I don't know whether to weep or to eat my gun when I read things like this:

A talking animal on a Palestinian children's television show has advocated starting a massacre with AK-47 firearms.

The violent suggestion came in response to a question from a child moderator on the program, which runs on official Palestinian TV, reported Palestinian Media Watch.

The recently aired episode was dedicated to the importance of trees. The moderator asked "Tarabisho," a talking chick, what he would do if someone, specifically a "little boy," were to chop down his tree. In his squeaky little voice, Tarabisho answered that he would shoot the little boy with an AK-47 automatic rifle, create a massacre and make a riot.

The following is the full text of the translated dialogue between the child moderator and Tarabisho:

Girl: If a boy comes in front of your house where a tree is planted, and cuts it down, what would you do?

Talking chick: I have two trees in front of my house.

Girl: If a little boy cuts them down, what will you do to him?

Talking chick: What I'll do to him? I'll fight him and make a big riot. I'll call the whole world and make a riot. I'll bring AK-47s and the whole world. I'll commit a massacre in front of the house.

Palestinian Media Watch, which features a video of the exchange, reported the moderator twice checked her notes while asking the questions, suggesting this was not a spontaneous discussion but was a deliberate educational message planned by the writers and producers of the show.

The program aired shortly after the Israeli army leveled many of the trees used by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza to hide rocket launchers.

As WorldNetDaily reported, Palestinian Authority television produced a "Sesame Street"-like children's program called the "Children's Club" – complete with puppet shows, songs, Mickey Mouse and other characters – focused on inculcating intense hatred of Jews and a passion for engaging in and celebrating violence against them in a perpetual "jihad" until the day the Israeli flags come down from above "Palestinian land" and the Palestinian flag is raised.

In one song on the "Children's Club," very young children are shown singing songs about wanting to become "suicide warriors" and to take up "a machine gun" to direct "violence, anger, anger, anger" against Israelis.

During the show, which featured children aged 4-10, one young boy sings, "When I wander into Jerusalem, I will become a suicide bomber." Afterward, other children stand to call for "Jihad! Holy war to the end against the Zionist enemy."

It always makes me wonder how guys like Jeff and Laurence can joke about the sick, murderous nature of Palestinian society. How are you able to make light of the fact that people want you dead? I find myself railing at them each for a moment every now and then until I remember that I'm now in the same situation myself, and I've only really been aware of it for three years.

I'm just not yet accustomed to the fact that there are a lot of people out there who want to kill me because I'm from this country. And nothing else would matter to them.

A lot of aware Jews out there have lived with this their entire lives—at least on a theoretical level—and are therefore coping better than I am.

(Also, Laurence and Jeff are funnier people from the get-go.)

The riff started with Protein Wisdom, who provided the link to this rather horrific little bit of news.

Posted by: Attila at 04:22 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 601 words, total size 4 kb.

Watch your backs, boys and girls. Bin Ladin might be getting ready for another attack over the weekend; CIA analysts are trying to figure out if there are hidden instructions in his latest videotape.

Of course, he might not try to attack us, figuring that Americans could well react just the opposite of the Spaniards in such a case.

But keep on the lookout anyway; it'll be a scary weekend in a very literal, non-Halloween-like way.

Posted by: Attila at 02:31 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 88 words, total size 1 kb.

All I can say is, I hope he's in a lot of pain. Maybe he'll have a slow, lingering death—just in case there isn't a hell. (I'm not against hedging my bets.)

My favorite part of the coverage is the fact that his wife has to join him from France, reminding us that his family is safely ensconsed in Europe: he only wants other people's families to die.

Outside the Beltway:

It must be getting serious. The press is already dusting off the Arafat obituary. Apparently, contrary to my belief that he was a mass murdering scumbag, he was simply a dynamic leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize. I stand corrected.

That's vintage Joyner.

Posted by: Attila at 10:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 117 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . from Mark Steyn, in which he uses the recent "assassination joke" on the part of a countryman as a point of departure to discuss cool irony and the European penchant for passivity. As in, how does it fit into the current world conflict, with people getting their heads chopped off just for attempting to do good works?

Not very well, he concludes:

This new war requires action, resolve, ongoing participation—and most of America's "allies" just can't be fagged. The Spanish vote was a vote for passivity, a call for inaction, and a quiet life no doubt with many "ironic jokes" about the absurd Americans. The "civilised world" sees itself like Continental skating judges at the Olympics, watching the Yanks career all over the ice and then handing out a succession of cranky 4.7s. The decadence of passivity does not express itself solely in "ironic jokes".

My problem is that John Kerry is part of that culture: he wants to criticize people of action rather than actually doing anything himself. Look at his lackluster Senate record, and listen to his micro-criticisms of the Bush Administration's accomplishments. Listen to his own plan: I'd have done everything better somehow, and people in other countries wouldn't dislike us so.

It may be too late for John Kerry to grow a spine, but I still have some hope the Western Europeans will figure things out soon. Certainly there are plenty of English who "get it." And then there are the Australians, to whom I'm grateful. Even a few Canadians (Kate, are you reading this?). And the Polish, for whom this is a labor of love. God bless them.

Posted by: Attila at 10:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 282 words, total size 2 kb.

Matthew Heidt of Froggy Ruminations lays out his case for the notion that Osama bin Laden is now facing his virginless eternity—and has been for some time. In the course of the entry he explains why Bush's message discipline over the issue of Tora Bora shows that the President places the interests of the country over his own re-election campaign. And he makes a good case.

Via Protein Wisdom, and a couple of others who have clean slipped my mind. Sorry!

Posted by: Attila at 01:12 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 89 words, total size 1 kb.

James points us to this column by Mark Steyn, which was spiked by his editors at the Telegraph and is published at his own site. It has to do with the dangers of getting sentimental during wartime, and why we need to take a clear-eyed look at how our actions endanger other people. Obviously, the degree of national alarm and outrage over Ken Bigley's murder in Britain and Ireland simply makes it more likely that other Britons and Irishmen will be kidnapped and killed.

By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it.

If the FCO wants to issue advice in this area, that’s the way to go: If you’re kidnapped, accept you’re unlikely to survive, say “I’ll show you how an Englishman dies”, and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you’re a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you’re an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley’s word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.

And, if you donÂ’t want to wind up in that situation, you need to pack heat and be prepared to resist at the point of abduction. I didnÂ’t give much thought to decapitation when I was mooching round the Sunni Triangle last year, but my one rule was that I was determined not to get into a car with any of the locals and I was willing to shoot anyone who tried to force me. If youÂ’re not, you shouldnÂ’t be there.

None of the above would have guaranteed Mr BigleyÂ’s life, but it would have given him, as it did Signor Quattrocchi, a less pitiful death, and it would have spared the world a glimpse of the feeble and unserious Britain of the last few weeks. The jihadists have become rather adept at devising tests customized for each group of infidels: Madrid got bombed, and the Spaniards failed their test three days later; the Australian Embassy in Jakarta got bombed, but the Aussies held firm and re-elected John HowardÂ’s government anyway. With Britain, the Islamists will have drawn many useful lessons from the decadence and defeatism on display.

Our first was Daniel Pearl, so we as Americans are getting good at this. We—the Western world—must use these incidents to increase our resolve, rather than to waver. It's easy to say, and hard to do. But it's necessary.

Please link to Steyn's column, and get the word out about it.

Posted by: Attila at 09:16 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 549 words, total size 3 kb.

Kerry let his true attitude about the War on Terror shine through in a New York Times puff piece.

When I asked Kerry what it would take for Americans to feel safe again, he displayed a much less apocalyptic worldview. ‘’We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,'’ Kerry said. ‘’As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.'’

ThatÂ’s the difference: Unlike Clinton, Kerry does inhale.

In fairness, the defenders of this remark are suggesting that Kerry isn't saying terrorism is at a "nuisance" level now, but rather that we might get to that place after fighting it for a while—beat it back to where it was before. Unfortunately, where it was before, with the law enforcement model being used during the Clinton administration and the anemic responses to the attacks of the 90s, is how we got where we are today. Terrorism is not a criminal act; it is an act of war. And in the parts of the world where it is used, no respect is earned by treating it like a criminal act: we merely communicate that we are "soft," and encourage more of the same.

Kerry's strategy for dealing with the biggest challenge of our age—one that expressly threatens the Western world itself—is insane.

Via Armies of Liberation.

Posted by: Attila at 05:16 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 289 words, total size 2 kb.

John Howard has just announced victory in the Australian election, and even picked up some seats in Parliament. We can hope that this is a harbinger of victory for Bush here in the states; it's certainly an indication that a lot of Australians understand what's at stake in the War on Terror, and that they support the Coalition of the Coerced and Bribed Willing.

With this news and that of Kenneth Bigley's murder, please keep our allies in your prayers. I'm unspeakably grateful that there are people around the world who understand what's going on.

Speaking of which, here's an impassioned piece by Silent Running (via My Pet Jawa) that I hope a lot of people read. There's a perception around the world that we in America are fierce in defending freedom, and have told the jihadists that we will destroy Mecca if they target New York or London or Sydney with WMDs. But I look at the polls, and I don't feel fierce: I'm just afraid. Afraid that there are an awful lot of people out there who simply don't get it.

Posted by: Attila at 08:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 193 words, total size 1 kb.

Rockets hit the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Baghdad earlier today. So far, it looks like no one was killed or injured. But my heart aches.

I wish we were fighting an enemy we could reason with or predict. These people aren't the same brand of evil as the Nazis, of course—but the Nazis were a more straightforward enemy to fight.

Posted by: Attila at 01:32 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 68 words, total size 1 kb.