North Dakota's oil production in November was up 56 percent from a year earlier, thanks to the huge Bakken Shale play.
The state's crude output, for the first time, exceeds 500,000 barrels a day. Its production surpasses that of OPEC member Ecuador.
As jihad plots multiply, DHS slumbers on
Snip: Instead, the Obama Administration has succumbed to pressure from Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups in the United States and has promised to scrub all training materials for the FBI and other agencies of any reference to Islam or jihad in connection with Islamic terrorism. That means that law enforcement officials are now effectively forbidden to study the motives and goals of the Alabama shooter, the Florida and North Carolina plotters, the former military man, and so many others like them, for to do so would necessarily involve study and discussion of the texts and tenets of Islam.
So far so good -- if the DHS were monitoring jihadist websites, which proliferate on the internet. But it isn't. Instead, it is watching sites where it is extremely unlikely ever to encounter a jihad plotter saying anything to indicate that he is up to no good. To be sure, the monitored sites are all over the map ideologically: they include Live Leak, Vimeo, Youtube, and Flickr, as well as the Huffington Post, Newsweek Blogs and the New York Times Lede Blog -- along with the Middle East Media Research Institute, the global intelligence site Stratfor, and many, many others, including my own website, Jihad Watch. Nonetheless, given the Obama DHS's stated emphasis on "right-wing extremism," it is much more likely that when they visit Jihad Watch and other counterterror sites, agents are on the hunt for dangerous conservatives, not hoping to learn anything about jihadist beliefs, motives or activities.
Jihad plotting persists in Mosques
Snips: The Islamic advocacy establishment in the U.S. insists that all Muslims in this country happily accept Constitutional freedoms and pluralism, and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a venomous "Islamophobe." If Shehadeh's claims are true, however, Salafism, a form of hardline Islam that calls for the imposition of Islamic law in its fullness, including stonings, beheadings, amputations, and warfare against unbelievers, is being preached not just in Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Iran, but also right here in Brooklyn.
Shehadeh also named as jihad plotters, along with "a livery cab driver" and "a College of Staten Island student who attended a fund-raiser at Brooklyn College for a terrorist," an "Ethiopian Muslim in the U.S. Army." But of course it would be the height of "Islamophobia" to question Muslims in the U.S. military as to their loyalties. He even identified "a reputed member of the terror group Hamas who lives in Syracuse." Shehadeh says that in 2008 he went to "a lecture at the Brooklyn Islamic Center in 2008 with someone named 'Omar' and a second man who peddled pro-jihad T-shirts. 'Almost everything [Omar] and his friend . . . talked about was jihad.'"
Voice of America journalist shot dead by Taliban in Pakistan
A journalist working for the Voice of America was shot dead by Taliban fighters in northwest Pakistan today.
Mukarram Khan Atif was attacked at a mosque near his home at Shabqadar town, 35 km from Peshawar, the capital of Khyber- Pakhtunkhwa province.
Two gunmen on motorcycles arrived at the mosque during evening prayers. One of them entered the mosque and shot Atif in the head before fleeing, police said.