By Andrew L. Jaffee

While pumping up his latest movie, “Apocalypto,” Mel Gibson has taken the opportunity to draw an inaccurate analogy between the fall of Mayan civilization and the U.S.-led Iraq war. Not only is his reasoning flawed, but his analogy is based on erroneous history. Here’s Mel:

“The precursors to a civilization that’s going under are the same, time and time again,” Gibson said after the work-in-progress screening in Texas.

“What’s human sacrifice if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?” he said.

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by Daniel Pipes
New York Sun*
September 26, 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/1004
* Cross-posted with permission

The violence by Muslims responding to comments by the pope fit a pattern that has been building and accelerating since 1989. Six times since then, Westerners did or said something that triggered death threats and violence in the Muslim world. Looking at them in the aggregate offers useful insights.

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by Shlomo Muslim, Ph.D., Guest Author, The Muslim Question Blog

Remember reading about those flight schools that were training terrorists in preparation for the series of buildings they flew into on 9/11? Sure you do. And remember reading about the FBI memos documenting that the FBI was watching these terrorists at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, also known as ERAU?

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by Michael Rubin
Middle East Quarterly*
Summer 2006
http://www.meforum.org/article/1025
* Cross-posted with permission

On October 14, 2005, police in the eastern Turkish city of Van arrested Yücel Aşkın, the rector of Yüzüncü Yıl University, on charges stemming from alleged corruption involving the purchase of medical equipment. In an effort to humiliate the rector, the police allowed local television to film Aşkın’s arrest and denied him bail. Few outside observers accepted the charges, and, within days, university presidents across Turkey were rallying in Van for the freedom of their colleague.[1]

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by Andrew Whitehead

The mid-term elections are on, and Minnesota Democrats have elected Keith Ellison as their candidate for the House of Representatives.

Ellison, an American-born convert to Islam, is an interesting person on many levels. First, Ellison once worked with the Nation of Islam (NOI), a Muslim-in-name-only “Islamic” hate group headed by Louis Farrakhan, a vicious anti-Semite and racist. Ellison explained away his ties to Farrakhan’s hate group by explaining that he “failed to scrutinize Farrakhan’s positions sufficiently.”

This alone should disqualify Ellison from representing the good people of Minnesota.

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by Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes’ Weblog*
http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/660
* Cross-posted with permission

Omran Salman, a Bahraini journalist and editor in chief of the liberal and pro-American website in Arabic, www.aafaq.org, has an important article in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, in which he points out the failings of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Titled, “Misguided Muslim groups: Focus should be on extremists’ war against the West,” it notes that CAIR, MPAC, and the Muslim American Society, rather than condemn the thwarted Aug. 10 plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners over the Atlantic “sought to both legitimize terror and portray Muslims as victims.” He explains:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

What’s Bill Clinton so angry about? (In this case, anger = defensiveness.) He cut and ran in 1993 from Somali after 18 American soldiers were killed. Now, we are witnessing the birth of another lawless, Islamist, terror central in Somalia. If the Union of Islamic Courts has its way, taking the place of the Taliban, Somalia will become the next Afghanistan, a headquarters for the planning of terrorist attacks against the West. What will we do? We’ve already got Iran, North Korea, Hezbollah, Hamas, al-Qaeda, etc., on our plate. Can we act by proxy, through neighboring Ethiopia? From the BBC:

Islamist fighters have reportedly advanced to the outskirts of Kismayo, the only port outside their control in central and southern Somalia.

Residents say the local militia withdrew in 40 trucks without a shot being fired as fighters loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) arrived.

Thousands of people are reported to have fled the city in recent days.

The UIC had said it will occupy Kismayo to stop a foreign peacekeeping force using it as a bridgehead.

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Hard pounding, gentlemen: but we shall see who can pound the longest. - Arthur Wellesley. Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo

by Bill Levinson

Hard pounding and not wishful thinking wins battles, whether physical or political. If MoveOn.org’s first suspension of its Action Forum on 8 September was a rout, its re-suspension of the Action Forum as of today is an unprecedented disaster that portends total organizational collapse– if its adversaries rouse themselves sufficiently to pursue an effectively-disarmed, disorganized, and fleeing enemy to the death.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Jeff Cohen, presumably another self-loathing Jew, asked the question, “What’s Wrong With Calling Bush A Devil?,” in an article published on Reuters AlertNet. Cohen asks in a subtitle, “Conservatives were quick to lash out at Hugo Chavez for calling President Bush a “devil,” but that’s exactly what Rush Limbaugh was calling Democrats only a few years ago.” Cohen spouts the usual dogmatic, knee-jerk moral relativism — concentrated on Bush-hatred, and with no substance, yet claims his arguments to be substantial. Cohen believes in a vast right-wing conspiracy controlling our media, and is upset because some “conservatives” have criticized Hugo, calling them hypocrites. But Cohen is just as big of a hypocrite.

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by Bill Levinson

There is no doubt as to what would happen to Jesus were he to preach his ideas in places like Saudi Arabia and Iran today. Yesterday, a jihadist called for the crucifixion of Pope Benedict. Since Catholics believe that the Pope is Jesus’ representative on Earth, killing the Pope would doubtlessly be the next best thing to killing the founder of the Christian religion itself.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I offer a sincere “Happy Ramadan” to the peace-loving Muslims of the world. But I am appalled at how Iraqis are “celebrating” this high holy day.

For me, the Iraq war has been a disappointment not because of accusations that President Bush “misled” the American people. After all, there is evidence of Saddam/al-Qaeda ties, indications that Iraq moved its WMDs to Syria, and the fact that Polish troops recovered 17 WMD warheads in southern Iraq.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Is the universe now officially in balance? Amnesty International has come around to calling Hezbollah’s firing of thousands of missiles at Israeli civilian targets a war crime. Amnesty had previously accused Israel of the same — for trying to stop Hezbollah from unleashing its hell-fire. But Hezbollah remains viciously unrepentant, with its leader promising to never disarm. From the AP:

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By Bill Narvey

Lesson 1:

Israel can only trust America in the war against Islamo-fascism where their respective focus and interests intersect and overlap.

There are differences in focus and interest in the U.S. war against Islamo-fascism and Israel’s war.

Israel must be more acutely aware of where and when America’s war on Islamo-fascism does not address Israel’s interests or actually works at cross purposes to it.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

A close adviser [to President Mahmoud Abbas], Nabil Amr, clarified that the Palestinian president would not ask Hamas to explicitly recognize Israel, but to abide by Palestine Liberation Organization agreements that recognize the Jewish state.

- Associated Press, 9/22/2006

Palestinians speak with forked tongue. What the heck does this mean? It is Oslo all over again: Arafat “recognized” Israel in English and then spoke of destroying Israel in Arabic. Same old. “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” In other words, there will be no peace until Palestinians love their children more than they hate Israel. Here’s more:

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By Fern Sidman

It has been an exciting week here in the Big Apple. In the spirit of freedom of speech, New York City was the site for the UN sponsored convocation of worldwide terrorists to espouse their demonic views. As we know, diplomatic immunity was granted to the likes of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinjehad and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

New York City had just concluded its remembrance of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that saw the destruction of the World Trade Center and the commemoration of close to 3,000 lives that were snuffed out on that day by the ilk of terrorists whose philosophy bears close resemblance to those who took the rostrum at the UN.

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