Strange but Nevada has not seen the money, jobs, industry and research that can come with the current monopoly it has via Yucca Mountain on temporary storage of spent fuel. A group called Nevadans For Carbon Free Energy, http://NV4CFE.org, has developed the concept of an energy park that would provide temporary storage, develop reprocessing and recycling, and eventually grow into power generation. The benefits to the state include jobs, state revenue, and money for the residents along the lines of the Alaska Permanent Fund.

It’s worth serious consideration given the unemployment and budget deficits. Here’s a short video from their website:

Yesterday, they got the desired result with one Ahmed Ghallani the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in a civilian court. Recall this is the follow that helped with the 1998 US embassy bombing. He was acquitted on all but one of the 285 charges against him.

The New York Post article, Terror-trial travesty, tells the story:

“After all, on the merits, the evidence against Ghailani was overwhelming:

* He helped buy the truck that carried the bomb in the attack on the embassy in Tanzania.

* A detonator was linked to him.

* A key witness had told authorities that he sold Ghailani the explosives.

Indeed, Ghailani practically confessed to his role in the affair himself. But his statements weren’t introduced at trial.

Defense lawyers had argued that Ghailani’s disclosures were inadmissible because they were coerced — and prosecutors were loath to risk having their entire case tossed by the judge.

Under normal circumstances, that’s fine. But this case involved a foreigner making war on America.”

In other words this is an enemy combatant, a foreigner who is not entitled to US constitutional rights including a civilian trial; he is entitled to a military tribunal.

The Post article also included a wonderful picture of Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

“These facts come courtesy of Ghailani’s own mouth. He revealed them under interrogation while in clandestine CIA custody before transfer to Guantanamo. Therein lies the legal absurdity.

The CIA grilled Ghailani in the interest of national security – to prevent further terrorist attacks – and not as a run-of-the-mill criminal suspect with full U.S. constitutional rights.

Thus, Ghailani had no lawyer. Thus, in the words of Manhattan Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan, Ghailani was subjected to a “combination of social influence approaches and extremely harsh interrogation methods to obtain evidence” – techniques that were used “to obtain intelligence from a handful of detainees believed to possess particularly high-value information.”

So, years later, come time for opening statements in Kaplan’s courtroom, prosecutors chose not even to try entering a word of Ghailani’s testimony into evidence. Instead, they hung their case largely on one Hussein Abebe, a Tanzanian who was prepared to testify that he had sold five crates of explosives to Ghailani.

Bad move. Kaplan yesterday barred Abebe from taking the stand because the FBI tracked him down based solely on information provided by Ghailani under “coerced” questioning.

This ruling was distressingly inevitable.”

Now Obama and Holder are educated attorneys well versed in criminal and constitutional law. It is safe to say that they know that the rights of the accused in the U.S. are much more protective than the rights of: (a) terrorists in Kenya, (b) criminals in Pakistan, and (c) enemy combatants detained in war time. In short, Obama and Holder knew that this instant ruling was “distressingly inevitable.”

Why then, would the Commander in Chief charged with the defense of this nation and his chief law enforcement officer Attorney General Holder choose to take this wartime prosecution out of military hands and place it in New York, the site of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th?

I have previously highlighted Dinesh D’Souza Obama analysis on these pages, but Kathryn Lopez’s NRO interview with D’Souza goes into greater depth and convinces me that his analysis is correct. In that analysis, Obama is an anti-colonists down to his core, socialists yes, but more important an anti-colonists. He favors the suppressed, exploited natives in Kenya, Pakistan perhaps those in the war regions. His father from which his dreams come, Dreams from My Father, was Kenyan. The interview is a must read.

D’Souza denies that Obama is merely a conventional liberal: “But conventional liberals don’t come out for the release of the Lockerbie bomber. Conventional liberals don’t return the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office. Conventional liberals don’t block oil drilling in America while subsidizing oil drilling in Brazil.Conventional liberals don’t try to turn the space agency NASA into a Muslim-outreach program. My anti-colonial theory beautifully explains all these facts.” There is indeed predictive value in this theory.

So I think it reasonable to believe that, despite protestations to the contrary, Obama wants acquittals in these civilian terrorists trials.

There were plenty of good memorials posted today. Some will bring tears, like “Remembering Patrick Sullivan” by  Jack Dumphy who tells of a brother naming his kids “Mary Patrick and Shane Patrice.” You get the picture.

But the one that impressed me most is less poignant and more accusatory, more an indictment of our progressive, politically correct, and invincibly naive ignorance.  Andrew McCarthy’s NRO post “Imagining Islam” is a wake up call to all sensible Americans, no all sensible Westerners.

Andy posits a fantasy Islam that is secular and moderate. This religion is dedicated to human rights, against slavery, modern and tolerant of other religions and cultures. Arguably such a religion would have condemned the murderous killing of innocents that preceded and followed those of the WTC. It would have issued those condemnations loudly and en masse for at least the last nine years.

But for the last nine years we have heard nothing but silence.

“What excruciating truths have we yet failed to grasp on this ninth anniversary of 9/11? The first is that such an Islam does not exist. The second is that, despite this fact, American foreign and domestic policy continues to proceed as though it does exist — and as though it were the only real Islam. That is, nine years after Islamists made their commitment to our destruction as unmistakable as possible, nine years after the non-occurrence of all the wonderful things that would certainly have happened if the Islam of our dreams were the Islam of our reality, our national-security strategy is still steeped in fiction.”

Hussein Obama has put America on a foreign policy of “self delusion.” We no longer wage a “war on terror” but instead engage in sporadic “overseas contingency operations.” If we avoid saying whom we are fighting and why, we soon forget. Our president, our commander in chief, goes through the Arab world bowing and appeasing. He fights our natural allies and weakens our defenses. He now tolerates a nuclear Iran whose president shouts “Death to America!”  He has our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan pursuing “nation building” with Shria law! This the law that stones women and kills homosexuals and bans religious minorities.

In the U.S. we defend the Islamists monument to the 911 slaughter at ground zero proffered by an imam paid by the U.S. State Department. This part of the religion of peace intends to take over our country not by violence but by out populating us and enacting Shria law as it is now doing in Europe.

But the violent wing of this fantasy religion of peace is still alive and healthy: “At home, even as al-Qaeda continues its efforts to reprise 9/11, a network of Islamist organizations — coordinated by the Muslim Brotherhood and financially backed by our friends, the Saudis — proceeds with what it calls its “grand jihad” to eliminate and destroy Western civilization by sabotage. This is not a secret. The Brotherhood’s internal memoranda were seized by the FBI. They boldly announce these claims in black and white. Two years ago, the Justice Department aptly labeled the constituent organizations — including the Islamic Society of North America and the Council onAmerican Islamic Relations — as unindicted co-conspirators in a terrorism-financing case in which several of their partners were convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. Today, those Islamist organizations are right back in business, with an open door to “engaging” government policymakers, as if nothing ever happened. In our imagination, they’re moderates, too.”

Hussein Obama’s policies weaken us. By failing to recognize our enemy and the values it seeks to impose, we eventually fail to recognize our own values and will soon lose them, to our regret.

“The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history; it is
the fanatics who march…it is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting
wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian
or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire
continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder,
or honour-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It
is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims
and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to
become suicide bombers..” In other words, peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence!

With this historical logic difficult to refute, it was heartening to see today’s WSJ article, “A Symposium: What Is Moderate Islam?” This is a collection of six answers given by Islamic scholars and commentators. I commend a full reading to the piece, but I was particularly drawn to the last two essays, “Don’t Gloss Over The Violent Texts” and “Mystics, Modernists and Literalists.”

From the first, “Radical Islam is not limited to the act of terrorism; it also includes the embrace of teachings within the religion that promote hatred and ultimately breed terrorism. Those who limit the definition of radical Islam to terrorism are ignoring—and indirectly approving of—the Shariah teachings that permit killing apostates, violence against women and gays, and anti-Semitism.”

“Moderate Islam must not be passive. It needs to actively reinterpret the violent parts of the religious text rather than simply cherry-picking the peaceful ones. Ignoring, rather than confronting or contextualizing, the violent texts leaves young Muslims vulnerable to such teachings at a later stage in their lives.”

And, from the second: “The literalists believe that Muslim behavior must approximate that of the Prophet in seventh-century Arabia. Their belief that Islam is under attack forces many of them to adopt a defensive posture. And while not all literalists advocate violence, many do. Movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the Taliban belong to this category.”

Islam has a foundational text problem which gives rise to the terrorists. It is difficult to see how that will be solved even if the silent majorities rise up in force in their totalitarian societies.

By modern analogy, silent majorities are responsible for the ills of great democratic nations. We have witnessed as much here over the last half century with our gradual descent on the road to serfdom, our slip into socialism.  Hopefully we wake up soon!

This is not a case of “loose lips sink ships;” this an intentional broadcast of secret information while the country is at war. The military traitor should get military justice.

But the rub is the self important Julian Assnage and his co-conspirators in the New York Time, the Guardian and Der Spiegel, the so-called responsible press. In the NYT case, it’s printing all the news “fit to print”

As Tony Blankley points out in his “Wiki Espionage” post their conduct is a clear violation of the Espionage Act (Title 18 U.S. Code, Section 794). Opposition to the war cannot justify treason.

“If Mr. Assange had perpetrated this outrage against Russia, inevitably there would be a news report a few month later announcing the death of Mr. Assange and his loved ones (should he have any) because of an unlikely street accident. Thank goodness we live in nation of laws — not of executive actions.

“But the rule of law will not last long if the law is not used to avenge grievous wrongs committed against our nation.

“It is the high duty of our government not to let Mr. Assange walk free (assuming the evidence in court of his espionage is as convincing as the news accounts suggest). Let the federal prosecutions proceed — wiki, wiki.”

The conceit, self aggrandizement, and above-the-law attitude of the NYT is appalling.

2. Sharia Law is a duty for all Muslims. Sharia is the anthesis of separation of church and state, indeed the anthesis of freedom. It combines religion and political aspects into one totalitarian society commanded by the Qur’an. The law is ancient commanding eye for eye justice, stoning, and dismemberment for proscribed offenses. It governs contracts and commerce. The world will not be at peace until all nations are governed by Shria Law. So creeping Shria as in the UK where Shria courts already exist is indeed a danger. At current birth rates Europe will be majority muslim within our children’s lifetimes. So whether through the bed room and creeping Shria or through 911 type jihad, Muslims are installing Shria worldwide.

3. Muslims lie to non-Muslims. The Qur’an sanctions these lies in order to convert infidels and advance Shria Law. This principal is called TAQIYYA. To say one thing to non-Muslims and the exact opposite to Muslims is frequently used in the Arab world today. This is the very means of calling Islam the religion of peace!

Hussein Obama has curried favor in the Arab world bowing to its leaders and apologizing for the United States. He is an advocate of the “religion of peace” view of Islam. He even urged the NASA director to reach out to Muslim countries. Methinks Hussein’s Muslim roots are getting in the way of his job as president!

The YouTube video is long and made for a British audience so I did not embed it in this post. If you are so inclined to further study, the link is here.