FrontPage/Robert Spencer, 9 Feb 10: . . . . It is not exaggerating to say that the Geert Wilders trial is a defining moment in the history of Western civilization. One would have to go back centuries to find a court case with as much significance for the future course of the free world. If the farrago of “hate” charges against Wilders stick, and he is convicted, it will herald the end of the freedom of speech in the West, as a precedent will have been set that other Western nations (urged on by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is the organization most responsible for the global assault on free speech) will be certain to follow.
The era of enlightenment and the understanding that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights will be definitively drawing to a close, and a new darkness will descend over Europe and the free world in general. For once the precedent is established that a man can be jailed and destroyed for offending a privileged class, the idea that every human being has rights that cannot be infringed will be damaged beyond repair.
And even if Wilders prevails, enough damage has been done already. The Dutch law (and there are others like it in other Western countries) that stipulates that someone can actually be tried and jailed for offending another person will remain on the books. Other trials will follow. The law will be used by the governing elites who developed it in order to maintain their power and silence independent and dissenting voices.
For that is, of course, the point of all this. The Dutch authorities stand arrayed on one side, with Wilders standing alone on the other. Yet despite the fact that he has nothing like their numbers, wealth, or resources, he threatens to topple their entire multicultural house of cards – for he has on his side a weapon that all of their power cannot defeat, the weapon of truth. And so they are desperate to silence him, and end forever his truth-telling about jihad and Islamic supremacism.
Yet even if they do silence him, the truth will still be the truth. They will not be able to obliterate it forever. But will they be able to help initiate a long, perhaps centuries long, period of darkness and oppression in Europe and its civilizational children? Certainly.
Financiarul, 9 Feb 10: Intelligence agencies worldwide are enveloped in an aura of mystery, which the services themselves preserve. Director of Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) of Romania, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, has agreed to partially remove this veil, in an interview for Romania Libera daily, occasioned by the celebration of the 20th anniversary on Monday since the establishment of the intelligence body.
Ungureanu believes SIE has nothing to do with the former Foreign Affairs Department of the communist Securitate. SIE was completely rebuilt, lying now on solid moral grounds, according to his head. During the 20 years full of problems, expectations, some broken, others only partially fulfilled, full of projects, many of them successful, some failed, SIE has managed to reach a mature age, an energetic adulthood, and not one experiencing no more than boredom and fatigue, said Ungureanu.
SIE is a small institution and it did not become the same bureaucratic as other institutions, so that, during such time of peace, it can do nothing else but grow. Being a small institution, perhaps the smallest of its kind, it promotes quality first and not quantity. . . .
. . . . Referring to the cooperation between SIE and NATO, Ungureanu said that ‘ the current structure of the intelligence service of Romania is rated by external grilles as being one of the most efficient in the North-Atlantic Alliance. The appreciation of professional success coming from the outside, corroborated with how the service is nowadays seen, in its strong partnerships with other services, and also in relationships with other intelligence services worldwide – more than 100 -, shows that SIE has recently left behind the stage of hesitation and professional inconsistency. . . .
Knoxville News Sentinel, 8 Feb 10: In a rare case of alleged corporate espionage, federal prosecutors have launched a rarer still move to block the public from seeing key evidence at the upcoming March trial.
Federal prosecutors Greg Weddle and Thomas Dougherty are asking a federal judge to block spectators at the trial of two Greenback engineers from seeing the seven photographs the pair allegedly snapped at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Topeka, Kan., in May 2007. “Without such a provision, owners may be reluctant to cooperate in prosecutions for fear of further exposing their trade secrets to the public view, thus further devaluing or even destroying their worth,” the prosecutors wrote.
Courtrooms are presumed under the U.S. Constitution to be open to the public. That same constitution guarantees the accused a trial in public. Legal justification for sealing evidence at a public trial is limited, and orders sealing trial exhibits are rarely granted. Weddle and Doughterty insist the photographs at issue reveal the inner workings of Goodyear’s roll over-ply down device used to manufacture massive off-the-road tires, which the firm contends is a trade secret.
Clark Alan Roberts, 46, and Sean Edward Howley, 38, are accused in a federal indictment of tricking their way into the inner sanctum of Goodyear’s plant to secretly snap photos of a device used to make massive off-the-road tires the pair were trying to help their Wyko Tire Technology bosses in Greenback craft for a firm in China. The duo is charged under the Economic Espionage Act, which makes it a federal crime to steal trade secrets. The Greenback engineers allegedly convinced Goodyear officials they wanted to tour the Kansas plant to take a look at Wyko equipment used by Goodyear that was in need of repair. Roberts, the indictment alleges, served as look-out while Howley used his phone to take shots of the device Goodyear used to make its OTR tires. . . . .
Prosecutor’s bid to block the public from seeing exhibits
Defense response in opposition to motion
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 170–Economic Espionage and Theft of Technology
AFP, 8 Feb 10: Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Monday that Iran is set to deliver a “punch” that will stun world powers during this week’s 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution.”The Iranian nation, with its unity and God’s grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman (February 11) in a way that will leave them stunned,” Khamenei, who is also Iran’s commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel.
The country’s top cleric was marking the occasion when Iran’s air force gave its support to revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a key event which led to the toppling of the US-backed shah on February 11, 1979.His comments came as Iran said it would begin to produce higher enriched uranium from Tuesday, in defiance of Western powers trying to ensure the country’s nuclear drive is peaceful. . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 270–An Introduction to Iranian Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies
AP, 9 Feb 10: Authorities arrested six suspected Taliban militants with a suicide vest and hand grenades who allegedly were on their way yesterday to attack a five-star hotel and kill Americans in Pakistan’s cultural capital, said police. The eastern city of Lahore has suffered a spate of bombings at markets and security installations in recent years as the Taliban have expanded attacks beyond their main sanctuary in the northwest. Militants have also targeted hotels and restaurants in other parts of Pakistan popular with Westerners.
The militants arrested yesterday on the outskirts of Lahore included a 14-year-old male and a prayer leader from Pakistan’s Khyber tribal area near the Afghan border, said Zulfikar Hameed, a police official. The prayer leader was wearing a vest packed with explosives. The two told police they were targeting Americans at the Pearl Continental hotel, he said. . . .
