Iranian Agent Pleads Guilty to Smuggling F-14 Parts

Omid Khalili pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court to charges of attempting to export US F-14 jet parts to Iran.

Khalili was charged with nine counts, including conspiracy, money laundering, smuggling and violations of US laws banning sensitive exports to Iran.

Omid was actively working with the Iranian government to procure military items, primarily parts for American-made F-14 Tomcat fighter jets which were sold to Iran before Islamist fundamentalists overthrew the secular regime in 1979 and replaced it with the current totalitarian dictatorship.

The Iranians keep getting caught trying to purchase F-14 parts illegally. It is somewhat easy to catch them, because Iran is the only nation which still flies the venerable F-14 Tomcat. The Tomcat was a truly awesome fighter aircraft for it’s time, but that time ended several decades ago. The Iranians do not possess the technology to build replacements for many of the Tomcat’s critical components and their fleet is slowly dwindling as more combat aircraft are cannibalized for parts.

The Iranian Sex Trade

Donna M. Hughes, a professor in the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Rhode Island, highlighted some frightening aspects of the Iranian regime in Islamic Fundamentalism and the Sex Slave Trade in Iran.

Professor Hughes begins:

A measure of Islamic fundamentalists’ success in controlling society is the depth and totality with which they suppress the freedom and rights of women. In Iran for 25 years, the ruling mullahs have enforced humiliating and sadistic rules and punishments on women and girls, enslaving them in a gender apartheid system of segregation, forced veiling, second-class status, lashing, and stoning to death.

This isn’t news.  This much everyone knows.  But the paper soon delves into details that are not common knowledge:

Joining a global trend, the fundamentalists have added another way to dehumanize women and girls: buying and selling them for prostitution. Exact numbers of victims are impossible to obtain, but according to an official source in Tehran, there has been a 635 percent increase in the number of teenage girls in prostitution. The magnitude of this statistic conveys how rapidly this form of abuse has grown. In Tehran, there are an estimated 84,000 women and girls in prostitution, many of them are on the streets, others are in the 250 brothels that reportedly operate in the city. The trade is also international: thousands of Iranian women and girls have been sold into sexual slavery abroad.

But surely the totalitarian Islamist government which monitors and controls every aspect of Iranian life is somehow unaware of these activities going on under their own noses? Well, apparently not:

This criminal trade is not conducted outside the knowledge and participation of the ruling fundamentalists. Government officials themselves are involved in buying, selling, and sexually abusing women and girls.

Given the totalitarian rule in Iran, most organized activities are known to the authorities. The exposure of sex slave networks in Iran has shown that many mullahs and officials are involved in the sexual exploitation and trade of women and girls. Women report that in order to have a judge approve a divorce they have to have sex with him. Women who are arrested for prostitution say they must have sex with the arresting officer. There are reports of police locating young women for sex for the wealthy and powerful mullahs.

In cities, shelters have been set-up to provide assistance for runaways. Officials who run these shelters are often corrupt; they run prostitution rings using the girls from the shelter. For example in Karaj, the former head of a Revolutionary Tribunal and seven other senior officials were arrested in connection with a prostitution ring that used 12 to 18 year old girls from a shelter called the Center of Islamic Orientation.

Other instances of corruption abound. There was a judge in Karaj who was involved in a network that identified young girls to be sold abroad. And in Qom, the center for religious training in Iran, when a prostitution ring was broken up, some of the people arrested were from government agencies, including the Department of Justice.

Not all children are used for prostitution locally. Many are sold overseas:

Popular destinations for victims of the slave trade are the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf. According to the head of the Tehran province judiciary, traffickers target girls between 13 and 17, although there are reports of some girls as young as 8 and 10, to send to Arab countries. One ring was discovered after an 18 year-old girl escaped from a basement where a group of girls were held before being sent to Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The number of Iranian women and girls who are deported from Persian Gulf countries indicates the magnitude of the trade.

…

Police have uncovered a number of prostitution and slavery rings operating from Tehran that have sold girls to France, Britain, Turkey, as well. One network based in Turkey bought smuggled Iranian women and girls, gave them fake passports, and transported them to European and Persian Gulf countries. In one case, a 16-year-old girl was smuggled to Turkey, and then sold to a 58-year-old European national for $20,000.

In the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, local police report that girls are being sold to Pakistani men as sex-slaves. The Pakistani men marry the girls, ranging in age from 12 to 20, and then sell them to brothels called “Kharabat” in Pakistan. One network was caught contacting poor families around Mashad and offering to marry girls. The girls were then taken through Afghanistan to Pakistan where they were sold to brothels.

In the southeastern border province of Sistan Baluchestan, thousands of Iranian girls reportedly have been sold to Afghani men. Their final destinations are unknown.

I know that under the rules of political correctness I am supposed to “celebrate diversity” and learn to “accept” other cultures and value them for their differences — but I am not going to.

Obama Administration Aiding Hamas

Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group which currently controls the small region of land known as the Gaza Strip, wants to kill Mosab Hassan Yousef.  Mr. Yousef is the best selling author of Son of Hamas, a revealing but not flattering look into the seedy world of Islamic extremism in Palestine.

Mosab was born into Ramallah in the West Bank.  His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, is a founding leader of Hamas. Mobab was an active member of Hamas from an early age and served prison time in Israeli jails for his activities.

Due to his activities and his families stature within the organization, Mosab had a view of all of the activities of Hamas.   What he saw sickened him and led to his eventual escape to America and conversion to Christianity.

Hamas wants Mosab dead.  He is not only an apostate, but he is also a friend of Jews and Christians.  In an act of unimaginable callousness, the Obama Administration has denied Mosab’s request for political asylum and is currently in the process of deporting him back to Palestine, where he will most certainly be murdered.

The administration claims that Mosab is “a danger to the security of the United States” and has “engaged in terrorist activity.” Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador is using Mosab’s best-selling book “Son of Hamas” as evidence against him, writing “At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent’s transport of Hamas members to safe houses . . . indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization.”

I don’t know how to speak to people as remarkably disconnected from reality as Ms. Calcador must be.  Mr. Yousef is a defector and if he is sent home he will be murdered.  Nonetheless, he is scheduled to appear in San Diego’s Homeland Security Immigration Court at 8am on 30 June where the Obama administration will ask Judge Rico Bartolomei to send him home.

This action represents direct aid from the Obama administration to Hamas.  The administration is wrapping up Mr. Yousef with a bow and presenting him to waiting murderers.  This is morally unacceptable.  In addition, it is illegal.  The U.S. is legally prevented from returning individuals to countries where their lives would be at risk by the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

The Obama administration used this treaty as justification for releasing terrorists from Guantanamo Bay instead of sending them back to China, and yet it has to date refused to apply this treaty to protect Mr. Yousef from Hamas, which is officially listed by the U.S. State department as a terrorist organization.  Are Obama’s actions showing that the administration is more friendly towards a known terrorist organization than towards China — one of our largest trade partners?

This is a moral outrage and the proud people of the United States must not let our foolish President give up Mr. Yousef to his murderers.

America's Founding Fathers and Islamic Terrorism

When we think about the War on Terrorism, it is so easy to think that we have only been fighting Islamic extremists since 9/11. Or, if you want to stretch it some, we’ve been fighting them since the Munich Olympics. Most Americans don’t realize that we have actually been dealing with Islamic extremists—terrorists—for much longer. Since the creation of our country, we have dealt with the danger of these Islamic terrorism.

During the fight for our Independence, the Barbary Powers—Tunis, Morocco, Algiers, and Tripoli—banded together and began to raid American ships. They would take prisoners alive and then demand ransoms. They would take the cargo on the ships and keep it and then demand that the prisoners be ransomed depending on their rank aboard the ship. According to one source, the price of a Master (captain) was 6,000, a mate (office) was 4,000 and a sailor was 1,500. And the only way it was getting paid was by the United States government.

In Jefferson’s papers, the reason the Barbary Powers were attacking American ships was explained:

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet [Mohammed] – that it was written in their Koran that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that is was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Musselman [Muslim] who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

These are words we have heard before. These are things that modern day Islamic extremists have said is their justification for waging war against the United States. It is an incredibly frustrating situation to be found in and, more importantly, it is a dangerous one. When a society feels that dying in battle means paradise, what’s to stop war?

I can tell you one thing that won’t stop a war and this was an example of it. Tribute. Paying tribute does one thing: makes a country weak. By the last year of President Washington’s presidency, the federal government was spending sixteen percent of its yearly budget on paying off the Barbary Powers. When a small country is trying to grow, this is not how you do it. Each year, money was paid to the Barbary Powers. Did that stop them from attacking American vessels? No. Did it embolden them? You bet.

So, despite the fact we were paying huge amounts in tribute every year to protect our ships, they continued to attack. And attack. It was under John Adams—at the insistence of Washington first—that a navy was built. This navy would be used to protect the merchant ships that were going through the Mediterranean. And it was necessary because by the end of Adams’ presidency, extortion payments made up a fifth of the entire Federal budget.

This leads to me to my second point. When given the option of paying off a threat or defeating that physical threat with force, the only option is to use force. The first two Presidents paid off these Islamic extremists and what did we get? Millions of dollars in lost revenue. So, when Thomas Jefferson became President, he did something different. He went to war against the Barbary Powers. And with the Marines and their “shores of Tripoli…” the Barbary Powers were defeated for a time.

For two decades, the United States had been paying extortion payments to these powers and nothing was ever done. Nothing ever stopped. The payments just kept going. However, it wasn’t until the United States used force that suddenly, we had a brief period of time where we could pause. Granted, we had to go to war again in 1815 against the Barbary Powers, but after that, they never became a threat to our ships.

The ultimate point I am trying to make is simple: it might seem wiser to pay off a foe. It’s only money. But, the second you demonstrate weakness in paying people off, you’re going to be stuck with the unfortunate role of consistently being extorted. It is only when you use your armed forces and make it clear that you’ll do damage if the attacks continue will a foreign power reconsider.

The United States is the strongest superpower in the world. We can defeat any foe. But, we have to understand that to defeat force, we must use force. If we are unwilling to use force and we just try to pay off our enemies, nothing will ever get done. And we will spend millions and billions of dollars that didn’t have to be spent. That’s not good for America. When force comes at us, we have to meet it head on with force.

Terrorists Stopped at Kennedy Airport

Two of the world’s most stupid Islamic terrorists were stopped at Kennedy Airport last Saturday while attempting to fly to Somalia and join fellow jihadist militants there.

The two retards were Carlos Almonte and Mohamed Alessa. Carlos earned the moniker “Jersey Jihadist” when he was photographed at an Islamic rally carrying a sign that read “Death to all Juice.”

Almonte is the son of Dominican immigrants, but had a violent falling out with his family when they refused to convert to Islam. His mother and his brother were forced to call the police and Carlos was charged with assault and possession of an unlawful weapon. At that time he was released after posting a $500 bail.

That was his fourth run-in with the law. His first was in 2004 when he was caught carrying a switchblade knife into high school. His second was an arrest for disorderly conduct and simple assault. His third was, more amusingly, for underage drinking.

Altamonte had recently quit a job in a New Jersey computer store. His supervisor spoke to reporters saying “We were planning to lay him off, but he beat us to it. I’m telling you, this kid is not smart. The simplest stuff we told him to do, he couldn’t – like organize this with that.”

Carlos’ partner in stupidity Mohamed has a history of antisocial behavior going back to high school. In his early teens he bragged about wanting to subjugate women, mutilate gays, and blow up his highschool. He was barred from attending classes and put on home study because he was threatening students and staff. He ended up being transferred to KAS Prep, an alternative school for troubled teens, but his troubles only became worse. A school official told The Bergen Record “Everyone tried to help this kid. He’s just an angry, young man.”

The witless duo were denied bail in their first court appearance due to the likelihood of flight from prosecution. Carlos’ father Pedro Almonte refused to attend the court proceedings, saying “I’m not supporting anybody that does something wrong.”

Possibly the most worrying aspect of this entire case related to how some members of the media have completely mismanaged reporting of the event. For information on that, read Robert Spencer’s article, The Jihad of Unmarried New Jersey Men.

Mortgage Applications Hit 13yr Low

The MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association) reports weekly data on mortgage applications. Despite artificially low interest rates and the lowest real estate prices we’ve seen in years, mortgage applications on new loans are at a 13yr low.

In the words of David Rosenberg, Chief Economist for Gluskin-Sheff, “Despite near record-high affordability, people would clearly prefer to rent or to stay doubled-up in their existing residence with the cousins, in-laws and Ma and Pa. Homeownership is clearly no longer up there with other motherhood items like baseball, hot dogs or apple pie.”

The decline in mortgage applications had been rapid, falling approximately 42% in just five weeks. This incredible change has happened so fast that few in the news media are even aware of it.

Part of the drop is related to the expiration of the temporary home buyer tax credit. This tax credit allowed the Obama administration to make the housing market appear to be recovering, but now that the tax credit has expired the delayed crash of the real estate market is catching up with a vengeance. The crash is particularly severe on the low end of the market. Owners of “starter homes” are now almost completely able to sell their current properties and upgrade to larger homes. The change is so massive that the average mortgage size jumped from $218k to $243k — even as overall sales prices are falling.

According to Michael Fratantoni, the MBA’s Vice President of Research and Economics, “Purchase applications are now 35 percent below their level of four weeks ago, as home buyers have not yet returned to the market following the expiration of the home buyer tax credit at the end of April. Despite the historically low rates, many homeowners have already refinanced recently, remain underwater on their mortgages, have uncertain job situations, or have damaged credit following this downturn, and therefore may not qualify to refinance.”

Weakened demand for real estate will force home valuations to continue falling. Approximately one in four U.S. homeowners currently owes more on their mortgage than their homes are worth. If this continues, many Americans will simply mail their house keys to their mortgage lenders and default on their loans.