Dinah Lord

You thought the Obamas dinner and B'way show were an outrageous waste of taxpayer $?

Wait til you get the tab for the Egypt trip where Obama submits to Islam.

Okay, I know it's Debka.  But, come on.  Let's watch the White House try and spin this.

US president Barack Obama has not yet decided whether his historic speech reaching out to the Muslim world will be delivered on June 4 from a lecture hall at Al Azhar University in Cairo or its main mosque, DEBKAfile's Middle East sources report. If the second, his address will take place in the presence of Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the Sunni Muslim world's greatest religious authority. In any event, Al Azhar is the most eminent school of Islamic learning in the world and the US president therefore expects its impact to far outweigh his first address to Muslims from Istanbul.

His arrival from a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on June 3 is planned to add extra weight to Obama's dramatic outreach to Muslims, since the king officiates as Custodian of the Holy Places to Islam.

Radical Muslims will therefore have all the more reason for rejecting it.

Giant transports have been landing at Cairo airport, unloading a fleet of armored vehicles, White House helicopters, counter-terror weapons and the vanguard of the 3,000 Secret Service officers backed by CIA and FBI personnel who will secure the US president during his stay in Egypt. Cairo will soon be in turmoil as forces are deployed from a command center at the American Embassy to control sections of downtown Cairo, with guard posts on the Nile River's banks, the international airport, main railway terminals and approaches to the city.

Some 30,000 Egyptian security personnel including army units stationed in Cairo have been placed on special duty until the American president leaves. Their names and those of the welcoming party at Al Azhar University were submitted to the US presidential security center.

Obama is due to land in Cairo Thursday at 10 a.m., drive to the Abidin Palace to meet President Hosni Mubarak and proceed from there to Azhar University. His convoy will be escorted by vehicles equipped with sensors for detecting firearms and explosives and covered by Marine helicopters overhead.

Until the last minute, the president's routes to the university have been withheld from Egyptian security authorities as a safeguard against leaks to hostile elements.

H/T to Stilletos in the Sand who tipped me off to find the original article.

Iran: Justice delayed is justice denied.

Iran hangs 3 Men held in bombing of Mosque. 

The blast took place on Thursday, the necktie party on Saturday.

Iran hanged three men on Saturday morning who were accused of being involved in a mosque bombing that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Two others were arrested and are being questioned in connection with the bombing, which took place Thursday in the southeastern city of Zahedan, the news agency said.

The Zahedan prosecutor, Muhammad Marzieh, said the three men were convicted of importing explosives from neighboring countries, taking two hostages in Zahedan, and taking part in a separate bombing against the security forces and the Revolutionary Guards a year ago, the INSA news agency reported.

“They said that they had eight other terrorist operations which they could no longer carry out because of their arrest,” Mr. Marzieh said.

A provincial judiciary official, Ibrahim Hamidi, said the men were arrested a few days before the bombing but all three confessed to providing the explosive, the IRNA news agency reported.

They were hanged at 6 a.m., before the funeral of the victims today.

In related "Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran news", The Iconoclast at the New English Review Journal brings us this:

From The Washington Post

Security personnel defused a homemade bomb found on an aircraft during a domestic flight in Iran late Saturday, Iranian media said, two days after a mosque bombing killed 25 people in the southeast of the country.

The device was defused after the Kish Air aircraft with 131 passengers on board made an emergency landing in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Fars gave no further details about the incident, which was also reported by other media.

According to the BBC

Plain-clothes security guards, who are believed to travel on every Iranian flight, found it in a toilet.

There is no recession in Jihad.

Rachel Ehrenfeld manages to both enlighten and depress us with her excellent article:  Recession in Terrorism Finance.

The economic downturn and instability of the financial markets in the West has battered global economies. Despite the accompanying drop in oil prices, the current financial crisis has actually presented opportunities to expedite the influence and extend the global reach of Islamism in ways Sunni imams and Shiite mullahs could have only fantasized about before.

Read it all.

Iraq: Green Zone turns pink for the night.

And it ain't for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, either.  (Can you imagine the kerfuffle that would have resulted if this had occurred on George W Bush's watch?)

A Gay Pride party at the Baghdad Embassy.

Change has certainly come to Baghdad. And it appears that includes the U.S. Embassy, where they are holding what the invitation says is the first-ever U.S. Embassy Gay Pride Theme Party next Friday at Baghdaddy's, which is the embassy employee association's pub.

"Come celebrate the start of Summer with color . . . and in costume!" the May 10 invitation says. "Dress in drag or as a gay icon. All are welcome." The invitation was attached to what was called an "All Hands Alerts" e-mail.

An embassy spokesman said by way of explanation: "This is an event organized and sponsored by a group of employees. Given the lack of places to meet in Baghdad, the embassy allows groups to use its social facilities for events on a first-come, first-served basis."

The invitation says, "Prizes will be awarded for two contests: Best Dressed Gay Icon and Best Lip Synch Performance." Unclear what the prizes are, but don't forget to "order costume supplies now in time for May 29th," we're told. "For more info and costume ideas, check out the next edition of The Tigris Times.

And they think that the mere presence of Gitmo recruits terrorists.

Obamas jet to NY, see Broadway show and dine out...ain't life grand?

The first couple to America:  "Let them eat fiddlehead ferns and ramps!"

I wasn't going to comment on this - and then I remembered the hell that George and Laura Bush went through during their tenure.  So this is brought to you courtesy of every meanspirited remark ever made about the Bushes by the moonbats.

It was date night for he and she.  They took a private jet from DC to NYC - plus two other planes, a helicopter and a motorcade on both ends.  How green of them!

During the campaign, Obama had promised Michelle they would go to see a Broadway Show after the election. 

Obama wore "smart business casual" and Michelle wore a black sleeveless (but, of course!) sheath and carried a cobalt blue clutch purse which contained her husband's balls. 

The show they saw was Joe Turner's Come and Gone.  Nuff said 'bout that.

And they dined on overpriced, precious, organic vittles at a low-key Greenwich Village restaurant, Blue Hill

Updated itinerary courtesy of FReeper CountRecount. 

From the NYPost.

Michelle had  acouple of martinis?  And wine?  Man, one martini puts me on my butt and I'm no piker when it comes to the hooch.

You'll be happy to know that it was all on our dime.  I sure hope they enjoyed themselves.

"Taxpayers footed the bill for the big night on the town, which included a total of at least $24,000 for the three aircraft used to ferry the Obamas, aides and reporters to New York and back. Dinner costs and orchestra seat tickets -- at $96.50 apiece -- were paid by the Obamas.

Obama's jet, a Gulfstream 500, served as a more modest Air Force One for the day in place of the customary presidential Boeing 747.

The White House declined to say how much the trip was costing taxpayers."

(Meanwhile Charlie Rangel advises the First Couple to stay out of East Harlem.)

News media all a-flutter at the Messiah's address to the Muslim world

I'm sure you've been seeing the slew of articles about the Messiah's upcoming address to the Muslim world.  For example:

Obama sets out to rebuild ties with world's Muslims

Obama's message:  I have a dream for Islam

Obama offers olive branch to Middle East

Why Obama's middle east speech matters.

Obama shouldn't let his speech to the 'Muslim world' be as much of a missed opportunity as his speech to Europe was

Middle East hangs on Obama's words.

Obama's address at Cairo will outline his personal commitments

Obama to visit Cairo,  a center of Islamic learning

Obama in the Muslim world

Not had enough yet?  Here's a little palate cleanser to remind you of the folks the Messiah will actually be addressing.

 Welcome to Cairo, Mr. President.

News travels fast in Cairo but it usually travels wrong. In the 1980s, riots broke out and people were killed over a wild rumor that Christians were spray-painting crosses on Muslim women's dresses using invisible ink. Subsequent rumors claimed that the iconic label of Coca-Cola (the company was fresh out from under a two-decade Arab League boycott for having a bottling plant in Israel) showed the Arabic words "No Mohammed, No Mecca" when viewed in the mirror. One would imagine that with a little squinting, literate Egyptians would be uniquely positioned to disconfirm such a thesis. In the end, it took Egypt's grand mufti to issue an opinion that the logo had been "designed in Atlanta 114 years ago in the state of Georgia and was written in a foreign language, not Arabic."

No sooner had the Coke business been put to bed than another rumor cropped up claiming that aftermarket seat belts made in Israel contained a chemical designed to make Arab men sterile (Cairo's enormous fleet of cabs have been retrofitting seatbelts in recent years). As with the invisible ink rumor, this one probably cannot be disproved, though with population densities in "popular" quarters pushing 1,000 per acre, it is hard to see what all the fuss was about. Not surprisingly, Egyptians get on each other's nerves...

Egypt: They ogle, they touch, they use the filthiest language possible."

It is estimated that 46 percent of all women are harassed daily and the fact that 50 percent of the women wear the hijab, and 9 percent wear the niqab?  It don't matter!  Being veiled is not the great protector of female modesty and chasity that our Muslim friends claim it to be.

"This was not the Egyptian hospitality we knew..."

From IPSnewsnet.

As night falls over Egypt’s capital, youth gather along the banks of the Nile where a carnivalesque atmosphere prevails.

Tamer and Mido have taken up positions on the railing next to the river. As a group of veiled teenage girls approaches, the duo works in tandem. Tamer removes the girls’ headscarves with his eyes, while sexually nuanced words roll off Mido’s tongue.

"Girls love the attention - it makes them feel attractive," says Mido, an engineering student, as the girls divert their eyes to the pavement and nervously scurry past. "They pretend to be innocent, but it’s just part of the game they play."

Women insist it is no game. They say the amount, and intensity of street-level sexual harassment has increased in the past decade.

The journey home from school or work can require running a gauntlet of gropes and taunts. "I’ve encountered every form of sexual harassment from men on the streets," complains Dina El-Sherbiny, a 31-year-old office administrator. "They ogle, touch, use the filthiest language imaginable."

A study published last year by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) found that 46 percent of the 1,000 women who were surveyed, were harassed on a daily basis.

"The results were a shock for us - this was not the Egyptian hospitality we knew, and it was not compatible with all our ideas about harassment," ECWR chairwoman Nehad Abu El-Komsan told IPS.

USA: Fearing Muslim violence, hotel cancels Wilders event.

It's come to this.

Fearing Muslim violence, hotel cancelsl event about -wait for it- muslim violence.

”The manager of a prominent Nashville hotel cancelled a contract with a conservative foundation to hold a conference this weekend on radical Islam, apparently after learning that the group would feature a keynote address by controversial Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker, Geert Wilders.

...

Thomas A. Negri, managing director of Loew’s Vanderbilt Hotel and Office complex in Nashville, told Newsmax on Wednesday that he had taken the extraordinary step of cancelling the conference at the last minute “for the health, safety and well-being of our guests and employees.”

Negri refused to say why he felt the conference would adversely affect the “health, safety and well-being” of the hotel’s guests and employees, except to refer to the website of the New English Review, the group organizing the conference.

Oh, and about Mr. Negri?

Negri appeared at a 2003 pro-immigration event on the same dias with a well-known Somali warlord, Gordon told Newsmax.

...

Negri also serves on the board of advisors of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, TIRRC, an activist group that states its mission “is to empower immigrants and refugees throughout Tennessee to develop a unified voice” and “defend their rights.” (for more on this, visit Refugee Resettlement Watch!)

The group boasts of having helped to defeat an “English only” amendment this January that would have required all Nashville government communications to be in English.

Earlier this month, the group won an award from the Migration Policy Institute, which is funded by grants form the J.M. Kaplan Fund, a left-wing group that also funds the ACLU, the Tides Foundation, the Tides Center, the Sierra Club, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and other left-wing causes.

The award singles out TIRRC for its “Welcoming Tennessee Initiative,” to“foster constructive public dialogue on immigration within the state.”

When asked if he objected to Geert Wilders appearance at the conference, Negri refused to comment.

Regarding the conference:  It's still on, albeit occuring in a "secure, undisclosed location".

(h/t FReeper wontsubmit)

How Iran messed with Miss North Dakota's head.

They really are bastards over there, aren't they?

A snippet from Ms. Saberi's NPR interview courtesy of Gawker.

The government pressured her into a false confession; "The first few days, I was interrogated for several hours, from morning until evening, blindfolded, facing a wall, by up to four men, and threatened, as I said, that I would be put in prison for 10 to 20 years or more or even face execution." Later, she recanted it, and that pissed off her captors further:

The prosecutor got upset with me for recanting my confession and sent my case to trial instead of freeing me, and that's when I was sentenced to eight years in prison. I knew this was going to happen when I recanted my confession, but I told myself, I would rather tell the truth and stay in prison instead of telling lies to be free.

Welcome home, Ms. Saberi.

The post that got me banned at Little Green Footballs - evidently.

I was banned by Charles Johnson, the man behind the LGF curtain.

Just went to log onto Little Green Footballs and found out that I'd been banned.  I guess it was the last post I shamelessly linkwhored on his little link thingy.  I thought it was humorous, evidently Mr. Johnson did not.

Either that or he didn't appreciate the fact that I had the nerve to reference the mention of Obama and his birth certificate at yesterday's White House presser and on Fox News.  I seem to remember he has some double secret rules about it or something.

Odd.  Mr. Johnson's latest LGF post deals with that very topic.

I guess only the great Charles Johnson is able to write about it with his trademark 'nirth certifikit' phunny.  Or something. 

Whatever.  LGF will do just fine without me and I will do just fine without them.  It's a big cyber world out there.

(Besides all his hatin' on people, places and things was beginning to get a bit tedious.)