Been one of those weeks, so this is a little shorter and later than usual:
Posts Tagged ‘nuclear weapons’
This Week in Jihad for March 18, 2011
Friday, March 18th, 2011This Week in Jihad for December 16, 2010
Thursday, December 16th, 2010Lots of Jihad news of note this week:
- Just in case you were busy Saturday and didn’t hear, a suicide bomber struck central Stockholm on Saturday.
- That bomber, Iraqi-born Taimour Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, was yet another product of British schools.
- But don’t worry, there are only about 200 Islamic extremists total in all of Sweden!
- Except that train bomber guy wasn’t among them. Might need to do some more counting there, guys…
- Not News: Middle Eastern religious leader declares that there’s a Zionist conspiracy against Arabs. News: It was the the patriarch of the Church of Antioch and the entire Levant for Melkite Greek Catholics. (Hat tip: The Corner.)
- Kuwait general says Iran’s nuclear program is military, not civilian. On behalf of non-liberals everywhere: Duh.
- Unclear on the concept: Feminists protesting in favor of Islamic extremists. You’re doing it wrong. (Sadly, the impulse seems inexplicably common in feminist circles these days.)
- Al Qaeda is planning suicide attacks against Christmas shoppers in the U.S. and Europe. Honestly, I just assume al Qaeda is planning suicide attacks year-round. It’s pretty much what they do. It’s like saying the New England Patriots work on winning football games year-round.
- Usually you hear about Iranian-sponsored suicide bombers blowing up people in other countries, not Sunni suicide bombers blowing up Shi-ites in Iran itself.
- Danish MP Jesper Langballe fined for telling the truth about Islamic rapes and honor killings. Indeed, he was denied the opportunity to defend himself.
- Did you know that Feisal A. Rauf, the guy trying to build the Ground Zero Mosque, is a slumlord?
- Weimer Istanbul. (Hat tip: Michael Totten.)
- And speaking of Michael Totten, he has an interview with Giulio Meotti, the author of A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism. Lots of bracing, disheartening information in that interview. “Europe is an anti-Semitic continent.” “The current European anti-Semitism is a powerful mix of Islamist pressure on Europe by large Muslim communities in its midst and a leftist-progressive ideology.”
- The 2010 Jihad Watch Award Winners. If you haven’t noticed, JihadWatch is one of the sites I
stealreference stories from for this roundup. - Finally, Dwight’s essay on the Iranian Revolution may be of interest to many readers.
This Week in Jihad
Thursday, December 2nd, 2010I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. Now back to a less happy task: rounding up jihad-related news over the last week:
- Muslim rape gang in Derbyshire, UK preyed on as many as 1,000 women and under-aged girls.
- Iranian Nuclear Scientists get to meet Allah.
- According to those Wikileaks documents everyone is talking about, Hezbollah used Red Crescent ambulances to smuggles Iranian arms into Lebanon.
- Obama’s UK ambassador gushes over the awesomeness of London’s jihadist mosque.
- Five Christians a week murdered in Pakistan for their religion.
- Kenya’s Presidnet orders all gays arrested.
- Saudi man to be lashed 70 times for the crime of turning on his cell-phone’s Bluetooth near of woman’s shopping center.
- Latest things to offend Muslims for no particular reason is (rolls dice): Yodeling.
- Canadian panel opposes adding honor killings to Canadian law. “Every offence that could be involved in honour-based crimes is already in Canadian law.” Well, yes. But that didn’t stop “hate crime” legislation, now did it?
(Hat tip: The usual suspects under “Jihad” on your right.)
As a side note, I would be interested to hear if anyone actually finds these weekly roundups useful. I put these up and get very little feedback on them…
This Week in Jihad for November 24, 2010
Wednesday, November 24th, 2010Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
Sadly, Jihad doesn’t wait for American holidays, so here’s a roundup of related news:
- 13-year old Pakistani girl gang-raped by members of the ruling party for her brother’s involvement in helping another woman get married to the man she loved (rather than an arranged marriage).
- Not wild about the Ground Zero Mosque? You might be paying for it.
- Even The New York Times notices Britain’s jihad schools. All it took was a program on the BBC. Maybe the Beeb could do a piece on how higher taxes and bigger government are actually unpopular among Americans…
- New “anti-bullying” law may just be another way to restrict politically incorrect speech on campus…including criticism of the Religion of Peace.
- Oppressive Middle Eastern regime with ties to terrorist groups stonewalling International Atomic Energy Agency about their nuclear program. Hmmm, for some reason that scenario sounds strangely familiar…
- Hezbollah threatens to take over Lebanon.
- It’s not a surprise when Pakistani officials defend the Taliban, since they were essentially created by the Pakistani ISI. However, it’s a bit more surprising when it comes from the Minister of Tourism.
- Of course, The Pakistani ISI are not to be confused with the Islamic State of Iraq terrorist group, which is currently railing against…Microsoft? (You have to be an MEMRI subscriber to see the full report. I may have to sign up…)
- This week’s winner in Irrational Fatwa Bingo is…blood donations.
- Finally, less a link than a question. Yesterday, in the course of fisking the latest WaPo gun control article, Dwight at Whipped Cream Difficulties linked to this table of law enforcement deaths over the last decade. The odd thing is that it shows 5 police deaths by terrorism in 2007, and despite racking my brain, I can’t think of any terrorist incidents that involved police officers that year. Can anyone figure out how and where those five deaths occured?
Symantic’s Extensive Analysis of the Stuxnet Worm
Tuesday, November 16th, 2010My hacking skills are pretty much limited to writing “Hello World” in Python on a good day, but even a cursory glance shows that Stuxnet is a very sophisticated beast indeed. Let’s hope it delivered a critical blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
The Stuxnet Worm: Set Pants to Brown Alert
Sunday, October 3rd, 2010The Weekly Standard has an interesting piece on The Stuxnet worm. It seems designed to attack Iran’s nuclear program, was in the wild for more than six months before being detected, featured stolen digital signature keys (which may have involved actual physical espionage) and used an off-the charts four zero-day exploits, which is pretty much unheard of.
We really, really better hope that we or the Israelis wrote this thing, because if not, there’s a team of scary-good black hat hackers out there (from the description of how large and sophisticated it is, and all the different things it does, makes me think it took at least ten really good hackers more than a year to create) that can physically destroy major infrastructure targets through code almost at will. You really, really don’t want a team of “non-state actors” to have those capabilities…
I suspect we’re getting a glimpse of what the opening rounds of the next major war will look like…
Obama Administration Gives OK to $60 Billion Arms Sale to Saudi Arabia
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010Maybe I just wasn’t paying attention, but I didn’t notice that the Obama Administration had approved a $60 billion (with a B) arms sale to Saudi Arabia until Instapundit linked to that Jonathan Tepperman piece.
I have mixed feelings about the deal.
- The Saudis are not our friends. The ties between the House of Saud and fundamentalist Wahabbist Islam go back over two centuries, and Wahabbism is (along with the fundamentalist Shia of Khomeinist Iran, and the teachings of Hassan al-Banna and his followers in the Muslim Brotherhood) one of the chief sources retrograde radicalism in modern Islam, an influence that the Saudis have continued to support with their petrodollars to this very day.
- My impression (and if someone has any contradicting evidence, feel free to share it in the comments below) is that the Saudi’s continuing support for Wahabbism is one of manipulative cynicism rather than deep religious belief. The Saudi ruling class is happy to swill alcohol and enjoy other forbidden Western pleasures behind closed doors, but continues to support Wahabbism as both a means of controlling their own country’s populace, and of maintaining their influence in the Ummah, the worldwide community of Islamic believers. Whether this makes them more or less evil is a matter of interpretation.
- Despite their outward hostility to Jews and ostensible support of Palestinian nationhood, one of the biggest open secrets in the Middle East is that the Saudis are in regular secret communication with Israeli leadership about matters of mutual interest. (Also, the Saudis, much like the vast majority of Arabs everywhere, don’t really give a rat’s ass about the Palestinians.)
- Their biggest area of shared concern is a nuclear armed Iran, which both view as an existential threat to their existence (albeit it of different types). This is why, as the Atlantic piece notes, Israel hasn’t lifted a finger to stop the arms sale.
On that basis, the arms sale should probably be approved. But it’s no substitute for actually taking out Iran’s nuclear program, or the mullahs pushing it.
Israel’s Possible Strike on Iran: Reactions
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010There have been a lot of reactions to the Jeffrey Goldberg piece on the coming Israel attack against Iran’s nuclear weapons program I talked about here.
The issue is discussed with the ever-irrepressible Christopher Hitchens. Conclusion? If Iran continues to pursue nuclear weapons, “I see no reason not to take out the regime.”
As usual, Ezra Klein and Juan Cole are clueless.
JournoList-founder Klein believes a strike would “make the Arab world in general, and Iran and various terrorist organizations, hate Israel even more.” The problems with this statement:
- Only for organizations already committed to Israel’s destruction and/or Iranian-backed groups (Hezbollah and Hamas), who will mainly be angry that Israel deprived them of far more potent weapons. A temporary increase in activity from the people who already want to see you dead seems like a good tradeoff for preventing a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran.
- Probably not for the majority of Sunni Arabs, most of whom regard Persian Shias with at best indifference and at worst racist xenophobia and contempt. Sure, they hate Jews worse, but beyond certain Muslim Brotherhood offshoots, there is very little in the way “Pan-Islamic Unity” in the Middle East.
- Ditto for for the Turks. Erdogan’s Islamist- and Iranian-leaning government would no doubt make a great deal of noise, but do very little in the way of concrete actions that they weren’t already pursuing against Israel, and the average Sunni Turk is likely to lose little sleep over an attack against Shia Persians.
- The leaders of most Arab countries seem to want the Iranians stopped as well. That would suggest that there will be very little response from those states beyond pro forma disapproval.
- Given that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has already called for Israel to be wiped off the map, how much more could they hate Israel?
For his part, Juan Cole (after the usual conservative-bashing and name-calling) says:
Bibi Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is for all his bluster far too personally indecisive to take such a major step (and certainly not without an American green light; Bibi thinks Clinton had him undermined and moved out of office for obstructing the Oslo accords, and does not want to risk the same fate for causing trouble for Obama in Iraq and Afghanistan)
This ignores the fact that the Dovish wing of Israeli politics has all but disappeared since the Oslo accords, in the wake of Arafat’s intransigence, Hamas’ takeover of Gaza, the war against Hezbollah, etc. Kadima, Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu are the three largest parties in Israel, and none are going to bring down the Netanyahu government should he order a strike on Iran. Even Kadima, the leftmost of those three, considers Iran’s nuclear program an existential threat. Kadima leader Tzipi Livni sounds only slightly less firm than Netanyahu, stating that “the free world cannot afford Iran with a nuclear weapon.”
Also, he ignores the fact that if it did come down to losing his job, or failing to prevent a nuclear holocaust against his nation, Netanyahu’s choice will still be pretty easy to make.
Finally, former UN Ambassador John Bolton says Israel needs to strike within eight days.
