Berlin

Germany has discovered it has more Muslims than suspected, with a government survey concluding on Tuesday that about 5 per cent of the entire population was Islamic.

The poll was funded by the Interior Ministry for a series of conferences between officials and Muslim groups, after complaints that there was no reliable information on the Islamic population or their views.

The survey report, released in Berlin by the Interior Ministry, calculated that about 4 million people in the country were Muslim, well up from the past estimates of 3.1 to 3.4 million based on immigration data. Germany's overall population is around 80 million.

Pollsters phoned 6,000 households with 17,000 residents. To understand how observant they were, families were asked if they ate pork or drank alcohol. Among Sunni Muslims, 91 per cent said they followed Islamic food and drink practices.

The rate among Shiites was 60 per cent and among Alawites 49 per cent.

No need to despair, Germs; you may have murdered millions of Jews and invalidated your claim to being termed humans, and the vacuum created by your murders has been filled by Mohammedans- a much less desirable people- but you still have those crematoriums... so if you decide to 'remove' a few million of those rapists, cannibals and beheaders we will understand.

A recent thread on the Al-Falluja jihadist forum discussed the case of whether a Muslim who has nothing else to eat may kill an infidel in order to eat him. The discussion was prompted by a recently published book by Abu Muhammad Al-Maqdisi, one of the most influential jihadist sheikhs active today.

"Is It Permitted To Eat The Flesh of American Soldiers?"

On June 13, 2009, a member of the Al-Falluja forum who uses the moniker "Al-Maqdisi's Student" wrote a post based on this passage [in full report] titled "Is it permitted to eat the flesh of American soldiers? A quote from the illustrious Sheikh Al-Maqdisi, may Allah preserve him." He began by recounting an exchange between the early Muslim commander Khalid b. Al-Walid and the Byzantine commander at the battle of Yarmuk (in the year 636 C.E.) The Byzantine commander said to Khalid that the Muslims had only gone out from their land due to hunger, and offered to buy them off. Khalid responded: "It was not hunger that drove us out of our land, as you say; we are a people who drink blood, and we know that there is no blood more delicious than Byzantine blood. That is why we came."

"Al-Maqdisi's Student" then cites the aforementioned passage from Al-Maqdisi's Beginner's Guide [in full report], and follows up with the words: "The mujahideen should inform their belligerent [infidel] and apostate enemies of this exceptional law so that they can bring it up and study it at their conferences on human rights, counterterrorism, and so on! Then they in turn can proclaim that our soldiers lick their lips [at the thought of] eating the flesh of their hamburger- and Pepsi-eating soldiers!"

Gabor Steingart

The occupant of the White House may have changed recently. But the amount of ill-advised ideology coming from Washington has remained constant. Obama's list of economic errors is long -- and continues to grow.

The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

DPA

US President Barack Obama has not been shy about public spending.

Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis -- and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price -- and that price might be America's position as a global power.

In his fight against terrorism, Bush had the ideologue Dick Cheney at his side. "We must take the battle to the enemy," he said -- and sent out the bomber squadrons toward Iraq on the basis of mere suspicion. The result of the offensive is well known.

Obama's Cheney

Obama's Cheney is named Larry Summers. He is Obama's senior-most economic advisor, and like the former vice president, he is a man of conviction. The financial crisis may be large, but Summers' self-confidence is even larger. More importantly, President Barack Obama follows him like a dog does its master.

Britain will continue to fund the destruction of opium fields in Afghanistan despite the United States condemning poppy eradication as a waste of money.

Ben Farmer in Kabul

Photo: AP

Despite a change in the US policy toward poppy eradication, Britain looks set to keep the same policy.

The British Government said destroying poppy fields remained a key deterrent to growers and one of the "seven pillars" of its anti-opium strategy in Helmand province, just a day after Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan, said that destroying the crop only drove poor farmers to join the insurgency.

In a reversal of policy, he said the United States would stop funding poppy eradication and instead concentrate on encouraging farmers to grow alternative crops.

The Afghan government backed Britain's stance and defended its previous efforts, which relied heavily on ripping up or flattening poppy plants, as "perfect".

Economic Impact by Congressional District

Karen Campbell, Ph.D. and David Kreutzer, Ph.D.
 
It has become quite clear over the past several months that placing a cap on carbon emission--via rationing, taxing, and eliminating consumer choice--will have major implications for American families and the economy.

An analysis of the Waxman-Markey bill (as reported out of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce) by The Heritage Foundation found that unemployment will increase by nearly 2 million in 2012, the first year of the program, and reach nearly 2.5 million in 2035, the last year of the analysis. Total GDP loss by 2035 would be $9.4 trillion. The national debt would balloon as the economy slowed, saddling a family of four with $114,915 of additional national debt. Families would also suffer, as the bill would slap the equivalent of a $4,609 tax on a family of four by 2035.[1]

Heritage is not alone in its assessment. The National Black Chamber of Commerce[2] and the Brookings Institution[3] also project huge job losses. Proponents of a national energy tax will quickly point to a recent Congressional Budget Office memo[4] and Environmental Protection Agency[5] analysis suggesting low per family costs. Those estimates are grossly inaccurate, as both the CBO memo and the EPA's analysis contain flaws too serious for use as measures of the economic impact of the Waxman-Markey bill.

While national numbers are startling, many Members of Congress may be tempted to assume that their congressional districts will not be affected because they "cut a deal" or they have an incomplete view of how the American economy functions. Thus, it is crucially important that the Members making decisions, and the people affected by those decisions, understand how their congressional districts will be impacted by Waxman-Markey, or any type of national energy tax.

Product Design & Development

Matthias Küntzel

The Iranians who are resisting the electoral putsch are not only being humiliated and beaten by the batons and bullets of the Pasdaran but also by the inaction of the so-called freedom-loving world: no call for a special session of the UN, no threats of sanctions, no boycott declaration, no economic embargo, not even the smallest warning—let's just not take sides or make any commitments as long as the result of the struggle in Iran remains open. The West, so the argument goes, has to be careful to avoid providing any pretext to vilify the Iranian opposition. So Obama doesn't need days but weeks to slowly pull back his outstretched hand, while the German Foreign Ministry argues all the more emphatically for a dialogue with the putsch-regime. Undauntedly, the German-Iranian Chamber of Industry and Commerce in Tehran advertises the building of a German-Iranian Business Center in Berlin, while the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Hamburg reported today that its upcoming seminar on "Export Certification in Iran Trade" (July 13) is already overcrowded. And haven't we gotten along somehow or other with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the past four years?

But this time this optimistic hope that things will just go on is a self-deception. Khamenei and Ahmadinejad represent the apocalyptic wing of the regime that has just carried out a coup d'etat. Both of them have politicized the mystical image of the Shiite Messiah, the "twelfth Imam," and they have mystified politics through appeals to the alleged will of that imaginary creature. In his Friday sermon, Khamenei attributed even the high electoral participation to the influence of that same twelfth Imam. For Ahmadinejad the return of the Messiah, so longed for, depends on maximal chaos and unrest in the world and on the destruction of Israel. It is therefore only consistent for him to regard the "nuclearization of Iran" as the "beginning of a fundamental change in the world."

Noel Brinkerhoff

Salman bin Abdul-Aziz

Even if a lawsuit by families of those who died during the September 11, 2001, attacks is not successful in court, the effort may result in shedding light on long-alleged connections between al-Qaeda and the Saudi royal family.

Lawyers representing more than 7,000 Americans have obtained internal Treasury Department documents showing that the International Islamic Relief Organization, a prominent charity heavily backed by Saudi royalty, had supported terrorist organizations until 2007.
 
The plaintiffs’ legal team also obtained testimony from a self-described al-Qaeda operative in Bosnia who said another charity, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, provided money and supplies to al-Qaeda in the 1990s.
 
Still another witness, in Afghanistan, has sworn that he witnessed an emissary for a leading Saudi prince, Turki al-Faisal, hand a check for one billion Saudi riyals (about $267 million) to a top Taliban leader in 1998. Al-Faisal later served as ambassador to the United States.

HARRY STEIN

"Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies," noted the Washington Post of Walter Kendall Myers, the aging New Leftist recently arrested with his wife, Gwendolyn, on charges of spying for Cuba. "But to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C.," the story continued, "it was nothing out of the ordinary. 'We were all appalled by the Bush years,' one said."

In this account and others, the Myerses seem less like shady characters out of a spy novel than like some of the more adamant residents of the leafy, left-of-center New York suburb where I live. They, too, as the Post has it, manifest "a deep and long-standing anger toward this country," and they certainly share Mr. Myers's rage, as recorded in his diary, at America's oil companies and health-care system.

Associated Press

Espionage then and now: Hede Massing (above) and Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn.

Reuters

That the Myerses' politics appear indistinguishable from today's garden-variety left-liberalism has not been lost on conservatives. One wag on the Web speculated that the couple would beat the rap by pleading insanity based on Bush Derangement Syndrome. "Here's the shocking part (kidding)," noted Gateway Pundit's Jim Hoft. "A Walter Myers from Ashburn, Virginia donated to the Obama Campaign this past year."

The Obama administration ignores a longstanding — and life-saving — policy.

Andrew C. McCarthy

As the Iranian government’s murderous repression of the Iranian people continues, critics right and left agitate over the deafening silence of an American president who, as a candidate, derided the Bush administration’s ambitious democracy promotion as too timid. They speculate as to why Barack Obama won’t speak out: Why won’t he condemn the mullahs? Is he daft enough to believe he can charm the regime into abandoning its nuclear ambitions? Does the self-described realist so prize stability that he thinks it’s worth abandoning the cause of freedom — and the best chance in 30 years of dislodging an implacable American enemy?

In truth, it’s worse than that. Even as the mullahs are terrorizing the Iranian people, the Obama administration is negotiating with an Iranian-backed terrorist organization and abandoning the American proscription against exchanging terrorist prisoners for hostages kidnapped by terrorists. Worse still, Obama has already released a terrorist responsible for the brutal murders of five American soldiers in exchange for the remains of two deceased British hostages.

Prepare to be infuriated.

On Jan. 20, 2007, five American soldiers were killed and three seriously wounded in Iraq. As Bill Roggio relates at the Long War Journal, it was a daring operation: a twelve-man terrorist team disguised as U.S. servicemen attacked our troops as they held a previously arranged meeting with local officials in Karbala. Four of the soldiers were alive when they were abducted from the scene. They were handcuffed and murdered in a remote location when the coalition forces attempting to rescue them closed in.

Given the sophistication of the raid and the intelligence required to pull it off, it was a virtual certainty that the mullahs’ special forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, were behind it. More than a decade earlier, in concert with Hezbollah (Iran’s forward terrorist militia), the IRGC had bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 members of the United States Air Force. In Karbala, the IRGC had relied on what Michael Ledeen of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies aptly calls its “most lethal element,” the Quds (Jerusalem) Force, in combination with a burgeoning, Hezbollah-like network of local Shiite terrorists.

This was confirmed two months later when U.S. forces captured Ali Mussa Daqduq, a high-ranking veteran of Hezbollah, in Basrah. As Roggio explains, Daqduq had been tasked by Iran to organize a network of terror cells to strike coalition forces in Iraq. The network would operate under the direction of Qais Qazali. Qazali and his brother, Laith Qazali, were captured along with Daqduq.