Memo to Bush: Take Up Putin's Offer

Russian President Vladimir Putin tried one of those judo moves that he was trained to use as a black belt--turning Russian weakness into a strength by throwing an unsuspecting partner on his back with an offer of a joint US-Russian missile base in Azerbaijan at the G8 Summit.

Putin's offer is one way to turn American-Russian conflicts into a "win-win" situation. Bush might immediately accept the offer in principle--with details to be hammered out over time.

Putin has put forward a serious deterrent to Iran, as well as any other potential Islamist states or terrorist non-governmental organizations threatening the West. If accepted by Bush, Russia resumes a traditional role as a buffer in the Clash of Civilizations--familiar position for a nation that defeated both Hitler and Napoleon in alliances with the West. Finally, it moves the ball forward on other possible US-Russian joint projects, including, eventually, American participation in Russian pipelines as full partner--rather than competitor. This would mark an end to the "Great Game" played since the collapse of the USSR, and the beginning of a real Alliance of Civilizations, as well as a business partnership that could be rewarding for both America and Russia.

Plus, it has the added advantage of letting Europe know that the US will not be played off against Russia while the EU trades with Iran and other enemies of the USA. Making the EU and Russia equal partners with the US would mark the first step in crushing Osama Bin Laden and his Islamist extremist supporters around the world. The message would be received quite swiftly among American adversaries--it might even lead to peace in Iraq by September. As I learned at Moscow State University, Saddam Hussein's Baathists were educated in Moscow, as was Palestinian president Abbas.

So President Bush, let's talk Texan. The question facing you right now is simply: "Is George W. Bush man enough to say 'Yes' to Putin?"

Joel Mowbray: Fire Register or Lose Al-Hurra Funding, Congress Says

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Register still seems to be toeing the PLO party line. Last Month, on May 15, Al-Hurra's onscreen ticker referred to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 as "al Naqba," which in Arabic means "the Catastrophe." When Mr. Register was informed of this--that in effect Al-Hurra was taking a pro-Palestinian position absolutely not shared by the U.S. government that funds the network--he said to employees in the newsroom that it was appropriate, since it's the term used by Arabs. The ticker was eventually changed, but only after an hour had passed.

Mr. Register has assured Congress that he is committed to fair coverage of Israel. Yet those assurances should be considered alongside his view of the Feb. 9 riots that occurred just outside the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. Despite widespread agreement in the Western media that the riots were started by Muslims, Mr. Register was convinced that Israel was the instigator--and he was determined to catch the Jewish state in the act the following Friday. He wrote an email to Al-Hurra staff saying that he wanted a satellite truck "in place to get people turned away from prayers . . . if the Israelis do this again."

Muslim men under 45 had been turned away from the mosque on Feb. 9--in order to limit the scope of violent riots that Palestinians had already hinted were coming. But so too were Jews, praying at the nearby Western Wall, removed from the area.

This week, the House panel responsible for funding the State Department and all international broadcasters takes up its fiscal year 2008 spending bill. Nine of the 13 members of the Appropriations subcommittee on Foreign Operations have already demanded that Mr. Register's employment be terminated, and now they have an opportunity to hand State and the BBG an ultimatum.

So Mr. Register's defenders should ask themselves: Is it worth risking millions to save someone with so dubious a track record?

NY Sun Links JFK Terror Plot to Iran

From today's New York Sun editorial:

The thing that caught our eye in the plot to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport and its oil lines concerns a detail in respect of the arrest of one of the key Guyanese suspects. It was the fact that the former member of the Guyanese legislature who was fingered in the plot, Abdul Kadir, was arrested in Trinidad on his way to Caracas, Venezuela. According to Mr. Kadir's wife, who was quoted in the Guyanese press, he was there to pick up an Iranian visa that would enable him to attend an Islamic conference in Tehran.

No doubt we will learn more about this plot as the weeks go on. Our sense of the intelligence community is that it is reserving its judgment, though clearly congratulations are in order for Commissioner Kelly, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, Roslynn Mauskopf, and the other officials involved in breaking this case. But our attention has been riveted for some time on growing evidence that the Iranian regime has been moving aggressively to gain influence in our hemisphere, and the big surprise in the latest case is only that it took so long for something to develop.

BTW, The New York Times ran its story on the JFK plot on page C12 (Business Section) of today's national edition--below the fold...

Libby Jail Term Puts Bush On The Spot

Peter Baker writes in the Washington Post:

The sentence imposed on former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby yesterday put President Bush in the position of making a decision he has tried to avoid for months: Trigger a fresh political storm by pardoning a convicted perjurer or let one of the early architects of his administration head to prison.

The prospect of a pardon has become so sensitive inside the West Wing that top aides have been kept out of the loop, and even Bush friends have been told not to bring it up with the president. In any debate, officials expect Vice President Cheney to favor a pardon, while other aides worry about the political consequences of stepping into a case that stems from the origins of the Iraq war and renewing questions about the truthfulness of the Bush administration.

The White House publicly sought to defer the matter again yesterday, saying that Bush is "not going to intervene" for now. But U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton indicated that he is not inclined to let Libby remain free pending appeals, which means the issue could confront Bush in a matter of weeks when, barring a judicial change of heart, Cheney's former chief of staff will have to trade his business suit for prison garb. Republicans inside and outside the administration said that would be the moment when Bush has to decide.

"Obviously, there'd be a significant political price to pay," said William P. Barr, who as attorney general to President George H.W. Bush remembers the controversy raised by the post-election pardons for several Iran-contra figures in 1992. "I personally am very sympathetic to Scooter Libby. But it would be a tough call to do it at this stage."

At the same time, some White House advisers said the president's political troubles are already so deep that a pardon might not be so damaging. Those most upset by the CIA leak case that led to the Libby conviction already oppose Bush, they noted. "You can't hang a man twice for the same crime," a Republican close to the White House said.

Classical Music Boosts DC NPR Station Ratings

Paul Farhi writes in today's Washington Post:

A bunch of European composers who haven't had a hit in decades have been very, very good to radio station WETA.

Since dropping news and talk programming for classical music in January, the Arlington public station has seen its fortunes soar. Ratings have more than doubled since the switchover from BBC and NPR reports to Bach and Brahms concertos. And perhaps just as important to WETA (90.9 FM), pledge contributions from listeners have been gushing.

WETA's strong showing in the first four months of the year likely reflects the death of WGMS-FM, the station that called it quits in January after 60 years as Washington's commercial classical station. WETA, owned by a nonprofit foundation, coordinated its format change with WGMS's expiration, becoming the sole classical outlet on the local airwaves.

The station's early success suggests that classical music isn't dead as a radio format, despite its long decline on commercial stations across the country. According to a study last year by the National Endowment for the Arts, only 28 commercial stations nationwide had a classical-music format in 2005. Public stations have gradually cut back on classical, jazz and other musical forms to focus on news and talk -- exactly the opposite path that WETA has taken this year.

The gains of that change are borne out by WETA's audience totals during the January-March quarter. According to the ratings service Arbitron -- which releases figures for public stations separately from those of commercial stations -- WETA captured 4.9 percent of the radio audience in Washington during the first quarter, up from 2.1 percent in the preceding three months, when WETA was a news-talk station. WETA carried mostly news and talk for a two-year period starting in February 2005.

Those numbers make WETA the region's fifth most popular station, behind traditional powerhouses WHUR-FM (which plays hip-hop), WTOP-FM (all news), WPGC-FM (urban contemporary) and WMMJ-FM (R&B hits).

Paul Weyrich on Western Media's Terrible Russia Coverage

From NewsMax.com:

When Yeltsin was in his second term he was blessed if he hit 29 percent. So I wondered how Kasparov was going to be able to oppose Putin, who at this writing is still scheduled to leave the Russian presidency at the end of his second term. I was thinking of the old Kasparov. This past week I had the chance to visit with Murashev in my home and the topic of Kasparov arose because it bothered me that the Western media had reported that he was held for several hours after a demonstration.

Murashev's views I have come to respect over the past nineteen years. He is very objective. He has seldom been wrong. He tells me that Kasparov has joined with a Marxist who campaigns for the return of Communism. Here is this important pro-democracy figure, Kasparov, who has now joined with his former arch-opponent to get political attention. Murashev says that unfortunately Kasparov has become an almost clownish figure.

He still has a good image in the Western media, however. I feel very badly that Kasparov, who no longer is involved with chess, is no longer respected in Russia. I liked the man. I was honored to be with him.

We have our sad figures who have fallen from grace as well. Think of Harold E. Stassen. I can only wish Kasparov well, but given his reputation, it is not likely we will be seeing him as a serious political figure ever again.

Meanwhile our conversation with Murashev turned to coverage of Russia by Western media. Murashev makes the case that it is terrible. I have seen it up close. Murashev is correct. The question is why?

Is it simply ignorance on the part of Western reporters? How can it be? They can see things with their own eyes. I once asked Igor Gaidar why Russia was receiving such bad coverage.

He said that the Soviets had spent millions to infiltrate the Western media, "Just because the Soviets went away, it doesn't mean these reporters have gone away. They are still there." I have no idea if that is the reason Russia gets such a bad rap. Perhaps some reporters are not communist plants but were sympathetic to the Soviet Union and resent what has taken its place.

I have met so many reporters who looked to the Soviet Union as a remarkable model. They blame the West for its collapse. Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky said that the West did not so much defeat that Soviet Union as it imploded.

Regardless of which notion is acceptable, the West defeated the Soviet Union or it imploded, there is no rational explanation for the coverage Russia is receiving. My own view is that most likely the reason for the bad coverage is resentment over what has replaced the Soviet Union.

A member of a prominent American Democratic campaign once told me that I had no idea how much liberals looked to the Soviet Union as an appropriate model for the West and how angry and confused the left now is that it has fallen. Most reporters belong to the left.

I would often say I would attend a hearing in the Senate and would not recognize the coverage of the same on the evening news. Now the Russians are having the same experience.

Melanie Phillips on Britain's Israel Boycotters--Part II

From the Daily Mail (UK):

The Palestinians have responded to Israel’s departure by launching more than 1,400 rockets at its traumatised civilian population. Since the beginning of May alone, they have fired more than 300 rockets on the southern Israeli town of Sderot, killing two people and injuring dozens more.

What would Britain do if, for example, France started firing hundreds of rockets at Kent with the intention of killing as many English people as possible and taking over Britain? This would be recognised as an act of war and we would respond by military action against France.

But when Israel carries out targeted strikes against Hamas terrorists to stop the attacks on its civilians, it is subject to furious protest.

Virtually every day, Israeli hospitals treat Palestinian children and others injured in the violence in Gaza. What other country in the world would respond in such a way to a people which has not stopped trying to annihilate it for the past 60 years?

Yet Israel is the one country singled out for a boycott. There are no calls for a boycott of countries committing true human rights abuses; no calls for a boycott of Russia over Chechnya, or China over Tibet, or Iran over its persecution of intellectuals and pursuit of genocide.

Instead, Israel is held to a standard of behaviour demanded of no other country while at the same time being singled out for a campaign of vilification based on demonstrable falsehoods.

So what is the reason for this startling double standard? Part of it is sheer anti-Jewish prejudice. But in the main, the perverse obsession with Israel has been caused by widespread ignorance, which has been exploited in turn by a shrewd and sophisticated strategy carried out by the Arab world to delegitimise Israel altogether.

The boycotts are an acknowledged part of that strategy, playing on the widespread misconception that occupation of the West Bank is illegal.

The facts are very different. Under international law, Israel’s occupation is entirely legal as an act of self-defence against Arab aggressors who have never ended their unlawful hostilities.

After the Six-Day War ended, Israel offered to hand back these territories to Jordan and Egypt in return for peace. The answer from the Arab world was a resounding ‘No’. They didn’t want the territories for the Palestinians. They wanted instead to use them to continue their war against Israel.

The only people who have ever opposed a lawfully constituted, peaceful Palestinian state are the Arabs. And yet Britain’s intelligentsia and union activists are busily boycotting and demonstrating against Israel. They are exactly the same kind of useful idiots who once supported Stalin, and waved aside all those who spoke up against the killings and the terror.

There are those who will dismiss what I say because, as a Jew and a supporter of Israel, I am thought to have a large axe to grind. But people said exactly the same thing to those Jews who tried to warn Britain and the world about Hitler in the 1930s. Britain dismissed such warnings then; and as a result the world paid a terrible price.

Dismayingly, the atmosphere in Britain today is all too similar. It is said that tragic history repeats itself as farce. Those who support the boycotts and demonstrations against Israel are helping ensure that history is to be repeated for a second time as tragedy.

Transcript of President Putin's Interview with G8 Journalists

From Kremlin.ru:

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Let us not be hypocritical about democratic freedoms and human rights. I already said that I have a copy of Amnesty International’s report including on the United States. There is probably no need to repeat this so as not to offend anyone. If you wish, I shall now report how the United States does in all this. We have an expression that is perhaps difficult to translate but it means that one can always have plenty to say about others. Amnesty International has concluded that the United States is now the principal violator of human rights and freedoms worldwide. I have the quote here, I can show you. And there is argumentation behind it.

There are similar claims about Great Britain, France or the Federal Republic of Germany. The same could be said of Russia. But let us not forget that other countries in the G8 have not experienced the dramatic transformations that the Russian Federation has undergone. They have not experienced a civil war, which we, in fact, had in the Caucasus.

And yet we have preserved many of the so-called common values even better than some other G8 countries. Despite serious conflicts in the Caucasus, we have not abandoned our moratorium on the death penalty. And, as we know, in some G8 countries this penalty is applied quite consistently and strictly enforced.

So I think that such discussions are certainly possible, but I am sure they have no serious justification.

Let me say again that, as far as I know, the German presidency of the G8 wants to formulate rules for dealing with some of the major economies of the world on an ongoing basis. I have already listed these countries and we certainly support our German partners. I think this initiative is absolutely valid.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL: A follow-up question. You talked about the problems of a unipolar world. Have you considered the possibility of creating some kind of alliance, some formal relations between countries, which could be seen as an alternative pole in the system of international relations?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: I think it would be a dead end, the wrong way to go about development. We advocate a multipolar world. We believe that it should be diverse and respect the interests of the overwhelming majority of the international community. We must create these rules and learn to respect these rules.

DER SPIEGEL: Mr President, former Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called you a ‘pure democrat’. Do you consider yourself such?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: (laughs) Am I a ‘pure democrat’? Of course I am, absolutely. But do you know what the problem is? Not even a problem but a real tragedy? The problem is that I’m all alone, the only one of my kind in the whole wide world. Just look at what’s happening in North America, it’s simply awful: torture, homeless people, Guantanamo, people detained without trial and investigation. Just look at what’s happening in Europe: harsh treatment of demonstrators, rubber bullets and tear gas used first in one capital then in another, demonstrators killed on the streets. That’s not even to mention the post-Soviet area. Only the guys in Ukraine still gave hope, but they’ve completely discredited themselves now and things are moving towards total tyranny there; complete violation of the Constitution and the law and so on. There is no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.

DER SPIEGEL: And your country is not moving at all back towards a totalitarian regime?

VLADIMIR PUTIN: There is no truth in that. Do not believe what you hear.

Charles Moore on Britain's Israel Boycotters and the BBC

From The Telegraph(UK) (ht lgf):

Alan Johnston, under terrorist orders, spoke of the "absolute despair" of the Palestinians and attributed it to 40 years of Israeli occupation, "supported by the West". That is how it is presented, night after night, by the BBC.

The other side is almost unexamined. There is little to explain the internecine strife in the Arab world, particularly in Gaza, or the cynical motivations of Arab leaders for whom Palestinian miseries are politically convenient.

You get precious little investigation of the networks and mentalities of Islamist extremism - the methods and money of Hamas or Hizbollah and comparable groups - which produce acts of pure evil like that in which Mr Johnston is involuntarily complicit.

The spotlight is not shone on how the "militants" (the BBC does not even permit the word "terrorist" in the Middle East context) and the warlords maintain their corruption and rule of fear, persecuting, among others, the Palestinians.

Instead it shines pitilessly on Blair and Bush and on Israel.

From the hellish to the ridiculous, the pattern is the same. Back at home, the Universities and Colleges Union has just voted for its members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".

Well, they could consider how work by scientists at the Technion in Haifa has led to the production of the drug Velcade, which treats multiple myeloma. Or they could look at the professor at Ben-Gurion University who discovered a bacteria that fights malaria and river blindness by killing mosquitoes and black fly.

Or they could study the co-operation between researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who have isolated the protein that triggers stress in order to try to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and their equivalents at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.

The main universities of Israel are, in fact, everything that we in the West would recognise as proper universities. They have intellectual freedom. They do not require an ethnic or religious qualification for entry. They are not controlled by the government. They have world-class standards of research, often producing discoveries which benefit all humanity. In all this, they are virtually unique in the Middle East.

The silly dons are not alone. The National Union of Journalists, of which I am proud never to have been a member, has recently passed a comparable motion, brilliantly singling out the only country in the region with a free press for pariah treatment. Unison, which is a big, serious union, is being pressed to support a boycott of Israeli goods, products of the only country in the region with a free trade union movement.

The doctrine is that Israel practises "apartheid" and that it must therefore be boycotted.

All this is moral madness. It is not mad, of course, to criticise Israeli policy. In some respects, indeed, it would be mad not to. It is not mad - though I think it is mistaken - to see the presence of Israel as the main reason for the lack of peace in the region.

But it is mad or, perhaps one should rather say, bad to try to raid Western culture's reserves of moral indignation and expend them on a country that is part of that culture in favour of surrounding countries that aren't. How can we have got ourselves into a situation in which we half-excuse turbaned torturers for kidnapping our fellow-citizens while trying to exclude Jewish biochemists from lecturing to our students?

Nobody yet knows the precise motivations of Mr Johnston's captors, but it is surely not a coincidence that they held him in silence until the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War approached, and only then made him speak. They wanted him to give the world their historical explanation - Israeli oppression - for their cause.

Yet that war took place because President Nasser of Egypt led his country and his allies declaring "Our basic aim will be to destroy Israel".

He failed, abjectly, and Egypt and Jordan later gave up the aspiration. But many others maintain it to this day, now with a pseudo-religious gloss added.

We keep giving sympathetic air-time to their death cult. In a way, Mr Johnston is paying the price: his captors are high on the oxygen of his corporation's publicity.

As for Israel, many sins can be laid to its charge. But it is morally serious in a way that we are not, because it has to be. Forty years after its greatest victory, it has to work out each morning how it can survive.

NY Post Links JFK Terror Plot to Al Qaeda

Hmmm...will The New York Times put this story somewhere below the fold on page 57 tomorrow?

Al Qaeda's so-called nuclear whiz kid - a "tantalizing terror figure" with a $5 million bounty on his head - was the radical big shot investigators had hoped to snag in their 18-month JFK-plot probe, The Post has learned.

The name of "invisible hand" Adnan Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, reportedly the man Osama bin Laden tapped to lead a previous scheme to detonate nuclear bombs simultaneously in several U.S. cities, came up at several points in taped conversations during the probe, according to law-enforcement sources familiar with the investigation.

Three Muslim men were nabbed Friday in the alleged plan to attack John F. Kennedy International Airport - the "chicken farm," as they dubbed it - which involved exploding a jet-fuel pipeline. A fourth suspect is at large.

Given Shukrijumah's notoriety in the terror world and the fact that he grew up in Guyana, as did three of the suspects, probers immediately homed in on him.

"Eyebrows went up," said one law-enforcement source.

"We thought he could be the invisible hand. He's always in the shadows, particularly in [the Caribbean]. He's passed through it, he's known, his name came up in the conversations.

"He would have been the prize."

So the feds allowed the probe to continue until the last moment, which came when one of the suspects boarded a plane in Trinidad headed for Venezuela - where the United States has no extradition agreement. Authorities weren't willing to risk losing him, so they "pulled the trigger" on the arrests, one source said.

Investigators had yet to collect evidence linking Shukrijumah to the JFK plot, but it's clear his name and efforts were well-known to the suspects.

Shukrijumah grew up in Guyana, according to terror expert and author Paul L. Williams. Shukrijumah's late father, Gulshair, an Islamic scholar, once served as a temporary imam at Brooklyn's al-Farouq mosque, which is well-known in radical circles, Williams said.

The mosque has connections to a scheme to fund an al Qaeda-linked sheik as well as one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers.

But the mosque's imam, Hile Said, 31, said, "We are against terrorism. We are callers of peace."

National Review on the JFK Terror Plot

Unlike The New York Times, which is obviously in denial (today's story on the terror plot was pubished on page 17), The National Review's editors are on top of the story today:

The enemy’s ideas are frightful: for example, its notion that mass murder is a legitimate means of pressing a socio-political agenda. This is not an aberrational belief espoused by a fringe of jihadist operatives. It is mainstream in Islamic countries and disturbingly common among growing Muslim populations in the United States and Europe.

This time, the hateful ideology infected a cell composed mostly of Guyanese militants, including Russell Defreitas (also known as “Mohammed”), a naturalized American secretly at war with his adopted country, and Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana’s parliament who was reportedly en route to a religious conference in Iran at the time of his arrest. It also included another Guyana native said to have ties to the murderous Jamaat al Muslimeen (the Muslim Group), a Sunni terror organization based in Trinidad and Tobago, and a Trinidadian allegedly tied to still other terrorists overseas.

Their inspiration was al Qaeda. Their aspiration was an atrocity more gruesome than 9/11 — a strike aimed not just at airplanes and passenger terminals, but at fuel pipelines that run through dense residential neighborhoods and feed JFK’s thousand planes a day transporting 45 million travelers a year. Their goal was not simply to knock out an airport, but to decimate much of Queens, and with it the U.S. economy.

Overly ambitious? Probably. Defreitas knew the terrain, having retired after years of working cargo at JFK. But his knowledge, and the painstaking surveillance of the target he allegedly did, were unlikely to overcome the technological obstacles to his plan. Further, the cell seems to have lacked financing (although they were actively pursuing it), and they had not yet acquired explosives when the investigation was cut short — apparently by Guyanese authorities understandably concerned that Kadir would evade their coverage if not arrested.

But even if the grand design was beyond the cell’s competence, an attempt could well have killed hundreds of people. As with the recent thwarting of a jihadist plot on Fort Dix, this intended atrocity appears to have been prevented by the cooperation of federal and local law enforcement, who managed to infiltrate the conspiracy with an informant — proving, yet again, that if we are to stop terror attacks rather than react to them, there is no substitute for human intelligence.

The deepest lesson here, though, is that we are at war with an enemy that hates us, that will stop at nothing — even death — to harm us, and that we must understand in order to defeat. That is the first step in the real battle of ideas.

Nina Khrushcheva: Putin is Bush's Doppleganger

On the eve of the G8 summit, Khrushchev's granddaughter writes in the Guardian (UK) that US and Russian leaders present mirror-images of one another (ht Johnson's Russia List):

Next week's G8 summit will probably be the last such meeting for Presidents George W Bush and Vladimir Putin. Seven years ago, at their first meeting in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Bush looked into Putin's eyes and somehow spotted the soul of a Christian gentleman, not that of a secret policeman. Next week, they shouldn't be surprised if they see a mirror of each other, because both men have exemplified the arrogance of power.

Bush and Putin both came to power in 2000, a year when their countries were scrambling to regain international respect: Russia from the chaos of the Yeltsin years and the US from the failed impeachment of President Clinton. Each country thought it was acquiring an unthreatening mediocrity. But both men, on finding themselves in positions of authority, ruled from their default positions: Bush as an evangelical convinced that God was on America's side, and Putin as a KGB graduate convinced that all power comes from intimidation and threats.

And what was the result? Convinced that he is right, and incurious to hear contrary arguments, Bush felt free to undermine the rule of law in America with warrantless domestic surveillance, erosion of due process, and defence of torture, in addition to misleading the public and refusing to heed expert advice or recognise facts on the ground. From the tax cuts in 2001 to the war in Iraq, Bush's self-righteous certitude led him to believe that he could say and do anything to get his way.

The damage that Bush's self-confidence and self-delusion has inflicted was magnified by his gross overestimation of America's power. Quite simply, he thought that America could go it alone in pursuing his foreign policy because no one could stop him. While his father lined up world support, and troops from over a dozen countries, for the first Gulf war, the son thought that allies were more hindrance than help; except for Tony Blair, he did not care to have them. Four years later, Bush's arrogance and mendacity have been exposed for the entire world, including the American public, to see.

Putin also succumbed to the same arrogance of power. Buoyed by high oil prices, he now seeks to bestride the world as if the social calamities that bedevil Russia - a collapsing population, a spiralling Aids and tuberculosis crisis, corruption mushrooming to levels unimagined by Yeltsin - do not matter. At a high-level security meeting in Munich this February, Putin, who usually draws on the secretive, manipulative, and confrontational cold war paradigm of what constitutes Russian diplomatic behaviour, lashed out at the US with the sort of language unheard of since Khrushchev said "We will bury you". American actions were "unilateral," "illegitimate," and had forged a "hotbed of further conflicts".

Putin's assessment of US unilateralism (if stripped of its overheated rhetoric) may be correct; the trouble is that he lacks the credibility to extol moderation in foreign policy. High oil prices have helped him rebuild and centralise the "strong state" that was his goal from the outset of his presidency. But his recent attempts to use Russia's energy resources for political coercion in Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere have exposed Russia as an unreliable partner, unnerving even the Chinese, who do not wish to see a reconstituted Russian empire on their border.

A Note from the Copyright Alliance

This just in, from Patrick Ross of the Copyright Alliance:

Thanks for the mention, Larry! The excerpt you quoted is what we’re trying to do, educate and increase awareness of copyright. I would posit, however, that it is inaccurate to call us Washington’s Copyright Lobby.

Almost all of our members have lobbyists either in-house or outside; they are more than capable of lobbying for their own interests. And more frequently than you might think, my members find themselves pitted against each other on policy issues.

For that reason, I don’t expect our time on the Hill to involve much lobbying for legislation. Rather, our mission will be to remind everyone that while copyright interests can compete in the market and in policy debates, they are united in their belief in copyright. That often gets overlooked, as does the fact that most of those conflicts are not about whether copyright is of value, but rather who gets the value.

This lobbying tag has been applied pretty broadly by journalists, bloggers, etc., and it seems my first order of business as the head of an educational institution is to do a better job of educating people about who we are. It’s a natural assumption to view us as a lobbying group...

Melanie Phillips on Britain's Israel Boycotters

From MelaniePhillips.com:

The hatred of Israel that now courses through Britain’s veins has now erupted in yet another frenzy whose irrationality and spite are scarcely credible. One now gets a whiff of what it must have been like during the witch-hunts of the Middle Ages; one now begins to understand just what Kafka was describing. British Jews are being swept up in a psychic maelstrom targeted at their right to peoplehood. As the violence against Israel increases with more than 300 rockets fired on Sderot and the western Negev since May, killing two Israeli civilians, wounding many others and traumatising untold numbers in addition; as Hamas threatens Israel with an endless war of annihilation; as Iran races towards the nuclear bomb to finish Israel off, Britain’s industrialised and professional classes are deciding once again to take the high ground of moral nihilism and punish not the instigators of this genocidal onslaught but the nation that is their victim.

Delegates at the first conference of the new University and College Union in Bournemouth voted by 158 to 99 to recommend to its branches’ a comprehensive and consistent boycott’ of all Israeli academic institutions. The Alan Johnston video was clearly made under duress but the British licence-fee payer might must have wondered why Fatah al Islam bothered to kidnap him for eleven weeks in order to get him to blame Israel for everything — and blame Britain for Israel as well as for Iraq and Afghanistan — when such views are transmitted by the BBC virtually every day of the week. The Hamas/al Qaeda script on Israel is now the British orthodoxy. And this week’s 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War will usher in a wave of hate-fuelled demonstrations by people supporting those who are working on that same script towards the destruction of Israel, Jewish peoplehood and Jews worldwide....

...Those obsessions, which are built upon lies, have never been challenged. They are the result of a world-wide Arab propaganda campaign shrewdly targeted to manipulate and exploit the preoccupations of the liberal west, which is all too eagerly disposed to take at face value any third world narrative of ‘colonial’ dispossession by western interests, even when this is demonstrably and verifiably untrue in every detail. This has been no mere propaganda campaign but a carefully calibrated strategic inversion of history and reality in order to turn the Arab aggressors into victims and the Israeli victims into aggressors in the western mind. It is a military strategy of systematic deception, dissimulation, fabrication and falsification. And it has surely succeeded – thanks to the intellectual and moral evisceration of British and western intellectuals – beyond the Arabs’ wildest expectations....

...The apartheid comparison is of course a demonstrable and grotesque lie — and a profound insult, moreover, to all those Africans who suffered under real apartheid. The comparison is indeed a kind of apartheid denial. But then all facts are being stood on their heads by the Israel-haters. Israel is blamed for the plight of the Palestinians when the Palestinians are responsible for the plight of Israel. Israel is represented as the aggressor and the Palestinians its victims whereas the Palestinians are the aggressors and Israelis the victims of terror attacks, human bomb atrocities and 1400 rockets from Gaza since disengagement. Israel is accused of preventing Palestinian statehood whereas in reality the Jews agreed to it repeatedly in 1937, 1948, 1967 and 2000 and it was the Arabs who rejected it and tried to destroy Israel instead.

Israel is accused of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. But it is Israel where Arab students attend university and sit in the parliament and the courts, and where not a day passes when Israeli hospitals aren’t treating Palestinian children injured in the fighting between Palestinians in Gaza; whereas it is Iran that is committed to genocide, and the Palestinians to ethnic cleansing from a Palestine which would be Judenrein and where no Jews would be allowed to live (by fervent agreement of the boycott supporters for whom not one Jewish settlement is to be allowed in ‘Palestinian’ territory.)

Why are facts being turned inside out like this? The UCU resolution had the gall to say that criticism of Israel was not antisemitism, with the clear implication that it never could be antisemitism. Well, no-one has ever said that criticism of Israel is antisemitism. But what’s going is not criticism of Israel. It’s a unique delegitimisation based on lies and libels as a softening up process for Israel’s extinction. It’s singling out Jewish peoplehood uniquely for denial. And it’s that double standard that cannot be explained other than by a profound prejudice....

...What is happening to England, once the most civilised, humane, fair-minded country on earth, but now consumed by hatred of its allies and the desire to grovel to its mortal enemies, is a tragedy.

Dershowitz to Sue British Israel Boycott Organizers

From the Financial Times (UK) (ht The American Thinker):

A top American lawyer has threatened to wage a legal war against British academics who seek to cut links with Israeli universities.

Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor renowned for his staunch defence of Israel and high-profile legal victories, including his role in the O.J. Simpson trial, vowed to "devastate and bankrupt" lecturers who supported such boycotts.

This week's annual conference of Britain's biggest lecturers' union, the University and College Union, backed a motion damning the "complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation [of Palestinian land]".

It also obliged the union's executive to encourage members to "consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions".

Prof Dershowitz said he had started work on legal moves to fight any boycott.

He told the Times Higher Educational Supplement that these would include using a US law - banning discrimination on the basis of nationality - against UK universities with research ties to US colleges. US academics might also be urged to accept honorary posts at Israeli colleges in order to become boycott targets.

"I will obtain legislation dealing with this issue, imposing sanctions that will devastate and bankrupt those who seek to impose bankruptcy on Israeli academics," he told the journal.

Sue Blackwell, a UCU activist and member of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine, said: "This is the typical response of the Israeli lobby which will do anything to avoid debating the real issue - the 40-year occupation of Palestine." Jewish groups have attacked the UCU vote, which was opposed by Sally Hunt, its general secretary.

I hope the discovery process reveals exactly which groups are behind all the "boycotts" against Israel--and whether any of them have links to Islamist terror organizations behind 7/7 or 9/11...

Daniel Pipes: CAIR Named "Unindicted Co-Conspirators"

From DanielPipes.org:

June 4, 2007 update: Federal prosecutors have named CAIR and two other Islamic organizations, the Islamic Society of North America and the North American Islamic Trust, as "unindicted co-conspirators" in a criminal conspiracy to support Hamas, a designated terrorist group.

In a filing last week, prosecutors described CAIR as a present or past member of "the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood's Palestine Committee and/or its organizations." They listed ISNA and NAIT as "entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood." Josh Gerstein of The New York Sun reports that spokesmen for CAIR did not respond to requests for comment.

This development occurred in connection with the trial, scheduled to start on July 16 in Dallas, of five officials (Shukri Abu-Baker, Mohammad El-Mezain, Ghassan Elashi, Mufid Abdulqader, and Abdulraham Odeh) of the now-defunct Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, accused of sending funds to Hamas. This court filing listed some 300 individuals or organizations as co-conspirators.

What is an unindicted co-conspirator? Someone by and about whom hearsay is permissible in the courtroom. Here is a definition by legal journalist Stuart Taylor, discussing an entirely unrelated case:

The prosecutor is saying in essence in court … that we believe this man was part of the criminal conspiracy, along with the people who are on trial. We haven't indicted him but the relevance of that for the purposes of the trial is that [it] lets them get in more evidence about the unindicted co-conspirator's … out-of-court statements than they otherwise could. It's a way around the hearsay rule. … For example, if they want … one of their witnesses, to talk about what [a person] said to him, ordinarily that would be barred by the so-called hearsay rule. You can't … testify in a trial about what somebody else said out of court. That rule has a lot of exceptions. One of the exceptions is if the person who you're trying to quote … is named by the prosecution as an unindicted co-conspirator, then you can talk about what he said out of court.

Substitute "organization" for "man" and "person" and this description applies to the situation of CAIR, ISNA, and NAIT.

Comments: (1) CAIR being named as an unindicted co-conspirator complements the fact that many of its staff and associates are associated with terrorism, as I have documented in this entry.

(2) It is only logical that CAIR, whose origins lie in the Islamic Association for Palestine, which was founded by Hamas, be legally investigated in connection with Hamas.

(3) This may be the first time since 1994 that the press could not find a CAIR spokesman for a comment.

(4) If it turns out that there is substance to the CAIR-HLF connection, then CAIR will be caught out by the changed political and legal environment since 9/11. Put simply, Islamists can no longer get away with they could before then. (I elaborated this in a different context at "Nike and 9/11.")

(5) Whatever the future brings, this designation will hang as a permanent albatross around CAIR's collective neck.

FBI Press Release on Kennedy Airport Terror Plot Case

Click here to download the Department of Justice Press Release by James Margolin and Robert Mendoza, as a PDF file from the FBI website.

As alleged in the complaint, the plot tapped into an international network of Muslim extremists from the United States, Guyana, and Trinidad, and utilized the knowledge, expertise, and contacts of the conspirators to develop and plan the plot, and obtain operational support and capability to carry it out...

...In a recorded conversation following one of the surveillance missions to JFK airport, DEFREITAS predicted that the attacks would result in the destruction of “the whole of Kennedy,” that only a few people would survive the attack, and that because of the location of the targeted fuel pipelines, part of Queens would explode.

In discussing JFK airport as a target, DEFREITAS exulted over JFK airport’s symbolic importance:

Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States. To hit John F. Kennedy, wow .... They love John F. Kennedy like he’s the man .... If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you can kill the man twice.

In a later recorded conversation with his coconspirators in May 2007, DEFREITAS compared the plot to attack JFK airport to the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, stating, “even the Twin Towers can’t touch it,” adding that, “this can destroy the economy of America for some time.”

For some reason, the editors placed their story on this case on Page 30 of today's New York Times. It was on Page One of today's Washington Post.

Frank Gaffney on "Islam v Islamists" on C-Span

Tonight, at 8pm, on Q&A.

Ken Burns Plugs "The War" at Book Expo America

Listen to Ken Burns promotional podcast for his book (will there be Latinos in it?) here.

Michael Vlahos on America's Dwindling Moral Authority

From the National Interest:

In broad terms, we have squandered the World War II canon. We have lost its mythic authority. We are at the historical end of its protective embrace. We are on our own now. This intangible is the most significant, and in some ways surprising, consequence of the war. It has resulted from the most temporal of events and will indeed deliver most apparent costs. But before considering the importance of the consequences, it is first necessary to map the landscape of failure, to diagram its dimensions. Our failure has unfolded in four dimensions: in terms of military objectives; reconstruction promises; "hearts and minds" goals and lofty, transformative ambitions for the region.

MILITARILY, AMERICA’S initial success in Afghanistan and Iraq did not bring secure and stable environments to these countries. However, America’s military campaigns have overseen a yearly escalation in chaos and violence in both. And while it is to be hoped that U.S. forces will eventually be extricated successfully, they will leave behind a menagerie of Islamist principalities locked in ceaseless struggle. These, of course, were not our military goals.

America also pledged to redeem and uplift Iraq and Afghanistan, just as we "reconstructed" Germany and Japan after World War II. This promise was not kept. Both countries are in ruins. By some measures, they are worse off than ever. Moreover, money is short, so there is little more we can do to help them. Our policies and practices have perversely helped to achieve the wreckage over which we now preside.

Further, we are losing what we declared to be a "war of ideas." After September 11, the world—even the Muslim world—rushed to our emotional support, but by now we have convinced the overwhelming majority of Muslims that we are attacking Islam itself. We have not liberated Muslims long abused by radical and fundamentalist ideology, as we said we would, or brought them greater freedom. We have failed in our promise to support democracy movements and dissidents, and continue to support political tyranny. Among Arab Muslims especially, we are universally hated.

We also boasted of our aim to transform the region, signaling that not even our "friends and allies" would escape the mighty wind of democratic reform. That boast has evaporated. And we now sit by and watch open political repression without even a mention. Not only do Arab regimes no longer fear us, but others, like Pakistan’s, openly mock us through their support of the Taliban. Our great Muslim adversary, Iran, has gratefully accepted our help in achieving almost all its strategic goals, including formal spheres of influence in Mesopotamia and western Afghanistan. Again, this was hardly our goal.

The aggregate consequence of failure across these four dimensions of our war effort abroad is the larger damage to American interests and the American cause.