all dangers emanate and come to the Balkans and further towards Europe — namely, from Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. Reading between the lines, I saw that his intention was to say that terrorism is somewhere other than in Israel and that it is perpetuated by someone other than the Israeli administration.

(In that last paragraph Zomun is comparing Israel’s warnings to Macedonia about the jihad against it — in progress for more than a decade now — to the “outlandish” notion of there being an Islamic “Green Corridor,” which he is calling Belgrade-spun propaganda. He is drawing a parallel between Israeli “propaganda” and Serbian “propaganda,” and implying that both countries’ troubles with Muslim terror originated with themselves. Apparently, this Bosnian former ambassador is unaware of what the state-of-the-art arena Sarajevo built for the 1984 Olympics was called: Zetra, short for the very real and very deliberate Zelena Transverzala, or Green Corridor running through the Balkans.)

But the upshot is this: While Turkey has been actively reestablishing its caliphate in the Balkans for years — not to mention everything that Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran and others of that sort have been up to in the Balkans — this Bosnian Muslim feigns suspicion over Israel warning that this and worse is going on. So you see it’s the Jews who are being underhanded with their warnings to the other infidels, sneakily discerning common infidel concerns with other countries.

Turkey has been maneuvering aggressively in the Balkans for years, not only stoking hostility against Bosnia’s Serb Republic and joining the Islamo-Western chorus mischaracterizing RS’s fears of Islamic usurpations in the region, but also acting hostilely against Serbia vis-a-vis an independent Muslim Kosovo, plus — as we shall see — giving terror a leg up in the region. All the while helping Serbia compromise itself (as it does with other infidel states), by increasing cooperative agreements, as Turkey knows Serbia is in great need since the Islamo-Western devastation of its economy in the 90s, from which it still hasn’t recovered.

As put by Nebojsa Malic — who has written an introduction and two columns about the Ottoman resurgence in the Balkans: Turkey, among other things, “is also the principal champion of the ‘Independent State of Kosova’ among the Islamic countries. The Serbs know all this by now (the government collaborates with the Turks because it’s composed of craven quislings)…”

Obama Hauls Arizona Before the UN Human Rights Council

Apparently Barack Obama is not content to make a federal case out of his immigration feud with Arizona; he just made it an international one.

The president’s first-ever report on U.S. human rights to the UN Human Rights Council contains a rich vein of offensive material. So far, one aspect has not been reported: our petty president used the situation to bash Arizona’s immigration law — and possibly transfer jurisdiction over the law from Arizona to the UN. Throughout the report, which sounds like an Obama campaign speech, the president discusses “the original flaw” of the U.S. Constitution, America’s tolerance for slavery, and his version of our long and despicable history of discriminating against and oppressing minorities, women, homosexuals, and the handicapped. After each complaint, he addresses how he is delivering us from ourselves, patting himself on the back for such initiatives as ending “torture,” promoting Affirmative Action, and passing health care legislation.

In his section on “Values and Immigration,” he praised the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to provide better medical care for detainees and increase “Alternatives To Detention” (e.g., letting them go). Then he turned to the one state that has had the temerity to stand in his way of fundamentally transforming the American electorate:


A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.

On Obama’s command, Attorney General Eric Holder has sued the State of Arizona for passing a law that he criticized without reading, and which merely upholds federal law. (He gave sanctuary cities a pass.) He now threatens an additional lawsuit against Sheriff Joe Arpaio for “racial profiling” when arresting illegal immigrants near the Mexican border.

Obama’s turns his skirmish with Jan Brewer from a states rights dispute into an international human rights cause. It also places Arizona’s law in the hands of the United Nations.

The national report is but the first step of the international government’s review process. On November 5, the United States will be examined by a troika of UN bureaucrats from France, Japan, and Cameroon (an oppressive nation which is a member of the Organization of Islamic Conference). This trio will consider three items: Obama’s self-flagellating report, reports written about America by UN tribunals or international governing bodies, and testimony from NGOs with a pronounced anti-American bias. It will also consider “voluntary pledges and commitments made by the State,” such as suspending an Arizona state law.

Then the French, Japanese, and Cameroon diplomats will draw up a plan of action for the United States to implement.

Nations are re-examined every four years. The Human Rights Council looks for voluntary compliance. However, its website asserts, “The Human Rights Council will decide on the measures it would need to take in case of persistent non-cooperation by a State with the” World Body.

When the Left cannot win at the ballot box (virtually every time), it overrules the people in the courts. Now that Obama is not sure he can prevail in the courts, he has overruled the American people by hauling Arizona and the two-thirds of Americans who support its law before the United Nations.

By Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

White House rips Forbes article - Dinesh D'Souza

Dinesh D'Souza has drawn a torrent of criticism with a Forbes cover story that accuses President Obama of adopting "the cause of anti-colonialism" from his Kenyan father.
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Sept. 27 issue of Forbes magazine. (Courtesy of Forbes)

But while most detractors focus on the author--and Newt Gingrich, who embraced the critique--the White House is aiming its ammunition at the business magazine.

"It's a stunning thing, to see a publication you would see in a dentist's office, so lacking in truth and fact," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says in an interview. "I think it represents a new low."

Gibbs is meeting with Thursday afternoon with Forbes's Washington bureau chief, Brian Wingfield, to discuss his objections. "Did they not fact-check this at all, or did they fact-check it and just willfully ignore it?" he asks.

The magazine would not make Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, available for comment, or any other editor. The biweekly did issue a statement: "Dinesh D'Souza's cover story was presented as an analysis of how the president thinks. No facts are in contention. Forbes stands by the story."

But some facts are very much in contention, and D'Souza--who loosely based the article on his forthcoming book, "The Roots of Obama's Rage"--isn't hesitant to discuss his work.

Reached separately in New York, D'Souza, 49, who worked in the Reagan White House, says his argument that the president was heavily influenced by the late Barack Obama Sr. is a "psychological theory." But, he insists, "the idea that Obama has roots that are foreign is not an allegation, it's a statement of fact."

The facts are also these: Obama Sr. abandoned the family when his son was 2, and the future president saw his father only one more time, during a visit in Hawaii when he was 10. Obama Sr. died in 1982.

Gibbs says the Forbes attack comes at a time when there is "no limit to innuendo" against the president, including baseless charges that he is a Muslim and was not born in the United States. Forbes, he says, "left the facts on the cutting-room floor."
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Dinesh D'Souza. (Courtey of Dinesh D'Souza)

D'Souza acknowledges one error. He wrote that Obama "is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa." Obama visited Pakistan once, as a college student, when he was older than 17. (Hawaii, of course, may be off the American mainland, but it is hardly out of the American mainstream.)

When Gingrich called the article profound and said Obama has a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" world view, Gibbs accused the former House speaker of "trying to appeal to the fringe." Gingrich told the Daily Caller that his own remarks "seemed to touch some kind of irrational nerve on the left."

The Forbes piece begins by calling Obama "the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history." D'Souza then uses long, winding threads in an attempt to tie Obama's policies to his upbringing. "He took his father's dream, his vision, his ideology," D'Souza says in the interview.

While describing Obama Sr. as a polygamist and drunk driver who has been accused of wife-beating, the author says that the president "adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder.... He must work to wring the neocolonialism out of America and the West...Clearly the anti-colonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. ..... The invisible father provides the inspiration."
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Robert Gibbs called the publication of the story "stunning."

As one example, D'Souza writes that the Export-Import Bank, "with Obama's backing," last year offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil to explore for oil that he says would remain in Brazil (though presumably it could be exported). Gibbs notes that the bank had no Obama appointees at the time and that the president's nominee to run the bank was awaiting Senate confirmation. D'Souza calls this a "semantic game," saying the president had the authority to stop the financing.

D'Souza, who has been affiliated with conservative think tanks, has written more than a dozen books, including "The End of Racism," "Illiberal Education" and "Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader."

In the interview, D'Souza says he explicitly rejects the notion that Obama was born anywhere but Hawaii and calls suggestions that he is race-baiting "preposterous." As someone who spent his first 17 years in India, he says he feels "an eerie similarity to my own background" in examining a president who spent part of his childhood in Indonesia. "I'm completely Americanized--I have an American accent, an American wife--but a residue of me is foreign."

D'Souza says his thinking about Obama's influences draws heavily from the president's memoir, "Dreams From My Father." But that book describes a young man's struggle to understand his African roots and the father he never really knew, and offers a largely critical portrait of the Harvard-educated man who left his family.

Columbia Journalism Review this week called the D'Souza article "a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia" and "the worst kind of smear journalism--a singularly disgusting work."