The Center for Security Policy created a powerful 1-minute video opposing the construction of the 13-story, $100 million mega-mosque near site of the World Trade Center. The Twin Towers were destroyed on 9/11 by adherents to the barbaric, supremacist and totalitarian program authoritative Islam calls “Shariah.” And the imam who is promoting this mosque has publicly declared that he seeks to “bring Shariah to America.”
As the ad makes clear, Shariah’s followers have long built mosques on the most sacred sites of those they have conquered – for example, on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, at Constantinople/Istanbul’s St. Sophia Basilica and in Cordoba, Spain, the capital of the occupying Moors’ Muslim kingdom.
In Jerusalem the Dome of the Rock is seen perched atop the Temple Mount, the site of three Jewish national temples. The Kotel or “Wailing Wall” is seen in the foreground. The Dome of the Rock was placed as a mocking symbol of triumph and supersession over Judaism and Christianity. Bernard Lewis is one of the world’s leading scholars of Islamic history. Here is what he wrote about the location of the Dome of the Rock Mosque:
“The choice is significant. Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Qur’an. Even the name “Jerusalem” does not figure in early Muslim writings.”
Of course New York City is not mentioned in the Koran either, but islamists are interested in it for the same reasons that they wanted Jerusalem 14 centuries ago: Islamic imperialist supremacy.
The Wailing Wall with it’s monolithic stones is actually the western retaining wall of the temple mount. Romans demolished the temple in 70 CE and killed, enslaved and exiled millions of Israelis. Jews have mourned the event for millinia and this is as close as they are allowed to worship to their temples historic location. The photo above shows many Bar Mitzva ceremonies being performed for poor families on a thursday afternoon recently.
Directly above this plaza sit the two 8th century arab mosques, the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa. All too often after friday prayers moslems rush out of the mosques and hurl pre-positioned stones and pieces of concrete down on the jewish worshipers. Israeli riot police must respond to quell the attacks.
An 8th century inscription on the exterior of the Al Aqsa mosque is a clear threat which still resonates with those who seek to impose Islam and sharia law on the world: God bears witness that there is no God but he, and so too the angels, those who possess knowledge, and stand firm in justice. There is no God but he, the omnipotent, the omniscient. God’s religion is Islam …Let whoever disbelieves in the signs of God beware, for God is swift in reckoning.“
It is common to see soldiers praying at the wall before departing for duty. The cavern seen in the background holds a large prayer room and a public/religious registry. This is the area where the many worshipers have been injured by falling stones.
Whenever arabs gather in the mosques Israeli police wait patiently outside the western wall, often for hours in the scorching sun, hoping that things remain calm. All entrances to the mosque area are monitored to prevent weapons or known terrorists from entering.
These words of Arlín Rodríguez, from the TV talk show The Roundtable on March 17, thundered in my ears for half an hour. A few days ago I had access to three hundred photos of the autopsies of those who died at the psychiatric hospital in Havana and I cannot imagine how that phrase came out of the mouth of a journalist.
When I opened the little folder called “Mazorra” a series of monstrosities hit me in the face and I couldn’t stop looking at the cruel graphic testimony. A friend who is a doctor visited and while he analyzed images I didn’t have the courage to look at, expressions like, “Holy Virgin Mary, Blessed God, What in God’s name is this?” issued from his outraged throat, mixed with obscure pathologies and the names of diseases both treatable and curable.
Enormous livers, tubercular lungs, and wormy intestines are the proof, Señora Arlín, of the sacredness of life in Cuba. Meanwhile The Roundtable throws a fit because the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo has unmasked a crumbling public health system, and they try to cover up the disgrace of a seeing soldiers dragging and beating a group of women dressed in white with flowers in their hands. I ask myself, Gentlemen Journalists, when will they explain to Cubans the reasons why twenty-six mentally incapacitated people died in inhumane conditions during their confinement in Mazorra?
Note: I publish this photo with a completely clear conscience; if they were not shown there would be no proof of the suffering that these people were subjected to. If not for the hard photos that denounced the Nazi Holocaust, the genocide of Pol Pot or the tortures in the prisons of Abu Ghraib, they, too, would not have existed.
Claudia Cadelo is the name of a courageous young female blogger in Cuba. She is one of the very few Cubans who dare to speak out against a totalitarian society in which they themselves are born captive. She blogs knowing that she can be arrested and sentenced to twenty years in prison at any moment, day or night. Claudia Cadelo follows the example of her mentor, Yoani Sanchez, who decided two years ago to blog in Cuba openly as a free person does in a free country. Claudia emulates Yoani’s blogging style of beautifully written short posts (two to four paragraphs) accompanied by one photograph. There are hundreds of Cuban dissidents in prison with long sentences for speaking much less than Yoani or Claudia. The photo below is from Claudia’s most recent post.
To Michael Moore and the millions of simple minded liberal Americans who believe that Cuba has a “single payer” health care system worth emulating, this blog post is for you.
“I have nothing to say to people that use their freedom of expression, their civil rights, their economic freedoms and their political freedoms to defend this totalitarian system. I don’t believe that any system is perfect, but what I am sure of is that this system is not the right one: a better society cannot be constructed if the basis of it is oppression, fear, militarism, the absence of civil rights and the supreme unlimited power in the hands of only two or three people; and we can add to that that the social ills, the corruption and the poverty which are also a part of the status quo, which remains.” Claudia Cadelo
Life is sacred in Cuba?- By Claudia Cadelo
These words of Arlín Rodríguez, from the TV talk show The Roundtable on March 17, thundered in my ears for half an hour. A few days ago I had access to three hundred photos of the autopsies of those who died at the psychiatric hospital in Havana and I cannot imagine how that phrase came out of the mouth of a journalist.
When I opened the little folder called “Mazorra” a series of monstrosities hit me in the face and I couldn’t stop looking at the cruel graphic testimony. A friend who is a doctor visited and while he analyzed images I didn’t have the courage to look at, expressions like, “Holy Virgin Mary, Blessed God, What in God’s name is this?” issued from his outraged throat, mixed with obscure pathologies and the names of diseases both treatable and curable.
Enormous livers, tubercular lungs, and wormy intestines are the proof, Señora Arlín, of the sacredness of life in Cuba. Meanwhile The Roundtable throws a fit because the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo has unmasked a crumbling public health system, and they try to cover up the disgrace of a seeing soldiers dragging and beating a group of womendressed in white with flowers in their hands. I ask myself, Gentlemen Journalists, when will they explain to Cubans the reasons why twenty-six mentally incapacitated people died in inhumane conditions during their confinement in Mazorra?
Note: I publish this photo with a completely clear conscience; if they were not shown there would be no proof of the suffering that these people were subjected to. If not for the hard photos that denounced the Nazi Holocaust, the genocide of Pol Pot or the tortures in the prisons of Abu Ghraib, they, too, would not have existed.
Short of stating it explicitly, elitism implies that “the masses” are mindless, spiritless creatures without free will, always in need of the largesse of the state, and for their own good the state ought to nationalize the country’s resources in order to feed its subjects.
