April 11, 2006
ABCNEWS : Iraq's newly crowned beauty queen, Tamar Goregian, has decided to step down — just four days after her election, making this the shortest reign in the pageant's 60-year history.On April 9, the 23-year-old, who was the first Armenian Iraqi to win the Miss Iraq pageant, announced her resignation after receiving threats by a group of religious extremists who referred to her as "the queen of infidels" for participating in the contest.
Miss Teen Iraq, Silva Shahakian, a Christian, accepted the title(pic below).
UPDATE: More hot Iraqi action here.
Posted by: Howie at
08:58 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 154 words, total size 2 kb.
Here is the disgusting website. I hate to even link it, but there it is. According to this WND article forwarded to my by Jay at Stop the ACLU, the site recently removed a bunch of offensive posts advocating child molestation after a Christian therapist exposed it on her radio talk show.
But, thanks to the Google cache, we've been able to see what some of those posts were that were taken down--ironical that Google, the company empowering these pedophiles is also empowering us with the tools to expose them . All the April posts are now gone, but the Google cache does have several March posts which have been removed. I've archived the cache of these pedophile bastards' webpage here just in case law enforcement needs it in the future. And I certainly hope some one gets nailed for this.
As of today, the webpage features a prominent 'code of ethics' at the top of it's page, but that wasn't true last March. For instance, the March 21st entry features links to a podcast which was once up (now gone--the link is actually to this website which claims to be an 'open roundtable childlove discussion') and describes it this way:
This episode is an intimate interview with Technea, a long-standing boylover in the community. He's an extraordinary person with a resounding understanding of life. We hear about his life, hardships, accomplishments and philosophies....How about this from the comments section:"I am a human being." Thoughts of boylove.
Seriously though, Thankyou JaydenDisgusting. It gets worse. The poster, Ashleigh, also contributes to another Google operated blog here. One of the posts, by another pedophile named 'Little Boy' links to a Canadian child actor's website, in which he says:and this just proves another point. Pedophiles/Pederasts/etc... have greater self-control and LOVE than some individuals in the world.
We are ONLY here for the ONEs WE LOVE! To care for them and their interests!
REMEMBER to LOVE your boy, YF and SYF...and others Remember to LOVE your wives, children, neighbors
I think Daniel is a real cutie!Daniel is 8 years old. Another post wonders whether or not Amazon.com can figure out a pedophile's identity if too many movies featuring young boys are bought. One of the movies mentioned features Billy Gilman. I've cached the site here .
Another related blogspot pedophile blog is here. It's called Modern Boylove. You're telling me that Google was unaware that a blog named 'Modern Boylove' wasn't run by pedophiles? The website glorifies the rape of a seven year old boy. Seven. Years. Old. I've cached it here
Some of the authors of both of the above blogs have pictures of very young children on their blogger profile pages. Here & Here.
I'm. Freakin. Speechless.
All of this is eerily remindful of another online pedophile who blogged this way before becoming a mass murderer: Joseph Duncan III
Hat tip to Jay at ACLU who has more. The WND article is here.
Posted by: Rusty at
08:42 AM
| Comments (45)
| Add Comment
Post contains 571 words, total size 5 kb.
Welcome to the 40th weekly Carnival of Liberty! As always, the Carnival is full of amazing attractions with fun-filled adventure for the whole family.This is the first time the Carnival has been here at Homeland Stupidity, and I have to say that the hardest part of hosting the Carnival was keeping all of these excellent posts hidden away until Tuesday. And now that theyÂ’re here, come one, come all, and enjoy the Carnival!
Next weekÂ’s Carnival will be brought to you by Left Brain Female. See the schedule to follow the Carnival of Liberty or if youÂ’re interested in hosting the Carnival.
Posted by: Howie at
08:06 AM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 132 words, total size 1 kb.
While I have no issue with American hackers being paid to take down jihadist sites and forums, I don't believe that it's an imperative to winning this war. I did a post back during the Cartoon Jihad wherein I pooh-poohed the reaction of people to the MSM's failure to print them, because all of us had already seen them. By us I meant blogs, and those who frequent them. A nice commenter reminded me of the total number of people who don't get news from blogs. Healthy slap in the face, that was.
Yes, the internet is a tool used to recruit terrorists, but it's just a tool. Recruitment of Islamic terrorists was going along just fine before the internet became a household tool. The Marine barracks in Beirut was bombed when the internet was in its infancy.
If we cannot win the cyber war, we cannot win our war against Muslim ideologues bent on creating the Islamic utopia by any means necessary.We've defeated [insert utopian ideology here] bent on creating their visions of our world by any means necessary, all long before the internet was created.
Mohammed had no internet, and now 1.2 billion people on this Earth are forbidden to gaze upon his visage. Saladin had no internet, and it didn't stop him from kicking Crusader ass. The mujahadeen in Afghanistan had no internet, and they stomped the Soviets.
Hacking jihadi websites doesn't stop madrassas being built in Eastern Europe. Hacking jihadi websites doesn't stop imams preaching on Fridays. Hacking jihadi websites doesn't do any more good than jihadis hacking our websites. They, like us, will just put them up somewhere else.
Hacking sites may even be counter-productive. We, the great unwashed, have no true idea of what our government's capabilities are. Most of that stuff is classified. If hackers start disabling jihad sites, who knows what information they would be depriving us of.
So I disagree with my blogfather. The best way to deal with jihadis is not to hack their websites, it's far more simple than that.
Kill them all, let Allah sort 'em out. It's hard to access Ummah.com when you're dead.
And before you spit in my face in the comments, "Kill them all" does not refer to all Muslims, just the jihadis. And yes, Improbulus Maximus, "Kill them all" does refer to all Muslims, not just jihadis. And no, Background Noise, I really don't mean all Muslims, just jihadis. There, have I covered my ass?
Rusty responds--the bitch slap! Ahhh, finally a debate! A debate, a debate, my kingdom for a debate!
Okay, how to respond? Since most of my posts are tongue in cheek, focus on lipstick lesbians, or are devoted to calling people names, it isn't easy slamming on the brakes and putting on the academic helmut so quickly. But here goes.
What Vinnie has just done is a classic example of not understanding two very important points and because he misses those points, is arguing against a straw man.
1) Probabalistic relationships are different than cause-effect relationships.
Contrary to what you were taught in both physics and logic, not all cause-effect relationships are direct. No one is arguing here that the internet causes terror, only that the increase in jihadi activity online has led to an increase in a) sympathy for terrorists which gives them room to hide among the civilian populations of the world b) recruitment of terrorists.
Thus, decreasing online terror activity will certainly decrease support for terrorism worldwide and therefore terrorist acts worldwide.
2) An effect often has multiple causes.
Before the internet there was jihad and after the internet there will be jihad, thus jihad must not be caused by internet. True enough, but the internet is a cause today if not the cause.
Wars are fought on many fronts and in many different ways simultaneously. So far, we have not even begun to fight the front that is cyberspace. My argument has never been that if we win this front we will win the war on terror, my argument is that if we wish to win the war on terror we must also win the cyber war.
Winning the cyber war will not mean we will win the war on terror, but it will certainly help. However, if we do not win the cyber war we cannot win the war on terror. It is a necessary condition for winning, but not the only condition.
Why? Wars are won when the enemy believes there is no hope for victory. When fighting an army, a nation, or even an organized resistance group, killing/capturing most of them or taking control of key physical territory usually serves as sufficient grounds for resistance to fall. But because in assymetrical and decentralized warfare beating individual cells is not enough to win, an atmosphere must be created in which enemy combatants have no hope of winning and therefore lay down their arms.
There are several other erroneous points Vinnie makes--such as not understanding the differences between Saladin's or Mohammed's very centralized armies and decentralized cells of terrorists--but I'll skip to the most important one.
The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that taking down terror websites is impossible since terrorists will just find new web space and new sites will pop up. That is, we should not wage war against the cyber jihadis because we cannot win it.
I'm sorry, but that just doesn't fly. How do we know we can't win it if we've never even attempted to fight it? Further, I would argue, effectively fighting the cyber war is actually much simpler than most understand. Since the vast majority of cyber jihadi activity only come from a handful of websites, taking out the most popular ones will drastically reduce the power of terrorists to shape the opinions of Muslims around the world.
We do not need to take down every jihadi website, we only need to take down the most popular ones. This could be accomplished today if we put our mind to it. That's right, today.
And, when the jihadis move to another website, we can follow them. Then take down that website. And the next. And the next.
Last, if you think taking down a few hundred websites is hard, how hard do you think it will be to find and kill a few hundred thousand jihadis? Impossible.
Vinnie:
I still don't see how this is a necessary condition to winning the war. To me, a necessary condition would be, say, removing the mullahs from power in Iran.
Hacking jihad websites is more like H/I fire in my opinion.
So...could you elaborate on that for me?
Posted by: Vinnie at
12:50 AM
| Comments (18)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1149 words, total size 7 kb.
April 10, 2006
ALBANY, N.Y. - A federal judge has ordered the Mexico school district to return bricks inscribed with evangelical Christian messages to a high school walkway, concluding their removal violated the free speech rights of the people who paid for them.Of course the Mexico Central School District only removed the bricks after being threatened by Central New York ACLU representatives. It's instructive that the ACLU, which supposedly champions civil liberties, used bullying to try to deny free speech to people because that speech was religious in nature.U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue ruled the bricks, with engravings like “Jesus Saves” and “Jesus Christ The Only Way!” didn't constitute a Mexico Academy endorsement of that religious view. The bricks containing such engravings were the only ones removed, while others also referred to God and some commemorated Methodist, Episcopal and Catholic churches.
“The undisputed evidence demonstrates that Mexico Academy engaged in viewpoint discrimination when it removed plaintiffs' bricks from the walkway,” Mordue wrote. “Further, the bricks at issue, which number 9 among 1,736, literally constitute an insignificant part of the walkway.”
Via Stop the ACLU
Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto and Vince Aut Morire.
Posted by: Bluto at
11:05 PM
| Comments (8)
| Add Comment
Post contains 210 words, total size 2 kb.
Why is the U.S. government unable to respond adequately to the cyber jihad?
a) They are still in law enforcement mode.
Unless an internet website is breaking the law, no action is taken by the government. However, if we are in a war, then the normal rules do not apply. We cannot treat terrorist forces on the web as if they were simply exercising some Constitutional right of free speech. If this is a war, then fight it like one. If you can kill your enemies in war, then certainly censoring them is justified.
b) Intelligence agencies lack the institutional know-how to fight the online jihad.
Traditionally, intelligence agencies such as the NSA and CIA have been the information gathering arm of the U.S. government. Such intelligence is used by other agencies to act. They may monitor jihadi websites, but they obviously are not acting on their information.
Occasionally they do act, but when they do --such as with the arrest of Irhabi 007--they are in law enforcement mode. Irhabi 007 was charged with a crime, but if using the internet to wage war upon your own country is a crime, then doesn't this reveal the underlying problem of not treating this as a war?
c) The military lacks the tools to fight the internet jihad.
If this is war then it is the military--not the intelligence agencies such as the CIA and NSA, and not the law enforcement agencies such as the FBI -- that ought to be fighting it. The military is great at doing a lot of things, but taking down websites is not one of them. Even if we could identify each and every web server which hosts terror websites, the solution is not bombing the webhosts. For the most part, companies either are not aware that terrorists use their services or they do not care because there are no real consequences to doing business with the online jihadis.
The solution? There is no government solution. The only people really equipped to counter the online threat are hackers themselves. These cyber pirates have the necessary knowlege, tools, and experience in infiltrating and taking down websites. With minimum investment in equipment, with the assurance that they will not be prosecuted for activities which are normally considered illegal, and with the promise of a reward for each website taken down, these cyber pirates would be turned into cyber privateers. There skills which are normally deemed socially unacceptable, can be used to the advantage of winning the long war against militant Islam.
I will be posting on cyber-privateering from time to time. Stay tuned!
Michael B. Kraft at the Counteterrorism blog has some notes on Professor Gabriel Weimann's new book Terror on the Internet:
Prof. Weimann also describes various efforts by private groups or individuals to take down the web sites of terrorists –and the back and forth efforts between Israelis and Palestinians or their supporters to take down each other’s websites. He also discusses the efforts, largely futile, by governments to deprive terrorist groups of service providers because they jump to other providers or conceal their origin.To effectively counter the cyber jihad, it will take much more than public diplomacy. I will have more on this in the future.Hoffman emphasized another side of the coin—the need to take the offense as well as play defense. He said the United States and friendly governments should do more to make use of the internet get across reliable news and counter what he called the ”parallel world” in which terrorists and their supporters receive distorted perspectives and rumors on their web sites.
This may take more nimbleness and sophistication than US Government public diplomacy efforts have shown in recent years. But it is time to act and think outside the conventional box and should be given high priority. [READ THE REST]
Posted by: Rusty at
09:03 PM
| Comments (8)
| Add Comment
Post contains 703 words, total size 5 kb.
Posted by: Rusty at
08:26 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 7 words, total size 1 kb.
In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein's long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president's State of the Union address in January 2003....Hat tip: ReynoldsHowever, the waters have since become muddied, to say the least. For a start, someone produced a fake document, dated July 6, 2000, which purports to show Zahawie's signature and diplomatic seal on an actual agreement for an Iraqi uranium transaction with Niger. Almost everything was wrong with this crude forgery—it had important dates scrambled, and it misstated the offices of Niger politicians. In consequence, IAEA Chairman Mohammed ElBaradei later reported to the U.N. Security Council that the papers alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium connection had been demonstrated to be fraudulent.
But this doesn't alter the plain set of established facts in my first three paragraphs above. The European intelligence services, and the Bush administration, only ever asserted that the Iraqi regime had apparently tried to open (or rather, reopen) a yellowcake trade "in Africa." It has never been claimed that an agreement was actually reached. What motive could there be for a forgery that could be instantly detected upon cursory examination?
Posted by: Rusty at
08:24 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
Post contains 350 words, total size 2 kb.
Five medical staff working for a Christian Aid-funded organisation have been murdered in north-west Afghanistan.more...The victims include a doctor, community health worker, and health educator who were part of a project run by the Rural Rehabilitation Association for Afghanistan (RRAA), in Darrah-i-Bohm, Badghis province.
It is thought that at least four gunmen broke into their clinic at around 1am today (local time). According to reports, the gunmen tied them up before shooting them.
Posted by: Rusty at
04:45 PM
| Comments (10)
| Add Comment
Post contains 453 words, total size 3 kb.
On one forum that I frequently visit, some of these doctored photos discussed in the article have been used to justify killing American soldiers in Iraq. In all cases they are used by Islamic extremists to justify their hatred of America and recruit new jihadis. Thus, the images used by the AP & other organizations--which are often staged and sometimes fake-- lead directly to the deaths of American troops and will eventually help justify the next act of terrorism against American civilians.
Via James Joyner here are some of the highlights of the National Journal article:
Thanks to digital technology, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the most photographed in history. Photographers with digital cameras have provided, almost instantaneously, an enormous flood of accurate, dramatic, and even shocking images to people around the world. But the daily downloads of news photos include some that are staged, fake, or so lacking in context as to be meaningless, despite the Western media's best efforts to separate the factual from the fictional....more...The photo editors for Time and The New York Times' Web site declined to comment. Other publications printed images of damage from the missile strike that seem entirely accurate. For example, Newsweek and The Washington Times published wide-angle photos of locals standing beside houses that had obviously been severely damaged. The New York Times print edition published the same wide-angle photo on January 18.....
The problem sharpens when no Western reporter is on the scene, but a photographer, usually an Iraqi stringer, is. Photo editors, or even local Western bureau chiefs, have trouble judging the veracity of the images that come from such an event. Last October, for example, The Washington Post printed a striking image of four caskets, purportedly containing dead women and children, and a line of mourning men on a flat desert plain outside the town of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The photo, provided by the Associated Press, accompanied an article that began this way:
Posted by: Rusty at
04:08 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 1226 words, total size 9 kb.
27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,19,0" width="150" height="300" title="Lives_Saved">
Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto.
Posted by: Bluto at
03:48 PM
| Comments (44)
| Add Comment
Post contains 61 words, total size 1 kb.
On that note, what if some one was to come back from the near future and warn you about the coming War with Islam, Eurabia, & a future global caliphate? And what if it was your society's own damn fault that they are enslaved in the future because they were so self-critical and unwilling to engage in the ruthlessness needed to win a war?
A brief conversation between Dan Simmons and a traveller from the future---read the whole thing:
I tried to relax. “What do you want to talk about?” I said.more...“The Century War,” said the Time Traveler.
I blinked and tried to remember some history. “You mean the Hundred Year War? Fifteenth Century? Fourteenth? Sometime around there. Between . . . France and England? Henry V? Kenneth Branagh? Or was it . . .”
“I mean the Century War with Islam,” interrupted the Time Traveler. “Your future. Everyone’s.” He was no longer smiling. Without asking, or offering to pour me any, he stood, refilled his Scotch glass, and sat again. He said, “It was important to me to come back to this time early on in the struggle. Even if only to remind myself of how unspeakably blind you all were.”
“You mean the War on Terrorism,” I said.
“I mean the Long War with Islam,” he said. “The Century War. And it’s not over yet where I come from. Not close to being over.”
“You can’t have a war with Islam,” I said. “You can’t go to war against a religion. Radical Islam, maybe. Jihadism. Some extremists. But not a . . . the . . . religion itself. The vast majority of Muslims in the world are peaceloving people who wish us no harm. I mean . . . I mean . . . the very word ‘Islam’ means ‘Peace.’”
“So you kept telling yourselves,” said the Time Traveler. His voice was very low but there was a strange and almost frightening edge to it. “But the ‘peace’ in ‘Islam’ means ‘Submission.’ You’ll find that out soon enough”
Great, I was thinking. Of all the time travelers in all the gin joints in all the world, I get this racist, xenophobic, right-wing asshole.
“After Nine-eleven, we’re fighting terrorism,” I began, “not . . .”
He waved me into silence.....[snip]
Posted by: Rusty at
02:55 PM
| Comments (20)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1815 words, total size 11 kb.
Posted by: Rusty at
01:38 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.
From Middle-East-Online.com:
Thirteen Algerian customs officials were killed (pic) and eight others injured Friday when their convoy was ambushed south of Algiers, security sources and the Algerian news agency APS reported.more...A security source said the convoy of about 12 four-wheel-drive vehicles came under rocket attack by Islamist militants around 8:00 am (0700 GMT) at Ouardhia on a Saharan road to In Salah.
Posted by: Mike Pechar at
01:31 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 391 words, total size 3 kb.
On April 7, the Washington Post reported that US aid to Palestinians is being redirected through the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). As the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal discovered three years ago, the UNRWA has been infiltrated by terrorist sympathizers, and the "refugee" camps administered by UNRWA are, in reality, terrorist training camps (via IRIS Blog).
Thanks to Tel-Chai Nation who has more.
Also posted at The Dread Pundit Bluto and Vince Aut Morire.
Posted by: Bluto at
12:10 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 127 words, total size 1 kb.
Ynet:
A group of ultra-orthodox hackers, shocked by the obscenity of some porn sites, has launched an internet campaign in a bid to cause such sites to crash. The hackers, already named at some internet forums the "ultra-orthodox sex commando," or the "ultra-orthodox electronic underground," focus their efforts at this point on Hebrew sites.But what I want to know is how come Bill Dauterieve, who sends along the link, was busy looking at Jewish porn? And for that matter, there's Jewish porn.
The first target was the Hebrew porn site www.sexhack.tk – a mid-sized, not very popular site that features sex videos.Those who tried logging in to the site found instead a photo of the Lubavitch Rabbi with the text: "We, the religious-net group, hacked into this site and erased all obscenities. The other sites we plan on bringing down are listed below."
The hackers erased the explicit content and wrote that "the holy kabbalah warns that the sin of spilling sperm in vain is the cause for most diseases and misfortune!"
Posted by: Rusty at
10:06 AM
| Comments (6)
| Add Comment
Post contains 211 words, total size 1 kb.
The group is well known and has hacked the Kingdom of Bahrain's website in the past. They've also targetted several Danish bloggers such as Nodblog and Uriaposten. So, Aaron ought to feel himself in good company.
Apparently, the cyber attack originated from Saudi Arabia. You mean to tell me there are terrorists from Saudi Arabia? I don't believe it!
Beth calls this the online equivalent of a fatwa. I'm sooooo jealous. All this time I've put in for a fatwa and what do I get? Nothing!
Ever wanted to e-mail an online terrorist? It just so happens that we have the e-mail address of the crew responsible for the wave of online terrorism:
Why not drop a line and let this guy know what you think of him.
UPDATE: It looks like another old friend, TC Leather Penguin, was also hacked, but he's back up again. As McGehee notes, both attacks were on Word Press users. The same can be said of the Danish bloggers who were attacked. Is there a flaw in Word Press that the ROPers have learned to exploit to their own advantage?
Posted by: Rusty at
09:26 AM
| Comments (8)
| Add Comment
Post contains 256 words, total size 2 kb.
Other parts of the country are looking at forming similar regions so they can govern themselves with as much autonomy as possible over their own affairs, thus reducing the powers of the central government. By reducing such powers, you will reduce the different communitiesÂ’ insecurities because of the mistrust that exists today."Interesting. But if that is the case, then why not let Iraq dissolve into three more homogenous countries?He adds, "At the moment, Baghdad is the prize and everybody is fighting over it. We need to reduce the relevance of that prize so that we reduce the level of tension throughout Iraq."
The mistrust and tension, Talabani says, is a part of Saddam HusseinÂ’s legacy, pitting one community against the other, as well as instilling fear from cruelties committed by the former regime against all segments of the population.
"My own region, Kurdistan, was decimated by Saddam," Talabani says. "He destroyed about 4,000 villages, killed about 200,000 people, and used chemical and biological weapons in over 250 incidences – primarily against civilians."
Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, most Kurds believed themselves to be the only victims of SaddamÂ’s brutality. "But when the regime fell, we realized that Iraqi Arabs were also victims," Talabani says. "We recovered hundreds-of-thousands of bodies in mass graves across the country, many of which were dedicated to children three to six-years-old. Most had been experimented on by the regime. I cannot describe the carnage and brutality in a way that you would be able to comprehend just how bad it really was."
Posted by: Rusty at
07:06 AM
| Comments (7)
| Add Comment
Post contains 307 words, total size 2 kb.
Question: How long before McKinney accuses Dignan of being a racist?
Posted by: Rusty at
07:00 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.
Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country. This ban applies, among other things, to participation in demonstrations and the expression of opinions in public about domestic politics.What?
UPDATE: No Speed Bumps says the Democrats have sold out the working class by supporting amnesty for illegals. I dunno. That kind of assumes the Ds cared in the first place....
Posted by: Rusty at
06:56 AM
| Comments (17)
| Add Comment
Post contains 98 words, total size 1 kb.
132 queries taking 0.1645 seconds, 483 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.








