While we were watching to see how that democracy thing was working out in Iraq, we came across a story that has gone almost totally unreported. Hushed up, in fact.

It’s about an assassination attempt on the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki , who escaped with his life but had to be hospitalized.

Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was injured in an attempt on his life last Thursday, March 11. His armored convoy came under an RPG-automatic fire attack after a bomb hit his car. US and Iraqi authorities have blacked out the incident, but our sources learn that Maliki is being treated for moderate-to-serious injuries at the American military hospital. One source says he was hit in the arm. His doctors apparently found his condition was too serious for him to face TV cameras and deliver a broadcast statement to the nation scheduled Sunday March 14, although members of his State of the Law party were beginning to ask questions about his disappearance.

As the counting of votes continues in Iraq’s general election, it confirms the Maliki party’s lead against its foremost rival, former prime minister Iyad Allawi’s secular al-Iraqiya bloc of liberal Shiites and Sunni Muslims.

Allawi’s is running an active campaign to prove widespread vote-rigging both in the balloting of the 19 million eligible voters in the country and the more one and a half-million ballots outside.

Maliki is running ahead in seven to nine provinces. Still, Allawi who appears to have carried five, hopes to unseat his rival and win a second term as prime minister.

The incumbent, a Shiite, is solidly backed from Washington as its best hope for a stable government that would allow the US military to pull out of Iraq on time in August, seven years after the invasion.

Saudi Arabia and Syria and some circles in the Obama administration promoted Allawi’s bid.

The attack on Malliki was obviously aimed at getting rid of the American candidate for Iraqi prime minister. His State of the Law party is very much a one-man show. Without its leader, it would probably break up into factions and its winning parliamentary members attach themselves to other groupings in the 325-member House.

Of course, if they could have pinned the assassination attempt on Mossad the media would have been all over it.

In our  post below, Reaching for the moon no more, we discuss our belief that Obama, by choice and taste, is committed to Islam. If we are right, it is entirely consistent that he should dislike Israel and wish to turn US policy against the small beleaguered state, even though a majority of Americans strongly support it. (The wishes of the American majority are not something he takes much notice of anyway.)

What Obama needed was an excuse. He’s found one in a zoning decision by the municipal authorities of Jerusalem to build some houses for Jewish occupants in a Jewish neighborhood in Israel’s capital city. The Israeli government recently replied, out of diplomatic courtesy, to a stupid and bullying demand by the Obama administration that building for Jewish settlement on the West Bank should be stopped, by agreeing to suspend such development for a few months, but the agreement specifically excluded Jerusalem from the suspension. There is no cause here for the Obama administration to take offense, but any excuse is better than none when there’s a really big strategy to be advanced.

Jennifer Rubin writes at Commentary’s Contentions that the Obama administration

wants a fight, a scene, a sign to its beloved Palestinian friends that it can be tough, tougher than on any other nation on the planet, with Israel. What we have here is a heartfelt desire to cozy up to the Palestinians; what’s missing is a cogent explanation for what this gets us. No Israeli prime minister has suspended or will suspend building in its capital. No amount of unilateral concessions, even if offered, would unlock the “peace process.” So the point of this is what then? To permanently shift American policy toward [ie now to be against] Israel? To create havoc and further uncertainty as to where the U.S. stands regarding Israeli security? We are seeing the full flowering of what many of us during the campaign suspected and what was revealed in the Cairo speech: Obama has a deep affinity with the victimology mythology of the Palestinians. We have never had such a president and never had such an Israel policy.

The Wall Street Journal is puzzled too:

In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for “putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence” of similar incidents.

The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton [she harangued the Prime Minister, as is her harpy way, for 45 minutes on the telephone] was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel’s acquiescence in the Obama Administration’s increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel’s restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.

But there is no puzzle at all if it is understood that the Obama administration does not want to halt Iran’s nuclear bid. And all becomes even clearer if Obama’s intention is seen to be an exercise in accustoming Israel and the world to such expressions of US outrage against Israel’s ‘behavior’, that, should Israel be contemplating unilateral military action against Iran, it will be thoroughly discouraged.

Jennifer Rubin herself cannot see what the objective is:

It’s difficult to see who could possibly be pleased with this performance — not skeptics of the peace process, not boosters of it, and certainly not the Israelis. For those enamored of processing peace, this must surely come as unwelcome news, for why would the Palestinians make any move at the bargaining table “when the international community continues to press for maximum concrete concessions from the Israelis in exchange for words more worthless than the air upon which they float away as soon as they’re uttered.” And as for the Palestinians, well they’re delighted to have a president so infatuated with their grievances. They’re once again learning the wrong lesson: fixation on settlements and obstruction gets them American support. What it won’t get them, of course, is their own state.

Indeed not. And that’s the point as far as the Palestinians are concerned. They don’t want their own state if it’s to exist alongside the State of Israel. To accept such a state would be to accept  Israel’s legitimacy. Oh, they want a state alright – but one consisting of Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. They’ll accept nothing less. That is why they have rejected all offers of a contiguous state since 1947.

Even AIPAC, until now a blind supporter of Obama, rebukes him, displaying a bewilderment which results only from its own deliberate blindness:

AIPAC calls on the Administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish State. Israel is America’s closest ally in the Middle East. The foundation of the U.S-Israel relationship is rooted in America’s fundamental strategic interest, shared democratic values, and a long-time commitment to peace in the region. Those strategic interests, which we share with Israel, extend to every facet of American life and our relationship with the Jewish State, which enjoys vast bipartisan support in Congress and among the American people.

The Administration should make a conscious effort to move away from public demands and unilateral deadlines directed at Israel, with whom the United States shares basic, fundamental, and strategic interests. The escalated rhetoric of recent days only serves as a distraction from the substantive work that needs to be done with regard to the urgent issue of Iran’s rapid pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the pursuit of peace between Israel and all her Arab neighbors.

Again, all bewilderment clears away if it is understood that Obama does not want Israel to be a close ally, or any ally at all; does not want to stop Iran having nuclear weapons; does not want peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors; does not want there to be a state of Israel. Yes, our suspicion stretches that far! Obama, we guess, is in perfect tune with the international Left, and the international Left passionately desires the dissolution of the state of Israel.

Of course poor old Joe Biden is not aware of this. He’s generally not aware of what is going on or ever has gone on. That’s why he was an ideal envoy to send to Israel at this juncture, to declare everlasting love for the Israelis and immediately afterwards take offense at a quite ordinary and inoffensive thing they’ve done. Any bewilderment he feels is chronic and can never be cleared away.

It is not difficult to see what Obama likes and does not like, wants and does not want, and what is the general thrust of his world-view and political agenda.

He likes climate change. It’s an ideal cause for the far left, because if only people can be hoodwinked into believing that it constitutes a threat to all life on the planet, government can claim that it must be dealt with by forcing us to change the way we live. Dealing with it can hugely tighten government control – not just by the US government but by some global uber-body that can enforce subjection world-wide.

He likes Islam. There’s a pile of evidence for this: his Cairo speech, his bowing to the “king” of Saudi Arabia, his reluctance to interfere with Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, his reaching out to Syria … the full list would be long.

He does not like American military superiority, or American exceptionalism in any form, including its superiority in space exploration (with its potential for enhancing military power).

On January 27, 2010, the Orlando Sentinel reported that:

NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead. So are the rockets being designed to take them there — that is, if President Barack Obama gets his way.

When the White House releases his budget proposal Monday, there will be no money for the Constellation program that was supposed to return humans to the moon by 2020. The troubled and expensive Ares I rocket that was to replace the space shuttle to ferry humans to space will be gone, along with money for its bigger brother, the Ares V cargo rocket that was to launch the fuel and supplies needed to take humans back to the moon.

There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation program at all. …

The White House will direct NASA to concentrate on Earth-science projects — principally, researching and monitoring climate change — and on a new technology research and development program that will one day make human exploration of asteroids and the inner solar system possible. …

The White House budget request, which is certain to meet fierce resistance in Congress, scraps the Bush administration’s Vision for Space Exploration and signals a major reorientation of NASA, especially in the area of human spaceflight.

“We certainly don’t need to go back to the moon,” said one administration official.

Everyone interviewed for this article spoke on condition of anonymity, either because they are not authorized to talk for the White House or because they fear for their jobs.

But Indonesia and other Muslim countries will be getting US help with launching rockets?

On February 16, 2010, the same paper reported that:

Barack Obama has asked NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy.

Specifically, he talked about connecting with countries that do not have an established space program and helping them conduct science missions. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia, including an educational program that examines global climate change.

“We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education [and] other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there,” Bolden said.

The Washington Post reports:

In theory, the Afghan government is in place in Kandahar, but its authority is nominal. Bombings and assassinations have left the government largely isolated behind concrete barricades and blast walls. In the latest burst of violence, a suicide squad struck across the city late Saturday, detonating bombs at a recently fortified prison, the police headquarters and two other sites … At least 30 people were killed.

For the first time in years, however, the U.S. military again has Kandahar in its sights.

American troops are seeking to reclaim the city and surrounding province, where the Taliban has proved resurgent, more than eight years after the U.S.-led invasion forced the group from power. But a visit here last week made clear that American forces will face an insidious enemy that operates mainly in the shadows and exercises indirect control through intimidation and by instilling fear. The provincial governor remains mostly behind barricades. The provincial council has trouble convening because many members have fled to Kabul. The police are viewed as ill-trained, corrupt and possibly in league with criminal gangs.

The environment here [is] more complicated than the one the Marines have encountered in neighboring Helmand province and the town of Marja, where the Afghan government’s presence was nonexistent and where Taliban fighters were massed in large numbers. The Marines took Marja with relative ease, installing a governor handpicked by the Kabul government.

In Kandahar city, residents say, real power rests with Ahmed Wali Karzai, head of the council and the younger brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Karzai has been accused of vote rigging and involvement in the drug trade, allegations he has consistently denied. The eight judges still working in the city and province live together for security, packed into an impregnable compound, behind gray concrete walls topped with razor wire. …

If Kandahar city is sliding into lawlessness, the surrounding province appears in even worse shape. In the city, the government has retreated behind concrete barricades; in much of the countryside, there is no government presence. …

Haji Raz Mohammed, president of a district council, said he regularly negotiates with the Taliban to prevent its fighters from destroying development projects. “The Taliban is there, the Americans are there, the government is there,” he said, “But nobody is really in control of the district.”

To operate so easily, in the city and the province, the Taliban must rely on some level of local support. …

“The majority of people say they are afraid of the Taliban,” said a paid adviser to the government’s reconciliation commission in Kandahar. “But they are better than the government, because the government is so corrupt.”

We are to understand that “the coalition forces” – ie America and Britain  – will win the war in Afghanistan; that the lives lost and the blood shed to turn Afghanistan into a peaceful democratic country have not been sacrificed in vain. We have to try to believe that Afghanistan will soon have a government that is no more corrupt than most western governments are; that the traditionally warring tribes will from  then on forget their old hatreds and live peacefully with one another; that there will be no, or at least much less, drug trading; that the criminal gangs will become less of a danger; that the police will be well-trained and less corrupt; that the Taliban will give up its passionate warfare and bow to the democratically elected government; that the whole miserable place will become something like Surrey or California.

Or what?

And who can believe it?

In our post Christians murdered by Muslims (March 9, 2010), we quoted this from an AP report:

Witnesses said the violence began in the mostly Christian village at about 3 a.m. Sunday — an hour when the area should have been under curfew and guarded by the military. Jos has remained under a curfew since violence in January left more than 300 people dead — the majority of them Muslims. …

Sectarian violence in this region of Nigeria has left thousands dead over the past decade.

But the information troubled us. It didn’t fit with what we know, that in Nigeria Christians are persecuted by Muslims, not Muslims by Christians.

While we hold that religion per se is and always has been a chief cause of bloody conflict, we recognize that some religions are more murderous than others. For the last couple of hundred years Christianity has been a comparatively gentle religion. This is even true in Nigeria, where Christians seem to be concentrating aggression on their own children (see our post Children tortured by Christians, March 9, 2010) rather than fellow Nigerians of other religions. Islam, however, is as violent and bellicose as it has always been, and is actively waging jihad not only against the West but also, with extreme savagery, in Asia and North Africa.

Now comes a report by Caroline Glick that sets the record straight and rings true:

In Nigeria … with the apparent collaboration of the Muslim-dominated Nigerian army, Muslim gangs entered three predominantly Christian villages around the city of Jos and killed innocent civilians, including children, with machetes, axes, and daggers.

According to eyewitness reports, some victims were scalped and many were raped. Most had their hands and feet chopped off. Infants and children were among the butchered.

The massacre was premeditated. According to government spokesmen, Muslim residents were tipped off two days prior to the attack. To ensure their victims were Christians, the jihadists addressed them in Fulani, the language spoken by local Muslims. If the victims responded in Fulani they were saved. Otherwise they were hacked to death.

Sunday’s massacre could have been expected to lead the news worldwide. But it didn’t. Indeed, it was barely noted.

That scant coverage the barbarous events received was itself plagued by obscurity and vagueness. Commentators and reporters alike hid the identities of the aggressors and the victims, characterizing the jihadist butchery as “sectarian violence”.

They also sought to obfuscate its significance, claiming that the Muslim gangs decapitated infants in response to tribal property disputes.

Jessica Olien at The Atlantic not only made these claims, but brushed off the dimensions of the atrocity, writing, “It’s worth noting that police have confirmed only 109 dead.”

After minimizing the death toll, Olien turned her literary daggers on the victims, claiming that they had it coming. As she put it, “It’s hard not to compare the weekend’s attack with one in January in which 150 people from the same Muslim community responsible for Sunday’s attack were brutally killed. The attack on March 7th drew considerably more international attention [than] the previous incident.”

Ah, so unfair. The over-reported atrocity unfairly portrays murdered Christians as victims. But Olien knows better. The Muslims were simply retaliating for the attacks they suffered.

Sadly for Olien and her erudite justification of barbarism, it is far from clear that the victims of January’s violence were Muslims. Writing in the London Times on Thursday, British Baroness Caroline Cox [a highly trustworthy source – JB] claimed that the primary victims of January’s slaughter were Christians, not Muslims.

According to Cox, eyewitnesses to the events in January “indicated that the killings began when Muslim youths attacked Christians on a Sunday morning on their way to church. Muslims were also killed as those under attack began to fight back.”

Cox continued that Sunday’s attack followed a now familiar pattern. Attacks “are initiated by well-armed Muslim extremists, chanting militant slogans, attacking and killing Christian and other non-Muslim citizens and destroying homes and places of worship.

“In the early stages of the attack, the Muslim militants take corpses to mosques where they are photographed and released to the media, creating the impression that these are Muslim victims.”

The international media are only too willing to accept at face value these false accusations of Muslim victimization at the hands of their actual victims. And so are their leftist comrades in international governing circles.

In the wake of Sunday’s massacre, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon both issued statements making no distinction whatsoever between the victims and the aggressors. Both called for “both sides” to act with “restraint.”

We find it hard to believe that Charles Krauthammer or Brit Hume would obey instructions as to what they may say or not say on Fox News.

Yet it does seem that Fox has sold its soul to the devil.

This is from Family Security Matters:

Former prominent guests on Fox News, including Walid Shoebat, contend that the News Corporation has surrendered its “fair and balanced” coverage of Islam and events in the Middle East for a fistful of Saudi cash.

Their contention is based on a series of recent developments within the media giant.

The first development was the news that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, invested $70 million in the Rotana Group, an enterprise owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah. The Rotana Group operates a host of TV channels throughout the Middle East and is a leading producer of Arabic movies.

Next came Mr. Murdoch’s decision to make Abu Dhabi, the headquarters of the News Corporation’s global media operations in the Middle East.

On Monday, the Fox Business Network announced that it will dispatch a full-time correspondent to the Middle East in order to inform Americans of the unique business opportunities in such places as Syria, a country that provides shelter for Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah and support the insurgents in Iraq.

In the wake of this announcement, Fox news commentators – including Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, A.B. Stoddard and Bill Kristol – condemned Geert Wilders, a well-respected Dutch dignitary and critic of radical Islam, as a “fascist” and a “demagogue.” …

In the past, the former member of the Dutch National Parliament was a frequent guest on Fox News. Last February, Bill O’Reilly welcomed Mr. Wilders to America, while condemning a scared Britain for banning him entrance to the country.

Other news about the parent company of Fox News began to surface, including reports that Kingdom Holding owns at least 7 percent of the News Corporation and has become the second largest shareholder in the Murdoch conglomerate. Some speculate that the actual shares controlled by Kingdom Holding through a hedge fund may exceed 25 percent.

Kingdom Holding is owned by Prince Talal …

Listed by Forbes as the world’s 22nd richest person, Prince Talal also owns substantial shares of Time Warner, Apple, eBay, Disney, and Citibank.

As for charity, he gives millions to Hamas and other pro-Palestinian organizations.

Critics say that Prince Talal’s sizeable investment in the News Corporation accounts for Fox News programs critical of Israel, including a series of special reports in which Carl Cameron and Brit Hume [even he? – JB] alleged that Israel gathered information about the attacks of 9/11 and failed to warn the American people.

Walid Shoebat, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who converted to Christianity, charges that Fox News now prohibits critics of Islam and Islamic terror from appearing on its broadcasts.

“He himself (Prince bin Talal) said, ‘I just had to make a phone call to [tell them to] stop using the word Muslim’ regarding the rioting in France,” Mr. Shoebat notes. “Bill O’Reilly says to Ibrahim Hooper, the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that he is an upstanding citizen. Since when was the head of CAIR an upstanding citizen?”

Mr. Shoebat adds that viewers will no longer be seeing any so-called “Islamophobes” on Fox.

“Today, I’m not invited at Fox News. Neither is Robert Spencer or Brigitte Gabriel,” he laments. “But Ibrahim Hooper is invited to speak at Fox News. It used to be that experts on terrorism who are critical of the Islamic views [were] able to get a voice on Fox News. Those days are gone.”

Mr. Shoebat says that instead of airing those critical views of Islam, Fox News now legitimizes Hooper, the spokesman for CAIR, a group which he maintains is a front for Islamic terrorists.

We were lucky to have Fox News to tell us what the left-slanted mainstream media concealed, and to bring us opinion from both the right and the left. Fox News was “fair, balanced, and unafraid” as they claimed and continue to claim.

But is the claim still justified?

Not if we are to judge by their treatment of the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who is on trial in Holland for expressing an opinion, well supported by facts, on the horrific ideology of Islam.

Here are three articles which together, in sequence, tell the sorry story:

The first is by David Swindle at Front Page:

Fox News’ Special Report with Bret Baier featured a segment tonight [March 8, 2010] on Dutch politician Geert Wilders’s blasphemy trial in the Netherlands.

The segment featured these descriptors of Wilders:

“A man who inspires fierce emotions.”

“Anger on the streets of London. The object of the demonstration was a recent visit by Far-Right Dutch politician Geert Wilders.”

“His Anti-Muslim rhetoric makes him a target of critics.”

“Wilders says Muslim head scarves should be banned, he’s branded the Muslim prophet Muhammed a pedophile and likened the Muslim Koran to Mein Kampf.”

“Far-Right”?

The “Far-Right” label is meant to smear Wilders by trying to associate him with racist European political parties like the BNP [British National Party] that actually warrant the label.

“Anti-Muslim”? Try Anti-Islam. Wilders’ film Fitna exposes how Islam’s first victims are always Muslims. [A link is provided to the film.]

Finally, the report cites three examples of Wilders’ allegedly extreme, “Far-Right” views. While whether head scarves should be banned is a matter of opinion, the last two points — Muhammad’s pedophilia and the Koran’s racist and genocidal injunctions are points of fact.

Later on Special Report they featured a panel in response to the story in which host Jim Angle questioned Charles Krauthammer [whom we greatly respect and admire, and usually, but not this time, agree with – JB], Bill Kristol [whom we respect, and often, but not this time, agree with], and A.B. Stoddard. Krauthammer said that Wilders was wrong about Islam — that the Dutch politician did not see a difference between Islam and Islamism.  So those who follow “Islam” ignore passages of the Koran and those who follow “Islamism” actually do what the book tells them to do? Is that right, Charles? Just want to make sure I’m up to speed on the preferred Orwellianisms on the Politically Correct Right.

Stoddard’s comments — she said that Wilders saw no difference between terrorist Muslims and non-violent Muslims — indicate that it’s likely that her first exposure to Wilders was the segment. And Kristol? He dismissed Wilders as a “demagogue.”

This is supposed to be the “conservative” network here and they are unable to present a single panelists who will support Wilders.

The next is by John L. Work, also at Front Page:

Following the gang hatchet job on Dutch Parliamentarian Geert Wilders by two separate FOX News crews a few nights ago, FOX pulled down all the video footage from the internet – like it never happened. Well, it did happen. Jim Angle, Glenn Beck [who we think is doing a great job exposing the Obama administration and is a splendid entertainer] Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and A.B Stoddard all did the dirty work during two different shows. …

First, let’s look at Beck’s six minute interview with Wilders from February of 2009. Beck warmly welcomed Wilders and gave him plenty of air-time. Wilders presented his case for the noble cause of resistance to the growing Islamic repression of free speech in The Netherlands. Beck treated Wilders like the hero he is.

A year later it is impossible to reconcile Beck’s posture and position in 2009 with his attack on Wilders this week – unless one allows for the possibility that Beck is now being influenced by powers above him at FOX News. [A link is provided to Beck’s 2009 interview with Wilders.]

Now for this week’s piece, in which Beck labeled Wilders a fascist [Another link is provided.]:

Let’s analyze the evidence:

Wilders, himself, has not changed since the first Beck interview – not his speech, not his positions, and not his beliefs. What has changed immensely is his stature in The Netherlands. He is much more powerful now than he was when he first appeared on Beck’s show in 2009. In fact, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that Wilders could become Prime Minister.

Now, FOX News is astonishingly trying to destroy Wilders. Ignoramus, demagogue and fascist are pretty nasty labels to lay on anyone. Beck was not recognizable this week from his demeanor and position with Wilders in 2009.

Other than Muslims throughout the world, who would be unhappy with Wilders’ rise to power and prominence in The Netherlands? Who stands to gain from stopping the most prominent and eloquent defender of Western Civilization in Europe? Who stands to gain from having Wilders’ reputation hacked to pieces by a major American news outlet? You can figure this out. [Another link is provided.]

A whole lot has changed at FOX News, folks.

This last link leads to our third source, an article by Diana West:

It was pile-on time at Fox News tonight as Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, a gal whose name I missed [update — A.B. Stoddard] and Bill Kristol all branded Geert Wilders beyond the pale tonight.

Beck classified Geert as a fascist.

Krauthammer said Geert didn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism — never mind that according to Krauthammer’s idea of Islamic scholarship, neither did Mohammed.

[Stoddard] said she agreed with Imam Krauthammer and added that if people like this (Geert) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences.

Kristol called Geert a demagogue.

In other words, a stomach-turning display.

Fact is, this anti-Geert pundit solidarity will only delight Newscorp [owners of Fox] stakeholder Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. That’s because it is Wilders in the Netherlands who stands as the unexpectedly strong spearhead of resistance to the Islamization of Europe and the wider West. As a scion of the most powerful sharia dictatorship in the world, Prince Talal doesn’t like that. How fortunate for him that Fox News doesn’t like it, either.

It’s another real African story.

The Wichita Eagle of Kansas reports:

Up to half the food aid intended for the millions of hungry people in Somalia is being diverted to corrupt contractors, radical Islamic militants and local U.N. workers, according to a U.N. Security Council report.

Only half?

The report blames the problem on improper food distribution by the U.N. World Food Program in the African nation, which has been plagued by fighting and humanitarian suffering for nearly two decades, according to a U.N. diplomat. …

Because of the instability in Somalia, transporters must truck bags of food through roadblocks manned by a bewildering array of militias, insurgents and bandits. Kidnappings and executions are common and the insecurity makes it difficult for senior U.N. officials to travel to the country to check on procedures. Investigators could end up relying on the same people they are probing to provide protection.

Strange that we hardly hear a word about this, though surely it’s a much discussed issue in the UN?

There are of course UN sanctions against Somalia:

[A] U.N. diplomat told The Associated Press that “a significant diversion” of food delivered by the U.N. food program is going to cartels that were selling it illegally, according to the report by the panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions against Somalia. …

Although WFP contracts are supposed to be subject to open tender and competitive bidding, “in practice the system offers little or no scope for genuine competition,” the diplomat quoted the report as saying.

The transportation contracts, with a budget of $200 million, constitute the single most important source of revenue in Somalia, the diplomat quoted the report as saying. … “On account of their contracts with WFP, these men have become some of the wealthiest in Somalia” …

Some 3.7 million people in Somalia – nearly half of the population – need aid. Earlier this year, the country’s main extremist Islamic [ie terrorist] group, al-Shabab, said it would prohibit WFP from distributing food in areas under its control because it says the food undercuts farmers selling recently harvested crops. [They have a point there – JB]

Omar Jamal, first secretary for Somalia’s U.N. Mission, told the AP on Wednesday that the problem is “the absence of law and order.”

We wouldn’t argue with that.

“Radicals, al-Shabab have to eat. And ever wonder where their foods come from? Of course, from WFP and UNDP,” said Jamal, also referring to the U.N. Development Program.

Someone really ought to do something about it –

“Empower the Somali government to deal with corrupt contractors, Islamists and war profiteers awash in the country.”

Exactly how?

The terrorists who are doing so well out of all this misplaced philanthropy and endemic corruption have a complaint to make:

Al-Shabab [which] controls 95 percent of WFP’s areas of operation … accused the agency of handing out food unfit for human consumption and of secretly supporting “apostates,” or those who have renounced Islam.

Approximately 30 percent of the food goes to the distributors or “implementing partners,” between 5 and 10 percent goes to the armed group in control of the area, and 10 percent to the ground transporter, the diplomat quoted the report as saying.

The rest – about 50 percent of the food aid – is distributed to the needy population.

If they say so.

A couple of footnotes:

The U.S. reduced its funding to Somalia last year after the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control feared aid could be diverted to al-Shabab, which the U.S. State Department says has links to al-Qaida. The issue remains unresolved.

Finance Minister Abdirahman Omar Osman … said the Somali government would investigate the allegations of diverted food aid.

Sure it will. And what a difference it will make.

THE UN MUST BE DESTROYED!

The British are becoming dhimmis in their own land.

Here is a portrait of a British dhimmi:

A SCHOOL has become the first non-Islamic primary in Britain to get strict accreditation for serving Halal food, it emerged yesterday.

Although it is a non-faith school, 95 per cent of pupils at Daisyfield Primary School in Blackburn, Lancs are Muslim.

In an illustration of the rapidly changing face of Britain, it is the first state, non-Muslim, primary school to get the certificate from the Halal Monitoring Committee. …

Headmaster Peter Fenton, who received the certificate from local councillor Salim Mulla, said: “I am pleased our self-managed kitchen has been recognised as meeting the standards of the Halal Monitoring Committee for purchase, storage and preparation of our meals.”

Moulana Hanif, Halal Monitoring Committee local area representative, said: “I would personally like to thank Daisyfield for taking this very important step towards supplying genuine Halal products to the children attending the school.

“We hope all schools will follow, so that genuine Halal products are provided to Muslim children, which is a very important part of our faith.”

Salim Mulla presents the Halal certificate to head Peter Fenton

A Wall Street Journal editorialist in a grossly distorted encomium to Muslim Spain, mentioned the “pan-confessional humanism”  of Andalusian Islam, and even asserted: “one could argue that the oft-bewailed missing ‘reformation’ of Islam was under way there until it was aborted by the Inquisition.”

Maria Rosa Menocal, Yale Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, in her 2002 hagiography of Muslim Spain, The Ornament of the World, has further maintained that “the new Islamic polity not only allowed Jews and Christians to survive, but following Quranic mandate, by and large protected them.”

These quotations are from an essay by Bat Ye’or and Andrew G. Bostom at Jihad Watch. The authors go on to explain that the commonly held view that Andalusian Islam was enlightened and tolerant is a myth:

We believe that reiterating these ahistorical, roseate claims about Muslim Spain abets the contemporary Islamist agenda …

Iberia (Spain) was conquered in 710-716 AD by Arab tribes originating from northern, central and southern Arabia. Massive Berber and Arab immigration, and the colonization of the Iberian peninsula, followed the conquest. Most churches were converted into mosques. Although the conquest had been planned and conducted jointly with a strong faction of royal Iberian Christian dissidents, including a bishop, it proceeded as a classical jihad with massive pillages, enslavement, deportations and killings.

Toledo, which had first submitted to the Arabs in 711 or 712, revolted in 713. The town was punished by pillage and all the notables had their throats cut. In 730, the Cerdagne (in Septimania, near Barcelona) was ravaged and a bishop burned alive. In the regions under stable Islamic control, Jews and Christians were tolerated as dhimmis – like elsewhere in other Islamic lands – and could not build new churches or synagogues nor restore the old ones. Segregated in special quarters, they had to wear discriminatory clothing. Subjected to heavy taxes, the Christian peasantry formed a servile class attached to the Arab domains; many abandoned their land and fled to the towns. Harsh reprisals with mutilations and crucifixions would sanction the Mozarab (Christian dhimmis) calls for help from the Christian kings. Moreover, if one dhimmi harmed a Muslim, the whole community would lose its status of protection, leaving it open to pillage, enslavement and arbitrary killing.

By the end of the eighth century, the rulers of North Africa and of Andalusia had introduced Malikism, one of the most rigorous schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and subsequently repressed the other Muslim schools of law. Three quarters of a century ago, at a time when political correctness was not dominating historical publication and discourse, Evariste Levi-Provencal, the pre-eminent scholar of Andalusia, wrote: “The Muslim Andalusian state thus appears from its earliest origins as the defender and champion of a jealous orthodoxy, more and more ossified in a blind respect for a rigid doctrine, suspecting and condemning in advance the least effort of rational speculation.”

The humiliating status imposed on the dhimmis and the confiscation of their land provoked many revolts, punished by massacres, as in Toledo (761, 784-86, 797). After another Toledan revolt in 806, seven hundred inhabitants were executed. Insurrections erupted in Saragossa from 781 to 881, Cordova (805), Merida (805-813, 828 and the following year, and later in 868), and yet again in Toledo (811-819); the insurgents were crucified, as prescribed in Quran 5:33.

The revolt in Cordova of 818 was crushed by three days of massacres and pillage, with 300 notables crucified and 20,000 families expelled. Feuding was endemic in the Andalusian cities between the different sectors of the population: Arab and Berber colonizers, Iberian Muslim converts (Muwalladun) and Christian dhimmis (Mozarabs). There were rarely periods of peace in the Amirate of Cordova (756-912), nor later.

Al-Andalus represented the land of jihad par excellence. Every year, sometimes twice a year, raiding expeditions were sent to ravage the Christian Spanish kingdoms to the north, the Basque regions, or France and the Rhone valley, bringing back booty and slaves. Andalusian corsairs attacked and invaded along the Sicilian and Italian coasts, even as far as the Aegean Islands, looting and burning as they went. Thousands of people were deported to slavery in Andalusia, where the caliph kept a militia of tens of thousand of Christian slaves brought from all parts of Christian Europe (the Saqaliba), and a harem filled with captured Christian women. Society was sharply divided along ethnic and religious lines, with the Arab tribes at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the Berbers who were never recognized as equals, despite their Islamization; lower in the scale came the mullawadun converts and, at the very bottom, the dhimmi Christians and Jews.

The Andalusian Maliki jurist Ibn Abdun (d. 1134) offered these telling legal opinions regarding Jews and Christians in Seville around 1100 C.E.: “No Jew or Christian may be allowed to wear the dress of an aristocrat, nor of a jurist, nor of a wealthy individual; on the contrary they must be detested and avoided. It is forbidden to [greet] them with the [expression] “Peace be upon you”… “A distinctive sign must be imposed upon them in order that they may be recognized and this will be for them a form of disgrace.”

Ibn Abdun also forbade the selling of scientific books to dhimmis, under the pretext that they translated them and attributed them to their co-religionists and bishops. In fact, plagiarism is difficult to prove since whole Jewish and Christian libraries were looted and destroyed…

In Granada, the Jewish viziers Samuel Ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph, who protected the Jewish community, were both assassinated between 1056 to 1066, followed by the annihilation of the Jewish population by the local Muslims. It is estimated that up to five thousand Jews perished in the pogrom by Muslims that accompanied the 1066 assassination. This figure equals or exceeds the number of Jews reportedly killed by the Crusaders during their pillage of the Rhineland, some thirty years later, at the outset of the First Crusade…

The Muslim Berber Almohads in Spain and North Africa (1130-1232) wreaked enormous destruction on both the Jewish and Christian populations…  massacre, captivity, and forced conversion… Maimonides, the renowned philosopher and physician, experienced the Almohad persecutions, and had to flee Cordoba with his entire family in 1148 …

Although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk this utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews: “..the Arabs have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us… Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they..”

A valid summary assessment of interfaith relationships in Muslim Spain, and the contemporary currents responsible for obfuscating that history, can be found in Richard Fletcher’s engaging Moorish Spain. Mr. Fletcher offers these sobering, unassailable observations:

“The witness of those who lived through the horrors of the Berber conquest, of the Andalusian fitnah in the early eleventh century, of the Almoravid invasion- to mention only a few disruptive episodes- must give it [i.e., the roseate view of Muslim Spain] the lie. The simple and verifiable historical truth is that Moorish Spain was more often a land of turmoil than it was of tranquility…Tolerance? Ask the Jews of Granada who were massacred in 1066, or the Christians who were deported by the Almoravids to Morocco in 1126 (like the Moriscos five centuries later). In the second half of the twentieth century a new agent of obfuscation makes its appearance: the guilt of the liberal conscience, which sees the evils of colonialism – assumed rather than demonstrated – foreshadowed in the Christian conquest of al-Andalus and the persecution of the Moriscos (but not, oddly, in the Moorish conquest and colonization). Stir the mix well together and issue it free to credulous academics and media persons throughout the western world. Then pour it generously over the truth… [But] Moorish Spain was not a tolerant and enlightened society even in its most cultivated epoch.”