The Palestinian Jihadist is Always the Victim.

Newsflash: See below: FBI believes Hasan may potentially be connected to three of the 9/11 hijackers.

Our president is quoted in the pages of the New York Times advising us not to “jump to conclusions.” According to CNN, President Obama has also cautioned against a “backlash” against Muslims in the military and in the country. This — from the charmer who bowed before the Saudi King and who betrayed Muslim women in his Cairo speech.

Ordinarily, I’d agree with such advice about conclusion-jumping. The military does first have to investigate the matter fully. One can’t always believe what one reads in the media, etc. But whether or not Major Hasan acted alone, had allies, was inspired by religious and political Islamism, was psychiatrically troubled — the fact remains that he committed an act of terrorism. He terrified other soldiers precisely where they were supposed to feel safe. So much of the truth is already so clear that it would be insane, insulting to the intelligence to deny or minimize it.

Quickly, reflexively, without waiting for more of the facts to emerge, the mainstream print media has already decided that Major Hasan is a tormented “innocent” who must have snapped under alleged conditions of extreme provocation and humiliation. Indeed, today, the headline in the New York Times about this story is: “Little Evidence of Terror Plot in Base Killings” with a sub-heading of “Investigators Say Major at Fort Hood Faced Many Pressures.”

As I predicted, the Paper of Record views the jihadist as the victim, as a man who was suffering from secondary trauma given the stress of listening to other soldiers talk about their battlefield trauma. The mainstream media assures people that there is no such thing as Islamic jihad; that the Ft. Hood massacre has nothing to do with Islam or with violent jihad; that if there are any victims here, it is not the dead and wounded soldiers (whose young and beautiful faces have begun to haunt me), but the man accused of their mass murders.

The portrait of Major Hasan to be found in the pages of the New York Times is that of a solitary and tormented man, one who was being forced to fight in a war he opposed for religious reasons, an unjust war, a man who viewed America as the aggressor, and Muslims, especially Muslim suicide killers, as innocent, justified, even heroic.

So far, he sounds like a New York Times reader himself.

I am a psychologist, a retired Professor of Psychology and a psycho-analytically oriented psychotherapist. But I have also been following current events, even studying them. Based on the evidence to date, Major Hasan’s bloody rampage seems to have been planned. The day before the murders, he gave away his furniture and copies of his Qu’ran. On that day, Major Hasan also had a mysterious, brief meeting with another man dressed in Islamic clothing. And he used his neighbor’s computer.

Thus, Hasan’s action was a planned execution. It was not the act of a man who suddenly “snapped.” Yes, as I wrote in my earlier piece, we may characterize Hasan’s action as a case of Sudden Jihad Syndrome but that does not mean I am making an actual psychiatric diagnosis. The phrase is descriptive, perhaps even sarcastic. Yes, we may call this the act of a lone shooter — if it turns out that he acted alone — but still, this lone shooter was someone who was inspired by a radical Islamist ideology which views such murderous acts as religiously heroic, not as “psychiatrically deranged.”

In Gaza or on the West Bank, Major Hasan would be given a hero’s parade. Osama bin Laden’s followers will print posters and banners with his face.

Some may choose to view him as dysfunctional, psychiatrically challenged, socially inappropriate, isolated, inflexible, fanatical — but that does not justify or excuse his jihadic crime. Many religious fanatics are also “mentally ill.” It is the religious ideology that empowers criminal and, in Hasan’s case, treasonous activity. Hasan did not commit jihadic mass murder because he is “mentally ill,” but because he is a jihadist.

Updated. New Information=*

The moment I first heard about the mass murders at Fort Hood I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslims.

Call me “Islamophobic,” call me “psychic,” call me what you will.

It now seems that there was only a single shooter: Major Malik Nidal Hasan, (or Nidal Malik Hasan), an American-born Muslim man of Palestinian/Jordanian descent, an American citizen who is an Army-trained physician—a psychiatrist to be exact, one who specializes in Disaster and Preventive Psychiatry. He is also a religious Muslim. **Several sources confirm that he shouted “Allahu Akhbar” before or during his shooting rampage.

** According to CNN (!!) we now know that Major Hasan was long seen as a “ticking time bomb.” At Walter Reed, he once gave a power point presentation which justified suicide murders. He expressed “dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy” and viewed the war on terror as a “war against Islam.” Major Hasan would deliver extreme political and radically Islamic views when he should have been lecturing about environmental health or behavior science. When his students attempted to have him stick to the subject, Major Hasan refused to do so.

According to Dr. Val Finnell, a former classmate, Major Hasan would “argue with people. He made himself a lightning rod.” Radical Islam was a “big, dominating topic for him.” Dr. Finnell saw no “anti-Muslim harassment,” their class was very diverse and the military culture was very politically correct. In addition, as a Major, Hasan outranked most of the military. Few would dare harass him.

**Thus, Hasan’s reassignment to Ft. Hood was definitely a demotion. And, he had a fight with a new neighbor over his Islamic bumper sticker being pulled off. Hasan allowed no one entry into his apartment unless he was there. And, he used a neighbor’s computer the day before he murdered so many in cold blood. He had one visitor only: a man wearing Islamic clothing who spent only five minutes there after which both men left. **According to the New York Times, Major Hasan maintained a number of email accounts and used computers in several locations.

** According to General Barry McCaffrey, (on CNN), “the vast majority of Muslims serve very honorably in the military.” However, Major Hasan’s dastardly deed may very well be a case of a “domestic terrorist attack.”

According to the Washington Post (and cited at JihadWatch):

“Hasan attended the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring and was ‘very devout,’ according to Faizul Khan, a former imam at the center. Khan said Hasan attended prayers at least once a day, seven days a week, often in his Army fatigues. Khan also said Hasan applied to an annual matrimonial seminar that matches Muslims looking for spouses. ‘I don’t think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions,’ Khan said.”

Some say that Hasan may have objected to having to follow military orders which meant being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Others say that Hasan was already being monitored for posting pro-jihadi and pro-suicide martyrdom material on the internet. (“Monitored” but still being deployed? How could this happen?)

**Major Hasan allegedly tried to convert his infidel patients and colleagues to Islam (for which he was repeatedly reprimanded). Or, he insisted on lecturing students, colleagues, and patients against America and for Islamic rights. Students and superiors may have questioned him about this. This alone may have been something he felt constituted being “picked on,” “harassed,” ordered not to proselytize or propagandize on the job. To a religious jihadic Muslim in an era of violent jihad, such an intervention or interference might be experienced as interfering with his right to practice his religion.

On Thursday, according to the mainstream television media, Major Hasan allegedly gave away his clothing and possessions, including copies of the Qu’ran. (That’s a clue right there. Is anyone in charge here?)

The military men do not understand how one shooter could have **killed and wounded 51 other human beings. Perhaps others were involved. But wait—there’s a reason Hasan did this. An explanation, an excuse.

According to Hasan’s cousin, he had been “picked on,” harassed by other soldiers because he was of “Middle Eastern origin.” This may be true—and if true, terrible—but so what?

Let’s assume it’s true: I know many people, including soldiers, including female soldiers, who have been brutally harassed. They do not shoot 51 people down in cold blood.

Who does? And why? The only answer most people want to hear is that a lone, psychiatrically deranged shooter did it. All by himself, on his own.

On November 6, 1990, 40 brave Saudi women drove their cars in public in Riyadh, the capital city, to demand their right to drive. They were quickly detained, their passports were confiscated, and they were fired from their jobs.

On the 19th anniversary of this event, Saudi women activists, led by prominent Saudi activist and journalist Wajeha al Huwaider, are launching the Black Ribbons Campaign. They want to move about in the world freely, without a male minder.

Al Huwaider has called for the abolition of the mahram (“guardian”) law which requires women to obtain the approval of a male relative for nearly any move they make in their lives. She is also demanding that Saudi women be treated as a citizens, just like their male counterparts, and that they be allowed to travel, drive, gain custody of their children, work, study, etc., just like their male counterparts. The Saudi women will not “untie their ribbons until Saudi women enjoy their rights as adult citizens.”

But in only nineteen years, how the times have changed! Once, Muslim women chose not to wear hijab—in Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Iran, etc. Today, some Muslim women insist not only on shroud-veiling, but on having male babysitters as well!

For example, the fully-shrouded Saudi princess, Jawaher bint Jalawi, says she must have and cannot part with her male “guardian” who accompanies her wherever she goes. She insists that only he knows what’s best for her. In response to Al Huwaider, the (government-backed?) princess has launched a campaign called “My Guardian Knows What’s Best for me.”

I wonder if she is one of the princesses who immediately shed their shrouds once the plane clears The Kingdom. But the princess’s stand is also a perfect example of how a prisoner fears the light, an example of the way in which women internalize sexism and try to enforce the status quo by keeping other women in line. This is a phenomenon that I discuss at length in Woman’s Inhumanity to Woman.

But Saudi Arabia is a very strange place. For example, a new TV show that discusses issues concerning teenage girls and female university students was recently broadcast with Saudi presenters dressed in black from head to toe. The show, Asrar Al-Banat (The Secrets of Girls), is broadcast on Awtan TV, a Saudi religious channel. One broadcaster said: “Basically, this is my hijab and I don’t wear it because of the channel.”

On the one hand, we have Saudi princesses who insist upon male minders and Saudi broadcasters who do not mind reporting the news covered in black from head to toe. On the other hand, we have highly aggressive women who oppress other women hellishly—in Iran, for example, but now also in Indonesia, where there is a newly created female Shari’a police. These humorless and self-important ladies go around Bandeh Aceh reprimanding other women for wearing clothing that they view as “too tight”—but these women have no male minders and are, in fact, also allowed to reprimand men who are not praying at the proper time.

I totally support the Saudi feminists and yet, as I read their list of demands, I also feel sad that they cannot also demand the right to walk about without being “covered,” the right to feel the sun on their faces as they shop or visit a garden. Indeed, my assistant asked a perfectly sensible question: “Where exactly will the Saudi women wear the black ribbon? Who will be able to see it if they are totally covered up?” Probably on their wrists—where I shall wear mine.

Historically, many Muslim women have resisted the Veil. Some have even done so for religious reasons. Yes—for religious reasons. According to Algerian-American sociology professor Marnia Lazreg, the Veil is not mandated in the Qu’ran; “modesty” may be expressed in many ways—indeed, Muslim men might start behaving more “modestly” towards both veiled and unveiled women; reducing Islam to one visual symbol, especially one that highly restricts, suffocates, and compromises only women, not men, is outrageous and tragic. Lazreg makes these arguments and more in her excellent, elegant book Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women.

According to Lazreg, Muslim girls and women once walked freely in their cities. They were not often harassed by men. That time is over. Ironically, as more women comply, give in, embrace wearing the Veil, this does not mean that either veiled or unveiled women are safer. On the contrary. Today, the Islamic Veil does not keep harassers away.

Let me note: Lazreg views the state, the family, and the culture which force women to veil as no different from the European secular state which forces Muslim women not to veil. She believes that women’s bodies are their own and that each woman should have the right to choose what clothing she will wear for herself. Her argument is a powerful one and I shall return to it in a future column. Lazreg does conclude by imploring Muslim women not to wear the veil.

I will start wearing a black ribbon on November 6th. I will keep doing so until Saudi women are free. Please join me. This black ribbon can become quite a conversation-opener and consciousness-raiser. Remember: We are not really free when others are still in chains, especially if we refuse to hear their cries, and refuse to support and honor their brave, potential liberators.

Britain’s Center for Social Cohesion Can’t Get the American Media to Pay Attention

The Center for Social Cohesion, a distinguished British think tank, has just released a major expose of the radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), which is targeting the West, “including the United States, and (which) supports violent jihad.” Britain has just suspended government support for some HT nursery and primary schools which function to indoctrinate unsuspecting Muslim children into dreaming of a global caliphate.

And yes, they veil the little, little girls at ever-younger ages. Well-meaning parents who themselves may not be religiously well-versed may believe that what this group does, represents “authentic” rather than dangerously “radical” Islam.

According to the Center, “last month, President Obama’s faith advisor, Dalia Mogahed, legitimized HT’s claims that the majority of Muslims support the group’s political vision when she spoke alongside HT’s women’s representative on a UK television programme.” My colleague, Cinammon Stillwell, wrote about this. Mogahed did say that she had no idea that a representative of HT would be on the program. This might be true, but Mogahed could have walked off the set—or spent the time challenging HT’s radical agenda.

Douglas Murray, the Center’s Director, has sent this new and alarming report to every American wire service. So far, none have picked it up. He cannot understand why—given that it has received wide and serious attention in Britain.

I myself am not surprised. An American news article for which I was interviewed, and which criticized Mogahed’s appearance (which is not what I talked about), was killed at the last minute—after which, within minutes, an interview with Mogahed appeared in US News and World Report which rebutted, glossed over, minimized and “spun” every point made in the article which never ran.

Big Brother is Watching You.

UPDATE:

Noor Almaleki has just died in Arizona. May she rest in peace. May her murderer, her father, be brought to justice. My condolences to those who loved her.

May American justice prevail. The prosecutor has described this as an “attempted honor killing.”

At a court hearing over the weekend in Phoenix, county prosecutor Stephanie Low told a judge that Almaleki admitted to committing the crime.

“By his own admission, this was an intentional act and the reason was that his daughter had brought shame on him and his family,” Low said. “This was an attempt at an honor killing.”

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Last week, the Iraqi father who drove a two ton jeep over his daughter in Arizona for being “too westernized” high-tailed it out of town, drove down to Mexico where he abandoned his vehicle and caught a flight to London. UK Port of Entry authorities denied him entry, contacted US authorities and placed him back on a plane to the US. Almaleki was arrested when his plane landed in Atlanta, then returned to Arizona where he now sits in jail.

“Agencies involved included the US Marshalls Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, Arizona Department of Public Safety, officials in the United Kingdom, and officials from the Nogales and Sonora, Mexico Police.”

Hurrah for the combined law enforcement heroes in action.

What’s missing from the coverage (at least so far) is the usual Islamist spin. No hard-line representative of the Islamic community is insisting that this was not an “honor killing” or that if it was, it has nothing to do with Islam or with Muslims. That’s it’s a typical ‘teenage” thing or a typical case of domestic violence.

Which brings us to the second attempted honor killing story which might be a first of its kind. A woman, defending the honor of Islam, tried to kill her easy going husband. He lived–but the attempted murder was serious. Will Islamists defend and support her, embrace her as a good Muslim? Or shun her as a psychiatrically troubled woman?

Early this morning, as Jewish men gathered for their morning prayers, a lone gunman entered the Adat Yeshurun Valley synagogue in North Hollywood (or entered it’s parking lot) and, without saying a word, shot and wounded two men. The gunman, described as an African-American teenager wearing a hood, apparently fled. (By the next day, police claimed they were not certain if the shooter was African-American). At first, they arrested an African-American man who resembled the ostensible description of the shooter; they have since released him. The police are calling this a “hate crime” since no other motive appears to have been involved. (The police have subsequently said that they are not sure of the motive). Thankfully, the wounded men, Maor Ben-Nissan and Allen Lasry, were hospitalized and will recover. (Thank you Dymphna for posting their names here).

Yesterday there was a shootout in Detroit at a mosque largely peopled by African-American converts to Islam and led by the former Black Panther H. Rap Brown, who converted to Islam in jail while serving a life sentence. If a convert to Islam was involved in the LA synagogue shooting (and it is totally unclear whether this is the case), I would view this shooting as one lone individual’s version of “political” payback. Recently, in 2009, four African-American prison converts to Islam plotted to blow up two Riverdale synagogues and an American military base.

Blame the Jews, target the Jews—even when they are not involved, especially when they aren’t. Even when the Jews are not Israelis and are not necessarily “Zionists.” Even when the Jews may themselves be Arabs of many skin-colors. The Los Angeles synagogue is Sephardic and Orthodox. Its congregants are mainly Moroccan, Iranian, and North African Jews. A true anti-Semite makes no distinction between Jews and Zionists, and between Jews of color, who may speak Arabic and Persian, and Jews of European extraction who do not. Such fine distinctions are not made in the West or in the Arab world.

On the other hand, the LA shooting could, (were it not for eyewitness accounts to the contrary), be the work of the proverbial lone deranged man, perhaps a white supremacist like the aging Nazi-wannabee who shot a guard at the United States Holocaust Museum earlier this year. Indeed, in 1999, a white supremacist entered a Los Angeles Jewish center and opened fire with a semi-automatic, shooting five people. My God, the shooter could be a Jew. We have seen cases in which Jews have scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti on synagogue walls; in 2005, a jilted ex-boyfriend in Florida shot one of his ex-girlfriend’s employers during Rosh Hashanna prayers at a Chabad service.

The shooter could have been a hired hitman out to settle someone else’s personal or financial score.

Or, the lone Los Angeles shooter could be a Muslim—either a deranged one off his medication, easily influenced and empowered by hate propaganda, as the 2006 Seattle Jewish Center shooter was, or perhaps an angry, politicized loner as Sirhan Sirhan (the Palestinian who assassinated Robert Kennedy) was. I write about him in my book, The New Anti-Semitism: The Current Crisis and What We Must Do About It.

Palestinian terrorists made an art of attacking synagogues in Europe as a way of expressing their displeasure about Jewish Israel. In 1980, they bombed the Paris synagogue on Rue Copernic. The bomb, hidden in a motorcycle, killed four people and wounded twenty others. Nearly thirty years later, one of the perpetrators was arrested in Canada: Hassan Diab, a Lebanese-born lecturer in sociology. In 1998, a bomb exploded outside a synagogue in Riga, Latvia, nearly destroying the building. This attack was presumably caused by fascist extremists.

Last month, I met so many wonderful people at the Italian government conference in Rome. One such being is Bruce Bawer, an American writer who lives in Norway and who has published many influential works including While Europe Slept and Surrender. Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom. We had a drink, got on famously, one thing quickly led to another and, soon enough, he’d asked me to write a monthly column for Human Rights Service, an online publication which appears in Norwegian and English. Bruce is the soul of cheerful generosity and I look forward to someday touring a fjord or two in his company.

Here is the first piece I wrote for him and for the two Norwegian women who publish the site, Hege Storhaug and Rita Karlsen.

A Lesson Learned in Kabul
by Phyllis Chesler
Human Rights Service
October 27, 2009
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27.10.09: We hope that the American author and women’s rights activist Dr. Phyllis Chesler will be a regular contributor to this site. Here she introduces herself to our readers with a look back at her unforgettable experience as a young wife in Afghanistan – and reflections on what she learned from it.

By Phyllis Chesler

Once, long ago, I was held captive in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Yes, I went there of my own free will, but I was only 20 years old and in love with my college sweetheart – a sophisticated, modern man with whom I discussed Dostoevsky, Strindberg, Sartre, Ibsen, de Sica, Truffaut, Fellini, and Simone Signoret. We were both theatre and movie buffs, and although my future husband had been born in Afghanistan, he had attended high school and college in America.

When we landed in Kabul, my American passport was confiscated and I discovered, for the first time, that my father-in-law had three wives and twenty-one children. I had flown right into the Middle Ages. I soon learned that I was expected in live in purdah—a rather posh version of an all-female life at home, with trips to female relatives and to the tailor.

If one survives such a grand and dangerous adventure, one learns some important lessons.

Thus, even before I became a feminist in 1967, I had already learned that the (imperfect) West is still a far better place for a woman to live than is the most hospitable, beautiful, wealth-encrusted Muslim country. Friends thought I had married a Prince and gone to live in a fairytale. They did not want too much reality to intrude upon their fantasies.

Thus, at too young an age, I already understood that barbarism and hatred of the Other is indigenous to Islam; it is not caused by Western “evil.” Intra-tribal and religious-sect feuding is a permanent way of life in the wild, wild East.

We are entering an all-spin zone, a wild, weird and spooky season — and I am not talking about Halloween.

With a few exceptions, the mainstream media continue to kill stories about honor killings and attempted honor killings in North America. How often did you read stories about the honor killings that took place in Toronto (07), Dallas (08), Atlanta (08), Oak Forest, Illinois (08), Alexandria (08), Buffalo (09), and Kingston, Canada (09)—on and on, until the most recent attempted honor killing in Phoenix?

There are two killers still on the loose: Yaser Said, the Dallas monster out of Egypt who abused, stalked, and murdered his two daughters with the help of his wife, their mother, and his son, their brother.

Iraqi-born Faleh Hassan Almaleki is another foul killer on the lam. Just last week, he ran over his 20-year-old daughter, Noor, with a car because she was “too western.” Imagine: This father used two tons of steel rage against his daughter. He mowed her down with a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Faleh also tried to kill the older woman who was with her, Amal Edan Khalef, with whom Noor was living. Amal had probably rescued Noor, but she was also the mother of Noor’s boyfriend. Both women are now in the hospital; Noor remains unconscious and is barely clinging to life.

At issue: Apparently, Noor had been fighting with her father for years. She did not want to remain in her arranged marriage and, indeed, left the Middle East and dared to choose a boyfriend of her own. Yes, like the Said sisters, Noor also had pages on Facebook and at MySpace too. Noor knew she was living in the United States and not in the Middle East. Apparently, her father did not accept this as reality.

With the exception of brief, one-time reportage, (USA Today, AP, ABC News, etc.) the mainstream national media has not really covered this story. Only True Crime Reports has updated it. When it comes to Islam and honor killings, political, anthropological, historical, and psychological information is rarely brought to bear on the single story. Suddenly, completely out of context, one lone individual or one lone family just up and murders their daughter or their sister. No rhyme or reason to it. Case closed.

The local Arizona media have certainly covered this attempted honor killing and they’ve quoted experts who’ve said things as strange as the local Dallas media experts did in the Said case (It was not an honor killing, honor killings have nothing to do with Islam or with Muslims); as strange as the Florida media experts did in the case of Rifqa Bary, the teenage apostate runaway whom a Florida judge has just sent back to Ohio (She is an unbalanced, rebellious teenager who only imagines that she has been abused; she is in no danger at all).

A Dangerous Denial

The New York Times does not tell us whether Tareq Mehanna, the 27-year-old Massachusetts pharmacist who was just arrested on federal terrorism charges, is or even might be a Muslim. In their pages, telling this particular truth is still verboten, politically incorrect, rude, racist, a cheap shot, even “Islamophobic.”

Look: Mehanna might have traveled to Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen (which he did) because, as a relatively young man, he just wanted to sow his wild oats. No matter that Mehanna and his “associates,” including one Ahmad Abousamra who subsequently fled to Syria, had traveled together “seeking training from terrorist groups to fight against American soldiers.” No matter that Mehanna had tried to buy a gun from one Daniel Maldonado who is “currently serving a 10-year-prison sentence for training with Al Qaeda in Somalia. “

Why should the Times suggest that Mehanna’s motivation might be related to Islamic jihad? That hypothesis would tarnish an entire religion, an entire people. It can’t be true—but even if it is true, it’s too troubling and unpleasant a truth. Why connect the dots when you can continue to confuse people?

Well, as the Danish Mohammed Cartoon controversy has so ably demonstrated, not all religions are equal. If someone flies planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon—better not blame it on the Saudis or on Islamic jihadists, especially if they are guilty. People who are capable of such acts won’t like such accusations. They might sue you or kill you or blow up your kids. Anyway, it’s better not to think this way, better not to descend to the level of people who believe that Islamic terrorists have declared war against all non-Muslims, (against other Muslims too), especially against those who live in America and Israel.

That’s a really unfashionable philosophy of life.

Ironically, David Rohde, the Times reporter who was captured by the Taliban and kept for seven months could have used a clearer understanding about both al-Qaeda and the Taliban; Daniel Pearl might have benefited from a more unfashionable philosophy too.

I have been reading David Rohde’s front page Times series about his captivity in Afghanistan. Rohde kept hoping that “his” captors were the good Taliban, not the bad Taliban. Like Ann Frank, Rohde desperately desired to believe that people are really good, or at least that some people, even kidnappers, even religious fanatics, even highway brigands, are also really good; c’mon, aren’t some of them, at least some of the time?

Viruses are in the air. They (and bacteria as well) are in my body and a course of antibiotics will hopefully cure me–but a virus is also in my computer!

Did I infect my own computer?

No, it is not possible to transfer human viruses to machines; at least, not yet. My computer genius, Mitchell Price, tells me that “Malware has destroyed my computer!” This means that a “company has made a false anti-virus application” and then swooped right in ostensibly to protect me from their own spyware.

For a fee, they offered to correct the problem that they themselves had caused. I refused to ransom my computer and so they ruined my hard drive, just hijacked it. According to Mitchell, some people from “eastern Europe and Asia started doing this simply for mischief, but then found a way of making millions from it.”

Pirates, robbers, brigands are still plying their trades on the Orient Express and the Old Silk Road–this time, in virtual reality.

This can happen to anyone of us. As yet, there is no protection against it. Rather, the only protection against it is to never go on the internet. Mitchell advises us all to be “very careful of links that we may in good conscience, click. They may have a bug or a virus.”

Thus, friends and readers: I have a slight fever and am in bed with a very challenged immune system, bacteria, and one kind of virus (surrounded by lots of tea, soup, and meds) and my sympathetic computer is awaiting her own specialist this evening who will get rid of one hard drive and replace it with another.

Yep. The whole system has to go. Nothing is lost. Except time and money.

Someone should find these malicious people and sue them out of business, dont’cha think? If this has also happened to you please say so.