[osint] Neo No More

[David Bier]

"Nowadays, if you are any kind of political thinker at all, and you
haven't issued a sweeping denunciation of your dearest friends, or
haven't been hanged by them from a lamppost — why, the spirit of the
age has somehow passed you by."



http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/books/review/26berman.html

March 26, 2006

'America at the Crossroads,' by Francis Fukuyama

Neo No More

Review by PAUL BERMAN

In February 2004, Francis Fukuyama attended a neoconservative
think-tank dinner in Washington and listened aghast as the featured
speaker, the columnist Charles Krauthammer, attributed "a virtually
unqualified success" to America's efforts in Iraq, and the audience
enthusiastically applauded. Fukuyama was aghast partly for the obvious
reason, but partly for another reason, too, which, as he explains in
the opening pages of his new book, "America at the Crossroads," was
entirely personal. In years gone by, Fukuyama would have felt cozily
at home among those applauding neoconservatives. He and Krauthammer
used to share many a political instinct. It was Krauthammer who wrote
the ecstatic topmost blurb ("bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant") for
the back jacket of Fukuyama's masterpiece from 1992, "The End of
History and the Last Man."

But that was then.

Today Fukuyama has decided to resign from the neoconservative movement
— though for reasons that, as he expounds them, may seem a tad
ambiguous. In his estimation, neoconservative principles in their
pristine version remain valid even now. But his ex-fellow-thinkers
have lately given those old ideas a regrettable twist, and dreadful
errors have followed. Under these circumstances, Fukuyama figures he
has no alternative but to go away and publish his complaint. And he
has founded a new political journal to assert his post-neoconservative
independence — though he has given this journal a name, The American
Interest, that slyly invokes the legendary neoconservative journals of
past (The Public Interest) and present (The National Interest), just
to keep readers guessing about his ultimate relation to
neoconservative tradition.

His resignation seems to me, in any case, a fairly notable event, as
these things go, and that is because, among the neoconservative
intellectuals, Fukuyama has surely been the most imaginative, the most
playful in his thinking and the most ambitious. Then again, something
about his departure may express a larger mood among the political
intellectuals just now, not only on the right. For in the zones of
liberalism and the left, as well, any number of people have likewise
stood up in these post-9/11 times to accuse their oldest comrades of
letting down the cause, and doors have slammed, and The Nation
magazine has renamed itself The Weekly Purge. Nowadays, if you are any
kind of political thinker at all, and you haven't issued a sweeping
denunciation of your dearest friends, or haven't been hanged by them
from a lamppost — why, the spirit of the age has somehow passed you by.

Fukuyama offers a thumbnail sketch of neoconservatism and its origins,
back to the anti-Communist left at City College in the 1930's and 40's
and to the conservative philosophers (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Albert
Wohlstetter) at the University of Chicago in later years. From these
disparate origins, the neoconservatives eventually generated "a set of
coherent principles," which, taken together, ended up defining their
impulse in foreign affairs during the last quarter-century. They
upheld a belief that democratic states are by nature friendly and
unthreatening, and therefore America ought to go around the world
promoting democracy and human rights wherever possible. They believed
that American power can serve moral purposes. They doubted the
usefulness of international law and institutions. And they were
skeptical about what is called "social engineering" — about big
government and its ability to generate positive social changes.

Such is Fukuyama's summary. It seems to me too kind. For how did the
neoconservatives propose to reconcile their ambitious desire to combat
despotism around the world with their cautious aversion to social
engineering? Fukuyama notes that during the 1990's the
neoconservatives veered in militarist directions, which strikes him as
a mistake. A less sympathetic observer might recall that
neoconservative foreign policy thinking has all along indulged a
romance of the ruthless — an expectation that small numbers of people
might be able to play a decisive role in world events, if only their
ferocity could be unleashed. It was a romance of the ruthless that led
some of the early generation of neoconservatives in the 1970's to
champion the grisliest of anti-Communist guerrillas in Angola; and,
during the next decade, led the neoconservatives to champion some not
very attractive anti-Communist guerrillas in Central America, too; and
led the Reagan administration's neoconservatives into the swamps of
the Iran-contra scandal in order to go on championing 

[osint] Beleaguered Premier Warns U.S. to Stop Interfering in Iraq's Politics

[David Bier]

"...Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq vigorously asserted his
right to stay in office on Wednesday and warned the Americans against
interfering in the country's political process.
Mr. Jaafari also defended his recent political alliance with the
radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, now the prime minister's most
powerful backer, saying in an interview that Mr. Sadr and his militia,
now thousands strong, are a fact of life in Iraq and need to be
accepted into mainstream politics."
"The Iraqi government's tolerance of militias has emerged as the
greatest source of contention between American officials and Shiite
leaders like Mr. Jaafari, with the American ambassador contending in
the past week that militias are killing more people than the Sunni
Arab-led insurgency. Dozens of bodies, garroted or with gunshots to
the head, turn up almost daily in Baghdad, fueling sectarian tensions
that are pushing Iraq closer to full-scale civil war."


How close depends on how near to being drilled or garroted one is. Mr.
Jaafari has made his bed with al Sadr whose allies are Iran, Hamas and
Hizballah.

David Bier

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/30/international/middleeast/30iraq.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

March 30, 2006

Beleaguered Premier Warns U.S. to Stop Interfering in Iraq's Politics

By EDWARD WONG

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 29 — Facing growing pressure from the Bush
administration to step down, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari of Iraq
vigorously asserted his right to stay in office on Wednesday and
warned the Americans against interfering in the country's political
process.

Mr. Jaafari also defended his recent political alliance with the
radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, now the prime minister's most
powerful backer, saying in an interview that Mr. Sadr and his militia,
now thousands strong, are a fact of life in Iraq and need to be
accepted into mainstream politics.

Mr. Jaafari said he would work to fold the country's myriad militias
into the official security forces and ensure that recruits and top
security ministers abandoned their ethnic or sectarian loyalties.

The Iraqi government's tolerance of militias has emerged as the
greatest source of contention between American officials and Shiite
leaders like Mr. Jaafari, with the American ambassador contending in
the past week that militias are killing more people than the Sunni
Arab-led insurgency. Dozens of bodies, garroted or with gunshots to
the head, turn up almost daily in Baghdad, fueling sectarian tensions
that are pushing Iraq closer to full-scale civil war.

The prime minister made his remarks in an hourlong interview at his
home, a Saddam Hussein-era palace with an artificial lake at the heart
of the fortified Green Zone. He spoke in a languorous manner, relaxing
in a black pinstripe suit in a dim ground-floor office lined with
Arabic books like the multivolume "World of Civilizations."

"There was a stand from both the American government and President
Bush to promote a democratic policy and protect its interests," he
said, sipping from a cup of boiled water mixed with saffron. "But now
there's concern among the Iraqi people that the democratic process is
being threatened."

"The source of this is that some American figures have made statements
that interfere with the results of the democratic process," he added.
"These reservations began when the biggest bloc in Parliament chose
its candidate for prime minister."

Mr. Jaafari is at the center of the deadlock in the talks over forming
a new government, with the main Kurdish, Sunni Arab and secular blocs
in the 275-member Parliament staunchly opposing the Shiite bloc's
nomination of Mr. Jaafari for prime minister.

Senior Shiite politicians said Tuesday that the American ambassador,
Zalmay Khalilzad, had weighed in over the weekend, telling the leader
of the Shiite bloc that President Bush did not want Mr. Jaafari as
prime minister. That was the first time the Americans had openly
expressed a preference for the post, the politicians said, and it
showed the Bush administration's acute impatience with the political
logjam.

Relations between Shiite leaders and the Americans have been fraying
for months and reached a crisis point after a bloody assault on a
Shiite mosque compound Sunday night by American and Iraqi forces.

Mr. Jaafari said in the interview that Ambassador Khalilzad had
visited him on Wednesday morning but did not indicate that he should
abandon his job.

American reactions to the political process can be seen as either
supporting or interfering in Iraqi decisions, said Mr. Jaafari, the
leader of the Islamic Dawa Party and a former exile. "When it takes
the form of interference, it makes the Iraqi people worried," he said.
"For that reason, the Iraqi people want to ensure that these reactions
stay in a positive frame and do not cross over into interference that
damages the results of the democratic process."

According to the Constitution, the largest bloc in Parliament, in 

[osint] Insulating Bush

[David Bier]

"As the 2004 election loomed, the White House was determined to keep
the wraps on a potentially damaging memo about Iraq."
"Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of
classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser
Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised
that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address --
that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a
nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records
and interviews."
"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior
government official outside the White House who was personally
familiar with the damage-control effort. "The mission was to insulate
the president. It was about making it appear that he wasn't in the
know. You could do that on Niger. You couldn't do that with the
tubes." A Republican political appointee involved in the process, who
thought the Bush administration had a constitutional obligation to be
more open with Congress, said: "This was about getting past the election."


Interesting that paying members of the NJ board include the Senate
Republican Policy Committee.  Definitely a Rove coverup for CICBush43.

David Bier

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0330nj1.htm

PREWAR INTELLIGENCE

Insulating Bush

By Murray Waas, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Thursday, March 30, 2006

Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other
White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election
prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that
he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war
had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his
concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government
records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley
determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he
later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was
procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon --
might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

As the 2004 election loomed, the White House was determined to keep
the wraps on a potentially damaging memo about Iraq.

Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a
classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate,
specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that
although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related
to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence
branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for
conventional weapons."

Three months after receiving that assessment, the president stated
without qualification in his January 28, 2003, State of the Union
address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our
intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase
high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

The previously undisclosed review by Hadley was part of a
damage-control effort launched after former Ambassador Joseph C.
Wilson IV alleged that Bush's claims regarding the uranium were not
true. The CIA had sent Wilson to the African nation of Niger in 2002
to investigate the purported procurement efforts by Iraq; he reported
that they were most likely a hoax.

The White House was largely successful in defusing the Niger
controversy because there was no evidence that Bush was aware that his
claims about the uranium were based on faulty intelligence. Then-CIA
Director George Tenet swiftly and publicly took the blame for the
entire episode, saying that he and the CIA were at fault for not
warning Bush and his aides that the information might be untrue.

But Hadley and other administration officials realized that it would
be much more difficult to shield Bush from criticism for his
statements regarding the aluminum tubes, for several reasons.

For one, Hadley's review concluded that Bush had been directly and
repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community
over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a
nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.

For another, the president and others in the administration had cited
the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was
determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations
that he was attempting to purchase uranium.

And finally, full disclosure of the internal dissent over the
importance of the tubes would have almost certainly raised broader
questions about the administration's conduct in the months leading up
to war.

"Presidential knowledge was the ball game," says a former senior
government official outside the White House who was personally
familiar wi

[osint] Somalian-born Dutch MP faces threats due to views on Islam+

[Bruce Tefft]

 
FOCUS: Somalian-born Dutch MP faces threats due to views on Islam+
BRUSSELS, March 31
(Kyodo) _ (EDS: ONE PHOTO ACCOMPANYING THIS STORY IS AVAILABLE VIA E-MAIL.
THE PHOTO ADVISORY IS TO FOLLOW)

Dutch MPs Geert Wilders and Ayaan Hirsi Ali top the list of most threatened
politicians in 2005, said an annual report released by the Dutch Public
Prosecutor this week.

"I am living in constant hiding since film producer Theo van Gogh was killed
in November 2004," Hirsi Ali, a member of the Liberal Party, told Kyodo in
an exclusive interview.

"Right after the murder I was moved to the United States, later I came back
and changed from hotel to hotel every night. I even stayed in a marine
casern for a while as well as in a house close to the Israeli embassy, one
of the most protected buildings of Holland," the member of parliament said.

Van Gogh was stabbed in broad daylight for making "Submission,' a short film
showing a naked woman with verses from the Koran written on her body. Hirsi
Ali wrote the script, and has now finished the script for a sequel, and even
thinks about remaking the first one.

Before showing the film on Dutch state television, Hirsi Ali recognized that
the film would provoke a strong reaction.

"The complete Muslim world will tumble over me," she told the Dutch media in
July 2004, a month before the actual showing and three months before the
brutal killing.

The consequences for Van Gogh and herself turned out to be much more
devastating than she could ever imagine.

Her life today is one where is she on high alert at all times. She is always
surrounded by bodyguards and security cameras.

"When people tried to come in via the roof of the house close to the
embassy, even there I was not safe anymore."

Thirty-six-year old Hirsi Ali, of Somalian descent, became a target of
Islamic extremists years ago, when she first publicly criticized Muslim
extremism.

"I get the threats through e-mail or ordinary post. The safety team tells me
which supermarket to go to, never two times to the same one...my face has
become too familiar with the people, it has become too dangerous."

The daughter of an opponent of the Somalian dictator Siad Barre, Hirsi Ali
left her country in 1992 when she was forced to marry a cousin living in
Canada.

On her way to Canada, she decided to change her travel destination when she
was in Germany and took the train to the Netherlands.

In three weeks time she received political asylum and changed her name from
Ayaan Hirsi Magan to Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

She quickly learned Dutch and took up a study of social assistant. She later
studied political science at the Leiden University.

For five years she translated the stories about women refugees and abortion
clinics in the Netherlands.

Her knowledge and experiences in her youth -- fleeing her country because of
her father's political activities and living in Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and
Kenya -- made her think as she does today, Hirsi Ali has often said when
asked how she developed her views.

Growing up in an orthodox Islamic family, her grandmother forced her to
undergo a female circumcision against the wishes of her father.

Much later, Hirsi Ali became one of the fierce opponents of the tradition,
often applied in African families.

In one of her first books "De Zoontjesfabriek (The Sons'Factory)," she wrote
about how her personal life shaped her political views.

"When my grandmother was asked how many children she had, she answered:
'One,' she writes.

She had nine daughters and a son. She said the same about our family, that
there was only one child. "What about us?" my sister and I asked. "You will
bring forth sons for us," she replied. "I had to become a sons' factory. I
was nine then."

Around the same time of the book's publication in October 2002 Hirsi Ali
changed switched from the Dutch Labour Party to Liberal party. She felt that
Labour Party, which was always defending a multicultural society, did not
know enough about the Islamic community.

"I like the fact that the liberals watch the individual rather than a
community. In this country, in this democracy, everyone has the right to be
a free and responsible civilian," she said.

Despite the increasing number of death threats, Ali said she must speak out.

"In the West people lost their instinct for fear. Having lived in Africa I
immediately feel real danger, my instinct to detect it is very well
developed. And believe me, it is urgently needed to act."

The danger Ali speaks about is that of growing extremism among radical
Muslims in the West -- a process which, specifically in the Netherlands,
seems to pose many difficulties, as has been recognized in different
official reports.

These changes have been recognized by members of the Moroccan community as
well.

"People such as Mohammed Ajouaou were initially very critical about my
ideas. Now he is standing around me to give support," she said.

Ajouaou is a theologist living in the Netherlands of Moroccan descent, 

[osint] Experts Puzzled Over US Release of Captured Iraqi Documents

[Bruce Tefft]

 
Experts Puzzled Over US Release of Captured Iraqi Documents 

By Gary Thomas
VOA NEWS
Washington
30 March 2006

Under pressure from some members of Congress, Director of National
Intelligence John Negroponte ordered the public release of thousands of
documents and other files captured in Iraq. But, experts are puzzled as to
why the documents were apparently released with little or no screening.

The initial release of some 600 items from an estimated 50,000 boxes of
files is posted on a website of the U.S. Army's Foreign Military Studies
Office.
Accompanying the release is an official disclaimer that says the U.S.
government cannot vouch for the authenticity, truthfulness, or accuracy of
any of the released files. 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says many of the documents and tapes have
not been thoroughly reviewed prior to release.

"These things are mostly in Arabic and they're going to be put out by the
government of the United States without, in many cases, having been read or
translated or analyzed or checked, simply because the decision has been made
that with a quick review a great amount of it is - it is appropriate to put
out a large amount of it," he said.

Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, who once headed the unit tracking Osama
bin Laden, says it is unprecedented to release thousands of captured files
without any preliminary screening. He points out that captured files from
Nazi Germany were not declassified and released until many years after the
end of World War II.

"To give away that amount of documents without first having examined them
thoroughly to see if there was any information that was either operationally
useful or incriminating or damning to some of America's allies or
embarrassing to the U.S. government itself is really an irresponsible act,"
he said.

But another former CIA officer sees no security problem. Reuel Marc Gerecht,
now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, says the Saddam Hussein
regime is gone and there is no reason to classify the material.

"I applaud the decision to release it," he said. "It should have been
released sooner. And they should not allow the [Central Intelligence] Agency
to classify any of that Iraqi documentation."

Ironically, the release comes at the same time that officials have removed
previously declassified historical documents from public archives and
repositories to make them secret again.

Michael Scheuer believes the government hopes somebody will uncover a key
piece of evidence that will bolster the Bush administration's rationale for
going to war with Iraq. But Reuel Gerecht plays down any political
motivation for the documents' release. He says the government simply does
not have enough competent Arabic linguists to sift through and screen all
the material.

"Well, they won't be able to screen them," he said.
"If we have to wait for them to screen them, we'll all be dead. You cannot
overestimate the fatigue the American government has in handling Arabic
documentation. There's no way in god's earth the American government could
competently review that material. The only chance you have for a thorough
review of that material is by outsiders."

One document from the Iraqi archive says Russia gave away U.S. troop
movements to the Saddam Hussein regime on the eve of the U.S. invasion in
2003. Russia has denied the charge. 

But official U.S. reaction to the charge that Russia put American troops in
danger has been muted. Michael Scheuer says he is not surprised that Russia
might have given information to Saddam Hussein. But he is puzzled that it
had not produced any howls of outrage from the administration or Congress.

"I really do not know what to make of it," he said.
"It does not surprise me, if it is true, that the Russians would supply
information to Saddam. They had a very close relationship. And the Russians
are more our friends in our own imagination than they are in fact. But to
release it just publicly and then just be silent about it - it is very
difficult to understand what they are doing. 

Reuel Gerecht offers possible explanations, including one that the Russians
may have been duped by American intelligence to pass misleading information
to Baghdad.

"One would not be shocked if the Russians gave away U.S. troop movements,"
he said. "You would be shocked if they did not. It is not clear that any of
the information relayed was actually accurate, which could mean that the
information that was relayed was just simply bad. It could mean that the
information that was relayed by the Russians was actually planted. So it is
very, very difficult to assess this properly yet."

Officials say it will take about one year to release all the captured
material. 




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[osint] International scam targeting Islamic mosques broken

[Bruce Tefft]

Someone needs to explain to the FBI that the US is at war...someone
targetting the enemies bases of support and safehouses should be given a
medal, not stopped and arrested.
 
Bruce
 



By GARRY MITCHELL Associated Press Writer
MOBILE, Ala.
An international wire fraud scheme targeting Islamic institutions with a
phony stranded-traveler plea, netting only small sums but hitting multiple
victims over many years, has been disrupted by the arrest of its mastermind,
the FBI says.

Islamic advocates say Mohammed Mustafa Agbareia, who was arrested in Canada
and pleaded guilty March 1 in Alabama to one count of conspiracy to commit
wire fraud, may have scammed more than $1 million from mosques and Islamic
groups over nearly two decades.

He will be sentenced July 10 by U.S. District Judge Charles Butler in
Mobile, where he is in the custody of federal marshals.

Agbareia is accused of claiming to be with a Saudi development bank
investing in local Islamic society projects. Eventually he would contact
Islamic leaders asking for money, saying he was stranded at an airport in
Canada or another distant location and needed money wired.

Agbareia manipulated the Islamic tenet of lending aid to a stranded
traveler, the FBI says.

He would always ask for $1,000 to $1,500 _ amounts small enough to "pass
under the radar" of local authorities, said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Washington, D.C.

"This guy was really unique," Hooper said in an interview Wednesday.

Agbareia, whose guilty plea was first reported by the Mobile Register, faces
a possible 5-year prison sentence, a $250,000 fine and 3 years of federal
supervision after his prison release. But penalties could vary because a
religious institution was a victim and the court's sentencing guidelines are
only advisory in this case, according to the plea agreement.

The scheme dates to the 1990s and had at least 45 victims in the United
States before being halted. It involved over 10,000 solicitations for money,
according to the FBI.

Agbareia was indicted in Mobile and Vermont on the fraud charges about a
year ago. A second man, Zouhair Youssei Hissy, also was indicted in Mobile
for an alleged role in the scheme and awaits extradition to the United
States from Canada.

Agbareia, 40, was arrested in Canada pending his unrelated deportation to
Israel. Records show he's from Nazareth in Israel.

The FBI probe of Agbareia began in Vermont where two victims were defrauded,
an FBI spokesman said in a March 22 statement about the case. Another
complaint came in Alabama in 2004 from the Islamic Society of Mobile Mosque.

Collecting victims' phone numbers on the Internet, Islamic institutions or
mosques were contacted by Agbareia and Hissy, who claimed to represent the
Saudi Arabia-based Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

Agbareia usually kept 60-80 percent of the money, with Hissy getting the
remainder, the FBI said.

In Mobile, FBI spokesman Special Agent Craig Dahle said it's unknown how
much money the scheme collected. He said there could be victims worldwide.

In the plea agreement, Agbareia, represented by the public defender's
office, agreed to forfeit any proceeds of his criminal activity and
cooperate with the government's investigation under threat of additional
charges. 
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[osint] FW: Carroll, CAIR & Co.

[Bruce Tefft]

She's an anti-American "useful dupe"...maybe even a Muslim convert.  For
some reason (!) the mainstream media is not publishing her anti-American
remarks, but the Islamic media and internet is trumpeting it.
 
Bruce
 



1.  Is she a convert? 

2.  Is she a collaborator? 

3.  Note CAIR's graciously claiming credit. 
 
D
 
Reaction to reporter Carroll's release
Thursday, March 30, 2006 Posted: 1810 GMT (0210 HKT) 
story.carroll.intvu.ap.jpg
U.S. journalist Jill Carroll appears in an interview Thursday on Iraqi
television shortly after her release.
 
(CNN) -- The release Thursday of American journalist Jill Carroll nearly
three months after her kidnapping in Baghdad elicited joy from family,
friends and officials as well as expressions of hope for the release of
other hostages in Iraq:
Jim Carroll, the reporter's father, said he was asleep when the telephone
rang about 6 a.m. The voice on the other end of the line said simply, "Hi,
Dad. This is Jill. I'm released." (
 Watch a spokesman express the family's feelings --
1:15)
Mary Beth Carroll, Jill's mother, said in a statement read by her brother,
Peter Alonzi, in Evanston, Illinois: "My wish is that this joyous occasion
will offer hope to all the mothers of Iraq whose children have been
kidnapped. ... May they all be returned safely and quickly to their mothers'
arms." 
Richard Bergenheim, editor of The Christian Science Monitor, the paper for
which Carroll freelanced, said, "Often more than 30 Iraqis a day are
kidnapped, and the world does not hear their voices or that of their
families. ... I can't help but reflect on the conditions in which other
captives have been held, which have been very grim."
Tariq al-Hashimi, secretary-general of the Iraqi Islamic Party, was seen on
a videotape offering Carroll presents, including the Quran: "I extend my
congratulations to you, your family, to the American people for your safety
and I'm very pleased you are with us today."
President Bush said, "Thank God. ... I'm just really grateful she was
released, and I want to thank those who worked hard to release her, and
we're glad she's alive."
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hailed the release, expressing "the
great delight and the great relief of the United States." (
 Watch the president and Rice react to Carroll's
release -- 1:27)
Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said Carroll "is safe, she is
free, and she appears in good health and in great spirits. ... We're going
to work as hard as we can to help her get home as soon as possible."
The Christian Science board of directors said in a statement: "We're deeply
thankful for the monumental labors that went on in agencies and offices of
the United States government, within the government of Iraq, and among
individuals in Iraq and worldwide. To everyone who offered private and
published messages of support along the way, you have our heartfelt thanks."

Micah Garen, former captive in Iraq, said: "Jill is a wonderful person, and
she showed so much compassion to Iraq. ... She's been released unharmed. I
think everybody can celebrate this." 
Jackie Spinner, a Washington Post reporter who covered Iraq, said of
Carroll: "This is a woman of tremendous courage. Obviously she did something
right to get herself out of the situation, starting from the fair reporting
that she did during her many months in Iraq."
Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists,
said: "We are overjoyed that this ordeal has finally ended and that Jill
Carroll has been returned safely. We continue to call for the release of
other remaining captives in Iraq, and we urge armed groups to stop targeting
innocent civilians."
Reporters Without Borders said: "We thank all those throughout the world,
particularly the major Arabic media, who campaigned for the release of this
young journalist. ... Our campaign will not be over until the three Iraqi
reporters, Rim Zeid, Marwan Khazaal and Ali Abdullah Fayad, have been
released in their turn."
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations,
said that the group welcomes Carroll's release as "a positive development
and we hope it leads to the release of all hostages currently held in Iraq.
... We hope that we had at least some small part in winning her release and
convincing the kidnappers their actions were counterproductive to the
interests of the people of Iraq."
Richard Kolko, FBI spokesman, said, "We are obviously pleased that Jill
Carroll has been released. Many U.S. government agencies and the FBI worked
diligently behind the scenes on the Jill Carroll kidnapping case. The FBI's
Office for Victim Assistance will now work to reunite Jill with her family."
CNN's Susan Garraty and Jason Carroll contributed to this report.
 
 
 
Accessed 30 Mar 2006, 
 
 
 
 
 


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[osint] Film Provokes Action Toward Islamist Threat

[Bruce Tefft]

 
- Zara   Myers
http://www.jewishexponent.com/ViewArticle.asp?ArtID=2864
In a show of unity in the face of mounting international Arab extremism, as
well as anti-Israel sentiment on America's college campuses, some 800 people
turned out for last weekend's sold-out screening of "Obsession: Radical
Islam's War Against the West" at the University of Pennsylvania in
Philadelphia. 

Welcoming those to the March 26 event - organized by Aish Philadelphia, the
Jewish Community Centers, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia,
Hillel of Greater Philadelphia and Akiba Hebrew Academy - Michael Wachs, one
of the evening's sponsors, said that "the true blessing of this event is
Jews standing united as one. 'Obsession' is a wake-up call." 


The film, which received top honors at the 2005 Liberty Film Festival, was
directed, edited and co-written by Wayne Kopping of South Africa. Rabbi
Raphael Shore, director of Aish International, was the co-producer and
co-writer. 


'Death to the Jews!' 


With archival footage, the film graphically displays acts of terrorism and
slaughter around the globe, including the Sept. 11 plane crashes in New
York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., and bombings in Jerusalem, Madrid
and London. Radical Islamic imams are shown spewing hate for America and the
Jews; young children are seen screaming, "Death to the Jews!" 


The film intersperses the acts of terrorism with interviews with experts,
including Steven Emerson, executive director of The Investigative Report;
Itamar Marcus, editor of Palestinian Media Watch; and former federal
prosecutor John Loftus. 


It also draws parallels between radical Islam's war on the West and Nazism.
Footage compares huge rallies in Germany in the 1930s and '40s to those in
the Mideast today, both with stiff-armed salutes and shouts for the
destruction of the Jews. 


As part of his introduction of the guest speaker, Gary Erlbaum - co-chair of
Federation's Center for Israel and Overseas - noted that "Judaism allows us
to make choices." 


"Where do we go from here?" he then asked. 


"The humanitarian gesture is to stand up for ourselves and the people of
Israel," offered Erlbaum. "Tell everyone you can that the world is a
dangerous place." 


In his speech, Prager pointed out the ways anti-Semitism finds expression on
the campuses of the United States. He specifically mentioned Harvard,
Columbia and the University of Chicago. 


"They are home to the enemies of the Jewish people," he said. "Jews venerate
the university. However, our colleges are morally inverted, and teach that
America and Israel are the enemies." 


He also told the audience to take the moral imperative and to reject the
need of always being politically correct. 


After absorbing Prager's arguments, Annamerle Bellah of Wynnewood agreed
with the speaker's sentiments. 


"There is urgency for Jews to lose our apathy," she said before quoting the
talmudic sage Hillel. "If we are not for ourselves, who will be? If not now,
when?" 


Penn student Michael Halassa, a Jordanian-Christian Arab, said "the movie
was not strong enough. Nothing there surprised me. We were taught to hate in
school." 


Rabbi Yaakov Couzens, director of Aish Philadelphia, praised the community
example of unity and cooperation of the five partner organizations in
putting together the event. He made it clear why the film was shown at Penn,
and why student tickets were underwritten by the event's organizers. 


"Students are in an intellectual learning mode," stated the rabbi, who plans
to show the film at other Philadelphia-area schools. "Far too many
professors are giving anti-Israel and anti-America views. 


"What students learn will affect whom they marry, their politics, and their
daily values," he continued. "All of the partner organizations are working
to see that those values include a love of Judaism and Israel." 

  _  

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determined by 

[osint] Islam: Scholar Warns Europe Of 'Clash Within Civilization'

[Bruce Tefft]

This is the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist who keeps trying to get into the
US.
 
Bruce
 

  _  




Thursday, 30 March 2006

Islam: Scholar Warns Europe Of 'Clash Within Civilization' 

By Ahto Lobjakas


 France -- Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan talking during the European Social
Forum in Ivry-sur-Seine, 15 Nov. 2003
 
Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan (file photo)   
AFP 
Tariq Ramadan, a leading scholar of Islam in Europe warned on March 29 that
the European Union must come to terms with its Muslim citizens or face what
he called a "clash within civilization."





BRUSSELS, March 30, 2006 -- Speaking at a two-day conference on the future
of Islam in Europe, Tariq Ramadan argued that Europe is in trouble unless it
learns to accept and treat its Muslims as equal citizens. 

The highlight of the Brussels conference was a debate between Ramadan and
the leader of the Greens in the European Parliament, Daniel Cohn-Bendit.
Speaking to journalists before the debate, Ramadan said he believes the
watershed event for Europe's Muslims is the recent row over the cartoons
satirizing the Prophet Muhammad -- and not the rise of Islamic terrorism. 

"[In] the long run if you don't know how to deal with something like that it
could have more damaging consequences than the 11 September [2001 attacks],"
he said. "Why? Because with what we had in the [United] States we had
something that was something clear. These are extremists; we are dealing
with people who are not accepted by the great majority of the Muslims, they
are on the margin of the margin -- [Osama] bin Laden and the others. Even
the people who did what happened on July 7 [2005] in Britain, they were on
the margin of even the community. They were not meeting in mosques. They
were meeting in gyms and places like that, outside the reality of the Muslim
community." 

Common Values? 

Ramadan says the publication of the cartoons points to a fundamental problem
with values that all European citizens should share. 

   Muslims
praying in London (AFP file photo)He insists that Europe's estimated 15
million to 20 million Muslims are not, as he puts it, "Muslims in Europe"
but "European Muslims." They are European citizens first and Muslims second
-- and must be understood as such by other Europeans. 

Ramadan's thesis is that by identifying Muslims primarily by their faith,
European countries risk a "clash within civilization." He says extremists
within the Muslim community and the European far right are using the
cartoons controversy to "polarize" the communities. 

Ramadan particularly singles out the political right, saying it is building
a "Europe of fear" by portraying all Muslims as a threat. 

'Common Civic Sense' 

Using the cartoons as an example, Ramadan says Europe is denying its Muslim
citizens something it affords to its traditional minorities -- such as the
Jews. He calls this "common civic sense." 

"We have something when we live together which is clear," Ramadan said.
"It's a common civic sense. You are not going -- and it would be wrong -- in
our continent, to start laughing at the suffering of the Jews. You don't do
it. You don't have to do it. It's not illegal, [but] it's stupid. It's not
-- it's not dignified. And I think we have to understand from where is it
coming? From laws? No. It's coming from [a] common civic sense. Don't do it,
because we're living together." 

Ramadan says the sensitivities of Europe's Muslims require similar respect.
He argues that there's a clear distinction between such respect and
censorship -- the latter is the removal of a right, while the former asking
for it to be used wisely. 

No Longer An Immigrant Community 

Ramadan also says a line must be drawn between Muslims and immigration.
Immigration is an increasingly keenly perceived as a threat by many
Europeans, and many immigrants are Muslims. But, he says, immigrants no
longer make up the bulk of Europe's Muslim citizenry. 

Ramadan's views met with some opposition, notably during his two-hour debate
with Cohn-Bendit. Cohn-Bendit's political roots are in the far left, and he
said he rejects the ambition of any religion to influence public life in
Europe. 

Offering mostly anecdotal evidence, Cohn-Bendit denounced the constraints
Islam often imposes on its adherents' choices in life -- especially as
regards marriage. 

Is It Possible To Reform Islam? 

Cohn-Bendit also expressed frustration at the tendency of fundamentalist
Islam to thwart attempts at reform in the Muslim world outside Europe. 

He particularly pointed to Turkey, the only Muslim democracy and an EU
candidate country, which he said nevertheless failed to follow through with
change. 

   A
poster by artist Burak Delier depicting a woman wearing a chador made from
the European Union flag in an Istan

[osint] Bush Wanted War

[David Bier]

"Bush wanted war. He just didn't want the war he got."
"Whatever Bush's specific reason or reasons, the one thing that's so
far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way
out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started."


Would have been nice if he had some sense of history and military
affairs so something akin to the U.S. Constabulary in Germany might
have been set up in Iraq to win the peace.

David Bier 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/29/AR2006032902057.html

Bush Wanted War

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, March 30, 2006; 12:00 AM

It is my firm belief that if, say, a few dozen people simultaneously
did an Internet search for the words "Bush lied," computers all over
the country would crash and the energy grid would buckle, producing a
rolling blackout that would begin somewhere around Terre Haute, Ind.,
and end in Barnstable, Mass. So common is the statement "Bush lied"
that it seems sometimes that I am the only blue-state person who does
not think it is true. Then, last week, the indomitable Helen Thomas
changed all that with a single question. She asked George Bush why he
wanted "to go to war" from the moment he "stepped into the White
House," and the president said, "You know, I didn't want war." With
that, the last blue-state skeptic folded.

I would not go so far as to say that Bush wanted war from Day One in
the White House, but there was plenty of evidence he had Saddam on his
mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We have
it from Richard Clarke, formerly the White House's chief
anti-terrorism official, that within a day of the attacks Bush was
inquiring if Saddam might have had a hand in them. When told no --
"But, Mr. President, al-Qaeda did this," Clarke told him -- it became
instantly clear that this was not the answer Bush wanted. "'Look into
Iraq, Saddam,' the president said testily," Clarke writes in his book,
"Against All Enemies."

Similarly, Bob Woodward says in his book, "Plan of Attack," that not
only was Bush fixated on Iraq, but by Thanksgiving of 2001, he already
had told Don Rumsfeld to prepare a plan for the invasion of that
country. "Let's get started on this," the president said, cautioning
the defense secretary not to tell anyone. Rumsfeld said that
eventually he would have to take CIA Director George Tenet into his
confidence. "'Fine."' Woodward quotes Bush as saying -- "but not now."

As for myself, I was told by a European intelligence official that
after flying to Washington right after the 9/11 attacks, he was
stunned to discover that talk had already turned to Iraq. This was
particularly true at the Pentagon, where Paul Wolfowitz was obsessed
with Iraq, and that seems to have been true of the White House as
well. And now we know from various British accounts that close aides
to Prime Minister Tony Blair recognized early on that Bush was going
to go to war -- and that Blair, his poodle at obedient heel, would
follow along. More recently we learned -- again from British sources
-- that even though Bush went back to the United Nations for yet
another resolution condemning Iraq, he was determined to make war
almost no matter what.

None of this necessarily means that Bush doctored U.S. intelligence to
make a purposely false case that Iraq was seething with weapons of
mass destruction. There is plenty of evidence that others in the
administration -- Dick Cheney, in particular -- exaggerated such that
their pants must have caught fire, but nothing so far proved that Bush
knew he was making a false case. Indeed, foreign intelligence sources
were in agreement with Bush on Iraq's WMD and so were Clinton
administration officials who had seen some of the same intelligence.
Even within the Bush administration, critics of the war -- and there
were some -- were just as convinced that Saddam had WMD. Colin Powell,
you may recall, soiled his stellar reputation with a United Nations
speech that is now just plain sad to read. Almost none of it is true.

There remains, though, the little matter of what was in Bush's gut --
not his head, mind you, but that elusive place where emotion resides.
It was there, in the moments after 9/11, that Bush truly decided on
war, maybe because Saddam had once tried to kill George H.W. Bush,
maybe because the neocons had convinced him that a brief war in Iraq
would have long-term salutary consequences for the entire Middle East,
maybe because he could not abide the thought that a monster like
Saddam might die in his sleep -- and maybe because he heard destiny
calling.

Whatever Bush's specific reason or reasons, the one thing that's so
far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way
out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. Bush wanted
war. He just didn't want the war he got.




Posted by David Bier, CADRE Intel Mgr
http://groups.google.com/group/publicintel

“M

[osint] 'Plotters aimed to bomb Tube'

[Bruce Tefft]

 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-2108768_1,00.html
 


The TimesMarch 29, 2006 


'Plotters aimed to bomb Tube'

By Nicola Woolcock


Defendant tried to recruit a London Underground worker for a 'martyrdom
operation'

     





A MUSLIM Tube worker was asked to become a suicide bomber by an Islamic
extremist on trial for plotting to attack a British target, the Old Bailey
was told yesterday. 

The London Underground worker, known only as Imran, allegedly attended a
terrorist training camp in Pakistan with four of seven men who are charged
with conspiracy. 

The court was also told that a key al-Qaeda operative called Q, who gave the
men their orders, was living in Luton. Q reported to Abdul Hadi, No 3 in
command of the terrorist organisation. 

One defendant, Waheed Mahmood, allegedly sent supplies for al-Qaeda from
Britain to Pakistan, including a GPS navigation system, solar panels,
invisible ink and cash. 

Another, Omar Khyam, was said to have masterminded a "martyrdom operation"
with a belt bomb and wanted to know if Imran would be willing to carry it
out. But Imran refused because he thought the plot would come to nothing. 

And the older brother of a third defendant, Anthony Garcia, was allegedly
planning a separate terrorist attack on a target in Britain. 

The claims were made by Mohammed Babar, an American terrorist turned
informant, who is giving evidence against his former accomplices. 

He said that the group discussed how to smuggle bomb parts into Britain and
carried out test explosions at a terrorist training camp in Malakand, a
mountainous region in northern Pakistan. The first was unsuccessful but the
second created a U-shaped hole. 

A video was made of their training camp activities with the intention of
adding verses from the Koran, and turning it into recruitment propaganda. 

The men planned to smuggle explosives to Europe inside shampoo bottles, cans
of shaving foam or packages of dried fruit - shipped, couriered or taken in
person - while detonators would be concealed in a tape recorder. 

Mr Khyam, 24, from Crawley, West Sussex, also allegedly tricked one Muslim
into carrying aluminium powder on to a flight from Pakistan to Britain to
see if Customs would detect the substance. 

He attended the camp with his younger brother, Shujah Mahmood, 18, Mr
Garcia, 24, from Ilford, East London, and other British Muslims who are not
on trial. Salahuddin Amin, 31, from Luton, did not attend because he had
undergone previous training. 

The men were said to have dressed and acted like tourists en route so that
they would not attract attention. They moved into a hotel, travelled in a
minibus emblazoned with its logo, wore Western clothes and stopped praying
in public, on the orders of Abdul Hadi. 

The defendants also took numerous photographs of each other while hiking and
visiting local landmarks, as proof of their "tourist activities" if stopped
by the authorities. 

The trial was also told that the men obtained other substances for making
explosives, including urea brought from Britain, and nitric acid bought from
a bazaar, but rejected these in favour of ammonium nitrate and aluminium
powder. 

Mr Khyam's younger brother, Shujah Mahmood, 18, allegedly brought digital
scales to Pakistan so that they could weigh the ratios. 

Mr Khyam was said to have given a "watered-down" formula for explosives to a
British Muslim known as Uniboy, who wanted to carry out his own terrorist
attack with Mr Garcia's older brother, Lamine. 

Babar said: "Uniboy said he wanted the formula because he wanted to do an
operation himself in the UK. 

"He didn't know how to make a bomb . . . He said he wanted to do something
with someone else as far as making a bomb and hitting a nightclub." 

Babar added that another man had brought supplies for al-Qaeda from Britain,
on behalf of Waheed Mahmood. Babar said: "He had a GPS navigation system,
solar panels, invisible ink, cash and Lucozade. They were all given to Mr
Amin. They were just meant for al-Qaeda. Except for the Lucozade." 

The men were also taught how to shoot in different positions and to assemble
and take apart weapons. 

Mr Amin, Mr Mahmood, Mr Khyam, his brother, Shujah Mahmood, 18, and Jawad
Akbar, 22, all from Crawley, and Mr Garcia and Nabeel Hussain, 20, of
Horley, Surrey, deny conspiring to cause an explosion likely to endanger
life. 

Mr Khyam, Mr Garcia and Mr Hussain deny possessing 600kg (1,320lb) of
fertiliser for the purposes of terrorism. Mr Khyam and Shujah Mahmood deny
possessing aluminium powder for the purposes of terrorism. 

The trial continues.



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[osint] FW: ACLU Out-PCs Itself in Boston Mosque Caper

[Bruce Tefft]

 
Excerpt:
 
 
If, as de Rochefoucault had it, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to
virtue”, the ACLU has to be first in line at that altar.  …
 
Too kind, too kind.
 
D 
 
The ACLU's Leap to Inaction
By   Hillel Stavis
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 30, 2006
For nearly a hundred years the crèche sat in front of the Balch Elementary
School in South Norwood, Massachusetts.  Then in 2004, Sarah Wunsch,
attorney for the Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union
contended that the display depicting the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem
manger, violated separation of church and state. and its presence on the
grounds of a public school sent a message that the schools endorse
Christianity. ''Kids being driven to school or being dropped off see it and
think it's part of school," she said. 
Eventually, the ACLU prevailed, the crèche was removed and relocated nearby
to private land.  
In scores of similar cases, the ACLU and its 50 state affiliates
relentlessly scan the horizon for perceived violations of the Establishment
Clause of the Constitution.  Supreme Court decisions on religious
constitutional issues began in earnest in the late 1940’s, culminating in
the landmark decision in the 1962 Engle v. Vitale decision in which the
Court ruled that New York’s practice of beginning the school day with a
prayer violated the first amendment.  Recently, the ACLU has trumpeted its
victories in “The Silver Ring Thing” case in which The Department of Health
and Human Services was held in violation of the clause by providing
“inherently religious activities” in its promotion of an “abstinence before
marriage” program.  Nor is the ACLU shy about broadcasting its role in
eliminating “intelligent design” courses in Pennsylvania public schools.  In
hundreds of cases, the ACLU neither slumbers nor sleeps when it comes to
pursuing miscreants who would subvert our Constitution.  Thanks to their
efforts, perhaps next year our currency will bear the inscription, “In
Litigation We Trust.”
Now imagine my surprise when I couldn’t find anyone – either at the
Massachusetts ACLU – or at its big brother in Washington who had brought
legal action – or who would even render an opinion - on the construction of
a $22,000,000 religious structure on land virtually given away by the city
of Boston and attendant religious instruction courses forced on a nearby
state-funded college.  How could such a monumental religious undertaking
involving the obvious endorsement by government officials at every level
escape the withering gaze of the watchdogs of the ACLU?  
It took only a few phone calls to find the answer.  The religious structure
and institution was neither a church nor a synagogue.  It was a mosque.  And
not just another mosque.  The Islamic Society of Boston’s mosque project
will be the largest on the east coast of the United States and will be
funded primarily through Middle East emirate money. 
Not content with support pledged by Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, the ISB sought
to purchase the city-owned land at a bargain basement price.  And did they
ever succeed.  The City of Boston obliged the group by selling its 1.9 acre
site valued at $2,000,000 for $175,000.  Boldly compounding the fraudulent
conveyance part of the scam, the city agreed to receive further in-kind
payment from the ISB in the form of an Islamic Library and courses in
Islamic instruction at a state facility, Roxbury Community College; not a
$200 crèche or a menorah made of scrap tubing, but a multi-million dollar
enterprise based on defrauding taxpayers and establishing ongoing
indoctrination courses on the glories of Islam.  Not only did this
enterprise represent “inherent religious activity”, but it went far beyond
the ACLU’s floor for triggering action by involving explicit and manifold
religious activity.
If, as de Rochefoucault had it, “Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to
virtue”, the ACLU has to be first in line at that altar.  Carol Rose,
Director of the Massachusetts ACLU, told me in 2004, in response to a
private lawsuit brought by an individual based on violation of the
establishment clause, that her organization favored the ISB’s position
insofar as the lawsuit “violated that organization’s right of free speech.”
After I put my dropped jaw back into place, I suggested that a $22,000,000
mosque built on giveaway city land along with taxpayer funded Islamic
indoctrination amounted to a textbook case of Establishment Clause
transgression and made the crèche case look like a minor infraction.  At
that point she terminated the conversation.  
Fast forward to March of this year.  Major news stories, local and national,
are now breaking revealing even more skullduggery at the Boston
Redevelopment Authority and the Islamic Society of Boston.  It seems that
the Deputy Director of the BRA, a Mr. Muhammed Ali-Salaam, a former official
at Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam and member of the ISB, traveled t

[osint] Muslims in the West

[Bruce Tefft]

Now this is encouraging!
 
Bruce
 
 
 http://www.salaam.co.uk/themeofthemonth/april02_index.php
 
INTRODUCTION 






"To Allah belongs the East and the West. Wherever you turn there is the
presence of God..." 

As the twenty-first century begins, almost one out of every five human
beings is a Muslim. In the course of the 21st century a quarter of the human
race will probably be Muslim. The new demographic presence of Islam within
the Western world is indicative that Islamisation is now a major globalising
force. Also as a manifestation of the demographic Islamisation of the
Western world, there are now over a thousand mosques and Islamic centres in
the United States alone. And the country has professional associations for
Muslim engineers, Muslim social scientists and Muslim educators. There are
some six million American Muslims, and the number is rising impressively. It
can no longer be seen as Islam versus the West. It is Islam and the West or
Islam in the West, as some observers have noted.

 Mosque of Paris
 The
growth of the Muslim community in the West has been impressive to judge by
the mosques or mainly prayer rooms: both Germany and France have about a
thousand, Britain about 500. The central mosques in London and in Washington
symbolise this growth. The mosques are full of worshippers, they are
beautifully constructed and are the hub of Muslim social and religious
activity. In France, Islam is the second most important religion numerically
after Catholicism. In Britain Muslims have been demanding state subsidies
for Muslim denominational schools. In Germany it has been belatedly realised
that the importation of Turkish workers in the 1970s was also an invitation
to the muezzin and the minaret to establish themselves in German cities.
(source: Sharif Shuja, Contemporary Review Company Ltd)

*   Origins of the immigrants 

 Regents Park Mosque,London
 Muslims
in Europe have a direct relationship to the colonial period. The UK ruled
South Asia (British India), and therefore most of its Muslim immigrants tend
to be from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Moroccans and Algerians drifted
to France (they are about six to 10 million Muslims now in France). Because
Germany and Turkey had a relationship going back to the First World War,
Turks went to Germany (most of Germany's one and a half million Muslims are
Turks). The Netherlands has about half a million Muslims who are mostly from
Surinam. In Portugal most Muslims are from the former colonies in India or
southern France; in Spain they are from Morocco or Algeria. In Italy, where
there are estimated to be about 200,000 Muslims, they are mostly from Libya.

Muslims in America have a direct relationship with the political turmoil in
many countries of the Muslim world that has occasioned increased emigration
(exodus of Palestinians, revolution in Iran, the military coup in
Afghanistan, the Lebanese civil war.) and consequently contributed to the
Muslim presence in America.
Most now come from the subcontinent of South Asia, including Pakistanis,
Indians, and Bangladeshis. Today this group probably numbers more than one
million. Also the black Muslims through the Nation of Islam and Warith Deen
Muhammad represent a very large Muslim community.

*   The American versus the European experience 

 Washington Mosque

There are some interesting differences between the USA and Europe which help
us to better understand the phenomenon of Muslims living in the West, and
which also highlight the broader historical differences between the USA and
Europe. The main difference is the social and economic composition of the
Muslim community. In the USA it is largely middle class doctors, engineers,
academics. This gives the community a greater social confidence and a
positive sense of belonging. In Europe, by and large, the community remains
stuck in the working class or even the underclass. Its failure on the
political scene is spectacular: although Britain has two to four million
Muslims they have only been able to win a couple of seats in Parliament.
Worse still is that their leaders tend to be divided, particularly over
where to draw the line between integration and traditional Muslim identity.
Another difference is that in the USA there is a greater geographical
spread. Muslims are not concentrated in one state or city. In Europe there
is a tendency to concentrate. Bradford in England is an example. The
concentration allows the leaders of that particular city to emerge as
spokesmen, that does not represent automatically the Muslim community of the
UK.

Europe itself has changed dramatically in relation to its immigrants and
their culture. For example, from the early 1950s to the early 1990s a number
of developments took place in Britain on all levels of societ

[osint] UK - How many Muslim terrorists here?

[Bruce Tefft]

How many Muslims are there in the UK?   
 About 1.6 million (legal).
 
Bruce
 

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

  

UK - How many Muslim terrorists here?

 
 I asked that question on Saturday as a result of information
coming out of the current Muslim terrorist trial going on.

Today,  
from the Times we learn of references to even more Muslim terrorists here in
the UK, including al Qaeda.



A MUSLIM Tube worker was asked to become a suicide bomber by an Islamic
extremist on trial for plotting to attack a British target, the Old Bailey
was told yesterday. 

The London Underground worker, known only as Imran, allegedly attended a
terrorist training camp in Pakistan with four of seven men who are charged
with conspiracy. 



So, who is he? Does he still work for the Underground? Remember, the
activities of these UK Muslim terrorists predates the 7/7 London Underground
attacks.

Then there's this reference to al Qaeda here in the UK.



The court was also told that a key al-Qaeda operative called Q, who gave the
men their orders, was living in Luton. Q reported to Abdul Hadi, No 3 in
command of the terrorist organisation. 



Got that? al Qaeda living in Luton.

There's more.



And the older brother of a third defendant, Anthony Garcia, was allegedly
planning a separate terrorist attack on a target in Britain. 



Still more.



He attended the [terrorist] camp with his younger brother, Shujah Mahmood,
18, Mr Garcia, 24, from Ilford, East London, and other British Muslims who
are not on trial. 



Who, how many and where are they?

And more.



Mr Khyam was said to have given a "watered-down" formula for explosives to a
British Muslim known as Uniboy, who wanted to carry out his own terrorist
attack with Mr Garcia's older brother, Lamine. 

Babar said: "Uniboy said he wanted the formula because he wanted to do an
operation himself in the UK. 



And more.



"He didn't know how to make a bomb . . . He said he wanted to do something
with someone else as far as making a bomb and hitting a nightclub." 



Who might that be?

Not done yet.



Babar added that another man had brought supplies for al-Qaeda from Britain,
on behalf of Waheed Mahmood.



Again, who and where is he?

Oh, you didn't know any of this? Ahh, you must have been reading
 the BBC's report on the trial.

That's why you don't know these UK terrorists are Muslims, that al Qaeda are
here and that there are many many more UK Muslim terrorists out there. Or,
that prior to 7/7, UK Muslim terrorists tried to recruit a Muslim
Underground worker to mount a terrorist attack.

You see the BBC don't want you to know all that. Why?

Because the BBC are on the side of the terrorists.

-
Comments:- 

Comment Successfully Posted 

Such "trivial" matters like this are not newsworthy here!, no we have much
more "important" things on the TV "news" here, like French strikes (no
mention at all of our own on the same day!), Pop Idol, Soap operas and the
daddy of them all, the Opium of the masses...football!.

Bury everything else, especially islam and our wide open surrendered borders
because thats all that grinning fool Bliar and his regimes fault, and we
cant have the sheeple knowing about any of that can we!.
Mick | 03.29.06 - 12:32 pm |

# 
  _  


 Gravatar
 What's that sound we are hearing?

Could it be the rapid approach of the final flush?

Don't worry foks your news media are making sure that you are fully
informed. Your governments are going to protect you. They have to don't
they? After all they took all of your guns away!
Isn't that all the proof you need that they are concerned for YOUR
wellbeing?
OneMoreMiddleAgedGuy |   Homepage | 03.29.06 -
3:58 pm |

# 
  _  


 Gravatar
 The Islamic radicals have been in the
Universities since the mid 80'swhere are they ALL now?
mick in the uk |   Homepage | 03.29.06 - 5:38 pm |

# 
  _  


 Gravatar
 To know the exact number of terrorist,you
should know the head count of muslims. If there are 1 million- bingo you get
the number.Where there are muslims 

[osint] Hamas says it won't arrest terrorists who attack Israel

[Bruce Tefft]

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/697914.html
 
 

Last update - 23:04 23/03/2006


 
     
Hamas says it won't arrest militants who attack Israel  
     
By Reuters  
     

Incoming Palestinian interior minister Said Seyam, chosen by Hamas to
oversee three security services, said on Thursday he will not order the
arrest of militants carrying out attacks against Israel. 

"The day will never come when any Palestinian would be arrested because of
his political affiliation or because of resisting the occupation," Seyam
told Reuters in an interview. "The file of political detention must be
closed." 

Hamas, whose charter officially calls for Israel's destruction, swept to
victory in a Jan. 25 election and plans to present its cabinet line-up to a
Hamas-dominated parliament for a vote next week. 




The militant group has selected Hamas loyalists like Seyam to fill almost
all of the 24-member cabinet after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud
Abbas's Fatah faction and other moderate parties refused to join a coalition
with Hamas. 

Hamas's failure to convince rival factions to join the government could make
it harder for it to rule and could cement U.S. and Israeli efforts to
isolate the group. 

As well as vowing not to arrest militants for carrying out attacks against
Israel, Seyam said Hamas would try to coordinate militants' operations. 

"Talks with the factions in the future will focus on the mechanisms, the
shape and the timing (of any attacks)," he said. 

"But the right to defend our people and to confront the aggression is
granted and is legitimate." 

Seyam said he had begun talks with Palestinian security chiefs in the hope
of averting fighting within the security services. A majority of the
20,000-plus security personnel, who will answer to Seyam, are Fatah members.


Seyam said maintaining law and order would be a top priority. There were
several hundred murders in Gaza and the West Bank last year, according to
human rights groups. 

Seyam said his ministry would continue to coordinate day-to-day security
issues, like the number of permits given to Palestinian workers, with
Israeli authorities. But Seyam said he did not plan to meet Israelis
himself. 

"Regarding daily issues, they will not be changed, except in the way that
serves the interest of our people," he said. 

Israel and the United States have said they will not have any contact with
Hamas members and have urged donors to cut off direct funding to the
government unless it renounces violence, abides by interim peace deals and
recognises the Jewish state. 

"Saeed Seyam did not come to the government to revive any security
cooperation or to protect the occupation and their settlers. I came to
protect our people and their fighters, to protect their trees, their
properties and their capabilities," Seyam said.



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[osint] Sydney bomb plot by female Muslim convert link to race riots, murderer

[Bruce Tefft]

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=92998
 
  

Sydney bomb plot link to race riots, murderer

Monday March 27, 2006

A woman charged at the weekend with plotting to bomb Sydney was a convert to
Islam who planned the attack at the behest of a jailed murderer angered over
anti-Muslim race riots here late last year.

Jill Courtney, 26, was arrested at her suburban Sydney home on Friday in a
swoop by Federal and local police operating under anti-terrorism laws.

She was charged with conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to cause explosives
to be placed in or near a public place.

The court granted a request by Courtney's lawyer that the woman be assessed
by a psychiatrist.

Police were not required to detail the allegations against Courtney during a
brief court hearing yesterday, but Sunday newspapers quoted police sources
saying they believed she was acting out of love for a jailed murderer,
Hassan Kalache.

Kalache, 28, is serving a 22-year sentence for killing a rival drug dealer
in 2002 and allegedly told Courtney he was angry over race riots in Sydney
last December and that he would marry her if she carried out a retaliatory
bombing.

A police detective said Courtney converted to Islam after becoming
"besotted" with Kalache. "It's a pretty sad case, she's a bit of a candle in
the wind," he was quoted as saying.

Courtney is due to appear in court again tomorrow.

Last year's riots began when a white mob shouting racist chants assaulted
people of Middle Eastern appearance in the beachside suburb of Cronulla.



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[osint] Christians in Afghanistan

[Bruce Tefft]

 SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 30, 2006, 12:33 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,408781,00.html 

Christians in Afghanistan
 
A Community of Faith and Fear

By Matthias Gebauer in Kabul 

Afghan converts to Christianity lead dangerous lives and must keep their
faith secret to avoid persecution by police, Islamists or even their own
neighbors. Members of this secret society have to constantly keep looking
over their shoulders. 

 An Islamist demonstration in Afghanistan: Christians have no voice here.


REUTERS
An Islamist demonstration in Afghanistan: Christians have no voice here.
Hashim Kabar is nervous. The 36-year-old is fidgeting with the plastic chair
in his small office, looking repeatedly at his watch. His mobile phone keeps
ringing and every few minutes he stands up and goes to the door of the small
building. "Everything OK?" he asks the armed guard there, who is crouching
next to the heavy steel door that has a small slit he can look out of. The
guard nods and Kabar comes back. "I don't have a good feeling about this
today," he says, rubbing his eyes. "Something tells me we're going to have a
visit." 

It's difficult arranging meetings with people like Kabar. Time and again he
postponed the appointment, then he asked that the location be changed.
Finally the meeting takes place in his office. Brochures are lying about and
a computer hums in the background, but nothing would indicate the subject of
the conversation. There are no crucifixes on the wall, no Bibles on the
shelves. Anything that could out him as a Christian has been put out of
sight, out of fear. He is afraid that what happened to Abdul Rahman, another
convert to Christianity, might happen to him. 

The case of Rahman serves as proof to Afghan Christians that they live in
extreme danger, simply because of their beliefs. Despite the fact that
international pressure prevented Rahman from being sentenced and perhaps
executed by Afghanistan's justice system, Rahman's story illustrates the
extreme stress that those who turn away from Islam experience every day. "We
must recognize that freedom of religion, as promised by the Afghan
constitution, does not exist," says Kabar, sadly. "But maybe it's good that
the international community is now aware of that." 

Persecution under the Taliban 

Kabar converted to Christianity 20 years ago, when such a thing was not as
taboo as it is today. "There were a lot of churches, both in Kabul and in
the country," he says. "Back then the two religions coexisted here almost
peacefully." But that all changed when the Taliban came to power in the
mid-1990s. Taliban Supreme Leader Mullah Omar ordered his men to raze
churches to the ground, to lynch Afghan Christians and to kill or drive out
foreigners who followed Jesus Christ. 

Many of Kabar's friends lost their lives during this period. "They tortured
prisoners until they got them to tell them the names of other Christians.
Then the Taliban would kill them and go in search of new victims." Why he
himself survived, he doesn't know. He was taken prisoner twice and
interrogated for hours at a time, but his persecutors could find no proof.
"I knew the suras and the prayers from the Koran by heart. So I pretended to
be a good Muslim," he said, with something like pride in his voice. 

But the disappearance of the Taliban has not made much of a difference for
people like Kabar. Converts continue to be hunted down, thrown into prison
or even killed by their neighbors. The West was largely unaware of the
situation, and it was only by coincidence that Rahman's case captured
international attention. Afghanistan's 2004 constitution, which guarantees
freedom of religion, is of little use to Christians. "Many in power in the
judicial branch are imams or clerics who have little interest in the
constitution," says Kabar. 

Hide and seek 

Kabar is forced to renounce his core identity every day. There is an Islamic
name on his business card, although privately he carries the name of one of
the apostles. Only his family and his closest friends know his secret.
Sometimes, he says, he has to act as if he is praying to Allah. "If business
associates come to my house and suddenly want to pray, I have to go along,"
he says, adding that he only hopes his God understands. 

No one knows how many Afghan converts there really are. Because there are no
churches, there are also no records. Everything is carried out in secret;
only Christians know other Christians. Kabar says he knows a couple of
hundred in Kabul and in many other Afghan cities, estimating that there are
probably in total between 1,000 and 2,000 people of the Christian faith in
Afghanistan, against a Muslim majority of nearly 20 million. Christian Web
sites put that number at 10,000, a figure which seems exaggerated. 



NEWSLETTER  >
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[osint] Blackwater aviation unit to relocate to Camden County

[Bruce Tefft]

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=102168

&ran=18268



Blackwater aviation unit to relocate to Camden County 

By JEFFREY S. HAMPTON, The Virginian-Pilot 
C March 29, 2006 

Blackwater USA's aviation division plans to move to Camden County as the
company continues to expand in the region, Blackwater officials confirmed
Tuesday.

Aviation Worldwide Services and Presidential Airways will bring about 22
rotary and fixed-wing aircraft, including the CASA 212 cargo plane to an
airport under construction in Camden County, said Gary Jackson, president of
Blackwater USA. 

"We have a fleet of aircraft that all have customers," Jackson said. "Every
single aircraft has a contract."

Blackwater's aviation division is currently based in Florida with about 40
employees. The date for the company to move to Camden has not been set, said
Chris Taylor, Blackwater spokesman and vice president for strategic
initiatives. 

The airport permit is scheduled for review by the Camden County planning
board in April. County commissioners also would have to approve the permit,
likely at the May meeting.

For months, local officials have speculated that the aviation company
planned to move to an airport under construction on Blackwater property in
Camden County, but Blackwater officials had declined to confirm the move
until Tuesday.

Blackwater USA has applied to build an airport in Camden County to serve as
the base for its aviation services. If approved by Camden County officials,
the airport would include a 6,000-foot-long, 80-foot-wide runway, another
perpendicular airstrip 2,550 feet long and a 20,000-square-foot hangar,
according to county records. A storm water permit has been approved, said
Dave Parks, chief inspector for Camden County.

Blackwater is also building a blimp at its target manufacturing plant in
Pasquotank County, Taylor said. The blimp could turn into a fleet of
lighter-than-air craft deployed for battlefield surveillance and border
patrol, he said. The blimps, at about 120 feet long, will fly 5,000 to
10,000 feet up, barely visible to enemy ground forces or people illegally
crossing a border.

The company, which served its first customers in 1998 with six employees,
has expanded rapidly since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Blackwater's revenue grew 600 percent between 2002 and 2005. The company
employs 1,300 contractors with a database of 4,700 more and trains 500
military and law enforcement personnel a week, according to a report in Fast
Company magazine earlier this month. Including employees, about 1,000 people
are on the site on a given day. 

The company lists its headquarters as Moyock and owns 4,646 acres in
Currituck County, but almost all of Blackwater's facilities are in Camden
County, where it owns about 1,500 acres.

In 2004, the company announced that it would move to the Currituck airport,
bringing an estimated 

25 jobs and about 10 aircraft. That project stalled after a dispute over
airport ownership between Currituck and the state dragged on. About that
time, residents complained about Blackwater and the military carrying out
operations at night at the airport. 

Last month, Blackwater moved into a 66,569-square-foot, two-story metal
building with nearly 300 rooms. The building is the largest in Camden
County. The Currituck County Board of Commissioners voted Feb. 6 to allow
Blackwater USA to build firing ranges, classrooms and a bunkhouse near
Moyock. The project would be the first for Blackwater in Currituck County.

Reach Jeffrey Hampton at (252) 338-0159 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] 




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[osint] Blackwater USA says it can supply forces for conflicts

[Bruce Tefft]

 

 

Blackwater USA says it can supply forces for conflicts 


Blackwater USA runs a 6,000-acre operation in Moyock, N.C. Its Web site
states: "We are not simply a 'private security company.' We are a
professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability
operations firm who provides turnkey solutions."


Blackwater USA runs a 6,000-acre operation in Moyock, N.C. Its Web site
states: "We are not simply a 'private security company.' We are a
professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping and stability
operations firm who provides turnkey solutions." STEVE EARLEY/THE
VIRGINIAN-PILOT FILE PHOTO 

By BILL SIZEMORE, The Virginian-Pilot 
C March 30, 2006 

Stepping into a potential political minefield, Blackwater USA is offering
itself up as an army for hire to police the world's trouble spots. 

Cofer Black, vice chairman of the Moyock, N.C.-based private military
company, told an international conference in Amman, Jordan, this week that
Blackwater stands ready to help keep or restore the peace anywhere it is
needed.

Such a role would be a quantum leap for Blackwater and raises a host of
policy questions. 

Until now, the eight-year-old company has confined itself to training
military and police personnel and providing security guards for government
and private clients. Under Black's proposal, it would take on an overt
combat role.

"We're low-cost and fast," Black was quoted as saying. "The issue is, who's
going to let us play on their team?"

Unlike national and multinational armies, which tend to get bogged down by
political and logistical limitations, Black said, Blackwater could have a
small, nimble, brigade-size force ready to move into a troubled region on
short notice.

Black's remarks were reported by Defense News, a military publisher that
sponsored the conference where he spoke, the Special Operations Forces
Exhibition.

Chris Taylor, a vice president at Blackwater's Moyock headquarters,
confirmed the account.

"A year ago or so, we realized that we could have a significant positive
impact with a small, professional force in stability operations and
peacekeeping operations," Taylor said.

Blackwater is no stranger to volatile situations. As a security
subcontractor escorting a convoy in Iraq in 2004, the company attracted
worldwide attention when four of its workers were killed, mutilated and hung
from a bridge in Fallujah.

Blackwater, most of whose workers are former members of elite military units
such as the Navy SEALs, now provides security for the U.S. ambassador to
Iraq under a contract with the State Department.

The reconstruction of Iraq has been hampered by insurgent activity, Taylor
said, and Blackwater has the expertise to quell insurgent attacks if invited
by the Iraqi government.

"We clearly couldn't go into the whole country of Iraq," Taylor said. "But
we might be able to go into a region or a city." 

Another place where Blackwater could help restore order, Taylor said, is the
Darfur region of Sudan, where millions have been killed or displaced by
civil strife. The company could send troops under the control of the United
Nations, NATO or the African Union, he said.

Taylor and Black said the company would undertake such a mission only with
the approval of the U.S. government.

Peter Singer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who has written a book
on private military companies, said the concept of private armies engaging
in counter-insurgency missions raises myriad questions about staffing
standards, rules of engagement and accountability.

"No matter how you slice it, it's a private entity making decisions of a
political nature," he said.

"It gets dicey."

Reach Bill Sizemore at (757) 446-2276 or [EMAIL PROTECTED] 




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you must obtain permission from 

[osint] The Jewish Intergalactic Conspiracy

[Bruce Tefft]

 
 
 Max Boot:
Policy analysis -- paranoid style
March 29, 2006
 
IN HIS CLASSIC 1964 essay, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," the
late Richard Hofstadter noted: "One of the impressive things about paranoid
literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost
touching concern with factuality that it invariably shows. It produces
heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only
thing that can be believed." As examples, he cited a 96-page pamphlet by
Joseph McCarthy that contained "no less than 313 footnote references" and a
book by John Birch Society founder Robert Welch that employed "one hundred
pages of bibliography and notes" to show that President Eisenhower was a
communist.

For a more recent instance of the paranoid style, a modern-day Hofstadter
could consult "The Israel Lobby and American Foreign Policy," a "working
paper" by John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M.
Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. With 83
pages of text and 211 footnotes, the Mearsheimer-Walt essay (part of which
appeared in the London Review of Books) is as scholarly as those of Welch
and McCarthy - and just as nutty. 
Mearsheimer and Walt are out to prove that the "Israel Lobby" has seized
control of U.S. foreign policy and thereby "jeopardized not only U.S.
security but that of much of the rest of the world." 

But their very first footnote demonstrates a terminal lack of seriousness:
"Indeed, the mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support
for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would
not need an organized special interest group to bring it about." By that
standard, Social Security, the 2nd Amendment and Roe vs. Wade must not be
"in the American national interest" either, because they are all defended by
even more powerful lobbies. 

The whole paper is full of such faulty reasoning - not to mention inaccurate
"facts" and numerous quotations taken out of context. (The Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America has posted a long list of
mistakes at its website camera.org.) 

In Mearsheimer-Walt's telling, the Israel lobby seems to include just about
every American politician, think tank and newspaper. Many of those cited
actually have conflicting views - "the Lobby" is said to include architects
of the Oslo peace process such as Dennis Ross and critics of Oslo such as
Richard Perle. One suspects that it's enough for Mearsheimer-Walt that most
of those they name are Jewish, though in fairness, they are careful to note
that the fifth column also includes "Christian evangelicals" and
"neoconservative gentiles."

Mearsheimer-Walt can't see any legitimate reason why all these people (along
with most Americans) might support Israel - support they claim is "in good
part" responsible for our "terrorist problem." In reality, Osama bin Laden
was far more inflamed by our support for the Saudi royal family than for
Israel. But Mearsheimer-Walt never mention the existence of the Saudi lobby,
whose success in influencing American policy is far more mysterious
considering that Saudis, unlike Israelis, are leading participants in
anti-American terrorism. 

It's true that the U.S. has paid a price for supporting Israel, but it has
paid an even bigger price for supporting other embattled allies. The U.S.
has sent subsidies but never soldiers to protect Israel - unless you
believe, with Mearsheimer-Walt, Pat Buchanan and David Duke, that the
invasion of Iraq was a Zionist plot. We have sent troops to save, among
others, Britain, France, South Korea, South Vietnam, Kuwait and Kosovo.
Today we risk war in defense of nations from Latvia to Taiwan, even though
there is no good reason why their fate should matter to us any more than
that of Israel. Perhaps Mearsheimer and Walt will write another paper
exposing the tentacles of the Latvian lobby. Or are they only exercised
about the power of the Hebrews? 

After finishing their magnum opus, I was left with just one question: Why
would the omnipotent Israel lobby (which, they claim, works so successfully
"to stifle criticism of Israel") allow such a scurrilous piece of
pseudo-scholarship to be published? Then I noticed that Walt occupies a
professorship endowed by Robert and Renee Belfer, Jewish philanthropists who
are also supporters of Israel. The only explanation, I surmise, is that Walt
must himself be an agent of those crafty Israelites, employed to make the
anti-Israel case so unconvincingly that he discredits it. "The Lobby" works
in mysterious ways.
 
 
Accessed 30 Mar 2006,
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-boot29mar29,0,7274839.c
olumn?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
 
 
 
 


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[osint] Arroyo sees peace with Muslim rebs soon

[Bruce Tefft]

She's making a big mistake.
 
Bruce
 
 

Arroyo sees peace with Muslim rebs soon 

 

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=news02_mar31_2006

PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said yesterday she expects a peace pact
with Muslim separatist rebels this year, and appealed for aid to speed up
economic development in strife-torn Mindanao. 

Government and Muslim rebel negotiators met recently in Malaysia in the
latest round of informal talks to end more than three decades of rebellion,
and agreed to resume discussions early next month, a rebel spokesman said. 

“I believe that before the year is out, we would be able to achieve lasting
peace in Mindanao with your support,” Arroyo said in a speech at an
international donors’ meeting in Tagaytay City. 

“The last mile is always the hardest sailing because that is when the
destination is in sight, but the winds of resistance will blow most
fiercely.” 

Australia was the first to heed the President’s call, contributing A$500,000
(about P18 million) to the Mindanao trust fund administered by the World
Bank. 

The money would help “alleviate the living condition of the people in
Mindanao, particularly former [Moro Islamic Liberation Front] combatants,
their families and communities,” Australian Ambassador Tony Hely said. 

Mrs. Arroyo said “nothing will be more powerful for the future development
of the Philippines than to bring peace, stability and justice to Mindanao. 

“Please consider providing your aid now even as we await the signing of a
final peace accord as several nations have already done under the Mindanao
Trust Fund of the World Bank.” 

The bank and international donors so far have contributed $2.7 million and
promised $50 million more after a peace agreement is signed. 

“Mindanao has great potential for rapid development if different groups can
begin to trust each other, find agreement, and, together, focus on the
development... especially those areas that have been affected by the armed
conflict,” World Bank representative Joachim von Amsberg said. 

Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu said the negotiators were unable to settle
differences over “ancestral domain,” which includes control of resources and
demarcation of territory. 

“They will return in the first part of April,” Kabalu told The Associated
Press by telephone. “We are optimistic. We are confident that we can reach
an agreement within this year.” 

He said there were “intense discussions” over the sharing of
resources-taxes, other revenues and natural resources-in Mindanao. 

The rebels were looking at patterns in peace agreements in Sudan and in
Aceh, Indonesia, he said. AP, and Joyce Pangco Pañares

  

 



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[osint] Philippines: Terrorists emboldened by coup fears, House says

[Bruce Tefft]

 
Terrorists are emboldened by any signs of weakness in their enemy...
 
Bruce
 



Terrorists emboldened by coup fears, House says 

 

http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=news03_mar31_2006

COUP concerns within the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police
(PNP) have emboldened terrorists to launch new attacks, lawmakers said
yesterday. 

"These recent bomb attacks in Jolo and Davao del Sur showed that terrorists
only waited for the right time to strike," said Eastern Samar Rep. Marcelino
Libanan. "They knew this was the right time to strike because the AFP and
PNP have been distracted by the adventurism [of] several of their officers."


Cebu City Rep. Antonio Cuenco, for his part, said the recent Jolo bombing,
which killed five people, the Weena bus bombing in Davao del Sur, which
wounded 22 people, and the lingering threat posed by the alliance of
communists and rebel military officers should be a wake-up call to the AFP
and the PNP to "shun politics and adventurism now and respond to their call
of duty to secure the republic from terrorists and other enemies of the
state." 

The two lawmakers, who are pushing for the quick passage of an antiterrorism
bill, also expressed alarm over the claims by George Madlos, a spokesman of
the National Democratic Front in Mindanao, that communist rebels are still
in talks with Magdalo officers who are at large. 

The Palace, meanwhile, said Madlos statement buttressed government claims of
a rightist and leftist conspiracy to overthrow the civilian government. 

"The admission by a communist spokesman that they maintain contact with the
rightist conspirators only confirms what we have known all along. There is
an unholy alliance between communists and rightists that threatens our
democratic system," said Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye. 

Earlier this week, Madlos claimed that disgruntled junior officers as well
as some high-level officers were in contact with leaders of the underground
communist movement. He said he himself had his last contact with a military
officer this month. 

In his remarks yesterday, Bunye said a rightist-leftist conspiracy would
fail because of a lack of popular support and because the Armed Forces chain
of command is firmly entrenched within the Constitution. 

"A rightist-leftist alliance will not benefit the people. Rather, it's a
pitiful attempt to put into power two groups with conflicting ideologies and
have no love for democracy," he said. 

Bunye said the Arroyo administration would not waver nor soften its resolve
to impose punishment on the coup plotters and those who seek to destabilize
the government. 

"Military and civil justice will come down hard on traitors who are
condemned by the great majority of the officers and soldiers," he said. Joel
M. Sy Egco and Fel V. Maragay

 



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[osint] Coup veteran closes in on Peru's left flank

[Daniel Sullivan]

Coup veteran closes in on Peru's left flank 


Populist Humala is poised to follow wave of socialist electoral wins in
Latin America 


MARINA JIMÉNEZ 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20060330.wxperu30/BNStory
/International/home

>From Thursday's Globe and Mail

His only political experience is a failed coup. He comes from a family that
espouses an eccentric philosophy of remaking the government around
descendants of the Incan Empire.

And yet Ollanta Humala, a radical populist, is rising in popularity, and is
now the favoured candidate to become Peru's next president in the election
on April 9.

If the retired army lieutenant-colonel wins, he would become at least the
eighth Latin American leader to take office since 2000 from the left,
including the leaders of Bolivia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador
and Venezuela, with strong leftist contenders in Mexico's and Nicaragua's
presidential races later this year.

Mr. Humala, 43, is riding a wave of regional discontent with the neo-liberal
policies of privatization and free trade. While the Andean country of 27
million has experienced solid economic growth for five consecutive years --
7 per cent last year -- the benefits have not filtered down to the poor
majority living in the shantytowns and the highlands.

"Humala is saying 'we need a new model.' He is using the rhetoric of
[Venezuelan President] Hugo Chavez and [Bolivian President] Evo Morales,
though he has toned it down a bit," Max Cameron, a political scientist from
the University of British Columbia, said in a phone interview from Peru.
"Peruvian politics is a wonderful soap opera with lots of scandal and drama,
and volume is always at maximum. It's rough and dirty."

Mr. Humala, whose background is mestizo, or mixed race, and who has
distanced himself from his family's racist creed, is capitalizing on the
country's disenchantment with the status quo. His closest rival is Lourdes
Flores, a fiscally conservative, pro-business candidate who cannot shake her
image as a member of the rich, Lima-based elite.

The latest opinion survey by pollster Apoyo shows Mr. Humala, of the Union
for Peru (UPP), with 33 per cent of voter support, and Ms. Flores, 46, with
the National Unity party (UN), with 27 per cent. Unless one candidate wins
50 per cent plus one vote, the election will go to a second round in May.
Ms. Flores is favoured to win the second round, but with a third of voters
still undecided and momentum building for Mr. Humala, there is a strong
chance he could be the winner. 

There are 20 presidential contenders and 3,000 congressional candidates for
120 seats in a country with a colourful history of political drama and deep
social inequities: illiteracy remains at 35 per cent in remote Andean towns,
and one in every two Peruvians has no access to proper medical care.

Alberto Fujimori, a political unknown, was elected president in 1990,
defeating Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru's most celebrated writer, as the country
struggled with hyperinflation and the havoc wreaked by the Shining Path, a
Maoist insurgency.

When Mr. Fujimori fled the country 10 years later, he was discredited as an
authoritarian ruler undone by a corruption scandal. He is currently in
prison in Chile awaiting extradition, after he tried to return to Peru to
run for re-election. Mr. Humala led a coup against Mr. Fujimori in 2000, and
was briefly imprisoned.

No wonder a recent United Nations report found major disillusionment in Peru
with the political system. Only 5 per cent of those surveyed felt democracy
was working well, 73.2 favoured authoritarianism and 90.4 think politicians
are to blame for the demise of democracy.

"There is a general sense that the legislature here is useless," Prof.
Cameron said. "One congressman is a bigamist. Another used his position to
put family members in prominent positions. And congress just voted for a pay
raise and now make 18 times the average per capita income."

Mr. Humala's candidacy falls less into the market-friendly leftist camps of
Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula
da Silva, and more closely resembles that of Mr. Chavez and Mr. Morales. 

Venezuela's charismatic strongman is given to florid, four-hour speeches
filled with anti-U.S. rhetoric, while Mr. Morales, Bolivia's first
indigenous president, is leading a campaign to legalize coca plants.

Mr. Humala said he would suspend eradication of coca, the prime ingredient
for cocaine, which Washington has spent millions of dollars trying to get
rid of in the Andes. He suggested baking 27 million loaves of bread from
coca leaves every day for school breakfasts.

Mr. Humala has also called for a renegotiation of oil and gas contracts with
foreign investors, and promised to call a constituent assembly to draft a
new constitution, something Mr. Chavez also did

[osint] France's "Virus of Denial"

[Bruce Tefft]

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,408579,00.html
 
 SPIEGEL ONLINE - March 29, 2006, 01:39 PM
URL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,408579,00.html 

The World from Berlin
 
France's "Virus of Denial"

Protests in France reached a new high point on Tuesday with millions taking
to the streets against a new labor law. Pressure on the government is
growing. And France is moving headlong toward a crisis. 

Over 1 million people took to the streets of France on Tuesday as students,
union members and leftists marched against new labor laws introduced by
Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin. A nation-wide strike severely limited
train, plane and bus service across the country with some scattered violence
occurring on the streets of the French capital. Police sought to control the
protesters with water cannons and some 240 people were arrested according to
the Associated Press. Protest organizers estimate that over 3 million people
took part in the some 250 protests across the country. 


FRENCH PROTESTS: DEMONSTRATIONS INCREASE PRESSURE ON VILLEPIN
 
 AFP
 AP
 REUTERS  

Click on a picture to launch the image gallery (6 Photos). 




The Tuesday demonstrations mark an intensification of the pressure being
placed on Villepin -- whose law would allow employers to fire workers under
the age of 26 with no reason during their first two years on the job -- to
negotiate a compromise solution. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy on
Tuesday suggested suspending the law to allow for negotiations while
Villepin continued to resist withdrawing the law as protesters are
demanding. He is hoping the law will encourage employers to hire more young
people and thus reduce the 22.3 percent unemployment rate faced by those
under 26. 

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung, having spent much of the last week
reflecting on the goings on in France, takes a step back from the specifics
of the current protests to examine the state of politique in the country as
a whole on Wednesday. It's not optimistic about what it sees. "At the
beginning it was just a conflict over an employment law, now it's become a
government crisis, and if it continues for a little while longer, then
France will experience a crisis of state." The paper sees the country
hopelessly split between the right and the left, with both sides more
concerned about scoring political points than about the well-being of the
country as a whole. "The socialists have only joined the demonstrators this
time out of opportunism, without having any ideas of their own to reduce
unemployment." The shocking part, the paper says, is that President Jacques
Chirac, elected with an unprecedented 80 percent majority four years ago,
has become completely helpless in the face of the series of crises France
has faced in the past 12 months. "Never has a president, never has a
government, done so little with such a large majority." 

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung, takes a more activist approach, seemingly
wishing it were at the front lines of the protests in Paris. With nothing
all that controversial going on in Berlin at the moment, the paper has to
settle for calling for the resignation of the French government. "It has
created new uncertainties and injustices for young employees. After four
national days of protest ... the French leadership has only one single
possibility to end the conflict: They have to withdraw the law." While much
of the recent attention has been focused on Prime Minister Villepin as the
author of the law, the paper argues that Sarkozy and Chirac, too, are to
blame. After all, Sarkozy's own labor market proposals weren't much
different from Villepin's. And Chirac created the government in the first
place. That, though, is just the beginning. "Reactions to yesterday's
protests have to come from other European capitals and from Brussels," the
paper writes. Let the revolution begin ... . 


The right-leaning Die Welt, which often comes across as pining for the day
when workers just shut up and leave the thinking to their employers, sees
the strikes as little more than whining for a world that no longer exists.
The basic tone of the piece -- which looks at strikes in France, England and
Germany this week -- is, "globalization is happening, get used to it." What
is everybody striking against? "Against the changes currently taking place
in the living standards within Western industrialized countries." A "virus
of denying reality" is spreading throughout Europe, the paper argues. It's
not the systems that are too rigid, rather "now we can see that it's the
people who are inflexible." 

The financial daily Handelsblatt, finally, looks at what the strikes mean
for President Chirac. No matter what happens, the pa

[osint] Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment

[Daniel Sullivan]

International








Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=268142

&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ 

 




 

Vienna, Austria













30 March 2006 03:25




 



Iran refuses to halt uranium enrichment, Iranian ambassador Aliasghar
Soltanieh told Agence France-Presse on Thursday, the day after the United
Nations Security Council called for the programme to be suspended.

"Iran's decision on enrichment, particularly research and development, is
irreversible," said Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador in Vienna to the UN
watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Security Council had on Wednesday in New York adopted a non-binding
presidential statement which called on Iran to honor IAEA calls for it to
re-establish "full and sustained suspension of all enrichment-related and
reprocessing activities, including research and development".

It was the first Security Council action since the IAEA reported Iran to the
council on February 4, which unlike the atomic agency has enforcement
powers.

In February Iran resumed uranium-enrichment activities after suspending the
strategic work that makes what can be nuclear fuel, but also atom-bomb
material, in October 2003 in a gesture of confidence-building in talks with
the European Union.

He said the IAEA had made an "historical mistake" in sending, in February,
the Iranian dossier to the Security Council.

Europe and the United States suspect Iran is secretly trying to develop a
nuclear weapon, but Iran insists its programme is dedicated solely to
produce energy.

Soltanieh stressed that the IAEA has not found Iran guilty of diverting
nuclear material for military purposes or of trying to make atomic weapons.

The IAEA has also, however, stated that it is so far unable to conclude that
Iran's programme is strictly peaceful, as Tehran claims. -- Sapa-AFP

 



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[osint] Muslim cleric held over Varanasi blasts

[Bruce Tefft]

 Incredible!  Yet another "holy man", a cleric of the "noble religion of
Islam" the religion of "peace, love and tolerance" arrested for involvement
in terrorism.  Who would have imagined?
 
-Bruce
 


 
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=65224 

  Expressindia.com



Thursday, March 30, 2006

 


 



Nation


 

 

 


Muslim cleric held over Varanasi blasts


 


Press Trust of India


 


Varanasi, March 30: A Muslim cleric has been picked up by the Special Task
Force from his residence in Allahabad for interrogation in connection with
his alleged role in the terror attacks here, officials sources said today. 

The cleric, identified as Waliullah, from the Islamabad locality under
Phulpur police circle area of Allahabad was taken into custody by the STF
team on Sunday night for interrogation in connection with his alleged role
in the March 7 twin blasts in Sankat Mochan temple and cantonment railway
station here, based on reports of suspicious activities in the past, sources
said. 

STF picked up Walliullah as soon as he returned home following questioning
by the local intelligence unit and police officials at Phulpur police
station, they said. 

He is being interrogated at an undisclosed location amid charges that he and
his family provided refuge to the terrorists in their house in 2001
following which he and his two brothers were booked under various provisions
of the Indian Penal Code on sedition charges, the trial of which was still
pending with the lower court in Allahabad district. 

Meanwhile, Allahabad SSP Vijay Singh Meena told PTI over phone that the
alleged suspect in the terror attacks in Varanasi was missing from his house
for past six days, but refused to confirm that he had been taken into
custody by the STF team, which was probing the terror attacks. 

Meena also said that Waliullah's family members had met him and requested
his intervention to find out details of his location and also whether he was
under the custody of the STF.

 

 


 

 


 


URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=65224

C 2005: Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd. All rights reserved
throughout the world. 

 



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[osint] Wounded in Philippine bus bombing rises to 17

[Bruce Tefft]

 

Wounded in Philippine bus bombing rises to 17

Wednesday March 29, 5:14 PM

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060329/3/2i5x8.html

MANILA, March 29 (Reuters) - A crude bomb exploded on Wednesday inside a bus
in Digos City in the southern Philippines, wounding 17 people, police said. 
Security officials were investigating whether the communist guerrilla group,
the New People's Army (NPA), had planted the improvised explosive device,
which went off around 11:30 a.m. (0330 GMT) after the bus stopped at a
terminal. 

"We are investigating if the NPA is behind this since it's their
anniversary," provincial police officer Reggiette Tecson told Reuters. 

The NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, vowed on
Tuesday to step up attacks on government targets outside the capital as the
rebels marked their 37th anniversary on Wednesday. 

Passengers and some vendors at the terminal were injured in the bus attack,
said Ninang Hadjaril, police superintendent of Davao del Sur province. He
said another parked bus at the terminal was also damaged. 

The NPA guerrillas have been waging an insurgency since 1969, which has
killed more than 40,000 people, deterred investment and slowed development
in one of Southeast Asia's poorest countries.

000.





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[osint] Muslims and PC

[Bruce Tefft]

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles_print.php?article_id=5368
 
 Muslims and PC
March 29th, 2006



The major problem facing American Muslims today is not active prejudice or
government harassment; it's political correctness.

PC has been the governing force in relations with the American Muslim umma
since 9/11, if not before. It is the sole reason why dubious and litigious
  groups like The Council on
American-Islamic Relations CAIR), have become the chief representatives of
the Muslim community, why "racial profiling", the sole rational method of
preventing terrorist infiltration, has been effectively banned (Arabs and
Persians being Caucasian, it would have to be "ethnic profiling", but. ooh
never mind), why any critical or even debatable reference to Muslims or
Islam in general has been carefully excised from public discourse - at least
as far as the antique media are concerned.

So it's no surprise PC played a major role in the three latest collisions
between Muslims and American society at large. Umar
 Abdul-Jalil is the
prison chaplain who made a series of inflammatory remarks to a Muslim
Students Convention (including anti-Semitic comments concerning "Zionists in
the media"), only to be reinstated by NYC Mayor Harold Bloomberg.

Mohammed Reza  
Taheri-azar is the Iranian immigrant who ran down nine people with an SUV at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in early March. Asked
whether Taheri-azar had committed a terrorist act, university chancellor
James Moeser ducked the question, saying that such judgements were not his
responsibility. Taheri-azar was also allowed open contact with the media on
several occasions by local law enforcement, which he used to explain his
actions as the result of his devotion to Islam.

Sayed Rahmatullah   Hashemi,
a former ambassador-at-large for Afghanistan's Taliban, notorious for
justifying government atrocities and attacking Christians, is completing his
first year as a student at Yale. The university has been perfectly clear as
to why he was selected - as opposed to, say, a deserving former victim of
the Taliban. It's for reasons of "diversity."

The essence of political correctness is privileged treatment provided solely
due to an individual or group's ethnic background. That this is the case in
all three of these situations goes without question - public officials
mouthing anti-Semitic statements usually aren't offered a second chance;
it's very seldom that inmates in custody are allowed to address theological
lectures to the media; and no Serbian genocide-justifier was greeted at Yale
after the fall of Milosevic. (Though John Fund points out
  that anti-Semitic
propagandist Paul DeMan was more than welcome.)

One factor concerning PC that's usually overlooked is that it actually has
little to do with the race or ethnicity that it purports to protect. Ever
since its rise in the1980s (and even in its embryonic state in previous
decades) political correctness has been all about the whites who administer
it, the bureaucratic and academic elites who select the privileged groups
and set down the rules that the rest of us are supposed to obey. It's their
agenda that PC actually serves - the supposed victim groups come in a poor
second, if at all.

This can clearly be seen in the way that blacks fared under the PC regime.
Back in the 1960s, when the practices that were later christened "political
correctness" were first taking form, the blacks consecrated as leaders by
the media and politicians (particularly after the murder of Dr. King)
weren't the serious men of the 40s and 50s, the heroic epoch of the civil
rights movement, but thugs and hustlers on the order of Huey Newton, Bobby
Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver. Black cultural contributions hailed by white
media weren't for the most part the rich tradition created by blues, jazz,
and ragtime, or the Harlem Renaissance, but street-corner ghetto culture. 

Moves such as these almost seem designed to derail the civil rights program,
and in fact the movement collapsed into ineffectuality at roughly the same
time, where it abides today under such paragons as Louis Farrakhan, Al
Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson.

The irony is that American blacks, being Americans above all else, and
sharing the qualities of Americans, worked their way out of their dilemma
anyway. Today, the U.S. possesses the largest black middle class in the
world, and racial relations that could not be more distant from the
terrifying days of the late 60s. Some scars remain - the thug mentality, the
gangsta rap world, that small percentage of slum dwellers who evidently
cannot be reached by any effort. But American blacks in general have become
the envy of the world - and PC, in whatever stage of devel

[osint] An Infantry Colonel's Foxhole Report from Iraq

[Bruce Tefft]

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5370
 
 An Infantry Colonel's Foxhole Report from Iraq
March 30th, 2006



[Editor's note: our contributor LTC Joseph Myers forwards this report from
Iraq with the following introduction: 

I received this 'update' from a friend, written by a great American and
Infantry officer, it represents his view of things in Iraq.a personal
foxhole snapshot from someone "over there" for ten months.  This is not an
official report of the Army or the MNF-I, but I thought you might want to
post it; it's a very telling and inspiring story. But just between you and
me and the reading audience, the American media is failing the American
people-and terribly so. Is it just an accident or partisanship?  I suspect
books will be written on the coverage of this war as much as its conduct.

Meanwhile the American Army and the rest of our armed forces in this fight
is the only thing standing between us and tyranny.  One day the American
people might understand this, no thanks to the American media of course.]

Hello All,

Sorry it has been five months since my last update, but then, we have been
busy.  Let me give you the bottomline up front (BLUF), and then catch you up
on things.  Feel free to forward this to whomever, since we still can't seem
to get the press to tell folks what is going on.  This is how the fight is
going from my foxhole, and it is much more than the bombings, US casualties,
and rumors of civil war the press seems to be focused on.

BLUF:  We are not, and have not been, on the verge of civil war.  We have
had an increase in killings by militia groups in the past five weeks, and
that is not helping get the new government seated, but we (the Iraqi
Security Forces (ISF) and Coalition Forces) are far from losing control.

As you probably noted, Al Qaida and the other insurgent groups were not able
to mount a Tet like offensive this past fall.  Iraqi and US operations
prevented them from organizing major attacks, and the ISF did a superb job
of securing the polling sites.  Iraq ratified a constitution and conducted a
credible election.  Although the Iraqis face some significant challenges
forming the new government, the basics of democracy are present and taking
root.

Saddam's trial is making progress, albeit painfully slowly.  The new judge
is ensuring the defendants receive due process and a fair trial, while
eliminating their ability to turn the trial into a political circus.
Saddam's and the others' security continue to be one of my personal
headaches, so I am a big fan of keeping the trial moving.

2006 is the Year of the Police, which means our focus is to get the Iraqi
police forces trained and operational.  We continue to work to rebuild the
Iraqi Army, which assumes responsibility for more battle space each week.
It is the ability of the Iraqi Army to take the fight to the enemy that
allowed us to turn off two US replacement brigades at the end of 2005.  The
Iraqi Army is having successes and failures, but is steadily improving.
Recently they have conducted a number of truly outstanding operations, both
in conjunction with us and on their own.  The police are not as far along,
hence our focus on them in 2006.  What you don't see in the media is the
tremendous courage of most of the Soldiers, Policemen, and Judges who take
significant risk each day to bring stability to their country.  I lost an
Iraqi friend last week who was the leader of the security of the prison
where we send our convicted terrorists to serve their sentences.  Another
equally brave corrections officer stepped up immediately to take his place.

The fight against Al Qaida is going well.  They have chosen to make Iraq the
battleground against the US, and this has enabled us to kill or capture
significant numbers of their senior leadership, and put a dent in their
funding.  They believe they can prevail by killing US Soldiers, and waiting
for the US public to tire of the war and casualties, and bring us home.  As
I talk to Soldiers around Iraq, they overwhelmingly believe in what they are
doing and why they are doing it.  They know they are winning, and are
frustrated by what they see and hear in the news about America questioning
why we are here.  In my opinion, it is much better to fight these terrorists
in Iraq vice in the US.

Our counterinsurgency strategy continues to focus on:  offensive operations
to kill or capture insurgents; train and reinforce the Iraqi Army and police
forces to conduct the counterinsurgency; establish a strong democratic Iraqi
government; and rebuild the infrastructure and economy.  The interagency
process is working fairly well in Baghdad (Washington could take a lesson),
with most of my contacts being with the Departments of State and Justice.  

One of our two largest challenges is to get the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds to
work together.  No one party/sect has a majority in the newly elected
Council of Representatives, so learning to compromise and put toge

[osint] Zipping it on the road to perdition [we are getting too afraid to OFFEND]

[Bruce Tefft]

 


 
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/14219872.htm 
  _  


Michael Smerconish | Zipping it on the road to perdition


How putting handcuffs on what we can say and do is literally threatening our
lives

TONIGHT, with Bill O'Reilly, I'm scheduled to formally launch my new book,
"Muzzled."
Why "Muzzled"? In a word, it's what we are. Words and actions have been
muted by those among us who assert their political correctness while
sacrificing the rugged individualism that has been the hallmark of our
nation.
Every slight.
Every insult.
Every askance look.
What in the past would have been settled with a hand gesture is today
grounds for a federal case. At any other time in our history, what I have
written would be a collection of enraging, enthralling and entertaining
tales. But now they are more. The "Muzzled," victim-filled society we've
created is a cancer that has metastasized to the war on terror.
Consider that, on the home front:
Post Katrina, a group of Portland, Ore., firefighters volunteered to help
when tens of thousands of people were still stranded. But before they were
allowed to have at it, FEMA demanded they undergo diversity training! People
were dying in the Gulf states while our government demanded that folks who
had already proven their decency by their willingness to leave their own
families and travel across the country to help were stuck in a hotel room in
a sexual-harassment class.
Not long ago on Wall Street, Andrew Susser was fired from his high-level
position at Bank of America after his face was superimposed onto the photo
of a fully clothed woman as an attention-getter in a company report. No
nudity. No profanity. Just corporate intolerance.
Kirk Reynolds got canned as the public-relations head of the San Francisco
49ers when a video he made to reach those in the locker room was evaluated
instead on the politically correct streets of San Francisco.
This very newspaper felt the need to apologize for a Page 1 that showed the
mugs of 18 perps wanted for murder in Philadelphia because none was
Caucasian, despite the fact that no Caucasians were then at large for murder
in Philadelphia!
And, in our town, an ad exec was awarded $600,000 after filing a
discrimination lawsuit solely because his boss, in an effort to improve
company dress, had distributed the all-time business best-seller, "Dress for
Success," which contained advice for people selling to individuals of a
different race or ethnicity.
Over in New Jersey, the time-honored tradition of "Ladies' Night," a gimmick
for nightspots to lure women who, in turn, lure more men, came to a halt
after a single male patron complained about women paying less for drinks.
New Jersey is also where honor guardsman Patrick Cubbage was prohibited from
saying "God bless you, and God bless the United States" when handing
American flags to the grieving kin of veterans at military funerals.
Out in Chester County, kindergarten student Wesley Busch was told it was OK
to identify his favorite book for classmates and have one of his parents
come to class and read aloud from it, as long as it wasn't the Bible.
UP IN NEW England, 9-year-old Collin Kelly was stopped from placing flowers
on the bare graves of soldiers.
The color red has fallen out of favor for teachers marking papers at schools
across the country because of a concern that it could have a negative effect
on the psyches of students getting an unfavorable grade. This at the same
time that grades themselves are being shunned!
Youth athletics have succumbed to trophy mania: Now, just showing up is
deemed deserving of recognition.
At Harvard, undergrad Michael Kopko was given permission by the school to
start a room-cleaning business on campus - as long as he didn't use the
"sexist and demeaning" word "maid" in the name of his enterprise.
And, of course, here at Penn, a woman who had sex in front of an open window
was deemed to be a victim of sexual harassment after (surprise, surprise)
somebody snapped her photo and put it online.
In Atlanta, former college linebacker Brian Nichols, on trial for rape,
overpowered the five-foot granny named Cynthia Ann Hall who was guarding him
before going on a killing spree that included the murder of a judge, but
nobody was willing to publicly question why such a mismatch was ever
allowed.
The Miss America Pageant would rather see its ratings in the tank than have
a busty baton twirler win the competition.
Slavery: Wachovia, the nation's fourth largest bank, apologized (and appears
ready to pay) for something that it didn't do, in an era when the bank
didn't exist, under laws that were not broken.
Indian tribes claim they were dishonored when their land was stolen and
assert ownership claims in what is really a bid for casino licenses. All the
while, the tribes object to sports teams named to honor them, proving that,
in the end, it's all about the wampum.
And nobody has been more muzzled than smokers, while the allocation of
research money ignores the fact th

[osint] French Court Sentences Algerian for Funding Terror Attacks

[Bruce Tefft]

 http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-03-29-voa39.cfm

French Court Sentences Algerian for Funding Terror Attacks 

By Lisa Bryant
VOA NEWS
Paris
29 March 2006

An Algerian Islamist has been sentenced to 10 years in jail for financing a
wave of terrorist attacks in France in 1995. Rachid Ramda is facing another
trial for his alleged participation in the attacks.

The sentence by a Paris criminal court came as no surprise. Rachid Ramda has
served his sentence already in Britain, as Paris and London waged a
decade-long extradition battle. 

Ramda was finally extradited to France last December.
He was convicted for financing the terrorists who carried out the 1995
bombings, and for providing logistical support.

During the trial, Ramda pleaded innocent to the attacks in three Paris
metros that killed 10 people and injured roughly 200 others. He expressed
sympathy for the victims. The bombings took place at the height of clashes
in Algeria between Islamist extremists and the country's military-backed
government.

Terrorists targeted France as well, for allegedly backing Algiers. Ramda was
accused of being a senior member of Algeria's Islamist GIA terrorist group
in Europe at the time.

Francoise Rudetzki, head of a French victims group, SOS Attentats, says she
is satisfied with the sentencing.

Rudetzki says Ramda is paying for his role as financier of the attacks. Now,
she says, he must respond to accusations he participated directly in the
bombings.

Ramda remains in prison pending a second, separate trial, in which he is
charged with murder in the 1995 bombings. If found guilty, he faces a
maximum sentence of life in prison. The trial has not been scheduled. 

000.






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[osint] REFERENCE: Biological and chemical weapons: Arm yourself with information

[Bruce Tefft]

 
http://www.mayoclinic.com/print/infectious-disease/MH00027/METHOD=print 
 
  

Biological and chemical weapons: Arm yourself with information




Bioterrorism. Germ warfare. Chemical agents. All are names for a different
type of warfare, one in which the enemy is microscopic and deadly.

Experts say the average U.S. resident's risk of exposure to biological and
chemical agents is low. But knowing that doesn't necessarily allay your
fears. You want to make sure you and your family are protected against
anthrax or other bacteria, viruses and chemicals that might be used as
weapons. Your first line of defense is to arm yourself with information.

Infectious disease experts say that the agents of greatest concern are the
germs that cause anthrax, smallpox, plague, botulism and tularemia.


Anthrax


Anthrax is caused by bacteria that normally reside in soil in the form of
microscopic spores. The spores transform into the anthrax bacteria, which
produce a toxin that can be fatal to humans and animals.

Anthrax spores are odorless, tasteless and invisible to the naked eye. It
takes thousands of spores to cause an infection, but the amount needed to
make you ill is smaller than a speck of dust. Antibiotics can treat anthrax
if used early.


Smallpox


Although worldwide vaccinations have eradicated smallpox - the last reported
case was in Somalia in 1977 - experts believe the virus could be used as a
biological weapon. Known stocks of the virus exist in only two World Health
Organization (WHO) labs. What's not known is if other supplies exist or are
in the hands of terrorists.

Signs and symptoms of smallpox include a high fever, fatigue, aches and a
rash. The lesions resemble small pocks - tiny, pus-filled blisters
(vesicles) most prominent on the face, arms and legs. Smallpox is fatal in
about 30 percent of cases. Among survivors, many will have permanent,
disfiguring scarring or blindness.


Plague


Plague is a highly infectious disease of animals and humans caused by the
bacterium Yersinia pestis, which is found in rodents, such as rats,
squirrels and prairie dogs. Fleas spread plague from animals to humans - you
can get plague if you've been bitten by an infected flea.

In the Middle Ages, plague - also known as the Black Death - spread across
Europe, killing 20 million to 30 million people, one-third of the
continent's inhabitants at that time. Antibiotics can now prevent or treat
plague.


Botulism


Botulism is a muscle-paralyzing disease. It's caused by a toxin made by the
bacterium Clostridium botulinum. Botulinum toxin is among the most lethal
substances known, and it can kill within 24 hours.

You can get the main form of botulism by consuming improperly canned foods
or fish containing the naturally occurring bacteria. Botulism potentially
could be used as a biological weapon by contaminating food supplies with the
toxin.

Like anthrax, bacteria that produce botulism also occur in spore form in
contaminated soil, although that's rare. In that case, botulism-causing
bacteria could spread by inhalation or by eating fruits or vegetables not
properly cleaned before cooking or preserving. Infection can also occur
through a contaminated wound.

Botulism usually develops between 12 and 36 hours after ingesting the toxin.
Food-borne botulism may at first cause abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting
and diarrhea. Other early signs and symptoms include double vision, drooping
eyelids, dry mouth, slurred speech and difficulty swallowing. You probably
won't have a fever. Botulism causes muscle weakness and eventual paralysis
that starts at the top of your body and works its way down. The disease
kills by paralyzing muscles you use to breathe.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and some state health
departments keep an antidote to botulinum toxin in storage. Treatment
includes taking the antidote and possibly using a ventilator for breathing
until the toxin works its way out of your system. If you have the bacteria
that produces botulism in a wound, treatment includes cleaning the wound and
taking antibiotics.

An experimental botulism vaccine exists, but because the disease is rare,
experts don't recommend immunization. In the United States, about 25 cases
of food-borne botulism are reported each year.


Tularemia


Tularemia (too-luh-RE-me-uh) is an illness that normally infects wild
animals, such as rabbits and squirrels. It's caused by the bacterium
Francisella tularensis, and some experts fear it could be used in germ
warfare.

Humans can acquire the illness by coming in contact with the blood or body
fluids of infected animals, from the bite of a fly or tick that carries
blood from an infected animal, or from contaminated food or water. As a
biological weapon, tularemia-causing bacteria could be dispersed through the
air and inhaled.

Tularemia is now a rare disease. It occurs only in isolated cases, mainly in
the sout

[osint] Fukuyama's fabrication

[Bruce Tefft]

Fukuyama's fabrication

By Charles Krauthammer
Mar 28, 2006
WASHINGTON -- It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment.
There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his
allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq War, nearing the end of its first
year, as "a virtually unqualified success." He gasps as the audience
enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades
so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can
no longer be one of them. 
And thus did Francis Fukuyama become the world's most celebrated
ex-neoconservative, a well-timed metamorphosis that has brought him a piece
of the fame that he once enjoyed 15 years ago as the man who declared, a
mite prematurely, that history had ended.
A very nice story. It appears in the preface to Fukuyama's post-neocon
coming out, "

America at the Crossroads.'' Last Sunday it was repeated on the front page
of The New York Times Book Review in Paul Berman's review.
I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004
Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now
brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I
attributed "virtually unqualified success'' to the war is a fabrication. 
A convenient fabrication -- it gives him a foil and the story drama -- but a
foolish one because it can be checked. The speech was given at the
Washington Hilton before a full house, carried live on C-SPAN and then
published by the American Enterprise Institute under its title "Democratic
Realism: An American Foreign Policy for a Unipolar World.'' (It can be read

here.)
As indicated by the title, the speech was not about Iraq. It was a fairly
theoretical critique of the four schools of American foreign policy:
isolationism, liberal internationalism, realism and neoconservatism. The
only successes I attributed to the Iraq War were two, and both self-evident:
(1) that it had deposed Saddam Hussein and (2) that this had made other
dictators think twice about the price of acquiring nuclear weapons, as
evidenced by the fact that Gaddafi had turned over his secret nuclear
program for dismantlement just months after Saddam's fall (in fact, on the
very week of Saddam's capture).
In that entire 6,000-word lecture, I said not a single word about the course
or conduct of the Iraq War. My only reference to the outcome of the war came
toward the end of the lecture. Far from calling it an unqualified success,
virtual or otherwise, I said quite bluntly that "it may be a bridge too far.
Realists have been warning against the hubris of thinking we can transform
an alien culture because of some postulated natural and universal human will
to freedom. And they may yet be right.''
We do not yet know. History will judge whether we can succeed in
"establishing civilized, decent, nonbelligerent, pro-Western polities in
Afghanistan and Iraq.'' My point then, as now, has never been that success
was either inevitable or at hand, only that success was critically important
to "change the strategic balance in the fight against Arab-Islamic
radicalism.'' 
I made the point of repeating the problematic nature of the enterprise: "the
undertaking is enormous, ambitious and arrogant. It may yet fail.''
For Fukuyama to assert that I characterized it as "a virtually unqualified
success'' is simply breathtaking. My argument then, as now, was the
necessity of this undertaking, never its assured success. And it was
necessary because, as I said, there is not a single, remotely plausible,
alternative strategy for attacking the root causes of 9/11: "the cauldron of
political oppression, religious intolerance, and social ruin in the
Arab-Islamic world -- oppression transmuted and deflected by regimes with no
legitimacy into virulent, murderous anti-Americanism.''
Fukuyama's book is proof of this proposition about the lack of the plausible
alternative. The alternative he proposes for the challenges of 9/11 -- new
international institutions, new forms of foreign aid and sundry other forms
of "soft power'' -- is a mush of bureaucratic make-work in the face of a
raging fire. Even Berman, his sympathetic reviewer, concludes that "neither
his old arguments nor his new ones offer much insight into this, the most
important problem of all -- the problem of murderous ideologies and how to
combat them.''
Fukuyama now says that he had secretly opposed the Iraq War before it was
launched. An unusual and convenient reticence, notes Irwin Stelzer, editor
of "The Neocon Reader,'' for such an inveterate pamphleteer, letter writer
and essayist. After public opinion had turned against the war, Fukuyama then
courageously came out against it. He has every right to change his mind at
his convenience. He has no right to change what I said.
Charl

[osint] US Reaffirms Ban on Contacts With Hamas

[Bruce Tefft]

 
Now if the US State Dept will get on board...they won't.

Bruce


US Reaffirms Ban on Contacts With Hamas 

By David Gollust
VOA NEWS
State Department
29 March 2006

The Bush administration said Wednesday a U.S. policy barring contacts with
Hamas will remain in place, now that a Palestinian government led by the
militant Islamic group has assumed power. The development means a cutoff of
U.S. funding for the Palestinian Authority, but the State Department said
humanitarian aid to Palestinians will increase.

The State Department says the terms of U.S. policy with regard to contacts
with Palestinian officials, now that the Hamas-led government has been sworn
in, are still being refined. 

But it is making clear that American diplomats and other officials will have
no dealings with Hamas members, regardless of what position they may hold in
the new Palestinian administration.

At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack said that
while a uniform policy is being drafted, U.S. diplomats intending to meet
Palestinians have been instructed to review their plans with the American
Consulate in Jerusalem, which handles relations with the Palestinians.

He said the United States will continue to deal with Palestinian Authority
chief Mahmoud Abbas of the mainstream Fatah movement and non-Hamas
Palestinian legislators. 

But he said contacts with Hamas members are out of the question, because the
organization has refused to accept Israel's right to exist and other
international terms for acceptance, and is listed by the United States as a
terrorist organization.

"Hamas now is leading a government and they have refused to meet the
conditions laid out by the international community," he explained.  "Also,
the United States, as an individual country, has certain laws that U.S.
officials must abide by.  And part of those laws say that we will not deal
with a member of a terrorist organization. So we will not have contact with
members of Hamas, no matter what title they may have."

Spokesman McCormack said a review of U.S. aid policy toward the
Palestinians, begun after the Hamas election victory in January, is
substantially complete. 

It has already been determined that direct U.S. aid to the Palestinian
Authority will cease, and the United States asked for and received a refund
of unspent funds from a $50 million allocation to the authority last year.

But McCormack said American humanitarian aid, traditionally channeled
through the United Nations and non-governmental groups, will continue and
actually be increased, though he provided no details.

The U.S. aid program for Palestinians for the current fiscal year totals
about $150 million, about half of it earmarked for the United Nations Relief
and Works Agency, which assists Palestinian refugees.

With the new Palestinian government installed, and Israeli elections
completed, the Bush administration is sending two senior envoys to the
region this week to assess the situation.

McCormack said Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David
Welch was already en route to the area and would be joined shortly by the
White House National Security Council's chief Middle East policy official,
Elliott Abrams.

000.


 



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[osint] Muslim gets 30 years for plotting to murder Bush

[Bruce Tefft]

http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews

&storyID=2006-03-30T063524Z_01_NOOTR_RTRJONC_0_India-242829-2.xml
U.S. man gets 30 years for plotting to murder Bush
Thu Mar 30, 2006 12:28 AM GMT



By Caroline Drees, Security Correspondent
ALEXANDRIA, Virginia (Reuters) - A federal judge sentenced a U.S. citizen
convicted of plotting to assassinate President George W. Bush and conspiring
with al Qaeda to 30 years in prison on Wednesday.
In November, Abu Ali, now 25, was found guilty of all charges in a
nine-count indictment, including conspiracy to assassinate Bush, conspiring
to support al Qaeda and conspiracy to hijack aircraft. His lawyers are
appealing the ruling.
"The court is sentencing you to 360 months, which is 30 years in prison,"
said U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee.
The sentence will be followed by 30 years of supervised release, Lee said.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Abu Ali, who faced a minimum
sentence of 20 years behind bars. But the judge said the nature of the
offence and Abu Ali's personal history justified a sentence of less than
life in jail.
Lee said that while the crimes were serious, Abu Ali had not committed any
acts of violence, and no weapons were ever found in his possession. Other
mitigating factors included the absence of a prior criminal record, his
youth and his otherwise strong personal record, the judge said.
In arguing for life imprisonment, prosecuting attorney David Laufman said,
"It is simply chilling to contemplate that this defendant might ever walk
the streets of this country again."
Laufman said Abu Ali was unrepentant, remorseless and dangerous. "Al Qaeda
could not have found a more ideal operative to carry out terrorist attacks
inside the United States," he said.
Abu Ali appeared in court wearing a dark green prison jumpsuit with the word
"PRISONER" in white letters on the back, his black hair neatly combed and
his beard trimmed. He declined the judge's offer to make a statement before
his sentence was read out.
His mother, father, a sister and a brother sat impassively in the courtroom
during sentencing, flanked by several rows of friends and supporters.
Abu Ali, who lived in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Virginia, was
arrested in June 2003 while studying at a Saudi university and was held in
Saudi custody for 20 months before returning to the United States after
being indicted.
In Saudi Arabia, he signed confessions and made statements admitting to the
plot against Bush and to having ties to an al Qaeda cell.
But when the case came to court, Abu Ali pleaded not guilty to the charges,
saying he made up the confessions after being tortured by Saudi police.
"He was tortured and that is the only reason he made those statements,"
defence attorney Khurrum Wahid told reporters after Wednesday's sentencing.
"We hope to be victorious on appeal."
Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty called the sentence "strong punishment
for the defendant's egregious crimes. It is important that Abu Ali remain
behind bars until he is no longer a threat to the American people."

  _  


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[osint] MI5 enabled UK terrorists "rendition"

[Bruce Tefft]

 Good news...a govt bureaucracy doing its job!

Bruce


http://www.kuna.net.kw/Home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=843146
MI5 enabled UK pair''s "rendition"
POL-RENDITION-UK


LONDON, March 28 (KUNA) -- Telegrams sent by the British domestic security
service known as MI5 led to the "extraordinary rendition" of two UK
residents now in Guantanamo Bay, the BBC said.

Flight details sent to US authorities allowed Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil
al-Banna to be arrested in Gambia.

The British Government has always said it opposes "extraordinary rendition",
secret flights taking terror suspects for interrogation in other countries.

The UK Foreign Office denies requesting the men's detention.

Al-Rawi and al-Banna were arrested at Gatwick airport, outside London, in
November 2002, BBC TV reported late last night in its current affairs
programme "Newsnight." British intelligence then sent US authorities a
telegram saying one of them had been carrying an object that could have been
used as part of an improvised explosive device.

The men were later released after MI5 found the device to be an innocent
battery charger, but this time the US authorities were not informed.

The following week the men continued their journey, a business trip to
Gambia, west Africa.

British intelligence then sent the US authorities a second telegram
reminding them of the previous telegram, giving the men's flight details and
saying they were associates of radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada.

The telegram said "This information is being communicated in confidence...
should not be released without the agreement of the British Government." "It
is for research and analysis purposes only and should not be used as the
basis for overt or covert action." But the men were arrested at the airport
in the Gambian capital, Banjul, along with al-Rawi's brother Wahab, a
British citizen, who was there to meet them. Their lawyer Brent Mickum told
the BBC "They were taken out in chains and hooded... to separate rooms,
where there were seven nor eight individuals all of whom were dressed
completely in black and wearing black masks." Wahab, who was later released,
said that when he asked to see a representative of the British authorities
in Gambia he was told: "Who do you think ordered your arrest?" The telegrams
proving Britain's involvement in the Gambia arrest emerged during a High
Court battle, in central London, in which the men have demanded the
Government act on their behalf to secure their release from Guantanamo Bay.

However, it is not clear if the British Government knew what would happen to
them after they were arrested.

The Foreign Office said in a statement "We can confirm that the UK did not
request the detention of the claimants in The Gambia and did not play any
role in their transfer to Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay." Last week, the
British Government said it would act for al-Rawi alone, after it emerged in
court that he had co-operated with MI5, helping pass messages to Abu Qatada.

Al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen with UK residency, was reportedly sent to England
in 1985 after his father was arrested by Saddam Hussein's secret police.

Al-Banna is a Jordanian refugee who had been living in north-west London.

Both men deny any involvement with Islamic terrorism.

They are among at least eight UK residents still thought to be held at the
US-run camp in Cuba. (end) he.

mab





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