http://townhall.com/columnists/BruceBialosky/2009/11/30/the_world_according_
to_fantasy



The World According to Fantasy
Bruce Bialosky
Monday, November 30, 2009

The Bush era careened into the Obama era and the world cheered. That is what
we are told over and over again. The world has become a more welcome place
for Americans. We have become less belligerent and the world has breathed a
heavy sigh. That is indisputable, incontrovertible knowledge.

That was what I was being told at lunch the other day. My companion was not
some wild-eyed leftist. In the best of times, this gentleman clings to the
middle of the political spectrum. He presently has serious reservations
about Obama, and believes that he is destined to be a one-term president.
Yet when it comes to foreign affairs, somehow Mr. Obama is brightening our
prospects around the world.



In a way my friend is correct. President Bush did not pander to public
opinion in order to enhance his image. If foreign governments acted in a
manner contrary to our national interest, Bush had relatively cool relations
with them. Furthermore, whatever plans he may have wanted to pursue upon
stepping into the Oval Office changed irrevocably on September 11, 2001.

Yet my friend was sucked into this commonly-accepted mindset. Does that
mindset have any basis in reality? It depends on your reality. The
demagogues of the world appear to be happier with Obama, as are the
intellectual elite in Europe, most of whom shared a particular distaste for
Bush. But that was only in parts of Europe.

Certainly Gerhard Schroeder and Jacques Chirac – respectively the former
leaders of Germany and France – used Bush as a political soccer ball to
enhance their own political positions. But they have been replaced by Angela
Merkel in Germany, who enjoyed a warm relationship with Mr. Bush, and
Nicolas Sarkozy in France, who seems to doubt the intellectual capacity and
trustworthiness of Obama. Other close allies of President Bush included
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi as well as Spanish Prime Minister
José María Aznar (who was narrowly defeated for re-election after the Madrid
subway bombing in 2004).

Was the rift with Old Europe triggered entirely by America? Not according to
Lord Charles Powell, an advisor to Prime Ministers Thatcher and Major, who
recently stated that “People like to blame George W. Bush for the trouble in
the transatlantic relations, but Europeans had their part in it.” Europeans
didn’t really understand how deeply 9/11 affected the American psyche. While
they have become used to armies marching back and forth across their
landscape, the attack on the American homeland was unprecedented, and it is
likely that any President would have had disagreements with foreign leaders
because of our reaction in the ensuing decade.

The elitist perspective of unilateral distaste for Bush completely
disregards the admiration for him in the former Soviet Bloc countries. In
Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, Belarus,
Bulgaria, Georgia, Albania and the Baltic States, Bush is viewed as a great
friend and statesman – while Obama is considered questionable. The
perception that the entire world disliked Bush denies the reality of a huge
part of Europe that does not harbor the intellectual elite that interact
with the American Intelligentsia.

In 2008, my wife and I vacationed in Eastern Europe. Having the opportunity
to experience firsthand the hard-earned freedom of the Czech Republic, East
Germany and Poland enriched our lives. In Warsaw, we spoke with the manager
of our hotel, asking his thoughts about the geo-political situation that
confronts Poland. He expressed profound concern about (in his words) “the
Russian Bear’s intentions.” I assured him that unlike their former allies
(such as France), we would help defend Poland and protect her from another
foreign invasion. Little did I know that in less than a year, Obama would
eviscerate much of Poland’s faith in America.

My lunch partner pointed to Russia as a place where Obama would do better
than Bush. Certainly, Bush was mocked for his unsophisticated commentary: “I
looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and
trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of
his soul.” What is often left out is the next line: “He’s a man very
committed to his country and the best interests of his country.” That is the
most important portion of the statement.

Obama has no better chance of working with Russia than Bush did. Russia
today is as it has been for at least four centuries – expansionist. Frankly,
I’m not sure why, since their land mass is the largest in the world, but
they have attempted to overrun and rule their neighbors through various
forms of government. Whether their leaders were Czars, Communists, or
whatever you call the current bunch, they have always been the same – thugs
and expansionists.

John Lehman, who served as Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan,
stated that within thirty days of Reagan’s inaugural, the British and
American Navies swept into Mediterranean waters showing the Soviet Union
that if they played any games, “We would kick their asses.” When you deal
with thugs, you have to show them that you will be tougher than they are.

My friend expressed the commonly-accepted media mantra about what the world
was like during the Bush Administration, and how it will magically improve
under Obama. It is not only seriously wrong, but has caused several
potentially dangerous changes to our foreign policy.

I have some advice for President Obama. The tough tactics being deployed
against his perceived domestic political enemies should be redeployed
overseas. Let me assure you that Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and
Venezuela are a lot more dangerous than Fox News and the health insurance
industry.





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http://townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2009/12/01/why_wont_we_face_irans_
evil



Why Won't We Face Iran's Evil?
Mona Charen
Tuesday, December 01, 2009

When tens of thousands of Iranians took to the streets last spring and
braved the most brutal repression the regime could inflict, Michael Ledeen
was the least surprised man in Washington. In season and out, Ledeen has
chronicled the profound weakness of the mullahocracy and its deep
unpopularity with the Iranian people. Impatiently, year after year, he has
identified opportunities for the United States to help the people of Iran
replace their sinister and menacing rulers. After each new post on the
subject, Ledeen signed off with "Faster please."

In "Accomplice to Evil," Ledeen seems almost out of patience. The failure to
grapple with the challenge of Iran is more than a strategic failure, he
argues; it's a moral failure. Just as few in the democratic countries took
Adolf Hitler at his word when he repeatedly promised to dominate the world
and kill all the Jews, and few could squarely acknowledge the genocidal
lengths to which the communists would go, so today the threat from the
radical Islamists is minimized, whitewashed, or wished away.



Of the Carter administration, Ledeen writes, "The failure to comprehend what
Khomeini was all about contributed mightily to the American debacle in Iran,
and to subsequent failure of American policy, for the policy makers -- from
Carter down -- did not take seriously the possibility that Khomeini might be
worse than the shah." Incomparably worse as it turned out. During the war
with Iraq, Iran sent tens of thousands of children to their deaths
"clearing" minefields. Before departure, they were issued plastic keys -- to
open the gates of paradise.

But Americans have doggedly refused to recognize the nature of the regime or
the Islamist movement it spearheads. Ledeen writes of the Carter State
Department: "In what was to become a great leitmotif of the next 30 years,
American diplomats desperately worked for an agreement at all costs." When
the Iranians presented brutal demands that the U.S. turn over all Iranian
"criminals" who had taken refuge in America, an assistant secretary of state
-- in words that could have been ghostwritten by the current occupant of the
Oval Office -- explained "... the Iranian suspicions of us were only natural
in the post-revolutionary situation ... but after a transition period common
interests could provide a basis for future cooperation."

Even after the regime had held our diplomats hostage in Iran for more than a
year, the Carter administration "approved a series of humiliating
concessions" in the hope of securing their release. It was that way to the
bitter end. On the day before he left office, Carter issued Executive Order
12283, which immunized the Iranian government from lawsuits arising from the
seizure of the embassy.

President Obama deludes himself that "outreach" to the mullahs represents
some sort of new departure in American policy. In fact, every administration
since Carter's has repeatedly attempted to "engage" the mullahs. Even the
Bush administration "pursued accommodation ... as vigorously as any of the
others." From pages 155 to 159, Ledeen lists the scores of publicly reported
meetings between top Iranian and U.S. officials in just the seven years
between 2001 and 2008. One example gives the flavor: On Nov. 17, 2003,
Secretary of State Colin Powell praised the efforts of "my three colleagues,
the EU three, (who) played a very, very helpful role in going to Tehran ...
and coming back with a very, very, positive and productive result."

It was nothing of the kind. But that didn't prevent the Bush administration
from continuing to lower its bucket into this dry well. The Obama
administration, seasoning its approach with fawning genuflections, is taking
accommodation to a new level -- a fact that is not lost on the Iranian
people who chant "Obama. Obama. Either you're with us or you're with them"
as they dodge the batons and bullets of the Basij militia.

Ledeen's advice is to offer strong moral support to the Iranian people.
Reagan's open advocacy for the dissidents in the Soviet empire gave them
courage and hope. He would also supply reliable news about what is happening
in Iran through every available outlet. The Iranians are huge consumers of
Internet news (Farsi is the fourth most common language online), but they
need cell phones, satellite phones, laptops, servers, and BlackBerrys. Every
successful revolution, Ledeen reminds us, "including ours," required outside
assistance. Third, he would destroy the assembly sites for the weapons Iran
is providing to the Taliban, Mahdi Army, and al-Qaida.

Defeating those he has elsewhere called the "terror masters" in Tehran would
drive a stake through the heart of radical Islam. "The defeat of the
principal sponsor sends shock waves through the movement and discredits the
ideology." But only if we can overcome our self-delusions about the enemy
first. Faster please.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/12/01/2009-12-01_so_long_sucker.htm
l



So long, sucker: Good riddance to UN's gullible nuclear watchdog and Iran's
No. 1 patsy

Editorials <http://www.nydailynews.com/authors/Editorials>

Tuesday, December 1st 2009, 4:00 AM


Related News


.Mysterious
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/11/30/2009-11-30_mysterious_sadd
am_channel_hits_iraq_tv.html>  'Saddam Channel' hits Iraqi TV

.Iran
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/11/30/2009-11-30_iran_plans_10_e
nrichment_sites_in_defiance_of_un_white_house_voices_concerns.html>  plans
10 enrichment sites in defiance of UN; White House voices concerns

.Bam
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/12/01/2009-12-01_bam_plan_hea
ls_rift_with_key_advisers.html>  Afghanistan plan heals rift with key
advisers

.Voice
<http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2009/12/01/2009-12-01_voice_of_the_peop
le_for_dec_1_2009.html>  of the People for Dec. 1, 2009

.Senior
<http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2009/12/01/2009-12-01_senior_penta
gon_official_communicated_with_white_house_party_crashers_.html>  Pentagon
official communicated with White House party crashers

.

As of today, Mohamed ElBaradei
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Mohamed+ElBaradei>  is retired as head of
the United <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/United+Nations>  Nations'
chief nuclear watchdog agency after 12 years of service. He gets a gold
watch, a special model that ticks louder and louder as Iran
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Iran>  gets closer and closer to getting
hold of the world's most dangerous weapons.

And this watch is made of fool's gold. For that is what ElBaradei has been:
a dangerous, delusional fool, a man who swallowed lie after lie from Tehran
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Tehran>  and excoriated the U.S.
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/United+States>  for failing to share his
gullibility.

This is the man who, in October 2003, told the BBC
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/British+Broadcasting+Corporation>  he was
"assured that [Iran's leaders] have made a decision to come with [a] full
and complete story of all the nuclear activities in the past, and that they
are absolutely ready now to cooperate fully with us and to demonstrate full
transparency, for us to be able to get all the clarification required."

This is the man who, in February 2008, said on Iranian TV that he expected
"the issue would be solved this year." And who later that month described
Iran's explanations of its suspicious nuclear activities as largely
"consistent with [the IAEA
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/International+Atomic+Energy+Agency> 's]
findings [or at least] not inconsistent."

This is the man who this February boasted, "We have been able to understand
the scope of the most sensitive part of the Iranian program, which is the
enrichment program, which is now under complete agency inspection."

This is the man who in July said, "In many ways, I think the [Iran] threat
has been hyped."

This is the man who, according to France
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/France> , suppressed evidence of Iran's
covert weaponization facility from a report on Tehran's nuke program.

This is the man who last month said, "Israel
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Israel>  is the No. 1 threat to the
Middle East <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Middle+East> ," adding, "Iran
could be a very positive element in the stable Middle East. Iran could be
absolutely essential to stability in Afghanistan
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Afghanistan> , in Iraq
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Iraq> , Syria
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Syria> , Lebanon
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Lebanon> , Palestinian territories."

And now, as he leaves office with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Mahmoud+Ahmadinejad>  nakedly vowing to
build 10 more uranium facilities like the recently revealed one at Qom
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Qom> , ElBaradei has declared:

"It is now well over a year since the agency was last able to engage Iran in
discussions about these outstanding issues. We have effectively reached a
dead end, unless Iran engages fully with us."

And his IAEA has suddenly wised up with a demand that Iran immediately
freeze operations at Qom, amid "serious concern" about possible military
uses of its nuke program.

The record is clear. ElBaradei styled himself a peacemaker of eternal
dimension, got played like a fiddle by the power-mad mullahs and wound up
pushing the planet toward disaster.


Related Topics


.Iran <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Iran>

.International <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/International+Relations>
Relations

.Iranian Politics <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Iranian+Politics>

.Nuclear <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Nuclear+Proliferation>
Proliferation

.Nuclear Weapons <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Nuclear+Weapons>

.Political Policy <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Political+Policy>

.Politics <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Politics>

.World Politics <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/World+Politics>

.Mohamed ElBaradei <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Mohamed+ElBaradei>

.Tehran <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Tehran>

.International
<http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/International+Atomic+Energy+Agency>
Atomic Energy Agency

.Qom <http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Qom>





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-27/why-we-should-scre
en-muslim-soldiers/full/



Why We Should Screen Muslim Soldiers

by Ken Allard <http://www.thedailybeast.com/author/ken-allard/>



Ken Allard

Colonel Ken Allard (US Army, Ret.) is a draftee who eventually served on the
West Point faculty, as Dean of the National War College and as a NATO
peacekeeper in Bosnia. His most recent book,
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591140072/thedaibea-20/> Warheads:
Cable News and the Fog of War, is a memoir of his ten years as an on-air
military analyst with NBC News.

As the Pentagon probes what happened at Fort Hood and Obama readies for a
fresh surge in Afghanistan, retired Col. Ken Allard asks the hard questions
the Army needs to put to Muslim soldiers.

The memorials are behind us. The Pentagon's investigation has only just
begun. With the president set to send a fresh wave of troops into battle in
Afghanistan, it is time to examine the really hard questions confronting us.

Were Army leaders guilty of political correctness in missing obvious warning
signs about the radical Islamist leanings of Major Nidal Malik Hasan, Fort
Hood's accused mass murderer? Was it simple negligence or PC-induced
spinelessness when authorities at Walter Reed Army Medical Center failed to
investigate a psychiatrist-in-training who inexplicably suggested that his
patients be tried as war criminals? Worse yet: Why was such an officer
promoted to major and shipped off to Fort Hood instead of being separated
for cause from the Army's commissioned ranks?

After the Twin Towers fell, religion-specifically Islam-became an ambiguity,
raising questions about the internal order of a military force drawn from a
pluralist society.

Army Chief of Staff General George Casey drew fire immediately after the
attack for urging that the murders at Fort Hood not descend into a "backlash
against some of our Muslim soldiers." In the New York Post last week, Bob
McManus wrote that, because complex military systems require "extraordinary
levels of trust," the Army should suppress "Islamist crackpots" just as it
does swastika-wielding white supremacists. But monitoring the possibility of
divided loyalties among some of our Muslim soldiers is far more complex than
keeping the Klan out of the ranks.

As it did elsewhere, the September 11th attacks blurred traditional military
dividing lines. A soldier's religion had always been a deeply personal
question thought to reinforce basic patriotic values. However, after the
Twin Towers fell, religion-specifically Islam-became an ambiguity, raising
questions about the internal order of a military force drawn from a
pluralist society. Those ambiguities grew more troubling as the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan required soldiers to have a working familiarity with
different Islamic cultures. Muslim soldiers brought clear advantages to our
extended involvement in the Middle East, but the wars also threatened to pit
their patriotic values against their religious ones, with potentially
dangerous consequences. With few clear answers, the avoidance of ambiguity
became a bureaucratic sacrament.

Had it been asked, history might have suggested some useful precedents. The
American military establishment has always had considerable latitude to
maintain good order and discipline-especially when offsetting history's
latest trump card. Even more than religious questions, the American military
tradition has always regarded political judgments with an abiding distaste.
Yet the Cold War demanded uncomfortable new distinctions. Traditional
liberalism was good while democratic socialism provoked the uneasy but
passing grade of neutral. Communism was an easy touchdown: evil incarnate
and the preferred codeword for Russian imperialism. Soldiers with Marxist
leanings had a tough time obtaining security clearances.

Like September 11, the Vietnam War erased many traditional guidelines. It
also redefined the always-uneasy boundaries between patriotism and dissent.
The Army was forced to defend core institutional values while struggling to
apply them to the new uncertainties. A once-segregated Army that came to
appreciate black talent now learned that black nationalism could be
dangerous, especially if accompanied by military indoctrination. Within
limits, peace symbols and anti-war sentiments would be tolerated, but the
Weather Underground and the Red Army Faction were not. The paramount
concern: insuring that such groups did not infiltrate military units. As the
Army recovered from Vietnam, it rediscovered inherent powers to combat
espionage, sedition, and subversion. Throughout the 1970s, it used similar
authorities to discharge soldiers whose backgrounds or behavior made them
unsuited to serve in the newly professional force.

Can that often-overlooked experience provide some useful guidelines in
reducing the currently prevailing ambiguities? Had I been charged with the
responsibility of evaluating Major Hasan's suitability, I believe that these
initial questions might have been relevant.

1. Does this soldier appear to believe that Islam is a religion of peace?
Does he believe that American defense policies are helping or hurting that
general belief system?

There is no more fundamental global conflict than the struggle for the soul
of Islam, fundamentalists on one side and reformers of various persuasions
on the other. When not otherwise engaged in watchful waiting, American
foreign policy routinely distinguishes those countries we can work with from
those we cannot. So why not apply this same kind of distinction while making
critical judgments on personnel security policy?

2. How has this soldier demonstrated recurring actions, patterns, or
observable behaviors that might indicate his real beliefs?

Except for wives (and maybe ex-wives), no person on this earth is competent
to judge the conscience of another. But we routinely base character
judgments on actions, confidence being proportionate to the length of the
track record. Profiling works the same way, the only issue being: How good
is the information on which that profile is based?

3. Is this soldier's retention in the U.S. Army clearly consistent with the
national interest?

Make no mistake. We are all security risks with backgrounds and personal
histories resembling a silhouette of the Rocky Mountains. Those peaks and
valleys translate into strengths and vulnerabilities for us all. We
shouldn't make Muslims into a mysteriously protected class somehow exempt
from scrutiny.

4. Assuming that his service is clearly consistent with the national
interest, do the soldier's religious principles contradict the oath taken to
"uphold the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign
and domestic"?

Professor Jeffrey Addicott, director of the terrorism law center at St.
Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, points out that the oath required
of all commissioned officers imposes no religious test but only a simple
affirmation of the special trust required of those selected for leadership
responsibilities in defending the nation. "If you can't swear to that," he
says, "then 'game over.' "

Finally: If it seems as if I am singling out Muslims-especially those in
uniform-for unusual attention, the answer is yes. But please blame history
rather than me for telling you because, last time we looked, we were not at
war with Lutheran, Baptist or Catholic extremists. (But those Episcopalians
might bear closer scrutiny, too.)

Colonel Ken Allard (US Army, Ret.) is a draftee who eventually served on the
West Point faculty, as dean of the National War College and as a NATO
peacekeeper in Bosnia. His most recent book,
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591140072/thedaibea-20/> Warheads:
Cable News and the Fog of War, is a memoir of his 10 years as an on-air
military analyst with NBC News.







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://townhall.com/columnists/JohnHawkins/2009/12/01/five_more_amateur_mist
akes_by_the_obama_administration



Five More Amateur Mistakes By the Obama Administration
John Hawkins
Tuesday, December 01, 2009

"My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey
of personal discovery." --
<http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/09/rwns_10_favorite_sarah_palin_q.php>
Sarah Palin



Since he has been elected, Barack Obama has been like a four year old
wearing water wings and desperately trying to reach the edge of the pool. In
other words, he has been completely out of his depth. Who could have known
that giving soaring speeches about "hope" and "change" while voting
"present" on the tough issues wouldn't be enough preparation for the most
important job on Planet Earth -- oh wait, millions of Americans knew that
and pointed it out at every opportunity. Unfortunately, the media was too
busy obsessing over Sarah Palin's wardrobe and parody songs on the Rush
Limbaugh show to actually consider whether or not a man whose biggest
accomplishment was winning a Democratic primary against Hillary Clinton was
qualified to be President.

Of course, we can debate Obama's ideological decisions all day. Does the
country need socialized medicine? Should he have pursued that staggeringly
expensive stimulus program? Has he been applying enough pressure on Iran?
The answers to those questions are no, no, and no -- but, there's a more
important question we need to consider: does Barack Obama know what he's
doing?

Early on, the Obama Administration made
<http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/03/my_latest_townhall_column_the_17.php
> a lot of foolish mistakes. Obama selected numerous tax cheats for his
Cabinet. They gave the Russians a button that was supposed to say "reset"--
but that actually said "overcharge." They gave our best allies, the Brits,
25 DVDs of American movie classics -- that were not only wildly
inappropriate, but wouldn't even play in their DVD players. Unfortunately,
those early gaffes have not only continued; they've begun to have more
serious policy implications.

1) What are we trying to do in Honduras? After Fidel Castro wannabe, Manuel
Zelaya, started trying to engineer a rigged vote to overthrow democracy in
Honduras, the rest of the government there sprang into action and bounced
him right out of the country. Bizarrely, the Obama Administration sided with
Zelaya and against democracy in that nation. Eventually, by making it known
that they wouldn't recognize the results of a new election, the Obama
Administration
<http://rightwingnews.com/2009/11/obamas-buffoonery-in-honduras/> seemed to
have Honduras right where they wanted them: they appeared to be on the brink
of putting Zelaya back in power. Puzzlingly, the Obama Administration then
switched course on a dime and made it known that they'd accept the results
of the election whether Zelaya was back in charge or not. In light of the
change in American policy, Honduras went ahead with their elections without
giving power back to Zelaya. There was no explanation for the Obama
Administration's original position, beyond catering to leftist thugs like
Hugo Chavez, and no explanation of their radical shift at the last minute.
If you can figure out what they were trying to accomplish, you should tell
Obama. He's probably still trying to figure it out.

2) Russia's missile defense date dupe: It's bad enough that Barack Obama, in
a display of cowardice that would make Neville Chamberlain wretch,
unhesitatingly tossed the Poles and Czechs over-the-side on missile defense
in an effort to appease Russia. Keep in mind that when we first went into
Iraq, Poland was one of only three other nations to actually put their
troops in harm's way to help us. Their repayment for that act of friendship
and loyalty? We pulled back from building missile defense in their nation
and made the announcement on the
<http://rightwingnews.com/2009/09/why-poland-and-the-czech-republic-were-fed
-to-the-bear/> 70th anniversary of Poland's invasion by Russia in return
for...well, nobody seems to know. There was an unmistakable message that
Russia wanted to send to the small Western European nations on its borders
by making the announcement on that date: It was, "America can't help you
now. Russia owns you." Their message was sent with Obama's help as once
again, he was played for a fool. Since then, Obama has
<http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5AQ3IP20091127> backpeddled
in an effort to fix the damage his bungling caused in the first place. It's
almost as if Obama has no coherent strategy, no idea what he's doing, and is
so far over his head that he doesn't know which way is up. But, it couldn't
be that because if it were, Chris Matthews and the New York Times would be
talking about it on a daily basis -- right?

3) Putting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in New York: No one seems to be
able to give a coherent explanation for the decision making process behind
this. Other terrorists are being put on trial at military tribunals, so why
not Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Why put someone through the American system of
justice when both the President and Attorney General are publicly assuring
everyone that no matter what happens, he can't be found innocent and
released? You think putting KSM in front of a military tribunal, where at
least, theoretically he could be found innocent looks bad? Well now, we're
risking intelligence secrets getting out, increasing the risk of a terrorist
attack on New York, and making it possible KSM might be acquitted on a
technicality for a hearing that makes the greatest system of justice in the
world look like a show trial cooked up by North Korea.

4) Cash for Clunkers: In a nutshell, the Cash for Clunkers program involved
borrowing billions from the Chinese to incentivize Americans to destroy
their working cars in order to buy brand new foreign cars. Although it's
debatable how accurate their data is, according to the Department of
Transportation,
<http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aOvqtH88QaJg> 4 out of
the top 5 models bought in the program were made by foreign car companies.
Moreover, after the program ended, predictably, the sales of new cars
<http://cbs2chicago.com/consumer/cash.clunkers.car.2.1221878.html> dropped
considerably because the program didn't create new demand so much as cause
people to buy a few months earlier than they would have anyway. In other
words, not only did the program fritter away 3 billion dollars in borrowed
money, it led to the destruction of more than a quarter-of-a-million
functional cars that were bought and paid for by the government and could
have been given to the poor or charity. The Obama Administration's reaction
to this debacle? They want to create a
<http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Cash+for+clunkers+II:+Elec
tric+boondoggle&articleId=d3d375a9-59c8-4520-935b-3a0ab838de39> cash for
appliances program. Will they ever, ever, ever learn anything?

5) Why all the bowing? Most Americans find the idea that they should bow to
another person offensive and they find it even more galling when their
President does it. It's almost an insult by proxy. If even your leader is
willing to admit he's inferior, what does it say about you? Obama seemed to
realize this mistake, albeit after the fact, when he bowed to the Saudi
King. Weirdly, even though many Americans actually saw Obama bow on video,
<http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2009/04/my_latest_townhall_column_20_g.php>
the White House simply denied that it happened. How much audacity do you
need to lie about something that tens of millions of Americans have seen
with their own eyes? Even after that experience, Obama went on, in a
grotesque, servile fashion to bow to both the Emperor of Japan
<http://rightwingnews.com/2009/11/obamas-servile-bowing-has-gone-too-far/>
and the Chinese Prime Minister. It was a pointless, humiliating display that
quite frankly, made many Americans embarrassed for him as a man and slightly
ashamed that we have such a weakling in the White House.







[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100018459/at-midnight-last-ni
ght-the-united-kingdom-ceased-to-be-a-sovereign-state/


At midnight last night, the United Kingdom ceased to be a sovereign state


By Daniel Hannan
December 1st, 2009

We woke up in a different country today. Alright, it doesn't look very
different. The trees still seem black against the winter sun; the
motorways continue to jam inexplicably; commuters carry on avoiding
eye contact. But Britain is no longer a sovereign nation. At midnight
last night, we ceased to be an independent state, bound by
international treaties to other independent states, and became instead
a subordinate unit within a European state.

Yes, a European state. Take a quick dekko at the definition set out in
Article One of the1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties
of States: "The state as a person of international law should possess
the following qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a
defined territory; (c) government; and (d) capacity to enter into
relations with the other states."

Until yesterday, the EU qualified on grounds (a), (b) and (c). Now it
has ticked the final box. Under the Lisbon Treaty, which came into
force today, it acquires "legal personality", which gives it the right
to sign accords and treat with other states. Nor is this right simply
theoretical: the EU now has a foreign minister, a diplomatic corps
(the European External Action Service) and 160 overseas embassies.

Until yesterday, the EU could not annex additional policy areas
without a new treaty, which needed to be ratified by all its
constituent nations. Now, it has the so-called "passerelle" clause, or
self-amending mechanism. Parliament, in other words, no longer has the
final say on extensions of EU jurisdiction. The EU derives its
authority, not from its 27 members, but from its own foundational
texts.

Until yesterday, Britain could simply walk out of the EU by abrogating
the Treaty of Rome and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act.
Henceforth, it will have to go through the secession procedure laid
down in Lisbon. In other words - in the minds of Euro-lawyers, at any
rate, if not of British constitutionalists - the EU gets to settle the
terms on which its members are allowed to leave. Formal sovereignty
has been shifted from the national capitals to Brussels.

It is appalling, demeaning, disgraceful that such a thing should have
been done without popular consent, and in the absence of the
referendum that all three parties had promised. "There's no point in
crying over spilt milk," you might say. True. But there is every point
in mopping it up.

http://www.newswithviews.com/Ryter/jon303.htm



FORGOT THE PAST? HERE'S THE FUTURE





By Jon Christian Ryter
December 2, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

On Nov. 1, 2008. three days before the presidential election, Democratic
Sen. Barack Hussein Obama led Sen. John McCain by 4 percentage points. Obama
came out of the Democratic National Convention with a 15-point lead over
McCain-and with a sworn statement by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi [CA] who, as
the Chairman of the Democratic National Convention, was required to certify
that the nominee had been properly vetted and verify that Barack Hussein
Obama met the requirements of Article II of the Constitution and was
eligible to seek the office of President of the United States. Her signed
statement was a sworn oath. So much for honesty in the office of the Speaker
of the House of Representatives.

As he campaigned for the highest office in the land, Obama promised black
voters that he would restore the generational entitlement system that was
dismantled during the Republican Revolution of 1994. He added that his first
priority, once he took office, would be the redistribution of the wealth of
"the rich." Thus far, that's the only campaign promise Obama has kept. To
you and me, and to the minorities to whom he made that pledge-whose combined
backbreaking sweat equity built this nation- "the rich" are the fat cat
industrialists who own the companies, the Wall Street investment bankers,
stock brokers and hedge fund operators like Paul Alfred Paulson who
personally earned $4 billion in 2008 short selling the stocks in your 401K
retirement fund (which is why you can't retire anytime soon), or the
executives at AIG, or CitiBank or JP Morgan Chase who earn seven-digit
incomes only because they are part of the entitled elite. (Back in my
younger days when I earned about $45K, my boss earned about a half million
per year and paid Uncle Sam less income taxes than I did).

Since the rich are as invisible to the media as they are to the politicians
they have enriched with the gratuities that keep them in office, to the
social progressives, the term "rich" refers to working class Americans who
are actually upper "middle class." Politicians always talk about taxing the
rich because the working class likes the idea of the rich being soaked. The
problem is, the wealth of the rich sit in tax exempt trust funds. Only the
money spent by the rich for their personal comforts, and the simple interest
on those funds are taxable. Rich, to a politician is the small business
owner who has the potential to grow his business enough to compete with the
true rich. Which, of course is why they want to tax him into oblivion. The
fact that taxing him to excess means you and I lose our jobs means nothing
to them because the "jingle" in their pockets sings to the tune of the
invisible rich. But, don't worry. The politicians will take care of you by
extending your unemployment benefits an additional 13 to 26 weeks.

To the elite, we are the "rich" because we are "accidentally well-off."
Thus, when a politician talks about taxing the rich, he's talking about us
regardless which side of his mouth the words come. The rich fear the middle
class because that's the only segment of society which threatens their grip
on the serfdom (referred to today as "the low income working class-and
tomorrow, the rest of us"). Try as hard as the historic pilgrim stock rich
families in America did to make the US Senate an American "House of Lords,"
and the House of Representatives the commoners' legislative body, the middle
class keeps getting elected into the Senate. The true rich in this nation
are economically invisible because they want to be invisible.

Thus, when politicians talk about taxing the rich, they always mean they are
going to tax the middle class. Even when the candidate assures the voters
that if their household incomes are less than $250 thousand, they will not
face any increased taxes. Without looking at any of the tax increases
planned for those earning $30 thousand-and-up by the Obama Administration,
the three "stimulus bills" already enacted: the Emergency Economic
Stabilization Act of 2008, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and
the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 total three trillion,
five hundred and seventy-nine billion dollars which will be paid for by the
middle class because the truly rich are, once again, invisible-even to the
IRS-since their money is sheltered in tax-exempt foundations.

When Obama addressed the NAACP in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 14, 2008 he told
them when-not if-he won the White House, speaking as a man with
foreknowledge that he was going to win the election, he was going to
redistribute the wealth of America. Obama will deny he knew that ACORN and
MoveOn.org's "Motor Voter" efforts would create 35,626,580 illegal votes for
him, so regardless how many conservatives or liberals voted for Sarah Palin
and, by extension, Sen. John McCain, his Progressive handlers assured him
that, at the end of the day, he would become the 44th President of the
United States. In the end, when you do the math, the statistics released by
the Obama Administration on the Election of 2008 indicate there were 169
million registered voters of which 86 million were registered as Democrats,
55 million were registered as Republicans and 28 million were registered as
Independents.

The FEC reported that 56.8% of the registered voters voted. That's
96,992,000 actual votes cast by registered voters who voted once. But the
total number of ballots in the ballot boxes totaled 132,618,580. It appears
that a lot of people voted a lot of times, (or a whole big big bunch of
ballots in a whole big bunch of States were simply added to the mix before
or after-the-fact and counted with the legitimate ballots). Regardless how
they got there, when you do the simple math, there were 35,626,580 too many
votes counted. Obama was credited with receiving 69,456,897 votes. Subtract
the 35,626,580 "too many votes" and we find 33,830,317 legitimate votes cast
for Obama. The Progressive far left is comprised of about 31,820.000 people
who would vote for a Marxist Muslim. That leaves about 2,030,317 independent
voters who cast their votes for Obama. Four million, nine hundred
thirty-four thousand, eight hundred fourteen Independents voted for
Palin-McCain. The media claims that the Independents-all 28 million of
them-voted for Obama. Surprisingly, with all the third party rhetoric, only
1,866,000 of them voted for one of the third party candidates.

Approximately 19,158,869 of them sat out the election because the best that
I can see, their votes don't show up anywhere. I guess when we want to blame
Obama on someone, those were the people who gave their votes to Obama by
default by not casting them for Palin-McCain (since almost every Republican
vote in 2008 was cast for Alaska governor Gov. Sarah Palin, not Sen.
McCain.) Had the registered independents who did not vote cast their ballot
for Palin-McCain, your tax dollars would not be sitting in the personal bank
accounts of America's money barons and your great, great, great
grandchildren would not be up to their ears in debt the moment they were
born. I understand it was the intent of the Independents to punish the GOP
for becoming Democrats. But, in the end, since the only people who got
punished were us, it would seem that voting for the lesser-of-two-evils
would have been a much wiser choice for the American people. Hopefully each
of those Americans who chose to teach the Republican Party a lesson can
explain to their children how casting a vote for integrity cost each child
and grandchild not yet born $36,000 in taxpayer debt on the day of their
birth.

But, that's why Obama was so confident about winning when he stood before
the NAACP on July 14, 2008. He assured the gathering at the 99th Annual
NAACP Conference that the redistribution of the wealth of America would
begin as soon as he was inaugurated in order "...to ensure [that] economic
justice is being served."

He wasn't talking about recasting a broader welfare net like Peggy Joseph
envisioned when she took her daughter out of school on Oct. 30, 2008 to
attend a Florida Obama-Biden rally, and remarked to a NBC-TV Channel 6
reporter that this was the most memorable day in her life because when Obama
won, she wouldn't "...have to worry about putting gas in my car; I won't
have to worry about paying my mortgage. You know," she concluded, "if I help
them, they're going to help me." While Obama has increased the size of the
Lyndon B. Johnson welfare net, his redistribution-of-the-wealth plan was not
directed people like Peggy Joseph, the outspoken welfare mom, nor to
minorities of any stripe. It was directed at the invisible elite who already
own almost everything in the world and who, now, want to own the rest.

While the Progressive far left 111th Congress has already expanded the
welfare system, it is unlikely they will restore generational welfare for
the minority underclass because in the communist world all members of
society must contribute their labor. Speaking of Labor, the first major
recipient of Obama's largess with our children's money, was the government's
own labor union, the Service Employees International Union [SEIU]. SEIU,
which bargains for all local, county, State and federal employees, is the
fastest growing labor union in the world The SEIU, whose revenue-stream
comes from the taxpayers in the form of dues from its members and grants
from the federal government, donated $61 million of your money to the Obama
campaign during the past election. SEIU thugs harassed Obamacare protesters,
and they were almost the sole attendees at the well-publicized Obama
healthcare rallies where it appeared everyone was in favor of Obamacare. Of
course SEIU is in favor of Obamacare because, like the federal government,
their version of the plan doesn't contain the rationing the rest of us will
endure if Obamacare becomes law. SEIU members will move to the front of the
line. Taxpaying double dippers (seniors on Medicare who are also Social
Security recipients) will move to the back of the line where they will
remain, in perpetual limbo, waiting for medical care that will never come.

In the end, the minorities who knocked on doors, supported Obama by
attending his rallies and, in the end, cast their vote for the "brother,"
are now wondering why they still have to pay their own mortgages, make their
own car payments and, of course, put gas in their own cars. Because, for
most of them, the stimulus bills which supposedly put some $3,579,000,000.00
into the economy hasn't put anything in their pockets. And, the legislation
that was supposed to guarantee African-Americans and other minorities would
stand at the head-of-the-line for all of the government construction
projects, are still jobless. What's more, they have little or no prospects
of finding a job. Nationwide, 34.5% of all young black men 25-tears of age
or less are out of work in a world where the universal unemployment rate
(depending on whose survey you are reading is between 11.4 to 12.9%). If I
was a young Black man, I'd be asking the Black brother at 1600 Pennsylvania
Avenue why, with all of his promises about redistributing the wealth, the
unemployment rate for young Black men is three times the published rate of
unemployment for the universal population in the United States. Could it be,
maybe, that instead of redistributing the wealth to the poor Black guys,
Obama gave the money to the rich White guys?

The problem most blacks experience in finding jobs is that they live in a
nation where at least 34 million Americans are now out of work and job
hunting. And 15 million illegal aliens are stealing what jobs are available
by working for serf wages at minimum wage or below that US citizens-Black or
White-who are paying a mortgage, making a car payment and paying taxes
simply couldn't afford to work for. Most job hunting young Blacks, who speak
"Ebony English" (Ebonics) instead of American English, have learned through
experience they are the last to be hired and the first to be fired when
things get tough. In good times, before the housing collapse that was caused
by greedy mortgage brokers and the Fed which forced the banks holding those
mortgages to reduce the value of their mortgage assets when the subprime
collapse happened, creating the financial crisis. The sale of housing
skidded to a halt. The collapse of the construction market, manufacturing,
the hospitality industry and retail are disproportionately impacting 17 to
35 year olds who generally populate these work environments. These are the
areas where most African American workers were employed.

If you recall, on Jan. 7, 2009-two days after the 111th Congress was
installed-Obama Economic Advisor Robert Reich testified before Charlie
Rangel's House Ways & Means Committee, detailing to Rangel's committee how
he envisioned Obama's infrastructure spending should play out. He insisted
that spending should target projects that "...have a high social return that
also can be done with the greatest possible speed..." and that the jobs
being created "...simply not go to high-skilled people who are already
professionals, or to white male construction workers." Rangel agreed, noting
it was imperative to "...get the money where the hemorrhages are. At the end
of the day," he noted, "we know where the joblessness is, where the fears
are, and we can get the federal formulas to get the relief to those
communities. We don't have to worry about the what the middle class is going
to do. Things are so bad they have to put food on the tables..." to pay
attention to what the Democrats were loading into the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009.

When the legislation, which did not get a single Republican vote, was
enacted and signed into law by Obama, it stipulated that [a] all jobs
created by the stimulus bill would be union jobs, and [b] minorities and
women would get the jobs. I find it interesting, with the Obama
Administration claiming they created, or saved, millions of private sector
jobs the General Accounting Office has been able to document zero job
creation, and with 8 million Americans losing their jobs since the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 became law, it's safe to assume no
jobs were saved, either.

The stimulus money pool that was legislated by the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009 which was going to create a virtual tsunami of
employment for Black Americans where Rangel and the Democrats "...knew the
joblessness existed" was diverted like a dam diverts a river. Instead of
creating jobs for his unemployed Black brothers, Obama funneled the money
stream into the hands of America's most powerful bankers and forced General
Motors and Chrysler to surrender the ownership of their companies to the US
government, with the largest block of shares going to-you guessed it-SEIU,
which will shortly take over the United Auto Workers which represents what
auto workers are left in this country.

The Democrats insist that the Black unemployment rate is three times the
rate of the White workers because racism is at play, and that's why they
don't get called back for jobs after their interviews-providing they are
even interviewed. First, let's all of us understand one thing. There aren't
any jobs. Why? Because the $789 billion in stimulus money that was supposed
to create jobs in the United States was given to the bankers and
industrialists who are investing 100% of their financial efforts in the
emerging nations where tomorrow's consumers live. The bulk of those dollars
simply weren't invested in the United States. When asked by the GOP how many
jobs he created, Obama's economic advisors and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis
simply pulled numbers out of midair. The media reported them as fact. They
just weren't good enough for the General Accounting Office which finally
conceded the White House may have created 50 thousand jobs and perhaps saved
another 50 thousand even though there was no evidence that any jobs had been
created nor saved because of the stimulus plan-particularly since 8 million
Americans lost their jobs since Obama took up residency in the White House.

Princeton University sociology professor Devah Pager told the Washington
Post in a recent interview that "...Black men [are] less likely to receive a
callback or job offer than equally qualified white men." The problem may
well be that most of those young Black job applicants speak Ebony English as
their first language and they simply don't have a second one. And, far too
often (if the interview doesn't require a suit and tie) the job interview
dress code consists of pants (whether trousers or jeans) whose waistband is
about jock strap level with boxer shorts at waist level. Small business
owners (about the only "new hire" employers left in America) are too
image-conscious to hire employees who cannot speak American English
fluently. (Nor, by the way, will they hire White applicants with spiked
hair; pierced tongues, noses, brows or cheeks; or tattooed like a carney
sideshow attraction.)

Smart business owners hire people based not on ethnicentricity but on the
perceived work ethics of the applicant, their appearance and their ability
to communicate cogently during the interview. If you think that's not so,
remember this. There is a thriving black middle class in America. Most of
those who own their own businesses will always hire an articulate white
employee before they hire a black applicant whose first or only language is
Ebony English. Like their white counterparts, they are in business to make
money. And whom they employ to represent them is a reflection on their
character.

Ebonics suggests either an unintelligent or at least uneducated person.
While it may not be true, those who choose the gangsta appearance and an
ebonics vernacular suggest poor math skills and weak work ethics. In Pager's
view it's simply racism. Pager told the Post that in her own studies in
Milwaukee and New York a few years ago she concluded that "...Black men with
a clean record fare no better [in the job market] than white men just
released from prison." Pager needs to take off her Princeton shades and look
around. This economy is affecting every American: male, female, Black,
White, Hispanic, Asian, or European. Over 15 million US jobs-including the
factories which employed them-left the United States for the emerging third
world nations where 80% of the world's potential consumers await the jobs
being exported from the United States. Unlike the US and western European
replacement markets, which have reached a product saturation level of about
99%, in the emerging nations, consumers possess virtually no modern consumer
products and need everything. Especially jobs to provide the income to buy
the goods they need.

I think if I was one of Obama's Black brothers, I'd be asking for my vote
back. But more than that, if the Black brothers can forego Ebony English in
favor of American English and take a real close look at what the Brother in
the White House is doing, they will start asking questions of the
public-at-large instead of the black precinct bosses who treat them like
slaves shackled to the public feeding trough. When they stop and really
think about it, they're going to realize they've been Obamaized.

The Democratic Party used them once again. Only this time, there will be no
Yellow Brick Road leading to a Black Utopia. When Obama completes the task
of converting freedom to communism, the brothers will not be riding down
that Yellow Brick Road in a new Cadillac. They will learn what the Russian
people learned in 1917, the Italians learned in 1922, the Germans learned in
1934, the Chinese learned in 1946, the North Koreans learned in 1948 and the
Cubans learned in 1957. Work or starve. There will be no free ride except
for the rich. They will own the Yellow Brick Road and the rest of us will be
traveling in the opposite direction on the rutted, potholed dirt roads to
oblivion.

I don't think Black America wants their country converted into a Marxist
nation anymore than White America. Perhaps its time for Black America to
bond with White America and find a government that actually works for all
the people. That is, after all, what the Constitution tried to create.
Greedy men thwarted that plan. It's past time to take our nation back. The
way I figure it, we have one election left to change our lot. That election
occurs in Nov., 2010. If we don't take Congress away from the Social
Progressives in 2010, the Election of 2012 will be the last election of a
dying nation. And remember this...when you vote in Nov., 2010, you aren't
voting for yourself...you're voting for your children and grandchildren.
Don't let them grow up in a communist world, thinking that their fathers and
grandfathers voted their conscience in 2010 and lost a country.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/another_spying_scandal_a
t_gitmo_I7hKkTOEivnunImP6QY4gI



Dec. 1, 2009, 2:29 PM home

Another spying scandal at Gitmo

By PAUL SPERRY

Last Updated: 2:29 PM, December 1, 2009

Posted: 12:48 AM, December 1, 2009

A number of Arabic and Pashtu interpreters at the terror-war detention
center at Guantanamo Bay are under active investigation for omitting
valuable intelligence from their translations of detainee interrogations,
among other security breaches. This could taint some of the evidence at the
"9/11 trial" in New York and proceedings against other detainees.

Remarkably, the Pentagon never cleaned up the "mole infestation" at its
highest-security facility after the FBI busted a Muslim spy ring at Gitmo in
2003.

The 2003 probe involved at least two Arabic interpreters with high-level
security clearance. Senior Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, a Syrian native, and
former Army linguist Ahmed Mehalba, an Egyptian native, were later convicted
of stealing or mishandling classified documents.

Six years later comes a new problem with Muslim personnel who have virtually
unfettered access to detainees and intelligence at Gitmo. Professional
military security and intelligence officials at Gitmo did the preliminary
probe, then prepared a classified summary and are now briefing top officials
and members of Congress in Washington. An active FBI criminal probe is also
under way.

The possible new spy ring involves several Arabic linguists, some also
Egyptian and Syrian immigrants. They're suspected of, among other things:

* Omitting valuable intelligence from their translations of interrogations.

* Slipping notes to detainees inside copies of the Koran.

* Coaching detainees to make allegations of abuse against interrogators.

* Meeting with suspects on the terror watchlist while back in the United
States.

Officials say some of the suspected "dirty" linguists -- who met privately
in a locked mosque at Gitmo -- have had access to 9/11 mastermind Khalid
Sheik Mohammed and other high-value al Qaeda detainees.

"Three years of investigations have revealed the presence of
pro-jihad/anti-Western activities among the civilian-contractor and
military-linguist population serving Joint Task Force Guantanamo," states a
copy of a classified Gitmo briefing, prepared in May for the FBI, CIA and
Congress' intelligence committees.

The report explains that dirty Arabic linguists have gathered classified
data involving detainees, interrogations and security operations in an
effort to "disrupt" Gitmo operations and US "intelligence-collection
capabilities."

It goes on to specifically finger the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist
organization. The US operations and front groups of the Egypt-based
brotherhood are the subject of my recently released book, "Muslim Mafia,"
which first revealed the contents of the secret Gitmo report.

"These actions are deliberate, carefully planned, global, and to the benefit
of the detainees and multiple terrorist organizations, to include al Qaeda
and Muslim Brotherhood," the briefing states.

How did this happen at the highest security facility in the world? In the
wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, US officials went from waterboarding
terrorists to handing them prayer rugs and Korans, while calling them to
prayer five times a day. Pentagon political correctness dictated turning a
blind eye to any questions of loyalty among Muslim linguists and chaplains.

Compromised interrogations could affect releases and trials -- and the
problems go much further.

At least one in seven former Gitmo detainees has returned to terrorism or
militant activity. Some recidivists had met with the suspect Muslim
translators. Others were privately counseled by Muslim chaplains and lay
leaders also under investigation for security breaches.

If they fed intelligence to these repatriated detainees, then al Qaeda and
the Taliban may know what we know about them and adjust accordingly.

Prisoners released from Gitmo are allowed to keep their Korans -- and it's
camp policy not to search the holy books. Non-Muslim personnel can't even
touch them. There's no telling what military secrets have been compromised.

Also in question is just how far the enemy has penetrated our critical
foreign-language program -- not just at Gitmo, but across the entire
national security and intelligence complex. Many Arabic linguists are
contractors who rotate in and out of the federal security agencies leading
the War on Terror.

To prevent future betrayal, the government must reevaluate its
security-clearance and hiring procedures for contract and military
linguists. Post-hiring, it must institute periodic security interviews,
polygraph exams and database-access audits for each translator.

More immediately, it must review key translations on the shelf for accuracy,
using trustworthy translators -- and subject new translations to
spot-checking in a stringent quality-assurance program.

The translation of intelligence against our enemy -- evidence that will now
be tested in civilian court -- can no longer be blindly entrusted to
individuals with possibly divided loyalties.

Paul Sperry, a Hoover Institution media fellow, is author of "Infiltration"
and the new book "Muslim Mafia." Sperry@...





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This is a joke.  One can not "talk" to Muslims about anything.



B



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578386,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r2:
c0.000000:b0:z5




Plan Calls for Teen Christian Convert, Muslim Parents to Talk About Religion


Wednesday, December 02, 2009 http://www.foxnews.com/images/foxnews_story.gif

The runaway teen Muslim convert to Christianity who made national headlines
when she ran away should talk to her parents about religion when they are
reunited, according to a proposal filed in Ohio.

A government caseworker outlined a plan calling for
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578386,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r2
:c0.000000:b0:z5> Rifqa
Baryhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2_bing.gif, 17, and her parents
to listen to each other's views on religion.

Bary needs to hear out her parents' explanation of their beliefs when she
goes home, according to the proposal filed in
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578386,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r2
:c0.000000:b0:z5> Franklin
Countyhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2_bing.gif Juvenile Court. In
turn, her parents must listen to Bary explain her newfound Christianity.

The goal is for both sides to better understand why the teenager ran away to
Florida over the summer and stayed with a Christian family she met online.


<http://www.foxnews.com/slideshow/us/2009/10/15/christian-convert-fears-fami
ly> SLIDESHOW: Christian Convert Fears Family

Bary has said she feared her father would harm or kill her for converting
from Islam. Her father has denied the claim. A
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578386,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r2
:c0.000000:b0:z5> Florida Department of Law
Enforcementhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2_bing.gif investigation
found no credible threats to the girl.

The plan leaves open the possibility that the girl may never return home.

Bary was sent back to Ohio last month, where she is in the care of the
county children's services agency. Her phone and Internet usage is being
closely monitored to comply with a judge's ruling.

Bary, of suburban New Albany, disappeared July 19. Police used phone and
computer records to track her to the Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of Orlando,
Fla.-based
<http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,578386,00.html?loomia_ow=t0:s0:a4:g4:r2
:c0.000000:b0:z5> Global Revolution
Churchhttp://images.intellitxt.com/ast/adTypes/2_bing.gif.

Authorities said the teen had met him through a prayer group on Facebook.





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http://tinyurl.com/yczygyb




Former Muslims United Applauds Swiss referendum Victory banning
Minarets-"the bayonets of Islam"


By editor
<http://formermuslimsunited.americancommunityexchange.org/author/editor/>  .
on December 1, 2009



Supporters of a ban claim that allowing minarets would represent the growth
of an ideology and a legal system - Sharia law - which are incompatible with
Swiss democracy. The Swiss Referendum victory drew a red line against
Islamization in Europe."

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 2009
Contact: Nonie Darwish
ndarwish@...

Former Muslims United Applauds Swiss referendum Victory banning
Minarets-"the bayonets of Islam"

Nonie Darwish, executive director and co-founder of Former Muslims United
(FMU) applauded the results of a Swiss Republic referendum banning the
construction of minarets among the approximately 150 Mosques serving 400,000
Muslims in Switzerland. Minarets are Muslim towers to call the faithful to
prayers through loud speakers five times daily. These towers are symbols to
both Muslims and non-Muslims of the Islamization of Europe, America and
other Western democracies.

Ms. Darwish of FMU said: "the Swiss referendum victory is the equivalent of
banning what Turkish PM Erdogan called: 'the bayonets of Islam.' Supporters
of a ban claim that allowing minarets would represent the growth of an
ideology and a legal system - Sharia law - which are incompatible with Swiss
democracy. The Swiss Referendum victory drew a red line against Islamization
in Europe."

She also noted that "this referendum victory is a credit to Swiss citizens,
especially women voters who viewed construction of Minarets as leading to
adoption of other graphic elements of Sharia law including wearing of burkas
in public by Muslim women." Darwish also pointed out that polls taken after
the victory in the Swiss Referendum in neighboring Germany indicated that a
similar effort there might win a plurality of votes.

Darwish added that "many Muslim groups are denouncing the ban as oppression
to freedom of religion. However, such Muslim groups will be more credible if
they first denounced the oppression of religious minorities in Muslim
countries who make it illegal to practice any religion other than Islam.
Muslim groups who claim that they are oppressed in Europe should be the
first to stand up and yell "not in the name of my religion" when Churches
are burned in Muslim countries. But instead all we hear from Muslim groups
is "I am a victim" and "I am offended" while the blood of non-Muslims is
being shed in the name of Sharia.

Former Muslims United is a US-based civil rights organization with the goals
of seeking the protecting the human and civil rights of Apostates from Islam
in accordance with the laws of the United States and its Constitution.

Co-founders of Former Muslims United
Nonie Darwish Ibn Warraq Amil Imani Wafa Sultan Mohammed Asghar Mano Bakh
Walid Shoebat

For more information on Former Muslims United go to its website at:
www.formermuslimsunited.americancommunityexchange.org/
<http://http:/formermuslimsunited.americancommunityexchange.org/>





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/12/02/officials-dispute-suggestion-afgh
anistan-surge-ordered-fight-al-qaeda/



December 02, 2009

30,000 U.S. Troops Not Fighting 100 Al Qaeda Terrorists, Officials Insist

Intelligence officials on Wednesday disputed suggestions that President
Obama is sending 30,000 more troops just to fight 100 Al Qaeda operatives
estimated to be remaining in Afghanistan, arguing that their influence with
the Taliban makes them far more harmful than their numbers would indicate.

Intelligence officials on Wednesday disputed suggestions that President
Obama is sending 30,000 more troops just to fight 100 Al Qaeda operatives
estimated to be remaining in Afghanistan, arguing that their influence with
the thousands-strong Taliban makes them far more harmful than their numbers
would indicate.

The officials responded after an ABC News story referred to the intelligence
community estimate on the number of Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan as
"Obama's secret," and something he deliberately omitted mentioning in his
speech Tuesday night.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., invoked the 100 figure in her response to
Obama's Afghanistan strategy speech Tuesday night.

"I do not support adding more troops because there are now 200,000 American,
NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 Al
Qaeda," she said in a written statement.

But officials called any suggestion that the surge is meant to fight 100
terrorist operatives irresponsible.

While intelligence officials confirmed that only about 100 Al Qaeda
operatives remain in Afghanistan and their "center of gravity" is in
Pakistan, they said "their leadership works tightly with leaders of the
Afghan Taliban."

In other words, the Taliban are taking orders from the few Al Qaeda members
in the region. Between the two countries, there are only thought to be
several hundred Al Qaeda members.

The Taliban follow a brutal version of strict Wahhabi Islamic law, banning
all "un-Islamic" activity and committing numerous human rights violations,
including restricting all freedom for women. Al Qaeda's goal to divorce all
Muslim countries from foreign influence would be warmly received by a
Taliban-led government in Afghanistan, as was the case in the 1990s.

Top officials on Wednesday defended Obama's surge decision, arguing that the
U.S. military needs to take on the Taliban as a way to keep Afghanistan from
falling into hands that Al Qaeda can exploit.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the U.S. "cannot
afford" to allow the Taliban to restore Al Qaeda's safe haven inside
Afghanistan.

"The Taliban and Al Qaeda, while separate, are two peas in a pod," Rice told
Fox News.

Top military officials have for months estimated that the actual number of
Al Qaeda operatives in the region is small.

National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones said in an interview in October
that Al Qaeda was "very diminished" in Afghanistan, that fewer than 100 were
left, and that they were not able to launch attacks on the United States or
its allies from the country.





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12/02/2009 12:58 PM


Opinion


Searching in Vain for the Obama Magic


By Gabor Steingart <mailto:steingartdebate@...>

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his
Tuesday address announcing America's new strategy for Afghanistan. It seemed
like a campaign speech combined with Bush rhetoric -- and left both dreamers
and realists feeling distraught.

One can hardly blame the West Point leadership. The academy commanders did
their best to ensure that Commander-in-Chief
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,664682,00.html>  Barack
Obama's speech would be well-received.

Just minutes before the president took the stage inside Eisenhower Hall, the
gathered cadets were asked to respond "enthusiastically" to the speech. But
it didn't help: The soldiers' reception was cool.

One didn't have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon
hearing Obama's
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,664708,00.html>  speech.
It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of
responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He
demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan
<http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,k-6948,00.html>  -- and
then they will march right back out again. America is going to war -- and
from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War
Prize laureate.

Just in Time for the Campaign

For each troop movement, Obama had a number to match. US strength in
Afghanistan will be tripled relative to the Bush years, a fact that is sure
to impress hawks in America. But just 18 months later, just in time for
Obama's re-election campaign, the horror of war is to end and the draw down
will begin. The doves of peace will be let free.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of
his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of
ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said,
before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised
that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to
the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was
"corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will
have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and
fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution:
Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the
left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

Obama's Magic No Longer Works

But in this case, the public was more disturbed than entertained. Indeed,
one could see the phenomenon in a number of places in recent weeks: Obama's
magic no longer works. The allure of his words has grown weaker.

It is not he himself who has changed, but rather the benchmark used to
evaluate him. For a president, the unit of measurement is real life. A
leader is seen by citizens through the prism of their lives -- their job,
their household budget, where they live and suffer. And, in the case of the
war on terror, where they sometimes die.

Political dreams and yearnings for the future belong elsewhere. That was
where the political charmer Obama was able to successfully capture the
imaginations of millions of voters. It is a place where campaigners --
particularly those with a talent for oration -- are fond of taking refuge.
It is also where Obama set up his campaign headquarters, in an enormous tent
called "Hope."

In his speech on America's new Afghanistan strategy, Obama tried to speak to
both places. It was two speeches in one. That is why it felt so false. Both
dreamers and realists were left feeling distraught.

The American president doesn't need any opponents at the moment. He's
already got himself.





URL:






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/01/blackwater-201001?printa
ble=true




Tycoon, Contractor, Soldier, Spy


Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination
program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut
Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery
accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set
for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal
takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing
the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror.


By Adam Ciralsky


January 2010


http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/blackwater-1001-01.jpg

Erik Prince, founder of the Blackwater security firm (recently renamed Xe),
at the company’s Virginia offices. Photograph by Nigel Parry.



Iput myself and my company at the C.I.A.’s disposal for some very risky
missions,” says Erik Prince as he surveys his heavily fortified, 7,000-acre
compound in rural Moyock, North Carolina. “But when it became politically
expedient to do so, someone threw me under the bus.” Prince—the founder of
Blackwater, the world’s most notorious private military contractor—is
royally steamed. He wants to vent. And he wants you to hear him vent.

Erik Prince has an image problem—the kind that’s impervious to a Madison
Avenue makeover. The 40-year-old heir to a Michigan auto-parts fortune, and
a former navy seal, he has had the distinction of being vilified recently
both in life and in art. In Washington, Prince has become a scapegoat for
some of the Bush administration’s misadventures in Iraq—though Blackwater’s
own deeds have also come in for withering criticism. Congressmen and
lawyers, human-rights groups and pundits, have described Prince as a war
profiteer, one who has assembled a rogue fighting force capable of toppling
governments. His employees have been repeatedly accused of using excessive,
even deadly force in Iraq; many Iraqis, in fact, have died during encounters
with Blackwater. And in November, as a North Carolina grand jury was
considering a raft of charges against the company, as a half-dozen civil
suits were brewing in Virginia, and as five former Blackwater staffers were
preparing for trial for their roles in the deaths of 17 Iraqis, The New York
Times reported in a page-one story that Prince’s firm, in the aftermath of
the tragedy, had sought to bribe Iraqi officials for their compliance,
charges which Prince calls “lies … undocumented, unsubstantiated [and]
anonymous.” (So infamous is the Blackwater brand that even the Taliban have
floated far-fetched conspiracy theories, accusing the company of engaging in
suicide bombings in Pakistan.)

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/headers/001_alsoonvfcom_220px.gif
<http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/war-watch/>
http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/war-watch.jpg

In Hollywood, meanwhile, a town that loves nothing so much as a good
villain, Prince, with his blond crop and Daniel Craig mien, has become the
screenwriters’ darling. In the film State of Play, a Blackwater clone
(PointCorp.) uses its network of mercenaries for illegal surveillance and
murder. On the Fox series 24, Jon Voight has played Jonas Hodges, a thinly
veiled version of Prince, whose company (Starkwood) helps an African warlord
procure nerve gas for use against U.S. targets.

But the truth about Prince may be orders of magnitude stranger than fiction.
For the past six years, he appears to have led an astonishing double life.
Publicly, he has served as Blackwater’s C.E.O. and chairman. Privately, and
secretly, he has been doing the C.I.A.’s bidding, helping to craft, fund,
and execute operations ranging from inserting personnel into “denied
areas”—places U.S. intelligence has trouble penetrating—to assembling hit
teams targeting al-Qaeda members and their allies. Prince, according to
sources with knowledge of his activities, has been working as a C.I.A.
asset: in a word, as a spy. While his company was busy gleaning more than
$1.5 billion in government contracts between 2001 and 2009—by acting, among
other things, as an overseas Praetorian guard for C.I.A. and State
Department officials—Prince became a Mr. Fix-It in the war on terror. His
access to paramilitary forces, weapons, and aircraft, and his indefatigable
ambition—the very attributes that have galvanized his critics—also made him
extremely valuable, some say, to U.S. intelligence. (Full disclosure: In the
1990s, before becoming a journalist for CBS and then NBC News, I was a
C.I.A. attorney. My contract was not renewed, under contentious
circumstances.)

But Prince, with a new administration in power, and foes closing in, is
finally coming in from the cold. This past fall, though he infrequently
grants interviews, he decided it was time to tell his side of the story—to
respond to the array of accusations, to reveal exactly what he has been
doing in the shadows of the U.S. government, and to present his rationale.
He also hoped to convey why he’s going to walk away from it all.

To that end, he invited Vanity Fair to his training camp in North Carolina,
to his Virginia offices, and to his Afghan outposts. It seemed like a
propitious time to tag along.

Split Personality

Erik Prince can be a difficult man to wrap your mind around—an amalgam of
contradictory caricatures. He has been branded a “Christian supremacist” who
sanctions the murder of Iraqi civilians, yet he has built mosques at his
overseas bases and supports a Muslim orphanage in Afghanistan. He and his
family have long backed conservative causes, funded right-wing political
candidates, and befriended evangelicals, but he calls himself a libertarian
and is a practicing Roman Catholic. Sometimes considered arrogant and
reclusive—Howard Hughes without the O.C.D.—he nonetheless enters
competitions that combine mountain-biking, beach running, ocean kayaking,
and rappelling.

The common denominator is a relentless intensity that seems to have no Off
switch. Seated in the back of a Boeing 777 en route to Afghanistan, Prince
leafs through Defense News while the film Taken beams from the in-flight
entertainment system. In the movie, Liam Neeson plays a retired C.I.A.
officer who mounts an aggressive rescue effort after his daughter is
kidnapped in Paris. Neeson’s character warns his daughter’s captors:

If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I
do have are a very particular set of skills … skills that make me a
nightmare for people like you. If you [don’t] let my daughter go now … I
will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Prince comments, “I used that movie as a teaching tool for my girls.” (The
father of seven, Prince remarried after his first wife died of cancer in
2003.) “I wanted them to understand the dangers out there. And I wanted them
to know how I would respond.”

You can’t escape the impression that Prince sees himself as somehow
destined, his mission anointed. It comes out even in the most personal of
stories. During the flight, he tells of being in Kabul in September 2008 and
receiving a two a.m. call from his wife, Joanna. Prince’s son Charlie, one
year old at the time, had fallen into the family swimming pool. Charlie’s
brother Christian, then 12, pulled him out of the water, purple and
motionless, and successfully performed CPR. Christian and three siblings, it
turns out, had recently received Red Cross certification at the Blackwater
training camp.

But there are intimations of a higher power at work as the story continues.
Desperate to get home, Prince scrapped one itinerary, which called for a
stay-over at the Marriott in Islamabad, and found a direct flight. That
night, at the time Prince would have been checking in, terrorists struck the
hotel with a truck bomb, killing more than 50. Prince says simply,
“Christian saved Charlie’s life and Charlie saved mine.” At times, his sense
of his own place in history can border on the evangelical. When pressed
about suggestions that he’s a mercenary—a term he loathes—he rattles off the
names of other freelance military figures, even citing Lafayette, the
colonists’ ally during the Revolutionary War.

Prince’s default mode is one of readiness. He is clenched-jawed and tightly
wound. He cannot stand down. Waiting in the security line at Dulles airport
just hours before, Prince had delivered a little homily: “Every time an
American goes through security, I want them to pause for a moment and think,
What is my government doing to inconvenience the terrorists? Rendition
teams, Predator drones, assassination squads. That’s all part of it.”

Such brazenness is not lost on a listener, nor is the fact that Prince
himself is quite familiar with some of these tactics. In fact Prince, like
other contractors, has drawn fire for running a company that some call a
“body shop”—many of its staffers having departed military or intelligence
posts to take similar jobs at much higher salaries, paid mainly by Uncle
Sam. And to get those jobs done—protecting, defending, and killing, if
required—Prince has had to employ the services of some decorated vets as
well as some ruthless types, snipers and spies among them.

Erik Prince flies coach internationally. It’s not just economical (“Why
should I pay for business? Fly coach, you arrive at the same time”) but also
less likely to draw undue attention. He considers himself a marked man.
Prince describes the diplomats and dignitaries Blackwater protects as “Al
Jazeera–worthy,” meaning that, in his view, “bin Laden and his acolytes
would love to kill them in a spectacular fashion and have it broadcast on
televisions worldwide.”

Stepping off the plane at Kabul’s international airport, Prince is treated
as if he, too, were Al Jazeera–worthy. He is immediately shuffled into a
waiting car and driven 50 yards to a second vehicle, a beat-up minivan that
is native to the core: animal pelts on the dashboard, prayer card dangling
from the rearview mirror. Blackwater’s special-projects team is responsible
for Prince’s security in-country, and except for their language its men
appear indistinguishable from Afghans. They have full beards, headscarves,
and traditional knee-length shirts over baggy trousers. They remove Prince’s
sunglasses, fit him out with body armor, and have him change into Afghan
garb. Prince is issued a homing beacon that will track his movements, and a
cell phone with its speed dial programmed for Blackwater’s
tactical-operations center.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/blackwater-1001-02.jpg

Prince in the tactical-operations center at a company base in Kabul.
Photograph by Adam Ferguson.



Once in the van, Prince’s team gives him a security briefing. Using
satellite photos of the area, they review the route to Blackwater’s compound
and point out where weapons and ammunition are stored inside the vehicle.
The men warn him that in the event that they are incapacitated or killed in
an ambush Prince should assume control of the weapons and push the red
button near the emergency brake, which will send out a silent alarm and call
in reinforcements.

Black Hawks and Zeppelins

Blackwater’s origins were humble, bordering on the primordial. The company
took form in the dismal peat bogs of Moyock, North Carolina—not exactly a
hotbed of the defense-contracting world.

In 1995, Prince’s father, Edgar, died of a heart attack (the Evangelical
James C. Dobson, founder of the socially conservative Focus on the Family,
delivered the eulogy at the funeral). Edgar Prince left behind a vibrant
auto-parts manufacturing business in Holland, Michigan, with 4,500 employees
and a line of products ranging from a lighted sun visor to a programmable
garage-door opener. At the time, 25-year-old Erik was serving as a navy seal
(he saw service in Haiti, the Middle East, and Bosnia), and neither he nor
his sisters were in a position to take over the business. They sold Prince
Automotive for $1.35 billion.

Erik Prince and some of his navy friends, it so happens, had been kicking
around the idea of opening a full-service training compound to replace the
usual patchwork of such facilities. In 1996, Prince took an honorable
discharge and began buying up land in North Carolina. “The idea was not to
be a defense contractor per se,” Prince says, touring the grounds of what
looks and feels like a Disneyland for alpha males. “I just wanted a
first-rate training facility for law enforcement, the military, and, in
particular, the special-operations community.”

Business was slow. The navy seals came early—January 1998—but they didn’t
come often, and by the time the Blackwater Lodge and Training Center
officially opened, that May, Prince’s friends and advisers thought he was
throwing good money after bad. “A lot of people said, ‘This is a rich kid’s
hunting lodge,’” Prince explains. “They could not figure out what I was
doing.”

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/blackwater-1001-06.jpg

Blackwater outpost near the Pakistan border, used for training Afghan
police. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

Today, the site is the flagship for a network of facilities that train some
30,000 attendees a year. Prince, who owns an unmanned, zeppelin-esque
airship and spent $45 million to build a fleet of customized, bomb-proof
armored personnel carriers, often commutes to the lodge by air, piloting a
Cessna Caravan from his home in Virginia. The training center has a private
landing strip. Its hangars shelter a petting zoo of aircraft: Bell 412
helicopters (used to tail or shuttle diplomats in Iraq), Black Hawk
helicopters (currently being modified to accommodate the security requests
of a Gulf State client), a Dash 8 airplane (the type that ferries troops in
Afghanistan). Amid the 52 firing ranges are virtual villages designed for
addressing every conceivable real-world threat: small town squares, littered
with blown-up cars, are situated near railway crossings and maritime
mock-ups. At one junction, swat teams fire handguns, sniper rifles, and
shotguns; at another, police officers tear around the world’s longest
tactical-driving track, dodging simulated roadside bombs.

In keeping with the company’s original name, the central complex,
constructed of stone, glass, concrete, and logs, actually resembles a lodge,
an REI store on steroids. Here and there are distinctive touches, such as
door handles crafted from imitation gun barrels. Where other companies might
have Us Weekly lying about the lobby, Blackwater has counterterror magazines
with cover stories such as “How to Destroy Al Qaeda.”

In fact, it was al-Qaeda that put Blackwater on the map. In the aftermath of
the group’s October 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, in Yemen, the navy
turned to Prince, among others, for help in re-training its sailors to fend
off attackers at close range. (To date, the company says, it has put some
125,000 navy personnel through its programs.) In addition to providing a
cash infusion, the navy contract helped Blackwater build a database of
retired military men—many of them special-forces veterans—who could be
called upon to serve as instructors.

When al-Qaeda attacked the U.S. mainland on 9/11, Prince says, he was struck
with the urge to either re-enlist or join the C.I.A. He says he actually
applied. “I was rejected,” he admits, grinning at the irony of courting the
very agency that would later woo him. “They said I didn’t have enough hard
skills, enough time in the field.” Undeterred, he decided to turn his
Rolodex into a roll call for what would in essence become a private army.

After the terror attacks, Prince’s company toiled, even reveled, in relative
obscurity, taking on assignments in Afghanistan and, after the U.S.
invasion, in Iraq. Then came March 31, 2004. That was the day insurgents
ambushed four of its employees in the Iraqi town of Fallujah. The men were
shot, their bodies set on fire by a mob. The charred, hacked-up remains of
two of them were left hanging from a bridge over the Euphrates.

“It was absolutely gut-wrenching,” Prince recalls. “I had been in the
military, and no one under my command had ever died. At Blackwater, we had
never even had a firearms training accident. Now all of a sudden four of my
guys aren’t just killed, but desecrated.” Three months later an edict from
coalition authorities in Baghdad declared private contractors immune from
Iraqi law.

Subsequently, the contractors’ families sued Blackwater, contending the
company had failed to protect their loved ones. Blackwater countersued the
families for breaching contracts that forbid the men or their estates from
filing such lawsuits; the company also claimed that, because it operates as
an extension of the military, it cannot be held responsible for deaths in a
war zone. (After five years, the case remains unresolved.) In 2007, a
congressional investigation into the incident concluded that the employees
had been sent into an insurgent stronghold “without sufficient preparation,
resources, and support.” Blackwater called the report a “one-sided” version
of a “tragic incident.”

After Fallujah, Blackwater became a household name. Its primary mission in
Iraq had been to protect American dignitaries, and it did so, in part, by
projecting an image of invincibility, sending heavily armed men in armored
Suburbans racing through the streets of Baghdad with sirens blaring. The
show of swagger and firepower, which alienated both the locals and the U.S.
military, helped contribute to the allegations of excessive force. As the
war dragged on, charges against the firm mounted. In one case, a contractor
shot and killed an Iraqi father of six who was standing along the roadside
in Hillah. (Prince later told Congress that the contractor was fired for
trying to cover up the incident.) In another, a Blackwater firearms
technician was accused of drinking too much at a party in the Green Zone and
killing a bodyguard assigned to protect Iraq’s vice president. The
technician was fired but not prosecuted and later settled a wrongful-death
suit with the man’s family.

Those episodes, however, paled in comparison with the events of September
16, 2007, when a phalanx of Blackwater bodyguards emerged from their
four-car convoy at a Baghdad intersection called Nisour Square and opened
fire. When the smoke cleared, 17 Iraqi civilians lay dead. After 15 months
of investigation, the Justice Department charged six with voluntary
manslaughter and other offenses, insisting that the use of force was not
only unjustified but unprovoked. One guard pleaded guilty and, in a trial
set for February, is expected to testify against the others, all of whom
maintain their innocence. The New York Times recently reported that in the
wake of the shootings the company’s top executives authorized secret
payments of about $1 million to Iraqi higher-ups in order to buy their
silence—a claim Prince dismisses as “false,” insisting “[there was] zero
plan or discussion of bribing any officials.”

Nisour Square had disastrous repercussions for Blackwater. Its role in Iraq
was curtailed, its revenue dropping 40 percent. Today, Prince claims, he is
shelling out $2 million a month in legal fees to cope with a spate of civil
lawsuits as well as what he calls a “giant proctological exam” by nearly a
dozen federal agencies. “We used to spend money on R&D to develop better
capabilities to serve the U.S. government,” says Prince. “Now we pay
lawyers.”

Does he ever. In North Carolina, a federal grand jury is investigating
various allegations, including the illegal transport of assault weapons and
silencers to Iraq, hidden in dog-food sacks. (Blackwater denied this, but
confirmed hiding weapons on pallets of dog food to protect against theft by
“corrupt foreign customs agents.”) In Virginia, two ex-employees have filed
affidavits claiming that Prince and Blackwater may have murdered or ordered
the murder of people suspected of cooperating with U.S. authorities
investigating the company—charges which Blackwater has characterized as
“scandalous and baseless.” One of the men also asserted in filings that
company employees ran a sex and wife-swapping ring, allegations which
Blackwater has called “anonymous, unsubstantiated and offensive.”

Meanwhile, last February, Prince mounted an expensive rebranding campaign.
Following the infamous ValuJet crash, in 1996, ValuJet disappeared into
AirTran, after a merger, and moved on to a happy new life. Prince, likewise,
decided to retire the Blackwater name and replace it with the name Xe, short
for Xenon—an inert, non-combustible gas that, in keeping with his political
leanings, sits on the far right of the periodic table. Still, Prince and
other top company officials continued to use the name Blackwater among
themselves. And as events would soon prove, the company’s reputation would
remain as combustible as ever.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/blackwater-1001-03.jpg

Prince at a Kandahar airfield. Photograph Adam Ferguson.



Spies and Whispers

Last June, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta met in a closed session with the
House and Senate intelligence committees to brief them on a covert-action
program, which the agency had long concealed from Congress. Panetta
explained that he had learned of the existence of the operation only the day
before and had promptly shut it down. The reason, C.I.A. spokesman Paul
Gimigliano now explains: “It hadn’t taken any terrorists off the street.”
During the meeting, according to two attendees, Panetta named both Erik
Prince and Blackwater as key participants in the program. (When asked to
verify this account, Gimigliano notes that “Director Panetta treats as
confidential discussions with Congress that take place behind closed
doors.”) Soon thereafter, Prince says, he began fielding inquisitive calls
from people he characterizes as far outside the circle of trust.

It took three weeks for details, however sketchy, to surface. In July, The
Wall Street Journal described the program as “an attempt to carry out a 2001
presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” The
agency reportedly planned to accomplish this task by dispatching small hit
teams overseas. Lawmakers, who couldn’t exactly quibble with the mission’s
objective, were in high dudgeon over having been kept in the dark. (Former
C.I.A. officials reportedly saw the matter differently, characterizing the
program as “more aspirational than operational” and implying that it had
never progressed far enough to justify briefing the Hill.)

On August 20, the gloves came off. The New York Times published a story
headlined cia sought blackwater’s help to kill jihadists. The Washington
Post concurred: cia hired firm for assassin program. Prince confesses to
feeling betrayed. “I don’t understand how a program this sensitive leaks,”
he says. “And to ‘out’ me on top of it?” The next day, the Times went
further, revealing Blackwater’s role in the use of aerial drones to kill
al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders: “At hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan …
the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound
laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously
performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Erik Prince, almost overnight, had undergone a second rebranding of sorts,
this one not of his own making. The war profiteer had become a merchant of
death, with a license to kill on the ground and in the air. “I’m an easy
target,” he says. “I’m from a Republican family and I own this company
outright. Our competitors have nameless, faceless management teams.”

Prince blames Democrats in Congress for the leaks and maintains that there
is a double standard at play. “The left complained about how [C.I.A.
operative] Valerie Plame’s identity was compromised for political reasons. A
special prosecutor [was even] appointed. Well, what happened to me was
worse. People acting for political reasons disclosed not only the existence
of a very sensitive program but my name along with it.” As in the Plame
case, though, the leaks prompted C.I.A. attorneys to send a referral to the
Justice Department, requesting that a criminal investigation be undertaken
to identify those responsible for providing highly classified information to
the media.

By focusing so intently on Blackwater, Congress and the press overlooked the
elephant in the room. Prince wasn’t merely a contractor; he was, insiders
say, a full-blown asset. Three sources with direct knowledge of the
relationship say that the C.I.A.’s National Resources Division recruited
Prince in 2004 to join a secret network of American citizens with special
skills or unusual access to targets of interest. As assets go, Prince would
have been quite a catch. He had more cash, transport, matériel, and
personnel at his disposal than almost anyone Langley would have run in its
62-year history.

The C.I.A. won’t comment further on such assertions, but Prince himself is
slightly more forthcoming. “I was looking at creating a small, focused
capability,” he says, “just like Donovan did years ago”—the reference being
to William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who, in World War II, served as the head of
the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the modern C.I.A.
(Prince’s youngest son, Charles Donovan—the one who fell into the pool—is
named after Wild Bill.) Two sources familiar with the arrangement say that
Prince’s handlers obtained provisional operational approval from senior
management to recruit Prince and later generated a “201 file,” which would
have put him on the agency’s books as a vetted asset. It’s not at all clear
who was running whom, since Prince says that, unlike many other assets, he
did much of his work on spec, claiming to have used personal funds to
road-test the viability of certain operations. “I grew up around the auto
industry,” Prince explains. “Customers would say to my dad, ‘We have this
need.’ He would then use his own money to create prototypes to fulfill those
needs. He took the ‘If you build it, they will come’ approach.”

According to two sources familiar with his work, Prince was developing
unconventional means of penetrating “hard target” countries—where the C.I.A.
has great difficulty working either because there are no stations from which
to operate or because local intelligence services have the wherewithal to
frustrate the agency’s designs. “I made no money whatsoever off this work,”
Prince contends. He is unwilling to specify the exact nature of his forays.
“I’m painted as this war profiteer by Congress. Meanwhile I’m paying for all
sorts of intelligence activities to support American national security, out
of my own pocket.” (His pocket is deep: according to The Wall Street
Journal, Blackwater had revenues of more than $600 million in 2008.)

Clutch Cargo

The Afghan countryside, from a speeding perch at 200 knots, whizzes by in a
khaki haze. The terrain is rendered all the more nondescript by the fact
that Erik Prince is riding less than 200 feet above it. The back of the
airplane, a small, Spanish-built eads casa C-212, is open, revealing Prince
in silhouette against a blue sky. Wearing Oakleys, tactical pants, and a
white polo shirt, he looks strikingly boyish.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/blackwater-1001-05.jpg

A Blackwater aircraft en route to drop supplies to U.S. Special Forces in
Afghanistan in September. Photograph by Adam Ferguson.

As the crew chief initiates a countdown sequence, Prince adjusts his harness
and moves into position. When the “go” order comes, a young G.I. beside him
cuts a tether, and Prince pushes a pallet out the tail chute. Black
parachutes deploy and the aircraft lunges forward from the sudden weight
differential. The cargo—provisions and munitions—drops inside the perimeter
of a forward operating base (fob) belonging to an elite Special Forces
squad.

Five days a week, Blackwater’s aviation arm—with its unabashedly 60s-spook
name, Presidential Airways—flies low-altitude sorties to some of the most
remote outposts in Afghanistan. Since 2006, Prince’s company has been
conscripted to offer this “turnkey” service for U.S. troops, flying
thousands of delivery runs. Blackwater also provides security for U.S.
ambassador Karl Eikenberry and his staff, and trains narcotics and Afghan
special police units.

Once back on terra firma, Prince, a BlackBerry on one hip and a 9-mm. on the
other, does a sweep around one of Blackwater’s bases in northeast
Afghanistan, pointing out buildings recently hit by mortar fire. As a drone
circles overhead, its camera presumably trained on the surroundings, Prince
climbs a guard tower and peers down at a spot where two of his contractors
were nearly killed last July by an improvised explosive device. “Not
counting civilian checkpoints,” he says, “this is the closest base to the
[Pakistani] border.” His voice takes on a melodramatic solemnity. “Who else
has built a fob along the main infiltration route for the Taliban and the
last known location for Osama bin Laden?” It doesn’t quite have the ring of
Lawrence of Arabia’s “To Aqaba!,” but you get the picture.

Going “Low-Pro”

Blackwater has been in Afghanistan since 2002. At the time, the C.I.A.’s
executive director, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, responding to his operatives’
complaints of being “worried sick about the Afghans’ coming over the fence
or opening the doors,” enlisted the company to offer protection for the
agency’s Kabul station. Going “low-pro,” or low-profile, paid off: not a
single C.I.A. employee, according to sources close to the company, died in
Afghanistan while under Blackwater’s protection. (Talk about a tight-knit
bunch. Krongard would later serve as an unpaid adviser to Blackwater’s
board, until 2007. And his brother Howard “Cookie” Krongard—the State
Department’s inspector general—had to recuse himself from Blackwater-related
oversight matters after his brother’s involvement with the company surfaced.
Buzzy, in response, stepped down.)

As the agency’s confidence in Blackwater grew, so did the company’s
responsibilities, expanding from static protection to mobile
security—shadowing agency personnel, ever wary of suicide bombers, ambushes,
and roadside devices, as they moved about the country. By 2005, Blackwater,
accustomed to guarding C.I.A. personnel, was starting to look a little bit
like the C.I.A. itself. Enrique “Ric” Prado joined Blackwater after serving
as chief of operations for the agency’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). A
short time later, Prado’s boss, J. Cofer Black, the head of the CTC, moved
over to Blackwater, too. He was followed, in turn, by his superior, Rob
Richer, second-in-command of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service. Of the three,
Cofer Black had the outsize reputation. As Bob Woodward recounted in his
book Bush at War, on September 13, 2001, Black had promised President Bush
that when the C.I.A. was through with al-Qaeda “they will have flies walking
across their eyeballs.” According to Woodward, “Black became known in Bush’s
inner circle as the ‘flies-on-the-eyeballs guy.’” Richer and Black soon
helped start a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (which collects
data to help businesses assess risks overseas), but in 2008 both men left
Blackwater, as did company president Gary Jackson this year.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/politics/2010/01/blackwater-1001-04.jpg

Prince in his Virginia office. His company took in more than $1 billion from
government contracts during the George W. Bush era. Photograph by Nigel
Parry.



Off and on, Black and Richer’s onetime partner Ric Prado, first with the
C.I.A., then as a Blackwater employee, worked quietly with Prince as his
vice president of “special programs” to provide the agency with what every
intelligence service wants: plausible deniability. Shortly after 9/11,
President Bush had issued a “lethal finding,” giving the C.I.A. the go-ahead
to kill or capture al-Qaeda members. (Under an executive order issued by
President Gerald Ford, it had been illegal since 1976 for U.S. intelligence
operatives to conduct assassinations.) As a seasoned case officer, Prado
helped implement the order by putting together a small team of
“blue-badgers,” as government agents are known. Their job was threefold:
find, fix, and finish. Find the designated target, fix the person’s routine,
and, if necessary, finish him off. When the time came to train the hit
squad, the agency, insiders say, turned to Prince. Wary of attracting undue
attention, the team practiced not at the company’s North Carolina compound
but at Prince’s own domain, an hour outside Washington, D.C. The property
looks like an outpost of the landed gentry, with pastures and horses, but
also features less traditional accents, such as an indoor firing range. Once
again, Prince has Wild Bill on his mind, observing that “the O.S.S. trained
during World War II on a country estate.”

Among the team’s targets, according to a source familiar with the program,
was Mamoun Darkazanli, an al-Qaeda financier living in Hamburg who had been
on the agency’s radar for years because of his ties to three of the 9/11
hijackers and to operatives convicted of the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies
in East Africa. The C.I.A. team supposedly went in “dark,” meaning they did
not notify their own station—much less the German government—of their
presence; they then followed Darkazanli for weeks and worked through the
logistics of how and where they would take him down. Another target, the
source says, was A. Q. Khan, the rogue Pakistani scientist who shared
nuclear know-how with Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The C.I.A. team
supposedly tracked him in Dubai. In both cases, the source insists, the
authorities in Washington chose not to pull the trigger. Khan’s inclusion on
the target list, however, would suggest that the assassination effort was
broader than has previously been acknowledged. (Says agency spokesman
Gimigliano, “[The] C.I.A. hasn’t discussed—despite some mischaracterizations
that have appeared in the public domain—the substance of this effort or
earlier ones.”)

The source familiar with the Darkazanli and Khan missions bristles at public
comments that current and former C.I.A. officials have made: “They say the
program didn’t move forward because [they] didn’t have the right skill set
or because of inadequate cover. That’s untrue. [The operation continued] for
a very long time in some places without ever being discovered. This program
died because of a lack of political will.”

When Prado left the C.I.A., in 2004, he effectively took the program with
him, after a short hiatus. By that point, according to sources familiar with
the plan, Prince was already an agency asset, and the pair had begun working
to privatize matters by changing the team’s composition from blue-badgers to
a combination of “green-badgers” (C.I.A. contractors) and third-country
nationals (unaware of the C.I.A. connection). Blackwater officials insist
that company resources and manpower were never directly utilized—these were
supposedly off-the-books initiatives done on Prince’s own dime, for which he
was later reimbursed—and that despite their close ties to the C.I.A. neither
Cofer Black nor Rob Richer took part. As Prince puts it, “We were building a
unilateral, unattributable capability. If it went bad, we weren’t expecting
the chief of station, the ambassador, or anyone to bail us out.” He insists
that, had the team deployed, the agency would have had full operational
control. Instead, due to what he calls “institutional osteoporosis,” the
second iteration of the assassination program lost steam.

Sometime after 2006, the C.I.A. would take another shot at the program,
according to an insider who was familiar with the plan. “Everyone found some
reason not to participate,” says the insider. “There was a sick-out. People
would say to management, ‘I have a family, I have other obligations.’ This
is the fucking C.I.A. They were supposed to lead the charge after al-Qaeda
and they couldn’t find the people to do it.” Others with knowledge of the
program are far more charitable and question why any right-thinking officer
would sign up for an assassination program at a time when their
colleagues—who had thought they had legal cover to engage in another
sensitive effort, the “enhanced interrogations” program at secret C.I.A.
sites in foreign countries—were finding themselves in legal limbo.

America and Erik Prince, it seems, have been slow to extract themselves from
the assassination business. Beyond the killer drones flown with Blackwater’s
help along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (President Obama has reportedly
authorized more than three dozen such hits), Prince claims he and a team of
foreign nationals helped find and fix a target in October 2008, then left
the finishing to others. “In Syria,” he says, “we did the signals
intelligence to geo-locate the bad guys in a very denied area.”
Subsequently, a U.S. Special Forces team launched a helicopter-borne assault
to hunt down al-Qaeda middleman Abu Ghadiyah. Ghadiyah, whose real name is
Badran Turki Hishan Al-Mazidih, was said to have been killed along with six
others—though doubts have emerged about whether Ghadiyah was even there that
day, as detailed in a recent Vanity Fair Web
<http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/10/al-sukariya-200910>
story by Reese Ehrlich and Peter Coyote.

And up until two months ago—when Prince says the Obama administration pulled
the plug—he was still deeply engaged in the dark arts. According to
insiders, he was running intelligence-gathering operations from a secret
location in the United States, remotely coordinating the movements of spies
working undercover in one of the so-called Axis of Evil countries. Their
mission: non-disclosable.

Exit Strategy

Flying out of Kabul, Prince does a slow burn, returning to the topic of how
exposed he has felt since press accounts revealed his role in the
assassination program. The firestorm that began in August has continued to
smolder and may indeed have his handlers wondering whether Prince himself is
more of a liability than an asset. He says he can’t understand why they
would shut down certain high-risk, high-payoff collection efforts against
some of America’s most implacable enemies for fear that his involvement
could, given the political climate, result in their compromise.

He is incredulous that U.S. officials seem willing, in effect, to cut off
their nose to spite their face. “I’ve been overtly and covertly serving
America since I started in the armed services,” Prince observes. After 12
years building the company, he says he intends to turn it over to its
employees and a board, and exit defense contracting altogether. An internal
power struggle is said to be under way among those seeking to define the
direction and underlying mission of a post-Prince Blackwater.

He insists, simply, “I’m through.”

In the past, Prince has entertained the idea of building a pre-positioning
ship—complete with security personnel, doctors, helicopters, medicine, food,
and fuel—and stationing it off the coast of Africa to provide “relief with
teeth” to the continent’s trouble spots or to curb piracy off Somalia. At
one point, he considered creating a rapidly deployable brigade that could be
farmed out, for a fee, to a foreign government.

For the time being, however, Prince contends that his plans are far more
modest. “I’m going to teach high school,” he says, straight-faced. “History
and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school,
too.”





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Irrelevant.  If they are true-believers, and die in a martyrdom operation,
they are guaranteed entry into Paradise…thus have nothing to complain about.



If they are not true-believers, they are bad Muslims or apostates and their
deaths don’t matter.



B




12/03/2009 04:09 PM


Surprising Study On Terrorism


Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims


By Yassin Musharbash <mailto:yassin_musharbash@...>

Few would deny that Muslims too are victims of Islamist terror. But a new
study by the Combating Terrorism Center in the US has shown that an
overwhelming majority of al-Qaida victims are, in fact, co-religionists.

In the battle against unbelievers, can one also kill Muslims? Even the
terror network al-Qaida is troubled by this question.

A leading al-Qaida ideologue for the terror network, Abu Yahya al-Libi, has
developed his own theologically-based theory of collateral damage that
allows militants to kill Muslims when it is unavoidable.

Even the Iraqi affiliates of Osama bin Laden's terror group, who are known
to be particularly bloodthirsty, claim that they too consider this question.
For instance, in a message claiming responsibility for an August attack in
Baghdad, the group wished those Sunnis injured in the "operation" a speedy
recovery and expressed their hope that those killed would be accepted by God
as "martyrs."

But even as such apologetic communiqués from al-Qaida show the terror
network stylizing itself as a defender of the true faith wrestling with
religious concepts, they also make it look as though any dead Muslims are
regretful but isolated cases. The facts, though, tell a different story.

Between 2004 and 2008, for example, al-Qaida claimed responsibility for 313
attacks, resulting in the deaths of 3,010 people. And even though these
attacks include terrorist incidents in the West -- in Madrid in 2004 and in
London in 2005 -- only 12 percent of those killed (371 deaths) were
Westerners.

New Report Shows Many More Muslims Killed Than Non-Muslims

It is, of course, no surprise that al-Qaida kills more Muslims than
non-Muslims -- particularly for people in the Islamic world. But a
<http://www.ctc.usma.edu/Deadly%20Vanguards_Complete_L.pdf> new report by
the Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) at the United States' Military Academy
at West Point in New York -- which has gathered together these and other
relevant figures in one report ("Deadly Vanguards: A Study Of al-Qaida's
Violence Against Muslims "), spells out the discrepancy in black and white.

The authors of the study admit that their report likely omits a number of
Muslim victims. But that was the price of their rigorous methodology, used
in an effort to avoid accusations of partisanship.

The researchers only counted the attacks for which al-Qaida claimed
responsibility, thus preventing accusations that they were seeking to make
al-Qaida look even worse than it is. Still, it is well known that al-Qaida
does not claim responsibility for every attack perpetrated, meaning that
many victims are likely left out of the report. Furthermore, the researchers
only included attacks reported on by the Arab media and relied on the
numbers they reported -- out of a conviction that the Arab media is more
highly regarded in the Muslim world than the Western media. That, though, is
not always the case.

Blurred Figures And Inexact Categories Are Problematic

The greatest potential for inaccuracy in the report, however, is the placing
of victims into only one of two categories: Western or non-Western. The
assumption being that Western would also mean non-Muslim and vice versa. The
problems with such a system of categorization are myriad. Not all those
living in the Muslim world are Muslim: In Iraq, al-Qaida has launched
attacks against Kurds, Yazidi and Christians. Secondly, a lot of the Muslim
victims are actually -- and deliberately -- Shiites. A Sunni group, al-Qaida
considers the Shiites to be unbelievers.

Unfortunately news reports don't tend to differentiate between Sunni and
Shiite Muslims, explains Scott Helfstein, one of the writers of the report.
This is also the reason for the non-Western and Western categories. "It is
easy for journalists to count nationality but they rarely, if ever, identify
religion," Helfstein writes in reply to e-mailed questions from SPIEGEL
ONLINE. The report's writers were well aware of the problem. "But we were
not able to find a way around it," Helfstein notes.

Indeed, the report's authors confront the shortcomings of their methodology
head on. In one passage, they remove attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan from
their calculations altogether, resulting in the share of Westerners killed
in al-Qaida attacks rising to a much more significant 39 percent. If one
removes the Madrid and London attacks from the statistics, though, the share
of murdered Westerners drops back down to 13 percent.

Perhaps more significantly, if one only examines attacks in 2007 and
disregards those having been perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan, the share
of non-Westerners killed by al-Qaida rises to 99 percent. In 2008, it was 96
percent.

Non-Westerners 38 Times More Likely To Be Killed

Put another way, between 2006 and 2008, non-Westerners were 38 times more
likely to be killed by an al-Qaida attack than Westerners.

"Since al-Qaida has limited capability to strike against its Western
enemies, the group maintains its relevance by attacking countries with
Muslim majorities," the study concludes.

The conclusions reached by Helfstein and his co-authors are hardly world
changing. They are valuable nonetheless, in that they provide a numerical
foundation to the relationship between Muslim and non-Muslim al-Qaida
victims.

Still, critics will no doubt point out that the study comes from the CTC, an
organization that is part of an American military school. In recent years,
the CTC has released a number of excellent studies on terrorism. But because
it is actually supplying arguments, backed by scientific research, for the
fight against terrorism to decision makers, politicians and military
personnel in the US, it cannot be considered strictly neutral. That also
applies to this case, especially since a number of American officials have
recently begun stressing the point that al-Qaida is particularly violent
toward Muslims and can now rely on solid data to back up their argument.

This perceived lack of neutrality doesn't change the fact that the
fundamental findings of the report are correct and meaningful. The authors
conclude that if they compare statistics for the years from 1995 to 2003
(excluding the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US as a solitary event), they
find that al-Qaida is becoming more violent and "increasingly
indiscriminate" in its attacks.

Just how big a problem this discrepancy between Muslim and non-Muslim
victims will become for al-Qaida remains to be seen. Even prior to the
report's release, however, it had become a subject of intense debate within
the Jihadist seen -- with more and more ideologues coming to the conclusion
that al-Qaida's fight on behalf of the downtrodden Muslims isn't worth it.





URL:


* http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,660619,00.html









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Obama and Chavez Backed Zelaya Repudiated in Honduras election


And free people spoke today and kicked Obama in the can and the Chavez
backed Zelaya out. Another stunning blow for the insufferable commie
President of the US.

In Elections, Honduras Defeats Chávez Wall Street Journal

Unless something monumental happens in the Western Hemisphere in the next 31
days, the big regional story for 2009 will be how tiny Honduras managed to
beat back the colonial aspirations of its most powerful neighbors and
.preserve its constitution.

Despite the nefarious and incomprehensible backing of Oblunder.

Yesterday's elections for president and Congress, held as scheduled and
without incident, were the crowning achievement of that struggle.

National Action Party candidate Porfirio Lobo was the favorite to win in
pre-election polls. Yet the name of the victor is almost beside the point.
The completion of these elections is a national triumph in itself and a win
for all people who yearn for liberty.

The fact that the U.S. has said it will recognize their legitimacy shows
that this reality eventually made its way to the White House. If not Hugo
Chávez's Waterloo, Honduras's stand at least marks a major setback for the
Venezuelan strongman's expansionist agenda.
The losers in this drama also include Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Spain,
which all did their level best to block the election. Egged on by their
zeal, militants inside Honduras took to exploding small bombs around the
country in the weeks leading to the vote. They hoped that terror might damp
turnout and delegitimize the process. They failed. Yesterday's civic
participation appeared to be at least as good as it was in the last
presidential election. Some polling stations reportedly even ran short, for
a time, of the indelible ink used to mark voter pinkies.

Latin socialists tried to discredit Honduran democracy as part of their
effort to force the reinstatement of deposed President Manuel Zelaya. Both
sides knew that if that happened the electoral process would be in jeopardy.


Mr. Zelaya had already showed his hand when he organized a mob to try to
carry out a June 28 popular referendum so that he could cancel the elections
and remain in office. That was unlawful, and he was arrested by order of the
Supreme Court and later removed from power by Congress for violating the
constitution.

It is less well-known that as president, according to an electoral-council
official I interviewed in Tegucigalpa two weeks ago, Mr. Zelaya had refused
to transfer the budgeted funds as required by law to the council for its
preparatory work. In other words, he didn't want a free election.

Mr. Chávez didn't want one either. During the Zelaya government the country
had become a member of Mr. Chávez's Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas
(ALBA), which includes Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. If power
changed hands, Honduran membership would be at risk.

Last week a government official told me that Honduran intelligence has
learned that Mr. Zelaya had made preparations to welcome all the ALBA
presidents to the country the night of his planned June referendum. Food for
a 10,000-strong blowout celebration, the official added, was on order.

ALBA has quite a bit of clout at the Organization of American States (OAS)
these days, and it hasn't been hard for Mr. Chávez to control Secretary
General José Miguel Insulza. The Chilean socialist desperately wants to be
re-elected to his OAS post in 2010. Only a month before Mr. Zelaya was
deposed, Mr. Insulza led the effort to lift the OAS membership ban on Cuba.
When Mr. Zelaya was deposed, Mr. Insulza dutifully took up his instructions
sent from Caracas to quash Honduran sovereignty.

Unfortunately for him, the leftist claims that Honduras could not hold fair
elections flew in the face of the facts. First, the candidates were chosen
in November 2008 primaries with observers from the OAS, which judged the
process to be "transparent and participative." Second, all the presidential
candidates save one from a small party on the extreme left wanted the
elections to go forward. Third, though Mr. Insulza insisted on calling the
removal of Mr. Zelaya a "military coup," the military had never taken charge
of the government. And finally, the independent electoral tribunal, chosen
by congress before Mr. Zelaya was removed, was continuing with the steps
required to fulfill its constitutional mandate to conduct the vote. In the
aftermath of the elections Mr. Insulza, who insisted that the group would
not recognize the results, presides over a discredited OAS.



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http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-Examiner~y2009m12d2-Mumbai-An
niversary-Producers-of-film-mark-the-anniversary-of-terror-attack



Mumbai Anniversary: Producers of film mark the anniversary of terror attack

December 2, 5:13 PMhttp://image.examiner.com/img/greydot.gifLaw Enforcement
<http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-Examiner>
Examinerhttp://image.examiner.com/img/greydot.gifJim Kouri

In an industry swamped with filmmakers such as Michael Moore, it's a
surprise to find Obsession.
In an industry swamped with filmmakers such as Michael Moore, it's a
surprise to find Obsession.
Photo credit: Police Times

The producers of the award-winning documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's
War Against the West are making it available for free online viewing to mark
the anniversary of the deadly Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The Mumbai terror attacks took the lives of 173 and injured more than 300
victims.  Mumbai, India is the largest city in the world in terms of
population, with the city proper having a population of approximately 14
million inhabitants

"The brutal attacks in Mumbai were yet another instance of innocent
individuals murdered at the hands of radical Islamic terrorists," stated
Raphael Shore, producer of Obsession. "It is important to recognize that
these incidents are not isolated. Rather, each attack is merely a new front
in a global jihad being carried out by dangerous extremists that seek to
destroy western freedoms and democracy."

"Our hearts go out to the loved ones of the Mumbai victims. It is important
for individuals around the world to truly pause and consider the losses
suffered in Mumbai, and understand the heinous motivations behind such
vicious attacks," Shore added.

The free stream of Obsession is part of a grassroots initiative to mark the
anniversary of the attacks and educate the public about the threats that
radical Islam pose to the world at large and the United States in
particular. Concerned citizens will have the opportunity to watch the film
throughout the week, and learn more about a growing radical movement
targeting western liberties and ideals.

Over 30 million have seen the groundbreaking film, a powerful and
controversial educational tool that media pundits have coined a "must-see."
Obsession was the winner of the best feature film award at the Liberty Film
Festival.

OBSESSION: Radical Islam's War Against the West documents the call for world
domination and global jihad made by Islamic leaders on a daily basis. The
film features exclusive footage from Arabic TV, as well as interviews with
former terrorists, and experts including Alan Dershowitz, Steve Emerson and
Caroline Glick. The film outlines parallels between Chamberlain's strategy
of appeasing Hitler prior to WWII, with the West's current attitude of
appeasing Iran and radical Islamists.

The free online stream is available for a limited time at:
http://www.radicalislam.org/Obsession

Bloggers and web site owners are invited to host the free stream on their
blogs or web sites. To embed the stream visit:
www.clearspring.com/widgets/4aace992ff38389f

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association
of Chiefs of Police and he's a columnist for The Examiner (examiner.com) and
New Media Alliance (thenma.org).  In addition, he's a blogger for the
Cheyenne, Wyoming Fox News Radio affiliate KGAB (www.kgab.com). Kouri also
serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael
Moriarty.

He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights
nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In
addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university
and director of security for several major organizations.  He's also served
on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers
throughout the country.   Kouri writes for many police and security
magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and
others. He's a news writer and columnist for AmericanDaily.Com,
MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he's syndicated by AXcessNews.Com.
Kouri appears regularly as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news
and talk shows including Fox News Channel, Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN
Headline News, MTV, etc.





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http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20091202135822.aspx



12 Days, 3 Networks and No Mention of ClimateGate Scandal
Even as Copenhagen looms, broadcast news ignores e-mails suggesting warming
alarmists 'manipulated' data, conspired to destroy information and thwarted
peer reviews.

  <http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/2009/20091202135822.aspx> By Julia
A. Seymour
Business & Media Institute
12/2/2009 2:01:37 PM




It's been nearly two weeks since a scandal shook many people's faith in the
scientists behind global warming alarmism. The scandal forced the University
of East Anglia (UK) to divulge that it threw away raw temperature data and
prompted the temporary resignation of Phil Jones of the university's Climate
Research Unit.



Despite that resignation and calls by a U.S. senator to investigate the
matter, ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news programming has remained
silent - not mentioning a word about the scandal since it broke on Nov. 20,
even as world leaders including President Barack Obama prepare to meet in
Copenhagen, Denmark next week to promote a pact to reduce greenhouse gases.



Other news outlets, including The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and
Associated Press have deemed ClimateGate worthy of reporting, but the
networks were too busy reporting on celebrity car accidents and the killer
whale that ate a great white shark. Instead of airing a broadcast news
segment that might inform the public about the science scandal, both ABC and
CBS relegated the story to their Web sites. There was one mention of the
scandal on ABC's Sunday talk show: "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."



The ClimateGate scandal, as it is being called, has the hallmarks of a major
news story: private emails purporting to show unethical or illegal behavior
supplied by a hacker or whistleblower, high profile scientists like James
Hansen and Michael Mann, and a potential conspiracy to distort science for
political gain. But the networks haven't bothered with the story.



Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist and BMI adviser, said Nov. 20 of the
leaked e-mails and documents:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/21/science/earth/21climate.html?_r=3&hp=&adx
nnl=1&adxnnlx=1258981217-J7yhMhEJWdwLtqx9U3uQdQ> "This isn't a smoking gun,
it's a mushroom cloud."



White House press
<http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/30/gibbs-on-climategate-the-science-is-s
ettled/comment-page-4/>  secretary Robert Gibbs responded to a question
about ClimateGate by insisting that "global warming is happening" and that
for most people it isn't really a question anymore. That is the same message
viewers get from the network news about climate change.



An examination of morning and evening news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC
since Nov. 20 yielded zero mentions of the scandal, even in the Nov. 25
reports about Obama going to Copenhagen to discuss the need for emissions
reductions. But during the same time period, the networks reported on
pro-golfer Tiger Woods' "minor" car accident at least 37 times. They also
found time to report on an orphaned Moose and the meal selection at the
president's State Dinner.



ClimateGate began after someone (hacker or whistleblower) attacked servers
of University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) and made
thousands of e-mails
<http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=259&filename=1016746746.txt>
and documents public. Those e-mails appear to show a conspiracy to falsify
temperature data, a willingness to destroy information rather than release
it under Freedom of Information (FOI) law and the intimidation of
publications willing to publish skeptical articles.



CRU's director Phil Jones admitted real CRU e-mails had been stolen when he
told New Zealand's Investigate magazine, "It was a hacker. We were aware of
this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system
and taken and copied loads of data files and emails." Others argue a
whistleblower was responsible for the breach.



One of those alleged e-mails was from Jones to Michael Mann (famous for his
hockey stick graph of global warming) and two others appeared to indicate
manipulation of scientific data.



Jones wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real
temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [Sic]
from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."



Jones, who contributed to a chapter of the U.N.'s IPCC report, claims the
term "trick" was used "colloquially as in a clever thing to do." Myron
Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy for the Competitive Enterprise
Institute (CEI), supplied his own view of what Jones and Mann meant by
hiding the decline.



Ebell wrote in the National Post: "What is the clever method that Prof.
Jones learned from Prof. Mann? I think he is referring to the way Prof. Mann
constructed his celebrated hockey stick graph. His proxy records showed flat
temperatures for the past 1,000 years, including the past century. But
everyone knows that temperatures have gone up rapidly in the past few
decades . So what Prof. Mann did was splice the last few decades of surface
temperature records onto his proxy record. Voila!
<http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2258374&p=2>  - the hockey
stick."



The alleged e-mails were enough to force Jones' temporary resignation. On
Dec. 1, Associated Press reported that Jones is "stepping down pending an
investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made
climate change."



Other leaked e-mails asked people to delete e-mails and one said that if
information was requested using FOI, it would be deleted rather than turned
over:



Alleged e-mail from Jones to Mann Feb. 2, 2005:



"The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever
hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the UK, I
<http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=490&filename=1107454306.txt>
think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. Does your similar act
in the US force you to respond to enquiries within 20 days? - our does !
The UK works on precedents, so the first request will test it. We also have
a data protection act, which I will hide behind."



In Britain, it is a crime to delete information requested under FOI.





Networks Focus on Tiger's 'Minor' Accident, Sea Lions, Pete the Moose



In more than a week, the networks couldn't be bothered to report on the
ClimateGate scandal. Instead they fixated on professional golfer Tiger
Woods' car accident and the rumors surrounding the crash at least 37 times.



And ABC, CBS and NBC had even more trivial stories to discuss during that
time than Woods. Somehow the networks considered a sea lion glut in San
Francisco, Pete
<http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2009/11/25/climategate-ignored-again
-broadcast-nets-go-state-dinner-menu-sea-lions-p>  the orphaned Moose, the
color of tablecloths at the state dinner, Great White shark vs. Killer
Whale, a baby panda and the Sonoma, Calif. crush of grapes. All were more
worthy of reporting than a scandal that prompted one U.S. senator to call
for an investigation
<http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20091123145143.aspx> .



Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., said on Washington Times Radio Nov. 23 that
"Since Barbara Boxer is the chairman and I'm the ranking member on
Environment and Public Works, if nothing happens in the next seven days,
when we go back into session a week from today that would change this
situation, I will call for an investigation because this thing is serious."



The three broadcast networks ignored ClimateGate even in reports about the
upcoming climate change conference. On Nov. 25, all three evening newscasts
mentioned Obama would be going to Copenhagen. NBC's Brian Williams called
global warming "one of the biggest issues facing the planet," But didn't say
a word about the hacked emails or possibly manipulated data that laid the
foundation for emissions reductions.



But just one day earlier, CBS's Declan McCullagh reported on CBSNews.com
that Congress might investigate
<http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/11/24/taking_liberties/entry5761180.shtml
> "whether prominent scientists who are advocates of global warming theories
misrepresented the truth about climate change." McCullagh's lengthy story
detailed the e-mail leak and reactions to it from both warming advocates and
skeptics.



ABCNews.com waited until Nov. 28 to do an original report on the leaked
e-mails on its Web
<http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/scientist-leaked-climate-mails-distraction/s
tory?id=9178656&page=1>  site.





Scientists implicated.



The e-mails (which can be viewed and searched online
<http://www.eastangliaemails.com/index.php> ) appear to show unethical and
potentially illegal behavior on the part of prominent scientists (many of
whom are involved in the UN IPCC process).



Here are just a couple of the most embarrassing e-mails
<http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2009/11/20/possible-conspiracy-m
isreport-temperatures-found-media-mum>  that can speak for themselves:



From Kevin Trenberth to Michael Mann and others including James Hansen and
Michael Oppenheimer in Oct. 2009:



"The <http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?page=1&pp=25&kw=travesty>
fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it
is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09
supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are
surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."



From Jones to Raymond Bradley, Malcolm Hughes and Michael Mann on Feb. 21,
2005:



"PS: I'm getting hassled by a couple of people to release the CRU station
temperature data. Don
<http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=498&filename=1109021312.txt>
't any of you three tell anybody that the UK has a Freedom of Information
Act!"



A May 2009 e-mail from Jones allegedly told Mann to delete e-mails regarding
the Fourth IPCC draft and said Keith and Caspar would also delete the
correspondence.



One scientist featured prominently in many of the CRU e-mails was Mann,
whose research has long been scrutinized by other scientists. He introduced
his hockey stick chart in the 1990s, but it was questioned in 1998 by Willie
Soon and Sallie Baliunas of Harvard, according to a February 2005 Wall
Street Journal article. In 2003 others, including mathematician Stephen
McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick, also criticized Mann's hockey stick.



The Journal reported at that time that Mann "tried to shut down debate by
refusing to disclose the mathematical algorithm by which he arrived at his
conclusions."



Mann defended himself in a letter to the Washington
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/30/AR200911300
3885.html>  Post on Dec. 1, 2009 saying "some have engaged in a smear
campaign." "They have stolen thousands of scientists' personal e-mails,
including some of mine, and have mined the e-mails for words or phrases
whose meaning can easily be distorted," Mann continued.



Iain Murray, a senior fellow at CEI, explained why the e-mails were so
important and the three things everyone should know about ClimateGate.



"This may seem obscure, but the
<http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/three-things-you-absolutely-must-know-about-cl
imategate/>  science involved is being used to justify the diversion of
literally trillions of dollars of the world's wealth in order to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by phasing out fossil fuels. The CRU is the
Pentagon of global warming science, and these documents are its Pentagon
Papers," Murray wrote.



Murray said the three vital things the documents indicated were that "the
scientists discuss manipulating data to get their preferred results," talked
about "subverting the scientific peer review process" to prevent skeptics
from being published, and worked to prevent disclosure of the information.



But the leaked e-mails were only the tip of the iceberg. According to The
London Times online, scientists at the University of East Anglia
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece>
"admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their
predictions of global warming are based."



That article described CRU as "the world's leading centre for reconstructing
past climate and temperatures," and quoted Roger Pielke, an environmental
studies professor from Colorado University.



"The CRU is basically saying, 'Trust us.' So much for settling questions and
resolving debates with science," Pielke said.





Networks promote global warming, censor skepticism



Sadly, the willingness of the networks to capitulate to the global warming
agenda and ignore other voices is not a recent phenomenon.



The Business & Media Institute has reported for years the way in which the
news media have latched on to climate scares in the past 100 years (cooling,
warming, cooling and now warming again). From ice age threats in the late
1800s to the warming in the 1920s, before returning to cooling fears again
in the 1970s, print media encouraged fears of climate apocalypse
<http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.a
sp> .



But even more worrisome is the way the network news media have stifled
debate on the issue of climate change. BMI released a Special
<http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2008/GlobalWarmingCensored/G
lobalWarmingCensored_execsum.asp>  Report in 2008 that found global warming
skeptics rarely get any say on the networks, and when they do barbs like
"cynics" or "deniers" are often thrown in to undermine them.



On the networks, man-made global warming proponents overwhelmingly outnumber
those with dissenting opinions. During the 2007 study window, there was an
average of 13 global warming advocates for each skeptic featured. CBS had
the worst ratio: 38-to-1. That report also found that the networks
frequently omit the cost of so-called solutions to global warming.



In 2009, BMI found that the networks remained silent as House committee
passed a cap-and-trade bill out of committee. That bill, known as
Waxman-Markey
<http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2009/20090527141451.aspx> , could
cost $9.6 trillion in GDP loss by 2035, according to one estimate.
Meanwhile, the networks ignored the bill and almost never explained what
cap-and-trade meant.



Ignoring the ClimateGate scandal is just the latest in a long line of poor
reporting on climate issues by the network news media. Marc Morano of
ClimateDepot.com <http://climatedepot.com/>  told the Business & Media
Institute that the fact that the networks aren't covering the story is
actually "great news for the truth."



Morano explained that the networks are making the "classic mistake" of
thinking if they ignore the story it will go away, but talk radio and the
internet are getting the information out to the public without spin from the
networks which he said are "heavily invested in manmade global warming."





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http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2QxNWFlZDM5MDQ0NzM4MDg3ZjA3MDE5ZjNmYzB\
jYzU=



Somebody at Fort Hood Should Be Walking the Plank   [Andy
<mailto:amc%63%61%72%74%68y@%6ea%74%69onalre%76%69e%77.%63%6fm>  McCarthy]

Prepare to be infuriated.

It's been brought to my attention by several reliable sources that the Defense
Department has brought Louay Safi to Fort Hood as an instructor, and that he has
been lecturing on Islam to our troops in Fort Hood who are about to deploy to
Afghanistan. Safi is a top official of the Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA), and served as research director at the International Institute of
Islamic Thought (IIIT).

Worse, last evening, Safi was apparently permitted to present a check (evidently
on behalf of ISNA) to the families of the victims of last month's Fort Hood
massacre. A military source told <http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199803.php> 
the blogger Barbarossa at the Jawa Report: "This is nothing short of blood
money. This is criminal and the Ft. Hood base commander should be fired right
now."

ISNA was identified by the Justice Department at the Holy Land Foundation
terrorism financing conspiracy trial as an unindicted co-conspirator. The
defendants at that trial were convicted of funding Hamas to the tune of millions
of dollars. This should have come as no surprise. ISNA is the Muslim
Brotherhood's umbrella entity for Islamist organizations in the United States.
It was established in 1981 to enable Muslims in North America "to adopt Islam as
a complete way of life" — i.e., to further the Brotherhood's strategy of
establishing enclaves in the West that are governed by sharia. As I detailed in
an essay for the April 20 edition of NR, the Brotherhood's rally-cry remains, to
this day, "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our
law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.� The
Brotherhood's spiritual guide, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who issued a fatwa in
2004 calling for attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, openly declares that
Islam will "conquer America" and "conquer Europe."

Also established in 1981, the IIIT is a Saudi funded think-tank dedicated, it
says, to the "Islamicization of knowledge" — which, Zeyno Baran (in Volume 6
of the Hudson Institute's excellent series, "Current Trends in Islamist
Ideology") has aptly observed, "could be a euphemism for the rewriting of
history to support Islamist narratives." Years ago, the Saudis convinced the
United States that the IIIT should be the military's go-to authority on Islam.
One result was the placement of Abdurrahman Alamoudi to select Muslim chaplains
for the armed forces. Alamoudi has since been convicted of terrorism and
sentenced to 23 years in federal prison.

As noted in this 2003 Frontpage report
<http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=15222> , 2002 search warrant links
Safi to an entity called the "Safa Group." The Safa Group has never been charged
with a crime, but the affidavit allegest its involvement in moving large sums of
money to terrorist fronts. Safi was also caught on an FBI
<http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/199803.php>  wiretap of Sami al-Arian, a former
leader in the murderous Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). The year was 1995, and
the topic of the discussion between Safi and al-Arian was Safi's concern that
President Clinton's executive order prohibiting financial transactions with
terrorist organizations would negatively affect al-Arian. More recently,
al-Arian has been convicted of conspiring to provide material support to
terrorism.

At Human Events a couple of months back, Rowan Scarborough had a disturbing
report <http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33472>  about the FBI's
"partnering" efforts with Islamist groups — including the very same ISNA that
the Justice Department had cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the
terrorism financing conspiracy. A prominent figure in the report was Louay Jafi:

Safi is a Syrian-born author who advocates Muslim American rights through his
directorship of ISNA's Leadership Development Center. He advocates direct talks
between Washington and Iran's leaders. He has spoken out against various law
enforcement raids on Islamic centers.

In a 2003 publication, "Peace and the Limits of War," Safi wrote, "The war
against the apostates [non-believers of Islam] is carried out not to force them
to accept Islam, but to enforce the Islamic law and maintain order."

He also wrote, "It is up to the Muslim leadership to assess the situation and
weigh the circumstances as well as the capacity of the Muslim community before
deciding the appropriate type of jihad. At one stage, Muslims may find that
jihad, through persuasion or peaceful resistance, is the best and most effective
method to achieve just peace." [ACM: Implicitly, this concedes there is a time
for violent jihad, too.]

At ISNA's annual convention in Washington in July, one speaker, Imam Warith Deen
Umar, criticized Obama for having two Jewish people — Rahm Emanuel and David
Axelrod — in the White House. "Why do this small number of people have control
of the world?" he said, according to a IPT transcript. He said the Holocast was
punishment for Jews "because they were serially disobedient to Allah."

[Steven] Emerson's group [the Investigative Project on Terrorism] collected
literature at the convention approved for distribution by ISNA. It said the
pamphlets and books featured "numerous attempts to portray U.S. prosecution of
terrorists and terror supporters as anti-Muslim bigotry; dramatic revisionist
history that denied attacks by Arab nations and Palestinian terrorists against
Israel; anti-Semitic tracts and hyperbolic rants about a genocide and holocaust
of Palestinians."

Asked if the FBI should sever ties with ISNA, Emerson said, "ISNA is an
unindicted co-conspirator. It's a Muslim Brotherhood group. I think in terms of
legitimacy there should be certain expectations of what the group says publicly.
If it continues to espouse jihad and anti-Semitism, I think it nullifies it
right to have the FBI recognize it."

If you want to get a sense of the garbage our troops are being forced to endure
in Fort Hood's classrooms, check out Jihad Watch, where my friend Bob Spencer
has more on this episode and on his prior jousts with Safi, here
<http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/12/dhimmitude-and-stealth-jihad-at-fort-hood.htm\
l> , here <http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/12/cherry-picking.html> , and here
<http://www.jihadwatch.org/2007/03/louay-safi-islamophobia-and-unintentional-iro\
ny.html> .

What on earth is this government doing, and will Congress please do something
about it?

12/03
<http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2QxNWFlZDM5MDQ0NzM4MDg3ZjA3MDE5ZjNmYz\
BjYzU=>  05:49 PM





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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1945182,00.html?xid=feed-yaho
o-top-linkbox



Dec. 07, 2009

Obama Shrinks the War on Terrorism

By Peter Beinart

To understand Barack Obama's Afghanistan decision, it's instructive to go
back to one history-shifting sentence, uttered by his predecessor more than
eight years ago. It was Sept. 20, 2001. The nation was in agony, and George
W. Bush stood before a joint session of Congress, telling Americans where to
direct their rage. "Americans are asking, 'Who attacked our country?'" Bush
declared early in his remarks. "The evidence we have gathered all points to
a collection of loosely affiliated terrorist organizations known as
al-Qaeda."  <http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1653255,00.html>
(See pictures of the battle against the Taliban.)

Had Bush stopped there, everything would be different today. But a few
minutes later, he made this fateful pivot: "Our war on terror begins with
al-Qaeda, but it does not end there." After that, Bush mentioned terror,
terrorists or terrorism 18 times more. But he didn't mention al-Qaeda again.
When he returned to Congress a few months later for his January 2002 State
of the Union address, he cited Hamas, Hizballah, Islamic Jihad, North Korea,
Iran and Iraq and employed variations of the word terror 34 times. But he
mentioned al-Qaeda only once.

For Obama, this is the original sin whose consequences must now be repaired.
His foreign policy in the greater Middle East amounts to an elaborate effort
to peel back eight years of onion in hopes of finding the war on terrorism's
lost inner core: the struggle against al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda alone. That's
the subtext underlying his new Afghan strategy. He's raising troop levels,
but less to vanquish the Taliban than to gain the leverage to effectively
negotiate with them — in hopes of isolating alQaeda from its Afghan allies.
He's boosting America's means but narrowing its ends. The same logic
underlies his outreach to Iran and Syria and his rhetoric about groups like
Hizballah and Hamas. Obama's not trying to end the war on terrorism, but he
is trying to downsize it — so that it doesn't overwhelm the U.S.'s
capacities and crowd out his other priorities.
<http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1890204,00.html> (See
pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley.)

Obama's foreign policy, in fact, looks a lot like Richard Nixon's in the
latter years of Vietnam, which sought to scale down another foreign policy
doctrine — containment — that had gotten out of hand. And Nixon's experience
offers both a warning and an example: pulling back from your predecessor's
overblown commitments can be vital. The risk is that it can make you look
weak or immoral, or both.

The End of Omnipotence
Obama's effort to downsize the war on terrorism is partly a function of
personality and mostly a function of circumstance. George W. Bush loathed
what he called "small ball." He saw both his father's presidency and Bill
Clinton's as inconsequential and yearned to invest his own with
world-historical significance. After 9/11, he immediately began comparing
the war on terrorism to World War II and the Cold War — a global,
generation-defining struggle against an enemy of vast military and
ideological power that would transform whole chunks of the world.

Obama, by contrast, doesn't need to go hunting for grand challenges. From
preventing a depression to providing universal health care to stopping
global warming, he has them in spades. Bush could afford to define the war
on terrorism broadly because he didn't think anything going on at home was
nearly as important. Obama, on the other hand, must find space (and money)
for what he sees as equally grave domestic threats. Bush loved the ominous,
elastic noun terrorism. Obama, according to an analysis by Politico, has
publicly uttered the words health and economy twice as often as terrorism,
Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan combined. Even his decision to temporarily send
more troops to Afghanistan was framed as a way to allow the U.S. to
eventually disengage from the war.

Obama is also shrinking the war on terrorism because, although he won't say
so out loud, he's scaled back Bush's assessment of American power. When Bush
invaded Iraq, the U.S. was coming off a decade of low-cost military triumphs
— from Panama in 1989 to the Gulf War in 1991 to Bosnia in 1995 to Kosovo in
1999. And back then, Afghanistan looked like a triumph too. It was easy to
believe that the U.S. military — through a combination of force and threats
of force — could prevail over a slew of hostile regimes and movements at the
same time. And it was easy to believe that the U.S. could afford these
military adventures, particularly for conservatives like Dick Cheney, who
famously declared that "deficits don't matter." Finally, in the wake of
communism's collapse and the spread of democracy throughout the developing
world, hawks tended to see dictatorships as brittle, devoid of popular
support. This epic faith in the U.S.'s military, economic and ideological
power fueled Bush's decision to define the war on terrorism as the U.S.
against the field. It was like the way Americans once talked about Olympic
basketball: we were so much better than all the others that they might as
well combine into one opposing team so we could take them all on at the same
time.

  <http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1889200,00.html> See
pictures of suicide in recruiters' ranks.

These days the U.S. doesn't look quite so omnipotent. Insurgents in Iraq and
now Afghanistan have learned how to throw sand in our war-fighting machine.
Economically, our gaping deficits are making it harder to run the war on
terrorism on a blank check. And ideologically, violent, illiberal movements
like Hamas, Hizballah and the Taliban have proved that they have deeper
roots in native soil than the Bushies assumed. At West Point, Obama said he
would not "set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means or our
interests." Bush never spoke in that language of limits.

So Obama is trying to make a virtue of necessity. Since the U.S. can't
defeat all terrorism-supporting movements and regimes, he's arguing that it
doesn't have to, since most of them are not committing terrorism against us.
As Bruce Riedel, who ran Obama's initial Afghanistan and Pakistan review,
puts it, "He's going after the organization that attacked the U.S. on 9/11
and before and since rather than pursuing a vague and murky war on terrorism
everywhere." Team Obama has junked the phrase war on terror, not to mention
Islamofascism. And the World War II and Cold War analogies have mostly
ceased. Even in Afghanistan, Obama has sharply narrowed the U.S.'s goals.
While still aiming to "defeat al-Qaeda," we're now trying only to "reverse
the Taliban's momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government."
In other words, we'll tolerate Taliban control over large chunks of the
Afghan countryside.

Narrowing the Struggle
Practically, this exercise in subtraction starts with Iran. By defining the
U.S.'s enemy as "terror," Bush implied that Iran was as big a problem as
al-Qaeda. After all, Tehran's mullahs began sponsoring terrorism before
al-Qaeda was even born. In so doing, Bush made normal relations with the
Islamic Republic virtually impossible. While he didn't actually declare war
on Tehran, he initiated the coldest of cold wars: threats of force, no
diplomacy and an ideological campaign aimed at making the regime crack.

In Obama's narrower struggle against al-Qaeda, however, a cold war with
Tehran makes little sense. For all its nastiness, the Iranian regime doesn't
direct its terrorism against the U.S. And Iran's Shi'ite theocrats have a
mostly hostile relationship with the anti-Shi'ite theocrats of al-Qaeda. In
both Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran has caused trouble for the U.S. largely out
of fear that if the U.S. prevails in those countries, Iran will be next. But
the Obama Administration seems to believe that if the U.S. can convince
Iran's regime that it's not next, Washington and Tehran can cooperate to
achieve their common goal in Afghanistan and Iraq: smashing al-Qaeda.

The U.S.-Iranian cold war has shown some signs of a thaw, Tehran's continued
defiance of world opinion on its nuclear program notwithstanding. Obama has
begun the highest-level diplomatic engagement with Tehran in 30 years and
refrained from calling for the overthrow of the regime, even amid mass
Iranian protests last summer aimed at accomplishing exactly that. Media
coverage of the diplomatic dance between Washington and Tehran focuses on
Iran's nuclear program, but by pursuing a fundamentally different
relationship with the Islamic Republic, the Obama Administration is also
quietly conceding that Iran's militancy is different from the terrorism of
al-Qaeda, an organization that no U.S. diplomat would ever sit across a
table from.

And even as it works to remove Iran from the U.S.'s post-9/11 enemies list,
the Obama Administration is trying something similar with another
traditional Middle Eastern irritant, Syria. Under George W. Bush, Syria got
the cold-war treatment as well: rhetorical belligerence, veiled military
threats, a withdrawal of the U.S. ambassador. Under Obama, by contrast,
Middle East envoy George Mitchell has been to Damascus, the Syrian Deputy
Foreign Minister has been to Washington, and the rhetoric has become
noticeably less hostile.

The best precedent for all this is what Nixon did in the late Vietnam years.
For roughly two decades, the U.S. had been trying to contain "communism" —
another ominous, elastic noun that encompassed a multitude of movements and
regimes. But Vietnam proved that this was impossible: the U.S. didn't have
the money or might to keep communist movements from taking power anywhere
across the globe. So Nixon stopped treating all communists the same way.
Just as Obama sees Iran as a potential partner because it shares a loathing
of al-Qaeda, Nixon saw Communist China as a potential partner because it
loathed the U.S.S.R. Nixon didn't stop there. Even as he reached out to
China, he also pursued détente with the Soviet Union. This double outreach —
to both Moscow and Beijing — gave Nixon more leverage over each, since each
communist superpower feared that the U.S. would favor the other, leaving it
geopolitically isolated. On a smaller scale, that's what Obama is trying to
do with Iran and Syria today. By reaching out to both regimes
simultaneously, he's making each anxious that the U.S. will cut a deal with
the other, leaving it out in the cold. It's too soon to know whether Obama's
game of divide and conquer will work, but by narrowing the post-9/11
struggle, he's gained the diplomatic flexibility to play the U.S.'s
adversaries against each other rather than unifying them against us.

Gaining Leverage
Lurking behind Obama's different view of Iran and Syria is a different view
of the terrorist movements they support: Hizballah and Hamas. For Bush, the
only distinction among Hizballah, Hamas and al-Qaeda was that the first two
terrorized Israelis, not Americans, and since Israel was the U.S.'s close
ally, that was no difference at all. But the Obama Administration has hinted
at a different perspective: a recognition that unlike al-Qaeda, Hizballah
and Hamas are nationalist movements with deep roots in their particular
societies. That means that unlike al-Qaeda, they can't simply be destroyed.
Rather, the goal must be to transform them from military organizations into
purely political and social ones, as happened with the Irish Republican
Army. The U.S. might still dislike their Islamist, anti-Western,
anti-Israeli agenda, but as Obama said in an interview with the Arab-owned
news channel al-Arabiya during his first week in office, he would be "very
clear in distinguishing between organizations ... that espouse violence,
espouse terror and act on it — and people who ... have a [different]
viewpoint [from the U.S.'s] in terms of how their countries should develop."
Hizballah and Hamas would have to transform themselves to gain U.S.
recognition, but while Bush's goal was to smash the two movements, Obama's
seems to be to nudge that transformation along.

The most urgent and high-profile item on Obama's downsizing agenda is, of
course, Afghanistan. For eight years, the Bush Administration lumped
al-Qaeda and the Taliban together. It was the most obvious application of
Bush's famous declaration that "we will make no distinction between the
terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them." But now the
Obama Administration is making exactly that distinction. "There is clearly a
difference between" the Taliban and al-Qaeda, press secretary Robert Gibbs
said recently. A host of Obama officials have insisted that the Taliban is a
tribal and national movement and that while it may want to terrorize Afghan
secularists and women, it is not particularly interested in terrorizing the
American homeland.

The Taliban's local roots, Obama officials suggest, also make it harder to
vanquish than al-Qaeda. The implication is that as with Hizballah and Hamas,
the U.S.'s only realistic goal is to bring the Taliban into the political
process. Despite his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan,
Obama has abandoned the goal of making the country Taliban-free. For all the
attention it has received, the decision about troop levels is essentially
tactical: it's an effort to win the military leverage necessary to persuade
elements of the Taliban that they're better off in government than on the
battlefield. "Ultimately," Defense Secretary Robert Gates has declared,
there must be "reconciliation with the Taliban."

The Downside of Downsizing
In general, Obama's bid to shrink the war on terrorism makes sense. Since
the U.S. lacks the capacity to eliminate Hizballah, Hamas and the Taliban
and since we are probably unable to overthrow the regimes in Syria and Iran,
we need to rethink our goals. Many on the American right believe the lesson
of the Reagan years is that the U.S. can bludgeon our enemies into
submission if only we don't lose our will. But Ronald Reagan didn't bludgeon
Mikhail Gorbachev into submission; he seduced him with intensive diplomatic
engagement and arms-control agreements that thawed the Cold War. It was only
after that thaw that Gorby let Eastern Europe go free. Eventually, it will
probably take a similar thawing to get regimes like Iran and Syria out of
the terrorism business.

Obama's effort to downsize the war on terrorism can also free up time and
resources for the rest of American foreign policy. During the Bush
Administration, the post-9/11 agenda often seemed to constitute a good 75%
of the U.S.'s international agenda. If Obama could eventually get that down
to, say, 50%, it would free him up to devote attention to long-term
challenges like climate change and the global economy that Bush gave short
shrift.

But downsizing also has its costs. The first is moral. Obama may be right
that the U.S. can't vanquish movements like Hizballah and the Taliban or
even an embattled regime like Iran's. Legitimizing them, however, will be
hard for some Americans to swallow. Already, hawks have slammed Obama for
negotiating with Iran's mullahs while the blood of Iranian protesters is
still fresh on their hands. And "reconciliation" with the Taliban, while
necessary for the U.S.'s eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan, might be a
horror show for Afghan women. It is worth noting that while many historians
applaud Nixon's retreat from global containment, his decision to cozy up to
dictators in Beijing, Moscow and elsewhere elicited revulsion from Americans
on both left and right.

The second problem with Obama's agenda is that although he wants to cut
deals with regimes like Iran's and movements like the Taliban, he's not in a
particularly strong position to do so. Back in 2002 or 2003, when the U.S.
looked almost invincible, the Iranians appeared willing to concede a lot
simply to forestall a U.S. attack. Now, with the U.S. mired in Afghanistan
and Iraq, they are less afraid and thus less willing to deal. Similarly, the
Taliban have little incentive to break with al-Qaeda so long as they feel
they're gaining momentum in the Afghan war. It will be hard for Obama to win
at the negotiating table what he can't win on the battlefield. After all,
despite Nixon's intricate diplomacy with Moscow and Beijing, neither
communist superpower helped him where he wanted it most — in preventing a
U.S. defeat in Vietnam.

Therein lies the irony of Obama's downsizing effort: he needs to ratchet up
conflicts at first — by sending more troops to Afghanistan and perhaps
pushing new sanctions against Iran — to gain the diplomatic muscle to cut
deals that don't look like abject American defeats. It's a risky strategy,
since there's no guarantee that the bigger sticks will work, and if they
don't, pulling back will be even harder. But it's a gamble Obama may have to
take. The harsh truth is that the U.S. is significantly weaker in the Middle
East now than it was in 2002. For close to a decade, our adversaries have
not only survived our efforts to destroy them; they've also realized that
conflict with the U.S. has its advantages. Now Obama wants to call off the
feud. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. He may want to pare down
America's enemies list. But the other guys have to take us off their enemies
list too.

Beinart is associate professor of journalism and political science at the
City University of New York and a senior fellow at the New America
Foundation.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sunday, December 06, 2009

 
<http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-british-buffoonery-uk-takes-less\
on.html> MORE BRITISH BUFFOONERY: UK TAKES LESSON FROM US STATE DEPARTMENT IN
REFUSAL TO NAME THE ISLAMIC ENEMY......

http://tundratabloid.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-british-buffoonery-uk-takes-lesso\
n.html










UK government officials who get their talking points from the various Leftist
think tanks scattered around Europe and the US, believe that refusing to
properly identify the enemy, that being fundamental Islam, will deny the
fundamentalists the legitimacy of being representatives of "true Islam".



They continue with their ridiculous meme to include the official boycott of
those who insist otherwise, like Robert Spencer, Nonie Darwish and a host of
others in the anti-Islamization movement. The former insists that by not naming
the enemy, you run an even greater risk of placing Western society in jeopardy,
not just by an increased chance of violent terrorism, but by allowing the
stealth jihad to continue to Islamize society without fear of being outed,



These highly counter-productive policies allow the non-violent jihadi followers
of traditional Islam to skirt the radar screens of our law enforcement and
judicial systems, due to not be able to mention the elephant in the room. It's
utter madness not to be able to mention jihad or fundamental Islam, let alone an
act of Islamic terrorism. It is we who are being fooled, not the jihadis, and
certainly not the rest of the Islamic world. KGS



NOTE: Thanks to Vlad Tepes for the audio interview of Muslim Mafia author David
Gaubatz









 
<http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2759618/Ministers-told-Dont-call-Isla\
mic-extremists-Islamic-extremists.html> Dont call extremists 'extremists'



MINISTERS have been BANNED from using words like Islamist and fundamentalist -
in case they offend Muslims.



An eight-page Whitehall guide lists words they should not use when talking about
terrorism in public and gives politically correct alternatives.



They are told not to refer to Muslim extremism as it links Islam to violence.
Instead, they are urged to talk about terrorism or violent extremism.



Fundamentalist and Jihadi are also banned because they make an "explicit link"
between Muslims and terror.



Ministers should say criminals, murderers or thugs instead. Radicalisation must
be called brainwashing and talking about moderate or radical Muslims is to be
avoided as it "splits the community".



Islamophobia is also out as it is received as "a slur that singles out Muslims".



The guide, produced by the secretive Research, Information and Communications
Unit in the Home Office, tell ministers to "avoid implying that specific
communities are to blame" for terrorism. It says more than 2,000 people are
engaged in terror plots.



The guidance was branded "daft" last night by a special adviser to
ex-Communities Secretary Hazel Blears. Paul Richards said: "Unless you can
describe what you're up against, you're never going to defeat it.



Ministers need to be leading the debate on Islamic extremism and they can't do
that if they have one hand tied behind their back."



The Home Office said: "This is about using appropriate language to have
counter-terrorism impact. It would be foolish to do anything else.



H/T: Holger Danske



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=58099



Pelosi Endorses 'Global' Tax on Stocks, Bonds, and other Financial
Transactions
Monday, December 07, 2009
By Matt Cover, Staff Writer




(CNSNews.com) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) endorsed the idea of a
"global" tax on stock trades and other financial transactions, saying the
estimated $150 billion in annual revenue from such a tax could be used to
help fund more stimulus spending.

At her weekly press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi said the financial
transactions tax (HR4191) currently before Congress would have to be made
"global" to keep U.S. investors from taking their business overseas and out
of taxable reach.

The House speaker said that a transaction tax could be imposed in
conjunction with congressional efforts to
<http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-110publ343/pdf/PLAW-110publ343.pdf>
divert funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), with funds from
both going to fund a second stimulus spending package. (The first stimulus
bill, $789-billion, was signed into law by President Barack Obama on Feb.
13, 2009.)

"I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit," Pelosi
told reporters. "The concern that many of us or others have had is that it
will send, it will send transactions overseas.



"Well, let's see, the fact is, what we are talking about is a global
transaction [tax]," she said, "something that we would do in conjunction
with other G nations, whether it is G8, G20, whatever the current G number
is. Because it is really a source of revenue that has really minimal impact
on the transaction, but a tremendous impact on helping us meet our needs."

Pelosi said she thought the idea might have currency among a public eager to
see Wall Street firms "pitching in" to help the government grow the economy.

"I think there would be a market for it among the American people to say
that we are all participating in the economic prosperity of our country, and
we are all pitching in to continue that prosperity," said Pelosi.

The tax idea, the brainchild of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, would
mean that all major financial centers - Asia, the EU, U.S., and U.K. - would
all have to pass a similar transaction tax to avoid disadvantaging one
country's stock exchange. This would ensure that no matter where a person
wanted to buy stock, they would have to pay the new tax.

Brown originally proposed the idea on Nov. 7 at a meeting of G20 finance
ministers in St. Andrews, Scotland.

The American version,
<http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-4191> H.R. 4191,
introduced by Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), would levy a separate tax on all
stock trades, futures contracts, swaps, credit default swaps, and stock
options in an effort to tap the trillions of dollars of such transactions.

Seeking to circumvent concerns about further deficit spending on stimulus
programs, the bill attempts to raise approximately $150 billion every year.

"The jobless recovery suggests that the Federal Government must continue to
prime the economy, but the record deficit is a real obstacle," the bill
reads.

"To restore Main Street America, a small securities tax on Wall Street
should be invested in job creation for Main Street," says the bill. "This
transfer tax would be assessed on the sale and purchase of financial
instruments such as stocks, options, and futures. A quarter percent (0.25
percent) tax on financial instruments could raise approximately
$150,000,000,000 a year."

The transaction tax proposal was met with opposition from some House
Democrats, who signed a "Dear Colleague" letter outlining their opposition
to the tax and urging other members of Congress to join them.

"A $150 billion tax on financial transactions will fall on millions of
hardworking Americans who are saving for their future through their 401k
plans, mutual funds, pensions and other savings vehicles," wrote Reps.
Michael McMahon (D-N.Y.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and Debbie Halvorson
(D-Ill.) in the letter, which is still being circulated on Capitol Hill, a
copy of which was obtained by CNSNews.com.

"Supporters of the proposal promote it as a way to make Wall Street pay for
economic stimulus, because it would apply only to stocks, futures, forwards
and derivatives," the letter states.

"In reality, it would be a tax on all investment and savings vehicles
because mutual funds and money market fund transactions are, by definition,
purchases and sales of securities and bonds," it added.

The three Democrats said that the American version of the proposal would not
exempt middle class Americans, as it claims to do, because while the tax
would be paid by major stock brokers, those brokers would pass the cost down
to everyday investors, pension, and retirement funds.

"Proponents of a transaction tax argue that a small 0.25 percent tax on
stocks would be paid for by the highly paid financial traders and would not
affect most Americans," reads the letter. "This is simply not true. A tax on
stock transactions would affect every single person who owns and invests in
stocks from small business owners to senior citizens."

"Americans saving for their retirement, to pay for college or 'a rainy day
fund' to meet future emergencies will be subjected to a tax that will reduce
the value of their savings at a time when they are just starting to recover
the losses they incurred at the height of the financial crisis," the letter
states.

Pelosi's office did not return calls for comment on this story





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

National Review Online




December 05, 2009



<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OGU1YTExODkwOGE4ZjVlMTE3OWM3ZDNhODRhYz
M3YTE=> The Unrealistic Realist


Leader of the free world? Not Obama's bag.

By Mark Steyn

If you happen to live in Kabul or Jalalabad, Ghurian or Kandahar, then a
U.S. presidential speech about Afghanistan is, indeed, about Afghanistan. If
you live anywhere else on the planet, a U.S. presidential speech about
Afghanistan is really about America - about American will, American purpose,
American energy. How quickly the bright new dawn fades to the gray morning
after. In Europe, the long awaited unveiling of this most thoughtful of
presidents' deliberations got mixed reviews - some bad, some brutal. Der
Spiegel called it "half-hearted," the Guardian called it "desperate." And
those are his friends.

You could watch the great orator's listless, tentative performance with the
sound down and get the basic message: I don't need this in my life right
now. If you read the text, it made even less sense. There's something for
everyone: A surge! . . . and a withdrawal. He's agreed to surge for a bit,
but only in preparation for a de-surge in 18 months' time. I said on the
radio that the speech reminded me of the English nursery rhyme:

The Grand Old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again.

The Grand Young Duke of Hope has 30,000 men. He'll march them up the Khyber
Pass but he'll march them down again in July 2011. If you're some village
headman who's been making nice to the Americans, the Taliban have a whole
new pitch for you: In a year and a half, the Yanks are going. But we'll
still be here.

"Our goal in war," wrote Basil Liddell Hart, the great strategist of armored
warfare, "can only be attained by the subjugation of the opposing will." In
other words, the object of war is not to destroy the enemy's tanks but the
enemy's will. That goes treble if, like the Taliban and al-Qaeda, he hasn't
got any tanks in the first place. So what do you think Obama's speech did
for the enemy's will? He basically told 'em: We can only stick another 19
months, so all you gotta do is hang in there for 20. And in an astonishingly
vulgar line even by the standards of this White House's crass speechwriters
he justified his announcement of an exit date by saying it was "because the
nation that I'm most interested in building is our own." Or, as Frank
Sinatra once observed, "It's very nice to go trav'ling/But it's so much
nicer . . . to come home":

"It's very nice to just wander the camel route to Iraq . . . but it's so
much nicer, yes it's oh so nice to wander back."

As I said, Obama's speech is only about Afghanistan if you're in
Afghanistan. If you're in Moscow or Tehran, Pyongyang or Caracas, it's about
America. And what it told them is that, if you're a local strongman with
regional ambitions, or a rogue state going nuclear, or a mischief-making
kleptocracy dusting off old tsarist dreams, this president is not going to
be pressing your reset button. Strange how an allegedly compelling speaker
is unable to fake even perfunctory determination and resilience. Strange,
too, how all the sophisticated nuances of post-Bush foreign-policy "realism"
seem so unreal when you're up there trying to sell them as a coherent
strategy. Go back half a decade to when the administration was threatening
to shove democracy down the throats of every two-bit basket case whether
they want it or not. Democratizing the planet is, in a Council of Foreign
Relations sense, "unrealistic," but talking it up is a very realistic way of
messing with the dictators' heads. A pipsqueak like Boy Assad sleeps far
more soundly today than he did back when he thought Bush meant it, and so
did the demonstrators threatening his local enforcers in Lebanon.

As for Assad's friends in Tehran, you wonder if they're not now flouting
"world opinion" merely to see how ever more watery and qualified the threats
from Washington get. The tireless Anne Bayefsky reported this week that the
administration's latest response to Iran's nuclear provocations is to "start
shifting our focus to the track of pressure." It's a good thing the
diplomatic cable is a mostly metaphorical concept these days because, priced
per word, Washington's are getting expensive. Starting to shift our focus to
the track of pressure isn't the same as "pressure." Nor is it even a first
step on "the track of pressure." Nor is it even a commitment to "focus" on
"the track of pressure." But it does represent a clear start to shifting the
administration's focus from whatever it's focusing on right now to focusing
on the possibility of shifting its focus to the track of pressure with the
possible goal, once it's focused on shifting to the track of pressure, of
eventually applying some. Not now. Not next month. But maybe at some point
sometime, once we've figured out what meaningless gestures the Russians and
Chinese would agree not to veto . . .

Like Europe, the Obama administration's "realists" have decided that, if the
alternative is summoning up the will to prevent a nuclear Iran, it's easier
to live with it. The realpolitik crowd's biggest turn-on among their many
peculiar fetishes is "stability," yet they're stringing along with what will
be the single biggest destabilizing factor in geopolitics in a generation.
Iran's president may be a millennial crackpot, but he's thinking more
realistically than the "realists." If you can bulldoze your way into the
nuclear club without paying a price, why not go for it? Pakistan had to do
it quietly, in the shadows. Iran's done it brazenly, daring the world to
stop her. We didn't - notwithstanding that the Islamic Republic has a
30-year track record of saying what it means and then doing it. If you were
ever going to hold the nuclear line, this is the place to do it. And the
fact that we didn't is a huge victory for the mullahs long before the first
nukes are ready to fly.

One of the most interesting developments in recent months have been the
emerging alliances of convenience between Iran and its clients, on the one
hand, and the likes of Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela on the other. Some
of this is simple mischief-making, but, in the vacuum of the Hopeychange, a
lot of it shows a shrewd strategic calculation. A nuclear Tehran, for
example, serves Moscow's interest in promoting itself as a guarantor of
Eastern European "security." It's one of the oldest of protection rackets:
You need me to protect you from my psycho friend. For their part, the Sunni
Arab dictatorships will soon face the choice of accepting de facto Persian
regional hegemony or embarking on their own nuclearization. As for Israel,
they'll either be living under the ever-present threat of annihilation. Or
they'll be dead.

Whatever your view of this scenario, "stability" doesn't seem to cover it.
In his speech, the so-called "leader of the free world" all but physically
recoiled from the job description. Sorry about that. Not his bag. In the
more toxic presidential palaces, you would have to be awfully virtous not to
take advantage of such a man. And soon.


- Mark Steyn <http://www.marksteyn.com/> , a National Review columnist, is
author of America
<http://www.nationalreview.com/redirect/amazon.p?j=1596985275>  Alone. C
2009 Mark Steyn









[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Have AP headline-writers got enough brains for this headline to be
tongue-in-cheek? Because...the word "fatuous" springs to mind, quickly followed
by "and stupid."

--J.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091208/ap_on_bi_ge/climate_epa

By H. JOSEF HEBERT and DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writers
â€" 5 mins ago

WASHINGTON â€" The Obama administration took a major step Monday toward
imposing the first federal limits on climate-changing pollution from cars, power
plants and factories, declaring there was compelling scientific evidence that
global warming from manmade greenhouse gases endangers Americans' health.

The announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency was clearly timed to
build momentum toward an agreement at the international conference on climate
change that opened Monday in Copenhagen, Denmark. It signaled the administration
was prepared to push ahead for significant controls in the U.S. if Congress
doesn't act first on its own.

The price could be steep for both industry and consumers. The EPA finding clears
the way for rules that eventually could force the sale of more fuel-efficient
vehicles and require plants to install costly new equipment â€" at a cost of
billions or even many tens of billions of dollars â€" or shift to other forms
of energy.

No analysis has been conducted by the EPA on costs of such broad regulations,
although the agency put the price tag of its proposed climate-related car rules
at $60 billion, with an estimated benefit of $250 billion.

Energy prices for many Americans probably would rise, too â€" though Monday's
finding will have no immediate impact since regulations have yet to be written.
Supporters of separate legislation in Congress argue they could craft measures
that would mitigate some of those costs.

Environmentalists hailed the EPA announcement as a clear indication the United
States will take steps to attack climate change even if Congress fails to act.
And they welcomed the timing of the declaration, saying it will help the Obama
administration convince delegates at the international climate talks that the
U.S. is serious about addressing the problem. Obama will address the conference
next week.

But business groups said regulating carbon emissions through the EPA under
existing clean air law would put new economic burdens on manufacturers, cost
jobs and drive up energy prices.

"It will choke off growth by adding new mandates to virtually every major
construction and renovation project," declared Thomas Donohue, president of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in recent months has been particularly critical
of the EPA's attempt to address climate change.

The EPA signaled last April that it was inclined to view heat-trapping pollution
as a threat to public health and welfare and began to take public comments for
formal rulemaking. That marked a reversal from the Bush administration, which
had refused to issue the finding, despite a conclusion by EPA scientists that it
was warranted.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said Monday, "There are no more excuses for
delaying," adding that the so-called endangerment analysis from global warming
had been under consideration at the agency for three years. After the official
finding, she said the agency is now "obligated to make reasonable efforts to
reduce greenhouse pollutants under the Clean Air Act."

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Barack Obama "still believes
the best way to move forward is through the legislative process" â€"
something Obama has expressed on a number of occasions as he has pressed
Congress to shift the nation's energy priorities away from fossil fuels and to
reduce climate-changing pollution.

The EPA said scientific evidence clearly shows that greenhouse gases "threaten
the public health and welfare of the American people" and that the pollutants
â€" mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels â€" should be reduced,
if not by Congress then by the agency responsible for enforcing air pollution.

"These long-overdue findings cement 2009's place in history as the year when the
United States government began addressing the challenge of greenhouse-gas
pollution," said Jackson.

She rejected claims by climate skeptics that the science of global warming
remains in doubt, an argument given additional attention in recent weeks with
the disclosure through intercepted e-mails that a British scientist had
privately discussed ways to shield certain climate data from public scrutiny.

"The vast body of evidence not only remains unassailable, it has grown even
stronger," said Jackson.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a lead author of a climate bill before the Senate,
said of the finding: "This is a clear message to Copenhagen of the Obama
administration's commitments to address global climate change. ... The message
to Congress is crystal clear: Get moving."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., also a co-author, said, "The Senate has a duty to
act."

Business groups have strongly argued against tackling global warming through the
Clean Air Act, saying it is less flexible and more costly than the cap-and-trade
legislation being considered by Congress. Any regulations from the EPA are
certain to spawn lawsuits and a lengthy legal fights.

"Such regulations would be intrusive, inefficient and excessively costly, chill
job growth and delay business expansion," argued Jack Gerard, president of the
American Petroleum Institute, which also has been critical of the climate
legislation before Congress.

"The Clean Air Act can complement legislation," said Jackson. In fact, if
Congress were to cap greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA probably would be given
the responsibility of implementing the law.

The EPA's involvement in reducing climate-changing pollution, stems from a 2007
Supreme Court decision that declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse
gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. But the court said the EPA would
have to determine if these pollutants pose a danger to public health and welfare
before it could regulate them.

___





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Newsmax.com



Obama Promised Openness, Closes Meetings

Sunday, December 6, 2009 12:36 PM







WASHINGTON -- It's hardly the image of transparency the Obama administration
wants to project: A workshop on government openness is closed to the public.


The event Monday for federal employees is a fitting symbol of President
Barack Obama's uneven record so far on the Freedom of Information Act, a big
part of keeping his campaign promise to make his administration the most
transparent ever. As Obama's first year in office ends, the government's
actions when the public and press seek information are not yet matching up
with the president's words.

"The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear
presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails," Obama told government
offices on his first full day as president. "The government should not keep
information confidential merely because public officials might be
embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or
because of speculative or abstract fears."

Obama scored points on his pledge by requiring the release of detailed
information about $787 billion in economic stimulus spending. It's now
available on a Web site, . Other notable disclosures include waivers that
the White House has granted from Obama's conflict-of-interest rules and
reports detailing Obama's and top appointees' personal finances.

Yet on some important issues, his administration produced information only
after government watchdogs and reporters spent weeks or months pressing, in
some cases suing.

Those include what cars people were buying using the $3 billion Cash for
Clunkers program (it turned out the most frequent trades involved pickups
for pickups with only slightly better gas mileage); how many times airplanes
have collided with birds (a lot); whether lobbyists and donors meet with the
Obama White House (they do); rules about the interrogation of terror
suspects (the FBI and CIA disagreed over what was permitted); and who was
speaking in private with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (he has close
relationships with a cadre of Wall Street executives whose
multibillion-dollar companies survived the economic crisis with his help).

The administration has refused to turn over important records. Obama signed
a law that let the Pentagon refuse to release photographs showing U.S.
troops abusing detainees, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates then did so.
The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, has
refused to release details about the CIA's "black site" rendition program.
The Federal Aviation Administration wouldn't turn over letters and e-mails
among FAA officials about reporters' efforts to learn more about planes that
crash into birds.

Just last week, a State Department deputy assistant secretary, Llewellyn
Hedgbeth, said at a public conference that "as much as we want to promote
transparency," her agency will work just as hard to protect classified
materials or information that would put the United States in a bad light.

People who routinely request government records said they don't see much
progress on Obama's transparency pledge.

"It's either smoke and mirrors or it was done for the media," said Jeff
Stachewicz, founder of Washington-based FOIA Group Inc., which files
hundreds of requests every month across the government on behalf of
companies, law firms and news organizations. "This administration, when it
wants something done, there are no excuses. You just don't see a big
movement toward transparency."

The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties
group, said it filed 45 requests for records since Obama became president,
and that agencies such as NASA and the Energy Department have been mostly
cooperative in the spirit of Obama's promises. But the FBI and Justice
Department? Not so much, said Nate Cardozo, working for the foundation on a
project to expose new government surveillance technologies.

The FBI resisted turning over copies of reports to a White House
intelligence oversight board about possible bureau legal violations. The FBI
said it's so far behind reviewing other, unrelated requests that it can't
turn over the reports until May 2014.

"This administration started with a bang, saying this was going to be a new
day, and we had really high expectations," Cardozo said. "We haven't seen
much of a change. The Justice Department said there would be a stronger
presumption in favor of disclosure, but that hasn't been the case."

Obama has approved startup money for a new office taking part in Monday's
closed conference, the Office of Government Information Services. It was
created to resolve disputes involving people who ask for records and
government agencies. But as evidenced by the open-records event behind
closed doors, there is a long way to go.

"We'd like to know, when they're training agencies, are they telling them
the same thing they're saying in public, that they're committed to making
the Freedom of Information Act work well and make sure that agencies are
releasing information whenever possible while protecting important issues
like individual privacy and national security," said Rick Blum, coordinator
of the Sunshine in Government Initiative, of which The Associated Press is a
member.

The closed conference will provide tips for FOIA public liaisons on
communicating and negotiating with people who make requests, and introduce
the new Office of Government Information Services to them, said Melanie Ann
Pustay, director of the Justice Department's Office of Information Policy,
which takes the lead on government openness issues.

Pustay said she planned to say the same things at the private workshop that
she would say publicly. She offered these reasons to explain why it was
closed: She wanted government employees to be able to speak candidly, and
the conference would be in an auditorium at the Commerce Department, where
she said a government ID was required to be admitted. The AP and others news
organizations routinely enter government buildings to cover the government.

Pustay said she is looking for ways to improve how the government responds
to information requests, which costs roughly $400 million each year.

The director of the new Office of Government Information Services, Miriam
Nisbet, said the event was closed to make sure there would be room for all
the government employees attending.

"I can understand skepticism anytime a meeting for government people is not
necessarily open to the public," Nisbet said. "However, everything that is
discussed there is absolutely available for the public to know about."

C 2009 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be
published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[First and least, this pre-programmed 4-star lunkhead can't stop speaking in
clichés and vacuous corporate jargon. Telling. But more important, the
message he's carrying from Obama's White House radiates with thumb-twiddling
indecision and thumb-sucking naïveté in the face of a looming transformative
world crisis. Of course, as NRO's
<http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/12/teed_up.asp> Michael
Goldfarb notes, when the press gets a hold of this it becomes "evidence that
this White House is somehow more serious about national security decisions
than its predecessor." df]





The Hill, Blog Briefing Room



  <http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room>


<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/70803-wh-mulling-iran-sanc
tions-in-january> Iran
<http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/70803-wh-mulling-iran-sanc
tions-in-january>  sanctions to be mulled in January



By Tony Romm - 12/06/09



The president could begin pushing for a new round of sanctions against Iran
as early as January unless its leaders commit in earnest to dismantling
their nuclear energy program, one White House official acknowledged on
Sunday.

That informal deadline and threat -- one of the White House's strongest to
date -- arrives about a week after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
signaled he would build additional, domestic nuclear power plants and, in
the process, reject what was supposed to be a landmark deal between Iran,
the International Atomic Energy Association and the world community.





"Well, the president has said consistently -- and the international
community has also said consistently -- that we would be able to see which
way Iran wishes to go by the end of the year," Gen. James Jones, the White
House's national security adviser, told CNN's "State of the Union."

"And that clock's ticking. The door is still open, but, unfortunately, the
picture Iran is painting is not a good one," he added. "But we are still
open to negotiations. The IAEA is still working feverishly to try to bring
this about."

The White House's relationship with Iran seemed to be improving as recently
as a month ago, after Iranian leaders signaled they would permit inspections
of their nuclear facilities and consider a deal to import nuclear energy
from a third party.

But those negotiations quickly broke down. Iran's support for the deal
during an October meeting of the P5+1 -- a team of British, Chinese, French,
German, Russian and U.S. negotiators that met with Iranian leaders -- never
truly materialized, prompting world leaders to worry the deal itself was
doomed.

But the standoff reached a new intensity when Ahmadinejad decided he would
no longer halt uranium production at Qom -- the secret nuclear facility
world leaders rebuked Iran for constructing in October. The Iranian
president also announced last week his state would construct 10 additional
nuclear power plants; a clear message to IAEA officials and western leaders
that it was frustrated with nuclear negotiations.

U.S. officials subsequently announced they would confer with European
leaders in the hopes of assembling some sort of sanctions package. While
some White House advisers acknowledged off the record last week they were
making progress on that front, they added their proposed sanctions were
still too irresolute to announce formally.

But Jones' remarks on Sunday nevertheless demonstrate the White House is
seriously mulling a rebuke for Iran's nuclear program, unless Ahmadinejad
returns to the negotiating table before next year.

"What's on the table is very logical, very fair, very reasonable," Jones
said of the IAEA deal. "And if Iran wanted to signal to the world that it
wishes to participate more fully in the family of nations, this is a very,
very good way for them to do this."

###





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/08/james-hansen-climate-kook/




James Hansen, Climate Kook


2009 December 8

by Claude Cartaginese



Amy <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1692>
Goodman's Marxist
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=115&type=issue>
Democracy <http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6891>
Now! program hit the jackpot last week by introducing its viewers to
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) climatologist James
Hansen, a man who's views on man-made global warming are so radical that he
thinks even Al
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2140>  Gore
doesn't get it!

Hansen wants the climate
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=99&type=issue>
talks (currently taking place in Copenhagen) to actually fail, since, in his
view, the talks are fatally flawed and any agreements reached will be
inadequate in averting the pending climate catastrophe. In fact, he believes
that the entire negotiations should be started from scratch, but only after
we stop burning all fossil fuels.
From the Democracy Now! report:

James Hansen: As long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy, they're going
to continue to be used and their use will increase. So we have to put a
price on carbon. And the money that is collected from this price must be
returned to the public 100 percent, either as a monthly dividend or a
payroll tax deduction or a combination of those. If we do those things, the
problem becomes solvable. If we don't, it is the biggest inter-generational
injustice in the history of the world. We'll be leaving our children and
grandchildren with a situation out of their control. So we've got to begin
to influence the policies that are being talked about. And what is being
talked about in Washington now and in Copenhagen now is totally inadequate.
It's greenwash. It's cap and trade with offsets, which will be just like the
Kyoto Protocol. It will do nothing to reduce global emissions.

In an interview with The Guardian last week, Hansen went so far as to equate
any compromise on the use of fossil fuels to slavery or Nazism:

James Hansen: This is analogous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham
Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill. On those kinds of
issues you cannot compromise. You can't say let's reduce slavery, let's find
a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%.

In Hansen's view, he is the only one with the grasp and honesty to confront
the issue of man's ruination of the atmosphere, and President Obama
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511> , Al
Gore, and other politicians and scientists have failed to meet what he
regards as this great "moral challenge of our age." He went so far as to
call Obama's climate policies "half-assed."

Many scientists who have worked with Hansen in the past, however, disagree
with Hansen's self-assessment.

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, Hansen's former
supervisor, publicly declared that Hansen has "embarrassed NASA" with his
alarming climate claims.

NASA Physicist and Astronaut Walter Cunningham is also no Hansen fan.
Cunningham has described Hansen as:

A political activist who spreads fear even when NASA's own data contradicts
him. NASA should be at the forefront in the collection of scientific
evidence and debunking the current hysteria over human-caused, or
Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Unfortunately, it is becoming just
another agency caught up in the politics of global warming, or worse,
politicized science.

Hansen has in the past called for the arrest of those who disagree with him,
and while at NASA has been accused of manipulating data which resulted in
false and misleading conclusions. He is a leading critic of the coal
industry, and was arrested last summer protesting at a West Virginia coal
mine.

What Hansen lobbies for indefatigably, however, is an immediate "carbon tax"
on fossil fuels-a tax that is so outrageously high that all manufacturing
would be brought to an immediate standstill.

Such a tax would, in Hansen's view, be the most likely to have the desired
effect of "forcing us to change our ways."

Notice Hansen's preferred method of change: the use of force.





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Like Mohammed, Gore would probably have his critics killed, if he could.



B



http://newsrealblog.com/2009/12/07/idiot-watch-al-gore-the-poet/




Idiot Watch: Al Gore the Poet


2009 December 7

tags: Al Gore <http://newsrealblog.com/tag/al-gore/> , News
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/news/> , poetry
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/poetry/> , Politics
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/politics/>

by David Horowitz

poet_poster

Excerpts of Al Gore "poetry" from
<http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/12/al-gore-the-poet-laureate
-of-climate-change.html> Variety:

The beginning:

One thin September soon
A floating continent disappears
In midnight sun

Vapors rise as
Fever settles on an acid sea

An excerpt from the middle:

Snow glides from the mountain
Ice fathers floods for a season
A hard rain comes quickly

Then dirt is parched
Kindling is placed in the forest
For the lightning's celebration

Conclusion:

The shepherd cries
The hour of choosing has arrived
Here are your tools


FOX: How Al Gore is Goring the Rest of Us


2009 July 15

tags: Al Gore <http://newsrealblog.com/tag/al-gore/> , Bill O'Reilly
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/bill-oreilly/> , Cap and Trade
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/cap-and-trade/> , Environmentalism
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/environmentalism/> , News
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/news/> , Politics
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/politics/> , President Obama
<http://newsrealblog.com/tag/president-obama/>

by Joseph Klein

Al Gore
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=2140>  is
profiting obscenely from his campaign against global warming.  Bill O'Reilly
reported on the Factor last night that Gore's net worth is up some 5,000
percent.  And the former Vice President stands to make many millions more if
cap-and-trade
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=826>  legislation
(which already has made it through the House of Representatives) is passed
by the Senate and signed into law by President
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511>
Obama.

Meanwhile, we will all be paying the price of Gore's radical brand of
environmentalism
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=99&type=issue> .
Cap-and-trade amounts to a hidden tax (of multi-billion dollar proportions)
on all ordinary Americans. Even President Obama admitted as much when he
said, "[U]nder
<http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1511>  my
plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily
skyrocket.. they [coal power plants] would have to retrofit their
operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to
consumers."

And that is not all that would skyrocket.  Every product and service
affected by cap-and-trade would increase in price.  That's because the cost
of the permits that energy companies must buy before releasing carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere will be passed on to us.  Meanwhile the trading
of permits in market exchanges will enrich firms on Wall Street as well as
Al Gore, who is affiliated with the cap-and-trade venture-capital firm,
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

  This has the unmistakable look and smell of a blatant conflict-of-interest.

If Gore is indeed the savior of the environment that he professes to be, why
doesn't he fork over 100% of his personal profits from cap-and-trade and all
other of his greenhouse business ventures, and deposit that money into a
pool of funds that would be distributed to those Americans who inevitably
will suffer the economic consequences of his policy recommendations?

The answer is that Mr. Gore prefers to continue living in wealth and
splendor, with an enormous "carbon footprint" of his own to boot!





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Published on HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com ( <http://hamptonroads.com/>
http://hamptonroads.com)

Accused SEALs gain public support as heroes

RICHMOND

Three Navy SEALs facing accusations they mistreated a detainee are gathering
support from people who consider them heroes.

A Facebook page created to support the men has some 45,000 members and a
California congressman is heading efforts to get Defense Secretary Robert
Gates to intervene. Facing court martial are Petty Officers 2nd Class
Matthew McCabe of Perrysburg, Ohio, and Jonathan Keefe of Yorktown, Va., and
Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas of Blue Island, Ill.

Army Lt. Col. Holly Silkman, a spokeswoman for the military's Special
Operations Command Center, says the public should withhold judgment until
the facts come out.

The charges center on alleged abuse of Iraqi Ahmed Hashim Abed, who's
believed to be connected to the 2004 killings of four Blackwater security
guards.

   _____

Source URL (retrieved on 12/07/2009 - 12:30):
<http://hamptonroads.com/2009/12/accused-seals-gain-public-support-heroes>
http://hamptonroads.com/2009/12/accused-seals-gain-public-support-heroes



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

No, the massacre highlights Somali/Muslim savagery and barbarism.

B



Doctors' massacre highlights medical crisis in Somalia

Public anger spills over into protests over suicide bombing

By Daniel Howden, Africa Correspondent

Tuesday, 8 December 2009

The Independent


<http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/doctors-massacre-highlights-me
dical-crisis-in-somalia-1836063.html?action=Popup> Mourners prepare to bury
the Education Minister Ahmed Abdulahi Wayel

AP

Mourners prepare to bury the Education Minister Ahmed Abdulahi Wayel

Dr Maslah was still writing a message of congratulations to his best friend
when news reached him of the bombing. The young surgeon was starting another
gruelling shift at Galkayo hospital and was happy that a few hundred miles
south in Mogadishu his friends at medical school were celebrating their
graduation. A year earlier he had been the one collecting his degree as one
of the first class of university graduates in Somalia since 1991. He was
looking forward to getting some reinforcements.

The graduation was a welcome bright spot in a city consumed by internecine
war and government ministers packed into the Shamo Hotel, along with
families, lecturers and students.

But this year's class would not be so fortunate. The doctor's friend, with
whom he'd studied at Benadir University for six years, was ripped apart by a
massive blast along with half his class and three ministers.

A young man had sneaked into the celebration disguised in women's clothing
and a veil. He made his way to the front and triggered the explosive vest he
was wearing.

A witness describes what happened next. "Suddenly, the hall shook," he said.
"Dozens of people were on the ground under a huge cloud of smoke. The
ceremony hall became very dark, and seemed like a slaughterhouse, for the
blood flowing on the ground. A young man rushed to pick up his older
brother, who had graduated that day, but he was already dead. The young man
cried and cried."

In a country seemingly inured to the atrocities of war, the slaughter of a
class of young doctors has been greeted with unprecedented anger. Yesterday,
hundreds of Somalis marched from the bomb site to Benadir University in the
first ever public demonstration against the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, and Al-Shabaab has denied
it.

For Dr Maslah there is more grief than anger. "I knew most of them ... I'm
very sorry," he said, repeating the phrase four times. The lost class of
2009 could not be more sorely needed. Dr Maslah, based in Galkayo, north of
the capital, is one of only a dozen surgeons in the entire country. His
hospital has seen 34,000 patients in the past year. He himself performs an
average of 40 operations a month.

Merely resolving to stay in the country takes uncommon courage. "They have a
passion for their people," says Karin Fischer Liddle from Doctors Without
Borders (MSF). "They're extremely brave to have taken the decision to stay
in Somalia."

Dr Maslah thought of leaving the country but says his brother convinced him
to stay. The young surgeon explains that he often feared for his life just
getting to school. Some patients cannot be saved as there are no bloodbanks
and people often travel for days just to reach a hospital. Recently the
patients that arrive are often starving. The hospital is receiving more
malnourished patients than ever before, according to MSF. Its feeding centre
is packed with 1,300 people.

"I am not considering fleeing the country," Dr Maslah says despite his
grief. "Sometimes I feel fear but I find reasons to stay. I'm in the place
where I can be of most use."

Somalia: An escalating tragedy

34,000

The number of patients seen by Galkayo hospital in the past year.

1,300

The number of hungry people crammed into the hospital's feeding centre, many
having arrived in a state of starvation

3.6 million

The number of Somalis in need of aid - nearly half the population

100,000

Approximate size of exodus of professionals from Somalia in the past year





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.newswithviews.com/Kincaid/cliff374.htm



SOCIALISTS DEMAND TRILLIONS IN "CLIMATE DEBT"





By Cliff Kincaid
December 8, 2009
NewsWithViews.com

You don't need to attend the United Nations climate change conference to
know what's really going on.

Ignoring the fallacies behind the "science" of man-made global warming, a
new U.N. report on "climate justice" says the U.S. and other countries owe
$24 trillion in "climate debt" to the rest of the world. The report,
"Climate Justice for a Changing Planet
<http://www.un-ngls.org/spip.php?page=climatejustice> ," argues that the
United States is "historically the largest global emitter" of greenhouse gas
emissions and therefore has the biggest "debt" to pay.

But another U.N. report puts the figure at $45 trillion.

President Obama seems prepared to accept this bogus claim by attending the
United Nations conference on December 18.

The U.S. failure to pay, argues leftist Canadian writer Naomi Klein, has
already produced "climate rage" and a "global movement for climate justice"
led by Bolivia's socialist President Evo Morales. The implication is that if
the U.S. doesn't pay up, protests and even violence could break out.

In a statement, the Morales regime declared that "What we call for is full
payment of the debt owed to us by developed countries for threatening the
integrity of the Earth's climate system, for over-consuming a shared
resource that belongs fairly and equally to all people, and for maintaining
lifestyles that continue to threaten the lives and livelihoods of the poor
majority of the planet's population."

In other words, Americans are supposed to feel guilty over having a
successful industrial economy. It is a system that has produced more wealth
for more people than any in human history.

A detailed proposal from Bolivia says "a wealthy minority," presumably in
the U.S. and other "rich" nations, "has already over-consumed a considerable
amount of environmental space," thus "denying it to the poorer majority who
needs it in the course of their development."

Naomi Klein describes the proposed payments as "reparations."

But as startling as the figure of $24 trillion sounds, a separate report
from the U.N. Environmental Program says the cost could be as high as $45
trillion. It is estimated that "a package to address climate change and
energy development needs at the global level may require US $45 trillion up
to 2025," it says.

The March 2009 "Global <http://www.unep.org/pdf/GGND_Final_Report.pdf>
Green New Deal" report says that the global financial crisis is an
opportunity to usher in a new international socialist order. "The rules of
financial architecture and of global environmental governance are being
simultaneously re-written in 2009," the report explains. "We believe that
there is a unique historical opportunity now to create the basis of a new
Green Economy that is able to allocate natural capital and financial capital
in a far more effective and efficient manner into the foreseeable future. We
must not miss this chance to fundamentally shift the trajectory of human
civilization."

The author of this report was Professor Edward
<http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/barbier/>  B. Barbier of the University of
Wyoming. His "Global Green New Deal" report was prepared in consultation
with the U.S. Presidential Climate Action Project, a little-known entity
launched by the University of Colorado whose advisory board
<http://www.climateactionproject.com/advisory.php>  includes ousted White
House communist "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones. World Net Daily highlighted
Jones' role in the group in a November 30 story
<http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=117548>  by Aaron Klein.

Co-authored by Barbara Adams and Gretchen Luchsinger, the most recent United
Nations report on "climate justice" says "because the world's richest
countries have contributed most to the problem, they have a greater
obligation to take action and to do so more quickly." Paying a "climate
debt" is the way to make sure that "extreme imbalances in development are
evened out."

  "China now produces the largest amount of overall national emissions,
topping the United States," the report says. "But this figure must be
qualified by the fact that China's population is four times as large as that
of the United States, making its per capita emissions rate roughly 75
percent less."

Hence, the U.S. is still the chief culprit and should pay the most.

The report was launched in conjunction with the U.N. climate change
conference now taking place in Copenhagen and is designed for the
consideration of policy makers and non-governmental organizations. It is
being distributed by the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service.

"Given the escalating pace of global warming," the report argues, the world
"now has to act with far greater urgency." But change is possible only with
"major economic and political rearrangements around the core principles of
equity and sustainable development."

These are euphemisms for destroying private property rights and the free
enterprise system and creating a global socialist superstate.

Under a heading about the need to "transform the systems and institutions
that have created climate change," the authors say that "tinkering around
the edges" will not suffice and that "Governance and development models
should be built around notions of justice and equity, with the objective of
working for the planet and people as a whole, and evening out imbalances
that are not sustainable. It is not enough to talk about low-carbon pathways
through technology, for example, without also rethinking current models of
production, global trade and consumption patterns."

Proposals for "climate change financing" include a Comprehensive World
Climate Change Fund, into which payments could be made, and a global carbon
tax.

The ATTAC movement says
<http://www.attac.org/en/tags/copenhagen-2009/change-system-not-climate> ,
"Change the system, not the climate!" ATTAC, which stands for the
Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of
Citizens, favors global taxes on currency transactions.

A more detailed article on "climate justice" explains that "It isn't simply
a matter of asking the rich world to pay for the devastation climate change
is causing in the developing world. As a report recently
<http://www.wdm.org.uk/climatedebtreport>  launched by World Development
Movement and Jubilee Debt Campaign points out, 'climate debt' questions a
global free market system which has pushed many developing countries into
high carbon pathways that they now need to find a way out of."



This is about as clear as it gets-free markets will give way to a worldwide
socialist state, created under the guise of solving a climate crisis that
does not really exist.



The authors, Nick Dearden and Tim Jones, attempt to throw cold water on Lord
Christopher Monckton's contention that this amounts to a blueprint for
"world communist government." However, they acknowledge that the proposal
does imply "fundamental changes in the global economy" and the "radical
redistribution of the world's resources."

Do you think we can count on the major media attending the conference to
report on the real agenda behind the event?





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