New York trial pushes Pentagon agenda

In a race against time the Pentagon has shifted some of its vast resources to step up the program to develop the H2O Follicle Enhancer and bring it to market early in the New Year, in an effort to roll it out six months earlier than originally scheduled.

“At least 200 additional specialists have been reassigned to this work in the past week as well as an additional $10 million dollars injected into its budget”, said a Pentagon spokesperson, who requested anonymity.

The HFE has been a “hush-hush” project in the basement labs at the “Pent” for the past year, administered by PROFITS, the acronym for the Program Research Office for Investigating Technology Spinoffs.

PROFITS was initially set up under the Eisenhower administration in the mid-1950s because the U.S. government was embarrassed by the amount of money it was devoting to scientific research for military and warfare purposes.

“Eisenhower, who always had a concern about the industrial – military hegemony in the economy, believed if some of the research could be turned to useful consumer use there would be a morally defensible way of supporting such expenditures and that it would have the added benefit of recouping some of the taxpayers dollars through volume sales of the spinoffs”, said the source.

It is the announcement by the Obama administration that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attack, will be brought to New York and put on trial that has the Pentagon in such a dither. The defence will discredit evidence of information obtained from waterboarding and attempt to have that evidence thrown out.

The Pentagon is concerned that public disclosure of its waterboarding techniques will harm its commercial opportunities.

“One of the exciting things we learned at Guantanamo”, said the source, “is that waterboarding can produce prodigious hair growth. You only have to look at the before and after pictures of Khalid (shown above) to see the results. In the first photo, taken at the time of his capture, you see a depressed man, losing his hair, and in the after shot is the same person -- no really -- sporting a luxuriant beard.”

“Also note the bright-eyed twinkle in the second photograph. This man has been fully restored to health and he owes it all to waterboarding.”

“You know", said the spokesperson, "We got all the 9/11 information from this guy in the first waterboarding session, within about three minutes, but the next day the guards noticed that his face fuzz had grown more than inch overnight. When that news got back to Washington, it was decided to continue the waterboarding to see if more growth would be stimulated. That was what accounted for the other 79 dunkings Khalid received. The outcome was both stunning and undeniable. The PROFITS folks at the Pentagon were very excited.”

When asked about the market possibilities for the H2O Follicle Enhancer, the source said it would likely be an export market that would drive sales, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia amongst Muslim men, and in India amongst Sikhs.

“The market for a beard growing product is just so-so in the Western Hemisphere, but face beavers are all the rage in the Islamic world. The women like them too, for obvious reasons I need not go into right now and that will not be a direct selling point in the marketing campaign, but will be understood nonetheless”, said the spokesperson. "The demographics favor strong market demand, as well, with so many of the potential buyers being under the age of 24 and unattractive to women because of difficulties in growing full beards."

Pentagon researchers have been working overtime to find the right ratio of uric acid to water that they believe is one of the keys to the stimulation of hair follicles. Uric acid is produced by human urine. They are also interested in knowing whether the cultural/racial make-up of the soldiers who emptied their bladders into the water used on Khalid is important.

“It could be a diet thing. If the soldier was Hispanic and had just consumed a burrito within the hour before he appeared at the waterboarding site the density or purity of the acid may be different from a Caucasian soldier who had a tuna sandwich.”

PROFITS has also engaged a highly-respected boutique New York marketing consulting agency to assist it in developing a marketing program, but has not made the agreement public as yet. However, it has been confirmed that the Ron Jon Surf Shop has been contracted to develop a commercially appealing waterboard.

“Something colorful and comfortable that conveys more laid back Beach Boys and less Torquemada is the goal”, said the spokesperson. "After all, who would want to be uncomfortable while they are choking?"

Canada's ambivalence to 5th columnist Islamism

A couple of days ago, I opened up the on-line version of a mainstream Toronto newspaper and the imagery couldn't have been more jarring.

The top picture showed a Muslim woman all decked out in black with the nijab (head and face covering), exposing only her eyes. She was celebrating, with her 6 children, the release from prison after a 5 year stay, under strict conditions, of her 44 year old husband, Egyptian Mahmoud Jaballah, courtesy of Canada's federal court.

Jaballah is an immigrant who, along with a handful of others who have also been released under conditions, was being held under a "security warrant." This is a draconian legal device to hold somebody deemed dangerous to national security without having to formerly charge them and bring them to trial. Canada's answer to Guantanamo.

The court has already ruled that he cannot stay in Canada, but it is unclear where they will send him, since it is likely if he were deported to Egypt he would be tortured and/or killed (he fled Egypt to Canada in the first place). We don't know the details of the evidence against him because it is still considered a state secret, but I am betting that he wasn't picked up by our authorities for selling Bibles door to door, or that he was chased out of Egypt for the same thing ( a death sentence there). The only thing we do know is that he was associated with Ahmed Saad Khadr, the now deceased -- died in a gun battle with Pakistani troops -- patriarch of the odious and poisonous Khadr clan in Toronto (dubbed by Dr. Daniel Pipes as Canada's first family of terror).

That wasn't so much disturbing to me (disturbing as it was) as the juxtapostion with the picture immediately under that story. It was a picture of the boy next door, the fresh-faced, apple pie eating, 25 year old Nova Scotian, Cpl. Kevin Megeney. He reportedly was killed in his tent in Afghanistan by a single bullet, apparently fired by accident by some fellow soldier. The matter is being investigated and the military is silent on the details.

But this single front page says so much about Canada's ambivalence about Islamism. We are sending our soldiers into battle with Islamists to protect another bunch of Muslims who run their country under the law of the Sharia (but a less strict version -- still allowing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, mind you).

I wonder if Cpl. Megeney was a Christian.

At the same time we have, by polling estimates, about 10% of our domestic Muslim population (that 10% translates into approximately 50,000 in aggregate numbers) who support the supplanting of our liberal democracy with an Islamic state, perhaps run by theocracy like Iran. That poll number, by the way, corresponds to international estimates of Islamists amongst the greater Muslim population, which translates into a staggering 120,000,000 such people.

In World War Two, our fathers and mothers did not have any qualms about quashing 5th columnists. The Japanese were rounded up, along with some Germans and Italians. Of course, it was the worst kind of racial profiling and some very unpleasant things were done to the Japanese in particular. It was possible to do this in Canada because it was about 74% English and 22% French -- there was no ethnic mosaic, no political correctness (they used to openly talk about the yellow peril in Parliamentary debates), no consideration of moral relevancy, no multiculturalism imperatives, and no charter of rights.

We can't do that kind of thing anymore, even if circumstances might suggest it. Nor would I advocate such a thing. But, it is clear to me that Canada is at war with Islamism -- or what the hell is our army doing in Afghanistan -- and that being said, these Islamists in this country are 5th columnists. We need to stop coddling them and start considering what action we can take if they are undermining our war efforts by sapping our political morale.

Or, we need to cease being at war with Islamism in Afghanistan.

Either way, we need to stop sacrificing the Cpl. Megeney's for nothing.