Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

UN Envoy Hints Failure to Strike Peace Deal Would Spell End for PA
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily NewsJpost
Categories: Today's Headlines;Peace Process

The United Nations' representative to the recently resumed peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority suggested in a radio interview on Sunday that failure to clinch an agreement that would pave the way for the establishment of a Palestinian state would lead to the disintegration of the interim government in Ramallah.

In remarks broadcast on Israel Radio, Robert Serry said that the urgency of the hour gives him hope that both sides will approach this latest round of negotiations with greater willingness to make progress.

"There is a growing realization on both sides that it is important for them to make meaningful progress and to make these talks not just another round of talks," Serry told Israel Radio.

"I think it is also a time for both sides to make tough decisions," he said. "If there is a willingness to do this, then I believe this goal [of a final status agreement] can be reached within six to nine months."

Nonetheless, Serry warned that yet another collapse of the peace process would cast a heavy pall over the political future of PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

"President Abbas has already been, for a long time, the leader of what is considered to be the more moderate wing of the Palestinian movement which is committed to a two-state solution," Serry told Israel Radio. "Another failure will have consequences for him."

"But the very reason that in my view the consequences for both sides will be pretty serious if this fails again gives me hope that they will be serious in this US-led effort to return to meaningful negotiations."

The 63-year-old Dutch diplomat says that peace is all the more imperative since the current governmental infrastructure that has taken root in the West Bank will no longer have legitimacy if it is not seen as a way station toward a Palestinian state.

"If this state-building remains without a credible political horizon, that cannot just continue endlessly, and that is why the resumption of talks at this point is so important," he said.

"These institutions have been built up. If their ultimate meaning, which is to be the foundation stones of a Palestinian state, becomes a total illusion, then we should not take their continued existence for granted. It should be clear to anyone."

New Fears Syria May Launch Cyberstrike in Retaliation
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily Newswashingtontimes.com
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Syria and its ally Iran have been building cyberattack capabilities for years and soon might have a chance to use their skills in a hot war for the first time.

Former U.S. officials and cybersecurity scholars say Syria has a demonstrated cyberattack capability and could retaliate against anticipated Western military strikes against Syria for its suspected chemical weapons attack against civilians in the country’s 2-year-old civil war.

“It’s foreseeable that Syrian state-sponsored or state-sympathetic hackers could seek to retaliate” against U.S., Israeli or Western interests, Michael Chertoff, a former secretary of Homeland Security, told The Washington Times on Wednesday.

“We have already seen regional cyberactors, such as the Syrian Electronic Army, conduct attacks on U.S. targets,” added Rep. James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Democrat and a member of the House Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The Syrian Electronic Army has successfully attacked computer networks used by U.S. media outlets — hacking the Twitter account of The Associated Press this year and mostly knocking The New York Times website offline for 20 hours Tuesday and Wednesday.

Attackers penetrated the company that manages the paper’s Internet domain, NYTimes.com, according to reports in the computer security trade press.

Hackers can relatively easily hide their tracks from all but the most extensive and time-consuming forensic efforts, but the Syrian Electronic Army has publicly claimed these attacks. In online postings, the group of hacker activists, or “hacktivists,” claim to be motivated by Syrian patriotism and to act independently of the regime in Damascus.

“It can be difficult to distinguish between hackers who are sympathetic to a regime and those directly [state] sponsored or controlled,” said Mr. Chertoff, co-founder and chairman of the Chertoff Group, a global security advisory firm.

Islamic hackers whom U.S. officials have linked to Iran have launched a series of increasingly powerful cyberattacks against the websites of major U.S. banks for almost a year.

Large U.S. financial institutions probably have the best cybersecurity of any nongovernmental entity, yet their websites have been driven offline by repeated attacks.

A self-described hacktivist group called Izad din al Qassam has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which they announce in advance.

The group says the attacks are designed to punish the United States for an Internet video, “Innocence of Muslims,” made by an Egyptian-American Coptic Christian, which portrays Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as a killer and pedophile. The Obama administration tried to blame the video for the terrorist attack last year at a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

But the kind of cyberattack that most alarms national security specialists took place a year ago and was aimed at the Saudi Arabian state oil company, Aramco.

A virus called Shamoon infected the company’s computer network and wiped data from more than 30,000 computers, effectively destroying all the information on the system.

A similar attack on a bank could destroy digital records of customer accounts.

Hackers also have demonstrated that they could take over computer control systems that operate chemical, electrical and water and sewage treatment plants. They also can hack into transportation networks.

“An aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” Leon E. Panetta, then CIA director, warned in a speech in New York last year.

“They could contaminate the water supply in major cities or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”

Specialists doubt that the Syrian Electronic Army has that kind of advanced capability, but it is always hard to tell, said Timothy Sample, who is a vice president at technology contractor Battelle Inc., which does cybersecurity work for U.S. intelligence and defense agencies and civilian clients.

“The barriers to entry for these kinds of capabilities are very low,” he said, adding that it is easy to buy cyberattack tools and hire hackers on the black market.
“It would be dangerous to rely on the proposition that any given attacker lacks a particular skill,” Mr. Sample added.

Cyberforensic specialists have documented the Syrian Electronic Army’s historic links to a computer society founded years ago by Syrian President Bashar Assad. The British Guardian newspaper has reported that the group is funded by Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Mr. Assad’s and the owner of SyriaTel, a telecommunications and Internet service provider.

Front groups such as the Syrian Electronic Army still provide states with so-called plausible deniability, Mr. Chertoff said.

“Even if it is evident that Syria is behind an attack, they can deny it. We saw that in Estonia,” he said.

In 2007, in the midst of a bitter diplomatic dispute between Estonia and Russia, the small Baltic nation suffered a series of huge cyberattacks that knocked banks, government websites and other vital infrastructure offline. The attacks came from Internet addresses in Russia and were coordinated on public bulletin boards run by hackers and nationalist groups, but the Russian government denied any involvement.

Mr. Chertoff said U.S. policymakers were used to such dilemmas.

“There are often times we know [who has attacked us], but we can’t publicly prove it without revealing intelligence sources and methods. You have to decide whether to act on the basis of evidence you cannot reveal,” he said.

Any U.S. response to a Syrian attack might well not be visible, said Adam M. Segal, a cybersecurity scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. Cyber Command has said it has the ability reach back into attackers’ networks and “prevent these [kinds of] attacks from their source,” said Mr. Segal, “essentially doing defense through offense.”

Cyberattacks are now “an integral part of modern warfare,” said Mr. Langevin, who has led efforts in Congress to pass legislation designed to shore up the nation’s cyberdefenses.

“This is going to be a lingering problem,” Mr. Chertoff said.

Let the Headlines Speak
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Satellite imagery shows North Korea expanding rocket launch site
New satellite imagery shows North Korea is conducting major new construction to expand facilities at a launch site from where it fired a rocket into orbit last December, a US research institute has said. The work at the west coast site of Sohae, near the northern border with China, includes what could be a new launch pad for testing mobile ballistic missiles.  

Syria: John Kerry slaps Britain in face as he calls France 'oldest allies'
John Kerry delivers diplomatic slap in the face to Britain, failing to mention them among list of supporters and referring to France as "oldest allies". John Kerry administered a diplomatic slap in the face to Britain following David Cameron's withdrawal of military support for intervention in Syria, omitting the UK from a long list of 'friends' prepared to support US actions against the Assad regime.  

UN weapons inspectors leave Syria earlier than planned
UN weapons experts left Syria earlier than planned this morning, paving the way for a possible US strike after Washington concluded the regime was responsible for last week's deadly chemical attack. The 13 inspectors, led by Ake Sellstrom, brought forward their departure from 7am on Saturday to 4am, despite travel being considered dangerous around that time.  

Obama: Sex Ed for Kindergartners ‘Is the Right Thing to Do’
The Chicago Public Schools this year are mandating that the district’s kindergarten classes include sex education, fulfilling a proposal President Barack Obama supported in 2003... To further clarify Obama’s position on sex ed...Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS)...curriculum suggested discussing same-sex relationships—in non-graphic terms--with kindergartners.  

South American countries gripped by snow
Unusually cold weather and snow in parts of South America have affected thousands of people in several countries. The cold spell has killed at least seven people in Peru, four in Bolivia and two in Paraguay. In the latter, the authorities blamed the weather for the death of more than 5,000 cattle too.  

Russia's Vladimir Putin challenges US on Syria claims
Russian President Vladimir Putin has challenged the US to present to the UN evidence that Syria was responsible for chemical weapons attacks. Mr Putin said it would be "utter nonsense" for Syria's government to provoke opponents with such attacks when it was in a position of strength.  

Syrian official to AFP: US to attack at any moment
According to Israel Radio, Kuwaiti press quotes sources in the Gulf as saying that Washington will launch strikes against Syria from bases in Turkey and Cyprus. Syria anticipates a US military attack "at any moment," a security official is quoted as telling AFP on Saturday, just hours after UN investigators probing an alleged chemical weapons attack by pro-government forces left the country.

Jerusalem Church Continues Bold Stand Despite Arson Attack
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today - Ryan Jones
Categories: Today's Headlines;Persecution

Pastor Steven Khoury of Calvary Church is determined to continue taking a bold stand for the Gospel despite sometimes violent opposition, including a recent arson attack against the church's building in the eastern Jerusalem Arab suburb of Shuafat.

Khoury had just returned from one of his many speaking engagements abroad when church elders urgently notified him of the attack.

"Pastor, we finished our youth revival meeting. Sunday evening a big fire was intentionally started attacking the front and sides of Calvary Church building," an elder frantically explained over the phone. "The fire department in Jerusalem brought two large fire trucks which caught the fire in time before burning up our church building, playground and our church vehicle."

What's worse, none of the church's neighbors bothered to notify Khoury or his staff about the fire, another indication that his actively evangelistic ministry is unwelcome in the area.

It's not that many of the church's neighbors didn't care, but, as the elder explained, "because of our standing firm in being a lighthouse and teaching Jesus many will not say anything of fear of physical attacks on them, there children or property."

Shuafat has long been a flash point of conflict, and Israeli rescue forces and police typically avoid the neighborhood for fear of sparking a violent response.

This is where Khoury and his team are working to share the love of Yeshua. And their troubles did not begin with the arson attack.

The church continues to operate out of temporary facilities, and landlords are becoming increasingly hesitant to rent to these Christians. In fact, Calvary Church was recently notified that at any time it could be told to vacate its current premises.

The church is now seeking the funds to purchase its own building. A suitable building has already been located, and, as Khoury explained, "This opportunity is a miracle as the Lord lead us to the ONLY Muslim willing to sell to us. By selling to us he is actually risking much, the only way we can explain his willingness to sell is that the Holy Spirit is leading him."

While the new building would prevent the church from ever being evicted, it could become even more of a target for attack. In fact, Khoury has every intention of letting his light shine even brighter. "What an opportunity to be a lighthouse in between two of the largest Arab Muslim towns outside of East Jerusalem," he told Israel Today. "Calvary is already providing people in the community with the rare opportunity to hear and learn about Jesus."

While the church's current circumstances would deter most, Pastor Khoury remains resolute. "We will continue enduring because we believe what we are doing is reviving the church in the city where it all began."

Golan Druze Prefer Israel to Syria
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily NewsIsrael Today - Aviel Schneider
Categories: Today's Headlines;The Nation Of Israel

In the shadow of the raging Syrian civil war, the 20,000 Druze who live in the Golan Heights are finally admitting publicly that they prefer life under Israeli sovereignty.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War, and annexed the strategic plateau in 1981. All during that time, the Golan Druze leaned more anti-Israel for fear they would one day find themselves again under Syrian sovereignty.

At numerous points, the West tried to broker peace talks that would see Israel surrender the Golan to Syria in return for peace. The precedent was set with Egypt and the Sinai, and the Druze feared their fate would be similar. Had they dared to openly align with Israel during those years, they knew the Assad regime would respond harshly if it ever regained the Golan.

Now, after 32 years under Israeli rule, the Druze are taking a more pro-Israel stance, even on camera.

Harel Locker, a senior Israeli government official, was recently invited by prominent Druze leaders to visit the main Golan Druze town of Majdal Shams. Among those welcoming the Israeli was local spiritual leader Sheikh Taher Abu Salah.

The Druze asked Israel to allow entry to those of their family members who had, for various reasons, moved back to Syria over the past few decades. They realize now that Israel is the only place they and their families can be truly safe and free to live their lives without persecution.

"The last visit of an Israeli politician to a Druze village in the Golan was in the mid-80s," an Druze leader told Israeli radio. "The politician was Shimon Peres, and he was driven out of town by people hurling eggs. Locker's visit marks a dramatic turnaround."

Egyptians Bewildered Over U.S. Support for Muslim Brotherhood
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily Newsgatestoneinstitute.org
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The Egyptian people are astounded. They simply do not understand the Obama Administration's efforts to bring the Muslim Brotherhood back to power.

In an effort to make some sense of the Obama Administration's policies, Amr Adeeb, a prominent Egyptian commentator, argues that the U.S. is helping the Muslim Brotherhood to achieve power, in order to turn Egypt into a magnet for jihadist fighters. The goal, Adeeb states, is to turn Egypt into another Syria or Afghanistan and discredit Islamism as a viable political movement.

To Westerners, this may seem like a bizarre conspiracy theory, but for Egyptians it helps explain why the U.S. government is supporting an organization that has openly declared jihad against the West, engaged in threats of war with Israel and Ethiopia, demolished dozens of ancient historic churches, set hospitals on fire, and murdered Christians in the streets. 

The Muslim Brotherhood has no respect for the rule of law, but the Obama Administration treats the Egyptian military that removed the group from power as a threat to democracy itself.

The fact is, the Ikhwan (as the Muslim Brotherhood is called in Arabic) engaged in some pretty undemocratic behavior in the election that brought it to power in June 2012. Morsi lied about his background, telling voters he worked for NASA when he did no such thing. 

He falsely promised to spend $200 billion on an Egyptian renaissance only to say, once he was elected, that it was just an idea. He bribed voters with cooking oil, sugar, and medicine. On the day of the election, with threats of violence, the Muslim Brotherhood stopped thousands of Coptic Christians from voting. 

Further, in a little known aspect of the election, many voters complained of receiving ballots that had already been marked in Morsi's favor.

Egyptians were willing to overlook these irregularities in hopes that Morsi would bring order and stability to their country. They hoped he would follow through on his promise to build a modern Egypt; create jobs, and put together and inclusive government and constitution. They hoped he would honor his promise to spend $200 billion on repairing Egypt's infrastructure as part of an Islamic "Renaissance Project."

Instead, Morsi worked systematically to dismantle the institutions of a 7,000 year-old country. He gathered his cronies to speak openly, on national television, of destabilizing Ethiopia in a fight over the use of water from the Upper Nile River.

Morsi also straightforwardly stated that he was recreating an Islamic "Caliphate." He pardoned and freed hard-line Islamists -- including Anwar Sadat's killers -- and allowed them to have an Islamic political party, contrary to the constitution, which bans religious parties. When Morsi spoke to audiences, hard-line Islamists sat in the front row, demonstrating that these people were his political base.

To buttress the support of this base, Morsi released members of Gamaa al-Islamiyya, founded by the "Blind Sheikh," Omar Abdel-Rahman, who attempted the first World Trade Center attack. This group, considered a terrorist organization by the United States, killed over 60 tourists in Luxor in 1997. 

That history did not stop Morsi from appointing one of its members governor of Luxor, over the objection of local residents who are dependent on tourism for their livelihood. Nor did it stop him from assigning another member of this group as Minister of Culture. With these decisions, Morsi delivered a final blow to Egypt's tourism industry.

And if people are not even willing to visit Egypt, how will they invest in the country?

The Muslim Brotherhood, however, apparently does not want tourists from the West, even though they have been an important source of hard currency for decades. It seems Sheik Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, an ultraconservative Islamist and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had asked Morsi to not allow Western tourists into Egypt, and to replace them with tourists from Muslim countries.

Life under the rule of Morsi became impossible. For Egyptians, shortages of food, water, electricity, and medicine became the norm. In response, Morsi appeared on TV to ask for more time, another 10 or 15 years.

As Morsi started driving his country into a civilizational ditch, some of the passengers rebelled. A grassroots movement called "Tamarud" ("Rebellion") mobilized over 30 million people, who took over the streets of Egypt, and called for the removal of Morsi and his radical government. 

Their legitimate goal was to take the steering wheel from a group of madmen who wanted to bring about famine and take Egypt back to the dark ages. To prevent a civil war, the Egyptian army removed Morsi and installed an interim government with the support of Al-Azhar University, the most respected Islamic authority in Sunni Islam; the El Nour Party (an ultraconservative group); the Coptic Church, and a number of secular parties.

Predictably, the Muslim Brotherhood responded with threats and violence, especially targeting the Christians of Egypt. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood shot a 10-year-old Christian girl in the streets as she returned home from church. They beheaded a Christian merchant, shot a priest in Sinai and marched Franciscan Nuns in the streets like war prisoners. 

They burned Christian business, homes, and churches, especially the ancient churches in Upper Egypt. Their goal was to terrorize Christians and erase all of evidence of Egypt's Christian past. Apparently, destroying the country's hope for the future was not enough.

Islamists also massacred officers and soldiers from the armed forces and the police. Mohamed Beltagy, an Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood politician, stated in a televised interview that violence would stop when Mohammed Morsi was reinstated as the president of Egypt.

Many Egyptian are asking: Why are the West and United States insisting on supporting the Muslim Brotherhood in the name of democracy? It was the same type of "democracy" -- merely an election, which is only a small part of a democracy -- that brought Hitler to power in Germany and Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip. If Hamas is outlawed in the West, why isn't the Muslim Brotherhood?

What many Egyptians cannot understand is: Why is the U.S. Administration siding with the forces of oppression in their country and assisting with its transformation into a failed state under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood? These conditions all run contrary to American interests.

In the Middle East, a strong economy, military, and police are the cornerstones of stability. Egypt was the first Arab nation to choose the path of peace with Israel. Egypt is the nerve system of the Arab and the Islamic world. The U.S. has a strong interest in a stable, modern, and prosperous Egypt. It simply cannot be allowed to become another Somalia or Afghanistan, controlled by its own version of the Taliban.

Could North America Survive Without the Grid? – November Simulation to Prepare for Unthinkable Re
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily NewsThe New York Times
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

The electric grid, as government and private experts describe it, is the glass jaw of American industry. If an adversary lands a knockout blow, they fear, it could black out vast areas of the continent for weeks; interrupt supplies of water, gasoline, diesel fuel and fresh food; shut down communications; and create disruptions of a scale that was only hinted at by Hurricane Sandy and the attacks of Sept. 11. 

This is why thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, F.B.I. antiterrorism experts and officials from government agencies in the United States, Canada and Mexico are preparing for an emergency drill in November that will simulate physical attacks and cyberattacks that could take down large sections of the power grid. 

They will practice for a crisis unlike anything the real grid has ever seen, and more than 150 companies and organizations have signed up to participate. 

“This is different from a hurricane that hits X, Y and Z counties in the Southeast and they have a loss of power for three or four days,” said the official in charge of the drill, Brian M. Harrell of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known as NERC. “We really want to go beyond that.” 

One goal of the drill, called GridEx II, is to explore how governments would react as the loss of the grid crippled the supply chain for everyday necessities. 

“If we fail at electricity, we’re going to fail miserably,” Curt Hébert, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said at a recent conference held by the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

Mr. Harrell said that previous exercises were based on the expectation that electricity “would be up and running relatively quick” after an attack. 

Now, he said, the goal is to “educate the federal government on what their expectations should or shouldn’t be.” The industry held a smaller exercise two years ago in which 75 utilities, companies and agencies participated, but this one will be vastly expanded and will be carried out in a more anxious mood. 

Most of the participants will join the exercise from their workplaces, with NERC, in Washington, announcing successive failures. One example, organizers say, is a substation break-in that officials initially think is an attempt to steal copper. But instead, the intruder uses a USB drive to upload a virus into a computer network. 

The drill is part of a give-and-take in the past few years between the government and utilities that has exposed the difficulties of securing the electric system. 

The grid is essential for almost everything, but it is mostly controlled by investor-owned companies or municipal or regional agencies. Ninety-nine percent of military facilities rely on commercial power, according to the White House. 

The utilities play down their abilities, in comparison with the government’s. “They have the intelligence operation, the standing army, the three-letter agencies,” said Scott Aaronson, senior director of national security policy at the Edison Electric Institute, the trade association of investor-owned utilities. “We have the grid operations expertise.” 

That expertise involves running 5,800 major power plants and 450,000 miles of high-voltage transmission lines, monitored and controlled by a staggering mix of devices installed over decades. Some utilities use their own antique computer protocols and are probably safe from hacking — what the industry calls “security through obscurity.” 

But others rely on Windows-based control systems that are common to many industries. Some of them run on in-house networks, but computer security experts say they are not confident that all the connections to the public Internet have been discovered and secured. 

Many may be vulnerable to software — known as malware — that can disable the systems or destroy their ability to communicate, leaving their human operators blind about the positions of switches, the flows of current and other critical parameters. Experts say a sophisticated hacker could also damage hard-to-replace equipment. 

In an effort to draw utilities and the government closer, the industry recently established the Electricity Sub-Sector Coordinating Council, made up of high-level executives, to meet with federal officials. The first session is next month. 

Preparation for the November drill comes as Congress is debating laws that could impose new standards to protect the grid from cyberattacks, but many in the industry, some of whom would like such rules, doubt that they can pass. 

The drill is also being planned as conferences, studies and even works of fiction are raising near-apocalyptic visions of catastrophes involving the grid. 

A National Academy of Sciences report last year said that terrorists could cause broad hardship for months with physical attacks on hard-to-replace components. An emerging effort led in part by R. James Woolsey, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is gearing up to pressure state legislatures to force utilities to protect equipment against an electromagnetic pulse, which could come from solar activity or be caused by small nuclear weapons exploded at low altitude, frying crucial components. 

An attack using an electromagnetic pulse is laid out in extensive detail in the novel “One Second After,” published in 2009 and endorsed by Newt Gingrich. In another novel, “Gridlock,” published this summer and co-written by Byron L. Dorgan, the former senator from North Dakota, a rogue Russian agent working for Venezuela and Iran helps hackers threaten the grid. In the preface, Mr. Dorgan says such an attack could cause 10,000 times as much devastation as the terrorists’ strikes on Sept. 11, 2001. 

Despite the growing anxiety, the government and the private sector have had trouble coordinating their grid protection efforts. The utility industry argues that the government has extensive information on threats but keeps it classified. Government officials concede the problem, and they have suggested that some utility executives get security clearances. 

But with hundreds of utilities and thousands of executives, it cannot issue such clearances fast enough. And the industry would like to be instantly warned when the government identifies Internet servers that are known to be sources of malware. 

Another problem is that the electric system is so tightly integrated that a collapse in one spot, whether by error or intent, can set off a cascade, as happened in August 2003, when a power failure took a few moments to spread from Detroit to New York. 

Sometimes utility engineers and law enforcement officials also seem to speak different languages. In his book “Protecting Industrial Control Systems From Electronic Threats,” Joseph Weiss, an engineer and cybersecurity expert, recounted a meeting between electrical engineers and the F.B.I. in 2008. When an F.B.I. official spoke at length about I.E.D.’s, he was referring to improvised explosive devices, but to the engineers the abbreviation meant intelligent electronic devices. 

And experts fear government-sponsored hacking. Michael V. Hayden, another former C.I.A. director, speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center conference, said that the Stuxnet virus, which disabled some of Iran’s centrifuges for enriching uranium, might invite retaliation. 

“In a time of peace, someone just used a cyberweapon to destroy another nation’s critical infrastructure,” he said. “Ouch.”

Beware Al - Jazeera Coming to America
Aug 31st, 2013
Daily Newsgatestoneinstitute.org
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

Al-Jazeera is "breaking in with something we think is unique, and are confident, with our guts and some research, that the American people are looking for," according to its America's president Kate O'Brian. 

If she is claiming "guts" and "research" are among the qualities sought by American viewers, she may be right, although what puts Al-Jazeera uniquely in a position to provide either is unclear. In a Time.com article, Al-Jazeera political analyst Marwan Bishara worried that it would become "too American," with too many American accents and "watered down" journalism – hardly the stuff of unique "guts."

The real concern for American viewers is not the quality of the product on the screen, but rather two mostly hidden issues: the government behind the network, and the difference between Al-Jazeera's Arabic and English versions.

To Americans, Al-Jazeera purports to be the equivalent of CNN or Fox or MSNBC – an independent purveyor of news. Yes, Americans know that most media leans left and a little bit of it leans right, but the networks themselves are generally free of government manipulation.

Al-Jazeera, however, is a wholly owned arm of the Government of Qatar. The State Department describes Qatar as "an hereditary constitutional monarchy governed by the ruling Al Thani family in consultation with a council of ministers, an appointed advisory council, and an elected municipal council." [In other words, a dictatorship, and the switch from the elder Al Thani last month to his son this month may be no change at all.]

This is not CNN, but Pravda; not Fox, but Izvestia. When Americans watched Soviet propaganda masquerading as news during the Cold War, they were aware of its source and aware of its biases toward communism and against free markets and free systems. The British government openly and proudly owns the BBC, and while the corporation's mandate is "to provide impartial public service broadcasting," viewers know what they're measuring against.

What should viewers know about Qatar that might impact how Al-Jazeera covers news?

First, Qatar is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. The elder Emir was the first head of state to visit Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the Brotherhood and an entry on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. While there, he offered Hamas $450 million. 

Separately, Qatar announced a $1 billion "Heritage Fund" to "protect the Arabic and Islamic heritage of Jerusalem." Apparently there is no Jewish heritage in the city needing "protection." Qatar funded Libyan rebels, many of whom were al Qaeda-related and who followed battle in Libya with the war in Mali. 

Qatar, in conjunction with Brotherhood-leaning Turkey, has spent $1-3 billion on Syrian rebels, with concerns that some part of more than 70 plane-loads of Qatari-supplied weapons found their way into the hands of the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra as well as Muslim Brotherhood forces.

Crucially, during the Egyptian upheaval, Al-Jazeera has been understood to be on the Brotherhood's side against the al-Sisi government. In July, 22 Al-Jazeera Cairo staff members quit, accusing the station of "airing lies and misleading viewers." 

Former anchor Karem Mahmoud said there was "biased coverage" and "the management in Doha provokes sedition among the Egyptian people and has an agenda against Egypt and other Arab countries." He added that the channel's management instructed the staff to favor the Brotherhood.

To make its own preferred political point, Al-Jazeera has stooped to the sort of phony journalism that has characterized coverage of supposed Hamas injuries in Gaza. On Tuesday, Al-Jazeera ran a clip of a Morsi supporter with a bandage around his head and a blood-soaked compress on his stomach. 

The "patient," however, forgot to let the local medic in on the scam, and as the bloody gauze is taken away and the bloody shirt lifted to treat the wound, there simply is no wound. The "patient" then lifts his leg and shoves the attendant away, irritated. The clip has more than 2.2 million hits on YouTube.

The second problem is that Al-Jazeera in English is not Al-Jazeera in Arabic. Historian Harold Rhode explains:

They… have completely separate staffs and editorial policies. Al-Jazeera in English is not particularly anti-Western and has interesting content. Al-Jazeera in Arabic is viciously anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and incites its viewers to fight the West. Al-Jazeera English was created to pacify Western governments, who are lulled into believing that since both stations have the same name, they must air the same material.

After 9-11, Fouad Ajami wrote, "Day in and day out, Al Jazeera deliberately fans the flames of Muslim outrage." Anti-Semitic cartoons on the network would not pass muster anywhere in the United States.

This may seem less weighty than the issue of state ownership, but it goes to the core of journalistic integrity – of which Al-Jazeera has none. Americans generally do not speak Arabic and will not watch the Arabic version. It is a lie by omission to let Americans think that the harmless – or even interesting – programming they see is the same that is seen by millions of Arabic speakers, when in fact, Al-Jazeera promotes calumnies and hatreds against us and against our friends, and promotes incitement to terror.

Journalist Oren Kessler, postulated the network in English would have three choices:

To continue its present gambit of declaring a common "vision" with its parent channel while hoping the latter's indiscretions somehow do not reflect poorly on itself… to pressure that same out-of-control kin to pull its act together, lest it once again cast doubt on the character of both… (or) to categorically and unequivocally cut its own cord.

Unfortunately, there is a fourth. Al-Jazeera may simply continue to be the two-faced propaganda organ of a dictator who supports the Muslim Brotherhood, telling lies in Arabic and another story in English; increasing its anti-American, anti-Christian and anti-Semitic view of the world, and fomenting violence in the Middle East and the Arab world.

Only the level of American viewership will determine Al-Jazeera's future.