THE SPECTACLE
Senior Reporter Dale Hurd uses his global reporting experience
to uncover trends in the news and share some of the interesting
stories behind the headlines.
january 31, 2006
Eight Jews were wounded a few weeks ago at Moscow's Chabad Synagogue by a knife-wielding attacker described in one press account as an “alienated young loner.” The attack led to a flurry of news reports over fears that hate crimes are growing in Russia.
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january 27, 2006
This is the story I’ve both feared and expected. AP reports that Colombia has dismantled a false passport ring with links to al-Qaida and Hamas terrorists.
The report says “(t)he gang allegedly supplied an unknown number of citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries with false passports and Colombian nationality without them ever stepping foot in the country. The counterfeited passports were then used to facilitate their entry into the United States and Europe.”
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january 19, 2006
Watch for Latin America to become one of America’s top foreign policy problems later this year. On July 2nd, Mexico could elect as president an anti-American, pro-Castro leftist named Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The popular former mayor of Mexico City still leads in the polls, although his lead has shrunk. Add to that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez ...
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january 16, 2006
As the economy gets worse in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez needs more than the U.S. to blame for his nation’s problems, so he’s begun to scapegoat the Jews.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center has condemned Chavez’ comments in a Christmas Eve speech to the nation in which he said that “…some minorities (read “Jews”), descendants of those who crucified Christ…a minority took the world's riches for themselves.''
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january 13, 2006
Some Muslim “leaders” are miffed about news reports that ever since 9/11 the feds have been secretly monitoring mosques for traces of nuclear radiation. The New York Times reported that, “F.B.I. officials met with Muslim and Arab-American leaders on Wednesday in an effort to dispel anger and concern over the bureau's secret monitoring of radiation levels at Muslim sites around the country.”
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january 9, 2006
The Intelligence Summit, a terrorism research center connected to several important U.S. intelligence figures, says it will release audio tapes next week of Saddam Hussein talking about his Weapons of Mass Destruction. Its news release says “A former military intelligence analyst, who currently works as a civilian contractor, believes he has found a cache of extremely confidential--and very shocking--audio recordings of Saddam Hussein's office meetings. The audiotapes, which had apparently been overlooked, were found in a warehouse along with many other untranslated Iraqi intelligence files. These tapes are extremely significant, since they may be the best evidence yet of Saddam's secret intentions concerning weapons of mass destruction.”
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january 4, 2006
The death of Europe feels trapped in an abstract realm until the reality of it slaps you across the face. I’ve reported plenty on the subject in its various manifestations from different European capitals, but sometimes I have to ask myself if I’m exaggerating the severity of the crisis. After all, the United States continues to defy the prophets of doom, who seem to pop up in European news reports on a regular basis, by the way. And Europe is rich and modern like the U.S., so I tell myself surely it must be flexible and adaptable enough to survive.
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December 14, 2005
The Chinese military continues to hack into the Pentagon’s computer network. But what’s more interesting is the White House response--none.
AFP, the French News Agency, quoted Alan Paller of the SANS Institute, as saying the attacks have been traced to the Chinese province of Guangdong, and the hacking has all the signs of an ongoing military operation.
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december 13, 2005
The European elite, which sides with convicted murderers over their victims when it comes to the right to life, is outraged over California's execution of Stanley Tookie Williams. Politicians in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's native Austria have called for his name to be removed from a sports stadium in his hometown. A Christian political group went even further, suggesting the stadium be renamed the "Stanley Tookie Williams Stadium."
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August 8,
2005
Let’s
begin, shall we?
1. We admitted we were powerless over our hatred of (INSERT
George W. Bush HERE) –and that our (INSERT “thinking,
logic, and strategic vision” HERE) had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves
could restore us to sanity.
Power? Oops. The recovery effort begins to break down
at this point, since many of the Bush haters in Europe
and America don’t believe in a power higher than
the human mind. But hey, I was concerned enough to try
to help them.
More...
August 4,
2005
Worldnetdaily.com
has been running a series of articles that claim that
al-Qaeda already has nuclear weapons inside the U.S. and
is waiting to detonate them.
Joseph Farah writes, “At least two fully assembled
and operational nuclear weapons are believed to be hidden
in the United States already..."
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August 4,
2005
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is in the midst
of a potentially embarrassing
defamation suit that it filed against Andrew Whitehead
of Anti-CAIR. Anti-CAIR
is well, anti-CAIR, and accuses America’s most vocal
Islamic organization of ties to terror, something a lot
of people have done.
More...
august 2,
2005
The hands down winner for the category of he’d
be hilariously funny if he weren’t so dangerous
has to go to Venezuela’s aspiring maximum dictator
Hugo Chavez. During his presidency, many a Venezuelan
has uttered the words el hombre está loco.
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August 1,
2005
The London bombings and the Fatwa issued last week in
this country against suicide bombings (see
my July 28 entry) continue to emit all manner of intellectual
fallout.
Terror expert Steven Emerson writes:
"…the fatwa is bogus. Nowhere does
it condemn the Islamic extremism ideology that has spawned
Islamic terrorism. It does not renounce nor even acknowledge
the existence of an Islamic jihadist culture that has
permeated mosques and young Muslims around the world."
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july 28, 2005
There is a buzz among terror experts that the U.S could
be the next address for a suicide bombing, and Muslim
leaders here fear the backlash. Speaking to CAIR spokesman
Ibrahim Hooper a few months ago for a different story,
he basically told me that all bets are off if there were
ever another major attack on the United States by Muslim
Terrorists. The phrase “internment camps”
was discussed.
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july 27, 2005
At the six-nation nuclear disarmament talks in Beijing
today the U.S. told North Korea to dream on after
Pyongyang demanded that we end our nuclear defense of
South Korea as a precondition for negotiations over the
North’s rogue nuclear program. Watch now for the
predictable North Korean propaganda folderol about drowning
us in a “sea of fire” or something.
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july 26, 2005
For years, a confidential U.S. military source has told
me repeatedly what has since become conventional wisdom:
Osama bin Laden has been living across the border
from Afghanistan in the mountains of Pakistan, and he
has eluded capture with the assistance of Pakistan’s
military.
His lair is a high altitude location that can be assaulted
only by dropping commandoes from aircraft. The rugged
terrain and high altitude environment would make such
an assault an extremely difficult task. But my source
says the biggest factor preventing the nabbing of
bin Laden is that it would have to be a secret incursion
into Pakistani territory without Pakistan’s knowledge.
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july 21, 2005
Where are
all the Brits who used to make fun of the al- Qaeda threat?
They seem to have disappeared. Would it be a cheap shot
for me to bring up the fact that right up to the first London
Bombing, the British left and its allies, radical Muslims--including
those who say they oppose terror but who want to make Britain
an Islamic state-- were saying that the terrorism threat
and the war on terror was a White House-created fantasy
to facilitate the expansion of the American empire?
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july 20, 2005
Below I wrote of the possibility we could be paying a
lot less for gasoline next year. But there’s also
a nightmare scenario...
As you may have heard, the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia
is warning that another terror attack on westerners
inside the Kingdom might be in the works.
But some terror analysts still await the “big one”—
a terror strike against Saudi Arabia’s huge oil
pipeline network. The pipeline is heavily guarded
and not easy to hit, but there are 10,000 miles of it.
More...
july 20, 2005
Hitting a Chinese Wall?
There are continuing rumblings that China’s
economy will go into the tank big time in 2006, which
would mean less energy demand worldwide. How might
this help the Republicans? Because a major cooling
in China’s overheated economy, along with an expected
increase in oil production and more stability in Iraq,
would drive down oil prices sharply, to levels not
seen for years, which in turn could rev up the
U.S economy during an election cycle and help
the GOP.
More...
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