ISA CONTINUES TO CURRY FAVOR

WHO'S AWAKE NOW? More on the northern Virginia Saudi-backed Islamic school, which has been under fire of late for many unsavory reasons, the last being their intention to enlrage their premises. Here's some info by a reader of Jihad Watch.

As a lifelong resident of Northern Virginia and one who has worked for private schools throughout my teaching career, I can testify to how much difficulty the County typically gives to the zoning procedures for any private school, particularly toward private Christian schools.

But in the case of the ISA, the County is bending over backwards and evincing full dhimmitude. The contrast couldn't be more apparent! What should we conclude? Frankly, I suspect there is a money trail—possibly campaign donations to Board members or something similar.

When Fairfax Christian School sold to the Embassy of Saudi Arabia back in the 1980s, the financial offer was sky high—an offer not to be refused, really, Chesapeake Bay Watershed Act or no Chesapeake Bay Watershed Act.

To my knowledge, the Popes Head Road location of the ISA is now configured differently from when the site was the property of a Christian school. Last time I drove by, the place was similar to a walled compound. My memory could be faulty as I haven't been there in a while. I will check it out on my own soon. But I can say this FOR A FACT: When Fairfax Christian School was operating in that location, the site was not a walled compound.

Here's something else to note: in Fairfax County, the ISA has used or purchased sites previously used as schools, thereby passing the initial and grueling zoning procedure. There's a reason for that method: if starting from "scratch," the school and its primary officers/investors would have to produce proof of character and sign off on future intentions for the site. In addition, along the way during construction, inspections of all sorts would be conducted on a regular basis. Among those inspections would be a process of full financial disclosure, made public.

America. Home of the sellout.

OIL PRICES, CONSUMPTION CONTINUE SLIDE

An article by Neil King, Jr. of the Wall Street Journal should have conservationist Americans dancing with joy. However, only half the story is actually good news. If these prognostications are true, then the West has some measure of hope of curtailing those runaway oil prices that help cripple our economy this past year. However, the general wisdom that oil prices need to be at a certain level in order to fuel exploration of other energy resources needs to go the way of $140 a barrel oil prices.

Because this week's outlook also included news that the frackas between Russia and the Ukraine has interrupted the delivery of energy resources to Europe, this is not the time for a return of the freewheeling energy glutton America had become. The United States cannot continue to delay its search for viable alternative fuel technologies. The following article and the news out of Russia are testament to the cold hard fact that we need inependence from our energy masters. King writes:

The global downturn is thwarting efforts by Saudi Arabia and other big oil exporters to prop up prices of crude amid rising supply and dwindling demand.

Big producers in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries have struggled for months to keep pace with global economic woes, which have sent oil prices down more than 70% since July.

The world's biggest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, tried to nudge the market up this week by announcing plans to cut output to its lowest level since 2003—around 7.7 million barrels a day, which would put its production roughly two million barrels a day from the summer. Other OPEC members, including Venezuela, are calling for another round of cuts when the group meets next in March.

Global economic woes continue to trump OPEC actions amid signs of weakening energy demand in almost every corner of the world. Reports of rising crude stocks and falling retail sales in the U.S. drove oil prices down again Wednesday, with U.S. benchmark crude settling at $37.28 on the New York Mercantile Exchange, down 1.3% from Tuesday.

OPEC's 12 members last month announced the group's largest supply cut—2.2 million barrels a day—after pledging to cut two million barrels a day in the autumn, when the slowdown began to take hold. OPEC produces about 40% of the world's daily oil needs, which now run around 84.5 million barrels.

OPEC officials expressed concern that the market thus far has been unaffected by the cuts, which have been more disciplined than many analysts predicted. OPEC officials say they hope the cuts will begin to register soon and help drive prices back above $50 a barrel. But pessimists within the cartel say continuing bad news could drive prices well below $30 a barrel in coming months.

Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi, speaking at an oil conference Wednesday in New Delhi, said prices had fallen below the level warranted by market fundamentals. The oil market, he said, needs prices that "encourages investment, helping create a climate conducive for the development of all viable energy sources." Mr. Naimi recently put that price at $75 a barrel.

Nonsense. Development of new technology does not compete with oil production. Delivery of those technologies may one day compete, but that is no reason to delay the process of finding and perfecting an alternative to oil. If oil did not exist, what then? This general economic wisdom is bunk. Thomas Edison's perfected electric light technology was to compete with gas lighting, but buildout costs were enormous.

The battle between electric and gas lighting lasted some 30 years, and although advances were made in gas-lighting technology, electricity won out. During that time, the Cleveland OH City Council, viewing comparative costs, voted to go back to gas light in 1883 but reversed itself 17 days later. About the time that Brush was developing his arc light, Thomas Edison designed a practical incandescent lamp which later had great significance for Cleveland, because the companies that formed the National Electric Lamp Assn. in 1906 centered much of their light-bulb production in this area. When NELA became the National Quality Lamp Division of GENERAL ELECTRIC CO., it established Nela Park in the suburbs. The division took the leading role in GE’s incandescent lighting development program from 1915 until 1935, when fluorescent lighting research became prominent.

For years, the world's oil surplus was negligible. This year, OPEC's spare capacity is expected to surge to around four million barrels a day, according to the U.S. Energy Department. In 2009, global oil demand will fall by 800,000 barrels a day—the sharpest retreat since the recession of the early 1980s, the Energy Department predicts.

Gasoline demand is down almost 4% in the U.S. from a year ago, despite the drop in fuel prices. The U.S. is now importing about 750,000 fewer barrels a day than it did last year. Yet crude and refined-fuel stockpiles rose by 9.8 million barrels last week, the Energy Department said Wednesday. Stockpiles at the country's main delivery point for U.S. crude in Cushing, Okla., are at record highs.

OIL PRICES SET TO JUMP

JUST AS AMERICANS ARE FINALLY beginning to reap the benefits of plunging gasoline prices—including more money in their pockets—OPEC is getting ready to squeeze them once again by cutting oil production and driving up prices to refineries.

The 13-nation global oil cartel—which includes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela—will hold an emergency meeting in Vienna Friday to discuss the steep and rapid decline in oil prices.

"The era of cheap oil is finished," Iran's Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari boasted on Tuesday. When asked what price Iran would want for its oil, Nozari declared, "The more the better."

"A few member nations have voiced their intentions of pushing for a cut in production, including Qatar, Iran, as well as OPEC's president Chekib Khelil, who said that output could be slashed by as much as 2 million barrels a day," analysts for Raymond James & Associates told MarketWatch.com.

When oil peaked at more than $147 a barrel in July, gas prices soared to above $5 a gallon in some parts of the U.S., and Americans were forced to cut back on driving. With the price of oil at about $73 a barrel on Tuesday, pump prices have fallen to as low as $2.30 a gallon.

The price dip in oil—and gasoline— finally is working its way into the beleagured American economy, putting a few extra dollars in the hands of consumers just as the home heating and holiday shopping seasons begin.

Read it all.

NO BREAK ON FUEL COSTS FOR MILITARY

WASHINGTON (AP) - Military units fighting in Iraq and elsewhere will see another hike in fuel costs next week. The cost increase will be the second time the Defense Department has had to raise rates in the middle of the budget year because of soaring oil prices.

On July 1, the cost for refined fuel will jump from $127.68 a barrel to $170.94. That is an astounding 34 percent jump in just six months and more than double what was being paid on behalf of the troops three years ago.

The new costs translate to about $4.07 a gallon for jet fuel and $4.70 a gallon for diesel.

A Pentagon spokesman said the price increase is needed to cover an anticipated $1.2 billion rise in fuel costs in the next three months. He said it will not affect ongoing military operations, but could affect daily support activities

This is simply outrageous, lacking what left of Western military intelligence. The US needs to leave Iraq, bill the Saudis for protection and the Iraqis for reconstruction, or both. This continued "white hat" approach is pernicious failure.

THOMAS JEFFERSON'S CERTAINTY

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA did not have bases in Saudi Arabia when the "Algerine" pirates sailed into the Atlantic to capture our sailors and torture them in the late 1700s to 1830 (one of the obtuse reasons Osama bin Laden and his Western apologists give for the September 11 attacks). As a matter of fact, then as now, the Islamists were very straightforward as to why they were attacking us for the thirty years of the Barbary war(s).

The following paragraph summarizes the dutiful and unvarnished research of Thomas Jefferson:

"It was written in the Koran, that all Nations who should not have acknowledged the Muslim’s authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find and make slaves of all the could take as prisoners, and that every mussulman who be slain in the battle was sure to go to paradise."

—Abd-al-Rahman, March 1785 London, England, during a meeting to discuss the fate of American captives in Barbary to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.

The idea that current Islamic charm has been perverted or hijacked into some radical NEW version of Islam is FALSE. In fact, ITS ALWAYS BEEN BARBARIC IN NATURE, but no one in the West seems to know enough about history to accept this fact. Jefferson accepted the word from the mouth of the enemy, and grew bold enough to defeat them. Today, our politicians wink, shuffle their feet, and pick words from a hat handed them by the enemy, asking only how high to jump, or rather, how low to kneel, beg, and borrow.

THE QUESTION OF MUSLIM EXPULSION

Treason seems to be a forgotten crime these days, a mere remnant leftover from bygone years of high espionage when enemies were declared by name, rather than coddled when masquerading as our allies. While pink teary-eyed leftists whine about Guantanamo Bay war camp protocols, resolutely dismissing the culture of death plotted against the US, Canada, Chetznya, SW China, Serbia, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, and a host of soft European targets as mere residuals of our own ugly existence, others more robust in our outlook on reality search for more strident and historically compelling solutions to the problems the Camp of Islam is causing.

An eloquent solution just as punishing, but perhaps more apropos for our times than the one the current administration has advanced, leaving many of us chafing with regret, is the idea of an immigration freeze and annulment, an idea not at all new but historically grounded, an idea that actually seems fitting for the times as the creeping totalitarianism of democracy seems to some far worse than the blatant totalitarianism of the political bullies on the darling Left, in addition to the call from Muslims to incite terror and violence against us with the aim of abolishing our own constitutional form of government and replacing it with the theological totalitarianism of strict Islamic law, known as sharia.

Of course this solution is not without its pitfalls. At first glance, native tribes would be calling for the expulsion of whites, but that call simply distorts the nature of the current situation. What about those tribes? What about the crimes committed by those tribes against each other before the European arrived? And let's recall plainly that conquering Spain was a European power, not a native American tribe. and that its land grab was and is no more or less sanctified than the English, French, Portuguese or Dutch (and now Mexican or Islamic).

No, this issue must be addressed in terms of the current war, the current enemy, the current problem of an unidentified number of Muslims who refuse to integrate into the American way of life as an opportunity to escape the troubles in their own homelands, who refuse to become Americans, but only see themselves as slaves of Allah's massive war machine. An ungodly number of these immigrants are people who love death more than they love life, and are hell-bent on sharing that love with us. They are not fleeing jihad, they are exporting jihad. And our leadership simply imports it into our neighborhoods, believing that if we treat these immigrants nicely, they will respond in kind. Unfortunately, the anecdotal evidence overwhelmingly contradicts this delusion. Here is one:

I have had Somali co-workers and as fellow students at community college, and have been a fellow patient with them at the county hospital and they, save for a few individuals, do hate us, and they constantly threaten lawsuits (how is that for integration) and generally avoid being friendly with non-Muslims.

For some examples, I include the following—my brother went to a heavily Somalian high-school (Minneapolis Roosevelt) and the school decided to make two Somalians, homecoming king and queen, disqualifying the other people on the slate, even though two non-Somalis had won. At the homecoming dance, in broad public the homecoming king punched the queen in the face at the dance. At the same highschool the Somalis harrassed Ethiopians, called the American blacks pig-eaters, sons of slaves and infidels, and openly expressed virulent racist hatred towards whites, including teachers.

In a fight the night before September 11, several Somalians attacked African American members of the football team and ended up stabbing a football coach who attempted to break up the fight. At Washburn highschool here in Minneapolis in the last couple of years there has been serious violence between Somali and African American or black gangs. At one of my jobs, they are openly rude to non-Muslims and a Somali woman I worked with was being stalked by these guys, who would come to threaten her at work. She was scared, and she finally quit the job.

There, where two Bosnians also work, two cousins, and one was friendly, and his cousin yelled at him for making friends with the Americans, and would just coldly glare at people who were friendly with them. He would never shake hands. I could go on about my Egyptian Muslim friend in high school, who eventually turned on his American friends over Islam, and got religious after being a pot-smoking boozer. His friendship quickly turned to hatred.

At community college, MCTC, the Somalis' clearly took over parts of the school. And felt no need to behave, and in class, were rude to both students and faculty. And then there are those "domestic violence" episodes in which a Somali or Ethiopian Muslim kills a woman from their community. My point is Muslim and Somali immigrants are not nice people and the US imported a real bunch of winners. Muslim immigration is bad, bad news. And the authorities here, have a hear no evil, see no evil policy. It is going to get worse.

In response to the call for expelling thousands if not millions of unrepentant Muslims—First Amendment flaunting saboteurs and stealth jihadists all—from these United States of America, a concerned citizen named Susan has eloquently written:

Don't you think that "expelling" our sworn enemies would be preferable to locking them up in isolated compounds to prevent them from fully practicing their religion by engaging in violent jihad? Apparently you consider the idea of "expulsion" akin to "illegal" wiretapping and intercepting communications between domestic and overseas terrorists; abhorrent violations of the Constitutional rights of islamic terrorists who happen to be American citizens. And of course we all know that if the federal government is permitted to trample all over the constitutional rights of treasonous, terrorist muslims, martial law and tyranny are imminent. No problem; we don't mind getting blown to bits so muslims can perfidiously exploit the First Amendment, which guarantees rights that are anathematized by islam.

Nothing like islam has ever threatened America before; the closest comparison might be Japanese Americans during WWII. The threat posed by islam and muslims is unique, unprecedented, and grossly understated. But don't despair; we both know that the expulsion of jihadist Muslims is a very remote, albeit tantalizing, prospect. It is quite obvious that the mendacious, malevolent, perfidious imams and apologist, pseudo-scholars of Islam have our government's ear and the American people are being fed to the wolves so Muslims can feel good about themselves, not that they have ever had any low self-esteem issues. Problem is, they don't just want to feel good about themselves; instead they intend to dictate how non-Muslims will perceive islam and if that ploy fails, they will manipulate and exploit the same First Amendment that allows them to practice their vile religion to dictate what we can say about it. And you're worried about Big Brother taking away your rights?

Not only would I applaud the expulsion of every muslim with questionable loyalty to America or with overt jihadist ambitions, nothing would thrill me more than to see bulldozers razing mosques across America as their sullen, evil Wahabbi imams were being escorted to airports with one-way tickets to the dysfunctional kingdom of sadistic savages, aka Saudi Arabia. This scenario is one of my favorite daydreams but I have no illusions that a rational and salutary approach to our deadly dilemma will ever occur, at least not until they succeed in annihilating millions of us. In the interim, the stealth jihad marches on and scores a new victory every day.

I loathe islam with all my heart and soul, and I could never trust a Muslim but I wish Muslims no harm; I just wish they would go away. They are not worth the anxiety, fear, and unrelenting threat they pose by virtue of their malevolent, insidious religion. Who needs it?

—Susan P

Postscript (from Max Publius): The Navajo Reservation in Arizona has about 200,000 residents and is half the size of England, which has 50 million. That's quite a disparate land distribution. Yet England, under a pact with dhimmi traitors like Blair and the Islamist-loving United Nations, accepts hundreds of thousands of Islamonazis each year. Other immigrants just invade illegally. Number of immigrants taken in by the Navajo? None, unless you show you have Navajo ancestry. Ditto for most non-Western countries.

Can you imagine a group invading the Navajo Reservation, demanding welfare, calling Navajo "kaffir" with a bullhorn, attacking Navajo religious figures and buildings, raping and stealing from Navajo, and calling themselves "Navajo" while disparaging everything about the Navajo, and on and on.

That is exactly what is happening in little England. Just replace the above with English.

And now Lebanon falls. The government has capitulated to Hezbollah. The tumbling of a house of cards has begun. Were the only victims in Lebanon other Muslims, one might not mind, as the Camp of Islam grows in ferocity, it doesn't matter whose bodies pile high from the carnage. But Lebanon has been somewhat of a haven for Christians in the Middle East as they are driven from their ancestral homes in surrounding dar al-Islam, and that makeshift haven is now threatened. And none of the ruling elites in the Western world has given a thought to providing a permanent place of refuge in the Middle East itself to the more than a million Christians who have left, or will have to leave, Iraq.

They could do this, for example, by relocating many of them to Lebanon, and forcing the Shi'a out, by popular demand, so that they go to Iraq, among other Shi'ite Arabs. Or they could move them to the "West Bank," and force out the Muslim Arabs who represent a permanent threat to Israel. They can't be allowed into Western countries, having been raised on a steady diet of hysteria and hate, but they could be given space in Iraq, replacing those lost Assyrians and Chaldeans.

Those Assyrians and Chaldeans, if they wish to remain in the Middle East, should find their natural homes in Lebanon, or the "West Bank" within permanent Israeli protection, or possibly in Syria. But Syria could only be a haven for them if one assumes that the Alawites will begin to see the light and stop doing Iranian bidding in order to prove that they are bona fide Shi'ite Muslims, and continue to keep their own local Muslims in check—which is the only protection the Syrian Christians now possess.

But who in the Western world now thinks of saving the Christians through such intelligent, and in another day, obvious population transfer?

It isn't done. We prefer to stay pure, by never mentioning such things. Thus, we allow millions of people to be booted out, with nowhere to go, because we simply can't begin to think in realistic terms about such transfers, which were the norm, not the exception, throughout human history—including the history of the last century.

ENCOUNTER WITH A SHARIA APOLOGIST

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch reports on an encouraging email he received from an educated reader. It is as follows:

I am writing to tell you about a small success story in the struggle against Sharia. I am a law student at the University of Cincinnati. Last Thursday our school hosted a Sharia apologist from Saudi Arabia, Dr. Abdulkareem Hamad A. Alsaiygh. He's Dean at the Center for Contemporary Islamic Studies and Dialogue among Civilizations, Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University.

The purported goal of his visit was to dispel myths that the West has about Islam and Sharia Law. Because of your written work and this website, a group of us were prepared to ask questions that cut through the typical obfuscating rhetoric of this Sharia apologist. Heading into the event, the vast majority of students in the audience were sympathetic and welcoming to the speaker and his ideas. By the end of the event, they were all rightly horrified.

Among other things, our questions forced Dr. Alsaiygh to admit the following:

1. That apostasy is rightly punishable by death under Islamic law and the law of Saudi Arabia.
2. That there will never be a Christian church in Saudi Arabia.
3. That a Christian church is considered a national security risk to Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states.
4. That stoning is appropriate punishment for adultery.
5. That most women raped in Saudi Arabia deserve some punishment for "putting themselves in that situation."
6. That "interfaith dialogue" could never include polytheistic religions.
7. That Christian evangelism in Saudi Arabia is a subversive act comparable to planning a terrorist attack in the US.
8. And that all these were "moderate" Islamic positions.

Of course, he attempted to take us on the obligatory guilt trip by blaming the West for radical Islam. But, by this point, he had lost the vast majority of the audience.

ISLAMIC WAR ON WOMEN

I only just found this rather dated news, but since it goes to the heart of why I keep this blog without concern for active readership—liberty of conscience—it bears mentioning here.

Norway's newspaper Aftenposten reported back in April of this year yet another "stupid Muslim trick" fleecing their country. Norwegian-Somalian Kadra, who became famous in Norway for exposing imam support of female circumcision, was attacked and beaten unconscious by seven or eight persons of Somali origin. Kadra said that the gang of Somali men attacked her around 3 a.m. in downtown Oslo on Thursday. A medical examination found that she had several broken ribs, NRK (Norwegian Broadcasting) reports. Kadra filed charges and was due to speak with police on Friday.

“I was terrified. While I lay on the pavement they kicked me and screamed that I had trampled on the Koran. Several shouted Allah-o-akbar (God is great) and also recited from the Koran,” Kadra told VG. Her role in a 2000 hidden camera TV documentary revealing the positive attitude of Muslim leaders to female circumcision had a massive impact on Norway, and sparked new legislation.

When our leaders wake up to the fact that this Koran has given millions of young men around the globe a license to thuggery and murder? Sudden Jihad Syndrome or SJS is a very dangerous contagion.

But that's not all...

A court in the ultra-conservative kingdom of Saudi Arabia is punishing a female victim of gang rape with 200 lashes and six months in jail, a newspaper reported on Thursday. The 19-year-old woman—whose six armed attackers have been sentenced to jail terms—was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.

But in a new verdict issued after Saudi Arabia's Higher Judicial Council ordered a retrial, the court in the eastern town of Al-Qatif more than doubled the number of lashes to 200. A court source told the English-language Arab News that the judges had decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media."

Read more.

THE PLIGHT OF LAURA BUSH

The following commentary comes to us by Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post. Her poignant reportage once again shows those of us paying attention how sadly entrenched the Bush administration is with the Saudi royal family. This insult to America's own recent history in standing up to the human rights violations of global despots wherever we find them (okay, not entirely true) seems lost on our present leadership.

Or closer to the truth, and far worse in terms of the economic and other strategic ramifications is that the American presidency is simply "owned" by the Saudis, and thus are behaving like obedient dhimmi slaves to the oil masters who threaten us with painful economic sanctions if we do not abide their every request. Respect is one thing. Submission quite another. Let us not forget that the word "Islam" itself translates from the Arabic as submission.

On the surface, wearing the scarf is no big deal. Male gentile visitors to a Jewish synagogue are usually asked to don the yarmulka. But lntuit the striking difference of garb here in the first picture when compared to the second picture taken of the First Lady in the scarf, just below. The difference is visceral. Then finish reading Glick's essay:

Women in Saudi Arabia do not have human rights. As Amnesty International puts it, "The abuse of women's rights in Saudi Arabia is not simply the unfortunate consequence of overzealous security forces and religious police. It is the inevitable result of a state policy which gives women fewer rights than men, which means that women face discrimination in all walks of life and which allows men with authority to exercise their power without any fear of being held to account for their actions."For instance, women in Saudi Arabia cannot choose whom they marry and they have no real power to divorce their husbands. Men on the other hand can lawfully marry up to four women and divorce any of them simply by announcing that they have divorced them. And once they are divorced, they are by law and practice denied custody of their children.

Marital rape and physical abuse are not generally considered crimes and therefore women have no legal recourse for dealing with abusive husbands, or fathers or brothers. Since they are legally barred from serving as lawyers, and Islam weighs a woman's court testimony as worth half the testimony of a man, even if they were able to press charges against their male tormentors, Saudi women are effectively denied recourse in the local courts.

Women of course are not the only victims of the Saudi regime. Non-Muslims are denied the right to worship. Shi'ite Muslims' right to worship is subject to draconian limitations. Jews are officially barred from entering the kingdom. Then too, there are no real elections in Saudi Arabia, no press freedom, no freedom of assembly. Yet even against this totalitarian backdrop the position of women stands out in its severity.

Take education for example. As the State Department's 2006 Human Rights report notes, there is little academic freedom in Saudi Arabia. For instance, "The government prohibited the study of Freud, Marx, Western music, and Western philosophy." Yet women's educational opportunities are even more constrained. Due to gender apartheid, women may only study in all female institutions. There they are prohibited from studying fields like law and engineering and petroleum sciences. In 2005 the BBC reported, "Although women make up more than half of all graduates from Saudi universities, they comprise only 5 percent of the kingdom's workforce."

Saudi women have no freedom of movement. They may not drive. And they may not move around in public unless escorted by their husband, father or brother. Women found in public unescorted by suitable males are subject to arrest and corporal punishment.

The limitations placed on public appearances are mind boggling. As Freedom House reported in 2005, "Visible and invisible spatial boundaries also limit women's movement. Mosques, most ministries, public streets, and food stalls (supermarkets not included) are male territory. Furthermore, accommodations that are available for men are always superior to those accessible to women, and public space, such as parks, zoos, museums, libraries, or the national Jinadriyah Festival of Folklore and Culture, is created for men, with only limited times allotted for women's visits."

To the extent that women in Saudi Arabia are allowed leave their homes, they are prohibited from actually being seen by anyone through the rigid enforcement of Islamic dress codes. As the State Department 2006 report explains, "In public, a woman was expected to wear an abaya (a black garment that covers the entire body) and also to cover her head and hair. The religious police generally expected Muslim women to cover their faces and non-Muslim women from other Asian and African countries to comply more fully with local customs of dress than non-Muslim Western women. During the year religious police admonished and harassed citizen and noncitizen women who failed to wear an abaya and hair cover."

Perhaps it is because it is so offensive to the Western eye to see women covered like sacks of potatoes, the abaya has become a symbol of Islamic oppression and degradation of women. Although outlawing their use, as the French have attempted to do in recent years, is itself a form of religious oppression, the sentiment informing their ban is certainly understandable. The fact is that a free society should not be able to easily stomach the notion that women should be encouraged, let alone obliged to wear degrading garments that deny them the outward vestiges of their humanity and individuality.

Due to the fact that the abayas convey a symbolic message of effective enslavement of women, Mrs. Bush's interaction with women clad in abayas was the aspect of her trip most scrutinized. In the United Arab Emirates, Mrs. Bush was photographed sitting between four women covered head to toe in abayas while she was wearing regular clothes. The image of Mrs. Bush sitting between four women who look like nothing more than black piles of fabric couldn't have been more viscerally evocative and consequently, symbolically meaningful.

The image told the world that she—and America—is free and humane while the hidden women of Arabia are enslaved and their society is inhumane.

But then Mrs. Bush went to Saudi Arabia and the symbolic message of the previous day was superseded and lost when she donned an abaya herself and had her picture taken with other abaya-clad women. The symbolic message of those photographs also couldn't have been clearer. By donning an abaya, Mrs. Bush symbolically accepted the legitimacy of the system of subjugating women that the garment embodies, (or disembodies). Understanding this, conservative media outlets in the US criticized her angrily.

Sunday morning, Mrs. Bush sought to answer her critics in an interview with Fox News. Unfortunately, her remarks compounded the damage. Mrs. Bush said, "These women do not see covering as some sort of subjugation of women, this group of women that I was with. That's their culture. That's their tradition. That's a religious choice of theirs."

It is true that this is their culture. And it is also their tradition. But it is not their choice. Their culture and tradition are predicated on denying them the choice of whether or not to wear a garment that denies them their identity just as it denies them the right to make any choices about their lives. The Saudi women's assertions of satisfaction with their plight were no more credible than statements by hostages in support of their captors.

As the First Lady, Laura Bush is an American symbol. By having her picture taken wearing an abaya in Saudi Arabia—the epicenter of Islamic totalitarian misogyny—Mrs. Bush diminished that symbol. In so doing, she weakened the causes of freedom and liberty which America has fought since its founding to secure and defend at home and throughout the world.

BEWARE OF FAKE FRIENDSHIPS

In his essay "Islam: Setting the United States Up For the Fall" of 19 March 2007, Randy Taylor spares no quarter in divesting America of its present spirit of appeasement in its relations to Islam and those countries seeking to undermine the American nation, a spirit which will not only contribute to the fall of America if cautions of the few aren't heeded by the many, but will be its primary weakness in the face of the current threat. Thanks to ACT's Brigitte Gabriel for passing this along.

1990-1998: The population of the United States is largely unaware of Islam, Islamic terrorism or what is being planned against this great nation. We vaguely recall some Islamic persons trying to blow up the World Trade Centers but it is only a distant memory, a fluke, a failed attempt. We aren't even aware of the structure of terrorist masterminds behind the event. There was a bombing in Oklahoma City by some disgruntled ex-soldier but we were told he acted alone, so we accepted it at face value. We didn't look any deeper. We accepted what we were told. Most of us did anyway. We sought to ignore the ones trying to tell us otherwise.

Wise men like Steve Emerson are largely unheard by us, by choice. Steve is the equivalent of a modern day Paul Revere placing himself at great risk to warn us of the enemy coming. We choose not to listen. Ignore it and it will go away. As long as it doesn't affect the stock market, it doesn't count as a threat.

Most of us don't really know the name Osama bin Laden and we may have heard about an Islamic grass roots style group named al Qaeda at one time or another. But that is what the CIA and the FBI are for, to protect us from bad guys. So we don't give it much thought. The ground was set in our minds for underestimating this enemy.

2001-2003: On September 11, 2001 airplanes flown by Islamic terrorists crash into the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon resulting in huge death tolls of our fellow Americans. Another airliner crashes into a field in Pennsylvania killing everyone on board. In the following days our televisions are filled with images of nineteen men, Islamic men who did this terrible deed. We want revenge and we demand it. The focus shifts to the Taliban, the group named al Qaeda that we had ignored for years and the leader Osama bin Laden. Now we want to know about this guy, these animals that follow him. Our President speaks to us and makes it clear that we are going after these people and going after anyone who supports terrorism. He makes it clear that this isn't a quick fix and this could take twenty years or more. We as a national majority, still angry, agree. The War On Terror begins. We start in Afghanistan and later we move into Iraq and remove the terrorist dictator, the killer of many people, Saddam Hussein.

Islam starts the counter-campaign within the United States. Islam is determined to force their ways and means upon the American society. Islam starts lobbying the people, the government as a largely "misunderstood" religious minority. The Islamic organizations get to work along with many similar Islamic organizations branching out to spread the poison where ever they can to whoever will listen.

2006-2007: We as a country have forgotten or softened on everything above. We have grown weak in our resolve and prove this by having elected weak people into the government positions within our government. A large cross-section of the American people want us to leave Iraq immediately. Cindy Sheehan is the new Jane Fonda and develops a following of other like-minded weak pacifists. Islam is growing in strength within the government itself.

The people in Minnesota actually elected a Muslim into Congress. He has done nothing positive for the United States as a whole and when you look at his hometown, his election seat, there are Muslim related problems across the board. The cabbies at the airport are trying to force their religious issues on the passengers and the flight where the six imams were removed for creating a security threat all originate in his hometown. Coincidence some could claim? I doubt it.

Islamic organizations are carefully orchestrating lawsuits, marches, large propaganda campaigns all across the nation. Islamic schools and mosques are being built in record numbers across the nation with Saudi oil money being funneled into the US legally. Islam is on the march. The submission of the great country of the United States to Islam has begun just as planned. Just as we were warned by Osama bin Laden, Islam is using Americas own laws and freedoms to destroy us.

Islam is working both ends against the middle if you look closely. They are heavily recruiting in the ghettos and the prisons as well as recruiting at the top, the Senators and the Congress. They are working on the middle now. They have infiltrated the military. At every infiltration point there is a common factor. The rules have been changed to accommodate Islam specifically.

We were established as country based around God where a person had a right to worship God, their God as they choose to do so. That line has been crossed however and the Constitution violated in favor of Islam. Anytime one religion takes precedence or is granted privilege specifically as a religion then there has been a discrimination against all other religions. Such is the case here. This is dangerous ground. This in itself is endangering the Constitution and everything the Constitution stands for. This is endangering the rights of all other peoples in this country.

True Islam, in its purest form is a danger, a threat to all other religions, cultures and peoples. It is a threat to civilization itself. Islam is uncivilized in its doctrine. It is uncivilized in its justice system. It affords no rights and freedoms. It condemns all activities outside its teachings. It makes no allowances for other religious beliefs. It calls for the extermination of peoples that worship any other religions. Its brings death to where there is life.

And we are welcoming Islam? Let's look at that closely.

The primary reason that we are making this mistake is because we are uninformed about the true teachings of Islam. There is a fabricated gentle version floating around that is unlike the true teachings of Islam. It is a softened version, the liar's version. We choose it because it is the easy way out. It presents itself as sheep when in fact true Islam is nothing but wolves. It presents itself as a religion of peace, love and tolerance. If you look around the world at every trouble spot there is, where Islam is involved, there is not a trace of peace, not a trace of love of others and there is no tolerance whatsoever. Islam is about submission, nothing else. Submit to Islam or they will kill you. They killed over 3,000 of us on September 11, 2001 and we still don't get it.

There are those that claim that Islam was hijacked by some radicals. Here's a Newsflash to these ignorant people who claim this. It is way past that and since these peaceful people that you weak minded people keep referring to have no control over what is going on in their own religion and since the terrorists are obviously in charge of Islam, then Islam as whole is a danger to the western world and the people in it. Islam isn't being run by pacifists and peaceniks. It really never was and any chance that these "peaceful" Muslims could reel in their religion is long gone. They refuse to do so and this is mostly in part because Islam never was a peaceful religion. Sounded good, seemed like good water cooler talk but it is and always was a line of BS. Another example of "Political Correctness" run amuck.

But we go on with this fraudulent diatribe because we don't want to alienate our so called "allies". You know the ones that are funding the mosques, schools and Islamic organizations inside this great country. The allies that pay families of suicide bombers when family members blow themselves and others up in a suicide attack. These same allies sent money to the 9/11 hijackers to fund the operation against the United States. This is nothing short of these Islamic governments smiling in our faces and stabbing us in our backs.

The primary piece of irony that strikes me as asinine is our push in this country to arrest, prosecute and even forever blacklist pedophiles yet we are welcoming a religion established by a pedophile.

Mohammed, the Islamic prophet took a girl as a bride at age six so he could have sex with her at age nine. That will get you 10 years to life in the United States and we are welcoming a belief system established by this pedophile? We are not only welcoming it, we are making provisions within our society and government to accommodate it. What are we thinking?



Is it going to take another 9/11 attack or bigger to open our eyes? Do we not realize that what is going on is a struggle, a fight to the death between the forces of good and evil? Do we not realize that we, the United States and countries like ours are the only thing that stands between the good people of the world and Islam destroying mankind? Do we not understand that if we pull out of Iraq or Afghanistan that the terrorists will become emboldened and will not hesitate to strike us
here in America?

People, shut the door on Islam while there is time. Write letters to your Congress and your Senators. Support the ones that are trying to protect us. Abandon and condemn the ones that are opening us up to the enemy. Get on the blogs and speak your mind. Email anyone that will listen. Speak out against this evil called Islam. Don't let the few of us that do be the lone voices in the wilderness. We are speaking for you. Help us be heard.

Thank you.

Stay safe. Be vigilant.