I'm Back (Sort Of!)

Ack! Low bandwidth/limited connectivity issues are here to stay, at least for the next couple of months. Regretfully, it means I'll have to chuck the pictorial commentaries (and bye-bye to my patience too). However, no pictures means I'll have to actually write about stuff, so I'll be resuming news updates, links to noteworthy sites, and the occasional book review.

Meantime, while my location must remain ambiguous, I'm tickled pink to report that it made the top 5 of America's most conservative cities. Well, according to a bunch of leftie SF academics, anyway, who probably pay their MJ bill by selling organic lightbulbs and "Castro/Chavez '08!" bumper stickers.

Auntie Em: Hate You, Hate Kansas, Taking the Dog

I'm in the midst of relocating, so I'll be off the grid for a few more days. I'm heading for a place with much friendlier gun laws but much less sophisticated internet access, so thanks for your patience!

Jihad in China?

A suicide bomber has killed himself and injured 31 on a bus on a busy street in southeastern China.

Chinese media reports on the terrorist, Huang Maojin, 42, sound pretty weird.

The Jawa Report: "What many people in the West are unaware of, is that China is fighting a low-level Islamist insurgency in its Western provinces."

Islamist Coup in Mauritania

A 17-man military junta comprised of top army brass toppled [President Maaoya Sid'Ahmed Ould] Taya while he was abroad [at King Fahd's funeral in Saudi Arabia] on Wednesday. The coup was welcomed by many in this desert nation who had grown weary of Taya's harsh 21-year rule.

Taya, who seized power in 1984, was strongly criticized by many Mauritanians for allying his overwhelmingly Muslim nation with the United States in the war on terror and with Israel. He also drew ire for opening full diplomatic relations with Israel six years ago, becoming one of only three Arab League nations to do so.

Al-Reuters reports that the new government has freed around 20 al Qaeda-linked "Islamist activists."

Others say it's just a tribal thing.

Bring It!

While the New York Times and even Fox News cluelessly give CAIR officials a platform and the kid-glove treatment they ceaselessly demand, Investor's Business Daily published this no-nonsense profile of CAIR last week. No author seems to be named, which means they do indeed understand who they're dealing with.

The terror-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, says two New York officials' push for such targeted profiling on city subways is offensive and ignorant.

"Terror comes in all shapes and sizes," insists Wissam Nasr, director of CAIR's New York branch.

Never mind that eight young Muslim men bombed London's tube. Or that 19 young Muslim men attacked New York in 2001. Or that every suspect on the FBI's list of most wanted terrorists is a Muslim man, with nearly half going by the name Mohammed.
. . .
CAIR should know better than anyone who does fit the terrorist profile. Three of its own officials were recently convicted of terror-related crimes. One even worked for Hooper. He's now in prison for conspiring to kill Americans.
. . .
Tellingly, CAIR after 9-11 refused to single out al-Qaida or Osama bin Laden for condemnation. After the London bombings, it endorsed an anti-terror edict so broad it was meaningless -- and one that was loaded with qualifiers.

What's In A Name?

It's frankly comical to watch all these hawkish conservatives tiptoeing through the rhetorical minefield. Meanwhile, the usual suspects stand by ready to shout "Timothy McVeigh" -- as if repeating this incantation somehow neutralizes terrorism's overwhelming nexus with Islamic theology.

Rumsfeld: It's a "global struggle against violent extremism."

Gen. Myers: the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."

Bush: No, it's still the war on terror. "Make no mistake about it, this is a war against people who profess an ideology, and they use terror as a means to achieve their objectives."

Andrew McCarthy (with thanks to JR): "Let's call it "The Thing Involving the Teeny-Tiny Number of People Who Made Certain Things Go Boom After Reading that Book that We Didn't Flush and Who Absolutely, Positively Do Not Represent the Vast, Enormous Majority of Very, Very Nice People Who Read the Same Book Without Making Anything Go Boom."

How can any country win a war when its leaders can barely bring themselves to call it a war, for fear of offending the enemy? Islamists themselves define the conflict as a holy war against Jews and Crusaders. That doesn't make our response a crusade, but we should sure as hell stop pandering to our hypersensitive fifth column and start calling this war what it is. Gates of Vienna suggests "the Third Wave of the Great Islamic Jihad." A mouthful, but much closer to the truth.