The Western Word

This Week's Editorial

MULTICULTURALISM WAS THE TRUE KILLER AT FORT HOOD
By Avi Davis

Pundits, commentators, newscasters and our political class are all looking for the clues: Who and what caused Major Nidal Malik Hasan to launch a deadly attack on his fellow soldiers in Fort Hood, Texas last week resulting in the massacre of 14, including the life of an unborn baby?

Take your pick of the reasons:

Hasan was bridling with indignation that the United States was carrying out military operations against fellow Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq
Hasan cracked under the strain of dealing with trauma victims returning from overseas duty.
Hasan was inflamed by the prejudicial treatment he had received from his colleagues and superiors.
Hasan was infuriated that the army would not allow practicing Muslim servicemen to become conscientious objectors before shipping them out to countries where they would be forced to shoot and kill their co-religionists
Hasan was the latest example of America’s love affair with guns and its fatal ambivalence in policing them.
Hasan was simply a very disturbed individual who had exhibited paranoid, anti-social behavior at numerous times during his military career

Such reasons seem to echo the same motivations our chattering classes once ascribed to another famous killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, viz: the killer was driven by personal issues which had nothing to do with his adoption of a hateful ideology or contempt for America and its values.

But the truth is now becoming stunningly clear. Hasan was a confirmed jihadist, his values and ideals tied directly to the same ideology which resulted in 3,000 deaths in America on a sunny morning in September, 2001 and has been the catalyst for 14,327 individual terrorist incidents worldwide since that date.

Even at this early stage of the investigation, his emails, recorded conversations and own writings provide conclusive proof that he considered suicide bombings, the premeditated mass killings of innocents and fatal attacks against United States civilians and military personnel as justified acts of homicide. He was deeply influenced in these views by the preachings of an imam, Anwar al-Alwaki, who, according to the 9/11 Commission, was the spiritual guide to two of the 9/11 hijackers in a San Diego mosque. Hasan had also attended the Dar al-Hirjah mosque in Falls Church, Virgina where al-Awlaki once preached. In the month before the massacre Hasan had exchanged 10-20 emails with the imam who is now believed living in exile in Yemen.

On the day following the Ft. Hood massacre, on his website, al-Awlaki praised Hasan as a true Muslim warrior, as "a hero" and "a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

How long will it take for our cognoscenti to connect these dots?

Perhaps we should indeed be moving beyond an examination of Hasan’s motivations, which are clear and incontrovertible, to asking ourselves these far more relevant questions:

Why was a man of Hasan’s temperament and ideology not properly vetted before being accepted into the U.S. Army?

Why was no one willing to pay heed to the warning signs of an impending catastrophe?

Why is the media working so assiduously to obscure the true motivations for his crime?

The answer to the first question is that since 9/11, the U.S. military has been under increasing pressure to embrace diversity as a governing principle for recruitment. Military advertisements, in a range of communities, suggest that cultural affinities and religious observance are respected in the U.S. army while accommodations are made for particular aspects of appearance. It should be no surprise then that the November 9th edition of Army Times carries a front page story headlined – Regs Make Way for Religion – Sikh, Muslim Allowed To Incorporate Customs Into Army Dress.

The story details how Captain Kamaljeet Singh Kalsi, a practicing Sikh, was granted permission on October 22 to wear a beard and a turban with his uniform. The decision stands in stark contrast to a 1986 Supreme Court decision (Goldman vs Weinberger), where the Court upheld a proscription on Jews wearing yarmulkes while in uniform.

With the army displaying such giddy obeisance to diversity and multicultural sensitivities, is it any wonder that its own Chief of Staff, Gen. George Casey, in the wake of the massacres, proclaimed that, “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

Given such hand wringing over the necessities to produce a true “multicultural” army, it seems fairly clear that Nidal Malik Hasan was accepted into the armed forces and then rose to the rank of major, despite his dubious associations and anti-American beliefs, because he was a Muslim. The inescapable conclusion is that the army feels it must have Muslims within its ranks in order to prove it has no beef with Islam and that this over rides the suitability of practicing Muslim recruits for actual army service.

The answer to the second question is even more troubling.

Hasan’s penchant for spouting anti-American rhetoric and for declaiming on the essential justice of a jihadist campaign was well known to his superiors and the FBI. But as a Fox News report, investigators were loathe to launch an investigation of the email trail which led from Hasan to Anwar al-Alwaki for fear of being “ crucified” in the breach of the Major Hasan’s First Amendment rights.

But what of Hasan’s superiors, who certainly knew of his beliefs and ideological commitments? In 2007, as a recruit, he made a power point presentation at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C. where he underlined Muslim grievances against the U.S. and supported the Jihadist justification for attacks on U.S. military personnel. You would think that this would offer some cause for alarm. Yet no one spoke up or complained about these outrageous views emanating from the mouth of a U.S. army officer, even though one colleague expressed reservations about “sharing a foxhole” with the man.

Why was no one willing to expose this ticking time bomb within their midst? For the same reason the FBI resisted the urge to build a more comprehensive file on Hasan: he is a Muslim, and therefore, as a defamed and persecuted minority within the United States, a case to be handled with delicacy.

The evidence unfortunately grows that multicultural sensitivities will often trump security interests, even when the lives of American citizens are directly threatened.

Finally we come to the media.
The New York Times, in an editorial on November 6, declared that: "It is unclear what might have motivated Major Hasan. He seems to have been influenced by a mixture of political, religious and psychological factors.”
It followed a day later with a story suggesting that Hasan was driven crazy by the stress of his job as a psychiatrist.

CNN’s Chris Matthews , in an interview on November 11 with Nihad Awad, a representative of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), focused not on the motivations for the crime but on whether Muslims in America should fear a wave of reprisals as revenge for the shootings. In the course of the interview the two men seemed to agree that we may never discover the true motivations for the killings.

And here’s a doozy from The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky:
“ The fact that Hasan reportedly shouted the Allahu Akaba is meant, I suppose, to imply that he was an extremist fanatic. I'm not sure that it does. My understanding is that it's something Arab people often shout before doing something or other.”

The fact that suicide jihadists are regularly recorded as intoning these words before committing murder and that two flight recorders from the four planes which crashed on 9/11 have the hijackers murmuring them repeatedly, seems to say nothing to Tomasky and others like him.

Why? Why such a cognitive suspension of one’s own powers of analysis and deduction?

Why such an apparent inability to parse wishful thinking from reality?

Because the members of our media are loathe to present us anything as starkly black and white as good and evil, prefering an infinitely more comfortable grey zone where no reader or listener need be railroaded into judgement or moral distinctions.

Yet it is this murky grey zone which provides the intellectual fodder for multicultural sensitivites and cultural acceptance of deviant, asocial behavior. It also happens to be the same swamp from which Jihadists fish for their claims of moral equivalence and the materials from which their protective social dome is constructed.

Expressions of Islamic extremism go unchecked in our society because no one seems willing to trip the wires of multicultural correctness. Despite the events of 9/11, despite the thousands of terrorist attacks and murders around the world which have drawn their inspiration from the Koran and Islam, our society - from our government, to our houses of learning to our armed forces, insists on subscribing to an utter falsehood that religion plays no role whatosever in these attacks. Instead they hew to multicultural tropes which deaden our acceptance of the truth.

A jihadist ideologue may well have pulled the trigger that ended 14 lives last week. But it was multiculturalism and its inveterate partner ‘diversity’ which opened the gate and allowed him entry into our lives.

We should all be questioning how much further we can allow that gate to swing open. We should all be wondering, if the gate is to remain even a little ajar, what barriers will exist to prevent further expressions of hatred, acts of incitement and the perpetration of wanton, indiscriminate murder.

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 Phantom Backlash
by Robert Spencer

Backlash fever is sweeping the nation: thirteen Americans are dead and thirty-eight wounded in a jihad attack at Fort Hood, and our government’s primary concern -- from the Chief of Staff of the Army to the Islamic pressure groups such as CAIR -- are focused entirely on ensuring that Muslims in the United States are not being victimized by a “backlash.” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declared: “We object to, and do not believe, that anti-Muslim sentiment should emanate from this. This was an individual who does not represent the Muslim faith.” She said that DHS was taking steps to “prevent everybody being painted with a broad brush.” Not “taking steps to prevent another jihad terror attack.” And she promised: “One of the things we’ll do is make sure that we’re reaching out to the state and local authorities within the US, because they often have better outreach to members of the Muslim community than we do.” The U.S. Army Chief of Staff, George Casey, likewise seemed primarily concerned about the safety of Muslims, not about the safety of the potential victims of the next jihad attack: “I’m concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that.” Not “I’m concerned that there could be another jihadist among our Muslim soldiers. And I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that.” (Humanevents)

The Darwin Debates:
Charles Darwin and the children of the evolution-Dennis Sewell
The naturalist outraged the church, prompting a bitter debate that still sets creationists against evolutionists. Now a sinister link has emerged between his work and the recent spate of high-school killings by crazed, nihilistic teenagers

You wouldn’t know from the celebrations of Charles Darwin’s life this year that the amiable Victorian gent portrayed in those TV drama-docs pottering around the garden of his home in Kent has been fingered as a racist, an apologist for genocide, and the inspiration of a string of psychopathic killers. The Darwin double anniversary (2009 marks both the bicentenary of his birth and 150 years since the first publication of On the Origin of Species) has featured much vanilla hoopla: the Royal Mail issued commemorative stamps; Damien Hirst designed the dust jacket for a special edition of Darwin’s masterpiece; Bristol Zoo offered free admission to men with beards, and the Natural History Museum served pea soup made to a recipe devised by Darwin’s wife, Emma. The conclusion of dozens of lectures, articles and education packs for schools has been that Darwin wasn’t just a brilliant scientist, but a thoroughly good egg. With hardly a mention that his name has been associated with some of the most infamous crimes of modern history, it is as if there has been an unspoken agreement to accentuate the positive. Certainly, the milquetoast Darwin played by Paul Bettany in the recent film Creation provided little hint that there might be a dark side to the great man’s bequest to posterity. The film focuses on Darwin’s inner conflicts in the years leading up to the publication of On the Origin of Species. The scientist is reluctant to make his ideas public, not because he has foreseen dire social consequences, but chiefly because he fears that the theory of evolution will upset his wife and the Church of England. (Timesonline.co.uk)

Hasan to Be Charged With 13 Counts of Premeditated Murder in Fort Hood Massacre
Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan was charged Thursday with 13 counts of premeditated murder in last week's Fort Hood mass shootings.
Hasan, 39, is suspected of killing 13 of his comrades Nov. 5 when he opened fire at a soldier processing center at the Army base in Killeen, Texas. He was charged in the military's legal system, making him eligible for the death penalty.
SLIDESHOW: Fort Hood Victims
The Army Criminal Investigation Command formally announced the charges against Hasan at Fort Hood Wednesday afternoon. "We are aggressively following every possible lead," said Chris Grey with the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, adding that additional charges are possible. Hasan will be tried in the military's court-martial system. Prosecutors will likely seek the death penalty, the maximum sentence he faces. The minimum is life in prison.Executions of military defendants are very rare. (Foxnews)

Obama Honors Fort Hood Victims as Heroes, Says 'Justice' Awaits Killer-Fox News' Bill Sammon and Eve Zibel and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
The president said the memory of those who died in the Fort Hood massacre 'will be honored in the places they lived and by the people they touched.'
In his first address during a time of national mourning, President Obama on Tuesday hailed the victims of the deadly Fort Hood shooting as heroes, saying "no words can fill the void that has been left." Obama, who traveled to Texas to console survivors and family members of victims of the deadly massacre that killed 13 and wounded 29 last week, said, "We come together filled with sorrow for the 13 Americans that we have lost, with gratitude for the lives that they led, and with a determination to honor them through the work we carry on." Obama said the memory of those who died "will be honored in the places they lived and by the people they touched." "It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know -- no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts, no just and loving God looks upon them with favor. And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice -- in this world, and the next," Obama said. (Foxnews)

Merkel Pays Tribute to Courage of East Germans
Germany's ceremonies to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall culminated on Monday night in falling giant dominoes and a fireworks display over the Brandenburg Gate. Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the courage of her fellow eastern Germans who fulfilled the nation's dream of unification.
The cold drizzle didn't dampen the celebrations on Monday as Berlin marked the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by ceremoniously toppling 1,000 colorful 2.5-meter-high (8-foot) dominoes. The spectacle was watched by tens of thousands as well as world leaders gathered at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Germany's division and reunification. The dominoes stretched for 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) along the line the Wall took through central Berlin. Lech Walesa, the former leader of the Solidarity trade union, tipped over the first one. It was a fitting tribute to Poland's struggle for freedom throughout the 1980s, which culminated in its first free election on June 4, 1989, and provided the key momentum for the East German demonstrations that helped bring down the Wall. Earlier in the day, Chancellor Angela Merkel had stepped back into her own history. Accompanied by Walesa and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, she walked across the iron bridge at Bornholmer Strasse that used to separate East from West Berlin and was the first checkpoint to open its barrier to thousands of easterners on the night of Nov. 9, 1989. (Spiegelonline)

Denmark to pay immigrants £12,000 to go home if they 'can't or won't' assimilate
Denmark is boosting cash incentives to entice immigrants to return to their homelands if they 'can't or won't' assimilate into society. The offer now on the table is close to £12,000 for every person who takes up the offer to leave. Critics of the measure say it sends the wrong message to foreigners but the centre-right government in Copenhagen is forging ahead with the plan. The financial carrot is ten times more than that previously offered under a scheme which as been law since 1997. We thought it was important to substantially increase this aid so that immigrants who want to return home because they are not able to adapt to Danish society have a strong financial basis to start a new life,' said foreign affairs spokesman Soeren Espersen of the far-right Danish People's Party. The offer is aimed at immigrants and refugees who 'cannot or do not want to integrate into Danish society,' said the head of the DPP's parliamentary group, Kristian Tuelesen Dahl. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Italy: 'Paedophile' prophet remarks rile Muslims
Rome, 9 Nov. (AKI) - One of Italy's largest Muslim organisations on Monday condemned the feminist and former rightwing MP Daniela Santanche for calling the Prophet Mohammed a paedophile and polygamist on television at the weekend. "If there is a basis to make a formal complaint, we will do so because we need to say enough is enough with this kind of vulgarity targeting Islam's prophet," said a spokesman for the Muslim group UCOII, Elzir Izidin. "It is incitement to hatred and is unacceptable. We are looking into what we can do," Izidin added. Santanche made the inflammatory remarks during a heated debate on Sunday with the president of Milan's Islamic centre, Ali Abu Schwaima, on the placing of the crucifix in Italian classrooms.
"Mohammed was a polygamist and a paedophile because he had nine wives, one of whom was only nine years old, that is a historical fact," said Santanche. (AKI)

France: Companies confronted by religious demands-Islam in Europe
A third of French companies say they are concerned by demands from their employees regarding wearing the headscarf, holidays and prayers. "Managing Eid is a real headache,' says the manager of a transport company. "Half of the bus-drivers are Muslim. When they all ask to be absent on that day, how do you assure 100% service?" To anticipate these pressures, certain companies now distribute a calendar of all religious festivals to their foremen. While others repeatedly oppose 'absences for religious reasons'. "Every company puts together a place for Allah. If the Muslim employees are many, they dictate the norm. Otherwise it's very random," says anthropologist Dounia Bouzar, who today publishes the results of an extensive study of the working world ("Allah a-t-il sa place dans l'entreprise?" "Does Allah have a place at work?"). An educational book where regretfully anonymous managers tell of daily life, the increase in demands. (Islamineurope)

Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks: Islam must separate religion from power-Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
The Chief Rabbi has called on Muslims to get used to living as a minority in Britain and to learn to separate religion from power. Lord Sacks said that neither Muslims nor Christians had yet learnt the lessons inflicted on the Jewish people by the Babylonian exile. “One of the great advantages of being Jewish is you know how to sing in the minor key,” he said. “We have had 26 centuries of experience ever since the Babylonian exile of living as a minority in the midst of a culture that does not share our views. Christianity and Islam have not had that experience.” He said that Christianity had learnt toleration but only after 100 years of “knocking the hell out of each other all over Europe”. He said: “So Christianity went through its experience, Judaism has been through it a long, long time ago and Islam has not yet had that experience. “I have no doubt that Islam will work its way through to the essential situation that Judaism arrived at and Christianity, namely the substantive separation of religion from power. (Timesonline.co.uk)

The Chico Romance-Ashley Thorne
Scanning the headlines yesterday for news about sustainability in higher education, I was surprised to find a letter to the editor of the ChicoER newspaper entitled “Sustainability has other goals.” Cynthia Van Auken, a grandmother who in 2002 ran for Congress as a Republican in Georgia’s fourth district and lost, wrote the letter. In it she challenges those going to a sustainability conference at California State University, Chico to learn about Agenda 21 (the United Nations blueprint for sustainability in the twenty-first century) and the sustainability movement. She warned that the sustainability movement ultimately takes away individual liberties and urged readers to “read the agenda. It is not only about saving the planet from plastic water bottles.” NAS has shown that the sustainability movement is not solely environmental; it sells eco-responsibility but delivers big government, economic redistribution, and loss of individual freedoms (see our articles on sustainability). Advocating stewardship of the earth via solar panels, reusable grocery bags, and energy-efficient light bulbs is not inherently ideological. Sustainability on the other hand, with its aims to radically alter our social and economic landscape, is a launching pad for progressive political agendas. (NAS)

No campus like it-Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze
Tough. Challenging. Rewarding. That’s student life at the Royal Military College
At precisely 7:30 on a cool, damp morning in late October, moments before the sun begins its ascent into an overcast sky, the Parade Square on the campus of the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont., is filled with about 1,000 cadets wearing camouflage uniforms. They are aligned in a giant U formation, and in the middle stands their cadet wing commander, 21-year-old Nicolas Bouchard, a fourth-year chemical engineering student and army combat engineer. “I’m throwing you a challenge,” says Bouchard into a microphone. “Anyone who gets either a 95 per cent average at the end of the semester, or anyone who gets 500 on the next PPT [Physical Performance Test], will have an award created in your name.” A hush falls over the cadets. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” Bouchard continues, “but I believe that’s what Russell Crowe really meant [in the movie Gladiator] when he said, ‘What you do in life echoes in eternity.’ ” The speech ends, but a buzz filters through the crowd. At RMC, cadets are used to big challenges, and this one is no exception. Just getting into the college is difficult. In any given year, the 39 Canadian Forces recruitment centres across the country receive as many as 1,500 applications for the Registered Officer Training Program (ROTP); only about 300 make it into the college. (Macleans.ca)

Academic freedom for thee but not for me- Don Feder
Of all the sins of the campus left, the worst is hypocrisy. Academic freedom is a spigot they turn on and off at their convenience. This evening, Ray Luc Levasseur, a convicted terrorist who served 18 years of a 45-year sentence, will participate in a "Colloquium on Social Change," at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, sponsored by a "progressive" faculty group called "Social Thought and Political Economy." Levasseur was the leader of the United Freedom Front, which worked for social change from 1976 to 1984 by bombing government buildings, robbing banks, murdering a New Jersey state trooper and attempting to murder two Mass. state cops. Given the academic mindset, the only surprise here is that, unlike William Ayers, Levasseur isn't a professor. On October 6, the U. Mass. administration cancelled Levasseur's participation, due to an outcry by police unions and pressure from Governor Deval Patrick, who doesn't need additional baggage when he runs for reelection next year. On Monday, the University reversed its earlier decision, and paraded its virtue in the process. (Americanthinker)

Sudden Jihad Syndrome-Diana West
(Israelnationalnews.com) Some backstory to the Ft. Hood Massacre by a"Palestinian"Muslim officer in the United States Army. First, why do I call Hasan a "Palestinian"? Because he has identified himself as Palestinian. Why do I call him "Muslim"? Despite what dhimmi-media are not bothering to mention, or barely mentioning in passing, he is a Muslim. In this Age of Jihad, this is RELEVANT. Elementary example: If, during World War II, a German-American Nazi had shouted "Sieg Heil" before committing a similar unspeakable act on a US base, his German-ness and Nazi beliefs would also have been RELEVANT. (Of course, had such an officer been arguing against US involvement in WWII and calling for German Nazis to "rise up against the aggressor," etc., he would have been relieved of duty if not arrested long before such an attack.) But even as we learn Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" -- not "God is Great," as the media oh-so-prudishly prefers -- before mowing down dozens of brave American soldiers deep in the heart of Texas (just as Mohammed Atta, the Egyptian AIr 990 pilot, the Bulldozer killer, and more, all yelled) the military spokesmen, pundits, newspapers remain "stumped" as to his motivation. Stumped.They are unable even to speculate whether this was an act of jihad. They can't even mouth the words, certainly can't write them. (INN)

Obama: Avoid “Jumping to Conclusions, Avoid Anti-Muslim “Backlash.”-Phyllis Chesler
The Palestinian Jihadist is Always the Victim.
Newsflash: See below: FBI believes Hasan may potentially be connected to three of the 9/11 hijackers. More Newsflash: See below. Hasan told physicians at Walter Reed that infidels should be beheaded; his collegues afraid to report him due to the politically correct climate. Our president is quoted in the pages of the New York Times advising us not to “jump to conclusions.” According to CNN, President Obama has also cautioned against a “backlash” against Muslims in the military and in the country. This — from the charmer who bowed before the Saudi King and who betrayed Muslim women in his Cairo speech. Ordinarily, I’d agree with such advice about conclusion-jumping. The military does first have to investigate the matter fully. One can’t always believe what one reads in the media, etc. But whether or not Major Hasan acted alone, had allies, was inspired by religious and political Islamism, was psychiatrically troubled — the fact remains that he committed an act of terrorism. (Pajamasmedia)

Exclusive: ‘Blame America First’ Takes Root in Fort Hood Narrative-Peter Huessy
The horrific attack on our brave American soldiers at Fort Hood brought to the surface many of the things that are wrong with American society. Most of the drive-by media were quick to blame the killings on the “stress” that had been placed on the (alleged) murderer, Maj. Hasan, an Army mental health provider. In bold print above the fold, the New York Times explained to us the stress of going overseas and being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan was the “trigger” that pushed Hasan over the edge. At the same time, a veterans group, meeting in Washington with Senate staff about the time of the shooting, said that the Army had failed to increase the number of mental health professionals working with U.S. soldiers coming back from the war zone and this was the reason for the killing spree upon which Maj. Hasan had embarked. Unremarked by the press coverage of the group’s claims was the seemingly obliviousness that Hasan hadn’t even gone to the war zone, let alone come back. (Familysecuritymatters)

The laws that stain Britain’s good name-John Kampfner
Libel tourism isn’t just a matter for the media elite. Freedom of speech for everyone is in danger
Britain is a pariah state, shunned by its allies and exploited by the unsavoury. The state of English libel laws (Scotland’s provisions are a little better) is so embarrassing that a number of US states have enacted legislation to protect their citizens from our courts. London is the global centre of libel tourism. From Middle Eastern potentates to Russian oligarchs, the rich and powerful use our legal system to bully people who try to hold them to account. Sometimes cases make the courts; more often individuals, authors, newspapers or charities involved are forced to apologise even when they know they have done nothing wrong. This is the big chill. This has gone far beyond the rights of the media. It affects people in all walks of life. Thanks to the UK, abuses around the world are hushed up, for fear of what might happen if a single copy of a publication, even if it originated abroad, is found in Britain. Finally, Parliament is waking up. (Timesonline.co.uk)

Free Speech Rights Prevented Probe Into Hasan E-Mails, Investigators Say
The claim comes as officials in different branches of law enforcement and the military squabble over who knew what when about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's leanings toward faith-inspired violence, and as charges fly that 'political correctness' prevented officials from taking action and is still being used as a crutch in explaining the rampage after the fact. Investigators would have been "crucified" over First Amendment rights if they had launched a full-scale probe into e-mails Fort Hood massacre suspect Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly sent to a radical imam, a government investigator told Fox News. The claim comes as the squabble grows among officials in different branches of law enforcement and the military over who knew what, and when, about Hasan's leanings toward faith-inspired violence, and amid charges that "political correctness" prevented officials from taking pre-emptive action. Multiple investigators familiar with the FBI's review of the Fort Hood case told Fox News that they simply did not have enough evidence to launch an investigation. (Foxnews)

Dazed and Confused-Elliott Abrams
The Israelis can’t figure out U.S. policy. For that matter, who can?
When I visited Israel in late October, not long before the latest visits of U.S. envoy George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Israelis of all political hues confessed that they were amazed, perplexed, and confused by the policy those two diplomats and President Obama are following. First came an instant attitude of hostility on the part of the Obama administration toward Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, even before he had taken office on March 31 and despite his efforts to create a centrist coalition. Second came its obsession with a “settlement freeze,” which in fact was a demand for something that no Israeli prime minister of any party could possibly agree to — a complete and immediate freeze on construction not only in every settlement (including those Israel will obviously keep in any final-status agreement) but also in Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Third came the demand that Arab states reach out to Israel, a demand that the president himself delivered to the king of Saudi Arabia in a visit there in June and that, predictably, was rejected immediately. (Nationalreview)

Kristallnacht Anniversary-Robert S. Wistrich
On November 9, 1938, a massive nation-wide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich. The pretext for this orgy of violence against German Jews was the shooting in Paris two days earlier of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish refugee. The state-organized pogrom, instigated by Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, resulted in the burning or damaging of more than a thousand synagogues; the ransacking of about 7,500 businesses, the murder of at least 91 Jews, and the deportation of another 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. This murderous onslaught against German Jewry, cynically described by the Nazis as the “Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht), was a major turning point on the road to the “Final Solution” of the so-called “Jewish Question.” (Brusselsjournal)

This Again? A Norwegian University Threatens a Boycott of Israel-Joseph Puder
The best way to describe the proposed boycott of Israeli academic and research institutions by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology at Trondheim is to label it “outrageous.” While Israel, whose science and academic research is far superior to that of Norway, can live very well without the Norwegian academic institutions, the hypocrisy tinged with anti-Semitism makes the decision to boycott Israel most disturbing. The boycott, replete with perversions of basic historical facts and Middle East realities, could lead one to consider that the Palestinian Authority rather than native Norwegians had a hand in its drafting. But then again, Norway gave the world “Quisling [1],” a name which has become synonymous with the word traitor. (Vidkun Quisling headed the Nazi puppet regime installed by the Germans during WWII). Betrayal of the truth and perversion of reality has emanated from Norway before. (Pajamasmedia)

Is Sweden headed back to the past?
TOMAS SANDELL , THE JERUSALEM POST
This is an extract of a speech which will be given at a hearing in the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm today in connection with the debate on the article under the headline "Our sons are plundered for their organs" which appeared in Aftonbladet on August 17. 'This I will have to share..." It was with great admiration and deep sympathy that I listened to the opening address of the impressive Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust on 26 January 2000. Sweden, through its then prime minister Göran Persson, had taken the lead in alerting the world community about the deadly virus of anti-Semitism and about the need to keep the memory of the Shoah alive. In an unprecedented effort to combat new forms of anti-Semitism, 1 million copies of a book about the Shoah, Om detta må ni berätta ( This you will have to share), were distributed in Sweden. Never would it have occured to me that almost exactly 10 years later I would be sitting in the Swedish Parliament opening my speech with these very same words. "This is what I need to share with you..." As a non-Swede and a non-Jew for that matter, but with a broad European outlook, I have to share what I have observed in that country in 2009, 10 years after this landmark conference. (Jpost)

State Dept: US Goal to Expel Jews in 'Occupied' Post-67 Lands-Hana Levi Julian
(Israelnationalnews.com) A top State Department official spelled out on Tuesday that the goal of the United States in its negotiations in the Middle East is to pressure Israel into expelling Jews from Judea and Samaria in order to "end the occupation that began in 1967." William J. Burns, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said in his address to the Middle East Institute Tuesday that he sees the U.S.mandate as one of "determined leadership" and that American must be straightforward about its intentions. "Our goal in the region is clear," he said, "two states living side by side in peace and security; a Jewish state of Israel, with which America retains unbreakable bonds, and with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, that ends the daily humiliations of Palestinians under occupation, and that realizes the full and remarkable potential of the Palestinian people." Although he made no mention of any demands upon the PA in order to achieve its goal of establishing a new Arab state within Israel's current borders. (INN)

Israel-bashing at UCLA – by Eric Golub
Last week, the Center for Near Eastern Studies [1] (CNES) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) co-sponsored a seminar with the ungainly title, “Invasion Is a Structure, Not an Event: Settler Colonialism Past and Present [2].” It was billed as a “two-day event organized by Gabriel Piterberg [3],” a notoriously anti-Israel [4] UCLA history professor. True to form, the seminar featured some of the most politicized and biased academics [5] in the field of Middle East studies. The audience of around 30 included perhaps 15 professors and a cadre of the aging hippie revolutionaries (not mutually exclusive groups) one grows accustomed to seeing at anti-Israel events. Having covered earlier this year a “Gaza and Human Rights [6]” symposium at UCLA that was widely criticized [7] for devolving into Israel-bashing and anti-Semitism, I attended this event with a watchful eye. UCLA professors, perhaps aware that they are now being monitored, have become somewhat wary. The panel included Jewish and Israeli speakers in an attempt at “diversity,” but as is typical in academe, it was intellectually homogeneous. The “Jewish perspective” was represented by the far left of the political spectrum and differed little from the so-called pro-Palestinian perspective. To the extent any true debate existed, the seminar was an exercise in the indefensible vs. the incomprehensible. (Frontpagemagazine)

TERRORISM, security and policy

Dare to Call It Terrorism-Andrew C. McCarthy
The FBI will not admit that what happened in Texas is part of the jihad.
So it turns out that the worst Islamist terrorist strike since 9/11 — an attack that killed twice as many Americans as were slain in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — was not a terrorist attack at all. Just ask the FBI. The initial hurried reports of thirteen people (including twelve U.S. soldiers) murdered, and dozens of others wounded, were just coming in. A pained Diane Sawyer was wishing aloud that Nidal Malik Hasan were named “Smith.” Her colleagues in what now passes for mainstream journalism were risibly theorizing that post-traumatic stress disorder must have snapped this non-combat Army psychiatrist — one who’d screamed “Allahu akbar!” while mowing down U.S. soldiers about to deploy to a Muslim country for a war he’d made no secret of deploring; one whose only battlefield experience was the massacre he’d just committed against unarmed men and women in a Fort Hood training center. Then, like the cavalry, the FBI came riding to the PC rescue. The Federal Bureau of Let’s Skip the Investigation pronounced that the killing was not terrorism. Forget about Islamic (or at least Islamist) terrorism. This mass murder wasn’t even terrorism. (Nationalreview)

Hasan and the Big Lie: U.S. ‘War’ Against Islam-Steve Emerson
When an American-born radical Islamist cleric chose to praise last week's Fort Hood shooting spree by Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, part of the rationale was that no Muslim could faithfully serve the U.S. armed forces. To Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki, that's because "The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam." A 2005 Canadian study of radicalism concluded that this theme is a potent tool in recruiting Muslims and turning them into violent extremists. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) report was on youth radicalism and Hasan is a 39-year-old with advanced college degrees. Associates are stepping forward with accounts showing that Hasan was frustrated by what he saw as an American war against his faith. The Washington Post obtained a copy of Hasan's June 2007 presentation at as part of his residency program at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Among the statements that disturbed his colleagues, Hasan declared that "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims." (Familysecuritymatters)

Is Fort Hood Really a “Tragedy?”-Victor Davis Hanson
Something has gone terribly wrong in the entire reaction to the Ft. Hood massacres, as evidenced by the media, the administration, the military authorities, and perhaps the public at large. There seems almost a dreamy disconnect from the terrible fate of the slain—as if we are innately impotent to stop such mayhem, or are above the fray and so like Platonic Guardians must remain deep in contemplation about how in theory we can persuade the Hasans to cease and desist—as if our therapeutic stance in the first place did not encourage and embolden such monsters to act.
Not a “tragedy”
So I am tired of the use of the word “tragedy”—the Greeks’ original invention that grew out of a “goat song”. True, it has come to mean “calamity”, but tragedy’s essence is a central character, flawed rather than inherently evil, at war with, and at the mercy of, larger, immovable forces like fate, destiny, and the gods that overwhelm an Oedipus or Ajax—through a fatal flaw, hubris, or happenstance. (Pajamasmedia)

Is Yemen the most dangerous new front in the war on terror?
The multiple crises afflicting Yemen are not a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and certainly not to those in Washington, says Richard Spencer. Sheikh Anwar al-Awlaki is the man investigators fear held some sort of sway over Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter. He is the radical cleric whose mosque in Virginia Major Hasan attended and to whom, we now know, he addressed 10 or 20 emails that were intercepted by US intelligence agencies over the past year. Sheikh Anwar's latest blogpost describes Major Hasan as a "hero", a man of conscience. Given that the cleric says other Muslims have a right, or a duty, to behave similarly, army investigators will no doubt be keen to see who else was in contact with him. But the blog is worth reading for other reasons, too. Last month, for instance, Sheikh Anwar told us to expect the unexpected. But the message had nothing to do with Fort Hood. Instead, his focus was closer to hand: "Could Yemen be the Next Surprise of the Season?" he asked.The sheikh now lives in Yemen, which is an American ally and which he claimed would become the next front in the global war on America, the "single most important front of jihad in the world". Jihad, he claimed, was "coming home". (Telegraph.co.uk)

Why Fort Hood Really Happened-Daniel Henninger
In war, uncertainty gets you killed. It just did. The only good news out of the Fort Hood massacre is that U.S. electronic surveillance technology was able to pick up Major Hasan's phone calls to an al Qaeda-loving imam in Yemen. The bad news is the people and agencies listening to Hasan didn't know what to do about it. Other than nothing. Next week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I., Conn.) will convene the Homeland Security Committee to find out if someone in the Army or FBI dropped the ball on Hasan. At Ford Hood itself, grief has been turning to anger as news of possible dropped balls has emerged. Earlier in the week at Fort Hood, President Obama spoke about the consequences of doing nothing. He named and described each of the 13 dead. That properly gave individual reality to what soon will become "the victims of Fort Hood." This is how it always goes. For about a week after these awful incidents—such as the USS Cole bombing in Yemen (year 2000, 17 dead)—the rest of us feel, just a little, what the surviving families feel. This week, 13 American families are shattered, forever. It's a big deal, the biggest deal there is. (WSJ)

Taleban spin doctors winning fresh ground in propaganda war with Nato-Tom Coghlan in Kabul
Above them a banner reads “Voice of Jihad” and a ticker tape entitled “Hot News” announces a stream of alleged military successes. This is the website of the Taleban, infamous for their wholesale rejection of modernity, who have banned television and the internet. Yet since 2006, the Taleban have been harnessing that same despised technology in an escalating campaign of propaganda against which Nato appears to have no effective answer. Huge resources are now being committed to catching up. Nato’s new communications directorate opened in Kabul this year and employs 120 staff. “Information is everything. This is a war of perception played out in the minds of the Afghan people,” says Rear-Admiral Greg Smith, the foremost communications expert in the US Navy. His arrival in Kabul in May was the latest acknowledgement that in the front rooms of the West and the villages of Afghanistan, Nato has failed to win the argument. In the border regions of Pakistan the enemy is also hard at work. “Ustad” (Master) Muhammad Yassir is the Taleban’s chief spin doctor. (Timesonline.co.uk)

Beyond Appeasement-Herbert London
When Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1936 he noted that based on his appeasement stance with Hitler “peace was at hand.” Alas, Chamberlain was duped and, as might have been expected, history has not treated him kindly. But, however false the concessions made by Hitler, Chamberlain believed he had obtained a concession – restraint on Nazi imperial ambitions. In 2009 America’s own Chamberlain, President Obama, has adopted a stance beyond appeasement; he engages in preemptive conciliation without any expectation of a quid pro quo. President Obama doesn’t wait to be double-crossed; he is concession man who gives before he is asked and remarkably puts American interests at risk in order to enhance his international standing. Without securing any benefit from the withdrawal of missile sites and radars in Poland and the Czech Republic, President Obama blithely gave up what had been negotiated and settled with our allies. This move was heralded by the Russians, as might be expected. But Russian leaders immediately noted that they will not use this gesture to put pressure on Iran’s ambition to obtain nuclear weapons. After all, a Russian spokesman noted, “Why should we make a concession when you’ve decided to correct a mistake.” (Humanevents)

Climate change 'sceptic' Ian Plimer argues CO2 is not causing global warming-Louise Grey
Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes and is not responsible for climate change, a scientist has claimed. Professor Ian Plimer, a geologist from Adelaide University, argues that a recent rise in temperature around the world is caused by solar cycles and other "extra terrestrial" forces. He said carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, widely blamed for global warming, is a natural phenomenon caused by volcanoes erupting. "We cannot stop carbon emissions because most of them come from volcanoes," he said. "It is a normal element cycled around in the earth and my science, which is looking back in time, is saying we have had a planet that has been a green, warm wet planet 80 per cent of the time. We have had huge climate change in the past and to think the very slight variations we measure today are the result of our life - we really have to put ice blocks in our drinks." Most mainstream scientists agree that the recent warming period was caused by an increase in carbon dioxide since the industrial revolution. However Prof Plimer said the world has experienced three periods of cooling since 1850 and furthermore carbon dioxide was increasing during many of those cooler periods. (Telegraph.co.uk)

TREASON IN THE AIR-Bjørn Lomborg
Discussions about global warming are marked by an increasing desire to stamp out “impure”
thinking, to the point of questioning the value of democratic debate. But shutting down
discussion simply means the disappearance of reason from public policy. In March, Al Gore’s science adviser and prominent climate researcher, Jim Hansen, proclaimed that when it comes to dealing with global warming, the “democratic process isn’t working.” Although science has demonstrated that CO2 from fossil fuels is heating the planet, politicians are unwilling to follow his advice and stop building coal-fired power plants. Hansen argues that, “the first action that people should take is to use the democratic process. What is frustrating people, me included, is that democratic action affects elections, but what we get then from political leaders is greenwash.” Although he doesn’t tell us what the second or third action is, he has turned up in a British court to defend six activists who damaged a coal power station. (Scienceandpublicpolicy)

Moving towards a treatment for Alzheimer's-ISRAEL21c Staff
Ongoing research at an Israeli university may lead to vaccines that can teach our immune systems to better fight Alzheimer's disease.
An Israeli researcher who is working on a vaccine for Alzheimer's has discovered that it is possible to test and measure specific immune responses in mice carrying human genes and to anticipate the immune response in Alzheimer's patients. The research at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) could lead one day to specific Alzheimer's vaccines that reduce plaque, neuronal damage and inflammation associated with the disease. Today around 5.3 million people in the US alone suffer from Alzheimer's, a debilitating and progressive disease that destroys the brain cells causing memory loss, according to the Alzheimer's Association. It is a fatal disease, and is the seventh leading cause of death in the US. Amyloid beta-peptide accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's patients where it appears to promote neuronal damage. In an article, recently published in the Journal of Immunology, BGU researcher Dr. Alon Monsonego determined that introducing A-beta into the brain triggers a natural immune response that can be detected in humans. (israel21c)

Lift and Separate-Ariel Levy
Why is feminism still so divisive?
Bra burning—the most famous habit of women’s libbers—caused a fair amount of consternation back in the seventies, and the smoke has lingered. Wives and mothers were torching the most intimate accessory of control; what might they put a match to next? “Often today those who cherish family life feel, even in their own homes, under constant assault,” the cultural critic Michael Novak wrote in 1979. The goals of the women’s-liberation movement, he saw, were incompatible with the structure of the traditional family. That’s why bra burning became the most durable and unsettling image of modern feminism. So it may be worth noting that it never actually happened. In 1968, at a protest against the Miss America pageant, in Atlantic City, feminists tossed items that they felt were symbolic of women’s oppression into a Freedom Trash Can: copies of Playboy, high-heeled shoes, corsets and girdles. (New Yorker)

Struggle and Triumph-Barbara Jepson
In the First Symphony, Brahms's experience shows. The first symphony by Johannes Brahms took about 14 years to complete and generated one of the most commonly cited remarks in music history. "I shall never write a symphony," he had told a friend after a decade of effort. "You can't have any idea what it's like to hear such a giant marching behind you." The "giant" was undoubtedly Beethoven, whose groundbreaking Fifth and Ninth symphonies were tough acts to follow. A prediction by Robert Schumann, that a symphony by his protégé Brahms "would mark the rebirth of Romanticism at its highest level," surely added to the pressure. Yet in the magnificent "C Minor Symphony," which had its premiere in his native Germany in 1876, Brahms not only overcame self-doubt but further imbued Classical symphonic form with the rapid mood shifts and ardent longing of German Romanticism. Endowed with remarkable thematic richness and unity, the C Minor Symphony is music of struggle and triumph, from its yearning opening for strings over a pounding timpani to its jubilant conclusion. Indeed, ambiguity pervades this 45-minute work. In "The Symphony," Michael Steinberg's reference guide, the author recalls a rehearsal of the C Minor's first movement in which conductor Herbert Blomstedt asked the San Francisco Symphony to "think of flowers straining to break through concrete." (WSJ)