The Western Word

This Week's Editorial

AUSCHWITZ REMEMBERED IN BLACK AND WHITE
By Avi Davis

So here we stand once again before the gates of Auschwitz. Sixty-five years ago the Russian army liberated this camp. What, we might ask, did they first experience as they approached the gates emblazoned with the unforgettable motif Arbeit Macht Frei?

Contrary to what most people think, the first experience of Auschwitz for the Russians was not the scenes that would later become immortalized in still photographs and film footage. Rather, it was the overpowering stench of death carried in the air as the soldiers approached from ten miles away. When they finally reached the camp gates, the scene of utter desolation could barely be believed, even by hardened soldiers who had survived the Battle of Stalingrad and witnessed its horrific carnage.

Bodies were stacked in places ten feet high; young children, clothed in rags, stumbled from the barracks, emaciated skeletons; Young men and women, some only in their teens, looked aged well beyond their years, haggard, lice infested and covered in grime. The footage that cameraman Alexander Vorontsov and director Irmgard von zur Muhlen, took that afternoon, offered us images that have become indelibly stamped on Western memory. . In addition to the utter destitution of the scene, the camera pans across mountains of personal possessions confiscated from the prisoners -- nearly half a million suits and dresses and tens of thousands of eyeglasses. The gas chambers, the portable gallows, the warehouse that held countless bags of human hair ( 7.7 tons of it!) and the glare of the silent survivors as they stared unblinking at the camera, were the living reminders of how western civilization had turned on itself.

But the parallel tragedy of the day is often forgotten. Nine days before the liberation, as the Soviets approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, Nazi SS officers forced nearly 60,000 inmates to march west. Only 7,000, too sick and enfeebled, remained in the camps.

The death march of the winter of 1945 was the final gift of the Nazis to Western civilization. Although there were many death marches, from most of the concentration camps such as Buchenwald and Treblinka, the Auschwitz Death March is by far the best known and involved the most inmates. The prisoners, were marched toward Wodzisław Śląski (German: Loslau) and were put on freight trains to other camps. Of the 60,000, 15,000 prisoners died, either through summary execution, exposure or exhaustion, their bodies thrown into ditches or left to rot on the road where they fell. They marched in the bitterly cold Polish winter 180 miles in 45 days, with very little to eat or drink and no warmth, sleeping in open fields, barns, warehouses--anywhere they could find shelter along the way. They finally arrived at Camp Hirschberg, near the Czechoslovakian border. Many of the survivors of the march would not be liberated until the very last days of the war.

There is no color film that survives from the day of liberation at Auschwitz. That is perhaps appropriate since color itself, a symbol of vibrancy and life, had become the nemesis of the Nazi operation at Auschwitz. The drabness of the camp, its dank, gray barracks, the colorless prison uniforms and the stark parade grounds represent the Nazi attempt to erase any semblance of normalcy from daily life and convince Auschwitz’s inmates that this new world was the only one they would ever know.

Yet if anything stood in defiance at Auschwitz, it was the resilience of nature itself - the blue of the sky, the green of the nearby forests and the warmth of the sun. Even in the bitterest months of incarceration, the surviving inmates took heart from these reminders that the earth still spun on its axis, that the seasons would still arrive and depart, and that nature, indifferent to Nazi terror, was the one thing that that terrible military machine could not control. This knowledge infused them with the hope that the Nazi regime was itself transient and would one day be swept away by the tide of history.

Such a moment of realization is beautifully captured in a scene from Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl once visited a young woman in Theresienstadt’s infirmary. The young woman knew that she would die in the next few days. But when Frankl talked to her, she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge:

"I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard," she told me. "In my former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments seriously." Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, "This tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness." Through that window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the branch were two blossoms. "I often talk to this tree," she said to me. I was startled and didn't quite know how to take her words. Was she delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked her if the tree replied. "Yes." What did it say to her? She answered, "It said to me, 'I am here-I am here-I am life, eternal life.”

The will to live, the determination to defy terror and resist evil, takes its inspiration from many sources, but among the most important of them is the sense that human life has purpose and free will is our most important weapon in affirming it. As Frankl himself states, "Everything can be taken from a man but the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

We who are blessed with greater freedoms than any other human beings in history, might then wish to use this week’s commemoration to recall that nothing in nature, even a couple of blossoms on a chestnut tree, should be taken for granted. We might want to reinforce the notion that humanity’s course, in defiance of the nihilistic fatalism that dominates so much of our culture, derives from the exercise of our free will. And we might want to remember that how we choose to live our lives, as both individuals and communities, will ultimately determine our collective fate.

Many Holocaust victims learned that the art of survival involves more than just putting bread in your mouth. It also embraces a certain moral world view, one which connects one’s being’s fate to another’s and through love, compassion and caring builds unassailable bonds between them. It is a trait, lest we ever forget, that is distinctly human.

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

Don't Subsidize Haitian Corruption
By Christian Whiton

The devastation in Haiti has brought into stark relief the best and worst of America’s approach to tragedy abroad. On one hand, there is a commendable outpouring of charity from the American people and yet another display of the effectiveness and competence of the U.S. military. On the other, the Obama administration and other spendthrifts are asserting a non-existent responsibility for American taxpayers to help rebuild Haiti. Their call to ride to the rescue reflects a foreign policy that wastes taxpayer dollars while actually fueling corruption and misery. Furthermore, there is no compelling reason for the United States to involve itself in Haiti’s reconstruction. It is an impossible task for another country and there are no U.S. interests at stake that warrant involvement beyond short-term rescue activities.
(FOXnews.com)

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.

Osama bin Laden claims credit for Detroit terror attack-Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
Osama bin Laden has taken credit for a thwarted attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
Speaking in an audio recording released after Britain raised its terror threat level, the al-Qaeda terror chief also threatened fresh attacks against American targets. He praised Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who tried to blow up a Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with explosives concealed in his underpants, as "a hero". Although he did not claim direct responsibility for the attack, bin Laden said that Abdulmutallab's mission was intended to "re-affirm" the message sent to the United States on September 11, 2001. The one-minute recording, which bin Laden directed personally to President Barack Obama, sought once again to draw a direct link between al-Qaeda's terror campaign and US support for Israel. "America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine," bin Laden is heard to say in the recording, which was broadcast by al-Jazeera television in Qatar. "It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly.". (Telegraph.co.uk)

Al-Qaeda seeks WMD, US unprepared for threat: reports-AFP
The United States has not done enough to protect the country against the threat of weapons of mass destruction even as Al-Qaeda appears intent on staging a large-scale attack, reports released Tuesday said. A bipartisan panel warned the government had failed to adopt measures to counter the danger posed by extremists using WMD, saying the administration lacked plans for a rapid response to a possible biological attack. "Nearly a decade after September 11, 2001, one year after our original report, and one month after the Christmas Day bombing attempt, the United States is failing to address several urgent threats, especially bioterrorism," said former senator Bob Graham, chair of the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. He said that Washington no longer had "the luxury of a slow learning curve, when we know Al-Qaeda is interested in bioweapons." In its "report card," the commission also gave the federal government low marks for failing to recruit a new generation of national security experts and for failing to improve congressional oversight of intelligence and homeland security agencies. The findings came as a former CIA officer wrote in a report that Al-Qaeda's leaders have been working methodically since 1998 to secure weapons that could inflict massive bloodshed. (Breitbart)

Exclusive: ‘One Nation under Allah’-Gadi Adelman
When I returned to the United States in 1981, my biggest concern was that the terrorism I had witnessed in Israel would reach our shores before too long. I was called an alarmist and told by those “in the know” that America didn’t have terrorism. Off the cuff, my answer was, “Wait 10 years and remember the word Jihad.” Unfortunately, although my timing was off by two years, I was right. With all my concerns as to the future of this country, the one thing that truly never crossed my mind during my first few years was that America would have to worry about Sharia law. The literal translation of Sharia is path, or path to water. “Šarīat Allāh” (God’s Law), refers to the legal framework within which the public and private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Islamic principles of jurisprudence. Sharia deals with all aspects of day-to-day life, from family, sexuality, hygiene, politics, economics, banking, business, contracts and social issues. What is happening here is no different from what happened in Europe. Well, maybe a bit different, I think, because in Europe Sharia was creeping into the society and here it is steamrolling. (Family Security Matters)

Sarkozy U-turn on French burka ban over fears of 'terrorist reprisals' - Peter Allen
France is set to perform a U-turn on its pledge to ban the burqa because of threats including 'terrorist reprisals' and legal challenges from the EU. Despite President Nicolas Sarkozy's assertion that Islamic veils were 'not welcome', MPs are to recommend today that they are barred only from public transport and civic buildings such as schools and hospitals. They would be permitted in private buildings or on the street. MPs already indicated that there are a range of dangers associated with a full ban – including terrorism or a challenge by the European Court of Human Rights. There was also fear that it could lead to international condemnation, after the outcry given to Switzerland after a referendum there last year backed a ban on any more minarets being built in the country. Communist MP Andre Gerin, head of a parliamentary panel which has spent six months examining the controversial issue, said a full ban could inflame tensions within France's five million-strong Islamic community, the largest in western Europe. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Chicago Man Pleads Not Guilty in Mumbai Attacks- DOUGLAS BELKIN
CHICAGO—The Chicago man charged with helping to plan a 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that killed more than 160 people entered a plea of not guilty in federal court Monday morning. Tahawwur Hussain Rana wore an orange jumpsuit and entered the court room with both his hands and feet shackled. He spoke very briefly in the arraignment before Judge Arlander Keys, saying "Yes, your honor," when asked if he understood the charges against him. Mr. Rana, 49 years old, is being held in federal custody in a Chicago jail along with his boyhood friend, David Coleman Headley, who has also been charged in connection with the massacre. Both men have also been charged with planning a second attack against a Danish newspaper that published a cartoon in 2005 that many Muslims found offensive. That attack was not carried out. Mr. Rana was arrested in October. The three charges against him include providing material support for terrorism in the Denmark plot, the Mumbai attacks and to the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Taibi. The latter two counts carry a possible life sentence. (WSJ)

Paris: Girl beaten for chatting on MSN
A 16 year old might lose her eye for chatting on MSN. Caught while on her computer in December, she was beaten and locked up at home in the Paris suburb of Saint-Gratien (Val d'oise). With their parents' permission, both strict Muslims, her two brothers (28 and 32) allegedly punished the victim. The four held a family meeting to avoid legal repercussions. The brothers and parents [ed: according to one report, the mother was not charged] appeared before a magistrate in Pontoise yesterday, charged with willful violence, kidnapping or more than seven days and neglect. The investigation started after the victim visited an ophthalmologist, having finally been able to leave the apartment a month after the attacks started. The teenager, who was injured in her eye, was able to consult a specialist, who did not fail to notice the bruises. The young victim risks losing her eye. At best, according to certain reports, she would retain very diminished eyesight. Her visual acuity is less than a tenth. The specialist immediately reported the incident and the proceedings were launched. The Enghien-les-Bains police started a preliminary investigation which culminated Wednesday in the arrests of the parents of the victim and her two brothers. The older brother is particularly suspect. They trapped her for eight days in the apartment, in harsh conditions. (Islamineurope)

Pakistan: Journalist interviews Belgian al-Qaeda fighter
A video of the report is available here (in French)
His face hidden by a dark veil, wearing camouflage and armed with a knife and a machine gun. Ghent resident 'Adelbert Naaktgeboren' appeared this way on TV last night. As a real al-Qaeda fighter in Afghanistan, with a new name - Abu Adam Saifoula. He and his fellow fighters captured their uniforms from the Americans, by attacking the back-lines. "And thanks to the help of Allah, we also managed to kill Americans." The young man says that he's been fighting with al-Qaeda against NATO troops for five years. "A holy war against the infidels," he calls it. "A war which will only end when the infidels all convert to Islam, or are killed." French journalist Mélanie Bois found and met the Ghent Jihad fighter. "It happened in Pakistan," she said yesterday by phone from Pakistan. "Six kilometers from a village Dara Adamkhel in the area of Peshawar. In the middle of a a perilous zone, which is under control of the Taliban. He didn't want to say anything about the details of his life." Mélanie Bois says that in his former life the man was named 'Adelbert Naaktgeboren'. To the camera he says that he's 'from Belgium' and 'from Ghent'. "He didn't show me his passport. But when the camera was off, he spoke to me in French and Flemish. He also looks like a European. He is 25 years old, has big brown eyes and a beard." (Islamineurope)

No to Tariq Ramadan-Steven Schwartz
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has lifted the visa ban on the European theoretician of radical Islam and virtuoso Jew-baiter, Tariq Ramadan, allowing him to take up a position he was offered at Notre Dame University. At the same time, a U.S. entry prohibition against a South African leftist, Adam Habib of Johannesburg University, was voided. The decision to admit Tariq Ramadan is profoundly wrong. Adam Habib is an innocuous figure. Tariq Ramadan is not. Ramadan was first barred from the U.S. in 2004, under the U.S. Patriot Act. As described in a predictably smarmy reportage by The New York Times on Wednesday, January 20, Ramadan was excluded at that time for contributing to a so-called charity that supported Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization. Ramadan claimed he thought the group to which he donated was not so connected, and that he has repeatedly denounced terrorism. In reality, the denial of his visa was based on his assistance to two Hamas fronts, the Palestinian Welfare and Aid Committee (Comité de Bienfaisance et de Secours aux Palestiniens or CBSP) and the Palestinian Aid Association (Association Secours Palestinien). The latter is related to CBSP, which was designated by the U.S. Treasury as a terror financier in 2002. (Hudsonnewyork)

Typecasting: Why Nurses are Women, Cops are Conservatives, and Professors are Liberals-Ashley Thorne
Patricia Cohen reports in the New York Times on yet another study that asks why college professors are overwhelmingly liberal. The working paper, authored by sociologists Neil Gross and Ethan Fosse, concludes that the main reason for the disparity is occupation typecasting. Fewer conservatives want to go into academia, just as fewer liberals become police officers and few boys dream of becoming nurses when they grow up. Such stereotyped professions tend to maintain social homogeneity. But stereotypes exist for a reason. According to Gross and Fosse, professors are more likely to have fewer children, advanced degrees, “higher levels of tolerance for controversial ideas,” non-conservative religious beliefs, and a disparity between their education levels and their income. These qualities are more compatible with a liberal political outlook. Gross has been cranking out volumes of research on this theme. (NAS)

Tolerating exclusive societies is nail in coffin of university ideals-Professor Anthony Glees
It is entirely self-serving for Malcolm Grant to say that universities should not police their students.
Universities have always policed students in the sense that they have kept an eye on them and encouraged them to feel that they were being taught and challenged as individuals. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was not radicalised on campus he is the exception rather than the rule. He is the fourth president of a university Islamic society to be involved in serious terrorist charges. Many student Islamic societies act as parallel student unions, looking after their members' welfare. This leads directly to social exclusion and the creation of Muslim enclaves. In allowing this situation to continue, universities are failing to make Muslim students feel that they are part of one campus community. That makes it possible for a very small number of people to believe that it is only by blowing this country up that they can see the political changes that they want. Universities are there to give higher education to the people who are going to play a formative role in our society in the future - that means giving them a rational and balanced view of the world. When universities tolerate on their campuses organisations which seek to radicalise, they hammer another nail in the coffin of the idea of higher education. (Thisislondon.co.uk)
Professor Anthony Glees is Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, University of Buckingham.

Meet the Real Jack Bauers-Marc A. Thiessen
In Courting Disaster, the real CIA interrogators explain why their methods bear no resemblance to what you see on Fox’s 24.
This week saw the premiere of a new season of 24, with CTU agent Jack Bauer preparing to leave the world of counterterrorism for a quiet life as a grandfather in Los Angeles. But he is pulled back into the fight to stop the attempted assassination of a Middle Eastern leader in New York. As he questions an informant, he thrusts a gun into the man’s neck but then pulls back, telling him, “You’re lucky I’m retired.” In another time, the man would have suffered far worse. The public view of interrogations had been shaped by the fictional Bauer, who captures a terrorist and proceeds to torture him — holding down his head in a bathtub full of water, using a Taser to shock him, lopping off his fingers with a cigar cutter — while screaming questions until the terrorist finally breaks and gives up the location of the nuclear bomb that is about to go off. For some critics of U.S. interrogation policy, this is not fiction, but a depiction of reality. In Newsweek, Dahlia Lithwick has written that “high-ranking lawyers in the Bush administration erected an entire torture policy around the fictional edifice of Jack Bauer.” And Philippe Sands, author of the book Torture Team, has written that the show has been the “midwife” for torture’s “actual use on real, living human beings.” None of this is true. (The National Review)

Lancet Study Blames Palestinian Wife-Beating on Israel-Phyllis Chesler
Does Not Mention Honor Killings, Forced Veiling, Arranged Marriages, etc.
It’s official. Britain’s premier medical journal Lancet [1] has been completely Palestinianized. It no longer bears any relationship to the first-rate scientific journal it once was. Perhaps Lancet is no longer a standard-bearer but has become a follower in the global movement in which standards have plunged, biases have soared, and Big Lies now pass for top-of-the-line academic, scientific work. The post-colonial academy is itself thoroughly colonized by the false and dangerous ideas of Edward Said (please read my dear friend Ibn Warraq’s most excellent book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism [2]). However, I once believed that Said’s paranoid perspective had primarily infected and indoctrinated only the social sciences, humanities, and Middle East Studies. We now see his malign influence at work in a new article, just out today, by professors who work at the Department of Medicine at Harvard University; the Division of Epidemiology and Community Health at Minnesota University’s School of Public Health; The Boston University School of Medicine; the School of Nursing at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey; and at the School of Social Work and Social Welfare at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. (Pajamasmedia)

Amanpour’s Viewership Soars -- on Fox News!-Human Events
CNN spiked a hot story on Sunday. But if their plan was to keep a lid on a heated and unflattering Christiane Amanpour interview, it didn’t quite work out. Christiane Amanpour interviewed author Marc Thiessen about his hot new book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack last Wednesday, January 20. But Thiessen turned the tables on Amanpour and instead confronted her about her biased reporting. The show broadcast to CNN’s international audience, as planned. The piece was then to air in the large U.S. market Sunday. However, it appears that after Thiessen firmly called out CNN’s star reporter for spreading mistruths about enhanced interrogation, one of her pet issues, the network opted to not air the show at all in the United States. Here’s where the story gets interesting. Fox News Channel then grabbed the CNN video clips off YouTube and aired parts of the revealing interview on its two top rated shows, "The O’Reilly Factor" and "Hannity." The net effect was that parts of the interview were seen domestically by more than ten times the number who would have seen it had the show simply aired on CNN alone. (Humanevents)

Stop the Trial of Geert Wilders-Leon De Winter
A Dutch court is forced to compare Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' and the Quran.
What started as a trial against Geert Wilders for alleged Islamophobia has nearly turned into its opposite: a historical case about the message of the Quran. The Amsterdam court trying the controversial Dutch politician is now preoccupied with the question of whether this book, sacred to more than a billion believers, can be compared to one of the most vile publications in the history of Western civilization—Hitler's "Mein Kampf." What could possibly go wrong? In his writing and speeches, Mr. Wilders has found these two works to be similar in terms of their anti-Semitism and incitement to hatred, and has thus called for a publishing ban on the Quran similar to the one in place for "Mein Kampf." This is what triggered Mr. Wilders's prosecution for discriminatory and insulting remarks against Muslims and Islam. The Dutch politician, though, denies having insulted Muslims. He insists his focus is on radical Islam and the Quran, which he considers to be not only a religious text but also a political pamphlet encouraging Muslims to discriminate against and, if necessary, kill Jews, Christians, apostates and other unbelievers. That's why Mr. Wilders claims the right to criticize and condemn Islam. (WSJ)

The Wilders Trial: Voices From Europe-Diana West
In the summer of 2008, as many readers know, I traveled to six European countries to interview politicians dedicated to breaking, halting and/or reversing the Islamization of their countries (here is a collection of some of the writings inspired by the trip). One of those politicians was Geert Wilders, then the little-known (outside of the Netherlands) leader of a very small party, PVV, the Party for Freedom. Only a year and a half later, Wilders is the most famous Dutchman in the world, and his party rivals the current ruling party in popularity. Wilders is also now on trial for his political life and liberty – hardly a coincidence. But Wilders is not the only politician in Europe fighting Islamization. In my travels, I learned there were other countries where extremely courageous men and some notable women had entered the democratic arena to defend Western liberties against the onslaught of sharia (Islamic law), and with electoral success. In interviewing such politicians, I was much impressed with their political and, in these times of jihad violence, physical courage. Sadly, it remains the case that no US politicians speak with either the candor or understanding of the Islamic threat besetting the West that at least some of their European counterparts do. (Brusselsjournal)

UCL head: London colleges must let extremists speak-Tim Allen
Radical speakers must be allowed to address students on campus in the interests of free speech, says the head of the college attended by the alleged Detroit jet bomber.
Malcolm Grant, President and Provost of University College London, said it was not the job of universities to act as “policemen” and prevent students becoming terrorists. He criticised the “hysteria” whipped up in the aftermath of the failed Christmas Day attack and dismissed the idea that universities are “hotbeds of extremism”. Professor Grant spoke to the Evening Standard as he launched an inquiry into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's time at UCL, amid claims that the Nigerian began to be radicalised while a student in London. Professor Grant has also been appointed to lead a national review into how universities work with the police and security services to try to prevent violent extremism. Abdulmutallab, president of UCL's student Islamic society during his three years at the college, is accused of trying to detonate explosives hidden in his underpants as a Northwest Airlines flight approached Detroit airport. Police and the security agencies are concerned that many universities and colleges are fertile grounds for radical Islamic preachers and banned groups. (Thisislondon.co.uk)

'Anti-Semitism in Europe highest since WWII'-Abe Selig , THE JERUSALEM POST
Anti-Semitic incidents in western Europe peaked to a level not seen since the close of World War II, according to numbers released by the Jewish Agency on Sunday, three days before the commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The data showed a spike in anti-Semitic violence during and after the IDF's Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last winter. During the first three months of 2009 - part of which included the IDF operation in Gaza - more anti-Semitic incidents (including anything from verbal threats to violent attacks) took place in western Europe than during all of 2008. In France, 631 incidents occurred in the first half of 2009, compared with 431 in 2008. In Britain, some 600 anti-Semitic incidents took place during 2009. In the Netherlands, some one hundred incidents were noted following the Gaza incursion, the same number as the country had witnessed the entire previous year. (The Jewish week)

Hugo Chavez May Join Gaza Flotilla-Gil Ronan
IsraelNN.com) Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez may join one of the next “humanitarian” flotilla headed for Gaza. Lebanese newspaper As-Safir reported Monday that the aid convoy “Lifeline 4” will leave for Gaza after the British parliamentary elections in May, and will have Chavez on deck, along with well known anti-apartheid activists from South Africa. The newspaper quotes Kevin Ovenden, an aide to anti-Israel MP George Galloway, as saying that in two months' time, even before the next Lifeline convoy sets off, several other aid ships will leave Mediterranean ports for Gaza. The ships will set off for Gaza in March, in a convoy initiated by a Hamas terror activist who received political asylum in Britain. The man, Muhammad Sualha, stated in a pro-Hizbullah website that the convoy will include six or seven ships that will depart from Turkey, Greece and Cyprus simultaneously. "This time we want a direct confrontation with the Zionist enemy,” he explained. Sualha was a propaganda liaison for Hamas in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the 90s. (INN)

Dropping International Holocaust Memorial Day Would Be World’s Final Insult To Survivors; Would Spur New Wave of Anti-Semitism- Rabbi Abraham Cooper*
As the International Holocaust Memorial Day beckons this week, we are confronted by the sad reality captured in the just-released report by longtime human rights icon Natan Sharansky that European anti-Semitic incidents in 2009 were highest since the Holocaust era. Sharansky pointed to an era of new “blood libels,” including the recent canard promoted on Youtube accusing the Israelis of harvesting the organs of the Haitians, an echo of Israelis wrongfully accused of harvesting the organs of Palestinians. This is a time of unprecedented attacks against Israel by a broad array of political, diplomatic, academic and religious forces who seek to demonize and isolate the Jewish state and supporters of Zion. Meanwhile, denial of the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust, history’s greatest and most documented crime, remains a potent weapon for Jew haters and a source of unfathomable pain for aging Holocaust survivors. Now there’s a campaign to drop the International community’s day to remember the Holocaust. We cannot let this happen! Holocaust revisionism and denial traces back to just after World War II. It gathered steam in the 1970s, embraced by a new generation of ‘neo’-Nazis and pseudo-intellectuals who brazenly railed against the truth and the overwhelming evidence of history’s greatest crimes. (Simonwiesenthalcenter)

Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: The Jews Are Our Enemies and Allah Will Annihilate Them at Our Hands-MEMRI
The following are excerpts from a sermon given by Egyptian cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub, which aired on Al-Nas TV (Egypt) on December 29, 2009.

"The Nation of Islam was Created to Remain to the End of Time, Strong and Dominant"
Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: "The nation of Islam is here to stay. We should make this notion grow within our hearts. Our nation was not created to fulfill a role and then disappear, like the nations before us, which were created to exist for a while, only to be annihilated. No, no. The nation of Islam was created to remain to the end of time, strong and dominant.
[...]
"Our nation will never die. It will not be annihilated. We have seen our nation undergoing worse events then those we witness today. We ache [for] the disintegration, the loss, and the eradication of Iraq, but Iraq has undergone crises that made the Euphrates River flow red with blood, and another time, flow black with ink, because of the books of the Baghdad Library which were thrown into it.
[...]
(MEMRI)

Why the British left hates Israel-Douglas Carswell
A generation ago, the British left was broadly pro-Israel. Perhaps it was the kibbutzim’s utopian blend of Zionism and socialism, or maybe because Israel was seen as the plucky underdog. Either way, the country could count on a fair hearing. Not so today. Israel is now reviled by many on the left. If Britain is, in Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor’s words, “a hotbed of radical anti-Israel views”, blame must partly rest with those on the political left who have made hostility to the Jewish state acceptable in a way their grandparents would have thought offensive and absurd. Israel is regarded with suspicion by many on the left, not because it is Jewish but just because it is a nation state. No country on earth better embodies the spirit of national self-determination — of a distinct nationhood for a people — than Israel. Over millennia, Jewish families have toasted one another with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem”. In 1948, it became a reality. The left also, of course, continued to support the independence struggles, led by Gandhi, Nkrumah and Kenyatta, of former nations of the British Empire. But today, certainly where Israel is concerned, it is fashionable among the British left to reject the very idea of nationhood in favour of a belief in supranationalism. (Jewishchronicle)

We are still in the shadow of the Holocaust-Michael Gove
Anti-Semitism is on the rise, which makes memorial day all the more vital, says Michael Gove.
This Wednesday we remember the greatest crime ever inflicted by man against his fellow man. Holocaust Memorial Day allows us to reflect on the bleakest chapter in the history of the 20th century. And there is a special urgency in the call to remember this year, of all years - because the shadow of the Holocaust continues to fall over the world today. Mass murder is still deployed as a political tool by tyrants, from Burma to Zimbabwe. Racism is returning to the streets of Europe, from St Petersburg to Antwerp. And, hard though it is to credit after the horrors of the last century, anti-Semitism is creeping back into the corridors of power. We know that Nazi ideology still has the power to motivate evil men. From the Swedish fascist who tried to acquire the "Arbeit macht frei" sign which hung over the gates of Auschwitz, to the British fascists of the BNP, there is an ominous resurgence of extremist activity visible across our Continent. (Telegraph.co.uk)

For Bigots, Israel Can Do No Right-Alan M. Dershowitz
As most objective observers throughout the world marvel at Israel ’s efficiency and generosity [1] in leading the medical aid efforts in Haiti , some bigots insist on using these efforts as an occasion to continue their attack on the Jewish state. Both the neo-Nazi hard right and the neo-Stalinist hard left cannot help but to demonize Israel, regardless of what Israel does. The neo-Nazi website ReportersNotebook.com features a blog entitled The Zionization of Disaster Relief. It accuses Israel of “exploiting the suffering of poor, defenseless Haitians on behalf of Israeli Triumphalism.” It complains that Israel is rendering medical aid to Haiti only to deflect attention from its crimes against the Palestinians. The hard left, even in a Israel , complains that Israel should not be sending medical assistance to such a faraway place. Instead it should be sending it to nearby Gaza . Even the New York Times, in an otherwise thoughtful analysis of the controversiality of the aid among some Israelis, failed to note the difference between Israel sending its limited resources to faraway Haiti and to nearby Gaza. Haiti is not at war with Israel . (Frontpagemagazine)

Now Al Qaeda sends women suicide bombers to target West- Jason Lewis, Mail on Sunday Security Editor
A team of non-Arabic female suicide bombers has been sent to attack targets in the West, it is feared.
Security officials have been warned to be on the look-out for the women, carrying Western passports, who are believed to have escaped an attack on an Al Qaeda terror camp in Yemen. Former White House counter-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke said: 'There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins - that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like Al Qaeda terrorists, who may not be Arabs and may not be men. They have trained women.' A U.S. air strike on Christmas Eve is believed to have killed many suicide bombers being trained in Yemen, but some are thought to have escaped. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the former British student accused of trying to detonate a bomb on a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day, told the FBI several other people trained with him in Yemen. Female suicide bombers have previously struck in Iraq and Israel but security sources regard the use of western-looking women for Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. or Europe as 'inevitable'. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Secret Report: Iran will Have Nuclear Bomb This Year-Malkah Fleisher
(Israelnationalnews.com) A secret intelligence dossier currently being reviewed by US, Israeli, German, and Austrian governments reveals secret Iranian tests and hierarchies of power dedicated to the successful development of a nuclear bomb, and predicts that Iran will have a primitive nuclear bomb by year's end. According to the classified document featured in an exposé by Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Iran is well on its way toward obtaining its first nuclear bomb. The country's nuclear research program, it turns out, has a military wing answering to the Defense Ministry which the West was not aware of until now. Der Spiegel explained the structure of Iranian nuclear establishment at length. Iran's new Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, Kamran Daneshjoo, 52, is in charge of the country's nuclear energy agency.. (INN)

Intelligence from Tehran Elevates Concern in the West-By Dieter Bednarz, Erich Follath and Holger Stark
The West has long been suspicous of Iran's nuclear program. SPIEGEL has obtained new documents on secret tests and leadership structures that call into question Tehran's claims to be exclusively interested in the peaceful use of the technology.
It was probably the last attempt to defuse the nuclear dispute with Tehran without having to turn to dramatic new sanctions or military action. The plan, devised at the White House in October, had Russian and Chinese support and came with the seal of approval of the US president. It was clearly a Barack Obama operation.
Under the plan, Iran would send a large share of its low enriched uranium abroad, all at once, for a period of one year, receiving internationally monitored quantities of nuclear fuel elements in return. It was a deal that provided benefits for all sides. The Iranians would have enough material for what they claim is their civilian nuclear program, as well as for scientific experiments, and the world could be assured that Tehran would not be left with enough fissile material for its secret domestic uranium enrichment program -- and for what the West assumes is the building of a nuclear bomb. (Spiegelonline)

The Pentagon's Willful Blindness-Andrew Bostom
The Pentagon's bowdlerized "analysis" of the jihad-inspired mass murder committed by a pious Muslim officer at Fort Hood is a disgrace. The willful blindness toward the essence of jihad will harm our troops. I recently attended a briefing (an early iteration of the discussion contents are available here, entitled "To Our Great Detriment") which elucidated in irrefragable detail the Pentagon's willful capitulation to the dictates of Islamically-correct interpretations of jihad by various Muslim Brotherhood "consultants" to the Department of Defense (DOD). While the DOD adopts the absurdly apologetic interpretation of jihad at its most "aggressive" as a bloodless missionary "striving" to promote the Religion of Peace -- negating the living legacy of jihad as a genocidal war doctrine, in practice as well as in theory -- the Pentagon's Muslim Brotherhood advisers, true to the authentic doctrines of jihad as an endless war of propaganda and deceit, continue to espouse jihad war to their Muslim constituencies. The result of this stunningly corrosive process has been the willful subversion of U.S. DOD policy to the ultimate goals of both cultural and violent jihad: Islamization.(Americanthinker)

Internationalizing the Jihadist Threat from Pakistan-Afghanistan American terror arrests show reach of al Qaeda-affiliated jihadi groups along Pakistan-Afghanistan border-IPT News
A superseding indictment released earlier this month added three defendants to Chicago resident David Coleman Headley's alleged conspiracy to plot attacks in India and Denmark. It also makes clear that, while the public focus on terror has shifted to Yemen, the threat of jihad from al Qaeda affiliates along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border remains potent. Headley, an American citizen, is accused of scouting sites attacked in last year's deadly Mumbai terror attacks. The wave of terror unleashed by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) killed 170 people, including six Americans, and injured hundreds. In addition, Headley allegedly plotted to attack the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten and kill the cartoonist who drew a caricature of the Prophet Mohamed. The superseding indictment adds charges against Headley's accomplice Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistan-born Canadian citizen who also lives in Chicago, and recently entered a not guilty plea. And it charges an influential leader of a Pakistani terrorist group with known ties to al Qaeda as well as a retired major in the Pakistani military. (IPT)

ANOTHER climate change blunder: First it's melting glaciers, now natural disaster claim is debunked-Daniel Martin
The world's leading climate change scientists have been caught out making unfounded claims about global warming for the second time in just over a week. Experts appointed by the United Nations said rising temperatures were to blame for an increase in the number and severity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. But it has emerged that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based the statement, made in 2007, on an unpublished report that had not been properly reviewed by other scientists. The report's author has since withdrawn the claim, saying there is not enough evidence to link climate change to worsening natural disasters, and criticised the use of his data as 'completely misleading'. It follows the IPCC's admission that it was wrong to state in its influential 2007 Fourth Assessment Report that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. That assertion was based on ' speculation' featured in an eight-year-old article in New Scientist magazine. The latest revelation means more embarrassment for the climate change lobby because worsening natural disasters were a central plank of arguments at the recent UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Barack Obama used the claims when he said last autumn: 'More powerful storms and floods threaten every continent.' (Dailymail.co.uk)

China to lead world scientific research by 2020-Matthew Moore
Vast state investment in schools, universities and research programmes has driven the rapid growth, with academic discoveries rapidly tapped for commercial potential. Chinese scientists are particularly strong on chemistry and materials engineering, both considered central to the country’s industrial development and economic future. The number of peer-reviewed papers published by Chinese researchers rose 64-fold over the past 30 years. China is now second only to the US in terms of academic papers published, and will take first place by 2020 if current trends continue. It comes after last week’s announcement that China is poised to replace Japan as the world’s second largest economy, behind the US. The boom in China’s scientific research was disclosed in an analysis of papers published in 10,500 academic journals across the world. The figures, compiled by the publisher Thomson Reuters for the Financial Times , showed that Chinese scientists had increased their output at a far faster rate than counterparts in rival “emerging” nations such as India, Russia and Brazil. Although India has long been tipped as the most likely threat to US academic supremacy, the study found it now lags well behind China. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Poison and Progress-Deborah Blum
Modern science's race to stay ahead of global terrorists and political assassins began with some devious poisoners in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 1906, Belle Gunness started running personal ads in Midwestern papers. She described herself as an attractive widow with a lush Indiana farm property, interested in an equally affluent new husband. She included a tart postscript: "Triflers need not apply." Suitors answered her call by the dozen—and disappeared at a similar rate. After Ms. Gunness herself vanished in 1908, the La Porte, Ind. police department eventually set the body count at more than 40. This figure included her children and stepchildren, pieces of whom were found buried around the farm. A conspirator later detailed Ms. Gunness's favorite method for murder: a little chloroform in a tumbler of whiskey, followed by a strychnine chaser. Once her gentleman callers dropped dead, she would wait for dark to dismember and bury the bodies. Ms. Gunness was one of the most successful poison killers to belong to the era historians call the golden age of poisoning, from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. (WSJ)

Cameron's right about Broken Britain, but it will take more than a few tax breaks to reverse our descent into savagery-Melanie Phillips
Never is the inadequacy of party politics more sharply exposed than over the issue of the steady brutalisation of our society. The spectacle of David Cameron being subjected to political knockabout by the Children's Secretary Ed Balls over the Edlington child torture case is deeply distasteful. And yet, Cameron's own observations in turn raise more questions than they answer. Cameron has been accused of making political capital out of this appalling case, in which two little boys, aged 10 and 11, attacked two other little boys aged nine and 11 with such sustained sadism that one was left next to dead and both remain psychologically scarred. Cameron said these appalling events proved the truth of his claim that Britain was now a 'broken society'. This provoked claims by Balls and others that society is not broken at all, that Cameron is an opportunist, and that his policy of promoting marriage is pointless since the parents of the child attackers were married. These claims are as specious as they are cynical. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Teens: Oral Sex and Casual Prostitution No Biggie-Claire Shipman and Cole Kazdin
Teens in Documentary Say Oral Sex 'Not That Big of a Deal' and Get Paid for Sexual Favors. May 28, 2009 —They don't give their names, but viewers can see their faces plainly and what these teens are saying is shocking parents. "I ended up having sex with more than one person that night and then in the morning I was trying to get morning-after pills," one of the girls said. "I was, like, 14 at the time." It's just one of dozens of stories from teenage girls in a new documentary by Canadian filmmaker Sharlene Azam that aims to shed light on the secret, extremely sexual lives of today's teens. Have a question about teens and oral sex? Click here and Claire Shipman may answer online. Also check out Claire Shipman's blog by clicking here. After four years researching for the documentary, Azam told "Good Morning America" that oral sex is as common as kissing for teens and that casual prostitution -- being paid at parties to strip, give sexual favors or have sex -- is far more commonplace than once believed. "If you talk to teens [about oral sex] they'll tell you it's not a big deal," Azam said. "In fact, they don't consider it sex. They don't consider a lot of things sex."
Evidence of this casual attitude may be seen in the fact that more than half of all teens 15 to 19 years old have engaged in oral sex, according to a comprehensive 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics. (Abcnews)