A Burqa for Lady Liberty and a Mosque for Ground Zero

A Muslim group has announced plans to cover the Statue of Liberty with a burqa and then replace her with a minaret. But there's no reason at all to take such plans seriously. Lady Liberty being treated the way the Muslim world treats women in general, is as unlikely as a massive mosque being built just downwind of Ground Zero. Or Queen Elizabeth donning a hijab on a visit to Abu Dhabi. It's one of those things that we're told not to worry about until it happens and then objecting to it becomes a crime against tolerance. The tolerance of intolerance.


In Germany, a Kosovar Muslim airport employee cried, "Allahu Akbar" and opened fire on a group of US airmen. Of course the motive has yet to be determined, and after a long period of speculation touching on everything from his mortgage problems to his scratchy uniform, the truth will be known and quietly buried, along with the two men he killed. Little more than a decade ago, the United States Air Force was instrumental in helping create a terrorist state for Kosovar Muslims. This is the gratitude they got in return. A hail of bullets. And this is the gratitude that Westerners can always expect for their aid.


Anjem Choudary, the leader of the Islamic group that would like to sandblast Lady Liberty, and Arid Uka, the airport gunmen, were not hatched in some cave in Pakistan. Choudary was born in the London Borough of Bexley. Arid Uka was born and raised in Germany, where his family had lived for some 40 years. They are not immigrants, but native born European Muslims fighting to remake Europe into an Islamic state. The idea is fanciful, just like the Statue of Liberty being blown up by the American Taliban to make way for a minaret. But there was a time when a short Austrian corporal's plans to build a Thousand Year Reich on the bones of Europe were as laughable as Choudary's antics.

In 1993, Americans laughed at a gang of stupid Muslim terrorists who had tried to blow up the World Trade Center using a Ryder rental van, and then actually tried to get their deposit back on the van. 8 years later a gang of terrorists not all that much smarter than them hijacked four planes withbox cutters and knocked down both towers, killing 3,000 people. And suddenly it wasn't funny anymore.

Evil is often ridiculous in its pretensions, but horrifying in its execution. It is silly only until it begins to succeed, and then the joke turns to horror and madness. We may find Kim Jong Il funny, but no one in North Korea does. Saddam's love poems, Stalin's toupee, Hitler's comic bellicosity, Khaddafi's eccentricity are funny only because we never lived under them. The presumptuousness of a Choudary presuming to wave the flag of Islam over the White House and announce plans for dynamiting theStatue of Liberty is a joke. But the punchline is how little we are doing to halt the day when it really does fly over the White House.


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Postal Service to run out of cash by October, postmaster tells panel

The Republican-controlled House opened the envelope of postal finances on Wednesday and what it pulled out wasn’t pretty.

Unless things change, the post office will run out of money by the end of the fiscal year in October, Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe told the House Oversight subcommittee on the Postal Service.

Mr. Donahoe said that as of Sept. 30 his agency will owe the federal government a payment of $5.5 billion to fund medical costs, in advance, for future retirees, and in November it will need to make a $1.3 billion payment for worker’s compensation.

“The Postal Service will not have the cash available to make both of these payments. We need legislation this year to address that fact,” he said.

If it does come down to crunch time, said Mr. Donahoe: “We will deliver the mail.” Employees will be paid, as will suppliers, he said. “The thing we will not do is pay the federal government.”

Without some important changes to the law the post office “cannot survive as a self-financing entity,” Mr. Donahoe said.

While the post office has been battered by the recession and the movement of mail to the Internet, it has also cut costs sharply by reducing its work force by 240,000 people in recent years. Last year, it cut costs by $3 billion and expects to reduce spending by another $2 billion this year, Mr. Donahoe said.

But, alone among federal agencies, the post office is required to pay about $5.5 billion annually into an account to fund future retiree medical benefits.

The requirement was imposed in 2006, and since then the post office has paid $21 billion into the fund and, during the same period, has had a net loss of $20 billion, explained Ruth Goldway, head of the independent Postal Regulatory Commission.

“Prefunding health benefits is an incredible burden,” Mr. Donahoe said. “In 2007 and 2008, we would have had net profits except for the prefunding.”

Washington Times


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Two Suns Seen in Asia

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Pakistan: Minister's murder 'a CIA plot aimed at US contractor's release'

Islamabad, 3 March - (AKI) - By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Pakistan's minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated by the CIA to divert attention from the case of detained US contractor and murder suspect Raymond Davis, religious party politicians and scholars in Pakistan claimed on Thursday.


"This murder seems to be a conspiracy of CIA and its agents to deviate the attention from the issues like Raymond Davis trial,” Hanif Jalandari, a senior official for the association of Pakistan's Islamic seminaries told Adnkronos Internationonal (AKI).

A Pakistani court has ruled Davis, a CIA contractor should stand trial for double murder after he in January shot dead two Pakistanis in Lahore he claims intended to rob him. Davis is also suspected of spying.

The death of a third Pakistani struck by a US diplomatic vehicle as it rushed to Davis' aid, has inflamed anti-American sentiment across Pakistan.
he case has caused a huge diplomatic row and is testing the often-fraught ties between the allies. US officials insist Davis has diplomatic immunity and should be released immediately. The Lahore High Court is due to rule on that issue later this month.

Hardline religious parties have called for Davis to be hanged.

Referring to the murder of Bhatti, a Christian and one of few politicians urging Pakistan's controversial blasphemy laws to be amended, Jalandri said: "This incident has no logic."

"Had this occurred two months back the situation would have been different," said Jalandri, noting that the government had repeatedly stated it did not intend to reform the blasphemy laws.

The sentencing to death of a Christan woman for blasphemy last year in eastern Punjab state sparked an international outcry amid moves to reform the laws. But religious parties in Pakistan staged mass protests across the country to oppose the bill tabled by a member of the ruling Pakistan People's Party.

After the Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer, an outspoken critic of the laws, was shot dead by his bodyguard in January, the government said it had no plans to amend the blasphemy laws. Critics of the laws - which mandate the death penalty for insulting Islam - say they are abused to persecute religious minorities or settle grudges since convictions can be delivered with little evidence.

Bhatti's slaying was condemned by the head of Pakistan's main Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami, who agreed with Jalandri that the CIA was behind the killing.

“We deplore the murder of Shahbaz Bhatti. This is the work of CIA to hush up the court trial of Raymond David in the media,” Syed Munawar Hasan said in a statement.

Bhatti was killed when four gunmen riddled his car with bullets as he was travelling to a cabinet meeting in Islamabad. The gunmen reportedly left a leaflet near his body claiming his assassination by the PakistanTaliban (TTP) and Fadayan-e-Al-Qaeda, a group of jihadists that coordinates Al-Qaeda and the TTP.

TTP spokesman Ehsanullah Ahsan reportedly called local TV channels to say the group had killed Bhatti

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Libya: Gaddafi threatens bloodbath if West intervenes

Shortly after his air force launched bombing raids on rebel-held positions, Col Gaddafi presented a very different show of political strength in a two-and-a-half-hour speech to his General People's Assembly.

He arrived in a golf buggy, driving it himself up to a pavilion in the grounds of a hotel being used in place of the Hall of the People, which was burned down in riots last week.

He basked for 15 minutes in the cheers of hundreds of delegates, with scores of women ululating loudly. "He is like an eagle," they chanted. "He is our only eagle."

He then launched into a speech which was more controlled than his other recent appearance, and offered concessions to both the opposition and to the West.

He said there would be no punishment for rebels who handed in their weapons and gave themselves up, saying they were "young men who had been brainwashed by al-Qaeda

He announced economic incentives, promising zero-interest mortgages and economic development. He even unveiled a platform of local government reforms.

In a startling admission, he said he was deliberately adopting a different tone to that last Friday, when he addressed supporters in Tripoli's Green Square, because he knew he was talking to the outside world via the international media, who were bussed in for the event.

He said he would welcome any mission sent by the United Nations Security Council to investigate allegations that he had used force against civilians.

It was rebels, he said, who had seized weapons to use against innocent people, inspired by Islamic militants, and he accused the opposition of beheading and hanging people as al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq had done.

He said the truth was being hidden by a "media war", part of a Western conspiracy to find a pretext to invade Libya and seize its oil wealth. But, rising to a crescendo, he said if the West tried to intervene Libya would "fight to the last drop of blood", and that "thousands and thousands of Libyans would die".

And he said he would outlast the international leaders now calling for him to go. "They will come to the end of their terms as president and become normal citizens," he said. "I will still be leader of the revolution."

The West continued to send mixed messages on whether it was prepared to use force against Libya. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, said all options were still being considered. "That includes the issue of no-fly zones, although clearly that is something we could not do on our own," he said. "There are legal issues. It is a very large country."

But Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, made clear his opposition at a congressional hearing. "If it's ordered we can do it, but frankly there is a lot of loose talk about this. Let's call a spade a spade – a no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy air defences," he said.

Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, also said that the decision was a "long way off".

But the idea received support from both the Arab League and a rebel spokesman, Hafiz Ghoga, who called for air strikes on government positions. "The presence of any foreign forces on Libyan soil is strongly opposed," he said. "There is a big difference between this and strategic air strikes."

William Hague, the foreign secretary, discussed the issue by telephone with General Abdul Fattah Younis, Col Gaddafi's interior minister, who defected to the rebels last week.

The Telegraph

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Russia, Saudi Arabia warn against Libya intervention

MOSCOW (BNO NEWS) -- Russia and Saudi Arabia on Thursday warned against foreign political or military intervention in Libya, which could make the situation worse, Russia's Foreign Ministry said.

Earlier in the day, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Saltanov, who is also presidential envoy on the Middle East, and Ali ben Hasan Jaafar, the Saudi ambassador to Moscow, discussed the situation in the Middle East, RIA Novosti reported.

Other countries, including Iran and Afghanistan, have also warned against international military intervention. Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama said that his government was preparing a full range of options to respond to Libya's crisis, including coordinating with allies and partners as well as with multilateral institutions.

Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with Emergency Situations Minister Sergei Shoigu described the situation in Libya as moving toward the civil war, RIA Novosti reported.

"Libya has been and is on the brink of a civil war, and our task was to save the lives of our citizens [there]," Medvedev said.

"A complete disintegration in state governance usually occurs during such events, which is what we have seen in Libya," he added.

Russia completed on Wednesday the evacuation of its citizens from the North African country. The Russian Embassy in Tripoli reported earlier on Thursday that Russia had evacuated 520 Russians and 593 foreign nationals from Libya.

On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution to suspend Libya's membership of the UN Human Rights Council because of Muammar al-Gaddafi's violence against demonstrators. The International Criminal Court in The Hague on Thursday opened a probe into the role of Gaddafi and his top aides in atrocities allegedly committed in the crackdown on protesters.

Libya has been plunged into chaos as massive anti-government protests continue nationwide, resulting in a violent crackdown by security forces which included aerial bombardments on protesters. At least 2,000 people are believed to have been killed in the uprising, but confirmed information has been difficult to obtain due to reporting restrictions by Libyan authorities.

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1929 Wall Street Stock Market Crash

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