On July 9th, Ayman al Zawahiri, the number 2 man in Al Qaeda, wrote a 6,000 word letter to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the Al Qaeda chieftain in Iraq. The letter was captured by U.S. forces, translated, and posted on government Web sites. Democrats and journalists scoff at President Bush's claim that Iraq is the central front in the War on Terror. Zawahiri agrees with Bush:

For the clerical fascists who rule the terror countries of the Middle East, the only education children should have is to sit around and memorize the Koran and the sayings of Mohammed.The clerics want good little Moslem androids, who will accept the preposterous belief that all knowledge was acquired several centuries ago and that man’s only worthwhile intellectual activity is to imbibe that knowledge in order to recite it when called for.The most devastating critique of such a system is laughter, which the leaders of the terror regimes can not and dare not tolerate. Laughter bespeaks fun, and fun is totally forbidden.

Chapter Twelve: Angry Gods The Spaniards now devoted themselves to building Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz. On a plain half a league from Quiahuitztlan (qwee-ah-weets-tlan), a fort was erected with high wooden walls and watchtowers, followed by a church, market place, arsenals, barracks, and officers’ quarters. Cortez himself was the first to work, digging trenches and hauling foundation stones. Cajoling his officers to join him, they all set to work, as did all the soldiers at whatever task they could do ? making bricks, nails, and lumber, working the lime kilns ? while over a thousand Totonacs labored with them. Within less than three weeks it was habitable enough for the colony to be formally founded (1). A few days after "Villa Rica" had been established, a delegation of Mesheeka nobles arrived, led by a military commander named Motelchiuh (mo-tell’-chee-you), and including two of Montezuma’s nephews. Motelchiuh grandly presented Cortez with the gilded helmet requested by Tendile at the sand encampment of San Juan de Ulua. It was now filled with gold dust ? as Cortez had requested.

Symantec Corporation said recently that it found itself forced to start dealing with spyware and adware simply because users of Symantec antivirus programs really couldn't tell the difference between a system infected with malware (virus, Trojan, worm, and so forth) and a system infested with adware or spyware. For the past 3 months, nearly one out of every five calls for help to Symantec ended up involving spyware or adware rather than what they call malware. To The Point readers know that I’ve been using the opposite terminology. Viruses, trojans and worms were in one category, and spyware and adware I called malware. These days, virus experts recognize that certain threats should rightly be called blended, in that they combine virus, worm, and sometimes even trojan characteristics within a single executable.

My old friend, the late James Jesus Angleton (once upon a time the head of CIA's counterintelligence forces) was in a somewhat milder mood than the last few times we'd "talked," thanks to my unreliable ouija board and the relentless static that seems to accompany my efforts to communicate with spirits in The Beyond.ML: It seems the al-Reuters Agency and others in the deadwood media are painting a fairly depressing picture of your old organization. "CIA Director Porter Goss...faces a shortage of experienced spies created by a post-September 11 stampede to the private sector, current and former intelligence officials say..."JJA: Haha. Very droll. The usual divertissement from the Reuters crowd.ML: But still, don't you think it's legitimate to worry about hundreds or thousands of people leaving the clandestine service? JJA: More like a blessing.