Trump Cans Comey CNN Goes Gorilla

Neither item of the news is surprising, really. The head of FBI should have been gone day one of Trump administration for incompetence and overstepping his mandate.  His handling of the Clinton email saga was atrocious, whichever way you want to look at it. In the Democratic version of the beef, his "re-opening" of the investigation into Clinton two weeks before the election day, was a capital offense (,and in the extreme form of denial, one of two major causes of her losing the vote on November 8th). In the Republican one, Comey in the summer gave a pass to a blatant breach of security and unconscionable handling of government secret documents by the former Secretary of State Clinton. Only last week, the FBI director raised some eyebrows again when it was revealed during the Senate hearings that the some of the classified emails on Huma Abedin husband's laptop did not get there via backup (accepted as a bona fide explanation, and by the disseminated by the Bureau in news releases) but via transmission over public network (obviously unencrypted) to secure a hard copy. So two GOP beefs against Comey, against one Democratic one.

      No sooner the news of firing Comey hit the airwaves, CNN had its take on it, which went on like this: "Trump fired Comey because the FBI was getting closer and closer to him. This was a cynical, Nixonian ploy to get the DOJ off Trump's back on his wheeling dealing American democracy away to Putin. "

Nothing surprising in this for the ongoing congressional investigations into Russian interference in last year's US election, which has come straight out of Kafka. Perhaps only Jeff Toobin, one of the CNN regulars who usually keeps his head above silly babblefests, who this time went completely bonkers, fuming about the absurdity of Trump's "firing Comey in May 2017 because he was nasty to Hillary in October 2016", an obviously stupid way to try to get rid of the Inquisitor just as he was to confirm the Bureau has incriminating evidence of the Donald fellating Putin. Toobin, turning colors kept bleating the instant litany of the Dems, that this act was to sabotage The Investigation (which has so far produced absolutely nothing that would warrant interest), and that a special prosecutor was needed who would be impartial, which in translation means:  ready to conclude the prosecution of the president without facts to the satisfaction of the combined force of  Democrats and NeverTrumpers and get the sorry SOB out of the White House where he had no business to be in the first place.

Of course, I am a cynic and therefore do not believe that the canning of Comey had to do with the botched Hillary-Abedin investigation. But unlike Toobin, I think the official case for getting rid of him is good and solid. The real reason though that Trump finally got his fill of the FBI chief is, I have convinced myself,  because both of them know that Trump has not been investigated by the FBI, and Comey during the Senate hearing last week played stupid and chose to dance around it when he could have simply and truthfully said: "No, president Trump himself is not being investigated by the FBI".  That would have been the end of the despicable charade. There was no collusion between Trump's team and Russia because the pathetic little non-items on Michal Flynn, Carter Page, Roger Stone or Paul Manafort that have bubbled up are far, far from anything even resembling some unseemly conspiracy.  Now, to believe that with the sentiments that Washington and the mainstream media have toward the sitting president, the blatant  effects of some vast Manchurian candidate conspiracy would have been hidden this long strikes me as far stupider than believing Trump fired Comey because of his inept handling of the Hillary Clinton emails investigation.

Why Does Putin Kill Kittens ?

    Because of the way MMOs (major media outlets) report on certain realities in the world these days, the question in the headline needs to be grasped first on the merits of its utility. It does not really matter if Vladimir Vladimirovich destroys cuddly domestic pets, or whether such accusation is stupid beyond belief. We have the means to validate whatever beliefs by the wonders of communications technology.  The thing to grasp here is whether it is useful to believe that Putin kills kittens. And the finding would be - I guess - yes it is useful.  It is useful to believe that because it makes available certain options which the US foreign policy would not normally enjoy.

 Now here again I need to pause and digress.  I realize that to say anything about anything in terms of norms in our time is felt by the intellectually destitute squatters occupying main street to be deeply abnormal, as they would no doubt describe efforts to be normal as being patriarchal or heterosexist or dinosaural. So, it is really hard to imagine what normal options in US foreign policy would be to begin with in this particular bubble of here-and-now. Especially, since the women who run (which at this juncture means animate) US foreign policy from Michelle Obama down to Mary Harf are not exactly the blushing types.  But let us just say that in the olden days, say before Reagan's amiable senility set the policy tone, one would not badmouth foreign dignitaries unless one meant business, that is to say, one really meant to kill the sons-of-bitches. But not even then. Churchill omitted Hitler's titles (even the sarcastic Herr) when referring to him only after the war started.  

     Not so in our times. For Hillary Clinton whose demeanor epitomizes the contemporary lack of personal culture, not to say norms of diplomatic protocol, Putin is KGB psycho or Hitler or whatever the brainwave washes up on the spikes of her tongue. She does not mean to kill the son-of-a-bitch when she accuses him (a soulful Russian) of lacking a soul. She just does her politico version of twerking for the evening news. He is smart; he'll figure out it isn't for real - it's only for the masses hungering for some exciting news from a woman who cannot be wrong.  If she says that Putin (Warning : a graphic description ahead may be disturbing to some readers !) skins the poor critters alive it must be so. And if it rings true in the feeble American grasp of the world that,  as Jen Psaki said that the population of Crimea was 'forced to go to the polls facing a false choice' in a 2014, then the claim that the Russian president has vivisectionist tendencies offers tantalizing possibilities in extending NATO to the gates that obsessed the Russian chauvinists since the time immemorial.

So, yes, Putin kills kittens. And we have a proof that ! Well actually, like with the proof of columns of Russian military hardware entering Ukraine, it is more or less in the eye of the beholder. But that does not matter. Let the RT and one of the Rands blow into the wind all they want. The US Senate had a proof of Russian tanks invading Ukraine. We have a proof of Putin killing kittens. It may not be available quite in a consumable packaging but we are all adults and we are sophisticated about the world we live in. And since women rule and the Duchess of Cambridge is into killing kittens as well, the real question is, WTF am I talking about?  Ah, yes, the world where women rule !

The End of the Politics of Mindless ?

        It seems pretty clear by now that no one of any political weight in Washington or  Ottawa reads my blog. Which I would say is sad given that I offer an essential point of view that describes me, as the Soviet dissidents under Brezhnev used to say, inakomyslayuschiy.  Curiously, the Mainstream Media in the West, is now the official POV of the nachalniki (ie. the big cheeses), and no-one pays any attention to those "thinking differently" except for the Department of Homeland Security analyzing the NSA intercepts of their smart phones. 

        Of course, in the eyes of the average Joe and Jane, as in the Eastern Europe of my youth,  the mainstream media are professional liars, starting with their describing themselves as "mainstream".  The only difference is that the average anglo today does not have access to intelligent, consistent political viewpoint to shed light on the two official versions of the same political drool. If, for example, I do not believe in equating homosexual partnerships with traditional institution marriage, it instantly disqualifies me in one camp as a pervert who would deny gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered folks their civil rights. In the other version naturally I would be a closet fairy who would give them every civil right except the rights of parenthood if they are not parents.  Strange as it may seem, on a certain level these two political stances are equivalent - in being vacuous.  Like in the former USSR, the different personal creeds and obsessions, do not obstruct the party line (though sometimes they were at variance with it).  Dick Cheney may be a supporter of gay marriage, but his view of the Maidan putsch in Kiev coincides with that of Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and president Obama. It was not a putsch: it was a revolution of Ukrainian people in revolt of Putin's henchmen who would deny them the pearly gate of EU.  All of them deplore the thugs in Crimea who deny the OSCE observers (the verb derived from the Czech word obsírati - to 'pooh around') access. None of them would so much as peep for an investigation into the identity of the Maidan snipers who apparently were picking their targets equally among the rioters and the riot police !  Imagine the scandal if they were to be linked to the legitimate government of Ukraine which put out an international arrest warrant on the former president Yanukovich for mass murder.

       Henry Kissinger may have difficulty reading some aspects of the current conflict, but I don't.  The happenings in the Ukraine were prefigured by the Western posture in Libya and Syria, and had I been asked, I would have predicted that Putin would react forcefully if confronted by the meddling and bungling US-led shit-disturbers in his back yard.    Kissinger's reading of course is right on many points, and his viewpoint stands in stark contrast to the bluster and bleating heard everywhere west of Dnieper. He understands the importance of Ukraine to Russia and that it far exceeds any political gambits that Putin may have had in mind.  Above all,  good old Henry understands that this issue far surpasses whoever might be sitting in the Kremlin. Had some strongman (like the late general Lebed') been in power, Russian tanks would have been in Kiev before the Sochi Olympics' closing ceremonies.  The former player of the China-card (which somehow ended in Putin's hand too)  is also sharply critical of the EU's handling of Ukraine, anabashedly accusing its 'bureaucratic dilatoriness' with turning negotiations into a crisis. All good !  Kissinger, in my view,  however does not quite grasp the Crimea power play by Putin.  It is a carefully chosen piece of strategy, which I believe is calculated to extract a price for the West's repeated unprovoked harrassment of Russia and to dissuade Washington and Brussels from trying the heavy-handed tactics again. It is also a revanche for the ugly assault of the West on Russia's traditional Balkan's ally, Serbia, and the forceful separation from its cultural cradle, Kosovo. It happened under Yeltsin who was the friendliest Russian leader to the West since Catherine. The unilateral proclamation of Kosovo independence in 2008, on Putin's watch, left the Russians slighted and humiliated but also resolved.  It might have happened to the Serbian holy land around Kosovo Polje; it will not happen to Russia's holy land of Kievan Rus. There are powerful motivators for Putin to make the West eat the humble pie. 
      
       The US policy makers would do well to take the another look. Hillary's sophomoric parallels won't do.  Is it possible that she is so out of touch she does not know the type of argument she deploys has been a staple of ridicule known as the Godwin's Law ? Incidentally, also someone apparently forgot to tell Madam Secretary that the United Kingdom still holds Munich to be a valid agreement, based on the unalienable right of a people to self-determination. In the unapologetic view of Whitehall, it was Hitler who abrogated the treaty when he took over Bohemia and Moravia in 1939. 

   Putin is an exceptionally shrewd politician who knows how far he can go. I don't think it was his plan to annex Crimea outright, but to hold it as a bargaining chip to make the US and EU more amenable to his point of view.  When he was snubbed, he opted for plan B.  The referendum may still be an open-ended play. If Russia gets what it wants : most importantly the implementation of the accord signed by Yanukovich with the West (Putin has already indicated he does not expect him to return),  recall of the new "governors" in the East, repeal of the despicable language edict, and the absurd "lustration" laws which in effect bar Russian speakers from political office, the plebiscite may be postponed and the region will eventually settle for quasi-independent status with no political satraps from Kiev and Ukrainian military on the peninsula.  But Russians will not de-escalate since from their point of view it was not they who escalated the situation in the first place.  I think secretary Kerry has some leg-work to do.  Let's hope someone at the State Department can decipher the riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. Preferably someone who knows the correct Russian word if you want to be friendly with them. 

Befuddling Bazookas in Benghazi

Hillary Rodham Clinton has a special talent. She makes people angry without necessarily intending to. She manages to sound arrogant and incompetent at the same time and that more than anything in her politics excites all sorts of people. It could be the hijab-clad young women in Cairo who dissed her with the cries of "Monica". It could be Russia's foreign ministry officionados who relish in telling stories of her naivete. It could be Putin who in 2008 retorted to her gratuitous insult of him as a man "without a soul" that one would expect someone aspiring to be a leader of a state to have at least "brains in the head".   In her superior-but-dumb view of the world a former KGB man could not have soul, and that's that. Where that leaves the first Bush who became president after serving as a director of the CIA, would be an impertinent question. Quod licet jovi non licet bovi, as they used to say in one former super-power. But does Hillary actually understand what she is saying ? 

 

       I have a lot of sympathy for the Russian view of Hillary as a self-righteous twit out of her depths, someone who just does not get it.  It is not just the lack of diligence that leads her astray. In one underreported gaffe, she presented her counterpart Sergei Lavrov a button intending to say in Russian "reset" but in reality said "overload".  How could that happen ?  Isn't there anyone in the US State Department who speaks Russian well enough to point out such an embarrassing mistake?  But it is her utter lack of finesse or ability to present a compelling argument which really jars the diplomats the most. In February, speaking in Bulgaria, she described the blocked vote on Syria in the UN Security Council as "travesty".  Both Russia and China presented crisp analysis of the situation, refusing to be bullied into accepting one-sided, and in their mind simple-minded, solutioning of the Syrian crisis.  The country was on the brink of civil war.  The world would be ill-served if the UN, contrary to its charter, were to take up one-sided point of view, demanding the unconditional surrender of one side (ie. the one the US does not like)  to the other.  Whether the affected neutrality of the dissenters is real or not:  the position that Russia an China have taken up demands an intelligent, reasoned response, not characterizations.  One will not win friends and influence people if one cannot deal with a dissenting point of view except by denouncing it and suppressing it.  The former Soviets know this better than anyone.
  
   The Russians have been droning on about the short-sightedness of the US policies in the Near and Middle East since the air strikes of last year. It is unwise, they say to use force to topple ugly, but in the bigger picture, harmless dictatorships. Ghaddafi, for all his domestic nastiness and bizzare clowning, was long past running terrorist hotels and fitness centres. Americans knew that and kept sending him captured Libyan al-Qaeda operators.  So what would be the motivations of the US State Department to have his corpse dragged through the streets by fighters led by one of the terrorists they sent to Libya  just a few years earlier to be kept under lock ?  A befuddling mystery ?  Probably not to the Moscow analysts who note the uncanny loss of memory in American foreign policy which basically operates with a world-view that last followed the Russians at the time when Brezhnev was still somewhat lucid. Will they wake up and start operating in the century which started with a most dramatic declaration that the Islamist supremacists mean business and are determined to destroy the once proud people with the most advanced civilization on the planet ? 

Tales told by the State Department in the times of Huma Abedin

The official US view is that the assault in Benghazi was the work of  "a small, savage group".  There is of course an eleven-year tradition at the State Department to view gross assaults on the people and territory of the United States as the work of extremists abusing the great peaceable religion of Islam.  This "denial" mindset planted immediately after 9/11 is unwilling to come to practical terms with the new challenge and find an effective policy capable of controling it. Instead, it will deny radical Islam exists. It will deny it presents today the greatest peril to the traditional values of the Republic ! It will chastise as "islamophobes" all those who say it does ! 

       But reality comes pinching, my friends. The president or the State Department do not know who is behind the Benghazi attack or wehther it was coordinated with the raising of the shehada (the black flag of jihad) over the US embassy in Cairo.  They have no way of knowing what is brewing under the surface in those two countries.  Yet, the tale of Lybians and Americans fighting side by side is told even as the dispatches agree that most of the Libyan security guards fled soon after the assault began. The scope of the assault on the Americans in Benghazi is reduced to a single location even though most of the major media outlets record two assaults against the Americans, the second coming at a "safe house".   It does not take much brain power to figure why this piece of information is withheld by Hillary and Huma. It directly contradicts the "small" in description of the attacking groups. At minimum, the security of the diplomatic facility was compromised beforehand by the hostile fighters or their handlers.    

      Then there is the soap about the friendly Libyans carrying the dying ambassador to the hospital. Oh, puh....leeze !  First, the body was not carried but delivered at the facility by a vehicle. The pictures that surfaced on the Web show Mr Stevens was dragged or carried by a single person and his distress (if he indeed was still alive) the object of necrophiliac curiosity by the crowd.  Certainly, the images are not consistent with a show of concern for the ambassador's well being:

 A disinterested analyst would conclude that in all probability the people who abducted the ambassador and later delivered him at a hospital were the attackers. To assume friendly strangers  awoke in the night, and rushed selflessly in the direction of  the gunfire and flames to help the besieged Amerians seems more like a bad Hollywood script than anything resembling reality.  Most likely, the captors were ordered by their command to deposit the body at the hospital and a story was concocted (perhaps via threats to the hospital personnel) that he was still alive on arrival. 

Defending Free Speech and Rejecting Free Speech in one Breath

   The administration initial response to the attack is a study in double-think.  I am sure the media would have a heyday with a judge who would begin his sentencing speech of a rapist by saying : "this court rejects all efforts to denigrate the moral sensibilities of the pious, by women who wear short skirts and appear in public unescorted and with uncovered head.  But there is no justification in this type of senseless violence....". Wolf Blitzer or Christiane Amanpour would see right away where such rhetoric contradicts itself.  If there is no justification for senseless violence, why name the pretext under which this outrage is being perpetrated ? No civilized person of whatever confession would agree to an assailant's point of view in justifying sexual assault.  Why then would we agree to link some obscure video and vicious mayhem ? If there is no justification (none!) for the gratuitous violence against the US (and now the West generally !), one cannot preface it with a "but".   It immediately sends the wrong signals !

How then do I think Obama and Clinton should have worded their anger ?  Maybe by saying something like this: 

This administration and the American people condemn without reservation the unprovoked outrage against our diplomats and the symbols of our sovereignity.  There is no justication for the barbarous violence we have been subjected to in Libya and Egypt yesterday.  None !  We categorically reject the attempts of those who fuel hatred against the United States to justify it by pointing to some obscure video on the Internet.   Those who who stir the cauldron of hate against America know full well this is not the view of the Administration or the American people.   They know the great majority of us do not hate Muslims or seek to to harm them.  They use this pretext in their desire to deny us the right to hear all points of view, even those with which most of us disagree, and some of us find morally reprehensible.  Do not be misled ! America will never accept to be dominated by a single religious belief in place of its Constitution which separates matters of one's faith from those of the state.  I beseech you do not be misled about the resolve of the American people to protect its way of life and its interests in the world !

Surely, something like this would stand a better chance to calm the hotheads, and assure those who are the true friends of the US that there are still some brains at work in the US foreign policy.   But this would assume that the State Department advising the president knows what shat she is doing.  And there of course is the problem, considering the current intellectual capacity of the State Department and its self-admitted confusion over the effect of policies which she herself put in place.

Flying and Landing in Allah's Way

Among all the strange events this week, a little diddly protocol lapse during an Iftar gala hosted by the State Department on Wednesday caught my attention. The annual dinner for the country’s Muslim leaders and diplomatic corps of the Islamic world during the Ramadan became de rigeur under the Clinton administration and continued with Condolezza Rice.

There is, I suppose, no great harm in a little patronage gesture to celebrate a religious minority, even though I am frankly puzzled by the insistence on calling the event Iftar. I understand it is a Muslim religious festivity, a communal meal breaking the daylight fasting during Ramadan. The ceremony seems meaningless to non-believers who presumably eat during the days of the month during which, according to tradition, prophet Muhammad received his first revelation. It seems to me then that if some gesture of inclusiveness during this special time for Muslims is due, it should come from them. The remarks by Barack Obama that the tradition of American presidents hosting Iftar dinners for Muslim guests goes back to Thomas Jefferson are a bit cockeyed urban legend to justify the new nomenclatura. According to the Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, the Tunisian envoy in question declined an invitation to dine with the President at three-thirty in the afternoon explaining his religious duty. The courteous president simply rescheduled the invitation to an hour after sunset.

No matter: the issue I really have is with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s protocol regarding the Florida cuckoo believed to be a pastor by fifty lost souls. First off though, in case you did not know, an insane man in Canada decapitated a passenger on Greyhound bus and consumed part of his victim last year. No editorial or diplomatic activity issued from this incident that would give cause to riots and large scale property damage. No speeches by religious leaders, politicians or dieticians followed to quell fear of the Scots of being targeted by the Chinese. But naturally I understand that the Secretary just could not pass the book-burning threat in dignified silence after the Defence Secretary himself picked up the phone to beg the pastor to spare American lives in Kabul.

To Whom Is the Quran holy ?

I have no big criticism of what the Secretary of State said but I do take exception at her describing the book as ‘the holy Quran’. She should have chosen her words more carefully. She could have said ‘Muslim holy scripture’, 'Islam's holy book,'or as the New York mayor did, ‘a book which his holy to Muslims’. If I were an American I would be outraged at the insinuation that somehow the book deserves to be held up by objective standard as some sort of a national treasure which is above criticism. No way the Quran should be burned. It needs to be read by everyone in America and the West; it needs to be studied, appreciated, remembered and referred to when pointing to Muslims things which we (Non-muslims) have insurmountabe difficulty with, that is, if we are referred back to Islam's seventh-century scripture as the last valid standard of civility.

Examples: Quran preaches religious apartheid explicitly denying the ecumenical character which would justify Mme Secretary (who is a Christian) appealing to it as 'holy' on religious grounds.

Muhammad vowed,

I do not worship what you worship, nor do you worship what I worship(sura 109:1).

Of course that was the kinder, gentler prophet of the early days when he believed that there is no compulsion in religion. Later revelations were not so easy going or forgiving to the unbelievers :

Give courage to the believers. I will cast terror into the hearts of the infidel. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off the tips of their fingers. (sura 8:12)

As for instructions how to deal with dignitaries such as the Secretary who curry favour as hosts with the believers in their religious festivities,

...do not take from among them [infidels] friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah’s way; but if they turn back [to their homes], then seize them and kill them wherever you find them(sura 4:89).

Whatever one may say, all of what the book says about the relations of the Muslim community to the outside world – which the religion's founding dynasties sought transparently to conquer and subjugate – should be totally unacceptable as a blueprint for modern, secular state based on principles of peaceful co-existence among nations, and the rule of globally recognized principles of justice. The First Amendment guarantees everyone the right to practice the faith of their choice. However, it should be unacceptable for an administration official to accede to claims of one religion over others by calling its scripture 'holy' without qualification. This is especially a case with a minority faith whose traditional religious precepts for dealings with outsiders are at odds with the elementary rules of civilized norms of behaviour, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Just in case you missed it, the 1948 UDHR was replaced in the Islamic world in 1990 by its own separate charter, the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam . Needless to say, the new document is wholly rooted in sharia, and therefore does not guarantee decadent 'western' heresies such as a freedom of religion or the equality of genders. )

Madam Secretary seems oblivious to the bigger picture and what message she, as the senior administration official projects is sending to the Islamic world. First and foremost she needs to grasp that contrary to the disinformation of the major U.S. media outlets, the new flames of passion are to ensure her willingness to fly in Allah’s way, not that of some random Christian fundamentalist firebug. When fanatical mullahs and imams send vicious mobs into the streets of Kandahar, Peshawar, Isfahan or Bandung and threaten Americans everywhere on the globe it is to strike terror in her heart and in the heart of those presently administering the self-destructing ship that is America.

It is frankly unbelievable to me that there has not been one major commentator in the US who would point to this tactic. These violent street protests and large threats are not spontaneous cries of the ordinary Muslims. They are either carefully orchestrated media events or a happy feeding off them by the religious leaders. They have but two simple aims : to intimidate Americans and to divert attention from the real issues. The real issue in this case - let us not mince words or be inoffensive in the face of a ghoulish provocation - is assuring American compliance in a memorial to the Islamic fanatics and mass murderers who assaulted the United States as the symbol of political and economic power in the world nine years ago on this day. Mr Rauf says he acquired the precious location to push back against the extremists. Does that mean al-Qaeda was bidding too to acquire the property ?

The Importance of Being Terry Jones

The Terry Jones’ shenanigans are not so much a media conspiracy as they are an exhibit of the detached bottom in the manufacturing of news. The Guardian’s brief history of the media escalation is very revealing in this respect. It seems clear though that the hype around Jones outside of the U.S. was fuelled or controlled by the mosques and madrassas and turned on full throttle after Obama back-pedalled on his support for the Lower Manhattan project, messing things for himself and creating a surge of public opposition. To stem the growing uproar, the Florida pastor was dressed up as the ubiquitous American ugly bigot who threatens peaceable Muslims, and impassionate pleas (and threats) were rained on him to call off his ‘International (Good Lord!) Koran Burning Day’. Obvious attempts then were made to paint the critics of the Islamic centre project on Ground Zero, as part of a socially retrograde red-neck elements in American society led by a Quran-burning zealot. To this end Jones was 'invited' to New York to meet Mr Rauf. Whatever was or was not promised, it is clear that the clever clerics shanghaied the hapless twit, in linking his idiocies explicitly to his opposition of the great project of peace, dialogue and healing in America. Would any reasonable person give quarter to one like Terry Jones, and those like him who oppose the holy project ? Of course not. Terry has been sent packing without being allowed into the presence of the imam.

The UA Flight 175 Landing Gear as Islamist Relic

So, barring a miracle (of common sense and goodwill prevailing), the shrine to the landing gear of the UA Flight 175 in which the great majority of the 65 souls on board was flown in Allah's way against their will on September 11, 2001, shall be erected. The symbolism of the locale is crystal clear and accessible to both friends and enemies of the US, home and abroad. This is where some of the wreckage of one of the two flights to Allah landed and gutted the building on that day of divine judgment. It is hallowed ground for the martyrs who sacrificied their lives in jihad against the great Satan.

This is Mr Rauf's project as it is seen by everyone, especially the insane leaders of the mosques convinced in the just cause and reality of their world conquest. He himself markets his mosque as

dawah (invitation or summons to become Muslim)from Ground Zero!!! The picture to the left is his Malaysian publication, titled: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawah in the Heart of America post 9/11. Only the American idiots don't get it. They, with small exceptions (some of whom are sadly but inevitably idiots of a different kind), are mesmerized like the hapless townsfolk of Constantinople by the whirling dervishes under their bastions coming at the head of great armies of Mehmed II.

By the way, do not get me wrong on this: I am a great admirer of Rumi (the founder of Mawlawi Sufism and the whirling dervish dance) perhaps the greatest mystical poet of any age or culture. Here is what he says from beyond space and time, as an American on 9/11 2010:

You wreck my shop and my house and now my heart,
but how can I run from what gives me life ?

I am weary of personal worrying,
in love with the art of madness !

Tear open my shame and show the mystery.

How much longer do I have to fret with
self-restraint and fear ?

But finally, (I hope I understand Rumi's mystery well): who cares if American elite has suddenly lost the grasp of what makes a man, a woman, or a nation respected among their peers ? Who cares if Muslims are insensitive to people who do not know how to respect themselves ?

In the embrace of God, every thing is holy: those who lie mutilated on the ground; and those who mutilated them in whatever cause under heaven. The universe is unfolding as it should.