Aseel al-Omari is a self-described "close friend" of Mohammed Asha, a suspect arrested in connection with last week's failed terrorist attack on Glasgow Airport in Scotland.

The Associated Press reports that al-Omari said the following in defense of her friend:

"He was a good Muslim but never a terrorist or involved in such activities," she added.

Emphasis mine. Apparently, al-Omari thinks it's noteworthy for a good Muslim not to be a terrorist. Hey, she said it, not me.

Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports:

Philippine troops discovered a motorcycle rigged to explode in a southern province, amid threats of new attacks during the Christmas holidays, the military said yesterday.

The motorcycle was found on Saturday a few metres away from a military checkpoint in Esperanza town in Sultan Kudarat province, 930km south of Manila. Colonel Danilo Garcia, an army brigade commander, said the motorcycle’s fuel tank was converted into an explosive device using picric acid.

Al Qaeda-linked Muslim militants operate in the southern Philippines, including local Abu Sayyaf rebels and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) militants. The Abu Sayyaf and the JI have been blamed for some of the worst terrorist attacks in the Philippines, including the bombing of a passenger ferry off a Manila port in February 2004.

So, help me out here — is this all because of the Israel-Palestine situation? Or the war in Iraq? Or could it simply be the nasty tendency of radical Islamists to attack anyone and everyone who happens to be around them?

For those of you keeping score at home, Islamic "militants" or terror groups are currently on the attack, or are threatening to attack, not only in the Philippines, but also in Thailand, Somalia, Algeria, Indonesia, Sudan, India, Pakistan, Denmark, Spain, Russia, Britain, France — ah, heck, let's just say all of Europe — and, of course, Iraq and all the usual suspects in the Middle East. It's really quite extraordinary. I haven't checked every country in the world, either, so let me know if I've left anyone out.

The never-ending laundry list of radical Islam's targets shows us that the problem isn't Bush, or Iraq, or Israel. It's radical Islam.

Good news. Hamas appears to be moving away from its reprehensible practice of using eleven-year-olds and mentally-challenged teens as suicide bombers.

Now, reports the Times of London, it's using grannies instead:

A grandmother became the oldest Palestinian suicide bomber yesterday when she blew herself up in Gaza and slightly wounded two Israeli soldiers.

Fatma Omar An-Najar was the first suicide bomber to be claimed by Hamas for nearly two years. Its armed wing said that she was aged 57, but her family said that she was 68.

The brave men of Hamas are generous indeed to let old ladies and gullible kids share in the fruits of martyrdom, instead of hogging it all for themselves.

Domino's Pizza in Japan is offering a terror-licious "24 Entertainment Pack".

My God, I hope this isn't actually tied to some sort of product placement on the show: "Jack, we only have two hours left to foil the terrorists' latest plot, and I'm starving!" "Then we'd better call Domino's — they deliver in under 30 minutes!"

Why has the prize been awarded to 167 Jews, and to only four Arabs out of 380 million Arabs...?

That's Samir Ubeid, an Iraqi researcher, claiming the Nobel Prize is awarded disproportionately to Jews due to "racism".

MEMRI.org translates more of Ubeid's interview, which aired October 31 on Al-Jazeera TV, here (via Fark). Read the whole thing for some industrial-strength moonbattery. And here's the subtitled video (via LGF):


Why have so few Arabs won the Nobel Prize? It's a good question, but not for the reason Ubeid thinks it is.

The Associated Press reports that Hamas is urging Muslims worldwide to attack American targets:

Signaling a change in tactics, Hamas' military wing on Wednesday called on Muslims around the world to attack American targets after an apparent misfiring of an IDF artillery shell in the Gaza Strip.

"America is offering political, financial and logistic cover for the Zionist occupation crimes, and it is responsible for the Beit Hanoun massacre. Therefore, the people and the nation all over the globe are required to teach the American enemy tough lessons," Hamas said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.

Of course, it just wouldn't be Hamas without a little bit of the old play-both-sides game:

Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led Palestinian government, said the group had no intention of attacking American targets.

Whatever. The real question is, why would Hamas expect Muslims around the world to attack anyone? Doesn't it know that Islam is the religion of peace?

The Japan Times reports on Muslims in Japan:

...Muslims in Japan, say their leaders, have escaped much of the antipathy and targeting experienced by those in Europe and elsewhere since 2001.

Maybe — just maybe, mind you — that's because Japanese in Japan have escaped much of the Islamic terrorism, riots, and other violence experienced by those in Europe and elsewhere since 2001. Just sayin'.

What is often descibed as the "tiny minority" of Muslims who support Islamic terrorism would appear to be a good deal larger than one might have thought. Via LGF and Michelle Malkin, Reuters reports that a depressingly high 10% of Indonesian Muslims support terrorism in the name of Islam:

Around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims support jihad and justify bomb attacks on Indonesia's tourist island of Bali as defending the faith, a survey released on Sunday showed.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country, with 220 million people, 85 percent of whom follow Islam, giving the Asian archipelago the largest Muslim population of any nation in the world.

"Jihad that has been understood partially and practiced with violence is justified by around one in 10 Indonesian Muslims," the Indonesian Survey Institute said in a statement.

"They approved the bombings conducted ... in Bali with the excuse of defending Islam," it added, saying the percentage of such support "is very significant."

I suppose the positive spin on this would be to say that 90% of Indonesian Muslims don't support Islamic terrorism. That's an important fact, and we shouldn't lose sight of it. But 18.7 million terror supporters (10% of 85% of 220 million) — in just a single country, mind you — is more than a "tiny minority". It's a big problem.

FOLLOW-UP:
The Reuters article continues:

The survey found one in five Indonesian Muslims more generally supported the aims of Jemaah Islamiah — an armed movement backing the creation of an Islamic superstate linking Muslim Indonesia and Malaysia, and Muslim areas in the Philippines and Thailand.

Jemaah Islamiyah is a terrorist organisation, as designated by the U.S. State Department. And 20% of Indonesian Muslims agree with its goal of taking land from sovereign states like Thailand to form an Islamic nation. If that's not supporting terrorism, it's pretty close.

(NOTE: Welcome, LGF readers! And thanks for the link, Charles.)

Michelle Malkin reports that YouTube took down a video she posted there, expressing her criticism of militant Islam. (It's available on her site here.)

Yet YouTube seems to have no problem hosting viciously anti-Israel propaganda videos. Check out some examples here, here, and here. (The last one in particular is so full of Jews-are-taking-over-the-world paranoia that it's almost a parody.)

How should YouTube determine where to draw the line between strongly-held political views, and unacceptably offensive content? Answer: It shouldn't. It shouldn't be in the viewpoint-regulation business. As is often said, the best response to offensive speech is more speech, not censorship.

I know YouTube is a business and wants to avoid controversy. But most people are smart enough to know that it doesn't endorse the message of any particular video uploaded to its site. And by censoring its user-generated content, YouTube is shooting itself in the foot.

Malkin quotes YouTube user Intelsum, who theorizes that the site automatically pulls videos "flagged" as offensive by a large enough number of users — and that Muslim groups are gaming the system, rallying their members to flag videos that criticize aspects of Islam, even though such videos don't violate YouTube's stated terms of use.

If that's what's going on, it's a flaw in YouTube's moderation system and should be stopped. The real attraction of YouTube has been the sense that you can find anything there. But those days may be past. Now it seems that you can find only what YouTube, and its most aggressive user groups, think you should see.

FOLLOW-UP: Charles notes that YouTube has since pulled the third anti-Israel video I linked above. However, this may have been due to copyright considerations, not issues of content, since the clip apparently used MEMRI TV footage with the MEMRI logo covered up.

ANOTHER FOLLOW-UP: And now the first of the three anti-Israel videos has been pulled by YouTube, raising the possibility that hordes of LGF's "lizardoid minions" flagged it as offensive. This is not a positive development. I want these videos to be widely available, so people can see just how deranged and hate-filled Israel's opponents can be. A tit-for-tat censorship battle only leaves all of us less informed.

Just a day or so ago, the Sunday Times of London reported that it had obtained an Al Qaeda video from 2000, featuring Osama Bin Laden and 9-11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and Ziad Jarrah. In particular, it shows Atta and Jarrah reading their "martyrdom" wills (clearly labeled al wasiyyah, or “the will”) to the camera. You can see the entire hour-long video (without audio) in five parts on the Jawa Report here.

Coincidentally, a few days before this video hit the news, I found the following in my inbox from a fellow named Jason Bainbridge. He represents a conspiracy-theory group calling itself Tokyo911.com:

Hello, I would like to submit an upcoming event in Tokyo for your blog.
------------------------------------------------------
Join us on October 7th for this first ever 911 Truth International Conference in Tokyo Japan!

[Rest of message deleted]

That's right; the moonbattery of 9-11 conspiracy theorists has hit Japan.

I wonder if the new Al Qaeda video will make the people behind this "truth" conference stop and think how silly they're being, even for just a second.

Ah, who am I kidding? Of course it won't.

Via Fark, ABC News's "The Blotter" blog says that the French report of Osama Bin Laden's death has been dismissed as a mere rumor.

From OhMyNews:

A French newspaper reported that the most wanted man on earth, Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan on Aug. 23, mainly because the terrorist mastermind's geographical location made all potential medical assistance impossible.

"His geographic isolation, provoked by constant fleeing, is believed to have made medical assistance impossible [and] on Sept. 4, 2006, the Saudi security services received preliminary information of his death," the paper reported.

It might not seem as satisfying as some other ways one might have imagined Osama meeting his end, but wasting away from disease, unable to get treatment, is actually pretty grisly when you think about it.

Assuming it gets confirmed, I assume the media will fall all over themselves crediting this one to Bush, for pushing Bin Laden into hiding, leaving him unable to get medical treatment. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course they won't. But this is enough good news for one day.

I just had a sudden realization; it may have occured to you before, but it's new for me:

9-11 conspiracy theorists are like Intelligent Design supporters.

Why? I mean, besides the fact that they're both nuts?

Here's the answer: Both groups support their views with what I call musta-been arguments. (There's probably a Latin term for it. If you know it, tell me.)

9-11 kooks will say things like "Look at the hole in the Pentagon. That musta-been from a missle!" Or, "Look at the pattern of smoke coming out of Tower 2. That musta-been from dynamite!"

What they won't give you — what they can't give you — is anything resembling concrete, specific evidence of their claims.

They'll never find anyone who was involved in carrying out or planning any aspect of a government "inside job" on 9-11. Or any internal memos about such a plot. Or any actual proof that demolition charges were planted in the Twin Towers. They'll never be able to show us what "really happened" to Flight 93, which they claim did not actually crash in a field in Pennsylvania. Or Flight 77, which they claim did not actually hit the Pentagon. Or any of the people on those planes.

Similarly, Intelligent Design backers say that because life on Earth is so complex, it musta-been designed by some higher power. They'll never be able to show us what this power is, who is using it, and how.

At the same time, both groups ignore the obvious, voluminous evidence that contradicts their pet theories. And they also both seize upon tiny uncertanties in the "official story" as proof that it's false, while offering no hard proof that their own views are true.

Heck, they don't even specify what their own views really are. Ask a 9-11 "Truther" what really happened on 9-11, blow by blow, detail by detail. He won't have an answer for you. Because conspiracy theorists don't like to make specific claims. Those could be fact-checked, you see. Far better for them to float half-baked, unfalsifiable conjectures, while demanding the other side account for the shape of every last puff of smoke and the size of every last scrap of wreckage.

Meanwhile, they get to side-step massive problems with their own vague theories. Like, if 9-11 was designed to provoke a war with Iraq, why didn't we use Iraqis as the hijackers? And why did we bother involving Flight 93 in the plot, anyway? What did that accomplish? Why hasn't a single person involved in such a massive conspiracy and cover-up come forward to spill the beans? "Truthers" don't have answers to such questions. They just have questions.

9-11 conspiracy theorists and the Intelligent Design pushers both know that if you leave your claims vague enough, they can't be proved wrong. Fortunately, they can't be taken seriously, either.

This post is part of 2,996, a blogosphere remembrance of the 2,996 victims of the September 11 terror attacks. 2,996 bloggers have each volunteered to write a post about one of the dead. D. Challener Roe, the blogger behind the project, has assigned me to post about Deanna L. Galante, who on September 11, 2001, was weeks away from giving birth to her first child.

Deanna L. Galante's entry in the New York Times' Portraits of Grief series is titled "A Knack for Hair". It reads:

Deanna L. Galante had such a knack for styling hair that she attended beauty school after high school in Sheepshead Bay, and when she ran out of heads to practice on among family members, she used her own. It was her second career, and she kept up with the trends. Braids, beads, perms and shavings, she did them all.

On Wall Street, Ms. Galante, 32, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald's eSpeed division as a personal assistant. At home on Staten Island, where she lived with her husband, Anthony, she did puzzles to unwind and was busy redecorating in anticipation of their first child; she was six weeks away from going on maternity leave. "She was already like a second mom to my 12-year-old," said her sister, Tina. "They were always doing their hair and nails."

Newsday ran a longer piece about Deanna:

Deanna Galante was always checking in with the people she loved.

"She would call everybody a couple of times a day," said her husband, Anthony Galante. "She would call her brother, her mother, her father, me, my parents, at least two or three times a day." Anthony's voice cracked slightly as he added, "That's why it's so hard now. She doesn't call."

Deanna, 32, a personal assistant at Cantor Fitzgerald, was on the 106th floor of One World Trade Center when it was hit by a plane.

"She was at the happiest point of her life," Anthony said. "So was I, until Sept.11."

The couple had lived together for two years, and Deanna was seven months pregnant with their first child.

"She loved kids," Anthony said. "She just basically had two goals — to be with me forever and to have the baby and be a loving mother."

Anthony only knew his son-to-be — already named Matthew Giacomo Galante — from the doctor's office and from the movements in Deanna's belly.

"From going to the doctor every other week, the sonograms, we'd see him suck his thumb," he said. "Just the night before, we were looking at her stomach and he was moving around."

The couple had already bought diapers and baby clothes, and started renovating their house. Deanna's mother had planned a baby shower for Oct. 28.

There is some small consolation for Anthony in the memory of the couple's wedding two months ago, which fulfilled a dream for Deanna. About 40 family members and guests took a cruise ship from Manhattan to Bermuda and the marriage took place on board.

"She was pregnant and all, and she was dancing every night," Anthony said. "She was the only one that didn't get seasick."

Athletic and outgoing, Deanna loved skiing, rollerblading and going to the gym. She had been an aerobics instructor at one point. After high school, she went on to beauty school, and she still cut hair for a few private clients.

And, Anthony said, "She had a million friends. She'd meet you one time, and then the next time she'd speak to you, she'd talk like she'd known you for a long time," he said. "She was that type of person."

Anthony is working on arranging a memorial service for his bride.

"It's not what I was planning for," he said. "I was planning for a baby, not a funeral.

"She always said, 'That's it.' I was stuck with her forever.

"I can't believe it ended this way."

None of us really can.

A year ago, I blogged about how in the four years after 9-11, America had not been hit again by terrorists.

Well, now it's five years. Another year, another total absence of terror attacks against America. (Of course, when September 11th rolled around last year, Al Qaeda warned that it had another attack in the works. Uh-huh. Apparently, it's being planned by the same team that's been developing Windows Vista.)

After 9-11, stopping another terror attack has been George W. Bush's primary task. And regardless of whatever else his administration has done or failed to do, at this he must be deemed a success. Here's hoping I'll be able to post a similar update next year.

When traveling by plane, it's never a good sign when there are television news crews filming inside both your departure airport and your arrival airport. I guess they were just there to do stories on how passengers are coping with the foiled terror plot and the new travel restrictions. Actually, I didn't notice much of a change. We were told no containers of liquid could be brought on the plane, but after I went through security, I bought a bottle of Diet Coke inside the terminal and visibly carried it on board.

I wasn't trying to prove a point; I was just thirsty and I forgot about the new rule. Still, it suggests that the crackdown on liquids is either mostly for show, ineffective, or both. It's worth noting that the would-be terrorists behind the recently-foiled plot were caught well before they actually got to an airport, and that's as it should be. If we're only uncovering terrorists when they get to the check-in line, somebody's not doing his job.

FOLLOW-UP:
I swear I wrote the above post before reading this WSJ article, via Instapundit:

Much of the work to stop potential terrorists must occur before they ever walk into an airport, aviation experts say. "By the time you get to the security checkpoint, chances are you've lost the battle," said Douglas Laird, an aviation consultant who once headed security for Northwest Airlines.

I would like to point out to any airline executives reading this that Mr. Laird no doubt charges a high fee for his security consulting services, while I am willing to work cheap.

As I prepare to head to the airport for a trip to New York, this happens:

LONDON, Aug 10 (Reuters) - British police foiled a plot by would-be suicide bombers to simultaneously blow up several planes flying to the United States, arresting 24 people days before they could attack, officials said on Thursday.

Disclosure of the alleged plan to smuggle bombs on aircraft disguised as drinks immediately brought drastic new security measures and chaos at airports on both sides of the Atlantic.

British security sources said they had been watching the suspects for eight months, and London police's Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson described their goal as "mass murder on an unimaginable scale".

"The plan was to have multiple suicide bombings on aircraft, essentially at the same time," said U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

A U.S. intelligence official said the planned bombings were just days away, with a dry run planned first: "They were a couple of days from a test, and a few days from doing it."

Almost five years after 9-11, it's good to see that major terror plots are being found and stopped before they can be carried out. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a plane to catch.

FOLLOW-UP:
I was going to write something like, "How long will it be before some lefty blogger claims it was all just a government ruse designed to keep us afraid?" But I was too slow. It's already happening at DailyKos (via LGF), where the results of a reader poll asking whether the terror plot was "legit" or "more drama from BushCo to keep us all afraid" have split pretty much 50-50.

As Israel continues its attack on Gaza in response to Palestinians kidnapping an Israeli soldier and firing rockets at Israeli schools, the BBC reports on the harsh conditions Palestinians are facing there:

Abu Heni and his friends have seen it all before.

Perhaps that is why, as they sit playing cards, they do not appear overly-concerned with the Israeli incursion that is happening less than three miles from where we are sitting.

Four men, sitting round a small white table, at the Al Karawan cafe in downtown Gaza. Of course, as Muslims, they do not play for money, just points.

That does not mean the game is not important. Abu Heni gets agitated and shouts at his playing partner when he puts down the wrong card. As far as I can make out what they are playing is a kind of "trumps".

...Now I am usually a committed non-smoker but in this noisy, crowded cafe full of agitated card players I sit back and enjoy a Shisha [or hubbly-bubbly as it is known in English].

The double-apple flavour is particularly good and goes down really well with a glass of sweet mint tea.

Oh, the humanity!

FOLLOW-UP:
Yes, this post is basically a rip-off of this one. What can I say? It's a winning formula.

Another day, another tragic terrorist attack on a commuter train — this time in India. The BBC reports:

More than 160 people have been killed and 460 injured by seven bombs on the train network in the Indian financial capital Mumbai (Bombay), police say.

The first of the near-simultaneous blasts went off at about 1830 local time (1300 GMT), during the rush hour in the suburbs on the Western Railway.

Correspondents spoke of scenes of pandemonium, with people jumping from trains and bodies flung onto tracks.

The BBC notes:

The blasts came hours after suspected Islamic extremists killed seven people in grenade attacks in the summer capital of Kashmir, Srinagar.

There's been no claim of responsibility for the train bombs, but it's looking like the Religion of Peace has struck again.

I don't know how I missed this one. Via LGF, the Associated Press reports:

A terrorist plot to inflict death and destruction by attacking train tunnels used by tens of thousands of commuters each day was thwarted before the men could travel to the United States, authorities said Friday.

Eight suspects — including an al-Qaida loyalist arrested in Lebanon and two others in custody elsewhere — had hoped to pull off the attack in October or November, federal officials said. But federal investigators working with their counterparts in six other countries intervened.

"It was never a concern that this would actually be executed," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. "We were, as I say, all over this."

Thankfully, we can score one for the good guys: Another crazy Islamic terrorism plot foiled. But as I've said before, underground trains = terror targets.