US Intelligence Agencies warn of implanted bombs inside terrorists

I guess they finally got around to watching The Dark Knight:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. government has warned domestic and international airlines that some terrorists are considering surgically implanting explosives into humans to carry out attacks, The Associated Press has learned.

There is no intelligence pointing to a specific plot, but the U.S. shared its concerns last week with executives at domestic and international carriers.

People traveling to the U.S. from overseas may experience additional screening at airports because of the threat, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

My prediction: a pregnant woman delivers by C-section and has the empty space in her abdomen replaced with a chemical pack. After some weeks of healing, she's given the catalyst in liquid form disguised as injectable insulin and sent onto a plane.

Midflight, she goes into the lavatory to "take her insulin," injects it into her belly into the chemical pack, and....

(H/T Hot Air.)

UPDATE: Thanks, Ace, for linking this in the Headlines at Ace Of Spades HQ. And welcome, M&Ms!

Too bad I can't draw.

(image by buzzsawmonkey)

Being that it's Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

However, I can repost.

It wasn't always haram to display images of Mohammed.

A Persian depiction of Mohammed preaching to his followers.



An Uzbek depiction of Mohammed on his flying steed Buraq on his Night Journey to (what has been interpreted as) Jerusalem. [Note: why would he have gone to the Temple in Jerusalem if, as modern Muslim fanatics suggest, there was no Temple in Jerusalem?]



But somehow we are now supposed to believe that Islam prohibits depictions of Mohammed on pain of death.

Screw that.

One of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that set off the current assault on free speech.



And an image composed by one "tadpole" that pretty much illustrates the same idea of a religious figure being perverted into an excuse for murderous oppression.



But here may be the most provocative image generated for Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, by Day-By-Day cartoonist Chris Muir. Do you see a man of peace, a religious fanatic, an object of idol worship, or perhaps the death struggle of Western freedoms against medieval religio-political values?

The Telefon Rings

In his Best of the Web blog at OpinionJournal.com, James Taranto comments that the decision to try KSM and other enemy combatants in New York returns 9/11 to the forefront of America's consciousness.

In addition, the more dramatically the Obama administration departs from past antiterror policies, the more the public will be inclined to blame it should there be another terrorist attack--especially if, God forbid, terrorists use the trial as an occasion to hit New York.

“…should there be another terrorist attack…” With respect to the massacre at Ft. Hood, allow me to direct you to a movie from the Cold War era: the Charles Bronson spy actioner Telefon.

During the Cold War of the 1950s, the Soviet Union planted a number of long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents all over the United States, spies so thoroughly brainwashed that even they didn't know they were agents; they could only be activated by a special code phrase (a line from Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" followed by their real given names). Their mission was to sabotage crucial parts of the civil and military infrastructure in the event of nuclear war.
Over twenty years pass, and the Cold War gradually gives way to détente. Nikolai Dalchimsky (Donald Pleasence), a rogue KGB officer, defects to America, taking with him the Telefon Book, which contains the names, addresses and telephone numbers of all the agents. He starts activating them one by one. American counterintelligence is thrown into confusion when seemingly-ordinary citizens (even a clergyman) start blowing up what are, in some cases, long-abandoned facilities and commit suicide right afterwards.

Seems that the actions of Maj. Hasan conform to the outlines of the Telefon plot: he was essentially programmed to commit traitorous mass murder, triggered by key verses fed to him by an enemy agent. It’s pretty clear that Maj. Hasan’s massacre was a terrorist attack, as well as an act of sabotage by a traitor.

President Obama has exhausted any benefit of the doubt on this issue. The next mass-casualty attack by an extremist Muslim on American soil, whether it kills 10 or 10,000, will demonstrate that he's unable to match the Bush Administration's record of preventing another terrorist attack on the American homeland from 9/11 on.

And those in the media and in official government positions who are desperately trying to deny that the Ft. Hood massacre was a terrorist act committed to support the extremist Islamic jihad against America are only making that next attack more likely. They're making it more difficult for law enforcement and counter-terrorism agents to identify who's the next sleeper likely to get a call on the telefon.

Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs: Women love Sharia law

I wonder what Obama's Women's Issues Czar will have to say about this? Daily Telegraph: Barack Obama adviser says Sharia Law is misunderstood.

President Barack Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, has provoked controversy by appearing on a British television show hosted by a member of an extremist group to talk about Sharia Law.

Miss Mogahed, appointed to the President's Council on Faith-Based and Neighbourhood Partnerships, said the Western view of Sharia was "oversimplified" and the majority of women around the world associate it with "gender justice".

The White House adviser made the remarks on a London-based TV discussion programme hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party.

The group believes in the non-violent destruction of Western democracy and the creation of an Islamic state under Sharia Law across the world.

Miss Mogahed appeared alongside Hizb ut Tahrir's national women's officer, Nazreen Nawaz.

During the 45-minute discussion, on the Islam Channel programme Muslimah Dilemma earlier this week, the two members of the group made repeated attacks on secular "man-made law" and the West's "lethal cocktail of liberty and capitalism".

They called for Sharia Law to be "the source of legislation" and said that women should not be "permitted to hold a position of leadership in government".

Miss Mogahed made no challenge to these demands and said that "promiscuity" and the "breakdown of traditional values" were what Muslims admired least about the West.

Nice litotes there: "what Muslims admired least about the West." Doesn't she mean, what Muslim extremists despise most, and what motivates them most to destroy the West?

While British ministers were worrying about protestors on the Right...

While the British government and the Left side of the British media have been focused on the perceived threat posed by the English Defence League, something else has been going on: Rashid Rauf 'training dozens of British terrorist recruits in Pakistan.'

Pakistani officials have warned that Rashid Rauf, the terrorist linked to the trans-Atlantic airline bomb plot, bas been involved in grooming two dozen British recruits to carry out new attacks.

Pakistan intelligence said that Rauf, who mysteriously escaped from police custody and was then reported killed by a missile fired by US drone last November, used the name Khalid to recruit fellow Britons for training at a camp in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

One official said that Rauf was involved with a group of Arab and Uzbek terrorists in a camp in Matta Cheena village in south Waziristan.

Rauf is said to be a key lieutenant of the group's leader, explosives expert, Abu Nasir. "He is an explosive expert who has effectively devised methods of explosives using easy-to-get ingredients that are virtually undetectable or can raise no alarms for authorities," said the intelligence source.

"We know that they are planning a very serious attack and it is very important for us to arrest all of them.

"If they are able to strike it is going to give a bad name to Pakistan once again for no reason."

Intercepted emails and text messages between Pakistan and the UK had indicated Rauf's involvement under the name Khalid after the authorities decrypted the communications.

British security and intelligence officials have said they believe Rauf may have survived the missile strike and could be planning further attacks.

A US informant called Bryant Neal Vinas, who has admitted planning a suicide attack, was arrested by the Pakistanis last November and said he had met Rauf shortly before the missile strike.

He gave information that has led to the arrest of two cells allegedly planning attacks during a European summit in Brussels and last Easter in Manchester.

Yep, sure sounds like those folks protesting Islamofascist extremism in Britain are the real problem, all right.

I just hope that security on the planes, trains and buses in Britain is as tight as the security forces say it is. Oh, and that they've managed to out-think Al-Qaeda with respect to what other targets terrorists might choose that haven't been given such tight security up until now.

The UK, a haven for (some) terrorists

Some people want you to believe that the worst threat facing Britain are the people pointing out the Islamofascists in their midst: Communities Secretary John Denham has likened far right groups mounting street protests against Islam to Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts.

The minister's comments came as he announced a drive to prevent white working class people being "exploited" by extremists.

But he later backtracked by stressing that today's situation was "nothing like the 1930s". He said:"All we are facing at the moment is small.

"But I think we need to take it seriously enough to say that there are obviously people who would like to be provocative, hope that there is not just a reaction but there is an overreaction, then people blame the people who overreact and the situation gets out of control."

Mr Denham singled out protests being organised by the English Defence League, some of which have turned violent over recent months.

Except perhaps it wasn't that the English Defence League wanted an overreaction, but that any expression of displeasure with Islamofascists in Britain faces an organized overreaction: Violent race riot flared after mosque chief urged Muslims to confront right-wing 'English Defence League' protesters.

The most influential Muslim leader in the West Midlands urged his followers to 'vent their feelings' against Right-wing protesters during a Birmingham rally that ended in violent clashes and 90 arrests.

Birmingham Central Mosque chairman Dr Mohammad Naseem encouraged Muslims to counter-demonstrate during Saturday's anti-Islamic protest by the English Defence League (EDL).

The police had advised community leaders to stop people from attending, reported The Times.

Last month there were also clashes when the English Defence League - formed after British soldiers were abused by Islamic radicals at a homecoming parade in Luton - held a rally on the same day as the Unite Against Fascism group.

The latest disorder involved around 200 people and spilled on to Bennetts Hill, a street popular with shoppers and lined with a number of pubs.

English Defence League marchers were involved in running disturbances which lasted all afternoon before the Right-wing protesters were taken to another part of the city by bus.

Witnesses claimed the English Defence League marchers, many of whom had been drinking since the morning, ripped up seats on the journey away from the city centre.

But some members slipped away from the police, clashing with more than 30 socialist protesters amid cries of 'Racist scum, out of Brum'. After an hour of angry skirmishes in the city centre, the situation deteriorated further after a group of Asian men also joined in.

Sarah Edwards had to duck into a cafe to avoid being caught in the violence.

She said: 'We suddenly saw what seemed to be about 200 Asian men running down the street, throwing bricks.

'They had bandanas over their faces and were shouting and screaming. We were so scared, we feared for our lives and had to run into the cafe so we wouldn't get hurt. It is so shocking to see this on our streets'

The English Defence League has claimed it is not racist, even saying it did not want any violence to happen at the pre-planned protest.

This picture is a bit inconsistent with the accusation of neo-Fascist skinhead racism: the haircuts look right, but what's up with that flag?

English Defence League supporters hold aloft the flag of Israel and gesture to police as they are corralled into a subway following the demonstration

However, it seems that there really are Islamofascists, known terror suspects, roaming free in the UK. In fact, some of them are even living on the public dole, courtesy of the British taxpayer: Suspects named on United Nations terror list living free in Britain.

The revelation that the men are being allowed to live in Britain without the prospect of being arrested or deported has prompted calls for an urgent change in the law.

Among the 12 suspects named on the UN list are a number of men accused of raising funds for a violent jihadist group with alleged links to Osama bin Laden....

One of the men named on the UN Consolidated List is Mohammed al Ghabra, a 29-year-old British citizen suspected of being a key figure in the plot to blow up passenger airliners over the Atlantic.

Also on the list is Khalid Abd Al-Rahman Hamd Al-Fawaz, 44, a Kuwaiti living in London, who has been accused by the FBI of involvement in bombing American embassies, and Hani al Sayyid al Sebai, a 46-year-old Egyptian also living in London.

Other individuals on the UN list include Ghuma Abd'rabbah, 52, a Libyan-born British citizen who is suspected of raising funds for the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihadist organisation opposed to the Gadaffi regime, and accused of having links with al Qaeda. He is understood to be living in the Birmingham area, along with Libyan-born Abd Al-Rahman Al Faqih, 50, who is also on the UN list....

Individuals are placed on the list on the basis of evidence about their links with al Qaeda or the Taliban submitted by members states of the United Nations. Once their inclusion has been endorsed by the UN Security Council, banking and treasury officials in the individual's country of residence are instructed to freeze their financial assets.

David Davies, Conservative MP for Monmouth and a member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "It's quite outrageous for these people to carry on living here, many of them on benefits. The Home Secretary should have the right to either lock them up or throw them out of the country, but for that to happen requires a change in the Human Rights Act."

A spokesman for the Home Office said: "These individuals are here legally. If they breach any laws they will be prosecuted. We cannot comment on any security operations regarding individuals."

One would think that if the Communities Secretary really wants to damp down fear and resentment toward Islamic extremism in Britain, a good place to start would be to arrest or expel the most extreme of the Islamic extremists.

Is Paris burning? Not yet, but...

Two men in an Italian prison were overheard plotting to blow up Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. Oh, and British targets, too.

Italian police on Tuesday arrested two alleged al-Qaeda terrorists suspected of planning attacks on Britain and France from inside prison as part of a Europe-wide network.

During wiretapped conversations the men discussed an attack on Charles De Gaulle airport outside Paris and spoke of the need to "strike at the British", Italian police said.

Bassam Ayachi, 62, a Syrian imam with French citizenship, and Raphael Frederic Gendron, 33, a Frenchman who converted to Islam, were allegedly part of an al-Qaeda cell operating in Europe.

They have been in prison in Bari, a port town in southern Italy, since November, when they were arrested on suspicion of smuggling five illegal immigrants into Italy aboard a camping trailer.

Ayachi is a well-known extremist preacher based in Belgium and mentor to Malika el-Aroud, a leading female figure in al-Qaeda whose first husband was killed in an attack against Ahmed Shah Massoud, then leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

El-Aroud was arrested in Belgium a month after Ayachi and accused of planning a suicide attack while Prime Minister Gordon Brown was attending a meeting of European leaders in Brussels.

Italian officers placed a listening device in the cell shared by Ayachi and Gendron.

In one bugged conversation, the pair discussed "striking the British" and launching a Sept 11-style attack using an aircraft, although the target was not specified.

"They are key figures in al-Qaeda's European organisation," said Giorgio Manari, the chief of police in Bari. The wiretap evidence had enabled investigators to "nip the plot in the bud", he said.

The men were served warrants charging them with criminal association linked to international terrorism and will remain in custody.

They were also suspected of recruiting militants for suicide attacks in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Police said the pair had for years lived in Belgium, where Bassam was an imam at an extremist Islamic centre and one of al-Qaeda's "spiritual guides", while Gendron, a computer expert, was the "media propaganda point man, via the internet, for the French-speaking community."

I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that these aren't the only two Islamic terror plotters in Europe. What with the totally botched raid on the Easter bombing plotters in Manchester, UK,, it seems that it's only a matter of time before the luck of European law enforcement runs out. It makes one wonder how much luck is left in the reservoir of American law enforcement....

Is this mass murderer now in custody?

On a day when at least 75 Iraqis were murdered in suicide bombings in Baghdad and at a Shia shrine in Diyala, the Iraqi security forces announced the arrest of the mastermind of the bombings, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a leader of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq.



Great news, if true:

The Islamic State of Iraq is an umbrella group of militant Sunni factions which is said to be dominated by Baghdadi's al-Qaeda in Iraq, which is affiliated to "core" al-Qaeda in Pakistan.

His arrest, which could not be confirmed, and even his death have been reported before. Security experts have speculated in the past that Baghdadi was a character invented by some extremist groups rather than a real person.

Let's cross our fingers and hope that this mass murderer is now out of commission. The early indications, though, aren't bright: Suicide bombers killed 60 people in an attack at a Shia Muslim shrine in Baghdad, the deadliest single terrorist strike in Iraq in almost a year.

The bombing brought the toll from suicide attacks in the country to almost 150 deaths in just 24 hours.

Two terrorists wearing vests packed with explosives approached separate entrances to the Imam Moussa al-Kadhim shrine in the Shia district of Kadhimiya. One blew himself up at the gates, while the second entered a courtyard before detonating his explosives.

Police said that at least 20 of those killed at the shrine - a frequent target of Sunni Muslim insurgents - were Iranian pilgrims.

A further 125 people were reported to have been injured in the attack.

It was the bloodiest terrorist operation in Iraq since 63 people died in a truck bombing in Baghdad on June 17 last year.

The shrine attack came a day after 89 people were killed in two suicide bombings, which targeted police and civilians in a square in central Baghdad and Shia pilgrims from Iran at a restaurant in Diyala province, north of the capital.

They followed the arrest on Thursday of a man who police in Baghdad claimed was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Monty Python's Scotland Yard

So, like, a couple of days before Easter, the whole of British law enforcement swoops down and arrests 11 Pakistani nationals and one British citizen in what the police call a "major terrorist plot." The police had to advance the timetable for their arrests because the Metropolitan Police's counterterrorism chief accidentally held a report on the plot in a way that let a press photographer get a clear and readable picture of it.

And now? 12 arrested after alleged 'Easter bomb plot' released without charge.

Eleven of the men - all Pakistani nationals - now face being deported after they were transferred into the custody of the UK Borders Agency.

They were released after investigators spent 13 days searching for evidence following the arrests from a number of addresses in Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Lancashire under the Terrorism Act.

Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith had previously claimed the operation had uncovered a "very big plot" against the UK, and police chiefs defended their actions yesterday.

However, questions are being asked as to the timing of the raids and the basis for the alleged intelligence of a plot given that no evidence was found.

The operation was run by Greater Manchester Police, together with MI5, but it was ultimately authorised by the then natonal head of counter-terrorism, Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick.

The raids led to his resignation, after he inadvertently allowed details of the operation to be photographed.

So the police believe that these men are a clear and present danger to Britain's security, but after 13 days of searching, they can't come up with concrete evidence to support that belief. Of course, Muslim advocacy groups in Britain are quick to point out that this is just more official harassment of their co-religionists:

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Instead of releasing them with good grace and making clear a mistake has been made, the government is seeking to deport them, citing a very vague national security threat. That is a very dishonourable way of proceeding."

Turn a terrorist plot into a propaganda victory against British counterterrorist operations. Brilliant.

It almost has me expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

The Jihadi Workout, or, Buns of Semtex

Jane Fonda tapes being haram, the jihad has developed its own workout program: Workout tips for jihad offered by al-Qaeda supporting magazine.

Complete with photographs of men in white robes with scarves covering their faces performing a variety of squats and sit-ups, it advises supporters to keep in shape so that they can "strike hard" against their enemies.

There is also a warning against visiting "un-Islamic" western gyms including LA Fitness with their "music, semi-naked women, free mixing and the danger of showing off".

That last bit could explain this pose (it does get lonely on the North West Frontier):

Is Israel's real enemy "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam"?

I am sure that everyone who heard or read Senator Obama's speech on race has keyed in on a particular passage that resonates with him or her, whether as a sign of the Senator's greatness or as evidence of his pettiness. For me, it is this:

"a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam"

To my mind, this is a prime example of how the Senator uses carefully-chosen words to score points simultaneously with various constituencies that might otherwise be at odds. He calls Israel a "stalwart ally" in order to curry favor with American Jews, and it will probably fool a number of them -- but what I want a candidate to say to make me feel more secure as an American Jew is recognition of Israel's status as the Jewish homeland, not just a geopolitical asset. If the USA has a moral obligation to Kosovar Albanians and Sudanese in Darfur because of their inherent rights as humans, certainly the USA should support the right of the Jewish people to claim one corner of the world as its own secure homeland.

But even more clever -- too clever by half -- is his contrasting Israel with "radical Islam." In doing so, he scores points for "recognizing the Islamofascist threat," but at the same time he covers up the real source of the conflict: good old-fashioned Jew-hatred on the part of Arab and Muslim countries and peoples. The Arab countries didn't attempt to kill the State of Israel aborning because of radical Islam; Nasser's calls for Israel's destruction were driven by secular pan-Arabism, not the Muslim Brotherhood; and the PLO needed no imams or muftis to urge them to murder Israelis and other Jews.

But to call out the Arab nations for Jew-hatred would draw attention to the fact that Reverend Wright is at home with Jew-haters in the Black community. Certainly he's cozy with Louis Farrakhan, and if he doesn't share Farrakhan's view of modern Jews as adherents of a "gutter religion" and identical to the "white Devils," he's certainly tolerant of that view. Indeed, the notion he expresses in his Christmas 2007 sermon, that Jesus was a poor Black man, indicates that his theology is based on the idea that the Judeans, the direct descendants of the Hebrews, were Black Africans -- which necessarily means that he believes that Jews from the European diaspora must be impostors, hijackers of the Jewish faith. Does he blame Askenazic Jews for the genocide of the original Black Jews? And what of the Jews of the Maghreb or of the eastern Arab lands -- are they legitimate Black Jews or just another brand of illegitimate interlopers?

This takes us back to the first half of the statement. I can imagine the Senator or his supporters telling radical Black constituent groups that he supports Israel only inasmuch as it is a useful tool and not out of any love for, or recognition of the rights of, Israel's Jews. I can further imagine him assuring those groups that he is diligently working to make Israel more secure by helping to rid it of its racist Zionist practices and principles and evolving past its outmoded fixation on being a homeland for the Jewish people.

The diminishing value of racial profiling

The Scotsman newspaper reports that al-Qaeda is recruiting non-Asians to convert to Islam and carry out jihad in Britain: Al-Qaeda's white army of terror.

As many as 1,500 white Britons are believed to have converted to Islam for the purpose of funding, planning and carrying out surprise terror attacks inside the UK, according to one MI5 source.

Lord Carlile, the Government's independent reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, said many of the converts had been targeted by radical Muslims while serving prison terms.

Security experts say the growing secret army of white terrorists poses a particularly serious threat as they are far less likely to be detected than members of the Asian community.

It appears that British law enforcement understands how the jihadist threat is evolving and is trying to adapt to match. It remains to be seen whether the public understands the issue, and whether the political class has the guts to back up law enforcement. A silver lining in this story is that it aligns with the political correctness of the political class: now law enforcement is saying that the color of a man's skin isn't the best predictor of his propensity to jihadist murder.

More evidence of UN uselessness

Proffered without comment:

UN peacekeepers ambushed in Darfur barely a week after launching mission

Bomb wounds 2 UN peacekeepers on patrol south of Beirut

Status quo won't change after Katyusha': 2 rockets hit North; Barak to "assess situation before responding;" UNIFIL to 'Post': No suspect ruled out.

CAIR acts as a foreign agent, so it should register as one

Think about this for a moment: Foreign Agents Registration Act

The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was enacted in 1938. FARA is a disclosure statute that requires persons acting as agents of foreign principals in a political or quasi-political capacity to make periodic public disclosure of their relationship with the foreign principal, as well as activities, receipts and disbursements in support of those activities. Disclosure of the required information facilitates evaluation by the government and the American people of the statements and activities of such persons in light of their function as foreign agents. The FARA Registration Unit of the Counterespionage Section (CES) in the National Security Division (NSD) is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Act.

Is that clear in your mind? Good. Now keep it in mind as you read this press release from CAIR (with a tip-o'-th'-hat to Little Green Footballs):

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani to drop a campaign advisor who offers rhetorical support to a group designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. government.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said Daniel Pipes, who recently signed on to Giuliani's campaign as a foreign policy advisor, is a vocal supporter of the terror group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). Earlier this year, Pipes even participated in a foreign rally for MEK leader Maryam Rajavi.

Shouldn't CAIR be required to register as a foreign agent under FARA?

The world's smallest oud

Abu Hamza's wife is concerned for her husband's welfare while he's in a UK prison:

Hamza, 49, dubbed the "preacher of hate", is serving seven years for inciting the murder of non-Muslims.

In a letter to a London-based Islamic organisation, Nagat Mostafa, 46, said her husband claimed to be the victim of racist bullying and Islamophobia in Belmarsh jail.

Her letter to al-Maqreze Centre for Historical Studies was sent shortly after Hamza - who is fitted with hooks on both hands - underwent surgery in May to remove an inch of bone from his left arm stump, which had become infected.

She wrote: "I would like to bring to your attention the current plight of my husband…

"The reason that his arm needed further amputation was because of the removal of his prostheses, resulting in him constantly putting pressure on the remainder of his fore limbs. As there is no soft furnishing in his cell, he has been suffering considerable pain… After surgery, before he had even recovered from the anaesthetic, he was returned to Belmarsh, only to be told he had to move from his cell to another one. He was so weak and unable to stand that he refused, resulting in him being put in solitary confinement…

"My husband says the racist bullying and Islamophobia against him have intensified."

The contents of the letter were disclosed by the Maqreze Centre, which called the cleric's treatment "unjust" and said it feared he could die behind bars.

He could die behind bars? Oh, the humanity! I shed a bitter tear.

Gandhi's grandson: my Granddad would have stood up to Bin Laden

Mahatma Gandhi's grandson says that the Great Soul would have stood up to Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and the Islamofascist movement.

Rajmohan Gandhi told the BBC his grandfather would also have tried to organise "something dramatic" - perhaps a mass fast - to show how unhappy most Muslims were that their religion was being linked to terrorism.

Asked what he would have made of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and the Islamist Taliban militia in Afghanistan, Rajmohan said: "He would have stood up to them."

"The Muslim and non-Muslim issue was a very important issue in his life in India, and he was killed because many Hindus thought he was friendlier to the Muslims than was necessary," the former Indian parliamentarian said.

"So today, he would never agree with the idea that there's something connected between Islam and violence or Islam and terrorism. He would totally oppose that idea."

Rajmohan added that his grandfather "might have recommended to the Muslims of the world who were unhappy being hijacked by the terrorists to say how about demonstrating your dissociation with violence through a fast if need be".

One wonders whether moderate Muslims could have been shamed by the Mahatma into such a grand demonstration, or whether he would even have lived long enough to carry out the effort. It's fairly certain that the Islamofascists would have had no qualms about murdering him.

Islamofacist aikido: using the West's bureaucracy as a weapon

The United States won the Cold War by forcing the Soviet Union to collapse under the weight of its own bureaucracy. Now the international Islamofascist movement is using the same technique against the societies of the West.

Special Branch and MI5 officers are forced under human rights laws to spend hours form-filling before carrying out the most basic surveillance tasks.

The problems are made worse by undermanning and mean that only a handful of the estimated 150 Islamic extremist suspects in Scotland are under constant surveillance.

We have discovered serious misgivings among officers about manning levels and the law under which they operate, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

We can reveal that:

• Getting permission for the most basic surveillance operation, such as observing a building, takes up to half a day of paperwork and referrals to senior officers;

• Authorisation for a full-scale surveillance operation, such as following a suspect, can require up to three days of bureaucracy;

• If requests are rejected, officers have to spend around three or four hours filling in forms to explain why;

• Keeping one suspect under 24-hour surveillance takes between 24 and 36 highly trained staff, but there are thought to be just 250 Special Branch officers in Scotland;

• Health and safety regulations mean officers are generally restricted to working maximum shifts of eight hours;

• Most operations have to be justified at monthly and three-monthly intervals, requiring many hours of preparation.

Insiders have told Scotland on Sunday they believe that, largely as a result of these and other rules and regulations, as few as 10% of suspected extremists are under high levels of surveillance.

This, at the same time that member of the U.S. Congress want to put regulations in place "supporting the troops" by straitjacketing the Department of Defense in the length and frequency of an individual service member's deployments. What our Congressmen (and so many others in the West) fail to understand is, whether or not we are conducting a Global War on Terror, the Islamfascists are undoubtedly and wholeheartedly conducting a Global War on Us.

He came to kill and be killed, and found mercy

Hamid Karzai showed mercy toward a boy who was sent by Pakistani Islamofascists to kill Afghans.

The first whiskers of a moustache on his top lip, Rafiqullah stood to one side of the Afghan president, his father, with a full beard, stood to the other, at a ceremony in the capital on Sunday.

Rafiqullah's father, a poor tradesman from South Waziristan in Pakistan, had sent his son to a religious school, or madrassa, to learn the Koran. Later, when he asked where his son was, the teachers there brushed him off, he said.

Then last month, the 14-year-old was caught wearing a suicide vest on a motorbike in the eastern Afghan city of Khost.

"Today we are facing a hard fact, that is a Muslim child was sent to madrassa to learn Islamic subjects, but the enemies of Afghanistan misled him towards suicide and prepared him to die and kill," Karzai told reporters, his arm on the boy's shoulder.

The fanatics who sent Rafiqullah on his mission had no mercy or pity for him. One hopes that the current crackdown on radicals in Pakistan will put an end to this barabarity.

A silver lining in a horribly dark cloud?

Potentially this is the best news in the terror war to come along for some time.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Militants in northwest Pakistan disavowed a peace pact with the government and launched two days of suicide attacks and bombings that killed at least 70 people, dramatically escalating the violence in the al-Qaida infiltrated region.

The attacks Sunday and Saturday followed strident calls by extremists to avenge the government's bloody storming of Islamabad's Red Mosque and a declaration of jihad, or holy war, by at least one pro-Taliban cleric.

The terrorist murders of 70 people as good news? Well, consider this.

A document announcing the end of the peace pact in North Waziristan was passed around in the bazaar in Miran Shah. The signatories referred to themselves as the Taliban, a term commonly used by militants in northwest Pakistan, though their links with the Taliban fighting in neighboring Afghanistan are murky.

Under the Sept. 5, 2006, truce, the Pakistan army pulled back to barracks tens of thousands of troops that had been involved in bloody operations against suspected Taliban and al-Qaida hideouts, and militants agreed to halt attacks in Pakistan and over the border against foreign troops in Afghanistan. Tribal elders were supposed to police the deal.

Musharraf had clung to the agreement and similar pacts in neighboring areas, arguing that, by empowering tribal leaders to police their own fiefdoms in return for development aid, they offered the only chance of bringing long-term stability.

However, critics have argued that Musharraf's decision to cut a deal effectively handed the Taliban and al-Qaida a safe haven from which to plot attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan and in the West.

If this represents a real shift in Pakistani government policy -- if President Musharraf really has decided to stop trying to appease both the Islamofascists and the West and chosen the side of good, and if he can convince his military that their dependence on Islamic fundamentalist groups no longer serves its interest -- then this attack will help reinforce their resolve by proving that the radicals are interested only in jihad.

On the other hand, if these attacks cause Musharraf to lose his nerve, or if the Islamicists in his military convince their fellow officers once again to compromise with evil, it will be a black day for Pakistan and the world.

US Senate flexes its super-powers

The U.S. Senate leaps into action! Since the bounty of $25 million on Osama Bin Laden's head has had zero effect in leading to his capture, the Senate votes to double it. Hey, twice the dollars, twice the success, right?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate on Friday voted to double the bounty on Osama bin Laden to $50 million and require President George W. Bush to refocus on capturing him after reports al Qaeda is gaining strength.

By a vote of 87-1, the Senate set the reward for the killing or capture, or information leading to the capture, of the mastermind of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Critics of Bush's "global war on terror" have accused him of putting too much emphasis on Iraq, which had no known connection to the September 11 attacks, at the expense of efforts to get bin Laden and dismantle al Qaeda.

Right. Killing hundreds of al-Qaeda members in Iraq has nothing to do with dismantling al-Qaeda. And the thousands of NATO troops in Afghanistan have been ignoring the hunt for Bin Laden.

But the added money, and more importantly, reports to Congress, will do the trick -- this time, for sure!

Sen. Byron Dorgan, also a North Dakota Democrat, said more important than the bounty was the legislation's requirement that the administration give Congress classified reports on the hunt for al Qaeda leaders every 90 days....

Citing reports that bin Laden could be in a secure hideaway in Pakistan, Dorgan said, "There should not be one square inch on this planet" that is safe for bin Laden.

Sen. Jim Bunning, the Kentucky Republican who cast the only vote against raising the bounty, said catching al Qaeda leaders already was a "top priority." In a slap at Democrats, he added, "If Senator Dorgan truly supported our efforts to fight al Qaeda he would not support withdrawing from Iraq, a key battleground against al Qaeda and in the war on terror."

Of course, Congress could declare war on Pakistan and give the President the green light to invade the Northwest Frontier and Tribal Areas of that country to hunt down Bin Laden. The Pakistanis might, however, take exception -- and they do have nuclear weapons.

It's worth noting that at long last, Pakistan's President Musharraf has been forced into taking action against Islamic radicals in his country. That may lead to the Pakistani military pushing Bin Laden out of his safe haven in Pakistan's northwest and into the waiting arms of the NATO forces in Afghanistan. Better to promote this strategy than pretend that money will somehow solve the problem.

Of course, if Bin Laden is truly imaginative (as he always has proven to be), he might see this new reward level as a fundraising opportunity. He could allow a sympathizer to turn him in, knowing that the end result will be the US Congress giving al-Qaeda a $50 million cash injection.

On the other hand, I don't understand why the Democrats in Congress don't simply pass a law making it illegal for Bin Laden to remain in hiding. While they're at it, they could pass another law requiring al-Qaeda to redeploy from Iraq within 120 days. I'm sure that in their minds, it's just that simple.