The Western Word

If you were to plot the overthrow of a large Western democracy, which of the following methodologies would prove most effective?

a. A military coup, led by a sympathetic officer corp

b. A series of domestic terrorist attacks designed to spread fear and instability within the population

c. Penetration of the country's legislative, judicial and clerical bodies, making it a legal and moral crime to suggest that the enemy is, in fact, the enemy

d. Funding the country's academic institutions and educational system, so as to encourage a widespread embrace of a foreign ideology and its belief system

e. All of the above.

Perhaps the documentation is yet to be uncovered but many years ago Islamic regimes may have weighed these choices and concluded that option d. was the proper entry point for any campaign to defeat or destabilize the West. And in fact, over the past thirty -five years, the effectiveness of such a starting strategy has been exemplified in Britain, a country whose academic institutions have been the recipient of greater Islamic largesse than any other nation on earth.

This point was driven home this week by the publication of The Centre for Social Cohesion's A Degree of Influence - an alarming British report on the foreign funding of the country's universities. Among its many findings is the revelation that over the past 30 years, at least 10 major universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, have accepted donations from Muslim governments totaling hundreds of millions of pounds.

Yet the quantity of this funding pales when contrasted with its educational and societal impact.

Among the report's most crucial findings:

Censorship of discussion of certain aspects of Islam in UK universities
Administrative changes conducted to suit Islamic donors, including allowing certain donors to choose the academics who run the programs and the students accepted within them.
An absence of academic objectivity - failure to hew to traditionial academic rules of balance and fairness in discussion of Islamic topics
The use of the university progams as diplomatic instrumentalities of the donor countries involved
Deep financial reliance (and dependence) of the donnee instittutions on undemocratic countries with histories of human rights abuses
An absence of transparency (the report itself admits that only 5% of foreign donations to British universtities has been reported in the public record. The quantity of funding is almost certainly much higher. )
Insufficent safegaurds to prevent donations from affecting the way universities are run.

Over the course of 120 pages, the report paints a clear picture: Donations pouring in to the British university system are ravaging academic freedom and corrupting the administrative apparatus by which the system operates.

Those who believe these problems are isolated to Great Britian should think again. At How Free Is the University? AFA's 2008 summer conference, it was revealed that the problems identified in Britain seem to have now surfaced, sometimes in even more extreme form, in the U.S. It was if the potentates of rich Islamic countries, recognizing the phenomenal victories they had scored in the U.K., had decided to repeat that success in the very heartland of academic freedom itself.

Under Title VI of the Higher Education Act, (passed in 1958 as a Cold War measure designed to bring Americans up to speed on other cultures and political systems), federally subsidized Middle East Studies centers are required to pursue public outreach. This entails designing lesson plans and seminars on the Middle East for America's K-12 teachers. Yet, these university-distributed teaching aids usually slip into the K-12 curriculum without being subject tothe kind of public vetting or scrutiny one would expect.

The Saudis take full advantage of this open window. By lavishly funding several organizations that design Saudi-friendly English language K-12 curricula, the Saudis assist federally subsidized universities in producing materials that sanitize Islam and the Saudi kingdom while viciously attacking Judaism, Christianity and the West.

The money the Saudis are shoveling into our universities in the form of gifts and endowments is as alarming as it is in the U.K.: King Fahd donated $20 million to set up a Middle East Studies Center at the University of Arkansas; $5 million was donated to UC Berkeley’s Center For Middle East Studies from two Saudi sheiks linked to funding al-Qaeda; $2.5 million was donated to Harvard; $8.1 million went to Georgetown; $11 million passed to Cornell; $1.5 million dollars to Texas A&M; $5 million dollars to MIT; $1 million dollars to Princeton.$5 million dollars to Rutgers. Other recipients of Saudi largesse include Columbia, UC-Santa Barbara, Johns Hopkins, Rice University, American University, University of Chicago, Syracuse University, USC, UCLA, Duke University and Howard University, among many others.

Such is the allure of Saudi funding that the Muslim kingdom does not even need to go scouting for potential donee universities any longer. They will come to them.

In April 2008, The Australian revealed that Griffith University in Queensland- described by vice-chancellor Ian O'Connor as the "university of choice" for Saudis - offered the Saudi embassy an opportunity to reshape the Griffith Islamic Research Unit during its campaign so as to get some "extra zeros" added to Saudi cheques. And in Canada , Concordia University funded a delegation to travel to Saudi Arabia " to explore opportunities for cultural exchange," - a clever euphemism for fundraising.

Here we face one of the gravest challenges to our own civilization: In accepting money from brutal dictatorships who deny rights to women, are founts of rabid antisemitism and who refute the validity of basic Western values, we have not only given those regimes our endorsement; we have provided them, and their corrupted ideologies, with access to our students who are not given the least benefit of countervailing points of view.

The re-published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic Czarist-fabricated screed dating from the late 19th Century, is a popular bestseller in many Muslim countries. There readers will discover a malign Jewish conspiracy to run the world and strip it of its resources. But a more readable and factual tract might be titled The Protocols of the Elders of Islam. This document would, with hard, unassailable facts and calculated amounts, report on the extraordinary campaign of Muslim countries to undermine and pervert the West's basic institutions. The campaign might begin with the buying off of the universities, move on to the West's legislative, judicial and clerical institutions, seek then to destabilize society through unremitting terror campaigns and then consummate the effort with military coups.

Sound improbable? Sit in a class of almost any Muslim-funded Middle East Studies department on an American or Britiish campus today, then give me your answer. Perhaps then you might be educated enough to hazard a response to the multiple choice question I posted at the beginning of this article.

It is, frighteningly, " all of the above."

Want to comment on this article? 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

Sharia OK with Obama's Top Lawyer
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)
Posted 04/02/2009 ET

President Obama has tabbed the former dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, to become the legal adviser for the State Department. Among numerous questionable and controversial statements, Koh has said that the “war on terror” -- a term which the Obama Administration has already quietly abandoned, was “obsessive.” And in a 2007 speech, according to a lawyer who was in the audience, Koh opined that “in an appropriate case, he didn’t see any reason why sharia law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States.” Asked for comment, a spokeswoman for Koh waved the incident away: “I had heard that some guy...had asked a question about sharia law, and that Dean Koh had said something about that while there are obvious differences among the many different legal systems, they also share some common legal concepts.” Probably Koh has something in mind akin to what the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, was thinking when he made his notorious statement that Islamic law was “unavoidable” in Britain. Williams didn’t mean that Britain would become a Sharia state, but only that Muslims could have recourse to private Sharia arbitration for marital disputes, inheritance matters, and the like. Stonings and amputations? Of course not. “Nobody in their right mind,” said Williams, “would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that’s sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well.” But, he concluded, the idea that “there’s one law for everybody...I think that's a bit of a danger.” (HumanEvents)

EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah uses Mexican drug routes into U.S.- Sara A. Carter
EXCLUSIVE:
Hezbollah is using the same southern narcotics routes that Mexican drug kingpins do to smuggle drugs and people into the United States, reaping money to finance its operations and threatening U.S. national security, current and former U.S. law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism officials say. The Iran-backed Lebanese group has long been involved in narcotics and human trafficking in South America's tri-border region of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. Increasingly, however, it is relying on Mexican narcotics syndicates that control access to transit routes into the U.S. Hezbollah relies on "the same criminal weapons smugglers, document traffickers and transportation experts as the drug cartels," said Michael Braun, who just retired as assistant administrator and chief of operations at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). "They work together," said Mr. Braun. "They rely on the same shadow facilitators. One way or another, they are all connected. "They'll leverage those relationships to their benefit, to smuggle contraband and humans into the U.S.; in fact, they already are [smuggling]." His comments were confirmed by six U.S. officials, including law enforcement, defense and counterterrorism specialists. They spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. (Washingtontimes)

Taleban: we will launch attack on America that will amaze world-Zahid Hussain in Islamabad and Jeremy Page, South Asia Correspondent
Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taleban, threatened yesterday to launch an attack on Washington that would “amaze everyone in the world” as he claimed responsibility for the raid on a police academy in Lahore and boasted of a new regional militant alliance. Mr Mehsud, for whom the United States offered a $5 million reward last week, said that Monday's raid, which killed seven police officers, was retaliation for US drone attacks on Pakistan's northern tribal areas, now the main hub of Taleban and al-Qaeda activity. The 35-year-old leader of Tehrik-e-Taleban Pakistan (Movement of Taleban Pakistan), made the claims after taking the highly unusual step of telephoning Western news organisations from an undisclosed location. “We wholeheartedly take responsibility for this attack and will carry out more such attacks in future,” he said. “Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world ... The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America.” (Timesonline.co.uk)

Now fire service introduces hijab headscarves for Muslim workers-Jaya Narain
Pop into the firestation and the chances are there'd be a group of reassuringly burly men in there waiting for the call out, with uniforms and firefighting suits tailored for their use alone. The one or two women among them would have to make do with ill-fitting adaptations of the men's outfits while the handful of Muslim women in the service would be wearing their own head scarfs. But, with the fire service anxious to attract recruits of all sexes and backgrounds, it was decided that something had to be done. So yesterday the results were uneveiled, including full-length skirts, hijab headscarfs and long- sleeved shirts for Muslim women recruits. The hope is that the uniforms, designed for wearing round the station and for outings such as school trips, will be smarter and better fitting for every firefighter - even the men. For the first time also, women will get their own mustard yellow fire-fighting suit designed to protect their breasts and upper body.
This outfit was tried on yesterday by Lincolnshire firefighter Julie Smith. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Obama’s Most Perilous Legal Pick-Meghan Clyne
JUDGES should interpret the Constitution according to other nations' legal "norms." Sharia law could apply to disputes in US courts. The United States constitutes an "axis of disobedience" along with North Korea and Saddam-era Iraq. Those are the views of the man on track to become one of the US government's top lawyers: Harold Koh. President Obama has nominated Koh -- until last week the dean of Yale Law School -- to be the State Department's legal adviser. In that job, Koh would forge a wide range of international agreements on issues from trade to arms control, and help represent our country in such places as the United Nations and the International Court of Justice. It's a job where you want a strong defender of America's sovereignty. But that's not Koh. He's a fan of "transnational legal process," arguing that the distinctions between US and international law should vanish. (NYpost)

Danish Psychologist: “Integration of Muslims in Western Societies is not possible”-An Interview by Felix Struening
Danish integration problems with Muslims became public worldwide in 2006 when the newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Exactly two years later riots broke out again because of the reprint of the Mohammed cartoons by all major Danish newspapers. Currently 70% of the prison population in the Copenhagen youth prison consists of young man of Muslim heritage. Is this recent violence and general violent tendency among Muslims solely coincidental, or is there a direct connection? In February 2009, Nicolai Sennels, a Danish psychologist published a book entitled Among criminal Muslims. A psychologist’s experience from Copenhagen. In his book, Nicolai Sennels shares a psychological perspective of this Muslim Culture, its relationship to anger, handling emotions and its religion. He based his research on hundreds of hours of therapy with 150 young Muslims in the Copenhagen youth jail. EuropeNews interviewed the author about his book and its consequences on integration of Muslims in Europe. (Europenews.dk)

A forced marriage stirs emotions in Spain, Mauritania - Feature
Madrid/Nouakchott - When Selamha Mint Mohammed celebrated her marriage to Mokhtar Salem in Mauritania in 2006, the 14-year-old girl may not have fully understood the implications of the ceremony, Mauritanian media reports say. A year later, Selamha reported her parents and husband to police in Spain, where they now face long prison sentences on charges including sexual aggression, coercion and domestic violence. The trial, which was scheduled to continue in the southern city of Cadiz on Thursday, has raised difficult questions about immigration, cultural plurality and interference in both Spain and Mauritania. Selamha's parents emigrated in the late 1980s to Puerto Real in southern Spain, where the girl and two other children were born. Her almost illiterate father Mohammed Ould Abdallahi still speaks hardly any Spanish, according to the Spanish daily El Pais. When Selamha turned 14, Ould Abdallahi accepted, on her behalf, the marriage proposal of her cousin Mokhtar, who was more than 40 years old. (Earthtimes)

Slouching Toward the Therapeutic University: Part 1-Tom Wood
(for part two go here: http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=661)
In one of my recent postings (“Charles Murray and Progressive Education”), a book by Diane Ravitch called Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms had a very prominent place.Among other things, Left Back is a sustained attack on the student-centered movement that had its origins in the progressive educational theories of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ravitch freely acknowledges that some aspects of American education that needed reforming (e.g., the emphasis on rote learning and abusive classrooms and teachers) benefited from the student-centered movement in education. But she makes a compelling case that beyond certain specific, limited reforms the impact of the student-centered movement on American education has been disastrous. In the hands of the zealots (who have been legion) the student-centered movement led to the view that everything in the classroom must be immediately relevant to the lives of the students. Anything else represented the survival into modern times of the hidebound and the traditional, and was a violation of the students’ freedom to learn. According to the educational theorists of the progressive movement, the idea that the job of the instructor was to transmit information and an important body of knowledge was erroneous, authoritarian, and retrograde. (NAS)

A Radical Takes the Stand-Katherine Mangu-Ward
Old hippies with gray-streaked ponytails, sporting their best Indian radical-chic finery, arrived early and waited in a marble hallway of the District Court here, chowing down on breakfast burritos from the cafeteria. They came to support Ward Churchill -- you could tell by their "I Am Ward Churchill" buttons -- in his wrongful-termination lawsuit against his former employer, the University of Colorado at Boulder. Already a big man in his own field of Native American studies, Mr. Churchill achieved national notoriety in 2005 when an essay he wrote on the afternoon of 9/11 resurfaced. He had described some of the people who died in the World Trade Center that day as "little Eichmanns," a reference to a technocrat who facilitated the killing of Jews in Nazi Germany. The essay's gist was that, on that day, America got what was coming to it. An uproar inevitably followed. But something else followed as well: a close look at Mr. Churchill's academic career. Charges of shoddy scholarship, false credentials and even plagiarism surfaced. Eventually, the University of Colorado let Mr. Churchill go. His lawsuit is the final chapter in this drama. (WSJ)

Our universities are competing to take cash from foreign dictators-Robin Simcox
UK universities are in trouble. A Degree of Influence, a new report from the Centre for Social Cohesion to be published on Monday, shows that universities are now so impoverished that they are reliant on cash from theocracies and dictatorships to fund whole departments or institutes. This is demonstrably altering the way they are run.
We are now in a situation where, for example, Oxford sets up a lecture series paying tribute to the founder of Saudi Arabia on the back of a huge donation from that government. The School of Oriental and African Studies has put on an event glorifying Ayatollah Khomeini following a donation from Iran, and censored a picture that they say was insulting to Islam following offence taken by a funder. Management committees at Islamic Studies centres at Cambridge and Edinburgh are partly picked by a Saudi donor. Universities are not only required to follow a teaching curriculum from the Chinese government at Confucius Institutes, cultural and educational centres attached to universities, but have members of that government on their advisory board. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Media Bias

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Completing the Mosque-Martin Solomon
If you build it, the radicals will come. Or, shall we say, once it’s built, there’s no way to keep the radicals away. Would it be churlish at this point to say I told you so? I’m talking about the $20 million Boston mega-mosque, built on discounted city land with massive funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf sources. Scandal has plagued the project from the beginning. Two years ago I recounted the saga in a lengthy piece here at Pajamas Media called “[1] The Silencing.” At the time, the mosque builders were suing a laundry list of individuals, media outlets, and activist groups — basically anyone who had the bad taste to point out and call into question the unsavory nature of many of the Islamic Society of Boston’s (ISB) connections to radicals and the unseemliness of the land deal. It was a strategic suit intended to stop public scrutiny and criticism, as [2] one email exposed during the discovery process revealed. The strategy was largely effective, as defendants were quickly advised by counsel to remain silent. Even after the suit was dropped, what scant media coverage there was tended to focus on generic issues regarding the land deal, while continuing concerns regarding radical influence on the new mosque went, and continue to go, largely unexamined in mainstream outlets. (Pajamasmedia)

ABC & NBC Relay Phony Claims of Israeli War Crimes, Fail to Retract-Brad Wilmouth
In recent weeks, both the NBC Nightly News and ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson repeated charges that Israeli troops had witnessed the deliberate killing of Palestinian civilians by fellow troops during the Gaza War. In recent days, the New York Times has informed its readers that the Israeli military contends that it has disproved some of the claims and has found that the soldiers in question had actually been repeating rumors rather than events they had witnessed. But so far, neither NBC nor ABC has updated their viewers on the story. And in the case of ABC, even though some of the allegations had already been debunked, as reported in the conservative Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, March 24, the original inaccurate accounts were still repeated two days later on the Thursday, March 26, World News. Anchor Charles Gibson introduced the March 26 story: "There is a debate under way right now throughout Israel about soldiers, war and morality. Two months after the war in Gaza, Israeli soldiers are providing the accounts of what they saw and did on the battlefield. And some of those accounts are deeply disturbing." (Newsbusters)

Obama team drops "war on terror" rhetoric
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday the Obama administration had dropped "war on terror" from its lexicon, rhetoric former President George W. Bush used to justify many of his actions. "The (Obama) administration has stopped using the phrase and I think that speaks for itself. Obviously," Clinton told reporters traveling with her to The Hague for a conference on Afghanistan, which Bush called part of his "global war on terror." The term "war on terror" was coined after the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, which were planned in Afghanistan by the militant group al Qaeda.
The phrase was strongly criticized by human rights groups who said it was used to justify many actions, such as the opening of the Guantanamo Bay prison for detainees held without trial at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba. Internationally, the phrase was seen by critics as a "with-us-or-against-us" philosophy, overly dependent on military force and what many Muslims decried as an attack on Islam. (Reuters)

Italy: Muslims try to blow up 14-century fresco
ISLAMIC PROTEST -- Visitors to the magnificent church of St. Petronio in Bologna are now searched by Italian police before entering because in addition to protests by Muslims offended by a depiction of Mohammed in a 14th-century fresco, there have been unsuccessful attempts to blow the painting up.
The painting of the Last Judgement, by the Renaissance artist Giovanni di Modena, shows a devil dragging the prostrate, naked body of Mohammed into hell as a heretic. Against a background of failed crusades in the Holy Land, the Catholic Church in the 14th century had no taste for religious coexistence. Now it's militant Islam that is on the offensive: sources in Bologna say security forces have stopped at least two attempts to sabotage the painting by Islamic extremists. (World Politics Review and Jihad Watch)

Suit Shopping
On a recent rainy Friday afternoon, British Member of Parliament the Right Honorable Denis MacShane called my cellphone to offer a word of warning. “Make sure your article is very carefully checked by lawyers before it is printed,” he said. “Dealing with this subject is to swim in dangerous waters.” This article, fittingly enough, is about libel. More specifically, it is about the practice of “libel tourism,” a growing phenomenon whereby individuals or groups shop abroad for the country offering the most effective curbs on free speech. It is a matter of consternation to many here in London that the United Kingdom should prove, time and again, to possess the courts most likely to impose an easy gag or order substantial damages. British libel law “shames Britain and makes a mockery of the idea that Britain is a protector of core democratic freedoms,” says MacShane. The award-winning Guardian columnist George Monbiot describes the restrictions on Britain’s press as a “national disgrace.” (AmericanConservative)

ANTISEMITISM

EU Legislators Gather to Condemn Rising Anti-Semitism-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(IsraelNN.com) At a groundbreaking symposium on Monday, European Parliament members condemned anti-Semitism and racial intolerance - even when it emanates from the EU legislature itself. The one-day symposium, entitled "Building Together the Future of Europe", was organized by the European Jewish Congress (EJC), under the patronage of the Czech Presidency of the EU and the European Parliament, with the participation of the European Commission. Members of the European Parliament, other senior politicians, diplomats, religious and communal leaders from around Europe took part in the discussion on confronting the current alarming rise in European anti-Semitism.Several MEP's spoke of the need to combat anti-Semitism even in the European Parliament itself and not to succumb to political pressure to ignore this form of hatred. "Some EU parliamentarians hide behind 'Muslim pressure' instead of working towards eradicating anti-Semitism," said MEP Paulo Casaca from the Party of European Socialists. Other parliamentarians said that not recognizing the moral right of Israel to defend itself is tainted with anti-Semitism, as this is a basic right of every nation. (INN)

International Jewish organization blasts UN Human Rights body ‘anti-Israel resolutions’-Andrew Zimmer
WASHINGTON (EJP)---B’nai B’rith International (BBI) has condemned the United Nations Human Rights Council’s recent vote of five anti-Israel resolutions in Geneva.
In these resolutions, Israel is condemned for the settlements policy, the Gaza military operation and the treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank. “Though not surprising, the votes are further evidence that the council is hostage to an anti-Israel faction,” the BBI said. “The Human Rights Council’s abject failure to recognize and combat real human rights issues is outrageous,” BBI’s Executive Vice President Daniel S. Mariaschin said. “That the council seems capable only of condemning Israel, while grave human rights violations continue unthwarted around the globe, makes the U.N. body’s findings suspect,” he added.
“The council once again holds Israel to a separate set of standards at the expense of real global human rights reform,” BBI President Moishe Smith said. The UN body also passed a resolution pushed by a coalition of Islamic nations against “defamation of religions” that claims Islam, above all other religions, is the target of “deliberate stereotyping.” The resolution instructs nations to follow “legal strategies” to curtail this kind of anti-Islamic speech. (EJP)

Back-door boycott fears over labelling-Leon Symons
Jewish groups fear a government-backed meeting about the labelling of products from the West Bank may lead to a new “back-door” boycott of Israeli exports to Britain. The meeting is scheduled to be held in the Cabinet Office on Tuesday and invitations have gone out to major retailers, consumer groups and a small number of NGOs. Oxfam is the only group believed to have confirmed that it will attend. Just days before the government meeting, a briefing note from the UK Palestinian Solidarity Committee to its supporters says that it is concentrating its boycott actions on Waitrose and Tesco supermarkets this weekend. “On Monday, make sure everyone you know calls Waitrose and Tesco to complain about their sale of Israeli products and illegal Israeli settlement products.” The government wants retailers to label produce from the West Bank so that it is clear whether or not it originates from settlements — but it is asking them to label the produce voluntarily. (JewishChronicle)

Hamas Builds Arsenal, Prepares for War, Threatens Abductions-Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(IsraelNN.com) Hamas has been preparing for war through upgrading its strategy, its tactical capabilities and by smuggling weapons. Meanwhile, the jihadist organization issued threats to take more Israelis captive.
A leader of Hamas, which controls the Gaza half of the Palestinian Authority, warned Saturday that "if Israel does not accept the demands to free 1,450 prisoners for captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, [Hamas'] al-Qassam [Brigades] would kidnap more soldiers," according to the Gaza-based Palestine Today.
"The Hamas movement is not intending to make any concessions concerning its demands to finalize the prisoners exchange deal, and if this soldier (Shalit) is not enough, we will kidnap more," said Ra'ed al-Attar, a senior leader in Hamas' al-Qassam Brigades. (INN)

TERRORISM, INTERNET, JIHAD

The Truth Exposed: Islamic Terrorist Training & Fundraising in America Part I: The run-up to urban warfare & a warning of coming attacks-Douglas J. Hagmann
24 March 2009: Since 2004, investigators of the Northeast Intelligence Network have been performing an extensive investigation and surveillance operation of the activities of Jamaat ul Fuqra, an Islamic terrorist group that is currently active and operational across the US and Canada. The findings of our investigation and surveillance operations are as extensive as they are disturbing. This organization of Muslim terrorists are actively training for urban warfare, infiltrating our government institutions, securing positions of public trust, and raising substantial sums of money through a wide range of white collar criminal activity and Islamic charities which is being funneled to terrorist kingpin Sheikh Mubarek Ali Gilani in Pakistan. The money is used for terrorist operations and organizational advancement. From their US headquarters in rural Delaware county, New York at the base of the Catskills where recruitment is brisk, especially from within our prison system, they have also reinforced their operations into Mexico, Latin America, the Virgin Islands, and elsewhere. Their primary focus, however, remains the US and Canada, and their targets are both religious and secular in nature, with emphasis on the former. Such targets include Jews and Christians, churches and synagogues, and perhaps most insidiously, our schools and school children. The latter will be for psychological effect. (Homelandsecurityus)

Closing Gitmo: A Dangerous Decision: Are al Qaeda and Taliban coming to a prison near you?-Peter Brookes
[A]l Qaeda remains intent on attacking U.S. interests worldwide, including the U.S. homeland.
—Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, February 2009
On only his second day in office, newly minted President Barack Obama promulgated an executive order closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the island of Cuba within one year—if not sooner. Unfortunately, President Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo Bay—known affectionately by sailors for years as “Gitmo”—seems little more than a symbolic sop to domestic and international critics of the War on Terror. It also means that some of those held may be released, repatriated to their native land or transferred to third countries, leaving open the possibility of a return to the battlefield. Worse yet, others, who are deemed too dangerous to be released, may be transferred to prison facilities in the United States for detention, opening a Pandora’s box of potential terrorist nightmares for local citizens. In this case, the rush to fulfill a campaign promise could be a dangerous thing. (Familysecuritymatters)

CIA launches recruitment drive on internet and TV-Tim Reid
The CIA is attempting to recruit more spies by advertising on the internet, radio and television, and by holding meetings with American Muslims to make up a severe shortage of Arabic speakers. In a bid to fulfil a pledge by George W. Bush, the former President, to expand the agency's clandestine arm, advertisements have been placed on websites such as Career Builder, and on the online versions of The Economist and The Washington Post. Leon Panetta, the new CIA director, will meet Muslim groups in cities such as Detroit to spearhead personally the new drive to recruit Arabic speakers. He recently lamented the fact that only 13 per cent of CIA officers speak a foreign language, and just 22 per cent come from minorities. "In order to accomplish our vital intelligence mission we want to market our employment opportunities to speakers of Arabic, Russian, Korean, Pashtu and Urdu," George Little, a CIA spokesman, told The Times. "We want to emphasise to those communities that we welcome first-generation Americans to apply. They bring critical language skills and a knowledge of culture to support our intelligence mission." (Timesonline.co.uk)

China sees electronic spying as area where it can defeat America-Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
China decided to focus its efforts on cyber intelligence and information warfare more than a decade ago, after it identified a key area where it could compete with America.
"Thanks to modern technology, such as the development of information carriers and the Internet, many can now take part in fighting without even having to step out of the door," noted Wei Jincheng, a military strategist, in the Liberation Army Daily newspaper in 1996. While China cannot compete with the US in defence technology or conventional warfare, Mr Wei foresaw that the country's 300 million internet users could be marshalled into armies of hackers. "The rapid development of networks has turned each automated system into a potential target of invasion. The fact that information technology is increasingly relevant to people's lives means that those who take part in information war are not all soldiers and anybody who understands computers can become a 'fighter' on the network. The public can participate," he said. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Rise of sea levels is 'the greatest lie ever told'
The uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story, writes Christopher Booker.
If one thing more than any other is used to justify proposals that the world must spend tens of trillions of dollars on combating global warming, it is the belief that we face a disastrous rise in sea levels. The Antarctic and Greenland ice caps will melt, we are told, warming oceans will expand, and the result will be catastrophe. Although the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only predicts a sea level rise of 59cm (17 inches) by 2100, Al Gore in his Oscar-winning film An Inconvenient Truth went much further, talking of 20 feet, and showing computer graphics of cities such as Shanghai and San Francisco half under water. We all know the graphic showing central London in similar plight. As for tiny island nations such as the Maldives and Tuvalu, as Prince Charles likes to tell us and the Archbishop of Canterbury was again parroting last week, they are due to vanish. But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. (Telegraph.co.uk)

A voice of direction in the darkness-Ilana Teitelbaum
Imagine if you were standing in the hallway of an office building and couldn't see where the elevator to the next floor is. Now imagine that at the touch of a button, a prerecorded voice tells you exactly where to find the elevator. Another touch of the button, and the voice tells you which floor you need for your destination. Now this kind of aid for the visually impaired has become a reality, in the form of a new device created by Israeli company Step-Hear. While modern technology has not yet found a cure for blindness, the technology of Step-Hear can pave the way to increasing the independence and convenience of the visually impaired. The device, which was developed by engineers who specialize in special needs technologies, is an information and navigation reference point system consisting of two components: the base unit and the activator. The base unit is installed in key locations and contains pre-recorded information. Step-Hear base units can be located in public buildings, hospitals, transportation, shopping centers, and even museum exhibitions. (Israel21c)

The Real Henry VIII-BARRYMORE LAURENCE SCHERER
New York
Whether he is remembered as a fearsome bluebeard who went through six wives, a political tyrant who kept his executioner busy, the creator of the Anglican Church and despoiler of monasteries, or one of the most gifted and powerful monarchs of the early Renaissance, King Henry VIII of England (1491-1547) is among history's most renowned figures. During his lifetime and over the ensuing five centuries, his image has been interpreted and reinterpreted by artists, authors, dramatists and actors, from painter Hans Holbein to William Shakespeare and onward. In one of the latest such incarnations, Showtime's lavish soap, "The Tudors," Henry is transformed beyond all bounds of historical verisimilitude into a buff and bedroom-eyed mannequin with a libido as loosely buttoned as his doublet. f you want to get a sense of the king's majesty as it really was, however, you've but to visit the Grolier Club, America's oldest bibliophile society, and immerse yourself in its splendid exhibition, "Vivat Rex." (It travels to Washington's Folger Shakespeare Library in September 2010.) Commemorating the 500th anniversary of King Henry's accession, "Vivat Rex" -- whose title is the Latin accolade for "Long Live the King" -- represents the collaboration of the Grolier with the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, Harvard College Library's Houghton Library, the Morgan Library and Museum and other lenders. And this exceptional pooling of resources offers visitors the opportunity to commune with some of the rarest, most vivid books, manuscripts and artifacts related to Henry's reign and personal life. (WSJ)

The church’s lost leader-Melanie Phillips
The resignation of Michael Nazir-Ali as Bishop of Rochester is a terrible blow, not just for the Church of England but for Britain. The bishop says he is resigning so that he can work for endangered or beleaguered Christian minorities both abroad and in the UK. What a shocking rebuke to the church, that he has to leave his post of influence and authority as a bishop in order to carry out the church’s core duty to defend its own against attack. Shocking — but hardly surprising. Across the world, in countries such as Nigeria and Sudan, millions of Christians are being persecuted at the hands of militant Islam, with forced conversions, the burning of churches and widespread violence. Yet in the face of this global onslaught, the Church of England makes scarcely a peep of protest. Worse still, when Dr Nazir-Ali warned last year that Islamic extremists had created ‘no-go areas’ across Britain where non-Muslims faced intimidation, he was disowned by his fellow churchmen who all but declared that he was a liar - even though he was telling the truth. For this act of moral courage, he and his family had to be put under police protection, while his own church left him to swing in the wind of bigotry and intimidation. (Dailymail.co.uk)