"The Whistle-Blower Who Freed Dreyfus"- died 100 years ago today- from Robert Harris in The N.Y. Times

Essential reading from author, Robert Harris, in NY Times op/ed: 

The Opinion Pages|OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

The Whistle-Blower Who Freed Dreyfus

By ROBERT HARRISJAN. 17, 2014

Unlike his 21st-century counterparts Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, Picquart was neither a disaffected nor a junior figure in the organization he was to expose. On the contrary: In October 1894 he was a brilliant, rising army officer. One of his steppingstones to advancement had been a professorship at the École Supérieure de Guerre, and one of the officer-cadets he had taught there was a Jewish artillery captain, Alfred Dreyfus.

KINTBURY, England — Georges Picquart died 100 years ago this Saturday. To which the response from most quarters is likely to be “Georges who?” Even in his native France, his centenary is passing largely unremarked. Yet in the days of Queen Victoria and Theodore Roosevelt, Picquart was a figure of global controversy, revered and reviled in equal measure as the world’s most famous whistle-blower.

Picquart, like many of his contemporaries, was casually anti-Semitic. It came as no surprise to him when Dreyfus — the only Jew on the general staff — was suspected of passing secret intelligence to the Germans. It was Picquart who provided a sample of Dreyfus’s handwriting to the investigators. And when expert analysis seemed to confirm Dreyfus’s guilt, it was Picquart who met his unsuspecting former pupil in the Ministry of War so he could be quietly bundled off to prison.

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Robert Harris is the author of a forthcoming novel about Georges Picquart, “An Officer and a Spy.”  Read original article.

Obama advertises his country’s tendency toward subjugating its own best interests to appease its enemies in the jihadi world

Obama bungles his Osama opportunity by Kevin Libin in Canada's National Post

There’s no way around it: Barack Obama has taken the greatest public relations triumph of his presidency and ruined it. Not completely ruined it, no: the take-out of Osama bin Laden, America’s public enemy number one is too big an achievement to be completely undone by the president’s ham-handed handling of the aftermath. But he’s done an admirable job of taking the shine off of one of his nation’s most gloried moments by turning Americans’ attention from celebrating together to arguing over a couple of photographs and whether or not a crack team of Navy SEALs were merciful enough in their treatment of one of history’s most notorious mass murderers.

It’s worse than that, actually. He’s also advertised his country’s tendency toward subjugating its own best interests to appease its enemies in the jihadi world. . . .

Washington isn’t trying to sap the morale of North Americans; it’s trying to undermine the allure of jihad for those who might be tempted by it. Were America interested in showing its strength, it would not worry whether bin Laden was armed or not. It would insist that he was a marked man, a monstrous butcher, and deserved to die.

Were America interested in showing strength, it would release the photographs of Osama’s bullet-riddled corpse to advertise to his followers and sympathizers that he was nothing but a mortal, like the rest of us, who paid for his atrocities in blood, spilled unforgivingly by the greatest military power in history. It isn’t about jingoism. It’s about propaganda. It’s about psy-ops. These are standard devices of warfare.

Instead, the president has made the worst of a tremendous achievement. He has insisted that releasing the photographs, showing a bloody wound over bin Laden’s eye, would be too “gruesome” for Americans to stomach—the same people, as Jon Stewart pointed out, who “from 8pm on, every show on television we watch begins with an internal tracking shot of a gaping wound above someone’s left eye, pulling out only to reveal half a hooker in a dumpster, discovered by a child on a bicycle”—and too “inflammatory” to the Muslim world.

Had Barack Obama, say, come out on May 1st and announced that Osama bin Laden had been found, and shot down like a dog by a heroic team of highly trained U.S. troops, Americans would have cheered just as loudly. Had he released the photos, the world would know for certain that this once-mythic jihadi had died an ignominious and brutal death at the hands of a most fearsome adversary. Instead, the White House looks timid and unsure, while whatever credibility it retained after admitting it peddled false information, gets steadily eroded by a flood of fake death photographs hitting the Internet that will only confuse and sow doubt among anyone who might not implicitly trust America’s reputability—which is to say, about a billion Muslims worldwide.

Justice for Osama bin Laden - new Pat Condell video

Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard's Muslim attacker sentenced to 9-years' prison, followed by deportation

A Danish court on Friday sentenced a Muslim immigrant to Denmark to nine years in prison followed by expulsion for trying to kill a cartoonist whose 2005 drawing of the prophet Mohammed provoked Muslim outrage around the world.
The court in the city of Aarhus sentenced Muhudiin Mohamed Geele to be expelled from Denmark and banned from the country for life after serving his sentence, a police official said.

Geele, 29, broke into the home of cartoonist Kurt Westergaard with an axe and a sharp knife on New Year's Day last year. He was convicted on Thursday of an attempted act of terrorism and attempted manslaughter.

The court said in a statement the attack was an attempt to frighten the population and destabilise society and thus constituted an act of terror.  (Courtesy Sdamatt2)

What's next for the campaign to commute the sentence of Jonathan Pollard?

On November 21, 2008, Jonathan Pollard entered the 24th year of his life sentence, with no end in sight. Mr. Pollard's life sentence is disproportionate even when compared to the sentences of those who spied for America's enemies, not withstanding those, like Mr. Pollard, convicted for spying for America's allies.

Pres. George Bush's having declined to commute Jonathan Pollard's sentence, must Mr. Pollard suffer a minimum of 4 more years dreaming of clemency from a potentially out-bound President Obama?

Eric Sherby, vice-chair of the Middle-East Law Committee of the American Bar Association, writes a Jerusalem Post OpEd, "The Pollard Case after Bush":

Despite thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of phone calls, e-mails and letters to the White House from Pollard sympathizers, the Bush Administration never even hinted that it might be softening its no-pardon/no-commutation stance as to Pollard.

Now what?

The beginning of a presidency is never "pardon season," and that fact would appear to mean that Jonathan Pollard will be in prison until 2012 at least.

Yet there is one ray of hope. The new American vice president, Joe Biden, had, until early 2008, been a presidential candidate. In Biden's presidential candidate days, while he was trying to court the Jewish vote, he was asked about Jonathan Pollard. Biden responded that Pollard should be given "leniency." What precisely did Biden mean by "leniency" in the case of Jonathan Pollard - who has already been in prison for more than two decades? Apparently he was not asked to elaborate.

Now that the Bush presidency has ended, it is time for the new vice president to explain what he meant by leniency.

How, and by whom, should that question be posed to Vice President Biden? By President Shimon Peres.

(Click Read More below for full article.)

Many individuals believing that presidential clemency should be granted for Mr. Pollard's more than 23-years of time-served in Federal penitentiary have petitioned the White House with letters and phone calls.

Rabbi Pesach Lerner, Vice President of the American organization, National Council of Young Israel, gives a compelling video overview of the situation at hand. (Courtesy Maximum Impact Media)

(Handcuffed human-chain rally in Jerusalem in 2004 comemorating Jonathan Pollard's 20th-year of disproportionate captivity in American prison).

Esther Pollard, wife of Jonathan Pollard, explained Jonathan's plight in this interview with Hebrew newspaper, "First Place," in January 2007.  Please click "Read More" to read full article.

The information that Jonathan provided to Israel included Iranian, Iraqi, Libyan and Syrian nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare capabilities - all being developed for use against Israel. He also provided information on ballistic missile development by these countries and information on up-coming terrorist attacks planned against Israeli civilian targets.

To sign the Free Pollard Now petition please click this link.

Israel was legally entitled to this vital security information according to a 1983 Memorandum of Understanding signed by both countries. But the information was deliberately being withheld from Israel as the result of an illegal intelligence embargo implemented by former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and former Deputy Director of the CIA Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, whose pro-Arab tilt did not jibe with declared US foreign policy.

Instead, successive Governments of Israel have routinely exploited Jonathan's name and his plight, using it as a sweetener to sell unpopular unilateral concessions to the Israeli public. But when crunch time comes, Jonathan is always dropped from every deal and painful unilateral concessions to the enemy are made regardless. (Some examples include the Hebron Accords, the Wye Accords, and most recently the Disengagement from Gaza and northern Samaria).

In Washington it is an open secret that Jonathan's sentence is grossly disproportionate and purely political. This was confirmed in a 2002 interview with former Secretary of Defense, the late Caspar Weinberger. Weinberger openly admitted that Jonathan's case was a "minor matter" that had been exaggerated out of all proportion to serve another political agenda. The opening that this admission created to secure Jonathan's release was totally ignored.

Similarly Dennis Ross, the former US Special Envoy to the Middle East, stated in his book "The Missing Peace" (published in 2004) that Jonathan deserves to be freed unconditionally. Nevertheless, writes Ross, Pollard is far too valuable as a bargaining chip against Israel, so he advised the president at Wye not to release him. Still no response from Israel.

In point of fact, Israel has already "paid" for Jonathan's release several times over (including freeing 750 murderers and terrorists with blood on their hands as part of the Wye Accords), but has never bothered to collect its due.

In the 22 years that Jonathan has been in prison, he has repeatedly been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment and severe affliction. The Government of Israel has been informed of each and every episode of mistreatment of its agent but has never once intervened on his behalf, nor has the (Israeli) Government ever protested.

French court exonerates Karsenty; sidesteps Pallywood validity

Prof. Richard Landes' The Augean Stables leads the coverage of today's defeat for France2's Charles Enderlin.

The Jerusalem Post has an extensive article putting today's Karsenty/al-Dura victory in perspective:

The French Court of Appeals on Wednesday found in favor of Philippe Karsenty, overturning a lower court decision that he had libeled France 2 and its Middle East correspondent Charles Enderlin when he accused them of knowingly misleading the world public about the death of the Palestinian child Mohammed al-Dura in the Gaza Strip in 2000.

"The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that [al-Dura's shooting] was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody - without being sued," Karsenty told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the verdict was issued at 1:30 p.m. Paris time.

A statement forwarded to The Jerusalem Post from Enderlin noted that "the appeals court ruled that Karsenty's words were, in fact, libelous, and that Karsenty failed to prove that the news was staged and/or false." The statement added that the case was nevertheless overturned because "the court believed Karsenty had the right to stridently criticize the [France 2] report, since it dealt with an emotional topic, and that Karsenty's investigation into the matter convinced the court he was bring sincere."

A source close to Enderlin's side of the case explained that "you can get out of a libel suit either by proving you're right, or by showing you were sincere and had some research. The court found the latter to be the case."

The source also said Enderlin and France 2 would appeal the verdict, noting that they had won three out of four instances of judgment in the matter.

But, replied Karsenty, the only appeal left would be to France's Supreme Court.

"If they continue to insist they are correct," added Karsenty, "we will have victims of terror attacks that directly resulted from the [al-Dura] footage sue France 2."

British Justice Sacrificed to Saudi Extortion

Saudis Extort British Justice to Abandon Principles, Bribery Prosecution

Saudi's give British justice a public dhimmifying, as British prosecutors abandon bribery charges when Saudis threaten to cancel a 10-billion-pound weapons contract to British Aerospace.

"Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith said the decision had been made "in the wider public-interest," which had to be balanced against the rule of law."

Less-publicized Saudi leverage might help explain Western intelligence's disregarding Saudi's advocating sedition through the Wahabi movement throughout the West.