A man arrested in Memphis “stated he was a Muslim, and wanted to start jihad here in Memphis.”  He will be brought to court on January 7 for allegedly trying to blow up office buildings on Christmas day.  Two days earlier, the same man, Mohammed Ibrahim was arrested for possession of a ten inch butcher knife found in his sleeve.

Click here to view the whole report

When are we going to realize that theses attacks are all the same?  Whether they come from a wealthy Nigerian, a military psychiatrist or Mohammed in Memphis, they are all united by one goal: to take over the west and spread radical Islam.

Watch this chilling video of actual terrorist training camps in Hancock NY who call themselves Muslims of America. There are over 35 of these Al Fuqra compounds all over the United States. These compounds train their residents in tactics of Guerilla warfare. They believe that America belongs to Muslims and are ready to defend themselves against the enemies of Islam.

In this clip the leader of the compound declares that America is their country, but the government is denying them their fundamental rights.

You must see this for yourself.

And I cant help but ask why these compounds are left alone?

At the end of our newsletter we always like to leave our readers with a take action item.

This week, we suggest the take action item that most Americans are already taking. Why don’t you read this, and do nothing!

Do not learn more about the threat.
Do not tell others about the dangers.
Do not demand of your Congressmen, Senators and Law Enforcement to focus on this threat because it isn’t necessarily “politically correct”.

Let’s just be grateful that this attempt to take 270 lives was unsuccessful, and go on with our day. And of course, next time we travel, we will “take the powerful action” of getting to the airport an hour earlier for even more passenger screenings.

But seriously folks, let’s start talking. Let’s start demanding that people pay serious attention to the existential threat posed to us by radical Islam.

Unfortunately, there are a growing number of radicals out there. They are encouraged through all means to take extreme actions against America and West. And terror is just one front in their war.

So please, when it comes to the threat of radical Islam:
Learn more.
Speak more.
Demand more.

And comment here on this blog. Let us know what you think about the threat. And let us know what “take action items” you recommend for dealing with a threat that still remains unfamiliar to too many Americans.

The New York Post in an article today entitled Lying to Ourselves speaks about the fact that Umar Abdulmutallab, a wealthy Muslim university graduate, clearly planned to carry out his attacks on Christmas day in the name of religious fanaticism.

What he planned was a terror attack on Northwestern flight 253, inspired by the doctrine of radical Islam. His own father, a wealthy reputable banker in Nigeria, called the US embassy to warn them that his son had become radicalized. And yet, not only did the security system fail to catch him, our administration refuses to connect this incident with radical Islamic terror.

Much like the initial reactions after Fort Hood, our government rejects the claim that this man acted out of religious zeal. By continuing to ignore this fact and try and interpret every incident as isolated, we are only making it easier for the terrorists to take another shot at us. They have a well financed, global network powered by religious fervor and a penetrating ideology that has its goals set on bringing down the West.

Until we stop lying to ourselves and our administration starts to “connect the dots” no number of deodorant cans collected at the airport will put a real end to the terror.

Amidst another wave of opposition demonstrations in Iran, the Guardian reports the following regarding what Iranian supreme leader Ali Khameini is willing to do to hold onto power.

“Mohammad Khatami [Iran's reformist former president] was asked during a visit to Washington last year why he hadn’t done more to resist Khamenei,” he said. “He replied that it was because Khamenei is determined to fight his enemies if they come to the streets and that he is ready to kill up to 200,000 people. There are many pieces of evidence that confirm Khatami’s understanding that Khamenei is prepared to kill more people.

We’ve written about Iran’s nuclear ambitions in previous posts. If Khamenei is willing to kill this many of his own citizens for their pursuit of human rights, it’s reasonable to suggest he would be much less reserved when it comes to killing non-Iranians he also judged to be his enemies.

To mark the closing of a new year Time Magazine published an article about how the year 2009 saw an “unprecedented surge” of terror activity on US soil. There have been 32 planned attack since the tragedy of 9/11. Some of the more well known cases included the shooting at the Fort Hood military base in November. The murder of a soldier by a Muslim convert in Little Rock, and in January, the arrest of a Long Island convert who pleaded guilty to helping Al Qaeda with a plot to blow up a train in Penn Station.
The spokespeople for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) claim that these events do not point to a trend and the charge that Muslim Americans are being radicalized in US Mosques if false. What do you think about this? There is plenty of evidence that points to the fact that this is untrue and four of the cases outlined in the article are about Americans who converted to Islam and then carried out their plans.
One of the lessons learned in 2009 is that the internet has become a breeding ground for terrorist training activity. American Muslims are encouraged to stay in the US rather than travel to Pakistan or Afghanistan and commit isolated acts of terror.
Brian Jenkin’s a RAND corporation expert suggests that many of the young men carrying out these attacks were at a very impressionable age when the attacks on 9/11 were carried out. He says that “some would have been inspired by it and caught up in the jihadist narrative”. Thankfully, Americans are becoming more aware that this threat is here and more people are contacting their local officials when they see something suspicious.
I wonder what 2010 will bring?

What does it mean to win the war in Afghanistan, in order to make life safer for Americans at home?

On one side, there is a physical theater of war with real consequences at home.

President Barack Obama devoted a significant part of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech to clarifying this, in the wake of controversy over receiving the prize while the U.S. was engaged in wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I face the world as it is and cannot stand idle in the face of the threats to the American people. For, make no mistake, evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations could not convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates addressed the subject in early December, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He noted that a loss will empower our enemies, just as they were empowered to attack the World Trade Center several years after driving the Soviets from Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has indicated as much in statements like the following one from senior figure Adam Gadahn.

So America’s might, in addition to being exaggerated, is strictly physical, and, thus, ultimately beatable. And I’ll back that up with an example from recent history: the Soviet Union. Before its collapse, the Soviet Union was considered virtually unbeatable by Americans and the world… But the Afghan jihad, which was waged by a small group of lightly armed but faithful and steadfast Muslims wiped the USSR from the world map.

So, although Afghanistan may be half a world away, the war being fought there is about American survival.

Let’s say the U.S. defeats its enemies there decisively. Will that end the threat posed to Americans at home? Will we be safer? Thomas Friedman writes that it’s important, but not enough. There’s another war that needs to be fought. Read more…

Tariq Ahmad, a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston wrote an OpEd in the NY Times giving what he thinks is the solution to solving the problem of radical Islam.

He states: “The reality is that many Muslims are secular. We do not pray five times a day, do not read the Koran and have not spent much time inside a mosque. We only turn to Islam when a child is born, someone gets married or someone dies. To defeat the threat of radical Islam, I suggest that the answer lies among the people who are the least Muslim.”

Dr Zhudi Jasser the narrator of the film The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America, who unlike Tariq Ahmad considers himself a devout Muslim, believes that the answer lies with those members of the Muslim faith who believe that religion and state should be kept separate.

What do you think the answer is?

The following video is a moving tribute in support of those fighting for freedom in Iran.

There are a number of GRAPHIC IMAGES so viewer discretion is strongly advised.

Drug Trafficking in North Africa is directly linked to Al Qaeda:

An article in yesterday’s LA Times speaks about the clear link made between the cocaine smuggling routes in North Africa and an Al Qaeda group in the Maghreb.

“Reporting from Washington - Three men alleged to be Al Qaeda associates were charged Friday with conspiring to smuggle cocaine through Africa — the first U.S. prosecution linking the terrorist group directly to drug trafficking.”

The terrorists provide protection along these dangerous routes in exchange for large sums of money. They then use the cocaine profits to acquire better weaponry, expand recruitment and buy off corrupt governments.
An even scarier element of this story is that the personal relationships being formed between the terrorists and the drug organizations can become operational in the future.

It is time that this dimension of the global terror threat gets more attention in the media.