Terrorists Targeted U.S. Embassy in London

At Telegraph UK, "Christmas bomb plot: nine men remanded over plan to ‘blow up Big Ben and Westminster Abbey’." And LAT, "Nine terrorism suspects appear in London court":

Reporting from London — Nine men accused of terrorism and conspiracy to blow up high-profile targets that reportedly included the U.S. Embassy and the London Stock Exchange in a Christmas bombing campaign made their first appearance in a central London court Monday.

Most of the nine, ages 17 to 28, are of Bangladeshi origin. They were among 12 men arrested a week ago in three cities across Britain. Three were released without charge.

They were charged late Sunday after a weeklong interrogation by counter-terrorism police at a London police station. They appeared at the city's Westminster Magistrates' Court on Monday in three groups.

Anti-terrorism prosecutor Sue Hemming said the nine men were charged with preparing to commit terrorist acts or assisting in them.

The men were also accused of igniting and testing incendiary materials and downloading material for the preparation of acts of terrorism, Reuters news agency reported, and five of them were charged with possession of documents and records of potential use to terrorists. They will reappear in London's central criminal court, the Old Bailey, on Jan. 14.

The Guardian newspaper identified the nine as Nazam Hussain, 25, Usman Khan, 19, Mohibur Rahman, 26, and Abul Bosher Mohammed Shahjahan, 26, from Stoke-on-Trent in the Midlands area of England; Gurukanth Desai, 28, Omar Sharif Latif, 26, and Abdul Malik Miah, 24, who were detained in Cardiff, South Wales; and Mohammed Moksudur Rahman Chowdhury, 20, and Shah Mohammed Lutfar Rahman, 28, from London.

Though few details were revealed about the targets, the BBC reported that the men were accused of carrying out reconnaissance of high-profile targets, including the American Embassy and the London Stock Exchange.

Their arrest and charges come amid concerns about terrorism activity in Europe. On Dec. 11 a suicide bomber killed himself in an attack in Stockholm.

Moe Tkacik Responds

After a brief exchange, Moe Tkacik sent me a burst of tweets which combined to form something of a paragraph:

@AmPowerBlog omg how did I back off? There were a few tiny factual pts abt which I didn't feel like arguing in part due to solstice spirit ... always thought he was creepy but condom sabotage in consen sex not equiv of rape unless disease/impregnation is intent/result ... but! I'm not swedish law, and to me I realize this is largely abt language, and how precise and evocative you want words to be ... Guess I just dont want rape bcoming another "freedom",tho unsure what best evokes pantsless julian rubbing up agnst you/yr will ... I know and I commented bc i was surprised that was her reaction. By the end we kind of figured out where we differed...but ... also, no disrespect to naomi wolf, although "earth tones" etc etc. I found facts of case intriguing. Esp as someone who always ... wonders if it would have been a good idea to report my date rape? 90% of the time I think "no" but marcotte did make me think ... that since all that is likely to happen is he'll get a stern and semi-traumatic interrogation by police, everyone should do it ... pinning her down hpnd to Miss A right? Thought it was interesting that it didn't seem like she ever wld have gone to cops until ... younger miss W was so traumatized by the thing. Then ms A reexamined her own "worst sex ever" and (in my comic book imagination ... became filled with righteous rage on behalf of the sisterhood which is often not first thought when "worst sex ever" happens ... because young sluts are often too busy thinking "oh no am I a slut?" or "what slut disease do I have now?" Whereas old sluts ... are irritated but hardly traumatized, since let's be honest after a certain age no man can ever violate you like yr sexist boss ... anyway, I hadn't seen one dude committing two date rapes close enough for victims to confer. It was cool. There are worse probs ... and I can't tell you why the "CIA conspiracy" crap so angered the Lady Doyle set, bc obv the timing screamed "bitch(es)setmeup" ... but since Assange cant claim credit for stylish prose of cables or mindless violence of iraq footage,it doesn't really matter?

RELATED: "Rehabilitated Moe Tkacik Dishes on Robert Stacy McCain!"

Rehabilitated Moe Tkacik Dishes on Robert Stacy McCain!

Here's the dirt on Robert Stacy McCain's creds in the feminist blogosphere. We've got Amanda Marcotte dishing on the infamous "You buy the ticket, you take the ride" argument, and then we have Moe Tkacik's admission that McCain is the one Washington Times journalist that she "sometimes pays attention to because he's so radical."

What's amazing is that the #MooreandMe protest doesn't come up --- or at least not in the 25 minutes I watched. I stopped watching after that. The discussion devolved into gratuitous and surprisingly prurient sex talk, with an extremely selective commentary on the Julian Assange allegations. Note especially Moe's aggressive progressive feminist walk-back, since the discussion of her Washington City Paper piece is badly at odds with the reaction from Sady Doyle and her Twitter totalitarians. And Amanda Marcotte acknowledges so much at Pandagon:

I was ready for a fight, but Moe’s stance on both Wikileaks and the rape case changed considerably after that post, which also strangely includes ruminations on “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo”, as if you can really extrapolate much about Swedish culture from a single exploitation series that has a sort of feminist message buried in a bunch of unsettling rape imagery. But the chat was amicable, and we agreed on most things, and I think it was really interesting.

We'll have to take Amanda's word for it, that she was "ready for a fight." She doesn't look flush with adrenaline at the start of the clip, but then, with all due respect, I think she's a more reasonable woman than Sady Doyle --- and that's saying a lot.

RELATED: "Unwatchable BloggingHeadsTV Episode in Which I’m Mentioned."

Stand Up to China

And stand up for the defense budget.

Ambassador Bolton on Fox Business Channel:

Natalie Portman Pregnant!

And engaged!

Great commentary on Twitter:

Natalie Portman is beautiful, engaged, pregnant and has plenty of Oscar buzz going on. Pretty good time for her I'd say!

And here:

Natalie Portman is pregnant. Another dream dies.

Blizzard Time Lapse

At Geekosystem:

'Legitimacy War' and the Destruction of Israel

Professor Richard Falk demonstrates why anyone of genuine moral clarity can't take current fashions of international law seriously. At Al Jazeera, "The Palestinian 'Legitimacy War'":

Collective Justice

The underlying rationale is that aggressive war, crimes against humanity, and severe violations of the law of war and international humanitarian law are crimes against the whole of humanity, and not just the victim state or people. Although the Nuremberg Judgment was flawed, 'victors’ justice,' it generated global norms in the form of the Nuremberg Principles that are considered by international law consensus to be universally binding.

These ideas underlie the recent prosecution of geopolitical pariahs such as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic, and several African tyrannical figures. But when it comes to the lead political actors, as understood by the American-led hegemonic hierarchy, the leadership of the rest of the world enjoys impunity, in effect, an exemption from accountability to international criminal law.

It is a prime instance of double standards that pervades current world order, perhaps, most prominently illustrated in relation to the veto power given permanent members of the UN Security Council or the Nonproliferation Regime Governing Nuclear Weaponry. Double standards severs any link between law as administered by the state system on a world level and pretensions of global justice. The challenge for those seeking global justice based on international law that treats equals equally is to overcome in every substantive setting double standards and impunity.

The world of sovereign states and the United Nations have not been able to mount such a challenge. Into this vacuum has moved a surging global civil society movement that got its start in the global fight against colonialism, especially, the Vietnam War, and moved forward dramatically as a result of the Anti-Apartheid Campaign ....

The Power of Solidarity

Various instruments have been relied upon, including boycott, divestment, and sanctions solidarity movements, informally constituted citizens’ war crimes tribunals (starting with the Russell Tribunal during the Vietnam War, and extended by the Permanent Peoples Tribunal in Rome, and in 2005 by the Iraq War Tribunal that held 20 sessions around the world, culminating in a final session in Istanbul), civil disobedience in various forms, especially refusals to serve in military operations that violate international law.

It was a coalition of civil society actors that created the political climate that somewhat surprisingly allowed the International Criminal Court to come into being in 2002, although unsurprisingly without the participants of the United States, Israel, and most of the senior members of the geopolitical first echelon.

It is against this background, that two contradictory developments are to be found that will be discussed in more detail in subsequent articles: the waging of an all out Legitimacy War against Israel on behalf of the Palestinian struggle for a just peace and a backlash campaign against what is called 'Lawfare' by Israeli hardliners. A Legitimacy War strategy seeks popular mobilization on the basis of nonviolent coercion to achieve political goals, relying on the relevance of international law and the accountability of those that act on behalf of states in the commission of crimes of state.

Legitimacy vs. Lawfare

The Goldstone Report illustrates this interface between a Legitimacy War and Lawfare, reinforcing Palestinian contentions of victimization as a result of Israel’s use of force as in the notorious Operation Cast Lead (2008-09) and driving Israel’s top leaders to venomous fury in their effort to discredit the distinguished jurist, Richard Goldstone, who headed the UN mission responsible for the report, and the findings so convincingly reached.

With Israeli impunity under growing threat there has been a special pressures placed on the United States to use its geopolitical muscle within the UN to maintain the mantle of impunity over the documented record of Israeli criminality, and to make sure that the UN remains a selective sanctuary for such outrageous grants of impunity. These issues of criminal accountability are on the front lines of the Legitimacy War, and provide the foundation for efforts throughout the world in relation to the growing BDS Campaign (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).

There's more at the link.

And after you read that, check Elder of Ziyon, "Richard Falk Admits His Goal is to Destroy the Jewish State." And following the links takes us to an earlier article by Richard Falk, "The Palestinians Are Winning the Legitimacy War: Will It Matter?" And the key paragraph there:

The essence of this legitimacy war is to cast doubt on several dimensions of Israeli legitimacy: its status as a moral and law abiding actor, as an occupying power in relation to the Palestinian people, and with respect to its willingness to respect the United Nations and abide by international law. Those that wage such a legitimacy war seek to seize the high moral ground in relation to the underlying conflict, and on this basis, gain support for a variety of coercive, but non-violent initiatives designed to put pressure on Israel, on governments throughout the world and on the United Nations to deny normal participatory rights to Israel as a member of international society.

Eliminating Israel from the "legitimate" community of nations is what "collective justice" and the "power of solidarity" are all about. Some on the left are more open in their proclamations for Jewish extermination (Hezbollah's Nazrallah, for example), but people like Richard Falk are valuable to the world's anti-Semites in the provision of academic respectability for the global left's demands for a new Shoah. The enormity of evil inherent in the project is clear, but more so for those who recognize that the battle for truth in today's world is being fought on the field of Israel's continued existence in the Promised Land.

Hat Tip: Legal Insurrection.