Editor and Researcher Elisa Vandernoot

American Freedom Alliance Weekly Gazette

THE WEEK AT A GLANCE

This Week's Editorial

The Press and “Matters of Public Interest”
By Avi Davis

Give the New York Times at least a little credit for editorial discretion.

Last week, in a note to its readers accompanying the release of the first installment of nearly 90,000 classified documents, it claimed that it had ” taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests.”

Well thank goodness we have the editorial board of the New York Times around to make critical judgements on issues of  national security for us.

By now everyone knows that the paper, alongside seven other international newspapers, was the recipent of documents from the website known as WikiLeaks, which specializes in obtaining classified information that the government does not want made public.  The documents in this case  offer information about the U.S. war in Afghanistan which purportedly illuminate the U.S. government’s  military planning and decision making processes over a five year period between 2005-09.

The New York Times justified the release of the documents by asserting that  ” There are times when the information is of significant public interest,  and this is one of those times.”

By what authority does the paper gauge “matters of public interest? ”

And who, I wonder, made the editorial board of the New York Times the arbiter of what is or what is not in the ambit of this country’s national security interests?

Those are questions the News York Times and other national newspapers rarely answer with any precision,  if at all.  Rather, their conduct over the past decade has demonstrated a wilful contempt of government’s stated view of national security interests, together with the repeated failure to accede to the demands of successive administrations to keep national security materials well under wraps.

On December 16, 2005, Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, experienced  investigative reporters at the Times, blew open the NSA wiretapping scheme, under the same justification of public interest.   They followed that performance with  a report on June 23, 2006  focusing on the disclosure of the government’s SWIFT program -  an international effort, led by the United States, designed to monitor the financial transactions of terrorist organizations. 

But things are not always as they seem at the New York Times.

As to the first incident, commentator Gabriel Schoenfeld in Necessary Secrets: National Security, The Media and the Rule of Law ably demonstrates that it was neither “matters of public interest”  nor concerns for individual privacy that stood as the prime motivations for the Times to publish Lichtblau and Blau’s original story.  It was, rather, a determination not to be scooped by its own reporters who were both writing books at the time on the Bush Administration’s anti-terror campaign.  The eventual publication of those books  – Lichtblau’s Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice  and Risen’s State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration  soon revealed not a balanced examination of the efficacy of the Bush Administration’s counter terrorism campaign but a vitriolic contempt for the Bush Administration itself and a ruthless demonization – and throughly prejudiced – attack on its counter-terrorism measures. It cast into significant doubt the the true reasons for the exposure of the scheme.

As for the SWIFT program revelations, no legitimate reason was ever offered by the New York Times for the necessity in disclosing the program. In fact in a letter to readers the paper’s editor, Bill Keller, admitted that ” no serious abuses of privacy had been identified.” Rather, he stated, the article’s publication was a means of protecting the public against only potential violations by the Bush Administration:

  ” We remain convinced,”  he wrote, ” that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest “

In other words, the editor of the foremost and arguably the most influential newspaper in the country, believes that it is incumbent on journalists such as himself to determine ” matters of public interest ” that could have a  potential  bearing on the security of U.S.citizens.

But who elected or appointed such men to make those kind of decisions for us?   Who gave sanction to these self appointed tribunes to wrest from our elected leaders and our military personnel ( men and women, after all, in whom we repose our trust and confidence by fiat, to protect us) the authority to pass judgement on vital issues of national security? 

The answer, of course,  is no one.   The press simply deigns to itself such a right, even if the U.S. Constitution (through the First Amendment)  remains silent on the issue and abundant legislation ( including the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Comint Act of 1950 – both of which have sections which expressly focus on the published disclosure of classified  information)  and more than 200 years of court decisions have repeatedly curtailed the release of documents which the government regards as having a bearing on public safety.

Such editorial presumption was illustrated by Keller in his June 23, 2006 letter:

” And yet the people who invented this country saw an aggressive, independent press as a protective measure against the abuse of power in a democracy and an essential ingredient for self-government. They rejected the idea that it is wise, or patriotic, to always take the President at his word, or to surrender to the government important decisions about what to publish.”

He is certainly not alone in considering the enshrined principle of freedom of the press as a blank check given to an unelected body of self appointed potentates to pass judgement on what is and what is not safe for us to know.

On June 27, 2006, Dan Baquet, the then editor of the Los Angeles Times, in justifying his own paper’s publication of the SWIFT program’s details, offered this rather revealing window on press arrogance:

” We (also) have an obligation to cover the government, with its tremendous power, and to offer information about its activities so citizens can make their own decisions. That’s the role of the press in our democracy. The founders of the nation actually gave us that role, and instructed us to follow it, no matter the cost.”

No matter the cost?   I wonder if  Baquet had actually read the debates  on the  drafting of the First Amendment?  He might be surprised to learn that the  recorded discussion in the House of Representatives in 1789 on Madison’s first draft of the Amendment  is rather unhelpful in gauging the ’ Founders intentions’ and that there is no recorded debate at all on the issue in the Senate.   I wonder if he has read the vast body of jurisprudence since that time which makes it clear that there are absolute limits on the press’ supposed right to disclose classified materials to the public – particularly during war time.

What he might discover is that there is certainly no fundamental right to reveal everything there is to know about the workings of counter-espionage and counter-terrorism in this country - even where it concerns protecting against the potential  for the abuse of privacy rights.

If the press wants to claim that its right to virtually legislate on national security issues is absolute, then surely the public has a similar right to demand from it the exact standards and policies by which it seeks to frame these decisions.  It is simply not enough for editors such as Keller and Baquet to claim arbitrary authority.   If the United States Congress and our judiciary have spent 220 years debating First Amendment rights, then why isn’t it appropriate for our self appointed  fourth tier of government to be doing exactly the same thing? 

Maybe it is time for the press to examine, within itself and together with its reading public, the exact framework for the publication of classified documents whose disclosure could mean life or death for thousands of U.S. citizens.

Only then will we have a much more exact understanding of what the press actually means when it claims that it is taking action in ” matters of public interest “ and will be held accountable when it abuses its own standards.  And perhaps then American citizens, in whose service the press claims to be acting, will find a way to let our newspapermen know whether it considers those standards to be either admirably sustainable or else sadly deficient.

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 and the Los Angeles Jewish Journal Blog  On The Other Hand.

NEWS: EUROPE AND AMERICA

White House backed release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi-Jason Allardyce and Tony Allen-Mills
THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.
Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison. The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer. The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release. Scottish ministers viewed the level of US resistance to compassionate release as "half-hearted" and a sign it would be accepted. The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future "frank and open communications" with other governments. In the letter, sent on August 12 last year to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and justice officials, Mr LeBaron wrote that the US wanted Megrahi to remain imprisoned in view of the nature of the crime. The note added: "Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose." (Theaustralian)

Pregnant British mother guilty of U.S. terror charges after drawing up hit list of 'enemies of Islam'-David Gardner
A pregnant British mother has been convicted in the U.S. of lying to the FBI about drawing up a hit-list of possible terrorist targets. The intelligence agency alleged that Nadia Rockwood, 36, along with her husband, compiled a list of 15 Americans who they believed were enemies of Islam. The couple pleaded guilty to charges of lying to investigators and making false statements about domestic terrorism when they appeared in court in Anchorage, Alaska. Under a plea bargain deal, Muslim convert Paul Rockwood, 35, who worked for the U.S. Weather Service, will get eight years behind bars, the maximum allowed. His wife will be allowed to come back to the UK to serve five years of probation. She was reportedly planning to return to live near her mother in England when the couple were arrested. The alleged targets were not named in court, but none of them lived in Alaska. Nadia, who is five months pregnant and has a four-year-old son, was brought up as a strict Roman Catholic in Harrow, North London and attended the Italia Conti performing arts school, where she studied ballet and jazz. She worked as a professional dancer before moving to Japan to work as a bridal model, where she met Paul, who was then with the U.S. Navy. The relationship caused furious arguments back home with her and her parents, Samuel and Piri Hawes. Last night they revealed that Paul had converted to Islam after 9/11 in order to try to control a serious drink problem. Mr Hawes, a 67-year-old engineer, said he had spent years arguing with Paul about religion and had received threatening emails recently from his son-in-law after a row about Islam. 'I'm against any form of terrorism, especially in the name of religion,' he said. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Canada joins crackdown on radical Muslim cleric-Stewart Bell
The RCMP’s senior counterterrorism officer singled out radical preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki yesterday as a common thread among young Canadian extremists. Assistant Commissioner Gilles Michaud said Awlaki, a Yemeni-American terrorist leader, had been popping up during investigations of “the individuals that are of concern to us.” “He’s a major, major factor in radicalization,” Ass. Comm. Michaud, head of the RCMP’s National Security Criminal Investigations section, told the National Post in an interview. “This individual, basically he’s born in the U.S., so he knows the Western culture and whatnot, he knows the words to use and how to get to the young people.” The RCMP have been investigating radicalized Canadians who have travelled to such countries as Somalia and Pakistan for terrorist training. His comments came a day after the Canadian government ordered financial institutions to look for property linked to Awlaki and, if they find any, to seize it and report it to the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). (Nationalpost)

British girls undergo horror of genital mutilation despite tough laws-Tracy McVeigh and Tara Sutton
Female circumcision will be inflicted on up to 2,000 British schoolgirls during the summer holidays – leaving brutal physical and emotional scars. Yet there have been no prosecutions against the practice
Like any 12-year-old, Jamelia was excited at the prospect of a plane journey and a long summer holiday in the sun. An avid reader, she had filled her suitcases with books and was reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when her mother came for her. "She said, 'You know it's going to be today?' I didn't know exactly what it would entail but I knew something was going to be cut. I was made to believe it was genuinely part of our religion." She went on: "I came to the living room and there were loads of women. I later found out it was to hold me down, they bring lots of women to hold the girl down. I thought I was going to be brave so I didn't really need that. I just lay down and I remember looking at the ceiling and staring at the fan. "I don't remember screaming, I remember the ridiculous amount of pain, I remember the blood everywhere, one of the maids, I actually saw her pick up the bit of flesh that they cut away 'cause she was mopping up the blood. There was blood everywhere." Some 500 to 2,000 British schoolgirls will be genitally mutilated over the summer holidays. Some will be taken abroad, others will be "cut" or circumcised and sewn closed here in the UK by women already living here or who are flown in and brought to "cutting parties" for a few girls at a time in a cost-saving exercise. (Guardian.co.uk)

Essen: German students bullied by Muslims
More Often they're ridiculed, often they're even beaten. In class barely anybody speaks to them, they keep back, rarely voice their opinion - in short, they're not integrated in school. But these are not immigrant children in a German school, but German children in a secondary school (5th-9th grades) in Essen. German TV channel Das Erste reports. "They're not threatened with a knife every day. but the children of immigration background clearly have their way here," says the school principal. The female teachers have to deal with students saying "don't speak to her, she's just a German slut." "When it's Ramadan, there's a state of emergency. The last time it went so far, that they spit in our food," says the home-economics teacher. "People always say that foreigners are discriminated, but here it's precisely the other way around." A Lebanese Arabic teacher says that the German way of living is very clearly being rejected by his students, the attitude is almost chic. The German children respond with aggression or by over-adapting their behavior. In the playground you find them in the corners. Sebastian, an ethnic German 16 year old, feels bullied by the Muslim students, and is often involved in fights. Juli is a friend of the devout Saleh from Palestine. She calls herself a Muslims, which means: no parties, no alcohol, no sex. (Islamineurope)

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

The Scandal Goes On-Ashley Thorne
The evidence continues to mount that the helping professions are hostile to those with certain beliefs. Social work and counseling programs produce case after case of bias against libertarians, conservatives, and Christians—anyone who does not conform to the progressive politics espoused by these disciplines. Three years ago NAS published a report, The Scandal of Social Work Education (pdf), which found that a national accrediting agency for U.S. schools of social work required future social workers “to pursue policies, services, and resources through advocacy and social or political actions [italics added] that promote social and economic justice.” Social justice, NAS noted, is generally interpreted as advocacy of more egalitarian access to income through state-sponsored redistribution. The report included case histories of three social work students at three different schools. Emily Brooker, a student at Missouri State University, was given an assignment to sign a letter petitioning the Missouri legislature for homosexual adoption, an assignment she objected to on the basis of her Christian beliefs. After she told the professor of her objections, she was subjected to a long hearing in which she was reproached for her “discriminatory conduct” and threatened with expulsion. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) documented Brooker’s case in this video.
Bill Felkner’s grades suffered when he wrote against instead of in favor of a social welfare bill while attending the School of Social Work at Rhode Island College. A conservative, he found he could not in good conscience support the bill. See my article ““The ‘I-Revel-in-My-Biases’ School of Social Work” for Felkner’s full story. (NAS)

MEDIA BIAS

An Open Conspiracy To Slant the News-Jonah Goldberg
JournoList is a symptom, not the disease, of liberal media bias.
The JournoList has started to leak like an over-ripe diaper. Just in case you’ve been living in a cave, or if you only get your news from MSNBC, here’s the story. A young blogger, Ezra Klein, formerly of the avowedly left-wing American Prospect and now with the avowedly mainstream Washington Post, founded the e-mail listserv JournoList for like-minded liberals to hash out and develop ideas. Some 400 people joined the by-invitation-only group. Most, it seems, were in the media, but many hailed from academia, think tanks, and the world of forthright liberal activism generally. They spoke freely about their political and personal biases, including their hatred of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. That off-the-record intellectual bacchanalia has started to haunt the participants like an inexplicable rash after a wild party during Fleet Week. Last month, David Weigel, a young Washington Post blogger hired to report on conservative politics, ostensibly from a sympathetic perspective, left the Post thanks to his damning statements on JournoList (conservatives are racists, Rush Limbaugh should die, etc.). Now the diaper is coming off entirely. Perhaps stretching the diaper metaphor too far, what’s inside JournoList may stink, but it’s no surprise that it does. JournoList e-mails obtained by the Daily Caller reveal what anybody with two neurons to rub together already knew: Professional liberals don’t like Republicans and do like Democrats. They can be awfully smug and condescending in their sense of intellectual and moral superiority. They tend to ascribe evil motives to their political opponents — sometimes even when they know it’s unfair. One obscure blogger insisted that liberals should arbitrarily demonize a conservative journalist as a racist to scare conservatives away from covering stories that might hurt Obama. (Nationalreview)

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinian victims no one talks about
When was the last time the United Nations Security Council met to condemn an Arab government for its mistreatment of Palestinians? How come groups and individuals on university campuses in the United States and Canada that call themselves “pro-Palestinian” remain silent when Jordan revokes the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians? The plight of Palestinians living in Arab countries in general, and Lebanon in particular, is one that is often ignored by the mainstream media in West. How come they turn a blind eye to the fact that Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and many more Arab countries continue to impose severe travel restrictions on Palestinians? And where do these groups and individuals stand regarding the current debate in Lebanon about whether to grant Palestinians long-denied basic rights, including employment, social security and medical care? Or have they not heard about this debate at all? Probably not, since the case has failed to draw the attention of most Middle East correspondents and commentators. A news story on the Palestinians that does not include an anti-Israel angle rarely makes it to the front pages of Western newspapers. The demolition of an Arab-owned illegal building in Jerusalem is, for most of these correspondents, much more important than the fact that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Lebanon continue to suffer from a series of humiliating restrictions. (Nationalpost)

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

Exclusive: Time To End Islamic Appeasement?-Vincent Gioia
Islamists have it all over everyone else in the art of intimidation - using freedom in western civilization as a weapon in the battle to rule the world. One reason this practice has been successful is that civilized societies cannot comprehend a doctrine so pervasive in its goal to take over the world that so many non Muslims are unwilling to accept that we are in a war between different worlds. But the threat is not extra-terrestrial; it is a real threat by real people. To dedicated followers of Islam there is but one goal; replace all other religions and governments with Islam and Sharia law. In this, there is no compromise, there are no rules, and everything is allowed to achieve success. We are the victims of our own tolerance and "political correctness." Everywhere we are told that we should not offend anyone with words or deeds while Muslims are not, it seems, limited by the same rules. Curiously, criticism and lampooning the Christian religion is not out of bounds in art or politics but Islam is to be protected by law and custom from such behavior. Disgusting art denigrating Christ and symbols of Christianity are tolerated but cartoons of Mohammed elicit violence and mayhem without any organized and effective control of such actions. Responsible for this situation, at least in part, is the news media that is filled with misinformation about Islam. Despite untold acts of atrocities by Muslims, Islam is still regarded in many circles as "a religion of Peace"; how absurd is that? In Islamic countries the non-Muslims are treated like second or fifth class people and their populations are decreasing enormously. Countries that had significant numbers of Jews and Christians a century ago now have almost none. There are a handful of Jews left in Iraq. The Copts in Egypt are now only about 8% of Egypt's population. Where did they go? They converted to Islam or went to the West. (Familysecuritymatters)

Rachel Ehrenfeld: America’s Patron Saint of Free Speech-Phyllis Chesler
This is, indeed, “the worst of times, the best of times.” Dangerously brazen evil-doers and outrages both surreal and diabolical abound — but so do tireless heroes who have risen up to combat them. When the history of our time is written, Israel’s Nahum Shahaf, France’s Philippe Karsenty [1] and Nidra Poller, Germany’s Esther Shapira, and America’s Richard Landes [2] (who collectively exposed the first Big Lie of the Intifada of 2000, that of Mohammed Al-Dura) will be remembered. As will Pierre Rehov [3], formerly of Algeria, Israel, and France, who, in films, exposed the second Big Lie: that of the Israeli non-massacre in Jenin. Rehov also exposed, in film, the really big-but-all-but-forgotten refugee story of the Middle East: that of Jews expelled or forced to flee from Arab and Muslim countries. This film is called The Silent Exodus. Ibn Warraq, in his book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism [4], exposed a long-time and still festering Big Lie, that propagated by the Christian Palestinian-American Columbia professor, the late Edward Said, who persuaded the immediate academic world that Westerners, especially intellectuals, colonized our understanding of the Middle East and Muslim world and that our views are poisoned by racism, colonialism, arrogance, etc. Said single-handedly influenced academics everywhere to view formerly colonized Arab men, especially Palestinians, as the most oppressed on earth and to view Islamist barbarians and terrorists as justified freedom-fighters. Ibn Warraq’s work stands against this deluge. Of course, the Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, the American Molly Norris, the Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders, the Egyptian-European Bat Ye’or, and the scholar Zeyno Baran [5] have all stood against the Biggest Lies of our time. But now, allow me to sing the considerable praises of Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose brilliant persistence against the greatest of odds has won a great victory for free speech. Ehrenfeld is the first to acknowledge those who have helped her (see our interview below), but in my view, she is truly a lone David-like figure, working alone against a multitude of Goliaths. No other author really worked with her, shoulder to shoulder, in this long, hard campaign — although one came to testify. (Pajamasmedia)

ANTISEMITISM

How to top an implacable foe-Melanie Phillips
Among those bewildered and horrified by the fact that Israel has been turned into a pariah state, it is common to hear complaints about the uselessness of Israeli PR. But this is to miss the point by a mile. Yes, there are many examples of amateurishness or inexplicable silence on the part of Israel's hasbarah effort, although it is getting better. But the real problem is far deeper. It rests not on the presentation of Israel's case. It is rooted instead in Israel's whole strategy for dealing with the pressures upon it, and the way in which it has conceptualised the existential threat it faces from Arab rejectionism. The flawed way it thinks about its own situation has locked it into a vice from which it cannot escape. The problem has been elegantly summed up by Robert Aumann, an Israeli-American who was awarded the Nobel Prize for economics in 2005 for his work on conflict and co-operation through Game Theory analysis. In an article on aish.com, he suggests that Israel has fallen into the trap of the Blackmailer Paradox. Rational Israel is being forced to act irrationally, essentially through a chronic lack of confidence in its own position when faced with an implacable opponent. He uses the analogy of Shimon and Reuben representing the Palestinians and the Israelis who are dividing up a suitcase of money between them. Shimon declares unreasonably he will grab nine-tenths of the money. But, because he says take it or leave it, Reuben is forced to agree to this injustice just to avoid ending up with no money at all. (Thejewishchronicle)

Leftists Aren’t the Only Perpetrators of Anti-Semitism in the World-Caroline Gould
A few days after the Marmara raid by Israeli naval commandos on Memorial Day, Fox News commentator Glenn Beck [1] dedicated an entire program to the origins of the Israel-Middle East conflict and of anti-Semitism. It was a splendid piece of journalism and moved me to tears. I recorded Glenn’s show and have already broken the tab on the videotape. This was a classic — one to keep. Understand this: here in England we do not have anyone on television or radio who remotely resembles Glenn Beck. On the pro-Palestinian side there is George Galloway [2], a thundering orator who is a household name; on the pro-Israel side there are Melanie Phillips [3] and Kelvin MacKenzie [4], but they do not have a daily, televised vehicle that allows them the freedom Glenn enjoys to, as it were, deliver sermons unchallenged. His program about Israel the democracy was breathtaking because he looked at every aspect of the hatred heaped upon the tiny Jewish state and made sure the audience knew about the appalling human rights outrages perpetrated in neighboring dictatorships. But there was one boo-boo. Glenn kept repeating over and over his contention that the left are the perpetrators of Israel-hatred and anti-Semitism. This is simply not true. Perhaps one has to live outside the United States to understand the complexities of Israel-hatred, but without a shadow of a doubt it does not confine itself to the left. (Pajamasmedia)

Confronting Jew Hatred on Daily Kos: Propaganda and the Flotilla-MICHAEL LUMISH
First there was theological anti-Semitism. For centuries the Jews were vilified for “killing Jesus” and not accepting the divinity of Christ. Then, in the 19th and 20th centuries came racial anti-Semitism. The Jews were vilified for being racially inferior and an insect-like “parasite” on their Aryan hosts. Now we have what might be called “nationalist anti-Semitism.” It’s not that the Jews killed Jesus, nor that the Jews are racially inferior – nor that the Jews are responsible for capitalism, nor that the Jews are responsible for communism – but that the Jewish state is a rogue nation grounded in militarism, colonialism, imperialism, and racist Apartheid against those icons of pure victimhood, the innocent Palestinian people. This latest form of Jew hatred is expressed as anti-Zionism or what some call the New Anti-Semitism. Whatever Markos Moulitsas himself may think of Jews, there is no doubt that his Daily Kos website is a significant home for the propagation of hatred towards them via the spreading of hatred toward the Jewish state. This is not to say that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. It isn’t. Legitimate criticism is fine and necessary. The spreading of hatred, however, is not. One thing that I always hope for is a recognition of the difference between criticism and demonization, between criticism and delegitimization, between criticism and double standards. On Daily Kos we get a constant stream of the latter and very little, unfortunately, of the former. The influential leftist blog spreads hatred toward the Jewish state and this inevitably must come at the expense of the Jewish people. (Newsrealblog)

Wiesenthal Center Calls on Entertainment Community to Blast Oliver Stone for His Belittlement of the Holocaust and Anti-Semitic Remarks-Simon Wiesenthal Center
Stone “parrots the anti-Semitic chorus by attributing the world’s focus on the Shoah to ‘The Jewish domination of the media…,’” says Center official
The Simon Wiesenthal Center today blasted remarks made by director Oliver Stone in London’s Sunday Times in which he claimed that the Holocaust is overemphasized in our culture because Jews “control the media” and that “Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.” “Oliver Stone is bent on trivializing the Nazi Holocaust—‘Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people...’ and ‘contextualizing’ both Hitler and Stalin as not-such-terrible-guys with whom we should empathize, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center. “He parrots the anti-Semitic chorus led by Iran’s genocide-wannabe Ahmadinejad by attributing the world’s focus on the Shoah—in his money quote, sure to be enshrined in every Islamist Google search—‘The Jewish domination of the media…’” “We hope that Oliver Stone’s reckless and outrageous rhetoric will be condemned by his peers in the entertainment community,” Cooper concluded. (Simonwiesenthalcenter)

Oliver Stone Reaches a New Low: Anti-Semitism-Ron Radosh
Oliver Stone is at it again. I previously wrote [1] about him months ago. Stone, now in London to do publicity for his agitprop film on Hugo Chavez, took the opportunity to do some advance publicity for his forthcoming Showtime TV series, The Secret History of America. In his new gem, he will show us how Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were all unappreciated in their own time, since they were “vilified” and he wants to show — particularly in the case of Stalin — how he “has a complete other story.” Well, if Stone wants to really let us know that it is not just Fidel and Hugo Chavez he loves, but all previous monsters in the 20th century past, he is certainly free to do so. But in his new interview [1] with Camilla Long in the London Sunday Times, he certainly ups the ante. Added to his list of the misunderstood is Iran’s leadership. First, he informs Long that although “Iran isn’t necessarily the good guy,” the fact is that “we don’t know the full story!” Since Stone was given access exclusively to Ahmadinejad when he visited Iran, we can be certain we won’t have to wait long to see the results. Stone gets exercised when critics like me (whom you’ll recall he personally rebuked [2] a short time ago — you can read my response here [3]) expose his ignorance of history and his treatment of it as a vehicle for left-wing propaganda. It is no wonder that Castro “had been pleased” with the three documentaries Stone made about him, as was Hugo Chavez. (Pajamasmedia)

TERRORISM, security and policy

The new, improved Obama-Caroline Glick
Just when you thought he was shifting gears he pulls out a zinger.
You have to hand it to US President Barack Obama. He is relentless. Just when you thought he was shifting gears – easing up on Israel and turning his attention to Iran’s nuclear weapons program – he pulls out a zinger. His recent courtship of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu led some Israelis and supporters of Israel in the US to believe the administration had seen the light. After 18 months, we were told Obama finally realized that contrary to what he had thought, Palestinian statehood is not the most urgent issue in the Middle East, Iran’s nuclear weapons program is. In the past week alone, two prominent commentators – Aluf Benn from Haaretz and Ehud Ya’ari from Channel 2 both wrote articles claiming that Obama’s Middle East policy has undergone a transformation. As Benn put it, “President Barack Obama’s campaign of wooing Israel reflects a fundamental about-face in US policy in the Middle East.” And in Ya’ari’s words in an article in the Australian, “The foreign policy team of US President Barack Obama is undertaking a reassessment of its policy all over the Middle East, including Israel.” Both claimed the administration has resolved to cooperate with Israel as an ally rather than attack it as an obstacle to peace, and that Washington has recognized that Iran must be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. The basic notion informing both of these nearly identical articles is that the Obama administration’s foreign policy is fundamentally pragmatic rather than ideologically motivated. Both Ya’ari and Benn, like many of their fellow commentators on the Left, argue that Obama’s decision to invite Netanyahu to Washington and treat him like an ally rather than an enemy is proof that when stripped to its essentials, his foreign policy is pragmatic. (Jpost)

Prosecutor at terror trial says 2 men planned spectacular explosion at JFK airport in NYC-AP
Two men accused in a terrorist plot hoped to cause a spectacular explosion that would kill thousands at New York's Kennedy International Airport and avenge U.S. oppression of Muslims, a prosecutor said Monday at the men's trial. The defendants wanted to blow up jet fuel tanks at the sprawling airport, causing an explosion "so massive ... that it could be seen from far, far away," Assistant U.S. Attorney Zainab Ahmad said in closing arguments in federal court in Brooklyn. Their vision prompted them to code name the plot "The Shining Light," the prosecutor said. Defense attorney Mildred Whalen countered by accusing a government informant of manipulating a ragtag crew of delusional dupes who had "seen too many Bruce Willis movies." She called her client Russell Defreitas a "weak-minded, foolish man with a big mouth." Defreitas, 66, a former JFK cargo handler, and Abdul Kadir, 58, once a member of Parliament in Guyana, were arrested in 2007 before they could get beyond the planning stages after the informant — a convicted drug dealer — infiltrated the plot and made a series of secret recordings. Prosecutors say Defreitas did reconnaissance on the airport, sought the help of a militant Muslim group in Trinidad along with Kadir and dreamt of delivering a devastating economic blow to the United States. Defreitas, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Guyana, "is a classic homegrown extremist," Ahmad said. At trial, the government's evidence included tapes of Defreitas that showed he was determined to avenge the mistreatment of Muslims in the United States and abroad with an attack that would "dwarf 9/11," Ahmad said Monday. He also told the informant that his U.S. citizenship gave him cover, the prosecutor added. (Foxnews)

Rauf’s Dawa from the World Trade Center Rubble-Andrew C. McCarthy
Meet the Ground Zero Mosque imam’s Muslim Brotherhood friends. Feisal Abdul Rauf is the imam behind the “Cordoba Initiative” that is spearheading plans to build a $100 million Islamic center at Ground Zero, the site where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed by jihadists on 9/11. He is also the author of a book called What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America. But the book hasn’t always been called that. It was called quite something else for non-English-speaking audiences. In Malaysia, it was published as A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. Now it emerges that a “special, non-commercial edition” of this book was later produced, with Feisal’s cooperation, by two American tentacles of the Muslim Brotherhood: the Islamic Society of North America and the International Institute of Islamic Thought. The book’s copyright page tells the tale. (Nationalreview)

Hizb ut Tahrir is not a gateway to terrorism, claims Whitehall report-Andrew Gilligan
The Government has opened the way for official links with Muslim extremists after civil servants said radical groups could be a "safety valve" for those tempted by terrorism.
The groups specifically named - in documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph - include al-Muhajiroun, which has praised 9/11 as “magnificent” and Hizb ut Tahrir, which wants to turn Britain into an Islamic dictatorship under sharia law. In the classified papers, presented last week to Coalition ministers on the Cabinet’s home affairs committee, officials say a “clear assessment” has been made that individuals “do not progress” to violence through such groups. One paper, classified “Restricted” and entitled “Government strategy towards extremism”, says: “It is sometimes argued that violent extremists have progressed to terrorism by way of a passing commitment to non-violent Islamist extremism, for example of a kind associated with al-Muhajiroun or Hizb ut Tahrir ... We do not believe that it is accurate to regard radicalisation in this country as a linear 'conveyor belt’ moving from grievance, through radicalisation, to violence … This thesis seems to both misread the radicalisation process and to give undue weight to ideological factors.” In fact, at least 19 terrorists convicted in Britain have had links with al-Muhajiroun, including Omar Khayam, sentenced to life imprisonment as leader of the “fertiliser bomb” plot, and Abdullah Ahmed Ali, the ringleader of the airliner “liquid bomb” plot, who is also serving life. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Al-Qaeda beheaded French hostage: Mali official-AFP
Executed French hostage Michel Germaneau was beheaded by Al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a local official in northern Mali said overnight on Sunday. "Yes, it's true, after the failure of the Franco-Mauritanian raid on Thursday, AQIM executed the French hostage," said the official from the northeastern Kidal region, where Germaneau was reportedly held, asking not to be named. "The Frenchman was decapitated before the eyes" of the head of the radical AQIM group that was holding him, Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, who last year executed a British hostage, Edwin Dyer, after six months of detention. AQIM has announced that it executed Germaneau, a 78-year-old aid worker, on Saturday, in revenge for a joint raid last Thursday by Mauritanian and French troops, in which six fundamentalists were killed. Germaneau was seized in Niger on April 19. "He (Germaneau) was still alive during the raid, but hidden in a mountainous zone in the Kidal region, near the border with Algeria. The place is an impregnable fortress, where the Islamists have laid mines and built shelters to protect themselves from any air attack," the official told the news agency. (Hindustantimes)

Al Qaeda veterans now run Al Shabaab militia-MURITHI MUTIGA
Foreign jihadists have overrun the Somali nationals previously in charge of Al Shabaab, a development blamed for the movement’s new posture as an exporter of terrorism and a threat to stability in East Africa and beyond. The Islamists, mostly veterans of the Al Qaeda training camps of Afghanistan, now control the movement’s policy making organs and were directly responsible for ordering the Kampala bombings which announced the Al Shabaab’s arrival as an actor with a reach that extends beyond Somali territory. Intelligence reports made available to The EastAfrican indicate the bombings were aimed at achieving two intertwined objectives: They sought to draw regional powers into a war in Somalia, a development they hope will win the Al Shabaab public support by galvanising the people against a common enemy to help the group restore its severely diminished credibility. According to a report compiled for the African Union Mission for Somalia (AMISOM), the key figure in the Al Shabaab is Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a familiar name in East Africa for his role in a number of past atrocities including the twin US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es salaam. The other players serving in the Al Shabaab governing council are more obscure Jihadists who began arriving in the country from early 2009. (Theeastafrican.co.ke)

Israel Identifies The Perfect Terrorist-Strategypage
July 26, 2010: Israel and the United States have collected a lot of information on how Islamic terrorists operate. A lot of this data will remain secret for some time, but new tidbits are made public from time to time. The latest revelation is actually confirmation of many older bits of information. That is, the suicide bombers themselves are usually persuaded, not forced, to carry out their missions. Israel, for example, has captured at least fifteen suicide bombers who did not (could not or would not) carry out their mission. These terrorists were extensively questioned, as were family and friends. The Israelis also collected similar data on dead suicide bombers, including email or tapped phone calls and other material the bomber left behind. The Israelis, like the suicide bomb organizations, came to the same conclusion; that certain personality traits make someone very willing to carry out these attacks. And the chief characteristic is usually not fanaticism, but deference to authority and public opinion. This is one reason why the Palestinian media campaign to glamorize suicide bombers is so dangerous. (Strategypage)

Taliban behead interpreters in bid to halt Nato offensive-Miles Amoore
(requires paid subscription)
Six interpreters working for the US army were executed by the Taliban as part of an attempt to disrupt Nato counter-insurgency
The Taliban gunmen drove into the bazaar last Saturday in a three-car convoy. Tyres screeched as the vehicles skidded to a halt outside a shop where eight Afghan interpreters working for the US army were packing newly bought fruit into plastic bags. The Taliban levelled assault rifles at their heads and ordered them into the cars. As bystanders fled, two of the translators made a run for it. Ducking into an alleyway as bullets ricocheted off the walls around them, they escaped. Their six colleagues were less fortunate. They were driven to a Taliban “safe house” in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan. Early last Sunday their headless corpses were found on the south-western outskirts of the city. The Taliban had cut out each man’s tongue and placed his head on his chest. A note pinned to one body read: “The same fate awaits those who work for infidels.” The killings appear to be part of a Taliban initiative aimed at disrupting Nato’s counter-insurgency strategy, which hinges on the soldiers’ ability to protect the Afghan population. Last weekend Nato announced that it had intercepted a letter from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader, which had apparently been sent in June. It called on Taliban field commanders to kill or capture civilians working for foreign soldiers and the Afghan government. If genuine, the directive has come as US forces dig in across Kandahar in preparation for a fierce fight to wrest territory from the Taliban. ]Interpreters such as those killed last week will be crucial: the military relies on them to act as its eyes and ears as it struggles to win over the local population. (Sundaytimes.co.uk)

Iran's Khamenei calls on Muslims to fight 'terrorism' fuelled by US and UK-Telegraph
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called on Muslims to fight the "blind and savage terrorism" fuelled by the United States and Britain, whom he blamed for deadly bombings of an Iranian mosque. "In our region ... the blind and savage terrorism is born out of the evil policies of the United States, Britain and their state and non-state mercenaries," Khamenei said in a statement marking the seventh day of mourning for victims of the bombings of a Shiite mosque in southeastern Iran. "All Muslims are required to combat and confront this evil and sinister offspring which is the epitome of corruption on earth and of waging war against God," he said in the statement read out on state television. On Thursday, two suicide bombers blew themselves up at a Shiite mosque in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province of Iran which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, killing 28 people and wounding hundreds. Sunni rebel group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) said it carried out the attacks to avenge the execution of its militant leader Abdolmalek Rigi in Tehran's Evin prison on June 20. (Telegraph.co.uk)

GLOBAL GOVERNANCE AND RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISM

Desperate days for the warmists.
Warmists may be winning the big grants, but they're not winning the argument, says Christopher Booker
Ever more risibly desperate become the efforts of the believers in global warming to hold the line for their religion, after the battering it was given last winter by all those scandals surrounding the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One familiar technique they use is to attribute to global warming almost any unusual weather event anywhere in the world. Last week, for instance, it was reported that Russia has recently been experiencing its hottest temperatures and longest drought for 130 years. The head of the Russian branch of WWF, the environmental pressure group, was inevitably quick to cite this as evidence of climate change, claiming that in future "such climate abnormalities will only become more frequent". He didn't explain what might have caused the similar hot weather 130 years ago. Meanwhile, notably little attention has been paid to the disastrous chill which has been sweeping South America thanks to an inrush of air from the Antarctic, killing hundreds in the continent's coldest winter for years. In America, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been trumpeting that, according to its much-quoted worldwide temperature data, the first six months of this year were the hottest ever recorded. But expert analysis on Watts Up With That, the US science blog, shows that NOAA's claimed warming appears to be strangely concentrated in those parts of the world where it has fewest weather stations. In Greenland, for instance, two of the hottest spots, showing a startling five-degree rise in temperatures, have no weather stations at all. (Telegraph.co.uk)

SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Unmasking Silent Killer in Epilepsy-ALIYAH BARUCHIN
On July 9, 2009, Steve Wulchin went to wake his 19-year-old son, Eric, in their home in Boulder, Colo. Eric had been given a diagnosis of epilepsy three years earlier, but other than that, his father said, “there was nothing out of the ordinary.” His seizures had been well controlled; he had not had one in six months. Yet that morning, Mr. Wulchin found Eric lying on the floor. CPR and paramedics were too late; Eric had died at about 2:30 a.m. The cause of Eric’s death was ultimately listed as Sudep, for sudden unexplained death in epilepsy. The syndrome accounts for up to 18 percent of all deaths in people with epilepsy, by most estimates; those with poorly controlled seizures have an almost 1 in 10 chance of dying over the course of a decade. Yet many patients and their families never hear about Sudep until someone dies. Mr. Wulchin said none of Eric’s four neurologists ever mentioned it to the family. “The message we got back was, ‘There’s no reason why he can’t live a long and normal life,’ ” he said. “It never occurred to me that this was a possibility.” Now, physicians, researchers, advocates and relatives like Mr. Wulchin, a technology executive, are trying to raise awareness about Sudep. One of their goals is to establish registries of deaths and autopsy results, building databases to support future research. Sudep most often affects young adults, typically ages 20 to 40, with a history of the convulsive seizures once known as “grand mal.” Others at risk include those with difficult-to-control seizures, or seizures at night; people who take a large number of anti-epileptic medications or take them irregularly; African-Americans with epilepsy; and people with epilepsy whose I.Q. is under 70. (NYT)

The fire and fury of the shipyard-Christopher Howse
Ever wondered how ships were made? Thanks to Chatham's evocative £13 m restoration, you can find out.
In the newly restored No1 Smithery building at Chatham Historic Dockyard you find yourself standing inside a Stanley Spencer painting. The painting is The Furnaces. It shows men hauling at a red-hot length of steel disgorged by incandescent fire, from the sublimating blast of which they lean away. The men, in their thick-woven scorch-holed clothes, stand on a cast-iron floor punctured with rows of holes like a cribbage board – except that instead of spillikins, the little pegs used to keep the score in cribbage, here iron pegs called dogs (the size of thigh-bones) slot into the holes, around which the workers, in a game of skill at the risk of maiming, bend the new-born steel with outsized tools. This picture of Spencer’s and the seven others in his wartime series Shipbuilding on the Clyde hang, for the rest of this year, in the spacious new gallery at the No1 Smithery. Each 19ft wide, the paintings are rarely seen together, and have been newly restored. The room next to them is the so-called pipe-bending floor at Chatham, where just the same struggle between men and searing metal took place through two centuries. Here is the furnace, cold now, and here the inches-thick plate of the floor scattered by monstrous tools from a nightmare: tongs as long as two men, pincers that could snip off your head. On the wall next-door, among the Spencer paintings, hangs an example of the “Fearnought” heat-resistant clothing the men wore: a jacket with a hole burnt through by a fleck of iron as hot as the sun, wide trousers and thick mittens. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Memories of Iran-Saul Rosenberg
Enduring the shah's prisons—and those of the Islamic Republic.
When Houshang Asadi's feet hurt, he doesn't have to wonder why. They've been that way for 25 years, since the days when he was regularly beaten in an Iranian prison. The Islamist government's jailers knew well that the soles of the feet make an inviting target—rich in sensitive nerve endings and easily crushed bones. Memories of his imprisonment and torture in the early 1980s, Mr. Asadi says, still brought on tears every morning when he sat down to write about life before he escaped to Paris in 2003 from "the mega-prison that is today's Iran," as he calls his former home in the extraordinary memoir "Letters to My Torturer." The book would be remarkable on any terms, but it is made especially memorable by the chilling irony and heartbreaking naïveté that characterize Mr. Asadi's tale. His first experience of being imprisoned for political reasons comes as a young communist in the 1970s, when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's government decides he is a threat. For several months Mr. Asadi shares a cell with someone the regime also considers a threat—a warm-hearted cleric who weeps when he prays. The cellmates become friends, and, when they are separated in jail, the cleric assures Mr. Asadi that under an Islamic government—the shah's overthrow is already being contemplated—"not a single tear would be shed by the innocent." After an Islamic government does seize power in 1979, the cleric, now released and indeed a prominent member of the revolutionary hierarchy, invites his idealistic former cellmate to edit the regime's newspaper. After all, Iranian communists like Mr. Asadi had supported the Islamic revolution. But Mr. Asadi turns down the offer—he doesn't approve of the republic's ideology and if he accepted he "would be lying to myself and to you." (WSJ)

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