A couple of AIMers I hadn't heard from in a long time

In her recent essay published on Jihad Watch, Italian Reactions to Muhammad Film Protests, the London-based Italian blogger (or "web author" as she calls herself) Enza Ferreri reports some useful information about a couple of individuals in the A.I.M. (the Anti-Islam Movement -- which doesn't yet quite exist, but what the hey, hope springs eternal) I hadn't seen in quite a while.

First, it's nice to see the "geopolitician" Alexandre del Valle participate in the international conference held in honor of Oriana Fallaci in Florence this month which, as Ferreri reports, was not surprisingly, and refreshingly (but, alas, still unusually), an Islamically incorrect affair.  It's been a while since I've heard from him.  His masterly 2004 essay, The Reds, Browns and Greens: Convergence of Totalitarianisms, still stands out as a remarkably insightful analysis of the ideological interplays between Marxists (Reds), Fascists (Browns) and Muslims (Greens).

I'm also glad that Ferreri included an extended excerpt from Magdi Allam, the ex-Egyptian -- then more profoundly ex-Muslim -- man of letters who over the years has had many informative insights about the problem of the Islam he grew up with in Cairo, and continued to practice in Rome from 1972 until his wonderfully conspicuous baptism into the Catholic Church by the Pope himself in Vatican Square on an Easter Sunday in 2008 (search "magdi allam" on Jihad Watch through Advanced Google search). 

From the article Ferreri quotes, Magdi provides some interesting perspective and details about the embassy attacks:  

Open your eyes, look who crowded in front of the two embassies and watched the backs of the terrorists who made their way with bombs and rockets. They were men and women, young, adults and elderly, apparently people like all the others. Read what was written on the signs and open Qurans held high up, our condemnation to death for daring insult their prophet. 

Listen carefully to the incitement against the West uttered aloud by the instigators of hatred mingled happily in the crowd. No! It is not a loose cannon! The truth in front of our eyes, that we can hear with our ears, is that this Islamic terrorism is the tip of the iceberg of a widespread and deep-rooted popular reality which legitimizes, supports and finances it. And today, thanks to the success of the so-called 'Arab Spring', it gets full encouragement from ruling Islamic regimes which have not lifted a finger to prevent the attacks. 

The two embassies are located in very central areas, always under the strict control of the security authorities who, somehow, in this circumstance did not intervene. The terrorists have acted undisturbed both during the attack and looting of embassies and when they burned the American flag and replaced it with the black flag of al-Qaida, and finally when they executed the Ambassador Chris Stevens, a diplomat and two marines.