Vital Perspective

Companies doing business with sponsors of terror

Thanks to Judith for pointing this out.  The SEC publishes a list of companies that do business with state sponsors of terror .Of course, our so-called friends the Saudis, oil tick sponsors of Wahhabi Islam and Islamist terror, aren't considered a state sponsor of terror by our government, so companies that do business with them aren't listed.  But this list is useful anyway. You can make a difference with your investment decisions and purchase choices - for maximum impact let the companies know why you are taking your business elsewhere.

Companies that do business with Iran

Companies that do business with Sudan

Companies that do business with Syria

Companies that do business with North Korea

UPDATE: Well, look at our spineless political class: Congressional pressure forced SEC to remove the above lists. SEC withdraws list linking companies to terrorism

Within the last week, both the chairman and the ranking Republican member of the House Financial Services Committee had written to the SEC criticizing the list. The chairman, Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, called the list "unfair and perhaps counterproductive." He said some companies "apparently have investments that are so negligible they could not be considered material either to investors or the economy of the terrorist financing state." The ranking Republican of the committee, Spencer Bachus of Alabama, said "this initiative appears to have been ill-conceived and poorly implemented."

A brilliant offensive against the British academic boycott of Israel

Alan Dershowitz writes in the Wall Street Journal:

"As soon as [the British academics boycott of Israel] was reported, I helped to draft a simple petition in which signatories agreed to regard themselves as honorary Israeli academics for purposes of any boycott and "decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded."

Working with Prof. Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, and Ed Beck, the president of Scholars For Peace in the Middle East, we circulated the petition. I expected to gather several hundred signatures.

To my surprise, we have secured nearly 6,000 signatures, including those of 20 Nobel Prize winners, 14 university presidents as well as several heads of academic and professional societies. Three university presidents -- Lee Bollinger of Columbia, Robert Birgeneau of Berkeley and John Sexton of New York University -- have issued public statements declaring that if Israeli universities are boycotted, their American universities should be boycotted as well. Every day, I receive emails from other academics asking to be included as honorary Israeli academics for purposes of any boycott. We expect to reach at least 10,000 names on our petition.

It is fair to say, therefore, that the British boycott appears to be backfiring. British academics are on notice that if they try to isolate Israeli academics, it is they -- the British academics -- who will end up being isolated from some of the world's most prominent academics and scientists."

You can view signatories or add yourself to the list here:

An International Call To Academics and Professionals To Stand In Solidarity With Our Israeli Academic and Professional Colleagues

Fellow bloggers -- please help spread the word!

In the name of Islam

Thailand is known for its beautiful beaches and friendly people. How many people though are aware that radical Islam has set its sites on this lovely country?

"Twenty-five beheadings -- including 10 already this year -- have been reported in southern Thailand since an Islamic-inspired insurgency erupted in 2004, claiming more than 2,200 lives."

Here is the story of one brutal murder in the name of Islam: "Mohama Waekaji ...walked one cool morning to a rice mill, carrying a knife and following orders from a guerrilla commander to behead the 72-year-old Buddhist owner. He asked the elderly man, Juan Kaewtongprakam, for some rice husks. As he turned to collect them, Waekaji says, he slashed the blade through the man's neck."

What kind of vicious people would do such a thing? What kind of people would market and propogate this behavior? What kind of people would promise one 72 virgins in heaven for brutalizing another human being? "Thai authorities say jihad videos from the Middle East, captured from rebel training camps, may be inspiring young men like Waekaji. One clip said to have come from Iraq shows a woman lying on her side on a patch of grass as a man slowly cuts her throat with a long knife. Blood spurts from the wound, the screaming finally stops and her head is completely severed."

Simply evil.