|
GERARD GROUP INTERNATIONAL INC |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
August 28, 2008
Guest Columnist: The Big Chill—Islamists intend to muzzle Americans' free speech; a few Congressmen are fighting back.
By Clifford D. May
Home Front Terrorism:
By Ilana Freedman, Editor and CEO, Gerard Group International
Guest Columnist: Will Livni's Bubble Burst First?
By Claire Lopez
Freedom of speech is under attack. Let us count the ways.
The first and most obvious: Those who criticize militant Islamists - from novelist Salman Rushdie to Danish cartoonists to memoirist Ayaan Hirsi Ali - are routinely threatened with deadly violence. It would be black humor to say this is having a chilling effect.
The second is "political correctness." On campuses and within Western governments it is increasingly taboo to label terrorists who slaughter in the name of Islam "Islamist terrorists." In Canada, "human rights commissions" attempt to enforce this taboo by putting such writers as Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant on trial for the "crime" of expressing opinions that offend Islamic grievance groups - and also for quoting Islamists accurately and thereby casting them in an unfavorable light. If that's not Orwellian, what is?
But it is the third approach that could be most consequential for Americans. It's known as "libel tourism" and here's how it works: A book published in the United States names an individual abroad who supports terrorist groups. That individual - for the sake of discussion, let's say he's a Saudi petro-billionaire with a home in London -- goes online and orders a few copies which arrive in the mail. He takes those books to a British attorney who files a lawsuit complaining that his client has been libeled.
The billionaire knows it will be much easier to prevail in the U.K. than it would be in an American court where the First Amendment and decades of case law provide free speech protections. (Under English law, by contrast, the burden in a libel case is on the defendant to prove his innocence - which can be impossible if he's been using confidential sources or even just sources who don't want to cross an ocean and take part in a courtroom battle.)
The legal costs are chump change for the billionaire, while few non-fiction writers command similar resources. If the writer chooses not to spend months living in a hotel and fighting it out in court, the case will be forfeit and he will be hit with a "default judgment." If he doesn't pay, he'll never again be able to set foot in the U.K. and other countries that enforce British court judgments.
But more important is this: The message gets sent, loud and clear, to journalists, scholars and publishers, that researching and writing about terrorists and those who enable them is verboten -- even in America.
Publisher Roger Kimball has noted that when he was about to publish Andy McCarthy's Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, he received a message from a distributor working in the U.K. and Canada asking if there were "any references to Saudis and terrorist[s] in the book" as that "could potentially create libel lawsuits as it could offend Saudis living in England and this has happened with many other US publications and we do not want to be jeopardized in selling this book." No, no - we wouldn't want that, would we?
Kimball was not intimidated but some writers no doubt have been, and other publishers have not just turned down "risky" books but pulled volumes from shelves and destroyed them following threats of legal action.
What can be done to protect Americans from having our speech restricted by foreign terrorist financiers, foreign lawyers, foreign judges and their toadies?
Representatives Peter King (R-NY) and Anthony Weiner (D-NY) have introduced the Free Speech Protection Act of 2008, which would give Americans who find themselves in the situation described above a "federal cause of action" to sue right back - and to claim legal fees, costs and significant damage awards as well if a U.S. court concludes that the foreign suit was "a scheme to suppress First Amendment rights."
What's more, the bill would provide "expedited discovery": The plaintiff would be compelled to disclose information and documents relevant to the charges - something few investors in terrorist enterprises are eager to do.
On the Senate side, the bill is being shepherded by Senators Joseph Lieberman, (DI -CT), Arlen Specter (R-PA), and Charles Schumer (D-NY). What obstacles are preventing this bill from being passed into law? Let us count them.
First, though there is bipartisan support for this approach, not enough backers -- so far at least -- are from the majority party: Of ten sponsors on the House side, only one is a Democrat. Second, we're deep into the presidential campaign season, a time when very little moves on Capitol Hill. Third, never underestimate the ability of the Saudis, their lobbyists, their allies and their courtiers, to kill that which interferes with their interests.
Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism
Printed with the permission of the author whose article appears in Scripps Howard News Service 8/28/08
This the first of a multi-part series on the critical threat posed by enemies who live and operate among us, using our democratic systems to undermine our society from within our own borders. The series will provide an overview for a presentation that will be given at the Fourth Annual Intelligence Summit that will take place in Washington, DC on October 22-23, 2008.
We Americans have always been known for our ability to change with a changing world around us, and for our inner strength that enables us to rise to almost any challenge. But the current direction that America is taking with regard to the internal threat of terrorism directly contradicts our history, and threatens our future.
When we watched the first war in Iraq unfold on television from the comfort of our living rooms, we felt safe because the war was so far away.
When the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks once again dissolved into violence that spawned horrific terrorist attacks and predictable military responses, we shook our heads but still felt ourselves safe because the conflict was so far away.
When two suicide bombers used a small explosives-laden boat in a Yemen port to blow a 40-foot hole in the side of the USS Cole and murdered 17 US sailors, we were shocked and saddened, but we still felt safe. Yemen was so far away.
Then, when four planes shattered a perfect September morning, flying into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and into a desolate field in Pennsylvania, we were shocked, we wept and felt violated. We even volunteered to give blood, money, and support in whatever way we could to help those who could still be helped and to avenge the deaths of those who had perished.
At the time we felt vulnerable and frightened. But over time, we willed ourselves to think that maybe it was, after all, just a one-time event. We began leaving our fears where we keep our memories and once again we began to feel safe.
So when a second war in Iraq turned into a nightmare of terrorist attacks against hundreds of civilians as well as against our own troops, we wept for our fallen young men and women. We either railed against the war or rallied round our leaders who supported it, but we still felt safe in our homes. Iraq is, after all, so far away.
We keep the mean and the ugly away from our door by giving it names we can live with. We favor euphemistic terminology to reference some of the most egregious issues in our world today. We talk about "insurgents" and "militants," for example, to describe brutal murderers of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Israel. These are gentler, kinder words to describe those who are anything but gentle and kind.
Then, when we began to see terrorism in our own backyard, we used these gentler kinder words to dismiss them. 2006 was a good year for lone-wolf attacks that went largely unnoticed because of our kindly language.
When 30-year-old Naveed Afzal Haq, a US citizen of Pakistani origin, invaded the offices of Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, shouting, "I'm a Muslim American; I'm angry at Israel," and he murdered one woman in cold blood and injured five others, officials called it the act of a "lone individual acting out his antagonism. There's nothing to indicate that it's terrorism-related."
When Mohammed Reza Taheriazar, 23, a naturalized citizen from Iran and a graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill, in North Carolina, ran down five UNC students and a visiting scholar, it was a self-proclaimed attempt to avenge Muslim deaths overseas. But officials called it an assault. As in other cases, the police were not able to connect him to Al Qaeda or some other group, so he was not considered to be a terrorist.
When Joel H. Hinrichs III, an engineering student at the University of Oklahoma, tried to enter the stadium during a football game, wearing a suicide vest, and finally blew himself up outside stadium, the FBI reported no connection between him and terrorist organizations.
When Paul Joyal was shot in front of his home only days after appearing on Dateline to accuse Moscow of complicity in the poisoning death of Litvenenko, the police dismissed it as a street crime. It was easier than considering that a representative of a foreign nation might be carrying out violent crimes of retribution on US streets.
We Americans let ourselves be fooled by comforting language, and we assuage our fears by framing them in words which lessen our concerns. We prefer to see the world through eyes that are shaded and protected from the horror and insanity that prevails in other parts of the world. We allow ourselves to feel safe because it is either happening so far away, or it is something less than what it clearly appears to be.
We need to accept that the danger is real and that it is growing. We need to look at our world with greater clarity. We need to call the enemy what it is, even if doing so makes us uncomfortable, even if it makes us face some difficult truths about the world we live in.
9/11 was a wake-up call. The individual attacks that followed on what appear to be random targets, we have dismissed as isolated incidents, the work of misfits, the mentally deranged, and petty criminals. But the alarm keeps ringing, and we dare not push the snooze button and go back to sleep.
In the next several issues of INTELAnalysis we will discuss the growing threat of terrorism inside our borders. It will cover the growth in America of hostile organizations bent on our destruction, the symbiotic relationships between terrorists, organized crime, drugs, and gangs, and the nourishing of ideologies and doctrines that are anathema to the American way of life within our own institutions.
Ilana Freedman is Editor of INTELAnalysis and CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.
While the US media focuses on dueling celebrity ads, there is another election at least as critical as the one between the senators. It is the contest for the next Prime Minister of Israel.
With Prime Minister Olmert's late July announcement that he will step down shortly, attention has shifted to Kadima Party internal elections, now scheduled for 17 September 2008.
The leading contenders to succeed Olmert as Kadima Party leader and likely next Prime Minister of Israel are current Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is a former Defense Minister and Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The outcome of this internal party vote could hardly be more important, not just for the future of the State of Israel, but for American national security as well.
The parallels with impending U.S. presidential elections are startling and clear. Both races feature one candidate whose world view was formed in the crucible of wartime service in the armed forces. Both races also feature one candidate whose world view is still in the process of formation, having never yet been tested on the battlefield in leadership of men fighting for their lives.
There is another historical parallel that Sen. John McCain and Minister Shaul Mofaz on the one hand, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Senator Barack Obama on the other, share: the uncanny circumstance that we have been here before.
In 1938, as Hitler's jackboots were goose-stepping toward the Holocaust and a world war that would claim the lives of some 70 million human beings, a cultured and well-meaning Neville Chamberlain could not bring himself to acknowledge the evil that drives men to such slaughter. Nor had many bothered to read the ranting of a twisted little paper-hanger who published "Mein Kampf" in the mid-1920s.
The utter 'banality of evil' somehow lies beyond the comprehension of those most sophisticated and humane among us. In 1938, as now, there were those who understood what faced the world and shouted from the back bench and the podium to alert their fellow men -- and then, as now, many did not want to listen.
Today it is the repeated genocidal threats of a twisted little blacksmith's son to wipe Israel off the face of the map that some would rather dismiss as mere rhetoric. Civility and urbanity have their places -- 21st century Europe for instance, or the polished hallways of our nation's Capitol.
And so we hear Barack Obama offering dialogue with any who will speak with him and Tzipi Livni, declaring that "Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel". But with all due respect, neither Tzipi Livni nor Barack Obama has ever stared straight back at the face of pure evil and snarled, defying the forces of inhumanity to advance one step farther. Both McCain and Mofaz have -- on multiple occasions.
So these are the choices we face: Israel fights for its very existence, and the U.S. must decide whether to elect the candidate of experience and grit, or the young hopeful, who is as yet unaware that Armageddon beckons. There is growing concern among respected intelligence and military experts in Washington, not just about the young celebrity senator but also about his Kadima mirror image, the popular Tzipi Livni.
Increasingly, these experts are worried that Livni's utter lack of experience could imperil Israel's very existence by undermining the strength of its deterrent and endanger U.S. national security interests as well. A succession of events that began during the term of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has catapulted this most unready of candidates to the brink of what earlier had seemed a remote and unlikely position for one so unprepared to lead as Tzipi Livni.
Indeed, Sharon would arise from his coma in alarm if he but knew she was running for his old job -- just as his old friends in influential circles close to the Bush administration now watch in disbelief as Livni seems poised to assume the Israeli Prime Ministership. Ironically, it was Sharon who launched Livni on her unintended rise to the top.
According to Israeli media sources, while Sharon never considered Livni of a caliber to succeed him, he was moved to appoint her to minor Cabinet posts in the wake of his beloved wife's death, a loss that created a deeply-felt vacuum in Sharon's life.
By way of contrast, it was the powerful and respected former IDF Chief of Staff, Shaul Mofaz, whom Sharon appointed Defense Minister, effectively entrusting him as guardian of Israel's security. Today, Mofaz holds the Cabinet portfolio for the strategic dialogue with the U.S.
Increasingly, doubts are being raised across the Israeli political spectrum about Livni's ability to lead: two-time former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and Sharon's long-time confidant Zalman Shoval said in early August 2008, "She could be a first-class ambassador to many countries. But the post of prime minister in Israel requires something else, and I am afraid she does not have the wide scope that this job requires."
Prime Minister Olmert went even further in July 2008, when long-simmering contempt for her leadership qualities burst into the open during a private conversation. He reportedly called her a "backstabbing liar," adding that "Livni is not made from the material that leaders are made out of. She cannot make big decisions. She never has, not as justice minister and not as foreign minister."
Respected leaders from the U.S. intelligence and military communities are beginning to echo Israeli concerns, seeing in Livni a political lightweight whose lack of substance mirrors Obama's and similarly bodes real harm to American national security interests.
A former Director of CIA, who is familiar with her background and who requested anonymity, concurred with the recent and unusual statement from Mossad that characterized Livni's vaunted intelligence service as consisting of little more than a short stint as a glorified safe-house keeper.
Far from what Israeli journalists have criticized as her own exaggerated self-portrayal as a Bond-like secret agent with a super IQ, it would appear that Livni's brief affiliation with Mossad in fact ended with her resignation before she'd even completed training, reportedly to get married.
It is 1938 once again and we have been here before. There is no excuse for repeating the fateful mistakes of those dark days. This time, if possible, the stakes are even higher. Iran's theocratic regime is driving for nuclear weaponization -- and no one can say with certainty whether its clerical leadership clique is rational or not. Just as in 1938, it is no time to take chances on unprepared candidates whose default policy is appeasement.
Americans and Israelis alike must take the mullahs at their word: they threaten genocide and refuse to halt the development of the weapons to make it happen. The dustbin of history is littered with civilizations whose trust in the innate reasonableness of mankind blinded them to the essential atavism of our species.
The best of human qualities will not be harmed by the courage to defend them. But they can be obliterated by the failure to do so.
Clare M. Lopez is a former CIA operations officer and a Professor at the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies.
This article is printed with the express permission of the author as it was published in Human Events.com
© Gerard Group International, Inc. 2008
Home | Services | Methodologies | About Terrorism | GGi in the Press | About GGi | Our Values | The GGi Team | Links | Contact GGi