The Western Word

This Week's Editorial

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FENCE
By Avi Davis

Is there an award for radical leftist longevity? If so, it must surely go to 85-year-old Hedy Epstein - Holocaust survivor, great-grandmother, author and inveterate peace activist. For thirty-five years Ms. Epstein has been roaming the world, advocating for her special brand of civil rights and social justice. Her causes have included fair housing, abortion rights and antiwar protests which have taken her as far a field as Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cambodia and Africa.

However it is in Israel that this avowed peace proponent has found her true bête noire. Since 2003 Ms. Epstein has traveled to Israel a total five times and participated in several demonstrations in opposition to the construction of Israel’s defensive barrier, (designed to deter suicide attacks) and to protest the demolition of Palestinian homes and olive orchards.

Most recently Ms. Epstein was reported as being in Cairo where she participated in a hunger strike to shame the Egyptian government into granting visas to an international brigade of activists seeking a ‘peace’ march in Gaza to commemorate the one year anniversary of Israel’s three week long war against Hamas in 2009.

After many weeks of lobbying, the Egyptian government finally relented and granted 80 of the 1400 members of the international delegation ( known as Viva Palestina ), a two day visit to Gaza to demonstrate solidarity with Hamas.

But according to a report in Ha’aretz, Hamas did not quite offer the welcoming party Ms. Epstein and her starry-eyed activist friends had anticipated.

None of the protestors was allowed to stay in a private home, despite the fact that this had been expressly organized before the visit; they were forbidden from communicating with ordinary Gazans, even to speak through chain linked fences; they were shadowed by Hamas security personnel wherever they went and told exactly what they could or could not say to the press.

The ‘march’ the Viva Palestina organizers had been planning for nine months transformed into little more than a sightseeing excursion, retricted to specific sites such as bombed out community centers and U.N. stuctures (that no one had been permitted to repair) and of which the Hamas militia invited the foreign press to snap photos.

So disenchanted with the entire process did the protestors become that one of them was overheard acidly commenting: ”Now I understand that the call for ‘Freedom for Gaza’ has another meaning.”

Indeed. How many leftist peace activists like Hedy Epstein have encountered exactly the same kind of conduct that they had come so far to protest?

One doesn’t need to travel too far back in history. During the Spanish Civil War, many American Jews signed up to fight for the International Brigade to fight for the Republican cause in its struggle against the Fascism. It didn't take them long to find themselves completely betrayed by the Soviet-backed communists they had arrived to support. Many were shadowed, imprisoned and even executed by their leftist comrades, leaving such commentators as George Orwell with a life long and abiding hatred for the radical left.

One famous American dissident learned first hand what the other side of the fence really looks like. In 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald renounced his American citizenship to defect to the Soviet Union, expecting to be happily embraced by his fellow communists. But the Soviets had little time for the malcontent Oswald and he eventually left, expressing a bitter disenchantment with the dark and miserable life of the average Soviet citizen and the flippant way in which he had been treated by his Soviet handlers.

So too today do those who wish to link arms with Islamic terrorists often encounter the harsh realities of who they have befriended. The irony can’t be lost on anyone that these so-called seekers of peace, who earnestly spout left wing ideologies such as feminism, gay rights, liberation politics and radical environmentalism are scorned by Islamic terrorists who treat such notions with contempt. They see in these dreamers nothing more than cash machines to be milked for their American dollars or else for their inordinate public relations value. But never are they taken seriously as comrades-in-arms.

Bereft of her life experience, Hedy Epstein’s fellow travelers might be forgiven for their naivete in failing to recognize the signs of internal oppression. But that doesn’t excuse Hedy herself. Having once been its victim, she should now be able to recognize fascism when she sees it.

Without such recognition however, they all, after a while, begin to resemble the Western sympathizers of the Soviet Union during the 1930s, individuals such as George Bernard Shaw, Beatrice and Sydney Webb, Jean Paul Satre and numerous American journalists. These were travelers who became quite aware of the extent of Stalin’s crimes but did nothing, upon their return, to publicize them. As a result, they became his implicit, willing accomplices.

Perhaps those who traveled on the Viva Palestina Peace March will now have second thoughts about their alleigence to their Hamas brethren. Perhaps not. But whatever their current views, it is almost certain that they now understand that the other side of the fence is a pretty grim place and not just because of the things the Israelis have either done or not done.

They might finally recognize that Hamasistan is the kind of place that would never tolerate their kind of peace activism nor their inviolable right to protest, privileges they take so much for granted when they are at home in the West.

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

The Westergaard Attack: It's All the Same Jihad
by Robert Spencer

Despite the mainstream media’s best efforts to cover up the jihadist elements in both attacks, informed Americans know that Major Nidal Hasan murdered thirteen Americans in a jihad attack at Fort Hood in November, and that another Muslim, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, tried to explode Northwest Flight 253 as it landed in Detroit in another jihad attack on Christmas Day. But another major recent jihad assault has not been understood as such – although it was a manifestation of exactly the same deadly belief system that motivated Hasan and Abdulmutallab. Both Hasan and Abdulmutallab were linked to the New Mexico-born, Yemen-based Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who boasted in October 2009 that Yemen would soon become a center of the global jihad – and has been doing his best to bring that about by preaching violence and hatred against Jews and Christians for years. (Humanevets)

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab Indicted for Attempted Bombing of Flight 253 on Christmas Day-DOJ
Defendant Faces Life in Prison if Convicted
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department announced that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian national, was charged today in a six-count criminal indictment returned in the Eastern District of Michigan for his alleged role in the attempted Christmas day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, to Detroit. Count one of the indictment charges Abdulmutallab with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a penalty of up to life in prison. Count two of the indictment charges him with attempted murder within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. Count three of the indictment charges him with willful attempt to destroy or wreck an aircraft within the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, which carries a penalty of up to 20 years in prison. (DOJ)

Christmas Day bomb plot suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in court-Giles Whittell
The Nigerian at the centre of the Christmas Day bomb plot made his first appearance in a US federal court yesterday to be charged with the attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, for which he could face up to 90 years in jail. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was due to appear in court in Detroit as conservatives stepped up criticism of the decision to try him in a civilian court rather than before a military tribunal. President Obama’s chief counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan, has hinted that a plea bargain could be offered to persuade Mr Abdulmutallab to reveal details of al-Qaeda networks and conspiracies that he may have learnt about in Yemen. Yesterday Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time of the September 2001 attacks, condemned the approach as impractical. “If you put someone in a civilian court, within a short period of time a lawyer is appointed and the person shuts up,” he told ABC News. “If you have a person in the military system you can question him endlessly.” (Timesonline.co.uk)

Oslo: 'Morality police' in immigrant neighborhood
Bobby Burner is hungry after work and is chewing a samosa while walking on Grønlandsleiret street. Suddenly two young strangers block his way. Curtly and aggressively they ask: "Don't you know it's Ramadan? You should know better!" Sosionomen, originally from Iran, might look like a Muslim, but he isn't. During the Muslim fast last fall he was - as so many times before - in the capital's multicultural district where the trendiest cafes are next to the cheapest curry stands. In Grønland turban-wearing men leave Friday prayers as the young and trendy start the long weekend in town. The city's greatest concentration of khat joints and minarets are here. Burner likes the cultural diversity. But in particular after September 11, 2001 he's noticed a negative development: increased use of social control, hijab and full-body veils. More men with beards. "To be stopped on the street I see as harassing and threatening. It was worse than being attacked. There's no evidence for this form of harassment," says Burner. (Islamineurope)

France deports radical imam to Egypt-AFP
FRANCE today deported to Egypt a radical imam who for months had been inciting followers in Paris area mosques to rise up against the West, the government said. Described as dangerous, Ali Ibrahim Al-Sudani was detained and sent back to Egypt under an emergency deportation order, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said in a statement. "The secret services had identified this dangerous individual who for the past months had been delivering sermons calling for a fight against the West in several mosques in the Seine-Saint-Denis area,'' said Hortefeux in a statement. Sudani showed "contempt for our society's values and incited violence'', he added. The man was the 29th imam or Islamic preacher to have been deported from France since 2001, according to the interior ministry. In all, 129 Islamic radicals have been expelled from French territory, it added. (news.com.au)

Danes Study Immigrants After Cartoonist Attack-Sarah Lyall
COPENHAGEN — As part of the prolonged national headache caused by a Danish newspaper’s decision to publish 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, last weekend’s attack on one of the cartoonists responsible had a certain awful inevitability about it. Once again, the motivation was fury, still fresh after all this time, over the dissemination of the cartoons. And once again, the circumstances — in this case, the news that the person accused of the attack was a Muslim immigrant suspected of having links to terrorists — has led Danes into an uneasy examination of their relationship to their Muslim population. In a country that already has one of the strictest immigration policies in Western Europe, the attack has also spurred politicians from across the political spectrum to demand ever more stringent rules about who should be allowed to live here. (NYT)

Somali pirates holding Britons issue terrifying ultimatum: Pay £1.9m or yacht couple die-David Jones
Pirates holding a British couple issued a terrifying ultimatum yesterday: 'Pay up or we'll shoot them.'
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, the Somali gang which snatched Paul and Rachel Chandler from their yacht in the Indian Ocean said time was running out after negotiations to free them stalled. In a chilling exchange, they also revealed that 55-year-old Mrs Chandler has been brutally beaten and needs medical treatment. The captors are demanding $3million (£1.9million) and have set a two-month deadline for the ransom to be paid. If their demands are not met, they will kill the couple in March, one of the kidnappers told the Mail. 'We are giving an ultimatum of two months from January 1. If we are not paid $3million we are ready to shoot them,' he said. 'It is becoming too expensive to hold these people. By March, they have to decide or we will be done with them.' The man, who gave his name only as Noor, gave horrific details of the Chandlers' life in captivity.

Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School?-Lane Wallace
A DECADE ago, Roger Martin, the new dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, had an epiphany. The leadership at his son’s elementary school had asked him to meet with its retiring principal to figure out how it could replicate her success. He discovered that the principal thrived by thinking through clashing priorities and potential options, rather than hewing to any pre-planned strategy — the same approach taken by the managing partner of a successful international law firm in town. “The ‘Eureka’ moment was when I could draw a data point between a hotshot, investment bank-oriented star lawyer and an elementary school principal,” Mr. Martin recalls. “I thought: ‘Holy smokes. In completely different situations, these people are thinking in very similar ways, and there may be something special about this pattern of thinking.’ ” That insight led Mr. Martin to begin advocating what was then a radical idea in business education: that students needed to learn how to think critically and creatively every bit as much as they needed to learn finance or accounting. More specifically, they needed to learn how to approach problems from many perspectives and to combine various approaches to find innovative solutions. (NYT)

Learning from Umar-Steve McGregor
Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab shattered the mold -- and not just because he put a bomb in his underwear. His attempted destruction of Flight 253 reveals a dangerous ignorance in the West about the enemy threatening the United States. As an American studying in London, I interviewed several protesters at the G20 protests earlier this year. Outside the American Embassy, a crowd gathered to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "I don't think al-Qaeda exists," one man told me. "If you went to Arab countries, you'd see the peace." Many in the crowd shared his sentiment that al-Qaeda is simply a convenient myth used by the Bush administration to wage war. A startling number of people believe that the "U.S. government" was behind the 9/11 attacks. Will Umar's existence change their minds? Among those who acknowledge al-Qaeda, some discount its influence. Just three days before Umar's attack, Representative John Murtha told reporters that he "isn't convinced Al Qaeda is still a threat to national security." This mantra has been repeated by security experts and professors alike. But the reality is that Farouk was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen. And he's not the only one. (Americanthinker)

A New Propaganda Film by Natl. Resources Defense Council Fails the Acid Test of Real World Data-SPPI & Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
First, they called it “global warming”. Then they noticed there had been no warming for 15 years, and cooling for 9, so they hastily renamed it “climate change”. Then they noticed the climate was changing no more than it ever had, so they tried “energy security”, and even named a Congressional Bill after it. Then they noticed that most Western nations already had bountiful energy security, in the form of vast, untapped domestic supplies of oil, gas, coal, or all three, so they switched to “ocean acidification”. This is the new phantasmagoric for the tired, old scare whipped up by the NRDC and the environmental extremist movement for their own profit at our expense. The world’s corals, they tell us, will be eaten away by the acidified ocean within not more than ten years hence. Shellfish will be no more, their calcified carapaces and exoskeletons dissolved by the carbonic acid caused by our burning of fossil fuels. The oceans will die. Sound familiar? Yet, as the indefatigable Craig Idso here demonstrates, the scientific consensus – if science were done by consensus at all, which it is not – is that the rising “ocean acidification” scare is just more piffle. (Scienceandpublicpolicy)

Your Television Loved Global Warming-Art Horn
I went into television in 1979, when I was 25 years old. The weather was cold, very cold. The winters of the 1960s and 1970s were some of the most brutal of the last century. And stubbornly, the cold would not release it’s bone-numbing grip. Magazines sported stories [1] of a coming Ice Age. The winter of 1976-77 was so cold that the state of Ohio virtually closed for the month of January. A great blizzard in January 1978 brought hurricane force winds and record snowfall to the Midwest. Just a few weeks later, another massive blizzard of historic proportions closed Boston and Providence for a week. Snow fell in Miami [2] on January 19, 1977. Energy conservation was all the rage. People were buying solar panels to put on their houses to heat hot water. Tiny little Japanese cars were selling faster than Japan could make them — not only for the fuel efficiency, but because they were all front-wheel drive, better for handling in the never-ending snowstorms. The situation was alarming to some people. (Pajamasmedia)

Exclusive: Media Bias? What Media Bias?-Tom McLaughlin
As a history teacher, I must strive for objectivity. However, I know it’s not possible for a thoughtful person to study history, politics, or economics and not develop biases. Best practice would be to disclose those biases to students because it’s inevitable that I’ll teach concepts I believe in with more enthusiasm than concepts in which I don’t believe. It’s human nature. To detect this, students would need to understand the left/right political spectrum and the terminology used to describe it, so I sketched one out and taught it. Then I advised them to point out my bias when they detect it. Those exercises train them to identify and to be aware of a presenter’s political perspective when any sort of information is promulgated. As their own biases develop, they need to be conscious of them when they listen to information. Facts are facts, and when they learn things that contradict their tentative understanding of cause and effect, they have to be willing to do the work necessary to adjust it. Thoughtful, informed teachers and students inevitably develop a point of view on issues. Only a robot could play it completely down the middle every time. (Familysecuritymatters)

'Jihad' jitters at Met-ISABEL VINCENT
Is the Met afraid of Mohammed?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art quietly pulled images of the Prophet Mohammed from its Islamic collection and may not include them in a renovated exhibition area slated to open in 2011, The Post has learned. The museum said the controversial images -- objected to by conservative Muslims who say their religion forbids images of their holy founder -- were "under review." Critics say the Met has a history of dodging criticism and likely wants to escape the kind of outcry that Danish cartoons of Mohammed caused in 2006. "This is typical of the Met -- trying to avoid any controversy," said a source with inside knowledge of the museum. The Met currently has about 60 items from its 60,000-piece Islamic collection on temporary display in a corner of its vast second-floor Great Hall while larger galleries are renovated. But its three ancient renderings of Mohammed are not among them. "We have a very small space at the moment in which to display the whole sweep of Islamic art," said spokeswoman Egle Zygas. "They didn't fit the theme of the current installation." But it's not certain Mohammed will go on display when the Met finishes its $50 million renovation in 2011. (Nypost)

Google 'censors its website so anti-Islam searches fail to appear' -Neil Millard
Search engine Google has been accused of censoring its results after users discovered it never suggests search terms when it comes to Islam. In a time-saving feature the internet phenomenon, whose motto is 'don't be evil', helpfully suggests common searches as people type in what they are looking for. For example, if you type in 'Christianity is' in the search bar a whole range of options flash up including controversial suggestions such as 'Christianity is fake' and 'Christianity is a cult'. But anyone typing in a similar phrase which replaces Christianity with Islam gets no suggestions at all. The anomaly has led some to conclude the firm, famed for its democratic approach to the world of information it controls, is censoring the search results. Google's normal search suggestions originate from searches made around the world, adverts and known web pages. The company also says on its website: 'We try to filter out suggestions that include pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms. If you encounter a term that should not be suggested, please let us know by posting in the Google Web Search Help Forum.' A Google spokesman claimed the strange absence of results was a software problem. He said: "This is in fact a bug and we're working to fix it as quickly as we can.' Google also makes suggestions which are in the future tense. Search for 'Islam will' and the results are very balanced, including suggestions such as 'Islam will be destroyed' and 'Islam will take over the world'. (Dailymail.co.uk)

3 more churches attacked in Malaysia in Allah feud-AP
Firebombs were thrown at two more churches in Malaysia early Sunday and another church was splashed with black paint, the latest in a series of assaults on Christian houses of worship following a court decision allowing non-Muslims to use "Allah" to refer to God. Hundreds of worshippers whose parish church was partly gutted in a firebomb attack last week gathered at a makeshift prayer hall for their Sunday service and called for national unity and an end to violence. On Sunday, a Molotov cocktail was hurled at the All Saints Church in Taiping town in central Perak state early in the morning before it had opened, said state police chief Zulkifli Abdullah. He told The Associated Press that the building was not damaged but police found burn marks on the wall. A broken kerosene bottle with an unlit wick was found early Sunday inside the compound of the St. Louis Catholic church, also in Taiping, said the Rev. David Lourdes. He said it appeared to be a failed attack. In southern Malacca state, the outer wall of the Malacca Baptist Church was splashed with black paint, police said. (Jpost)

Greek Jews protest arson attack against Crete synagogue-EJP
ATHENS (EJP)---The Jewish community of Greece protested Friday after an arson attack against the only synagogue on the Island of Crete, urging the authorities to take measures in order to get rid of "similar phenomenons of anti-Semitism."
According to local police, unknown individuals broke into the Etz-Hayyim synagogue's yard an hour after midnight and set fire to an outdoor wooden ladder which leads to the library. The synagogue is located in the city of Hania's historic old quarter. Thanks to the swift intervention of the fire brigade, the fire was extinguished immediately before it threatened the temple and the adjoining library, which features roughly 1,600 rare books and manuscripts. Hania Fire Brigade chief said that at the scene, firefighters found a bottle with a flammable liquid still burning. Authorities in the port city said the synagogue's main doors were locked and that the alarm system sounded when firefighters broke down the main gate to enter the building. The medieval Etz-Hayyim synagogue serves as a place for prayer, a museum and memorial and a library recording the long and troubled history of Crete's Jews. (EJP)

Man taken off Miami-Detroit plane saying `kill all Jews' had mental problems-JENNIFER LEBOVICH
An Ohio man who became loud and disruptive aboard a Wednesday night flight from Miami to Detroit -- at one point telling those around him he ``wanted to kill all the Jews'' -- was removed from the airplane before takeoff and arrested. The man was identified as Mansor Mohammad Asad, 43, who authorities sayposed no potential security threat. Miami-Dade police say he caused enough of a ``disturbance'' that the pilot had to return to the jet-bridge. When Asad was taken off the plane to be interviewed by police, he threatened officers, made racial comments and charged an officer, authorities said. He was Tasered twice. Asad was charged with threats against a public servant, disorderly conduct and resisting an officer without violence to his person. The action taken by officials on Delta Airlines Flight 2485 comes at a time of heightened security at U.S. airports following the foiled terrorist attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day. (Miamiherald)

Alex Salmond urged to stop Scottish Israel trip-Marcus Dysch
The Scottish Friends of Palestine group has urged the Scottish First Minister to cancel a trade group’s trip to Israel, denouncing it as a “pariah state”. A delegation from Scottish Development International, which helps companies attract foreign investment, is due to arrive in Tel Aviv on Sunday. During the five-day trip, organised with UK Trade and Investment, they are expected to meet scientists from Israeli companies specialising in stem cell research, drug development and medical devices. It is hoped the visit will strengthen ties between the two countries’ life science industries. SFoP secretary Hugh Humphries wrote to First Minister Alex Salmond on Monday, calling on him to withdraw SDI from the trip because the government had “no mandate” to “deal in any way with a pariah state”. He said SFoP was “surprised and dismayed” to learn of the visit, given the “previous supportive positions of the Scottish government in relation to Palestinian issues”. (Thejc)

Blatantly Anti-Semitic Exchange on C-Span-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(Israelnationalnews.com) A caller on a C-Span interview program Monday complained about "all these Jews" having "way too much power" in America and pushing the U.S. into wars with the Muslim world. He found his comments echoed and expanded upon by the studio guest. Michael Scheuer, the former director of a CIA unit assigned to track down Osama Bin-Laden, calmly expressed the view that American soldiers are now dying in Iraq for the sake of Israelis. He further claimed that any debate of American support for Israel is squelched in the public sphere. The interviewer for C-Span's Washington Journal program did not react to the blatantly anti-Semitic exchange. Several other callers praised Scheuer for his position regarding Israel, adding their own condemnation of the Jewish State and its supporters.(INN)

Bill Ayers, Israel’s Latest Attacker – by P. David Hornik
“What a country. It makes me want to puke.” Thus spoke [1] Bill Ayers [2], the former but unrepentant Weatherman terrorist [2] who’s now a professor of education at the University of Illinois, in 2001. The country he had in mind was the United States. It’s a safe bet that people with his degree of America-hatred don’t like Israel, either. Indeed, Ayers has now joined 431 academics in signing [1] an anti-Israeli petition. Not surprisingly, it accuses Israel of apartheid—the ritual accusation [3] of the Israel-hating crowd that dreams of Israel’s Jewish-majority government being forced to dissolve the way South Africa’s white-minority government was forced to. The petition also “urge[s] our colleagues, nationally, regionally, and internationally, to stand up against Israel’s ongoing scholasticide and to support the non-violent call for academic boycott, disinvestment, and sanctions.” Soon after signing the petition Ayers, along with his wife and fellow former terrorist Bernadine Dohrn, was in Egypt [4], agitating to be allowed into Gaza to express “solidarity” with the Gazans and their leadership, Hamas [5]. (Frontpagemagazine)

TERRORISM, security and policy

Ben-Gurion Airport revolutionizes security with Unipass biometric system-Yaakov Lappin
As international aviation officials look to Israel for techniques to safeguard air travel after the failed Christmas Day bombing, Ben-Gurion airport on Tuesday launched a biometric security system for outbound passengers, heralding a new era of hi-tech passenger screening. The Unipass Airport Management System, developed by the Israel Airports Authority, is initially being tested on El Al Matmid Frequent Flyer Club members, before being gradually expanded to include, within two years, all departing passengers who voluntarily register, the IAA said. The IAA said the timing of the biometric security program's launch, amid heightened international air travel security following the Al-Qaeda terrorist plot to blow up a US airliner over Detroit last month, was purely coincidental. The IAA refused to address the issue of passenger profiling, saying instead that the Unipass system will offer improved service and security, and an identical screening process for all passengers. "This is the first system of its kind in the world. Interest has been expressed by other international airports," an IAA spokeswoman said. (Jpost)

Suicide bomber who killed CIA agents made video calling on militants to carry out revenge attacks in honour of Taliban leader-Daily Mail Reporter
The suicide bomber who killed CIA agents in Afghanistan had made a video calling on militants to avenge the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader by carrying out attacks in and outside the United States. A pilotless U.S. drone aircraft strike killed Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud last year. Al Jazeera reported on its website that the video was left as a message to the United States and its Arab ally Jordan by the bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, in which he tells them: 'We say that we will never forget the blood of our Emir Baitullah Mehsud, God's mercy on him.' Balawi blew himself up on December 30 inside Forward Operating Base Chapman, a well-fortified U.S. compound in Khost province in south-east Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. It was the second-most deadly attack in CIA history. Al Jazeera quotes the former Jordanian doctor as saying it was the obligation of all of Mehsud's fighters "to retaliate for his death in the United States and outside the United States" . (Dailymail.co.uk)

Al Qaeda recruiting at Midland prison-Ben Goldby
DEEP in the plush Worcestershire countryside lies a silent threat to our national security.
Amid the forests and foliage of leafy Littleton sits the forbidding fortress of HMP Long Lartin, where some of the world’s most dangerous Islamic extremists swap stories, prayers and even plots. New research from inside the lock-up’s specialist terror suspect unit suggests that regular inmates are being converted to radical Islam by the dangerous militants who are allowed to mix with other lags – and even lead prayers.
Fanatics inside the Worcestershire prison include Mohammed Hamid, 51, dubbed Osama Bin London, who encouraged teenagers to become suicide bombers during camping trips in the Lake District. Among his cellmates are Adel Abdel Bary, an Egyptian linked to Al Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman Al-Zawihiri, who is fighting extradition to the US for the 1998 African embassy bombings which killed more than 200 people.
And the unit has regularly housed notorious hate preacher Abu Qatada, described by a judge as “Osama Bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe” whose sermons influenced the masterminds of the 9/11 atrocity.

Detroit bomber 'singing like a canary' before arrest-Philip Sherwell in New York
President Barack Obama is under fire over claims that the Christmas Day underwear bomber was "singing like a canary" until he was treated as an ordinary criminal and advised of his right to silence. The chance to secure crucial information about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen was lost because the Obama administration decided to charge and prosecute Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an ordinary criminal, critics say. He is said to have reduced his co-operation with FBI interrogators on the advice of his government-appointed defence counsel. The potential significance became chillingly clear this weekend when it was reported that shortly after his detention, he boasted that 20 more young Muslim men were being prepared for similar murderous missions in the Yemen. The lawyer for the 23-year-old Nigerian entered a formal not guilty plea on Friday to charges that he tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25 – even though he reportedly admitted earlier that he was trained and supplied with the explosives sewn into his underwear by al-Qaeda in the Arab state. "He was singing like a canary, then we charged him in civilian proceedings, he got a lawyer and shut up," Slade Gorton, a member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the Sept 2001 terror attacks on the US, told The Sunday Telegraph. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Charles Krauthammer: Our civility, their weapon
On Wednesday, Nigerian would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was indicted by a Michigan grand jury for attempted murder and sundry other criminal charges. The previous day, the State Department announced that his visa had been revoked. The system worked. Well, it did for Abdulmutallab. What he lost in flying privileges he gained in Miranda rights. He was singing quite freely when seized after trying to bring down Northwest Flight 253 over Detroit. But the Obama administration decided to give him a lawyer and the right to remain silent. We are now forced to purchase information from this attempted terrorist in the coin of leniency. Absurdly, Abdulmutallab is now in control. And this is no ordinary information. He was trained by al-Qaida in Yemen, and just days after he was lawyered up and shut up, the U.S. was forced to close its embassy in Yemen because of active threats from the same people who had trained and sent Abdulmutallab. This is nuts. (Ocregister)

But We’re Still Gonna Kill You-Mark Steyn
Isolated extremists? This “war” is about the intersection of Islam and the West.
Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he’d converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn’t be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that. And the Ayatollah said hey, that’s terrific news, glad to hear it. But we’re still gonna kill you. Well, even a leftie novelist wises up under those circumstances. Evidently, the president of the United States takes a little longer. Barack Obama has spent the last year doing bigtime Islamoschmoozing, from his announcement of Gitmo’s closure and his investigation of Bush officials to his bow before the Saudi King and a speech in Cairo to “the Muslim world” with far too many rhetorical concessions and equivocations. And at the end of it, the jihad sent America a thank-you note by way of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s underwear: Hey, thanks for all the outreach! But we’re still gonna kill you. (Nationalreview)

Hamas and al-Qaeda are the Same-Dr.Dore Gold
Israelnationalnews.com) In its annual survey of terrorist threats to Israel during 2009, the Israel Security Agency noted the spread and buildup of "global jihadi" organizations in Gaza. In recent years a number of jihadi groups have emerged that openly identify with al-Qaeda, such as Jaish al-Islam (the Army of Islam), Jaish al-Umma (the Army of the Nation), and Fatah al-Islam. In February 2004, the U.S. designated Sheikh Abd al-Majid Zindani, president of Iman University in Yemen, as a "loyalist to Osama bin Laden." On March 20, 2006, Zindani, who recruited volunteers for al-Qaeda, sponsored a major fundraising event for Hamas in Yemen. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 to Detroit, went to hear lectures on radical Islam at Iman University. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told al-Hayat on February 26, 2008, that al-Qaeda was present in Gaza and he charged that "the Hamas movement brought al-Qaeda." He described the two groups as "allies. Despite the above, in the West there is a growing trend to view Hamas as separate from al-Qaeda, because that allows opening a political dialogue with Hamas. (INN)

'The Fight Against Terrorism Will Define Obama's Presidency'-
With a near strike on a flight to Detroit and a suicide attack in CIA agents in Afghanistan, terrorism has become the new focus of Barack Obama's presidency. US terror expert Bruce Hoffman tells SPIEGEL ONLINE that the threat of terrorism will dominate Obama's first term.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Has the failed Detroit airline plot ruined all the progress made in the "war on terror"?
Hoffman: I think a watershed has been crossed. Over the past year, we have seen a dozen terrorism plots or attacks in the United States -- at least one a month, which is completely without precedent. Some are directly orchestrated by al-Qaida or one of its franchises, such as the Northwest Airlines plot on Christmas Day. Others are executed by individuals directly inspired by al-Qaida, such as the shooting spree at the Fort Hood military base.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: We also appear to be seeing a new dimension of home grown terrorism.
Hoffman: American citizens are functioning as "sleepers" -- as illustrated by the arrest of an Afghan-born US resident who was trained by al-Qaida in Pakistan and plotted to carry out coordinated suicide attacks in Manhattan. Also, there are individuals acting completely on their own who were not even radicalized by al-Qaida or its sympathizers. For instance, the US authorities prevented a plot in May to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military airplanes flying out of a National Guard air base near New York.
(Spiegelonline)

'A Failure to Connect the Dots'-WSJ
A lesson in the lack of bureaucratic intelligence.
The antiterror education of President Obama continued yesterday, with his release of a White House report blaming the "counterterrorism community" as a whole for "a failure to connect the dots of intelligence" that would have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane to Detroit on Christmas Day. Mr. Obama blamed no one in particular for the failure, not even George W. Bush. In one sense this is refreshing. The President said the buck stops with him, not his underlings, and he ordered the usual agencies to review their usual procedures and institute changes to make sure information is shared more quickly and analyzed more comprehensively. This all seems worthwhile as far as it goes, and it may well do some good by shaking up settled behavior patterns, at least for a while. On the other hand, it's impossible to read even the six-page unclassified summary of the White House review without a rising sense of frustration, even anger. This was above all a failure of bureaucracy. Consider (or rather, bear with) this mouthful of an explanation from the White House review: (WSJ)

Diana West: How to know you are losing war on terror
It's more than passing strange when a former CIA director and the head of an Islamic advocacy group arrive at the same place on profiling terrorists -- or, rather, not profiling terrorists. I refer to ex-spy chief James Woolsey and executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations Nihad Awad, whose post-Mutallab statements are startlingly similar. First, Awad's statement. It is brief and pointed as befits a media-trusted quote-meister -- a gig unchanged, shockingly, by Awad's past links to Hamas and other jihadist groups, and CAIR's status as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror financing trial and Muslim Brotherhood affiliate. "First look at behavior, not at faith or skin color," Awad told the New York Times. "Then spend what it takes to obtain more bomb-sniffing dogs, to install more sophisticated bomb-detecting equipment and to train security personnel in identifying the behavior of real terror suspects.” Operative message: Ignore Islam. Watch for suspicious behavior and beef up the security gantlet. That's a surefire way to deny the existence of jihad and never end it, choosing instead to submit indefinitely to its untenable siege, equal parts frightening, humiliating, and inconvenient. But -- and this is where things get really disturbing -- Woolsey's idea of deterrent strategy is no different. (Washingtonexaminer)

Climate change: the true price of the warmists' folly is becoming clear-Christopher Booker
From the Met Office's mistakes to Gordon Brown's wind farms, the cost of 'green' policies is growing, warns Christopher Booker
Impeccable was the timing of that announcement that directors of the Met Office were last year given pay rises of up to 33 per cent, putting its £200,000-a-year chief executive into a higher pay bracket than the Prime Minister. As Britain shivered through Arctic cold and its heaviest snowfalls for decades, our global-warming-obsessed Government machine was caught out in all directions. For a start, we saw Met Office spokesmen trying to explain why it had got its seasonal forecasts hopelessly wrong for three cold winters and three cool summers in a row. The current cold snap, we were told with the aid of the BBC – itself facing an inquiry into its relentless obsession with “global warming” – was just a “regional” phenomenon, due to “natural” factors. No attempt was made to explain why the same freezing weather is affecting much of the northern hemisphere (with 1,200 places in the US alone last week reporting record snow and low temperatures). And this is the body on which, through its Hadley Centre for Climate Change and the discredited Climatic Research Unit, the world’s politicians rely for weather forecasting 100 years ahead. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Britain's new bomber command: The $2bn aircraft aiming for world peace-Angus Batey
The world's most expensive aircraft has a devastating new bomb that may yet end North Korea's nuclear pretensions. More to the point, they've just tossed the keys to an RAF pilot. LIVEreports from a top secret USAF base in Missouri on a very British coup
There are two ways for a Briton to get close to the world's most expensive bomber. One involves a year of emails, faxes and phone calls involving the Pentagon and the U.S. State Department to obtain permission to visit Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers are based. The other is to join the RAF. There, you must spend years flying fighter jets and apply for the one spot that opens up every three years on the world's most exclusive exchange programme. The advantage to this approach is that you could eventually pilot a $2 billion aircraft that gets more technically advanced each month - and is soon to carry one of the biggest bombs ever built. It is also this avenue that means a Brit may be in charge of the first strike of the next war. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Bill Bryson on the giants of the Royal Society
They discovered gravity, harnessed electricity and invented champagne: for 350 years the brilliantly eccentric members of the Royal Society have been expanding the frontiers of human knowledge
I can tell you at once that my favourite Fellow of the Royal Society was the Rev Thomas Bayes, from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, who lived from about 1701 to 1761. He was by all accounts a hopeless preacher but a brilliant mathematician. At some point — it is not certain when — he devised the complex mathematical equation that has come to be known as the Bayes theorem. People who understand the formula can use it to work out various probability distributions — or inverse probabilities, as they are sometimes called. It is a way of arriving at statistical likelihoods based on partial information. The remarkable feature of Bayes’ theorem is that it had no practical applications in his own lifetime. Although simple cases yield simple sums, most uses demand serious computational power to do the volume of calculations. So in Bayes’ day it was simply an interesting but largely pointless exercise. (Timesonline.co.uk)

Wolf Hall-Melanie Phillips
I have just finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize winning novel, Wolf Hall. It is simply stunning. I can scarcely remember a novel which has consumed me so utterly by creating a totally believable world. What did I know about Thomas Cromwell before I read it? Nothing that I could remember of any great significance. Now I feel I know him and understand him. How much of this wonderful novel is historical fact and how much derives from the imagination of Hilary Mantel I cannot say; but her book creates the impression of real people saying real things and feeling all-too real agonies, both corporeal and spiritual, in a political and religious climate of unimaginable fanatical savagery. Two things stand out for me in particular, apart from the extraordinarily subtle, sensitive and sympathetic portrait painted of Cromwell himself and his steady trajectory to supreme power as Henry Vlll’s indispensable aide and ally in employing uspseakable means to realise Henry’s obsessional and despotic quest for a male heir -- all through Cromwell’s combination of ruthless power, intellectual force, the steadiest of judgment and a character of pure steel forged by adversity. The first is the eye-opening picture Mantel paints of Sir Thomas More, here transformed from a martyred man of iron principle into a cold, ruthless hypocrite guilty of appalling cynicism, savagery and personal treachery. (Spectator.co.uk)

More than 230 schools have ditched Christian assemblies-Julie Henry, Education Correspondent
Almost 100,000 pupils are being taught in schools which have dropped Christian assemblies in favour of Islamic or multi-faith worship.
More than 230 schools have applied to councils for exemption from the legal requirement to hold a daily act of collective worship of a "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character". In some of these schools, Islamic assemblies are held instead, with readings from the Koran. Other schools run secular or multi-faith assemblies where Christianity is avoided or relegated to just one example of a faith among many. "The worst thing of all that schools can do, whether they have a determination or not, is a multi-faith mish mash," said Colin Hart, the director of the Christian Institute. "The British Social Attitudes survey found that 69 per cent of parents backed daily prayers in schools. Yet Christianity in schools is being marginalised. Parents do not want assemblies to be either secular or a confusing amalgam of faiths. Look at the massive number of parents of other faiths who apply to Church schools. They don't like the secularism that is pervading community schools." (Telegraph.co.uk)