Obama’s Big Data is Big Trouble

After the revelations of Wikileaks and Edward Snowden on the previously unknown activities of the NSA, the FBI, the ODNI and more, Americans and foreign leaders have come to understand the far reaching and obscure violations of any expectation of privacy. While countries spy on other countries, little has been preserved when it comes to the common citizen and their expectation of privacy.

Too many outside corporations are in partnership with Big Data that include internet technology companies, telecom companies and law enforcement.

Just this week without any fanfare, John Podesta, who is the White House Counselor to the President released the report and findings after his committee of Science and Technology were tasked with a 90 day study group on Big Data. The findings are disturbing and do nothing but encourage more violations of the 4th Amendment.

The big question remains, if the activities of the NSA and partners are preserving the Constitutional protections, then why is this study group suggesting legislation titled the ‘Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights’?

The study group fact sheet is here.  The full 85 page report is here.

In the meantime, Yahoo is not your friend.

Yahoo joins companies which track their users, If PRIVACY MATTERS Leave Yahoo

http://hackersnewsbulletin.com/2014/05/yahoo-joins-companies-track-users-privacy-matters-leave-yahoo.html

Some technology companies like Apple and Facebook are reported to be defying NSA mandates on secrecy, but the question is just how much are these companies really telling users and is it accurate?

Frankly, after all the lies, subterfuge and collusion of this administration, what should we trust that is being told to us?

 

Spying

The summary of the report as posted on the White House website reads as follows:

Over the past several days, severe storms have battered Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and other states. Dozens of people have been killed and entire neighborhoods turned to rubble and debris as tornadoes have touched down across the region. Natural disasters like these present a host of challenges for first responders. How many people are affected, injured, or dead? Where can they find food, shelter, and medical attention? What critical infrastructure might have been damaged?

Drawing on open government data sources, including Census demographics and NOAA weather data, along with their own demographic databases, Esri, a geospatial technology company, has created a real-time map showing where the twisters have been spotted and how the storm systems are moving. They have also used these data to show how many people live in the affected area, and summarize potential impacts from the storms. It’s a powerful tool for emergency services and communities. And it’s driven by big data technology.

In January, President Obama asked me to lead a wide-ranging review of “big data” and privacy—to explore how these technologies are changing our economy, our government, and our society, and to consider their implications for our personal privacy. Together with Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, the President’s Science Advisor John Holdren, the President’s Economic Advisor Jeff Zients, and other senior officials, our review sought to understand what is genuinely new and different about big data and to consider how best to encourage the potential of these technologies while minimizing risks to privacy and core American values.

Over the course of 90 days, we met with academic researchers and privacy advocates, with regulators and the technology industry, with advertisers and civil rights groups. The President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology conducted a parallel study of the technological trends underpinning big data. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy jointly organized three university conferences at MIT, NYU, and U.C. Berkeley. We issued a formal Request for Information seeking public comment, and hosted a survey to generate even more public input.

Today, we presented our findings to the President. We knew better than to try to answer every question about big data in three months. But we are able to draw important conclusions and make concrete recommendations for Administration attention and policy development in a few key areas.

There are a few technological trends that bear drawing out. The declining cost of collection, storage, and processing of data, combined with new sources of data like sensors, cameras, and geospatial technologies, mean that we live in a world of near-ubiquitous data collection. All this data is being crunched at a speed that is increasingly approaching real-time, meaning that big data algorithms could soon have immediate effects on decisions being made about our lives.

The big data revolution presents incredible opportunities in virtually every sector of the economy and every corner of society.

Big data is saving lives. Infections are dangerous—even deadly—for many babies born prematurely. By collecting and analyzing millions of data points from a NICU, one study was able to identify factors, like slight increases in body temperature and heart rate, that serve as early warning signs an infection may be taking root—subtle changes that even the most experienced doctors wouldn’t have noticed on their own.

Big data is making the economy work better. Jet engines and delivery trucks now come outfitted with sensors that continuously monitor hundreds of data points and send automatic alerts when maintenance is needed. Utility companies are starting to use big data to predict periods of peak electric demand, adjusting the grid to be more efficient and potentially averting brown-outs.

Big data is making government work better and saving taxpayer dollars. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have begun using predictive analytics—a big data technique—to flag likely instances of reimbursement fraud before claims are paid. The Fraud Prevention System helps identify the highest-risk health care providers for waste, fraud, and abuse in real time and has already stopped, prevented, or identified $115 million in fraudulent payments.

But big data raises serious questions, too, about how we protect our privacy and other values in a world where data collection is increasingly ubiquitous and where analysis is conducted at speeds approaching real time. In particular, our review raised the question of whether the “notice and consent” framework, in which a user grants permission for a service to collect and use information about them, still allows us to meaningfully control our privacy as data about us is increasingly used and reused in ways that could not have been anticipated when it was collected.

Big data raises other concerns, as well. One significant finding of our review was the potential for big data analytics to lead to discriminatory outcomes and to circumvent longstanding civil rights protections in housing, employment, credit, and the consumer marketplace.

No matter how quickly technology advances, it remains within our power to ensure that we both encourage innovation and protect our values through law, policy, and the practices we encourage in the public and private sector. To that end, we make six actionable policy recommendations in our report to the President:

Advance the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Consumers deserve clear, understandable, reasonable standards for how their personal information is used in the big data era. We recommend the Department of Commerce take appropriate consultative steps to seek stakeholder and public comment on what changes, if any, are needed to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, first proposed by the President in 2012, and to prepare draft legislative text for consideration by stakeholders and submission by the President to Congress.

Pass National Data Breach Legislation. Big data technologies make it possible to store significantly more data, and further derive intimate insights into a person’s character, habits, preferences, and activities. That makes the potential impacts of data breaches at businesses or other organizations even more serious. A patchwork of state laws currently governs requirements for reporting data breaches. Congress should pass legislation that provides for a single national data breach standard, along the lines of the Administration’s 2011 Cybersecurity legislative proposal.

Extend Privacy Protections to non-U.S. Persons. Privacy is a worldwide value that should be reflected in how the federal government handles personally identifiable information about non-U.S. citizens. The Office of Management and Budget should work with departments and agencies to apply the Privacy Act of 1974 to non-U.S. persons where practicable, or to establish alternative privacy policies that apply appropriate and meaningful protections to personal information regardless of a person’s nationality.

Ensure Data Collected on Students in School is used for Educational Purposes. Big data and other technological innovations, including new online course platforms that provide students real time feedback, promise to transform education by personalizing learning. At the same time, the federal government must ensure educational data linked to individual students gathered in school is used for educational purposes, and protect students against their data being shared or used inappropriately.

Expand Technical Expertise to Stop Discrimination. The detailed personal profiles held about many consumers, combined with automated, algorithm-driven decision-making, could lead—intentionally or inadvertently—to discriminatory outcomes, or what some are already calling “digital redlining.” The federal government’s lead civil rights and consumer protection agencies should expand their technical expertise to be able to identify practices and outcomes facilitated by big data analytics that have a discriminatory impact on protected classes, and develop a plan for investigating and resolving violations of law.

Amend the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The laws that govern protections afforded to our communications were written before email, the internet, and cloud computing came into wide use. Congress should amend ECPA to ensure the standard of protection for online, digital content is consistent with that afforded in the physical world—including by removing archaic distinctions between email left unread or over a certain age.

We also identify several broader areas ripe for further study, debate, and public engagement that, collectively, we hope will spark a national conversation about how to harness big data for the public good. We conclude that we must find a way to preserve our privacy values in both the domestic and international marketplace. We urgently need to build capacity in the federal government to identify and prevent new modes of discrimination that could be enabled by big data. We must ensure that law enforcement agencies using big data technologies do so responsibly, and that our fundamental privacy rights remain protected. Finally, we recognize that data is a valuable public resource, and call for continuing the Administration’s efforts to open more government data sources and make investments in research and technology.

While big data presents new challenges, it also presents immense opportunities to improve lives, the United States is perhaps better suited to lead this conversation than any other nation on earth. Our innovative spirit, technological know-how, and deep commitment to values of privacy, fairness, non-discrimination, and self-determination will help us harness the benefits of the big data revolution and encourage the free flow of information while working with our international partners to protect personal privacy. This review is but one piece of that effort, and we hope it spurs a conversation about big data across the country and around the world.

Select Committee, Benghazi

House Speaker John Boehner has pulled the trigger on establishing a Select Committee for the Benghazi attack. The long wait was to establish this committee was due in part to having tangible and proven evidence that pointed inside the White House, which has now been delivered as a result of a law suit granting the delivery of additional emails.

The House must now vote officially for the creation of this committee and several other items need to occur before work gets underway. Members of this committee must be chosen and those members must be vetted and apply for a higher set of security clearances. Additionally, a resolution is to be crafted that defines the powers, rules and procedures as well as the scope of the investigation relating to Benghazi. This is a slow but measured process which has some history as we have come to know least of which is the Iran Contra Affair yet those before included  select committees on Energy Independence and Global Warning as well as establishing the Treasury Department.

America is in a legislative crisis but most of all she is in an Executive Branch crisis and it has been established that key Cabinet Secretaries have crossed the legal lines of power. One such agency caught up in the matter of Benghazi especially is the State Department where two separate Secretaries where obfuscation is cancerous to the existing investigations on Benghazi. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry both have blood on their hands regarding Libya and the deaths of 4 Americans and even up to 24 more in Libya since the attacks.

 

Benghazi 1

WASHINGTON – Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry outlining the State Department’s continued obstruction into the investigation of the tragic events in Benghazi. While the Secretary stated in a House hearing this month that he was “not aware” of any State Department generated delay or obstruction into the investigation, Chairman Issa outlines specific incidences where the Department has used various tactics to stall and impede the investigation.  This obstruction includes unusual restrictions on documents,  threats to destroy Committee property, and attempts to hinder whistleblowers from obtaining legal representation cleared to view classified information.
 
The State Department has refused to provide requested information about procedures for attorneys representing whistleblowers can be cleared to handle classified information.
 
“During the course of the Committee’s investigation, numerous individuals have come forward with information related to the Benghazi attack,” wrote Issa in the letter. “Some witnesses may be required to retain personal counsel to represent them before the Committee and in case the Department retaliates against them for cooperating with the Committee’s investigation.  Additional witnesses may be compelled by subpoena to give testimony to the Committee and can be reasonably expected to retain personal counsel at that time.  In each case, witnesses may need to share sensitive or classified information with their lawyers.  The Department’s unwillingness to make the process for clearing an attorney more transparent appears to be an effort to interfere with the rights of employees to furnish information to Congress.”  

There has been a coordinated and intentional effort to cover up all the fallout of the 9-11 attacks but what is worse the re-election of Barack Obama was under an epic condition of fraud due in part to the IRS, NSA, PPACA and sadly the murders of 4 Americans.

For reference of the trail of blocking all investigative efforts by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, below is the text of the letter sent by the Chairman to Secretary of State John Kerry.

http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/2013-04-26-DEI-to-Kerry-DOS-Document-Production-Benghazi.pdf

 

This letter demonstrates the cautious steps taken by the Oversight Committee but more it illustrates the extent by which the State Department has blocked and challenged all investigation efforts. should be noted the Select Committee process will involve several agencies as this also has international implications and classified documents as well as covert operators.

Putin’s Goal Post, Novorossiya

First, hello to the Russian bots and hackers.

Okay, there was Libya and that failed post Qaddafi. Then there was Iraq and that has failed. Then there is Afghanistan and yes that has failed. Then there is the civil war in Syria and that was handed over to Russia to deal with. Then comes Iran’s nuclear program….remember that? Add in the failed peace talks between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, that is over. The White House mandated a pivot to Asia and now John Kerry is pivoting to Sudan. But what about Ukraine/Crimea and the Baltic States?

Putin is making his moves to the red zone where getting closer to the goal post of the New Russia which includes the old Novorossiya, so one needs to turn back to the Orange Revolution and further to the Ottoman Empire. The New Russia is emerging.

 

 

Russia Ukraine

 

 

When is a war called a war and who is noticing? The White House is fighting on behalf of Ukraine with shallow sanctions and John Kerry moved on to Sudan. Today was the deadliest day in the war in Odessa with 41 dead. This is precisely how the conflict in Syria started. In the Eastern part of Ukraine, pro-Russian militias used surface to air missiles and blew two helicopters out of the sky, killing the pilots. No one will admit Russian troops are in Ukraine yet the truth is Putin has admitted he dispatched saboteurs inside the borders in Slovyansk where mercenaries, terrorists and criminals have been unleashed at the of Putin. There are still pro-Ukraine hostages being held in Donetsk.

Last month, Russia stopped taking calls from anyone in Washington, DC. The radio silence from Russia spells trouble for the West as Russia asserts her power in the Baltic States, such that success has already been achieved with closer Russian relationships with Iran, Egypt, Syria and Latin America including Venezuela and Cuba. Putin is working a calculated consolidation plan where his eyes are set on Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Moldova, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. The ultimate goal is a Eurasian Union and Germany is at the core to stop this however, in a very feeble posture to stop the Russian global power objective. Stopping the Putin red zone mission by sanctions is not so much as a penalty flag and the Russian Oligarchs are moved money out of the United States already and their investments in Europe are protected for the sake of power resources such as natural gas and economic ventures. Merkel has pushed back on approving sanctions authored by the United States that have real teeth due to energy institutionalization of Russia in Europe.

The United States is war-weary, NATO is war-weary but enemies of the West are growing out of the weakness of the West and the future challenges are in front of us. NATO is an intergovernmental military organization established for the defense of Soviet aggression and the prospect of their nuclear programs.

The most proactive measure now would be to admit Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, where Article 5 would apply, an attack on one is an attack on all NATO members.

NATO Deputy Secretary General’s Special Representative for the Caucasus and Central Asia region James Appathurai  said in Tbilisi today that he believed the Alliance would discuss  whether NATO allies should deploy “defensive assets” in Georgia.

Appathurai announced this in response to the Georgian Defence Minister Irakli Alasania’s suggestion to put “air defense and anti-armour capabilities in Georgia,” which he made in Washington at the Atlantic Council’s conference “Toward a Europe Whole and Free” on Wednesday.  More here.

 

Tony Blair, More Right than Barack Obama

Tony Blair on the Islamist Threat

by Mark Durie
Frontpage Magazine
May 1, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/3813/tony-blair-on-the-islamist-threat

 

Tony Blair delivered a major speech on April 23 entitled, “Why the Middle East Matters”. In summary, he argued that the Middle East, far from being a “vast unfathomable mess” is deep in the throes of a multi-faceted struggle between a specific religious ideology on the one hand, and those who want to embrace the modern world on the other. Furthermore, the West, blinded up until now as to the religious nature of the conflict, must take sides: it should support those who stand on the side of open-minded pluralistic societies, and combat those who wish to create intolerant theocracies.

In his speech Blair makes a whole series of substantial points:

He states that a ‘defining challenge of our time’ is a religious ideology which he calls ‘Islamist’, although he is not comfortable with this label because he prefers to distance himself from any implication that this ideology can be equated with Islam itself. He worries that “you can appear to elide those who support the Islamist ideology with all Muslims.”

He considers Islamism to be a global movement, whose diverse manifestations are produced by common ideological roots.

He rejects Western non-religious explanations for the problems caused by Islamist ideology, including the preference of “Western commentators” to attribute the manifestations of Islamism to “disparate” causes which have nothing to do with religion. Likewise he implies that the protracted conflict over Israel-Palestine is not the cause of this ideology, but rather the converse is the case: dealing with the wider impact of Islamist ideology could help solve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

According to Blair, what distinguishes violent terrorists from seemingly non-violent Islamists – such as the Muslim Brotherhood – is simply “a difference of view as to how to achieve the goals of Islamism”, so attempts to draw a distinction between political Islamist movements and radical terrorist groups are mistaken. Blair considers that the religious ideology of certain groups like the Brotherhood, which may appear to be law-abiding, “inevitably creates the soil” in which religio-political violence is nurtured.

He considers “Islamism” to be a major threat everywhere in the world, including increasingly within Western nations. The “challenge” of Islamism is “growing” and “spreading across the world” and it is “the biggest threat to global security of the early 21st Century.”

Because of the seriousness of the threat of this religio-political ideology, Blair argues that the West should vigorously support just about anybody whose interests lie in opposing Islamists, from General Sisi in Egypt to President Putin in Russia. He finds it to be an absurd irony that Western governments form intimate alliances with nations whose educational and civic institutions promote this ideology: an obvious example of this would be the US – Saudi alliance.

In all this, one might be forgiven for thinking that Blair sounds a lot like Geert Wilders, except that, as he takes pains to emphasize, he emphatically rejects equating Islamism with Islam. Tony Blair and Geert Wilders agree that there is a serious religious ideological challenge facing the world, but they disagree on whether that challenge is Islam itself.My Blair’s speech is aimed at people who do not wish to be thought of as anti-Musilm, but who need to be awakened to the religious nature of the Islamist challenge. He is keen to assure his intended audience that if they adopt his thesis they would not be guilty of conflating those who support radical Jihadi violence with all Muslims.

Islam and Islamism

Two key assumptions underpin Blair’s dissociation of Islamism the religio-political ideology from Islam the religion. First, Blair presupposes that Islamism is not “the proper teaching of Islam”. It may, he concedes, be “an interpretation”, but it is a false one, a “perversion” of the religion, which “distorts and warps Islam’s true message.” He offers two arguments to support this theological insight.One is that there are pious Muslims who agree with him: “Many of those totally opposed to the Islamist ideology are absolutely devout Muslims.”

This is a fallacious argument. It is akin to asserting that Catholic belief in the infallibility of the Pope cannot be Christian merely because there are absolutely devout protestant Christians who totally oppose this dogma. The fact that there are pious Muslims who reject Islamism is not a credible argument that Islamism is an invalid interpretation of Islam.

Blair’s other argument in support of his belief that Islamism is a perversion of Islam is an allegation that Christians used to hold similarly abhorrent theologies: “There used to be such interpretations of Christianity which took us years to eradicate from our mainstream politics.” This is a self-deprecating variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, in which another’s argument is attacked by accusing them of hypocrisy. Here Blair rhetorically directs the ad hominem attack against himself and his culture. In essence, he is saying “It would hypocritical of us to regard Islamist ideology as genuinely Islamic, because (we) Christians used to support similarly pernicious theologies in the past (although we do not do so today).”

This logic is equally fallacious: observations about the history of Christian theology, valid or not, prove nothing about what is or is not a valid form of Islam.

Blair’s second key assumption is a widely-held view about the root cause of “the challenge”. The fundamental issue, he argues, is people of faith who believe they and only they are right and do not accept the validity of other views. Such people believe that “there is one proper religion and one proper view of it, and that this view should, exclusively, determine the nature of society and the political economy.” “It is not about a competing view of how society or politics should be governed within a common space where you accept other views are equally valid. It is exclusivist in nature.”

Hilary Clinton has expressed a very similar understanding of extremist religionists, who “define religion in such a way that if you do not believe what they want you to believe, then what you are doing is not practicing religion, because there is only one definition of religion.”

Such views about religion may reflect the secularist Zeitgeist, but they offer a very weak explanation for the challenge of radical Islam. The problem is not that Islamists believe they and only they are right. The problem is all the rest of what they believe.Consider this: Tony Blair himself believes his goal is valid, true and worth fighting for, namely a tolerant, open, democratic society, and the Islamists’ goal of a sharia society is invalid. He does believe that his view should determine the nature of society. Likewise many religious groups believe that they follow the one true religion, including the Catholic Church, which Tony Blair formally joined in 2007: Mother Theresa of Calcutta certainly did not consider alternative religious views equally valid to Catholic dogma. But none of this certainty of belief implies that Tony Blair or Catholics in general are disposed to become terrorists, cut hands off thieves or kill apostates.

Blair’s argument manifests the paradox of tolerance. His vision of a good society is one in which people must respect the views of others as “equally valid”. At the same time he argues that we should disallow and combat Islamism because it is “perverse”. He is asking for Islamism not to be tolerated because it is intolerant. If Blair’s explanation for Islamist nastiness is flawed, what then is the explanation? This takes us back to Islam itself. Does Blair’s position on Islam hold water?

Blair’s arguments for his positive view of Islam are weak. The validity of Islamism does not rest or fall on whether there are pious Muslims who accept or reject it, nor on whether Christians have advocating equally perverse theologies in the past. In the end, Islam as a religion – all mainstream Muslim scholars would agree – is based upon the teachings of the Sunna (the example and teaching of Muhammad) and the Koran. Islam’s religious validity in the eyes of its followers stands and falls on how well it can be justified from those authorities.There are at least three respects in which Islamist ideologies claim strong support from Islam – that is, from the Koran and Muhammad.

One is the intolerance and violence in the Islamic canon. The Koran states “Kill them / the polytheists wherever you can find them (Sura 9:5, 2:191). Muhammad, according to Islamic tradition, said “I have been sent with a sword in my hand to command people to worship Allah and associate no partners with him. I command you to belittle and subjugate those who disobey me …” He also said to his followers in Medina, “Kill any Jew who falls into your power.” Following in Muhammad’s footsteps, one of Muhammad’s most revered companions and successors as leader of the Muslim community, the Caliph Umar, called upon the armies of Islam to fight non-Muslims until they surrender or convert, saying “If they refuse this, it is the sword without leniency.”

It will not do, in the face of many such statements found in the Koran and the traditions of Muhammad, to throw one’s hands up in the air and say there are also bad verses in the Bible. If Jesus Christ had said such things as Muhammad did, Christianity’s political theology would look very different today and medieval Christian Holy War theology – developed initially in response to the Islamic jihad – would have come into being as part of the birth-pangs of the religion, just as the doctrine of the Islamic jihad did in the history of Islam.

Islamist apologists find it relatively easy to win young Muslims over to their cause precisely because they have strong arguments at their disposal from the Koran and Muhammad’s example and teaching. Their threatening ideology is growing in influence because it is so readily supported by substantial religious foundations. Islamism may not be the only interpretation of Islam, but by any objective measure, it is open for Muslims to hold it, given what what is in their canon.

Blair makes a telling over-generalisation when he states that Islamist ideology is an export from the Middle East. Another important source has been the Indian sub-continent. Today Pakistanis today are among the most dynamic apologists for Islamism. Abul A’la Maududi, an Indian (later Pakistani) Islamic teacher and founder of Jamaat-e-Islami was writing powerful texts to radicalise Muslims more than 70 years ago – including his tract Jihad in Islam (first published in 1927). His works remain in widespread use as tools of radicalization by Islamist organisations. Maududi’s theological vision was driven, not by Middle Eastern influences or Saudi petrodollars, but by his life-long study of the Koran and the example of Muhammad. The spiritual DNA of Maududi’s Islamist theology was derived from the Islamic canon itself.

The second point to understand about Islamist ideologies is that the conflation of politics and religion, which is one of Blair’s main objections to Islamism, has always been accepted as normative by the mainstream of Islamic theology. It is orthodox Islam. As Bernard Lewis pointed out, the separation of church and state has been derided by most Muslim thinkers since the origins of Islam: “Separation of church and state was derided in the past by Muslims when they said this is a Christian remedy for a Christian disease. It doesn’t apply to us or to our world.”

The third point about Islamist ideologies is that their vision of a closed society in which non-Muslims are second-class participants is in lock-step with the conservative mainstream of Islamic thought. Here again Bernard Lewis: “It is only very recently that some defenders of Islam began to assert that their society in the past accorded equal status to non-Muslims. No such claim is made by spokesmen for resurgent Islam, and historically there is no doubt that they are right. Traditional Islamic societies neither accorded such equality nor pretended that they were so doing. Indeed, in the old order, this would have been regarded not as a merit but as a dereliction of duty. How could one accord the same treatment to those who follow the true faith and those who willfully reject it? This would be a theological as well as a logical absurdity.” (The Jews of Islam, Princeton University Press, 1987, p.4).

Tony Blair is right to call the world to engage with and reject radical Islamist ideology. This is a defining global challenge of our time. He is also correct to affirm that this ideology is religious. But he is profoundly mistaken to characterize it as un-Islamic. The fallacious arguments he puts forward for distinguishing Islam from Islamism are nothing but flimsy rhetoric. The hard evidence against separating Islamism from Islam is clear, the sentiments of some pious Muslims non-withstanding.

Islamism is a valid interpretation of Islam, not in the sense that it is the only ‘correct’ or ‘true’ one, but because its core tenets find ready and obvious support in the Islamic canon, and they align with core principles of 1400 years of Islamic theology. (To make this observation is not the same thing as saying that all pious Muslims are Islamists!)

Blair is right to call for the West to combat “radical Islam”, but the reason why “radical” is a correct term to use for this ideology is that radical means “of the root,” and Islamist ideas are deeply rooted in Islam itself. Islamism is a radical form of Islam. This explains why the radicalization project has been advancing with such force all over the world.

 

In order to combat radical Islamic views we do need to have a frank and open dialogue about the dynamics of radicalization. Blair is concerned about the damage being caused by denial about Islamism, but he indulges in his own form of blinkered thinking, which is just as unhelpful. He was right to identify Islamist ideology as the soil in which violent jihadi ideologies “inevitably” take root, but fails to identity mainstream Islam itself as the soil in which Islamism develops. In reality the Islamist movement is but the tip of the iceberg of the Islamic movement, a deeper and broader revival of Islam across the whole Muslim world.

When countering radical Islamic ideologies, Western leaders should refrain from putting themselves forward as experts on theology, who are somehow competent to rule on whether a particular interpretation of Islam is valid or “perverse”. There is something ridiculous about secular politicians ruling on which manifestations of Islam are to be judged theologically correct. As Taliban Cleric Abu Qutada once said, “I am astonished by President Bush when he claims there is nothing in the Quran that justifies jihad violence in the name of Islam. Is he some kind of Islamic scholar? Has he ever actually read the Quran?”

Ritual displays of respect for Islam should not be naively used as sugar to coat the pill of opposition to the objectionable beliefs and behaviour of some Muslims. Leaders need to be absolutely clear about what values they stand for, and insist on these values. They should not need to express a theological opinion about what is or is not valid Islam in order to challenge the anti-semitism of Palestinian school textbooks, the denial of basic religious rights to non-Muslim guest workers in Saudi Arabia, incitement against Christians in Egypt, the promotion of female genital mutilation in the name of Islam in the Maldives, or the UK practice of taking child brides.

In this post-secular world, our leaders need to “do God” with less naivety. They need to grasp that the inner pressure they feel to manifest respect for Islam whenever they object to some of its manifestations is itself a symptom of the ideology of dominance which powers the Islamist agenda. They should resist the pressure to mount an apology for Islam. The mullahs can do that.

Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist, pastor of an Anglican church, and an Associate Fellow at the Middle Eastern Forum. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992.

GRU, Spetsnaz and Ukraine

Here are some updates(May 5, 2014) that need to be posted:

1. US F-15 jet intercepted a Russian strategic bomber near Guam. Also drastic increase in Russian air patrols around Japanese islands and Korea.

2. There had been long-range Russian air patrols to the coast of California and a circumnavigation of the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam.

3. US commander in Pacific reports a significant increase in activities by Russian planes and ships in the region.

 

What you don’t know is Putin’s agenda in Ukraine and how it is going down. The GRU Spetsnaz is the elite military intelligence and tactical unit. While some will say it has disbanded, that is not quite accurate. They are in Ukraine today for ‘special purposes’ which is the precise reason Eastern Ukraine is terrified and desperately seeking help from Europe and the West. This is a call where there is a ring but no answer, even VP Joe Biden cant hear it much less the State Department or the White House.

Now this is clearly an insurgency operation in Ukraine designed by the Elite within the Kremlin and it is headed up by a man named Igor Strelkov which is an alias. This man is a known assassin and kidnapper who orchestrated the capture of NATO spies. Strelkov has recruited all Pro-Russian forces for operations in Crimea and Ukraine as well as battle-hardened fighters itching for a nasty confrontation and full takeover of Ukraine. It should be noted that the mayor of Kharkiv, a Jew named Hennady Kernes was shot in the back while cycling. He was transported to Israel for treatment.

Strelkov is part of a disguised warfare mission that Putin originally denied but has since admitted to the Eastern Ukraine occupation. The ‘green men’ as they are being referred to are defected Chechens, paid Russian operatives and Russian military forces while Ukrainian men are being forced into submission to join the insurgency.

 

Spetsnaz

 

The U.S. State Department is well aware of those involved in the insurgency in Eastern Ukraine as NATO and the United States has well placed spies, operatives and media in Ukraine such that the intelligence has reached the United States, NATO and Europe with proven voice recordings, photos and operational objectives.

Translated:

As reported by the press center of the security service of Ukraine, he was a citizen of the Russian Federation spetsnaz GRU, an officer of the General staff of the armed forces of Russia Igor Strelkov.
It was his voice on a recording of a telephone conversation with the curator, published April 14 in the media, where he reports on terror in slovyansk and shooting the car with Ukrainian law-enforcement bodies.
Read takžeMèr gave the Russians captured the city, and residents generally do not support the federalization .
During operatively-investigatory actions previously detained by SBU saboteurs learned Strelkova as human, that they recruited and set a goal to capture the building in Kharkiv.
In early March, he arrived on the territory of Crimea, and coordinated the seizure of the Russian army and the RUSSIAN special forces military units of the armed forces of Ukraine, local authorities and administrative autonomy, the kidnapping of soldiers, activists of NGOs and other citizens of Ukraine and foreigners who were in the Crimea.
In addition, the Shooters recruits citizens of Ukraine for further use in the Organization and carrying out sabotage on the territory of our State.
The saboteur personally gave instructions to citizens of Ukraine “to” and “in” capture and hold the building of the Kharkiv regional State administration, military and law enforcement units to acquire arms in Luhansk region.
15 April the SBU started criminal proceedings on the fact of a citizen of the Russian Federation In premeditated murder and acting to the detriment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine, carrying out subversive activities, as well as organizing mass riots in the eastern regions of our country.

In a recent round of sanctions against Russia, which is for the most toothless, Igor Strelkov is listed as but one name on the sanctions list by the European Union.

Now given the face of the incursion in Crimea and Ukraine, the West has no stomach to take on Russia and so far has responded by delivering MRE’s to Ukraine and doing some joint NATO military exercises in a few Baltic States. The question now is why has the West not collaborated to move Ukraine and Georgia into NATO where Article 5 would in fact have some teeth in response to Putin’s mission to rebuild Russia into a new Soviet Union?