text:
Loving the enemy 6
GOPUSA reports:
The presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America had a simple comparison for the similarities between Muslims and Lutherans when she spoke at the opening session of the Islamic Society of North America's convention Friday.
[She said:]
I realized, looking at some of the lectures that you have scheduled, that if we were just to exchange "church" for "mosque" I would see I was in the same place with typical Lutherans.
… About 300 people attended the opening meeting at the Cobo Center. … More than 10,000 are expected before the 51st annual convention concludes Monday.
… The convention's keynote speech by former President Jimmy Carter is today [Monday, September 1, 2014].
What Jimmy Carter said to the convention is summed up in a few words at the end of this provoking video clip:
But what is this organization with which Lutheran Bishop Elizabeth Eaton finds she has much in common, and ex-President Jimmy Carter is happy to be associated with?
We quote from Discover the Networks' entry on ISNA:
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) was established in July 1981 by U.S-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood …
Today ISNA is the largest Muslim organization on the continent. Its annual conferences routinely draw 30,000 to 40,000 attendees, and its website receives some 2.6 million hits per month. …
ISNA leaders view Islam as being superior to all other faiths and destined to replace them. …
Based on a mid-1980s investigation, the FBI concluded that the Muslim Brotherhood members who founded U.S.-based groups had risen to "leadership roles within NAIT [North American Islamic Trust] and its related organizations", including ISNA, "which means they are in a position to direct the activities and support of Muslims in the U.S. for the Islamic Revolution".
Expanding on this, a late-'80s FBI memo said:
Within the organizational structure of NAIT, there have been numerous groups and individuals identified as being a part of a covert network of revolutionaries who have clearly indicated there (sic) support for the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the Ayatollah Khomeini and his government as well as other fanatical Islamic Shiite fundamentalist leaders in the Middle East. This faction of Muslims have declared war on the United States, Israel and any other country they deem as an enemy of Islam. The common bond between these various organizations is both religious and political with the underlying common goal being to further the holy war (Islamic Jihad).
Declassified FBI memos indicate that ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front as early as 1987. "The entire organization is structured, controlled and funded by followers and supporters of the Islamic Revolution as advocated by the founders" of the Brotherhood in Egypt, said one source. … And a 1988 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood document bluntly identified ISNA as part of the "apparatus of the Brotherhood". …
In the summer of 2007, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), which was based within ISNA's headquarters in Plainfield, Indiana, was tried on charges that it had engaged in fundraising on behalf of Hamas. During the court proceedings, the U.S. government released a list of approximately 300 of HLF's "unindicted co-conspirators" and "joint venturers". Among them were … ISNA [and] the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] …
In a June 2008 brief filed on their behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, ISNA and its related financial arm, the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), petitioned U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis to order that their names be removed from the list of co-conspirators in the HLF trial. The prosecutors, in turn, cited nearly two dozen exhibits establishing "both ISNA's and NAIT's intimate relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestine Committee, and the defendants in this case".
In July 2008, ISNA's lawyers conceded that their organization, through its affiliate NAIT, had given financial support to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. …
On July 1, 2009, Judge Solis upheld ISNA's designation as an unindicted co-conspirator, ruling that the government had "produced ample evidence" linking the group to Hamas and thereby justifying the designation. …
The International Assessment and Strategy Center arrives at this conclusion:
From Al-Arian, to KindHearts, to terrorism itself, ISNA has publicly distanced itself from extremists only when there was no other choice. As one of the largest Muslim American organizations in the United States, its failure to strongly oppose terrorism is inexcusable, but not particularly surprising when one considers the organization in greater depth. ISNA's history and past and present leadership are characterized by a long-standing relationship and connection with extremist groups and fundamentalist ideology. It has taken no decisive actions toward reform, such as purging its leadership of those members who have been most clearly linked with extremist views. Ultimately, the weight of evidence pointing toward ISNA's extremist nature is too great to be explained away by coincidence, circumstance, or ignorance. It must be held accountable for its harmful influence, and certainly does not merit its status as a "moderate" partner of the State Department on the increasingly crucial area of relations with the Muslim community.
And yet –
In September 2013, President Barack Obama praised ISNA for having long "upheld the proud legacy of American Muslims' contributions to our national fabric" …
The contributions ISNA made to Hamas, on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood – which is dedicated to the destruction of the United States – the president did not mention.
A Western bank dares to say no to the Muslim Brotherhood 4
British banks, with enthusiastic encouragement from Prime Minister David Cameron, succumbed to the temptation to provide "sharia compliant" loans and generally cater to the demands of the enemy, Islam.
Now one bank, HSBC, has changed its corporate mind about dealing with at least some – perhaps the worst – of its Muslim clients.
This is from Gatestone by Sam Westrop. (Sam Westrop, Douglas Murray, and Melanie Phillips are the leading voices – among very few – who dare to speak out loud, clear, and often against the destructive encroachments of Islam on British law, institutions, and traditions.)
In late July, HSBC, a British multinational bank, closed the bank accounts of Anas Al-Tikriti, a prominent British Islamist activist, and his family. HSBC also closed down the bank accounts of the Cordoba Foundation, of which Tikriti is the Director, and the Finsbury Park Mosque.
In response to enquiries, the bank simply stated that to continue providing services would be outside the bank's "risk appetite."
This latest round of bank account closures has come as a surprise to counter-terrorism experts and much of the media, who note that the Cordoba Foundation and the Finsbury Park Mosque have enjoyed strong political support in the past.
Just a few weeks previously, HSBC also closed the accounts of the Ummah Welfare Trust, a leading British Islamist charity that has previously partnered with the Al Salah Islamic Association, described by the U.S. Treasury Department as "one of the largest and best-funded Hamas charitable organisations in the Palestinian territories." Senior Hamas officials have confirmed that Al Salah is "identified with us".
Anas Al-Tikriti, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain, had his bank account, along with that of his wife and two children, shut down by HSBC. Tikriti has been described as "one of the shrewdest UK-based Brotherhood activists … [who] has sought to persuade Western governments that they should fund Brotherhood groups as moderate alternatives to al-Qaeda".
Tikriti is also a vocal supporter of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, and he has regularly hosted a program on the Arab TV satellite station, Al-Hiwar, founded by Azzam Tamimi, Hamas's "special envoy" to the UK. Tamimi, in 2004, told the BBC that he would become a suicide bomber if he "had the opportunity", and described self-sacrifice for Palestine as "a noble cause".
In an interview with the Muslim Brotherhood's official website after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Tikriti affirmed "the right of the Iraqis to engage in legitimate resistance against foreign occupation". He also has stated that the decision by the Muslim Council of Britain to boycott Holocaust Memorial Day was a "principled stand".
In response to HSBC's closure of his bank account, Tikriti claimed that, "HSBC has targeted my family because of my activity in defence of Gaza against the barbaric aggression of the Zionists" and because of his efforts to "oppose the military coup in Egypt".
While many would dispute Tikriti's conclusions, his instincts might be right. The one thing that connects Tikriti with the Cordoba Foundation, the Finsbury Park Mosque and the Ummah Welfare Trust is evidence of their support for the Muslim Brotherhood and the designated terrorist group, Hamas.
The Cordoba Foundation, which Tikriti heads, has been described by Prime Minister David Cameron, as a "political front for the Muslim Brotherhood." In 2009, Cordoba co-sponsored an event organized by Cageprisoners, a pro-jihadist group, which featured as a guest speaker Anwar Al-Awlaki, who later became a senior leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, before he was killed in a U.S. drone-strike in 2011.
The Cordoba Foundation also works closely with the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, whose website was originally registered to Tikriti's wife, Malath Shakir, whose bank account was also shut down by HSBC. According to UAE media, the Emirates Centre for Human Rights is part of the global Muslim Brotherhood network.
For human rights! How they make a mockery of Western moral principles.
The most surprising organization to be shut out by HSBC, however, is the Finsbury Park Mosque. The loss of its bank accounts has sparked anger from leading British Muslims and sympathetic parliamentarians.
The Finsbury Park Mosque was once a much easier target for criticism. Ten years ago, the hook-handed Imam of the mosque, Abu Hamza – recently found guilty of eleven terrorism charges after a five-week trial in New York — was arrested on terrorism charges.
We didn't hear much about that from the media in the US, did we?
After his arrest, however, the British government, eager to rid the Finsbury Park Mosque of its pro-terror reputation, passed control of the institution to the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), one of the better-known Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the UK, and one with which Anas Al-Tikriti was once closely involved. Tikriti's lobbying efforts for the government to embrace Muslim Brotherhood groups as "moderate" alternatives to more overtly terrorist organizations appeared to have paid off.
The government seemed oblivious, perhaps wilfully so, that the MAB's founder, Kemal Helbawi, has proclaimed:
Oh honoured brothers, the Palestinian cause is not a struggle on borders or on land only. Rather, it is an absolute clash of civilisations: a satanic programme led by the Jews and those who support them and a divine programme carried by Hamas and the Islamic Movement in particular and the Islamic peoples in general.
We call it a clash of civilization with barbarism.
To run the Finsbury Park Mosque, the MAB appointed directors such as Mohammed Sawalha, a Hamas official described by a Brotherhood website as being "responsible for the political unit of the international Muslim Brotherhood in the UK." Sawalha is also "said to have masterminded much of Hamas's political and military strategy" out of London, as reported by the BBC.
In addition, the current Imam of Finsbury Park Mosque, Sheikh Rajab Zaki, was a key speaker at rallies in support of Mohamed Morsi, the former Muslim Brotherhood President of Egypt.
Finsbury Park Mosque continues to promote the Muslim Brotherhood preacher, Jamal Badawi, who has described suicide bombers and Hamas terrorists as "freedom fighters" and "martyrs." Badawi also advocatesthe right for men to beat their wives, if they show "disregard for [their] marital obligations."
Badawi has also shared a platform with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, and he is a director of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, which, in 2004, issued a fatwa authorizing the murder of American troops in Iraq. In addition, during the U.S. terror-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation in 2007, Badawi was named as an unindicted co-conspirator.
Finsbury Park Mosque still enjoys strong support from the local Council and the Metropolitan Police, both of which have sponsored events at the mosque with the support of the World Association of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi group that is a prolific publisher of anti-Jewish and anti-Shia material. WAMY is accused by a number of governments of funding terrorism.
Both the police and the local government body have provided several tens of thousands of pounds in grants to the mosque.
Likewise, the Ummah Welfare Trust has enjoyed the support of MPs; and the Cordoba Foundation has als0 received government funding through the Prevent scheme, a fund established by the previous Labour government to combat extremism.
Combat extremism by funding the extremists! What's that if not insane?
As for Anas Al-Tikriti, in January 2014, he was invited by President Obama to the White House, as part of a delegation led by Iraqi politician Osama Al-Nujaifi, who leads the Mutahidoun bloc, a coalition of Iraqi political parties, the leading member body of which, according to Al Monitor, is the Islamic Party, the Iraqi branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The biggest question now about HSBC's actions is "why?" Some observers have suggested that the HSBC's decision in 2012 to hire Stuart Levey, the former under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, might have something to do with it. Others have suggested the possibility that the British government's review into the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Prime Minister is due to hear during the summer recess, might be already having some effect.
On the face of it, it seems unlikely that the government would pressure HSBC to shut down Muslim Brotherhood bank accounts while allowing the British police to fund and sponsor Finsbury Park Mosque, one of the Brotherhood's most important institutions.
But the coalition government, much like the Labour government that preceded it, seems always to have embraced a contradictory approach in its efforts to confront British Islamism. The present government, for instance, managed to declare the Islamic Shakhsiyah Foundation a "Hizb ut-Tahrir front" and at the same time provide it with £70,000 of taxpayer monies.
In addition, after the announcement of the Muslim Brotherhood review in March 2014, the Foreign Office revealed that its advisory group on "freedom of religion" was to include a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Tariq Ramadan, as a board member.
Tariq Ramadan it is worth noting, is the grandson of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna.
Regardless of these apparent contradictions, HSBC's decision to close down these bank accounts is welcome. For far too long, Muslim Brotherhood groups in Britain have escaped censure in spite of their promotion of extremism and their connections to terrorism. Even if the government is dithering, at least the private sector is acting.
Without letting ourselves become too optimistic, we venture to hope that this action by HSBC night start a trend.
Egypt and Israel versus Hamas and Abbas 1
New alignments, new discords, new issues are emerging in the Middle East. The US has nothing to do with them. Obama and Kerry have snuffed out US influence in that important region.
This is from DebkaFile:
President of Egypt Abdul-Fattah El-Sisi, even before taking the oath of office Sunday June 8, became the first regime head to strike out at the Palestinian unity government installed in Ramallah on June 24, by intensifying the siege on its Gaza partner, Hamas. His steps threaten to stir up strife between the two newly reconciled Palestinian partners over who calls the shots in the Gaza Strip …
El-Sisi acted expeditiously to refute the claims by Palestinian Authority sources in Ramallah and Hamas officials in Gaza City that he would open the Rafah crossing from Gaza to Egyptian Sinai as soon as the new Palestinian government was in place, as a gesture of support. The answer they received from from Cairo to their request was that the border terminals would remain open only if PA security forces from Ramallah assumed control of the borders and officiated at the crossings.
But Hamas has no intention of handing this strategic resource over to Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah. A standoff has therefore developed between the two partners, souring the amity they have strived to display. Any PA bid to take over control of the Gaza crossings would be forcibly resisted by Hamas, a clash that could spell the end of their reconciliation and power-sharing deal.
Not only has Cairo kept the Rafah crossing shut, it has beefed up military oversight on its borders with Gaza to prevent incursions at any point. A law has been drafted moreover by the Egyptian authorities setting out long prison sentences for anyone attempting to "prepare, dig or use" a tunnel connecting Egypt to a foreign "entity" or nation (i.e. Hamas or the Palestinian government) for the passage of goods or persons.
By these actions, Egypt has begun tightening its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
Friday, June 6, Israel's President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu phoned the incoming Egyptian president to congratulate him on winning the national election. Both Israeli and Egyptian officials declined to comment on the supposition that Cairo's steps for sealing the Gaza borders and taken inside the enclave had been coordinated with Israel.
[President El-Sisi] only stated pointedly that new opportunities had opened up for strengthening the peace pact with Israel. He did not elaborate on this. But … Israel has contracted to supply Egypt with 4.5 billion cubic meters of gas annually from its Tamar offshore field, to meet the economy's desperate shortage of energy. Israel, which already sells gas to Jordan, will shortly become Egypt's biggest gas supplier. …
El-Sisi's clampdown on Hamas ties in with the heavy Egyptian military deployment on its western border with Libya, and his determination to put a stop to the flow of smuggled weapons to the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip into the hands of Islamist terrorists.
Cairo recently received an intelligence tip-off that a number of Muslim Brotherhood leaders on the run had set up base in the Gaza Strip to engineer terrorist attacks on the Egyptian army, especially in Cairo and the Suez coastal cities.
Cairo is meting out harsh treatment not only to Hamas, but also to the pro-Iranian Palestinian Jihad Islami. Egyptian military intelligence made it clear to these extremists that, since their military wing now rivals Hamas's militia, the Ezz a-Din Al-Qassam, its leader Mohammed Al-Hindi, a personal enemy of El-Sisi, must go.
If not, Cairo will bar its members from travel between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, thereby cutting them off from their ties to Iran and the Arab world. This week, Jihad Islami knuckled under and replaced Al-Hindi with a new Gaza leader, Nafez Assam.
Mahmoud Abbas will try, when he visits Cairo next Tuesday to attend El-Sisi's inauguration as president, to obtain clear answers about his intentions. If Egypt maintains its current restrictions on the Gaza Strip and Hamas into the future, the Palestinians will be unable to hold the elections for president and parliament that are scheduled for Jan. 2, 2015 in the two territories. This will place the survival of the power-sharing government in Ramallah in grave doubt.
Obama's war – just for the hell of it 27
Muammar Qaddafi was a tyrant. Little good can be said of him. He was probably one of the worst Arab heads of state – a class that lends itself to only very small degrees of comparison.
But two things were in his favor.
One was that he wanted friendly relations with America. Or at least he did not want to give America reason to invade his country. President Bush launched an invasion of Iraq in March 2003 largely because (it was generally believed) Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Colonel Qaddafi had an arsenal of such weapons; but in December of that year, a few days after the defeated Saddam Hussein was captured, the dictator of Libya declared that he would abandon his WMDs. (In fact he kept quantities of chemical weapons right up to the day of his death in October 2011, but the 2003 declaration was nevertheless a white flag.)
The second thing – Qaddafi was the enemy of al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, both of which were active dangers to the West.
It would seem, therefore, that the interests of the US and Europe would best be served by his staying in power.
Why then did President Obama go to war against him?
Diana West writes at Townhall:
More than Benghazi skeletons should haunt Hillary Clinton's expected 2016 presidential bid. It now seems that the entire war in Libya – where thousands died in a civil war in which no U.S. interest was at stake – might well have been averted on her watch and, of course, that of President Obama's. How? In March 2011, immediately after NATO's punishing bombing campaign began, Muammar Qaddafi was "ready to step aside," says retired Rear Admiral Charles R. Kubic, U.S. Navy. "He was willing to go into exile and was willing to end the hostilities."
What happened? According to Kubic, the Obama administration chose to continue the war without permitting a peace parley to go forward.
Kubic made these extremely incendiary charges against the Obama administration while outlining his role as the leading, if informal, facilitator of peace feelers from the Libyan military to the U.S. military. He was speaking this week at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., where the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi was presenting its interim report. Kubic maintains that to understand Benghazi, the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks in which four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed, "you have to understand what happened at the beginning of the Libyan revolt, and how that civil war that created the chaos in Libya could have been prevented." …
A short chronology sets the stage:
On March 19, 2011, Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, made a dramatic announcement from Paris on behalf of the "international community." Eyes steady, voice freighted with dignity and moment, Clinton demanded that Qaddafi – a post-9/11 ally of the U.S. against jihadist terror-armies such as al-Qaida – heed a ceasefire under a newly adopted United Nations resolution, or else.
"Yesterday, President Obama said very clearly that if Qaddafi failed to comply with these terms, there would be consequences," Clinton said. "Since the president spoke, there has been some talk from Tripoli of a cease-fire, but the reality on the ground tells a very different story. Colonel Qaddafi continues to defy the world. His attacks on civilians go on."
That same day, NATO air and sea forces went to war to defeat the anti-al-Qaida Qaddafi and bring victory to Libya's al-Qaida-linked rebels. Uncle Sam … joined the jihad.
Through Libyan intermediaries whom he knew in his post-naval career as an engineer and businessman, Kubic was hearing that Qaddafi wanted to discuss his own possible abdication with the U.S. "Let's keep the diplomats out of it," Kubic says he told them. "Let's keep the politicians out of it, let's just have a battlefield discussion under a flag of truce between opposing military commanders pursuant to the laws of war, and see if we can, in short period of time, come up with the terms for a cease-fire and a transition of government."
The following day, March 20, 2011, Kubic says he relayed to the U.S. AFRICOM headquarters Qaddafi's interest in truce talks as conveyed by a top Libyan commander, Gen. Abdulqader Yusef Dubri, head of Qaddafi's personal security team. Kubic says that his AFRICOM contact, Lt. Col. Brian Linvill, a former U.S. Army attache in Tripoli then serving as point man for communications with the Libyan military, passed this information up his chain of command to Gen. Carter Ham, then AFRICOM commander. AFRICOM quickly responded with interest in setting up direct military-to-military communications with the Libyans.
On March 21, 2011, Kubic continued, with the NATO war heating up, a senior aide to Qaddafi, Gen. Ahmed Mamud, directly submitted a set of terms for a 72-hour-truce to Linvill at AFRICOM. The Benghazi commission made the basic text of these terms available to press.
During a follow-up telephone interview I had with Kubic, he underscored the show of good faith on both sides that created hopefulness that these flag-of-truce negotiations would come to pass. On the night of March 21, Gen. Ham issued a public statement on Libya in which he noted the U.S. was not targeting Qaddafi.
By March 22, Qadaffi had verifiably begun pulling back troops from the rebel-held cities of Benghazi and Misrata. The cease-fire Hillary Clinton said the "international community" was seeking only days earlier seemed to be within reach, with the endgame of Qaddafi's abdication and exile potentially on the table.
Then, shockingly, Kubic got what amounted to a "stand down" order from AFRICOM – an order that came down from "well above Gen. Ham," Kubic says he was told – in fact, as Kubic said in our interview, he was told it came from outside the Pentagon.
The question becomes, who in the Obama administration scuttled these truce talks that might have resulted in Qaddafi handing over powers without the bloodshed and destruction that left Libya a failed state and led to Benghazi?
Had talks gone forward, there is no guarantee, of course, that they would have been successful. Qaddafi surely would have tried to extract conditions. One of them, Kubic believes, would have been to ensure that Libya continue its war on al-Qaida. Would this have been a sticking point? In throwing support to Islamic jihadists, including al-Qaida-linked "rebels" and Muslim Brotherhood forces, the U.S. was changing sides during that "Arab Spring." Was the war on Qaddafi part of a larger strategic realignment that nothing, not even the prospect of saving thousands of lives, could deter? Or was the chance of going to war for "humanitarian" reasons too dazzling to lose to the prospect of peace breaking out? Or was it something else?
Kubic, the military man, wonders why the civilian leadership couldn't at least explore a possibly peaceful resolution. "It is beyond me that we couldn't give it 72 hours — particularly when we had a leader who had won a Nobel Peace Prize, and who was unable basically to 'give peace a chance' for 72 hours."
Obama favored the Muslim Brotherhood's coming to power in Egypt. He welcomed some of its members into advisory positions in his administration. Did the possible "larger strategic realignment" involve the Muslim Brotherhood? Did the Obama administration want it in power in Libya as well as in Egypt? What advice was Obama and Hillary Clinton getting on Libya and Egypt during the violent upheavals of the so-called "Arab Spring", and from whom? Is there a clue in the fact that Hillary Clinton's closest adviser was Huma Abedin, whose family has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? Isn't there at the very least grounds for suspicion in the light of all this? (See our posts, Extreme obscenity, July 27, 2013, and Hillary of Benghazi, August 27, 2013.)
We think there is. But why Obama and Hillary Clinton should want the Muslim Brotherhood in power in North Africa is another question – one to which there cannot be a reassuring answer.
Curious and curiouser 1
What sense can be made of this story?
Syria flies rockets to Iran: Iran loads them on a ship and sends it sailing down the Gulf, south-west on the Arabian Sea, and north up the Red Sea.
Israel intercepts the ship, commandos board it, find the rockets, re-route the vessel to the Israeli port of Eilat.
Where was it bound for? For whom were the rockets intended? Gaza? How the hell would they get there?
Look at the map showing the path of the arms to the point of interception, search and capture:
Next we are told that the Israelis didn't accomplish the whole feat alone – gathering the intelligence, setting up the capture. No, suddenly Jay Carney claims that it was a US-Israeli joint venture.
In an unusually frank disclosure, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday night, March 5, that US intelligence services and military had worked with Israel to track the Iranian Panama-flagged ship KLOS C, which was apprehended by Israeli naval commandos on the Red Sea earlier that day carrying missiles for Gaza via Sudan. The ship was boarded by the Israeli elite Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13) and found to be carrying dozens of 302mm rockets with a range of 150 km made in Syria. It is now on its way to Eilat.
Just how would they get from Port Sudan to Gaza? Through Sinai? Then through tunnels? Isn't the Egyptian army patrolling Sinai? Hasn't Egypt closed the arms-smuggling tunnels? Why would Egypt allow arms to reach Hamas, the rulers of Gaza and a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood when the MB is the present Egyptian government's enemy?
And even more curious, why would Obama suddenly co-operate with Israel against Iran when his whole policy towards those two countries for at least the last four years has been to co-operate with Iran against Israel?
Has he had a sudden change of heart and mind? If so, what will his party, his base, his hurrah-chorus the mainstream media, say to this 180 degree turnabout?
It's really very hard to believe.
The White House spokesman said that Washington worked with Israeli through intelligence and military channels, and at the national security adviser level, as soon as it knew the shipment was on the move. He said that President Barack Obama also directed the US military to work out contingencies in case it became necessary to intercept the vessel (therebysanctioning military action).
Obama? Military action?
"Our Israeli counterparts ultimately chose to take the lead in interdicting the shipment of illicit arms," Jay Carney said. …
This was the first time in four years that the US and Israel have collaborated in an operation against Iran – ever since the Stuxnet virus attack in 2010 on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Until now, the Obama administration steadfastly refused to act against Iran for fear of jeopardizing the international diplomatic track for curbing its nuclear program.
The unusual frankness with which the Obama administration announced its coordination with Israel is both dramatic in itself and a road sign pointing the way to a radical change in its Iran policy.
The US and Israel appear to be lining up – in their military policies as well – against the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah bloc.
This radical turnabout was most probably the high point of the conversation between the US president and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House Monday, March 3, after which Netanyahu raised comment by showering Obama with praise during his speech to the AIPAC conference in Washington the next day. …
Whereas Obama had shown impatience, irritation, and antipathy towards Netanyahu in an interview just one day before the meeting.
US and Israeli intelligence sources report that both countries are braced for a swift and stinging response from Tehran … As Carney put it: "We will continue to stand up to Iran's support for destabilizing activities in the region in coordination with our partners and allies.These illicit acts are unacceptable to the international community and in gross violation of Iran's Security Council obligations."
Israel's elite Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13) early Wednesday, March 5, boarded [the] Iranian Panama-registered cargo vessel KLOS C. Concealed in its hold under sacks of cement were dozens of 302mm rockets with a range of 150 kms, manufactured in Syria and destined by Iran for the Gaza Strip after being offloaded in Sudan.
The Israeli commandos seized the vessel in open sea on the maritime border of Sudan and Eritrea, 1500 km south of Israel, and have set it on course for Eilat.
Sudan has [become] in the last two years … a major Iranian weapons manufacturing and logistic depot, which supplies Syria, Hizballah and Hamas. Port Sudan is the hub for the smuggling of Iranian arms to various Middle East locations.
The IDF [Israeli Defense Force] said the Iranian missile cargo was destined for the Palestinian Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip. If this is so, it would mean that Iran had gone back to arming Hamas with missiles and rockets after a two-year pause during which the Palestinian extremists were cold-shouldered by Tehran for their animosity to Syria's Bashar Assad. …
[But] it is hard to believe the Assad would consent to relay Syrian-made missiles to this antagonist.
Some Middle East military sources believe the shipment was not destined for Palestinian terrorists for use against Israel, but rather for Muslim Brotherhood activists fighting the Egyptian army from their forward base in the Gaza Strip.
They don't rule out the possibility of Al Qaeda affiliates fighting in Sinai as being the address. Western intelligence has recorded instances of Iran entering into ad hoc operational collaboration with al Qaeda elements when it suits Tehran's book. …
The rockets were flown from Syria to Iran, then loaded on [the] ship where they were concealed under sacks of cement inside containers. From the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, the ship headed into the Red Sea bound for Sudan where it was intercepted by Israeli commandos.
The Iranian arms ship's progress was tracked all the way.
By Israel, apparently. By the US, easily if that's what Obama wanted. But why suddenly does he want to "jeopardize the international diplomatic track for curbing Iran's nuclear program"?
Will Jay Carney, standing there among the flying pigs, do something he has never done before – tell the truth and explain everything?
That's not very likely, but then much is not very likely in these bizarre events.
Ending the pax Americana 2
We are in principle against intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. But we are not for isolationism or pacifism – we regard either philosophy as a formula for national suicide. If other countries become belligerent, build up their armed strength, send their warships towards our shores, establish bases in countries on our borders, and declare their aggressive intentions towards us, the politics of those countries become our business. That is happening now. We are under threat – because Obama is deliberately weakening America. And his reaction to the result is to weaken America even more.
The conditions for major war develop much more easily when the U.S. is too weak. They are developing as we speak.
To a meaningful extent, the significant increase we've seen in unrest around the globe since 2010 has been made possible, and inevitable, by the retraction of American power. Even where we still have power in place, it has become increasingly obvious that we aren't going to use it.
We quote from a website interestingly named Liberty Unyielding. The article on the extreme folly of the Obama administration's moves to weaken America is by Commander Jennifer Dyer, now retired from the US navy. (Her own blog is at Theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com):
The collapse of order in the Arab nations in 2011 was the first significant stage of the process. The perception that the United States would do nothing about a Hezbollah coup in Lebanon was tested in January of that year. The perception proved to be true, and when protests erupted in Tunisia and Egypt, for causes both natural and manufactured, a set of radical Islamist actors – the "establishment" Muslim Brotherhood, Sunni jihadists, Iran – saw an opportunity. The establishment Muslim Brotherhood has largely won out in Tunisia, but the battle still rages among these radical actors for Egypt, Syria, and now Iraq. Lebanon is being incrementally sucked into the maelstrom as well.
In multiple venues, Russia has watched the U.S. and the West effectively back Islamists in Russia's "near abroad": in Turkey (with support for the now struggling Erdogan government); in the Balkans, especially Bosnia and Kosovo; and in Syria. …
There was a time when the implicit determination of the U.S. to enforce the "Pax Americana" order – the post-World War II alignments of the region – held Russia in check. The Russians still derived some security benefit from that order, after all … It appears to me, however, that 2014 will be the year in which it becomes clear that, according to Russians' perception, they no longer benefit from the old order. If we're not going to enforce it, Russia will do what she thinks she has to.
In fact, Moscow's pushback against the plan for Ukraine to affiliate with the EU constitutes just such a blow for perceived Russian interests. It is of supreme importance for Westerners to not misread the recent developments. The EU and the U.S. did back down when Russia pushed hard last fall. The only ones who didn't back down were the Ukrainian opposition. I predict Vladimir Putin will try to handle the opposition factions cleverly, as much as he can, and avoid a pitched battle with them if possible. He respects what they are willing to do. But he has no reason to respect Brussels or Washington.
And that means he has more latitude, not less, for going after the regional props to the old order, one by one. As always, Russia's inevitable competition with China is a major driver, along with Russia's concern about Islamism on her southern border. The whole Great Crossroads – Southwest Asia, Southeast Europe, Northeast Africa, the waterways that snake through the region – is, if not up for grabs, at least in ferment. Look wherever you like: there are almost no nations where there is not a very present menace from radicalism, or where governments and even borders are not gravely imperiled by internal dissent.
Israel is the chief standout for politically sustainable stability and continuity. Romania and Turkey seem likely to at least retain their constitutional order in the foreseeable future, but Turkey's geopolitical orientation, in particular, is less certain. Greece and Kosovo – even Bosnia – have serious internal problems. Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia all remain in crisis at various levels. Jordan and Saudi Arabia are relatively stable, and the Arab Persian Gulf states relatively so as well. But their neighborhood is going downhill fast. Iran is riding a wave of radical confidence, and the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan.
In this tumultuous region, it's actually a little funny that Pakistan looks stable and staid compared to Iran, Afghanistan, and neighbors west. We can hope that Islamabad's perceived need to maintain a symmetrical stance against India will keep Pakistan's loose federation of intransigents federated, and the nukes under central control. But as we move across South Asia, we near another boiling pot. Thailand – long an American ally and pillar of stability in the region – has been rocked in recent months by national unrest of a kind not seen in Southeast Asia for decades. Islamist radicalism is a growing threat in Indonesia, and an unpacified one in the Philippines, after more than a decade of U.S.-Philippines collaboration in fighting it.
And, of course, China is making real, transformative moves against regional security with her proclamations about air space and maritime rights off her southeast coast.
This disruptive process, like the battles for many of the Arab nations, is already underway. We're not waiting for something to happen; it's started.
China assumes, quite correctly, that there will be no effective pushback from the United States. But two other nations with power and means will regard it as intolerable for China to dictate conditions in Southeast Asia: Japan and Russia. The dance of realignment among these nations has implications for everyone in Central Asia and the Far East. The day may be on the horizon sooner than we think when maintaining a divided Korea no longer makes sense to at least one of the major players. The day is already here when Chinese activities in Central Asia are alarming the whole neighborhood, just as Chinese actions are in the South China Sea. …
Russia and Iran are advancing on the US through Central America:
It's no accident that as radical leftism creeps across Central America (falsely laying claim to a noble "Bolivarian" political mantle), the maritime dispute between Nicaragua and American ally Colombia heats up – and Russia shows up to back Nicaragua and Venezuela – and so does Iran – and unrest turns into shooting and government brutality and violence in Venezuela – and Hezbollah shows up there to openly support the radical, repressive Maduro government.
Now Iran has a naval supply ship headed for Central America, very possibly with a cargo of arms that are not only prohibited by UN sanction, but capable of reaching the United States if launched from a Central American nation or Cuba.
We're not still waiting for the shocks to start to the old order. They've already started. I haven't surveyed even the half of what there is to talk about …
She looks at the latest defense cuts with dismay and considers what the consequences will be:
This is the world in which the United States plans to reduce our army to its lowest level since before World War II, and eliminate or put in storage much of its capabilities for heavy operations abroad (e.g., getting rid of the A-10 Warthogs, moving Blackhawk helicopters into the National Guard). It's in this world that DOD proposes to cease operating half of our Navy cruisers, while delaying delivery of the carrier-based F-35 strike-fighter to the Navy and Marine Corps. These cutbacks come on top of cuts already made to training and maintenance expenditures in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force that will affect unit readiness for years to come. …
Then comes what should be a shocking observation:
By cutting back on defense so drastically, America is deciding, in essence, to "fight fair": to give whatever opponents emerge more of a chance to kill our soldiers, damage our interests, and drag out conflicts. …
That would be hard to believe of any American leadership – until now. It is ludicrous. Worse, it is lunatic. But Obama has never concealed or disguised his wish to weaken America's military capacity.
The decision "to further limit our capabilities to use power in politically relevant ways" will result in "even more global unrest: more conflict, more shooting, more blood, more extortion and political thuggery menacing civil life in the world's poorer and more vulnerable nations", and that cannot be good for America. The point is that -
These unpleasant trends will spill over into civil life in the wealthier nations soon enough …
As it has, she points out, in Ukraine, Thailand, and Venezuela, "whether directly or through second-order consequences".
Peace and freedom have to be tended constantly; they are not the natural state of geopolitical indiscipline, but its antithesis. …
We're extraordinarily unprepared for the world that is shaping up around us. …
[And] a world that doesn't want quiescent trade conditions, tolerance of dissent, the open flow of ideas, and mutual agreements, peacefully arrived at, will not have them.
That's the world we are sentencing ourselves, for now, to live in. Perhaps we will learn from the consequences how to think again: about what it takes to guard freedom, and indeed, about what freedom actually is.
It is Obama who needs to think again, but there is no reason to hope that he will. It could hardly be more obvious that he does not care for freedom.
Taking the enemy's advice 1
An Egyptian court has ordered the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood and the confiscation of its assets.
The ban is a blow to the Obama administration which supported the Muslim Brotherhood while it was briefly in power in Egypt.
This CBN video shows that the administration consults Muslim Brotherhood affiliates and takes their advice, not only for policy towards the Middle East, but also for domestic policy. (We took the video from Creeping Sharia.)
Hillary of Benghazi 3
If it is possible for the US to have a worse president than Obama, it would be Hillary Clinton.
The two of them have already embarrassed their country more than enough.
She's done nothing to boast of in her long career as the wife of a politician, her very short career as a senator, and her disastrous career as Secretary of State. But she's done much to be ashamed of. The worst thing she did was set up a death trap – what difference does it make whether she meant to or not? – for a US Ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi. Then she lied about it. Blamed an obscure amateur video maker. Weird!
Her speeches are flat, dull, unmemorable – inevitably so, because she's a dull thinker. There have been, and will be, countless speeches by other politicians just as boring and forgettable, but none could ever be more so.
This is from PowerLine, by John Hinderaker:
The aftermath [of the appalling mess in Benghazi] is embarrassing, too. Hillary told the father of one of the murdered SEALs that the administration would stop at nothing to bring that lousy video maker to justice. The man must have thought she was a lunatic. Later, according to an eyewitness, Hillary erupted in rage against a Republican Congressman who suggested that Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Which, of course, she knew it was shortly after it began. Is it bad to be a cowardly liar? Not if you are a Democratic presidential candidate, evidently.
The aftermath didn't end with the administration's initial lies, either. It continues to this day. One might think that a Secretary of State who lost an ambassador on her watch would stop at nothing to make sure that the terrorists who carried out the attack were killed or otherwise punished. (Killed, preferably.) If this is a subject in which Hillary has taken interest, she has shown no sign of it.
And this is from Front Page, by Daniel Greenfield:
This week CBS joined NBC and CNN in the Hillary entertainment business. While NBC airs a 4-hour miniseries produced by James D. Stern, the son of a top Bill Clinton donor, whom the New York Times accused of pushing Hillary Clinton's candidacy eight years ago, CNN will air a documentary about Hillary and CBS is developing Madame Secretary, a television series about a female Secretary of State.
The biggest challenge for all these projects is how small a figure they have to hang so many hours of dead air on.
The NBC series will "recount Clinton's life as a wife, mother, politician and cabinet member." Tellingly, the political side of her life comes last. The CBS series will cover "the personal and professional life of a maverick female Secretary of State as she drives international diplomacy, wrangles office politics and balances a complex family life."
It always comes back to the family life, because what else is there? Turn off the cameras and sitting there is the compulsively dishonest and corrupt wife of a compulsively dishonest and corrupt former president. The wife of a dishonest, but popular, president, running for his old job, may have a slight Latin American or Middle Eastern flavor, but it's not even Evita; let alone Hillary of Arabia.
Hillary's closest supporters don't have much to say about her weak tenure as Secretary of State. Once you get past the usual material about serving as a role model for girls and facing the challenges of being a wife and a mother, there are very few specific mentions of what Hillary actually did while in office.
Hillary took a lot of trips and spent a lot of money on art in embassies and green energy, but you couldn't find her actual accomplishments with a microscope.
The only two moments of her diplomatic career that anyone remembers is the bungled Russian reset button and her clumsy participation in the Benghazi cover-up. Even the most favorable reading of both events, a misspelled gimmicky button and blaming her subordinates for not providing adequate security funding which helped lead to the murder of four Americans, don't make for much of a resume.
After Hillary stepped out of the State Department to begin her 2016 campaign, the medals and awards came pouring in almost as fast as the television shows.
The National Constitution Center awarded her a Liberty Medal because she "traveled to more countries than any other Secretary of State" and "used social media to engage citizens". That's not the bio of a Secretary of State. It sounds like a celebrity getting some meaningless UN humanitarian award for tweeting about Rwanda.
The National Defense University Foundation will follow that up by giving her the Patriot Award in the Ronald Reagan Building in order to celebrate "the American spirit of patriotism" which she embodies in some unspecified way.
The ridiculous parade of awards and shows is a rerun of how Obama, an uninteresting Illinois politician, was transformed into the most interesting figure in American politics through obsessive attention and hysterical praise. But Hillary Clinton, who will be pushing seventy by the time her big moment in the sun arrives, has fewer excuses for needing to slap this much greasepaint on an undistinguished resume.
The positions that will be used as props in her quest for higher office came to her only by way of being married to the former President of the United States. And it's impossible to find anything revolutionary that she did with those positions, except use them as launching pads for an office she was even less qualified for. …
There is nothing factual in Hillary's background to justify her inevitability as a candidate. Her time as Senator and Secretary of State was a shapeless blur of undistinguished mediocrity culminating in one final bloody disaster.
And Dan Calabrese writes about Hillary's dishonesty:
As Hillary Clinton came under increasing scrutiny for her [untrue] story about facing sniper fire in Bosnia, one question that arose was whether she has engaged in a pattern of lying.
The now-retired general counsel and chief of staff of the House Judiciary Committee, who supervised Hillary when she worked on the Watergate investigation, says Hillary's history of lies and unethical behavior goes back farther – and goes much deeper – than anyone realizes.
He goes on to tell a little known story of what he mildly terms her "unethical behavior". One to add to a long list. Find it here.
And this is an extract from Discover the Networks' survey of Hillary's deplorable career. (The whole survey is a must-read.)
In July 2012, author and former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy noted the following items about the relationship between Hillary Clinton's State Department and the Muslim Brotherhood …
• The State Department has an emissary in Egypt who trains operatives of the Brotherhood and other Islamist organizations in democracy procedures.
• The State Department announced [in November 2011] that the Obama administration would be 'satisfied' with the election of a Muslim Brotherhood–dominated government in Egypt.
• Secretary Clinton personally intervened to reverse a Bush-administration ruling that barred Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Brotherhood's founder and son of one of its most influential early leaders, from entering the United States.
• The State Department and the administration recently hosted a contingent from Egypt's newly elected parliament that included not only Muslim Brotherhood members but a member of the Islamic Group (Gama'at al Islamia), which is formally designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
• On a just-completed trip to Egypt, Secretary Clinton pressured General Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, head of the military junta currently governing the country, to surrender power to the newly elected parliament, which is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the newly elected president, Mohamed Morsi, who is a top Brotherhood official.
In the summer of 2012,controversy arose over the fact that Secretary Clinton's closest aide and advisor, Huma Abedin, has longstanding intimate ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Then came Benghazi …
Picturing the global jihad 3
Picture from PowerLine
Crush 'em 11
We do not think that Obama wants to appease the Muslim Brotherhood. We think he wants to encourage and promote that evil organization. Wants to, and does. He admits its members as advisers into US government departments. He continues to try to restore them to power in Egypt when clearly a majority of Egyptians want them gone. He had helped them get into power there in the first place.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the creator of Hamas, so no doubt he wants Hamas to be victorious too – and that means against Israel. It is also the parent of al-Qaeda, and Obama is helping al-Quaeda "rebels" win in Syria by arming them. Sure he finally let bin Laden get bumped off. Sure he lets drones kill other al-Qaeda leaders. Doing all that is excellent cover for pursuing his chosen mission – helping the Muslim Brotherhood win worldwide.
But the Muslim Brotherhood must not win. It would be an excellent thing if the Egyptian military were to crush the Brotherhood there where the monster was born, destroy it utterly, once and for all.
On this we are of one mind with Daniel Greenfield, who writes at Front Page:
Like all terrorist organizations, the Muslim Brotherhood has only one commodity to trade in. Blood.
In the war of ideas for the future of Egypt, the Brotherhood had nothing to offer but the blood of its followers and victims. It has no new ideas. It has no record of accomplishments. It has no vision for the future …
The outcome of any interaction with the Brotherhood could have been predicted from its motto; "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."
In the streets of Egyptian cities, Muslim Brotherhood activists achieved their highest hope. They died in their Jihad against the liberal opposition and the military, fighting against human rights for women and Christians, against multi-party rule, freedom of speech, museums, libraries and the future in the way that the armies of Allah have died for over a thousand years.
Some died trying to kill Egyptian soldiers and police officers. Others were killed by their own people in order to maximize the death toll and spread shock and horror through the international community. …
An old Arab tactic that – exploiting the conscience of others. And it goes on working!
For the wealthy titans of the Brotherhood, their followers are pawns to be disposed of, human shields for their political ambitions. The Muslim Brotherhood spent their blood generously during the clashes with Egyptian police the same way that Hamas and Hezbollah spill the blood of their own people.
What it bought with their blood is the outrage of the world. Terrorist organizations are one-trick ponies. They unleash horrifying violence, blame it on the brutality of the authorities and wait for the world to step in and apply pressure on whatever government they are trying to overthrow. …
The Muslim Brotherhood's leaders followed the oldest traditions of Islam by offering their followers paradise and atonement in exchange for unleashing their darkest passions. That the unleashing should have ended in hundreds of deaths is not at all unprecedented in the many wars and conflicts of Islam.
What any normal person would consider a massacre, the Muslim Brotherhood considers an opportunity.
The Muslim Brotherhood used the blood of its followers as currency to buy international outrage that will be used to pressure Egypt into releasing Brotherhood leaders like Morsi and and Khairat el-Shater. It wanted the clashes to be as ugly and bloody as possible. It wanted to outrage the world because it knew that was the speediest way of getting its leaders out of their prison cells and back into power.
These murderous tactics would be useless if the United States and Europe weren't full of useful idiots and fellow travelers, in and out of the media, gasping at the carnage and demanding an immediate halt to the violence.
There is only one way to halt the violence and that is to crush the Muslim Brotherhood. …
The calls for Brotherhood participation in an Egyptian government are senseless insanity. Is there room for a movement that seeks nothing but death in the ranks of any government? Should murderous madness on such a scale really be the currency that purchases power? …
Western governments fear escalation in Egypt. And that fear is the secret weapon of every terrorist group. The terrorist groups always escalate, spending their currency of blood cheaply to break the will of their enemies. The only way to break that cycle is to out-escalate them by showing that their currency of blood is worthless because the people and governments they are terrorizing will not be bent under its terrible weight.
Wars aren't won through de-escalation, but through escalation. America lost in Afghanistan because it wasn't willing to fight harder and bloodier than the Taliban. The Egyptian government has shown that it is willing to match the Muslim Brotherhood's ruthlessness without backing down.
To reward the courage of the Egyptian soldiers and police who fought the Muslim Brotherhood in the streets by forcing their government to stand down and surrender to the terrorists who nearly turned Egypt into a second Iran is an unmitigated crime.
Fortunately, it is unlikely that the Muslim Brotherhood will be restored to power in Egypt. We hope it will become impossible.


text: My Lost Treasure: Sgt Pepper By Robyn Taylor June 1, 2014 11:08 AM Share on Facebook Share on Twitter June 1, 1967 The Beatles released the Sgt Pepper album. I couldn't pick just one song for today's lost treasure, so you get the whole album…enjoy, and thanks for listening! Filed Under: Boris and Robyn | My Lost Treasure | Sgt Pepper Category: Articles | The Boris and Robyn Show Share on Facebook Share on Twitter More Send to a friend! Print this page Pin it! Reddit This! Share on Tumblr! Best of WPDH Recommended For You Around the Web

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This being our special issue on the environment, I must preface my remarks about wanting to strangle the squirrel in my bedroom wall by first reassuring the reader that, here at Sojourners, I'm known as Mr. Nature. I consistently put the natural world before self, causing staff members to see me as no less than a modern-day St. Francis. (Or maybe it's because sometimes I come to work in my bathrobe, on account of I forget.)
For me, there are no pro-environment laws too restrictive, no endangered species legislation too protective, no wetlands undeserving of care. Err on the side of Mother Nature, I always say, as I brake for crossing wind gusts. Paper or plastic? It's not a choice, it's an outrage!
That said, however, and with a clear understanding of the biblical call to care for God's creation, I want to wring that little squirrel's neck. I want to teach him a lesson that will say to squirrels everywhere that my home is not theirs to move into for the winter, as cozy as my home may be, compared to - and I might be going out on a limb here - a tree. As a general rule, I believe that undomesticated creatures, with the possible exception of Winnie the Pooh and Rush Limbaugh, should not live in houses.
Unfortunately, I have had little support on this matter from those of my own species. The other humans in the house - those whose side of the bed is not next to Grand Central Squirrel - have been taken in by said squirrel's bushy tail and cute expressions. They stand at the window and smile warmly as the animal scampers about, gathering leaves in its mouth and occasionally stopping, in a Kodak moment, to raise up and look at us. Then it scampers up the gutter spout and poops in our house.
Apparently the cuteness of these moments outweighs any concern for my discomfort during the night, which leaves me coming down to breakfast with baggy eyes and a face gaunt from lack of sleep. (My looking like a jet-lagged Alan Greenspan obviously makes no difference to these squirrel-lovers.)
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT I am kept awake by the sounds of crinkling leaves as the squirrel wriggles in his makeshift bed, perhaps dreaming of a nut he once enjoyed. Or maybe some other nut.
I've tried to see things from the squirrel's perspective, and I imagine it's not easy settling in for the night. You know how it is when you're trying to get comfortable on a pile of dry leaves and fiberglass insulation. No matter how you shift your body, there's always a stem poking you in the ear, or scratchy fiberglass filaments creating a pre-cancerous irritation on your neck.
So my heart goes out to the little guy, and also my fist, as I pound on the wall trying to get him to stop whatever it is he's doing that sounds like somebody digging into a box of Cracker Jacks. (Which is hardly worth the effort these days, since the prize is just a piece of colored cardboard from China.)
Unfortunately, my wall-pounding seems to be making no difference, since the squirrel stops his movements only for a second, and probably says to himself, "There's that pounding again. Dag, some creature must have moved inside the walls."
My plans to leave out poison or set traps have been vetoed by a family that insists on a more humane approach, one that I was similarly required to take some years ago when a mouse had nested under our bathroom sink.
It was a young mouse, too stupid to hide when we opened the cabinet door, and it would raise up on its little legs and sniff at us with interest. My daughters declared this Just The Cutest Thing and placed him under their official protection. Which meant I could neither poison nor squash it, leaving one of those catch-and-release traps as the only option. The mouse was easy to catch (being, as it was in an earlier sentence, still young and stupid), but then the problem became "now what?" So I carried the trap to a vacant lot nearby and, with a motion that I had practiced beforehand, flung out the mouse at the exact moment I opened the little trap door. This was supposed to send the creature several feet away, where it could start a new life, possibly in the lucrative dumpster inspection industry. But my timing was off, and instead I flung the mouse straight down at my feet, where it quickly scurried for the closest dark space.
Which was up my pant leg.
I'd go into more detail but it STILL FREAKS ME OUT JUST THINKING ABOUT IT!
Not wanting to risk a similar incident with a squirrel, I've decided to just wait for spring, when warmer weather should send it outside. Then I plan to curl up on some leaves and fiberglass insulation and sleep until summer.
Ed Spivey Jr. is art director of Sojourners. And now we know why his pants are so tight around the ankles. We thought it was a fashion thing.
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"Squirreling Away for the Winter"


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Price: $59.00
In Subtle Expressions (Formerly, Ekman Subtle Expressions Training Tool (SETT) 4.0), Dr. Paul Ekman trains you to see mini expressions that appear in just one region of the face. Understanding these subtle expressions can reveal unspoken and deep emotions. Buy now to receive immediate access online for one year. Tablet compatible.
Sections: Intro, Learn, Practice
Language: English
Training Time: about 90 minutes
License: 1 year, single user, repeated access.
Platform: Web browser (please see system requirements)
Certificate: Yes


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BodyViz In the News
Select Year:
October 2015
Iowa Western Community College (IWCC) has acquired three BodyViz portable stereoscopic 3D solutions to be shared at all five of the college's campuses.
September 2015
August 2015
We are pleased to announce Lone Star College-North Harris, one of the fastest growing community colleges in the nation, has acquired BodyViz for their Anatomy & Physiology classes.
July 2015
A collage of snapshots from an onsite 3D BodyViz training session for Allied Helath faculty at Fort Hays State University
BodyViz will be exhibiting at the Association of Educators in Imaging and Radiologic Sciences (AEIRS) on July 15th - 17th, in San Antonio, TX.
June 2015
We appreciate everyone who stopped by our booth at AACA and look forward to discussing your interest in BodyViz.
BodyViz will be exhibiting at the American Association of Clinical Anatomists (AACA) 32nd Annual Meeting on June 9th - 13th, in Henderson, NV. If you have faculty attending from your institution, we will be located at BOOTH 16.
We appreciate everyone who stopped by our booth last week and look forward to discussing your interest in BodyViz.
May 2015
Northland Community and Technical College in Thief River Falls, MN has installed a BodyViz solution that provides students with a completely new experience in exploring the human body.
BodyViz will be exhibiting at the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society's 29th Annual Conference on May 24th - 256th in San Antonio.
April 2015
BodyViz was a huge hit at the Experimental Biology (EB) conference in Boston this month.
February 2015
View a collage of images from a recent BodyViz 3D training session at Gadsden State Community College.
January 2015
More than 600 students in Gadsden State Community College's health sciences programs will have a different look inside the human body, thanks to a software program that renders MRI and CT images in 3D.
Gadsden State and BodyViz are making an impact locally as featured in The Gadsden Times.
A BBC journalist recently interviewed CEO Curt Carlson regarding the use of the Xbox game controller in BodyViz.


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about | Maps & Directions | contact | admissions | faculty | alumni & development | library | Tech Support Center | dean's office | Policies & Procedures
about | Maps & Directions | contact | admissions | faculty | alumni & development | library | Tech Support Center | dean's office | Policies & Procedures
FAculty directory
Young-Jin Son, PhD
Associate Professor, Anatomy and Cell Biology
Associate Professor, Shriners Hospitals Pediatric Research Center
Telephone: 215-926-9354 (Internal: 7-9354)
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
Shriners Hospitals Pediatric Research Center
Plasticity and Repair of Neural Connections between Spinal cord and Muscle
My lab wants to elucidate the mechanisms that govern maintenance and regeneration of synaptic connections in the spinal cord and muscle, particularly those associated with glial cells. I discovered earlier, with Wes Thompson, that Schwann cells play pivotal roles in restoring synaptic connections in muscles, i.e., neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). I have then extended the discovery by identifying glia-associated factors that promote formation and maintenance of NMJs (e.g., mAChRs and CAMs), by investigating factors that disturb stability of mature NMJs (e.g., spinal cord injury, paralysis), and by studying roles of Schwann cells and other glia in sensory nerve regeneration (i.e., restoration of sensory synaptic connections in the spinal cord). My lab was the first to demonstrate that particular muscles paralyzed by spinal cord injury fail to maintain NMJs and therefore lose neural connections with the spinal cord. We also showed that muscarinic signaling is a novel receptor system essential for stable maintenance of NMJs. This latter finding lays the foundation for a new line of investigation of how spinal cord-muscle connections are maintained in muscles in an activity dependent manner. More recently, we have begun to utilize stem cells to restore spinal cord-muscle connections. Technically, my lab has pioneered in applying time-lapse in vivo imaging and fluorescent transgenic mice to study spinal root regeneration, asking why sensory axons fail to regenerate into spinal cord, and how to promote regeneration and synaptic connections with the spinal cord. We hope that our work, which uses various state-of-the-art molecular and cellular techniques, will lead to novel therapeutic strategies to promote repair of spinal cord-muscle connections in patients with neuromuscular, spinal cord or spinal root injury.
Postdoctoral Fellows and Other Scientists Supervised:
Graduate Students Supervised (as Primary Advisor):


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Donate $10, and I'll give you a public thank you on our livestream and do 5 sun saluations for you on the roof! You can watch it live at: www.occupyyouarebeautiful.com. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
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Doesn't it feel good to see and hear from people you help? I think so too. That's why if you donate $25, I'll send you a video thank you from patients and professionals at one of the tratment centers we visit. It'll probably make you tear up. $25 for a happy cry? Come on, it doesn't get better than that!
Receive exclusive access to my 1-hr interview on GaiamTV (usually stuck behind a paywall!). The theme of the interview is resilience. I talk about everything from gay parenting, to early childhood trauma, to the causes of eating disorders, to caring for a parent with dementia. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
You'll receive a signed copy of the book 21st Century Yoga, and I'll write a personal thank you note inside. I authored a chapter in the book called Starved for Connection: Healing Anorexia Through Yoga. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
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In addition to the video thank you, you'll receive a special Gaiam gift pack! The package includes a Sol yoga mat, wooden block, strap, and 3 months of free documentaries, yoga classes, and lectures on GaiamTV. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
You'll get to come with me to my favorite yoga event ever -- Hanuman Festival!! We'll sing, dance, and do cartwheels together, and I'll introduce you to all the amazing people who supported me in my recovery over the years. Hanuman was my first yoga festival and introduced me to a community I now consider family. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
You'll receive a pass to Off the Mat Into the World's 2014 Global Action Summit! I did training with this nonprofit in 2009, and I credit their program for kickstarting the work I do today. The Global Action Summit features talks from leaders in political action, mental health, international human rights work, social justice, and precedes Wanderlust Festival Tahoe each year. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
You'll be spotlighted in the second-largest conscious lifestyle magazine in the world, Origin Magazine. Origin will feature you (or your organization) and how you're giving back to the world.You will also receive a Thank You Videogram. (You must have a high-res photo)
You'll receive a photo shoot with LA-based photographer Sarit Z. Rogers (the incredible woman who took the photos on this page!). Sarit is an eating disorder survivor and body image advocate herself, and I can tell you from personal experience that she has an amazing way of making clients feel beautiful, confident, and at ease in their own skin in front of a camera. Package includes 2 retouched images for print or digital use. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
For families struggling with eating disorders: You and your family receive 3 90-minute consults with me (via Skype). Sessions include intake, consult, and linkage (to connect you with the highest caliber professionals, yoga teachers, and resources in your area), plus a 30 minute follow-up after 3 months. All ED clients must be seeing a therapist and/or physician. Consults will be booked in the order they're received as per contributors' availability, at a rate of 1 per week, starting in October.
Do you have a bio that needs rewriting? Or a website that's in desperate need of content? If you donate $1000, I'll work closely with you to create written content for your website, newsletter, press release or book. You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
You get to choose the topic of my next blog! And I'll make a point in the dedication to tell everybody about how awesome you are for funding my project. Blog topics must be non-promotional and limited to 1200 words. (I blog for Intent.com, Elephant Journal, Care2, Yahoo Shine, and Huffington Post, but cannot guarantee which platform your blog will be featured on). You will also receive a Thank You Videogram.
I'll give a customized keynote speech at your event. I speak regularly at universities, conferences, schools, and professional organizations about topics such as overcoming adversity, eating disorder recovery, caring for a parent with dementia, and same-sex parenting. Wanna give something back to your alma mater? Donate me! I even do birthdays and bat mitzvahs. :D (Travel and lodging not included)
Take a 7-day retreat to Queenstown, New Zealand for FREE (airfare not included). Includes luxury accommodations at the Rees Hotel, all meals, yoga, fitness classes, nutritional seminars, mountain bike tour, winery visits, & a helicopter tour. Estimated value: $4900
This day-long seminar gives helping professionals (such as therapists, nutritionists, physicians, and yoga instructors) a window into the process of eating disorder recovery from the perspective of a former sufferer. The seminar includes lecture, group discussion, and interactive exercises. (Travel and lodging not included)
Special for yoga studios! For the first 12 studios that make at tax-deductible 5K donation, I'll teach my 3-day Yoga, Food, and Body Image Intensive at no cost to your studio. The program is priced at $300 per participant, so if you have just 17 sign-ups you'll make your entire donation back. If you have 30 sign-ups, you'll make $9,000. (Travel and lodging INCLUDED)
If you make a $25K donation, I will forever sing your praises. And to commemorate your awesomeness, I'll dedicate my first book to you.
Now spread the word
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Scientific Research Proves Alcohol and Cigarettes More Dangerous Than Cannabis, Lsd or Ecstasy
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One again, controversial UK drugs Tsar, Professor Nutt, caused panic and confusion by undermining current government advice. But, who's telling the truth about the dangers of drugs? And why would anyone lie?
The UK government's leading drug adviser, Professor Nutt – famous for his previous controversial statement that taking ecstasy was "no more dangerous than riding a horse" – has caused confusion once again, now claiming alcohol and cigarettes are more dangerous than cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy.
Professor Nutt, chairman of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London, and head of the Neuropsychopharmacology Unit at Bristol University, is now calling for the creation of an "index of harm," to enable members of the public to compare the differences in danger levels between various drugs, both legal and illegal. In this index, alcohol would be considered the fifth most dangerous substance, after cocaine, heroin, barbiturates, and methadone. Cigarettes would be ranked number nine – higher than cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy, ranked respectively at 11, 14, and 18. Drugs in the index are scored and ranked based on the physical harm they may cause the user, the likelihood of dependence, and harm caused to society.
Professor Nutt criticised the government for providing mis-leading information, saying the artificial separation between legal and illegal drugs gives people the wrong impression about the dangers involved in the use of certain substances. He even went as far as saying smoking cannabis produces only a "relatively small risk of psychosis" – contradicting the government's own advice, which claims it massively increases the risk of mental illness. He accused the former home secretary, Jaqcui Smith – famous for her porn-watching husband and shameful involvement in the MPs expenses scandal – of "distorting and devaluing" scientific research, when making the decision to reclassify cannabis as a class B drug. She accuses him of "trivialising" the dangers of drugs.
Professor Nutt has recently released a statement, saying: "No one is suggesting that drugs are not harmful. The critical question is one of scale and degree." He added: "We have to accept young people like to experiment — with drugs and other potentially harmful activities — and what we should be doing in all of this is to protect them from harm at this stage of their lives. We therefore have to provide more accurate and credible information. If you think that scaring kids will stop them using, you are probably wrong." Source
The first and most obvious problem glaring at us from this "index of harm" is the incredibly high placement of alcohol, at number five – something many readers will be very surprised to see. A huge number of us drink on a regular basis, and probably consider consumption of this perfectly legal substance far healthier and less dangerous than regular use of either cannabis, LSD or ecstasy. But, if there's scientific evidence to prove this to be more than marginally inaccurate, don't the government owe it to us to tell us so?
The second issue is the idea that cigarettes could be more dangerous than cannabis, LSD, and ecstasy, which is shocking, by anyone's standards. Here in the UK, we're bombarded with press releases about the dangers of smoking cannabis; parents up and down the country are terrified their spliff-smoking teens will almost certainly find themselves suffering from schizophrenia if they insist in continuing their illegal past-time. Equally, LSD and ecstasy are promoted as dangerous, even lethal drugs – and most parents would much prefer their children were just having a drink and/or smoking some cigarettes, than taking either substance. But what if they're wrong?
From Professor Nutt's above statement, we can see he openly accuses the UK government of scare-mongering tactics that he personally believes will never work. And he's probably right, if previous campaigns are anything to go by. He's also perfectly clear in his research-based, professional opinion as a scientist, that alcohol and cigarettes are far more dangerous than is currently admitted. So why are the government ignoring the evidence provided by his careful research and clinging to false statements made by politically-motivated individuals?
Could it be anything to do with the MASSIVE income they receive from the tax they charge on alcohol and cigarettes?
I don't know about you, but as a parent – and regardless of any financial implications they may face as a result – I fully expect the government to provide me with the cold, hard facts about the dangers regarding drugs, as and when they discover them, so I can attempt to keep my children as safe as possible – as my job as a mother dictates. I simply cannot do so if they insist on lying to me.
LATEST NEWS: Government Sacks Scientist for Telling The Truth About Drugs
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Minnesota military veterans are invited to take part in an arts retreat as part of the Red Wing Community Veterans Project, all expenses paid. The Red Wing Arts Association shines a light on veterans this year in May and June; this retreat is part of that focus. Veterans of all ages will have a chance to explore art in a variety of genres at the Villa Maria Retreat and Conference Center May 19th through May 24th.
In Entering the Healing Ground¸ author and soul activist Francis Weller, offers a new vision of grief and sorrow. He reveals the hidden vitality in grief, uncovered when the heart welcomes the sorrows of our life and those of the world. We are ripened in times of loss, made more human by the rites of grief. Through story, poetry and insightful reflections, Francis offers a meditation on the healing power of grief. Kinshasha hosts a powerful conversation that you do not want to miss.
Health Notes Airs Mondays 6:30-7:30PM
Gina Miranda Kingsley is a Meso-American Mayan Time Keeper.
Gina is an expert on the Mayan Calendar a 5,000 year old vehicle of predictions and spirituality. The Mayan calendar is an ancient device filled with secret codes. Ancient Mayans were not only mystics, but they were scientists that delved into the origins of life.
Gina Miranda Kingsley is a scientist that studies and tracks the calendars to look for the secret codes within. Her website explores and reveals the complexities hidden within the calendar. She discusses such topics as: What are the Maya; Heroic Feminine Values; How Your Birthdate Effects Your life; Mayan Spiritual Manifestations during Ceremonies
Health Notes airs Mondays 6:30-7:30PM
Health Notes will end its African History Month tribute by talking with teacher, mentor and founder of WE WIN Institute.
Titilayo Bediako was born and raised in Minnesota, and is the daughter of civil rights leader Matthew Little. She is instrumental in using African and African American history to African American youth through WE WIN Institute ( a non-profit organization dedicated to the academic and social success of all children)
Bediako says participating in African rituals helps give African-American youth a sense that they belong to something larger than themselves or their surroundings.
She says that's something she never received when she was in school. After graduating from high school, she moved to Tennessee where she joined an African history study group. "The more I studied and the more I learned about myself, the more my given name, which was Michelle Little, didn't fit the person I had become," says Bediako.
The name Titilayo is from the Yoruba of Nigeria. She says it means "everlasting happiness." Bediako is from the Ashanti people of Ghana and it means, "born to struggle for her people."
Symbols of Kwanzaa, celebrated by African-Americans in December. Participating in African-rooted rituals and ceremonies, like Kwanzaa, is one way African-Americans nurture their African side. "So I get everlasting happiness in struggling for my people," says Bediako. "The one thing that I've learned is that struggling for African people makes it possible to struggle for all people."
Like Bediako, many African-Americans have adopted African names. However, despite attempts to identify with Africans, African-Americans carry the physical and emotional baggage of slavery and racism. Bediako says many African-Americans have poor self-esteem because they were born in a country that historically has devalued their lives.
.Health Notes Airs Mondays from 6:30-7:30PM
Caribbean born, gay singer/songwriter Nhojj talks about his new CD "Made to Love Him – Celebrating Love" and Rob Ainsley, Head of Music with the MN Opera discusses "The Dream of Valentino", Dominick Argento's opera about 1920's film star Rudolph Valentino
Born in 1931, Josie Robinson Johnson has played an active role in the civil rights movement since her teenage years, when she and her father canvassed her hometown of Houston to gather signatures on an anti-poll tax petition.
In the early 1960s, Johnson lobbied professionally for passage of bills concerning such issues as fair housing and employment opportunities. In 1964, she traveled from Minneapolis to Mississippi with an integrated group of women to witness and take part in the struggle there. After visiting an open-air freedom school where blacks were organizing, the group learned the school was bombed later that day. Johnson became a community organizer for Project ENABLE, a pioneering effort in developing parenting skills and strengthening family life in 1965. A member of the Minneapolis Urban League, she served as acting director between 1967 and 1968.
Johnson worked with elected officials many times over the years. In 1968, she became a legislative liaison and community liaison as a mayoral aide in Minneapolis during a time of trouble for African Americans in the town. The executive assistant to the lieutenant governor of Colorado from 1975 to 1978, Johnson went back to Texas in 1978 and supervised Judson Robinson's campaign staff. In 1980, she served as deputy campaign manager for the Jimmy Carter presidential campaign in Tennessee.
Johnson has also had an ongoing relationship with the University of Minnesota. Between 1971 and 1973, she served on the University's Board of Regents. She earned a B.A. in Sociology at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and an M.A. and Ed.D. at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The University of Minnesota offered her a senior fellowship in 1987. Johnson directed its All-University Forum as diversity director from 1990 to 1992. That year, she became responsible for minority affairs and diversity at the college as the associate vice president for academic affairs. The University of Minnesota established the annual Josie Robinson Johnson Human Rights and Social Justice Award in her honor.
Don't miss this important conversation with this African American Icon. Health Notes Airs Mondays, 6:30-7:30pm
Prof. Mahmoud El Kati talks about the legacy of Civil Rights Legend, Matthew Little, Nelson Mandela and Martin Martin Luther King Jr.
When you listen closely to Mahmoud El-Kati, a life-long educator and professor emeritus of history at Macalester College, you will hear one of the more nuanced and passionate voices working in anti-racism today. "Race is not based in genetics," El-Kati explains. "Race is a myth. Racism is a reality.
In this important conversation, Professor El Kati helps us to understand that our history is our humanity.
Byron Katie, founder of The Work, has one job: to teach people how to end their own suffering. As she guides people through the powerful process of inquiry she calls The Work, they find that their stressful beliefs—about life, other people, or themselves— radically shift and their lives are changed forever.
Katie will talk with Health Notes about The Work and how it relates to the work of Dr. Martin Luther King.
Womenfolk will feature the top women's folk/acoustic CDs of 2013 on Tuesday, January 14th as voted by you! To cast your vote for your top picks of the past year, email email@example.com by Sunday, January 12th at 6 pm. Then tune in on Tuesday from 2-4 pm Central to hear your favorite albums and picks from DJs, critics and your favorite Womenfolk artists!
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Star Wars Cake
- Uploaded By echocakes
- 2012-06-28 20:10:26
I made this cake for my son's birthday. The death star is made of rice crispys and fondant, the characters and the X-wing fighter are made of fondant. The cake is Vanilla cake with buttercream frosting. Thanks for looking!
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