A WEEKLY UPDATE
NOTES AND COMMENTS:
THE TERRORIST HYDRA: The headline of the lead story on page 1 of Friday’s Wall Street Journal: “U.S. Sees Iranian, al Qaeda Alliance.” Kudos to the U.S. government for catching up with FDD.
In particular, FDD’s Michael Ledeen and Tom Joscelyn have been pointing to strong evidence of this alliance for years.
To provide just a few examples, in this piece, back in December 2002, Ledeen cites evidence that “Iran is a major center for al Qaeda,” that there are “close working relations between Iraq and al Qaeda,” and, in addition, that there is “on-going cooperation between al Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and Hezbollah's chief of operations…”
A piece co-authored by Ledeen and Joscelyn early this year concludes that “evidence of cooperation between al Qaeda and Iran abounds.
In a piece in 2006 Ledeen discusses how Iran helps and arms AQ to kill Americans in Iraq.
And in an interview in 2007 Ledeen argues that AQ and Iran have been “working together since 1994, and we are now up to our uvulas in evidence showing Iran’s support for al Qaeda in Iraq. The 9/11 Commission — as Tom Joscelyn has written for years — found striking evidence of the al Qaeda/Iran partnership, starting with the sensational discovery that Imad Mughniyah, the operational chief of Hezbollah, was on the plane that took some of the 9/11 terrorists out of Saudi Arabia, en route to the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. …I think the Iranian domination of al Qaeda started when we destroyed al Qaeda in Afghanistan. The key leaders ran to Iran and have mostly been there ever since.” Some of these key leaders include Osama bin Laden’s son and al Qaeda operative, Saad bin Laden, and al Qaeda’s top military commander, Saif al Adel.
Also: On September 11, 2007, FDD Senior Fellow Tom Joscelyn published a monograph entitled, “Iran’s Proxy War Against America.” In it, Tom argued that the U.S. government has a blind spot when it comes to Iran’s collusion with al Qaeda. Tom cited evidence accumulated by various government bodies, ranging from Clinton-era prosecutors to the 9/11 Commission report, to demonstrate that the two were working together.
In the last two years alone, Tom has cited a large number of sources pointing to the dangerous pact between Iran, al Qaeda and also the Taliban. These sources include: leaked State Department cables, declassified and leaked documents prepared at Guantanamo, U.S. court decisions, leaked intelligence reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s testimony before an inquiry in London, and General Petraeus’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, among other sources.
The point is this: It is of the utmost consequence to policy makers that the most lethal jihadi terrorist groups, Sunni and Shia alike, can not only collaborate in theory but do collaborate in practice. This means that these terrorist groups are not, after all, non-state actors. This means that terrorism cannot be addressed without addressing Iran. This means that should Iran acquire nuclear weapons, the door will be open not only for proliferation to other nations in the region (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Egypt) but also to the terrorist groups with which Iran’s theocrats cooperate – AQ among them. This is an issue FDD will explore and emphasize in the months ahead.
IGNORING IRAN: Jennifer Rubin writes:
The Obama administration is consumed with the debt ceiling debate and with preventing a meltdown in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Meanwhile, the greatest threat to our national security in decades, the potential for a nuclear-armed Islamic revolutionary state in Tehran, still looms.
Certainly, the Obama team continues to mouth platitudes about the “success” of sanctions and the “isolation” of Iran. But neither is true. The sanctions have not halted or even seriously disrupted the mullahs’ quest for nuclear weapons. And Iran continues to gather allies and extend its reach in the region as the U.S. looks more feeble with each passing day.
I spoke to Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies yesterday about the state of the administration’s Iran policy. He was blunt:
I’d start with asking these questions:
1. Apart from sanctions, is anything else happening? What is the comprehensive strategy?
2. Who is driving Iran policy at the interagency level? Dennis Ross, Gary Samore, David Cohen, Bob Einhorn, Michele Flournoy, Tom Donilon, anyone else?
His conclusion on the first item is that nothing is happening, and we have no comprehensive approach. On the second, he says, “No one.”
More here.
Former CIA officer Fred Fleitz writes:
Mounting evidence over the last few years has convinced most experts that Iran has an active program to develop and construct nuclear weapons. Amazingly, however, these experts do not include the leaders of the U.S. intelligence community. They are unwilling to conduct a proper assessment of the Iranian nuclear issue—and so they remain at variance with the Obama White House, U.S. allies, and even the United Nations….
I read the February 2011 Iran NIE while on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee. I believe it was poorly written and little improvement over the 2007 version. However, during a pre-publication classification review of this op-ed, the CIA and the Office of the Director of Intelligence censored my criticisms of this analysis, including my serious concern that it manipulated intelligence evidence. The House Intelligence Committee is aware of my concerns and I hope it will pursue them. …
It is unacceptable that Iran is on the brink of testing a nuclear weapon while our intelligence analysts continue to deny that an Iranian nuclear weapons program exists. One can't underestimate the dangers posed to our country by a U.S. intelligence community that is unable to provide timely and objective analysis of such major threats to U.S. national security—or to make appropriate adjustments when it is proven wrong.
If U.S. intelligence agencies cannot or will not get this one right, what else are they missing?
More here.
SYRIA UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal editorializes:
Yesterday President Obama denounced Assad's use of "torture, corruption and terror" and said the dictator was "completely incapable and unwilling to respond to the legitimate grievances of the Syrian people." He's right, though we wonder how much more suffering Syrians will have to endure before the Administration explicitly calls for regime change. …
At least Congress isn't sitting still. This week Senators Mark Kirk of Illinois and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York plan to introduce the Syria Sanctions Act of 2011, which takes aim at the country's energy industry. Though Syria is a minor player in the international energy market, its oil sales this year will account for almost a quarter-about $4 billion-of its annual income. Damascus imports much of its refined petroleum to meet its daily energy needs, since it lacks domestic refining capacity.
We favor these sanctions, and most anything else that can hasten the fall of the House of Assad.
FYI: FDD has provided essential research in regard to these sanctions. More here.
The Jerusalem Post reports:
What the regime is facing here is a tribal insurrection in the east stretching from the north in Deir al-Zor, through the middle in Albu Kamal,” Tony Badran, a research fellow with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies,” told The Jerusalem Post by email.
The two eastern cities form the heart of Syria’s oil industry. Badran said that if they join the uprising launched in the flashpoint city of Deraa in the south, “and adding Hama and Homs in the middle, then potentially the country could be geographically cut in half.”…
An activist group, Avaaz, said in a report last week that Syrian security forces had killed 1,634 people since the uprising erupted in March….
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, once one of Assad’s main allies, said in May, “We do not want to see another Hama massacre,” and warned the 45-year-old president that it would be hard to contain the consequences if it were repeated.
"When Turkey and the US take a public stand on a particular locale, like Hama, and are ignored and a massacre occurs, if there is no credible response, it’s a problem," Badran said.
More here.
TERRORISM IN NORWAY: Author and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple says of the perpetrator of the terrorist attacks in Norway:
"I assume that when he was shooting all those people, what was in his mind was the higher good that he thought he was doing. And that was more real to him than the horror that he was creating around him."
In itself, having a worldview that shapes our attention, informs even what we believe to be real, is perfectly normal. It may even be essential. "After all," Dr. Dalrymple says, "having a very consistent worldview, particularly if it gives you a transcendent purpose, answers the most difficult question: What is the purpose of life?"
Having a purpose is usually a good thing. "One of the problems of our society," Dr. Dalrymple says, "is that many people don't have a transcendent purpose. Now it can come from various things. It can come from religion of course. But religion in Europe is dead."
Dr. Dalrymple argues that the welfare state, Europe's form of civic religion, deprives its citizens even of the "struggle for existence" as a possible purpose in life. One alternative, then, is "transcendent political purpose—and that's where what [Breivik's] done comes in." Such a political purpose doesn't lead inexorably to fanaticism, violence and murder. "But my guess," Dr. Dalrymple offers, "is that this man, who was extremely ambitious, didn't have the talent" to realize his ambitions, whether in politics or other fields. "So while he's intelligent he didn't have that ability or that determination to mark himself out in a way that might be more—constructive, shall we say." …
He has another worry, "that what [Breivik's] done will be taken as a reason to close down all kinds of debate," or to delegitimize the views of anyone who, as Dr. Dalrymple puts it, "question[s] anything that the current prime minister of Norway says or believes."
"Here is a man," Dr. Dalrymple says, "behaving like this and quoting all kinds of people, some of whom I admire or agree with." But to suggest that the views of those thinkers (including himself) somehow contributed to the killing in Oslo, he argues, makes no sense. "It's like somebody saying that if you believe, for example, that bankers were irresponsible during the [2008 global financial] crisis, you are leading inexorably to the killing of three bankers in the bank in Athens," as happened during one of the recent anti-austerity protests there.
More here.
Mark Steyn writes that Breivik’s manifesto seems to be determining
the narrative in the anglophone media. The opening sentence from USA Today:
Islamophobia has reached a mass murder level in Norway as the confessed killer claims he sought to combat encroachment by Muslims into his country and Europe.
Any of us who write are obliged to weigh our words, and accept the consequences of them. But, when a Norwegian man is citing Locke and Burke as a prelude to gunning down dozens of Norwegian teenagers, he is lost in his own psychoses. Free societies can survive the occasional Breivik. If Norway responds to this as the Left appears to wish, by shriveling even further the bounds of public discourse, freedom will have a tougher time.
More here.
Andy McCarthy adds that
it is patently absurd that Breivik’s attitudes about Muslims have come to dominate coverage of a horrific episode that appears to have little or nothing to do with Muslims — such that those actually killed become, as Mark puts it, “mere bit players in their own murder” while the legacy media shrieks about “Islamophobia.” As Bruce Bawer pointed out in his trenchant post this weekend (at Pajamas), we are now looking at “a double tragedy for Norway. Not only has it lost almost one hundred people, including dozens of young people, in a senseless rampage of violence. But I fear that legitimate criticism of Islam, which remains a very real threat to freedom in Norway and the West, has become profoundly discredited, in the eyes of many Norwegians, by association with this murderous lunatic.”
If we are to remain free and secure, that cannot be allowed to happen. And that starts with not apologizing for the entirely rational fear that future terrorist attacks will be fueled by Islamist ideology, just as thousands of past attacks have been. Prominent Muslims are forever making the most unfounded, most offensive pronouncements, and yet they never have to apologize. Right after 9/11, MPAC’s Salam Marayati told a Los Angeles radio interviewer, “If we are going to look at suspects, we should look at groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the State of Israel on the suspect list.” Before becoming a top Obama aide and envoy, Rashad Hussain excoriated the Bush Justice Department’s prosecution of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami al-Arian as a “politically motivated” “travesty of justice” that fit a “common pattern … of politically motivated prosecutions,” by which the U.S. government exaggerates the “threat to American security” — al-Arian later pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge. CAIR has made a career of rushing to the nearest microphone to discredit the investigation of Muslims who are later found guilty of terrorism. The list goes on and on; only the words “I’m sorry, I was wrong” are never uttered — and never demanded.
We all have a duty to exercise caution if we are going to comment before the facts are fully known. We have no duty to apologize, however, for well founded suspicions and for recognizing the threat Islamism poses to life and to Western liberalism. Our obligation is to remain vigilant.
More here.
Jamie Kirchick on attempts to smear Norway’s Progress Party:
“There are too many immigrants coming here, so we have to stop that because we have to take care of those who are already here,” Farida Amin, a Norwegian of Pakistani descent who immigrated with her family in 1975, told me. She now works for the Progress party and has been a member for eight years. Its emphasis on assimilation, and its concern for the harsh treatment that many Muslim women in Norway receive at the hands of their male relatives, is what attracted her. “Many women from non-Western countries are prevented from employment and active citizenship by their husbands, so we are working for that.”
In 2009, a representative of the sexual violence division of the Oslo police reported that, in the past 3 years, every single one of the city’s 41 reported aggravated sexual assaults had been committed by immigrants who come from countries “with a very different view of women than we have in Norway.” As to accusations that the party is “anti-Muslim,” Amin says, “No one has ever discriminated against me because of my religion.”
More here.
The Wall Street Journal opines:
Breivik's ideology reminds us that conservatives are obliged to police their own ranks and condemn those on the right who condone extremist rhetoric or political violence.
None of this justifies the attempts in some circles to claim that Breivik is somehow the logical product of a larger anti-Islamic movement or commentary. The BBC put one Lars Gule on the radio to warn that Breivik's views were "mainstream" in Norwegian society. Mr. Gule says he debated Breivik about his views online and did not get the sense that he was planning a violent attack. Mr. Gule himself was arrested in Lebanon in 1977 for possessing explosives intended for use against Israel on behalf of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
In a story linking American bloggers to Breivik yesterday, the New York Times produced a former Obama Administration antiterrorism official to opine that "Breivik emerged" from the "infrastructure" of the anti-Islamist American right.
Yet the notable but little remarked reality of post-9/11 America is how few acts of anti-Muslim violence there have been. President George W. Bush always distinguished between mainstream Islam and its radical perversion. The early speculations Friday—including our own—that the Oslo bomber may have had jihadist roots were understandable given the recent history of Islamist violence and reports that one jihadist group had claimed responsibility. …
Norway's murders shouldn't be an excuse to shut down debate over multiculturalism and the failure of many Muslims to assimilate to Europe's cultural norms. British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have broken taboos by speaking sensibly on the subject. Democracies need to address their anxieties openly, rather than push the political debate underground where the likes of an Anders Breivik can let them stew into a rationale for violence.
More here.
Columnist Bret Stephens quotes Boston University's Richard Landes:
"Like many active cataclysmic apocalypticists, [Breivis] believed that the socio-political world is in huge tension, like tectonic plates about to crack, and if he can set off a small explosion in the right place it will unleash far greater forces." In this sense, Mr. Landes adds, "the thing he resembles most is the people he hates."
He's right, and not just in regards to methods. Just as al Qaeda's primary fury has always been directed at Muslims who they view as apostates, traitors or stooges of the West, the main object of Breivik's hatred was what he called the "cultural Marxists" who dominated Norwegian politics. "If they refuse to surrender until 2020," he said of them, "there will be no turning back. We will eventually wipe out every single one of them."
Similarly, the purpose of Breivik's massacre wasn't simply to kill off the Labor party's leadership, current and future. It was to create a spectacle, and in doing so energize a cause. It's no accident that he wants media present at his trial: He has now entered what he calls the propaganda phase of his campaign, in which he imagines he will be given "a stage to the world" through which he can win over "tens of millions of European sympathizers and tens of thousands of brothers and sisters who support us fully and are willing to fight beside us." This was precisely what al Qaeda hoped to achieve (and to an extent did achieve) with 9/11.
More here.
FDD’s Michael Ledeen notes:
The Marxists embrace the myth of class struggle in a Western world that is no longer capitalist and where there is no working class. The jihadis embrace the cause of holy war (no accident, the Marxists might say, that jihadis raced to take ‘credit’ for the mayhem in the first hours) against a Western world described as Christian and Islamophobic. That, too, is an archaic remnant from a past long dead and buried, especially in Europe. The Old World is secular, and, certainly among its elites, more anti-Semitic and anti-Christian than anti-Muslim. ...
It is thoroughly understandable, then, that some have responded to the Norwegian mass murder with myths of their own, beginning with the fable that Breivik is the tip of a very large iceberg, that includes not only deranged would-be killers but also writers and politicians. Thus they conjure up yet another phantasmagorical mass movement—a vast conspiracy with countless followers, some hidden, others public. There is no such movement. Yes, there are crazy people who think they are fighters in the great cataclysmic struggle of the days of the Last Judgment (and if you want a fine survey and analysis of the enormous variety of such beliefs, and their dreadful effects over the centuries, get yourself a copy of Richard Landes’ timely study ‘Heaven on Earth’). But I doubt there are enough of them to feed more than a handful of Knights Templar, let alone a full-fledged political movement.”
More here.
ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE: Mark Steyn writes that by 2050
a majority of Austrians under 15 will be Muslim. 2050 isn’t that far away. …
A world that becomes more Muslim becomes less everything else: First it’s Jews, already fleeing Malmo in Sweden. Then it’s homosexuals, already under siege from gay-bashing in Amsterdam, “the most tolerant city in Europe”. Then it’s uncovered women, already targeted for rape in Oslo and other Continental cities. And, if you don’t any longer have any Jews or (officially) any gays or (increasingly) uncovered women, there are always just Christians in general, from Egypt to Pakistan.
More here.
Pat Condell’s very politically incorrect (and rather humorous) analysis of what’s happening in Sweden is here (Parental guidance suggested).
THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA: My column with an audio link here.
Peter Pham has more on this issue here.
AL QAEDA ON THE BRINK? FDD’s Daveed Gartenstein-Ross is dubious. More (including an audio link) here.
OPEC IS NOW A TERRORIST CARTEL: The Guardian (UK) reports
A senior commander of Iran's revolutionary guards, who is subject to comprehensive international sanctions, has been nominated as the country's oil minister, a position that currently includes the presidency of Opec.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, sent a list of four ministers, including Rostam Ghasemi, commander of the revolutionary guards' Khatam al-Anbia military and industrial base, to the parliament for approval, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Should the parliament confirm Ghasemi's nomination next week, the commander, who is targeted by US, EU and Australian sanctions, will be automatically appointed as head of Opec, giving the revolutionary guards access to an influential international platform.
Under Iran's constitution the president is in charge of appointing cabinet ministers, who take office after the approval of parliament.
Iran took the Opec presidency in October last year, its first time at the head of the oil exporters' cartel since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Unrest in the Middle East, especially the ongoing war in Libya, has given Opec a crucial role in determining the current oil price. Iran is the second-largest crude oil exporter in Opec. …
Revolutionary guards' assets, including those personally owned by Ghasemi and dozens of his colleagues, have been blacklisted by the US Treasury and western powers.
Other officials in Ahmadinejad's cabinet have been also subject to international sanctions including the foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, the defence minister, Ahmad Vahidi, and the vice-president, Fereidoun Abbasi Davani.
If this happens, should there not be a policy response from the US, Europe and other Opec customers? More here.
George Jonas note that we can do without OPEC oil:
Internal combustion engines can, if designed, modified or sometimes just tuned for it, run on cellulosic ethanol, ethyl-alcohol, grain alcohol — in other words, on booze. They can also run on methanol or industrial alcohol. Cars and trucks can run on fuels indigenous and inexhaustible without requiring major conversion; certainly none that is beyond existing technology. …
[A]ll big car-makers can manufacture “flexi-fuel” engines that run on 90% ethanol or bio-diesel. It’s politics.
We got into the habit of behaving as if countries or regimes hostile to us had a monopoly on fossil fuels and we had no choice but subsidize them in their efforts to develop nuclear weapons with which to blow us into oblivion — and if you think I’m talking about Iran, I don’t know what gave you this idea, but you’re not wrong.
While tyrannies and theocracies have deposits of oil relatively easy to extract and refine, such resources aren’t exclusive to theocracies and tyrannies. Oil and natural gas are available on- or offshore in humane and pacific regions as well, in quantities rivalling or exceeding deposits in the badlands of the Persian Gulf.
Nor are Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela the only alternatives to the al-Qaeda supporting Saudi and Holocaust-denying Iranian leaders. If we felt electric cars were too namby-pamby and alcohol-fuelled cars too macho; if we absolutely insisted on our addiction to fossil fuels, we still wouldn’t have to buy oil from our enemies.
The ayatollahs and their ilk don’t have a monopoly. We in Canada have just about as much oil as they do. Anyone who hasn’t yet read Ezra Levant’s book Ethical Oil should rush out to buy it. The oil sands of Alberta make Canada, as Levant puts it, an energy superpower that happens to be an ethical superpower as well.
Paying blackmail to someone who has something on you is one thing; paying it to someone who has nothing on you is something else. The world’s democracies are subsidizing rogue regimes for oil. Why? OPEC doesn’t have the world’s democracies over a barrel. Yes, we may have to pay OPEC’s *price* for oil — but we don’t have pay it to OPEC.
Looking at Alberta’s oil sands, we may conclude that we should pay it to ourselves.
Hello, people, cars don’t need internal combustion engines; internal combustion engines don’t need fossil fuels, and anyway, there’s lots of fossil fuel around. Some say Israel’s newly discovered fields equal Saudi Arabia’s deposits. We can shop outside the domains of sheiks, ayatollahs, and other marauders. Buying from them is like buying booze from Al Capone: Bad enough when he’s the only game in town and when he isn’t, well — supply your own adjective. Mine isn’t polite.
More here.
IGNORING THE EMP THREAT: Bill Gertz reports:
China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.
Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Center study on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China's so-called "assassin's mace" arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.
EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.
The declassified intelligence report, obtained by the private National Security Archive, provides details on China's EMP weapons and plans for their use. Annual Pentagon reports on China's military in the past made only passing references to the arms. …
Richard Fisher, a China military analyst, said EMP warheads are likely to be an option for China's new DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile for the purpose of attacking large U.S. Navy ships without inflicting immediate massive casualties.
"Less is known about the longer-term effects on personnel of this kind of radiation attack," said Mr. Fisher, who is with the International Assessment and Strategy Center. "The more powerful nuclear-propelled neutron bomb was designed specifically for killing personnel without a massive blast."
More here.
CYBERSPACE WARS: The Christian Science Monitor reports:
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have delivered a stark warning to the Pentagon: its failure to address key questions surrounding how the United States military would respond to a cyberattack--and what precisely constitutes an act of war in cyberspace, for that matter--remains a "significant gap" in US national security policy.
More here.
LEBANON’S IRAN CONNECTION: Benny Avni reports:
Lebanon and Israel are trying to resolve their maritime- border dispute peacefully -- for now. But the Hezbollah terrorists who control Lebanon are itching to turn it into a crisis that'll justify war -- if and when their patrons in Iran and Syria want it.
At issue is an area of the eastern Mediterranean where Israeli companies and their US partners have spent a lot of time and money exploring for natural gas. A few years ago, Delek of Netanya and the Texas-based Noble Energy hit pay dirt -- finding a rich sea area across from Israel's northern beaches that reportedly contains vast amounts of natural gas.
That's where Lebanon, which has yet to do any of its own exploration, comes in: Beirut now says it owns the area in which Israel is exploring. …
The real conflict isn't about legal haggling. Hezbollah -- which was founded by Iran to reach military parity with Israel -- wants to demonstrate to the Lebanese people that only its bravado can defend the homeland and its natural resources against predatory Zionists (and therefore Hezbollah must illegally maintain its huge arsenal of missiles and mortars). …
Meanwhile, as the Syrian regime teeters, there are increasing reports of a new transfer of long-range missiles to Lebanon, significantly increasing its capacity to hit all of Israel's population centers. …
But State Department "realists" pretend that none of this is our business.
Why can't we "choose sides" between America's most trusted Mideast ally and terrorists allied with our worst foes? If we must pretend to be neutral, why leave the mediation of a potentially explosive dispute to the decisively one-sided United Nations?
More here.
JEWISH QUESTIONS: FDD’s Jonathan Kay on the West Bank, Israel and history here.
SLAVES OF ZIONISM: Michael Rubin sends this creative bit of Photoshopping from Iran.
--Cliff May
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
"Re-equipping the military is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to making Canada a meaningful contributor in the world. We also have a purpose. And that purpose is no longer just to go along and get along with everyone else’s agenda. It is no longer to please every dictator with a vote at the United Nations. And I confess that I don’t know why past attempts to do so were ever thought to be in Canada’s national interest."
(6/10/2011) Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
"One of the problems of our society is that many people don't have a transcendent purpose. Now it can come from various things. It can come from religion of course. But religion in Europe is dead."
(7/30/2011) Psychiatrist and author Theodore Dalrymple
"I so admire the very brave Syrian protesters. Assad must go. He has killed 2,000 innocent civilians, thousands have been imprisoned. The sooner he will leave, the more his people will appreciate it. There is no chance he can defeat the people. If Syria’s ruler doesn’t realize this, he has already lost his place. I truly admire the Syrians’ stance against their ruler. It is easy to go and demonstrate, but when they are shooting at you? It is amazing. Their bravery and firm stance deserves respect. I believe that people who are interested in peace will prevail. Then it will be easier to achieve peace between Israel and Syria."
(7/26/2011) Israeli President Shimon Peres
IN THE MEDIA
US Adds American, Kenyan Shabaab Leaders to List of Designated Terrorists
07/31/2011, Bill Roggio, The Long War Journal
On July 29, the US Treasury Department targeted two senior leaders of Shabaab, the al Qaeda-linked group in Somalia, designating them as global terrorists. The designation allows the US to freeze the assets of the two leaders, prevent them from using financial institutions, and prosecute them for terrorist activities.
Al Qaeda, the Internet, and the Arab Spring
07/30/2011, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Threat Matrix, The Long War Journal
On Thursday, I was a panelist at a National Counterterrorism Center-sponsored conference on the global threat posed by al Qaeda; my panel focused on terrorist use of the Internet. This entry is adapted from my remarks, which were forward-looking in nature.
Al-Qaeda on the Brink?
07/28/2011, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, National Review Online
The idea that al-Qaeda is on the brink of collapse has taken hold. On Wednesday, the Washington Post noted that “U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly convinced that the killing of Osama bin Laden and the toll of seven years of CIA drone strikes have pushed al-Qaeda to the brink of collapse.”
In the Pirates' Lair
07/28/2011, Clifford D. May, Scripps Howard News Service
For years, Somali pirates have been hijacking ships off the coast of Somalia. For years, the United States and what we credulously call “the international community” have not been able to figure out what to do about it.
Treasury Targets Iran's 'Secret Deal' with al Qaeda
07/28/2011, Thomas Joscelyn, The Long War Journal
The US Treasury Department has designated six al Qaeda members who work for a terrorist headquartered in Iran. The Treasury Department explained that the six operatives are members of an al Qaeda network "headed by Ezedin Abdel Aziz Khalil, a prominent Iran-based al Qaeda facilitator, operating under an agreement between al Qaeda and the Iranian government."
Susan Rice's Absence Did Not Go Unnoticed
07/27/2011, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Commentary
On Tuesday, the United States reaffirmed its opposition to Palestinian plans to sidestep negotiations with Israel and declare a state this fall at the United Nations. But Ambassador Susan Rice, Washington’s top representative at the UN, was apparently nowhere to be found.
Happening Now
07/27/2011, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, Fox News Channel
Is al Qaeda on the verge of collapse?
Fox News.com Live
07/27/2011, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Fox News Channel
Does the situation in Norway pose a threat to U.S. national security?
News Update
08/1/2011, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, al Jazeera English
What is the extent of al Qaeda's connections with Iran?
News Update
08/1/2011, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer, VOA Urdu
Is al Qaeda on the brink of collapse and what is the extent of its connections with Iran?
Webinar: IRAN - WHAT NEXT?
07/27/2011, Mark Dubowitz, Clarion Productions
Despite increased sanctions and international pressure, the Iranian regime continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for terrorism, and human rights abuses. How can this regime be stopped in its tracks?
The Rob Breakenridge Show
07/27/2011, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, AM 770 CHQR - Calgary
Terrorist attacks in Norway.
News Update
07/26/2011, Clifford D. May, Alhurra
The conflict in Libya.
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