By Barry Rubin

What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:

In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce. Basically the NSA, as one of my readers suggested, is the digital equivalent of the TSA strip-searching an 80 year-old Minnesota grandmothers rather than profiling and focusing on the likely terrorists.

There is a fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States, the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone, not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:

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By Gary Gerofsky

This past week U.S. President Obama made Susan Rice his new National Security Adviser and Samantha Power his ambassador to the UN. Both women have the kind of credentials, loyalty and temperament that Obama needs to go full steam ahead on his second term agenda which includes the Obamification of the world, further apologizing for America, weakening the U.S. at every opportunity and saying “sorry” by supporting the most dangerous players on the world stage. The President is effectively giving up America’s position as defender of freedom and promoter of democracy and Judeo-Christian values. The Pax Americana era has long since disappeared. The safety derived from strength has disappeared. A state of vulnerability has resulted from political correctness and contrived shame that Obama conveys as a mea culpa for the U.S. having once been a dominant nation.

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By Barry Rubin

Up to now the Obama Administration has faced three big scandals — the IRS, the bugging of AP and Fox, and Benghazi. And now here is scandal Number 4:

For the last four years the Obama Administration has conducted a major “outreach” program to Islamic groups in the United States and in the Middle East. Patrick Poole has been investigating this project and in a comprehensive article now presents the full scoop and scope of what’s been going on. His article, “Blind to Terror: The U.S. Government’s Disastrous Muslim Outreach Efforts and the Impact on U.S. Policy” in the new, summer, issue of MERIA Journal is a game-changer.

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by Cynthia Farahat*

The terrorist attack in Benghazi is far more disturbing than previously thought. Although it has not been reported in the U.S. media, the possibility exists that the Egyptian government may have played an operational role in the attack. YouTube videos of the terrorist strike raise a serious problem that only an Arabic speaker would detect: some of the terrorists are speaking in the Egyptian dialect of the Arabic language.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

On this Memorial Day, it’s important to remember that the very same U.S. policies that created al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s—leading to the horrific attacks of 9/11—are today allowing al-Qaeda to metastasize all around the Muslim world. As in the 80s, these new terrorist cells are quietly gathering strength now, and are sure to deliver future terror strikes that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.

To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the chronic shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.

In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Afghani rebels—among them the jihadis—to repel the Soviets. Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and countless foreign jihadis journeyed to Afghanistan to form a base of training and planning—the first prerequisite of the jihad, as delineated in Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.

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By Gary Gerofsky

Disunity is making it difficult to impossible to deal with the terrorism we see happening all around us. My late father used to caution us that everything should be done in moderation. We were told to approach important decisions with care by weighing every action, looking at all the evidence, and considering all the options. He could not countenance reckless abandon. The fight against terrorism is being hampered severely by a reckless disregard for the truth, an inability to face the facts, a naiveté about the source of terrorism and a lot of propaganda that has politicized terrorism in ways inimical to finding viable solutions. The situation is being made worse by those whose inability to comprehend the dangers have them splitting hairs with their own and thus preventing any joint decisions that need to be reached. During past threats to our way of life in previous generations individuals, leaders and countries came together to confront the enemy but now we come together to comfort the enemy.

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by Mark Durie*

Today [May 22, 2013] in Woolwich, England, a man reported to be a British soldier was cut down by two Anglo-African Muslims wielding knives and a machete. One of the killers, speaking in a home-grown English accent, is heard (here) to say:

The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British solidiers, and this British soldier is one, is a eye for a eye and a tooth for a tooth. By Allah, we swear by the Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. So what if we want to live by the sharia in Muslim lands. Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists and kill us? Rather you are extreme. You the ones. When you drop a bomb, do you think it hits one person, or rather your bomb wipes out a whole family. This is the reality. By Allah if I saw your mother today with a buggy I would help her up the stairs. This is my nature. But we are forced by the Qur’an in Sura at-Tauba [Chapter 9 of the Koran], through many, many ayah [verses] throughout the Koran that [say] we must fight them as they fight us, a eye for a eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your governments. They don’t care about you. Do you think David Cameron is gonna get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? Do you think the politicians are going to die? No it’s going to be the average guy, like you, and your children. So get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we ca.., so you can all live in peace. Leave our lands and you will live in peace. That’s all I have to say. Allah’s peace and blessings be upon Muhammad …

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by Daniel Pipes*

The gruesome murder yesterday of a soldier outside London by a Muslim convert, Michael Adebolajo, brings to mind that throat slitting and beheading are Islamically sanctioned forms of execution. Although these occur particularly often in the course of family-related crimes — think, for example, of the case of Aasiya Hassan in suburban Buffalo, N.Y., killed by her husband in 2009, stabbed with two hunting knives more than forty times in the face, back and chest, then beheaded — this monstrous form of violence is also used in non-family instances. Some of those that took place over the past decade in the West in chronological order include:

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The war in Afghanistan may be winding down. But the Pentagon’s chief of irregular warfare still sees a war against al-Qaida that will last decades, all over the world — a prospect that prompted astonishment and constitutional debate in the Senate. …

- Wired.com, 5/16/2013

Two Islamist brothers terrorized Boston for days in April. Just a few days ago Fazliddin Kurbanov was charged in Boise, Idaho with “conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists,” according to the Idaho Statesman. The FBI itself said that:

… The Idaho indictment alleges in count one that between August 2012 and May 2013, Kurbanov knowingly conspired with unnamed co-conspirators to provide material support and resources to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a designated foreign terrorist organization. The indictment alleges that the material support and resources included himself, computer software and money.

In count two, the indictment further alleges that the defendant conspired to provide material support and resources, including himself, to terrorists knowing that the material support was to be used in preparation for and in carrying out an offense involving the use of a weapon of mass destruction. …

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

In January, an American Christian was sentenced to an eight-year prison sentence on charges of “endangering national security” in Iran. A 32-year-old married father of two from Boise, Idaho, Pastor Saeed Abedini traveled to his country of origin last year to visit family and help build an orphanage, only to be arrested and sent to Tehran’s brutal Evin prison.

According to Fox News, Abedini, a Muslim convert to Christianity—also known as an apostate deserving of death under Islamic Sharia law—is “facing physical and psychological torture at the hands of captors demanding he renounce his beliefs.” In a recent letter smuggled to family members, he recounted the “horrific pressures” and “death threats” he endures: “My eyes get blurry, my body does not have the strength to walk, and my steps become very weak and shaky… They are only waiting for one thing… for me to deny Christ. But they will never get this from me.”

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by Daniel Pipes*

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of “Ten Most Wanted” fugitives dates back to 1950 but the list of “Most Wanted Terrorists” dates back to just after 9/11 and a sense that terrorism had become a strategic threat. Today, the list includes 31 individuals, all of them male and with a single exception (Daniel Andreas San Diego, an animal rights extremist), all of them Muslim:

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By Gary Gerofsky

The Jewish Daily Forward published an article on April 17, 2013, soon after the Boston terrorist bombings entitled “Jews Warn Against Rush to Judgment on Boston Marathon Terror Bombings: Security Experts Say History of Mistakes Teaches Caution.” It contained the usual cautionary tripe and left-wing warnings not to presume anything about the bombings and not to jump to conclusions. The article did not, however, avoid musing about connections to Hitler’s birthday, the Oklahoma bombings, and the low-tech nature of the attacks — all conjecture used by the author to obscure the true nature of the terror act and to pin blame on the unobvious. The carnage was actually carried out by obvious culprits and the usual suspects: Muslim terrorists.

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by Raymond Ibrahim*

Reports of Christian persecution by Muslims around the world during the month of February include (but are not limited to) the following accounts. They are listed by form of persecution, and in country alphabetical order, not necessarily according to severity:

Church Attacks

Egypt: Once again, soon after Friday prayers, a throng of Muslims in Fayoum province, destroyed a Coptic church. The reason cited this time was that the church is “an unlawful neighbor to the Muslims who live adjacent to it and must therefore be moved.” According to AINA, “The mob climbed to the church dome and started demolishing it and setting it on fire. The dome collapsed into the burning church and caused great damage. Muslims used bricks from the dome and the holy cross and hurled it at the altar inside the church, causing part of it to be demolished; all the icons of saints were destroyed. Muslims tried to assault Father Domadios and threw stones at him, but he was saved by a Muslim family who brought him away from the village in their car.” Local Christian families were reported as staying indoors for fear of being assaulted by the Muslims. And, once again, although state security was present throughout this entire proceeding, it did nothing to prevent it. None of the perpetrators was arrested. Two days later, hundreds of Copts demonstrated demanding a halt to the ongoing attacks on their churches. In response, the church was attacked again by Muslims hurling more Molotov cocktails and stones while shouting “We do not want the church.” Some Muslims climbed atop the church again to completely destroy the remains of the wooden dome.

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BREAKING: NYC MAYOR BLOOMBERG WANTS TO REWRITE THE CONSTITUTION CLAIMING “that recent attacks on the Second Amendment have left him confident that such re-interpretation is possible.”

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President Obama and his lackeys in government still insist that the Fort Hood massacre was a case of “‘workplace violence,’ despite mountains of evidence [that] clearly proves the Fort Hood shooting was an act of terror.” Is the Obama administration now taking the same course with the Boston bombers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev? How did our national security apparatus allow these brothers to slip under the radar? Two men murdered three people and injured over 175 at an international event in a great American city, and “avoid[ed] capture for three days.” The daily activities of 1 million people were paralyzed in the midst of hundreds of law enforcement personnel.

Ample evidence already exists supporting the theory that the Tsarnaev brothers’ atrocity was motivated by Islamist ideology. Even CNN admitted:

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By Barry Rubin

The film “Casablanca” was an alarm bell for America back in 1941. I thought about an exchange from that script in regard to Boston:

Major Strasser: Are you one of those people who cannot imagine the Germans in your beloved Paris?

Rick: It’s not particularly my beloved Paris.

Heinz: Can you imagine us in London?

Rick: Ask me when you get there.

Major Strasser: How about New York?

Rick: Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn’t advise you to try to invade.

But wait! They got to New York back in 2001. And have been back there about 18 times since then. They got to Washington DC that same year.

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