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Neil Young and Crazy Horse have cancelled a 17 July concert in Israel, citing "tensions which have rendered the event unsafe". As the region shudders with rocket explosions and missile attacks, the musicians said they "look forward to playing in Israel and Palestine in peace". "It is with heavy hearts and deep sadness that we must cancel our one and only Israeli concert," Young and his band said in a statement. Some 30,000 people had bought tickets to the gig at Tel Aviv's Hayarkon Park – the singer's first Israeli show in almost two decades. According to Reuters, the decision...

Even by the low standards of Congress, Loretta Sanchez’s performance ranks as a disgrace. The Democrat from California managed — in just a few minutes — to turn the congressional investigation of the marathon terror bombings into a political hatchet job, while demonstrating her complete ignorance of basic facts of the case. Sanchez somehow butchered the names of the alleged terror bombers not once, but three times, calling the Tsarnaev brothers “Tsarnavar,” then “Tsarnev,” and finally “Tsarnov.” “There are still unanswered questions about the Tsarnavar brothers,” the tongue-tied congresswoman said. Yes, like, how to pronounce the names of the terrorists....

The Islamist militant group Boko Haram has conducted terrorist attacks in Nigeria that bring it closer to al Qaeda in northern Mali, making linkages between the groups more likely and more dangerous, according to a paper published by the Combating Terrorism Center. In the past year, Boko Haram has carried out several large-scale attacks across a 900-mile swath of Nigeria, roughly the distance between New York City and Atlanta, the paper states. That puts the Nigerian extremists just 300 miles from northern Mali, which is controlled by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and other affiliated groups. Boko Haram,...

A New York City community leader has an interesting (albeit naïve) idea that’s never going to happen, but it could spark some illuminating dialogue in the Ground Zero Mosque controversy. Julie, Menin, chair of the city’s community board has suggested that the embattled $100 million, 13-story Islamic “cultural center” be “transformed into an inter-faith center for reconciliation… to be shared by Muslims, Christians and Jews.” That should go over just fine with the Ground Zero Mosque Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, since he has already announced to the world that he considers himself “a Jew.” A declaration that liberal journalists like...

WASHINGTON - Osama bin Laden had no idea the U.S. would hit al-Qaida as hard as it has since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, a former bin Laden associate tells WTOP in an exclusive interview. "I'm 100 percent sure they had no clue about what was going to happen," says Noman Benotman, who was head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in the summer of 2000. "What happened after the 11th of September was beyond their imagination, " says Benotman, who adds that al-Qaida thought the U.S. was a "paper tiger." Sitting on the floor at bin Laden's compound in...

"Rep. Leonard Boswell is on the House Subcommittee for Aviation. I’d like to reach out and give Rep. Boswell a chance to make our airways a safer place to travel before terrorists have another chance at killing innocent Americans. Here are the solutions proposed: We need to combine intelligence and a careful selection of passenger information with redundant and data-integrated technologies. We need to use what we know. Passengers must be analyzed based on flight history and current flight plans. Individuals on the watch-list should never make it on an airplane let alone be given a US visa; especially when...

Here is video from Fox News today where former FBI Assistant Director Steve Pomerantz and former Homeland Security official Scott Weber talked about the preliminary report President Obama was to receive today on the attempted terrorist bombing on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Weber said Obama needs to move swiftly, because reports indicate there are at least 25 other terrorists in Yemen prepared to launch similar attacks. "We don't have much time," Weber said. . . . (VIDEO)

A Day to Remember http://www.wiseandfrugalgovernment.blogspot.com/ Like every American I remember exactly what I was doing when the second plane hit the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I was on the treadmill in my bedroom a little before 6 a.m., watching the stock market open, the futures soaring until a report that a plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 (EST). At that point there was only conjecture; a stray commuter plane the most popular theory. Live shots of the gaping hole and the billows of smoke but still no answers. At...

Binyam Mohammed, who planned terrorist attacks on U.S. cities, has been set free. Let’s imagine we’ve captured a highly trained terrorist al-Qaeda was attempting to embed in the United States, à la Mohamed Atta and company, to carry out mass-murder attacks in American cities. For eight years, our national-security debate in the United States has been divided into two camps on these cases. In the first are those who accept the post-9/11 law-of-war paradigm. They would have that enemy combatant detained for intelligence purposes (and to remove him from the battlefield) until he could be tried for war crimes by...

You know that we are living in scary times. Terrorist groups are metastasizing all over the globe. Al Qaeda has re-established its bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hizbullah, Hamas and other radical Islamic groups are gaining strength. You hear this stuff all the time, on television and on the campaign trail. Amid the din, it's hard to figure out the facts. Well, finally we have a well-researched, independent analysis of the data relating to terrorism, released last week by Canada's Simon Fraser University. Its findings will surprise you. It explains that there is a reason you're scared. The U.S. government...

Two days removed from the latest 9/11 anniversary commemorations, I wonder if it’s too much to ask that this anniversary be the last. Are we going to do this every year forever? America loves anniversaries, and the news media find it easier to write stories about them than to report what’s happening, say, now. But the somber, sad, reverent ceremonies every year are not helping America win this battle. We don’t need any more moments of silence or roll calls of the dead. We’ve done it every year for five years now. Enough already. There are those who would like...

Jon Voight Warns Americans To Stay Alert http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2007/04/16/jon_voight_warns_americans_to_stay_alert http://tinyurl.com/2wt2gr 04/16/07 16:30:53 Movie star Jon Voight wants Americans on high alert because he fears another 9/11 terrorist attack is near. The Deliverance star admits he's more than a little nervous about ongoing immigration issues, and fears Americans have become complacent as the sixth anniversary of Al Qaeda's attacks on Washington, D.C. and New York approaches. He tells RadarOnline.com, "I certainly hope we're paying close attention to all those people crossing our borders who might be dangerous to us. We know for sure there are cells in the United States that are...

Surprise is what intelligence is intended to prevent, but on Sept. 11, 2001, our nation was surprised, and the results were tragic. Now the fifth anniversary of those horrific events raises anew the question: Is our nation's intelligence community better prepared to keep America safe? The answer is yes. U.S. intelligence has made major advances since that Sept. 11. First and foremost, we better understand, and are aligned to meet, the threat of transnational terror. Although our enemy is constantly changing and remains deadly, our collectors and analysts are carefully tracking the evolution of al-Qaeda and its ideological allies. Today,...

George Galloway has spoken out in support of Lebanon, saying he believes Hizbollah is justified in attacking Israel. The Respect MP also lambasted media coverage of the war and said the UN resolution means nothing.

The BBC has rejected a call made by an independent panel studying charges of bias in its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to change its editorial policies on the use of the word "terrorist" and appoint a senior editor to oversee its Middle East coverage. Using the word "terrorist" to describe attacks on civilians, BBC management argued in a paper released June 19, would make the "very value judgments" it had been asked to eschew. An independent panel in May found the BBC's reporting from Israel did "not consistently constitute a full and fair account of the conflict but rather,...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The parents of Sept. 11, 2001, hero Todd Beamer, gave "United 93," the controversial movie about the doomed flight their blessing. Beamer's parents recently returned home to Jacksonville after watching a special screening of the movie. David Beamer, Todd Beamer's father, lives in Jacksonville. Todd Beamer was the passenger who yelled, "let's roll" as he and other passengers tried to take down the hijackers on United Flight 93. Some theaters around the country have refused to show the trailer for the film, saying it's just too soon, and too painful to watch. However, Beamer's father and other...

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday said the United States has made "serious mistakes" during the Iraq war that have led to the rising violence the country now faces. "We made some serious mistakes in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad," Powell told a crowd of thousands at the McCormick Place conference. "We didn't have enough troops on the ground. We didn't impose our will. And as a result, an insurgency got started, and . . . it got out of control." Now, American troops must "stick with the people of Iraq" until order is...

A few days ago, I posted a translation of a document culled from the captured Iraqi documents that the US found during Operation Iraqi Freedom. This particular memo, dated March 17, 2001, comes from a brigadier general in the Iraqi Air Force and requests a list of volunteers from all units under his command for suicide attackers. The memo explicitly explains the targets for these terrorist attacks, as the original translation from Joseph Shahda shows: The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of...

NEW YORK - A federal judge Friday upheld the police department's practice of randomly searching subway riders' bags, saying the intrusion on people's privacy is minimal while the threat of a terrorist bombing is "real and substantial." Police tightened security in the nation's largest subway system in July after the deadly terrorist attacks in London's underground. "The risk of a terrorist bombing of New York City's subway system is real and substantial," U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said. The New York Civil Liberties Union had challenged the searches, arguing that riders were being subjected to a pointless and unprecedented...

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