The Western Word

This Week's Editorial

A DECADE IN REVIEW
By Avi Davis

When the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000, I had to wonder what all the fuss was about. The clock apparently marked off two thousand years, but from what, no one was quite certain. I guess I am one of those contrarians who believes that we are woefully underserved by the Gregorian Calendar, which has been in use in the West since 1582. That is because marking off dates in decades, centuries and millennia is next to meaningless when we remember that Jesus was actually born in the year 4 BCE (therefore providing a somewhat awkward starting point for the first millennium); that the Earth’s orbit around the sun takes not 365 days but 365.2423 days, (a number not divisible by 4, 7 or 12) and that there wasn’t even a common subscription to the Gregorian Calendar until England converted to it in 1752 (abandoning the long used Julian Calendar).

Therefore, we might assume, there are minutes, hours and even days that might be unaccounted for in our spin through the universe. Given this sad state of affairs, using the clock to mark off a decade seems pretty pointless. With no universally accurate measurement of time, its all just pomp and circumstance about nothing.

Yet dates do bear meaning for us time-bound humans if only as a means of segmenting our lives into appreciable chunks of relevance and allowing us the means of chronicling our passage through life.

The marking of another decade is therefore an opportunity to reflect on what has passed in the ten years since that last supposed millenarian event.

Our past decade was bracketed by two completely unexpected occurences – the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the financial collapse of 2008. Everything else in between – the contested federal election of 2000, the three turbulent years of Intifada which broke the back of the Middle East peace process, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the tsunami which devastated Southern Asia in December, 2004, the flooding of New Orleans in August, 2005 – were blips on our radar screens by comparison.

Having trawled through the events of the decade, there appear four major themes that I believe will dictate much of what occurs in the coming years of this century:

1. The Emergence of Tension between National Security and Individual Rights

After the shock of 9/11 subsided and Americans got on with their normal lives, the horror of the day receded, while the government remained active in pressing for tighter security, passing the Patriot Act of 2002 with little dissent, establishing Guantanomo Bay as a maximum security prison and creating the Department of Homeland Security. This retreating tide however, exposed the hulk of the embittered federal election of 2000 and the remembrance of George W. Bush as an illegitimate president.

It wasn’t long, then, before the Democratic Party had launched into an assault on the Bush Administration’s national security measures – measures that almost any American government, from left or right, would certainly have enacted following such a devastating attack.

The hatred for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld became so palpable in the latter part of the first Bush Administration that a romday could not go by without some vituperative attack on the character and morals of the governing Administration from some major media source. The failure to uncover evidence of weapons of mass destruction, the most important reason proffered for the invasion of Iraq, only underscored, for the left at least, the Administration’s mendacity.

As the decade progressed though, it became increasingly clear that the struggle was not between opposing Democratic and Republican policies on issues of national security, but between two fundamentally differing world views. The war on terror, declared by the Bush Administration, was not a conventional war and could not be fought conventionally. It would involve not only a struggle abroad, but a struggle to contain potential terrorist activity within. Therefore wire tapping, stricter control over financial transfers, tough border controls and increased surveillance of potential insurgents within our towns and cities, were all necessary measures.

Yet the idea that Americans might have to surrender some fundamental rights to privacy was anathema to the left and they refused to countenance it. Perhaps they refused to understand that America was as much at war as it had been in 1917 or 1941; perhaps they failed to appreciate that individual liberty and the protection of personal rights were more robust than they had ever been in America’s history, even with the tightened security measures. But the venom with which the left attacked these necessary security measures was a gauge of the struggle between the right to privacy and national security imperatives. It will remain the guiding national debate of much of the coming decade.

2. The Rise of Radical Environmentalism

What started as a fringe movement in the early 1970s gained world attention in the 2000s. Environmentalism transformed from a movement to combat pollution and to conserve wilderness areas into a multinational effort to build awareness of anthropogenic global warming and as an attack against human development itself. With world politicians subscribing to the spurious notion of ‘scientific consensus’ on the issue, radical environmentalists, who decry human interference in the environment and are in fact opposed to development of almost any kind, were able to hitch their wagon to luminaries such as Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev and obtain an international spotlight they didn’t otherwise deserve.

But the global warming lobby has not provided entirely convincing science. Simply put, our climate and weather is governed by so many variables that predictions are fraught with difficulty. Computer models have been used to advance the idea of likely severe weather change but they are fed data that are not always verifiable. The same models have been used to predict weather patterns over the coming 100 years, but, as was discovered in October of this year, with the revelation that climate researchers in England manipulated, manufactured or otherwise doctored the same data, put the lie to the idea that climate science is not susceptible to political pressure or ideology. It seems, at least from the rash of emails uncovered in exchanges between the climate researchers, that sometimes the models are adapted to reach conclusions which are keeping with a political platform rather than as a reflection of real climate science.

The Bush Administration brooked this wave as bravely as it could, but its power as public policy was irresistible. We have now seen the discussion of global warming completely overwhelm our national narrative and become one of the leading political discussion points of this century. It came into political form last year in the guise of Cap and Trade legislation which thankfully exhausted itself before it could obtain strenuous political support. But it lives on in the rhetoric of our president, in widespread support in the media and academia and as a subject of strong advocacy among members of our political class.

But even as the movement has gained such extraordinary traction, there has been a countervailing movement pushing back against it. It was led by the weather itself.

The past ten years have proven, even according to most climatologists, decidedly colder than the previous twenty. The year 2008 was actually one of the coldest in the northern hemisphere since the 1850s. Scientific reports are emerging that it might not be man-produced fossil fuels which are causing any heating of the earth’s atmosphere but in fact natural cycles of the sun and the absence of cloud cover.

Whatever the conclusion of the scientific debate, there is now, for once, public discussion on the issue and doubt is beginning to creep into some independent thinkers’ minds. The collapse of an international agreement on climate control at the International Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December, reflects, to a certain degree, this concern. We await developments but the likelihood is that anthropogenic global warming will fade as a matter of international consensus.

3. The Fragility of the International Economic System

Why the financial crash of September 2008 came as such a surprise, is beyond my understanding. The collapse of major U.S.financial institutions, many of which had been around for a nearly century, was due to a complete failure of imagination and an unwillingness to take seriously the growing signs of collapse.

Credit, used in increasingly complicated and sophisticated ways, to the point where borrowings were made against assets that barely existed, undermined the entire structure of our paper (rather than monetized) economy. The signs should have been apparent, but even such revered figures as former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, couldn’t figure it out. But in retrospect it was fairly clear: the economy had grown top heavy with debt based on collapsing assets, and like a listing galleon over-freighted with cargo, just toppled over.

The international repercussions were telling. Almost every Western economy was struck by the seismic shock which followed the U.S. banking crisis of 2008. It drove down the international value of the dollar, upended the U.S. balance of trade and created havoc in world currency markets.

The cure administered to address the country’s economic woes seemed sometimes worse than the disease. The relatively modest Bush stimulus package in September, 2008 was followed by the massive $787 billion Obama stimulus for 2009, with hundreds of billions being made available to shore up not just the banking and investment industries but public companies as well. Never in American history had public funds been used to support failing enterprises in this way. It set an ominous precedent for any future economic difficulties that the country might be forced to confront.

The future of the West and its international financial system hangs in large part, on how the United States manages its fiscal problems. Building confidence in economic stability is probably the first order of business for any American government.

4. The Scourge of Islamic Fundamentalism

Prior to 9/11 terrorism appeared as little more than nuisance which affected other countries and not the United States. While it is true there had been urban terrorists of the 70s and 80s, the Oklahoma bombing of 1995 and assorted attacks against American military units stationed outside the country – these were perceived as the work of isolated groups with no unified motivation. Domestic terrorism, the kind which resulted in huge urban casualties, and motivated by an abiding hatred of U.S citizens as a people, was largely unknown.

The events of that September day, however, changed everything. The recognition that Americans were vulnerable, not just on isolated military bases in Beirut or Riyadh, but in their own homes and public places, altered the national dialogue. It has had a sizable impact on daily life, from the lines at security check points at airports, to the security measures regarding bank accounts to tougher immigration policies.

Yet what has failed to penetrate the West’s public consciousness was the motivation behind the September 11 attacks and the subsequent assaults on Western targets around the world. The rise of Islam, which began to take its fundamentalist political shape with the establishment of the Iranian theocracy in 1979, gathered clout with the upsurge in oil prices and sought to fill the oppositional role vacated in the 1990s with the fall of communism. Fundamentalist Islamic communities grew prodigiously in Europe where they took advantage of the benevolent welfare benefits offered to new immigrants by their host countries. As they gained in collective confidence and drew inspiration from the growing international prestige of the Iranian theocracy, these communities made a play for political power, though not necessarily through the political system. The French riots of 2005 and the Danish cartoon riots of 2006, both made it adamantly clear that the Islamic communities of Europe intended to become a serious political force to be reckoned with.

The reaction of the West was craven appeasement. Steeped in multicultural pieties, Western leaders bent over backwards to make it clear they were not knee jerk racists and would take no issue with Muslim demands for a certain degree of communal autonomy and separation from mainstream culture. This effort had its crowning achievement in February, 2008 when the Archbishop of Canterbury and the former Chief Justice of Britain both conceded that the establishment of a parallel legal system to adjudicate certain internal Muslim disputes, is inevitable.

It all took place against a backdrop of the rise of Islamic terrorism throughout the West. The 2002 Bali Night Club bombing, the 2005 London bombings, the 2006 Madrid Bombings, the 2008 Mumbai attack and hundreds of other assaults on soft targets in major world capitals, were all carried out, almost without exception, in the name of Islam. Apologists wrung their hands over the claim that these desperate attacks were not the work of true followers of the Muslim faith and that Islam remained a religion of peace.

But contrary proof was readily available. There were few Muslim religious leaders willing to publicly condemn the terrorist plague which had engulfed the societies in which they lived. In the United States, the willful blindness to the reality of Muslim representative organizations covertly supporting terrorism while feigning allegiance to American values was even more troubling. The Bush Administration went out of its way to pretend that the drive behind the terrorist scourge was something other than real Islam and the Obama Administration has continued on the same wayward path.

Until Western leaders connect the dots and recognize that the West is engaged in a physical, moral and philosophical battle with hardened murderers pledged to a religious creed that calls for the the West’s destruction; until it concedes that representatives of those men live, plot and recruit within their very own societies and are an ever present danger to us; until they face the reality that not all religions are “religions of peace” and that some might actually more resemble death cults pledged to the slaughter of unbelievers – we face a very difficult and prolonged struggle for which there is no certain victory.

Conclusion

The years 2000-2009 have been decried as a lost decade by many pundits and commentators. I don’t agree with them. I see the past decade as offering important lessons about the world in which we live – from the true nature of Islam to the fragility of the international economic system to the necessity to sometimes trade individual rights for personal security. What we make of these lessons will determine the kind of world in which we will live in the coming decade. Lets hope the human capacity for growth, ingenuity and recovery continues to reassert itself and that we will come to view these past ten years as the necessary growing pains of a maturing civilization.

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance.

Want to comment on this article? See Avi Davis’ blog
Avi Davis is the president of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at isdev@ix.netcom.com

Flight 253 and Counterterror’s Epic Fail
by Robert Spencer

An attempted jihad attack on Christmas Day has revealed that Americans are much more vulnerable to such attacks than most have believed – while government officials whistle in the dark. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 just before it landed in Detroit. In response, Barack Obama chose not to cut short his golfing vacation in Hawaii; the White House announced that he would “likely” have something to say about this latest attempted jihad attack on U.S. soil “in the next few days.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was ebullient, maintaining that “the system worked” and “everything happened that should have.” Unless the “system” consisted of relying on passengers to tackle jihadists (as Jasper Schuringa, the Dutch passenger on Flight 253, subdued Abdulmutallab), and trusting that jihadis’ detonators will malfunction (as did Abdulmutallab’s), Napolitano’s statement couldn’t possibly be farther from the truth. In reality, nothing worked. Nothing at all, both in terms of security procedures for individual air passengers, and in terms of the larger strategy for dealing with jihad terrorism. (Frontpagemagazine)

Homeland Security Must Grant Visas -- Not the State Department
by Christian Whiton

It is time for the U.S. to be more selective with those who wish to travel here from high risk areas and backgrounds. A visa should be a privilege, not an entitlement.
Nearly 300 innocent passengers and crew members on Northwest Flight 253 received what looks to be a Christmas miracle when they were not killed by an alleged terrorist who set off an explosive onboard. While the media is already raising questions about airline security, there is a more cogent question that needs to be answered: why is the federal government still giving visas to terrorists? Significant policy changes are necessary. The criminal complaint filed by the FBI against Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after his arrest at the Detroit airport accuses him of a “willful attempt to destroy an aircraft.” It cites preliminary analysis of the explosive in his possession as containing PETN, which was the explosive to be used in the foiled 2006 terrorist plot to blow up several commercial planes over the Atlantic. Early reports indicate Mr. Abdulmutallab, who is Nigerian, was given a visa with a two-year validity to enter the U.S. to attend a “religious ceremony.” (One wonders if that ceremony was to be his own martyrdom.) He confessed to receiving terrorist training during a recent trip to Yemen. It was also reported that Mr. Abdulmutallab was in a law enforcement intelligence database of people with suspected ties to terrorists. (Foxnews)

Christian Whiton was a State Department official during the George W. Bush administration from 2003-2009. He is a principal at DC Asia Advisory in Washington, and a fellow at the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles.

U.S. Probes Cleric's Tie to Jetliner Bomb Plot- EVAN PEREZ, MARGARET COKER, SIOBHAN GORMAN
WASHINGTON -- Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Yemeni cleric who has surfaced in multiple terror probes, is emerging as a central part of the Christmas Day airline bomber investigation, as authorities focus attention on a network of extremists in Yemen who may have helped radicalize the young Nigerian accused in the failed plot. U.S. investigators have uncovered intelligence "chatter" indicating contacts between Mr. Awlaki, who has been under U.S. intelligence scrutiny for years, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a wealthy Nigerian who is accused of trying to down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with explosives hidden in his underwear. While Mr. Awlaki had been suspected of having contacts with Mr. Abdulmutallab, the evidence firms up those links. The type and extent of the contacts detected between the two couldn't be learned. It isn't clear what direct role, if any, Mr. Awlaki played in the plot. Al Qaeda's branch in Yemen, with which Mr. Awlaki is associated, has claimed responsibility for the attack. (WSJ)

Yemen: Visa of Nigerian would-be-bomber expired-AHMED AL-HAJ AP
SAN'A, Yemen (AP) - The Nigerian suspected in the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner had stayed on in Yemen illegally after his visa expired three months ago and should have been stopped by authorities from leaving the country, Yemeni security officials said Thursday. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab spent time in Yemen on two occasions before the attempted Christmas Day attack on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight.
Yemeni officials said Abdulmutallab's student visa for Yemen, where he studied Arabic at a local language institute, was valid from Aug. 4 to Sept. 21. After his visa expired, the 23-year-old stayed on in Yemen until the first week in December, they said, but his whereabouts in the country was unknown. The officials said Abdulmutallab left Yemen on Dec. 7 on a flight to Ethiopia and then continued on a few days later to Ghana. In Ghana, he is believed to have purchased the ticket for the flight from Lagos to Detroit that he is accused of trying to bring down. They added that Yemen's airport authorities and passport control should have prevented Abdulmutallab from departing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case with the media, pending the outcome of an investigation. (Breitbart)

Dutch to Use Body Scanners-Daniel Michaels
New Technology Will Screen U.S.-Bound Passengers Amid Privacy Concerns
Dutch authorities said Wednesday that they would compel airline passengers heading to the U.S. to submit to new advanced body scanners, in a sign that worries about the recent attempt to detonate explosives aboard an airliner from Amsterdam are trumping privacy concerns about devices that can see through people's clothes.The machines, known as full-body scanners, have been used for several years on a voluntary basis in pilot programs in Europe and the U.S. They have sparked controversy because, in addition to highlighting weapons, drugs or cash hidden under a person's clothes, they also can depict medical implants and even provide images of a passenger's naked body. Many politicians and civil-rights advocates in the U.S. and Europe have said the machines violate air passengers' privacy. Such concerns -- and the cost of the machines, which run around $150,000 apiece -- have slowed their deployment. Security specialists also note the machines can't spot objects hidden inside a person and don't replace human intelligence gathered before a potential terrorist reaches an airport or observations of their behavior at an airport. (WSJ)

France and the Burqa-M. A. Khan
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in a rare speech to lawmakers of both Houses on June 22, 2009, kicked up a controversy by declaring the head-to-toe burka “not a sign of religion” but of “subservience,” which would not be welcome in France. Ignoring criticism, which divided the French, the Sarkozy administration pursued its intended burqa ban by forming a parliamentary committee consisting of 32 lawmakers to investigate whether wearing a burqa trampled Muslim women’s liberty and how the ban could be enacted. The committee, after a protracted investigation involving Muslim community leaders and intellectuals (including Tariq Ramadan), is about to deliver its verdict; recent statements by leading French politicians suggest that a recommendation banning the burqa in public spaces in France is on its way. Islam subjugated both non-Muslims (dhimmis) and the Muslim women. The West, including the French, spearheaded the liberation of dhimmis of the Islamic world in the so-called age of colonialism by direct intervention or through diplomatic pressure (e.g. Iran and Turkey). (Hudsonny)

Man attacks Danish comic artist-Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
A Somali man wielding an ax and a knife was shot by police as he attempted to kill an artist who drew a cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad that sparked outrage in the Muslim world, the head of Denmark's intelligence agency said Saturday. Jakob Scharf said in a statement that a 28-year-old man with ties to al-Qaida attempted to enter Kurt Westergaard's home in Aarhus shortly after 10 p.m. (2100 GMT) on Friday. But Westergaard pressed an alarm and police arrived minutes later, foiling the attempt on his life. The attack on the artist, whose rendering was among 12 that led to the torching of Danish diplomatic offices in predominantly Muslim countries in 2006, was "terror related," Scharf said. Westergaard, whose 5-year-old granddaughter was in the home on a sleepover, sought shelter in a specially made safe room when the suspect broke a window of the home, said Preben Nielsen of the Aarhus police. (Jpost)

The Liberal Plot against American Education- Robert Weissberg
I am usually skeptical about conspiracy theories, but American education's sorrowful state has increasingly pushed me in that direction. Some background: I've analyzed K-12 schooling for years and observed an odd pattern: We increasingly spend billions to improve it (with much of the increase directed toward uplifting blacks and Hispanics), but progress is miniscule. Setting aside sheer stupidity as an explanation, this blatant wastefulness is a prime candidate for a nefarious "dark forces" account. But more importantly, if this is indeed something other than stupidity (or the Illuminati, Freemasons, the Tri-Lateral Commission, and the like)...then could it be a "whodunit"? My first inclination was to round up the usual suspects: liberals. After all, all the outward signs of the "crime" point to this familiar culprit. There is the usual hasty fiscal extravagance, a muddle-brained potpourri of unreachable aims, the reflexive expansion of state power, and a commitment to "progress," absent boundaries. More telling, there is the signature dependency-for-life outcome where youngsters migrate from one government program to the next. But would this circumstantial evidence warrant a grand jury indictment, let alone a conviction? Harder evidence was required: if not a smoking gun, then at least a theory of the crime (to use some prosecutorial lingo). (Americanthinker)

A Tale of Two Gazas: Website Pictures Deny ‘Humanitarian Crisis’-Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(IsraelNN.com) The Arabic-language PalToday website, based in Gaza, recently posted pictures showing a world of plenty for residents, despite more than two years of reports that the area is suffering from a humanitarian crisis. However, itsEnglish website for foreign audiences showed a picture of misery, focusing on a girl who wanted her terrorist father freed by Israel. The pictures on the Arabic-language site were posted for the Eid al Adha Muslim festival, which recalls the forefather Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, who the Bible states was Isaac. The Muslim tradition substitutes him with Ishmael. The pictures on the Arabic-language site are headlined with the caption, "Clothes for their children despite the siege,” referring to the partial blockade Israel placed on Gaza following the Hamas military coup more than two year ago. Israel has allowed thousands of trucks, bearing tens of thousands of tons of food, goods and equipment into Gaza, but the United Nations has claimed several times that a humanitarian crisis is “imminent.”
Statistics provided by the Palestinian Authority show that unemployment in the Gaza area dropped in the second quarter this year by 20 percent from 45.5 percent in the second quarter of 2008. (INN)

Regime Wages a Quiet War on 'Star Students' of Iran- FARNAZ FASSIHI
Behind the drama unfolding in the streets of Iran, the regime is quietly clamping down on some of the nation's best students by derailing their academic and professional careers. On Wednesday, progovernment militia attacked and beat students at a school in northeastern Iran. Since last Sunday's massive protests nationwide, dozens of university students have been arrested as part of an aggressive policy against what are known as Iran's "star students." In most places, being a star means ranking top of the class, but in Iran it means your name appears on a list of students considered a threat by the intelligence ministry. It also means a partial or complete ban from education. The term comes from the fact that some students have learned of their status by seeing stars printed next to their names on test results. Mehrnoush Karimi, a 24-year-old law-school hopeful, found out in August that she was starred. She ranked 55 on this year's national entrance exam for law schools, out of more than 70,000 test-takers. That score should have guaranteed her a seat at the school of her choice. Instead, the government told her she wouldn't be attending law school due to her "star" status.

California Science Center is sued for canceling a film promoting intelligent design-Mike Boehm
The American Freedom Alliance says the center bowed to pressure from the Smithsonian. The science center says a news release hadn't been submitted to the museum, violating the contract. L.A.'s California Science Center will start the new year defending itself in court for canceling a documentary film attacking Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. A lawsuit alleges that the state-owned center improperly bowed to pressure from the Smithsonian Institution, as well as e-mailed complaints from USC professors and others. It contends that the center violated both the 1st Amendment and a contract to rent the museum's Imax Theater when it canceled the screening of "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record." The suit was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court by the American Freedom Alliance, an L.A.-based group described by senior fellow Avi Davis as a nonprofit, nonpartisan "think tank and activist network promoting Western values and ideals." The AFA seeks punitive damages and compensation for financial losses, as well as a declaration from the court that the center violated the Constitution and cannot refuse the group the right to rent its facilities for future events. (LAT)

Galloway compares Israel to Nazi doctor Mengele-Jessica Elgot
The MP George Galloway has compared Israel to Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who experimented on prisoners and with body parts of concentration camp victims. In an article in the Scottish Daily Record entitled “Dark Echoes of the Holocaust”, the outspoken Respect MP criticised the lack of press attention given to Israel’s admission of taking unauthorised organs from both Israelis and Palestinians. He said Israel was “playing mini-Mengele on Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.” Mengele was the so-called ‘Angel of Death’ at Auschwitz, who conducted gruesome experiments on inmates, particularly on twins, and ordered the deaths of prisoners with medical problems. Mr Galloway also boosted the claims of Swedish journalist Daniel Bostrom, who wrote in the newspaper Aftonbladet that Israelis were kidnapping and murdering Palestinian children for their organs. Mr Galloway said he owed Mr Bostrom an apology for not believing the report. He said: “When the story first broke, on Swedish TV, I frankly did not believe it. Implacable critic of Israel as I am, it was beyond belief that a country calling itself the ‘Jewish State’ could ever do such a thing. (thejc)

Europe Wants to Divide Jerusalem-Soeren Kern
The European Union on December 8 adopted a resolution that for the first time explicitly calls for Jerusalem to become the future capital of both a Palestinian state and Israel. Backing away only slightly from a more controversial Swedish proposal to officially call for the division of Jerusalem, the EU declared: “If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states.” The original proposal drafted by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, a well-known pro-Palestinian activist whose country currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU, had called for the creation of a “State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital.” Israeli officials, angry over EU efforts to prejudge the outcome of issues reserved for permanent status negotiations, persuaded French diplomats to remove the offending text, as well as other references to a Palestinian state that would comprise “the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.” Israel has always maintained that Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, regardless of any future peace settlement with the Palestinians. This has been the declared policy of all Israeli governments, left and/or right. (Brusselsjournal)

Jihadists: 'Kidnap Zionist and American Soldiers' to Free Gaza-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(Israelnationalnews.com) International jihadist elements have called for abducting Israelis and Americans in the Middle East in order to hold them hostage until the isolation of Hamas-controlled Gaza is ended.
Researchers from the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR) said last week that continuing electronic Islamist chatter included a new call for jihad fighters worldwide "to stand up alongside your brothers in Gaza." Specifically addressing "the lions of Iraq" and Palestinian Authority Muslims, a tactical discussion in jihadist forums focused on abduction: "Kidnap Zionist soldiers or American soldiers in Iraq, and release them only on condition that the closure be lifted from Gaza."
ITRR added that there is, in fact, an increased threat of kidnapping terror operations in areas of Israel and Egypt in close proximity to Gaza and the Palestinian Authority areas, as well as in Iraq. Especially vulnerable as targets for abduction or attack, ITRR said, are people travelling in vehicles with markings indicating Western companies or organizations. (INN)

Pianist Kissin launches anti-Israel BBC bias campaign-Stephen Pollard and Robyn Rosen
The Russian-born pianist Evgeny Kissin, who became a British citizen in 2002, has accused the BBC of “slander and bias” against Israel, broadcasting material he describes as “painfully reminiscent of the old Soviet anti-Zionist propaganda”. Mr Kissin, 38, who until now has not generally been known as politically engaged, has written to the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson. According to a close friend of the pianist, he has decided to become “actively involved in exposing and countering the evil propaganda of certain British media and especially the BBC.” Mr Kissin’s decision to use his fame and artistic renown to campaign on Israel’s behalf contrasts with the criticisms against the Jewish state regularly voiced by musicians such as Daniel Barenboim, who holds Israeli citizenship. In Mr Kissin’s letter, he accuses the BBC’s Persian Service of a “blood libel concerning Israel’s alleged harvesting of Palestinian organs and blood for future transplant”. He continues: “It beggars belief that the British taxpayer should be funding an organisation which is aligning itself with Iran’s despotic leader in its antisemitic propaganda. Other print media like the Guardian, which erroneously printed this libel propagated by Israel’s enemies, have since apologised. I am not aware of any such retraction from the BBC.”

Column One: A low and dishonest decade-Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST
Upon returning from Cairo on Tuesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu proclaimed, "It's time to move the peace process forward." The most sympathetic interpretation of Netanyahu's proclamation is that he was engaging in political theater. It was a low and dishonest statement uttered at the end of what has been, in the immortal words of W.H. Auden, "a low and dishonest decade." Everyone with eyes in their heads knows that there is no chance of making peace with the Palestinians. First of all, the most Israel is willing to give is less than what the Palestinians are willing to accept. But beyond that, Gaza is controlled by Hamas, and Hamas is controlled by Iran. For its part, Fatah is not in a position to make peace even if its leaders wished to. Mahmoud Abbas and his deputies know that just as Hamas won the 2006 elections in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Hamas would win elections today. To maintain even a smudge of domestic legitimacy, Fatah's leaders have no choice but to adopt Hamas's rejection of peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. (Jpost)

Pope Pius XII a Saint?-Prof. Robert S. Wistrich
(Israelnationalnews.com) Exactly ten years ago, on a cold winter morning in New York City, the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission, established to investigate Pope Pius XII’s response to the Holocaust, met for the first time to discuss its future work. I was the only Israeli historian among the six scholars (3 Catholics and 3 Jews) designated by the Vatican and leading Jewish organizations to study this hotly contested issue. A little under two years later, the project was abandoned as a result of the Holy See’s unwillingness to release materials from its own archives that could help clarify issues that our team of scholars raised in our provisional report. Already at that time, in the last years of Pope John Paul’s pontificate, there were moves afoot to place Pius XII on the fast track to sainthood, but they were probably slowed down by Israeli and Jewish protests and a desire by Church authorities to prevent a serious rupture in Catholic-Jewish relations. At issue was the silence of Pius XII during the Holocaust and his indirect complicity in the Nazi mass murder of Jews. (INN)

TERRORISM, security and policy

Suicide Bombing in Afghanistan Devastates Critical Hub for CIA Activities- SIOBHAN GORMAN
WASHINGTON—Wednesday's attack on a U.S. compound in Afghanistan devastated what has been a hub of counterterrorism and intelligence operations for the spy agency. Seven Central Intelligence Agency officers and contractors were killed and six more wounded in the suicide bomb attack at Forward Operating Base Chapman, CIA Director Leon Panetta said Thursday, the second-largest single-day loss for the spy agency in its history. Among the casualties was the agency's base chief, former intelligence officials said. There had been only four publicly acknowledged CIA fatalities in Afghanistan prior to this attack. The Taliban claimed responsibility Thursday for the bombing, which was carried out by suicide bomber wearing an Afghan National Army uniform. Some senior officials think the bomber may have been given access to the base because he was believed to be an informant, said two former intelligence officials. (WSJ)

Deleting Online Jihad and the Case of Anwar Al-Awlaki: Nearly Three Million Viewings of Al-Awlaki's YouTube Videos – Included Would-Be Christmas Airplane Bomber, Fort Hood Shooter, 7/7 London Bomber, and Would-Be Fort Dix Bombers- Steven Stalinsky*
Introduction
In the world of jihad against America, U.S.-born Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki's stature has risen significantly in recent days. This is because he is now credited with inspiring – through his online activities – last year's attempted terrorist attack at Fort Dix, New Jersey; last month's terrorist attack at Fort Hood, Texas; and this week's attempted Christmas airplane bombing near Detroit, Michigan. While this week there was speculation that he had been killed in an airstrike in Yemen, more recent reports suggest that he is still alive.
Al-Awlaki is the Bin Laden of the Internet
One of the most esteemed voices in the Arab media, Al-Arabiya TV director-general Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, wrote on December 29 in the Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, "Al-Awlaki is an important character … he is the Bin Laden of the Internet." Al-Rashed went on to say that there is a need "to wage war against extremist websites in general, which have become larger camps than the first camp that gave its name to the 'Al Qaeda' organization." (MEMRI)

Somali arrested at airport with chems-Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST
A man tried to board a commercial airliner in Mogadishu last month carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that could have caused an explosion in a case bearing chilling similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday. The Somali man - whose name has not yet been released - was arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before the Nov. 13 Daallo Airlines flight took off. It had been scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai. A Somali police spokesman, Abdulahi Hassan Barise, said the suspect is in Somali custody. "We don't know whether he's linked with al-Qaida or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the acts of a terrorist. We caught him red-handed," said Barise. A Nairobi-based diplomat said the incident in Somalia is similar to the attempted attack on the Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid - tools similar to those used in the Detroit attack. The diplomat spoke on condition he not be identified because he isn't authorized to release the information. (Jpost)

Rash of 2009 Homegrown Terror Plots Ends ‘Denial’-Steve Emerson
Given the raw number of terrorist plots throughout the year, it shouldn't come as a surprise that 2009 is ending with an attempt to blow a commercial airliner out of the sky. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed bombing plot stands out in part because it appears to be designed and launched from abroad. In 2009, homegrown American Islamist terror became impossible to ignore. Two fatal attacks on the U.S. military – one killing an Army recruiter, the other a mass murder of soldiers; an intercepted plot considered the biggest domestic threat since 9/11 and a series of conspiracies to blow up synagogues, office buildings and other targets made 2009 the year homegrown American Islamist terror became a clear, serious threat. An American stands accused of playing a key role in scouting targets in the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed more than 170 people. Five college students gave up promising futures to try to join the jihad against American soldiers in Afghanistan. And two young men were convicted for working with Pakistani militants in plots at home and abroad. (Familysecuritymatters)

To our eternal shame, Britain is STILL a hub for Islamic terror-Melanie Phillips
So here we go again. Another international Islamic terrorist plot - and yet another British connection. The attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up an American plane was averted only by luck and courage. The incident obviously raises alarming questions about gross lapses in security. In particular, how did Abdulmutallab obtain a U.S. visa when he had been on an American watch-list of people with known terrorist connections? But the deeper and more urgent issue for Britain concerns the key role this country has once again played in a Muslim's trajectory to radicalisation and terror. Abdulmutallab, who claims to have been working for Al Qaeda, was an engineering student at prestigious University College London for three years until 2008. He was actually refused an entry visa to Britain earlier this year, but only because the institution at which he said he wanted to study turned out to be non-existent. How, people might well ask, could such a radical have been educated in Britain without the authorities jumping on him? Did MI5 know anything about him - especially since he was on a U.S. terrorism watch-list for two years? (Dailymail.co.uk)

Homeland Security 101-Frank Gaffney, Jr.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came in for some well-deserved criticism for declaring over the weekend that "the system worked" with respect to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's effort to blow up the plane he was flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. By Monday, she was backpedaling, acknowledging that "our system did not work in this instance." In truth, for a lot of Americans, Ms. Napolitano has not had much credibility since she tried to ban "terrorism" from the official lexicon of her department. But arguably the most serious indication that she is wholly ill-equipped to carry out her present responsibilities can be found in another – as yet uncorrected – statement she made on Sunday. She told CNN's "State of the Union" that, "Right now, we have no indication [that Abdulmutallab's actions were] part of anything larger." Not "part of anything larger"? Is she serious? Does she take us for fools? Read my lips, Secretary Napolitano: Abdulmutallab's actions were absolutely, positively part of something larger. What they were part of is the comprehensive theo-political-legal program that authoritative Islam calls Shariah. (Familysecuritymatters)

War? What War? Charles Krauthammer
Janet Napolitano -- former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security -- will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: "The system worked." The attacker's concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son's jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers. Heck of a job, Brownie. The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration's response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism "man-caused disasters." Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York -- a trifecta of political correctness and image management. (Humanevents)

England set to miss first Commonwealth Games in 80 years amid Delhi terror fears- Sam Greenhill
Sports stars are abandoning the England team for the Commonwealth Games in India next year amid security fears. Some of the nation's greatest medal hopes are citing excuses ranging from 'bad timing' to 'the risk of tummy bugs' to avoid going to the tournament in Delhi. There are even reports that the entire England squad could pull out over worries that the athletes could become a target for terrorist attacks. Tensions in the region have made India volatile. Gunmen ran amok in Mumbai last year, shooting Westerners and killing 170 people, while in March fundamentalists murdered eight Pakistanis in a gun attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore. England withdrew from the World Badminton Championship in Hyderabad in August after terror threats. If the English team withdraws from the Commonwealth Games, the entire competition could be in jeopardy, especially if the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish teams follow suit. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Our 2009 Chickens and Their 2010 Roost-Victor Davis Hanson
A quiet year laid the groundwork for a troublesome one.
In the coming year, plenty of chickens will be coming home to roost. Take foreign relations. In 2009, the new administration assumed that George W. Bush was largely responsible for global tensions. As a remedy, we loudly reached out to our foes and those with whom we had uneasy relationships. But so far these leaders — like Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin — have only interpreted Barack Obama’s serial goodwill gestures as weaknesses to be exploited. They play the part of the pushy class bully, we the whiny nerd. In the waning days of 2009, Iran announced it has no intention of dismantling its nuclear facilities and ignored the latest Obama deadline to cease. There’s no reason not to expect the theocracy to make significant strides in its nuclear program in 2010, while continuing without rebuke to beat and murder democratic dissidents in its streets. Russia has announced plans to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons — and scoffed at our polite suggestions that it should pressure Iran to stop its nuclear development. Venezuela brags of its own similar program to come — which could threaten all the neighboring democracies in the region. The administration courted China on a much-heralded Asian tour. President Obama even has said he would be our first “Pacific president.”

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN’S CLIMATE LIES -The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
In December 2009, Scientific American, once a respected popular‐science journal and now a pulp science‐fiction picture comic, viciously attacked US Senator James Inhofe because he had proclaimed 2009 to be the Year of the Skeptic. By skepticism, he meant “standing up and exposing the science, the costs and the hysteria behind global warming alarmism”. Venomously, Science Fiction American’s editorial comment continued: “Within the community of scientists and others concerned about anthropogenic climate change, those whom Inhofe calls skeptics are more commonly termed contrarians, naysayers and denialists.” Yah‐Boo! This name‐calling marks the depth of unscientific desperation to which the proponents of the “global warming” nonsense have now sunk. Unscientific American pompously continued: “Not everyone who questions climate change science fits that description, of course—some people are genuinely unaware of the facts or honestly disagree about their interpretation. What distinguishes the true naysayers is an unwavering dedication to denying the need for action on the problem, often with weak and long‐disproved arguments about supposed weaknesses in the science behind global warming.” (Scienceandpublicpolicy)

Top scientists share their future predictions-Bryan Appleyard
From virtual brains and Matrix-like thought connections to diesel-making bacteria, what the next decade could bring
Nothing much is going to happen in the next 10 years. Of course, that’s not counting the diesel-excreting bacteria, the sequencing of your entire genome for $1,000, massive banks of frozen human eggs, space tourism, the identification of dark matter, widespread sterilisation of young adults, telepathy, supercomputer models of our brains, the discovery of life’s origins, maybe the disappearance of Bangladesh and certainly the loss of 247m acres of tropical forest. As I said, just another decade really. These days, “just another decade” always means 10 years of future shock. Science, technology and the contemporary mania for change combine to stun the imagination. It is the way we live now, in a condition of permanent technological revolution. In 2000 — remember? — the internet all but died when the dotcom stock market bubble burst. You could stand on top of the World Trade Center. And mobile phones were just, er, phones. Today, you still get up and eat breakfast, but, outside, it’s a different world. (Timesonline.co.uk)

The Case Against the New Year-Simon Winchester
Midnight revelry amounts to sheer malarkey; in praise of a sober morning celebration
The islands of the Kingdom of Tonga, the only surviving monarchy in the Pacific, are tropical, but not quite a paradise. The largest people in the world live there, and they eat a lot of Spam. Tafahi is a tiny outpost of this chain that is famous for two things: the quality of the vanilla grown there and the fact that it is the nearest inhabited land to the western side of the International Date Line. (The Republic of Kiribati tried to shift the line to make itself the closest in 1999, but the attempt was widely seen as illegal.) A few years back, I was on Tafahi and bent on uncovering the first man in the world to wake up and greet the New Year. All was black until a few moments after five a.m., when slowly the eastern sky turned an ashen gray color and the outlines of the grass huts were slowly coming into view. A door creaked open and a figure—rather slighter than expected—stepped out into the dim light. "Gruss Gott!" he exclaimed. The first man in the world to see in that New Year turned out not to be Tongan at all. He was a balding German engineer in cargo pants. He worked at the Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg and he had come the 10,000 miles to Tonga to get away from home and all the New Year madness. (WSJ)

Sherlock Holmes: the detective who wouldn't die-Simon Callow
Arthur Conan Doyle couldn’t bear the fame of his detective, but he couldn’t kill him off either
The late 19th century witnessed a particularly gruesome crime. An impoverished Scottish doctor, struggling to maintain his working-class general practice in Southsea, gave birth to a prodigy, whom he then tried brutally to kill. He carefully researched the means of death, selecting the picturesque Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. The murder was a purely literary one, and no arrest was made, but the attempted homicide had the opposite effect to the one intended. It seems to have given Sherlock Holmes an unnatural extension of life — to make him, indeed, immortal. Arthur Conan Doyle reluctantly brought him back from the dead, and over the remaining 30 years of his life wrote a number of novels and short stories further chronicling his activities, generally when he needed the money. But by that time Holmes had already taken on a life of his own. Indeed, when Doyle sent the great detective plunging to what he hoped would be his watery grave in The Final Problem, readers were so outraged that they stood outside the writer’s house in Connaught Place, London, in solemn protest, wearing black arm bands. For them, he was real. (Timesonline.co.uk)