Newsweek: An 'Islamic Europe Is No Cause for Concern'

The magazine urges readers to stop worrying and learn to love the multicultural utopia.

by Carol Gould
http://pajamasmedia.com/
July 19, 2009

It was with astonishment that I read William Underhill’s report in the July 20 issue of Newsweek, “Why Fears of a Muslim Takeover Are All Wrong,” decrying the scaremongers of the world who think radical Islam is a threat to our way of life. Underhill names and shames Mark Steyn but one assumes he would also condemn Melanie Phillips, Phyllis Chesler, Nidra Poller, Bat Ye’or, Daniel Pipes, and little old me writing from London. Melanie, Nidra, Bat, and I have a premium on firsthand experience of radical Islam because we happen to live in Europe.

It is difficult to establish from Underhill’s screed where he lives and from what shore he writes, but his cynical piece appears to trash the views of many of the world’s most eminent scholars of modern radicalism. He asserts that the predictions by experts that Europe will soon have a significant Muslim population should be put into perspective, but then says, “Fertility rates remain higher among Muslim immigrants than among other Europeans, and Muslims may continue to arrive in Europe in large numbers.“ Being the descendant of immigrants I do not condemn this, but it is the emerging radicalism that is so perilous.

Underhill quotes a professor from Exeter University, the home of Ilan Pappe, the Israeli revisionist historian. According to Grace Davie, who is described as an expert on Europe and Islam, “The worst of the scaremongering is based on the assumption that current behavior will continue.”

Then he comes out with a doozy.

“The truth is that there are no powerful Muslim political movements in Europe, either continentwide or at the national level.” Is he nuts?

Here in Britain not a week goes by without a media story on an issue brought into the national discourse by the powerful Muslim Council of Britain, Muslim Association of Britain, or Muslim Parliament. In July a meeting at Conway Hall hosted by the Centre for Social Cohesion had to be abandoned because al-Muhajiroun was successful in refusing to allow men and women to sit together. The meeting spilled out into the street and a major confrontation was narrowly avoided, but not before a huge, adoring crowd had assembled to hear the ubiquitous and influential British Muslim leader Anjem Choudhary proclaim, “We will dominate this country, my brothers, and implement the beauty and perfection of Islam,” to shouts of “Sharia for the UK!”

William Underhill might wish to know that my esteemed colleague Charles Moore of the Daily Telegraph happened to say on BBC Question Time that the Muslim Council of Britain had refused to condemn the kidnapping and killing of British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The BBC panel had, incidentally, been discussing the shameful demonstrations by British Muslims at a military parade in Luton in March in which the protesters had held placards referring to soldiers as “butchers.”) Underhill needs to know that the powerful MCB, demanding financial compensation from Moore, has managed to elicit an apology from the BBC on its website but is now demanding an on-air apology.

Underhill says, “A British Muslim from Pakistan would struggle to communicate with a French Muslim from Algeria.” Has he ever attended a rally in Trafalgar Square in which thousands of radical Muslims of every nationality and sect mingle and distribute literature about “Zionist apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing in Palestine,” in between endless speeches by activists of every background condemning evil America and its war criminals?

Underhill proves my point by citing a recent Gallup poll: “more than 30 percent of French Muslims were ready to accept homosexuality, compared with zero in Britain.” This is one indication of the reactionary nature of much of British Islam. He goes on to point out that “40 percent of Iranians living in Germany identified themselves as having no religion. … In the Netherlands, the proportion of Muslims who regularly attend the mosque — 27 percent — is lower than the proportion of Protestants who go to church.” This may be true but what the “scaremongers” are trying to point out is that there is also a percentage of Muslim populations, led by imams from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who have become radicalized in such a way as to be unprecedented amongst any other minority immigrant group in Europe.

If Underhill thinks there isn’t a problem, evidently he has not heard about the massive fertilizer bomb plot that would have killed thousands in British shopping malls, the liquid bomb plot that would have brought down airliners by the handful, and the nearly successful 2007 bombs that narrowly missed slaughtering hundreds in London’s Texas Embassy restaurant, in a Haymarket nightclub, and at Glasgow Airport. Has he not heard about the July 7 bombs or Richard Reid? Britain continues to be a breeding ground for radical groups allowed to function without impunity across the country. What other nationality or faith behaves like this? Was it normal for the men of the London Regent’s Park Central Mosque, way back in 1998, to warn my Libyan cameraman not to bring me, producer of a film celebrating the three Abrahamic faiths, onto their premises or I “would be killed”? This is the peaceful, loyal population that Newsweek sees blending in so well to European ways of life? Yes, the IRA terrorized Britain for decades, but Britain now has a new problem with young men born here who seek to bring a repressive system to a progressive democracy that has flourished for a thousand years.

It is interesting too that the British Muslim Parliament, unlike the Jewish Beth Din, wanted a “confrontational approach in its championing of Islamic causes” when it was founded in 1992. On its own website it acknowledges, “The idea was instead to empower Muslims with their separate and distinctly Islamic institutions to meet their needs independently of the British government. … It also sought to discourage Muslims from entering mainstream politics or even from voting in elections; rather, the focus of debate was the need to create a ‘non-territorial Islamic state’ in Britain.” It has since backed down from these notions, but reading the website of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK, one appreciates the anger simmering in the community. Those who worry about this are not “scaremongers.”

Underhill finishes off his essay with: “It seems that if Europe is in the throes of revolution, many of the supposed combatants appear strangely content with the established order.”

That could have been said before 9/11 when a significant Islamic uprising was being perpetrated against Israel but when the rest of the world was “quiet.” Notwithstanding this, watching the rage of the Palestinian intifada, I warned fellow synagogue-goers at the Selichot service on September 8, 2001, that “something terrible is brewing.” They scoffed. Then stuff happened.

Now in 2009 the world is not quiet and, sadly, radical Islam dominates the news 365 days a year. That these movements are not proliferating inside Europe is nonsense. No population surveys can truly convey the dangers of British and European extremism. Like Winston Churchill in the wilderness years, I am happy to be a scaremonger.

Radical Islam Checks In

By SADANAND DHUME
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
July 21, 2009, 4:06 A.M. ET

Friday’s bombings of the J.W. Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia, underscore the emergence of a new terrorist target of choice: the international luxury hotel. In the 19 months leading up to the Jakarta attacks, Islamic terrorists have brought their holy war to upscale properties in Kabul, Afghanistan; Islamabad, Pakistan; Mumbai, India; and Peshawar, Pakistan. The casualties thus far number about 116 people killed and hundreds more injured.

More often than not, the terrorist predilection for five-star mayhem is explained in purely practical terms. Compared to fortified and heavily guarded embassies, hotels, welcoming to strangers by design, make relatively soft targets. Their international clientele, as well as the visual impact of a mangled façade of a familiar building, guarantee terrorists publicity. When the hotel brand in question is American, such as the Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton, the terrorist faithful gain the added benefit of hurting their foremost foe.

From a radical Islamic perspective, however, an international hotel is much more than merely a convenient target of opportunity. It also represents, in microcosm, the antithesis of the world that radical Islamists, both violent and nonviolent, seek to create.


Associated Press

The Ritz-Carlton hotel after the explosions in Jakarta

In a modern hotel, for example, men and women are treated equally. More effort is expended on segregating smokers from nonsmokers than on segregating the sexes. The bar, the gym and the swimming pool are gender-neutral spaces. Nobody seeks to enforce special dress codes on women.

Nor would any international hotel dream of privileging one faith over another. By contrast, under the radical Islamic worldview Muslims are entitled to special privileges. This worldview provides the underlying principle for such things as Pakistan’s harsh antiblasphemy laws and Malaysia’s lopsided affirmative action program for its Malay-Muslim majority. True, a hotel in, say, Jakarta, may place a Koran by the bedside table, and mark the direction of prayer to Mecca on the ceiling. But these are innocent gestures, designed to convenience Muslim guests rather than to inconvenience, much less to actively discriminate against, those of different backgrounds.

For Islamic radicals, who seek to order all aspects of 21st century life—from banking to burqas—by the medieval precepts enshrined in Shariah law, the secular nature of a hotel is galling enough. But perhaps this would not matter as much if it weren’t appealing to local elites. In a place like Peshawar or Kabul, and to a large degree even in Jakarta or Mumbai, a five-star hotel represents an island of order and prosperity in a sea of squalor. It hints at the prosperity promised by free markets and a culture of individual liberty. It is living proof that the worldly can successfully be split from the divine. It also acts as a bridge to the West. For example, star players of Manchester United, the British soccer club, were scheduled to stay at the Ritz-Carlton before the attacks forced them to cancel their visit to Indonesia.

What, then, does the chasm between Marriott values and Shariah values portend? For the foreseeable future, leading hotels in Asia will continue to evolve in the direction of marble-floored bunkers. Metal detectors, sniffer dogs, undercarriage mirrors and armed guards in lobbies—all unimaginable barely a decade ago—will increasingly become part of the standard luxury hotel experience. If, as appears likely, the Jakarta attacks were carried out by hotel guests, then more intrusive background checks may also become necessary.

In the long term, however, the only way to return hotels to their natural function of openly connecting visitors to a local area will require a recognition by elites in Muslim-majority countries that a law and order approach to fighting radical Islam is necessary but insufficient. Going after individual perpetrators of terrorist violence, or even dismantling networks such as Jemaah Islamiyah in Indonesia and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, earns only a temporary reprieve. As long as a vocal and influential minority of Muslims remains fundamentally opposed to what a hotel like the Marriott or the Ritz-Carlton stands for, the odds of terrorists seeking to stoke their sympathy and shore up public support (however foolish and misguided) will not disappear entirely.

—Mr. Dhume is a Washington-based writer and the author of “My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist” (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009).

In Defense of 'The Wanted'

The reality show about suspected terrorists living among us has been much maligned ... by journalists who have yet to see it.

by Karen Northon
http://pajamasmedia.com/
July 18, 2009

It’s 24 meets Dog the Bounty Hunter.

What’s not to love about that?


Echo Ops Productions

Members of "The Wanted" team (l-r) Roger Carstens, Adam Ciralski and Scott Tyler.

NBC’s latest addition to the reality show genre, The Wanted, doesn’t premiere until July 20 at 10 p.m. ET, but it is already stirring up a full pot of controversy. And while it would be easier for me to join in the media pig-pile on NBC, touting superficial analysis of a show I’ve never seen, I have decided instead to go into this with an open mind and many questions. Let there be clarity!

The Wanted features Emmy-winning journalist Adam Ciralsk, retired Navy SEAL Scott Tyler, retired Army Special Forces officer Roger Carstens, and former U.S. intelligence official David Crane. They all team up to track suspected terrorists and war criminals living comfortably among us — “us” being quiet, unsuspecting neighborhoods all over the world.

This proximity should cause a certain level of discomfort for those of us who would prefer to think “not in my neighborhood.” Perhaps that discomfort is why this show is under fire by the mainstream media. We don’t want to consider the possibility that our neighbor finances a global terrorist organization, or that our daughter’s college professor is accused of genocide.

But psychology aside, criticisms of the show stem primarily from issues of journalistic ethics and vigilantism.

There has been some blatant bad reporting regarding the show. I have seen several articles label all members of the show’s team as journalists, while only one is. Also notable, though only mildly surprising? Despite the considerable coverage of the show to date, the cast members I spoke to have had little contact from the media.

I was prepared to write endlessly about comparisons to other “reality shows” and about how the media has covered high-profile criminal cases in the past. But I realized — again, after talking to the cast of The Wanted — that these comparisons, however valid, are also a distraction from the real question of the roles and responsibilities of investigative journalists.

The show follows the aforementioned team of experts in various fields conducting interviews, gathering and analyzing information, and following leads, with the ultimate goal of confronting the accused (suspected terrorists and war criminals) and giving them a chance to respond to the allegations against them. Is this not what investigative journalists do?

Anyone who has a working television knows that when there is a high-profile criminal case in this country — O.J. Simpson, BernieMadoff , Scott Peterson — the media blankets it with interviews, updates, and legal analysis that often goes well beyond the bounds of the evidence at hand. The media does not wait for these cases to be decided before launching into full exposition on the case. Nor should they be compelled to.

However, in the case of The Wanted, the Department of Homeland Security has attempted to dissuade the show’s investigation into a particular case of a man wanted for genocide, claiming the actions of the cast and crew could impede any “official” investigations. While most of us cannot speak knowledgeably as to what Homeland Security is or is not doing with regards to any of these cases, one thing we can rally around is the singular importance of a free press — a media that is not beholden to the priorities, agendas, and timelines of a government or any of its agencies.

So what about the vigilante aspect?

This one is much simpler to answer. Go to Merriam-Webster.com, or the dictionary on your bookshelf, and see the following or a similar definition:

Vigilante: a member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily.

At no point in the show does anyone involved attempt to deliver justice, by any means or perception. Those involved with The Wanted are quite clear that their hope is to shine a syndicated light on these cases so that public sentiment will demand justice in the appropriate venue by the appropriate authorities.

Public sentiment is a powerful force. And if the show succeeds in its mission, perhaps the cases they investigate will result in answers to long-posed questions — questions of the guilt or innocence of individuals living among us, accused of terrorism and war crimes.

Why I Joined 'The Wanted'

by Roger D. Carstens
http://www.humanevents.com/
07/20/2009

“I am now also teaching Jihad. You must know. And against American soldiers. You must know this also.” These words were spoken to me only a few weeks ago by Mullah Krekar -- the founder of the Iraqi terrorist group Ansar al Islam -- from the comfort of his home in Oslo, Norway.

Some call him “bin Laden 2.0”


Mullah Krekar

Krekar, a man who has been declared a terrorist by Iraq, Jordan, the European Union, and the United Nations, has apparently escaped any form of extradition, deportation or arrest, as the Norwegian government has decided not to take any action against him.

I wish I could say that the Mullah’s case and circumstances were isolated -- but they are not. All around the world, including the United States, terrorists, mass murderers and those indicted for war crimes are living among us -- and little is being done to shine a light on this fact.

Until now.

Tonight at 10 PM Eastern Standard Time, NBC will debut its controversial show, “The Wanted.” The show can best be described as a “follow doc”: news cameras follow a former Navy SEAL, an investigative journalist, a former war crimes prosecutor, and a former Green Beret as they investigate and confront those accused of the most egregious crimes against humanity.

I am the Green Beret.

I came to the show honestly. Just over a year ago, I was a Senior Fellow at a DC-based think tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). I had come to CNAS directly from the Army -- or more accurately -- directly from Iraq, where I had served as a Special Forces advisor to the Iraqi National Counter Terror Force.

I was at work one day, merrily typing away, when my phone rang. On the other end was a colleague from another think tank, who asked, “hey, Roger, want to be on an NBC TV show?”

“Absolutely not,” I responded. “Are you sure,” he pursued. “The show is about chasing down those who perpetrated the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.”

“Yeah… I want in on that,” I responded.

In 1994, I was serving in a Special Forces unit in Germany. In the early morning hours of April 7th, my unit was alerted and given the mission to go to Kigali, Rwanda, secure the airport, and to be prepared to accept follow-on U.S. forces should the United States decide to attempt to stabilize the country.

Within hours of notification, my 104-man unit was in an aircraft hanger conducting mission planning, rehearsals, and waiting for the U.S. Air Force aircraft that would fly us into harm’s way.

After 3 days of waiting, the mission was abruptly canceled.

I went home to my house in Germany, exhausted after 3 days of high-stress activity, and -- trying to unwind -- I plopped down on my couch and turned on the TV.

The first thing that I saw was a report coming out of Rwanda -- a report that included footage of bodies floating down a river near Kigali. Uncharacteristically, I started weeping. After 5-10 minutes of shaking and sobbing, I can remember pulling myself together and saying to myself, “we should have gone. I should be in Rwanda right now, doing something.” But the United States chose to do nothing, and I did what all good soldiers do: I boxed up my emotions and buried them.

The call that I received at CNAS opened that box, and I felt a wave of emotion as I told my colleague on the other end of the phone that I wanted in -- with one condition: that out team be allowed to conduct exhaustive research prior to confronting an alleged terrorist or war criminal. NBC readily agreed.

The following months are almost indescribable, as our team traveled to Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the Congo, France, Norway, Germany, Spain, and many destinations within the United States -- all in an effort to investigate some of the most sickening acts of human depravity.

The most shocking thing in all of these months of travel, however, was not the depth of criminal activity that we uncovered, but rather the lack of interest, will power or capability exhibited by the governments where these accused persons reside.

In Mullah Krekar’s case, the Norwegian government has three options: they can arrest him for breaking Norwegian law, they can deport him for circumstances related to his asylum request, or they can chose to honor the extradition requests of Iraq and Jordan.

During the course of our investigation, the Norwegians told us that Krekar has not violated Norwegian law, he was factually honest on his asylum request, and that Norway would not honor extradition requests to Iraq and Jordan, as Norway is a signatory to a convention that prevents member nations from sending accused persons back to countries that still have the death penalty.

Despite assurances from the Iraqis that Krekar will not be executed (for record, my team obtained that promise), the Norwegian government refused to act. The conclusion: that Norway -- and many other countries -- do not have the will power to confront evil; and that the laws of today and have not kept pace with the threats that we face.

Terrorists and mass murderers get this. That is why they seek refuge in countries like Norway: they know that the very laws that they wish to tear down will protect them. In essence, Norway and like-minded countries have become safe havens for terror; and places of refuge for humanity’s most unwelcome.

In investigating these dormant or unknown cases, “The Wanted” attempts to shine a light on evil. We are reminded of that quote (often attributed to Edmund Burke) that “all that it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”

Well, if my last year is any barometer, there is a lot of evil out there -- and a lot of nothing being done about it.

I remember what Edmund Burke said about 250 years ago: "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

“The Wanted” is about doing something.

Link
http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/content/the_wanted

Roger D. Carstens is a retired Army Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He is a member of the cast of "The Wanted", which debuts tonight at 10 PM on NBC.

The ‘Tax the Rich!’ Reflex

It will make the investor class anemic.

George F. Will
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jul 27, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/

Tap a typical democratic member of the House of Representatives on the knee with a rubber hammer and he or she will say: "Tax the rich!" If such a person, lounging in a lawn chair, is startled from a summer torpor by a cymbal crash, he or she will leap up exclaiming: "Tax the rich!" Forgive such people; they cannot help themselves. It is a reflex.

But people with only one idea really have no idea; they have only a mental default position. So, last week the House decided to solve the problem of finding $1 trillion for health care by increasing taxes on the income of the 1.4 percent of taxpayers who already pay 45.2 percent of the income taxes—the rich, understood, for now, as those with annual household incomes of at least $350,000. These people do a disproportionate share of society's investing and charitable giving, so there will be less of both if the House has its way.

Less of both would be an improvement, according to statists who think both should be done primarily by government rather than individuals, the better to engineer improved equality, understood as a more equal dependence of almost everyone on government for almost everything.

But there are unmentionable trade-offs. Richard Posner, senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, says what no elected official dares to say: "As society becomes more competitive and more meritocratic, income inequality is likely to rise simply as a consequence of the underlying -inequality—which is very great—between people that is due to differences in IQ, energy, health, social skills, character, ambition, physical attractiveness, talent, and luck." Hence policies, such as steeply progressive taxation, that are intended to increase equality are likely to decrease society's wealth. They reduce the role of merit in the allocation of social rewards—merit as markets measure it, in terms of value added to the economy.

It is, of course, possible to argue that the gain in equality of condition is worth the net loss in affluence. It is, however, telling that no public official actually makes that argument.

Today, in the midst of what history may remember as the Great Recession, it is especially risky to siphon away still more of the resources of the investor class. It is prudent to expect that business investment will have to play a larger role in fueling economic growth than it has played in the last quarter century. This is because private consumption may not soon be what it was between 1983 and 2008.

Speculating in The Wilson Quarterly about a "new normal," Martin Walker, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, notes that for more than three decades after World War II, private consumption as a percentage of GDP varied within a narrow band, between 61 and 63 percent. In 1983, however, consumption began to rise, and reached 70 percent in 2007, fueled in part by $500 billion annually in home-equity loans.

Suppose the old, pre-1983 normal returns as the new normal. In 2007, personal consumption, at 70 percent of the $13.8 trillion GDP, was $9.7 trillion. Martin calculates that if it had been even at the upper end of the 1946–1983 norm, at 63 percent, 2007 consumption would have been $1 trillion less.

In 2007, Americans' savings rate was approximately zero. Today it is 7 percent of disposable income. Which is fine: -Daniel Akst, a contributing editor of The Wilson Quarterly, notes that the noun "thrift" is etymologically related to the verb "thrive." That should, however, be a sobering thought to a nation in which last year more than half of all college students had at least four credit cards. The credit card is one of what Akst calls the four horsemen of the financial apocalypse.

The other three are the automobile, the television, and the shopping cart: Cars made possible population dispersal and large lots for large houses with lots of room for stuff. Television, the powerful marketer in the living room, made it unnecessary to imagine new stuff; it showed what might be bought with credit cards, which separated the pleasure of purchasing from the pain of paying. And, says Akst, the shopping cart, although unknown in traditional department stores (carts in Marshall Field? Heaven forfend), is suited to all-you-can-carry, buffet-style shopping at Wal-Mart and Target. Carts are necessities for hauling superfluities to the large car for the drive to the large house.

If the age of conspicuous consumption is behind us and conspicuous -nonconsumption—frugality chic? "Notice how I am trying not to be noticed"?—is upon us, heaven help us. Heaven had better, because the investor class, squeezed again and again, might be too anemic to provide the economic propulsion that used to come from consumers.

Fetuses found to have memories

By Jennifer Harper
The Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Thursday, July 16, 2009

They weigh less than 3 pounds, usually, and are perhaps 15 inches long. But they can remember.

The unborn have memories, according to medical researchers who used sound and vibration stimulation, combined with sonography, to reveal that the human fetus displays short-term memory from at least 30 weeks gestation - or about two months before they are born.

"In addition, results indicated that 34-week-old fetuses are able to store information and retrieve it four weeks later," said the research, which was released Wednesday.

Scientists from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Maastricht University Medical Centre and the University Medical Centre St. Radboud, both in the Netherlands, based their findings on a study of 100 healthy pregnant women and their fetuses with the help of some gentle but precise sensory stimulation.

On five occasions during the last eight weeks of their pregnancies, the women received a series of one-second buzzes on their bellies with a "fetal vibroacoustic stimulator," a hand-held diagnostic device used to gauge an unborn baby's heart rate and general well-being.

The baby's responses - primarily eye, mouth and body movements - were closely monitored over the weeks with ultrasound imaging to gauge "fetal learning" patterns. The researchers found that the babies acclimated themselves to the sounds and vibrations to the point that they no longer bothered to respond - a process known as "habituation."

"The stimulus is then accepted as 'safe' " by the babies, the study said.

The team also found that the tiny test subjects actually improved these skills as they grew older, with those who were 34- or 36-weeks old clearly showing that they had become familiar with the hum outside the womb.

"The fetus 'remembers' the stimulus and the number of stimuli needed for the fetus to habituate is then much smaller," the study said.

"It seems like every day we find out marvelous new things about the development of unborn children. We hope that this latest information helps people realize more clearly that the unborn are members of the human family with amazing capabilities and capacities like these built in from the moment of conception," said Randall K. O'Bannon, director of education and research for the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund.

A call to NARAL Pro-Choice America for comment on the implications of the research were not returned.

The Dutch medical team, meanwhile, said its findings could help obstetricians track the healthy development of unborn babies during pregnancy. The research was published in Child Development, a medical journal.

Scientists have been curious about fetal responses to sound for decades.

The first real study of "habituation" occurred in 1925 when researchers discovered that fetuses moved less when exposed to a beeping car horn. Since then, door buzzers and even electric toothbrushes have been used to help researchers understand the fetal environment - and the response of the unborn to such influences.

Beeps and buzzes were not always the tools of choice.

In 2003, psychologists and obstetricians at Queen's University in Canada found a profound mother-baby link. In a study of 60 pregnant women, they found that the unborn babies preferred the voices of their own mothers - both before and after birth.

The heart rates of fetuses sped up when they heard their mother reading a poem, and slowed down when they heard a stranger's voice - evidence of "sustained attention, memory and learning by the fetus," said Barbara Kisilevsky, a professor of nursing who led the research.

The Queen's group has also investigated fetal response to the father's voice, concluding that if men try a little pre-natal vocalizing to their offspring, the newborn will later recognize the father's voice.

Islamic Supremacist Group Holds First U.S. Conference

By Diane Macedo
http://www.foxnews.com/
Friday, July 17, 2009

The Khilafah Conference 2009 is scheduled to be held July 19, 2009 at the Hilton Oak Lawn hotel.

A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S.

The Khilafah Conference 2009 is scheduled to be held July 19, 2009 at the Hilton Oak Lawn hotel. (YouTube)


Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades.

Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," at a posh Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.

Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it does not engage in terrorism, and it is not recognized by the State Department as a known terror group.

But some terrorism experts say it may be even more dangerous than many groups that are on the terror list.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism," Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.

Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or "khilafah" — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.

Hizb ut-Tahrir often says that its indoctrination "prepares the infantry" that groups like Al Qaeda take into battle, Phares said.

"It's like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda," he said. "One would compare them to Hitler youth. ... It's an extremely dangerous organization."

Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.

"The aim of this conference is to recruit within the Muslim community in America," he said. "The Middle East governments go after them, but in the U.S. they are protected, so having a base here is going to help their cells around the world."

Representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir declined to comment when contacted by FOXNews.com.

Oren Segal, director of Islamic Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said the conference is cause for concern.

"While they're not, for the most part, engaging in violent activities, and they publicly say that they're against violence, there have been examples around the world where people who have spun off of this group have engaged in violent activity," Segal told FOXNews.com. "That's why they're banned in several Arab and Central Asian countries, as well as Germany and Russia."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of the group's most famous alumni, New Statesman journalist Shiv Malik reported, citing intelligence sources. In addition to plotting the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he also is implicated in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, the Bali nightclub bombings and the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

Malik's report, the public policy institute the Nixon Center and the counter-extremism think tank the Quilliam Foundation agree that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq until he was killed in June 2006, also was once a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir.

They say other former members include Asif Muhammad Hanif, a British man who blew himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, killing four people (including himself) and wounding more than 50; and Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric currently banned from Britain who praised the 9/11 attacks, raised funds for Hezbollah and Hamas and called for attacks on the Dublin airport because U.S. troops transfered there on their way to Iraq.

Segal said Hizb ut-Tahrir is becoming more active online in the U.S. — particularly on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace — and now it may be able to add a significant number of Americans to its ranks.

But one place the group will likely not be recruiting is a local Islamic school that backed out of hosting the conference.

The non-profit Aqsa school in Bridgeview said Hizb ut-Tahrir had deceptively portrayed the conference as a bazaar-type event where traditional food and clothing would be sold.

"They misrepresented themselves and the event. We don't want to be in the middle of something like that," the school's business manager Rana Jaber, told CBS News.

The conference's new venue doesn't seem to mind.

Hilton Oak Lawn General Manager Rick Harmon said Hizb ut-Tahrir used its own name when it reserved the room for the conference, but the hotel was not aware of the content of the event, which includes lectures entitled "Capitalism is Doomed to Fail," "The Global Rise of Islam," and the "Role of Muslims in America," until after the contract was signed.

Still, Harmon said the hotel is open to all kinds of meetings, that don't necessarily reflect its position or beliefs.

"We're United States citizens and an American business — if it's legal, we're able to host it, as long as it's nothing that disrupts our other guests' privacy and security," Harmon told FOXNews.com.

According to the Khilafah Conference 2009 Web site, the group aims to do neither.

"Hizb-ut-Tahrir is convinced that change must start in the minds of people, and therefore does not accept for people, or societies, to be forced to change by means of violence and terror," it reads.

The site, which includes a promotional YouTube video, says the group "does not work in the West to change the system of government, but works to project a positive image of Islam to Western society."

Click here to see the conference video.

But former member Ishtiaq Hussain said Hizb ut-Tahrir is repackaging itself as a moderate organization as a tactic, while in reality it is "extremist."

"They don't recognize countries like Israel, for example; they don’t believe Israel should exist," Hussain, now a trainer for the Quilliam Foundation, told FOXNews.com. "Some of their leaders have denied the Holocaust, and they believe homosexuals should be thrown off the highest building. ... It's actually a very dangerous group."

Hizb ut-Tahrir itself has also published writings that seem to contradict its tenet of non-violence.

In his book, "How the Khilafah Was Destroyed," Sheikh Abdul Qadeem Zalloom, the former global leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir, says anyone who rules by a non-Islamic system should "either retract or be killed ... even if this led to several years of fighting and even if it led to the killing of millions of Muslims and to the martyrdom of millions of believers."

Click here to read the full excerpt.

Hizb ut-Tahrir's official ruling on the permissibility of hijacking planes says, "If the plane belongs to a country at war with Muslims, like Israel, it is allowed to hijack it, for there is no sanctity for Israel nor for the Jews in it."

Click here to read the full ruling (pdf).

And one of the organization's more recent leaflets, published in March, calls for the declaration of "a state of war against America."

Click here to read the leaflet.

But, despite these threats and calls to action, Hizb ut-Tahrir remains off the State Department's terror watch list, and it is free to host the Khilafah Conference and any other event like it.

"In other parts of the world where they're really very active, they've drawn tens of thousands of people to some of their events," Segal said.

"It'll be interesting to see to what degree they'll be welcomed here."

Liberal Lion in Winter

Eminentoes

By Daniel J. Flynn on 7.20.09 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/

Forty years ago today, the world fixated upon Apollo 11's lunar landing. But in Massachusetts, an incident highlighting humanity's depths rather than its heights relegated one of the biggest stories of the 20th century to below the fold. "Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the only surviving brother in a family pursued by tragedy, narrowly escaped death early yesterday when his car plunged into a pond on a sparsely populated island off the coast of Martha's Vinyard," read the lede in the July 20, 1969 Boston Globe.


Ted Kennedy and his wife, Joan, leave Hyannis for Mary Jo Kopechne's funeral in Pennsylvania. (UPI)

The story, of course, was not that the Bay State's senior senator had "narrowly escaped death," but that the occupant of the passenger seat, Mary Jo Kopechne, hadn't. "She didn't drown," John Farrar, the diver who retrieved Kophechne's body from Kennedy's Oldsmobile, later pointed out. "She died of suffocation in her own air void. It took her at least three or four hours to die. I could have had her out of that car in twenty-five minutes after I got the call. But he didn't call." At least he didn't call somebody who could have helped Kopechne -- between the time of the accident and surrendering himself to the police the following morning, Senator Kennedy charged 17 long distance calls to his credit card.

Such questions as "What was the senator doing alone so late with a woman other than his wife?" and "Why was the senator driving after partying all day?" yielded to one even more troubling. Why did Senator Kennedy work so hard to save his political skin when he could have done something to save the life of the former aide to his late brother Robert? Outraged Americans wanted Kennedy's resignation. Enamored Massachusetts voters reelected him the next year.

Four decades later, the issue of a Ted Kennedy resignation is again discussed, albeit in more hushed tones. The lawmaker's battle with brain cancer has made it difficult for him to perform his duties in Congress. Kennedy has been absent from the Senate, his workplace for nearly a half century, for 14 months. He has participated in just 4 percent of the votes in the 111th Congress, missing roll calls on the stimulus package, the tobacco tax hike, the budget, and virtually every other issue of consequence that has come before the Senate.

The constituencies -- Bay State voters and liberal Democrats -- that would benefit most from his resignation are the most adamantly opposed to it. But the price of Kennedy retaining his title is high: Massachusetts gets half of the Senate representation as other states and Senate Democrats are denied the opportunity to break filibusters without the aid of Republicans.

When Alaska Governor Sarah Palin tendered her resignation because she reasoned that frivolous ethics complaints and other distractions had undermined her effectiveness, a torrent of negative press followed. But in keeping a title without performing the duties, Kennedy has experienced no such criticism.


Chappaquiddick Island, a small island off the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard, became nationally recognized following an incident involving Senator Ted Kennedy and his companion Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969. Ted and Mary Jo, a former staff member of Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, were driving in Kennedy’s 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 after a party when Kennedy drove off the Dike Bridge into Poucha Pond in Massachusetts.

HBO has been running a fawning documentary, "Teddy: In His Own Words," that, as its title suggests, tells the story of Ted Kennedy's life through his own words. This fall, the senator's memoirs hit bookstores, with electronically-signed, leather-bound editions fetching $1,000. On Friday, the New York Times ran a hagiographic article on how much the Senate misses its second-most senior senator. "What would Teddy do?" Senator Patty Murray explained to the Times of the guiding principle on health care reform. "We're all working to do what we think he'd want us to do." Newsweek features the ailing senator on its cover and an accompanying article authored by him. Kennedy writes, "For four decades I have carried this cause -- from the floor of the United States Senate to every part of this country."

The irony here is that by treating his office as a family legacy Senator Kennedy risks undermining his political legacy. The health-care legislation widely seen as the exclamation point to Kennedy's career faces a tough slog, made more arduous by the medical woes of Kennedy and his friend and former rival Robert Byrd. In an atmosphere in which every vote counts, there are two votes Democrats can't count on. Apart from providing inspiration, the biggest impact Kennedy can have on ensuring the passage of a government-run health insurance program would be to resign and allow Democrats another reliable vote.

But if his reprehensible behavior surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne didn't prompt Senator Kennedy to resign 40 years ago, it's unlikely that missing all but a handful of votes for more than a year will prompt him to resign today. For perhaps the first time in almost 47 years, Republicans are better off with a Kennedy inside the Senate than outside it.

- Daniel J. Flynn, the author of A Conservative History of the American Left, blogs at www.flynnfiles.com.

There's Poetry In This Near Miss

By Thomas Boswell
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Monday, July 20, 2009

Sport is one method by which mankind tests the limits of our humanity. On Sunday at the British Open, Tom Watson almost redefined us all.

Almost.

TURNBERRY, SCOTLAND - JULY 19: Stewart Cink (L) of USA looks at the Claret Jug with Tom Watson of USA after his victory in a play off following the final round of the 138th Open Championship on the Ailsa Course, Turnberry Golf Club on July 19, 2009 in Turnberry, Scotland. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)

That he did not win a sixth Open, yet came so close, that he lost with such resolute composure, then refused to accept the most glorious near miss in the history of modern sports as anything but a defeat, only raised his achievement to a different, but not lower, place of honor.

The Irish poet W.B. Yeats, no offense to Scotland intended, wrote when he was 63 years old, "An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing for every tatter of its mortal dress."

At 59, Watson sang louder and longer than anyone ever has in any of our games. He carried the solo part for 71 holes and nearly four full days of golf. They still play all 72.

At the 18th hole at Turnberry, site of his "Duel in the Sun" win over Jack Nicklaus 32 years ago, Watson ran out of notes and luck. A shot into the final green that seemed almost perfect, sure to leave a 25-foot two-putt for victory, was carried by wind and adrenaline, just over the back crest of the green, down a hill into an unpredictable lie.

Bogey followed, then a playoff. Sure as the dying daylight, even in Scottish latitudes, Watson reached his 60th birthday two months early, going bogey, par, double bogey, bogey for a ludicrous six-shot loss to Stewart Cink.

After Watson putted out to end his day, he lifted one hand, but did not raise it even as high as his shoulder to acknowledge his ovation, one visible in Scotland but easy to imagine around the world. Then Tom shrugged to the grandstands (sorry, couldn't quite do it) and lifted the arm again to the same low height. Now the reason was clear. Watson did not lack the energy to raise his arm like a victor; he just had too much class. Though the moment in almost every sense belonged to him, he refused to steal it from Cink.

"It would've been a hell of a story, wouldn't it? It wasn't to be. And yes, it's a great disappointment. It tears at your gut, as it always has torn at my gut. It's not easy to take," Watson said. "I put myself in position to win, but I didn't do it on the last hole."

Most sports events have a dateline. A few, these days, take place simultaneously all around the earth. This was the latter. Millions will remember where they witnessed this Open and, perhaps, what curses they spewed or furniture they broke when Watson's eight-foot putt for victory was struck with a horrid yipping stroke, the flaw that's plagued him for 15 years, producing a miss as grisly as his demographic might predict.

I watched Watson for hours on TV in a baseball press box. An executive Watson's age said, "I've been explaining to my family. There's just never been anything like it." You break significant records by tiny margins. Baseball cheaters aside, you don't dwarf them. Only one parallel to what Watson nearly attempted, something utterly beyond odds or imagination, comes to mind: When Bob Beamon broke the Olympic long jump record in '68 by 21 3/4 inches, it was said he'd "jumped into the next century." His mark stands.

US golfer Tom Watson drives from the 6th tee during the play-offs against US golfer Stewart Cink, on the final day of the 138th British Open Championship at Turnberry Golf Course in south west Scotland, on July 19, 2009. Cink won the Open after a four-hole play-off. AFP PHOTO/Adrian Dennis (Photo credit should read ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images)

Had Watson won, he would have been the oldest winner of a major champion by 11 years. The closest "comparison" is so ridiculous it underlines the point. Nicklaus finished a remote sixth in the Masters at 56 and was hailed. Ben Hogan is still praised for a 66 at the Masters in his golf dotage. Watson had an up-and-down from off the 18th green to win.

At an age that is the equivalent of 80 or 90 or who knows what (perhaps deceased) in jock years, even Watson's loss merely reconfirmed what he had already achieved. True, he's still fit, supple and hits it long. But the back of the man's neck looks like alligator skin. In profile, he has three chins. Then there's his neck. It's old.

We live in a time, like all others, that adores conventional outcomes, familiar emotions and compositions of feeling that do not surprise us but confirm our bearings. That, perhaps, is why Watson's "loss" is hard to digest, to measure, even to accept. If he were 39 or even 49, like Kenny Perry who bogeyed the 72nd hole of this year's Masters, then lost in a playoff, he could still use words like "squandered" to apply to Watson.

But we don't have the proper vocabulary to describe a 59-year-old who almost wins an event in which Tiger Woods can't make the cut. But Yeats did: "Bred to a harder thing than triumph, turn away and, like a laughing string whereon mad fingers play, amid a place of stone, be secret and exult."

Now, those of us who prefer to cherish Watson's attempt, not diminish it, can have the whole thing to ourselves. The mob will move on, disoriented, dissatisfied at being denied something simple to hail. Instead, we have harder things on which to chew.

Age wins again; it just refuses to go away. After his bogey at the 72nd, Watson's game fell apart in toto -- 4 over par in the playoff. The moral is merely to stand against it, ignore it and play above it as long as you can.

And miserable undeserved bad luck, like Watson's dead-flat-flushed approach to the 18th hole, when will it finally stop showing up to thwart the deserving? How much more charity work can Watson do, for his late caddie Bruce Edwards, or for decades in Kansas City? What kind of napping divinity allows such mischief, even in the devil's game? But the lesson is trickier. We're always responsible for ourselves. It never stops. Tom knows you always have to under-club coming to the house with a lead. You're always amped -- even when you're really, really old.

"What do I take from this?" Watson told the media afterward. "A lot of spirituality. There was something out there, I still believe that, that helped me along."

At the very least, it was the spirit of millions of people, not just in Scotland, who shared a rare moment when one man stood for us and pushed against the boundaries of age that we all share. Can you really change life's timeline by 11 years? Do we, each faced with our own challenges, have the capacity to expand our expectations that much?

Before this round, Nicklaus sent the first text message of his life, assisted by his always more-savvy wife: "Win one for the old folks. Make us proud. Make us cry again."

Don't worry, Tom, you did.

Today's Tune: INXS - Devil Inside

(Click on title to play video)

Tom Watson's historic run at the 2009 British Open is one for the ages

By Mike Lupica
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/index.html
Sunday, July 19th 2009, 4:00 AM

Last year it was Greg Norman, at 53, with his chance on the final day to win the British Open, to become the oldest winner of a major golf championship. This is much better now with Tom Watson, much bigger, what would be the biggest golf story of all time if he can win at Turnberry today, 32 years after he won a British Open there the first time. This is a story now that comes out of Scotland and out of golf and reaches out to everybody who cares about sports, who will watch this morning and into the early afternoon to see if Watson, a couple of months short of his 60th birthday, can actually do this. If he can be young again for one more day.

"I have a game plan," he said on ABC when his round Saturday was over, after he had played the last three holes in 2-under to get back the outright lead.

Tom Watson rekindles memories of his 1977 British Open win on same Turnberry course with lead after 54 holes. (Kinnaird/Getty Images)

We will find out if his game plan, and his ball-striking, and the serenity he has shown so far, and the way he has driven and putted at his age will stand up over the last four or five hours at Turnberry. Oldest tournament in the world. Oldest golfer to ever come this close. Know this: If Watson can't close the deal, it won't be because he isn't tough enough.

When Watson was young, he putted the way kids do before they know putting is supposed to be hard. He didn't care how far past the cup he rammed the birdie putts he didn't make, because whether it was six feet or eight feet or even 10 feet coming back, he seemed to make them all.

He made all the putts the rest of us miss.

Until he stopped making them. He stopped making short putts. Watson had the yips, and after a while it was as terrible watching him stand over a 3-footer as it had been once with Ben Hogan. Watson stopped making putts and he stopped winning, even though he could hit the ball like a dream, the way he has so far at Turnberry. He was driving it better than ever and hitting irons as well as he ever had, and he couldn't win.

And Watson stayed in there. He didn't quit, he didn't go to a long putter or a belly putter or a cross-handed grip or the grip known as the "claw." He was still the tough kid from Kansas City who used to beat balls in the winter when no one else was around because he wanted to be great. He would figure this out.

A friend once asked why he didn't go to the belly putter or the long putter that other shaky golfers used, and got the look that Watson used to stare down even Jack Nicklaus with.

"It's not golf," Watson said.

Finally there was the Sunday afternoon at the Memorial, Jack's tournament, when he won again. It had taken nine years. He was 46. Now he is 59 and trying to win a British Open. Suddenly he, and not Tiger Woods, is the golfer the whole world is talking about. Here is what Jack Nicklaus was quoted as saying about his old friend, and old adversary, on Friday night when the questions started coming at Nicklaus from all over the world:

"I'm sure Tom knew he could play well, but perhaps he didn't know if he would play well. Now that he has played well and put himself in position for the next two days, hopefully he will forget his age and remember he is Tom Watson, and Tom Watson knows how to finish."

Then Nicklaus, who had just finished a round of golf at his Bear's Club in Jupiter, Fla., said to his friend Scott Tolley, "I watch very little golf, but I will watch this weekend."

These last 10 years have been a good time for Tom Watson. He is happily remarried. He still plays some senior golf. Every May he still goes fishing with his buddies Tom Devlin, who owns the Flint Hills National Golf Club in Wichita, and Max Moss, a retired veterinarian, at the ranch Watson owns outside Wichita. Barney Adams of Adams Golf is with them, too. They still stop in at the Toots diner outside Wichita for lunch. After dinner sometimes, Watson will still stand up in his living room and give Devlin or Moss a lesson.

Whatever happens today at Turnberry, whether he wins his sixth Claret Jug or not, he has thrilled us all. Only golf gives you a moment like this. We have been conditioned to believe that when Tiger Woods doesn't contend at a major that the tournament doesn't matter, that when he leaves a major early as he did this week, he takes the whole sport with him. Only this time he left us Tom Watson. He was in the lead Thursday night and still tied for the lead with Steve Marino on Friday night. Saturday he rolled in that bomb and nearly eagled No. 17 and barely made an unforced error all day and was at the top of another leaderboard in the British Open.

Another thing Nicklaus said Friday: "I always expect to see Tom Watson's name at the top of the leaderboard."

This is a sports story to make you cheer whether golf is your sport or not. This is what it would have been like for DiMaggio to get one more swing at the old Stadium, or Clyde to get one more chance to throw it to Bradley coming around a screen, or Namath to throw one deep to Maynard one more time at Shea. Watson doesn't play for all the old golfers today. He plays for everybody who dreams about being young again.

Anger Over CIA Flap Is Misplaced

It’s an intelligence boon to al-Qaeda’s senior leaders.

By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/
July 17, 2009, 0:00 a.m.

Where’s the outrage?

If this country had its head on straight, there would be nothing but white-hot popular fury over the latest Bush-era CIA scandal broken by the New York Times.

CIA director Leon Panetta reportedly told congressional committees that the CIA hatched a plan, in the wake of 9/11, to kill senior leaders of al-Qaeda. The CIA would send operatives to assassinate these terrorists in their homes and caves, if that’s not redundant. President Bush reportedly put Cheney in charge of the scheme.

Now, here’s where it gets confusing. The Democrats and much of the press insist the scandal is that Cheney never briefed Congress about specifics of the plan. There’s only one hitch: The program never made it off the drawing board. No CIA operatives were sent out to kill members of al-Qaeda.

Frankly, I don’t get it. Democratic leaders in Congress think it’s outrageous they were never told about a program that was never put into effect. The only potential scandal I can see is that the program was never put into effect — and that we’re telling the whole world about it.

Call me crazy, but I just assumed that the CIA was out there trying to kill as many senior members of al-Qaeda as it could. Congress, in the spirit of broad patriotic bipartisan righteousness, authorized the use of force on al-Qaeda after it killed 3,000 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001. Now we find out that the CIA lacked the competence or will to hunt down and kill men desperately in need of killing.

It’s as if, years after Pearl Harbor, it was reported that the OSS had never tried to kill senior Japanese or German officials.

Yet the Democratic Congress is furious that it wasn’t fully briefed on an operation that was never operationalized.

And it’s worse than that. Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, and others make it sound like some rogue conspiracy was afoot. “We were kept in the dark,” complained Feinstein. “That’s something that should never, ever happen again. Withholding such information from Congress is a big problem because the law is very clear.”

But in the fall of 2001, Bush issued an executive finding authorizing covert counterterrorism measures. Congress was briefed on that. Even a cursory reading of the public record at the time shows that Congress was nothing but supportive of the effort to take the fight to the enemy.

All Cheney is being accused of is possibly telling the CIA not to brief Congress on its methods until it actually had something concrete to report. Even that appears to be an exaggeration, since Michael Hayden, head of the CIA from 2006 through 2008, has insisted he was never told to keep this plan secret from Congress.

And, again, the main scandal is that the CIA couldn’t ever get its act together enough to have anything concrete to report.

Now, one plausible defense of the Bush administration is that it determined that “targeted killings” via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as Predator drones were a safer and more cost-effective way of killing the bad guys. Presumably Congress has no moral objection to that practice, since we do it all the time.

But there’s an additional problem. It’s bad enough to learn that our intelligence operatives haven’t been able to kill our enemies. But it compounds the outrage when you broadcast that fact to the world.

It’s an intelligence boon to al-Qaeda’s senior leaders when we inform them that America’s spooks can’t, or won’t, get close enough to kill them.

It’s hard to know what Panetta’s motives are in all of this. But it’s hard not to conclude that his agenda is political. Last month, in a seeming effort to appease Pelosi after he contradicted her slanderous claim that the CIA routinely lied to Congress, Panetta turned into a partisan attack dog. He claimed that Cheney hoped America would be attacked again, just so he could be proven right. Panetta later backpedaled, but the initial broadside seemed like an indication that he considers carrying water for the Democrats to be part of his job description.

Now Democrats are clamoring yet again for an investigation into Bush-era policies at precisely the moment their agenda is starting to unravel. The stimulus is looking more like a dud every day, Obama’s health-care and cap-and-trade schemes are acquiring an increasingly bad odor politically, and suddenly Democrats, Panetta included, are looking to offer up a big, distracting spectacle by turning the CIA into a partisan cudgel.

Again: Where’s the outrage?

— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.

© 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

The Not-So-Dark Ages

By James V. Schall, S.J.
The Catholic Thing
http://www.thecatholicthing.org/
Friday, 10 July 2009

Some very good things from the French mind are appearing among us. Daniel Mahoney brought Pierre Manent to our attention. He re-presents Raymond Aron, Charles de Gaulle, and the pertinent French background to Solzhenitsyn’s work. Jean-Luc Marion, Alain Besançon, and Rémi Brague have become “must-reads” if we want to escape modern ideology – unfortunately, not everyone does.


Mont Saint-Michel

Last semester a French exchange student attended one of my classes. Her father, a medical doctor from Nice, visited one day. I mentioned a review of Sylvain Gouguenheim’s Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel: Les racines grecques de l’Europe Chrétienne (“Aristotle at Mont Saint-Michel: The Greek Roots of Christian Europe”). Weeks later, his daughter presented me with a copy from Nice. I have now read this remarkable, enormously learned book.

It examines the now often heard and widely popular assumption that civilization was stimulated to become “modern” because of “enlightened” Islamic philosophy that arrived in the stagnant West through Toledo and Sicily. The Christian Dark and Middle Ages are pictured as be-knighted, populated mostly by primitive folks just vegetating till the Enlightenment came from Islam to early modern Europe.

Gouguenheim’s method often is to take a learned citation advocating this thesis, and then to demolish it. For example, he cites the following passage from a study of Islam in Europe: “Europe would not be that which it is if it did not know Islam. It belongs to its patrimony.” We should greet this thesis, he says, with a “profound reserve.” The reason is that the impetus in question came ultimately from the Greeks and the Christians, not Islam. And even when a Greek text appeared in the Arabic language, it was usually translated by Christians or those conquered by Islam.

Gouguenheim attacks the notion that the so-called Dark and Middle Ages were so backward that they could not recognize a self-evident principle if it stared them in the face. The book’s title refers to manuscripts of the works of Aristotle that were found in the famous abbey at Mt. Saint-Michel where they were translated into Latin not from Arab sources but directly from Greek texts. This endeavor happened before Arabic translations of Aristotle reached Toledo.

Gouguenheim then examines the whole history of what happened to Greek texts of the classical authors translated into Arabic. In general, he finds that writers often forget the Byzantine world, the world of the Eastern Roman Empire, a world that had Greek as its language. Christianity from the beginning recognized that it had to deal with precisely Greek philosophy and culture. Benedict XVI in the Regensburg Lecture remarked that the Christian mind was concerned not so much with classical myth or religion as with classical philosophy, with Plato, Aristotle, and friends.


Saint Michel, Abbey, Mont Saint-Michel

Gouguenheim, in an erudite study, shows that the Arab conquests in the beginning were of Persian, Syrian, and Byzantine territories. Only one Muslim philosopher was actually an Arab, al-Kindi; the others, the great ones, were Persians, Syrians, or Spaniards. Moreover, most of the texts that were translated from Greek to Arabic were translated by Arab speaking Christians: Syrians, Copts, or Greeks.

All through the classical, Carolingian, and Ottonian periods we find constant exchanges of texts. What Gouguenheim points out is that interest in Greek science and philosophy was restricted to a few scholars in the Muslim world. These acted as private citizens. They were often condemned or restricted in their philosophic activities.

In the Christian world, however, primary interest was devoted to finding the exact meaning of the dynamic Greek texts. This search was both religious and philosophic. So the classical texts were not “Islamicized” to meet the requirements of Koranic culture. The Christian understanding of reason led to a desire to know what Aristotle actually teaches, even if on some point he might be criticized.

This book is eye-opening. It is far more realistic than most things we read about the ease of multicultural “adaption” or endless dialogue. Gouguenheim’s approach is blunter than we usually encounter in the discussion of different religions: “Fundamentally, European civilization remains Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian in inspiration. In its further course, European philosophy or science developed its own proper and original conceptions. Islam was, from the redaction of the Koran on, the bearer of another global system. From that point of view, Greek knowledge was able to be integrated only in a particular manner, limited to certain sectors or to certain thinkers.”

Islamic scholars, as Gueguenheim shows, go through contortions to demonstrate that the Koran preceded the Old and New Testament. Therefore, Jews and Christians must have deliberately rewritten the text so that the Muslim interpretation of its own revelation would still hold.


Cloister, Abbey, Mont Saint-Michel

Gueguenheim concludes that Western civilization does not owe its genius or energy to Islam. It has its own roots. In its dynamic form, Islam was not itself able to assimilate the Greek heritage. It proved too dangerous to the Koranic understanding of reality.


- James V. Schall, S.J., a professor at Georgetown University, is one of the most prolific Catholic writers in America. His most recent book is The Mind That Is Catholic.

The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

Cronkite’s Signature: Approachable Authority

An Appraisal

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/
July 18, 2009

Dissent on college campuses during the Vietnam War could turn nasty.
When students gathered in common rooms to watch television in the early 1970s, the seditious insisted on “Star Trek” reruns; the best and brightest would demand to switch to “Cronkite.”

Back then, “Cronkite” meant the news.


CBS Photo Archive/Getty Images

Walter Cronkite in October 1960

It’s almost impossible to convey the place Walter Cronkite held in American life for the 19 years he spent as the anchor of “The CBS Evening News.” It wasn’t just that he narrated the spikes in modern history, from the Kennedy assassination to the civil rights movement to the election of Ronald Reagan.

People tuned in to his program even on routine days when his broadcast — Senate subcommittee hearings, gas prices, détente talks with the Soviet Union — was as dull as toast. Mr. Cronkite’s air of authority, lightly worn and unquestioned, was unusual even then, but nobody comes close to it now.

Mr. Cronkite retired in 1981 at 64 and spent much of his remaining years giving charmingly self-deprecating interviews for tributes and retrospectives with titles like “Cronkite Remembers.” In one he explained his legendary status by saying, “Everything we did was for the first time.”

For viewers, however, it sometimes seems as if everything Mr. Cronkite did was for the last time, that his outsize tenure bracketed a bygone era when America was, if not a more confident nation, certainly a more trusting one.

And there’s a reason Mr. Cronkite stood out from other television newsmen of his time, and it wasn’t his credentials, even though he covered D-Day from a B-17 as a United Press correspondent, went on bombing missions over Germany and opened United Press’s first postwar bureau in Moscow.

It was his looks.

Mr. Cronkite, a dentist’s son who began his career as a radio announcer in Kansas City, Mo., wasn’t glossily good-looking in the starched, blow-dried way of so many of his successors; if anything, he was closer to homely than handsome. But behind a crisp speaking style, he had a natural, unaffected demeanor that made him more inviting than other television reporters.

When he took over from Douglas Edwards in 1962, Mr. Cronkite would announce the day’s events, and then, as anchors do now, turn to correspondents in the field. Those reporters — and in the early 1960s the CBS A-team included Mike Wallace, Howard K. Smith and Morley Safer — often read their reports sitting at desks in front of curtains in out-of-town studios, as stiff and unsmiling as hostages in a ransom tape.

Mr. Cronkite, who sat at a desk next to a typewriter in what at least seemed like a bustling newsroom, would fiddle with his earpiece, move his chair and glance down at his notes; he looked like a kindly newspaper editor interrupted in the middle of a big news day, busy, of course, but never too busy to explain the latest developments to out-of-town visitors.


Mr. Cronkite became a star when he was chosen to lead CBS’s coverage of the Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1952, the first presidential election year in which television outshone radio.
Photo: CBS News

He made history just by rising from that desk to check the wires. Every Kennedy documentary includes the clips of Mr. Cronkite announcing that the president had been shot and removing his thick black glasses for a pause after stating that Kennedy was dead. Those live moments of television news are as embedded into the tragedy as John-John’s salute and the Zapruder film.

No account of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency leaves out the night in February 1968 when Mr. Cronkite concluded, on the air, that the Vietnam War could not be won. He had a toehold on the first manned lunar landing and a hand in the Begin-Sadat Middle East peace talks.

Viewers mostly associate him with calamity, but he liked to align himself with good news, shedding his famed neutrality to express boyish enthusiasm for what he called, somewhat quaintly, “the conquest of space.” (His first words when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon on July 20, 1969, were “Oh, boy.”)

But he didn’t turn into “Uncle Walter” overnight, and his last name didn’t become synonymous with television news until well into the 1970s. For many years “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC had higher ratings and more pizzazz; CBS caught up only after Chet Huntley retired in 1970.

When Mr. Cronkite was No. 1, the nightly news mattered. College students nowadays get their information from blogs and Comedy Central, not CBS. Families don’t gather in the den to eat dinner in front of “World News Tonight With Charles Gibson.” Brian Williams and Katie Couric wouldn’t dare sign off with the words “and that’s the way it is.”

The television news business long ago lost that kind of prestige and importance; the audience for evening newscasts has so dwindled that this year there were more viewers on an average night for “American Idol” than for the programs on CBS, NBC and ABC combined.

Anchors try to project authority with sprawling desks and fancy computer graphics: “The CBS Evening News” studio today looks like a NASA command post. When Mr. Cronkite became anchor, the setting was somber and almost touchingly low-tech. For a report on unrest in Algeria in August 1962, Mr. Cronkite looked up at a screen to introduce a correspondent in Paris connected “via Telstar.” The boxy television sets along the wall of his studio look like the portholes of a Jules Verne submarine.

For years Mr. Cronkite read the news as if he were still on radio. On April 4, 1968, the night the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, the news came too late in the day for CBS to provide many images from the scene. America went into shock while staring at Mr. Cronkite as he read the bare facts aloud. His face, subdued, grave but studiously unemotional, was reassuring in a way that President Johnson, who that night gave a speech urging people to stay calm, was not.

Over the years, not only did the CBS studio get fancier, but also the technology, production values and expectations. But Mr. Cronkite didn’t change much, and that was the most reassuring thing of all.

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Times Topics: Walter Cronkite

America's Newsman Was Last of a Broadcast Breed

CBS's Towering Anchor Won a Country's Trust

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Saturday, July 18, 2009


It's been 28 years since Walter Cronkite last told America that was the way it is, more than enough time for him to fade from our collective consciousness.


CBS news anchor, Walter Cronkite, covered NASA missions from Mercury through the space shuttle. (CBS News)

The fact that he didn't speaks volumes not just about him, but also about an era when an anchor could presume to tell the country -- without contradiction from bloggers, Twitterers and other carping critics -- that what he had just presented was indeed a definitive picture of reality.

For those of us who were lucky enough to know him, the resonant voice, the mustache, the avuncular manner were so reminiscent of the television presence who was with us during all those moments of joy and tragedy. But his death also reminds us that there can never be another Cronkite -- not just because of the media's fragmentation, but also because Americans will never again trust journalists how they trusted him.

And that is a healthy thing. From the JFK assassination to the moon landing, from his Vietnam visit to the Iran hostage crisis, the old UPI guy was a reliable narrator of national and world events. But every journalist should be challenged and fact-checked, as now happens roughly every second of every day. Cronkite's liberal views emerged in his latter years as a syndicated columnist, proving that no sentient being can practice journalism without forming opinions that they then strive to keep out of their work.

It is hard to remember, in this age of niche cable channels feeding every obsession, how dominant CBS and NBC (and, much later, ABC) were in their heydays. Every senior member of Cronkite's news team -- including, at various times, Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, Roger Mudd, Marvin Kalb, Bernard Kalb, Fred Graham, Daniel Schorr -- was a recognizable celebrity in his own right. (They were almost all men.) You got your morning paper, and then you watched Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley at night, perhaps while eating a TV dinner.

In later years, Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings -- and now Katie Couric, Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson -- played important roles at traumatic moments in history. But Cronkite and his team, with an audience as large as 20 million -- nearly as large as today's nightly newscasts combined -- shaped the news agenda every day.


Like many American broadcast personalities of the day, Walter Cronkite lent his support to the work of the Radios. Cronkite narrated Towers of Truth, a film about RFE's work commissioned by the National Committee for a Free Europe and shown in conjunction with Crusade for Freedom fund raising efforts.

The last time I saw Cronkite, in 2007, in his Manhattan apartment near the United Nations, he was infirm, slowed by age, hard of hearing, but mentally sharp and still opinionated. He regretted that he had been forced to retire, at 65, which now seems relatively young. Cronkite had been promised an on-air role, but CBS never made much room for him in the Rather era, and Cronkite made clear that he was bitter about that.

Historians point to his 1968 conclusion, after a visit to Vietnam, that the war was hopelessly stalemated, as the best single example of his enormous clout. But I vividly remember the "CBS Evening News" of Oct. 27, 1972, when President Richard Nixon was cruising to reelection despite the Watergate scandal, which had not yet implicated the White House inner circle. Cronkite insisted on turning over two-thirds of the broadcast to a 14-minute piece that attempted to explain the intricacies of the scandal to a mass audience. The Nixon White House called CBS Chairman William Paley to complain.

Brokaw has called Cronkite the "gold standard," and at a time when journalism commanded a whole lot more respect than it does today, he was its undeniable symbol. Perhaps it was his wire-service training, at a time when print experience was still considered valuable for broadcast journalists. Perhaps it was his calm demeanor, his mastery of understatement, his disdain for on-air showmanship. Perhaps it was the era, before Comedy Central, when anchors were not mocked for missteps or pomposity.

In later years, as he watched from the sideline, Cronkite became a critic of the evening news. "Nobody's asked me, which is strange, but I think the networks ought to be doing the headlines -- compressed as they must be -- and no features," he told me in 2002. "Drop that 'Your Pocketbook and Mine,' 'Your Beauty and Mine,' 'Your Garbage Can and Mine.' "

He also decried the staffing cutbacks as the networks shrank their evening news staffs, saying: "It's a dollars-and-cents issue with the ownership. There's not the sense of responsibility of the old-timers who were taught this was their duty."

Generations of journalists revered him, though none could quite aspire to be him. When Williams, now the NBC anchor, was first hired by New York's WCBS, he asked a colleague to show him what he considered a shrine: the faded newsroom wall that had formed the backdrop for Cronkite's broadcast, by then relegated to a sad little back office.

Shortly before Memorial Day 2007, CBS aired a prime-time tribute to Cronkite. ABC's Gibson recalled being riveted by Cronkite's coverage of the 1952 conventions. Couric recalled that after President John F. Kennedy's assassination, Cronkite reacted as a human being first and a reporter second. Cronkite would later pay Couric the honor of recording the introduction to her broadcast, keeping his voice on the program he made famous.

Cronkite's passing, in the end, is the passing of an era, an era of black-and-white television, of mass audiences, of a slower time when the country waited for the headlines at 6:30 in the evening. No anchor -- no journalist -- will ever wield that authority again.