Well, since it’s the weekend,I’m going to go off-topic (the topic, of course, being the Great Islamic Jihad) for a little rant.

I hate Sarbanes-Oxley.

For those of you who have been honeymooning on Titan for the last four years, “Sarbanes-Oxley” is shorthand for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Public Law 107–204, passed by Congress on July 30, 2002. The full text of the Act is here (in pdf format). It was a response to the financial shenanigans and corporate misdeeds performed by Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, etc., and is supposed to prevent American businesses from ever doing such naughty things again.

The following is Sarbanes-Oxley (known, at least in our company, as “SOX”) from an IT department’s point of view, so non-geek readers may want to tune out and skip this post.

I’m a database programmer in a company of moderate size. We just recently went public, and the requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley caused the company to engage the services of a SOX-compliance auditor and an IT/Network consultant. We had a meeting last week to go over the changes we would have to make in our practices in order to ensure that we become SOX-compliant.

Up until now, all the programmers in the department have had full access to the database servers; that is, with a user ID and password we could view, design, and make changes to any of the production data in the corporate databases. This has always been very handy: whenever Accounting messes up, and needs to move a nickel from the right-hand pocket to the left-hand pocket of a hundred thousand virtual pairs of pants, my bosses will ask me to design and run an update query to do the job. Things like this happen fairly often, and it has always seemed natural that programmers should have the capacity to do such things, as a part of their jobs.

But that’s all over now.

From now on we will have full access only to the test servers, and not the real data. Depending on our job descriptions, we may have “view privileges” for the production data, but no “write privileges.” Anytime Accounting needs IT to clean up their messes, someone high up will have to create a paper trail leading down from the CFO and the CIO to my boss, changing my permissions and allowing me a brief window to modify the production data, under supervision and also creating a full log of the changes made.

What a crock of solid waste.

We don’t have access to the check printers and check paper. We can’t make bank transfers to numbered accounts in the Cayman Islands. All we do is create and maintain millions of records of accounting and business-related data in databases, and write the code for the apps that give the users access to the data and provide reports for them.

Do you remember the corporate hijinks that prompted Congress to get all high-minded and create the SOX behemoth in the first place? Hiding corporate debt. Maintaining high share value by the accounting version of three-card monty. Colluding with auditing firms to keep bogus records so none of this escaped into the light. Fleecing shareholders out of billions of dollars and destroying the pension funds of thousands of employees.

Programmers didn’t do these things. Not even the network administrators were involved. It was the top-level corporate managers, the major accountants, and the lawyers.

Under SOX, who will be permitted to have the codes that allow access to the important data? The top-level corporate managers, the major accountants, and the lawyers.

This isn’t just locking the barn door after the horse has been stolen. It’s turning over the keys to the horse thieves.

SOX places yet another handicap weight on the legs of American businesses in the global commercial sprints. It is reckoned to add enormous costs to every company, requiring new layers of auditors and accountants and overseers and paperwork. Every year it will cost an additional umpty-bazillion dollars to run American corporations, thanks to good ol’ Uncle Sam.

And did Congress, in its generous foresight, raise taxes and appropriate funds to reimburse businesses for their extra expense? No, it didn’t; the cost is simply passed on to the consumer.

That’s you, Jack.

Yup. That widget you have been paying six bits for will shortly be costing you a dollar, thanks to SOX. It’s a present from Your Friendly Federal Government, a little secret taxation without any representation.

And all that extra money you’re laying out — whose pockets will it line? Why, those of the top-level corporate managers, the major accountants, and the lawyers, of course.

Yes, yes, I know: the programmers will get a little bit of it, too. So I’m biting the hand that feeds me. So what?

 
LGF has a moving email from an Iraqi exile living in California. Mr.Ajinas reports that at least 65% of the voters turned out to cast their vote on the the country’s constitution.

More importantly, he sums up the feelings of his family about what America has done for his country:

Now, let’s wait and see what the legacy media makes of this story. Can you guess?

If the percentages hold true, how about this headline in The New York Times: “Over a Third of Iraqi Voters Stay Home Instead of Voting.”

Meanwhile, now magazines are competing for fraud charges with the dailies:

In both cases — the Iraqi triumphal vote, the legacy media slide — it couldn’t happen to more deserving folks. The mills of God grind slowly…

P.S. Welcome, Instapundit readers!

 
Yesterday’s report in Moscow News reveals some new details of Thursday’s Islamic terror attack in Nalchik, the North Caucasus capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria republic.

At various times during the day’s confusing events, terrorist mastermind Shamil Basayev was reported to have been killed, and to have escaped death, and even not to have been there at all.

What seems significant is that the mujahideen appear to have been forced into battle earlier than they had planned:

So the terrorists were caught relatively unprepared and forced into precipitate action; they activated their attack plans under circumstances that were less than favorable to them. This would explain the lopsided casualty rate: 60 terrorists killed, versus 24 police and civilians. Of course, these figures are in the process of being revised, and there have been later reports suggesting a death toll of more than 100. In addition, as the article says,

Still, in the end, it seems to be a substantial setback for Basayev’s group. To take three times as many casualties as does the enemy — when one’s group is but a tiny fraction of the general population of the area — has got to be a devastating blow.

The Russian authorities were not entirely unprepared for such an attack; they had been watching the “Caucasus Front” and preparing for a confrontation.

One word that stands out in these accounts is jamaat. Concerning the Caucasian Jamaats, Winds of Change refers the reader to an article in The Jamestown Foundation:

These “communities” bring to mind other Jamaats closer to home, including the one on our doorstep in Red House, Virginia. The people in Nalchik, residents of a small provincial town, were not thinking of themselves as front line soldiers in a war. They were going about their business, driving to work, taking their children to school, when the terrorists struck:

So what about the jamaats in our midst?

When we’re taking kids to school, buying a cup of coffee in a restaurant, taking the elevator up to the office… Shots ring out. Explosions outside. Bodies in the street. Masked and armed men taking hostages, waving their weapons, and crying, “Allahu akhbar!”

It is something to be aware of. We need all the information we can get.

Let’s not forget the Price of Liberty.

 
During the last few weeks we have been overwhelmed by the response to our posts, and — especially since the Jamaat ul-Fuqra meme started — we have been receiving an enormous number of emails in addition to the comments.

We are glad to have them, and I am gradually working my way through them. But it will take me a while, because I have a day job and have to pretend to work sometimes! Also, Dymphna is still recuperating.

I appreciate all the information, research, and tips that people have been sending. I will try to respond to everything, and post anything noteworthy.

Patience…

 
Go to The Politics of CP and see all the information on Jamaat ul-Fuqra he has turned up. The posts are: Terrorists in Rural America?, Terrorists in rural America…continued, Jemaat ul-Fuqra, and Jemaat ul-Fuqra Compounds.

He has located a website which has collated all the known locations and activity of ul-Fuqra. In particular there is this great map of the USA showing all the JF sites, with a history of the criminal acts.

Don’t miss this one. Get on over to The Politics of CP.

His analysis of Jamaat ul-Fuqra’s intelligence and ability in the “dark underbelly of America” puts paid to the idea that these people can be easily dismissed. They are a clear and present danger.

It behooves us to know where they are. Thank you, Politics of CP.

 
We got this postcard in the mail yesterday:

I’m not going to respond to this card, but if the Albemarle County Republicans call me, I’ll say this:

Pass the word up the food chain to the national party that the little guys are not going to help the Republicans any more until they mend their profligate big-government ways. I like what you guys are doing at the local level, but somehow the message has to get out to the party at large. So this time you’re on your own.

Medicare prescription drugs. Highway bill. Katrina pork feast. Sarbanes-Oxley. No Child Left Behind. Affirmative action upheld. The shameful imposition of steel tariffs.

Pork after pork after pork, and more Big Government to go with it. I won’t be voting for a Democrat any time soon, but the Republicans won’t “run the table” until they stop “filling the trough”.

Bill, you’re absolutely right, and you have read my mind. I have in hand an Albemarle County Republican Committee begging letter. I’m going to cut out the little form at the bottom, put it in an envelope, and send it in with $0 and a note saying exactly why.

 
Reader Nosy writes us with his take on the Joel Hinrichs case. I am posting it here in its entirety without further comment.

 
Today’s Islamist terrorist attack in the North Caucasus represents a further advance by the Chechen terrorists and their allies in southern Russia.

The background on Kabardino-Balkariya can be found in this PBS article:

It appears that the Great Jihad is attempting reduce yet another functioning economy into a Islamist wasteland.

Nalchik is the capital of Kabardino-Balkariya. A look at this Moscow News map shows how the Chechen Islamists have moved their struggle out of Chechnya, through North Ossetia (where the Beslan attack took place) and have now staged a co-ordinated attack in Kabardino-Balkariya.

According to an article in Eurasia Daily on August 11,

It may be that we are watching a move by the Islamist terrorists out of the ethnic Muslim republics and into Russia itself. Only time will tell.

 
A reader from California emailed Gates of Vienna with this message:

The money quote from the Knight-Ridder story is: “Officials confirmed last week that the FBI is investigating connections between the community, called Baladullah, and an organization known as Jamaat Al-Fuqra, which the U.S. State Department has listed as a terrorist group operating in both Pakistan and North America.”

He is quite right about the killing of Indians: Jamaat ul-Fuqra has a known history of targeting Hindus. As the SATP reported:

In the aftermath of 9/11, Sikhs were targeted by mistake as Muslims, due the turbans they customarily wear. But there’s no way to tell how many killings of Hindus are the result of the Great Jihad and not simple “hate crimes.”

 
There has been an enormous response in the comments on my original Jamaat ul-Fuqra in Virginia post. Readers have done their own online research and linked to what they have found.

There are a lot of interesting comments; go and look at all of them. But the best one so far is this Virtual Earth image link sent by PoliticalCP. His blog post is here.

 
In last night’s comments on Dymphna’s followup to my Jamaat ul-Fuqra post, commenter Felix said,

Unfortunately for all of us, the country of origin of most members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra is the United States of America.

They are a group that parted ways with the Nation of Islam over doctrine, and their defining feature is a zeal to wage violent jihad.

One of the problems facing any attempt to investigate or disseminate information about Jamaat ul-Fuqra, at least in its American branches (Virginia, Colorado, Tennessee, Georgia, New York, etc), is that it largely consists of young black males recruited from prison populations by Saudi-financed chaplains. For these convicts, with little or no family affiliation, ul-Fuqra is home, church, and nation.

These are not the grim buttoned-down legions of Louis Farrakhan. These are violent criminal psychopaths who get to continue their careers of robbery, fraud, murder, and mayhem, all for the greater glory of Allah. And they are American citizens.

To make matters worse, they are mostly African-Americans. Any attempt to deal with them is going to bring the wrath of the Multicultural Mafia down on the head of whoever does it. You can see why the mainstream media shy away from this topic, and why law enforcement is treading so gingerly. Arrange a mass bust at an ul-Fuqra compound, and you’d have the entire army of Sharpton, Jackson, Sheehan, and their uncritical media entourage swarming around you like hornets. There’s no political payoff for any functionary who attempts it.

I can see why people are afraid to go there. I’m afraid to go there, too: down that road looms a Race War. When the shooting starts, that’s how it will be played in the media, and no politician will be able to allow it to continue. We are pretty much stuck on this one.

It’s the omnipresent cultural poison that has infused every nook and cranny of American life: the PC desire to avoid being labeled a “racist.” And there’s always some race-hustling poverty pimp or fund-raising civil-liberties group out there ready to hurl the epithet in all directions. Do you see the conundrum? We have enclaves of Americans who hate America, who have proved themselves willing to do her harm, yet reining them in will be deemed a “hate crime.” Figure your way out of that one.

So I’ll just get it out of the way right now: I’m a racist. I want to see something done about ul-Fuqra, so I’m a racist. Call me that; I don’t care.

I think it’s time to “commit a hate crime” and do something about this enemy that’s in our midst. If we allow things to continue as they are, these compounds and camps and communes will grow and spawn spinoffs and continue to amass ordnance and explosives and guns.

They will wait. Wait until America is vulnerable, after another terrorist attack, after a major natural disaster, after the avian flu strikes…

The Great Islamic Jihad will be happy to piggyback in on a race war in America. They will also be happy to piggyback in on the craven American PC fear of being termed “racists.”

They don’t care. Either way they get the Caliphate, and Dhimmocracy in America.

 
The United Kingdom is uniting. Under the aegis of the Terrorism Act of 2000, fifteen “alleged” international Islamic terror groups are getting the heave-ho from Britain.

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, brandished his list of proposed outlaws and went one step further:

Here is his reasoning:

No sooner had the list been published than there arose outcries from the opposition:

Oh, balderdash. These criminals are undermining the United Kingdom. They need to be outlawed immediately. They should have been outta there twenty years ago. They have brazenly milked our ally dry and it’s high time that politics were put aside for the sake of security and common sense.

Here’s the list so far, though Mr. Clarke has no problem adding to it for “any group [which] commits or participates in acts of terrorism, prepares for terrorism or promotes or encourages it”:

NOTA BENE: Jammat ul Furquan is on this list. That name is very similar to Jamaat ul-Fuqra, the groups that have formed in the United States and have compounds in a number of places, including the one in Charlotte County, Virginia. Not sure they were the same organization, I contacted Daniel Pipes, who confirmed that they are indeed one and the same.

Just so you know: Following the bombings in July, Britain has now outlawed these people. Join one of the groups in the UK and you face a ten year jail sentence.

Here in the US, of course, many of these groups seem able to operate with impunity. We’ve made some improvements but not nearly enough. What will be our version of London, July 7th? The average person might have thought New York City, Pennsylvania and Washington D.C.’s 9/11 would be sufficient, but obviously not. We did get a lot of candlelight vigils, though.

Well, let’s see what Ramadan brings, shall we? That is, aside from the usual cynical, hypocritical taqiyyah from CAIR, claiming that Islam is a religion of peace.

 
At The Word Unheard, USMC Vet has a feature on Mark Tapscott’s appearance on Fox News. Mr. Tapscott is the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy. He was interviewed to get his speculations about the reasons why the MSM has studiously ignored the bizarre death of Joel Hinrichs at Oklahoma University.

Unfortunately, Mr. Tapscott was unable to explain the absence of the “dominant media” in a story which has so far, he says, been “blog-driven.” Excellent term for what is — and isn’t — happening with this story.

The Sarge has some good links, including one to a video of the interview and an essay of Mr. Tapscott’s in which he questions whether or not this OU explosion and the New York subway threat are linked.

It is Ramadan after all. And we are Satan, are we not?

Read the Sarge here.

 
Does Joel Hinrichs have a copycat at Georgia Tech?

This afternoon, News 11 Atlanta is reporting:

UPDATE: Latest word is that it’s a student prank. If so, I bet those students are sorry they picked that particular prank.