Azerbaijani citizen working for ISIS tried to attack synagogue in Baku

Here's a case the awful Rachel Avraham's quite possibly obscuring in all her attempts to make Azerbaijan look as safe as Turkey is at this point:

A youth in Azerbaijan affiliated with the Islamic State terror organization is being tried for attempting to attack a synagogue in the capital city of Baku in December, according to Azerbaijani media reports.

18-year-old Abdulla Aliyev is accused of attempting to attack the Mountain Jews Synagogue of Baku with a Molotov cocktail and other weapons on December 28. The State Security Service was able to prevent the attack and detain him.

An accomplice testified against Aliyev, saying he was recruited online. The two began speaking about ISIS on Instagram that November, and Aliyev sent him a link to join a secret group.

“Later, he told me that he was going to attack a synagogue and asked me for an axe, a knife, a Molotov cocktail, and gloves,” the witness said. “He said that after that, when the time came, he would bomb other places as well.”

The local authorities may have arrested all involved, but that doesn't excuse that the Religion of Peace was an influence on the culprit. That Azerbaijan continues to follow Islam is exactly why sooner or later, it will have consequences, and their hostility to Armenia is exactly why their ostensible respect for Israel can't be accepted in every way.

A fact-based movie from India that's important to see

There's a new movie produced in India (via Front Page) about a horrible tragedy where Muslims brainwashed Hindu and Christian girls into serving jihadism:

The trailer of The Kerala Story was released on April 26 and has led to reactions and controversy. The film by Vipul Amrutlal Shah aims to tell the tale of how women from the Indian state of Kerala women were tricked and trafficked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the conflict zone of Syria. The film directed by Sudipto Sen traces the journey of four female college students in Kerala who become part of the Islamic State.

Kerala leader of opposition V.D. Satheesan demanded that the film should not be allowed to be released.

The film especially showcases certain cases of how ‘love jihad’ was used by ISIS to lure 32,000 women to Syria. The trailer shows how men were brainwashed to woo Hindu and Christian women of Kerala in the name of love, convert them to Islam and convince them to join ISIS and other Islamic war zones. The shocking incidents occurred between 2018-19, when a rising number of Kerala youths had come under the influence of ISIS. [...]

The movie is based on a tragedy where around 32,000 women went missing in Kerala. They were allegedly brainwashed and lured by Muslim men, who married and converted them, radicalised them and later deployed them in terror missions in India and abroad for ISIS.

All must be done to ensure that this movie continues to be available for the public to see, and that there's security and safety for the public going to view it at the movie theaters. The leftists who're calling for censorship of this film should be condemned for what they're leading to, and should cease all attacks on it, period. The filmmakers have done the right thing to tackle the issue of women being lured into horrifying situations by Mohammedans and then put in the middle of war zones, making things worse.

If Not for Memo, Torture Might Not Be An Issue

The question of whether members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities should be allowed to use waterboarding and other forms of torture during interrogations might be largely irrelevant today if not for a memo signed by Under Secretary of Defense James R. Clapper Jr. Oct. 29, 2007.

On that day, Clapper issued a memo granting “Operational Approval of the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System (PCASS)” and designating the polygraph and its cousin, the PCASS, as the “only approved credibility assessment technologies” in the Department of Defense. And that's where the problems begin.

Click here to read the complete copyrighted story, If Not for Memo, Torture Might Not Be An Issue, at Bob McCarty Writes.

Will Military Continue Stonewalling on Lie Detector?

Nearly two weeks have passed since I published a post (”Is Tech ‘Turf War’ Putting U.S. Troops at Risk“) about my attempts to learn about the effectiveness — or lack thereof — of the military’s use of the Preliminary Credibility Assessment Screening System. Today, I wonder if officials at U.S. Central Command will continue the Army’s practice of stonewalling me when it comes to answering questions about the use of the hand-held lie detectors in combat zones.

The subject is important to me, especially when I consider a note received from an active-duty member of the Special Operations community who’s obviously familiar with the issues at stake:

“The bottom line is that the upper levels of command owe us a product that works. The CVSA has been tested under combat conditions and truly works! What more proof do they want?”*

To read the long and twisted chronicle of this former Air Force public affairs officer's attempt to get answers from the military, click here.

WHERE SADDAM'S WMDS WENT

No doubt this won't get much attention by the MSM as it contradicts what they want to believe, but here's what happened to Saddam's WMDs in past years (via IRIS Blog):

According to foreign reports, Israel destroyed a nuclear weapons installation in Syria in September. Never has a larger story been pushed under the rug by so many so quickly. What are we to make of this?

Over the weekend former federal prosecutor and the head of the non-governmental International Intelligence Summit, John Loftus, released a report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. His report was based on a private study of captured Iraqi documents. These were the unread Arabic language documents that US forces seized, but had not managed to translate after overthrowing Saddam Hussein in 2003.

After a prolonged battle between Congress and then director of US National Intelligence John Negroponte, President George W. Bush ordered those documents posted on a public access Web site last year. They were taken down after it was discovered that among the Iraqi documents were precise descriptions of how to build nuclear weapons.

As Loftus summarized, "The gist of the new evidence is this: Roughly one-quarter of Saddam's WMD was destroyed under UN pressure during the early to mid 1990s. Saddam sold approximately another quarter of his weapons stockpile to his Arab neighbors during the mid-to-late-1990's. The Russians insisted on removing another quarter in the last few months before the war. The last remaining WMD, the contents of Saddam's nuclear weapons labs, were still inside Iraq on the day when the coalition forces arrived in 2003. His nuclear weapons equipment was hidden in enormous underwater warehouses beneath the Euphrates River. Saddam's entire nuclear inventory was later stolen from these warehouses right out from under the Americans' noses."

Loftus then cites Israeli sources who claim that the Iraqi nuclear program was transferred to the Deir az Zour province in Syria.

LOFTUS'S REPORT jibes with a report published on the Web site of Kuwait's Al Seyassah's newspaper on September 25, 2006. That report, which I noted last November, cited European intelligence sources and claimed that in late 2004 Syria began developing a nuclear program near its border with Turkey. Syria's program, which was run by President Bashar Assad's brother Maher and defended by an Iranian Revolutionary Guards brigade, had by mid-2006 "reached the stage of medium activity." The Kuwaiti report stated that the Syrian nuclear program was based "on equipment and materials that the sons of the deposed Iraqi leader, Uday and Qusai transferred to Syria by using dozens of civilian trucks and trains, before and after the US-British invasion in March 2003."

The program, which was run by Iranians with assistance from Iraqi scientists and scientists from the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union, "was originally built on the remains of the Iraqi program after it was wholly transferred to Syria." These reports and several others like them which have surfaced over the past several years tell us interesting and disturbing things.

So it was good then that the IAF blew those nuclear plants in Syria to smithereens. Read the whole article, as it tells a lot of important information.

ISRAELI DOCTORS SAVING LIVES OF IRAQI AND PALESTINIAN CHILDREN

Oh, those evil racist genocidal Jews with their evil racist genocidal ways:

Three Israeli doctors on Tuesday screened 40 Iraqi children suffering from heart disease in a rare instance of cooperation between people from Israel and the Arab country. The doctors said they hoped their actions will improve relations between the two Mideast nations and ease tensions between Israel and the rest of the Arab world. Dr. Sion Houri, director of the pediatric intensive care unit at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon, Israel, said he thought ties and friendship were being built through his work in Jordan with the Iraqi children. "Our only previous exchanges with the Iraqis are the Scud missiles", he said, referring to the missiles Iraq, under former dictator Saddam Hussein, fired on Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.

This is of course nothing new. MK Aryeh Eldad - who is regularly and literally accused by the left of being genocidal - is explicit that his role as a doctor and human being compels him even to treat injured terrorists. But it does suggest something unseemly about the motives of the boycott leaders who are trying to crush the Israeli medical industry because of the racism of Israeli doctors.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

20 PERCENT OF DEMS: IT WOULD BE TOTALLY SWEET IF THE US WAS DEFEATED BY ISLAMOFASCISTS IN IRAQ

Sometimes we kind of exaggerate our headlines for effect. Kind of like an eyerolling "how absurd is the left - why don't they just go ahead and go all the way" hyperbole kind of thing. Sometimes it's flat out true because they're totally insane:

early one out of every five Democrats thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq, according to the FOX News Opinion Dynamics Poll released Thursday. The percentage of Democrats (19 percent) who believe that is nearly four times the number of Republicans (5 percent) who gave the same answer. Seven percent of independents said the world would be better off if the U.S. lost the war. Overall, 11 percent of Americans think the world would be "better off" if the U.S. lost the war, and 73 percent disagree. Opinion Dynamics Corp. conducted the national telephone poll of 900 registered voters for FOX News from Sept. 25 to Sept. 26. The poll has a 3-point margin of error.

We close with the usual line: reasonable Democrats can say any of the following: (1) they can agree with this incandescently stupid position (2) they can insist that these borderline traitors don't control the Democratic party or (3) they can promise to wrest control of their party back from same. Or they can keep living in a thin bubble of denial insulated by ritualistically muttered catechisms about engagement with genocidal thugs and social policy. Which is what they'll do.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

IRAQIS REJECT DEMOCRAT PLAN FOR IRAQ

BREITBART/AP:

Representatives of Iraq's major political parties on Sunday strongly denounced a U.S. Senate proposal calling for a limited centralized Iraqi government with the bulk of the power given to the country's ethnically divided regions.

The groups, which represented both Shiites and Sunnis, said the plan would hamper Iraq's future stability, and they suggested parliament draft a law permanently banning the splitting of Iraq along sectarian or ethnic lines.

"This proposal was based on the incorrect reading and unrealistic estimations of Iraq's past, present and future," according to the statement read by Izzat al-Shahbandar, a representative of the Iraqi National List, a secular political party.

The nonbinding Senate resolution calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions under control of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis in a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., was a prime sponsor of the measure.

THE PLAN FOR TRIFURCATION OF IRAQ WAS PROPOSED BY JOE "THE LYING PLAGIARIST" BIDEN.

BTW: NATO STILL HAS TROOPS IN THE BALKAN "QUAGMIRE" CITED BY BIDEN AS A SUCCESS TO BE EMULATED, SO EVEN IF YOU'RE A LEFT-WING SURRENDER MONKEY YOU SHOULN''T THINK THAT EVEN THIS PLAN IS A TICKET FOR RETREAT.

HEZBOLLAH ALLY, IRANIAN PROXY MAHDI ARMY PRESENTS MAJOR PROBLEM FOR POST-SURGE SCENARIOS

Danger Room has a roundup of the post surge scenarios that are available to the Coalition. One major problem:

Garton Ash believes that "capacity to intervene" will diminish as Basra increasingly comes under the sway of extremist elements. AlterNet concurs: "Should British forces decide to venture back, they will inevitably face a den of Mahdi Army fighters," according to their analysis: The militia is said to number 17,000 in Basra alone and is divided into 40 company-size military units, according to a senior Iraqi security official. ... They control multiple units in the 14,500-strong police force, and hold sway in hospitals, the education board, the university, ports and oil terminals, and the oil products and electricity distribution companies.

Or as we like to call them, the Hezbollah allied Mahdi army:

“We teach each other,” i.e. cross-pollination. The traffic’s not one way, either; follow that last link to refresh your memory. As far as I know, it still hasn’t been conclusively established that Sadr is Iran’s chief proxy in Iraq, although the collusion with Hezbollah and the fact (again, per the Independent) that thousands of JAM members have trained in camps in Iran indicates a high level of nuance to the relationship. Traditionally SCIRI was Iran’s arm inside the country but they seem to have drifted towards the American side in the past year, possibly as a reaction to Sadr’s coziness with the regime. Michael Totten, on the ground in Baghdad, seems pretty clear on what’s what, though: The Mahdi Army is Iran’s major proxy in Iraq. It is, in effect, the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah.

Hey, remember when the US kept the IDF on a short leash because they didn't want to destabilize Sinoria, even at the risk of not uprooting Hezbollah? Apparently - according to the oh-so-brave State Department Director Alberto Fernandez - Lebanon's government wasn't responsible for Hezbollah even though Hezbollah was part of the Lebanese government. Good to see that's working out.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]

Michael Totten On The Anbar Awakening

Michael Totten visited Ramadi in Anbar and reports.

“It was nothing we did,” said Marine Lieutenant Colonel Drew Crane who was visiting for the day from Fallujah. “The people here just couldn’t take it anymore.”

What he said next surprised me even more than what I was seeing.

“You know what I like most about this place?” he said.

“What’s that?” I said.

“We don’t need to wear body armor or helmets,” he said.

I was poleaxed. Without even realizing it, I had taken off my body armor and helmet. I took my gear off as casually as I do when I take it off after returning to the safety of the base after patrolling. We were not in the safety of the base and the wire. We were safe because we were in Ramadi.

It is quite long. You should read the whole thing. Lots of pictures. Happy smiling faces.

What happened? It seems like living under Islamic fascism is not as popular in practice as it is in theory.

Cross Posted at Power and Control and at Classical Values

BRITISH ARMY LEAVES NORTHERN IRELAND - 38 YEARS LATER

NYTIMES/REUTERS:

The army watchtowers have gone and British soldiers no longer search homes looking for wanted men but for many in Northern Ireland's border towns the trauma of conflict still burns.

The British army ends on Tuesday its 38-year role supporting police in Northern Ireland, its longest ever military operation.

They stayed for as long as it took.

We did the same elsewhere - and are still on the watch in in Germany and Japan and South Korea. And it's a good thing considering that Putin is threatening trouble for Europe and Kim is making trouble for South Korea and Japan.

Staying until the JOB IS DONE. It's the RIGHT thing to do.

The Brit's did. We've done it before. And are still doing it.

Which is why we mustn't bug out of Iraq. It would be the WRONG thing to do.

2007 ASIA GAMES SHOCKER: IRAQ BEATS SAUDI ARABIA IN FINAL!

RTE (IRELAND):

The Iraqi national football team has won the Asian Cup for the first time, beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the final in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The team includes Sunnis, Shias and Kurds and has been widely praised for its uniting influence on the country.

TAKE THAT AL QAEDA!

ABC/AP:

Defying orders from authorities, celebratory gunfire resounded across Baghdad and revelers poured into the streets after Iraq beat Saudi Arabia to clinch its first Asian Cup soccer championship on Sunday while mosques broadcast calls for the shooting to stop.

Security forces, meanwhile, enforced a vehicle ban in an effort to prevent a repeat of car bombings that killed dozens celebrating Iraq's progress to the finals in Asia's top soccer tournament.

Iraqis welcomed the victory as a chance to show the world they can come together and expressed frustration that their politicians couldn't do the same.

"Those heroes have shown the real Iraq. They have done something useful for the people as opposed to the politicians and lawmakers who are stealing or killing each other," said Sabah Shaiyal, a 43-year-old policeman in Baghdad. "The players have made us proud, not the greedy politicians. Once again, our national team has shown that there is only one, united Iraq."

The Iraqi team, known as the "Lions of the Two Rivers" beat three-time champions Saudi Arabia 1-0 in its first appearance in the Asian Cup final.

The jubilation over the victorious run of the team has given Iraqis a rare respite from the daily sectarian attacks, with men of all ages cheering and dancing in the streets after the quarterfinals and the semifinals.

But extremists seemed just as determined to destroy national pride and unity.

EXTREMISTS AND DEMOCRATS!

THE PLURALISTIC DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF IRAQ: CHAMPIONS.

SADDAM'S CHEMIST COUSIN SENTENCED TO HANG

Saddam's cousin al-Majid, the madman in charge of their chemical warfare against the Kurds, has been sentenced to death:

BAGHDAD (AP) - Two decades after Iraq's military laid waste to Kurdish villages, the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday sentenced Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," and two others to death for their roles in the bloody campaign against the restive ethnic minority.

Al-Majid, a cousin of executed former President Saddam Hussein, was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes for ordering army and security services to use chemical weapons in an offensive said to have killed some 180,000 people during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

Hang 'im high, I say!

HOW IRAN'S JIHADISTS ENCOURAGED ATTACKS IN IRAQ

The NY Sun interviewed a Kurdish spy who told how Iran's terrorist operatives encouraged attacks in Iraq. Here's the first part, and here's a followup article written the day after.

The "I Support Democracy In Iraq" Contest

Coyote Organics is offering a prize for the design of the logo for the I Support Democracy In Iraq campaign.

A. Jacksonian of Dumb Looks Still Free thinks it should include a purple finger.

So far the owner of Coyote Organics and I will judge the contest (I may add one or two other judges as I corral them). The decision of the judges is final. If the judges can't come to a decision, my decision is final.

The contest will extend for thirty days from the first submission. I may extend that deadline (it will be announced at Power and Control) if there are no suitable submissions.

I will post the submissions as they come in.

Update: I have added some Submission Guidelines.

I Support Democracy In Iraq

If any artist can turn this into a better graphic, I would be very grateful. As would the Iraqi democrats. Contact me at Power and Control, my e-mail is on the sidebar.

For those who wish to join the campaign leave me a comment at I Support Democracy In Iraq. I'll add you to my blog roll and put your url up on the front of this page at Power and Control.

DHIMMITUDE IN BAGHDAD. NO REALLY - LITERAL DHIMMITUDE

Dhimmi Watch brings yet another report of the disturbing, medieval version of Islam that's slowly creeping into cultural and judicial life in Iraq:

An update on this story: "More on Muslims Forcing Christian Assyrians in Baghdad to Pay 'Protection Tax,'" from AINA, with thanks to all who sent this in:
(AINA) -- On 3-18-2007 AINA reported that Muslims were forcing the Christian Assyrians in the Dora Neighborhood of Baghdad to Pay the jizya, the 'Protection Tax' demanded from Christians and Jews by Islamic law. AINA has obtained testimony from two residents of Dora and an observer. All names are withheld to protect the safety of the individuals.

Baghdad Observer:
Elements of Al-Qaeda have moved into Dora from Anbar. No security forces are to be seen there, it seems to be abandoned by both Iraqi and Coalition. In Hay Al-Mechaneek (which is in Dora across the bridge) people have been warned by these insurgents to uninstall the satellite dishes since this is "Haram" (forbidden) in Islam. In Dora where christians live in Hay Al-Mualimeen [Teachers quarter] and Hay Al-Athorieen [Assyrian quarter] is where they are telling people to convert, leave, pay "Jizya" taxation.

He's got more letters and testimony in the original post. It's depressing to see that Iraq is getting more theocratic after everything the Coalition has fought for. But this will be the entirety of Iraq - and very soon afterwards the entirety of Syria and Egypt - if the US withdraws before establishing a stable, non-confessional Iraqi regime. Iraq will become the new Afghanistan (or is Afghanistan already the new Afghanistan)? Except it'll be what Afghanistan would have become if it was floating on a sea of oil.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]