The Western Word

Guest Columnist

This month's guest columnist is Diana West author of The Death of the Grownup. She also writes a weekly column that appears in about 130 newspapers. She has written essays for numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, The Public interest, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Post Magazine, and her fiction has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly.

Copenhagen: Free Speech Central
by Diana West

On Sunday, June 14, I joined (from L to R) Ann Fishman of the Liberty Legal Project, Wafa Sultan, author of the upcoming "A God Who Hates," Mrutyuanjai Mishra of the Danish Free Press Society, and Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders in the Danish parliament for a daylong conference sponsored by the Danish Free Press Society on "Free Speech and Islam."

My topic was "The Impact of Islam on Free Speech in the US." Here is the written text:

Americans are proud, and rightly so, of the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights, which, among other things, protects speech from government control. The Amendment says in part: “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Increasingly, however, Americans seem content to regard the First Amendment not as the fundamental working tool of democracy, but as a national heirloom, a kind of antique to admire rather than put to use. I don’t think many of my countrymen perceive how profoundly their attitude toward free speech has changed. But there is a difference between having freedom of speech and exercising freedom of speech, one that has become glaringly and distressingly obvious to me since September 11, 2001. So, while it is true that the US government is not Constitutionally empowered to make laws that censor Americans, it is also true, I believe, that Americans have come to censor themselves. But why?

I speak today in regard to the effect of Islam on speech in America -- Islam as it has entered our national discussion and debate –- and, I must add, lack of national discussion and debate -- since the heinous Islamic attacks on the US nearly 8 years ago.

You may recall that just days after the attacks, then- President Bush said – and I quote -- “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.” At that same moment, the Pentagon, just across the river from the White House, was a colossal ruin, there was still carnage and mangled steel in the Pennsylvania woods, and an acrid fire of souls burned at the bottom of Manhattan. But once President Bush uttered that word “crusade” a new fear seemed to grip Washington and the wider world: namely, the fear that the President would “alienate” Muslims, even so-called “moderate Muslims.”

I believe such a fear may be unique in the annals of peoples under assault and bears further consideration. The English word “crusade,” of course, harkens back to the medieval wars between Islam and Christendom, which Islam ultimately won, as we know. In the more than nine centures since, the word has become a familiar metaphor for any moral fight for right: Long ago in America, Thomas Jefferson spoke of a “crusade” against ignorance; the feminist Susan B. Anthony called for a women’s temperance “crusade”; more recently Colin Powell referred to the “equal rights” crusade. And when Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote his memoir of World War II, he called it “Crusade in Europe.”

But after 9/11 it became instantly clear that there wasn’t going to be a 21st-century-“crusade” against newly expansionist Islam – not even against the most violent manifestations of jihad as exemplified by these bloody attacks on civilians and cities in the United States. Why? Muslims didn’t approve. Non-al Qaeda Muslims, presumably, didn’t approve of a “crusade” against al-Qaeda, and the leader of the Free World deferred. A White House spokesman quickly expressed the president’s “regret” that anyone might have been “upset” by the word “crusade.” After that, the word was effectively struck from the English language.

This may seem like a small thing, no more than a diplomatic nicety, but the significance of excising this rousing and storied word from the vocabulary of Americans at the onset of war can hardly be overstated, and must be understood as an early and decisive psychological victory for Islam over the West. In this early semantic retreat we can see the beginnings of the official American lexicon that now strives to avoid associating Islam and jihad altogether, that no doubt gives mighty encouragement to the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s continuing efforts to outlaw all criticism of Islam.

Let me explain. In acceding to the Islamic interpretation of the word “crusade” as something wrong and indefensible – and, worse, something taboo and also verboten -- the president traded away a piece of our history and our language – and our understanding of our history through our language – for the sole sake of appeasing Islam. And truly, this was just the beginning.

Soon, the president was giving up other words, other pieces of our culture. Operation Infinite Justice, the Pentagon name for the assault on the Taliban, for example, was changed after Muslims complained that they believed only Allah dispenses infinite justice. The new name was Operation Enduring Freedom. Presumably, Muslims do not believe Allah dispenses freedom, enudring or otherwise (which is interesting), so that was all right. But in making the change, the US was again deferring to Islamic demands, Islamic understandings. In other words, as a military intelligence officer-friend of mine likes to put it, we were “outsourcing” our judgment to Islam. Indeed, the name “war on terror” itself was a generic sop to Islamic sensibilities, omitting any reference to the Islamic dimension of the struggle, namely the jihad that was and is underway.

In those early days after 9/11, President Bush also made it part of his job to serve as the nation’s head cheerleader for Islam as “the religion of peace.” Confusingly, this immediately put “jihad” in a box as something superfluous to Islam. This is now the conventional wisdom in America, from Left to Right: jihad has nothing to do with Islam. Or: “Jihadism is not Islam,” as former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney obediently declared last month. People think Barack Hussein Obama is the first American president to promote Islam. The fact is, President Bush’s incessant declarations that Islam is a peaceable creed that terrorist-traitors had “hijacked” or “twisted” drove Abu Qatada, the notorious imam in Britain linked to Al Qaeda to comment – and I quote --: “I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Koran that justifies jihad or violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Koran?”

It’s fair to say that the answer to both questions is no. It’s also disturbing to realize that in the mainstream conversation, the only questions balking at the president’s depiction of Islam as a hearts-and-flowers ideology came from an Islamic terror-imam – never from our own media or politicians. Last year, George W. Bush’s Department of Homeland Security made it difficult for government officials to talk about anything but “hearts and flowers” Islam by issuing a long memorandum “suggesting” that government officials stop using all such words as “jihad,” “jihadist,” “Islamic terrorist,” “Islamist” “Islamofascist” and the like when discussing, well, Islamic terrorism. “Using the word “Islamic” will sometimes be necessary,” the memorandum said, adding that the department’s Muslim experts were concerned that in such a case –- quote -- “we should not concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitmate adherents of Islam.”

It’s not hard to imagine Abu Qatada cackling over this propaganda, but I regret to say there was scant media coverage of even this outrageous Islamic apologetic via government directive.

This shouldn’t be surprising since the media in the US, as elsewhere in the West, is overwhelmingly predisposed to ignore or deny, as a key point of cultural relativism, all specifically Islamic roots of jihad violence and conquest. This is the philosophical basis of what I call Islam-free analysis. Add to that the fear factor of Islamic violence – as we saw in the Danish cartoon crisis – or fear of Islamic protests or harassment, and the United States of America is happy to comply with a universal gag order on Islam, First Amendment or no First Amendment.

And so, from the so-called war on terror – which is now, even more opaquely known by the Obama administration as an “overseas contigency operation” -- to newsrooms across America, Islam as what sociologists call “an underlying cause” is increasingly treated as a forbidden topic. Another example: As a journalist, I attend expert lectures in Washington, DC, on, "What happened in Iraq?" or, "The future of Afghanistan." I can attest that at all the ones I have attended, Islam – its culture, its history, beliefs, supremacism, sharia, jihad, anything - is never even mentioned. In this same mold, Gen. Stanley McChrystal gave one his first interviews as the newly confirmed commander in Afghanistan last week about the challenges facing coalition forces in Afghanistan. Such challenges, apparently, have nothing to do with Islam, Islamic law (sharia), or jihad – none of which he even mentioned.

This same see-no-Islam mindset, to focus on the media for a moment, drives stories such as the Buffalo, New York “businessman” who beheaded his wife this spring after she filed for divorce. Did I mention he was a Muslim? That he had founded a television station to combat negative Islamic stereotyping? Most US media didn’t. Initial reports, such as they were, cited “money woes,” or general “domestic violence” as the trigger, never noting the sacralization of misogyny within Islam, let the unfortunate Koranically inspired propensity toward beheading people. To take another typical story, last month authorities uncovered a terror plot in New York City targeting synagogues and military aircraft. I listened to a 2 minute and 29 second radio report of the story and didn’t get the information that the suspects were jailhous converts to Islam until the final eight seconds. And that was typical. Another non-story for the Islam-blind: When Harvard University’s Muslim chaplain recently declared support for the traditional Islamic penalty of death for apostasy, there were exactly two newspaper stories: one in Harvard’s student newspaper, and one that I wrote. Some of the most egregious examples of Islam-free reporting came out of the jihadist attacks on Mumbai. Early this year, for example, the Indian government released intercepts of conversations of the jihadists who murdered 163 people last November. The conversations frequently invoked Allah, Islam and the need to spare Muslims in the blooody rampages but world media including the New York Times and the Asscoiated Press, for example, omitted all or very nearly all references to Allah, Islam, and the need to spare Muslims in the bloody rampages.

As a conservative, I would like to say that such silence on all things Islam is a phenomenon of the mainstream media, or the Left in general. But this same silence is also a phenomenon of the Right, the side of the politial spectrum where one expects to find some fight. But American conservatives, too, protect Islam by not talking about it -- our most famous conservative talk show hosts, for example, barely ever mention it -- or by obscuring the subject with the nonsense words that hide the mainstream Islamic roots of terror and supremacism.

Soon after 9/11, I tried some of these same terms out myself – Islam”ist,” Islamo-fascist, radical fundamentalist, Wahhabist, and the like -- but came to find them confusing, and maybe purposefully so. In their amorphous imprecision, they allow us to give a wide berth to a great problem: the gross incompatibility of Islamic ideology with Western liberty. Worse than imprecision, however, is the evident childishness that inspires the lexicon, as though padding “Islam” with extraneous syllables such as “ism” or “ist” is a shield against politically correct censure; or that exempting plain “Islam” by criticizing imaginary “Islamofascism” spares us Muslim rage--which, as per the Danish experience, we know explodes at any critique. Such mongrel terms, however, not only confuse the disucssion, but keep our understanding of Islam at bay.

Here is how it works on the Right. In writing about Cartoon Rage 2006, Charles Krauhammer, probably the leading conservative columnist in America, clearly identified why the Western press failed to republish the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

He wrote: “What is at issue is fear. The unspoken reason many newspapers do not want to republish is not sensitivity but simple fear.” Unquote.

This was clear as a bell. But then he wrote:

“They know what happened to Theo van Gogh, who made a film about the Islamic treatment of women and got a knife through the chest with an Islamist manifesto attached.”

To repeat, the columnist wrote that Theo van Gogh made a film about the “Islamic treatment of women” and was killed by a knife “with an Islamist manifesto” attached. Given that both Theo’s film and murder-manifesto were explicitly inspired by the verses of the Koran, what’s Islamic about the treatment of women that’s not also Islamic about the manifesto? The “ist” is a dodge, a semantic wedge between the religion of Islam and the ritual murder of van Gogh. It saves face. But why, why, is it up to an infidel American columnist to save face … when the face is Mohammed’s?

I think the answer is connected to what may have been the real war President Bush began to lead the day he gave up the “crusade.” I’m afraid this effort isn’t against “jihad,” and it isn’t against Islamization. On the contrary, it’s a very strange war for the West: it’s our war against alienating Islam; our war against blaming Islamic ideology for violence and repression in the cause of Islamic conquest. In this Western struggle to protect Islam, denouncing an Islam”ist” manifesto, for example, leaves Islam itself ideologically blameless. And this constitutes a win in this very weird war.

But the war against alienating Islam is not a war I want to fight — and no adherent of Western liberty could believe it’s the war we want to win. Indeed, this war effort turns out to be the same thing as fighting for Islam. It calls us to self-censorship, self-abnegation, self-extinguishment. It depends on and encourages our submission. This is the behavior of the dhimmi and the culture of dhimmitude as catalogued by the great historian Bat Ye’or. Honestly, I don’t think Americans realize they’re engaged in such a suicidal effort, which has even intensified under President Obama. Nor do I believe most Americans would rally to such a cause -- if, that is, they became educated to understand it. But the knowledge gap is as wide as the communications gap. Deep down we may not have lost our will; however, at this terrible point, we have lost our language to mobilize that will. And very few Americans seem to realize it.

A final point: I’ve had the opportunity to observe Geert Wilders speak in the United States this past year, and, as you know, he speaks in robust terms to explain forthrightly the perils of Islamzation in the West. His heroic manner and clarity electrify many of the Americans who hear him – which suggests there is a healthy flicker of life out there. But there is often someone in the crowd who will tell Mr. Wilders that while he agrees with the message, Mr. Wilders should soften his words so as not to offend anyone – meaning, of course, Muslims. “Don’t say Juedo Christian culture is better,” I heard one man say to Mr. Wilders. “Say: `we believe in women’s rights.’” I know I don’t have to worry about Mr. Wilders “moderating” his message, but I worry greatly about all the Americans who ask him to.

On hearing about the Dutch court’s sharia-compliant prosecution of his freedom of speech, an American journalist reacted with genuine horror that such a state of repression could exist in a Western country. At the same time, I could sense his quiet pride in knowing, at the back his mind, that he, as an American, was fully protected by the First Amendment. But I wondered to myself, Did he use it? Did his colleagues use it? If the state of American journalism is any marker, the answer is no. Geert Wilders speaks out as if he is protected by the First Amendment, but US journalists and politicians speak so as not to “give offense,” so as not to raise alarm, so as not to criticize Islam.

Islam, of course, is not our only block on speech. For decades, Americans have been schooling themselve to speak with political correctness. As the country has lurched Left under President Bush and now even further under President Obama, we are now seeing ominous legislation making its way through Congress – so-called “hate crimes” legislation – that bodes ill for free speech and also for equality before the law. We are seeing alarming efforts on the Left to “regulate” – in fact, to censor -- radio talk shows, for example, and also the Internet.

I wish I could end on a hopeful note, but my sense is that it will have to get worse in America before it gets better. And how will we know when things are beginning to improve? When Americans, as a people, learn, or re-learn something: that it’s not enough to posess freedoms. We must learn that it’s vital to exercise our freedoms if we want to have any hope of preserving them.

Justice Department Partners with Islamic Supremacists
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)

In its ongoing quest to win the hearts and minds of Muslims in America, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has asked its employees to volunteer to man an information booth at the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) convention in Washington over the July 4 weekend. According to an internal email that Pajamas Media obtained and published, the Division is seeking staff members to “hand out literature and answer basic questions.” This is, says the e-mail, a “unique opportunity.”

And what could be wrong with this? After all, two administrations now have made outreach to Muslim moderates a significant element of their counterterror strategy -- this will, we are told, marginalize the Islamic jihadists who try to portray counterterror efforts as “anti-Islamic.” One of the many problems with this strategy, however, is that State and Justice Department officials, along with the FBI and other agencies, have never shown any great ability to be able to determine reliably who is a genuine moderate Muslim and who isn’t. The influence and access to the highest levels of government that Abdurrahman Alamoudi of the American Muslim Council, now serving a 23-year prison sentence on jihad terror financing charges, is only the most notorious case in point among many instances of misguided contact and cooperation between Islamic supremacists and U.S. government agencies. (HumanEvents)

UK expels Iran diplomats in tit-for-tat protest row-Jenny Booth
Britain is to expel two Iranian diplomats as a tit-for-tat response after Iran forced the same number of British diplomats to leave, Gordon Brown revealed this afternoon. "It is with regret that I should inform the House that Iran yesterday took the unjustified step of expelling two British diplomats over allegations which are absolutely without foundation," Mr Brown told MPs. "In response to that action, we informed the Iranian ambassador today that we would expel two Iranian diplomats from their embassy in London. I am disappointed that Iran has placed us in this position." The Foreign Office revealed that the Iranians had accused the expelled British diplomats of "activities inconsistent with their diplomatic status", which is diplomatic code for spying. It said the allegations were baseless. "We think the Government of Iran is seeking to blame the UK and other outsiders for what is an Iranian reaction to an Iranian issue," said a spokesman. “This has a potential impact on our staff safety and is unacceptable. We have taken the decision to reciprocate.” The latest exchange of hostilities marks a further deterioration in relations between Iran and the West. (Timesonline.co.uk)

State Department Site Features Radical Mosque- IPT News
The State Department web portal www.america.gov continues to whitewash radical Islamists. As we've reported, publications showcasing Muslims in America rely on radical Islamist organizations with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, while ignoring non-Islamist Muslims. Another example is a video, "Eid in America," about a Muslim religious holiday that can be seen here or here. The video depicts the Dar Al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va. as a model of American diversity. It is packed with statements and vignettes portraying congregants as patriots who love everything about the United States. But the video fails to say anything about the longstanding history of connections between the mosque, its leadership and radicalism. On Dar Al Hijrah's website, there are links to the sites of two prominent organizations linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, an 80-year-old religious movement that seeks to make Islamic religious law, or Shariah, the controlling basis for society: The Muslim American Society (MAS) and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). (IPT)

Sarkozy throws weight behind move to ban burqa, saying 'it's a sign of subservience'-Peter Allen
The Islamic burqa is ‘not welcome’ in France and should be banned, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced today. In comments which were set to infuriate radical Muslim leaders, he said the body covering ‘is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience,’ adding: ‘It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.’ A group of 58 MPs from the Left and Right has called on Parliament to take action against women who are adopting what they called oppressive head-to-toe Islamic dress that ‘breaches individual freedoms’. There are more than five million Muslims in the secular French Republic, but everything has been done to prevent showing off their religion in public. In 2004 France banned religious headcover in state schools.
(Dailymail.co.uk)

Muslim prisoners get their own cells after sharing row-IAN GALLAGHER
A prison has agreed to give Muslims their own cells after they complained about sharing with other inmates. They were said to be unhappy at praying and eating near non-Muslims at Birmingham’s Winson Green jail. It is thought to be the first time inmates have been segregated by religion. Prison bosses have decided to place them with other Muslims, or give them single cells when space is available. More than 1,400 inmates, including murderers and robbers, are housed at the jail. So far around 15 Muslim inmates have been accommodated either by being moved to a cell with another Muslim or put on their own,’ said a prison source. ‘They initially asked for their own wing but this was turned down.’ In June 2006, a High Court judge warned that Ministers must find cash to cope with growing prison numbers and called for an end to forced cell sharing. Mr Justice Keith’s concerns were included in his report into the racist murder of Asian prisoner Zahid Mubarek by his cellmate Robert Stewart at Feltham Young Offenders’ Institution in West London. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Islam on the way to legal equality with Christianity in Germany
Calls are growing in Germany for Islam to be granted the same legal status, rights and duties as other recognised religions, with the idea forming the main focus for this week’s Islam Conference. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble of the conservative Christian Democratic Union has said this is his long-term aim, while the Greens this week urged the conference to take concrete steps in that direction. But a number of formalities have to be fulfilled for the German constitution to recognise Islam as an official religious community, including the ability to provide teachers to give children education in state schools about their faith. The Muslim communities in Germany are still a way away from this, Schäuble recently told the Tageszeitung. He said the conference was, “a fair way along the road to reaching the point of being able to offer religion classes at schools to Islamic children. We have developed a more exact understanding together that one can only introduce religion classes in a partnership.” He acknowledged the fact that the state governments have jurisdiction over education, and are far from accepting the idea of putting Islamic religion classes on an equal footing with Catholic and Evangelical classes. But he said: “This process needs time. So, for example, existing associations such as the Islam Council, are religious associations, but not a religious community as far as the constitution is concerned. Religious instruction is needed for that.” (Thelocal.de)

People on terrorist watch list allowed to buy guns-CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- When people on the government's terrorist watch list have tried to buy guns or explosives in recent years, the government has let them the vast majority of the time. That's the finding of a new report by the Government Accountability Office, sent to lawmakers last month and released publicly Monday. From February 2004 to February 2009, 963 background checks using the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System "resulted in valid matches with terrorist watch list records; of these matches, approximately 90 percent were allowed to proceed because the checks revealed no prohibiting information," the GAO report says. About 10 percent were denied. "Under current law, there is no basis to automatically prohibit a person from possessing firearms or explosives because they appear on the terrorist watch list," wrote the GAO's director of homeland security and justice issues, Eileen R. Larence. "Rather, there must be a disqualifying factor (i.e., prohibiting information) pursuant to federal or state law, such as a felony conviction or illegal immigration status." (CNN)

ACLU Recommendations Would Mean ‘More Money for Hamas’-Steve Emerson
The American Civil Liberties Union released a report June 16th (together with a You Tube video) attacking the U.S. government's efforts to shut down terrorist-financing charities. The report was based on 120 interviews, 115 of which were conducted with Muslim community leaders and other Muslims "directly affected by" U.S. government policies regarding the charities. It suggests (contrary to a substantial body of evidence) – that the U.S. government was wrong to have acted against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation and other charities accused of raising money for terrorist organizations. The report also perpetuates the myth that the United States government may be planning to prosecute persons for unwittingly contributing to charities that were fronts for terrorism. The ACLU asserts that post-September 11th policies targeting these charities have a "disproportionate" effect on Muslims and "are undermining American Muslims' protected constitutional liberties and violating their fundamental human rights to freedom of religion, freedom of association, and freedom from discrimination." (Familysecuritymatters)

Tenure and Academic Freedom-Naomi Schaefer Riley
College campuses display a striking uniformity of thought.
All over the country, colleges and universities are feeling the financial crunch: Endowments are down, students can't afford to pay tuition, and some state legislatures are even trimming higher-education budgets. Unfortunately, thanks to the recent ruling of a judge in Colorado, some college administrators have just lost one way to keep their costs under control. In 2003, the board of trustees of the Metropolitan College of Denver -- a public school in Colorado -- changed the school's handbook to make it easier to lay off tenured faculty in case of financial exigency. Under the current system at Metro College and elsewhere, some professors who have been at an institution for a period of about seven years are eligible for a job for life. They can technically be fired for gross misbehavior or incompetence. But once they've been granted tenure, a university is generally stuck with these teachers. And paying the salaries of tenured professors can add up, especially when a professor may no longer be teaching many classes either because of laziness or lack of student interest in his or her field.In response to the handbook change, five Metro College professors sued. They claimed that the terms of their employment had been significantly altered. (WSJ)

Marching Forward-Ashley Thorne
Higher education’s interactions with the military have been a topic of interest for the NAS. Last year we published a special issue of Academic Questions on “arms and the mind.” That issue examined how liberal education is taught in military academies, as well how military history is taught in liberal arts programs. We at NAS believe that all Americans should learn military history in order to better understand the Western heritage and in order to better participate in the civic order of our nation. We also believe that our soldiers should be trained, not only in combat tactics, but also in the highest traditions of scholarship. (NAS)

Robespierre & Co. David Solway
The Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, published in France as a neo-radical philosopher and glittering of late in the constellation of travelling professors on the American university circuit, has announced that “notre tâche aujourd’hui est de réinventer une terreur émancipatrice” (“our task today is to reinvent a liberating terror”), igniting as well as stemming from “la violence populaire” (“the violence of the people”). Robespierre is back, decked out in gown and mortarboard.For Zizek, as Adam Hirsch points out in The New Republic (December 3, 2008), the WTC nineteen who incinerated 3000 people were actually victims of global capitalism, and therefore members in good standing of the international Left and heroes of our time. Thus, judging from Zizek’s recent statements and especially from his introduction to his latest sortie, Robespierre: entre virtu et terreur, written, by his rather intermittent lights, to further the cause of liberty, equality and fraternity, his fascination with Robespierre should come as no surprise. Indeed, the “peace-loving” Left, which sees itself as the representative of the hidden will of the people and the herald of an equitable future for all, clearly has a powerful Robespierrean element in its make-up. As German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, Zizek’s sane antithesis, explains in Terror from the Air, “In the cultural domain ‘revolution’ is a code word for ‘legitimate’ violence.” (Frontpagemagazine)

Media Bias

Our World: The Obama effect-Caroline Glick
"Could there be something to all the talk of an Obama effect, after all? A stealth effect, perhaps?" So asked Helene Cooper, the New York Times' diplomatic correspondent in a news analysis of the massive anti-regime protests in Iran published in Sunday's Times. It took US President Barack Obama eight days to issue a clear statement of support for the millions of pro-freedom demonstrators throughout Iran risking their lives to oppose the tyranny of the mullahs. And after eight days of vacillating and hedging his bets and so effectively supporting Iranian dictator Ali Khamenei against the multitudes rallying in the streets, Obama's much awaited statement was not particularly forceful. He offered no American support of any kind for the protesters. Indeed, it is hard to say that in making his statement, the American president was speaking primarily as an American. He warned the likes of Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose goons are currently under orders to beat, arrest and murder protesters, that "the world is watching... If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion."According to several prominent Western bloggers with direct ties to the protesters, Obama's statement left the Iranians underwhelmed and angry. (Jerusalempost)

Death Knell for 'Mainstream' Journalism- Gary Larson
Pulitzer Prize-winning critic James Agee (1909-1955) observed long ago that journalism is "complacent to its own delusion ... that it is telling the truth." This statement is truer than ever today -- particularly among print dailies. Print journalism today stands at a bloody crossroads. Those who practice it must come to grips with certain realities, such as the declines in readership and circulation, and the reporters' tendencies to espouse personal agendas or to show slavish favoritism to their ideological pals. Some wags might say, "Good riddance." But the loss of our daily newspapers plainly sucks. It leaves a hole in how and where we get our news, however mangled or tainted that news might be. Mine is a crackpot theory, I believe that the prime function of journalism is to inform the public impartially without fear or favor. Color me naive. Journalists have not come around to recognize the question raised by novelist and critic James Agee in his landmark Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941): "Why is it that, written, facts lose so much of their force, and reality? Partly the writers' doing: as part-artist he [sic] feels the strength of need to select and then, to invent. Also, he is not aware that the truth is more important than any petty lie he may tell..." Agee, who was also a journalist, decried journalism's "temptation to invent." Words can "be made to do or tell anything within human conceit," he wrote. Words were always bedeviled in two "centrally important and inescapable ways": (AmericanThinker)

Revisiting ‘Al Durah’ in Time of Iranian Media Control-Richard Landes
The startling footage of Neda, the 27-year-old woman shot to death in the streets of Tehran recently, has [1] reminded some of the image of 12-year-old Muhammad al Durah: The footage of a Palestinian man [sic] being shot dead [sic] next to his 12-year-old son, Muhammad Jamal al-Durrah, by Israeli forces in Gaza in 2000 has been etched in the minds of many Iranians, as state television has continually replayed the images to highlight the “Zionist regime’s brutality.” Now, the Islamic regime itself has become the subject of similar allegations at home and abroad after gruesome footage of a dying young woman during the suppression of an opposition protest on Saturday was released on the internet. The image of Neda Salehi Agha-Soltan, a 27-year-old philosophy student, bleeding to death on the asphalt road of a Tehran street after she was shot in the chest, has become the rallying cry of the country’s opposition, which is disputing the June 12 election of Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad. Only al Durah wasn’t killed — not by Israeli soldiers, probably not by anyone, and certainly not “on TV.” (Pajamasmedia)

Iran's Web Spying Aided By Western Technology-CHRISTOPHER RHOADS in New York and LORETTA CHAO in Beijing
European Gear Used in Vast Effort to Monitor Communications. The Iranian regime has developed, with the assistance of European telecommunications companies, one of the world's most sophisticated mechanisms for controlling and censoring the Internet, allowing it to examine the content of individual online communications on a massive scale. Interviews with technology experts in Iran and outside the country say Iranian efforts at monitoring Internet information go well beyond blocking access to Web sites or severing Internet connections. Instead, in confronting the political turmoil that has consumed the country this past week, the Iranian government appears to be engaging in a practice often called deep packet inspection, which enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes, according to these experts. (WSJ)

Why I, as a British Muslim woman, want the burkha banned from our streets- Saira Khan
Shopping in Harrods last week, I came across a group of women wearing black burkhas, browsing the latest designs in the fashion department. The irony of the situation was almost laughable. Here was a group of affluent women window shopping for designs that they would never once be able to wear in public. Yet it's a sight that's becoming more and more commonplace. In hardline Muslim communities right across Britain, the burkha and hijab - the Muslim headscarf - are becoming the norm. In the predominantly Muslim enclaves of Derby near my childhood home, you now see women hidden behind the full-length robe, their faces completely shielded from view. In London, I see an increasing number of young girls, aged four and five, being made to wear the hijab to school. Shockingly, the Dickensian bone disease rickets has reemerged in the British Muslim community because women are not getting enough vital vitamin D from sunlight because they are being consigned to life under a shroud. Thanks to fundamentalist Muslims and 'hate' preachers working in Britain, the veiling of women is suddenly all-pervasive and promoted as a basic religious right. We are led to believe that we must live with this in the name of 'tolerance'. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Why Iran's Women Are Rioting-Deborah Weiss
The current uprising in Iran is not merely about a fraudulent election. The simmering masses of Iran are restless for the freedom and prosperity they once enjoyed, before being straitened for decades by the strictures of religious fanaticism. The people have seized upon this election fraud to push for greater openness and such forgotten notions as women’s rights. Nothing better illustrates the awful injustices Iranian women face than a soon-to-be released film, The Stoning of Soraya M. The film tells the grisly true story of an innocent woman who was stoned to death in Iran on charges of adultery. The events – which are described in flashback by the title character’s aunt, Zahra – take place in 1986, in the rural village of Kupayeh. Zahra recounts how years earlier her niece Soraya entered a marriage that had been arranged by her parents. She was 14 and her husband, Ali, was 20. Together they had four children, two boys and two girls. Ali was emotionally and physically abusive to his obedient wife, physically beating Soraya and openly cavorting with prostitutes. (Frontpagemagazine)

American Jews Still Refuse to See the Light on Obama Rich Baehr
Two recent public opinion surveys released in Israel and the United States demonstrate that the campaign by President Obama and members of his diplomatic team to criticize and isolate Israel over the issue of settlements in the West Bank is having an impact in both countries. In Israel, a survey sponsored by the Jerusalem Post revealed a stunning result: just [1] 6% of Israeli Jews now regard the U.S. president as pro-Israel. Another 86% regard Obama as either pro-Palestinian (50%) or neutral between the two parties (36%). No American president has ever been viewed in Israel this way, and it has taken but five months for the Israelis to come to understand the new reality in U.S.-Israeli relations — that the special relationship and friendship between the two countries has ended, at least at the level of the U.S. president and his administration. A second survey conducted by the Israel Project to measure support for Israel or the Palestinians in the United States indicates that the withering criticism of Israel by the new administration has taken a toll on support for Israel in the U.S. In five months, support for Israel [2] has dropped from 57% to 49%.
(Pajamasmedia)

WIESENTHAL CENTER RELEASES “FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE+: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS IMPACT DIGITAL TERRORISM AND HATE” –ANNUAL REPORT DETAILING HATE ON THE INTERNET
Facebook VP debates anti-hate activist over question of hate speech as free speech at event
The recent arrests in the tragic murders of Stephen Tyrone Jones at the U.S. Holocaust Museum and Dr. George Tiller at his Kansas church uncovered more evidence of how viral hate online incubates, empowers and emboldens violent bigots. With over one and a half billion users (almost one quarter of the world’s population), the Internet is the prime means of communication and marketing in the world. The Internet’s unprecedented global reach and scope combined with the difficulty in monitoring and tracing communications make it the prime tool for extremists and terrorists. The Simon Wiesenthal Center has been monitoring these developments for over a decade through its Digital Terrorism and Hate Project. At a Museum of Tolerance event, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center Rick Eaton, the Center’s Senior Researcher, along with Elliot Schrage of Facebook and community activist Brian Cuban, grappled with the findings of the Center's new Facebook, YouTube +: How Social Media Outlets Impact Digital Terrorism and Hate. The findings of the report, based on some 10,000 problematic websites, blogs and other Internet postings was presented before a group of law enforcement recruits and inner city high school students which illustrated that as the Internet continues to grow, extremists have kept apace in leveraging the dynamic new social networking services to find validation for their hateful agendas and seek recruits for their causes. Sites such as Facebook® and YouTube® have both seen a huge proliferation of extremist use with the greatest increase coming from overseas, particularly Europe and the Middle East. (SimonWiesenthalCenter)

Has Obama Betrayed Israel? Two Journalists Weigh In on the Issue - Ron Radosh
In today’s New York Post , TNR Assistant Editor James Kirchick has [1] written a truly brilliant article on how Barack Obama is betraying Israel. This is a harsh assessment, and Kirchick backs up his analysis with an array of facts. Obama’s policies, he points out, are distinctly different from those he promised during the campaign. Kirchick writes:
Just six months into the new administration…it is becoming increasingly clear that those who harbored suspicions about Obama’s approach to the Middle East had good reason to be worried. A confluence of factors- including his administration’s undue pressure on Israel, a conciliatory approach to authoritarian Muslim regimes, and the baseless linkage of the failed ‘peace process’ to the curtailment of the Iranian nuclear program- point to what could become ‘the greatest disagreement between the two countries in the history of their relationship,’ as Middle East expert Robert Satloff recently told Newsweek. The key to the new tilt against Israel is, Kirchick rightfully argues, the decision to make an end to Israeli settlement activity, even normal growth of existing settlements that would after a final peace remain in Israeli territory, the centerpiece of administration policy. He notes that in Obama’s Cairo speech, Israel was the sole country that Obama singled out for direct criticism. Ignored totally were various of what he calls the “degradations and injustices in the Middle East” from various Arab nations. Instead, Obama mentioned only America’s key democratic ally in the region, and only to rebuke it. (Pajamasmedia)

Hunting the Taliban in the footsteps of Winston Churchill: On lawless battlefields nothing has changed in a century- DAVID ROSE IN PAKISTAN
Along the high street in Kumbar Bazaar, normally a bustling market town, every shop has either been smashed by shells and missiles or sealed with steel shutters. The only sounds carried on the hot morning air are birdsong and the soft, throaty clatter of the engines idling in the tanks guarding our rear. A forlorn cow, its ribs jutting, picks its way through the debris. I turn to Major Zafar, the young Pakistani officer showing us round. 'What is happening to the animals, now their owners have fled?' He smiles ruefully and shrugs: 'Nothing. They are free.' Last week, photographer Alixandra Fazzina and I became the first British journalists to be given sustained access to some of the battlefields in Pakistan's war on Islamist militancy, a rapidly burgeoning confrontation that has already displaced millions and engulfed large swathes of the Northwest Frontier Province. But we weren't the first to cover a conflict against jihadists trying to overthrow a government in this region. Among our predecessors was an Army captain turned reporter who came this way in 1897: the future Prime Minister Winston Spencer Churchill, then aged 23. That summer the frontier tribes were inspired by radical mullahs to drive out the British. When the revolt started, Churchill was on leave in England from his regiment, which was based 2,000 miles from the front in Bangalore, south India. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Iranian Forces Attacking Protesters Are Terrorist Leaders Abroad-Fox News
From its support of designated terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to its backing of the Iraqi insurgency, Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has a formidable record of planning, supporting and funding terror in the Middle East.
Iran's violent crackdown against demonstrators in Tehran is only the latest exploit from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that has helped the country earn its U.S.-designated label as the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism. From its support of designated terror groups like Hezbollah and Hamas to its backing of the Iraqi insurgency, the IGRC has a formidable record of planning, supporting and funding terrorist groups in the Middle East. The U.S. State Department added the IGRC to its list of foreign terrorist organizations last year. In April 2009, the department released its annual Country Reports on Terrorism assessment concluding that "Iran remained the most significant state sponsor of terrorism" in the world. The Quds force, an elite branch of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps was identified as the main channel through which the regime supports terrorist groups abroad, according to the United States. The report found that the Quds Force gave "weapons, training and funding" to Hamas and Hezbollah as well as Iraq insurgents and Taliban in Afghanistan. It also concluded that the secretive military branch trained the Taliban "on small unit tactics, small arms, explosives, and indirect fire weapons." (Foxnews)

Exclusive: Meet the True Father of the Islamic Revolution – Jimmy Carter-Paul L. Williams, Ph.D.
“A man can have sex with animals such as sheep, cows, camels, and so on. However, he should kill the animal after orgasm. He should not sell the meat to the people in the village; however, the selling of meat to people in a neighboring village is permissible.” – Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Jimmy Carter has devolved from being America’s worst president to being America’s worst ex-president.
Last week, Carter met with the Hamas government that gained control of Gaza two years ago, after the Palestinian Authority’s forces were routed not only by popular vote bust also by bloody factional struggle. Jimmy declared that Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) should be recognized as the proper governing authority in Gaza and should not be viewed as a terror organization. Few, however, are screaming, despite the fact that Hamas is one of the world’s leading Islamic Jihadi groups. Hamas is an organization that remains responsible for scores of suicide attacks against Israeli civilians (including the 2002 Passover suicide bombing); that supports the World Islamic Statement (the declaration of war against the United States as issued by Osama bin Laden in 1998; that disseminates hate literature to Muslim children throughout the Middle East; and that prays for Allah to transform Jews into “apes, pigs, mice, and lizards.” (Familysecuritymatters)

The Iran Crisis Moves Closer To Home-Melanie Phillips
There is chatter in some quarters that the Iranian ‘green revolution' may be petering out. Well, it depends whom you’re reading. The Iran expert Michael Ledeen says he has no idea what’s going to happen. But there are signs that the regime is preparing for an all-out assault; and that they are panicking and the ayatollahs are at odds amongst themselves; and that, most interestingly of all, this: ...that there are cracks in the regime’s edifice, ranging from declarations of small groups of Revolutionary Guards calling on their brothers to defect to “the people,” to a phenomenon that is just beginning to be discussed here and there, mostly on the Net but originally in an Arab newspaper. Steve Schippert posted on it and did a first-class analysis. Steve starts with a report from al Arabiya that says senior ayatollahs have been meeting secretly in Qom to discuss significant changes in the structure of the Iranian state. In addition to the Iranian clerics, there was a foreigner: Jawad al-Shahristani, the supreme representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the foremost Shiite leader in Iraq. If this is true, it is, as Steve says, huge. Because it means that senior religious leaders in Iran are talking to the representative of an Iraqi Imam who believes, as most Shi’ites did before Khomeini’s heresy, that the proper role of religious leaders is to guide their people from the mosque, not from the political capital. In other words, they are talking about the most serious form of regime change. (Spectator.co.uk)

The Race To Stop Iran Getting The Bomb Is What Counts-James Forsyth
The scenes from Tehran have been inspiring and show that democracy is changing the shape of the Middle East, says James Forsyth. But the immediate decision facing President Obama is what to do about Iran’s fast-moving nuclear programme
It was what the West had long dreamed of seeing in Iran. The largest rally in Tehran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 was not demanding death to America but respect for the democratic process. Those who have long claimed that the Iranian people are the greatest threat to the theocrats of Tehran appeared to have been proved right as hundreds of thousands marched against the status quo. The much-talked-about liberalism of Iran’s youthful urban population was making itself shown. The regime clearly realised that it was in trouble once it saw the sheer numbers that the opposition had mobilised. There was, tellingly, no attempt to seek a full-on confrontation with the demonstrators. although the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei hailed Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s suspiciously large victory over Mir Hossein Mousavi as ‘blessed’ at the weekend (perhaps divine assistance explains how tens of millions of ballots could be counted in minutes), the regime was forced by the protests into launching an inquiry into the election on Monday and then a partial recount on Tuesday. The opposition, however, is still holding out for a fresh vote. (Spectator.co.uk)

Missile Defense Misjudgment-Frank Gaffney, Jr.
What on earth are they thinking? The Obama administration and its Democratic allies on Capitol Hill are significantly reducing America's missile defense programs at the very moment when the need for such systems is becoming ever more palpable. It is hard to believe - especially in the wake of the President's much-ridiculed decision to close Guantanamo Bay without a better plan for safely incarcerating its dangerous detainees - that either the Chief Executive or legislators really want to impale themselves on another national security decision that defies common sense. The issue will be joined this week when the House of Representatives debates a GOP-sponsored amendment to the defense authorization bill that would restore funding for anti-missile systems cut or terminated by Team Obama and the majority on the House Armed Services Committee. The backdrop will be reported preparations by North Korea to launch a ballistic missile in the direction of Hawaii, possibly on the Fourth of July. In the face of this emerging threat to one of America's fifty states, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has, to his credit, announced that he is moving missile defenses into place to protect our countrymen in Hawaii. Yet, at the same time, he and President Obama are insisting that we can safely do without fourteen more long-range missile interceptors, a second airborne laser and various other enhancements to our relatively rudimentary anti-missile deployments. (Familysecuritymatters)

Hizb ut-Tahrir America Launches Web Site to Promote July Conference-Madeleine Gruen
Hizb ut-Tahrir America (HTA) has a launched a Web Site to promote its July 19th, 2009 Khilafah Conference in Bridgeview, Illinois.
The site provides an agenda for the conference, but does not provide a list of invited speakers or any contact information for the organizers. The well-designed site indicates that HTA is taking steps to create an impression with the public and with its target audience that it is a solidly established institution. Most likely, HTA's membership and support base in the United States numbers only in the hundreds. Due to the fact that HTA's operations have been largely clandestine until now, it has been difficult to determine the size of its ranks. However, several known members have status and influence in universities and in their communities. For more information about HTA's activities in the United States, and their recent transition to the public phase of operations, please see my recent post on the CTB. (Counterterrorismblog)

Korean Cargo-Ship Conundrum-Peter Brookes
Hardly a week seems to go by without North Korean leader Kim Jong Il deciding to once again chest-thump President Obama in an increasingly dangerous game of school-yard bullying. US planes and spy satellites are now monitoring the movements of a ship that looks to be the latest provocation. In just the last month, we've seen Pyongyang conduct a nuclear test, threaten war, sentence two US journalists to prison camp and promise another long-range missile test, this time toward Hawaii. But the latest nose-tweak, according to press accounts, centers on a North Korean cargo ship now at sea with a suspected load of contraband in defiance of a week-old UN resolution, which, among other matters, prohibits Pyongyang's arms exports. Kang Nam, the North Korean-flagged ship, could be carrying components or materials for ballistic missiles, nuclear or chemical weapons -- even conventional arms. Some assert it's been involved in proliferation activity before. Of course, Kim's regime has already transferred ballistic missiles to Pakistan, Iran and Libya and was infamously building a nuclear reactor in Syria before Israel destroyed it in 2007. This cargo isn't likely helpful to international security (or US interests), either. (Familysecuritymatters)

Fading of the Dollar's Dominance-Anthony Faiola
Other Nations See Opening to Boost Their Currencies
The days of calling the dollar almighty may be numbered.
Since World War II, when the dollar eclipsed the British pound as the king of world currencies, the United States has reaped the rewards of its monetary strength. The greenback's sense of indestructibility allowed the U.S. government to borrow cheaply and gave rise to an era of rich American globetrotters toting the world's most easily convertible form of cash. But the financial crisis that started in the United States is dramatically intensifying the debate over the future of the dollar, and whether it can, or should, remain at the top of the financial food chain. Although a meaningful shift away from the dollar is likely to take years or more, some analysts believe that the debate is now reaching a tipping point. Last week, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China -- whose governments are some of the world's largest dollar holders -- jointly declared the need for a "more diversified international monetary system," sparking a drop in the greenback on world markets. In recent months, China in particular has led a campaign for a new world monetary order, arguing that the financial crisis has exposed profound vulnerabilities in the U.S. economy and financial system. Those flaws, critics argue, show it is simply too risky for the world's central banks to rely largely on the dollar for their global reserves. (Washingtonpost)

After Global Warming- Larrey Anderson
Science and ideology don't mix. They never have and they never will. The house of cards that is the science behind "climate change" is collapsing at exactly the same time it is being imposed by the Obama administration and Congress as an ideological "truth." America is facing the perfect storm of an imploding scientific theory that will be enforced by the rule of law. Make no mistake: the big bad wolf of truth is about to blow the straw house of global warming to bits. This is why there was a sudden shift, in the last nine months, from the use of "man made global warming" to "climate change" by the proponents of the theory. The scientific tug of war over whether or not the planet is heating or cooling has been going on for over 100 years. The difference between the past and our current situation is that governments around the world are passing (or attempting to pass) draconian laws and enforcing (or attempting to enforce) authoritarian treaties in order to "regulate" the planet's temperature.The predictions of impending doom are nothing new. Business and Media Institute published an article titled "Fire and Ice" that details the media's historical treatment of the debate. (Americanthinker)

MIT’s Unscientific, Catastrophic Climate Forecast -by Kesten C. Green and J. Scott Armstrong
The MIT Modellers Violated 49 Principles of Forecasting
When we drive on a long bridge over a river or fly in a passenger aircraft, we expect the bridge and the plane to have been designed and built in ways that are consistent with proven scientific principles. Should we expect similar standards to apply to forecasts that are intended to help policymakers make important decisions that will affect people’s jobs and even their lives? Of course we should. Such standards exist. But are they being followed? The Financial Post asked us to look at a report last month from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, titled “Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate based on uncertainties in emissions (without policy) and climate parameters.” The MIT report authors predicted that, without massive government action, global warming could be twice as severe as previously forecast, and more severe than the official projections of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The MIT authors said their report is based in part on 400 runs of a computer model of the global climate and economic activity.
While the MIT group espouses lofty-sounding objectives to provide leadership with “independent policy analysis and public education in global environmental change,” we found their procedures inconsistent with important forecasting principles. No more than 30% of forecasting principles were properly applied by the MIT modellers and 49 principles were violated. For an important problem such as this, we do not think it is defensible to violate a single principle. (Scienceandpublicpolicy)

Polar Bears are not dying out, say scientists in book on popular 'scare stories'-Chris Irvine
Polar bears are not dying out and Turkey Twizzlers are fine, according to a new book from scientists wishing to challenge science "scare stories"
It is widely thought that the polar ice caps will melt, causing sea levels to rise, resulting in the loss of cities along the coast, as well as a the majority of polar bears. And if global warming does not kill us, then obesity or heart disease will thanks to an addiction to junk food and salt. But a new book, compiled by Stanley Feldman, a professor of anaesthetics at London University, and Vincent Marks, a former professor of clinical biochemistry and dean of medicine at the University of Surrey, are questioning the end of the world and healthy eating tips. Writing in The Daily Mail, the pair discuss Global Warming And Other --------: The Truth About All Those Science Scare Stories, where they examine the "facts" behind global warming, the future of polar bears and chef Jamie Oliver's nemesis, Turkey Twizzlers.
The Sun is behind Global Warming. Rather than man-made CO2 being responsible for global warming, they argue that there is evidence it is caused in part by the increase in the intensity of the Sun's heat. CO2 levels
Although the level of CO2 is higher than the "pre-industrial" level – today it is about 0.038 per cent of the atmosphere, compared to 0.02 per cent, carbon dioxide levels have often been as much as 10 times higher than they are today. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Tech Watch: Local solar-energy firms' technologies shine brightly-MATTHEW KRIEGER
The recent ILSI Biomed Conference generated a significant amount of news coverage in the local press, focusing on the accomplishments of the Israeli life-sciences industry: on the technology side, with the rollout of the Technion's amazing ViRob robot, and on the political side, as the Chief Scientist's Office announced the allocation of funds for the first half of the year. While this has been going on, there has also been a great deal of quiet activity coming out of Israel's renewable-energy industry. TechWatch takes a closer look at some of the most important announcements. Earlier this month, Ra'anana-based Sunday Energy, the leading solar-energy service provider in Israel, and Ormat Technologies, one of the world's largest geothermal-power solutions companies, announced the signing of an agreement to build a 1 megawatt peak (MWp) photovoltaic solar installation on the roof of Ormat's factory in Yavne. Once complete, the 16,000-square-meter installation will be the largest PV roof in the Middle East. It will generate an estimated NIS 60 million from solar-energy sales over the next 20 years. The project will cost approximately NIS 20m. to construct and is expected to be completed by the first half of 2010. Sunday and Ormat will cooperate on all phases of the project, including the planning, licensing, equipment purchasing, installation and connection to the electricity grid. The agreement stipulates that the companies will share responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the system for 20 years. The project will be completed in phases, with the first 50 kilowatt peak (kWp) stage already under development. (Jpost)

A Mensch for All Seasons- RUTH R. WISSE
"Now let's talk about something more cheerful. What's up with the cholera epidemic in Odessa?" This season marks 150 years since the birth of Sholem Aleichem, whose appeal to "something more cheerful" made him the most popular Yiddish writer at a time when more Jews spoke Yiddish than any other language. Known to modern audiences mostly through "Fiddler on the Roof" -- the Americanized musical adaptation of his stories of Tevye the Dairyman -- Sholem Aleichem cast the Jews as a people who would live through laughter -- or die trying. He was born Sholem Rabinovitch in 1859 in the Ukrainian Jewish town of Pereyaslav, a middle child of a large family that doubled in size after his mother died and his father married the proverbial wicked stepmother. His first stab at turning hurt into humor was an alphabetized collection of her curses. Recognizing young Sholem's talents, his father tried to give him a good general as well as a Jewish education. But he was forced to send his son out into the world at age 16 to seek his fortune. With penmanship as his only marketable skill, the young man got a lucky break when he was hired by a Jewish landowner looking for both a personal secretary and a tutor for his only daughter. Sholem's storybook romance with his student, Olga, in defiance of her father's wishes, became the plot of his first attempt at romantic fiction. (WSJ)

Woodstock’s 40th: we wanted to change the world-Stephen Dalton
The world’s most famous rock festival happened almost by accident, a chaotic love-in in the dark days of Vietnam.
Forty years on Woodstock is still dividing opinion. Pete Townshend recently described The Who’s performance at this epoch-making hippy festival in 1969 as “the most important single concert that we ever did”. But Roger Daltrey’s verdict is harsher: “The worst gig we ever played.” Billed as “three days of peace and music”, Woodstock took place on a hot midAugust weekend on rolling farmland in upstate New York. Half a million rock fans, freaks and hippies converged on the sleepy town of Bethel, jamming traffic for miles and overwhelming the organisers. On Friday afternoon they trampled the fences, turning Woodstock into a free festival. Consequently, it also became a notorious financial disaster. But Woodstock’s idyllic reputation was sealed for ever by a best-selling soundtrack album and Michael Wadleigh’s Oscar-winning documentary. Both became huge hits, saving Warner Brothers from bankruptcy. Released on DVD and Blu-ray, the digitally remastered 40th anniversary edition of Wadleigh’s film offers a fantastic journey through Woodstock. It features classic sets from The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker, Joan Baez, Santana and more — including two extra hours of previously unseen archive performances. (Timesonline.co.uk)

The Accused-John Jurgensen
A controversial new film looks at the treatment of women in Iran
“The Stoning of Soraya M.” is as blunt as the rocks hurled in the execution of its title. The independent film, set in an Iranian village in the late 1980s, tells the story of a woman falsely accused of adultery, then put to death according to religious laws enacted after the country’s Islamic revolution. A grisly climax helped doom the film’s chances for traditional distribution in the U.S., but the filmmakers say it was essential to call attention to the horror of stoning, which still occurs in Iran and some other Muslim countries, according to human-rights groups. “A movie like this needs to be absolutely uncompromising in its approach. The subject demands it,” says director Cyrus Nowrasteh, who was born in Colorado to Iranian parents. He has tackled sensitive topics in his previous work, such as the ABC miniseries “The Path to 9/11,” which he wrote and produced.But some human-rights advocates call the film inaccurate and sensationalistic. “It presents Iranians as barbaric, bloodthirsty savages,” says the Iran country specialist for Amnesty International USA, Elise Auerbach, who saw the movie at an advance screening. At least six stonings (five men and one woman) have occurred in Iran since 2002, Amnesty reports, and they were carried out by government agents, not in public. Meanwhile, the most aggressive efforts to end stoning are being led by Iranians themselves, Ms. Auerbach says. Without that context, she argues, the movie has “the appearance of being agitprop, stirring up fear that people in the West already have about Iranians.” In response, Mr. Nowrasteh says, “Stoning is in the written law of Iran. As long as it exists in the penal code in Iran, something needs to be done about it.” (WSJ)