The Burning Issue

By Alyssa A. Lappen and Jack D. Lauber
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 1, 2006

Establishing U.S. energy independence won the attention of President George W. Bush in his January 31 2006 State of the Union Address. The President called on research scientists and the energy industry to help the U.S. replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”

To do that, the President seeks a 22 percent increase in Department of Energy research into clean energy, and heavy investment in “zero-emission coal-fired plants, revolutionary solar and wind technologies, and clean, safe nuclear energy.” He also urges the auto industry to promote a major fuel shift, from imported oil to better hybrid and electric car batteries and hydrogen. Furthermore, within six years he seeks a switch to “cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switch grass.”

The President’s long-term goal is to “dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

Naturally, big oil executives pronounce, with doom and gloom, that such goals are implausible and unfeasible. At a February 8 energy conference in Houston, Exxon Mobil Senior Vice President Stuart McGill stated that it is a â€œmisperception” that the U.S. can achieve energy independence any time soon. Continue reading “The Burning Issue” →

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Embarrassing questions for Bush

By Rachel Ehrenfeld & Alyssa Lappen
WorldNetDaily | February 27, 2006 | 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Something strange is going on in our nation’s capital. The lack of transparency with which the U.S. administration has handled the ports sale to Dubai Ports World is just the latest in a series of troubling incidents in which the administration tried to force its will on the public, policy and lawmakers.

In the second week of February, several government agencies — handling national security issues — began a massive campaign to disrupt and discredit a major counter-intelligence conference whose participants and speakers included former and current top U.S. and foreign government, security, defense and intelligence officials and experts.

The Feb. 17, 2006 conference in Arlington, Va., was organized by the Intelligence Summit, a young, private, nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, headed by former U.S. prosecutor John Loftus. Since its planning began a year in advance, the conference attracted hundreds of government officials, security analysts, intelligence, counter-terrorism officers and corporate executives to speak and attend hundreds of sessions over three days. Continue reading “Embarrassing questions for Bush” →

Welcoming Terror to U.S. Ports

By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 24, 2006

President George W. Bush justifies the sale of the private British company that manages six U.S. ports to the government owned Dubai Ports World, saying that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a close ally of the U.S. in the war on terror. Indeed, the Jebel Ali terminal in Dubai transports at least 40% of US supplies to the troops in Iraq. Having the deepest port in the Persian Gulf, Dubai is critical for U.S. naval operations in the region. The UAE also provides air bases to support U.S. warplanes and stores materiel for U.S. forces. Moreover, it is also a major market for U.S. arms.

Not surprisingly, the President threatens to veto any legislation to block the deal and challenges lawmakers to â€œstep up and explain why a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard” than the British company that ran the ports before.

There are many important differences. To begin with, a private company based in the U.K. a Western democracy with troops fighting along with U.S. soldiers in Iraq, contrasts sharply with the UAE, which supported al-Qaeda, sent 9/11 terrorists and funding, and continues to support Palestinian suicide bombers and particularly HAMAS, which President Bush calls â€œa terrorist organization.”

On July 27, 2005, the Palestinian Information Center carried a public HAMAS statement thanking the UAE for its “unstinting support.” The statement said: “We highly appreciate his highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan (UAE president) in particular and the UAE people and government in general for their limitless support … that contributed more to consolidating our people’s resoluteness in the face of the Israeli occupation”. Continue reading “Welcoming Terror to U.S. Ports” →

Feminist Middle East Studies

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 17, 2006

It is a sad fact that many feminist academics â€œhave adopted a pro-PLO and pro-terrorist line of thinking.”[1] Middle East Studies specialists are among the worst.

The doyenne of this camp is Duke University’s Miriam Cooke, a professor of Arabic and Women’s Studies. Cooke champions what she calls the â€œproduction of knowledge,” especially on the Middle East, not to impart accurate historical information, but â€œto question structures of power.” Middle East academics must admit that they belong â€œto a power with definite interests in the Orient.” And students should only ask questions about power, not what is actually being said. They must learn “to ask, Under what circumstances would such an argument–no matter how preposterous–make sense? In what ways does it legitimate certain kinds of cultures while subordinating or outlawing others?” Cooke’s goal is no less than the eradication of Western “imperialism.”

Cooke is a card-carrying member of the â€œroot causes” crowd. In October 2001, she bemoaned the “catastrophic” 9/11 attacks but blamed them on the U.S. The causes dated “back through the Gulf War to the establishment of Israel in 1948.” The U.S. had instigated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, she alleged, and the “Afghans” (sic) rightly took their revenge. She also comes close to justifying mass murder; the “apparently innocent business of moneymaking in New York City and of policymaking in Washington DC,” seen as criminal elsewhere, had “direct and mostly negative consequences for most of the rest of the world.” There is little “apparent innocence” when it comes to capitalism. Continue reading “Feminist Middle East Studies” →

Europe’s Last Chance

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | February 16, 2006
The ongoing violence following the publication of 12 caricatures of the prophet Mohammed in then obscure Danish newspaper.

Jyllands Posten in September 2005, should have surprised no one; the seeds of Islamic attacks against Denmark, as a stepping-stone to the Islamist takeover of Europe were planted long before the cartoons were even published.

In April 15, 2005, five months before the cartoons ran, Palestinian preacher and Hizb Ut Tahrir leader Sheikh Issam Amayra called from al Aqasa Mosque in Jerusalem, upon Muslims in Denmark to begin a holy war. His sermon translated from the Arabic by Jonathan Dahoah Halevi, director of Orient research Group in Toronto, Canada.

Amayra’s sermon warned that:

“… the three percent of the Muslims in Denmark constitute a threat to the future of the kingdom of Denmark. And that should not be a surprise. After all, the Muslims in Yathrib [the city of Medina, before Mohammed moved there from Mecca] constituted less than three percent of the population there. Yet they managed to change Yathrib into Medina. Thus, it should not be a surprise that our Danish brothers manage to bring Islam to all the homes of the Danes. Allah will grant them the victory in their country in order to raise the Caliphate in Denmark.”

Continue reading “Europe’s Last Chance” →

Youngsters and jihad

By Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen
Washington Times | February 14, 2006

What would you like to be when you growup?A Hamas children’s magazine has a clear answer: a terrorist. A children’s story it published calls upon small children and encourages them to commit terrorist acts and sacrifice their souls for Allah.

Western politicians who delude themselves in the belief that Hamas will change have only to consider what Hamas leaders say. On Feb. 3, Hamas chief Khaled Mash’al declared in Damascus: “Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded,” according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Hamas gives this message to the present generation. But they also ensure that the next generation of Palestinians, now growing up, receives this message as early as possible. Hamas TV shows impart children with the jihad message when they are toddlers. And for kids who have learned to read, there are magazine comics.

The children’s magazine named Fatah — Arabic for the Muslim who conquers the Kufir States — in its last two issues carried an illustrated story about the heroism of a very young but courageous Palestinian child, who is determined to be a jihad fighter like his older brothers. Continue reading “Youngsters and jihad” →