WaPo has the latest on the arrest of a suspected Al Qaeda member...who had $12 million in phony cashier's checks on him upon his return from Indonesia. What struck me about this one was the photo- he doesn't look Middle Eastern at all. An operative with his features would be extremely valuable to OBL- not a man he'd waste for unimportant missions. Combined with the large sums found in his possession, do we really need to wait for the FBI/CIA to tell us the obvious? Score one for the good guys.

One Muslim stands up

We could use some more stories like this one.

November 17 mystery revealed

Debkafiles is reporting some fascinating developments concerning the mysterious group, November 17. According to their sources...

all the group’s victims, including Greek business executives and financial figures, were directly linked to intelligence agencies, suggesting that the killings were “wet operations”, or liquidations, rather than murders motivated by political ideology. A statement issued by the group after the murder of the British defense attaché two years ago underscores the point. It said Brigadier Saunders was killed because he helped to direct NATO’s bombing of the Serbs in Yugoslavia in 1998. By revealing Saunders’s secret role in the Kosovo war, November 17 signaled it was privy to precise data on the clandestine roles of its victims – information obtainable only by large, sophisticated and state-sponsored intelligence bodies.

And now Greek police have found a gun which was used in at least 6 of the killings committed by N17.

Last month, the police arrested a 40-year-old artist, Savas Xyros, who was seriously hurt – critically, according to some reports – when a bomb he was planting in Piraeus, the port of Athens, exploded prematurely. He is apparently cooperating with prosecutors. The 45-caliber gun police found beside him was identified as the weapon used in the murder of a Greek policeman in 1984 and six others. At the artist’s apartment in an upscale Athens neighborhood, police found a large weapons cache, including bombs and anti-tank missiles. They found second weapons cache in another Athens apartment some days later.

Which has led them to "Nikitas"

Hours after identifying the gun, the Greek police laid hands on the group’s suspected leader. He is described in Greek newspapers as a 60-year old left wing professor, who taught at Paris University between 1967 and 1974 when the “Colonels Junta” ruled in Athens...The academic is identified only by his nom de guerre of “Nikitas”.

This is one left wing professor with knowledge the government could use. Debka says,

The assassins never knew who sent them. Neither did the Greek authorities or the CIA and MI6, all of whom lost agents in November 17 assassinations. The prevailing theory among those sources is that the long-elusive group is backed by still-active intelligence entities under deep cover since they helped the Soviet KGB infiltrate the US intelligence community, especially the CIA and FBI, at the height of the Cold War. Both the FBI and the CIA are still trying to establish if the two spies for Moscow, the CIA’s Aldrich Ames and the FBI’s Robert Philip Hanssen, availed themselves of the operational services and capabilities of November 17 in their covert operations for the Russians. The urgency of that search has intensified in view of the possibility that November 17 operatives are linked to al Qaeda cells in Europe.

I smell a mole hunt.

Populist Emeritus

Bill O'Reilly has no shame. Tonight, on "The Factor", he referred to the case of the Orange County girl who was kidnapped/raped/murdered as being the same as terrorism. He further likened the perpetrator to Osama Bin Laden. Please. We'd all condemn this sicko for what he did to the little girl- he's a monster. But BO insults the viewers' intelligence with a comparison as weak as this.

I'm back, folks! SF was great- saw a Giants game, took a boat dinner cruise around the bay. Not bad for a business trip.

Travelling to San Francisco until Wednesday night. Blogging will resume shortly thereafter.

Belgian "tolerance"

The Spectator says we can't trust the Belgians to fight terrorism.

The Belgian government had made a deal with the GIA terrorists, agreeing to turn a blind eye to conspiracies hatched on Belgian soil in exchange for immunity from attack. In a GIA statement, addressing the Belgian King Albert II but posted to the French embassy in Brussels in June 1999, the Algerian terror movement explicitly referred to such a deal. Because of its ‘neutralist’ position, Belgium became known as a safe haven for terrorists. Britain had already experienced this in November 1988, when Belgium set free Patrick Ryan, an IRA arms-supplier who had been arrested in Brussels and who the British government had asked to be extradited to London. Although a Belgian court recommended that the government comply with Britain’s request, the Belgian Cabinet gave orders to let him go.

Advantage: US unilateralism

Nick Schulz thinks Bush is missing the point in the environmental debate. "Adaptive Capacity" is the key...

There is another economic argument that is simpler to make and is in many ways more important, but the administration seems unwilling, or unable, to articulate it. They could say - indeed, they should say, because the science supports this argument -- that catastrophic climate changes (not anthropogenic but natural) are possible if not likely. Climate systems are enormously complex and dynamic, influenced by countless factors from gases to the sun to our orbit in the solar system, so almost anything is possible: another ice age, a warming period, natural disasters, etc. So the best long-term strategy is to encourage "adaptive capacity," as MIT climatologist Richard Lindzen calls it. Adaptive capacity is nothing more than the ability to address and deal with climate changes of any kind. Another word for adaptive capacity is "wealth." (Just look at how the United States is able to deal with natural disasters as opposed to other nations in our own hemisphere, like Haiti. Since we are wealthier, our citizens can evacuate areas more quickly, build flood walls, build temporary shelters, etc.) Lowering emissions intensity, as the White House is now advocating, will do nothing to help generate wealth. Indeed, it will put a brake on wealth generation, both in the United States and around the globe. And that is a loser of a strategy for dealing with climate change of all kinds.

There are, indeed, two sides in the debate over environmental action- apathetic indifference typifies neither of them. Capitulations on the basis of questionable science only serve to support the notion that the Bush administration cares little for this issue. Until Bush can articulate the logic behind "adaptive capacity", his courtship of active greens will be an exercise in futility.