Editor and Researcher Elisa Vandernoot

American Freedom Alliance Weekly Gazette

THE WEEK AT A GLANCE

This Week's Editorial

ACLU Launches the Drone Wars
By Avi Davis

Barack Obama is about to find out exactly what it is like to be George W. Bush.

Over the past twelve months, the Obama administration has been ramping up a Bush era program of unmanned Predator and Reaper drones, targeting al Qaeda and enemy combatant insurgents in Iraq, Yemen, on the Afghan-Pakistan border as well as in Pakistan itself.

Since January 2009, nearly 500 kills have been credited by the Department of Defense to the drones, an achievement, it claims, that has saved innumerable American lives.

Yet the program during this time has been attacked by both the United Nations and  international human rights groups as a violation of American law, international humanitarian law and national sovereignty.  Briefs have been filed.

Philip Alston, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, stated six months ago that the strikes “might violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law.” On April 1, he presented his views again here.

Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell of the University of Notre Dame law school has called the drone program “unlawful killing,” and says it violates international law.

And the ACLU has put the program in its sights, suggesting that the drones may be a violation of  the U.S. law against assassination, international humanitarian law as well as an abuse of national sovereignty.

The matter falls into a legal grey zone since international humanitarian law regulates continuous armed conflict between states  with recognizable combatants—little of which is relevant to the U.S. fight against al Qaeda and its allies.  On the other hand, international humanitarian law allows that a state engaged in armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with notice or pursue legal process before using lethal force.

Notwithstanding this, U.S. procedures and practices for identifying targets have in fact been extremely precise with advanced technologies helping to make targeting  more focused.

Do the drone attacks then constitute “assassination”  which is prohibited under U.S. law?

According to State Department Legal Advisor and former Yale law School Dean, Harold Koh, they do not.   At the 104th meeting of the American Society of International Law on March 25,  he  submitted his opinion that the current administration has comported itself well within the parameters of the principle of distinction, which requires that attacks be limited to military objectives alone avoiding civilian objects and the principle of proportionality, which prohibits attacks causing incidental loss of civilian life excessive in relation to the military advantage anticipated.

“Under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems – consistent with the applicable laws of war – for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute ‘assassination’.”

Koh did not address the violation of sovereignty argument in his speech.  Nevertheless it is clear that the CIA under Bush, and now apparently under Obama, reserves its rights to go after its enemies wherever they are.  This  policy is validated in U.S. law by the September 14, 2001 Congressional resolution Authorization for Use of Military Force which allowed the president to:                     Read More

Avi Davis is the President of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. His writings and blog entries can be found at The Intermediate Zone. 

 

__________________________________________________________________

View the best of The Intermediate Zone from last week:

JORDAN PLAYS HARD BALL WITH SOFT SHOES
ARE ALL OPTIONS STILL ON THE TABLE REGARDING IRAN?
SURPRISE! DRILLING MAY BE MORE THAN A CONSERVATIVE PASSION
DEMYSTIFYING THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE AND THE DANGERS OF DOING SO
ALICE IN WONDERLAND: A REVIEW
BLAZING THE CELEBRITY TRAIL TO HUGO CHAVEZ’S DOOR
TIME MAGAZINE PROVIDES FRYING PAN FOR OUR CHICKEN LITTLES
DIVERSITY’S FAILING GRADES

Avi Davis can be contacted at adavis@americanfreedomalliance.org

NEWS: EUROPE AND AMERICA

Obama Bans Islam, Jihad From National Security Strategy Document-AP
The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war.
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said. The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century." The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document still was being written, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document will be the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, like his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used. The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the United States talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

Treasury Designates Two Individuals for Supporting Terrorist Activities
Treasury Targets Financier of al Qai'da in Iraq, Islamic Jihad Union Member
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today targeted the financial and support networks of al Qai'da in Iraq (AQI), al-Qai'da and Islamic Jihad Union (IJU) by designating two Europe-based individuals for providing support to terrorists or acts of terrorism under Executive Order 13224. Ahmad Khalaf Shabib al-Dulaymi was designated for providing financial, material, or technological support to AQI, and German national Atilla Selek, a member of the IJU recently sentenced to serve five years in prison, was designatedfor his involvement in an IJU plot to target U.S. military personnel stationed in Germany. Both AQI and the IJU are Specially Designated Global Terrorists previously designated under Executive Order 13224, which freezes any assets the designated individuals have under U.S. jurisdictionand prohibits U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions with those individuals. (UStreasurydepartment)

Belgium moves to become first European country to ban the burka-Mail Foreign Service
Belgium is on the verge of becoming the first European nation to ban the burka. A parliamentary committee agreed yesterday to outlaw the wearing of face-covering veils in public. The full Parliament will vote later this month. Under the proposals, women could face a week in prison or a fine for wearing a veil in public. There are an estimated 650,000 Muslims in Belgium – 6 per cent of the population. The text of the new law does not specifically mention burkas but makes it illegal for anyone to wear clothing ‘that covers all or most of the face’ in any public place. Left-wing MP Denis Ducarme left no doubt the rules were targeting-Muslim extremists. He said after the vote by the home affairs committee: ‘This sends a very strong signal to radical Islamists.’ The French- speaking liberals who have proposed the law argue that an inability to identify people presents a security risk and that the veil is a ‘walking prison’ for women. Daniel Bacquelaine, the bill’s chief promoter, said the ban might also be used against potentially violent demonstrators who covered their faces. He estimated that only a few hundred women in Belgium wore facial veils, but said it was a rising trend. (Dailymail.co.uk)

France's wealthy young Muslims fuel boom in halal food
An affluent middle class of young Muslims is driving a boom in sales of halal products, including alcohol-free sparkling wine and Islam-approved foie gras in France.The new consumers, known as the beurgeois – a combination of bourgeois and beur, slang for a French person of North African descent – have spending power worth an estimated 5.5bn euros a year.
But they don't want the foods that their parents grew up with, instead they want high end halal luxuries and a range of halal cuisines, the Guardian reports. In response to the growing demand for halal products, which is increasing by 15 per cent a year, supermarket group Caisno has started stocking an increasing variety of halal meats. The fast-food chain Quick has a number of halal-only burger bars and Muslim corner shops selling exclusively halal foods and drinks are also flourishing. Yanis Bouarbi, 33, an IT specialist who started the website paris-hallal.com, which lists restaurants in France serving halal food, said wealthy young Muslims were behind the new trend. "When our parents and grandparents came to France they did mostly manual work and the priority was having enough to feed the family," he told the Guardian. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Antwerp: 24 years for wife murderer
Omar Sellami (38) was found guilty by an Antwerp criminal court of killing his wife, Karima Sellami (24). The accused had strangled his wife on November 22, 2007 in their apartment in Merksem (Antwerp). The court sentenced him to 24 years in jail, taking into account the exceptionally brutal way in which he killed his wife, the suffering he had caused Karima and her relatives, and the aggressive, authoritarian and obstinate character Omar showed. Chairman Dirk Thys said: "You received a harsh punishment, but in our society it's not tolerated that men treat women in the way you've done. If you can't accept that, you'll never function in our society." Omar confessed last year that he was responsible for his wife's death. For two years had had sworn "by Allah" that Karima had strangled herself under the influence of the angry spirits that had possessed her. When he finally confessed, he said that Karima had told him that day that she had slept with another man. Omar says he flew at her, grabbed her by the throat and didn't let go until she didn't respond anymore. Karima married Omar when she was 17, and according to her older sister, Latifa, it was her decision. In the beginning they were happy, but a year and a half later, the marriage had a deep crisis. (Islamineurope)

'Allah Akbar' and 'Death to Russians' Inscriptions Appear in Moscow Metro-Pravda-Ru“Allah Akbar!” and “Death to Russians!” inscriptions appeared on the walls of the vestibule of the Planernaya station of the Moscow metro on April 3. A woman called the police and said that she saw several young men spray-painting the inscriptions on the walls of the station. The four men looked like natives of the Caucasus, the woman said. The men wrote the above-mentioned words quickly and drove away on a silvery car. The police said that it would be difficult to find the perpetrators since there are no surveillance cameras in the vestibule of the station. In the meantime, Western newspapers write that the fear of Muslims and people arriving from the Caucasus has been growing in Russia after the terrorist acts in the Moscow metro. The “white” Russians are scared of those people whom they refer to as “blacks” – Muslim women and men, mostly natives of the Caucasus, Switzerland’s Tribune de Geneve newspaper said. The police stop those whose appearance is typical of the nationalities living in the Caucasus: dark skin and black hair.An imam of a Moscow mosque said that the Russian media equate Muslims and terrorists and misuse terms in their reports. He urged reporters not to call terrorists “shakhids,” which translates as “martyrs,” because they are just “criminals.” In the meantime, a resident of Dagestan has claimed that he recognizes one of the women who carried out the terrorist attacks on the Moscow metro as his daughter Mariam Sharipova, RIA Novosti reports. (Newsfromrussia)

Taliban blasts hit U.S. consulate in Pakistani city of Peshawar during day of bloodshed-Mail Foreign Service
Militants killed eight people in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the Pakistan city of Peshawar yesterday. Taliban gunmen fired on a security post at the consulate in broad daylight before detonating a car bomb. The White House expressed 'great concern' at the attack. It came hours after a suicide bomber killed 38 people at a political rally in the region. 'I saw attackers in two vehicles. Some of them carried rocket-propelled grenades. They first opened fire at security personnel at the post near the consulate and then blasts went off,' said eye-witness Siraj Afridi. Other residents said there was an initial blast in the neighbourhood of the U.S. consulate and they later heard two other blasts and rifle fire in the same area.
Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq claimed responsibility for the blast by telephone: 'Americans are our enemies. We carried out the attack on their consulate in Peshawar. We plan more such attacks.' The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad said none of the victims were American and nobody inside the consulate was hurt.
The White House strongly condemned the attacks. (Dailymail.co.uk)

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

Ratatat, Sissy, Bay State Boom: Obama Whacks K-12 Standards-Peter Woods
Last week Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced that Delaware and Tennessee are the winners of the first grants in President Obama’s Race to the Top. That’s the initiative that will hand out billions of dollars to the states for joining a federal program to improve education. Delaware scored a cool $100 million, and Tennessee (the Volunteer state, after all) took home $500 million. Other contestants need not despair. Round two has a piñata stuffed with $3.4 billion more. Not everyone is flailing at the donkey. Some states have school standards already higher than the ones promoted by the Race to the Top, and have taken umbrage at what they see as an invitation to race to the middle, or even race to the bottom. A few weeks ago we reported on The New K-12 Standards Debate. The Race to the Top (RttT; we pronounce it “ratatat”) is intimately tied to something called the Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI; which we now pronounce “sissy”). CCSSI is a product of the cogitations of the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. But don’t be fooled. CCSSI is really the stalking horse of the Obama administration, which had to outsource the curriculum-building in light of restrictions on what the federal government can do by way of muscling into the states’ supervision of public schools. CCSSI was released as a draft report in March—allowing time for the public to comment before it freezes into place as a monument to its own magnificence. The last day for the public to comment was April 2. We are now in the unofficial period for public lamentations. (NAS)

Change the Conversation on Education-Christopher Chantrill
It's time for conservatives to go Alinsky on education. It's time for a fresh line of attack.
Diane Ravitch has given up on school choice. Her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, tells the story of her change of heart. You can read a quickie version in The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post. Ravitch doesn't like charter schools because they don't seem to make much of a difference. And testing? President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act has made things worse, encouraging "states to lower their standards and make false claims of progress." "It is time to change course," Ravitch writes. She recommends more credentials for teachers, "principals who are master teachers ... superintendents who are experienced educators ... assessments that gauge students' understanding" rather than "guessing," and so on. She sounds like Arthur Call. He pushed for high schools "under the leadership of friendly and large-spirited men and women." They would make students "socially and serviceably efficient." In 1909. Why in the world would anyone, then or now, think that a government high school with jobs-for-life teachers would generate friendly and large-spirited leadership, or attract master teachers? (Americanthinker)

MEDIA BIAS

Smashing the Left’s Stereotypes about Tea Partiers-Bob McCarty
I had the privilege of interviewing three interesting individuals among the 500 or more who attended the Tea Party Express III [1] rally Monday afternoon in St. Charles, Mo. One is a student at nearby Lindenwood University. Another is a small business owner from Belleville, Ill. The third is a black ambassador of conservatism from Deltona, Fla. Together, they smash the left’s stereotypes about who attends tea parties.
College Student
Despite a 30-minute deluge of rain prior to the rally, a college student with dreadlocks named Josh Siskowski was determined to stand up for conservatism and constitutional values. A history major at nearby Lindenwood University, he displayed and articulated a thorough understanding of what’s wrong with this country when government officials supplant the ideas of the Founding Fathers with their own misguided, big government ideology. “It’s movements like this that reassure us that the government is not going to take away our freedoms that were guaranteed to us through the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, what America was founded on,” he said. Most adamantly, he said, “We are not supposed to have our freedoms taken away by the people we elect.”
To watch the interview, click here [2]. (Pajamasmedia)

FT: Promoting Demonization
A recent study by Just Journalism revealed that Financial Times editorials, far from being a neutral voice, disproportionately blamed Israel for the problems of the Mideast and repeatedly disregarded salient facts. Anti-Israel bias isn't confined, however, to FT editorials. An op-ed by Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouthi is a prime example of the paper's contribution to the demonization of Israel.
The False Apartheid Analogy The title of the op-ed - Israel knows apartheid has no future - may have been penned by the FT or Barghouthi himself. Either way, the use of the word 'apartheid' in the headline is deliberately designed to create in the mind of the reader, the false analogy of Israel with apartheid South Africa. Indeed, according to Barghouthi: Apartheid is here. There is one set of Israeli laws applied to Palestinians in the West Bank and another set applied to Jews in the West Bank. Israeli settlers live illegally in beautiful subsidised housing on stolen Palestinian land while we are relegated to smaller and smaller bantustans. This charge comes on the back of Israel Apartheid Week, on which Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote: The Israel of today and the South Africa of yesterday have almost nothing in common. In South Africa, the minority white population harshly ruled the majority black population. Nonwhites were denied civil rights, and in 1958, they were even deprived of citizenship. In contrast, Israeli Arabs, about one-fifth of the country, have the same civil and political rights as do Israeli Jews. Arabs sit in the Knesset and serve in the military, although most are exempt from the draft. Whatever this is -- and it looks suspiciously like a liberal democracy -- it cannot be apartheid....
(See here for more on debunking the false apartheid analogy.)
Despite this, Barghouthi continues to parrot the language of demonization, referring to "antiquated notions of racial supremacy and colonisation." (Honestreporting)

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

When Free Speech Wins-Eric Giunta
As President of Florida State University College of Law’s Federalist Society chapter, I wish to extend a note of sincere gratitude to Mr. Robert Spencer for coming to lecture our student body recently on the subject of Islamic Jurisprudence [1]. I also wish to thank the David Horowitz Freedom Center for helping to fund the event with a very generous grant. Several rumors have made their way around campus, and the Tallahassee community, since the publication of my last piece here in these pages [2]. It is claimed that Mr. Spencer and I have declared the “death of free speech” at the law school, and that we have accused the administration of threatening to censor Tuesday’s lecture. Readers of FrontPage and of JihadWatch [3] know how baseless these charges are. Neither Mr. Spencer nor I ever accused the deans of threatening to cancel his lecture, or to censor the event’s controversial flier. We did report, accurately, that the Muslim Law Students Association had put pressure on the administration to have the event censored, that several of the fliers had been subjected to vandalism, and that the deans did put pressure on this writer to self-censor the offensive Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoon [4] that was the fliers’ centerpiece. There were, however, some very real and serious misrepresentations made by one student organization, and it was not the Federalist Society. The Muslim Law Students Association (MLSA) decided to orchestrate, in lieu of a counter-rally or a protest, an alternative lecture on Monday afternoon [5], titled “The 1st Amendment and Professionalism in a Republic.” The official Facebook event announcement, before its first edit, included some very serious charges. After playing the typically mindless, and in this case irrelevant, “racist card”, my colleagues at the MLSA made clear their frustration that the deans could not and would not force me to take down my flier, but assured their supporters that this type of scenario would not repeat itself in the future: (Frontpagemagazine)

ANTISEMITISM

Machete used in anti-Semitic attack in Gatineau, Carleton students say-DAVE ROGERS, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
OTTAWA — A well-known student supporter of Israel at Carleton University and an Israeli engineering student at the university say they are counting themselves lucky to have survived an attack with what they say was a machete near a Gatineau bar early Monday. Nick Bergamini, 22, vice-president of the Carleton University Students’ Association, said he and roommate Mark Klibanov were leaving Le Volt bar on Promenade du Portage at 1:45 a.m. when a group of about 10 men began yelling in English and Arabic that they were Zionists and Jews. “These people must have been Carleton students because I recognized one of them,” Bergamini said. “I said I love Israel because I support Israel’s right to exist. “I told them not to do this because I knew who they were, but I got hit hard on the back of the head. We ran to the bar entrance because bar security was there.” The two men later decided to walk across the Chaudière Bridge to Ottawa when the crowd surrounding them dispersed about five minutes later. As they walked through a parking lot near the bridge, however, a car with three men inside pulled up beside them. “One of them rolled down the window and said: ‘I am the one who hit you, you f-----g Jew,’ although I am not a Jew,” Bergamini said. “Two guys came out of the car, and one of them tried to kick my roommate. (Ottawacitizen)

Pro-Arabs Trying to Ban Israel Embassy in New Zealand-Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(Israelnationalnews.com) A pro-Arab coalition is trying to prevent Israel from re-opening its embassy in New Zealand later this month. Diplomatic affairs there have been conducted through Australia since 2002, when Israel closed its Wellington embassy in 2002 due to budget restrictions. Two years later, relations were chilly following charges that two alleged Mossad agents tried to get local passports illegally. Israel apologized for the incident, and relations have improved since then. Prime Minister John Key, who has family in Israel and is the son a Jewish refugee from Austria, told local media, “There's no reason why New Zealand can't enjoy good diplomatic relations with Israel.” However, a coalition of pro-Arab and anti-Zionist groups called No Israeli Embassy in Wellington (NIEW) has vowed to stop the embassy from re-opening. NIEW spokesperson Alistair Reith told the New Zealand web site voxy.co.nz, "Wherever the embassy goes, it'll be a noisy neighborhood. We can't make it as bad as Israel makes it for the people under military siege in Gaza, but everyone will know we will be laying protest siege to wherever they finally locate the Embassy." (INN)

Protesters disrupt Jerusalem Quartet broadcast-Jenni Frazer
A lunchtime performance by the Jerusalem Quartet at London’s Wigmore Hall, being broadcast live on BBC Radio Three, was taken off air partway through the concert on Monday afternoon after protesters disrupted the event. But the musicians played on and completed the Mozart and Ravel concert programme. The clash came after four or five pro-Palestinian protesters bought tickets for the concert, and, about five to ten minutes into the music, began shouting and heckling the Israeli musicians. They shouted: “The Quartet, who are cultural ambassadors for the state of Israel, are promoting the interests of Israel and all its policies against the Palestinians, to the British public.” The demonstrators were taken away by Wigmore Hall security officers and a decision was taken by the concert hall management to take the broadcast off-air "in order to deny these people publicity."A clearly shaken John Gilhooly, director of the Wigmore Hall, told the JC: "It is such a pity that music has become politicised." (Thejewishchronicle)

Swastika graffiti at former concentration camp in Germany-
BERLIN (AFP)---German police launched an investigation on Tuesday after vandals daubed swastikas on a memorial at the Neuengamme former Nazi concentration camp near Hamburg.
The vandalism occurred on Easter Monday during normal opening hours and despite a "brisk number of visitors" being there at the time, a police spokeswoman told AFP. It was noticed by employees later. The anti-fascist FIR association said it was "appalled at the defilement", which occurred just a few weeks before the 65th anniversary of the camp's liberation in May 1945. "This makes it clear once again that historical remembrance must go hand in hand with vigilance about current tendencies and actions by the far right," the FIR said. Neuengamme and its network of satellite camps in northwest Germany held some 100,000 prisoners from all over Europe between 1938 and 1945, 42,900 of whom died. (EJP)

Editor of Israeli Arab Newspaper: The Conflict Between the Arabs and Israel Is a Religious War-MEMRI
In a recent article, Hamed Aghbariya, editor of the Israeli Arab paper Sawt Al-Haqq Wal-Hurriya, which is affiliated with the Islamic Movement, claimed that the Israeli-Arab conflict is essentially a religious struggle.
The following are excerpts from the article: [1]
"All of a sudden, some of the forgetful among our people have woken up and expressed a fear that the Israeli establishment wants to drag the region into a religious war [...].[2]
"It is as if they are saying that everything that has happened since the fall of the Islamic Caliphate and the release of the Balfour Declaration does not constitute a religious war. As if the 1948 war against the entire [Muslim] nation was not a religious war, and the 1967 occupation of the territories and the desecration of the Al-Aqsa [Mosque] were not [part of] a religious war, and all the [other] wars and plans for Judaization were not [part of] a religious war. As if the war against Gaza was not a religious war, and what is going on today in Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem is not linked to a religious war. As if global Jewry and its leaders did not declare a religious war from the very first moment at the Basel Congress, when they announced that [the goal of] their enterprise was to realize the dream of returning to the land of [their] forefathers... (MEMRI)

TERRORISM, security and policy

Disarmament Danger-KEITH B. PAYNE
The Obama administration has placed nuclear disarmament at the top of its foreign-policy agenda. Other possible goals, such as modernizing U.S. nuclear forces for deterrence purposes, are now considered either transitory or subordinate to taking steps toward “nuclear zero.” In itself, banning nuclear weapons is not a new U.S. goal; Ronald Reagan also supported it. But this prioritization is unprecedented. In the past, Republican and Democratic administrations have maintained a balance between the parallel goals of modernizing U.S. nuclear programs for deterrence and pursuing nuclear-arms reductions when feasible. This balancing act can be seen in the Clinton administration’s policy of “lead and hedge,” which sought to lead in the reduction of nuclear arms while hedging against threats by sustaining a robust nuclear arsenal. Indeed, in pursuit of this balance, the Clinton administration successfully did what the Obama administration has now declared verboten in the push for nuclear zero: It developed and deployed new nuclear capabilities deemed necessary for deterrence. The George W. Bush administration sought to maintain a similar balance. It successfully negotiated the 2002 Moscow Treaty, which reduced U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear forces from approximately 6,000 to approximately 2,000 deployed nuclear weapons each. This two-thirds reduction was the largest in history. (Nationalreview)

Obama to soften nuclear strike policy... except for Iran and North Korea-Mail Foreign Service
Barack Obama says he will not use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have a nuclear capability - even if they launch a chemical or biological attack against America. Mr Obama's pledge came a year after his groundbreaking vow to move towards 'a world without nuclear weapons'. But while forswearing the use of the deadly weapons against non-nuclear nations, the President left himself a loophole to combat the threat from rogue regimes. He said he was making an exception for 'outliers like Iran and North Korea' that have violated or defied the international nuclear proliferation treaty. Mr Obama told the New York Times the move was part of a broader effort 'to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions.' He argued for a slower course of action, saying: 'We are going to want to make sure that we can continue to move towards less emphasis on nuclear weapons, to make sure that our conventional weapons capability is an effective deterrent in all but the most extreme circumstances.'
As well as narrowing the conditions under which the U.S. would use nuclear weapons, the Obama administration said 'the fundamental role' of the warheads was for deterrence. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Report #1 in a New NEFA Series, "Connecting the Dots": "America's First al-Qaida Fighters"-NEFA
In a new series of short reports titled "Connecting the Dots," NEFA analysts touch on a wide range of subjects concerning various aspects of terrorism. When vital information is treated as historical, it can lose its impact relating to current events. Reflection and re-evaluating documents, articles, and interviews can be a very valuable exercise in terms of identifying patterns, recognizing relationships, and connecting circumstances.In this first report, we revisit the fact that a handful of American Muslims were involved in the founding of al-Qaida as they were recruited a few months before al-Qaida was formed in the Bin Ladin's al-Masada (the Lions Den) camp in eastern Afghanistan. (Read Report Here) (NEFA)

My black widows will have more blood-Mark Franchett
THE dense woods on the border of Chechnya and Ingushetia afforded little protection to Doku Umarov’s men when Russian special forces tracked them down. For a full day or more, the Spetsnaz troops lobbed mortars and rockets into the thickets where a militant cell loyal to the country’s most wanted terrorist had tried to hide. Then they moved in for the kill. The bloodshed that followed became the focus of an escalating conflict that culminated in last week’s suicide bombings on the Moscow Metro. According to the Russians, the deaths of 18 terrorists that February day dealt a blow to Umarov’s ferocious little army of militants fighting for an Islamic state in the Caucasus. Umarov highlighted another side to the story: a group of teenage boys who had been picking wild garlic nearby had been stabbed, shot at point-blank range and riddled with bullets after being mistaken for his followers. While the Russians conceded that four civilians had been caught in crossfire, Umarov railed against a slaughter of innocents that required him to avenge their loss. It was barely six weeks later that two female suicide bombers took a bus to Moscow, boarded underground trains in the morning rush hour and blew themselves up. One was Dzhennet Abdurakhmanova, the 17- year-old widow of an insurgent from Dagestan with whom she had posed for a photograph as both brandished guns. The second bomber was believed to be Markha Ustarkhanova, 20, the widow of a Chechen militant leader. Together they killed 40 people and wounded more than 80. The Russian capital had seen its first big terrorist attack in six years. Shortly afterwards Umarov, 46, wearing camouflage fatigues and with a long beard, warned in a video of worse violence to come. The bombings had been a “legitimate act of revenge” for the deaths of civilians “massacred by the Russian occupiers”, he said. “They attacked them with knives and made fun of their corpses.” He added: “The war will come to your streets and you will feel it on your own skins.” (Timesonline.co.uk)

German Jihad Colonies Sprout Up in Waziristan- Yassin Musharbash, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark
A wave of Germans traveling to training camps for militant jihadists has alarmed security officials back in Europe. The recruits are quickly becoming radicalized and, in some cases, entire families are departing to hotbeds for terrorism. It is even believed that colonies catering to German Islamists have taken shape in the border area between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
It was a Sunday in September when they lost their son Jan*. He gave his parents a particularly tight hug, his father recalls, a long and intense embrace. The father says that he could sense that this was no normal goodbye, and that it was about more than the supposed vacation trip to celebrate the couple's first wedding anniversary -- which was the story that Jan, 24, and his wife Alexandra* had cooked up for him. It was the day of the German parliamentary elections in 2009, and the autumn sun was shining in Berlin, but Jan and Alexandra weren't interested in who would govern the country. They were going to leave Germany. They had rejected this society and this state. Jan and Alexandra packed their things into a rental car, picked up another couple, and the four friends headed off into exile. One of their traveling companions was 17 years old and six months pregnant -- her husband had just turned 20. Their child would not be born in Germany. (Spiegelonline)

Iran Nuclear Ring Probed- PETER FRITSCH and DAVID CRAWFORD
Western Authorities Investigate China Connection in Export of French Valves
An Iranian firm closely linked to Tehran's nuclear program acquired special hardware for enriching uranium, despite sanctions intended to keep such equipment out of Iran, according to officials with knowledge of the matter. In recent weeks, the officials said, an Iranian procurement firm obtained critical valves and vacuum gauges made by a French company that until December was owned by U.S. industrial conglomerate Tyco International. The French and U.S. firms said they knew nothing of the case. Western authorities are still struggling to understand precisely how the valves and gauges in question reached Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency is investigating the matter, according to a Vienna-based diplomat, and Western intelligence agencies also are investigating, The Wall Street Journal has learned. A Jan. 14 email that triggered the IAEA investigation alleged that the valves moved through an intermediary representing a Chinese company based near Shanghai. (WSJ)

Western Women Jihadists-Elisabeth Meinecke
Before news broke last week of the two female suicide bombers in Moscow, Americans had already learned that two U.S. women—known as Jihad Jane and Jihad Jamie—were arrested last month for ties to a terrorist plot against the life of a Swedish cartoonist. Jamie was later freed, while Jane has pleaded not guilty. Whether their acts were criminal or not, their associations with other jihadists opened a new front in the War on Terror: Western women making connections with terror groups. In January, the UK Telegraph reported that al Qaeda’s terror cells trained “a group of female suicide bombers to attack Western targets.” It added, “These women may have a non-Arab appearance and may be traveling on Western passports." Steve Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, says there’s little doubt al Qaeda wants to expand the demographic of suicide bombers, but said it is unclear how terrorist groups will seek out Western-looking women to convert to the cause. But certain psychological triggers are a factor when an American girl-next-door turns to female jihad, other experts said. Robert Spencer, the director of the website Jihad Watch and author of several books on Islam, says that Americans who convert are required to exchange a culture that relishes life for one that relishes death. “The idea of love for death is something that runs through the world view of the Islamic jihadis,” Spencer said. He referred to a comment from a jihadist in Afghanistan who said Americans love Pepsi-Cola the way they love death. “It sums up the difference in the mindset,” Spencer said. “Americans do love life, they love living, they love the things of life.” (Humanevents)

Exclusive: World’s ‘Most Dangerous Islamist’ Alive, Well, and Living in Pennsylvania-Paul Williams, PhD
An Islamic Armed Fortress Emerges in the Pocono Mountains
The most dangerous Islamist in the world is neither Afghani nor Arab. He comes from neither Sudan nor Somalia. And he resides in neither the mountains of Pakistan nor the deserts of the Palestinian territories.
This individual has toppled the secular government of Turkey and established madrassahs throughout the world. His schools indoctrine children in the tenets of radical Islam and prepare adolescents for the Islamization of the world. More than 90 of these madrassahs have been established as charter schools throughout the United States. They are funded by American taxpayers. One of these charter schools – Tarek ibn Zayed Academy (TiZA) in Minnesota – is so radically Islamic and subversive in nature that the Minnesota Department of Education issued two citations against it and the American Civil Liberties Union is suing it.
Dozens of his universities, including the Faith University in Istabul, train young men to become lawyers, accountants, and political leaders so that they can take an active part in the restoration of the Ottoman Empire and the Islamization of the Western World. He also allegedly operates compounds to train jihadis in the tactics of guerilla warfare. This individual has amasssed a fortune – over $30 billion – for the creation of a universal caliphate. His name is Fethullan Gulen and he resides not in the wilds of southern Turkey – but the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania. (Familysecuritymatters)

Alexander Tikhomirov's life illustrates challenge radical Islam poses in Russia-Philip P. Pan
MOSCOW -- He had been a bright but lonely child from a sleepy city near the Mongolian border, in a Buddhist region of Russia far from the nation's Muslim centers. But by the time he was killed last month, thousands of miles away in the volatile North Caucasus, Alexander Tikhomirov had become the face of an Islamist insurgency. After two young women blew themselves up on the Moscow subway last week, killing 40 people in the city's worst terrorist attack in years, investigators said they suspected that Tikhomirov had recruited and trained them, and perhaps dozens of other suicide bombers. How the schoolboy whom neighbors called Sascha became the tech-savvy militant known as Sayid Buryatsky remains a question wrapped in rumor and speculation. But the outline of Tikhomirov's journey from the Siberian steppes to the mountains of Chechnya provides a sense of the challenge that radical Islam poses in Russia and the speed with which the insurgency in the nation's southwest is changing. In less than two years with the rebels, Tikhomirov became their most effective propagandist, drawing in young Muslims with his fluent Russian, colloquial interpretations of Islam and mastery of the Internet. When security forces gunned him down last month at age 27, the guerrillas immediately cast him as a martyr. (Washingtonpost)

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Circling the Bandwagons: My Adventures Correcting the IPCC-Ross McKitrick
This is the story of how I spent 2 years trying to publish a paper that refutes an important claim in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The claim in question is not just wrong, but based on fabricated evidence. Showing that the claim is fabricated is easy: it suffices merely to quote the section of the report, since no supporting evidence is given. But unsupported guesses may turn out to be true. Showing the IPCC claim is also false took some mundane statistical work, but the results were clear. Once the numbers were crunched and the paper was written up, I began sending it to science journals. That is when the runaround began. Having published several against-the-flow papers in climatology journals I did not expect a smooth ride, but the process eventually became surreal. In the end the paper was accepted for publication, but not in a climatology journal. From my perspective the episode has some comic value, but I can afford to laugh about it since I am an economist, not a climatologist, and my career doesn’t depend on getting published in climatology journals. If I was a young climatologist I would have learned that my career prospects would be much better if I never write papers that question the IPCC. I am taking this story public because of what it reveals about the journal peer review process in the field of climatology. Whether climatologists like it or not, the general public has taken a large and legitimate interest in how the peer review process for climatology journals works, because they have been told for years that they will have to face lots of new taxes and charges and fees and regulations because of what has been printed in climatology journals. Because of the policy stakes, a bent peer review process is no longer a private matter to be sorted out among academic specialists. And to the extent the specialists are unable or unwilling to fix the process, they cannot complain that the public credibility of their discipline suffers. (Scienceandpublicpolicy)

SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Mind Games-Melinda Beck
Attention-Deficit Disorder Isn't Just for Kids. Why Adults Are Now Being Diagnosed, Too.
The symptoms of adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder seem to describe half the people in New York City: restlessness, impatience, impulsivity, procrastination, chronic lateness, and difficulty getting organized, focusing and finishing tasks. How do you know you have ADHD, which experts compare to having a mind like a pinball, with thoughts flitting in multiple directions. Maybe you're just overcaffeinated and overworked? And if you do have it, will there be a stigma? Should you try medication? Will it work? Parents of children with suspected ADHD face a myriad of similar questions. But the concerns can be just as troubling for adults, whose ADHD often goes unrecognized. An estimated 8% of U.S. children have ADHD, which is also known as ADD, for attention-deficit disorder, and some 50% of them outgrow it, according to government data. About 4.4% of U.S. adults—some 10 million people—also have ADHD and less than one-quarter of them are aware of it. That's because while ADHD always starts in childhood, according to official diagnostic criteria, many adults with the disorder went unnoticed when they were young. And it's only been since the 1980s that therapists even recognized the disorder could persist in adults. (WSJ)

The Monster-Victim Mix-Up-Jonah Goldberg
Anyone who thinks monsters are just “misunderstood” has misunderstood monsters.
I’ve seen How to Train Your Dragon twice. My daughter loves it (the lead dragon reminds us of her cat). And I think it’s pretty great too. (Note: Some pretty obvious spoilers heading your way.) Perhaps I’m mellowing in my middle years, but I don’t much mind what Entertainment Weekly calls the movie’s “layer of age-of-terror allegory about the ignorance bred by jingoism.” This refers to the fact that the Vikings in the film have been raised for seven generations to kill dragons: “It’s what we do.” But the hero, Hiccup, an alienated, smart-mouthed teen, discovers that dragons are actually inclined to be lovable, sweet-tempered companions, if only his fellow Vikings could get over their stubborn ignorance and prejudice and give the monsters a chance. It’s all been a misunderstanding, and in the end, dragons and Vikings learn to love one another.
My long-standing complaint against this sort of story — aside from its being a complete cliché — is that it teaches kids there’s no such thing as monsters. No, I’m not keen on telling kids that there are things that go bump in the night or beasts in the closet — particularly when that means I have to spend half the night with a terrified kid in my bed. But monsters once served an important purpose. The word’s Latin and French roots mean a grave warning or omen. Monster stories once told us that evil exists and that we shouldn’t assume all motives are good and kind. (Nationalreview)

Britain’s Humpty Dumpty Education System-Melanie Phillips
The latest threatened public sector strike is even more juvenile than all the others. Literally.
Teachers of the NASUWT union voted unanimously at the weekend for a ballot over industrial action — over the behavior of the children they teach. They say a government scheme called Student Voice, which allows pupils a say over the way they are taught, is being abused by pupils. One aspect of the scheme is that children help select prospective teachers and provide feedback on teachers’ performance. The all-too predictable outcome has been that such immature opinions have often been genuinely infantile — and yet have had to be taken seriously. As a result, one teacher failed to be appointed after being labeled “Humpty Dumpty” by a child. Another was humiliated by being told to sing her favorite song; she refused and didn’t get the job. A third was asked by children on the interview panel how this candidate might impress the judges of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent. The union also says pupils are “informing” on their teachers and manipulating questionnaires so they can unfairly criticize staff. For children to be put in this position at all is ludicrous. Is there anything more inappropriate than children taking upon themselves the role of adults in this way?
Well, actually, yes there is: when adults themselves have bestowed upon the children in their care a wholly inappropriate authority — and then turn round and complain about how they use it. (Familysecuritymatters)

Young Winston Churchill – a true friend of our people-ZALMI UNSDORFER
With the passing of the great wartime leader’s grandson, both Israel and the Jewish people lost an outspoken supporter.
With the death last month of Winston Churchill, grandson of the great wartime leader, both Israel and the Jewish people lost a good friend and an outspoken supporter. I was privileged to meet him in a business capacity, and remember very clearly the afternoon he welcomed me into his London home. “I am just taking leave of the children for Christmas,” he said, beckoning me into the sitting room. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting a few moments.” The memory is so very clear because there on the wall, from floor to high ceiling, was this stunning life-sized oil painting of his grandfather. I immediately thought of my own grandfather, who, on a cold night in 1945, asked his son to show him where the great man lived. They were the only figures standing in Downing Street when a limousine pulled up unexpectedly and the great man emerged. Seeing my bearded grandfather standing in reverence under the street lamp, he turned, tugged off his famous Homburg hat and – with a slight bow – almost barked: “Good evening sahr!” It is a story which often regaled our family members on Seder nights. While my meetings with “Young Winston” were strictly business, he began e-mailing me on Jewish topics from time to time. This was one of the early ones: “Dear Zalmi, London-bound from Kiev. Just a quick note to send you, in case you may be interested, my remarks re Babi Yar. While in Kiev I caught a very hairy kiss from the chief rabbi of Israel, an absolutely delightful man! Yours, Winston”. (Jpost)

www.americanfreedomalliance.org

  Links:

• Foundation for the   Defense of Democracy
• MEMRI
• Jihad Watch
• Simon Wiesenthal   Center
• The Investigative Project    On Terrorism
• Eye on the UN  
• Atlas Shrugs