Israel Struck Syrian Nuclear Project, Analysts Say
Israel’s air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports. The description of the target addresses one of the central mysteries surrounding the Sept. 6 attack, and suggests that Israel carried out the raid to demonstrate its determination to snuff out even a nascent nuclear project in a neighboring state. The Bush administration was divided at the time about the wisdom of Israel’s strike, American officials said, and some senior policy makers still regard the attack as premature…

From The New York Times (dated October 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

The Battle for Jerusalem Begins
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will put Jerusalem on the negotiating table as he hurtles toward a “joint declaration” with the Palestinian Authority ahead of next month’s U.S.-sponsored Mideast summit. The prime minister says that a joint declaration with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas prior to the summit will lead to direct negotiations. The Arabic Al Quds Al-Arabiya newspaper reported Monday morning that Olmert has now come to an agreement with Jordan that Arabs in eastern Jerusalem will be granted Jordanian citizenship. The plan would leave Jerusalem's Muslim holy sites under the control of the Hashemite kingdom, according to the report. Olmert vehemently denied the report…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated October 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

Israel May OK Division of Jerusalem
A confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday that his government would support a division of Jerusalem, which is reportedly a key component of an Israeli-Palestinian declaration to be made at a U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference next month. As part of recent negotiations between the sides, Deputy Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon has proposed turning over many of the Arab neighborhoods of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians…

Associated Press story at My Way News (dated October 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

'Dozens died in Syria-Iran missile test'
Proof of cooperation between Iran and Syria in the proliferation and development of weapons of mass destruction was brought to light Monday in Jane's Defence Weekly, which reported that dozens of Iranian engineers and 15 Syrian officers were killed in a July 23 accident in Syria. According to the report, cited by Channel 10, the joint Syrian-Iranian team was attempting to mount a chemical warhead on a Scud missile when the explosion occurred, spreading lethal chemical agents, including sarin nerve gas…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated September 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

9/11 Conspiracy Theories Gain Ground, Study Finds
[A new] poll, conducted by Zogby International for 911Truth.org and released last week, found that 31 percent of Americans do not accept the official explanation for Sept. 11 -- that "19 Arab fundamentalists executed a surprise attack which caught U.S. intelligence and military forces off guard." Among that 31 percent, around 26 percent agreed that the American government "knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military, and economic motives." Almost 5 percent believed that U.S. officials "actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attack"…

From Cybercast News Service (dated September 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/WT)

Putin praises strength of 'Warsaw Pact 2'
President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao…attend an unprecedented show of joint military force [Aug. 20] amid fears that the Russian leader is trying to turn an increasingly powerful central Asian alliance into a second Warsaw Pact…Founded in 2001, the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization], which includes the four central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as well as China and Russia, is rapidly gaining a reputation as an anti-Western organization…Yet the SCO has wider ambitions. Pakistan, India and Mongolia all want to join - as does Iran, whose president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, attended the summit as guest of honour…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Putin’s hostile course
At virtually every turn, Mr. Putin and the Russian leadership appear to be doing their best in ways large and small to marginalize and embarrass the United States and undercut U.S. foreign policy interests…

From The Washington Times (dated October 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Rethinking the core issues
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is shuttling between Jerusalem and Ramallah to help Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams craft a joint declaration for the upcoming Annapolis summit that addresses the "core issues," particularly, - refugees - known as the Palestinian "right of return" - final borders, and Jerusalem… Israel is…mistaken to waste most of its diplomatic energy "killing" the Palestinian "right of return," when there is no danger that Israel will be forced to absorb millions of Arab refugees. Diplomatically, Israel has already won that battle. But on two other "core issues," borders and Jerusalem, that are no less critical to Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state, and are today in great peril, Israel has a bloody diplomatic fight ahead…

From Institute for Contemporary Affairs director Dan Diker in The Jerusalem Post (dated October 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT/RE)

Selling out Israel on the installment plan
Name one concession Israel has made in recent years that has been reciprocated by its sworn enemies. This is not a trick question. There are none. That's why next month's announced "Middle East Summit" in Annapolis, Md., should be viewed as one more installment payment in the sellout of Israel and of American interests in the Middle East. While the United States continues to struggle to shore up democracy in Iraq, the Bush administration — like administrations before it — proceeds in undermining the likelihood that the region's first democracy will endure. At every negotiating session, Israel is pressured into making concessions for "peace" and receives more war in response. Mostly this is because of the wishful thinking in the West that has replaced sound policy. Why should the Palestinians make concessions when they are drawing closer to their objective of eradicating Israel by throwing stones and bombs and stonewalling negotiations?...

From columnist Cal Thomas at Jewish World Review (dated October 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (ME/WT)

Analyst: China building world’s largest navy as U.S. sea power is in 'absolute decline'
Did you know that China could become the world’s leading naval power by 2020? That’s the verdict of military analyst Tony Corn. This may help explain why the U.S. Navy thinks a piece of paper called the U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty provides some sort of protection for American forces on the high seas. It offers no such protection, of course, but it creates the impression that Navy leaders are doing something about our increasing weakness and vulnerability. However, like so many other U.N. treaties, including the 19 anti-terrorism treaties in effect on 9/11, this one offers a false sense of security. It will mask a dramatic decline in our military power…

From Accuracy in Media editor Cliff Kincaid (dated September 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (AP/WT)

Chlorine attacks in Iraq spur warnings in US
A spate of deadly chlorine bomb attacks in Iraq is prompting the Bush administration to urge nearly 3,000 municipal water treatment plants in the United States to make sure their chlorine gas is well protected -- spotlighting what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has singled out as a "gap in our system of regulation"…

From the Boston Globe (dated July 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/WT)

Natl. Intel Director Worried About Terror Sleeper Cells in U.S.
The nation’s top intelligence official yesterday went farther than ever before in outlining what he described as a heightened threat of an al Qaeda attack on American soil…

From ABC News (dated July 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/WT)

Japan's more provocative military makes neighbors nervous
The incremental changes - especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States - amount to the most significant transformation in the Japanese military since World War II, one that has brought it ever closer operationally to America's military while rattling nerves throughout northeast Asia…

From the International Herald Tribune (dated July 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (AP/WT)

Olmert Reiterates Stance to Give Away Judea and Samaria
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reiterated his belief that Israel "needs to withdraw" from the biblical Jewish provinces of Judea and Samaria [known to most as the West Bank]…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated July 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Israel frees 255 prisoners in bid to boost Abbas
Israel released 255 Palestinian prisoners on Friday as part of a series of goodwill gestures designed to bolster Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in his standoff against Hamas…

From CNN (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Report: Al Qaida network planning UK plot of 'Hiroshima' caliber
A British intelligence report…said there is a potential threat from Al Qaida in Iraq. “A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorization,” the report said. “He claims the operation will be on 'a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki' and will 'shake the Roman throne'. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West"…

From World Tribune (dated July 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/WT)

Merkel Open to Missile Shield Due to Iran Threat
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday she does not oppose U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield to counter any future attack by Iran, a project that has strained ties between Russia and the West…

Reuters story at Javno (Croatia) (dated July 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/WT)

Report: Christians crucified by terrorists in Iraq
Believers in Jesus said to be nailed to crosses, tied with ropes, set ablaze…

From WorldNetDaily (dated July 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Government report: Al Qaeda strongest since September 11, 2001
Al Qaeda is the strongest it has been since the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a new U.S. government analysis concludes…

From CNN (dated July 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (WT)

Germany Skeptical of EU Foreign Ministers' Middle East Initiative
Germany has criticized a call by 10 European foreign ministers to redefine EU objectives in the Middle East, including deploying in the Palestinian territories an international troop force armed with a "robust mandate"…

From Deutsch Welle (Germany) (dated July 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Hamas’s plans for Temple Mount foiled
Hamas attempts to gain control of the Temple Mount and recruit new Israeli-Arab operatives in east Jerusalem have been foiled by the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), a senior security official announced on Monday…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated July 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Secret Document: U.S. Fears Terror 'Spectacular' Planned
A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document. "This is reminiscent of the warnings and intelligence we were getting in the summer of 2001," the official told ABCNews.com…

From ABC News (dated July 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/WT)

[Israeli Minister] Lieberman wants NATO troops in Gaza
Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman discussed deploying NATO forces in the Gaza Strip in a meeting with NATO Deputy Secretary General Alessandro Minuto Rizzo in Brussels…

From Ynet News (dated June 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Israel braces for July war with up to five enemies
Israel is preparing for an imminent war with Iran, Syria and/or their non-state clients. Israeli military intelligence has projected that a major attack could come from any of five adversaries in the Middle East. Officials said such a strike could spark a war as early as July 2007…

From World Tribune (dated June 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

China building military force to challenge US
An increasingly wealthy China is now building a military force tailored specifically to challenge any attempt by the United States to intervene in a conflict over Taiwan, Western and Chinese military analysts have said…

From The Times of India (dated June 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (AP/WT)

Look who's holding hostages again
How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran? No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now. What? You haven't heard about them? Odd that, isn't it? But they're there…

From columnist Mark Steyn at Jewish World Review (dated July 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

How Empires End
Longtime critics of the [Iraq] war like Gen. William Odom say it is already lost, and fighting on will only further bleed the country and make the ultimate price even higher. The general may be right in saying it is time to cut our losses. But we should take a hard look at what those losses may be…

From columnist Patrick Buchanan at Human Events (dated July 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

What We Pre-Empted
Given the problems and U.S. casualties in Iraq, polls show a large majority of the American people believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. Yet if we imagine what the world would look like today if Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, it seems clear that almost no outcome in Iraq would be as adverse to the interests of the United States as today's world with Saddam still in power…

From American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Peter Wallison in The Wall Street Journal (dated July 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

The Threat of Bioweapons
Biological weapons are among the most dangerous in the world today and can be engineered and disseminated to achieve a more deadly result than a nuclear attack. Whereas the explosion of a nuclear bomb would cause massive death in a specific location, a biological attack with smallpox could infect multitudes of people across the globe. With incubation periods of up to 17 days, human disseminators could unwittingly cause widespread exposure before diagnosable symptoms indicate an infection and appropriate quarantine procedures are in place. Unlike any other type of weapon, bioweapons such as smallpox can replicate and infect a chain of people over an indeterminate amount of time from a single undetectable point of release. According to science writer and author of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston, "If you took a gram of smallpox, which is highly contagious and lethal, and for which there's no vaccine available globally now, and released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that the virus would go global in six weeks as people moved from city to city......the death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions.....in scale, that's like a nuclear war"…

From Janet Ellen Levy at American Thinker (dated July 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (GI/WT/ND)

Iran’s Proxy War
Tehran is on the offensive against us throughout the Middle East. Will Congress respond?...

From U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) in The Wall Street Journal (dated July 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (ME/WT)

Ceding the Fall of Pakistan
Beyond Musharraf lie only question marks and uncertainties at best, which is a dire Western predicament for a nuclear power cohabitating with popular and powerful al-Qaeda and Taliban movements on its soil. And increasingly, the question regarding Musharraf's rule as the leader of Pakistan is most often discussed in terms of how long he can survive, not whether or not he can retain reliable control of both Pakistan's government and its military. The Center for Security Policy's Salim Mansur raised the uncomfortable issue of a potential nuclear alliance between Iran and Pakistan. Few in the public governmental forum care to delve into the possible scenario of a fallen Pakistan suddenly a nuclear and military ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran. But such a scenario is very real, and one which few care to delve into for long. It’s not a pleasant exercise…

From Steve Schippert at FrontPage Magazine (dated July 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (AP/WT)

Report: PM willing to return Golan for peace with Syria
A recent flurry of secret messages from Israel to Syria signaled Israel's willingness to give up the Golan Heights in return for a peace agreement…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated June 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/WT)

Palestinians say fed up with gunmen
For most Palestinians, black-hooded gunmen have long been respected symbols of resistance against Israeli occupation. Now, frequent internal fighting and lawlessness gripping the Palestinian territories have transformed the militants into no more than gangsters in the eyes of many of those who once saw them as heroes. "It's very ironic but I'm relieved the Israelis have started a bombing campaign. The gunmen killing each other on the streets were forced to go into hiding," said Mai, a Gaza housewife, referring to strikes aimed at halting rocket attacks on Israel…Legislator Nasser Jum'a, once a leading member of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade… said ordinary Palestinians were so fed up with the armed groups "they now wish the Israeli occupation would take over in Gaza or hope for the return of Jordanian rule in the West Bank" to get rid of them…

Reuters story at Yahoo News (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/WT)

[After threat] Putin offers radar site in Azerbaijan
Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a U.S. missile shield in Europe, presented President Bush with a surprise counterproposal Thursday built around a Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than new defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Bush said it was an interesting suggestion and promised to consider it. Putin's formula would force a major rethinking of U.S. plans for defending Europe against attack from hostile regimes such as Iran or North Korea. While outright acceptance of Putin's idea appeared doubtful, the White House seemed eager to avoid further inflaming tensions by giving it short shrift. The Russian president said he would abandon his threat to retarget missiles on Europe — if Bush accepted the Kremlin's missile-defense proposal…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Chavez Calls for Leftist Defense Bloc in Latin America
President Hugo Chavez called for the creation of a common defense pact between Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia, while the leftist Latin American bloc announced the creation of a development bank to finance joint projects. Chavez said Wednesday that the four-nation Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, which began as a socialist-leaning trade group, should cooperate militarily to become more independent of U.S. influence…

Associated Press story at Fox News (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (LA/WT)

Iran president sees "countdown" to Israel's end
Iran's president said on Sunday the Lebanese and the Palestinians had pressed a "countdown button" to bring an end to Israel. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who triggered outrage in the West two years ago when he said Israel should be "wiped off the map", has often referred to the destruction of the Jewish state but says Iran is not a threat. "With God's help, the countdown button for the destruction of the Zionist regime has been pushed by the hands of the children of Lebanon and Palestine," Ahmadinejad said in a speech. "By God's will, we will witness the destruction of this regime in the near future," he said. He did not elaborate…

From Reuters (dated June 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/WT)

Gaza: Female TV staff get death threat
A radical Islamic group in the Gaza Strip issued a death threat over the weekend against women working for the official Palestinian Authority television station, accusing them of dressing immodestly and behaving in a way that violates the teachings of Islam. The threat, the first of its kind against female employees of Palestine TV, was made by the Righteous Swords of Islam, a relatively new group that is believed to have links with al-Qaida…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated June 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Three Arrested, 1 Sought In Terror Plot On New York City's JFK Airport
Federal authorities announced Saturday they had broken up a suspected Muslim terrorist cell planning a "chilling" attack to destroy John F. Kennedy International Airport, kill thousands of people and trigger an economic catastrophe by blowing up a jet fuel artery that runs through populous residential neighborhoods. Three men, one of them a former member of Guyana's parliament, were arrested and one was being sought in Trinidad as part of a plot that authorities said they had been tracked for more than a year and was foiled in the planning stages. "The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable," U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable"…

From Fox News (dated June 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/RE/WT)

Palestinian Kindergarten Graduates Vow to Die for Allah
A televised graduation ceremony at a Palestinian kindergarten in Gaza shows little boys dressed in black masks, camouflage fatigues, carrying toy guns, and waving green Hamas flags. The children vow that their most "lofty aspiration" is death for the sake of Allah. The ceremony aired on Hamas' Al-Aqsa Television on Thursday…

From Cybercast News Service (dated June 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Japan approves constitution steps
Japan's parliament has passed a bill that sets out steps for holding a referendum on revising the country's pacifist constitution…

From BBC News (dated May 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (AP/WT)

Israel is doomed (again)
By any rational analysis of all the factors in play, Israel is doomed. Which is why the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War in 1967 has come at a propitious time. If Israel's position is precarious now, it seemed hopeless in the days leading up to that war…

From Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial page editor Paul Greenberg at Jewish World Review (dated June 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Alleged plot: A potential threat seen in America's backyard
Officials think members of an extremist network in the Caribbean were part of the alleged plot… "That is what is most significant about this case. It demonstrates the evolving nature of the threat and how we need to be looking at areas of the world that have not been viewed by the general public as a terror threat," the official said. "It shows that the threat can come from anywhere. It is not just limited to the Middle East or South Asia"…

From the Los Angeles Times (dated June 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/RE/WT)

300,000 Supporters of Suicide Attacks in America
Some of the results of the Pew Research Center poll of Muslims in America were startling: twenty-six percent of Muslims between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine affirmed that there could be justification in some (unspecified) circumstances for suicide bombing, and five percent of all the Muslims surveyed said that they had a favorable view of Al-Qaeda. Given the Pew Center’s estimate of 2.35 million Muslims in America, and the total of thirteen percent that avowed a belief that suicide bombings could ever be justified, that’s over 300,000 supporters of suicide attacks. And 117,500 supporters of Al-Qaeda…

From Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer at FrontPage magazine (dated May 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/RE/WT)

Reviving the evil empire
Seven years ago, the economist Brigitte Granville and I published an article in the Journal of Economic History titled "Weimar on the Volga," in which we argued that the experience of 1990s Russia bore many resemblances to the experience of 1920s Germany... Having more or less stifled internal dissent, Russia is now ready to play a more aggressive role on the international stage. Remember, it was Putin who restored the old Soviet national anthem. And it was he who described the collapse of the Soviet Union as a "national tragedy on an enormous scale." It would be a bigger tragedy if he or his successor tried to restore that evil empire. Unfortunately, that is precisely what the Weimar analogy predicts will happen…

From Harvard professor Niall Ferguson in the Los Angeles Times (dated May 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/WT)

Fort Dix Fix: Immigration policy in wartime
Mercifully, today we are not commemorating 100 soldiers killed at Fort Dix this month by a group of immigrant jihadis…Unfortunately, the Senate’s grotesque immigration bill ignores the lessons about the intersection of immigration and terrorism that we should have learned from the Fort Dix plotters and from dozens and dozens of their predecessors. That lesson is that normal, sustained immigration enforcement, conducted across the board and without apology, is an indispensable tool in preventing and disrupting terrorist plots against our people…The Senate bill…actually undermines security by ensuring, in Section 136(d), that “Nothing in this section may be construed to provide additional authority to any State or local entity to enforce Federal immigration laws.” This is especially pertinent regarding the Fort Dix plot. The three Duka brothers — illegal aliens all — were stopped by police on various New Jersey jurisdictions 75 times without any inquiry into their lack of immigration status…

From Center for Immigration Studies executive director Mark Krikorian at National Review Online (dated May 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/LA/WT)

America must not ignore a dangerous percentage
26 percent looms large when it describes the number of American Muslims, ages 18-29, who support suicide bombings "in defense of Islam" — one of the sensational, if sensationally underreported, findings of a recent Pew poll. According to Pew, the total Muslim population in America is 2.35 million, 30 percent of whom are between 18 and 29. By my figuring, the suicide-bomb-approving cohort works out to 183,000 people…

From columnist Diana West at Jewish World Review (dated May 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/RE/WT)

Water As The Source Of Life And Strife
The next major Middle East war could well be fought not over land, oil or religion -- the traditional causes of conflict to date -- but over water, a precious commodity becoming rarer by the day. Addressing top leaders in industry, business, banking and the media in his speech at the opening session of the World Economic Forum held on the shores of the Dead Sea last week, King Abdullah II of Jordan raised the alarm over the scarcity of water in the region and warned of the dire consequences for not only the developing nations, but the havoc water scarcity would have on the developed world as a whole…

United Press International story at TerraDaily (dated May 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (ME/ND/WT)

Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won't change their view…

From author Bernard Lewis in The Wall Street Journal (dated May 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)

Israeli Envoy: Syrian Build-up - the Strongest Since 1973 War
Israel's Ambassador in Washington says Syria is developing its most serious threat against Israel since it attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973…

From Arutz Sheva Israel National News (dated May 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/WT)

6 men charged in plot to attack Fort Dix
Six foreign-born Muslims were arrested and accused Tuesday of plotting to attack Fort Dix and slaughter scores of U.S. soldiers — a scheme the FBI says was foiled when the men asked a store clerk to copy a video of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad. The defendants, all men in their 20s from the former Yugoslavia and the Middle East, include a pizza deliveryman suspected of using his job to scout out the military base. Their goal was "to kill as many American soldiers as possible" with mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and guns, prosecutors said…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated May 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/RE/WT)

Congress: India Builds Military Ties With Iran
Congress has determined that India was developing military relations with Iran despite a nuclear agreement with the United States. Members of the House and Senate said India was establishing defense and military cooperation with Iran in wake of a U.S. nuclear agreement with New Dehli. They have raised the prospect that Iran could benefit from U.S. missile technology sold to India…

From Middle East Newsline (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (AP/ME/WT)

Putin not able to track all nukes
Russian President Vladimir Putin told President Bush he could not account for all of Moscow's nuclear weapons at the same time al Qaeda was seeking to purchase three Russian nuclear devices on the black market, former CIA Director George J. Tenet said…

From The Washington Times (dated May 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/AP/ME/WT)

Top Hamas official: Kill all Americans
Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, declared during a Friday sermon at a Sudan mosque that America and Israel will be annihilated and called upon Allah to kill Jews and Americans "to the very Last One"…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated May 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Japan Considers Amending Pacifist Constitution
After years of talking about it, Japan's governing party has moved ahead this month with plans to revise the country's constitution. The changes would expand the role of Japan's military - a significant break from its post-World War II pacifist era. And as Catherine Makino reports from Tokyo, that is giving rise to fear that Japan could return to its militarist past…

From VOA News (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (AP/WT)

Report says terror attacks up sharply
Terrorist attacks worldwide shot up more than 25 percent last year, killing 40 percent more people than in 2005, particularly in Iraq where extremists used chemical weapons and suicide bombers to target crowds, the State Department said Monday…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (GI/ME/WT)

Al-Qaeda ‘planning big British attack’
Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report. Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West. Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”. The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq…

From The Times (London) (dated April 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/WT)

German army in new racism row
A video showing a German army instructor telling one of his soldiers to envision African-Americans in the Bronx while firing his machine gun was broadcast Saturday on national television. The video, coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany's conscript army…The instructor tells the soldier, "You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways ... Act." The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder…

Associated Press story at CNN (dated April 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

German backing for US anti-missile shield
Europe as whole could profit from US plans to place anti-missile bases in Poland and the Czech republic, while in the long run the EU is heading towards a common army, Germany's defence minister has said. Warsaw and Prague on Thursday (12 April) received political backing from the German EU presidency for their controversial plans to host a US defence system aimed at intercepting possible ballistic missiles fired from states such as Iran…

From EUObserver.com (dated April 13, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US/WT)

Iran possibly months from making bomb
New reports indicate Tehran close to enriching weapons-grade uranium…

From WorldNetDaily (dated April 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/WT)

Europe: Majority supports strike on Iran
Over half of Europeans would support a preemptive military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a poll released last week by a London think-tank reports…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated April 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/ME/WT)

Indonesia's Secular State under Siege
Indonesia is a nominally secular democracy. But the influence of conservative Islam is gaining in the world's biggest Muslim country. A further step away from tolerance may be just around the corner…

From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated April 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (AP/RE/WT)

Iran, Syria Prepare for War in Mid-2007
Israel's intelligence community has assessed that Iran and Syria were preparing for war in mid-2007. Officials said the war was expected to be sparked by a U.S. strike on Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. At that point, they said, Iran, Syria and Hizbullah would also attack Israel with a range of missiles and rockets…

From Middle East Newsline (dated April 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/WT)

Europe (finally!) gets the War on Terror
Two headline-grabbing signals came from Europe this week, one from Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany, and the other from Nicolas Sarkozy, the presidential front-runner in France. Both show a new desire to heal the Atlantic alliance, which has been badly strained in the last several years…Europe can no longer deny the Islamist threat…Nicolas Sarkozy as French Minister of Interior has had to deal with two years of nightly riots by thousands of ethnic Muslim adolescents…Europeans are aware of the spread of nuclear technology from Pakistan and North Korea to Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. Today Paris is only fifteen minutes away from an Iranian ICBM attack. That threat will not materialize until Iran obtains nukes, but that may be only a matter of time. So the Europeans might not say it out loud, but they finally "get" the War on Terror --- six contentious years after the Twin Towers fell. They still hope that a Democrat will be elected in 2008, because they are more comfortable with a European-style socialist in the White House. But given the common threat to civilized countries, they are prepared to work with the US either way. Hillary as president may declare the end of the words "War on Terror" --- for PR purposes --- but in truth, everybody knows that the anti-jihad struggle must be either won or lost, and the West cannot afford to lose. Angela Merkel was visibly shocked by Ahmadinejad's open threats of a nuclear Holocaust against Israel last year. She has signaled very clearly that Germany takes the Iranian threat very seriously…Bottom line: We are beginning to see a reconstruction of the Western alliance after a decade of unprecedented propaganda attacks from the European Left. That does not mean that Europe will be subservient to the US as it was in the 1950s and 60s. Europe will try to stay neutral in any nuclear standoff between the US and Iran, even though it also wants to be protected against Iranian blackmail. Ideally, Europe wishes to control America as its own foreign legion…

From James Lewis at American Thinker (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

Al-Qaida Sleeper Cells Await
Day in and day out, there are new revelations about terrorist sleeper cells in the United Kingdom and other European countries…The law of averages would indicate the near-certainty of terrorist sleeper cells in the United States…

By United Press International and Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/BR/EU/RE/WT)

The Result of European Unification Will Be War
The EEC was put across as a free trade zone. I never voted for the creation of a supranational, unaccountable government that does not submit to the will of the people via an election. In fact, I did not vote at all. I have never had a say on whether I want my country — which no longer exists — to be a part of this. The EU has no mandate and never has. Now, Germany is a more apt comparison than you might realise. Bismarck conceived the unification of Germany as a means to prevent the German kingdoms from fighting each other. He began to implement it when those same kingdoms were on the verge of signing an unprecedented peace treaty; his manipulations caused a war that gave him the pretext to simply conquer those other kingdoms, or trick them in to treaties that irrevocably tied them to his Imperial Germany. He began with a customs union. The EU has not resorted to wars to implement itself, but it began in the same way, and with the same aims. The EU was conceived as a means to prevent another war like the Great War, but it was interrupted by the Second World War. By the close of that war the political landscape had so changed that the concept of the EU was obsolete before the first treaties were even signed. It is consequently an institution looking for a role, and it has since found that role by re-positioning itself as a counter to American ‘hegemony’, a second pole against the US’s presence in the world as a super-power. This is in itself a foolish proposition; historically it is more foolish still, because history demonstrates that it will cause more trouble than it is worth. Bismarck’s united Germany did become peaceful for a while, but that peace didn’t last long. The internal fractures of the new Imperial Germany soon started to cause strife and resentment amongst the people of that country. A solution was found in the redirection of the national angst toward external enemies. The eventual result was the great war. The result of that was World War 2. The ‘unification’ of the nations of Europe is the same thing on a much larger scale. It is perhaps no coincidence that incidents of anti-Americanism have risen sharply since the signing of Maastricht. The EU has placed itself in opposition to the United States. It has inveigled itself so deeply in to the lives of its ‘citizens’, so deeply embedded itself in to every aspect of life, that everything a person does is regulated in some way by the EU…None of this was done with the consent of Parliament. None was done with the consent of the people of this nation…Sooner or later the sheer volume of regulations will start to affect people culturally. Our culture is slowly being eroded and destroyed by this vile institution, our national identities removed, our freedoms erased, and the end result? Inevitably, it will be war, but before that will be a morass of dull, lifeless existence for millions of people shorn of everything that once made their nations great. What price the ability to spend the same coin in 20 countries?...

Quote from Englishman Archonix at Gates of Vienna reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated May 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/WT)

Towards a Totalitarian Europe
Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy has warned that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. When people who have worked on higher levels in the EU system note similarities as well, it is time people start taking this idea seriously. In 2002 Louis Michel, the then Belgian minister of foreign affairs and today a member of the European Commission, told the Belgian parliament that the EU will eventually encompass North Africa and the Middle East as well as Europe…The Constitution will move even more power into the hands of the already powerful and unaccountable elites. The EUrocrats are basically saying that since somebody may conceivably threaten our democratic system at some point in the future, we might as well dismantle it now, in an orderly fashion. Moreover, whereas constitutions have traditionally outlined the basic workings of the state, the proposed European Constitution, running into hundreds of pages, betrays an almost sharia-like desire to regulate all aspects of life. It is an instrument of control, a blueprint for an authoritarian state. Nazi Germany was a totalitarian state, but such societies can also be transnational, as was the Soviet Union, which the EU resembles more than just superficially: An artificial superstate run by an authoritarian bureaucracy that overrides the will of the people and imposes its ideology on the populace. Are we back in the E.U.S.S.R? Although the EU, due to its transnational nature, most closely resembles the Soviet Union, there are also similarities with Nazi Germany. The EU was created by perfecting the Big Lie technique that was championed by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: Serve people massive lies, so big that they cannot believe that anybody would lie about it, and they will believe them, at least for a while. It should also be mentioned that Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for the warlike nature of Islam. The admiration was mutual. Muhammad Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti of Jerusalem, was an Arab nationalist and passionate anti-Semite who cooperated closely with Nazi Germany during World War II. Later, leadership of Palestinian Arabs was transferred to Husayni’s nephew Yasser Arafat, a very dear friend of the EU, who in 2002 gave an interview in which he referred to "our hero al-Husayni." If the EU is supposed to protect us from the horrors of Nazi Germany, it is remarkable how many of its traits it is copying, such as flirting with Arab strongmen and admiration for Islam. The Muslim immigration the EU is promoting to Europe has triggered the largest wave of anti-Semitism since the rise of, well, Nazi Germany, and may yet force the remaining Jews to leave. That Europeans should support this organization to prevent a new totalitarian regime is a sick joke. The EU is a lot closer to totalitarian states than the supposedly evil nation states it is going to replace. Since there is no European demos, no pre-political loyalty or shared public community, and since legislate power has been transferred to the unelected EU Commission, there is no way the EU can function as a democracy in any meaningful sense of the term. The EU can only become one giant Yugoslavia, either ruled by an authoritarian oligarchy in the fashion of Tito, or fall apart into civil wars. The slow, but steady stifling of free speech through legislation and Muslim Jihad violence indicates an ominous trend: Europe is moving in a totalitarian direction…

From blogger Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated April 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

Failure to See Jihad for What It Is
Someday, when the war in Iraq has become a historical episode, we will tally up the lessons learned--if, that is, we ever learn any. Here are two worth mastering because failing to do so probably means we will no longer exist. Lesson 1. Nation-building in a war zone is nuts. Nation-building in an Islamic war zone is suicide…I hate to be the one to break it to Gen. Petraeus, not to mention President Bush, but the fact is, in an Islamic war zone, an "infidel" army just isn't going to win Islamic allegiance. There are many religious and cultural reasons I could offer in explanation, but instead I'll turn to the underreported story of the week: two findings contained within an extensive new poll of Muslim opinion conducted in four major Islamic countries, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco and Pakistan. Accordingto WorldPublicOpinion.org, more than half of those polled in Indonesia, and three-quarters of those polled in Egypt, Morocco and Pakistan believe in the strict application of Shariah, or Islamic law. Nearly two-thirds of all respondents expressed their desire to see the Islamic world united in a caliphate. Which brings me to: Lesson 2. With numbers like these, portraying jihadist war goals (Shariah, caliphate) as belonging to a "tiny band of extremists" is nuts. Persisting in this PC fantasy as part of the narrative and strategy of the "war on terror" is suicidal. But such PC fantasy fuels hearts-and-minds efforts that go beyond "allegiance"-winning outposts in Iraq as the United States now weirdly cheers on world Islamization to curry Islamic favor…

By columnist Diana West in The Washington Times (dated April 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (ME/AP/RE/WT)

The Coming Era of Russia’s Dark Rider
History really does run in cycles. Take Europe for example. European history is a chronicle of the rise and fall of its geographic center. As Germany rises, the powers on its periphery buckle under its strength and are forced to pool resources in order to beat back Berlin. As Germany falters, the power vacuum at the middle of the Continent allows the countries on Germany's borders to rise in strength and become major powers themselves. Since the formation of the first "Germany" in 800, this cycle has set the tempo and tenor of European affairs. A strong Germany means consolidation followed by a catastrophic war; a weak Germany creates a multilateral concert of powers and multi-state competition (often involving war, but not on nearly as large a scale). For Europe this cycle of German rise and fall has run its course three times-the Holy Roman Empire, Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany-and is only now entering its fourth iteration with the reunified Germany. Russia's cycle, however, is far less clinical than Europe's. It begins with a national catastrophe…The Russians search desperately for the second phase of the cycle-the arrival of a white rider--and invariably they find one. The white rider rarely encapsulates what Westerns conceive of as a savior--someone who will bring wealth and freedom. Russian concerns after such calamities are far more basic: they want stability… Putin is the current incarnation of Russia's white rider, which puts him in the same category as past leaders such as Vladimir Lenin and, of course, Russia's "Greats": Catherine and Peter…In the third phase of the Russian cycle, the white rider realizes that the challenges ahead are more formidable than he first believed and that his (relative) idealism is more a hindrance than an asset. At this point the white rider gives way to a dark one, someone not burdened by the white rider's goals and predilections, and willing to do what he feels must be done regardless of moral implications. The most famous Russian dark rider in modern times is Josef Stalin…In particularly gloomy periods in Russia's past (which is saying something) the white rider himself actually has shed his idealism and become the dark rider. For example, Ivan the IV began his rule by diligently regenerating Russia's fortunes, before degenerating into the psychotic madman better known to history as Ivan the Terrible. Under the rule of the dark rider, Russia descends into an extremely strict period of internal control and external aggression, which is largely dictated by Russia's geographic weaknesses…

Stratfor.com Intel Briefing reposted at BillOReilly.com (dated April 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

The Crux of the Matter: Is America the EU’s Enforcer?
A truly horrifying possibility is emerging from this discussion, and it is so awful I have been slow to take it in. As a preface, I have always been utterly aghast at the American elites’ support for the unification of Europe. Why did Americans support the elimination of historic states and nations in this unaccountable, post-national, post-human, air-conditioned nightmare of the EU? It seemed the ultimate betrayal. It was also horrible that there was never any debate in America about this. No major voices in U.S. politics have opposed European unification or even questioned American support for it. But now a worse possibility – though it is only a possibility - appears on the horizon. It is that America is not merely the friend and cheerleader of the EU project, but its enforcer. Our troops and missiles and tanks are in Europe to prevent any uprising by European patriots and nationalists against the EU tyranny…

From Lawrence Auster at The Brussels Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/US/WT)

Hezbollah’s German Helpers
Holding currently both the E.U. and G-8 presidencies, Berlin would be in a strong position to head the fight against an organization dedicated to the destruction of Israel and the replacement of Lebanon's fragile democracy with a Tehran-backed Islamic state. So far, however, Germany has squandered this unique opportunity to push for a Hezbollah ban. Berlin's passivity is consistent with its tolerant approach toward the "Party of God" over the past two decades…Why does the German government tolerate [its] activities? First, the Hezbollah leadership in Beirut recognizes the value of a German safe haven. It demands that Hezbollah followers carefully obey German law, which Berlin claims they do "to a large extent." Experience from attacks in the U.S., Britain and elsewhere suggest, though, that terrorists follow the law up and until the point they decide to strike. Second, too many Germany policymakers uncritically accept the idea that there is supposedly a political Hezbollah -- an Islamist but legitimate movement independent of those Hezbollah terrorists who have murdered hundreds of people around the world. To believe that fairy tale, they even ignore Hezbollah's own words. As Mohammed Fannish, member of the "political bureau" of Hezbollah and former Lebanese energy minister put it in 2002: "I can state that there is no separating between Hezbollah's military and political arms"…

From European Foundation for Democracy senior fellow Alexander Ritzmann and Foundation for Defense of Democracies chief operating officer Mark Dubowitz in The Wall Street Journal (dated April 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

The Long Road to Victory
The US's difficulties with confronting Iran have little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Rather, America's feckless diplomacy toward Iran to date is the result of the administration's early misunderstanding of Iraq and of Iranian and Arab interests. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration identified certain basic guiding realities and missed others. First there was the issue of Arab tyranny…Yet recognizing this basic reality did not lead the administration to adopt appropriate policies…By pushing fast elections, the US entrapped itself. It inadvertently empowered its enemies and so was unable to embrace the duly elected governments. In opposing the forces it expended so much energy getting elected, the US was perceived as weak, foolish and hypocritical…As for the Arab world, the administration believes that since the Arabs oppose Iran's quest to become a regional nuclear power, they will help the US both in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Here too, the administration confuses common interests with common agendas. The fact that the Arabs share common interests with the US does not make them allies. As a young Saudi imam put it this week to The Wall Street Journal, "We are waiting for the time to attack [the US]. Youth feel happy when the Taliban takes a town or when a helicopter comes down, killing Americans in Iraq. It is a very dangerous situation for the US in the whole Muslim world"…

From Jerusalem Post deputy managing editor Caroline Glick at Real Clear Politics (dated April 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/ME/RE/WT)

Bin Laden's Eurofighters
242 jihadists, 31 attacks, 28 networks. After examining militant Islamism in Europe, researchers have found that self-recruitment is on the rise among terrorist leader Osama bin Laden's Eurofighters, and that there is no such thing as a standard terrorist…

From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated April 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/RE/WT)

A Question of Peace or War in Europe
In spite of days of controversy, today's signing of the "Berlin Declaration" went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible… German Chancellor…Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said "The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace"… The members of the "Strategy Group" took into their consideration the merging of European national forces into a unified EU army… The German Federal Chancellor has now made this suggestion her own. "In the EU itself we must move closer to a common European army," demanded Angela Merkel in Berlin's tabloid press last week… To increase pressure on the smaller EU members, the German government is dropping bellicose hints and portraying their EU plans as a method of avoiding descent into a new catastrophe - war. The Federal Chancellor announced in tones pregnant with disaster, "We should not take peace and democracy for granted. The ideal of European unification is still today a question of war and peace." Similar threats previously enabled the Federal Government to force through the Eastern expansion of the EU against heavy resistance in the mid-Nineties. Then the present Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schaeuble, declared in a strategy paper that "Germany might be required or compelled by its own security considerations to achieve the stabilisation of Eastern Europe alone and in the traditional manner." That paper was published on 1st September 1994, the 45th anniversary of Germany's attack on Poland. The Federal Chancellor's warning is a spin on those threats of war in a scarcely concealed form. It makes clear the radical determination of German foreign policy to achieve a total reordering of Europe under the aegis of Berlin, enforced by all means - apparently not excluding the military…

From Ron Janssen at Global Politician (dated April 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/WT)

The Trouble With Islam
Sadly, mainstream Muslim teaching accepts and promotes violence…

From former Islamist terror group member and Muslim reformer Dr. Tawfik Hamid (dated April 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (RE/WT)

IDF intelligence: Iran, Hizbullah preparing for possible US strike
Head of military intelligence says Iran, Syria and Hizbullah preparing for possible confrontation with US this summer…

From Ynet News (dated April 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/US/WT)

America unprepared for 'likely' nuke attack
Public awareness campaign is only hope, says 3-year University of Georgia study…

From WorldNetDaily (dated March 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (US/WT)

Sundering Jerusalem Is Explored: Israel’s Government Considering Plan Advanced by Riyadh
In a bid to open a channel to the Arabs, Israel's premier is embracing a long dormant Saudi peace proposal that would divide Jerusalem and could flood the Jewish state with Palestinian Arab refugees with family claims to land evacuated in the 1948 war that created the state. Speaking in Tel Aviv yesterday, Prime Minister Olmert said Israel was prepared to make "sweeping, painful, and tough concessions" in order to forge open contacts with Arab states that offered in 2002 to acknowledge Israel's right to exist in exchange for its full retreat from the territories it won in the 1967 war…

From The New York Sun (dated March 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/WT)

Solana: EU supports Syrian initiative to regain Golan Heights
The European Union supports Syria's goal of regaining the Golan Heights from Israel, the EU foreign policy chief said after meeting President Bashar Assad on Wednesday…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated March 14)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

Syria ready with bio-terror if U.S. hits Iran: Damascus reportedly hiding WMD among commercial pharmaceuticals
An American biodefense analyst living in Europe says if the U.S. invades Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions, Syria is ready to respond with weapons of mass destruction – specifically biological weapons…She anticipates a variation of smallpox is the biological agent Syria would utilize…[She] also told WND the North Koreans were working closely with the Syrians on their biological weapons program…

From author Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily (dated March 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/AP/WT)

The smell of irresolution
Here's a puzzle: Why would Al Qaeda choose the past several days, just as Democrats in Congress were voting to run up a white flag and commit the United States to defeat in Iraq, to launch a bloody wave of terrorist atrocities?... For that matter, why would Iran have chosen this moment to seize 15 British sailors and marines? One of the hostages was forced to write a letter urging the British government "to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future." But Britain has been withdrawing its forces from Iraq, reducing troop levels from 40,000 in 2003 to just 7,100 as of February. Prime Minister Tony Blair recently announced that 1,600 more troops will be pulled out this spring. So what was the point of Iran's unprovoked ambush? The answer in both cases is that this is how totalitarian aggressors react to faintheartedness… Six years after Sept. 11, and so many people still refuse to absorb this fundamental fact of life…

From Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby at Jewish World Review (dated April 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (US/BR/WT)

Evil Americans, Poor Mullahs
Forty-eight percent of Germans think the United States is more dangerous than Iran, a new survey shows, with only 31 percent believing the opposite. Germans' fundamental hypocrisy about the US suggests that it's high time for a new bout of re-education…

From Der Spiegel Online Berlin bureau chief Claus Christian Malzahn (dated March 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/US/ME/WT)

The Way the World Doesn't Work
It seems to me the elite internationalists are doing their darnedest to remake the world in a way that clearly doesn't work. Take, for example, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana's recent proclamation that his confederation of nations that brought us the two global wars of the 20th century will support Syria in efforts to regain the Golan Heights…There is a cacophony of international cries today for this land to be returned to Syria, from whom Israel captured it in the 1967 Six-Day War and again in 1973 after Syria briefly recaptured it and used the high ground for a massive armored assault on the Jewish state…But is it even accurate and proper to use the word "return" in this case? What is the history of the Golan? To whom does it rightfully belong? I'll bet it will surprise almost everyone reading this column today -- perhaps even many Israelis -- to learn that the Golan, which so many assume to be the undisputed territory of Syria, has been out of Damascus' control for far longer than it was within its control. It also might shock readers to learn how Syria gained control of the Golan Heights for the 19 years prior to 1967. Syria stole it -- at least part of it -- from Jews…

From WorldNetDaily editor and CEO Joseph Farah at Human Events Online (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Just Like the Mullahs: Taking hostages is just standard operating procedure for Iran
The mullahs… took the hostages because that is what they do. They’ve been doing it for a long time…The Iranians have two basic reasons to take hostages. One is to break our will and drive us out of the region; the other is to trade their prey for their comrades now in our grip, of whom there is a significant number (several hundred Iranian intelligence and military officers have been captured in Iraq in recent months, according to good U.S. government sources). Why now? Because now is when they succeeded in doing it; they’ve been trying all along…

From columnist Michael Ledeen at Jewish World Review (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/WT)

Mothballing the Fleet
Tony Blair’s getting angrier every day. But if past Iranian hostage takings are an indication, he may be upset for a while. The American-embassy hostages were held for 444 days, and the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last year by Iran’s Hezbollah puppets still aren’t free. Blair is threatening to escalate to a “different phase,” but Iran’s leadership knows something that most Americans don’t. Two months ago, Britain’s government announced plans to mothball almost half its naval fleet due to defense-budget cuts. Much of its existing navy is already so degraded; it would take over a year to get into action. According to the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, senior naval officers say that the cuts “will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force.” In fact, the British naval forces have been so neglected; the U.K. probably couldn’t pull off the Falkland Islands mission today. The world’s fifth-largest economy now supports an army that ranks 28th in size. What are they thinking? The 9/11 attacks should have been a wake-up call to our allies — but they seem to have had a tranquilizing effect instead…

From former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) at National Review Online (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/BR/WT)

A Question of Peace or War in Europe
In spite of days of controversy, today's signing of the "Berlin Declaration" went ahead without amendment. The pivot and crux of the controversy is the announcement of an intended replacement for the failed EU constitution which will have the same content under a different title and is to be ratified as quickly as possible. This arrangement has occasioned great displeasure in several European capitals. The most influential German think tank, the Bertelsmann Foundation, maintains that European unification must be driven forward; the greatly contested EU constitution is to be merely the "point of departure". For the first time, the foundation recently presented a draft paper to top politicians from twenty European countries and the USA over the "strategic reorientation" of the EU in which it recommended, as a first step, that the national armed forces of all member states should be combined into a single EU army. The German Chancellor has taken up this suggestion. Frau Merkel warned against refusing so-called integration. She said "The ideal of European unification is today again a matter of war and peace"…

From German-Foreign-Policy.com (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/WT)

Why Pakistan, not Iran, is the most pressing nuclear threat
The most pressing nuclear threat is widely perceived to be from Iran while the more imminent terrorist threat is believed to be found in Pakistan. While both threats remain very real, few seem to understand that the most imminent nuclear threat is posed by Pakistan--the only current nuclear power considerably within reach of becoming an Islamist-run state aligned with al Qaeda, the Taliban, or other Islamists…

From Center for Threat Awareness co-founder Steve Schippert in The Weekly Standard (dated March 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (AP/RE/WT)

Europe’s Stark Options
As the American columnist Dennis Prager sums them up, "It is difficult to imagine any other future scenario for Western Europe than its becoming Islamicized or having a civil war." Indeed, these two deeply unattractive alternative paths appear to define Europe's choices, with powerful forces pulling in the contrary directions of Muslims taking over or Muslims rejected, Europe an extension of North Africa or in a state of quasi-civil war…

From Mideast expert Daniel Pipes for National Interest (dated March-April 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/ME/RE/WT)

From Cold Peace to Cold War?: The Significance of Egypt’s Military Buildup
Since the 1978 Camp David Accords, the Egyptian government has undertaken extraordinary efforts to modernize its military with Western arms and weapon systems. By bolstering its armored corps, air force, and naval fleet with an array of U.S. military platforms, the Egyptian armed forces have emerged as one the region's most formidable forces. But as the post-Husni Mubarak era looms, questions abound. Who, precisely, is Egypt arming against, and why? Has Egypt attained operational parity with Israel? How will the military be affected by a succession crisis? Could Cairo's weapons arsenal fall into the hands of Islamists?...As the Egyptian armed forces continue to upgrade the quantity and quality of their military platforms to unparalleled heights--levels rivaling those of Israel--they have positioned themselves to be a major player on the Middle Eastern block. The path charted by Egypt during the coming years, though, will go a long way toward determining the significance of its meteoric rise from an archaic, Soviet-styled military to a Western-armed, twenty-first century juggernaut…

From American Enterprise Institute research assistant Jeffrey Azarva in The Middle East Review of International Affairs (dated March 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Al-Qa'eda 'plotted to kill Blair in front of Queen'
Tony Blair defied an assassination threat from al-Qa'eda to take part in the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in central London, it can be revealed for the first time…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated February 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/WT)

Secret report: Terror threat worst since 9/11
The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaeda agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001, secret intelligence documents reveal. The number of British-based Islamic terrorists plotting suicide attacks against "soft" targets in this country is far greater than the Security Services had previously believed, the government paperwork discloses. It is thought the plotters could number more than 2,000…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated February 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/WT)

Osama targets Prince Harry
Osama bin Laden personally has targeted Iraq-bound Prince Harry, saying he is wanted "dead or alive"…Code-breakers for MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency, have cracked al-Qaida's secret communications system and discovered Prince Harry is named as a prime target for the terror network when he goes on active service to Iraq. The MI6 code-breakers also have discovered the first real evidence in over a year that bin Laden is alive and personally has authorized the capture of the young prince – third in line to the throne – "dead or alive"…

From WorldNetDaily (dated February 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/WT)

Tiny Minority of Extremists Update
"84,000 Canadian Muslims think it's justifiable to behead our democratically elected prime minister and blow up the very symbol and centre of our democracy!"…

From Jihad Watch (dated February 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/RE/WT)

Shooting Pain: The future of heat-beaming weapons
If you're worried about terrorism, upset about the war in Iraq, and depressed by global chaos, violence, and death, cheer up. We've just invented a weapon that fires a beam of searing pain. Three weeks ago, the U.S. armed forces tested it on volunteers at an Air Force base in Georgia. You can watch the video on a military Web site. Three colonels get zapped, along with an Associated Press reporter. The beam is invisible, but its effects are vivid. Two dozen airmen scatter. The AP guy shrieks and bolts out of the target zone. He says it felt like heat all over his body, as though his jacket were on fire. The feeling is an illusion. No one is harmed. The beam's energy waves penetrate just one-sixty-fourth of an inch into your body, heating your skin like microwaves. They inflame your nerve endings without actually burning you. This could be the future of warfare: less bloodshed, more pain…

From Slate.com (dated February 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (WT)

Arab League blasts Temple Mount dig for 'altering features' of Jerusalem
The Arab League chief on Saturday accused Israel of attempting to alter the features of Jerusalem with its ongoing construction and excavation work near the Mugrabi Gate to the Temple Mount, and urged the international community to intercede to stop the work…Moussa said, without elaborating, that the dig reflects Israeli attempts to tighten control over Jerusalem…In Jordan, Islamists called for holy war, or jihad, to save the mosque and vowed revolt against their Arab rulers if they do not protect the Jerusalem flashpoint site from Israeli actions…

From Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated February 11, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Putin attacks 'very dangerous' US
Russian President Vladimir Putin has criticised the United States for what he said was its "almost uncontained" use of force around the world. Washington's "very dangerous" approach to global relations was fuelling a nuclear arms race, he told a security summit in Munich. Correspondents say the strident speech may signal a more assertive Russia…

From BBC News (dated February 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/WT)

Al-Qaeda’s Resurgence, Part 1: Ready to take on the world
Al-Qaeda will this year significantly step up its global operations after centralizing its leadership and reviving its financial lifelines. Crucially, al-Qaeda has developed missile and rocket technology with the capability of carrying chemical, biological and nuclear warheads, according to an al-Qaeda insider who spoke to Asia Times Online. While al-Qaeda will continue to operate in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will broaden its global perspective to include Europe and hostile Muslim states, Asia Times Online has learned. For the first time since its attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, this could be al-Qaeda's year on the offensive…

From Asia Times (dated March 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (GI/WT)

Canada's Jihadist Fifth Column
The fact that some 84,000 Muslims living in a western democratic country sympathize with the aims of these 18 would-be jihadists should not come as a surprise. Their number corresponds to the ten to 15 percent of the one billion Muslims worldwide who, experts say, support jihad. So even if one accepts the lower ten percent figure, that makes one hundred million people -- more than the membership of the Communist and Nazi parties combined -- who wish violent death upon the infidel. Not an insignificant number, to say the least…

From FrontPage Magazine columnist Stephen Brown (dated March 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/GI/RE/WT)

Purim Replay
If you stop to consider, it might occur to you that there is something surreal about Purim this year [sunset Saturday, March 3, to sunset Sunday, March 4—anniversary of the celebration in the book of Esther]. It is almost as if we are witnessing "replay". Haman is once again in our midst, but this time he is called Ahmadinejad - same country, same place, same agenda. Today's Iran is Persia of yore, and even as the malevolent Haman schemed Holocaust - the "final solution", so too, his 21st century heir is orchestrating a plan to wipe Israel off the map. And even as the Jews in Shushan were divided, caught napping and assimilating into their secular culture, so today, our people are fragmented, sleeping, and succumbing to the enticements of society. To be sure, there is one huge difference between Shushan of old and the events of today - Esther and Mordechai are missing. There is no one to summon our people, to awaken them from their slumber and charge them with their Divine calling. There is no one to proclaim those two magic words, "Keemu V'Keeblu" - "Let us re-accept and re-commit to our Torah" - two magic words that resulted in a. nechapochu - "a miraculous turn-around", converting darkness into light, doom into blessing, culminating in the joyous festival of Purim. But worse still, today we find ourselves in an untenable situation. Not only do we have to deal with the Ahmadinejads of this generation - Hamas, Fatah, and all the other anti-Semites who are proliferating on every continent, but we have to deal with a scourge that is by far more menacing - those of our people who have become Jewish self-haters. And that is an evil that we cannot easily overcome, for the decay from within is by far more deadly than any onslaught from without. Our own people, members of the liberal left, have taken up the cause of those who would wipe us off the map…

From Esther Jungreis at the Jewish Advocate (dated February 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

The Battle on the Temple Mount
A furor erupted in Jerusalem last week. It concerns the construction of a new walkway to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, intended to replace an earlier bridge that had collapsed. The only one that permits entry to the Mount for non-Muslims, via the Mughrabi Gate, the bridge is located near the Western Wall, and completely within Israeli jurisdiction…Islamic critics claimed that this work being done outside of the walls of the Temple Mount was an imminent threat to the al-Aksa Mosque on the Mount. Although the charge was baseless, Muslim organizations called for massive protests and there were also threats of violence…On this issue, as so many others in the past, Israelis and Arabs are on different pages. Yet we Israelis, largely blind to their perspective, continue to expect Arabs to function according to our terms, which are intended to be reasonable and conciliatory…But what is apparent now is that the head of the Islamic Movement, Kamal Khattib, has already declared that what the mayor proposes [i.e., a slowdown] is insufficient, and that only a complete cessation of the project will do. Clearly, he doesn't really care what the plans say. He will oppose them regardless of the facts…Almost certainly, it has nothing to do with stopping the construction of a walkway. The outrage over the walkway is only the latest front in the ongoing war against Israel. For Palestinian Arabs, nothing will truly suffice except total Israeli surrender…

From Jerusalem investigative writer Arlene Kushner at FrontPage Magazine (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Moscow-Tehran Ties
“The lion and the bear are hunting the eagle.” That's how a refugee from Tehran's reigning ayatollahs put it when he called me this week about recent developments in his homeland. The lion to which my friend referred was on the coat of arms of nearly every Persian king for more than a thousand years. The bear, of course, is imperial Russia. And we're the bird. It's an apt metaphor. Vladimir Putin, Moscow's current czar, is behaving like a bear awakened from hibernation — hungry and territorial. His recent words condemning U.S. foreign policy are mirrored by actions — both overt and covert — aimed at undermining U.S. national security. While eschewing animal symbols on their green, white and red flag, the Islamic radicals running Iran's theocracy act like lions on the prowl — dangerous to any prey. And while the simile is unlikely in nature — the lions and bears in my friend's parable have certainly teamed up to hunt the eagle. The only trouble with the allegory is that the United States is acting more like an ostrich than an eagle…

From Fox News commentator Lt. Col. Oliver North (dated February 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/ME/WT)

It Is Time to Face Russia’s Real Agenda
Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible…But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies…

From author Douglas Farah (dated February 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/WT)

Russia steps back on the world stage
Vladimir Putin -- Russia's president, although the more accurate title would be godfather -- made headlines last week with a speech in Munich that set a new standard in anti-Americanism…Less amusing [than his hypocrisy in this] is the greater meaning of Putin's Munich speech. It marks Russia's coming out. Flush with oil and gas revenues, the consolidation of dictatorial authority at home and the capitulation of both domestic and Western companies to his seizure of their assets, Putin issued his boldest declaration yet that post-Soviet Russia is preparing to reassert itself on the world stage. Perhaps the most important line in his speech was the least noted because it seemed so innocuous. ``I very often hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs,'' he said. ``It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so'…

From Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer at Townhall.com (dated February 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/WT)

Egyptian MPs want nuclear bomb
In stormy Parliament session, many politicians call on government to 'change diplomatic language', work to obtain nuclear weapons, particularly after Olmert implied that Israel possesses such a bomb…

From Ynet News (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/WT)

Lieberman pushes Israel to join EU
Stumbling blocks to European Union membership such as the possibility that Israel might have to drop its Law of Return or the fact that Israel is physically located on the Asian continent have not deterred Israel Beiteinu head and Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman from pushing to make what many would call a "pipe dream" into reality within the next five years. While the Israeli has not formally asked for membership in the 27 member body of European states and the EU does not view it as a possibility at this time, Lieberman has still put it high on his agenda for security, economic and cultural reasons…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated January 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

How the 'axis' seeks the killer missile
North Korea and Iran are cooperating in developing long-range missiles, the deputy director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency said yesterday…

From The Washington Times (dated January 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/AP/WT)

Iran prepared to provide security in Caucasus, C. Asia with Russia
Iran's foreign minister said Sunday the Islamic Republic is prepared together with Russia to provide security in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Secretary of Russia's Security Council Igor Ivanov is holding talks in Iran with the country's top officials. Manouchehr Mottaki said Iran and Russia could play an effective role in providing security in the region, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia…

From Russian News and Information Agency Novosti (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/AP/WT)

Report shows anti-Semitism on the rise
Press conference by Jewish Agency reveals startling rise in anti-Semitic incidents across the world in 2006, including two murders. Austria sees 66 percent rise in incidents, Germany sees 60 percent rise, Russian incidents up by 20 percent…

From Ynet News (dated January (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/RE/WT)

Iran prepares people for 'messiah miracles': Government broadcasts series on imminent appearance of apocalyptic Islamic 'Mahdi'
Official Iranian radio has completed broadcasting a lengthy series on the imminent appearance of a messianic figure who will defeat Islam's enemies and impose Islamic Shiite rule over the entire world – even speculating on specific dates the so-called "Mahdi" will be revealed. English-language transcripts of "The World Toward Illumination" programs can be found on the website of IRIB, a public broadcast arm of Tehran…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Olmert's party proposes handing West Bank to Europe
A member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party yesterday proposed transferring control of the West Bank to a European task force until the establishment of a Palestinian state, at which time the strategic territory would be handed to security forces associated with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The proposal comes after WND broke the story earlier this week that, according to top European and Egyptian diplomatic sources, Israel has been conducting behind-the-scene negotiations to hand over most of the West Bank to Abbas' security forces. The sources said the transfer of security control to Abbas would be coordinated by the European Union and Jordan…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Israel pledges 'two-state solution'
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have pledged to forge a peace between their countries, calling the vision of two states, side by side, the only path…

Press Association story at Breitbart.com (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/WT)

Waiting for the Mahdi: Official Iranian Eschatology Outlined in Public Broadcasting Program in Iran
The website of the governmental Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) has posted a lengthy document titled "The World toward Illumination." The document is a transcript of an IRIB series on the imminent arrival of the Mahdi, the Twelfth or Hidden Imam, awaited by Shi'ites as the Messiah. The program describes in glowing terms the messianic age to be inaugurated by the Mahdi. He is to begin his uprising in Mecca, and then march on Iraq, where he will establish his "seat of world government" in the city of Kufa and subjugate the current world powers. This will be an age of unparalleled happiness; there will be completely new technologies at mankind's disposal, and "corruption, war, and rebellion will no longer exist." Neither will "liberal democratic civilization"…

From The Middle East Media Research Institute (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Iran: Israel, US will soon die
Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister…

From Ynet News (dated January 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/WT)

NSC seeks to place Israel in NATO
In an effort to establish more effective deterrence in the face of Iran's race to obtain nuclear weapons, [Israeli] government ministries are, for the first time, working on drafting a position paper that will include guidelines and a strategy for turning Israel into a full-fledged member of NATO, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The paper is being drafted by an interministerial committee made up of representatives from the Defense Ministry and the Foreign Ministry and headed by the National Security Council. The committee plans to complete the paper by the end of February and present it to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for approval…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated January 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/EU/WT)

Burma 'orders Christians to be wiped out'
The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been leaked from a government ministry…The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised", calls for anyone caught evangelising to be imprisoned. It advises: "The Christian religion is very gentle – identify and utilise its weakness." Its discovery follows widespread reports of religious persecution, with churches burnt to the ground, Christians forced to convert to the state religion, Buddhism, and their children barred from school…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated January 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (AP/RE/WT)

Not This Time: Don't give up when victory is at hand
Certain parallels between Iraq and Vietnam are uncanny. A new general, David Petraeus, is taking over in Iraq with a credible new strategy, counterinsurgency. Four decades ago, General Creighton Abrams became the American commander in Vietnam, also with a new strategy. It called for taking and holding the villages and hamlets of South Vietnam. In a word, it was counterinsurgency, and it worked. Now in Iraq, Petraeus has as good a chance of success, starting with the pacification of Baghdad, as Abrams had. And the painful lesson of Vietnam applies in Iraq: Don't give up when victory is at hand. Those in Congress who advocate retreat in Iraq refuse to acknowledge this lesson. And they may have their way, whatever Petraeus accomplishes. With their calls for troop withdrawals and fund cutoffs and their antiwar resolutions, they have put America on a slippery slope in Iraq. And we know where it leads: to defeat while victory remains quite possible. This happened in six descending steps in Vietnam, and today's coalition in Congress of antiwar Democrats and vacillating Republicans has started pushing us down that dangerous slope…

From Weekly Standard co-editor Fred Barnes (dated February 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

Sleeper Cells in the United States and Canada
There is every reason to suspect that we will endure suicide missions by Islamist sleeper cells. They are already in place. They are waiting for the right time. I know this from experience. I have worked over 15 years as a U.S. Federal Agent, a U.S. State Department Arabic linguist, and the first civilian Federal Agent deployed into Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Since returning from Iraq I have been involved in terrorism analysis, specifically the mindset of terrorists. During my extensive research on sleeper cells I have talked with hundreds of people from the Middle East from all walks of life, and have talked with Iraqi Government officials, Iraqi military, and Iraqi police officers. In addition I have interviewed numerous counter-terrorism specialists in the U.S. and abroad. In the last year alone I have trained over 4000 U.S. Law Enforcement officers in Basic Investigative Arabic and counter-terrorism. The conclusion of my research is the title of this article…

From Dave Gaubatz at American Thinker (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/BR/RE/WT)

Britain will never join an EU army
There is now no doubt that the German presidency intends to resurrect the corpse of the European Constitution. Part of the debate that will be reawakened will be about the EU's defence pretensions and the long-held desire of some Europeans to diminish the influence of America on the continent…Britain can never allow its troops to be sent into action by any supra-national body, still less one with no democratic accountability. This must remain the exclusive political territory of a sovereign British government. It cannot and must not be a role for the EU. But notwithstanding these problems, the Euro-defence train rolls on and we must make our position clear. Too often we have been involved in the early stages of clearly integrationist projects, in the vain hope that they will change direction later. A prime example is the European Defence Agency (Eda). While the Eda is officially about rationalising defence research and development across Europe, there are many who see it as an essential first step towards a single EU defence procurement programme, itself a precursor of an integrated EU defence force. There is nothing wrong with trying to avoid uneconomic research duplication, but the exclusion of Norway and Turkey from the process suggests that it is about EU rather than European defence…The EU may have a role in acting as a delivery mechanism for Nato in some circumstances: it must not be allowed to replace Nato. That would not be in Britain's national interest and it is that national interest that will shape the defence policy of the next Conservative government…

From British Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/EU/WT)

November 2008: America is nuked
Only two weeks after the elections in November of 2008, the United States of America, a nation of former greatness, lay in absolute desolate ruin. Within the previous 72 hours a series of eight successive, delayed nuclear devices had been detonated. Indescribably large portions of metro Washington, D.C., Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, and two thirds of the island of Manhattan have been turned into steaming craters. Millions are dead. President George W. Bush is in intensive care; two-thirds of the Cabinet, including the vice president, are missing or dead. President-elect Barack Obama faces the most enormous challenge of any incoming president in the history of the nation. But why? How did it happen? Turn back the clock to the week of Feb. 5, 2007. With a courageous handful of dissenting votes against the measures, the two houses of Congress purposefully ignore the pleas of Gen. David Petraeus and both pass non-binding resolutions that condemn the president's call for victory. One comes from the Democratic controlled House condemning the president, his plan and by implications the troops, and the other from a U.S. Senate that ceases to even feign any faint resemblance of standing for victory…As a nation our leaders had taken us from the shadows of Churchill to the defeat of Chamberlain. And what's worse is we had let them…

From columnist and radio host Kevin McCullough (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

Nuclear trafficking: A radioactive subject
Clamping down on the trade in illicit nuclear materials sometimes offends Russia…The release last week of new tidbits about a Georgian sting operation which reportedly netted just short of 80 grams of highly-enriched weapons-useable uranium, a Russian citizen from Vladikavkaz in North Ossetia (a part of Russia) and several Georgian accomplices—was a “provocation”, thundered Russia's foreign minister…The Georgian case is alarming. The uranium being hawked was enriched to about 90%, and intended for weapons use (fuel for nuclear-power reactors is typically enriched to 5% or less; most research reactors run on more highly-enriched stuff, meaning 20% or more). Georgian officials say their prisoner revealed that his bagful came from an as yet undiscovered stash of 2-3kg; not enough for a weapon—that takes up to 25kg—but still a threat…And reported cases may hardly be the half of it...

From The Economist (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/WT)

A Star Wars Sequel? China throws down gauntlet with missile test
On Jan. 11…the Chinese military launched a ballistic missile into space and blasted a decrepit [Chinese] weather satellite the size of a refrigerator about 540 miles up. It was a technologically astonishing act – strategic analyst Richard Fisher told The Wall Street Journal that the missile shot shows that China's anti-satellite capabilities have now leapfrogged over our own – and a diplomatically audacious one. Only the U.S. and Russia had ever done anything like this, and not since 1985. This was clearly a shot across America's bow from a rising and aggressive world power. Despite its official stance against the militarization of space, Chinese military planners have for some time viewed space as a potential weak link in America's defensive capabilities. This is partly because of heavy U.S. dependency on satellites to gain and transmit information. An influential 1999 book by Chinese military writers revealed a key to that nation's strategic thinking when it observed, "To cripple or destroy the enemy's information system would drastically degrade the enemy's combat capabilities by making it blind, deaf or paralyzed." Though U.S.-China relations are good, this anti-satellite test belies Beijing's stated policy of pursuing peaceful relations…

From The Dallas Morning News (dated January 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (AP/ST/WT)

Israel’s Worst Nightmare: Israel cannot live with a nuclear Iran
A nuclear Iran could completely remake the region (not to mention imperil the Jewish state) merely by existing…And these terrifying scenarios exclude the most terrifying scenario of all: Iran uses its bomb. In a poll, 66 percent of Israelis said they believed Iran would drop a nuclear weapon on the Jewish state. Though defense experts are divided over the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear attack, every strategist we spoke with for this article considered the scenario plausible. "No one knows if Iran would use the bomb or not," says [current Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim] Sneh. "But I can't take the chance." The threat of a theologically motivated nuclear assault against Israel tends to be downplayed in the West; not so here…

From Jerusalem Shalem Center senior fellows Yossi Klein Halevi and Michael Oren in The New Republic, reposted at Aish.com (dated January 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Talking Ourselves Into Defeat: Profligate self-doubt can exact a price
The United States is talking itself into defeat in Iraq. Its political culture is now in a downward spiral of pessimism. In the halls of Congress, across endless newspaper columns, amid the punditocracy and on Sunday morning talk shows--all emit a Stygian gloom about America. Yes, on any given day on some discrete issue (Prime Minister Maliki's bona fides, for example), the criticism of the American role is not without justification. But the cumulative effect of this unremitting ill wind is corrosive. We are not only on the way to talking ourselves into defeat in Iraq but into a diminished international status that may be harder to recover than the doom mob imagines…

From Wall Street Journal deputy editor and columnist Daniel Henninger (dated January 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/ME/WT)

This Holocaust will be different
The Nazis, of course, industrialized mass murder. But still, the perpetrators had one-on-one contact with the victims…The second holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in five or 10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a day or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the mullahs in Qom will…give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…the go-ahead. The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases. Some of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple warheads. Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents, or old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries and Home Front Command units. With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 20,000 square kilometers), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel…No Iranian will see or touch an Israeli. It will be quite impersonal. Some of the dead will inevitably be Arab…It is doubtful whether such a mass killing of fellow Muslims will trouble Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. The Iranians don't especially like Arabs, especially Sunni Arabs, with whom they have intermittently warred for centuries. And they have a special contempt for the (Sunni) Palestinians who, after all, though initially outnumbering the Jews by more than 10 to 1, failed during the long conflict to prevent them from establishing their state or taking over all of Palestine. Besides, the Iranian leadership sees the destruction of Israel as a supreme divine command, as a herald of the second coming, and the Muslims dispatched collaterally as so many martyrs in the noble cause…A question may nevertheless arise in the Iranian councils: What about Jerusalem? After all, the city contains Islam's third holiest shrines (after Mecca and Medina), Al Aksa Mosque and the Mosque of Omar. But Ali Khamenei, the supreme spiritual leader, and Ahmadinejad most likely would reply much as they would to the wider question regarding the destruction and radioactive pollution of Palestine as a whole: The city, like the land, by God's grace, in 20 or 50 years' time, will recover. And it will be restored to Islam (and the Arabs). And the deeper pollution will have been eradicated…

From Ben-Gurion University history professor Benny Morris in The Jerusalem Post (dated January 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (ME/RE/WT)

Boys of the Taliban
Just recently, the Taliban issued a new set of 30 rules to its fighters. Many of the instructions were to be expected…But there is a curious rule that the Western media has typically ignored. Rule No. 19 instructs that Taliban fighters must not take young boys without facial hair into their private quarters…Rule No. 19 obviously indicates that the sexual abuse of young boys is a prevalent and institutionalized phenomenon among the Taliban and that, for one reason or another, its widespread practice has become a problem….That a mass pathology such as this occurs in a culture which demonizes the female and her sexuality -- and puts her out of mind and sight -- is only to be expected. To be sure, it is a simple given that the religious male fanatic who flies into a violent rage even at the thought of an exposed woman’s ankle will also be, in some other dysfunctional and dark secret compartment of his fractured life, the person who leads some poor helpless young boy into his private chambers. The key issue here is that the demented sickness that underlies Rule No. 19 is by no means exclusive to the Taliban; it is a widespread phenomenon throughout Islamic-Arab culture and it lies, among other factors, at the root of that culture’s addiction to rage and its lust for violence, terror and suicide…In the dysfunctional and morbid paradigms of this culture, the idea of love is, obviously, completely absent from men's understanding of sexuality. Like the essence of Arab masculinity, it is reduced to a form of prison sex: hurting others with violence. A gigantic rupture inevitably develops between men and women, where no harmony, affection or equality is allowed to exist. The sexual confusion, humiliation, and repression that develop in the mindset of many males in this culture are excruciating. And it is no surprise that many of them find the only avenue for personal gratification in the act of sexually abusing young boys and, of course, in humiliating the foreign "enemy," whose masculinity must be violated at all costs -- just as theirs once was&helli