Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Canvassing Churchill

Art Daily: "Sotheby's To Sell Sir Winston Churchill Work Given to U.S. President Harry S. Truman"

Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (1874-1965) was one of the great statesmen of the 20th Century but it is his paintings that have put him in the spotlight over the last year or so.

In July of this year Sotheby’s sold a view of his home, Chartwell Landscape with Sheep, for £1 million – a new auction record for a work by him (by nearly twice the previous record) – while in December last year, a Moroccan scene entitled View of Tinherir that Churchill had gifted to General George C. Marshall, fetched £612,800, again at a Sotheby’s auction.

Now, on Thursday, December 13, 2007, Sotheby’s is delighted to announce that it will be offering Churchill’s Marrakech as a highlight of its forthcoming sale of 20th Century British Art in London. Marrakech is comparable to View of Tinherir but arguably superior in both composition and provenance. >>>


Saturday, October 27, 2007

Early Rembrandt Discovered

On an auction in England a painting that had been evaluated between 700 and 1100 Euros eventually was sold for around 3 million. A number of experts thinks this is the real thing. The work has so far been attributed to 19th Century follower of Rembrandt's. But according to the Head of Sotheby's Netherlands, Jan Six, it probably concerns a self-portrait dating from 1629 of the master proper.

As it happens Six is a distant relative of Burgomaster Jan Six who was portrayed by Rembrandt (2nd picture). In a newspaper Six opines this is the major Rembrandt discovery of the decade.

For years the oil painting decorated the walls of a house in Gloucestershire. The owner had the canvass evaluated years ago, but the conclusion at the time was, that this was no Dutch master.

But while on auction potential buyers were persuaded that it was the real thing; the price went up to 2.2 million pounds and halted eventually around 3 millions Euros.

The buyer of "Young Rembrandt as Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher" wishes to remain anonymous. According to Six he is probably an art dealer who will restore and resell the master piece.

Here's more arts news concerning an exhibition in The Hague museum "Mauritshuis". They present a large survey exhibition of 17th century Dutch portraiture.

The World is Going Backward in Strides: Attempt on SIOE Leader

While some people of the "Stop Islamization of Europe" organization were preparing to demonstrate yesterday in Copenhagen against the chutzpah of Saudi Arabia lecturing their partner in the Eurabia project - Europe - on the Human Rights situation of Muslims on the continent - there has been an attempt on their lives. One of the victims is a 74 year old woman.

This is indeed the thirties! The Leftist Brown Shirts are everywhere. Reverting tomorrow on developments during Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week in America, but here is the press report. Feast your eyes how humanity is going backwards, giant strides at a time!

Friday, October 26, 2007

"Field Guide to American Politics" interviewing "Muslims Against Sharia"

The occasion of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week seems like a good opportunity to redeem my promise to write a post on the podcast interview (episode 53) that Andrew Riley and Duane Lester of All American Blogger and "Field Guide to American Politics" on 10th October had with one of the people behind "Muslims Against Sharia", Khalim Massoud. Now, seemed a particularly auspicious time in the light of this exchange of pleasantries on Propeller: the type of inter-human discourse seems to typify the discussions surrounding the subject, of which the catch words seem to be denial, projection, paranoia and intolerance.

The producers of "Field Guide to American Politics" (hereafter FGAP) set themselves the task to find out if the assertions of the two main Doubting Thomases - "Free Thinker (since 1881)" and "Exposing Muslims Against Sharia (Muhairi8)" that "Muslims Against Sharia" (hereafter MASH) are nothing but a Joowish Neocon conspiracy, intent on bending the radical tendencies within Islam into a more modern, humanistic approach from the inside out - are justified.

To put this accusation in the proper perspective, the reader needs to be aware that for some obscure reason best known to themselves, the Left has claimed "idealism" as their own. Enter the reviled Neocons, who are said to have stolen it away from them. Owing to this inexcusable feat Neocons are whispered to have horns! After this, no further justification or motivation is required: the "Joowish Neocon conspiracy" accusation carries plenty of weight all by itself.

Asked what the overall reception of "Muslims Against Sharia" has been since its arrival on the blego scene around 9/11, a metallic ghostly voice (the result of a transforming device) - which we take to belong to Khalim Massoud - confirms the mixed reactions. An alternative attitude - especially from the Muslim side - has been accusations of apostasy and deviation.

MASH obviously don't propose to waste any time in trying to convert religious fanatics. Massoud: "We don't care what they think. People who support our goals don't question our faith. We try to give voice to people who are sick and tired of human beings murdered in the name of Islam".

Confronted with the question what MASH mean with their statement that "Islamophobia is alive and well", Massoud explains that apart of self-hatred, they point to Muslims and their advocates' confirmation of Western stereotyping. What he means is, it's rather like the implied racism in views that Muslims would be unfit, or not ready, for democratic government.

Asked why Islam needs to be reformed, Massoud posits that Islam in its present form is inconsistent with modern society. If the barbaric practices can be removed, and Islam can stop being a justification for terrorism, the clash of civilizations might be averted, and Islam can become part of the free and democratic world.

The answer to the question what the difference is, between Muslims and Islamists, is necessarily protracted. Islam is no monolith. Fundamentalists obviously do not represent all Muslims. The perception in America is, that all Muslims are terrorists and that moderate Muslims don't exist. Although FGAP dispute this statement, at a later point in the show, an interlocutor called Jim, makes precisely this point as he gets caught in a mesh of circular logic. He distrusts MASH as "all Muslims lie to Infidels as their faith prescribes; if they wouldn't lie, they wouldn't be Muslims."

Massoud asserts MASH aim at giving moderates a voice. A vocal Muslim advocacy group like CAIR is well organised and well funded from the Middle East; it is embraced by the American government despite its terrorist ties. But no one has heard of the "American Islamic Forum for Democracy", who represent moderate Muslims.

Asked specifically why Sharia Law is incompatible with Western civilization, Massoud gives the truly horrific example of a Saudi girls' school on fire, out of which no students were rescued since they were not properly attired at the time. All interlocutors agree that such an occurrence taking place in the West is unthinkable: even in the hypothetical case of the event occurring in a Christian fundamentalist equivalent of Saudi Arabia, rescuing lives would be the prime focal point rather than symbolic, religious considerations.

Islamists make no secret of their wish to replace the Constitution with Sharia Law. Massoud lists a number of public examples implemented in the name of diversity, multiculturalism, tolerance and free speech. He suggests that if you want America to become more like Saudi Arabia, you pack up and go there instead. Arguments for Sharia practises based on the freedom of speech are sheer folly: this just provides aid and comfort to the enemy, which - last time he checked - was a criminal offense.

The example of guide dogs not being accepted by Muslim taxi drivers as "unclean" is in violation of laws, protecting the disabled. Another example stems from Germany where a misguided, postmodern judge declared Sharia divorce laws applicable to a Muslim couple of which the wife claimed urgent handling on the basis of abuse by the husband. Equal before the law? Apartheid indeed!

When asked to provide an example of a typical country practicing Sharia, Massoud mentions Afghanistan under the Taliban. The FGAP presenter at this point subconsciously prompts a rather alarming oxymoron in claiming to have a hard time indeed imagining "a Taliban style democracy". Saudi Arabia would be another example of a Sharia country, but it is kept afloat on oil revenues. One wonders about the state of medical treatment for women.

Massoud's advice to moderate Muslims is to "speak up, get organised, start your own group or join an existing one. The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who do nothing against it. Act, before it is too late!"

FGAP point out that MASH are taking big risks by speaking out: if not for hiding their identities, surely their lives would be in grave danger. Jim just sees it as yet more proof of MASH' perfidity: were they for real, surely they would long have been killed by now! There's no arguing with the master of circular reasoning!

Enquiring how much time he's got, Massoud wraps up his heart felt plea for Islamic reform with a laundry list of complaints, that:

- the US government is embracing radicals, while ignoring moderates;
- the people who are supposed to protect Americans from terrorism, are actually in bed with terrorist fronts;
- the media are being skillfully manipulated by Islamists;
- the American educational system is teaching Islamist views;
- Islamist regimes are exercising control over American foreign policy;
- political correctness, rather than common sense is ruling domestic politics;
- Christians and Jews are afraid of their own shadows in dealing with Muslims;
- anyone speaking out against Islamo-Fascism is automatically labelled a racist.

Islamism has infiltrated almost every aspect of Western life, because it is well organised and well financed. Moderate Islam is the best antidote to radical Islam, but without making good use of it, the West prefer to ignore the problem.

Nazi Germany had ten years to arm itself to the teeth; Islamo-Nazism has an eight years' head start. The question is what the toll will be this time round?!

Amen to that, with our sincere blessings and endorsement!

Scheduled for 14th November, yours truly about the new clearinghouse cum political watering hole: Politeia.

Related:
- "Muslims Against Sharia issue Counter Bounty"
- "The Mystery Behind "Muslims Against Sharia"
- "Leftists For Sharia"
- "The Unholy Alliance: Conflating Three Great Isms"

Thursday, October 25, 2007

The Wild Fires of Pyro Terrorism

With reference to the massive, cataclysmic wildfire situation presently unfolding in California, the Politeia Article Database has been updated with information on Pyro Terrorism.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the people who have been hit.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Update Iraq: Grim as Ever ... only Kidding!

Even before 'the surge' took hold, things were looking up. Not that you'd figure that from the reporting in what is collectively termed, 'the West'. Just how misleading the reporting by the politically biased mainstream press is, has already been published in a number of blogs, and by some critical journalists with a beating heart for the investigative side of the profession - those that haven't become part of the global conspiracy for the cultivation of the anti American consensus.

Michael Yon - an independent reporter who's been blogging from Iraq (at his own expense) since December 2004 - describes in "Resistance is Futile: You will be (Mis)informed" in no uncertain terms how the public is hoodwinked into believing that the war is long hopelessly lost. The Democrats have a vested interest that this perception takes hold if they want to win the next presidential elections, which they do, desperately.

Yon sums up the situation in a set of illustrative pictures, and in a few pointed words: "A gulf", "a gap", "a chasm", "a parallel universe". "All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq ... I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions."

"The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public."

This is how bad the situation is! Osama bin Laden just released the fourth video this year, bitterly scolding "the laxness" of his Iraqi cronies (clients, appears to be the new neutrality term). Newsday reports that "in the brief tape played on Al-Jazeera television, the terrorist leader urged militants to "beware of division", lamenting the "fanatical" tribal loyalties. This is perhaps no wonder, as the news that even Sunni tribesmen have had their fill of being slaughtered by the death cult, may not yet have filtered through to the profound Waziri layer of rocks, under which these hirabahists live.

In an 'in their face' provocation "the U.S. military plans a "unification parade" today in Ramadi, the Anbar provincial capital, to showcase the success of a tribal alliance with some Sunnis. Maj. Lee Peters, a military spokesman, said increased security will protect the celebration, which will include at least 200 Sunni sheiks and hundreds of other dignitaries in commemoration of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, founder of the anti-al-Qaeda Anbar Salvation Council, assassinated by a bomb Sept. 13."

Even the shushing tones of "the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women" - tut-tutting from a place beyond history so much raw, unsophisticated, direct cowboy brawn - cannot stop the advancement of the loathsome neocon dream of democracy for all.

Once it lets its civilizational influence felt, not only will Islam cease to be a hotbed and a justification for Hirabah (unholy war), it will also help foster a culture in which gruesome anti human practices as shown today by our friends at Muslims Against Sharia, will become a thing of the past (caution: the images are very graphic!).

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Effectively Communicating Jihad: a spade is a spade

Our new political watering hole, flagship and article library Politeia feels honoured to have gained permission by the author to publish a highly important essay on how strategic communications against the War on Terrorism can be improved. These pages have adopted, effective immediately, his recommendations with regard to idiom pertaining to Jihad and terrorism. We heartily encourage the readership to follow suit.

The author, Sam C. Holliday is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a former director of Stability Studies at the Army War College, and a retired Army Colonel. He earned a Master's in Public Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate in International Relations from the University of South Carolina. Currently he is Director of The Armiger Cromwell Center, a small nonprofit Internet organization for thinking "outside of the box of conventional wisdom." By means of its online essays, the ACC seeks more effective foreign policies to achieve stability through equilibrium. He's got his work cut out for him.

His recommendation for more precise idiom with respect to terrorism or the ongoing Jihad against the West, coincides with the alleged renunciation of terrorism by Sayid Imam al-Sharif, the man who prescribed the "Third Jihad" for the Islamization of the world. In effect, this could potentially be the turning point in the War on Terrorism.

Al-Sharif is the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. His supporters assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981. He himself was with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, fighting against the Soviet Union. He was captured after 9/11 and has been in an Egyptian jail since 2004.

There have been several reports that Al-Sharif will soon publish a book in which he states that the use of terrorism, and the killing of innocent nonbelievers in the name of Jihad, constitutes a violation of the Koran.

Sam Holliday argues that our enemies have called their struggle for the global Caliphate "Jihad", which means "holy war", and refer to their practitioners as "mujahidin", meaning "holy warriors", or "Servants of Allah" or, most irritating of all, “martyrs”. The latter word harks back to the first Christians who were persecuted under the pagan laws of the Roman Empire; it is derived from the Greek word 'martyras', meaning witness. They'd rather be tortured to death as 'witnesses to God', than acknowledge the Emperor's genie.

The point is that this Islamic terminology of holy war and holy warriors has positive emotional and religious connotations in the Muslim world. Furthermore - and this has become almost conspiratorial in its Orwellian dimensions - the media, Western governments and their spokespersons, the appeasers, apologists and advocates, for fear of antagonising the bullies, are exerting through political correctness the use of highly euphemistic terminology, the words "terrorism" and "terrorist" have been tabooed altogether and placed on an index of politically incorrect P.R. terms.

Sam Holliday argues that this Orwellian Newspeak is both inaccurate and dangerous. The leaders of the Third Jihad have exploited this lack of moral courage to their advantage. Holliday presses upon our leaders the urgent need to make changes in their spasmodic approach not to offend Muslims, and capitalize on al-Sharif's new found humanity. His dissent can potentially remove the Koranic justification from the terrorists. By accurately stating that we are fighting against Evil and Evildoers - not holy warriors - we can ourselves obtain a strategic communication advantage.

The author describes the "Third Jihad" as an aggressive revivalist movement that is accepted, respected and supported by peaceful and naive Muslims. The holy warriors come in numerous organizations of many sizes and with various tactical agendas. "They are motivated by feelings of envy, frustration, greed, prejudice and hatred that are the result of manipulation by the leaders."

Holliday provides a chronological outline of the history of Islam and the First and Second Jihads, the conquests of Spain and Byzantium (Constantinople), upto the Iranian Marxist-Islamist Revolution that overthrew the Shah, which is considered to be the starting shot of the third endeavour to establish a global Caliphate.

"For its leaders, the Third Jihad is just another effort to spread Islam until everyone is governed by “the ways of the Prophet”—and to take down the Great Satan. For the foot soldiers, it is a way to express their feelings. In all three Jihads violence has been an accepted way to eliminate, or convert, non-believers (infidels)."

They aim to weaken the opposition against the establishment of the global Caliphate, and to push back the influence of the West. This cultural takeover was al-Sharif's original goal. Many Muslims however oppose the Third Jihad as they have become its prime victims. Yet they might be willing to condemn “terrorism”, but not the goal of a Great Caliphate itself, being so central to Islam.

There's an entire Western cohort that denies the threat of the Third Jihad: if we meet the enemy with pacifist overtures, or perhaps throw them a Zionist bone, the danger will dissolve as by a miracle. This is often followed by assertions that directly refute the trivialization of terrorism, namely that it is the result of Western Foreign Policies in Islamic countries. This argument thanks its popularity to the fact that it suits the Leftist political agenda. Alternatively the existential rivalry between Shiites and Sunnis is pointed out, which is neither here, nor there (or anywhere).

Then there's the hyper dangerous, counter democratic phenomenon that is currently undermining our very way of life: the 'hate speech', "Islamophobia - a term invented to shut down legitimate and vital debate about the threat of the Third Jihad - and narrow their focus to the personal, inner, nonviolent Jihad al Akbar. They are weary, and want to enjoy the good life without effort or worry."

Not to mention the amount of deflectors: the climate, the McCanns, the amoral exploits of Hollywood degenerates. It all serves to at least distract the attention, or put in a positive light, a political-religious movement "that under international law is considered aggression, and for the past 300 years has often been called imperialism."

Holliday argues however that the idiom Hirabah (unholy warfare) and hirabahists (evildoers who use terror and will incur Allah's condemnation on Judgment Day) allows the distinction between Islam as religion and Islam as basis for all out conquest. He stresses the fact that it is necessary for Muslims to be "convinced that this distinction can be made in accordance with authentic Qur'anic Islam. The conversion of al-Sharif allows this distinction to be better communicated to all Muslims. The struggle over whether such a distinction can be made illustrates why communications is the center of gravity in irregular warfare—the oldest form of conflict among humans: insurgents using any means available to them to weaken those in authority."

The new idiom will be understood by, and will have meaning, for those who speak Arabic. We must attempt to discredit aggressive, unholy warfare, the Koranic justification of violence: Warfare against Hirabahists rather than War on Terror or GWOT (Global War on Terror). "However, the changes needed are not primarily in semantics. They are primarily contextual: how the leaders and people of America and Europe view irregular warfare and what changes they are prepared to make to become more effective in this form of conflict."

He clarifies further that we need to condemn terrorists in Islamic religious terms, rather than in Western secular terms. "No longer should we adopt the language of those falsely claiming they are fighting a Jihad for Islam." "If used effectively the apparent renunciation of terrorism by al-Sharif can facilitate such a change."

~ The entire essay is published on the Politeia Articles Database ~

Autumn ...

Saturday, October 20, 2007

The Counter Hirabah (or unholy war) Council

Atlas Shrugs is providing us with detailed minutes of the Counter Hirabah Council that took place in Brussels of all places, right in the heart of the rapidly descending EU, at the European and Flemish Parliaments. Gates of Vienna are posting the program overview, of what must have been an interesting two days.

On October 18 and 19, over 70 organizations and individuals joined together to create a European network of activists from 14 nations to resist the increasing Islamisation of their countries. The summit was sponsored by the Center for Vigilant Freedom. Proceedings and preparations have taken place in great secrecy. By this time of writing, it is all over.

Atlas: "Some names must remain unreported here, their security too tenuous. But it was an extraordinary group! Much thanks to our gracious hosts Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal, Bart Debie, Filip De Winter, Philip Claeys, Dirk Crols and their colleagues and the blogosphere ambassadors, Baron Bodissey of Gates of Vienna, and many European bloggers, activists and experts who contributed ideas and contacts."

GoV: "Our groups are a network of networks. Center for Vigilant Freedom’s goal is to create and strengthen a web of contacts, relationships, and interlinked organizations in order to roll back Islamization and the encroachment of sharia within our countries. We want to build a robust and flexible means of communication among ourselves.We intend to build up a coalition of people who track Islamization-related legislation in different countries. Their efforts will include actions to prevent terrorism, block the legal encroachment of Sharia, and encourage the passage of laws that protect national constitutions, limit immigration and roll back Islamization.

Reminds me of the underestimated Naimisha Journal.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Of Hive Minds and Group Souls: Marxism and Islamism

Here's a peek into the deluded world of Muslim conversion. As yet unbeknown to herself (I believe), lately I am given to follow the literary activities of a young female convert - one of 300 in Belgium alone. She has a university grade in higher Marxism, and is actually an activist posing as a journalist. (One wonders just how many of those are around!)

The first article I stumbled on, briefly appeared on the site of The Brunei Times: the word that comes to mind to describe it, is agit prop. It can now be accessed here. At present I have come across another article she authored for the Islamic press, an 'interview' with two other converts on the occasion of Belgian Convert Day, which seems to have taken place on 4th of March this year. Here's the Saudi Gazette with "My Daughter is a Muslim".

The 'discussion' - if it has actually taken place is immaterial - indicates quite nicely what the attractions of Islam are for some Leftist inclined people. I am suspecting the author is a sufferer of Narcissistic Awe, the underestimated form of Narcissism which does not mind enslaving the whole of humanity if they feel this is in the people's own best interest. Like all Narcissists they crave attention. Through identification with a victim group they can share the audience that this group is generating.

"There is not a dominant type of people that become converts. Converts come from all social and educational backgrounds. The strength of Islam is that they are all equal as Muslims."

The author doesn't seem to be aware of above psychological pathology that predisposes some people to identify with victim groups of the Marxist dialectic, or she might indeed be able point at a "dominant type of people".

"Equal as Muslims" underlines the call of egalitarian collectivism that never fails to attract the hive mind. It's as if this type of 'carbon based unit' instinctively feels the need to home back to the collective, the 'group soul' of the drove.

Apart from the aspects I mentioned in "The Unholy Alliance: Conflating the Three Great isms" this is a futher indication that the current form of Islam belongs to the family of subjectivist, collective Counter-Enlightenment ideologies (see also Chart I: The Straight Red Line), and one reason Muslims will never become "the new Joos", as some have suggested.

In a three part post on the pseudo religious aspects of the collectivist Counter-Enlightenment ideologies of the atheist variety, Communism and National Socialism, we saw that mass events were featuring highly on their indoctrination programs. The monotonous, rhythmic beat of a drum, or the cadence of a charismatic beloved leader-hierophant's prolonged speech, has the hypnotic effect that any right minded demagogue might be looking for. It is the opportunity to subliminally instill the message into the followers, a shot of ideological synchronizing of the watches, if you will. Islam's equivalents of course, are the Hajj and the blood fests associated with the Shia Day of Ashura.

Regarding the latter, Matthias Küntzel has written touchingly in "Ahmadinejad's World"; how the death cult based on Ashura (link to Time slide show) has sent half a million children into oblivion in mine fields, and wave after wave of underclass Iranians was shot to human pulp, in a way which even caused qualms in Saddam Hussein's battle hardened army.

"They come toward our positions in huge hordes with their fists swinging,” an Iraqi officer complained in summer 1982, “You can shoot down the first wave, and then the second. But at some point the corpses are piling up in front of you, and all you want to do is scream and throw away your weapon. Those are human beings, after all!”

In view of the blind sacrifices made in that war by the Basiji - the Iranian version of the Marxist proletariat - they have now been elevated to unofficial police, a sort of SA (Stormtroopers), enforcers of the Revolution and Ahmadinejad's regime apparatus. They are at present also manning the nuclear laboratories.

It is fascinating reading how the sense of 'original sin', originating in the Ashura story has been worked into today's Islamist policies of suicide bombings (the so-called martyrdom operations) and how the Muslim Brotherhood provided Sunnis with their own version.

Blood curling rather than fascinating is the Twelfth Imam dogma that underpins Ahmadinejad's apocalyptic teleology: the more the world is whipped into this Islamic version of political correctness, the sooner the Western Enlightenment notions as symbolised by the Jewish state are obliterated, the earlier this Messiah figure of the Mahdi will materialise, enabling the end game to begin.

This renders the nuclear doctrine of mutually assured destruction absolutely meaningless in this case. And this is why the political flippancy, that we'll just have to learn to live with a nuclear armed Iran, is so criminally ignorant.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Environmentalism's Blog Action Day

In celebration of Blog Action Day on which the combined blegosphere is to post on the environment I thought I'd take the opportunity to keep the readership up to speed with some news recently received from Dutch environmentalist watch dog "De Klimatosoof", Theo Richel.

It is of course about the recent ruling of a British judge in re of the Gore scandal, which is actually unprecedented in the history in humanity. Never before have so many heads of state and government been hoodwinked by a piece of fraudulent rhetoric posing as serious science. At some point it reached embarrassment levels.

I can spare myself the trouble of translating the whole thing by relaying the relevant links to Times articles No. 1 and No. 2 that say it all. Here's the link to order educational material should you require it.

All that is leaving aside why the Nobel Peace Committee has seen fit to endow this fraudster with a peace prize, even if we have become accustomed to some shocks in that department over the last decades. Richel has compiled all the negative reactions to the award on his site.

Of course we have to take into consideration the criteria with which this prize is awarded in the first place. It's almost Orwellian Newspeak - by which, after good totalitarian practice, a word has the exact opposite meaning. American Thinker:

"According to the 1895 will of the Prize's founder, Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel, the Peace Prize is to be awarded, "to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

Gore evidently has done none of the above, but it is a mystery in what sense the "abolition or reduction of standing armies" has ever contributed to world peace. The fact that the Cold War has never become a hot one was entirely due to the balance of power of the standing armies. The perfidity of pacifists knows no bounds.

Leaving you this Blog Action Day with Theo Richel's YouTube compilation of Al's black-book of environmental disasters, which - according to Richel - are all within the normal spectrum of climatic phenomena. The purpose is of course control and deflection from the real problems.

Dutch Transnational Progressivism Alert

The Dutch are up in arms as the Crown Prince's consort - the future Queen if there is to be one - has called the Dutch national identity into question.

The Princess' father was a Junior Minister in the Argentine junta, so the Princess is always eager to show her Leftist credentials. The Socialists were so perturbed by this marriage that they could only be pacified if the father would forgo attending his daughter's marriage: so much for national identity - pettiness would be one ethnic characteristic.

The discourse wanders in many trivial directions, except for the light in which this must be seen, namely transnational progressivism, of which the Princess and her family are typical proponents.


We had better be prepared for more assaults on national identities and nation states: delete the border!

The underlying ratio to this piece of multiculturalism is that our DNA is ninety nine point nine nine nine percent similar. On that basis how can we speak of race, or of culture, let alone of such a non-existent thing as 'national identity' which in the past has only been the cause of 'wave after wave of ethnic cleansing'. Nor are we territorial animals, or plants with roots; we are humans with boots, according to the simplistic multicultural Out of Africa ideologues. Aren't we basically all 'the same', stemming as we are from a common female ancestor?

This speech should typically trigger alarm bells in a cautious post democratic new-empires-without-emperors watch dog, like myself. I just perused the green links, which were written only last May. It was all very much conjecture then. But in a matter of a few months the North American Union seems inevitable (!) and the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is all but official reality.

The latter is particularly alarming as it provides the UN commission - the International Seabed Authority (ISA) - with its own source of revenue. In the cacophony of confused ideas, is the UN itself now considered to be a state? New World Order paranoids better keep close watch! Keeping you posted!

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Be Cool! Join the Nazi Appreciation Movement!

Bored to death with vacuity? Islam no alternative? Why not join the latest fad? Everybody else does ...

- American Thinker: "Mainstreaming Hitler" - "In an era when a head of state openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map it should come as no shock that Hitler is so popular that he is being used as an advertising icon. ... A Dubai-based company Conqueror Real Estate is standing by a decision to use Adolf Hitler in a national newspaper campaign in the United Arab Emirates."

- Arutz Sheva: "Neo-Nazi Activity Spreading Around the World" - Neo-Nazi activity is rising around the world, as incidents in September and early October were reported in Europe, Southeast Asia and the U.S."

New York
- Anti-Semites erected a four-foot high swastika at a Long Island, New York school this week in the latest of a rash of anti-Semitic incidents.
- Swastikas were also sprayed at another school and hate mail was sent to at least seven Jewish homes.
- On September 23, Yom Kippur eve, a bus outside the Bnei Shimon Yisroel yeshiva in Brooklyn was found marked up with swastikas and anti-Jewish slurs.
- In Williamsburg vandals used soap or lotion to smear the mirrors and bus interior.

Pennsylvania
- A 60-foot wide swastika was carved in a cornfield.
- Huge 600-foot wide swastika was found carved in another cornfield.

India
- A bed linen dealer in India named a new bedspread collection NAZI.

Korea
- A bar in a Seoul promotes a Nazi theme: the bar features a red Nazi swastika over the entrance.

Portugal
- First-ever desecration of a Jewish cemetery in the country's capital

Germany
In northern Germany, a news anchorwoman for the region’s public television channel was fired after she praised the way the Nazi regime treated women and the family unit.

Austria
Four soldiers had been suspended from service for creating neo-Nazi propaganda: two videos now also on YouTube.

Czech Republic
Prague officials over the weekend banned a march by the neo-Nazi Young National Democrats who planned to parade through the city's Jewish quarter the day after the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Poland
Vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery in the central city of Kalisz in the latest of several desecrations in the same cemetery over the past several months.

Hungary
Hungarian government officials are also on edge after a large neo-Nazi cell marched in the capital in the first week of September.

- Atlas Shrugs (photos courtesy Pam Geller): "Nazi/Islam Nexus: Inspiration or Conspiracy" - "There is a profound debate at the heart of recent revelation's in the evil nexus between Nazism and Islamism. Melanie Phillips merits a new book on the Nazi roots of Muslim antisemitism. Matthias Küntzel's forthcoming book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 run contrary to the arguments put forth in Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad and his soon to released The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism. Bostom's first book provides a much more detailed "alignment." Bostom includes a vile, but seminal essay by Nazi propagandist of extermination turned pious Muslim jihadist Johannes Omar Amin von Leers."

More on the German political scientist and author Matthias Küntzel (Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11) in "Berlin-Tehran: The Counter-Enlightenment Axis".

Update: It is a common mistake to mix up the original Indian swastika with the National Socialist symbol. The former is also known as the Wheel of Life, while the latter .... well, the same but only for a limited sort of people.


Note: Irony or sarcasm is lost on some readers. Present posting would be a good example of the latter.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Exclusive: The Clinton Legacy, The Balkan Caliphate

Last Friday morning the traditional neoclassical building, today the Cultural Center of the University of Indianapolis - an architectonic jewel in the traditional old town of Athens at the foot of the Acropolis mountain - was the scenic theatre of the presentation of a book with the skin crawling title "The Coming Balkan Caliphate", written by the American author Christopher Deliso.

Deliso is director of Balkanalysis.com, a leading independent online news and analysis group.

The site utilizes a growing corps of writers and researchers from regional countries as well as from elsewhere in Europe and the United States. Amongst those Ioannis Michaletos, the intelligence blogger and Junior Analyst at Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS) who has kindly provided this blog with unique background information on this summer's devastating wild fires, which - in all probability - were part of a pyro terrorism campaign against the Greek state, for which seventy people have been arrested, twenty of whom are described as 'foreigners'.

Deliso has lived and traveled widely in southeastern Europe and has a master's degree with distinction in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University (1999). Since 2001, he has published many articles on Balkan politics, economics, security issues, travel, history and culture in US and world newspapers, analysis firms such as the Economist Intelligence Unit, and in numerous magazines and websites.

The Balkans (link provides an excellent UN map) is the gateway between East and West, and historically Europe's soft underbelly. Presently organized crime and terrorism present a constant threat. Chris Deliso's eye-opening book details how fifteen years of misguided Western interventions, political scheming, and local mafia appeasement, compounded by a massive infusion of Arab cash, fundamentalist Islamic preaching and Wahhabi mosque building, have allowed radical Islamic groups to fill in the cracks between internal ethnic and religious schisms, and take root in key areas of the Balkans.

Deliso clarifies the situation as follows.

- Bosnia - During the 1990 Yugoslav conflict the Western powers conspired to allow Arab (Saudi, Wahhabi) mujaheddin, surplus of the Afghan resistance against Soviet occupation, to enter the territory as an easy way to counter the Serb attempts to keep the federation of Yugoslavia together, while countering internal Muslim harassment of local Christian populations.

Since the blow-back of this policy has become apparent, the US is pushing Bosnia to expel the radicals who've set up shop in the region. Belatedly, as by now they have gone underground. The present situation is said to be fluid.

There are however direct links between the Islamic radicals who were imported into Bosnia as a consequence of said Western policy, and the attacks of 9/11, the Madrid train bombings and the London attacks.

Another Bosnian connection that surfaced not so long ago was the foiled attempt on US Fort Dix and, just last week the scantly publicised matter of a Bosnian arrested in Vienna, Austria for a thwarted attack on the US Embassy in that city.

- Albania - Already historically a breading ground for lawlessness, tribalism and backwardness, this isolated rugged territory became a radical Islamist safe haven from the moment the old Stalinist regime fell. The US policy was to strengthen the fledgling democratic government. It is this blog's opinion that personal ties between Albania and the Clintons stem from these early years, as the US political order transited from the Cold War. Deliso: "The United States both cracked down on extremists and allied itself with Islamic leaders in the Tirana government, funding these radicals."

Albania became the scene of an influx of Wahhabi mujaheddin and Al Qaeda elements. Wahhabi mosque building is proliferating as we speak, as is Islamist social engineering: providing unemployed villagers with hand-outs to dress up as fundamentalists in an attempt at creating critical mass for the normalization of radicalism; call it the corrupt Islamist version of political correctness. This method is combined with a form of institutionalised thuggery: extortion, blackmail and intimidation. It is happening not just in Albania, but in all less affluent regions of the Balkans, of which there are many.

Albanian clan structure produces a social situation, ideal for the incubation of organised crime. The connection between terrorism and organised crime is by now well established; it is being monitored and documented by the various intelligence agencies.

- Kosovo - As was the case in Bosnia, Western policy has allowed mujaheddin to establish themselves in the territory, creating the conditions for radicalisation and Wahhabi mosque building. Also here the same pressurizing pattern of social engineering and intimidation emerges. (Tony Blair, rather shortsightedly, specifically encouraged mujaheddin who found themselves on UK territory, to join the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) so as to be rid of them).

Whether Kosovo, under American and European pressure, will become independent or not, is no longer really relevant as radical Islamization is concerned. The question is rather, will the matter of independence get sectarian dimensions or not.

Deliso was kind enough at this point to hand the audience a great scoop: there are Albanian-American radicals in Kosovo who had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attack. They were actively recruiting terrorists for 'the war against America'. The UN was aware of this fact, and did nothing.

Saudis and Pakistanis are making sincere efforts to take over the territory by means of (forced) conversions, proselytizing, charity hand-outs, entrenchment of Islamic banking structures, social engineering, intimidation, etc. Islamist functionaries are parachuted below the radar into minor positions, that are nevertheless of strategic interest. The word that springs to mind, is subversion.

Funds are pouring in. Donors are located in the Middle East, Malaysia and Birmingham (UK). The Islamic Heritage Foundation is another of the great Islamic charities exerting social pressure. The organization is banned in four countries, but is allowed to do their damnedest in the UN administered province of Kosovo.

T
he Bulgarian region of the Rodopi Mountains, bordering Greece, has pockets of radicalized villages, once again the result of Islamist import and social pressure, through charity, hand-outs, and intimidation.

There are tensions as a result of Christian versus Islamic animosity, but there's also competition over Saudi versus Turkish Islamic influence in the region.

While most Muslims - in the Balkans, or anywhere else - aren't fanatics at all, it must be stated that they profit from the situation in the sense that extremism offers them an opportunity to present themselves as the viable, reasonable alternative. Once in key positions, the moderates are threatened, intimidated and bullied into a more radical attitude. Their Islamist enforcers often take the shape of mafia style thugs.

- Intelligence failures - There has been a marked lack of intelligence sharing between countries, as well as between national or federal agencies. This has assisted in creating the current situation to a large extent. Various intelligence agencies per country are competing and fighting out turf wars over competence and jurisdiction. Given the EU's multinational dimensions this competition is even worse in Europe than it is in America. Terrorist groups of course have no such impediments.

The policies on Kosovo and Bosnia have assisted the nesting of foreign radical elements. The UN administration of Kosovo is inhabited by career diplomats whose attitude is to sit it out while pondering the next prestigious career move. Their motto consequently is "don't rock the boat", coupled with a mind set that prefers sweeping dirt under the carpet. Whistle-blowers are known to be stonewalled. There's high level corruption.


At this point Deliso voices concern over the US government's infiltration by spooks to an extent that is alarming. He also mentions there was a second failed attempt on Pope John Paul II's life, which is rarely publicised. I think I saw it reported once, but took it for a mistake. (Google produces no hits at all).

The threat of terrorism is also changing shape: an innovation are the so-called 'white devils', Caucasian converts who escape racial profiling. I think I predicted in these pages somewhere that this will likely be the face of terrorism in the future: a sort of Islamic Bader Meinhoff, just as fanatical, deluded, and radical Marxist as the Cold War set up.

Computer hacking is assisting terrorism by 'remote control', for example attacks on essential installations, such as power grids. The spate of pyro terrorism waltzing through Greece this summer may have been ignited 'remotely' by cell phones. Also in Greece some attacks were perilously close to power grids.

More attacks than we realise are being thwarted.

How's this for a coincidence ... on the morning that the former President Clinton is arriving in Athens to consult the local Socialist Party out of the crisis it finds itself in since losing the general elections - they cannot figure out how they lost it - Deliso is filling us in on some details of the Clinton legacy: "The Coming Balkan Caliphate".

Deliso stresses that he has spoken with high level US officials who have made plain that the 1990s failed policies were conscious decisions. The election of Hillary Rodham Clinton would in all probability bring back the same politicians who signed for the flawed policies of which we only now are experiencing the dire results: Wesley Clark, Madeleine Albright, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke, to name but a few.

The questionable method of rendition that got the Bush government into trouble, was first used in 1995 in Albania during the early Clinton years. Ray Robison commenting on a Front Page Magazine article by Julia Gorin, "Kosovo – The Epicenter of Islamofascism?" writes on this matter:

"... There are Islamic extremists in Kosovo. There have been for years as evidenced by the Clinton Administration’s germination of a controversial policy called "rendition". It was in Bosnia and Kosovo that the rendition of Islamic terrorists to nations like Egypt - which would obviously employ torture and in some cases murderous interrogation methods - began. The reason the U.S. rendition policy became necessary is because the Islamic terrorists were not from Kosovo. They were sent back to Egypt in most cases because they were Egyptians. Now an argument can be made that these Arab jihadists, veterans of the Afghan mujahideen were supported locally by some Albanian Islamic extremists."

The US, having currently concentrated their efforts on the Middle East and Afghanistan, have an intelligence deficiency in the region. In the past the US have outsourced information gathering to Ukrainian and Romanian agencies, but stopped doing so when a inordinate amount of disinformation ensued.

- Greece - Greece has of course always objected to the failed Western policies in the Balkans, but was forced to go along with more powerful allies. Foreign policy instead was concentrated on the minor issues, such as the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), or Skopje, on which matter Turkey seems to be very well informed.

Also in Skopje enclaves have been created that are virtual no-go areas for Westerners: ideal safe havens for terrorists and radicals.

Greece should identify and correct the intelligence hiatus. If more information would be available to combat the War on Terrorism, Greece would become a more valuable partner.

What stood out - and this is effectively the reason why Greece in the West is almost a white elephant - was Deliso's underlining specifically that the Greek governments, as well as the Orthodox Church 'have not allowed' and have 'prevented' Islamic radicals from establishing themselves in the country. The habitual means of establishment is through charity organizations.

But what Greece and the Greek Orthodox Church can achieve, can also be done by other countries! All we know is, that they haven't. Was that the result of active, but inapt policies as described here by Deliso, or a lack of political will? Or are we perhaps scratching the surface here of the very purposeful Eurabia doctrine as presented by author Bat Ye'or, of which we are to witness the latest instalment during the forthcoming Arab-European Dialogue on Human Rights and Terrorism, taking place in Copenhagen on 21-23 October?

This seems to be a good moment to go on record that a family member who worked for an intelligence service in the past, once disclosed that the Cold War ended at a good time, as resources would now become available for monitoring radical Islamist elements. This means that in government circles in 1990 there was known to be a threat from that area. Today it is widely forgotton that the problems didn't start on 9/11, 2001.

While many Western countries have severed their historical ties and suppressed national consciousness for ideological reasons, Greece is still a very free, traditional, Christian country, enjoying their historical roots and national identity and all that entails. While Western Europe is wallowing in decadence, and realing from its self-induced uprootedness, Greece is developing the first affluent middle class.

Deliso: "Many countries in the West, for example Germany and the UK, are in trouble through their multicultural policies." Greece on the other hand is still recovering from the historical black hole that was the blessing of being part of the Ottoman Empire. There are people alive today who remember, and there are those who know because their (grand)parents told them. Greece will have to be force-fed by the EU on multiculturalism, will it ever become a politically correct nation.

Deliso travels through the area extensively and has concluded, there are quite a few Western exiles who have found a home in the Balkans as well, the undersigned one of them. It would seem everybody is more or less adrift these days.

Finally, I'd like to remind the readership that the petition against the independence of the Serb province of Kosovo-Metohija, which would enhance the chances of the Balkan Caliphate even further, can be signed here.

2015: The Triumph of Evil or "What Happened?!"

These are momentous times. I fear there will be a point in the foreseeable future - say 2015 - that we'll ask ourselves, "how could we've let this happen, again!". My fear isn't based on phobia (of whatever variety), or on a vague gut feeling, female intuition or on obsessively reading the papers. It is not even based on historical parallels. Rather, my fears are the result of ice cold reasoning and analysis of the essentials.

This blog discusses with some intensity the intricacies of Subjectivism and its fallacies as espoused by the various branches of the Left over the centuries - including Right wing Socialism - and how these ideologies developed out of the Counter-Enlightenment movement started by Rousseau.

No matter what guise the particular variety takes, the end result is always the same: repression, followed by carnage and tragedy, born out of good intentions towards the common good. And if present developments on the world stage aren't deceiving us, the fallacy they stubbornly hang on to may come to cost us dearly once again. Since the wars of the last centuries the stakes are up and the technical means for industrial scale genocide have hugely improved.

The central philosophical con trick of all Collectivist thought (meaning: the opposite of individualism, covering the far Right (negligible in numbers), and first and foremost all of the Left of the political spectrum) is perpetrated in order to accommodate the lie, so that the ideology may survive yet another generation: it is the denial of Reality and with it, the rejection of right and wrong, good and bad.

This amorality has become a problem of Biblical proportions as adherents because of it, do not recognize Evil, even if it bit them in the behind. And because of the Left's unwillingness to concede defeat of their bankrupt ideology, the Left is also incapable of fighting Evil.

Psychologist/blogger Dr Sanity in a brilliant post "Strange Love: How they learnt to stop worrying and love the Iranian Bomb" described it like this: "Recent articles in the MSM (see here and here) suggest that the left is gearing up for an all out assault on the possibility of war with Iran. They intend to do this by using the talking point that "they can live with a nuclear Iran." ... In fact, we can translate (that) into "learning to live without Israel and the Jews". Because that is what the practical consequence of this leftist line of reasoning amounts to."

The doctor is as incisive as ever! But as the tally at present stands at 110 million victims for the whole of Counter-Enlightenment philosophies, who's to blink at a genocide more or less if it's done in the name of universal common good?! An amoral act of cowardice is better than having to fight any war, however morally justified, right?

Anybody who'd take the trouble of objectively thinking about the proposition before us, throwing momentarily aside psychopathology and the habitual ideological blinkers, would have to admit that such are the consequences of letting Iran off the nuclear hook.

But because of the central lie at the base of the ideology, they are unable to look at any given situation with anything remotely resembling objectivity. It enables them to maintain the ideology, but at the price of amorality and consequently, a blind spot for Evil.

The declaration in Subjectivist circles that God is dead has been epitomised by the proto Nazi philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. After World War II the Left have personified Adolf Hitler as the Horned One himself, thus creating a straw man for Evil. With Hitler's demise in the Berlin bunker, Evil died with him. As a result, the Leftist dogma has become that every issue can be resolved by talk and diplomacy.

The danger of this undertaking is that they run the risk of becoming Evil themselves. Their unwillingness to even consider their error, means risking the lives of another 100 million human beings. This is no political game, or a feeble discussion about up-tight morality. Existential issues are at stake, to put it mildly.

Recently re-reading some of the works of writer C.S. Lewis I stumbled upon 'Miracles' in which he refutes the Subjectivist fallacy by yet other means than set out in the PMF. In 'Miracles' Lewis is proving why - what at the time were termed Naturalists (or Materialists, Darwinians, atheists) - cannot maintain their faith in the human capacity for reason, and simultaneously assert an evolution process through natural selection.

Today's Postmodern Left have solved the issue by saying goodbye to Truth altogether, but in Lewis' time, in the evolutionary's book - absent a Designer - there could not considered to be such a thing as Truth prior to the event of thinkers, who could make the moral distinction between right and wrong.

This is the idea of Subjectivism in its full glory or, 'if I die overnight, will the sun still be rising tomorrow?', or 'if planet Earth is destroyed by an attack of giant squirrels from outer space and no human is left, this cannot be considered an immoral act (as only humans can say that it is).

Naturalists explain the world in terms of an endless chain of Cause and Effect. >>> The entire article is published on "Politeia".

"Violence cannot exist in and of itself.
It is invariably interlinked with the Lie."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Sunday, October 07, 2007

EU: Fraud in the Anti Fraud Watch Dog

You cannot make this up! Now it's allegations of fraud in the anti fraud office. But what can one expect when the foundation is rotten to the core. Read and watch this!

EUX.TV - "Exclusive: EU fraud buster OLAF in trouble over 'Hercule' programme "- "I'd like to draw your special attention to an EUX.TV news story based on interviews Dutch MEP (whistleblower) Paul van Buitenen and with OLAF (anti fraud office) Director Nicholas Ilett, about fighting fraud in the EU, recorded on Friday."

"Ilett responds to Van Buitenen's allegations, says he is misinformed, but does confirms some details of irregularities with OLAF's 'Hercule' programme.The Commission has also confirmed to us that not all is well with OLAF's 'Hercule' programme in Cyprus. Sum is relatively small, but it does confirms Van Buitenen's is not barking up against the wrong tree.You'll also find a transcript at the end of the story. Uncut versions of both Van Buitenen and Ilett interviews can be seen on our
YouTube channel. Further reading >>>

Internet Anthropologist T.T.: USA readies for war Iran

How wide is the gulf between objective evil and ... this Al Guardian extract?

I do not even venture to comment.

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Draft of New EU Constitution Now Available

EUX.TV: "Portuguese EU Presidency publishes draft for treaty that will replace rejected EU Constitution" - "Portugal, holding the rotating six-month presidency of the European Union, on Friday published a final draft of the treaty on the European Union that will replace the rejected European constitution. The draft will serve as a basis for further discussions in the coming weeks. Heads of state and government will meet in Lisbon in two weeks time for an informal discussion" ...

... on the Reform Treaty, which in an earlier incarnation was titled 'the EU Constitution', and was rejected by France and The Netherlands. According to the EU's own laws that should have been the end of it, weren't it for the anti Democratic mind set that is prevailing throughout the Union. If a measure is deemed necessary, it is pushed through, albeit illegally and in a new cosmetic coating. It's a insult to our intelligence, but there you are ... such is the legacy of the former European regents.

For the curious and the riotous amongst us, EUX.TV - a faithful mouthpiece - has the draft available at the site in four different languages >>>

Friday, October 05, 2007

Of Palestinian Pincers, Terror and Crime, again

Does anyone know a way out of this pincer movement?

Hamas:

- Haaretz: "Meshal: Upcoming Middle East conference is doomed to fail"- "The U.S.-sponsored international conference on Israeli-Palestinian peace is doomed to fail because it will serve only Israel's interests, Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal said in a CNN interview broadcast on Monday. >>>

Fatah:

- Jerusalem Post: "Summit failure may ignite new intifada" - "A failure in the upcoming US-sponsored Middle East peace conference would have more dangerous repercussions than the botched Camp David summit in 2000, Fatah officials warned on Tuesday. This was the first time senior Fatah officials hinted at a possible wave of violence if the conference - expected to be held in Annapolis, Maryland, next month - did not meet the Palestinians' demands. >>>


- Daily Mail: "Police raid finds £50m Da Vinci masterpiece in a lawyer's office"- "A stolen Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece was recovered in a raid on a lawyer's office yesterday. Police officers interrupted a meeting during which it is understood a deal to buy the £50million painting was being negotiated. Four men were arrested and are due to appear in court today. The Madonna with the Yarnwinder, painted in 1501, was taken from a castle belonging to the 9th Duke of Buccleuch, Britain's largest landowner, four years ago. >>>

- Elsevier: "Saint Martin centre of global narcotics trade" - "The Caribbean island of Saint Martin is an important centre for international narcotics trafficking, and through it also money flows to terrorist organisations. This is the conclusion of the Dutch Ministry of Justice in a confidential report on 'Organised crime and law enforcement on Saint Martin'. The report, dating back to June, speaks of an 'important and multi-purpose role concerning (international) drugs trade'. The Antilles island functions as a port of transit not only for cocaine, but also for heroin, marijuana and synthetic drugs. Moreover, local law enforcement agencies mention a flow of funds to terrorist organisations through the island. Large sums of money, the proceeds of drugs and human trafficking, arrives on bank accounts of organisations connected to the Taliban and Hamas. According to American intelligence, on the island itself are terrorists who have been trained in Al Qaeda training camps and are barred from flying to the United States. The Ministry of Justice report cautions the credibility of the information, but does stress that American intelligence agencies are not optimistic concerning crime and law enforcement on the island."