Here’s some great news from the Washington Post:

Iran’s nuclear program, which stumbled badly after a reported cyberattack last year, appears beset by poorly performing equipment, shortages of parts and other woes as global sanctions exert a mounting toll, Western diplomats and nuclear experts say. …

They complain of these several “woes”:

Analysts say Iran has become increasingly frustrated and erratic as political change sweeps the region and its nuclear program struggles. …

At Iran’s largest nuclear complex, near the city of Natanz, fast-spinning machines called centrifuges churn out enriched uranium. But the average output is steadily declining as the equipment breaks down …

Iran has vowed to replace the older machines with models that are faster and more efficient. Yet new centrifuges recently introduced at Natanz contain parts made from an inferior type of metal that is weaker and more prone to failure …

Western diplomats and nuclear experts say Iranian officials have been frustrated and angered by the program’s numerous setbacks, including deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists. Four Iranian scientists have been killed by unidentified assailants since 2007, and a fifth narrowly escaped death in an attempted car-bombing. …

But that Stuxnet worm is the damnedest thing:

The studies of Iran’s struggling uranium program draw on data collected by U.N. officials … The inspectors’ report documented a sharp drop in output in 2009 and 2010, providing the first confirmation of a major equipment failure linked to a computer virus dubbed Stuxnet. Western diplomats and nuclear experts say Stuxnet’s designer intended to attack and disable thousands of first-generation centrifuges at Natanz, undercutting Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. Many experts suspect Israel created the virus, perhaps with U.S. help, but neither nation has acknowledged any role.

Iranian scientists replaced more than 1,000 crippled machines. Afterward the Natanz plant appeared to quickly recover, and production rates soared to surpass levels seen before the attack. Yet, the gains have not lasted, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. …

The world owes a debt beyond price to Stuxnet’s designer. He has saved it – at least for a time – from nuclear war. But he’s not very likely to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. That’s reserved for terrorists and community organizers.

We are libertarian conservatives, “minarchists”, emphatically not anarchists.

Having a libertarian bent, we like much of what John Stossel writes in an article at Townhall:

Here’s my fantasy: Libertarians are elected to the presidency and to majorities in Congress. What would happen next? Well, if libertarians were “in charge,” you’d have more freedom and prosperity.

Freedom frightens some people. They say if no one is in charge there would be chaos. That is intuitive, but think about a skating rink. Before rinks were invented, if you proposed an amusement in which people strap blades to their feet and skate around on ice at whatever speeds they wish, you’d have been called crazy. There’s got to be speed limits, stoplights, turn signals. But we know that people navigate rinks safely on their own. They create their own order, with only minimal rules.

Society would work the same way — and does to a large extent even today. “Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government,” Thomas Paine, the soul of the American Revolution, wrote. “It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. … Common interest (has) a greater influence than the laws of government.”

Yes. Common interest is the wellspring of morality.

If libertarians were “in charge,” there would be laws to protect us from foreign enemies and those who would steal from us or injure us. Today, by contrast, under the rule of Democans and Republicrats, we’re drowning in rules — 160,000 pages’ worth. Micromanagement kills opportunity and freedom.

Maybe if there were a way to have more competition among governments, things would be better. Competition forces people to become more efficient and to get rid of stupid rules. What if we let people take over some unused land in America to create areas with fewer rules, simpler legal systems, smaller government?

Stossel quotes Michael Strong , who with his wife Magatte Wade founded the Free Cities Project.

Strong said, “We want to encourage thousands of people to create new governments that have different rules, each competing for customers with the best education and best health care, the most peace and prosperity you could imagine.”

We expect that where government interfered least with the economic life of the people there would be the greatest prosperity. Where it had nothing at all to do with education or health, the people would stand the best chance of being well educated and effectively cured. Where it most strongly protected liberty, they would probably endure the least crime. Where it armed the people most formidably they might least expect to be invaded.

Are there any free cities along the lines Strong and Wade envision?

“Hong Kong and Singapore are the best examples,” Strong said. “Now they are among the wealthiest places on earth.”

True – and proof that small government, doing little more than enforcing the rule of law, works well.

And there is a free city in Dubai because the emirate wanted to create a financial sector …

And did, though the emir had to abandon sharia law in the free city to achieve what he wanted:

“Dubai was brilliant,” Strong said. “They looked around the world. They saw that Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in world in eight years.”

It’s what libertarians have said: Freedom works, and government, when it grows beyond the barest minimum, keeps people poor.

As liberty is most likely to bring prosperity, why are libertarians a political minority?

Is it because many people fear it, and if so why?

Some want governments to be parental and care for them “from the cradle to the grave”. They think such welfare governments can guarantee that they’ll  be fed, housed, educated, medically treated all through their lives.

They could not be more wrong. The welfare states of Europe are rapidly going bankrupt.

And besides, what a government provides a government can withhold. To put yourself wholly in the power of a government is to put yourself not into safety but into danger. You are most safe when you control your own life, and the government does no more than guard your liberty. (And as everything governments do they do badly, it is wise to own a gun.)

Some need to feel that there is “someone in charge” – a king, a chief, a Secretary-General of the Communist Party, a powerful president, a Father in Heaven.

We don’t want someone in charge. Neither on earth nor “in heaven”. Throughout our earthly lives we want the rule of law, that wholly abstract authority, emotionless, fixed. (As Lord Denning, the British judge, said: “Be you ever so high, the law is above you”.)

And we delight in a universe that does not have and does not need “someone” to make, maintain, rule, watch over, manipulate, or give a damn about it.

Yesterday the Attorney General announced that an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, in Washington, D.C. has been foiled.

The Saudi Ambassador was to be killed by a bombing of a restaurant he frequents in the capital, so many others would have been killed and wounded.

The plot also involved attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina.

Barry Rubin writes at PajamasMedia:

The case is still being developed, and it isn’t clear whether the origin of this plot goes back to Tehran.

By which he means: Did the government of Iran order the attacks?

That does not need to be asked. In a despotism there are no free agents who decide for private reasons to attack another country. Although there is division among the internal powers of Iran – between the supreme “spiritual leader”, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and the president, Ahmadinejad; between either or both of them and the Revolutionary Guards; and probably between factions in every section of government and the military – it had to be one or some or most or all of them who approved such a plan as this.

According to ABC’s sources, Manssor Arbabsiar — an Iranian American living in Texas — approached an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, thinking he was speaking with a member of a Mexican drug gang for help in the proposed attacks. He said he was acting on behalf of a cousin, Gholam Shakuri, who might be a Revolutionary Guard official involved in terrorist operations.

He offered $1.5 million for the killing, with a $100,000 down payment in two installments being paid by Arbabsiar while on a visit to Iran.

These two men have been charged with conspiracy to kill, among other charges. Arbabsiar, who is now cooperating with the prosecution, also offered to provide opium in large quantities for the Mexican drug cartels. Apparently, the FBI has a lot of evidence, including recordings of meetings and telephone calls with Arbabsiar.

Reuters reports more details:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said one of two men charged in the plot, both originally from Iran, had been arrested and confessed. The other, who was still at large, was described in the criminal complaint as being a member of the elite Quds Force, which is part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. …

U.S. authorities arrested the other man, Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 29. …

The assassination plot began to unfold in May 2011 when Arbabsiar approached an individual in Mexico to help, but that individual turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The confidential source, who was not identified, immediately tipped law enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the informant in July and August for the plot, a down payment on the $1.5 million requested.

Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during telephone conversations with Arbabsiar …

Rubin comments:

Let’s assume that this story is accurate. What’s most important here is not the innate sensationalism of this dramatic story, but its political implications. An Iranian official — perhaps two according to the indictment — is directly linked with a plan to stage terrorist attacks on American soil in which Americans would certainly have been killed or injured. This amounts to an act of war. 

Indeed, it is the first time in modern history that a foreign government has been caught planning a major terrorist attack on American soil.

President Barack Obama, Homeland Security, and other top agencies and officials have the evidence and full briefings into this matter if they choose to access them. What effect would this have on U.S. foreign policy?

What effect should it have?

Already, they have had high-quality intelligence. We know this from the congressional testimony of Defense and State Department officials:

– Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

– Iran is harboring al-Qaeda leaders on its soil and letting them plan attacks on America from that safe haven.

– Iran is training and supplying the Taliban with weapons and training to attack and kill Americans.

– Iran is deeply involved in attacking and killing U.S. personnel and citizens in Iraq.

And that’s not all. Is this sufficient evidence to persuade Obama that Iran regards itself as being at war with the United States? That the top priority of U.S. Middle East policy — and very possibly the number-one priority of U.S. foreign policy generally — should be to counter Iran and revolutionary Islamism? And I don’t mean by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezballah as moderates!

Yes, it should have been the top priority years ago, but Obama has continued to hold out his hand in friendship to the monstrous regime.

Will there be a change now, Rubin asks.

Is this case going to be the smoking gun — or, perhaps, the smoking bomb — that gets U.S. policy on the right course? It should be, though I suspect it isn’t. …

Does Obama even understand the significance of it?

He has known about the plot since June, so the question is, “Why break it now?”

Jihad Watch asks that question and suggests an answer with another question:

 To divert attention from his spiraling scandals and plummeting fortunes?

But there is another – or additional – possible reason for the timing.

The announcement of the plot was made by Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been issued with a subpoena to appear before the the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in connection with the  “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal. Was it timed to make him seem extremely competent at his job and even perhaps indispensable?

If so, it’s a miscalculation. To have the Attorney-General make the announcement is to indicate that the administration sees the plot as a problem for law-enforcement, when in fact it is a grave act of aggression by a foreign power against the United States, and as such should be understood as a cause of war.

It has long been apparent that Obama hates to make decisions. And he hates to attack an Islamic country unless other Islamic countries give him the nod. This time, of course, Saudi Arabia will be pleased to have Americans risk their lives in an assault on Iran to punish the regime and prevent it developing into a nuclear-armed power. Obama would rather the Israelis bombed Iranian nuclear installations (especially – we suspect – as their doing so would then allow him to condemn Israel for an act of  aggression).

So will he or won’t he strike back at Iran? Our guess is that he won’t. He’ll go to the UN and ask “the international community” – a wraith lodged permanently in the mind of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – to consider setting a date for a meeting of the Security Council to discuss what warnings of what actions might be sent to the Iranian government without provoking it too severely.

It is not only the probability if a nuclear bomb that is to be feared from Iran’s persistent development of nuclear power.

According to this article, Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor is likely to repeat the disaster of Chernobyl:

The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a “tragic disaster for humankind,” according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.

There is a “great likelihood” that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document …

It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by “second-class engineers” who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world’s most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has “no serious training program” for staff or a contingency plan for accidents. …

Bushehr was started in 1975 when the Shah of Iran awarded the contract to Kraftwerk Union of Germany. When the Germans pulled out after the 1979 Islamic revolution the reactors were far from finished. They sustained serious damage in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The document claims airstrikes left the steel containment vessel with 1,700 holes, letting in hundreds of tons of rainwater.

The regime revived the project in the 1990s, but with one reactor only. It wanted a prestige project to show the Islamic Republic could match the scientific achievements of the West.

It may also have wanted a cover for developing its nuclear weapons program — and the opportunities for personal enrichment that the project gave Iran’s elite. This time Iran employed Russian engineers, who had not built a foreign nuclear reactor since the Soviet Union started to collapse in 1989.

Russia’s experts wanted to start from scratch. The Iranians, having already spent more than $1 billion, insisted they built on the German foundations.

This involved adapting a structure built for a vertical German reactor to take a horizontal Russian reactor — an unprecedented operation. Of the 80,000 pieces of German equipment, many had become corroded, obsolete or lacked manuals and paperwork.

“The Russian parts are designed to standards that are less stringent than the Germans’ and they are being used out of context in a design where they are exposed to inappropriate stresses,” the document says. It goes on to claim that “much of the necessary work for Bushehr is outside the competence of the Russian consulting engineers,” who consider the project a “holiday.”

The first victims of a Chernobyl-like disaster in Iran would be the Iranian people. We wonder how many of them are aware of the danger. Even if many of them are, there is nothing effective they can do about it.

It would be a boon for them and the rest of the world if Bushehr were bombed.

Pat Condell tells the truth about the Palestinians.

Although some of their leaders imported the idea of nationalism from Europe in the 20th century, it is not a motivating cause among Arabs. Tribe and religion are what matter to them. They regard the existence of Israel as an offense against Islam, and their hatred of it has nothing to do with territory, boundaries, settlements, states, no matter that their spokesmen pretend otherwise when they address the Western media or the United Nations. Islam teaches that all non-Muslims are worthy only of hatred, subjugation, and ignominious death.

This article is by Giulio Meotti from Front Page:

What can motivate the current Palestinian society to … the most horrible form of childhood molestation and child sacrifice? The way in which the Palestinian Authority educates children and society is a key indicator of its true intentions.

Convincing ordinary individuals to sacrifice themselves to kill the Jews is not easy, it requires subhuman ideas and institutions. The logo of the “Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations” – on their website and on top of their official statements at the U.N. – shows the Palestinian Authority’s claim to a Palestine that stretches throughout the entire historical entity of the former Palestine mandate, which had nothing to do with those who call themselves Palestinians today and everything to do with a national homeland for the Jewish people..

Palestinian Media Watch also revealed that Mahmoud Abbas chose an icon of genocidal anti-Semitism, the mother of four terrorists, one of whom killed seven Israeli civilians and attempted to killed twelve others, as the person to launch the statehood campaign with the United Nations.

In a widely publicized event, Abbas had Latifa Abu Hmeid lead the procession to the UN offices in Ramallah and hand over a letter for the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon. It is a measure of how deeply the ethos of martyrdom has penetrated Abbas’ policy, hailed for its “moderation”.

For as long as the PA continues to foment violence and promote hatred, the number of youngsters willing to blow themselves up or to slit Israeli throats will unfortunately continue to mount. The Palestinian Authority is still a font of incitement …

Palestinian leadership now seeks self-determination at the United Nations, but its daily policy shouts to the world that even after statehood, the fight must continue against the Jews. …

There is no precedent in the history of humanity for this god of martyrdom.

Well, perhaps there is. There were long dark ages when untold numbers of Christians sought martyrdom as a qualification to enter their heaven, often through murderous encounters with other Christians over differences of doctrine. And the lust for martyrdom must have been the motive of at least some of the Christian warriors of the Crusades. That sort of thing is not done so much now by Christians. But many Christians, notably on the political left, condone and even actively encourage Palestinian terrorism.

Generations of PA Arabs are taught to see … terrorist operations as a way to “open the door to Paradise” …  It’s the highest level of paradise, the one reserved for prophets and saints.

Signs on the walls of Palestinian kindergartens currently proclaim their students as “the shaheeds (martyrs) of tomorrow”. Elementary school principals commend their students for wanting to “tear [Zionists’] bodies into little pieces and cause them more pain than they will ever know”.

Terrorism is sanctified throughout all the PA areas. The streets are plastered with posters glorifying the suicide bombers. Children trade “martyr cards” instead of Pokemon cards. Necklaces with pictures of terrorists are very popular.

But are there not some Muslims who dislike the teaching of hatred?

This comes from AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA),  an English-language Shia television channel headquartered in London:

Saudis export anti-Christian and anti-Jewish textbooks across the world.

Textbooks used in Saudi Arabia’s schools contain virulent forms of anti-Christian and anti-Jewish bigotry that continue to fuel intolerance and violence around the globe, says a new report.

The problem is far greater than the five million students in Saudi Arabia who use these texts every day, said Nina Shea, director of the Washington-based Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom.

“Because of the Saudis’ great oil wealth, it is able to disseminate its textbooks far and wide,” she wrote in the report, Ten Years On.

“[These textbooks] are posted on the Saudi Education Ministry’s website and are shipped and distributed free by a vast Saudi-sponsored Sunni infrastructure to many Muslim schools, mosques and libraries throughout the world.

“This is not just hate mongering, it’s promoting violence,” she said in an interview. It is exporting terrorism through textbooks.

Christians are referred to as “swine” and Jews as “apes,” while being blamed for much of the world’s ills.

She notes in the report that since the Saudis control Islam’s holiest shrines in Mecca and Medina, they can “disseminate its religious materials among the millions of Muslims making the Hajj each year. Hence, these teachings can have a wide and deep influence.”

ABNA is apparently quoting Nina Shea with approval. But are these Shias exposing these facts about the Sunnis of Saudi Arabia out of genuine disgust or only because they are their doctrinal enemies?

The greatest real threat at present to the non-Muslim world is the aggressive Shia regime of Iran with its active pursuit of nuclear arms.

Iran and Syria: push one and both will come tumbling down.

So Michael Ledeen tells us. He writes at PajamasMedia:

The future of the Middle East (and perhaps of most of the world) depends on the survival or downfall of the tyrannical regimes in Syria and Iran. We need to do everything possible to ensure their downfall. This is the right policy for all the good reasons:

– Strategic: Iran is our major enemy and the leading killer of our people;

– Moral: Iran visits unspeakable horrors on its own people and wants to export this system worldwide;

– Regional: there is no hope for peace in the Middle East so long as this regime remains in power.

And so? What the hell are we waiting for? And why is there not a single candidate who will give voice to it?

The chief thing we’re waiting for is a new commander-in-chief.  And it’s a useful thing for him to know that the Iranian and Syrian regimes survive or fall together; that if one is knocked down the other’s done for.

Can we agree that Iran and Syria now constitute a single strategic problem? Surely Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, thinks so. Otherwise he would not have ordered the Revolutionary Guards to conduct a policy of all-out military, financial, and intelligence support for the Assad regime …

The Syrian crisis is only one very dark cloud in the terrible storm that has descended upon the Iranian regime.

That is why the current announced policy of the Obama administration — “Assad must go” — is incoherent. … If Assad must go, so must Khamenei. They are fused at the belly button, part and parcel of a strategic alliance that is responsible for thousands of American deaths and tens of thousands of American casualties.

Ledeen stresses and illustrates the rottenness of the Iranian regime, and praises “one of the world’s truly heroic figures, the Ayatollah Hossein Kazemeini Boroujerdi, imprisoned for more than six years and subjected to severe torture.” While we are dubious that an Ayatollah can be a world-class hero, we gather that this one is better than the others in the club.

Amazingly, he has continued his campaign from within Tehran’s grim Evin Prison. No charges have ever been brought against him, although it is obvious that he has been singled out for advocating separation of mosque and state, toleration of minority religions, and respect for the civil rights of the Iranian people. In recent days he has suffered a heart attack, but has been denied medical attention. If he dies, perhaps the winged troika of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power, and their many admirers, will mourn the death of this fine man, whom they have judged unworthy of American support.

The three harpies, we call them. They cawed about the need to interfere in Libya on the grounds that civilians needed to be protected, so Obama and NATO helped sharia-loving, black African-hating rebels to oust the tyrant Gaddafi and set up a brand-new oppressive regime including al-Qaeda terrorists. For some reason they do not explain, the harpies and Obama are more concerned for Libyan than Syrian or Iranian civilians.

This administration has always shrunk from speaking the truth about the Iranian regime, which is now engaged in a “killing spree” at the expense of the Persian nation. There have been so many executions and arrests of late that it’s very hard to keep track of them all, ranging from movie directors to Baha’is, from Christian converts to peaceful Sufi dervishes, and on to political protesters and those unlucky enough to be in the area when the security forces are unleashed. This frenzy of repression — more a bloody orgy than a spree — bespeaks enormous insecurity as well as the great evil about which I have been warning for so long.

And it is as corrupt as it is malevolent. …  Recent stories have highlighted huge financial losses, the true dimensions of which are considerably larger than those reported so far.  The corrupt mullacracy has exported a lot of money, and the first glimmerings of their methods are only surfacing now because of the enormous tensions within the regime. …  The Islamic Republic is a system of mutual blackmail, and whenever one of the components feels threatened, it typically responds by firing a warning shot across the others’ bows. The corruption is not just personal graft and fraud, although there is plenty of that to go around.  The major part is systemic. … Iran’s currency continues to crash…

So Khamenei is entitled to be very worried, and we are entitled to give this tottering edifice the little push required to put it out of its misery.

But the easier one to topple is Syria.

The Syrian resistance probably needs material support including weapons and perhaps some training … they will need to fight it out, at least for a while.

We are all for the smashing of the two regimes, but not for an attempt to turn either country into democracies – not because we wouldn’t like them to be real democracies, but because where Islam dominates democracy cannot thrive. (Turkey seemed an exception for the last ninety years or so, but is now reverting to the darkness of sharia.)

There should be no more hearts-and-minds campaigns.

In connection with which Ledeen quotes President Lyndon B. Johnson:

 “If you’ve got them by the balls, the hearts and minds generally follow.“

We’re not fans of LBJ, but we like him for that.

Questions:

To what extent are Iran’s foreign policy and nuclear program owned by Ahmadinejad?

If he fell from power, would there be any significant change in Iran’s relations with America, or in its determination and effort to become nuclear armed, and to annihilate the state of Israel?

Do the mullahs, whose authority continues while presidents come and go, intend any changes?

We may learn the answers if this report from DebkFile is true:

Ahmadinejad … is on his last legs as president. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has stripped him of most of his powers and shut the door against his having any political future. …

His loyalists have been deserting him in droves since he went to New York to deliver an address to the UN General Assembly on Sept. 23. The Supreme Leader used his absence for the coup de grace: The removal of the president’s loyalists from the list of 4,000 contenders running for seats in parliament (the Majlis) next March.

That was easily arranged: Khameini handed his orders to Ayatollah Mohammad Kani, head of the Assembly of Experts, which In the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for screening all contenders for office. He was told to disqualify all the president’s associates. So, in the next Majlis, Ahmadinejad will be shorn of a loyal faction and any buddies sticking to him when his second presidential term runs out in May 2013 will be out of a job. …

If there is to be change, it may not be for the better. Ahmadinejad’s probable successors, according to the report, are “hardliners”. But could they be even worse than Ahmadinejad? Can a plan be devised more aggressive than nuclear war?

Frontrunners for future president most mentioned recently are two hardliners, Majils Speaker Ali Larijani, a former senior nuclear negotiator with the West, and ex-foreign minister Ali Akhbar Veliyati, who is a member of Khamenei’s kitchen cabinet as senior adviser on international relations.

They will have to be patient.

The betting in Tehran is that the Supreme Leader will not actually sack Ahmadinejad but let him last out his term as yesterday’s man, lame duck in political isolation.

So we in the West, and the people of Iran, must also wait patiently for May 2013 to enjoy the downfall of Ahmadinejad, for a fleeting moment before the unimaginable worse becomes apparent.

Today the estimable Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, commenting on the just assassination in Yemen of the American-born al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki, said on Fox News that “we are winning” the “War on Terror”.

Great news, if it were true. But the US, the West, the non-Islamic world are not winning.

For one thing, it is not, and never was, a “war on terror”. It is a war of defense against Islam. And Islam is winning. Terrorism is winning. The West is allowing it to win.

Islam’s terrorist tactic is proving hugely powerful and has gained victories that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. It has cowed all the governments of western Europe, and innumerable authorities at all levels in the US. Islam is advancing day by day. Its terrorism is not practiced continually in all target countries, but the threat of it, and the memories of what has been done and could be done again at any moment, are always there. Because authorities are afraid, Islam creeps on.

Day by day, in Western countries into which Muslims migrate in ever-growing numbers, Islam gains its concessions, its privileges: here a mosque; there a partition of a public swimming pool for Muslim women; here a prayer room in a government building; there the removal from a public library of famous children’s books with pictures of pigs in them; here (in Britain for instance) the allowing of sharia courts and the upholding of their rulings by the state; there entitlements tamely paid to multiple Muslim wives by a welfare state with laws against polygamy; and here and here and here the establishment of faculties of Islamic studies, or even whole colleges, with immense grants of money from the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. Chunks of history, such as the Holocaust, are omitted from school courses because they might offend Muslim students – let truth be damned. Defense contracting companies in the US fall under the ownership of Muslims, who divert a part of the profits – and what defense secrets? – to the Muslim Brotherhood. In places of hot battle, Iraq is plagued with terrorist attacks day after day; and in Afghanistan the Taliban is undefeated and undefeatable, and ready to re-assume its despotic rule when the coalition soldiers have departed. In Libya an al-Qaeda leader has seized a position of power. And all the while, the mullahs of Iran are preparing to attack the West with nuclear weapons.

True, there have not been any more planes flown into buildings in America, but smaller plots of destruction and mass murder are constantly being laid. True, some of them are foiled, but some are attempted (such as an underwear bomb in a plane over Detroit) and some carried out (such as the massacre at Fort Hood), and the motive behind all of them remains: jihad, the holy war of Islam, perpetually waged one way and another for the conquest of the world by successive generations of Muslims, and coming closer to success now than ever before in history.

If the West does not capitulate totally and abjectly – which it might – the fiercest battles are still to come.

Jillian Becker   September 30, 2011

You won’t find much about it in the news media, but the pro-Arab Guardian reports on the bloody suppression of the continuing insurrection in Yemen:

For the past few weeks Change Square in Sana’a has belonged to Yemen’s young revolutionaries. It has been filled with dancing and singing to protest against the regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

But there was no singing on Monday. Instead, the square was filled with the echoes of gunfire and screams as the young demonstrators carried injured friends to safety, their blood dripping in a long crimson trail that led to the field hospital.

It was one of the bloodiest days yet in Yemen’s nine-month uprising, with more than 22 killed and at least 350 wounded. The carnage followed an attack on Sunday that left 30 dead and set the scene for the violence that has broken new ground in the stand-off between anti-government groups and loyalist security forces. …

On Monday night [September 19] Sana’a’s hospitals said they were unable cope with the number of casualties. Demonstrators were urgently calling for blood donors and trying to ferry the wounded to hospitals on Sana’a’s outskirts. Many of the wounds appeared to have been caused by high-calibre rounds fired into the crowds from anti-aircraft guns.

[President] Saleh, who was wounded during an explosion as he prayed in a mosque earlier in the year, remains in Riyadh as the guest of the Saudi Arabian monarch, King Abdullah …

The day’s violence was vividly illustrated bya live video stream from a field hospital set up by protesters after skirmishes with forces loyal to the president. A dead 10 month-old girl with a head wound … a screaming man with no right arm … 23 bodies were laid out in a makeshift morgue.

As night fell the shooting appeared to have spread across Sana’a as rebel units clashed with loyalist forces in a series of running battles across the city. There were reports that security forces loyal to Saleh’s son, Ahmed, were stationed near several of the hospitals that were treating the defected soldiers. …

Anti-government activists in the capital blame state media for the chaos in Yemen, claiming they openly provoke attacks. …

And who does the government blame?

Yemen’s government blamed al-Qaida elements it claimed were inciting trouble inside the anti-government movement for sparking Monday’s violence.

Like all governments everywhere, this one – it will have you believe – has a soft heart and wants nothing more than to be just and to protect the people from harm:

“The government of Yemen expresses its sorrow and condemnation for all acts of violence and bloodshed as those that happened yesterday in Sana’a,” the foreign minister, Abu Bakr al-Kurbi, told the UN human rights council. “The government will investigate and hold accountable all those who were in charge of these acts.” …

It sorrows. It condemns acts of violence and bloodshed. However –

As he spoke government helicopters patrolled the skies of Sana’a and reportedly targeted homes and property of senior opposition leaders.

“But, but – ?” you may splutter, pointing upwards.

It helps to know that in Arab culture, reality is what is said, not what is actually happening.