– “An 89-year-old white supremacist charged with killing a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was ordered to remain in jail Wednesday after prosecutors said the frail man was still dangerous because he had ‘no true friends’ and ‘nothing to lose.’”
– “A judge also ordered James von Brunn to undergo a competency evaluation despite objections from the wheelchair-bound suspect. He was otherwise nonchalant and even smiled when a prosecutor said he wanted to kill as many people as possible in the June 10 attack.”
– “In asking that von Brunn not be released, prosecutor Nicole Waid said von Brunn’s actions were clear on videotape.”
– “‘This isn’t a case of whodunit, your honor,’ Waid said.”
– “She said that though von Brunn may appear frail, he is still a danger because he ‘has no true friends’ and ‘nothing to lose.’”
– “Waid said that von Brunn arranged his finances and funeral plans before his ’suicide mission’ at the museum, and that he wanted to kill as many people as possible.”
– “He shook his head when Waid recounted how he had once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board. He was caught outside a board meeting carrying a bag stuffed with weapons. He describes his attempt with apparent pride on his Web site. He was sentenced in 1983 to more than four years in prison for attempted armed kidnapping and other charges in his Fed assault. He was released in 1989.”
– “Von Brunn was indicted in July on charges including first-degree murder for the death of museum guard Stephen T. Johns, who was black. Four of the charges carry a possible death penalty if he’s convicted.”
– “Public records show that in 2004 and 2005 he lived briefly in Hayden Lake, Idaho, which for years was home to the Aryan Nations, a racist group run by neo-Nazi Richard Butler. He had a racist, anti-Semitic Web site and wrote a book titled ‘Kill the Best Gentiles,’ alleging a Jewish conspiracy ‘to destroy the white gene pool.’ He also claimed the Holocaust was a hoax.”

HRCARI stands wholly against all supremacism, and most surely including white supremacism.

Responsible for Equality and Liberty has a post which explores the unexamined aspects of Von Brunn’s shooting, again, right here.

There are sadly groups out there which lend intellectual credance to people such as Von Brunn. These white supremacist/NeoNazi groups are just as unacceptable as Islamic supremacism groups.

We must stand united together in defense of our basic human dignity, and never give in to supremacism of any kind.

Mayor Michael Wildes of Englewood, NJ has organized a protest at Shmuley Boteach’s home at 11 am, this Sunday. Governor Corzine will be there, as will Congressman Steve Rothman. Other assorted individuals in the media are set to be at this event. Please also read Carl in Jerusalem’s article about Gadhafi.

Anyone who is able to make it to Englewood on Sunday at 11 am, please do.

The address: 394 East Palisades Ave, Englewood, NJ. (Google Maps)

Given the release of the Lockerbie bomber (who may not even have terminal cancer!), it is important to show up and support the victims of the Lockerbie bombing, and say NO to Gadhafi.

UPDATED: Article in Jewish Week

Article in Arutz Sheva

Article in the Jewish Standard

Article in North Jersey.com

Article on AOL.com

This rally looks to be big and has gotten some mainstream media press coverage!

The most well publicized honor killing in America is one that did not take place. Seventeen year old Rifqa Bary disappeared from her home in New Albany, Ohio in mid July, and surfaced in Florida on August 10, 2009. The teenager, who comes from a Sri Lankan Muslim family, sought refuge in Orlando with a pastor and his wife whom she had met through a Facebook prayer group. At a jurisdiction hearing in an Orlando juvenile court on August 21, Rifqa testified that she had fled because her father threatened to kill her for shaming the family by leaving Islam and becoming a Christian. “My life is at stake,” Rifqa said in an earlier interview. “My dad threatened me. I was ready to die, these were my thoughts, that I’ll be a martyr for Christ, let it be so! But the Lord led me here somehow through His grace . . . . . it’s been God’s hand protecting me the entire time. But I’m fighting for my life.”

 

Rifqa is far more fortunate than Amina and Sarah Said of Dallas, who were shot to death in an Islamic honor killing by their father, Yaser Abdel Said, an Egyptian-born cab driver. No one has had the opportunity to strangle Rifqa, as was done to Aqsa Parvez, a sixteen year old in Ontario whose father killed her for refusing to wear a hijab.  Rifqa is the one who got away, and whose photograph, thank God, is not found in the tragic gallery of honor killing victims from all over North America and Europe put together by advocate and activist Pamela Geller on her Atlas Shrugs blog. Another difference between Rifqa and the other bright, beautiful young women killed by their Islamist fathers, brothers, and husbands is that her testimony to her faith in Jesus Christ is now reverberating around the world. At the August 21 hearing, Rifqa told Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson, “I’ve been a Christian for four years of my life. . . . I assure your Honor, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.” Because of this, says author Brigitte Gabriel, the danger for Rifqa Bary is “far beyond honor killing.”

Read it all!

http://www.realcourage.org/2009/08/pakistan-christians-black-day/

This is extremely important, as Pakistani Christians are being chased from their homes, beaten, killed, and abused, and the world has ignored their plight. Let us all go to the Pakistani Christian rally and support the important cause of freedom and human rights. I will be there with Human Rights Coalition Against Radical Islam (HRCARI) literature and a number of friends. Please join me. What is happening in Pakistan to Pakistani Christians is the same jihad that has engulfed dozens of other nations around the world. Let’s stand together against Islamic supremacism, and call on the United Nations to embrace human rights. It is important to let the demonstrators themselves know they are not alone, and that there is a community of people dedicated to human rights and ending the suffering due to Islamic supremacism.

UPDATE: This article details how Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have been used to target minorities.

UPDATE: I just want to ensure people are aware – the protest is this WEDNESDAY, August 12 by the UN, and not this Sunday!

This was partly organized by Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi.

From R.E.A.L.:

1. As Responsible for Equality And Liberty supports universal human rights, we reject the efforts of the Islamic supremacism promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to create a “Muslim World” (caliphate/Khilafa). We believe there is ONE world, called Earth – with equal rights and liberty for all humanity – for every race, nationality, gender. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to implement Sharia law. We seek freedom for all – regardless of religion, race, or sex – and oppose Sharia’s gender apartheid and war on women. The Muslim Brotherhood seeks to impose Islam on all; we believe humanity has freedom of conscience and religion.

2. In Washington DC, the Muslim American Society (MAS) Freedom Foundation has written the Washington Post about the Muslim Brotherhood’s influence on MAS. You can see this on their website today. According to the former president of MAS, Esam Omeish: “The influence of Muslim Brotherhood ideas has been instrumental in defining our understanding of Islam within the American and Western context in order to espouse the values of human dialogue, tolerance and moderation.” Also according to former MAS president Esam Omeish: “It also has been instrumental in defining our worldviews of justice and human rights.” This influence of the Muslim Brotherhood on the “MAS Freedom Foundation” remains unequivocally stated on the MAS website. We believe that human dialogue, tolerance, and moderation begins with rejecting all supremacist organizations, including the Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood, and that supremacist organizations never teach tolerance or moderation. We believe that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of Liberty defines our worldview of the inalienable human rights of equality and liberty for all — that supremacist groups deny. We believe without such universal equality and liberty, freed from supremacist restraints, there will never be justice, nor will all of humanity have human rights.

3. Therefore, when the MAS Freedom Foundation seeks to hold a public rally in what appears to be an attempt to gain public sympathy for the control of Gaza by the Hamas Islamic supremacist terrorist organization, which has had a history of using human shields against people in Gaza (video of Hamas admitting to this), we ask Americans to look at what the MAS Freedom Foundation really believes in – based on what they say, and based on how they state the Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood has influenced their values. Furthermore, as individuals responsible for equality and liberty, we reject the Hamas charter which includes the antisemitic lie of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” that was popularized by Adolf Hitler in his Nazi propaganda.

HRCARI 100% supports the above, and has also clarified its position concerning Israel right here.

It is important now, more than ever, to support our friends and allies.

The probe was spurred by concerns first raised by Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican who in the past had championed the Pashto-language service known as Deewa Radio. Mr. Kirk said he became concerned that American taxpayers were providing the Taliban a megaphone after he learned that Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud had been interviewed by the service — and claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings in the Pakistani city of Lahore in March.

“The U.S. taxpayer should not be subsidizing free air-time for al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban leaders,” Mr. Kirk wrote in a May 5 letter to Mr. Geisel. “These broadcasts put the lives of American soldiers in danger and undermine the policies of the United States in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”

VOA Director Danforth Austin said Deewa Radio was simply seeking to report the news in a way that was credible to listeners from the same ethnic Pashtun group as the Taliban.

He told The Times that the Taliban has threatened the families of his reporters and broadcasters and declared Deewa Radio “haram” — forbidden by Islamic law.

“We wouldn’t be threatened by the Taliban if we weren’t showing them up for what they were and in a way that is credible,” Mr. Austin said.

Nonetheless, the station at times has inadvertently served as an outlet for the Taliban to advance its military strategy by misleading Pakistani authorities. For example, a Taliban spokesman told the VOA service in an April 24 interview that militant fighters were withdrawing from Pakistan’s Buner province when they did not do so.

The investigation of VOA’s Pashto service is another example of the long-standing tension about the role of American-funded broadcasting.

Read it all. This is not the first time that VOA has been accused of aiding and abeting Radical Islamic enemies of human rights. See the following:

Sen. Tob Coburn: VOA harming U.S. interests in Iran

CAIR propoganda on VOA

Dennis Ross, Special Advisor on Iran for the Secretary of State, has a book coming out next month that inconveniently takes issue with the Obama Administration’s thesis of “linkage.” “Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East,” Ross writes in a chapter titled “The Mother of All Myths,” “one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away.” Meanwhile, the Obama Administration – which Ross currently works for – is pressuring Israel in part because the president hopes progress toward the resolution of the Palestinian conflict will help derail Iran’s drive for the development of nuclear weapons.

Ross finished the manuscript and sold it to Viking Press before the president hired him, but he was right when he wrote it, and he’s still right today. The biggest problems in the Middle East – and Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons surely is one of them – have little or nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Iranian regime’s hatred of Israel is real, to be sure, and nuclear missiles in its arsenal would pose a serious threat, but Iran, in all likelihood, would wish to arm itself with the world’s most powerful weapons even if Israel did not exist.

Scholar Martin Kramer identifies nine regional “conflict clusters” and argues that “these many conflicts are symptoms of the same malaise: the absence of a Middle Eastern order, to replace the old Islamic and European empires. But they are independent symptoms; one conflict does not cause another, and its ‘resolution’ cannot resolve another.”

Read it all.

In order to defeat Radical Islam, we must be able to identify why it is a threat to us, and what is at the source of the problem. It is nonsensical at best to link any resolution of the Iranian nuclear problem with the Israeli-Arab conflict, yet that is what Barack Obama has done. We must educate ourselves into understanding how and why Radical Islam poses a threat, and thus how to best defend human rights around the world.

The act is so depraved so violent, so sickening, one shudders at the thought of what else percolates in the minds of those perpetrating it. Some of the details get lost in the translations, but evidence coming out of Iraq in the form of photographs and first-hand accounts make the torture at Abu Ghraib seem like child’s play by comparison.

According to reports, a program of “sexual cleansing” is being perpetrated against homosexuals in Iraq.

One of the methods, known as either “American Gum” or “Iranian Gum,” involves using industrial strength glue manufactured in Iran, which sticks to the skin, and can only be surgically removed. Death squads targeting homosexuals proceed to glue their anuses shut and then force feed them diarhetics, causing them to die an excruciating death.

Much like photographs of blacks being lynched in the American South were subsequently circulated by the proud perpetrators, videos of this violent form of torture are being virally distributed on mobile phones in Iraq.

While life under Saddam Hussein was no picnic, Iraq was far more secular than it is today, and while America’s “liberation” of Iraq put an end to the Baathist dictatorship, the absence of any post-invasion plans for rebuilding and restructuring allowed for the rapid spread of Islamic fundamentalism, resulting in a campaign of terror that has been waged against gay Iraqis.

In 2005, Iraq’s leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa urging the killing of gays, lesbians and transgendered people in the “worst, most severe way” possible. “Ahl al-Haq” (the Followers of Truth) have stepped up attacks in recent months.

Attacks against homosexuals have increased significantly in Shiite neighborhoods, as well as the southern provinces and in the Hurriya, Sho’la and Sadr neighborhoods in Baghdad. In Sadr City a lists of the names of allegedly gay men were circulated including a quote stating, “You, prostitutes, we will punish you!”

Please be sure to read it all.

We must stand together for human rights and not allow such depravity to occur anywhere in the world. Universal human rights applies to everyone, and does not exempt gay and lesbian people around the world.

Political Islam returned to the world stage with Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1979 revolution in Iran, which became the most aggressive patron of Muslim radicals outside its borders, including Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Until very recently, an oil-price windfall gave the Iranian state ample resources to pursue its agenda at home and abroad. How, then, should we explain an eruption of social pathologies in Iran such as drug addiction and prostitution, on a scale much worse than anything observed in the West? Contrary to conventional wisdom, it appears that Islamic theocracy promotes rather than represses social decay.

Iran is dying. The collapse of Iran’s birth rate during the past 20 years is the fastest recorded in any country, ever. Demographers have sought in vain to explain Iran’s population implosion through family planning policies, or through social factors such as the rise of female literacy.

But quantifiable factors do not explain the sudden collapse of fertility. It seems that a spiritual decay has overcome Iran, despite best efforts of a totalitarian theocracy. Popular morale has deteriorated much faster than in the “decadent” West against which the Khomeini revolution was directed.

“Iran is dying for a fight,” I wrote in 2007 (Please see Why Iran is dying for a fight, November 13, 2007.) in the literal sense that its decline is so visible that some of its leaders think that they have nothing to lose.

Very interesting. Also interesting to think if this has an implications for the Sunni world.

Read it all.