The sound of a terrorist, backpeddling.

India is accelerating the construction of a 2,500-mile fence to seal its border with its Muslim neighbor, Bangladesh. Didn�t the International Court of Justice say (to Israel) that such passive security measures were illegal � and much more objectionable than oh, say, sending suicide- bombers to play at weddings and bar mitzvahs?

More here.

Contemporaries remember his fondness for women, sport, and human detonation.
via LGF
How and why this mild-mannered Malaysian mathematician transformed himself into ‘Demolition Man’, the most wanted fugitive in South-East Asia, is a puzzle which authorities are hard pressed to solve after his violent death last Wednesday.
Azahari bin Husin eluded capture for three years after allegedly supplying explosives to the Islamist extremist group Jemaah Islamiah which has ideological and financial links to al-Qa’ida. Police say his signature car bombs and explosive backpacks were used in at least four suicide attacks against ‘soft targets’ in Bali and Jakarta, leading to the deaths of 245 people, including 26 British tourists in the 2002 Kuta night-club bombings. Azahari was briefly apprehended in Sumatra, but was unrecognised as the bespectacled militant wanted by Interpol for plotting to bomb the US Embassy in Singapore, and he slipped off. But he struck Jakarta’s Australian Embassy in September 2004, personally driving his customised car bomb and parking it 300 metres away. Police suspected him of planting similar bombs in August 2003 at the JW Marriott Hotel in Jakarta, where he was seen sketching in the lobby weeks before the explosions.
Fingerprints taken from one of the suspected militants killed in a police raid on a safe house in East Java on 9 November matched Azahari’s records. An hour-long gun battle ended dramatically when a militant sheltering inside blew himself up, and police found a stockpile of 30 more explosive devices in the rubble. Documents discovered in a cohort’s hideout the plans for a pre-Christmas ‘bomb party’ to be unleashed at Jakarta schools and churches.
Azahari was born in 1957 in Malacca, the cosmopolitan port town 150km south of Kuala Lumpur. At the age of 17, he left home to study in Adelaide, Australia, where he became an avid jogger and a motorcycle aficionado. But the gregarious student dropped his mechanical engineering courses after four years. An Australian classmate, John Cooper, recalls the young Azahari as ‘bright and cavalier. He seemed to have a healthy disrespect for authority.’
When, aged 20, Azahiri returned home, the Iranian revolution was in foment and Islamic students around the world took heed. Asahari did well enough in his statistics coursework in Malaysia to be accepted as a foreign student at Reading University, where he was enrolled in the late 1980s. Contemporaries remember his fondness for women, sport, and fast cars. After submitting his doctoral thesis, he left Britain for employment in Jakarta as a property- market analyst, but found he preferred life in academia. He married a co-lecturer at the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia at Skudai, Johor, where he eventually was appointed Associate Professor of Valuation and known for his lively classes.
It was only when his young Acehnese wife, Noraini, had difficulty conceiving a baby that Azahari turned to religion. Following visits to a Muslim faith healer, she became pregnant and bore two children in quick succession. After she was diagnosed with throat cancer, Azahari became extremely pious. He embraced jihad and was drawn to charismatic leaders such as the Indonesian cleric Abu Bakar Baasyir, spiritual head of Jemaah Islamiah. With Noordin Mohamad Top, headmaster of a religious boarding school, he promoted a pan-Muslim territory extending from the southern Philippines to southern Thailand and recruited youths to become martyrs for the cause.
Azahari perfected his bomb-making skills at a jihadi camp in Sadaa, Afghanistan, in 1999, after months of training in Mindanao, in the southern Philippines, and went on to design the Jemaah Islaimah bombers’ manual with emphasis on backpack explosives. He attended a meeting in Thailand with Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who was considered Osama bin Laden’s point man in South-East Asia. After Hambali’s arrest in August 2003, Azahari rose through the organisation’s ranks.
Counter-terrorism experts have described Azahari as a master of disguise. But in the past few years, officials said, he invariably wore an explosive belt around his waist to avoid being captured alive.
One of Azahari’s former students, Lum Chih Feng, recalled his teacher’s enthusiasm for English Premier League football. He preferred close-fitting Western clothes and rarely wore an Islamic skullcap and robe except at the mosque.
Shortly after his second baby was born in 2001, Azahari left home, telling his wife: ‘I have a greater cause in life. It is to serve God.’
Azahari bin Husin, statistician and bomb-maker: born Malacca, Malaysia 1957; Associate Professor of Statistics and Valuation, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 1991-98; married 1994 Wan Noraini Jusoh (two children); died Batu, Indonesia 9 November 2005.

Total scum.
But we learn from this:
a) The necessity to monitor radicalist preachings from mullahs
b) The necessity to take out terrorist host-nations (like Afghanistan)
c) The necessity to never, never, never give up (thank you, Sir Churchill)
Not a bad obit. I think every time a terrorist dies, they should have a special obituary page.

James Joyner reports that “Paris is on high alert after receiving credible threats against popular tourist sites, including the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-�lys�es.”

On the heels of the US laying murder and conspiracy charges against Omar Ahmed Khadr for his role in a 2003 firefight in Afghanistan, civil suits are being filed against the Khadr family;

Meantime, in an unprecedented civil lawsuit filed in Utah federal court, Morris and Speer’s widow, Tabitha Speer, are suing the estate of Khadr’s father, who may have been killed in a firefight in Pakistan, for training his son to be a terrorist. Their attorney, Donald Winder, applauded Monday’s charges and said the civil suit shows “we can fight terrorism on many fronts.”
[…]
Morris, a 19th Special Forces soldier, said the shrapnel that blinded his right eye in the Afghanistan battle came from a grenade tossed by the younger Khadr. When soldiers rushed the compound, wounding the boy and killing all other insurgents, Khadr purportedly threw another grenade that killed Sgt. Speer. Khadr was arrested immediately after the July 27, 2003, battle. The Canadian government has protested Khadr being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because of the boy’s young age.
���
Morris said he decided to file a lawsuit after watching on television the boy’s sister saying that the death of a U.S. soldier was “no big deal.”
���
Last week, U.S. District Judge Paul Cassell granted a default judgment against the elder Khadr’s estate. Morris and Speer’s widow will now seek to recover assets frozen by the United States, Canada and the United Nations. Attorney Winder said the Utah lawsuit is the first filed by a U.S. soldier against an enemy combatant. He said that al-Qaida operatives are criminals – subject to civil suits – because they are not part a country or political body recognized by any world organization.

Someone ought to point out that they might consider naming former Canadian PM Jean Chretien as a co-respondent.

In detail at the Belmont Club.

Simply put, he’s doing the best reporting to come out of Iraq.

The courage of the Iraqi people that January day planted a seed of confidence in my mind. These were not timid or cowering souls. There I was: an American in a dangerous Iraqi city, at the very polling site that soldiers were wagering would be bombed. I was weaponless and alone. One after another, Iraqis came and shook my hand, showing me their children, laughing, smiling, saying over and over, Thank you, thank you, thank you. I felt like an honored guest, and I felt a twinge of shame that I�d held less confidence in the Iraqis than they�d mustered for themselves.

Read it all here

CBC News;

Speaking to reporters at a break during a security conference in Montreal, [director of CSIS] Judd was asked if Canadians were in Iraq fighting against the American-led coalition. “Yes, I believe so,” he said.
He said there weren’t many, “we’re talking single digit numbers.” But he said “we’re aware of several others who are contemplating leaving.”
When asked if CSIS, or the government, could do anything to prevent people from joining the insurgency Judd said he didn’t think there was anything legally that could be done.

And on the other…

Nothing like having a couple thousand US Marines stay in the crapiest conditions in the world and then take the leash off of them and tell them to hunt down scumbags!! WOW!! I think it should be declared a holiday�� what to name it??��� Freedom day?� Naa���.. Christmas?��� nope, that ones taken (but fitting)��. Monky Stomp Monday?���nice ring to it���..how about�.. � Come to your house and blow your stinking camel licking carcass into small pieces so small we will be able to bury your sorry butt in a thimble����day???????? Kinda short but I like it!

Canadian terrorists head to Iraq – one of those happy little problems that comes with its own solution.

[very crudely paraphrased from the CTV Oct.16 national newscast]

Sandie Rinaldo [anchor]: The vote went ahead with surprisingly little violence but has that changed?
Lisa LaFlamme [from Baghdad]: Yes, Sandie, this morning the sound of explosions could be heard outside the green zone and the US military reported fighting and killing dozens of suspected Muslim militants.
Sandie Rinaldo : What are ordinary Iraqi’s saying?
Lisa LaFlamme : I went down to a pool hall and talked to two of them. They noticed that the insurgency began with the arrival of 150,000 American troops on their soil.
Sandie Rinaldo : It must be frustrating to Iraqis who can remember the days when the Baath Party Benevolant Fedayeen Of Mercy delivered chocolate covered cherries* to every Iraq family to celebrate Ramadan.
Lisa LaFlamme : To a man, that’s what they are saying. And today they are all waiting for the day when the Americans leave so that the insurgency will end.
Sandie Rinaldo : What a quagmire the Americans have found themselves in!
Lisa LaFlamme : Quagmire!
Sandie Reynaldo : Quagmire!
Lisa LaFlamme : Quagmire!

Related and unreported: BECAUSE BUSHCO AND THE AMERICAN MILITARY HAVE FAILED TO QUELL THE INSURGENCY!

In the Saudi daily bAl-Jazirah;

“The question that must be asked courageously is: Have the clerics of our times fulfilled their duty, as our forefathers did when they [fought] against the Khawarij? The most direct answer is: Sadly, no! Let’s assume that the government decides to allow women to drive without obligating them, for instance, to wear a veil; what would be the reaction of these clerics and students? How many protest delegations would come to Riyadh from all the provinces? How many fatwas would be signed? How many accusations would be leveled? How many noisy sermons would be delivered by many imams in the mosques?… Is a woman driving a car, or even not wearing a veil, a more serious prohibition in Allah’s eyes… than the acts of murder, slaughter, destruction, and violation of women’s honor [committed] by these ‘sick people?’ Why in the name of God [do we show] all this gentleness, forgiveness, and a tendency to ‘speak gently’ when it comes to terrorists, while [we show] extreme blatancy and harshness when it comes to women, for instance?…”
[…]
“In 1945, a short time after Nazi Germany’s surrender, a conference was held in Potsdam, Germany, in which one of the important articles [adopted] was ‘denazification.’ This conference is credited with uprooting the culture of Nazism from Europe. [The conference] aroused the world’s conscience against Nazism with the end of World War II, firmed up the revulsion towards it, and made it into something similar to a crime, not just in judicial and political terms, but also in terms of culture, ideology, and especially, the media. Thus, it suffices in Europe nowadays to accuse a politician of having Nazi tendencies, or of inciting to Nazism, for him to turn into something of a bandit. The [Potsdam] Agreement was signed by Britain, the U.S.S.R., the U.S., and China � the important world superpowers at that time.
“Why shouldn’t we learn a lesson [of the Potsdam] experience, which had the greatest impact on the uprooting of Nazism from the world?… Imagine that the way of dealing with statements by Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya� was comparable to the West’s way of dealing with Nazism. Would a [TV] channel, like Al- Jazeera, for example, dare to spread this ideology and to relate to statements by its leaders and preachers in the spirit of ‘point/counterpoint’ [5] and ‘freedom of speech’?
Everybody knows that this channel in particular has had the greatest media impact on the shaping, spreading, and strengthening of this dangerous trend, and that it provides it with wide space to express its ‘acts of heroism’, its statements, and its videotaped operations, to the point where it [Al-Jazeera] has become the primary platform of [Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya], as is happening today in Iraq.

Further to Occam’s question, I’m wondering if we’re seeing an indication that the supply of brainless young men is indeed finite? Why else would Hamas need a womens’ wing to wage jihad?

If there’s good news here, it’s the fact that women blowing themselves up will help lower the birthrate of those wackos.

Two Americans are dead and three Canadians injured in the Bali terrorist blast that killed at least 25 and injured 100.
CBC News: Three Canadians injured in Bali bombings (CBC News)

Three Canadians have been reported injured in Saturday’s Bali explosions. Dan McTeague, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, says three Canadians were in one of the cafes, and suffered minor injuries. They have been treated at a clinic and released. At least 25 people were killed and 100 are injured during two simultaneous attacks Saturday.
The blasts hit two packed seafood restaurants in Jimbaran beach and a bustling tourist shopping centre 30 kilometres away in downtown Kuta. The attacks come almost three years to the day when bombings in Kuta killed 202, including two Canadians.
Those bombings, and two other subsequent bombings in Jakarta that killed at least 23, have been blamed on a group called Jemaah Islamiyah, which has been linked to al-Qaeda.
Indonesian President Suslio Bambang Yudhoyono has warned that more attacks could happen. “We will hunt down the perpetrators and bring them to justice,” he promised. He warned people to be on alert.
Two Americans have been reported dead, and the United States has condemned the bombings on and offered to help. “The United States stands with the people and government of Indonesia as they work to bring to justice those responsible for these acts of terrorism,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. “We will continue to work together in our common fight against terror.”

One wonders what they have in mind in terms of a battle plan.
crosspost from OTB

AP;

The Iraqi government’s campaign to win support for the country’s new constitution has won the critical backing of the most influential Shiite religious leader, less than a month before a national referendum on the draft charter.
[…]
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, meeting with aides Thursday in the holy city of Najaf, urged his followers to vote “yes” on the new basic law, according to two top officials in al-Sistani’s organization. The officials refused to be identified because they are not authorized to speak for the reclusive cleric. In January, millions of Shiites followed al-Sistani’s call to vote in Iraq’s first democratic elections in nearly half a century, and the ballot gave the Muslim sect a majority in the new parliament and government.

Via OTB

A Toronto Sun editorial asks the obvious in the wake of Paul Coffins curfew for pleading guilty to 15 counts of fraud – “Is anyone ever going to be seriously punished for AdScam?”
Here in Saskatchewan, of course, we experienced our own highly publicized poltiical scandal in the 1980’s. In view of the severity of Paul Coffin’s sentence for defrauding the Canadian taxpayers (you can’t call it defrauding “the government” when the government is an accomplice) of $3 million, I thought it might be interesting to review those convicted and jailed over a total of $838,000 in misspent funds in our own province during the 1980’s;

– Lorne McLaren, former MLA: 3� years.
– John Scraba, former communications director: two years, $12,000 in restitution.
– John Gerich, former cabinet minister: two years, $12,264 in restitution.
– Michael Hopfner, former MLA: 18 months, $56,000 in restitution.
– Eric Berntson, former Saskatchewan deputy premier: one year; resigned Senate seat.
– Ralph Katzman, former MLA: one year, $100,000 in restitution

Source CBC archives.
Of course, unlike most of those listed above, Paul Coffin isn’t a politician. In fact, no politicians at all have been charged in the Adscam debacle, nor has there been any investigation into broader questions of inappropriate political acquisition of public funds outside of Gomery’s narrow mandate – despite the fact that the triggering event for the Governor General’s audit was a whistleblower complaint by Public Works employee Alan Cutler – who in 1995�questioned a $15,000 a month retainer that Paul Martin’s Finance Department was attempting to push through on behalf of his personal leadership campaign team the firm Earnscliffe.
Of course, the same provincial NDP premier whose party has flogged the “Devine” corruption horse in every election race since, had no problem at all endorsing the faltering minority government this spring. Apparently, Calvert suffers no twangs of ethical hypocrisy in standing shoulder to elbow with corrupt federal Liberals – so long as the cheques keep coming.
Reminscent of an old W.C. Fields joke, Lorne Calvert has established what he is. You can’t blame Saskatchewan taxpayers for wondering if there’s a secret price list.

Now the camera focuses on a man and a boy crouched behind a concrete barrel or culvert, their faces contorted in fear. Enderlin: “Here Jamal al-Dura and his son are targets of gunfire from Israeli positions.” The camera pans to a nearby Israeli outpost. The father waves with his right hand in the direction of the Israeli position. The father is hunched behind the barrel, the boy nestled against his back. Enderlin:

Muhammad is twelve years old. His father tries to protect him. He waves. But another round of fire bursts out. Muhammad is dead, and his father grievously wounded.

During the 55-second sequence, two shots have hit a concrete-block wall that stands like a backdrop for the scene, landing far afield of the father and son. Other bullet holes, similarly off-target, can be seen in the wall as well. The father shields the boy; the father’s arm is clearly visible, perpendicular to the ground. Guttural cries are heard, adding to the feeling of panic. The last round of gunfire kicks up a cloud of dust, obscuring the man and boy. When the dust clears, the boy is stretched out at his father’s feet; the father bobs his head as if groggy.
And that was it. As Enderlin would later explain, the reason France-2’s scoop was offered free to the world was that the producers did not want to earn a profit from so tragic an incident. Only the terrible moments of the child’s death throes, he added, had been edited out, being “too unbearable.” The film sequence itself, attributed at first to a “France-2 cameraman,” was subsequently identified as the work of the station’s Palestinian stringer, Talal Abu Rahmeh. By then, the full authority and reputation of France-2 itself had been indelibly stamped on the footage.
[…]
In one version of his story, Talal Abu Rahmeh went to Netzarim junction at seven in the morning on a hunch that the children would be out demonstrating “because it was a school day,” and he knew they demonstrated on school days. In another version, he ran over to the junction at 3 PM, after someone called his office to inform him that there were fierce battles going on. The outtakes show he was there from early morning. Apparently, a dozen of his colleagues had the same intuition; they too can be seen in the raw footage.
The Reuters, AP, and France-2 outtakes that I viewed show two totally different and easily identifiable types of activity at Netzarim junction: real, intifada-style attacks, and crudely falsified battle scenes. Both the real and the fake scenes are played out against a background of normal civilian activity at a busy crossroads. In the “reality” zone, excited children and angry young men hurl rocks and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli outpost while shababs (“youths”) standing on the roof of the Twins throw burning tires down onto the caged lookout; this goes on seemingly for hours, without provoking the slightest military reaction from Israeli soldiers.
At the same time, in the “theatrical” zone, Palestinian stringers sporting prestigious logos on their vests and cameras are seen filming battle scenes staged behind the abandoned factory, well out of range of Israeli gunfire. The “wounded” sail through the air like modern dancers and then suddenly collapse. Cameramen jockey with hysterical youths who pounce on the “casualties,” pushing and shoving, howling Allahu akhbar!, clumsily grabbing the “injured,” pushing away the rare ambulance attendant in a pale green polyester jacket in order to shove, twist, haul, and dump the “victims” into UN and Red Crescent ambulances that pull up on a second’s notice and career back down the road again, sirens screaming. In one shot we recognize Talal Abu Rahmeh in his France-2 vest, filming a staged casualty scene.*
Split seconds of these ludicrous vignettes would later appear in newscasts and special reports; the husk, the raw footage that would reveal the fakery, had been removed, leaving the kernel rich in anti-Israel nutrients.
Such staged scenes showed up, for example, in a dramatic CBS 60 Minutes special report on Netzarim crossing – a place “now known,” intoned Bob Simon, echoing Palestinian sources, “as Martyr’s Junction.”
The al-Dura death scene was filmed right in the middle of these falsified incidents. It can be localized and situated. In one section of Reuters footage we see the man and the boy crouched behind the upended culvert as a jeep drives slowly up the road, stops in firing range of the Israeli position that is clearly visible in the near distance, makes a U-turn, drives in the opposite direction, stops short of the barrel/culvert, and helps perform the clearly faked evacuation of a man wounded in the right leg, as also shown in the France-2 news report. In fact, two ambulances stand for a long moment no more than fifteen feet from the al-Duras. There is no evidence of armed combat in their vicinity. No sound of gunfire. Men run down the road, passing in front of the al-Duras. No one is hit.

Read it all.
David Gelernter has the full sequence of photo stills, along with more on the consequences of this bit of film making.

Paul Tuns;

In March 2004, in the wake of the Adscam scandal, Auditor General Sheila Fraser released another damning report, this one on Ottawa’s inaction on addressing national security concerns. She highlighted the vulnerability of Canada’s ports and airports to terrorist attacks, especially with regard to those who work there. She found that 5.5 percent of a sample of airport employees had possible criminal connections, a flag for national security concerns. If extrapolated to the entire airport workforce, there would be 4,500 employees with possible criminal connections the implications being that employees are not being properly screened, and those with criminal connections may also be tied to terrorist groups.
Senator Kenny’s Security and Defence committee has released several reports over the last three years raising concerns about the country’s lack of preparedness for terrorist attacks. In December 2004, Kenny released the 2005 edition of the Canadian Security Guide Book, which highlighted the same concerns Fraser drew attention to: improperly guarded and underguarded borders, and vulnerable ports and airports. In one example, he noted that Canada’s ports of entry were jeopardized by the disappearance of 1,127 uniforms or uniform items belonging to Canadian airport screeners over a nine-month period, including 91 security badges.
Kenny’s committee also alleges that the government is “cutting corners on intelligence.” This seems to confirm Fraser’s findings that nearly $9 billion in anti-terrorism money is not ending up where it is supposed to go, and that there are intelligence gaps resulting from fiscal mismanagement and oversight confusion. Kenny says the problem is not merely money but training; he said it can take years to properly train intelligence officers, but that there is no commitment to train a sufficient number of analysts.
Fraser’s report also found other problems with the government’s response to 9-11. Fraser said the official watch lists of criminals and terrorists were outdated, and that such information was not being shared among departments so that, for instance, the list of 25,000 lost and stolen passports each year is given to front-line border officers. She concluded, “These matters are serious and need to be addressed.”

Juxtaposed against that summary of continuing Canadian sluggishness in addressing national security and internal terrorist groups, a story from the Montreal Gazette;

When an alert was sent to Canadian customs agents in Quebec warning of an “armed and dangerous” suspect, some 50 employees walked off the job for four hours at about 15 of 44 border crossings just before 9 a.m. yesterday.
[…]
…the protesting agents were exercising their right under the Canada Labour Code to withdraw services if they feel their life or health is threatened.
“We’re not armed, we’re not going to be a target,” said Jean-Pierre Fortin, a union spokesperson. The union wants the federal government to supply border agents with sidearms. Ottawa says the agents’ bulletproof vests, telescopic batons and pepper spray are sufficient.

Nor are they equipped with chase vehicles. As a result, about 1500 vehicles “blew across the border” last year with impunity, as the only recourse for Customs officials is to place a call to the nearest RCMP detachment – which in many parts of the country, are being closed.

After living overseas for about a year and a half, I was now finally home in New York. This time around I had landed a sweet apartment in Lower Manhattan. Situated about six blocks from the World Trade Center and just two from the South Street Seaport. I could stand on my balcony and see through the canyon of skyscrapers that lined John Street to catch a glimpse of the World Trade Center.
All in all, it was a great place to live — very quiet and peaceful, especially for Manhattan.
Except for the night before the attack.
That whole day I was restless. Work was a stessful and I couldn’t concentrate all day. I had decided to take my camera along and take pictures of the WTC/Battery Park City area at lunchtime, but I ended up stuck in a meeting all day.
At the end of the day, I was still quite anxious and tense. So much so, that I decided to walk around a bit before going home. I would have taken pictures but the rain that hit the area pretty much killed that idea. My digital cameras was anything but waterproof.
Even after getting home I was still restless, so I watched a little TV. Then things got wierder.
The intro to the show Third Watch contained a monologue about some guy talking about how fast things can go wrong in life and started mumbling about Chaos Theory. After that show was over, I turned to the History Channel which was playing a [surprise!] WW2 documentary. Suddenly, a few Normandy veterans started saying basically the same thing. They commented about how one minute their friend would be next to them and then the next instant they were dead.
Needless to say, this sort of stuff didn’t sit well with me. So I turned off the tube and went to check my email. Imagine my shock when I saw the Yahoo Question of the Day was about Chaos Theory. At this point, I called my parents to make sure everything was OK. I was certain something bad was about to happen, but I didn’t know what.

Confused, I decided to go out onto my balcony to get some fresh air. To my shock and amazement, I saw a kind of odd glow in the sky and a strange kind calm in the streets. At this point, I ran back in to get a my camera and got a few shots of this phenommenon.

Later, I would try to get some sleep, but with all the odd vibes around me, how could I? I finally fell asleep around 1:30 AM only to awaken again around 3AM from a nightmare. At 5 AM, I fell back to sleep, only to be awoken at a quarter to nine, when a loud boom interrupted my sleep.

Frank LaVigne’s 9-11 photo diary
Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has collected dozens of links related to 9-11 and the aftermath.

A three-part series on China’s role in the War on Terror, at China E-Lobby. Intro:

The Unexamined Effect of the Hainan Island Outrage – This is the first of three posts that were inspired by Sunday’s anniversary of the 9/11/01 attacks. Tomorrow’s post will focus on occupied East Turkestan, which the Communists have used as their smokescreen to cover up their support of anti-American terrorists. The final post, on Sunday, will describe in detail those ties between Communist China and America’s enemies in the War on Terror.

Start here.
As a companion piece, Mark Helprin for the Opinion Journal. He has been sounding the alarm bells on China since the Clinton years, and has scathing words for both left and right.

September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore–purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds, whose presentation, unclean in every respect, is honored nonetheless by the controlling rump of Democrats–and to Bushmen like “Kip” Hawley of Homeland Security, father of the proposal to allow carry-on ice-picks, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to five-inches long.
For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists’ infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.
[…]
Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy–now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking–to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.
The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies’ delight.

From the Dep’t of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up;

“The Vatican, which is nothing but a government placed within a building, has moved to support the Christian side of the countries in the world, and if possible, the Catholic side…

Imagine that!
Via Upper Canada Catholic.

Times of London is reporting that codebreakers have thwarted an Al Qaeda gas attack on Parliament.

The plot, hatched last year, is understood to have been discovered in coded e-mails on computers seized from terror suspects in Britain and Pakistan. Police and MI5 then identified an Al-Qaeda cell that had carried out extensive research and video- recorded reconnaissance missions in preparation for the attack.

Via Hugh Hewitt, who observes “Nothing yet at the Washington Post or the New York Times, where staffs are probably too focused on Crawford demonstrators to notice the news from London.”