The Western Word

This Week's Editorial

EIGHT YEARS LATER
By Avi Davis

On September 11 this year I was traveling on two connecting flights on my way back from our conference in upstate New York. . As I boarded a Southwest flight from Chicago, the pilot, lowering his voice and dispensing with standard Southwest banter ( a pleasant relief) , reminded all on board that we should spare a thought for those who died eight years before. The passengers were indeed quiet for a few seconds but within moments returned to their state of general merriment as the pilot continued to roll out his ingratiating
(or just plain grating ) shtick.

There are only a few dates on the American calendar which prod national memory and inspire an annual display of grief. Count Pearl Harbor Day as one; Martin Luther King Jr. Day as another. The other two - Memorial Day, and Veteran’s Day respectively, have been swept away by the current of history, no longer finding firm footing in national memory and leaving us wondering whether the date commemorates anything significant at all. .

Although only eight years have now passed since the most deadly single day attack on the nation’s soil, September 11^th seems to be passing into the same unhappy void- with few willing to grapple with the day’s importance as a watershed in American history . No longer does it inspire anger at the heinousness of the unprovoked attack. No longer does one see flags displayed on homes and on cars. Newscasters quietly mention the attack and then , without too much comment, pass on to other news. The President makes an appearance at one of the scenes of the attack, but his speech is muted and it does not contain a rallying call for a vigorous national defense against an identified foe.

What is left is a gaping black hole in the national consciousness that no one these days seems quite prepared to fill. As the years pass 9/11 remains little more than a catch word - remembered in tangible detail as if it was a natural disaster such as Hurricane Katrina or the 2005 tsunami which devastated South Asia.

How did this state of affairs come to pass?. The answer might be found in 9/11’s bitter after taste, namely the war in Iraq, which wrung so much wasted emotion and misdirected hatred from our media, professoriate and Democratic leadership, that its dark cloud has obscured, perhaps forever, the significance of the very event which served as the war’s catalyst.

Fouad Ajami, in an op-ed in this Friday’s Wall Street Journal encapsulates the connection between 9/11 and everything that came after it quite brilliantly:

“ The impulse that took America from Kabul to Baghdad had been on the mark. Those were not Afghans who had struck American soil on 9/11. They were Arabs. Their terrorism came out of the pathologies of Arab political life. Their financiers were Arabs; and so were those crowds in Cairo, Nablus and Amman that had winked at the terror and had seen those attacks as America getting its comeuppance on that terrible day. It was important (for the U.S.) to take the war into the Arab world itself and the despot in Baghdad had drawn the short straw. The decapitation of his regime was a cautionary tale for his Arab brethren.”

Here Ajami rams his point home. Future historians will quickly dispatch the contemporary notion that the war in Iraq was ever prosecuted as an attempt for America to control Iraqi oil, for George W. Bush to settle a nagging personal grudge or to give expression to the U.S. military’s killer instinct. Rather it was designed to re-assert American strength in a part of the world that had come to mock it and to deal a decisive psychological blow to tin pot terrorist organizations and their state sponsors who believed that American national defenses could be easily penetrated and with little fear of retribution.

The consequence, of course, is that in the Age of Obama, it is now difficult to draw upon the memory of 9/11 as the single most important reason for defeating counter insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq or for confronting terrorist groups. So maligned have the efforts of the Bush Administration become, that, as Ajami reminds us, “ the appeal to 9/11 today rings hollow and contrived. In these past eight years, American liberalism has distanced itself from American patriotism and the results are there to see.”

Results indeed. It appears that today that not only does the notion of prosecuting a vigorous offensive war smack of Bush jingoism( see Nancy Pelosi’s comments on the lack of congressional support for increasing troops in the Afghanistan) but even the argument for building an effective missile defense, a worthy and urgent undertaking given the rapid proliferation of nuclear arsenals among rogue states - dismissed as just another carry over from discredited Bush policies.

I learned the depth of how truly vulnerable the United States is to a nuclear attack at our co-sponsored conference Permanent Continental Shutdown, in Buffalo New York last week. Over two and half days, 40 nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers, missile defense experts, commentators and politicians gathered to address the absolute failure of the last three U.S. Administrations to seriously address the likelihood of an electro-magnetic pulse attack on the United States. Simply put, an electromagnetic pulse attack occurs when a ballistic missile, loaded with a nuclear warhead, is launched at the United States and detonated at high altitude. The extraordinary pulse from this attack could cause a shutdown of the U.S. electrical grid. It could potentially send the United States back to a pre-industrial economy and society and render the nation dependent for its survival on aid from abroad.

While this sci-fi scenario might seem far fetched, it is in fact more real and more omnipresent than at any time since the end of the Second World War. America, similar to almost every Western country today, stands exposed and vulnerable to weapons of annihilation and nobody seems to want to hear the warnings.

But the warnings must be heard.

Those who live prosperous lives in the West and remain unworried by these threats to their social framework, their economies and their political systems, stand in exactly the same shoes as Europeans at turn of the century who could not fathom the outbreak of a continental war that would sweep away 60 million lives in the early years of the 20^th Century. And they remain fixed in the same in exactly the same position as the 1930s British leaders who failed to understand that any reticence in meeting Nazi aggression with aggression would lead to a catastrophic future confrontation in which the lives of millions of innocent citizens would be needlessly lost.

At the American Freedom Alliance we see this as one of the gravest perils confronting Western civilization. With the success of the Buffalo Conference we announce the formation of EMPACT International - an international coalition of organizations pledged to promote awareness of the threats posed to Western civilization from an electromagnetic pulse attack.

We are proud to be one of the leading organizations in this effort and hopeon this eighth anniversary of a day that changed history, that from now on it will no longer be commemorated with only flowers, speeches and television specials, but with the construction of a muscular defense and an aggressive foreign policy.

This will announce to the world that the United States will never again abide a realizablae threat to its national security or to its citizenry. And never again will it be unprepared as it was on that warm September day in 2001.

Want to comment on this article? See Avi Davis’ blog
Avi Davis is the president of the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles. He can be contacted at isdev@ix.netcom.com

CAIR’s E-mail Jihad
by Robert Spencer (more by this author)

The latest American official to be targeted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for exercising his freedom of speech is the mayor of Clarksville, Tenn., Johnny Piper. CAIR joined Clarksville-area Muslims in scolding Piper for forwarding an e-mail that protests against an Islamic stamp issued by the U.S. Postal Service. Too many politically correct officials cower before CAIR. They accept its self-definition as a civil rights organization (which it is not) and ignore the facts that it is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas funding caseand that sevveral of its officials have been convicted of terrorism-related offenses. But Piper -- refreshingly enough -- is not backing down. It all started last Friday, when without comment Piper forwarded to city council members and other Clarksville officials a viral e-mail that has been circulating for years, although Piper received a new version that erroneously blames Barack Obama for the stamp. The e-mail calls upon “patriotic Americans” to protest against the stamp that commemorates the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The e-mail exhorts readers to “remember the MUSLIM bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993!” Ahmed Joudah of the Islamic Center of Clarksville declared the e-mail was marked by “appalling ignorance of what Islam is, and who Muslims are. I laughed when I read it, but at the same time, I felt sorry that we still have people around us that think that way.” In what way did the e-mail manifest “ignorance”? Apparently Joudah was referring to its designation of the 1993 World Trade Center attack as an example of “Muslim terrorism.”

Mass murder at 30,000 feet: Islamic extremists guilty of airline bomb plot-Philippe Naughton
Three British Muslims were found guilty today of conspiracy to murder thousands of passengers and crew in an unprecedented airline bomb plot that could have proved as deadly as the 9/11 attacks. After a retrial at Woolwich Crown Court, jurors found the ringleader, Abdulla Ahmed, and two other men, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain, guilty of plotting to use liquid bombs to blow up airliners en route from Heathrow to the United States. Another defendant, Umar Islam, was found guilty of a more general charge of conspiracy to murder because jurors could not decide whether he knew of the specific targets in the plot three years ago. Three other men, Arafat Khan, Ibrahim Savant and Waheed Zaman, were found not guilty of conspiracy to blow up aircraft but could face a retrial on the more general conspiracy to murder charge because jurors could not reach a verdict. The eighth defendant, Muslim convert Donald Stewart-Whyte, was found not guilty on the terrorism charges but had pleaded guilty to a firearms offence. Ali, 28, was the leader of an East London terror cell inspired from Pakistan, the court heard. He had planned to detonate home-made liquid bombs in suicide attacks on transatlantic aircraft bound for major north American cities. It was the most complex and daring British-based terrorist conspiracy in modern times and, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, could have killed "hundreds of innocent people". (Timesonline.co.uk)

Inside a Terror Trial-Steve Cohen
How a Manhattan jury reached its verdict in the government’s case against international arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar. The Thursday before Thanksgiving 2008 was the first truly cold morning of the fall. The sky was clear, but the short walk from the subway to the federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan felt like miles. In part, the wind was to blame. But the chill was also emotional: 12 jurors were about to hand down their verdict in a terrorism case they had been hearing for the previous three weeks. The case was one of the most significant in the U.S. government’s battle against terrorism. It pitted the United States against Monzer al-Kassar, one of the world’s most successful—the prosecutors would say notorious—arms dealers. Whether it established any significant legal precedents would be left for the appellate lawyers to debate. But its outcome would certainly set the tone for the new Obama administration’s undercover strategies. I was a member of the jury, and I kept a daily journal, recording my own reactions to the lawyers, the witnesses, and the unfolding drama. Throughout the trial, the jurors heeded the judge’s admonitions not to discuss the case. But when it was over, I reconvened the jurors to ask them about their recollections. This is our story. (City-journal)

Colonel Gaddafi’s controversial Muslim clerics head for Midlands- Ben Goldby
A GROUP of controversial Muslim clerics funded by Colonel Gaddafi are set to make appearances at three Midland Mosques. Eleven preachers sponsored by the World Islamic Call Society (Wics), which was founded, led and paid for by the Libyan leader, will be holding events in Birmingham, Leicester and Nottingham during Ramadan. The speeches come just a month after the release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbasset Ali Al Megrahi caused a storm between Britain and the US when he returned to a hero’s welcome in Tripoli. And in a recent speech, Colonel Gaddafi said that the aim of Wics was to convert the whole of Europe to Islam. He said: “This religion shall overcome all other religions before it. Their time has gone. It is his promise, Allah shall prevail this religion over the rest. “There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent and the number is on the increase. The number of indigenous Europeans is falling drastically. “This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted to Islam. Europe will one day be a Muslim continent.” (Sundaymercury)

International links linger after 'Toronto 18' member imprisoned-Stewart Bell
‘A worldwide battle’
BRAMPTON -- He has been called the Terrorist Mr. Fix-It. Aabid Hussein Khan was an avid al-Qaeda supporter who recruited young Muslims and arranged their passage to Pakistan for terrorist training. Although he lived in central England, Khan travelled often, including to Toronto, where he intended to rent an apartment for recruits on their way to Pakistan's network of weapons training camps. "He was always spoken of in the sense of one who could facilitate travel to places for training and was particularly hopeful of having a place near Toronto, where his wife lived," said Mubin Shaikh, who informed on Khan's associates in Toronto for the RCMP. Now in a British prison, Khan is considered a key figure in a terrorist network that spanned a half-dozen countries, including Canada. He is also one of a growing number of friends, associates and co-conspirators within that network who have been convicted of terrorist crimes following a series of overlapping investigations. Three years after Canadian police arrested 18 Toronto-area men and accused them of plotting terrorist al-Qaeda-inspired attacks in Southern Ontario, the suspected ringleaders have not yet had their day in court. But related trials in Britain, the United States and elsewhere have already ended with convictions, and yesterday Saad Khalid was sentenced in a Brampton court to 14 years for his involvement in the Toronto bomb plot. (Nationalpost)

A Muslim republic in the Netherlands?-Eren G̈ü̈vercin
Henny Kreeft is the leader of the Netherland's Muslim Party (NMP). In this interview with freelance writer Eren Güvercin he talks about his unusual route to NMP leadership and the main goals of his party.
Mr. Kreeft, why was the NMP founded? Henny Kreeft: The initial idea for a party came from two Dutch Muslims in 2007. I read an article about it, telephoned them and we eventually met up. After that, they asked me to take over where they had left off. I had wanted to take some time to think about it, but in the end I agreed. They passed on the project to me, and I created the party as it is today. Reading their party manifesto I realised that it represented a response to the attacks on Islam and Muslims. I accepted this element, but I wanted the NMP to be more than just a one-issue party. So I made it a real party. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders' party, Party for Freedom (PVV) is extremely successful in the Netherlands. Why do you think that is? If you repeat a message over and over again, eventually people will start believing it, especially if it's being reported in the media on a daily basis. What happened was that after 9/11, some youth from a Moroccan background experienced problems in Holland. Wilders took it from there and added his interpretation of sections of the Holy Qur'an, thereby creating a major problem out of what had only been a minor problem to begin with.

ANALYSIS - Retail questioned as France pushes Islamic Finance-Tamora Vidaillet
PARIS (Reuters) - France's quest to create a new European hub for Islamic finance could soon yield results for wholesale banking and Islamic bonds, but concerns over the image of Islam may put the brakes on retail banking. Since launching a drive to develop Sharia-compliant financing and draw Middle Eastern capital to France around two years ago, Paris has made large strides on the legal and fiscal front, with much of the framework already set. Expectations are growing that it might be a matter of months before a firm or local authority issues France's first sukuk bond, which pays no interest but offers returns on underlying physical assets, and licences Islamic banks. The country's tiny Islamic finance market has so far largely involved Sharia-compliant property deals, a far cry from neighbouring Britain, which has spent the past five years positioning itself as a major Islamic banking centre.

What ‘Highly Trained and Certified’ Professors Don’t Want You to Know-Mary Grabar
Most have heard reports about the outrages in our schools: Ward Churchill [1] writing that the 9/11 victims were “little Eichmanns [2]”; 1960s terrorist, now professor of education, William Ayers [3] addressing high school and college students; Al Gore [4] propagandizing via his film An Inconvenient Truth in classrooms; and now President Barack Obama wanting to get elementary school children to scrutinize themselves [5] on how they are fulfilling what he “asks” them to do. I’d like to say these are exceptions, but after nearly two decades in education, I have to say that they are the tips of icebergs that aren’t melting. Most of the public is unaware of how deep the ideology is. They are apt to dismiss the situation as being that of one or two professors that Johnny needs to deal with until the day he has a well-paying job and never needs to read “literature” again and be beaten over the head with illustrations of how his ilk have oppressed others. Many parents even think of the terms “academic freedom” and “social justice” as noble concepts. Now that they have had four decades to take over the campuses, the radical Ph.D.s prop their Birkenstocked feet upon their large desks, until someone dares to question their “expertise.” Rushing to their computers, they then splutter out their invectives against assaults on their “academic freedom.” (Pajamasmedia)

Eastern Michigan U Expels Student for Her Beliefs-Ashley Thorne
This spring we wrote about Julea Ward, a student who was expelled from Eastern Michigan University's counseling program when she declined to affirm homosexuality as morally acceptable. The Alliance Defense Fund is currently representing her in a lawsuit against the University. Via David French at Phi Beta Cons, here is a brief video in which Julea tells her story.

Bbc Newsnight Plumbs New Depths Of Bigotry-Melanie Phillips
I have just caught up with a quite disgusting item by Katya Adler, transmitted on Monday evening's Newsnight, on military rabbis in the Israel Defence Force. She presented as deeply shocking the fact that these rabbis are trained officers who carry arms and are now deployed in the front line of combat. Worse still, they actually seek to inspire and fortify Israeli soldiers by using the Jewish religion and the words of the Hebrew Bible! How shocking is that?! No mention of the fact that the British army has military chaplains who are also officers. True, they don’t bear arms – although some chaplains in Afghanistan are now saying they think that should change because it is too dangerous not to when on a battlefield that is far more lethal to them than any other on which they have served: the sole reason the IDF rabbis are armed. But the really disgraceful element was Adler’s suggestion that that these rabbis were somehow the equivalent of Islamic jihadi fanatics who were transforming the mission of the IDF into ‘holy war’. Jewish religious belief, she implied, was the equivalent of the jihad. This appalling equation of course ignored the crucial difference between the jihad and the wars waged by the Israel Defence Force: that the jihad is aggressive and seeks to conquer, colonise, murder and enslave while the sole rationale for the IDF is to defend Israel against precisely such aggression. (Spectator.co.uk)

The AP’s Decision to Exploit a Marine’s Death-Mona Charen
An elastic concept of “journalistic duty.” Arguably violating its embed agreement, the near-universal press practice since 9/11, and the express wishes of the family, the Associated Press went ahead and published a photograph of mortally wounded Marine Lance Corporal Joshua “Bernie” Bernard, killed in action in Afghanistan. The AP also ignored the pleas of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who had implored the press agency as a “matter of judgment and common decency” not to publish the photo. Bernard, 21, a devout Christian and Iraq War veteran from Maine, was described by his squad leader as “a true-heartedly very good guy . . . probably one of the best guys I’ve known in my entire life.” Bernard served as his unit’s point man and navigator. He lost his life on August 14 when he was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade that blew off one leg and badly mangled the other. The AP photo captured Bernard lying on the ground, two buddies attempting to help — a splash of red where one leg had been. The AP’s justification of its decision is both pompous and dubious. (Nationalreview)

I, a former Islamic extremist, feel we have given in to the fanatics-Ed Husain
Like many young British Muslims, I was 'radicalised' at college. Just as the three British-born men who were found guilty this week of plotting to blow flights out of the sky were recruited at school, I encountered extreme Muslims at the age of 16 and was slowly converted to their ranks. At my East London college, the Islamic society was run by the extremist group Hizb ut Tahrir, which believes in setting up an Islamic state, destroying Israel, and denounces Western values. At first, I, too, was convinced by their rhetoric. However one awful violent moment changed me for ever. A young African man was knifed to death by the Muslim contingent at the college, simply for being a non-believer. After a petty row over the use of the snooker table, the Muslim group issued a call of Jihad against the young man and summoned their Hizb ut Tahrir contacts for 'outside backup'. An operative arrived and plunged a dagger into the boy's heart. The victim's name was Ayotunde Obunabi and I saw him lying dead. To Hizb ut Tahrir his life was worthless because he was not a Muslim. At that moment I understood the consequences of the rhetoric of radicalism. The murder, in 1996, compelled me to walk away from extremism. Now I believe I have to speak out about what I see happening in Britain before a terrible act of terrorism claims yet more lives. (Dailymail.co.uk)

Yale Surrenders....Stephen Suleyman Schwartz
Although I am a believing Muslim, my thoughts about the refusal of Yale University Press to publish Brandeis University professor Jytte Klausen’s book, The Cartoons that Shook the World - a study of the 2005-06 controversy over the Danish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad - without reproducing the images themselves in the text, have less to do with Islam than with events in which Yale had previously distinguished itself for its boldness and scholarly integrity - especially its starkly different response to the habit of the Stalin regime in Communist Russia in removing pictures of liquidated and otherwise inconvenient personalities from the photographic record. Excising images of Muhammad, whatever their content, from books on Islam, appears to have the same intent as that of Stalin’s minions - to recast history for the benefit of a perverse ideology. The Nazi regime similarly erased the name of the German Jewish-born poet Heinrich Heine from school textbooks, ascribing his poems - among the classics of world literature - to “anonymous” authorship. Yale’s abominable behavior in this incident, and its mimicry of totalitarian examples, reflects badly on the institution’s immediate past. (Hudsonny)

Student fined for Israel flag in Germany-Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post correspondent in Berlin , THE JERUSALEM POST
A local district court in the West German city of Bochum fined a student 300 Euros on Wednesday for displaying an Israel flag at a demonstration organized by Muslim organizations against the IDF Operation Cast Lead in January. According to Der Westen, a regional paper in Bochum, the public prosecutor termed the Israeli flag as "provoking" within a special situation. The 30-year-old student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she fears for her safety due to "massive problems with Nazis", told The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday that the "Israeli flag is a provocation for the anti-Semites." She asked rhetorically, "What is provocative about an Israel flag?" The public prosecutor in Bochum was not available for an immediate comment on the case. According to Der Westen, the local district court judged deemed the protest of the five activists expressing solidarity with Israel as a "dangerous situation." A spokesman for the district court, Volker Talarowski, told the Post that there was a "violation of the right to assembly" and the court's decision was issued "independent of a political motivation." Talarowski added that the pro-Israel demonstrators failed to register their protest 48 hours before the event. (Jpost)

To Ban an Israeli Film-Alan M. Dershowitz
Leftist filmmakers and writers show their totalitarian stripes.
A group of hard left filmmakers and writers from around the world have been using their celebrity to try to coerce the Toronto International Film Festival into banning Israeli films. Their petition, which is filled with misstatement of facts and rewriting of history, describes Israel as “an Apartheid regime.” It focuses not so much on Israel ’s occupation of the West Bank since 1967 but rather on Israel ’s very existence since 1948. It characterizes Tel Aviv, a city built by the sweat of Jews largely on baron coast land, as illegitimate. It never mentions the fact that the Palestinians were offered and rejected statehood in 1938, 1948, 1967 and 2000-2001. It fails to mention that when Israel ended its occupation of Gaza , the result was rockets being fired at Israeli schoolchildren and other civilians. They claim that the inspiration for their censorship effort includes “former President Jimmy Carter,” who they say has characterized Israel as an “Apartheid regime.” (Frontpagemagazine)

Israel: Carter's Blind Spot-Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper Simon Wiesenthal Center
Abba Eban used to say of Arab leaders and Mideast peace: "Tthey never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity." Former President Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, never misses an opportunity to say it's all Israel's fault. In Sunday's editions of The Washington Post, Mr. Carter -- returning from his latest "Elders" Holy Land tour -- first tells of his visit to Gaza, described "as a walled-in ghetto," whose inhabitants are blocked by Israel from "receiving any cement, lumber... and hundreds of other needed materials needed to repair schools, hospitals, business establishments or the 50,000 homes that were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel's assault last January." Absent is even a fleeting reference to Hamas' gift for Israel's 2006 unilateral withdrawal from Gaza: an unrelenting suicide terror campaign and 8,000 rockets targeting adjacent civilian communities, where post-traumatic syndrome still runs close to 75%. Also missing from his narrative is the fact that even during the intense eight-month barrage of rocket fire into Sderot, this Elder did not rush there to experience first-hand Hamas' payback for yet another Israeli "painful concession" to the "peace process". (Newsweek.washingtonpost)

At the UN's new site, a worldwide web of anti-Israel bias-Anne Bayefsky
The UN has just rolled out a new overhauled website. Presumably, the idea was to make it clearer what the UN does and to make it easier to access the goings-on. Insofar as UN demonization of Israel and UN-driven antisemitism are central pillars of its activities, the new site does an admirable job. In only five easy steps, the user is presented with ten categories for all meeting summaries and press releases of the entire General Assembly since they went online in 1995. One such category is "Palestinian Rights." All the other choices list nothing but generalities. The UN site is accessed by educational institutions, advocates, parliamentarians, non-governmental organizations and individuals around the world in six languages. Sooner or later, almost every schoolchild in America is bound to log on to www.un.org. The American taxpayer pays 22% of the cost of building and maintaining the UN website (along with all other regular budget costs). And in only five steps your child too can listen to Iranian President Ahmadinejad deny the Holocaust and talk about those Zionists' "ugly faces." (These were his words at the UN Durban II "anti-racism" conference in April, which the UN has chosen to archive and place permanently on its website.) (nydailynews)

Collaborators in the War Against the Jews: Tony Judt- Steven Plaut
The next investigative article in a series Frontpage is running about collaborators in the Islamic war against the Jews.
Tony Judt is a Jewish British professor of history now at New York University. He was born in the same year as Israel. He has devoted his recent years trying to lay the groundwork for Israel’s death. Although cloaking his arguments in sophisticated post modern discourse, he has acted as an intellectual collaborator with Islamists seeking to wipe Israelis and Jews generally off the face of the map. Because he has been called on the implications of his steady and increasingly radical attacks on Israel, Judt has come to see himself as a victim—so much so that Christopher Hitchens says he has a “persecution complex.” The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier goes a step farther in characterizing Judt’s grandiose sense of self and the intellectual violence of his writing when he calls him “the shahid [martyr: as in suicide bomber] of Washington Square.”
(Frontpagemagazine)

TERRORISM, security and policy

Airline bomb plot: mosque has been recruiting ground for 20 years-
Sean O'Neill, Crime and Security Editor
A mosque frequented by the leader of the airline plot terrorist cell has been a recruiting ground for extremists for more than 20 years. The Queen’s Road mosque in Walthamstow, northeast London, where Abdulla Ahmed Ali met his associates, is controlled by the ultraorthodox Tablighi Jamaat. Intelligence services around the world believe that Tablighi’s fundamentalism makes some of its followers easy prey for terrorist recruiters. Two decades ago the same mosque was hosting talks by followers of Omar Bakri Mohammed, one of the first Islamic clerics in Britain to preach jihad. The disclosure of the mosque’s history indicates that, despite the focus on the Pakistan-based terrorist threat, the roots of Islamist radicalisation are deeply embedded in Britain. The men involved in the fertiliser bomb plot of 2004, the July 7 and July 21 bombings of 2005 and the airline plot were all radicalised in Britain. Their initial contacts with the al-Qaeda network were through fundraisers and recruiters in Britain and Rashid Rauf, who has been identified by security sources as a key link man in Pakistan, was from Birmingham. Ed Husain, of the Quilliam Foundation, an anti-extremist think-tank, said the first contact with radicals for many young Muslims was at British colleges and universities. “In the 1990s it was Arab political refugees, not Pakistanis, that helped radicalise many British Muslims,” he said. “Pakistani militants provide training for would-be violent Islamists. But they go out radicalised and willing — it is folly to think that visits to Pakistan are points of first contact with extremism.” (Timesonline.co.uk)

Terrorists Shift Focus to Hotels and 'Soft' Targets, Study Says-AP
WASHINGTON -- Terrorists are aiming for hotels and other easier-to-hit targets as security measures at military and government facilities continue to improve, said a global intelligence company. Al Qaeda is changing from a centralized organization with global goals to regional "franchises" with more parochial aims and strong grass-roots support, according to a report Tuesday from STRATFOR. These smaller cells get less training and less money, so they set their sights lower. That doesn't mean they aren't dangerous, "particularly if they are attempting to prove their value or if they are able to link up with someone who is highly tactically skilled," the report said. According to STRATFOR, the number of attacks on hotels has more than doubled since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 when compared with the eight years before. Injuries and deaths caused by those attacks have increased six times over the same comparison period. (WSJ)

Al-Qaeda Targeting Germany for 'Next 9/11' - Within Weeks- Nissan Ratzlav-Katz
(Israelnationalnews.com) Jihadists close to al-Qaeda explicitly warned in new communications that Germany will be the target of the next 9/11-scale terrorist attack. The timing of the strike, they say, will be within the next few weeks. According to analysts with the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), a recently intercepted jihadist communication declares that "everyone knows" that the "next strike is very near, a strike that will surprise everyone in its effect, which will be much more shocking than that of 9/11/2001." The writer of the chilling message notes that this is the Muslim month of Ramadan and that "we pray that it will indeed be in this month." After referring to a previous boast by Osama Bin-Laden, that the enemy is afraid and unable to prevent the next attack, the communication says: "And the Germans, grandchildren of the Nazis, know more than everyone else that they will be the first ones to taste [the nightmare]. It is just a matter of time - that is, days or weeks - and God willing you'll see things that you've never heard of before." (INN)

Dozens of Islamic terrorists in Britain released from prison-Alastair Jamieson
Up to 40 convicted Islamic terrorists have been freed from prison and as many as 50 more are due for imminent release, according to reports. The militants, convicted for terror offences including plots to kill British soldiers, are being placed in hostels across Britain that usually deal with the rehabilitation of drug dealers or burglars. A report in The Sun said one third of the 120 convicted of Islamic terrorist offences since 1999 had already been released from jail having served their sentence, while another 50 will soon be out. The newspaper said those due for release include al-Qaeda trained Sohail Qureshi, 31, who was given a four-and-a-half year jail term after being arrested in October 2006 with night-vision goggles, £9,000 in cash and military kit. Also among those schedule for freedom is Andrew Rowe, 38, a Muslim convert described by police as a “global terrorist”, whose 15 year jail sentence imposed in 2005 was later reduced to ten years by the Appeal Court. With time served on remand, it means he will be released in eight months under the automatic two-thirds rule for prisoners serving more than four years It is thought there are around 20 recently-freed extremists in probation hostels, where they can wander the streets during the day but must return in the evening under curfew. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Yet Another Foreign-Policy Fumble - Throwing Missile Defense Under the Bus-Peter Brookes
The Obama administration is getting ready to throw the proposed Eastern European-based US missile-defense system under the bus. The move is a sop to the Russians (and to lefties here at home) – but will render us increasingly vulnerable to the growing Iranian nuclear/missile threat. It's sheer madness – yet another major foreign-policy fumble in its Pollyanna-ish effort to make everything right with the world.
True to form, the Obama-viks are bending over backward to please the Russkies in hopes they'll finally come around on helping curb Iran's runaway nuclear and missile programs. As a result, Team Obama will likely can the W-era missile-defense system slated for Poland and the Czech Republic. The system would defend us (and Europe) from Iranian nukes/missiles, but the Russians hate it because it's in their old stompin' grounds. Not only does this make us look weak by giving in to the Russian demand, there's also the delicious irony that Moscow is largely responsible for the Iran problem today, dating back to help the Kremlin gave the mullahs in the 1990s. (Familysecuritymatters)

UN wants new global currency to replace dollar-Edmund Conway, Economics Editor
The dollar should be replaced with a global currency, the United Nations has said, proposing the biggest overhaul of the world's monetary system since the Second World War. In a radical report, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has said the system of currencies and capital rules which binds the world economy is not working properly, and was largely responsible for the financial and economic crises.
It added that the present system, under which the dollar acts as the world's reserve currency , should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration. Although a number of countries, including China and Russia, have suggested replacing the dollar as the world's reserve currency, the UNCTAD report is the first time a major multinational institution has posited such a suggestion. In essence, the report calls for a new Bretton Woods-style system of managed international exchange rates, meaning central banks would be forced to intervene and either support or push down their currencies depending on how the rest of the world economy is behaving. (Telegraph.co.uk)

Global Warming for Dummies’ or Global Warming Propaganda?-Adam Brickley
(CNSNews.com) – “Global Warming for Dummies,” a guide which claims to “sort out fact from fiction” about so-called global climate change, in reality contains numerous biased statements – in some cases advocating the censorship of opinions which differ from those of the authors. The guide, authored by Elizabeth May of the Green Party of Canada and Zoë Caron of the Sierra Club of Canada, suggests a wide range of personal and government solutions to climate change. They take positions on tax policy, transportation policy, and population growth while dismissing opposing arguments and telling readers to avoid works produced by global warming skeptics. One passage, on page 68, seems to indicate a necessity to reduce fertility among the world’s women – and that empowered women will naturally have fewer children. “Luckily, population growth is slowing and should level off,” the book says. (Scienceandpublicpolicy)

Genetic breakthrough brings cure for Alzheimer’s a step closer-David Rose
Genetic mutations that could account for more than one in five cases of Alzheimer’s disease have been found, in a significant leap forward for dementia research, scientists say. British scientists have discovered two genes associated with the degenerative illness of the brain and their French colleagues uncovered a third. Having certain variations of the three genes could increase the risk of having “common” late-onset Alzheimer’s by ten to 15 per cent, the researchers say. It is thought that cancelling out their effects could prevent almost 100,000 cases of Alzheimer’s disease in the UK each year. The studies, published in the journal Nature Genetics, describe the first new genetic clues for dementia to be identified since 1993, when a mutant form of a gene called APOE was found to account for about a quarter of cases. A reliable genetic screening test for Alzheimer’s is unlikely to be available for many years but the discovery of further genetic links pave the way for possible new treatments. On the basis of further research, existing drugs such as aspirin or ibuprofen may also slow the pace of mental decline. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, affecting an estimated 400,000 people in Britain. This number is expected to grow to nearly a million within 20 years. (Timesonline.co.uk)

The Myth of the Overscheduled Child-LAURA VANDERKAM
No one would accuse Erika DeBenedictis of having a light schedule. Ms. DeBenedictis, 17, recently finished her junior year at the Albuquerque Academy in New Mexico, where she took A.P. Physics, A.P. Chemistry and a multivariable calculus class simultaneously. When she wasn't doing homework, she worked on computer-programming projects for science fairs, entering several over the course of the year. She practiced the piano for 30 minutes most days and got up early to sing in a choir, too. In other words, she could be the poster girl for the "overscheduled child" phenomenon that parents and educators like to work themselves into a stew about every time the calendar flips to September. Kids feel so much pressure to build a college-worthy résumé, the story goes, that they're sleep-deprived and anxious—or as psychiatrist Gail Saltz put it at a lunch I attended recently: "You might have a child who really wants to learn Mandarin . . . but if they are pushed too hard, you will likely wind up with a child who speaks perfect Chinese . . . on Xanax!" So is Ms. DeBenedictis facing a nervous breakdown as she enters her senior year? Hardly. "I'm very happy when I'm busy," she tells me. It's when she doesn't have enough to do that she starts "moping around." (WSJ)

All Together Now: Play the Game, Mom- SETH SCHIESEL
THERE may be no better way to bait a baby boomer than to be anything less than totally reverential about the Beatles. So the news that the lads from Liverpool were taking fresh form in a video game (a video game!) called The Beatles: Rock Band struck some of the band’s acolytes as nothing less than heresy. Luckily, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with the widows of George Harrison and John Lennon, seem to understand that the Beatles are not a museum piece, that the band and its message ought never be encased in amber. The Beatles: Rock Band is nothing less than a cultural watershed, one that may prove only slightly less influential than the band’s famous appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. By reinterpreting an essential symbol of one generation in the medium and technology of another, The Beatles: Rock Band provides a transformative entertainment experience. In that sense it may be the most important video game yet made. Never before has a video game had such intergenerational cultural resonance. (NYT)

The War That Never Ends-TERRY TEACHOUT
What World War II movies tell us about America’s only cultural consensus
The good war is now being refought in America's multiplexes for the umpteen-zillionth time—only this time the commanding general is Quentin Tarantino, a filmmaker whose interest in goodness, judging by his previous films, would seem to be rudimentary at best. Yet Mr. Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," a gore-soaked live-action cartoon about a platoon of renegade Jewish soldiers who hunt down Nazis and hack swastikas into their foreheads, opened big three weeks ago and is looking like a solid box-office success. Why has the creator of "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill" chosen to make a movie about World War II? Perhaps the word "about" should be encased in quotes, since Mr. Tarantino has described "Inglourious Basterds" as "a spaghetti western, but using World War II iconography as opposed to cowboy iconography." This implies that the real subject of the film is not World War II but, as is usual with Mr. Tarantino, film itself. On the other hand, I doubt that many of the people who are flocking to see his latest revenge fantasy are film-studies majors who rush home from the theater and earnestly catalog the inside-joke references to other movies with which "Inglourious Basterds" is encrusted. If I had to guess, I'd say that at least two-thirds of the film's viewers are taking it at face value—as a movie, in other words, whose fundamental premise is that the Nazis were truly evil. (WSJ)