WASHINGTON (January 10, 2011) — By May 2011, all states must be in compliance with the first 18 security benchmarks of the federal secure driver’s license law known as the REAL ID Act. REAL ID was prompted by the fact that the 9/11 hijackers acquired a total of 30 state-issued IDs and driver’s licenses in order to embed themselves here (and board airplanes).
Recent remarks by Attorney General Eric Holder on the threat posed by “radicalized” American Muslims are revealing — not just because of what they say regarding the domestic situation, but for their international implications as well. According to Holder:
“[T]he threat is real, the threat is different, the threat is constant. The threat has changed … to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born. It is one of the things that keeps me up at night. You didn’t worry about this even two years ago — about individuals, about Americans, to the extent that we now do.” Holder noted that while he was confident in the United States’ counter-terrorism efforts, Americans “have to be prepared for potentially bad news…. The terrorists only have to be successful once.”
Lee Smith is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations. On December 28, Mr. Smith addressed the Middle East Forum via conference call on the implications of Wikileaks regarding the Middle East, and their significance for U.S. policy in the region, a topic he has focused on in recentarticles.
The Voice of Israel government radio has reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Knesset on Tuesday evening, January 4th at which time he publicly read the much anticipated missive that he has personally penned to President Barack Obama requesting the release of Jonathan Jay Pollard. A former United States Navy intelligence analyst, Pollard has been incarcerated in the U.S. for 25 years on charges stemming from the passage of classified information to Israel. Pollard is presently in deterioriating health in a North Carolina federal prison and an orchestrated campaign amongst his supporters is underway to seek his freedom.
In the last days of 2010, Martin (”Marty”) Peretz, the recently retired editor and publisher of The New Republic, published two rambling, hysterical, and gratuitously cruelpieces which strongly advised President Obama not to pardon Jonathan Pollard.
No one, other than his own demons, asked Peretz weigh in on the matter; he could simply have remained silent. After all, Peretz has lived the life of a wealthy, influential, and outspoken Jewish public figure — a life of honor and freedom. Pollard has been dishonored, despised, and imprisoned for 25 years, seven of which he was forced to spend in solitary confinement. He is a very sick man whose supporters have finally, after many hard years, begun to gather serious support for his release.
Although he was loyal to a Middle Eastern country, the American military hired him as an intelligence officer and translator anyway — partly because he knew an important Middle East language. Nevertheless, he was a poor choice. This man passed classified documents to “insurgents” in Iraq who were battling American forces; he also had conversations with members of Al Qaeda and kept their documents on his computer.
His name — one of five aliases — is Noureddine Malki. He pretended to be from Lebanon, the persecuted son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, and on this basis allegedly sought and received asylum in America, naturalized citizenship, and a job as an Arabic translator for the Army. He received top secret clearance and was working in Iraq where he took bribes from various Sunni sheikhs and passed classified information on to them.
Of all the WikiLeaks revelations, the most captivating may be learning that several Arab leaders have urged the U.S. government to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Most notoriously, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia called on Washington to “cut off the head of the snake.” According to nearly universal consensus, these statements unmask the real policies of Saudi and other politicians.
But is that necessarily so? There are two reasons for doubts.
WASHINGTON (September 28, 2010) – Today the Center for Immigration Studies released the third film in a series, “Hidden Cameras on the Arizona Border 3: A Day in the Life of a Drug Smuggler,” at an event hosted by the Center for Immigration Studies and Women in Homeland Security. This is the Center’s National Security Director Janice Kephart’s third web-based border film, this time focusing on drug cartel travel methods through Arizona’s federally owned land. Ms. Kephart obtained much of the footage for the film by traveling with her hidden camera guide into three drug running corridors in central Arizona. She was joined on the panel by Julie Myers Wood, former Assistant Secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security.
After Anti-CAIR criticized CAIR in our last News & Analysis: “CAIR Content To Let Death Fatwa On Cartoonist Play Out?” CAIR-Seattle executive director Arsalan Bukhari has come out with a strong statement against Anwar al-Awlaki’s death threat fatwa on cartoonist Molly Norris for drawing the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” cartoon. Bukhari told the Washington Post: “What we are doing locally is talking to Muslim community leaders…. We are telling leaders: If they receive a threat that even seems to be joking, it should be reported.”
Islamist enmity for infidels, regularly manifested in the jihad, is by now moderately well known. Lesser known, however, but of equal concern, is the mandate for Muslims to be loyal to fellow Muslims and Islam — a loyalty that all too often translates into disloyalty to all things non-Muslim, including the American people and their government.
This dichotomy of loyalty to Muslims and enmity for infidels — which, incidentally, corresponds well with Islamic law’s division of the world into the abode of war (deserving of enmity) and the abode of Islam (deserving of loyalty) — is founded on a Muslim doctrine called wala’ wa bara’ (best translated as “loyalty and enmity”). I first encountered this doctrine while translating various Arabic documents for The Al Qaeda Reader. In fact, the longest and arguably most revealing document I included in that volume is titled “Loyalty and Enmity” (pgs.63-115), compiled by Aymen Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two.
Now that Arizona’s immigration law has at least temporarily been put on hold, President Obama may well be tempted to put the whole immigration issue on the back burner for a while, as his Justice Department’s lawsuit against the state winds its way through the courts. After all, he has plenty of other things vying for his attention — two wars and an anemic economy, for starters.
Who could blame him for wanting to put aside the contentious issue of immigration?
I visited Toronto in early March 2010 and as I left the country I passed through the usual security check at Pearson International Airport. What made it different is that the next passengers after me in line were a man, a small child, and a person in niqab. (I write “person” rather than “woman” as I hardly know who was under the niqab outfit.)
Curious how the niqabi’s hidden identity would be handled, I looked back as the trio was dealing with the security agent. To my astonishment, the agent did not demand to see the niqabi’s face but was content to see those of the man and child. I wanted dearly to video this procedure on my mobile phone but dared not, thinking that this could well get me hauled in on some charge that I, ironically, was breaching security.
The evidence suggesting that British passports were used by members of the team responsible for killing Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is causing concern at the possibility of a new diplomatic row between Israel and the UK. Such a row would come at a time of already strained relations between the two countries, because of the failure of the British government to take firm action to end the possibility of the arrest of Israeli officials in Britain on suspicion of ‘war crimes.’
Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to carry out a full investigation into the affair.
Libel suits are not normally associated with national security, but a case the Texas Supreme Court ruled on January 15 carries just such implications. The suit against internet journalist Joe Kaufman is a prime example of how libel law can be manipulated to stifle dissemination of information about terrorism and radical Islam.
It arises out of Kaufman’s September 28, 2007 FrontPage Magazine article on the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), which sponsored a “Muslim Family Day” at Six Flags Over Texas. Kaufman vowed to protest the event citing, among other things, ICNA’s alleged “physical ties with the Muslim Brotherhood and financial ties to Hamas.”
The revelations of possible Iranian involvement in the attack on Israeli diplomats earlier this month in Jordan appear to offer the latest evidence of direct engagement by Teheran in subversion and paramilitary activity across national borders.
The Jordanian investigation is still in its early stages. But the suggestion by sources close to the well-respected Jordanian General Intelligence Department that the explosives used for the attack may have been brought into the kingdom by Iranian diplomats is certainly plausible. It would conform to similar incidents on which the fingerprints of Iran were later unmistakably identified. It would also fit the current pattern of Iranian support for destabilizing its regional enemies.
Articles/Entries
