The full-length version of the acclaimed documentary film Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was released on September 11 and is now available from all the major DVD retailers (although Amazon is already sold out).
I raved about the shortened version when it aired on Fox News, and quoted others who raved as well. For instance, film critic Michael Medved called Obsession "one of the most powerful, expertly crafted and undeniably important films I've seen this year." You need to see this film. Your friends need to see it, too. It would make a great Christmas or Hanukkah gift.
Using images from Arab TV, rarely seen in the West, Obsession reveals an ‘insider's view' of the hatred the Radicals are teaching, their incitement of global jihad, and their goal of world domination. With the help of experts, including first-hand accounts from a former PLO terrorist, a Nazi youth commander, and the daughter of a martyred guerilla leader, the film shows, clearly, that the threat is real.
A peaceful religion is being hijacked by a dangerous foe, who seeks to destroy the shared values we stand for. The world should be very concerned.
Click here or on the banner below to order the DVD for $19.95, or to watch a full-screen, high-resolution stereo presentation online (broadband required) for $4.95, which can be applied toward a DVD purchase.
I've had doubts about bin Laden being alive for some time now, and the two recent videos just reinforced them. This CNET News Blog post pointed out some fascinating analyses of the videos by Dr. Neal Krawetz at Secure Computing. In As Alive as Elvis, Dr. Krawetz reported his findings regarding the Sept. 7 video, which included:
The video shows Bin Laden in his white hat, white shirt, and yellow sweater. This is the same clothing he wore in the 2004-10-29 video. In 2004 he had it unzipped, but in 2007 he zipped up the bottom half. Besides the clothing, it appears to be the same background, same lighting, and same desk. Even the camera angle is almost identical. …
… If you overlay the 2007 video with the 2004 video, his face has not changed in three years — only his beard is darker and the contrast on the picture has been adjusted.
What are the chances of nothing changing (except his beard) in three years? Virtually zero. The clips appear to have been recorded three years ago.
The audio does make reference to relatively current events (people and places). However, these references are ONLY made during the frozen-frame portions and only after splices in the audio track. The animated portions make no references to current events. …
The big question is: is the audio from Bin Laden? I'm not an audio expert (yet) and since I don't know Arabic, I cannot tell if there is an accent or if the accent changes. I do know that the room echo and background sounds change during different audio clips. And there are so many splices that I cannot help but wonder if someone spliced words and phrases together. …
With regards to Bin Laden's beard… It cannot be detected with any of my tools as being digitally modified. However:
The whole inner frame of Bin Laden was resaved at least twice. The number of reseaves does not appear to be enough to distort significant modifications.
The colorful border was also saved twice. However…
Even though the Bin Laden frame and border were both saved twice each, they were not saved at the same time. I know this because the Jpeg artifacts (8×8 squares) are on the 8×8 grid for the Bin Laden frame, but are shifted over on the border — the border's 8×8 artifacts do not lie on the Jpeg 8×8 grid.
The whole video frame (border + Bin Laden) was combined from many parts. Here's the order, starting with the last thing added:
As-Sahab logo, English subtitles, and text below Bin Laden (alternates between English and Arabic) was added last.
"The Solution" and Arabic in the top right corner was the penultimate addition.
The Bin Laden frame and border were combined.
In the Bin Laden frame, there is no indication of manipulation and no indication of a chromakey replacement. In the border, the spinning globe was modified along with the strobing colors.
Both saturation and PCA shows fine horizontal stripes on Bin Laden and the background. These came from interlaced video sources. In contrast, the text elements and As-Sahab logo appear to be from non-interlaced sources.
FWIW, interlaced suggests (but only suggests) older video and non-interlaced suggests newer.
If I had to bet, I'd bet bin Laden is dead, and Zawahiri, the brains behind al Qaeda, is keeping the charismatic figurehead "alive" for his PR value.
I WASN’T PLANNING ON POSTING A 9/11 reminiscence today. I wrote a lot of them back in the day, and I didn’t think I had anything fresh to say. Whatever I wrote today about 9/11 was going to stay between me and my hard drive. Then a few hours ago I got a letter from a Cantor Fitzgerald employee. It brought back memories of the day. Suddenly saying nothing about 9/11, especially on a day when so many Senators are talking about al Qaeda as part of a lame attempt to score partisan political points, seemed inappropriate.
We all know Rove is behind the newest Osama video, right? I mean there's no way Osama released a video on his own imitating every single left-wing talking point; that's just too perfect for us. He did everything but end his tirade with, "In conclusion, murderous terrorists and liberals are pretty much ideologically the same. Once again, if you take anything away from my speech, it should be that terrorists and liberals are almost exactly the same thing."
This is just too perfect for us; it has to be Rove.
BTW, I think it's funny how the liberals are acting like all we right wing bloggers conspired together to use the talking point that Osama sounds like a left-wing blogger. Did they ever consider that the reasons we all said he sounds exactly like a left-wing blogger is because he sounds exactly like a left-wing blogger? If in his video he had said, "Hey! Hey! Hey!" in a deep voice, we'd all be saying he sounded like Fat Albert. Instead, he said, "Democrats need to get America our of Iraq now and you need to read Chomsky and worry about global warming," so we're all saying he sounds like a liberal blogger. Occam's razor.
For me gay marriage is a human rights issue. It is a natural development of the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties, part of extending to gay people what was extended to African-Americans at that time. Simple equality. …
All that said, I doubt I will be voting in 2008 because of the candidate’s stand on same-sex marriage and not just because (see above) it is difficult to determine what those candidates really think on the issue. Those of us concerned about human rights, about the separation of church and state, about gay rights and women’s rights, about democracy itself, have bigger fish to fry – the War on Terror. And here is the connection in my belief system.
Because I am such an adamant adherent of gay rights, women’s rights, human rights – the values that evolved out of the Enlightenment – I have to vote for the candidate I think will best carry forth that war (by whatever means appropriate at the moment) to defend those Enlightenment values. This means, unless I am very lucky, that I will not always love that person in all areas. Indeed, I may have to swallow some very bitter pills, but these are serious times, by far the most serious of my lifetime. And I was born at the end of World War II.
I never cease to be amazed – and perhaps it is my own myopia – that my former colleagues on the Left can be blind to this situation. They act as if the threat is not real and is only a blip caused by a post 9/11 overreaction by George Bush, thus ignoring virtually all of Western history since the year 800, not to mention the overwhelming demographic changes of recent decades. (John Edwards – interestingly an opponent of gay marriage – recently called the “War on Terror” a bumper sticker. At least, he’s consistent.) The very people most threatened by the ideology of Islamism and the institution of Sharia law – gays, women, freethinkers – are often the very people least likely to defend themselves against it. What we have on our Left is a culture of denial equal to, if not exceeding, the German Jews of the 1930s and one that has taken the canard about all politics being local to an almost ludicrous extreme.
Jose Padilla will spend the rest of his life in jail:
Padilla and co-defendants Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face life in prison because they were convicted of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas. All three were also convicted of two terrorism material support counts that carry potential 15-year sentences each.
Jurors reached a verdict Thursday and it was read at 2 p.m. before U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke. The jury of seven men and five women deliberated for about a day and a half following a three-month trial.
Over at Daily Kos, the commenters are weeping for poor Jose, expressing disbelief at the quick verdict, and denouncing his detention and prosecution as reprehensible. The consensus seems to be that he was tortured until he went insane. They're ignoring the evidence that his mental state predates his apprehension. And they're confusing a commitment to Islamofascism with insanity — an understandable error.
Commentators and pundits have been pondering the meaning of al Qaeda's horrific truck bomb attacks in far northern, peaceful, Iraqi Kurdistan. What prompted them to attack a small, isolated ethnic group, far from U.S. troops, the surge, and disputed territory? Most missed the point.
This attack wasn't aimed at the Yazidis, or at the Kurdistan region, or even at the government of Iraq. It was aimed squarely at NBC, ABC, CBS, and the United States Congress. The Yazidi villages were just a convenient, low-risk target on which to unleash the maximum possible carnage. The reason for killing hundreds of Yazidis is to shock and dismay Americans. Expect more such "media events" between now and September 15.
Today's column by Ralph Peters addresses the issue well (emphasis added):
The victims were ethnic Kurd Yazidis, members of a minor sect with pre-Islamic roots. Muslim extremists condemn them (wrongly) as devil worshippers. The Yazidis live on the fringes of society.
That's one of the two reasons al Qaeda targeted those settlements: The terrorist leaders realize now that the carnage they wrought on fellow Muslims backfired, turning once-sympathetic Sunni Arabs against them. The fanatics calculated that Iraqis wouldn't care much about the Yazidis. …
But the second reason for those dramatic bombings was that al Qaeda needs to portray Iraq as a continuing failure of U.S. policy. Those dead and maimed Yazidis were just props: The intended audience was Congress.
Al Qaeda has been badly battered. It's lost top leaders and thousands of cadres. Even more painful for the Islamists, they've lost ground among the people of Iraq, including former allies. Iraqis got a good taste of al Qaeda. Now they're spitting it out.
The foreign terrorists slaughtering the innocent recognize that their only remaining hope of pulling off a come-from-way-behind win is to convince your senator and your congressman or -woman that it's politically expedient to hand a default victory to a defeated al Qaeda.
Peters goes on to explain that, barring the triumph of the "peace at any price" crowd here at home, and despite the likelihood of more massive bloodshed in the near term, the Petraeus plan is working well and the longer-term outlook in Iraq is pretty good. Read the whole thing.
The Islamofascists in general and al Qaeda in particular are masters of media manipulation and propaganda (the founders of the movement learned at the side of the Nazis). They're also keen students of history, and they know all about the 1968 Tet offensive, in which Viet Cong forces were defeated and decimated at every turn, but won a huge victory on the public relations front, leading Walter Cronkite to declare Vietnam a failure and destroying public support for the conflict.
Will al Qaeda be able to replicate Tet? I don't think so. For one thing, the media environment has changed, and we no longer rely on a Walter Cronkite to tell us "that's the way it is." Hardly anyone watches the Katie Courics and Keith Olbermans today. And in any case, if they try to paint an al Qaeda Tet as a tremendous defeat for the U.S., the new media will quickly counter with evidence to the contrary.
Have you been following the news from Lebanon? For some time now, the Lebanese army has been slugging it out with Islamofascist militias. The recent fighting has involved Sunni jihadists associated with Hamas and/or al Qaeda, not the Shi’ite Iranian proxies of Hezbollah. Here’s the latest report and photo from the AP via Fox News:
Islamic militants fired back volleys of rockets at the Lebanese army on Friday as troops pounded the remaining suspected hideouts of the Fatah Islam fighters holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon.
Regular artillery and tank fire could be seen falling on Nahr el-Bared, sending plumes of black smoke rising in the air over the refugee camp’s bullet-punctured buildings.
The story goes on to describe the rocket fire, the heavy bombardment of the “camp” on Thursday, the number of soldiers killed, and various tactical and other matters. Reuters has a similar story with similar pictures.
Reading these and other recent reports has made me wonder about some things.
The Lebanese army is fighting jihadists holed up in civilian neighborhoods, just as the Israelis did last year, and the Lebanese artillery and tank attacks seem much less restrained and precise. Why is the coverage so different? The AP story quoted above is 18 paragraphs long, and it isn’t until the 17th and 18th paragraphs that civilians are mentioned (emphasis added):
At least 60 militants and more than 20 civilians have been reported killed in the fighting, the country’s worst internal violence since the 1975-90 civil war. The camp housed more than 30,000 Palestinian refugees before the battles began.
Most of the camp’s residents already have fled, but a few thousand are thought to have stayed in their homes.
A few thousand civilians stayed? Look at the photo above and the others at the Reuters story linked above. That kind of bombardment of a densely-populated area has been going on for days. Don’t you suppose the “more than 20” reported killed is the tip of the iceberg? Why are the AP and Reuters not even bothering to provide an accurate count of the reported civilian casualties, much less an estimate of actual civilian casualties?
Why are civilian casualties barely worth noticing this summer? Last July, when Israel’s precision strikes against Hezbollah occasionally produced civilian casualties, AP and Reuters cranked out an endless series of breathless stories and photos documenting every last corpse and grieving woman. Where are the dead children and bloody shirts this time? Where is this summer’s equivalent of “green helmet man”? Why are AP and Reuters so much less interested in civilians killed by Lebanese than civilians killed by Israelis?
And one more question. Why are communities filled with 6- and 8-story apartment buildings called “refugee camps”?
Yesterday, President Bush spoke at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., a Saudi-funded mosque that preaches the most extreme Wahhabi theology/ideology, virulent Jew-hatred, and total rejection of virtually all aspects of Western culture and civilization. That's bad enough. While there, he announced that he's going to appoint a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference whose mission would be to "listen and learn." That's even worse.
As Steve Emerson pointed out, what this envoy will learn is that the OIC is run by anti-American, terror-embracing, Jew-hating radicals who argue that the 9/11 attacks were an understandable response to "the aggressions and discriminations committed by the West." The OIC embraces and supports Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Hezbollah, to name a few, as "freedom fighters."
Charles Johnson was annoyed at all the journalists covering the story (emphasis added):
In all the mainstream media articles about President Bush’s announcement that he’s appointing an envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, not a single one actually looks at the history and statements of this hate-filled Islamic group, whose charter explicitly states that it was formed to help implement the destruction of Israel.
The creation of the post will mark the first time a U.S. president has designated an envoy to the 38-year-old organization, which promotes Islamic solidarity and cooperation.
I guess it would just be too difficult for these journalists to actually do some research and find out what the OIC really promotes. They’ve even covered it themselves in the past, but now seem to have forgotten about Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed’s statement that “Jews rule the world by proxy” and Muslims must unite to find a way to wipe them out:Speech by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia to the Tenth Islamic Summit Conference.
Or they could just search LGF, for years of stories about the hate speech and support for murder and jihad for which the Organization of the Islamic Conference is infamous: LGF search: “Islamic Conference”.
First, the Bush administration sucked up to Abbas and pressured Israel to arm and fund an organization dedicated to its destruction (not that Olmert needed much pressuring; dhimmitude seems to come naturally to him). Now this.
It seems that the anti-American, anti-Israel leftists who dominate the career ranks at the State Department have completely carried the day. I'm very disappointed. This is idiotarian pandering to people who've loudly and repeatedly said they're our enemy. When will we take their word for it and act accordingly?
I had high hopes for Muslims Against Jihad, Martyn Burke's second documentary about moderate Muslims standing up against the radical Islamists. I was rather disappointed, and I blame Fox News. The film's continuity and impact were undermined by the many breaks and awkward edits, E.D. Hill's annoyingly hyperbolic commentary, and her relentless focus on PBS instead of the film during the interview segments with Burke and Frank Gaffney. Overall, it seemed more like Fox Against PBS than Muslims Against Jihad.
The film had some good segments, and even the interview had a few interesting moments. Chief among the latter was Burke recounting the meeting with a PBS vice president who wanted him to fire Gaffney for being a conservative and who asked Burke incredulously, "Don't you check into the politics of the people you work with?" Burke said he replied, "No. No, I do not. I check into their journalistic integrity."
I suppose I'm not really surprised, but it's an outrage that a high-ranking executive at the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting believes that of course producers should "check into the politics of people."
As for Burke's work, I'd like to see Muslims Against Jihad uncut and uninterrupted. And I still have high hopes for the first of the two documentaries, Islam vs. Islamists, which may finally be shown by individual PBS stations (probably at 3 AM). It got a glowing review from Oscar-nominated screenwriter Roger L. Simon, who knows a little something about good film-making. Simon especially liked that the film is not didactic or propagandistic, but "riveting and creatively made."
Time to start bugging the local PBS affiliates to show Islam vs. Islamists. I suppose I have to send them a check to get their attention, huh?
Gabriel grew up in Lebanon in a Maronite Christian community. During Lebanon's civil war, she spent seven years of her childhood in a bomb shelter and saw most of her friends killed by the Islamofascists. She speaks with passion and conviction about the Islamofascist war against Christians, Jews, secularists, and other infidels, and the threat it poses to freedom, democracy, and Western Civilization. If you're in the Loveland area, don't miss this opportunity to see her.
The services are open to the public, and no tickets are required. There will be a book signing after each service. The address is:
Resurrection Fellowship 6502 Crossroads Boulevard Loveland, CO 80538 970-667-5479
Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center is a documentary about moderate Muslims and the intimidation and threats they're subjected to by the radical Islamists. It was made by Canadian documentary filmmaker Martyn Burke, with a $700,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, for the 11-part PBS series America at the Crossroads. But PBS removed the film from the series because it was "alarmist" and not fair to the radical Islamists.
Read this interview with Burke, who's certainly not a raving neo-con, for the remarkable story. The film's critics at PBS and its D.C. affiliate, WETA, argued that the moderate Muslims in the film weren't "true" Muslims because they believed in democracy and were "Westernized" — the anti-democratic, sharia-promoting Islamists were the truer representatives of Islam and weren't treated fairly in the film! They also demanded that Burke fire co-producers Frank Gaffney and Alex Alexiev because they're conservatives.
Alyssa Lappen posted some interesting details at American Thinker last month about the folks at WETA (which produced the Crossroads series) who nixed Burke's work. One of the five-member committee that killed the documentary is associated with the Nation of Islam. Another is Crossroads producer Leo Eaton, whose father, Charles Eaton, a.k.a. Hassan Abdul Hakeem, is a Muslim convert with numerous ties to radical clerics.
You can't see the original Islam vs. Islamists yet, although PBS has relented just a bit and will allow the Oregon PBS to show it and make it available to other PBS stations. But tonight Sunday night, the Fox News Channel is airing Burke's companion/spinoff documentary, Muslims Against Jihad. Tune in, Tivo, or fire up the DVR or VCR. It's on at 9 PM Eastern (that's 7 Mountain) and again Sunday morning at 3 AM Eastern.
UPDATE: Fox News rescheduled Muslims Against Jihad for Sunday night at 9 PM so they could give Geraldo and a gaggle of shyster "criminal justice consultants" an extra hour to blather about the breaking news in this week's Crime of the Century. Sheesh.
I'm going to do something unusual for me — I'm going to urge you to watch a rap video. As with most rap videos, I can't really understand the words (although I'm pretty certain these lyrics don't include "bitch," "ho," "motherf*cker," or ni**er"). But, unlike most rap videos, I found this one's message easy to understand and moving:
You want to know more about the repression that upset these Iranian rappers? Gateway Pundit has pictures of how unveiled women are treated in Iran, along with links to a plethora of other posts about the treatement of women in Iran. The list includes this description of how one mullah categorized women:
He divided women into 3 groups:
The first group… he said are the women who are badly veiled who are like buses who everyone and anyone can ride.
The second group… are women who are wearing scarves without the Islamic overcoats; they are like taxis who only pick up certain passengers.
And finally, in the third group… there are women like my wife who are like donkeys who let only one person ride them!
So the zenith, the highest position that a woman can strive for, is to be like a donkey. Does the feminist movement have anything to say about this?
Publius Pundit showed that young men who defy the regime face a similar fate. And check out Gateway Pundit's news, pictures, and links about the ongoing beatings and arrests of Iranian university students protesting their repressive regime.
I'd like to believe that some small fraction of my chronically misspent tax dollars is secretly helping the pro-democracy movements in Iran.
I didn't watch the last Republican debate (or the first, for that matter), but I've seen the video of Ron Paul saying 9/11 was America's fault for bombing Iraq. I'd like to point out that although Paul's perspective is admired by quite a few libertarians (and quite a few 9/11 Truthers), there are also plenty of libertarians who dispute his explanation.
I think Paul's "analysis" is shallow and ahistorical. It's rooted in ignorance of the origins and nature of the Islamists, and it's woefully ignorant of the breadth of Islamist violence. For a much deeper libertarian analysis of why the Islamic fascists hate us, I recommend Mark Humphrys. For a powerful statement of why we must fight, see anarchist libertarian Eric Raymond's Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (also linked at right). For some evidence that Islamofascist rage is not just aimed at America and is not just about our intervention in Iraq, see here and here and here and here … and a score of other places I don't have time to link to.
According to Nathan Nelson at RedState, one libertarian — former Paul campaign coordinator Eric Dondero — was so disgusted by Paul's blame America riff that he decided to run against Paul for his congressional seat. Nelson approved:
Back when I was in the process of leaving the Democratic Party and deciding whether or not to become a Republican, Eric Dondero commented on my old blog and left me information about Republican libertarianism. This information was a major factor in my decision to indeed leave the Democratic Party and become a Republican. To this day, I consider myself a Republican who seeks to balance conservatism and libertarianism. I don't believe that these two ideological systems are mutually exclusive, nor do I believe that either system is incompatible with the Republican Party. I think that Republican libertarians are a valuable part of our coalition and will only become more valuable in the years to come, because libertarianism is growing and our party can grow with it.
With that said, Congressman Ron Paul is like a sore on the behind of Republican libertarianism. He makes it seem as though Republican libertarianism is nothing more than Buchananesque defeatism and isolationism. Eric Dondero is a positive alternative to Ron Paul: unabashedly Republican, unabashedly conservative, unabashedly libertarian, and unabashedly willing to balance these three systems. Perhaps most importantly, he is unabashedly willing to vote in favor of defending our country. He is a better choice for Texas' 14th District and for America.
On April 19th, TAP will stage a nationwide Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day. The focus of this national event will be a screening of the groundbreaking film Obsession: Radical Islam's War against the West on dozens of college campuses across America. …
Obsession is a wake up call. It offers a direct and chilling profile of what is brewing in the world of jihad right now-the plans for the mass murder of Americans and other Westerners and the justification that rationalizes radical Islam's blueprints for genocide.
We anticipate a great deal of opposition from the radical left that refuses to recognize that the War on Terror was not started by Washington, but has been declared on us by a global confederacy of Islamists dedicated to the subjugation and murder of us and other "infidels".
I've posted about Obsession before. It's compelling and important. If you're near one of the 70 or so campuses participating in this event, I urge you to attend. The University of Colorado at Boulder is one of them. Check the Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day page for the full list.
I've also written about the Terrorism Awareness Project before, recommending "The Islamic Mein Kampf" and other materials available at the site. Check it out.
Islamic militants fired back volleys of rockets at the Lebanese army on Friday as troops pounded the remaining suspected hideouts of the Fatah Islam fighters holed up in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon.