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OBAMA REVISITS THE MISTAKES OF THE PAST
By Avi Davis
 Whenever a President of the United States begins to talk effusively about cutting through the Gordian knot of the Middle East conflict it is time to start worrying about a new outbreak of hostilities.
That’s because for decades American Middle East policy has aimed at the unachievable only to end in encouraging further violence and despair.
How many successive administrations have had their plans for Middle East peace wrecked on the reef of hard reality?. That reef today is littered with the rusting hulks of successive plans and missions – from the Rogers Plan of 1969 to Kissinger’s haunted shuttle diplomacy of the mid 70s to the Oslo Accords of 1993 to the Zinni Mission of 2003 to the ill fated Road Map of 2004. These hapless initiatives and plans have shared one commonality – a staunch belief that Palestinians and their Arab sponsors only wish for the dignity of Palestinian self-determination . Given the reality of self rule, so the creed goes, Palestinians would cease their relentless assault upon the Jewish state.
Nothing, of course, could be further from the truth. Palestinian nationalism, from its very beginnings, has never had as its focus the creation of an independent state which would bring a measure of dignity to its people. On the contrary, Palestinian nationalism is erected, not on lending self-respect to a dispossessed citizenry but on the elimination of another people. In fact, anti-Zionism was and is the one overarching principle which unites the notoriously fractious Palestinian groups and their Arab state sponsors. It remains to this day a central trope of both the Fatah and Hamas charters. Without it, the various Palestinian chieftans would be tearing each other apart, much as their great-grandfathers did in the not so distant Palestinian tribal past. Nation building, at least as it is understood in the West, has never been an essential element in that struggle.
Revisiting the mistakes of the past is evident in the selection of George Mitchell as Middle East envoy and Dennis Ross as a key advisor. Mitchell, although perhaps well meaning, has consistently used moral equivalence as his prevailing tool of analysis in determining a path to peace in the conflict. Dennis Ross, on the other hand, is a diplomat with such a staggering record of failure and misunderstanding of key personalities and events in the Middle East, that his selection as a central figure in the Middle East policy circle almost has a ring of mockery to it.
Mitchell’s inability to appreciate that Palestinian hatred of Israel transcends issues of borders and territory and goes to the very heart of Israel’s existence is evident in almost every comment he makes on the conflict while Ross’ penchant for believing that propping up dictators and tyrants is the surest way to bring stability to the region ( ie: his consistent embrace of Yasser Arafat) made a joke of his role as Middle East envoy in the 1990s. This incompetent duo is as likely to steer the Middle East towards peace as Batman and Robin.
While we have yet to hear the full details of an Obama plan for Middle East peace, a certain misty outline is already forming. The first element, articulated in Obama’s interview on Muslim television station al Arabiya last Tuesday is the fundamental belief that the West and the East need to converse under an umbrella of mutual respect and mutual interest. This is a subtle recalibration of Clintonian “ I feel your pain” politics, a way of bespeaking the ragged old axiom that the West has somehow been negligent in its awareness of Arab sensitivities.
This is ludicrous. When Palestinians stop burning American flags in the streets of their cities; when democratic elections bring true democrats rather than murderers and human rights abusers to power; when the Palestinian educational system is gutted of incitement and both antisemitism and anti-Americanism, then perhaps we can talk about basis for mutual respect and interest.
Until then, the Obama Administration should understand, as the Bush Administration did to a certain degree, that there is no George Washington-styled nation builder among the corrupt and brutish leaders of would-be Palestine. Thugs and kleptocrats are the central figures of the Palestinian national movement and they are no more capable nor willing to urge moderation on their people than any other tyrant or dictator in the region.
The second element that is becoming clear is the Obama Administration’s willful determination to see a Palestinian state come into being. While George Bush became the first U.S. president to offer that state, for Obama and his team Palestinian statehood is likely to become an unassailable creed.
But what kind of guarantee of peace does this offer? If , in the likely event the West Bank becomes as radicalized as Gaza and all Israeli cities come under threat of direct daily rocket attacks, how does Israel respond? As everyone knows, there is significant difference between raiding a territory and invading a sovereign nation. Intelligence and surveillance, the key elements in the current maintenance of Israeli security, would be drastically compromised and the minimal diplomatic leverage the Jewish state presently maintains as a sovereign nation exercising its basic defensive rights, would be lost.
The creation of another terrorist sponsoring state on Israel’s backdoor step is a guarantee for war, not peace – and a war, to boot, of deep attrition that threatens to extend far into the future.
So lets get real. A major thrust by the Obama Administration into the Middle East quagmire requires a truly fresh approach and not warmed over Clinton obeisance or Carter gullibility. It needs to reflect the fact that there are powerful interests in the Middle East for whom keeping the fires in the Middle East conflict burning is a vital political or psychological need. It must come to grips with the fact that the drive for Palestinian statehood does not come from the Palestinian street but from distinctly American and Israeli sources. In the absence of an effective leadership, capable of leading the Palestinians to peaceful coexistence, and for the want of popular acceptance of Israel’s right to exist, there is no hope for true peace in the near future or even in our lifetime.
Americans are typically gung-ho problem solvers who assume that all conflicts can ultimately be settled between well meaning people. But when one side is emphatically and irreversibly committed to the others’ destruction, there is little room left for negotiation. Ultimately, then, U.S. policy needs to shift from an insistence that the conflict can be definitively resolved to an acceptance that in fact it can only really be managed. Until the Palestinians edit their children’s text books to reflect amity and friendship towards Jews or begin to read them stories that do not involve the murder of Israelis, they should be put on notice that any hope of accommodating their national aspirations will be dashed.
These should now form the basic preconditions for any discussion of Palestinian statehood. Sadly, it appears that Barack Obama will not have on hand prudent advisors necessary to etch for him this uncomfortable reality.
Want to comment on this article? See Avi Davis’ blog
THE PASSION OF GEERT WILDERS
By Avi Davis
We have now all read the disturbing reports of the intention of the Dutch Court of Appeals to prosecute of member of the Dutch parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination,
The prosecution will be based on comments by Wilders in various media on Muslims and their beliefs following the production of his 15 minute documentary Fitna
The court's ruling reverses a decision last year by the Dutch public prosecutor's office, which stated that Mr Wilders' comments had been made outside parliament as a contribution to the debate on Islam in Dutch society and that no criminal offence had been committed. The Court of Appeals found, however, that it considers appropriate a criminal prosecution of Wilders for having insulted Muslim worshippers because of Widers’ comparisons between Islam and Nazism.
To Read more See Avi Davis’ blog
Avi Davis is the Executive Director and Senior Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at isdev@ix.netcom.com
2009: A year to defend free speech: Or lose it-Geert Wilders & Robert Spencer
by Robert Spencer
Barack Obama isn’t wasting any time making an impression: he has selected the leader of a group that has been named an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case to present a prayer during his inauguration festivities. Ingrid Mattson, president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), will offer a prayer at the National Cathedral Tuesday.Superficially, Obama’s choice is understandable: Ingrid Mattson is a Canadian convert to Islam who has carefully cultivated the image of a moderate spokesperson. Yet her organization’s record is not entirely clean. Federal prosecutors last summer rejected claims that ISNA was unfairly named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case. And ISNA has even admitted ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, complaining only that the government’s evidence for those ties came from old documents, but offering no proof that the organization had reversed course. In a memorandum on the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy in the United States, a Muslim Brotherhood operative named ISNA as an allied organization in what it called “a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.”
NEWS: EUROPE AND AMERICA
9 Alumni of Saudi Program for Ex-Jihadists Are Arrested-Robert F. Worth
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Nine graduates of an influential Saudi rehabilitation program for former jihadists, including some who had been imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, have been arrested for rejoining terrorist groups since the program started in 2004, Saudi officials said Monday. The Saudi Interior Ministry acknowledged the arrests after it emerged late last week that two other graduates had joined the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda, raising questions about how the Saudis lost track of them. Both had been released from Guantánamo, in Cuba, in 2007, and one of the men is suspected of having helped plan a deadly attack in Yemen last year. The statement on Monday about the arrests appeared to be an effort by the Saudi authorities to underline their vigilance, despite the lapses, in keeping track of former militants. (NYT)
 Israeli Official Blasts Cat Stevens' Song for Gaza Children-Joshua Rhett Miller
A new recording by singer-musician Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, to raise funds for the children of Gaza is angering an Israeli official who says all children — not just Palestinians — in the war-battered region should receive the same treatment. "It is good Mr. Islam is interested in helping the children of Gaza," David Saranga, spokesman for the Consulate General of Israel in New York, said in a statement. "The children on the other side of the border should not be forgotten, as well, and it would have been nice for their situation to also be considered when Mr. Islam decided on the dedication of the song." Along with former Beatles collaborator Klaus Voorman, the London-born Islam recorded his version of the late Beatle George Harrison's "The Day the World Gets 'Round." Islam said he will donate all proceeds from sales of the song to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, the U.N. agency in charge of Palestinian refugees, and the nonprofit group Save the Children. (Foxnews)
New US Administration Floats 'Direct Diplomacy' With Iran-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(IsraelNN.com) The US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, began her term Monday by dropping a not-unexpected bombshell in the UN chambers. The new US administration, she said, would engage in "direct diplomacy" with Iran. Such a policy shift away from isolating Iran, as under the previous administration, is a touchstone of President Barack Obama's foreign policy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made that position very clear at her confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. "We look forward to engaging in vigorous diplomacy that includes direct diplomacy with Iran," Ambassador Rice told reporters after a private meeting with UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon. Rice (no relation to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) presented her credentials to the head of the international body earlier in the day. "We remain deeply concerned about the threat that Iran's nuclear program poses to the region, indeed to the United States and to the entire international community," Rice said, adding the status of Iran's nuclear program is one of the Obama administration's priorities. The ambassador further clarified that, "dialogue and diplomacy must go hand in hand with a very firm message from the United States and the international community that Iran needs to meet its obligations as defined by the Security Council and its continued refusal to do so will only cause pressure to increase." (INN)
Oslo: Muhammad most popular boy's name-Islam in Europe
Statistics Norway published the most popular names for boys and girls in Oslo in 2008. Muhammad has been the top name for several years now.------------ 120 boys were named Mohammad last year. The name was written in many different ways, but these are added together in the statistics. In 2007 Mohammad was also the most popular boy's name in the capital. Outside the capital, however, very few were named Mohammad. Just 56 boys got this name in the rest of the country. Statistics Norway says that it's not a new phenomenon that many choose to name their son after the prophet Mohammad, but don't know why it's so popular. "I tried to talk to people of Pakistani origin and got two different stories. Some said that Mohammad is considered as a type of title. Some said that it's relatively religious. The more modern use it like a name like we're used to," says Jørgen Ouren of Norway Statistics to Østlandssendingen. The next most popular boy's name in Oslo was Jakob. 76 boys got this name. By girls Sara and Sofie are the most popular names. 75 and 73 girls got these names respectively in 2008. (Islamineuropeblogspot)
Academic freedom
The University of Toronto - The Institution where Israel Apartheid Week was Born-Avi Weinryb
The University of Toronto is one of the most highly regarded academic institutions in Canada. A coalition of anti-Israel groups initially used the university campus as a launching pad for what has become an annual series of events that take place in dozens of cities around the world. Protesters call for a one-state solution, crippling divestment from Israel, and heavy sanctions. Parallels are drawn between Israel and the Apartheid system as it existed in South Africa. Thus thousands of students are exposed to this campaign of disinformation. The University of Toronto administration allows the event organizers to use campus facilities and has never taken action against the event, nor responded to the objections of Jewish human rights organizations and student groups that feel threatened when legitimate criticism turns into thinly veiled anti-Semitism. The Jewish community of Toronto, although highly organized, has failed to combat the campaign, and soft advocacy on behalf of Israel has merely led to the empowerment and continuation of this state of affairs. (JCPA)
Enchanting Sustainability-Peter Wood
Current Anthropology is a model scientific and scholarly journal. Now beginning its fiftieth year of publication, it takes a wide view of the discipline (“To encompass all scholarship on human cultures and the human, or closely related, species”) and publishes important and often ambitious work (“Analytical, theoretical, or synthetic articles that communicate significantly to the largest number of anthropologists and to scholars in related disciplines.) The journal is also notable for publishing along with major research articles “commentaries” written by a wide spectrum of scholars who have a chance to study the article before it goes to print. The author then rounds it out with a reply. Current Anthropology thus presents exemplary intellectual debate in a rather contentious discipline. That makes it all the more astonishing to find in the newest issue of this important journal an article that seems a flat-out repudiation of the ideals of disinterested intellectual inquiry and the centrality of rational analysis in scholarship and higher education. In their place it extols a new horizon in education that focuses on promoting “institutional change” by evoking among students “wonder, delight, awe, and meaning linked to both personal and political spheres of action.” (NAS)
Media Bias
'Who Has Won Here?'-Ulrike Putz in Beit Lahia, Gaza
In the Gaza Strip people are returning home -- or to the rubble that was once their home. Many are blaming Hamas for the destruction because the militants hid among civilians and attracted Israeli fire. Yet no one dares to speak out openly.
What is left over when a person is hit by a tank shell. Blood, tissue, bone splinters, splatters on the wall. And anger. Mohammed Sadala's rage is aimed at the man, whose remains he found in his bedroom: a Hamas fighter. He and a comrade broke into the home which had long stood empty after the Sadala family fled. The Hamas men shot at the approaching Israelis from the balcony. The soldiers fired back, killing the militants and destroying the house of the 10-strong family in the process. When Sadala came back to survey the scene he found his property in ruins: the younger children's bedroom was burnt out, while the living room and hallway were strewn with bullet holes and blackened by soot from the fire. In the bedroom lay the corpses: one had bled to death, the other was hit by a tank shell. Beside the bodies lay the assault rifle which they had used to try to stop the tanks. "I used to support Hamas because they fought for our country, for Palestine," says Sadala. Hamas stood for a new start, for an end of corruption, which had spread like cancer under the moderate Fatah. In the 2006 elections Hamas won the majority with their message of change, said Sadala, who earned a living in the building business. Gesticulating wildly, the 52-year-old surveyed the ruins of the bedroom: "That is the change that they brought about. We were blasted back 2,000 years." (Spiegelonline)
Freedom of Speech
Can the Koran be compared to 'Mein Kampf'?-Manfred Gerstenfeld
Last week the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that the attorney-general should bring a case against Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. This leader of the right-wing Freedom Party has made a number of extreme remarks about Islam and Muslims, such as calling the Koran the "Islamic Mein Kampf" and referring to "fascist Islam." The Amsterdam court contends that these and other such statements "affect the dignity of Muslims." The attorney-general's office had previously concluded that these and similar remarks were not punishable. Wilders was initially shocked by the court's decision, but he may well turn the case into a show trial outlining the threat to Western society from violent and hate-inciting forces in the Muslim world. His lawyers only have to go through websites such as FrontpageMagazine, Jihad Watch and MEMRI to bring overwhelming proof for two central claims. (Jpost)
British Parliament calls off screening of controversial film
LONDON, Jan 23 (APP)‑The British Parliament has cancelled the showing of a controversial film “Fitna” by the right‑win Dutch MP Geert Wilders following vociferous protest by the Muslim community. The screening was to take place on January 29 at the House of Lords. The decision to cancel the showing was taken on Friday when Lord Nazir Ahmed had a meeting with the Government Chief Whip of the House of Lords and Leader of the House of Lords, together with representatives from the Muslim Council of Britain, British Muslim Forum and other representatives from the British Muslim community. The film has created huge controversy around the world, especially in Europe. The decision by the Amsterdam Appeals Court, the second‑highest legal authority in the country, overturns an earlier ruling by the Dutch Prosecution Service, which last June dismissed hundreds of complaints against Wilders on the grounds that his utterances had been made “in the context of public debate”, a position that was endorsed by the Dutch Prime Minister, Jan Peter Balkenende, a Christian Democrat. (APP)
The Lse Caves In To Terror-Melanie Phillips
First the Netherlands prosecutes Geert Wilders for speaking against Islamic terror; now the London School of Economics has caved in to the threat of Islamist violence. Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, has been banned from chairing a debate on Islam at the London School of Economics today between Dr Alan Sked, a senior lecturer in international history, and Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, a Muslim writer and lecturer, because the LSE fears his views will provoke violence. Those views are outspoken opposition to the Islamisation of the west and staunch support for Israel. The LSE, where some Jewish students report a poisonous and frightening atmosphere at present, has just seen a week-long anti-Israel protest over Gaza. The Evening Standard reports: The LSE asked Mr Murray not to attend in the interest of public safety as his presence could provoke further unrest. A spokesman added: ‘He has spoken at LSE in the past and will be welcome to do so again in the future.’ Another victory for the forces of darkness, thanks to the pusillanimity of the LSE which, finding itself on the battlefield of the war to defend civilisation, has run up the white flag. (Spectator.co.uk)
Faith, Fanaticism, and Freedom of Speech Some opinions are contrary to human society. -Joseph Loconte
London
TWENTY YEARS AGO THIS month an Islamic organization in Great Britain staged a 1,000-strong rally of rage: with BBC cameras rolling, Muslim protestors burned copies of The Satanic Verses, the 1988 work by British novelist Salman Rushdie criticizing Mohammed. Death threats and a fatwa from the Iranian government anathematizing Rushdie forced the author into hiding. "I have come to feel that what happened with The Satanic Verses was a kind of prologue," he later told The Times, "and that now we're in the main event." The effort to silence criticism of Islam has become a main event not only in Muslim lands, but increasingly in the democratic West. Last month the London-based Centre for Social Cohesion released a report cataloguing the plight of European Muslims and ex-Muslims who have dared to challenge the forces of extremism. The study, Victims of Intimidation: Freedom of Speech Within Europe's Muslim Communities, recounts the careers of 27 leading detractors. All of them -- politicians, journalists, academics, and artists -- have experienced "significant and credible threats of violence" from Islamists and radical Muslims because of their criticism of Islam. (Weeklystandard)
ANTISEMITISM
 Highest anti-Semitism rates in 2 decades-ETGAR LEFKOVITS
The number of anti-Semitic attacks around the world during Israel's three-week military operation against Hamas in Gaza was up more than 300 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching a two-decade high, according to figures released Sunday by the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism. The Israeli forum's annual report, released ahead of Tuesday's International Holocaust Remembrance Day, also cited the "conspicuous" comparisons being made between Israel's actions against Hamas in Gaza and those of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. More than 250 anti-Semitic incidents were reported around the world during the 22-day assault on the Islamic regime in Gaza, which began on December 27, compared to 80 during the same period last year, according to the report. The bulk of the incidents were carried out in Western Europe and were led by local Muslims, including 100 each in France and Britain, the report found. (Jpost)
To Mark 'Holocaust Holiday,' Egyptian Cleric Amin Al-Ansari Revises History, And Comments On Footage of Prisoners Being Tortured in Dachau, Mauthausen, and Belsen, Saying: 'This Is What We Hope Will Happen But, Allah Willing, at the Hand of the Muslims'-MEMRI
On January 26, 2009, the day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Sunni Islamist Egyptian channel Al-Rahma [Mercy] TV aired a show featuring Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari. [1] Starting off by examining "the civil strife the Jews have caused throughout the world," Al-Ansari explained that because of the Jews' deeds during and after World War I, "it got to the point that the rulers themselves had no solution but to annihilate them." Al-Ansari showed viewers how "the holocausts of the Jews in Germany were because of their own deeds - they were killing Germans, kindling civil strife, inciting the people against their rulers, and corrupting the peoples," underlining his points with World War II footage of the bombing of Berlin, which he compared to present-day Gaza. Then, saying, "Let’s watch what Germany did to Israel - or rather, to the Jews," he screened footage of torture and killing of Jews in Dachau, Mauthausen, and Belsen, providing running commentary, and stating, "This is what we hope will happen, but, Allah willing, at the hand of the Muslims." He adds that the Jews "have even turned [the Holocaust] it into a holiday, which will be marked in a few days. They call it the Holocaust Holiday, in which they rekindle what happened to them, for the whole world to see, so that people will feel sorry for them... so that they can continue to extort people politically and financially forever. They like money."
Warning: The show contains extremely disturbing Holocaust footage.
TO VIEW THIS CLIP AND OTHERS, YOU MUST LOG IN/REGISTER FOR MEMRI TV, AT http://subscriptions.memri.org/content/en/member_registr_tv.htm.
REGISTRATION IS FREE OF CHARGE. (MEMRI)
To view this clip, visit http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1999.htm.
Pope Benedict 'Is Sabotaging Christian-Jewish Dialogue'-Siobhán Dowling
The Vatican's decison to lift the excommunication of a bishop who denies that the Holocaust took place has angered Jews across the world. German papers on Monday argue that the pope is ruining decades of work aimed at improving relations between Jews and Catholics.
Pope Benedict XVI insists that his only concern was that of eliminating a schism within the Catholic Church. But his decision to mend ties with the far-right Society of Saint Pius X (SPPX) by overturning the excommunication of four ultra-traditionalist bishops has outraged Jewish communities across the world. The reason for their anger is clear: One of those brought back into the fold is an unrepentant Holocaust denier.
In comments made to Swedish television and broadcast last Wednesday, British-born Richard Williamson said "I believe there were no gas chambers." He claimed that only 300,000 Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps, instead of the 6 million figure that is widely accepted by historians. Despite these extreme views, Williamson was included in a group of supporters of the late ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre who were returned to the fold on Saturday after the Vatican issued a decree lifting their excommunication. (Spiegelonline)
TERRORISM, INTERNET, JIHAD
 British Muslim 'starred in video with ringleader of 7/7 attacks'-David Brown
A British Muslim made a promotional video with the ringleader of the July 7 attacks when they attended a jihad training camp with terrorists linked to al-Qaeda, a court was told yesterday. Mohammed Shakil, 32, joined the camp in Pakistan with Mohammed Siddique Khan, who blew himself up on a Tube train at Edgware Road station, it is alleged. Both men fired weapons and starred in a video recorded at the camp to raise money in Britain for jihad, the jury at Kingston Crown Court was told. Two years later Khan led the four suicide bombers who killed 52 innocent people in London. Mohammed Junaid Babar, a convicted supporter of al-Qaeda, told the retrial of three men accused of aiding the 7/7 bombers that he persuaded Khan and Mr Shakil to attend the camp after they arrived in Pakistan in July 2003 on a “fact finding” mission. (Timesonline.co.uk)
Al Qaeda has posted a chilling video threat to Britain on YouTube - showing masked gunmen shooting the Union Flag-Alex Watts
Heavily-armed henchmen of Osama bin Laden are seen in a desert area, dressed from head to toe in black, using the flag as target practice. The video also shows the Stars and Stripes and Israel's flag riddled with bullets as the men unload their rifles. Two men released from America's Guantanamo Bay terror prison appear in the video, which has also been posted on jihadist websites. Abu Hareth Muhammad al Oufi is seen venting his fury at the West while holding an automatic rifle and brandishing a grenade. Former inmate Abu Sufyan al Azdi al Shahri is filmed sitting with two other men before a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq, the symbol for the al Qaeda terror network in Iraq. (Skynews)
BEYOND FINGERPRINTS Our New Identification System-FBI
Palm prints are taken from the scene of a diffused roadside bomb in Iraq. Later, an individual entering a New York airport is arrested on an unrelated charge. A full set of prints are taken during the booking process and submitted to our Next Generation Identification (NGI) system. A positive ID connects the man to the roadside bomb. A ski mask-wearing bank robber leaves with his loot, and witnesses tell police they noticed a red skull tattoo on his hand. A search of NGI’s Interstate Photo System for a red skull tattoo provides a potential candidate list that could ultimately lead to the identification of the bank robber.
Both cases are hypothetical, but in the not-too-distant future these scenarios could really happen…thanks to the ongoing development of the Next Generation Identification system—a logical evolution of our current Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS). (FBI)
Australia's 'Jihad Jack' testifies in French synagogue bomb trial-EJP
PARIS (AFP)---An Australian convicted of plotting attacks with Al-Qaeda told a Paris court Friday that a German accused of blowing up a synagogue had been close to Osama bin Laden.
Jack Roche, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to planning with Al-Qaeda to attack Israel's embassy in Canberra and is now free on parole, testified by video link from the Australian city of Perth. Christian Ganczarski, a German convert to Islam, stands accused of planning a 2002 suicide bombing of a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people. He is on trial in Paris, along with an alleged Tunisian accomplice and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of Al-Qaeda's attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. Roche told the court that Ganczarski was directly linked to Bin Laden, Al-Qaeda's Saudi-born leader, and used the pseudonym "Abu Mohammed". "He obviously had close ties with bin Laden, because he sat next to him and gave him the note Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had given me for him," Roche, a British-born convert to Islam, told the court. Roche, dubbed "Jihad Jack" by the Australian media, confessed during his own 2004 trial to travelling to Afghanistan, where he met Bin Laden and received explosives training with the Islamist extremist group. "He had links too with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," said Roche. "I met him in his house in Karachi. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed explained to me that Abu Mohamed was going to escort me to Afghanistan." (EJP)
ENVIRONMENTALISM and Science
 Emperor penguins could be virtually extinct by 2100, scientists say
Emperor penguins could be virtually extinct by the end of the century due to global warming.
Latest predictions based on climate change models show their numbers dropping 95 per cent by 2100, meaning there would be only about 600 breeding pairs left. Emperors are the largest species of penguin and breed during the Antarctic winter, making long treks across the ice to mate. Their travails have been seen by millions around the world after being immortalised on the big screen in the Oscar-winning French documentary March of the Penguins. As seen in the film the penguins walk many miles inland across the Antarctic wasteland,to their ancestral breeding grounds, where the females lay just one egg.
For the chick to survive both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months. That means sea ice cover plays a major role in their overall breeding success. Ice cover also influences the abundance of krill, and the fish species that eat them, which are both vital food sources for the penguins. (Telegraph.co.uk)
Spread of Malaria Feared as Drug Loses Potency-Thomas Fuller
TASANH, Cambodia — The afflictions of this impoverished nation are on full display in its western corner: the girls for hire outside restaurants, the badly rutted dirt roads and the ubiquitous signs that warn “Danger Mines!” But what eludes the naked eye is a potentially graver problem, especially for the outside world. The parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria is showing the first signs of resistance to the best new drug against it. Combination treatments using artemisinin, an antimalaria drug extracted from a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine, have been hailed in recent years as the biggest hope for eradicating malaria from Africa, where more than 2,000 children die from the disease each day. Now a series of studies, including one recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine and one due out soon, have cemented a consensus among researchers that artemisinin is losing its potency here and that increased efforts are needed to prevent the drug-resistant malaria from leaving here and spreading across the globe. “This is something we can’t just slide under the carpet,” said R. Timothy Ziemer, a retired admiral in the United States Navy who heads the President’s Malaria Initiative, the $1.2 billion program started by the Bush administration three years ago to cut malaria deaths in half in the countries affected worst. (NYT)
Society and CULTURE
 How the faceless and amoral world of cyberspace has created a deeply disturbing... generation SEX-OLIVIA LICHTENSTEIN
Remember that Hilaire Belloc cautionary tale - Matilda told such dreadful lies, it made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes? I used to love it as a child when telling lies was one of the naughtiest things you could do: Matilda ended up getting burned to death. These days, however, everything has changed and it’s the truths that children tell that make one gasp and stretch one’s eyes. A couple of years ago, my daughter Francesca, then aged 13, told me about a party she had been to one Saturday night. In the course of the evening, she came upon one of her friends, also aged 13, performing oral sex on a boy in the garden. The boy was standing and videoing the event on his mobile phone. My daughter, in whom the feisty gene has always found strong expression, pulled her friend off the boy, knocked the phone out of his hand and slapped him round the face. I apologise for shocking you, but then there are a number of things shocking about this event: the casual nature in which such an intimate act is performed in public, the young age of the participants and last, but by no means least, the fact that it is being filmed. (Dailymail.co.uk)
A Novel Version of Slavery-Nadya Labi In alternate universe of 'Blonde Roots,' Europeans toil for black masters
In the novel "Blonde Roots," writer Bernardine Evaristo imagines what might have happened if the ships of the triangular trade had sailed in reverse -- with white "Europanes" destined for the plantations of black masters in the islands off the coast of "Amarika" and exchanged for rum and other luxury goods headed to the "United Kingdom of Great Ambossa" in "Aphrika." While playing hide-and-seek with her three sisters, 10-year-old Doris Scagglethorpe -- the blonde, skinny daughter of a cabbage farmer -- is snatched from the coast of England, chained to an iron collar, sold for a shiny kettle and two caskets of grog, and shipped to a slave market.The daughter of a Nigerian father and white British woman, the 49-year-old Ms. Evaristo started out as an actress in the 1980s, starring in plays that she co-wrote for a production company she helped found. (WSJ)
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