Magic Statistics

Another report finds that the houses destroyed by the Zimbabwean government last year have not been replaced, as was promised earlier.

Official figures show that 92,460 houses and other buildings were flattened in eight weeks. However, a report to be issued by Amnesty International today found the regime had built 3,325 replacements.

The authorities claimed that the demolitions – codenamed "Operation Drive Out the Rubbish" – would be succeeded by an urban renewal campaign called "Operation Good Life for All". But Amnesty reports this "highly publicised reconstruction programme has in reality achieved very little". The handful of new houses are often incomplete, said the report, lacking doors, windows, floors and roofs.

Less than two weeks ago, a government minister summarily dismissed a church report saying what the Amnesty report now corroborates.

In his own inimitable fashion, Dictator President Robert Mugabe provides a dash of absurdity:

Last year, Mr Mugabe, 82, who has never explained the campaign, prevented the United Nations from distributing tents to the homeless, telling officials that the offer was insulting because Zimbabweans "are not Arabs".

Careful there, Robert.  Arabs may find that offensive.  And not only that, when it comes to housing, it appears that Arabs are better off than Zimbabweans.

Previous related posts:

• Housing shortage in Zimbabwe? Don’t believe it!
• Zimbabwe rounds up destitute street people

Mohamed Atta and his angry young followers met to plan the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the al-Quds Mosque.  Hidden away at the end of a mean street in Hamburg, Germany, it has long been known as a sanctuary for extremist Islamism.

Upstairs is the plain-looking prayer room where disenchanted young Arab immigrants have long visited from across Germany to hear imams describe the virtues of martyrdom. In 2001, an especially angry group of young men sat in the back of this room, part of a humourless group who were known to bully and belittle those who they deemed insufficiently devoted to the purification of the faith.

Beyond it are the smaller rooms where one of these men, a tense and peculiar university student named Mohamed Atta, assembled a group of men who were equally devoted to the spread of rigid Islamic law.

They would later be known as al-Qaeda's "Hamburg cell," and German and U.S. authorities would describe them as the masterminds and main executors of the Sept. 11 attacks. In these rooms, and in Mr. Atta's student apartment near Hamburg's technical university, they planned the details of the airborne suicide bombings.

Five years after several of this mosque's most devoted congregants crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the people of Hamburg are still wrestling with the extremist threat in their midst, in part because Germany's postwar laws, designed to prevent another outbreak of state extremism and oppression of minorities, provided excellent cover for the terrorists. To the horror of its well-heeled residents, Hamburg is still Mr. Atta's town.

The conspirators were, at the time, an unlikely bunch of mass murderers, for they were economically privileged, well-educated, apparently secularised, and uninterested in politics.  The 18 Canadians arrested earlier this year on terror-related charges fit such a profile, as do scores of others arrested elsewhere in the world.

Immediately after World War II, Germany enacted stringent laws protecting free association and free expression in order to prevent the return of totalitarianism. Ironically, those very laws are now inhibiting efforts to squelch Islamist activities.  The al-Quds mosque is known to be a centre for such activities, but it has been permitted to operate as it did before 9/11.

According to German intelligence officials and journalists who have gone undercover to investigate it, the mosque is still the site of planning for violent acts of martyrdom in the name of a pure Islamic state — in Iraq, Afghanistan and the West.
. . .
"The al-Quds Mosque is exceptional," says Heino Vahldieck, head of the state intelligence agency, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. "It is the only one of its kind in Germany. There are other mosques, we know, that are congregation points for jihadists. But al-Quds is exceptional."

A law relaxing restrictions on government investigation of terrorist-related activities has been challenged in court by German opposition parties, who claim it violates the constitution.

The laws designed to protect Germany against tyranny are now making the country a safe haven for terrorists.

As time passes, it has become ever more clear that 9/11 is the defining moment of the period following the collapse of the Soviet Empire, if not of the entire post-World War II era.  Civilisation is now locked in a deadly struggle with a widespread, ideologically driven, armed force, which, in my view, is usefully summarised by the word Islamofascism.

Large segments of the population minimise, excuse, or refuse to recognise the threat.  In some Western countries, those turning a blind eye hold powerful and highly influential positions in government and society.  They may even form a majority of the populace in some places. Smaller segments actively aid and abet those who work for our destruction.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I agree with Mark Steyn’s assessment that Islamofascism is not the cause of our predicament; it is merely the presenting symptom.  Civilisational weakness caused by profound self-doubt is the basic problem, which the jihadists have merely exploited and taken advantage of.  Ours is at root a spiritual crisis.  If this view is correct, Islamofascism cannot be defeated without a pervasive, deeply-held belief that civilisation is worth preserving—for reasons far more essential than economic prosperity, technological comforts and conveniences, and hedonistic “liberation”.

Defeating the enemy demands knowledge of and passion for the permanent things, things that will outlast us and our descendants.  If we do not seek and embrace and defend those things, what has civilisation to hold on to against the darkness that seeks to destroy us?

The times call for truth, wisdom, courage, and prayer.

A prayer for divine aid in time of war and tumult, from the Book of Common Prayer:

Almighty God, King of all kings, and Governor of all things, whose power no creature is able to resist, to whom it belongeth justly to punish sinners, and to be merciful to those who truly repent; Save and deliver us, we humbly beseech thee, from the hands of our enemies; abate their pride, asswage their malice, and confound their devices; that we, being armed with thy defence, may be preserved evermore from all perils, to glorify thee, who art the only giver of all victory; through the merits of thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The picture at the top (a slap-dash splice of two photos, for the site was too big to fit into one) shows Ground Zero as we saw it three weeks ago today.  It is posted here in memory of those who were mercilessly and unjustly slaughtered there by terrorists.  It is also and especially a tribute to those courageous men and women who willingly gave their lives to help and save others.  May our God, the God of all compassion, bless and comfort all who suffered that day.  May he bless and comfort all who are hurting still.