When Mike Hammer was stumped, when he didn’t have a clue as to who had murdered his old buddy or raped his ex-girlfriend, when the last beer had been drunk and the last cigarette had been stubbed out and he was still grinding his teeth with a mad on that would have frightened the Frankenstein monster, there was always a guy from way back, a bootblack, a gravedigger, a wino who had once been number two or three at GM who owed Mike a favor, and at great personal risk would supply the information that would break the case. Or maybe it would be some former FBI agent or a Green Beret who had taken down a dozen Viet Cong in Nam. There was always somebody. That was the way it was and that was the way it should be. Then Mike would load Betsy, stuff an extra gun barrel in his pocket, kiss the broad he was sleeping with on the forehead—sometimes he did it in the reverse order—and the rat-bag, the cause of all his anguish and consternation, would have an appointment with I, the Jury.

Bernard Piffy was not Mike Hammer. There were no bootblacks or gravediggers in his past. Nor did he know Opie or Aunt Bea. There were the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club and some old friends from back in Nam. That was as good as it got. He had been in England for three weeks and he was no closer to finding Yaser Abdel Said than he was getting the Queen’s autograph. He might as well have been in frontier Mayberry County riding herd on doggies or busting town drunks. And he was no closer to locating Asthma bint Marwan than the day he got off the plane at Heathrow and without bint Marwan there was no Said. But Inspector Clouseau was here and so were Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanijour and so was the smell of cordite and phosgene that had attached itself to their presence like fire and brimstone to Lucifer’s pitchfork. And there was the waitress slopping java over the plastic tablecloth. Some things were eternal.

No one had answered his ad in the newspapers. Maybe if he had wished upon a star…

As he left the Red Dragon he could hear kids yelling in the playground down the street. It was getting dark. His feet were killing him; there was a pebble the size of a cantaloupe in his right shoe. Maybe cousin Andy had been right about the private eye business. Yeah, cousin Andy was always right.

The voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it. “Hey, bud,” it said, “I hear you’re looking for Yaser Abdel Said.”

Piffy stopped dead in his tracks. It was a girl—a mere slip of a girl. She could not have been more than nine or ten years old. She was lounging in a doorway, or perhaps lurking was a better word to describe her presence. He remembered Ka'b. There seemed to be something around her head—an aura, a halo, a luminescence. He knew who she was, but he was surprised by her youth. “You are Asthma bint Marwan,” he said.

“You got that right, big daddy,” she said. “I am to guide you to the soul of Yaser Abdel Said.”

Piffy was puzzled. “You’re no bigger than Opie Taylor,” he said. “You should be home playing with dolls. Who put you up to this? And what’s with the halo? Are you a Christian saint of some kind? I don’t want to get mixed up in religion.”

“You already are,” she said. “I’m your escort.”

Piffy shook his head. “You’re way too young,” he said. “You’re younger than Joan of Arc.”

She put a finger to her lips. “Quiet!” she hissed. “He’s coming!”

“Who’s coming?” said Piffy.

Something was coming—a noisy something! An infernal racket had commenced from down the street, near the playground, perhaps—a screech of banshees intermingled with a dozen air-raid sirens. The wind had picked up. It snatched at Piffy’s hat. He made a grab for it. Then suddenly something happened to bint Marwan. She grew hazy, blurry, indistinct, a disembodied presence. She was merging into her halo, blending into the circle of light that surrounded her head. Something was dragging her into another dimension and then she reached back and drew the halo in after her. She was gone! Just like that! She had disappeared, vanished into the void…into Ka’b’s netherworld! To say Piffy was dumbfounded would have been a misstatement!

By now the screeching had reached a crescendo. Something was coming up behind him—a large something—a very large something—something of mastodonic proportions! The ground was shaking; the sidewalk was threatening to buckle! He turned to see what it was, stealing himself for an ugly confrontation.

My God! It was Shrek—or what Shrek might have looked like on steroids, an ugly Shrek stripped of every last semblance of humanity! The thing—the Shreckoid —glared at Piffy; then smashed a fist against the doorway where bint Marwan had been lurking reducing it to kindling. There came a fierce snarl of rage and the thing disappeared in swirl of wind.

Piffy stared at the shattered door. No one came to investigate. Perhaps they knew better. He retrieved his hat. Something had eaten its way through the brim. He lost more hats that way. He felt his wrist. He still had a pulse.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, bint Marwan returned from the netherworld. She climbed awkwardly out of a reenergized halo. “I am getting too old for this,” she said.

“Who was that?” croaked Piffy.

“That was Umyar—my assassin,” she said. “He has a long memory.”

“What’s he mad about?” said Piffy. ”You were the one that got assassinated.”

“It matters little to them,” said bint Marwan. “Islam never forgives.”

Piffy hitched up his pants. “Well, little girl,” he croaked, “If you’re going to take me to Yaser Abdel Said—“

“Please,” said bint Marwan, “I am going to take you to the soul of Yaser Abdel Said. They may appear to be one and the same thing but they are different.” And with that she started off into the gloom. “And do hurry,” she urged. “Umyar is slow but he is not stupid.”

Piffy was hard pressed to keep up. Bint Marwan floated through the transmogrifying darkness like a butterfly fleeing a monsoon—first one way, then the other. There were flashes of light. He saw the sun setting over the Arctic Circle. Anyway it looked like the Arctic Circle but it was gone in a split-second. There were doors, hundreds of doors, cascading by, shedding evanescent shafts of light, windows opening on vast expanses of—of nothing! He thought he saw a dog. A Saint Bernard! Or maybe it was a horse. It was confusing. He did not know how long it kept up. It was a kaleidoscope with a hundred extra pieces.

Someone screamed, “Allahu akbar!” and for a split-second he thought he saw a man in a burnoose beating a woman in a burka. Was it Paris Hilton? It couldn’t be! It was unsettling!

“Most people in Hell are women,” someone was saying. “I was shown the Hell Fire and the majority of its dwellers were women who are disbelievers or ungrateful. They are ungrateful to their husbands for all the favors they have done them.”

“To the moon, Alice, to the moon!”

A boy was crying—maybe it was a girl, a low whimpering sound. It was too dark to tell. He had lost all sense of direction. One scene after another burned its way past his tormented eyes. A boy in a Madrassas was being beaten for having fallen asleep.

“Allahu akbar!” Yes, yes, God was great! Piffy was no longer so sure.

There was a blinding explosion. Something was falling! London Bridge? People were cheering.

Then suddenly everything was quiet and he was standing in a dimly lit room. He took a look around. Jumping Jehosophat! He was in a mosque! Bint Marwan was beside him. A group of men were on their knees in the middle of the room. Their heads were pressed to the floor. A man in a white robe and a matching skullcap was pacing up and down in front of them.

Piffy was more than a bit nervous. He tugged at bint Marwan’s sleeve and nodded at what looked like an exit of some sort.

“Don’t worry,” whispered bint Marwan. “They can’t see you.”

Piffy remained on edge—bint Marwan wasn’t Rooster Cogburn.

“Oh, Allah,” said the man in the white robe, “do not let us die until our eyes are cooled with the sight of banu Israel being punished for their crimes.”

And the chant came: “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!”

“Jew York…” said the man in the robe. “Sorry, New York…a slip of the tongue.”

There were more “Allahu akbars!”

The man in the robe went on and on:”Allah has warned us in the Koran, do not befriend the Kuffar, do not align yourself with the Kuffar…What crimes has the government of Afghanistan committed? All they have done is that they have refused to hand over a person whose guilt has yet to be proved.”

“How long do we have to listen to this guy?” grumbled Piffy.

The words were like a hand grenade going off in the Halls of Montezuma and ending up on the Shores of Tripoli. A dozen heads came up from the floor! The spell—whatever it was—was broken!

“Jesus!” whispered bint Marwan.

The man in the white robe was looking straight at Piffy.

“They can’t see you! They can’t see you!” hissed bint Marwan.

“No, but he can!” cried Piffy, pointing at the hulking Shrek-like giant that had come up behind the loudmouth in the white robe.

It was Umyar!

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” said bint Marwan.

Yes, oh, dear…

“Can you believe that!” exclaimed the Professor.

“What’s that?” said Joe of Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club.

The Professor set aside the letter he had been reading. “Our private eye—Bernard Piffy,” he said.

“What’s he up to now?” asked Joe.

Bernard Piffy was the private detective the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club had hired to track down the notorious Yaser Abdel Said, the Dallas cabdriver who had murdered his daughters, Sara and Amina Said, in a fit of Islamic rage. It had been weeks since they had heard from Piffy. He was supposed to be in England hunting for Said. Cowsnofsky was betting the gumshoe was in Istanbul or Tahiti sunning himself on Joe’s frequent flier miles.

“No, he’s in England,” said the Professor. “This letter is birth-marked U. K.”

“So, what’s he up to?” asked Joe.

“Well, he’s doing what he said he was going to do,” said the Professor. “He’s stuffing himself with fish and chips and looking for Asma bint Marwan. Heh-heh! And look at the way he spells Asma! A-s-t-h-m-a. Asthma! Heh-heh!”

“That’s the way I spell it,” said Joe.

“What’s he have to say?” prompted Cowsnofsky.

“Well, let me read it,” said the Professor. He adjusted his spectacle, made a great display of shaking out the letter as if it were full of autumn leaves and at length began to read. “’Ka’b told me that if I wanted to find the soul of Yaser Abdel Said I should go to the Birmingham Central Mosque and look up Asthma bint Marwan. She would be my escort. I went to the mosque and asked for Asthma bint Marwan.” The Professor paused, rolled his eyes. “The poor deluded fool!” Then he continued.

“’I was lucky to get out of there in one piece. This Asthma bint Marwan isn’t any more popular with the Muslims in England than Ka’b was with Mohammed Atta and his playmate in Dallas…I’ll let you know as soon as I find Asthma and Said. Keep a stiff upper lip.’

“It’s signed Bernard Piffy,” said the Professor.

“Couldn’t we get that guy a computer?” suggested Cowsnofsky. “Snail mail takes forever. He might be in Madagascar by now.”

“No, no!” said Joe. “No computer—that’s out!”

“Asma bint Marwan has been dead 1,400 years,” mused the Professor. “She was a poet. The Shakespeare of the 7^th Century…the voice of moderation…her beauty and her intellectual brilliance were cosmic surges streaking through the obsidian darkness of the Arabian Peninsula! And she was quite the busybody. When she heard that the Prophet had sent his soldiers to kill Abu Afaq she raised a stink. She let loose with some poetry. Biting, sarcastic, though I can’t say whether it rhymes or not. ‘I despise you,’ she wrote, ‘Oh, you tribal people. You obey a stranger who is not from you. He’s not from any of your tribes. How can you expect good from the person who killed all your leaders?’ She was talking about Mohammed, of course. She wasn’t Lenny Bruce but the Prophet was taken aback. ‘Who will rid me of Marwan’s daughter?’ he asked. That night Umyar bin Uday went to the home of Asma bint Marwan where she slept with her young children and while she lay in bed with a suckling babe at her breast he slew her with violence aforethought. ‘I have killed Marwan,’ he announced. And Mohammed was pleased, not like Henry II who was devastated when he learned his knights had killed Thomas a Becket.”

“Well, I hope he doesn’t try to solve that one too,” said Joe. “I’m not made of money.”

One mystery at a time was enough for Piffy—more than enough; his investigation had come to a complete standstill. No one would talk to him, he had been thrown out of the Birmingham Central Mosque, the cop on the beat kept telling him to move on, his feet were killing him and he had spilled some goop on his spare pants and it wouldn’t come out. Nobody had ever heard of Asthma bint Marwan or would admit they had. He felt like Jethro Bodine with an empty crawdad bucket. Maybe if he took a couple of days off, relaxed a little, let his hair down. It was tough playing the hardboiled detective 24 hours a day. Mike Hammer could do it. But he was Bernard Piffy. He was more like Columbo in a clean trench coat. Yeah, that was it. Columbo.

He put a do-not-disturb sign on his door and away he went. He saw London Bridge, Old Bailey, Big Ben, Picadilly Circus, Windsor Castle, Stonehenge, Trafalgar Square, Fleet Street; Number Ten Downing Street and for ten dollars in chump change he got a peek at Andy Capp’s barstool. Wow! Andy Capp’s barstool! Wouldn’t Otis be jealous! And if someone could have shown him to the Champs Elysees he would have seen everything in one day! The next second day he rested—and then it got boring. Time begin to drag. He found a coffee shoppe he liked, ran an ad in the newspapers: Are You a Bint Marwan? If you are contact: B. Piffy at the Red Dragon, and then settled down at a corner table near the entrance of said coffee shoppe and waited.

And waited…and waited…

He waited two weeks, one day and thirty-five minutes and then Inspector Clouseau showed up. Imagine! Clouseau! 

He sauntered over to Clouseau’s table. “Clouseau!” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Clouseau looked Piffy up and down as if he were a Gunnery Sergeant inspecting Beetle Bailey. “I am looking for a reum,” he said.

“A reum?” echoed Piffy.

“A reum,” repeated Clouseau. He gave Piffy a last look as if to certify what he had seen, then got up abruptly and left the Red Dragon.

Well, if that didn’t beat all! The same thing had happened in Dallas. Clouseau had come in out of the blue looking for Ka’b and now here he was looking for a reum. There was something strange here! He couldn’t help feeling he was being set up. This was getting curiouser and curiouser. He signaled the waitress. “Let’s have a little more coffee over here,” he said. He would have to think this thing out.

The waitress sauntered over to Piffy’s table. “Sure, Yank,” she said. She seemed to be sneering. She slopped coffee over the plastic tablecloth and the side of the cup. Was it studied indifference or criminal neglect? Why did he always get the waitress with an attitude?

“Ever hear of someone name Asthma bint Marwan?” he asked.

The waitress stiffened. She was looking toward the door. “The ‘Asians’ are here!” she hissed. She turned and hurried back to the lunch counter.

The hair stood up on the back of Piffy’s head. The Asians! It was the boys from Dallas, Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour! He would have recognized them anywhere. They barged into the Red Dragon just as they had barged into the hash house in Dallas. Narrow-faced, thin-lipped, beady-eyed…why did they call them Asians? They weren’t Asians. Charlie Chan was an Asian. Chiang Kai-Shek was as an Asian. Hirohito was an Asian. Hop Sing was an Asian. These guys were Middle-Easterners.

Atta strode briskly to the lunch counter. “Have you seen Asma bint Marwan?” he asked the waitress.

The color had drained from Alice's face. “Don’t know any Asma bint Marwan,” she croaked, “but the Yank over there was asking about her.” And she pointed at Piffy.

“Thanks a lot!” mumbled Piffy.

Atta, with Hanjour trailing in his wake, passed close to Piffy on their way out. “Allah akbar!” Atta smiled at Piffy.

“Bonjour,” said Piffy.

“Will you be staying with us in the dar al-Harb?” asked Atta.

Piffy tried another language. “Nein, nein,”” he said.

Atta bowed. “Bismilla ir-Rahman ir-Rahim,” he said.

“Shalom…shalom,” mumbled Piffy. He was struggling. “Shalom Aleichem.” Why the hell did he say that? It didn’t make sense. But it didn’t matter; the ‘Asians’ were gone out across the sidewalk and to only God knows where, followed by an aroma of cordite and phosgene. Ugh!

Well, this was it! There would be no more fooling around. If he didn’t’ find this Asthma broad soon he never would.

The waitress was staring at him. “Scared, honey?” she asked.

“What do you think?” he said grimly.

“You pour any more coffee in that sugar bowl and I’m going to come over there and box your ears!” she said.

Okay, maybe he was a little scared. But these guys were supposed to be dead. Didn’t anybody else know that? It wasn’t a jungle out there—it was hell’s anteroom. Yeah, but he was Bernard Piffy, wasn’t he? Yeah…

The boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club were confused. Maybe consternated would be a better word to use. They had watched the killing of Sarah and Amina Said on America’s Most Wanted and had read Phyllis Chesler’s article on FrontPageMag. They knew what Yaser Abdel Said looked like—Weak Eyes Yokum had spotted him two or three times in the weeks following the murders but nothing had been done; anyway, not enough to satisfy Weak Eyes. And they had their doubts about the FBI and its ability to catch a rascal like Yaser Abdel Said. FBI head Robert Mueller looked more like Frank Costello than Eliot Ness. The FBI hadn’t been engaged in a successful first-class shootout since Melvin Purvis shot Pretty Boy Floyd full of holes in a cornfield back in ’34. They should have nabbed Said months ago.

“It’s a shame the rascal still on the loose,” growled Cowsnofsky.

“We ought to do something about it,” said the Professor.

“Do what?” asked Joe

“We could take up a collection,” suggested the Professor.

“For what?”

“We could hire a private detective,” said the Professor.

Absurd? Ridiculous? An ant can’t move a giant saguaro plant. But that is what the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club went and done.

The collection plate didn’t yield enough Grants to hire someone of the caliber of Magnum P.I. or Frank Cannon, and Mike Hammer was in a ‘Retirement Home’ but they got the best that could be expected for their money plus an ad in the shopper’s guide.

Cowsnofsky studied the man in the trench coat. “You look wiry enough,” he said. “How much can you bench press?”

“I don’t lift weights,” said Bernard Piffy. “I arm wrestle with Mike Hammer and ride alligators when it’s in season.”

“Remember,” said Joe, “you get half your money now and the rest when you catch the rascal.”

“I know how it works,” said Piffy. “I’m not an amateur. I worked with Bulldog Drummond as an apprentice schnauzer. I was a page boy when Nick and Nora Charles got married.” He let than sink in for a while. Then: “Have you got my reservations to Dallas?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Piffy.” said Joe. “Made out just like you said—to a Bernard Piffy. P-i-f-f-y—right?

Cowsnofsky peered at the reservations. “Is that the way you spell Piffy?” he asked.

“Why?” said Piffy. “Do have a better way to spell it? I’m always open to suggestions.”

Joe studied the private detective for a long moment before turning over the reservations.

Ranch House had been studying Piffy since he came through the door. “I think he’s Barney Fife’s cousin,” he mumbled into his beer.

“I don’t know,” said Socrates. “He hasn’t said ‘It’s a jungle out there.’”

Oh, yes, the caper was off to a great start! It wasn’t Matt Helm; it wasn’t Shell Scott; it was Bernard Piffy and the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club were having second thoughts about Robert Mueller

Special investigator Bernard Piffy arrived in Dallas without fanfare. He checked into a Best Western, spent a few days reconnoitering the lay of the land, bought a Dennis Weaver Stetson; ate his fill of tacos and beans. He shelled out a hundred dollars for a ride in Yaser Abdel Said’s taxi. Wouldn’t that be something to tell the old gang back in Mayberry—the real Mayberry, that is, the last hellhole of the old frontier, not the dumb yokel Mayberry of Andy and Opie and Aunt Bea Yeah, it would be something—not as big as when he beat Mike Hammer arm wrestling two out of three times, but something.

He talked to the police, to the firemen, to street people, to members of the Said family. “This was an honor killing,” said the dead girls’ aunt. That bothered Piffy. There was no honor in killing—not even in killing a rascal like Yaser Abdel Said. Had he said rascal? Yes, he had. He was beginning to sound like the boys at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club.

Islam Said, the brother of the dead girls, said his father was not the killer. He blamed Sarah and Amina’s boyfriends. “They pulled the trigger, not my father,” said Islam. A classmate of one of the girls was more informative. “Even at school,” she said, “if a teacher joked around like, ‘I’m gonna tell your parents about this,’ she would like totally flip out and start crying like, ‘please don’t tell.’”

It wasn’t long before Piffy learned a new word—dhimmi. It would creep in when he least expected. Dhimmi…dhimmi…dhimmi…And Wahhabi and honor killings—no one had used words like those in Mayberry. Out there it was still hellfire and damnation and an occasional ‘Jesus saves.’ But special investigator Piffy was running out of money. If something didn’t turn up soon he would have to go back to Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club empty-handed. He would rather spend a week in a jail cell with Otis or Ernest T. Bass. He knew his Andy Griffith.

He finished his cup of joe, left the waitress a quarter tip and stepped outside. It was a dark and stormy night. (Okay! Okay! It’s not Poe; it’s maxflack! Keep that in mind!)

“’Ey, bud,’ a voice sliced at him from the darkness. “I hear you’re looking for Yaser Abdel Said.”

Piffy peered into the gloom. A wretched waste of a man, clothed in the frightening shadows of the night, lurked in a doorway. Piffy took a step backward. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

“I am Ka'b” said the wretch.

Piffy swallowed. “Where did you come from?” he said. “Who sent you? Mike Hammer?’

“I know no Hammer,” said Ka’b, “but if you are looking for Said, I can take you to him.”

Piffy was elated. Things were looking up. This was going to be easier than he thought! Said…Ka’b…it would curl some toes back in Mayberry when he told this story! He turned up his collar against the chill in the night air, cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “if you’re game, so am I.”

Follow me,” said Ka’b.

When the wretch moved, the doorway seemed to move with him like some free-floating non-detachable part of an indefinable universe. First to one side and then to the other, back and forth—it was eerie. It must have been the coffee. He had never had a worse cup of joe. Yeah, he shouldn’t have left such a large tip. A quarter! What had be been thinking?

Ka’b slipped into an alleyway, the doorway sliding with him, first to the left, then to the right, like a double-jointed picture frame. It was more than eerie! Piffy followed cautiously. There was a rushing sound in his ears. It was so dark the only thing he could see was the back of Ka’b’s head and the ghostly outlines of the floating doorway. Then somebody—or something screamed. The sound cut through Piffy’s entrails like a cold blade through a pat of butter. “What was that?” he whispered hoarsely. “A Banshee?”

”Yes,” said Ka’b.

Then all at once he was in a cluttered dimly lit room. He didn’t remember going through any door or gate or opening of any sort but there he was—in a cluttered dimly lit room. A boy, it could have been one of the Little Rascals—Spanky or Alfalfa—was on his knees amidst the clutter, cowering, whimpering: pleading. A man was beating him with a stick. The man’s face was contorted with anger and hatred.

Piffy reached for his gun—but he couldn’t move! He was paralyzed! How could that be—he wasn’t frightened, he was angry. He wanted to do something! Somehow he managed to get Ka’b’s attention. He nodded at the man with the stick. “Is that Said?” he whispered hoarsely.

“No,” said the wretch. “The boy is Said.”

“Why is the man beating him?” whispered Piffy.

“He has cursed his father,” said Ka’b.

“Oh,” said Piffy as if it made any sense. “Can you tell me why the hell I can’t move?”

“Don’t worry,” said Ka’b. “They can’t see us. We are ephemeral—or maybe they are ephemeral. It’s quite complicated and I have never been able to figure it out. I am a poet, not a scientist.”

“We can’t just stand here!” wailed Piffy. “We have to do something!”

But Ka’b was not listening. “According to Al-Bukhari,” he mused, “Three persons shall not enter the garden: the one who is disobedient to his parents, the procurer and the woman who imitates men.” He paused to see if Piffy was listening, then continued: “Allah defers the punishment of all sins to the Day of Resurrection excepting disobedience to parents, for which Allah punishes the sinner in this life before his death.”

Piffy’s mind was racing. It kind of made sense…punishment…the boy…spare the rod… He was putting two and two together.

But then, suddenly, it was gone, just like that, the boy, the man, the room, everything—gone in a flash and a rushing sound had filled his ears and Ka’b was running, running, running as if the devil were after him, the doorway swinging from one side to the other as if Ike Clanton was pushing his way into the Long Branch Saloon. Piffy chased after the wretch into a vast unknown darkness.

“Quick! Quick!” urged Ka’b. “We must hurry! The Prophet has unleashed his minions! They will catch us and kill us! He has never forgiven men for what I said about him when he ordered the slaughter of the Banu Quraysh at Badr.”

“The Prophet?” puffed Piffy. “What Prophet?’

“Mohammed!’ said Ka’b, spitting the word out like a broken tooth. “I told him Hell would be a better place to reside than the Paradise he was promising everyone.”

Something was breathing down Piffy’s neck. He smelled smoke! Good grief! His hair was on fire! He lost sight of Ka’b and then he hit something in the stygian dark and he tumbled end for end for what seemed an eternity. When he came to a stop, he rolled over onto his back and took a deep breath. He sat up; nothing appeared to be broken. Ka’b was gone.

A door opened and someone shined a flashlight in his face. It was the waitress. “What the hell are you doing in the alley? Ain’t you got no place to stay?”

Special investigator Piffy got up; brushed the dirt from his trench coat. A rat scurried out from behind an overturned garbage can. It was the garbage can that had sent him sprawling. The stench of rotting grapefruit was overpowering. He looked at the waitress. “Of course I got a place to stay,” he snapped. “I’m staying with my friend, Ka’b.” If it was a jest, it was a poor one.

The waitress flipped him a quarter. “Here,” she said. “I think you need this more than I do.”

Special investigator Piffy would see more of the waitress and of Ka’b in the near future. His search for Yaser Abdel Said had just started.

                                                                                              Siraj Wahhaj

Isn’t a public thoroughfare a stated place of safety upon which a private citizen can expect to move from one destination to another without molestation? Isn’t it against the law for a private citizen or a group of private citizens to dragoon other private citizens off a stated public thoroughfare, to drag them into a building, say into a mosque, to interrogate them about their reasons for being on said public thoroughfare?

It would seem so, but that is exactly what happened to Bus Smith, a Wall Street investment banker, and his companions when they were dragged off a public thoroughfare by a group of angry Muslims and into the Masjid At-Taqwa Mosque in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn for ostensibly taking photographs of said mosque. They had not secured permission. Permission for what…to take pictures…to breathe the air? Was it a photograph-free zone? Is there some sort of double standard in play in Bedford-Stuyvesant? Could be. Militant Islam is not at all shy about taking photographs of anything that catches its fancy and the target doesn’t have to be on a public thoroughfare—bridges, nuclear power plants, military installations even George W. Bush hasn’t heard of, CIA headquarters, anything. Perhaps the Prophet PBUH has extended privileges to Muslims he has denied dhimmis and kafirs

Smith and his two companions were taken to a basement beneath the mosque where they were grilled by a character named Ali Kareem. There was no sense in making a run for it. Security was tight. About 20 Muslims dressed in Karate suits had gathered around them. Maybe it was Tae Kwan Do Day at the mosque. They were asked what they had been doing in the street in front of the mosque—a public thoroughfare where a private citizen can expect to be safe from molestation from other private citizens…one would think.

They said they were sightseeing. That did not work. It was only when they said they were admirers of Islam and wanted to learn about the religion of peace and tolerance, and begin sprinkling their words with Allahu akbars that the frowns and scowls on the faces of their captors turned to smiles. By then Bus and his pals must have learned everything about paranoia, xenophobia, intolerance and Islam they would ever want to know. They said their intent had been to obtain information about conversion. Sure. After a few more Allahu akbars and a couple of Shaloms they were allowed to go

It had been a close call. Thank God for the Allahu akbars!  (Many a quick-thinking Jew caught in similar situations in Nazi Germany survived by shouting Heil Hitler) It is amazing how the instinct for survival can come to the fore in a tight spot. Bus and his friends were lucky.

And where did this incident take place? In Brooklyn…are you sure? It couldn’t have! Not in the Brooklyn where Peewee Reese played shortstop and Jackie Robinson broke the color line. Not in the Brooklyn of Woody Allen and George Gershwin. Not in the Brooklyn of The Three Stooges and Vince Lombardi. Not in the Brooklyn of Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Mickey Spillane. There must be some mistake! Were that there was. It took place in that Brooklyn…in Bed-Sty.

Alas! Alas! Say it ain’t so, Joe! What kind of Hell has descended on Bed-Sty…on Brownsville…on Bensonhurst…on East Flatbush?

Not Hell, dear dhimmi, something worse than Hell—Islam!

The Masjid At-Taqwa Mosque is the haunt of Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj was one of the six imams hustled off a plane at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport back in November of 2006 for harassing passengers. The imams insisted they had behaved normally— as if spouting anti-American slogans, praying ostentatiously, jumping up and down, switching seats, talking loudly and asking for belt extenders was normal behavior. They acted more like The Three Stooges than purveyors of peace and tolerance. They made more noise than the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir embarking on the Love Boat. The Bowery Boys could have commandeered a bus with more savoir-faire and less disruption to the passengers. Of course, the imams took great umbrage when the gendarmes arrived to escort them from the plane. The religion of peace and tolerance would see them in court! Yes, in court, sir! But in the life of Siraj Wahhaj this was only a minor episode.

Guest speakers at the mosque have included blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman who is currently whiling away the last days of his life in a Missouri Federal Penitentiary for his part in the first World Trade Center bombing and Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani founder of the American branch of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, an organization suspected in 35 acts of terrorism in the United States. (Jamaat ul-Fuqra means Community of the Impoverished. Whether the impoverishment is economic, spiritual or mental or all three is yet to be determined) Add Clement Rodney Hampton-El known as Dr. Rashid, also in jail for participating in the first WTC bombing, and the usual hangers on at the mosque and one has a cast of characters that would have kept Shane out of Grafton’s Saloon and Eliot Ness out of Greasy Thumb Guzik's favorite speakeasy.

Wahhaj was listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the first World Trade Center bombing, but that did not keep him from appearing at the trial as a character witness for Sheikh Rahman. He has served on the advisory board for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and was the first imam to deliver a Muslim prayer before the US House of Representatives. He gets around. In 1999, he was the guest of Madeleine Albright at a State Department dinner. Wahhaj has told his followers that a society governed by strict Islamic law, in which adulterers would be stoned to death and thieves have their hands cut off, would be superior to American democracy.

How far have the limits of Hell been extended since the first World Trade Center bombing? Less than four years ago, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz proclaimed August 15, 2004, “Siraj Wahhaj Day” in honor of the imam’s “lifetime of outstanding and meaningful achievement.”

From the Burgerbrau Keller to the Beer Hall Putsch…from the first World Trade Center bombing to 9/11…from Brownshirts to Karate suits…

“In time this so-called democracy will crumble and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.”—Siraj Wahhaj, guest speaker at the Universal Heritage Foundation meeting at Kissimmee, Florida, December 2003.

Who will tell the people?

Who wouldn’t have been offended? All that naked flesh—right out in the open where anyone who wants to can see it? Alfalfa's eyes would have popped clear out of his head if he had seen something like that, so think of how it might effect the tortured psyches of little Mohammed and little Abdul and little Fatima who are far less acculturated to Madison Avenue and Fleet Street than your average Little Rascal. Three scantily clad models showing off Matalan’s new range of swimwear…on a billboard a stone’s throw from a mosque…in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood! The geniuses that put up the ad in Sparkbrook must have been insane! Even Granny Clampett would have been offended. They might as well have paraded Britney and J-lo and Paris up and down the street in front of the mosque sans culottes. How disgusting!

Sure, Potsy and Ralph Malph would have taken it in stride but did the Matalan ad men pause to consider even for a moment how much damage the hint of a bare bosom or the sight of a scarcely clad derriere could do to the fragile male chauvinistic ego of the average Muslim male? It could make them forget Jihad was an inner struggle—it could turn them into animals, make them lust after houris, strap on a suicide bomber’s belt, shout Allahu akbar and take the shortcut to Allah’s Great Whorehouse in the Sky.

And the effect on Muslim women and children—incalculable! Continuous exposure to advertisements of this sort would dull their senses, rob them of their virtue, their womanhood, make them careless, less modest, more prone to expose portions of their bodies—an elbow, a calf, a knee! Lewdness would become acceptable, epidemic, and Hell would be overrun with women—even more so than it is now!

Something had to be done and done quickly—and it was. The billboard was defaced! Thick white paint was applied to those parts of the human anatomy that insult Islam!

Coun Talib Hussain of Sparkbrook was critical of the vandalism but—there is always a ‘but’ in these affairs—he blamed Matalan and the city council as much as he did the paint and brush men. “I condemn the people that did this,” he said, “but at the same time it’s wrong for companies to put that kind of advert in sensitive wards…Having families seeing naked pictures does not bring the community together, it provokes things.” The ad was offensive. Offensive? Maybe.

Three days ago in Chadderton, in broad daylight on a busy street, two newspaper boys, ages 12 and 13, were attacked and beaten by a gang of Muslim youths. In broad daylight on a busy street! Surely, an advert of coming times! The youths—Asians, they are always ‘Asians,’ not Muslims—made off with a cell phone. A cell phone! Offensive? Certainly.

A day earlier, a 19-year-old man on the way to meet his girlfriend in Huddersfield was pursued by a gang of Muslim youths for a half mile before he was trapped in a garden where he was beaten with baseball bats and pieces of wood. Offensive? Put that on a billboard in Sparkbrook!

                                                                                               David Proctor                                                                        

A few days previously, 16-year-old David Proctor, while walking home from an asthma treatment in South Bedford, was beaten and robbed by a gang of Muslim youths. He had made the mistake of asking one of them for directions. He was forced to strip and hand over his jewelry. Offensive? You bet!

Two Muslim men, ages 19 and 26, are about to go on trial in Preston Crown for allegedly raping four 13-year-old girls at Pleasure Beach. The girls were on a school trip. The alleged attacks—a rape and sexual touching—began in the queue for a roller coaster ride, the famous Blackpool Big One, and continued during the ride at 70 miles per hour. Offensive? No one wants to be reminded of this one.

The number of unreported rapes in England and the rest of Eurabia is mind-boggling. Muslim men are raping European women at a rate that more than matches the antics of UN peacekeepers in Africa. Between 65 and 70 percent of all rapes in Denmark and Norway are committed by Muslims—a group that makes up less than five percent of the population! Offensive? Were the women wearing Matalan swimsuits?

Fjordman explains the rationale behind this barbaric attack on Brunhilda and Sigrid and Moll Flanders. “Western mores are offensive to Muslims,” he says. “Western women are cheap and offensive. (Offensive!) We Muslims are here, here to stay, and have a right to take advantage of the situation. It is our view of the matter that we should prevail. Western goods, like the land in which we now live, belongs to Allah and to the best of men—his Believers.”

It wasn’t Britney and Paris sans culottes that beat David Proctor to a bloody pulp. It wasn’t Matalan adverts that caused the rape of four 13-year-old girls at Pleasure Beach. It wasn’t cleavage that beat the 19-year-old boy over the head with baseball bats at Huddersfield or bikini lines that whaled the tar out of the newsboys in broad daylight on a busy street for their cell phone. It was Islam and the Jurassic Park mindset of the Believers who committed the atrocious acts as well as the mindset of Muslims like Coun Talib Hussain.

“Having families seeing naked pictures does not bring the community together,” he said, “it provokes things.” Rapes and beatings of non-Muslims—dhimmis—done in the name of Islam do not provoke. That is the way it has always been in Islam. How goes it at home? Ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali. There must be women cringing beneath the burqa and the nikab who would prefer the Matalan billboards to what they get from their husbands and from their religion.

Power resides and terror lurks where secrecy begins and secrecy in Islam begins in the home, in the Slave-master relationship. That is clearly what is offensive.

Sure, take down the Matalan billboards, paste over them, whatever, replace them with David Proctor’s battered face or the results of an ‘honor killing’ and place them in every intersection and in front of every mosque in England. It’s time for something that is even more offensive to Islam—truth in advertising.

Don’t ever send a college professor to do a man’s job. The United Nations Human Rights Council has appointed Richard Falk Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories. There is no special ‘rapporteur’ for Israel. Falk will replace John Dugant of South Africa. It’s a six-year term. Falk is not a friend of Israel…or of the Bush administration…or of Capitalism…and more recently of the 9/11 Commission. He is beginning to think it was an inside job.

Falk was an ardent admirer of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. He is closer to Jimmy Carter on Israel and to Rosie O’Donnell on his knowledge of structural steel than most college professors. As for his investigative powers no one would mistake him for that other Falk, Peter—TV’s famous Colombo—but investigating he will go. Colombo had an open searching mind; Professor Falk made up his mind on the Middle East 30 years ago and the road he has taken ends in Mecca, not in Paul’s Damascus. If the Human Rights Council was actually concerned with human rights and wanted to send a first-class rapporteur to the Middle East it would have chosen someone else, not a college professor who has piddled away three decades trying to prove Yasser Arafat and the PLO the moral equivalents of George Washington and the Continental Army—a college professor less burdened with his own self-importance who just might know the difference between a madrassas and the Boy Scouts of America. Colombo might have been a bit unkempt but he kept an open mind; he cleared out the rubbish every few days to make room for new insights. Richard Falk has let the debris of 30 years of misinformation collect.

By the way…incidentally…and another thing…

Falk is to investigate “Israel’s violations of the principles and bases of international law.” He will not investigate Palestinian violations. Does this scenario have a precedent? Has anything like this ever happened before? Well, sure. One can picture Der Fuhrer assigning Julius Streicher to investigate Jewish transgressions of the Aryan supremacy laws. Of course Streicher strode about Berlin with a whip in his hand. Falk will not be that obvious. He prefers mortarboards, Doctorates and long-winded dissertations to riding crops, boots and jodhpurs. Hamas will take care of the rough stuff.

No one can accuse Falk of being an anti-Semite. “It is especially painful for me,” he says, “as an American Jew, to feel compelled to portray the ongoing and intensifying abuse of the Palestinian people by Israel through a reliance on such an inflammatory metaphor as ‘holocaust.””

Then why does he persist in doing so? He’s a college professor. There are other words he can use. How about Jihad? How about Risorgimento? How about struggle? How about self-preservation? They are more accurate than holocaust. A perceptive college professor should be able to transcend morel equivalency. He should be able to do better than Jimmy Carter and Diane Finestein. It’s amazing what 30 years in academia can do to a relatively intelligent man’s grasp on reality.

Metaphor or no metaphor, Falk has compared Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis and he stands resolutely behind his comments. But he is a college professor and one would expect him to have some familiarity with Oradour Sur Glane and Lidice and some awareness of what it might be like to have his stomach torn open by ten-penny nails while munching on garlic bread in a pizza parlor in Jerusalem. The civilian casualties at Oradour and Lidice were not collateral damage and neither were the dead Israelis in the Jerusalem pizza parlor nor were the victims of other suicide bomber attacks on busses and bar mitzvahs. The killings were intentional and meant to terrorize.

The Israelis have not responded by attacking civilians but have went after the terrorists and if Falk were academically pure at heart, he would never have made his ridiculous comparison. Being forced to show identification at a checkpoint is not a gross abridgement of international law and morality except in the minds of Ward Churchill, Ibrahim Hooper and the Saudi-sponsored professors in the Middle East Studies Department at Colombia University. (There are others)

What Israel is doing in Gaza, says Falk, is a form of collective punishment. Sure, and so are the taxes Americans pay that help finance the UN, the PLO, Princeton University and Falk’s livelihood. Not much bang for the buck, but to equate security measures and self-preservation with Nazi terrorism, as Falk is doing, is worse than Orwellian—it is Goebbelesque.

The PLO in its various mutations has murdered more Palestinians than the Israelis, has stolen more money intended for the Palestinians than Capone took out of Chicago and spreads more hatred in a single day than Stormfront, the Klan and the Aryan Nation can do in a thousand.

Would it be asking too much of Richard Falk to get out in the world and take a look around, stare truth in the face, commune with Norm Peterson and Cliff Claven instead of Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky? Falk spends more time wailing and gnashing his teeth over what happened to 100,000 Japanese-Americans interned during World War II than commiserating with the survivors of those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center on 9/11, a disaster that he now believes, after high level discussions with Kevin Barrett, to have been an inside job. The Pentagon will be more difficult to explain.

“The record leads to the unhappy conclusion,” he said, “that ours is a political culture that doesn’t handle stress very well.”

Really? Rosie the Riveter went back to work on 9/12; John Henry on 9/13. The economy didn’t collapse and there were no mass suicides. How is that for stress management? There are more Pattons and Shermans left in America than Falk would like.

“It (America) has set some dreadful precedents in past dealing with groups and ideas that were viewed as hostile to the beliefs and interests of the American mainstream,” says Falk.

Was he talking about fascism and communism? Of course not, he was talking about J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy and George W. Bush. Many of those swimming in Falk’s mainstream haven’t recovered from the fall of the Soviet Union.

“What I think we have to realize, with alarm,” says Falk, “is that a group of evangelical geo-politicians have seized control of the government, sensing their historical opportunity to shape the future of the world and that this reactionary cabal is supported and reinforced by the religious right in America that is also now, for the first time, exerting a direct influence on our political destiny, challenging the secular heritage of the country.”

Secular heritage? Where did that come from? Barack Obama?

How is this for a secular heritage?

“Every student shall attend worship in the college hall morning and evening at the hours appointed and shall behave with gravity and reverence during the whole service. Every student shall attend public worship on the Sabbath…Besides the public exercises of religious worship on the Sabbath, there shall be assigned to each class certain exercises for their religious instruction suited to the age and standing of the pupils…and no student belonging to any class shall neglect them. (The Laws of the College of New-Jersey (Princeton), requirements during the presidency of John Witherspoon, president directly before the American Revolution)

My! My! Heretics at Princeton! And the 1850s too! Is there anything else Falk could be wrong about?

Why shouldn’t every five-year-old be informed about gay marriages? They are as common as chiggers on a chipmunk and almost as irritating. The kids need to be prepared for what’s in store for them in this life and one of those things is gay marriage. Who in their right mind would want Alfalfa and Darla to grow up like Potsy and Ralph Malph? Certainly not Paul Ash, Superintendent of Schools in Lexington, Massachusetts. The kids have a right to know such things and if they don’t learn about them on The View or from Rosie O’Donnell who’s going to tell them? Pat Robertson? No, but Paul Ash and Estabrook Elementary School will see to it that they are appropriately informed.

They teach diversity at Estabrook according to the Gospel of Adam and Steve as Jerry Falwell would have said. While Potsy and Ralph Malph check The King and I out of the high school library, Junior takes King and King or Who’s in a Family home from the tot library to show mom and dad. “That’s nice, junior. Now wash your hands and face, we’re going to McDonalds.”

Who’s in the Family is about families—all kinds of families, gay families, straight families, single-parent families, mixed-race families, families with aunts and uncles serving as parents, all kinds of families, no Romulus and Remus, no cyborgs, but all kinds of families. King and King is a 29-page story book about a prince who doesn’t like girls—sorry, Darla—who marries another prince and lives happily ever after with his soul mate as King and King without having to worry about a hysterectomy.

King and King is very popular in educational circles in England. It’s part of a package that includes a DVD entitled That’s a Family. Sound familiar? Promoting the gay agenda is mandatory in England. Schools are using King and King and That’s a Family not because of any particular literary brilliance connected with the book or the DVD or because they want to but to remain in compliance with the gay rights laws that were passed last April. The laws were intended to prevent homophobic bullying. It’s too early to tell whether or not they have achieved that end but they have done a good job of bullying teachers into promoting the gay agenda.

It was two years ago that Dave Parker's five-year-old son came home from Estabrook toting a copy of Who’s in a Family. Dave took a look at the book. It was a nice title but it was misleading. It wasn’t about Archie and Edith and Gloria and the Meathead—it was about Robin, her dad Clifford, and her dad’s partner Henry. There was also a cat. It could have been a transgendered cat—the book didn’t say.

Dave was disturbed. This was not the kind of religion he practiced. He blamed it on the same-sex marriage law. There were people who thought the legislation gave them the right to teach that kind of stuff to the youngest children. He took his concerns to the Lexington School Commission and was ignored. Negotiations with ‘higher authorities’ followed. Dave wanted his son to be excused from such classes in the future. He was told no one had the authority to do so. Dave persisted, was arrested for trespassing and spent a night in jail. He filed a lawsuit.

The 1^st Court of Appeals concluded no burden was imposed on the free exercise of a parent’s religion to have his or her children taught ideas in a public school that did not coincide with the religious beliefs of the parent. Paul Ash was ecstatic. “We are not required to inform parents in advance of teaching units that include same gender parents or required to release students when such topics are discussed,” he said. The parent can review the material but has no right to withdraw the child from the class. The same as when Junior is told his grandfather stole Texas from Mexico and the rest of America from Chingachgook.

Parker has not given up and the case is on its way to the Supreme Court. Say, isn’t that where Clarence Thomas works? And Antonin Scalia? Yes, it is.

Parker is lucky he doesn’t live in England where the educational bureaucracy has been even more successful in pushing the gay agenda than it has been in Massachusetts. Oh, there have been complaints in England but how far are they likely to get? Last week in Bristol King and King and That’s a Family came under fire from a group of irate parents. A spokesman for the parents said, “Homosexual relationships are not acceptable, as they are not in…many other religions but the main issue is that they didn’t bother to consult with the parents…Homosexuality is not a priority to parents but educational achievement is…This just makes parents think “what the heck is my child being taught at school?”

That is what Dave Parker wanted to know. What the heck were they teaching Junior?

Well, the authorities would soon put this guy in his place, wouldn’t they? He’d be lucky if they didn’t keep him in Old Bailey for a month. Well, the truth is, they didn’t. They treated him with the greatest of deference. He was not any ordinary protestor. He wasn’t some born-again Christian running off at the mouth. No sir, this fellow had credentials. He was Farooq Siddique of the Bristol Muslim Cultural Center.

The schools under scrutiny were Easton Primary School and the Bannerman Road Community School both located in Bristol. And Farooq had more visible support than Parker—far more. Forty protestors showed up at Easton and fifty at Bannerman; a veritable host. The parents were angry because they had not been consulted about the materials used in the class.

“They don’t do sex education until Year Six,” said Siddique, “and at least there you have got the option of withdrawing the children.” Dave Parker does not.

The Bristol City Council proved more accommodating than Paul Ash and the Lexington School Commission. It was the Council’s legal duty under the educational provisions of the April 2007 gay protection law to report and deal with homophobic harassment. Maybe they had gone a bit too far. The materials used by Easton and Bannerman had been supplied by a 28-month government research project known as No Outsiders. Fourteen elementary schools were involved in the program. In addition to King and King, No Outsiders offers And Tango Makes Three, a tale of a baby penguin with two homosexual fathers, and Spacegirl Pukes, a picture book about two mothers who send their daughters on a space trip. Government researchers insist No Outsiders is on the cutting edge of the educational revolution.

The Bristol City Council compromised. The books have been ‘temporarily withdrawn’ until the topic can be addressed in a more inclusive manner.

Those Brits sure know how to negotiate—from King John to Neville Chamberlain, a retreat here, a strategic withdrawal there but they put up more of a fight for King and King than they would have for the Cross or the Union Jack and the removal was only ‘temporary.’ How would Paul ‘Dirty Harry’ Ash have responded?

Say, what if Dave Parker showed up at the next Lexington School Commission meeting accompanied by Ibrahim Hooper and Ahmed Bedier? Wouldn’t that crunch some vertebrae! The Liberal stuffed shirts on that Commission would never have treated a Muslim like they treated Dave Parker.

What a sad state of affairs.

WHY AH PREFERS JESUS CHRIST TO MAHOMET

An Islamist Trojan Horse in the Pentagon? Why should anyone be surprised? Muzzamil Siddiqui has attended White House prayer breakfasts; Omar Ahmad has been on airport security panels; the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been advising border patrol agents and FBI agents for years. Why should anyone be surprised?

And who is the Trojan Horse? His name is Hesham S. Islam, not Sergeant John Stryker; he was born in Egypt; not in Gun Blast, Texas; he is involved with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), not with the Sons of Katie Elder. ISNA is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, not of the National Rifle Association. He reads the Qur’an, not Dianetics; he spends more time in a mosque than at Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club; if asked who the three little pigs were—if he didn’t say Larry, Moe and Curly—it would probably be Britney, Paris and Lindsey. Eliot Ness would have used him as an informer, not as a trusted aid. He would not have been on General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s staff in World War Two. If anything, given his country of origin, he would have been advising Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Remember the Grand Mufti? The British were looking for the Grand Mufti back in those days. He had been accused of engaging in terrorist activities in Palestine. That was before the creation of Israel. Not much has changed.

There are some questions about Hesham's bio—whether some of it happened as he said it did or if it happened at all. He was scarcely Opie’s age when he survived an Israeli bombing of Cairo. That could have had a negative effect on his life—if it had happened. Then he went to Iraq and joined the Merchant Marine. That was not a smart move. One of the Ayatollah Khomeini’s submarines—or maybe it was a fatwa—sank Hesham’s ship in the Arabian Sea. He wasn’t stuck in a lifeboat as long as Eddie Rickenbacker and he didn’t have to eat sea urchins but he did get wet—so he has said. After that he immigrated to the United States to join a real Navy. He worked his way up. He served 20 years—not as long as Bull Halsey or John McCain but longer than John Kerry or Jane Fonda. And he found friends in high places—very high places.

When Gordon England was appointed 72^nd and then 73^rd Secretary of the Navy in 2001 and 2003 and later 23^rd Deputy Secretary of Defense in 2006, he needed all the help he could get. His was a controversial appointment. He had absolutely no military experience. But not to worry—given the typical Republican businessman’s mindset—there wasn’t much difference between running a savings and loans and a ten-million-man military establishment. If Daddy Warbucks could do it, so could England. Now Daddy Warbucks might have been saddled with Little Orphan Annie but he had the Asp and Punjab to fall back on, England landed Hesham Islam among others. And Islam has been credited with masterminding the firing of the toughest, no-nonsense, anti-terrorist customer in the Pentagon, Major Stephen Coughlin.

England has grown close to Islam—the man and the religion and he has said some incredibly silly things. Daddy Warbucks would have taken note and would have sent the Asp after him.

“There is no contradiction between the peaceful religion of Islam and American values and principles,” he said. And where did England make this precocious statement—was it over boilermakers with Sergeant John Stryker in Joe’s Bar and Grille and Gun Club? No. It was made before a conference of the Islamic Society of North America in September 2006. If there is no contradiction between the position of women in Islam and the position of women in America than someone needs a refresher course in the US Constitution and a tour of the Gettysburg battlefield. England is not the reincarnation of Edwin M. Stanton—he may be the reincarnation of George B. McClellan minus the military expertise.

ISNA was established in 1963 by the Muslim Students Association of the US and Canada. Stephen Schwartz, a noted scholar and expert on Islam, has testified that ISNA is “one of the chief conduits through which the radical Saudi form of Islam passes into the United States.” Extremists have seized control of “more than 80 percent of the mosques in the United States.” Senators Charles Grassley (R-IO) and Max Bacchus (R-MT) of the Senate Committee on Finance listed ISNA as one of 25 American Muslim organizations that ‘finance terrorism and perpetuate violence.” Is this contradiction between American values and principles too subtle for England to grasp?

The Muslim Brotherhood has identified ISNA as a likeminded organization who shares the common goal of destroying America and turning it into a Muslim nation. ISNA has supported Sami al-Arian and the Holy Land Foundation. Maybe England doesn’t read inter-office memos.

Though it is not part of his job description, England has done much to promote Islam in the military. In fact, he has moved far beyond a helping hand to advocacy. In June 2006 he personally dedicated a mosque at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. He delivered a little speech in which he praised Islam’s contribution to America’s military successes dating back to World War One. He didn’t mention Thomas Jefferson or James Madison and the war against the Barbary Pirates. There are approximately 4,000 Muslims serving in the US Military today—fewer than fought against American sailors and marines at Tripoli and Derna 200 years ago. At last count there were 426 Muslims in the USMC with 24 at Quantico. The latter now have a place to pray until a bigger and better mosque is built in 2009. Would England have built a place of worship for the Branch Davidians? Would he have done it for the Doukhobors…for the Albigensis? Would he have done it for anybody but Muslims? Asp, sharpen your knife!

The mastermind behind the Quantico mosque was Muslim chaplain Abuhena Mohammed Saifulislam. Abuhena is another Muslim success story. He migrated to the States from Bangladesh in 1995. He received his advanced education at the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Science at Leesburg, Virginia—a school that was raided by federal agents shortly after 9/11. One of Saifulislam’s teachers was Taha Jaber Al-Alwani. This fine upstanding Muslim version of Mr. Chips allegedly donated $50,000 to support the families of suicide bombers. He was also an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Sami al-Arian trial.

Saifulislam was the first Muslim chaplain assigned to Gitmo. He preceded James Yeo. He did his work well. Thanks to his efforts, the Muslim detainees at Gitmo have a menu of 113 Muslim-approved meals to choose from. The guards—well, they can eat hardtack. Saifulislam has been given the Red Carpet treatment at Gitmo and elsewhere. What does he know that nobody else knows? Gordon England personally promoted Saifulislam from lieutenant to lieutenant Commander. The ceremony was said to have been unprecedented. It was as if Donald Rumsfeld had gone to Camp Swampy to personally promote Beetle Bailey to Corporal. It doesn’t happen. George C. Marshall didn’t do it. Ulysses S. Grant didn’t do it. England should not have done it. He would never have done the same for Father Mulcahy.

Gullible? That may not be a strong enough word to describe England. In his speech to ISNA, he said, “While military action against those extremists who do others harm is a necessary part of that resolve—it is not sufficient. Another important part of the solution is clearly demonstrating, and making known in no uncertain terms, that there is no contradiction between the peaceful religion of Islam and America’s values and principles…You, my friends, are the shining example for the rest of the world.”  Was that George C. Marshall addressing the graduates of Luftflotte 4? No, it was Gordon England.

Donald Rumsfeld was on the way to losing the war in Iraq when he resigned; Gordon England is losing the war at home. Ulysses S. Grant had John A. Rawlins—they didn’t come any better, no one was more dedicated to Grant and to America than Rawlins. Tsar Nicholas had Rasputin. Gordon England has Hesham Islam and Abuhena Saifulislam and he sees no contradiction between them and America’s freedoms. Abraham Lincoln would not have tolerated Clement Vallandigham serving on Ulysses S. Grant’s staff and neither would have Grant. George W. Bush knows what he has in Gordon England. It is time to throw the bum out—unless, of course, England is doing the job Bush wants done. In that case it may well be too late for anything but the Asp and Punjab.

Geert Wilders had a point: “If I had announced that I was going to make a film about the fascist character of the Bible would there have been a crisis meeting of Holland’s security forces?” Wilders had just announced that his 10-minute film would be postponed for two weeks and that Dutch authorities had ordered him to leave the country.

A ten-minute film about the fascist character of the Bible…hasn’t that been done by CCN or by Ted Turner or somebody at the UN? Seems like one is aired every night. No one has called the cops. There have been no bomb threats. Bill Maher’s anti-Christian rants last longer than 10 minutes. Between Real Time and the Playboy Mansion, he’s spent more time abusing Christ than Herod and Judas Iscariot did combined.

Suppose someone did propose a 10-minute film about fascism in the Bible who would be the narrator? Got to have a narrator. Bill Maher? Rosie O’Donnell? Would bin Laden be invited to the Premier? Got to have be a Premier. Would Bill Clinton apologize for the behavior of Mother Teresa? There would have to be an apology. Who would be the first dhimmi at CNN or MSNBC to insist that there are many versions of Christianity and that Opie Taylor and Potsy Weber shouldn’t be confused with …with…ah, Tim McVegh or…or…Eric Rudolph…yes, Eric Rudolph…don’t want to tar all Christians with the David Koresh brush.

Columbia and Berkeley would probably snap up the film for its freshmen indoctrination programs. Chances are an Obama or Hillary administration would show it to the FBI and the CIA. It’s time they took a closer look at who they are hiring in this War on Terrorism. Tighten up those screening procedures…some of those fuzzy-cheeked applicants might have belonged to the Catholic League while in college or worse…been a Promise Keeper. Can’t take chances with national security.

Would the Vatican protest—warn the producers not to show the film under penalty of excommunication? Would they get Ibrahim Hooper’s backing?

Wilders, 44, continued: “Would I have received as many death threats as I have done since announcing I was making a film about the Koran?” Of course not! He would be praised for his bravery; invited on The View; they would name a faculty lounge at Berkeley in his honor. Half the US Congress would say they might disagree with what he says but would defend to the death his right to say it—unless he used the N word or was insensitive to some minority group (list available on request).

Iran has warned the Netherlands what will happen if the Dutch are so foolish as to air the Wilders film. “The Iranian parliament will request to reconsider our relationship with it (the Netherlands),” said Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of Majlis National Security. Iran is currently reconsidering relationships with the United States, Israel, Australia, Denmark, Lower Slobbobvia, Shangrila…

“In Iran, insulting Islam is a very sensitive matter and if the movie is broadcast it will arouse a wave of popular hatred that will be directed towards any government that insults Islam.” Succinct! Let’s see…Pim Fortuyn insulted Islam; Submission insulted Islam; Theo van Gogh insulted Islam; Salman Rushdie insulted Islam; the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons insulted Islam; the rondellhund insulted Islam; Kafirs gnawing on pork rinds insult Islam; women in miniskirts insult Islam; ringing church bells insult Islam. It is easy to insult Islam. Muslims are the most sensitive and most easily insulted people in the world and also the most tolerant and peaceful—and that is why every offender of Islam is given a day in court except during waves of popular hatred.

In Afghanistan a journalist who insulted Islam has been sentenced to death. He had questioned the Islamic marriage bed. Why should Muslim men be allowed four wives and Muslim women only one husband he asked? Would an American Horace Greeley have dared to ask Mitt Romney that question? Muslim clerics were humiliated—to suggest that a Muslim man couldn’t satisfy four women—with appropriate separate rooms—would be to question his fitness for the 72 virgins awaiting his expertise in Allah’s Great Whorehouse in the Sky. Is it any wonder that the Court’s decision was immediately praised by the Afghan parliament?

In Pakistan, Muslim men are abducting and killing Christian boys, not because of hatred though that is part of it, but to harvest their body parts for sale on the black market. In Saudi Arabia, a Nigerian woman was beheaded for drug trafficking in the holy city of Mecca. It’s a dark side to something.

Meanwhile in Washington DC, Floris van Hovell, spokesperson for the Dutch Embassy said, “The government is taking the announcement of this movie quite seriously. Obviously, because the movie hasn’t been made, we cannot say anything about the movie until the movie has been shown, but the message Mr. Wilders has told us he wants to portray is disturbing.” But not as disturbing as murdering young Christian boys for their body parts or beheading drug traffickers in Mecca? Right?

Maybe it is Wilders. “I believe our culture is much better than the retarded Islamic cultures,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the intolerance in the world comes back to the Islamic religion and the Koran.”

Well—sure, if one counts organ harvesting, honor killings, church burnings, suicide bombings and female genital mutilation, but Bill Maher knows about all this, doesn’t he?

Want to know about democracy in Pakistan? Ask Arsalan Iftikhar. That’s what Laura Ingraham did. Want to know why Muslims do not rise in mass to condemn terrorism? Ask Eric Vickers. That’s what Bill O’Reilly did. Don’t waste time on the Spencers and the Bostoms, go right to the horse’s mouth, to the font of all knowledge, ask the one-eyed camel, get clued in. They won’t always be there.

Iftikhar was legal counsel for CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations). He is now a contributing editor to Islamica Magazine. He knows all about democracy, free speech and the First Amendment. Sure, sure he does—the first is un-Islamic, there’s too much of the second and the third should be reinterpreted. CAIR has sued Paul Harvey, anti-CAIR’s Andrew Whitehead, US Congressman Cass Ballenger (R-NC), Doctor Ruth, the National Review, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Michael Savage among others for exercising their First Amendment rights. CAIR hasn’t sued FOX.

Vickers was executive director of the American Muslim Council (AMC). He is a civil rights lawyer and an activist. His detractors call him an Islamist. He said the 2003 Columbia space shuttle disaster was divine intervention against the United States. Allah works in mysterious ways. A civil rights lawyer might not be expected to know that but an Islamist would. The earthquake that struck northwest Iran in 1990 took 35,000 lives and the trembler that hit Bam the day after Christmas in 2003 took 15,000. Was it divine intervention or was Mother Nature to blame? Certainly Allah could have prevented those disasters had he wanted. The Tsunami took 150,000 lives in 2005. Like most God-slingers, Vickers cares little about details.

In the run-up to the Iraq War, he attacked President George W. Bush on religious grounds. “In invoking God to be with American soldiers in our approaching war with Iraq,” he said, “what the President did not say is that he is calling on God to kill innocent Iraqi children.” Saddam Hussein killed thousands of innocent Iraqi children and tens of thousands of innocent adults in the decades preceding the Iraq War and Vickers said little or nothing. During the ‘80s and ‘90s, Sudan’s Mad Mullahs turned the Sudanese landscape red with the blood of tens of thousands of innocent children and hundreds of thousands of innocent adults. Most of them were Christians and animists and if Vickers shed a tear it was not on FOX or YOU TUBE. Yet O’Reilly called Vickers one of the ‘Good Guys.’

Laura Ingraham did not go that far. But Arsalan Iftikhar? What does he know about democracy in Pakistan…or in Iran…or in Saudi Barbaria…or in the United States…or anywhere? He may think democracy is un-Islamic but he couldn’t very well say so. What about the democratic movement in Pakistan? Is he for it? Is he against it? He didn’t say. The Three Stooges were closer to democracy than Pakistan has ever been. When the just martyred Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister of Pakistan she conducted a brutal campaign against the Pandits in Kashmir. She was slightly more democratic than Benito Mussolini and a lot less than Jefferson Davis.

Iftikhar told Tucker Carlson of MSNBC that labeling Muslims as terrorists was the moral equivalency of saying, “that all Italians are part of the Mafia. All Irish are part of the IRA.” Moral equivalency? Where did he get that? From Jimmy Carter? The number of Italians actually belonging to the Mafia is miniscule and the number of Irish belonging to the IRA is not any greater but it can be assumed that all Muslims are Muslim otherwise they would be apostates; therefore terrorism is the cross all Muslims must bear whether they like it or not.

Iftikhar’s rhetoric is the moral equivalency of balderdash, but give him his due—he does writes extensively on religion. His articles have appeared in Islamica and in various magazines and newspaper. He promotes the Interfaith Alliance. “We revere Jesus as a great prophet and the messiah of God,” he wrote in the Providence Journal. “He is mentioned in the Quran 33 times. We equally revere the Virgin Mary as the mother of the Messiah.”

That may be true but the Qur’an also says that those who believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God or place faith in the Holy Trinity are Infidels and will suffer a painful doom. It is best to read the fine print before booking passage on the (Allah’s Ship of State) Interfaith Alliance.

O’Reilly and Ingraham treat Islamic propagandists like Iftikhar and Vickers with far more deference than they deserve—a deference they would never extend to David Duke or, say, Michael Savage. They should ask tougher questions. Where were you on the morning of 9/11? Have you ever owned a Kalashnikov? How much money have you contributed to the Holy Land Foundation? When was the last time you visited a Catholic church? If it is an Interfaith Alliance, why not hold some activities in a synagogue?

Non-Muslim America must be made aware that CAIR and AMC do not represent Islam, or at least, should not, and neither do Vickers and Iftikhar. These groups and their adherents oppose everything that would make America stronger, better able to wage war on terrorism, nor do they like the Patriot Act, the First Amendment or Britney Spears. But so far no one at FOX—or elsewhere for that matter—has had the temerity to ask them pointblank if they would prefer Sharia Law to the US Constitution if they had their choice.

Hate crimes…Islamophobia…the post 9/11-world…the right of return…they will talk about anything but their religion. It’s a broken record. It was boring the day after 9/11.

Couldn’t FOX find somebody else? Why the same old tired stonewalling faces? Why is it always a member or an ex-member of CAIR or AMC? Why not set a picture of Mohammed in a chair across from O’Reilly or Colmes and start the questions?

What would be wrong with that? It would be blasphemy because pictures of Mohammed are not allowed? Well, they could leave the picture blank or paint a number on it. How about eight?  That’s a good number. Or how about one of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons? Artistic representations are not pictures—they are figments of someone’s imagination—like a crucifix suspended in a jar of urine. They’re great icebreakers. It would make for a lively debate. They could try it on Sixty Minutes and then Vickers and Iftikhar could show everyone what they really think of democracy and the US Constitution.

Spider-Man? Are they kidding? Anybody who has read Calvin and Hobbes or has figured out that Clark Kent is Superman knows it will take more than a comic strip character to save the reputation of the United Nations. When Chicago was in trouble during Prohibition they didn’t call on Dick Tracy. No, sir! With guys like Greasy Thumb Guzik and Hinky-Dink Kenna counting up the loot they did the smart thing, they brought in the Feds—Eliot Ness, the IRS, and they elected Roosevelt president. When the Apaches were running riot in New Mexico and the Territorial Governor’s image was going down the medicine well he sent for General George Crook. Sure, he could have done the hip thing and called on Hondo or the Lone Ranger but he had a real problem on his hands.

Gangsters, con men, wild Indians—it takes a certain touch. Now if the problem were Goons it would be okay to call in someone like Popeye who had a long history of dealing successfully with that particular type of miscreant. But there would always be the chance that Popeye, unlike Spider-Man, might confuse some of the goons in the UN with comic strip goons, a not uncommon mistake in some circles.

Besides—why would anybody want to save the United Nations? There are more mass murderers, child molesters, racketeers, slave masters and drug dealers in the UN than there are in the Mafia. There are more psychopaths, little Eichmanns and Hannibal Lecter wannabes in the UN than in Dr. Frankenstein’s waiting room. There are more leeches in the UN than there are in the Okefenokees.  Dracula would have been comfortable in the UN.  Hitler and Stalin would have been welcome. There are more dictators in the UN than there were countries in the League of Nations. It will take more than Spider-Man to resuscitate the UN’s reputation. Eliot Ness, Roosevelt, George Crook, Popeye combined, working in shifts, 24-hours a day would be hard-pressed to turn things around.

Yet Spider-Man may be better than what they have. The UN is currently relying on Romuald Sciora. Romuald who? Okay, Sciora is not exactly a household word. Few people outside of France and the UN have heard of him. But he does exist. He’s spent the last four years at the UN working on The Price of Peace. It’s a two-part project; there’s a book, a documentary and a TV series called The Secretary General. The Three Stooges completed more short subjects in half the time and at a fraction of the cost. The TV series and the book were released simultaneously. The second part is a full-length documentary. Camera crews followed UN operations around the world and filmed On Blue Road. They missed the Oil-for-Food scandal and the bombing of UN Headquarters in Baghdad. Sciora has done some good work. He has the Chronicles from a Barbaric Era and The Ashes of the Phoenix to his credit but how many kids in Swaledale, Iowa, or Gunblast Texas, are going to sit still long enough to digest any significant information from On Blue Road or The Secretary General?

Swaledale, Iowa? Gunblast, Texas?  Well, sure…one wouldn’t expect the UN to aim its propaganda at a Mad-Rats-Asses school in Saudi Barbaria or at a preteen suicide bombers academy in the Gaza Strip…that would be insensitive! Besides, it is Tom and Huck the UN is after, not Abdul and Hamid. So why not hit the kids with a Spider-Man comic book? Spidey’s more popular than George W. Bush. He can do things Hulk Hogan has only dreamed of. The comic book will be distributed to thousands of schools across America. Interest in literature at PS 109 will escalate.

Kiyo Akasaka, a communications and public information executive at the UN said Spider-Man should make the UN “more accessible” to American students. “The comic book will showcase Spider-Man lending a helping hand to the United Nations,” said Akasaka. And there’s more to it than just the comic book. The gift package will include games and documents explaining the role of the United Nations. Tom and Huck “will get excited if they know their heroes like Spider-Man will work with the United Nations to address these issues…peace and security.”

Ah, yes…the issues. One must not forget the issues, especially peace and security. Cuba…Iran…Iraq…North Korea…

The UN condemned the US embargo of Cuba; the UN condemned the US embargo of Iran; the UN condemned the US embargo of Iraq. They are forever condemning the US. They condemned the US for tolerating tourist traps. That’s right…amusement parks, wonder caverns and mystery spots. Mystery Spots? Yes, mystery spots! They condemned Camp X-Ray and they have condemned counter-terrorism. They have not condemned Hamas or Hezballah. Will they be smart enough to stay out of Little Havana in South Florida where Castro is a worse villain than Ahmadinejad?

It is estimated the comic book will reach more than a million American school kids. Eventually it will be translated into other languages and will be broadcast around the known world—so they say. But don’t bet on it. The comic has one target—the USA! Accept perhaps for Israel, no country in the world has as low an opinion of the UN as America. And there are plenty of reasons for the negativity aside from the UN’s anti-American bias. The UN wastes too much money—much of it American. They are Woody Allen ineffective. They failed to prevent massacres in Rwanda, Sudan and Darfur. They failed to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of North Korea and Pakistan .Too many UN members have shown little or no respect for freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the right to bear arms. UN officials are not elected, they are appointed, as often as not, by the kind of men Spider-Man has spent his life bringing to justice.

The comic book is an attempt by the UN’s hierarchy to bring the US back into ‘its’ proper orbit within the world body’s deteriorating constellation. The moral authority once wielded by the UN has disappeared into a rhetorical cesspool. The US should go its own way. There’s a Brave New Universe out there and it doesn’t include Darth Vader clones. If the intention of the world’s premier bureaucracy is to “sensitize youth’—as they claim—they would have started with Hamas’ homicidal brats and King Bubba-dullah’s whiney Qur’an-thumpers, not with Tom and Huck, then maybe, just maybe, “This comic book,” as Akasaka said, “will undoubtedly contribute to helping young people gain a better understanding of our world.”

Our world? Yes, our world. And that, as Abe Lincoln used to say, “is the rub.” Is it Our World or is it the UN’s World?  If it’s the latter, run—run for your life!

Spider-Man? Are they kidding? Anybody who has read Calvin and Hobbes or has figured out that Clark Kent is Superman knows it will take more than a comic strip character to save the reputation of the United Nations. When Chicago was in trouble during Prohibition they didn’t call on Dick Tracy. No, sir! With guys like Greasy Thumb Guzik and Hinky-Dink Kenna counting up the loot they did the smart thing, they brought in the Feds—Eliot Ness, the IRS, and they elected Roosevelt president. When the Apaches were running riot in New Mexico and the Territorial Governor’s image was going down the medicine well he sent for General George Crook. Sure, he could have done the hip thing and called on Hondo or the Lone Ranger but he had a real problem on his hands.

Gangsters, con men, wild Indians—it takes a certain touch. Now if the problem were Goons it would be okay to call in someone like Popeye who had a long history of dealing successfully with that particular type of miscreant. But there would always be the chance that Popeye, unlike Spider-Man, might confuse some of the goons in the UN with comic strip goons, a not uncommon mistake in some circles.

Besides—why would anybody want to save the United Nations? There are more mass murderers, child molesters, racketeers, slave masters and drug dealers in the UN than there are in the Mafia. There are more psychopaths, little Eichmanns and Hannibal Lecter wannabes in the UN than in Dr. Frankenstein’s waiting room. There are more leeches in the UN than there are in the Okefenokees.  Dracula would have been comfortable in the UN.  Hitler and Stalin would have been welcome. There are more dictators in the UN than there were countries in the League of Nations. It will take more than Spider-Man to resuscitate the UN’s reputation. Eliot Ness, Roosevelt, George Crook, Popeye combined, working in shifts, 24-hours a day would be hard-pressed to turn things around.

Yet Spider-Man may be better than what they have. The UN is currently relying on Romuald Sciora. Romuald who? Okay, Sciora is not exactly a household word. Few people outside of France and the UN have heard of him. But he does exist. He’s spent the last four years at the UN working on The Price of Peace. It’s a two-part project; there’s a book, a documentary and a TV series called The Secretary General. The Three Stooges completed more short subjects in half the time and at a fraction of the cost. The TV series and the book were released simultaneously. The second part is a full-length documentary. Camera crews followed UN operations around the world and filmed On Blue Road. They missed the Oil-for-Food scandal and the bombing of UN Headquarters in Baghdad. Sciora has done some good work. He has the Chronicles from a Barbaric Era and The Ashes of the Phoenix to his credit but how many kids in Swaledale, Iowa, or Gunblast Texas, are going to sit still long enough to digest any significant information from On Blue Road or The Secretary General?

Swaledale, Iowa? Gunblast, Texas?  Well, sure…one wouldn’t expect the UN to aim its propaganda at a Mad-Rats-Asses school in Saudi Barbaria or at a preteen suicide bombers academy in the Gaza Strip…that would be insensitive! Besides, it is Tom and Huck the UN is after, not Abdul and Hamid. So why not hit the kids with a Spider-Man comic book? Spidey’s more popular than George W. Bush. He can do things Hulk Hogan has only dreamed of. The comic book will be distributed to thousands of schools across America. Interest in literature at PS 109 will escalate.

Kiyo Akasaka, a communications and public information executive at the UN said Spider-Man should make the UN “more accessible” to American students. “The comic book will showcase Spider-Man lending a helping hand to the United Nations,” said Akasaka. And there’s more to it than just the comic book. The gift package will include games and documents explaining the role of the United Nations. Tom and Huck “will get excited if they know their heroes like Spider-Man will work with the United Nations to address these issues…peace and security.”

Ah, yes…the issues. One must not forget the issues, especially peace and security. Cuba…Iran…Iraq…North Korea…

The UN condemned the US embargo of Cuba; the UN condemned the US embargo of Iran; the UN condemned the US embargo of Iraq. They are forever condemning the US. They condemned the US for tolerating tourist traps. That’s right…amusement parks, wonder caverns and mystery spots. Mystery Spots? Yes, mystery spots! They condemned Camp X-Ray and they have condemned counter-terrorism. They have not condemned Hamas or Hezballah. Will they be smart enough to stay out of Little Havana in South Florida where Castro is a worse villain than Ahmadinejad?

It is estimated the comic book will reach more than a million American school kids. Eventually it will be translated into other languages and will be broadcast around the known world—so they say. But don’t bet on it. The comic has one target—the USA! Accept perhaps for Israel, no country in the world has as low an opinion of the UN as America. And there are plenty of reasons for the negativity aside from the UN’s anti-American bias. The UN wastes too much money—much of it American. They are Woody Allen ineffective. They failed to prevent massacres in Rwanda, Sudan and Darfur. They failed to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of North Korea and Pakistan .Too many UN members have shown little or no respect for freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the right to bear arms. UN officials are not elected, they are appointed, as often as not, by the kind of men Spider-Man has spent his life bringing to justice.

The comic book is an attempt by the UN’s hierarchy to bring the US back into ‘its’ proper orbit within the world body’s deteriorating constellation. The moral authority once wielded by the UN has disappeared into a rhetorical cesspool. The US should go its own way. There’s a Brave New Universe out there and it doesn’t include Darth Vader clones. If the intention of the world’s premier bureaucracy is to “sensitize youth’—as they claim—they would have started with Hamas’ homicidal brats and King Bubba-dullah’s whiney Qur’an-thumpers, not with Tom and Huck, then maybe, just maybe, “This comic book,” as Akasaka said, “will undoubtedly contribute to helping young people gain a better understanding of our world.”

Our world? Yes, our world. And that, as Abe Lincoln used to say, “is the rub.” Is it Our World or is it the UN’s World?  If it’s the latter, run—run for your life!

Lord Byron was a poet. Every kid not in a Mad-Rats-Asses school has heard of him—or should have. In the full bloom of life Lord Byron ran off to Greece to fight the Turks. He was planning an attack on the Turkish fortress of Lepanto when he caught cold and died. William Haines Lytle was also a poet. He wasn’t quite as good or as well known as Lord Byron but he was good enough. He wrote Anthony and Cleopatra.

   “And for thee, star-eyed Egyptian!

        Glorious sorceress of the Nile,

   Light the path of Stygean horrors

        With the splendor of thy smile;

   Give the Caesar crowns and arches,

        Let his brow the laurel twine,

   I can scorn the Senate’s triumphs.

       Triumphing in love like thine.”

He ran off to fight for the North in the American Civil War. He was commanding a brigade in Phil Sheridan’s Division when he was mortally wounded at Chickamauga.

A fellow named Kilroy wrote only three words—the epic Kilroy was here!  It was easy to remember. GIs took a liking to it and scrawled the century’s shortest poem on everything they came across between Normandy and Berlin. It was said a high-ranking German General offered a large reward for the capture of Kilroy.

And then there was Steve Allen. Steve was always on the lookout for new poets. Where have all the poets gone he asked and he offered this by the Silhouettes. Who can forget: Get a job?

     Sha na na na sha na na na na

     Every morning about this time

     she get me out of my bed

     a-crying get a job.

     After breakfast, everyday,

     she throw the want ads right my way

     And never fails to say

     Get a job.

     Sha na na na na Yip yip yip yip Get a job.

Well—where have all the young poets gone? There are no Byrons, no Lytles, no Kilroys—no Silhouettes. Today’s young poets are not fighting to free the Greeks or to end slavery or to push the Nazis out of France or to avoid gainful employment. No, sir, they are rising up from the impoverished masses of the Middle East and North Africa to protect the most peaceful and tolerant religion that has ever existed from the Kafir hordes of America and Israel—the ruthless mercenaries of social change, democracy, artistic license, woman’s rights, mini skirts, Western clothes, clean-shaven faces and the Three Dog Night.

Where have all the young poets gone? Gone to Jihad and You Tube everyone! Typical of the new breed of poet is The Lyrical One. What extraordinary composition! What striking lyrics! What rolling periods! What a concatenation of ideas! The Living Martyr literally oozes from The Lyrical One’s pen! Watch live on barbarindians as she puts words to paper! (Actually she uses a computer but one bit of literary license deserves another) And look at her eyes! Oh, those eyes! Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes? I’ll never love blue eyes again? No! Not at all! Cold, steely, the Bride of Frankenstein! Brown as the waste at the bottom of a cesspool! The last thing Boris Karloff saw before the castle exploded! Be the judge!

                 The Living Martyr

    “The living martyrs are awakening

     And Kafirs world seem to be shaking

     let us make jihad

     move to the front line

     to chop chop head off Kafir swine.”

It brings to mind The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Note the double chop—a poetess willing to take chances! And it rhymes! Oh, the amateurs are getting better, bolder; more courageous, thanks to You Tube—also more demented.

With The Living Martyr under her burqa, there was no stopping The Lyrical One. The influence of Hamas Mouse courses through her poesy like soiled diapers through the intestines of an old Billy Goat. But she struggles on. How to behead is early Calvin and Hobbes—without Calvin and without Hobbes. It could have been written by the man that shot George Wallace—or Larry Flynt…it is through the intestine. Read it and scowl.

                           How to behead

     “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think.

     It’s all about the flow of the wrist.

     Sharpen the knife to its maximum.

     And before you begin to cut the flesh,

     tilt the fool’s head to its left.”

To its left? Is this from the Qur’an or from al-Qaeda for Dummies? Of course, if the target is someone like Crocodile Dundee it won’t matter and the assassin will wish he hadn’t sharpened his knife to the maximum.

But in Allah-la-la-land digression is oppression and the poem must go on.

     “Saw the knife back and forth.

     No doubt that the punk will twitch and scream,

     But ignore the donkey’s ***,

     And continue to slice back and forth.

     You’ll feel the knife hit the wind and food pipe.

     But don’t stop.

     Continue with all your might.”

Jack the Ripper wrote something like this in the third grade and was canned. But notice how descriptive The Lyrical One is—she uses the words wind and food pipe instead of esophagus or gullet. The Ripper preferred gullet. The overall tone of How to behead offers a clue to the poet’s identity. She could be a halal butcher. They are familiar with twitching, screaming and donkey butts. But onward with the poem:

     “About now you should feel the knife vibrate.

      You can feel the warm heat being given off.

      But this is due to the friction being caused.”

Vibrate? Heat? Friction? There one has it—proof positive that the poet is a halal butcher! Of course, by joining jihad to the slaughterhouse one is sure to create an excessive amount of tripe. And that is clearly the case with The Lyrical One. But no died-in-the-wool poet can leave that much tripe lying around unattended, something must be done with it and what better place to dispose of it than on You Tube. They take all kinds of tripe. There are people who would call How to behead rubbish, but not to worry, You Tube handles rubbish as well as tripe and it is also a good place to store three-day-old possum innards and the unsalted sowbelly that winds up behind the Clampett cabin after the Annual Possum Day Parade.

The Lyrical One finishes with a bleeding ulcer:

     “Kafirs, your time will come soon,

       and no one will save you from your doom.”

The poet should—sha na na na na Get a job.

The video was posted by barbarindian

To The Lyrical One: “Here come the chopper to chop off your head.” Now that’s poetry!

(The Lyrical One, Samina Malik, was sentenced to 9 months in jail for violating the 2000 Terror Act. She was found guilty of scrawling extremist thoughts on till receipts at the shop where she worked in Heathrow. The sentence was suspended.)