[osint] Obama's Syria Confusion

[Beowulf]

Obama's Syria Confusion

Posted By Stephen Brown On April 26, 2011 @ 12:55 am In Daily
Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments
 

Syrian President Bashar Assad upped the stakes in the bid to save his regime
on Monday when he launched an attack
  on
the city of Daraa involving hundreds of troops, backed by tanks and snipers,
to crush the anti-government uprising, killing at least 11 people. These
latest casualties increased the death toll in the Syrian crisis to about 300
with no end in sight.

The escalating violence in Syria poses a serious dilemma for the White
House. As the casualties mount, liberals in America are wondering where
their champion of human rights, President Obama, has disappeared to. He was
front and center in the Egyptian crisis, and even sent American warplanes to
bomb the murderous dictatorship in Libya. But so far in Syria, Obama has
only condemned the violence in conjunction with other world leaders, calling
the Assad regime's actions "outrageous." But why such a milquetoast response
to the client regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a world sponsor of
terror? Why are Egyptian allies (Mubarak) and Libyan gadflies (Gaddafi)
treated more aggressively, and more swiftly than a regime, whose fall might
actually benefit American interests?

The White House has made no attempt to impose sanctions or an arms embargo,
or even sponsor anti-Syria motions in the United Nations Security Council,
as it did with Libya, and as human rights organizations are now demanding.
The criticism Obama is receiving from administration-friendly publications,
like the Washington Post, is causing his inaction on Syria to appear even
more perplexing.

"As a moral matter, the stance of the United States is shameful. To stand by
passively while hundreds of people seeking freedom are gunned down by their
government makes a mockery of the U.S. commitment to human rights," the Post
stated
  in an editorial.

Although it is deeply confusing, there has been widespread speculation that
the Obama administration's unresponsiveness on Syria is partially owed to
its belief that Assad is both an effective and essential partner in the
fleeting Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. "Assad may cling to power, but
Syria has vanished as a prospective player in peace negotiations. A
comprehensive peace is impossible without Syria, which explains why
Washington has not demanded Assad's ouster along with Libya's Colonel
Muammar Gaddafi," the Asian Times opined
 . The
aforementioned Washington Post editorial articulated much the same.

However, it is worth remembering that the ousted Mubarak regime of Egypt,
unceremoniously abandoned by the Obama administration, was also integral to
the ongoing peace accords. This did not deter the president from issuing
forceful calls for Mubarak's deposition, which his administration in fact
hastened behind the scenes. This is to say nothing of the president's
relative uninterestedness in salvaging peace negotiations. Thus, the primacy
of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords to Obama's decision process on
Syria is highly questionable. 

Rather, it is important to consider an important difference between Egypt
and Syria that would account for Obama's apparent moral dissonance with
respect to human rights in the Middle East: Syria is one of the closest
allies of Iran, a country the Obama White House has been careful not to
provoke. From his first days in office, Obama has attempted to reach out to
Iran in an effort to stop that country's nuclear weapons program and
antagonism on the world stage. What the White House probably fears most in a
firm response to the Syrian situation is Iranian reprisals through its
extensive network of regional terrorism - another so-called "obstacle" to
the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

  _  

  _  

However, if the administration hopes the situation will eventually stabilize
in Syria enough so that the president can pursue his Middle East peace
dream, he is in for a major disappointment. The instability and the killing
in Arab countries will most likely continue for some time yet and even get
worse. In the Arab states experiencing unrest, the underlying issues are
economic. Unemployment is rampant and food prices have soared 30 percent
over the past year, putting millions of people living on or below the
poverty line in dire straits.

Syria is no exception. The disturbances there in fact started when a group
of students protested rising food prices
 . The food
situation was exacerbated by merchants who then began to hoard
non-perishable items like rice and cooking oil. As with Egypt's poor

[osint] Smugglers As Heroes

[Beowulf]

Smugglers As Heroes

Posted By Walter Williams On April 26, 2011 

Smugglers are heroes of sorts. The essence of what a smuggler offers is:
"Government tyrants want to either prevent or interfere with peaceable
voluntary exchange among individuals. I can reduce the impact of that
interference." Let's look at smuggling, keeping in mind that not everything
illegal is immoral and not everything legal is moral.

Leading up to our War of Independence, the British, under the Navigation
Acts, had levied taxes on a wide range of imports. One of those taxes was on
molasses imported from non-British islands. John Hancock, whose flamboyant
signature graces our Declaration of Independence, had a thriving business
smuggling an estimated 1.5 million gallons of molasses a year. His smuggling
practices financed much of the resistance to British authority. In fact, a
joke of the time was "Sam Adams writes the letters (to newspapers) and John
Hancock pays the postage."

Hancock's smuggling, as well as that of many others, made the people of our
nation better off by providing cheaper prices for molasses used for making
rum. British oppressors were worse off by having lower tax revenues.

In 1920, the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the production, distribution and
sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States, went into effect. It had
wide public support. In my opinion, no case can be made for stopping another
person from enjoying beer, wine and whiskey. That's oppression, but along
came heroes to the rescue. The ink hadn't dried on the 18th Amendment before
smugglers started smuggling beer and whiskey from Canada and Mexico. Ships
lined up along our shores, just beyond the three-mile limit, to off-load
whiskey onto speedboats. Smugglers and bootleggers spared millions of
Americans from do-gooder oppression. 

While the smuggler qua smuggler is my hero, several important negative
effects surround his activity. Smuggling is illegal. It becomes a
sometimes-nasty criminal enterprise because those who engage in it tend to
be people with an overall lower regard for the law. Since smuggling is
illegal, disputes must be settled with guns and violence instead of courts.

  _  

  _  

Plus, police and other public officials are corrupted. Worse of all is the
reduced respect for laws by the public at large. After the 18th Amendment's
repeal, virtually all of the crime and corruption associated with
Prohibition disappeared.

Not many Americans are aware of today's big smuggling activity - cigarette
smuggling. Confiscatory taxes that are as high as $7 a pack, in New York
City, making one pack of cigarettes sell for $13, have encouraged a thriving
smuggling business across our country. Like Prohibition, confiscatory
tobacco taxes are popular with Americans.

A recent study by Michael LaFaive and Todd Nesbit of the Midland,
Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy titled "Cigarette Taxes and
Smuggling" shows that states with the highest cigarette smuggling rates are
those with the highest tobacco taxes such as Arizona (51.8 percent of the
state's total consumption are smuggled), New York (47.5 percent), Rhode
Island (40.5 percent), New Mexico (37.2 percent) and California (36.3
percent).

Cigarette smuggling, like yesteryear's whiskey smuggling, has become a
livelihood for criminals. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives has found that Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Taiwanese
and Middle Eastern (mainly Pakistani, Lebanese and Syrian) organized crime
groups are highly involved in the trafficking of contraband and counterfeit
cigarettes. What's worse is that some of these groups use their earnings to
provide financial assistance to terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah
and Hamas. That means tax-hungry politicians and anti-tobacco zealots are
providing the means for aid to America's enemies.

The solution to cigarette smuggling, and the criminal activities associated
with it, is to eliminate the confiscatory taxes. Unfortunately for
tax-hungry politicians and anti-tobacco zealots, who see confiscatory taxes
as a tool in their moral crusade against tobacco, only benefits count. For
them, the costs of their agenda are irrelevant or secondary at best. And, as
novelist C.S. Lewis put it, "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised
for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive."

  _  

  _  

  _  

Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2011/04/26/smugglers-as-heroes/

 



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[osint] Punishing the Wealthy in Obama's World

[Beowulf]

Punishing the Wealthy in Obama's World

Posted By Benjamin Shapiro On April 26, 2011 

President Obama's recent deficit speech defied logic, tortured statistics,
and targeted political enemies.  It also did Americans a service by
revealing the underlying animus the President has for those who achieve
monetary success in America.

Whenever Obama pre-emptively and strenuously denies that he thinks
something, he almost invariably thinks it.  So, for example, when he told
Americans last week that he doesn't want to tax the rich "because we
begrudge those who've done well - we rightly celebrate their success," but
because we need to "afford" programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social
Security, you can bet he means precisely the opposite - he doesn't care a
whit about paying for these programs, he cares about punishing the wealthy.

President Obama's own rhetoric betrays him on this issue - hence his harping
on the "fairness" of tax rates rather than the benefits of higher tax
receipts.  Tax receipts pay for programs; tax rates do not.  Tax receipts
fund Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; tax rates do not.  And yet
Obama focuses incessantly on tax rates, even to the exclusion of tax
receipts.  In 2008, Obama was explicitly asked about raising the capital
gains tax rate if it lowered tax receipts.  He did not challenge the premise
that higher tax rates could lower tax receipts.  Instead, he said he would
raise tax rates even if it lowered tax receipts. Obama's answer demonstrated
his hatred for those who earn using the hackneyed old "fairness" chestnut:
"What I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for
purposes of fairness."

Obama is hardly the only liberal who suggests that tax rates are more
important than tax receipts as a matter of principle.  On Sunday, failed
1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale stated that tax rates
are a moral issue.  "Taxes reveal who we are as a people and what we value,"
Mondale wrote in The Washington Post.  "The public's support is greatest for
raising taxes on the affluent ."  Once again, Mondale cites "fairness" as a
rationale for "eliminat[ing] Bush's tax cuts for the rich."  "Where is the
decency in cutting taxes for those making tens of millions while middle
America struggles?" Mondale asks.  "This is a fight over fairness that
Americans can understand."  Mondale's mistaken belief that raising taxes
will "increase revenue" is an ancillary point to him - it's the basic virtue
of eating the rich that mandates it. 

Michael Moore thinks the same way.  In a typical fire-breathing speech from
the rotund rabble-rouser, he told a crowd of Wisconsin union members that
America is "awash in wealth and cash.  It's just that it's not in your
hands.  It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the
workers and consumers to the banks and portfolios of the uber-rich."  To
Moore, one of America's wealthiest people, the rich must be taxed because
they are morally blameworthy, not because we need their money to pay for our
programs.

  _  

  _  

As Bill Whittle puts it in this brilliant video for Declaration
Entertainment  , liberals want
to eat the rich.  They are not interested in boosting the economy,
maintaining social programs, or making our unfettered spending sustainable.
We could confiscate all of the profit made by the Fortune 500 companies,
Super Bowl ad revenue, all the salaries of the major sports, all the money
made by any individual above $250,000 annually, the entire net worth of
every billionaire in the country . and not even come close to making up the
annual deficit for 2011.  And yet liberals continue to harp on the moral
praiseworthiness of doing just that.

According to President Obama, we would not be a great country without
confiscating the wealth of earners and redistributing it to those who refuse
to pay for their health care and retirement.  The better angels of our
nature mandate a "communal" view of the world, in which we force some to pay
for others.  Naturally, Mondale and Moore feel the same way.

Of course, there is nothing more immoral than such class warfare.
Capitalism is based on the principle of mutual benefit - nobody can coerce
anyone to buy a product or provide a service.  Communism is based on the
principle of pure selfishness - I deserve your cash because I exist.
Capitalism is you allowing a plumber into your house to fix your pipes, and
then handing him a check for a job well done.  Communism is a plumber
breaking into your house, leaving the pipes leaky, and forging a check from
your account.  Liberals think that capitalism is based on greed, but
capitalism cannot serve greedy without altruistic output.  Communism is
based on both greed and jealousy, without even a hint of altruism.

At root, the difference between President Obama and conservative Americans
is a question of values, not of means.  Obama and his cadre could not care
l

[osint] 7 Shocking Gitmo Revelations from WikiLeaks

[Beowulf]

http://www.alternet.org/story/150737/7_shocking_gitmo_revelations_from_wikil
eaks?akid=6885.30206.P3sHYq
 &rd=1&t=12

 



  Raw Story / By
 Kase Wickman 

comments_image
 5 COMMENTS 

7 Shocking Gitmo Revelations from WikiLeaks

The incoherence behind Gitmo is finally coming to light. 

April 25, 2011  |   

 

 

A massive leak of more than 700 military documents, attributed to infamous
transparency group WikiLeaks, was released Sunday night. Much of the new
information deals with detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, records that begin
immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks and range to 2009,
including documents relating to 172 prisoners still held at the
controversial detention facility.

Here are seven shocking revelations about Guantanamo Bay and the practices
there.

One hundred twenty-seven "high risk" prisoners remain at Guantanamo Bay, but
almost as many "high risk" prisoners have been released to other countries
or freed, despite being described as "likely to pose a threat." Of the 600
detainees known to have been transferred out of the prison since 2002, 160
fell under the "high risk" categorization,
 according to NPR. At least two dozen
transferred "high risk" prisoners have been linked to terrorist activity
since their Gitmo exit, including two Saudis who became leaders of al-Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula.

"There's a group there that we all agree never gets let out, and then
there's the rest," Rep. Mike Conaway (R-TX) said of Guantanamo detainees at
a recent congressional hearing. "As you close on that number of folks who
should not ever be let go, then you run the risk of letting somebody go who
shouldn't be."

Officials aren't sure what they're doing. In 704 leaked documents assessing
detainees, the word "possibly"
 appears 387 times, "unknown" 188 times and
"deceptive" 85 times. Two conflicting committees from the Department of
Defense worked at the facility and clashed frequently over how to classify
prisoners' threat levels and the quality of information they shared.

While some "high risk" prisoners have returned to terrorism, still others
have become U.S. allies. A former Gitmo detainee whose files identify him as
"a probable member of al-Qaeda," Abu Sufian Ibrahim Ahmed Hamuda bin Qumu,
is now a key figure on the rebel side of the Libyan revolution, a leader of
a rebel brigade in the northern part of the country. When Qumu was
 captured in Pakistan shortly after 9/11, he was
considered an enemy of the United States. Now, he and the U.S. have a goal
in common: unseat Gaddafi.

Instead of getting closer to catching Osama bin Laden, the documents show
that the
 focus has broadened from catching key al-Qaeda operatives,
noting information about other foreign operations. One captive was sent to
Gitmo so officials could glean any information he had on the Bahraini court,
and another was interrogated about any knowledge he had of Uzbekistan's
secret service.

Officials took note of every possible piece of evidence, in hopes of
building mosaics of information - even evidence as trivial as origami art.
 McClatchy reports:

Guards plucked off ships at sea to walk the cellblocks note who has hoarded
food as contraband, who makes noise during the Star Spangled Banner, who
sings creepy songs like "La, La, La, La Taliban" and who is re-enacting the
9/11 attacks with origami art.

Officials noted that information from some unstable prisoners may be faulty
or untrue, but used it anyway. Yasim Mohammed Basardah, a detainee who gave
information about 60 other prisoners, was
 noted as being unreliable, and his file
stressed that information he shared should be independently verified.
However, he was also given a "high" intelligence value, and his threat level
was lowered from high to medium in exchange for his cooperation. He was
resettled in Europe in 2010. According to the documents,
 eight prisoners have revealed information about 235 others.

Suspects were nabbed and shipped to Gitmo because they wore cheap wa

[osint] Network Would Link Defense Functions, People

[Beowulf]

Network Would Link Defense Functions, People 
  
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 14:40:00 -0500 



Network Would Link Defense Functions, People 


By Terri Moon Cronk 
American Forces Press Service 

WASHINGTON, April 25, 2011 - To optimize U.S. cybersecurity using a new 
information-sharing enterprise network in a reduced-budget era, a top Defense 
Department official gave industry leaders a challenge: "We need your 
innovation." 

Robert J. Carey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for information 
management integration and technology and the Pentagon's chief information 
officer, outlined the department's "enterprise strategy and roadmap" for 
members of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association here 
April 22. 

Carey said the plan would bring all branches of the military together on the 
same information-sharing network system. 

"It's not about consolidation as much as it is about raising security, while 
keeping enterprise in view," he said. "Improving cybersecurity is what this is 
about." 

Making sure firewalls get trusted information and driving costs down while 
raising the security bar form the nexus of the effort, Carey said. 

"When a service member is downrange, he doesn't care where the information 
comes from –- only that it's at hand and he can do something with it," Carey 
said. "Enterprise is actionable, timely, relevant, trusted information." 

And while it seems simple to provide, he said, the existence of many networks 
makes it difficult. 

Defense budget cuts have become the catalyst for change, Carey told the 
industry leaders, and finding efficiencies to run the department has become 
essential. 

"If we keep doing what we've done [with past funding], we're not going to get 
there," he said. 

The enterprise network, however, would cost little, because the system's 
architecture would result from a "bottom-up" approach, Carey said, with DOD 
making new uses out of existing network equipment from all military branches. 

"It's really hard to defend [the department's] 15,000-ish networks and 10,000 
applications and systems," he acknowledged. But even with a substantial amount 
of details yet to be ironed out –- including network optimization, data center 
consolidation, data tagging and others -- Carey said some efficiency 
initiatives already are paying off after six to eight months of work, such as 
in tracking identity on classified networks. 

"It's actually starting to happen," he said. 

Email is another challenge. "There are a lot of email systems out there," he 
told the group. "We've got to buy what we have better, and use what we have 
better." 

Carey said all branches of the military bought email systems and set them up 
command by command, ship by ship, with no tightly knit communications system. 
But now, he added, enterprise system purchases for hardware and software will 
be viewed with a critical eye. 

"We need to look at: 'Is it applicable at the enterprise level? If it is, how 
can I buy it better than I'm buying it now? How can I use my money more wisely 
for the taxpayer?'" Carey said. 

The challenges of the new enterprise system will be many, Carey said, but he 
added that he believes it is a proven system that is both cost-effective and 
essential for improved cybersecurity. 

"We are starting this pump with the water we already have," he said, noting the 
drop in funding for the enterprise network system. "And the defense leadership 
recognizes that factor." 

Launching the system will take more time with less funding, Carey said, "but 
we're still going forward, because this can be done on its own gravity." 
  


Related Sites: 
Armed Forces Communications and Electronic Association   



 



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[osint] Tin Foil Turbans: The 6 Stupidest Conspiracy Theories that Millions of Muslims Believe

[Beowulf]

Tin Foil Turbans: The 6 Stupidest Conspiracy Theories that Millions of
Muslims Believe

Posted By Kathy Shaidle On April 25, 2011 

"But the biggest problem with conspiracy theories is that they keep us not
only from the truth but also from confronting our faults and problems. .This
way of thinking relates any given problem to external elements, and thus
does not [lead] to a rational policy to confront the problem. He who speaks
of ghosts [as the reason behind any given problem] can do nothing to solve
it."

"Anyone, who adopts the conspiracy theory becomes so helpless that he ends
up surrendering or committing suicide. The thinking of conspiracy theorists
shifts between surrender and suicide, between helplessness and passivity,
between negligence and failure."

- Dr. Abd Al-Mun  'im
Sa'id, 1999

During the Q&A at Mark Steyn's recent

"controversial" speech burlesque song-and-dance routine (no, really
 .) in London, Ontario, a young man rose to ask Steyn a
question.

"I am Iranian," he began - leading our gang ensconced in "bloggers row" to
turn in unison to the Iranian ex-pat in our group
  for
his verdict. After the questioner got out another sentence, our friend
rolled his eyes and muttered, "Idiot."

The Iranian up at the mic had asked a reasonable question about how much the
U.S. had armed Iraq before they decided Iraq was their enemy and invaded
them. (Steyn  's answer: according to a
Stockholm "peace research institute", only 1% of arms sales to Iraq since
the 1970s had come from America. Most came from France and Germany. Ooops.)

What came next led everyone else in the hall to roll their eyes.

Just as, in the famous phrase of Abba Eban, "The Arabs never miss an
opportunity to miss an opportunity," it seems that Muslims never miss an
opportunity to toss out some pointless, idiotic conspiracy theory.

In this case, Steyn's questioner was particularly agitated about the "fact"
that Saddam Hussein had once been awarded the "key to the city of Kansas
City." To this young man, this naturally proved conclusively that
 . well, I'm not sure,
but Steyn managed to get some comic mileage out of it.

As it turns out (and this too is typical), the Iranian questioner was
half-right about the facts, and wrong about his conclusions. According to
Wikipedia 
and other sources, Saddam Hussein was honored with the Freedom of the City
of Detroit - write your own jokes in the comments - for donating a huge sum
to a local church.

I think it was Canadian journalist Robert Fulford who called conspiracy
theories "history for stupid people." Given the level of illiteracy in the
Muslim world, this is as good an explanation as any for why millions of
Muslims,   even
"educated: ones, believe crazy stuff. I recently heard Canadian Muslim
author Tarek Fatah
 relate
stories of his latest visits to the Middle and Near East; he said he was
most often regaled with 9/11 "troother" nonsense by relatively wealthy
Pakistanis with university degrees.

Of course, the unpleasant fact is that the Muslim world has been in decline
for centuries. Since this decline contradicts their self-image as a superior
people, there must be some other explanation for their backwardness.
Conspiracy theories provide that explanation
 ,
while short circuiting the very self-criticism that international Islam
desperately needs to get itself out of its hole.

It's easy to laugh at these conspiracy theories, and maybe watch Jesse
Ventura's new show about them, "just for laughs." However, as memorably laid
out in one of my favorite books - The Cost of Deception: The Seduction of
Modern Myths and Urban Legends, by John A. Williams - conspiracy theories,
far from being harmless fun, actually pollute the public square.
Misinformation undermines civil society by making trust in one's fellow man
a mug's game. Paranoid cynicism becomes the default "sophisticated"
worldview.

Indulging in conspiracy theories isn't healthy, whether or not those
indulging are on the right or the left.  And when those theories are being
spread by millions of people who have the potential and the will, to kill,
they can be fatal.

And now, on to the 6 stupidest conspiracy theories that millions of Muslims
believe:

#6  "Cockroach Lady Diana had 700 Boyfriends!"

 

"Lady Diana is called, Cockroach D

[osint] Barack Obama Is Too Much Like Jimmy Carter

[Beowulf]

Barack Obama Is Too Much Like Jimmy Carter, Says. Nation Columnist Eric
Alterman?

Posted By Calvin Freiburger On April 25, 2011 @ 5:00 pm In
Economy,Email,Feature,News,Obama, Barack | 2 Comments
 

Conservatives

frequently make unfavorable comparisons between Barack Obama
  and
Jimmy Carter
 , but
it's a rarer occurrence to see leftists
  do
the same. So when a lefty zealot like Eric Alterman
  does
precisely that in his latest
 Daily Beast
article, it's bound to raise eyebrows, though it shouldn't-where The One
reminds right-wingers of Carter through his international and economic
ineptness, Alterman sees Obama aping some very different traits from his
predecessor:

The gregarious Massachusetts pol, House Speaker Tip O'Neil, could hardly
have been more eager to work with a Democratic president after eight years
of Nixon and Ford. But when they first met, and O'Neil attempted to advise
Carter about which members of Congress might need some special pleading, or
even the assorted political favor or two with regard to certain issues, to
O'Neil's open-jawed amazement, Carter replied, "No, I'll describe the
problem in a rational way to the American people. I'm sure they'll realize
I'm right." The red-nosed Irishman later said he "could have slugged
 " Carter
over this lethal combination of arrogance and naivety, but it would soon
become Carter's calling card.

Alterman doesn't know just how right he is. The Left can never entertain the
possibility that they might be wrong on questions of fundamental principle.
Progressive ideology

holds itself to be the culmination of man's intellectual and moral
development thus far, enlightenment from which there could be no
fundamentally different deviation. John F. Kennedy said
  the days
of "grand warfare of rival ideologies" were behind us, replaced with "more
basic discussion" of "technical questions." If someone rejects the key
tenets of the progressive agenda, it must be because he either doesn't yet
understand it properly, or is blinded by his personal biases or interests.
Someone simply can't be enlightened and well-informed, and still reject
leftist policies.

Both men rule without regard to the concerns of the base of their party.
Both held themselves to be above politics when it came to making tough
decisions. Both were possessed with superhuman self-confidence when it came
to their own political judgment mixed with contempt for what they understood
to be the petty concerns of pundits and party leaders. And worst of all, one
fears, neither one appeared willing to change course no matter how many
storm clouds loomed on the horizon [.]

[A]s Ezra Klein points out
 ,, Obama's deficit reduction plan, while not quite
as brutal as the Republican Ryan plan, is even more conservative than the
Simpson-Bowles plan, which was itself deeply conservative
 . He calls for raising less money in new taxes and far smaller
cuts in the defense budget, chasing the Republicans into territory that is
well to the right of anything even Ronald Reagan dared propose
  before his 1980
shellacking of Jimmy Carter.

It's true that some conservatives
  have
praise for Simpson-Bowles, but Brian Riedl at the Heritage Foundation
explains
  that the plan is hardly an ideal
center-right reference point thanks to its emphasis on raising taxes
(including an automatic "tax hike trigger"), slashing defense spending,
leaving entitlements relatively unscathed, and measuring "all tax and
spending changes against a baseline that already assumes nearly $2 trillion
in tax increases from letting parts of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire and
from no longer renewing many other annual tax cuts."

And I

[osint] Obama "Worshipped" On Easter at Church That Hosted A Palestinian Hate-Israel Conference (Jeremy Wright Redux)

[Beowulf]

Obama Chose To Worship On Easter At A Church That Hosted A Palestinian
Hate-Israel Conference

Posted By Joseph Klein On April 25, 2011 

President Obama and the first family attended Easter services at the Shiloh
Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.  As the mainstream press made sure to
point out, this church was founded in 1863 by freed slaves.

MSNBC proclaimed:

Obama attends Easter service at historic church: The first family enters
Shiloh Baptist Church to a round of applause

It would be such a heart-warming picture of religious devotion except that
the mainstream press neglected to mention a couple of things about the
church which Obama chose for his Easter worship. The Shiloh Baptist Church
hosted an anti-Israel hate fest in 2009
 at the same time as an
associate minister of the church, Adam Russell Taylor, was  serving as an
Obama administration White House Fellow in the Office of Cabinet Affairs,
Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs
 .

Why did Shiloh Baptist Church's associate minister Taylor win one of only
fifteen coveted fellowship positions at the White House? Perhaps  because he
just happened to be the Senior Political Director of the far Left ministry
Sojourners
  run by
Obama's spiritual advisor Jim Wallis
 when
he was tapped by the Obama White House for the prestigious fellowship.
Perhaps Taylor's appointment was also payback for the
  kind things he had to say
about Obama's controversial Chicago pastor,  Rev. Jeremiah Wright, during
the height of the bruhaha over Obama's twenty year association with Wright's
Trinity Church.

Taylor said that while he did not agree with every single word Wright had
ever uttered,

I still vehemently defend the prophetic tradition that Rev. Wright has
advanced over the course of 36 years of ministry.

In October of 2009, while Taylor was serving in the Shiloh Baptist Church
and as an intern in the Obama administration, the church hosted a hate
Israel conference sponsored by a radicalized Palestinian Christian
liberation theology group that called the establishment of Israel "The
Catastrophe" (Nakba) and has openly questioned Israel's right to exist.

The group is known as Friends of Sabeel
 , which has spewed anti-Israel propaganda in both
the United States and Europe since its founding in 1989. It has chapters in
the United States and runs conferences in churches such as Shiloh Baptist
Church to support the work of the Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical
Liberation Theology Center. Among other things, they have helped spearhead
the divestment campaign against Israel in churches receptive to the
anti-Israel, Palestinian victimhood message. 

The dinner speaker at Shiloh Baptist Church's 2009 hate Israel conference
was Rev. Naim Ateek, President and Director of the Sabeel Ecumenical
Liberation Theology Center
 . It must be a small world since Obama's spiritual advisor Jim
Wallis is a great admirer of Ateek, whom he has reportedly referred to as
"Palestine's Desmond Tutu
 ."
That makes sense since Tutu also hates Israel.

It's too bad that Ateek was not present at this year's Easter service at
Shiloh, attended by President Obama. Ateek would have then been able to
repeat a past Easter season sermon of his:

In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross
again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only takes
people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout the
land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has
become one huge [G]olgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is
operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.

But I digress. Let's return to the 2009 Shiloh Baptist Church's Palestine
conference where Israel's "crimes" against the Palestinians dominated the
agenda and any talk of the persecution of Christians by Muslims or the
terrorist violence against Israel were taboo. The guest list represented a
who's who of Israel bashers.

The Opening Plenary remarks at the conference were delivered in the Shiloh
Baptist church sanctuary by Dr. Richard Falk, UN Special Rappporteur on
Human Rights in the Palestinian 

[osint] White House Slams Rev. Franklin Graham for Comment about Issues Surrounding President Obama's Birth (truth hurts)

[Beowulf]

White House Slams Rev. Franklin Graham for Comment about Issues Surrounding
President Obama's Birth
 


by Kimberly Schwandt
  | April
25, 2011


Read more:

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/04/25/white-house-slams-rev-franklin-
graham-comment-about-issues-surrounding-president-obamas-b?test=latestnews#i
xzz1KdDe7OOY

 

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said comments by Rev. Franklin Graham
  that there
were issues surrounding President Obama's birth were "preposterous charges."

Graham, who has met with Obama before, appeared on ABC's "This Week" and was
asked about people like Donald Trump bringing up questions about the
president's birth. "Well, the -- the president I know has some issues to
deal with here. He can solve this whole birth certificate issue pretty
quickly. I don't -- I was born in a hospital in Asheville, North Carolina,
and I know that my records are there," Graham said.

"You can probably even go and find out what room my mother was in when I was
born. I don't know why he can't produce that. So I'm not -- I don't know.
But it's an issue that looks like he could -- he could answer pretty
quickly," he added.

Carney, in an abrupt answer, reacted and said, "It's interesting that a
minister would use Easter Sunday to make preposterous charges."

A reporter in the daily White House briefing had asked for reaction to
Graham's comments that aired Sunday and also for other charges that Graham
has made about the Muslim Brotherhood
  infiltrating all parts of the Obama administration.

The interview with the influential evangelical pastor took place late last
week, but aired on Easter Sunday.

The issue of the president's faith also came up. As recently as last week,
President Obama professed his Christianity, also going to church services
with his family in D.C. on Sunday. However, the president still battles
misperceptions that he is a Muslim.

"Now, he has told me that he is a Christian. But the debate comes, what is a
Christian? For him, going to church means he's a Christian. For me, the
definition of a Christian is whether we have given our life to Christ and
are following him in faith and we have trusted him as our lord and savior.
That's the definition of a Christian. It's not as to what church you are a
member of. A membership doesn't make you a Christian," Graham said.

The reverend said he does take the president at his word on that. "Well,
when he says it, of course, I can't -- I'm not going to say, "Well, no,
you're not." I mean, God -- God is the only one who knows his heart."


Read more:

http://politics.blogs.foxnews.com/2011/04/25/white-house-slams-rev-franklin-
graham-comment-about-issues-surrounding-president-obamas-b?test=latestnews#i
xzz1KdDYVO00

 



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[osint] RECENT NY TIMES HEADLINE: 'Surprisingly, the Muslim Brotherhood appears to have seized the Egyptian revolution'

[Beowulf]

  


 
 RECENT NY TIMES HEADLINE: 'Surprisingly, the Muslim Brotherhood
appears to have seized the Egyptian revolution' 


  barenakedislam
| April 25, 2011 at 10:27 PM | Categories:
 Jihad this! | URL:
 http://wp.me/peHnV-t7N 


RECENT NEW YORK TIMES HEADLINE: 'Surprisingly, the Muslim Brotherhood
appears to have seized the Egyptian revolution'


Posted: April 25, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam
  | Filed under:
Jihad this!   |
 12 Comments > 


 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/muslim-brother-hioood-seal
.jpg?w=300&h=300WELL, DUH!  This must come as quite a shock to Obama Regime
officials like Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who assured
us that the Muslim Brotherhood was a mostly secular movement. 


HOT AIR
  - Even some hard-nosed
realists might find themselves a bit surprised
  at how quickly the nature of the
Egyptian revolution changed after Hosni Mubarak fled:

In post-revolutionary Egypt
 , where hope and confusion collide in the
daily struggle to build a new nation, religion has emerged as a powerful
political force, following an uprising that was based on secular ideals. The
Muslim Brotherhood
 , an Islamist group once banned
by the state, is at the forefront, transformed into a tacit partner with the
military government that many fear will thwart fundamental changes.

 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/egypt__muslim-brotherhood.
jpg?w=590&h=331

It is also clear that the young, educated secular activists who initially
propelled the nonideological revolution are no longer the driving political
force - at least not at the moment. As the best organized and most extensive
opposition movement in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood was expected to have an
edge in the contest for influence. But what surprises many is its link to a
military that vilified it.

But what happened to all of those young idealists in the street that drove
Mubarak out of power and put their trust in the military to protect them?
Well, they don't seem to be around any longer, but suddenly facial hair is
the new fashion on the street:

"We are all worried," said Amr Koura, 55, a television producer, reflecting
the opinions of the secular minority. "The young people have no control of
the revolution anymore. It was evident in the last few weeks when you saw a
lot of bearded people taking charge. The youth are gone."

*   Share this

 



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[osint] Peter King vs. Eric Holder - Why Did the Justice Department Never Indict CAIR?

[Beowulf]

 



April 26, 2011 4:00 A.M.

 

 
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/265576/peter-king-vs-eric-holder-brian-bolduc?page=1

 

Peter King vs. Eric Holder - 
Why Did the Justice Department Never Indict CAIR?

The clock is ticking for Eric Holder. On Monday, Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.) 
sent the attorney general a letter asking why the Justice Department declined 
to prosecute the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a 
Muslim-American organization, in a recent antiterrorism case. He gave Holder 
until April 25 to respond.

 

In United States v. Holy Land Foundation — which was ultimately decided in 
November 2008 — the U.S. attorney’s office in Dallas, Texas, listed CAIR as an 
“unindicted co-conspirator” with the Holy Land Foundation, a now-defunct 
fundraiser for the terrorist group Hamas. Citing wiretaps from a 1993 
Philadelphia conference among several Muslim groups, the attorney’s office 
argued that CAIR and its founder, Omar Ahmad, “discussed . . . redefining the 
perception of the sub-organizations due to their work for the Palestinian 
cause, and the legal hurdles the [Muslim] Brotherhood faced when raising funds 
for Hamas and other Palestinian causes or when taking orders from overseas 
leaders.”

King claims to have sources who know why the Justice Department never indicted 
CAIR or Ahmad. “I have been reliably informed that the decision . . . was 
usurped by high-ranking officials at Department of Justice headquarters over 
the vehement and stated objections of special agents and supervisors of the 
Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the prosecutors at the U.S. 
attorney’s office in Dallas, who had investigated and successfully prosecuted 
the Holy Land Foundation case,” King wrote. “Their opposition to this decision 
raises serious doubt that the decision not to prosecute was a valid exercise of 
prosecutorial discretion.”

After King released his letter, however, bloggers questioned the accusation. 
Politico’s Josh Gerstein reported that the George W. Bush administration also 
neglected to prosecute CAIR. “The decision not to indict CAIR came in 2004 as 
prosecutors in Dallas were preparing to seek an indictment of the Holy Land 
Foundation and five of its officials,” Gerstein wrote. “Some prosecutors wanted 
to include CAIR and others in the case at that time. However, senior Justice 
Department officials elected not to, [a source of Gerstein’s] said.”

Ron Kampeas, chief of the Washington, D.C., bureau at the Jewish Telegraphic 
Agency, raised doubts about King’s allegations as well. He quoted from district 
judge Jorge Solis’s opinion, which argued that there was no “legitimate 
government interest that warrants publicly identifying CAIR and 245 other 
individuals and entities as unindicted co-conspirators.” The main reason the 
government had done so, Kampeas argued, was to increase the pool of evidence it 
could use to convict its main target, the Holy Land Foundation.

But that’s a selective reading of the decision, King says. The judge “went on 
to say the government had produced ample evidence” that CAIR was linked to the 
Holy Land Foundation, King tells National Review Online. Indeed, Solis wrote, 
“The four pieces of evidence the government relies on . . . do create at least 
a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas.” 
Solis may not have seen a reason for the government to publicly disclose its 
suspicions of CAIR and thus besmirch the group’s reputation without the 
opportunity of a trial. But he also saw reason for the government to be 
suspicious.

King continues: “In this case, the prosecutors on the case who were dealing 
with it most closely wanted to proceed and they weren’t allowed to. The people 
working on the case thought they had enough for a conviction. If they believed 
an indictment was likely and a conviction was likely, what possible reason did 
the Justice Department have to overrule them?”

Politics, the congressman surmises. “We have probably the most liberal attorney 
general we have ever had,” he says. “From the day he came into office, he was 
talking about investigating CIA interrogators and holding 9/11 trials in New 
York, and even when he was forced to reverse himself, he made it clear he 
wanted trials held in New York. I would see this as being just a very dug-in 
liberal ideology on Holder’s part.”

And the pushback he’s gotten is just standard liberal fare, King believes. 
“There’s no doubt that radical Islamists in this country have become a 
protected force,” he tells NRO. “All of the radical Muslim groups such as CAIR, 
their allies in the media, and liberals in general have just rallied to the 
their defense.” If King had made similar charges about a right-wing Christian 
group, “there’d be either silence or encouragement” from the left.

But is the Left merely defending a politically unpopular mi

[osint] Phone Data Used to Fill Digital Map

[John F. McMullen]

*(johnmac -- Our Brave New World -- different from anything envisioned by
Huxley or Orwell  -- Bruce Sterling's 1980s "Islands In The Net" was
predictive as was  Neal Stephenson' "Snow Crash". Anyway, here we are now --
and it's ironic: as technology allows us to explore our own individuality by
"going where've we wish" (like here) and interacting with folks we choose
from all over the world,, the aggregating of data about us -- our locations,
buying habits, relationships, etc. -- reduces us to simply numbers in the
Matrix. -- as shown in a well done other piece that follows -- Note: a
shorter version of this e-mail was sent to some folks earlier; this version
contains full text)*


>From The New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/technology/26locate.html

*Phone Data Used to Fill Digital Map**by Miguel Helft *

 SAN FRANCISCO — You may not know it, but if you carry a smartphone in your
pocket, you are probably doing unpaid work for
Appleor
Google—
and helping them eventually aim more advertising directly at you.
  Enlarge This Image
  Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Wi-Fi hot spots, like this cafe in Norton, Kan., can provide valuable
location information.

As those two companies battle for dominance in mobile computing, they have
increasingly been using their customers’ phones as sensors to collect data
about nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi hot spots.

Google and Apple use this data to improve the accuracy of everything on the
phone that uses location. That includes maps and navigation services, but
also advertising aimed at people in a particular spot — a potentially huge
business that is just getting off the ground. In fact, the information has
become so valuable that the companies have been willing to push the envelope
on privacy to collect it.

“Google envisions a world where even a small business can promote products
to consumers nearby on a mobile device,” said Alistair Goodman, chief
executive of Placecast, a location-based advertising company here. “That is
a massive market.”

The companies are using the cell tower and hot spot data to build maps of
the world, maps that help smartphones quickly pinpoint their locations.
Using the signals as navigational beacons is particularly useful in places
where GPS satellite signals are weak, like urban areas or anywhere indoors.

Shifting allegiances and legal battles in the world of location services
suggest competition in this market is heating up.

Apple initially relied on technology from Skyhook Wireless, a company that
was a pioneer in the technique of using Wi-Fi hot spots for location. But
last year it began collecting its own data as well. And late last year,
Skyhook sued Google, charging that Google had copied its technology and
persuaded Motorola to break contracts with Skyhook and use Google’s
competing service.

Google and Apple have said that they collect the information anonymously and
use it to keep their databases of Wi-Fi hot spots up to date, not to track
individuals. But because a person’s location is delicate information, the
practices have raised privacy fears.

The use of this data by the companies has been under scrutiny since last
week, when two technology researchers reported that a file stored on many
iPhones and iPads keeps track of all the locations visited by a user. The
file is unencrypted and is copied to people’s personal computers when they
sync their devices.

The report prompted lawmakers in the United States to ask Apple for
explanations. Several European governments said they would open
investigations into Apple’s practices. On Monday, two customers sued Apple
accusing it of privacy invasion and computer fraud. They contend the company
is secretly recording and storing the location and movement of
iPhoneand
iPadusers.

Late last week, Google said it was collecting information about nearby
networks from 
Androidusers,
though it said that it was not tracking individuals and that it
allowed users to decline to participate.

Lisa 
Madigan,
the attorney general of Illinois, wrote to Google and Apple on Monday asking
them to explain their location data collection practices.

Apple has declined to comment on the matter.

On Monday, the Web site MacRumors
publishedan
e-mail said to be from Steven
P. 
Jobs

[osint] US Atty General Eric Holder Responds to PJM Reports: We’ve Set Record In Terrorist Prosecutions

[Beowulf]

 

 



US Atty General Eric Holder Responds to PJM Reports: We’ve Set Record In 
Terrorist Prosecutions


3:47 am on April 26th, 2011
 

 
http://pajamasmedia.com/tatler/2011/04/26/us-atty-general-eric-holder-responds-to-pjm-reports-weve-set-record-in-terrorist-prosecutions/

Speaking at the Department of Justice yesterday, US Attorney General Eric 
Holder took a swipe at my exclusive Pajamas Media articles reporting from a 
confidential DOJ source that Holder’s  

 DOJ scuttled the terror finance prosecution of American Islamic leaders as 
part of the Holy Land Foundation case, as well as that DOJ’s Muslim outreach 
efforts have  

 jeopardized active terror investigations.

In response to the scuttling of the second round of Holy Land Foundation 
prosecutions, Holder shot back that the Obama Administration has set a record 
in terrorist prosecutions over the past two years. However, that might be 
because of the skyrocketing number of terrorist incidents by Muslims over the 
past two years that have also set a new record.

And in response to the charge that DOJ’s Muslim outreach has jeopardized active 
terror investigations, Holder vowed to continue such outreach programs “to all 
communities”, apparently including ( 

 as I reported) Muslim leaders under active investigation in terrorism cases 
and those  

 identified by federal prosecutors as unindicted co-conspirators in terror 
finance prosecutions.

Meanwhile, Holder has yet to respond to House Homeland Security Committee 
chairman Rep. Peter King’s questions about  

 why the DOJ quashed the pending indictment of Omar Ahmad, co-founder of the 
Council on America-Islamic Relations (CAIR), that King had requested by the 
close of business yesterday. The Investigative Project on Terrorism has also 
just released a report, “ 
 The Case 
Against Omar Ahmad“.

Here’s some of the video of Holder’s speech via CNSNews:

[video]http://youtu.be/DZL4LY5nyIk[/video]

  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZL4LY5nyIk&feature=player_embedded

 



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[osint] Thailand, Cambodia Edge Toward War

[Beowulf]

 

 

 

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/MD27Ae01.html

 

 




Thailand, Cambodia edge toward war 
By Richard Ehrlich 

  BANGKOK - Thailand 
and Cambodia fortified their border positions on Tuesday after four days of 
artillery and mortar battles killed seven Cambodian soldiers and five Thai 
troops, while both sides tried to dominate nearby ancient Hindu temple ruins. 
No deaths were reported during Monday's clashes. 

Thai troops with scant  
 medical equipment 
used stretchers and open pickup trucks to transport some injured soldiers from 
border fights to hospitalization during the weekend. Thailand moved tanks and 
armored personnel carriers along the mountainous jungle frontier about 560 
kilometers northeast of Bangkok. 

Cambodia installed more multiple-rocket launchers and other
heavy weaponry to bolster its side. Phnom Penh said on Monday that shelling and 
rifle fire by Thai forces during the weekend damaged the crumbling stone ruins 
of two small 1,000-year-old Hindu temples, Ta Krabey and Ta Moan. The extent of 
the damage was unclear. 

The ruins are in a disputed border area where most of the four straight days of 
clashes have occurred. Both Buddhist-majority countries again used artillery, 
mortars and rifles on Monday night near Ta Krabey, according to Thai and 
Cambodian military spokesmen. 

"The Cambodian acts of aggression left Thailand with no choice but to defend 
its sovereignty and territorial integrity by using proportionate means with 
necessity, under international law, and strictly directed at only military 
targets," the Thai Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. 

About 20,000 villagers on each side of the frontier have fled to makeshift 
shelters, while camouflaged Thai and Cambodian troops continue to patrol the 
jungle. The clashes were not expected to escalate immediately into full-scale 
war between Thailand and Cambodia, but the fighting has shut cross-border trade 
and caused jitters in both Southeast Asian capitals. 

United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon and the 10-member Association of 
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) - of which both Thailand and Cambodia are 
members - have called on the countries to arrange a ceasefire, but the Thai 
military said it was fighting to stop Cambodia's attempt to seize the Ta Krabey 
and Ta Moan temple ruins. 

Cambodia wants to expand upon its 1962 success when the International Court of 
Justice in the Hague awarded Cambodia ownership over larger stone temple ruins 
at Preah Vihear, about 201 kilometers to the east of the current fighting, the 
Thai army said. 

"There must not be Cambodian soldiers around Preah Vihear, other temples, and 
communities," Thai army commander General Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Monday. 

"Cambodia would have seized the area, as they did in the areas near Preah 
Vihear temple," Thai army spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said on Sunday. "So 
letting problems occur today is better than seeing it turn chronic in the 
future," he said, explaining why Thai forces were defending the two smaller 
temples and nearby disputed territory. 

Both sides have repeatedly blamed the other for being the aggressor and firing 
first. In February, four days of fighting near Preah Vihear killed a total of 
10 soldiers on both sides before hostilities quieted. 

Cambodia wants to internationalize the problem and called on the United Nations 
and   Indonesia to 
mediate. Thailand has said it prefers to negotiate through bilateral rather 
than multilateral means. 

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, in his role as current chair of 
ASEAN, postponed his scheduled  
 trip on Monday to 
Cambodia and Thailand after Bangkok tried to limit Indonesia's efforts to send 
military observers to the disputed border where recent fighting occurred. 

During the weekend, Cambodia said Thai forces fired 75mm and 105mm shells 
"loaded with poison gas", but no evidence was provided and Bangkok denied the 
allegation. In February, Bangkok denied using cluster bombs but later 
reluctantly admitted to firing several cluster-loaded bombs at Cambodia. 
Thailand has in return accused Cambodia of moving civilians as human shields 
into militarized areas. 

The United States has good relations with both countries' armed forces and has 
refrained from openly intervening in the conflict. Thailand is a non-North 
Atlantic Treaty Organization military ally of the United States and is bigger, 
wealthier and better armed than Cambodia, but Cambodian soldiers are considered 
tougher fighters on the ground. 

Cambodia's military leaders include Hun Manet, who received his diploma in 1999 
from the US Military Academy at West Point. Two-star Lieutenant General Hun 
Manet is deputy commander of the Royal Ca

[osint] A View from Syria

[Beowulf]

http://tinyurl.com/69r8uyp

 


A View from Syria


April 25, 2011 | 1904 GMT 

Editor's Note: What follows is raw insight from a STRATFOR source in Syria.
The following does not reflect STRATFOR's view, but provides a perspective
on the situation in Syria. 

People are scared. An understatement, no doubt, but my friends - both
foreign and Syrian - are worried about the developments. Almost all of my
foreign friends are leaving and many have moved departing flights up in
light of the recent events. Most Syrians don't have this option and are
weighing their options should sustained protests move to inner Damascus.
Everyone is thinking along their sect even if they aren't open about it.
Much of the violence is attributed by Syrians to these mysterious "armed
gangs." Many are still placing hope in "Habibna" (literally "Our Love," a
nickname for the president) to bring about enough reforms to placate the
demonstrators. A point that I was forced to make over and over is that a lot
of the people protesting are doing so because someone they knew was killed
and not because they were anti-government, although they are now. Privately,
my Syrian friends admitted that Bashar [al Assad, the Syrian president]
needs to make some major, major concessions quickly or risk continued
protests and bloodshed of which would be attributed to him and not merely
"the regime."

By now we are all familiar with the cycle of protests reaching their high
point on Fridays, after prayers. This Friday, however, was different for
Syrians. Having seen the infamous emergency law lifted, albeit with serious
caveats, Syrians were hoping for a relaxing of the security responses to the
demonstrations. What they got was half as many demonstrators killed in one
day as in all the days of demonstrations preceding it combined. It was
almost as if things had been safer when the emergency law had been in
effect. (On a side note, my friend guessed that maybe two out of every 100
Syrians could actually tell you what the emergency law was.) What was most
striking about the demonstrations was that there were two in Damascus itself
(Midan on Friday, April 22, and Berze on Saturday, April 23). While not in
the city center these are by no means the far suburbs and countryside of
Daraa or Douma. There were also protests in Muadamiyeh, which is right
outside town next to the main bus station. I've heard that tanks along this
road were seen April 24 pointing their guns not in the direction of the road
but toward the city. The regime and everyone is terrified about protests in
the city itself.

You could see the depression in the air on Saturday. Everyone knew that
those killed from the day before would be having large funerals today and
that those gatherings would likely be attacked as well. My Christian friends
were especially worried due to rumors that churches were going to be bombed
on Easter. As my friend put it, "I know they're just rumors but I'm afraid
they [the security apparatus] might actually do it."

What is becoming increasingly apparent is that Bashar is not the reformer he
claimed to be. His words are not being met by real, concrete action. Even
though he might have wanted to reform and may have been hampered by others
in the regime (cousin Rami Makhlouf, brother Maher), these efforts are
steadily losing traction. The regime seems to be playing by "Hama rules" in
its response to the demonstrations and it's unlikely that this is happening
without Bashar's full consent at this point. The most positive assessment of
him I heard was that he still wanted true reforms (although nothing
game-changing) but that he was growing impatient with the demonstrators. One
person conjectured that Bashar's mistake was promising reforms when he first
came to power. "If he hadn't promised 'reforms' and not delivered on them
people wouldn't be so mad. He shouldn't have said anything and given
everyone false hope or actually followed through on them." 

Support for the protests is mixed. Many of those out in the streets are
there because someone close to them was killed. Think tribal mentality: I
wasn't mad at you before but you killed my cousin/brother/friend and now I
am mad. People are gathering to defend their honor. There is almost no
organization inside Syria among the protesters. I asked several people and
they agreed that the Muslim Brotherhood was almost non-present in the
country. All that is coordinated is information being leaked out about the
responses by the security forces against the protesters. As I told my
friend, the problem is that unlike in Cairo's Tahrir Square, all the
demonstrators are dispersed across the country and do not have enough time
to talk to each other to decide what they wanted. There is also a fairly
widely held belief that much of the killings are taking place as a result of
these armed gangs firing on security forces and innocents being caught in
the crossfire. Some are quick to blame "foreign conspirators" although
several of my f

[osint] MISSOURI: Muslims cry "foul" over Representative's bold-faced truth about Islam

[Beowulf]

  


 
 MISSOURI: Muslims cry
"foul" over Representative's bold-faced truth about Islam 


  barenakedislam
| April 25, 2011 at 5:18 PM | Categories:
 Islam in America | URL:
 http://wp.me/peHnV-t5Z 

A Columbia, MO Muslim says a state lawmaker's e-mail response to a
constituent's criticism is further proof his faith is under attack on
Capitol Hill. (As well it should be) State Rep. Rick Womick, R-Rockvale,
called Islam in the e-mail a "political-militaristic-religion" responsible
for 10 out of the last 11 terrorist attacks on Americans. (Eww, don't
[...]


MISSOURI: Muslims cry "foul" over Representative's bold-faced truth about
Islam


Posted: April 25, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam
  | Filed under:
Islam in America   |
 19 Comments > 


 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/rick-womick.jpg?w=302&h=35
5A Columbia, MO Muslim says a state lawmaker's e-mail response to a
constituent's criticism is further proof his faith is under attack on
Capitol Hill. (As well it should be) State Rep. Rick Womick, R-Rockvale,
called Islam in the e-mail a "political-militaristic-religion" responsible
for 10 out of the last 11 terrorist attacks on Americans. (Eww, don't
confront Muslims with the facts, it might incite them to violence)


C-DH   -
Womick wrote he has studied Islam and its code known as Shariah for nine
years, and he advised others to do the same before turning a blind eye and
accusing others of intolerance. 

 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/violence-inherent-in-islam
1.jpg?w=166&h=267"Ignorance is bliss, and stupidity can get you killed,"
Womick wrote. "I suggest you educate yourself on both sides of the issue."

Lawmakers are considering a bill that would authorize the governor and
attorney general to designate an entity "a domestic terrorist" or "a foreign
terrorist organization." Initially, the measure mentioned Islam and Shariah
by name, but it was later amended to strip any reference to a religion.

Daoud Abudiab, a Columbia Muslim whose mosque was torched by white
supremacists in 2008, said Womick's written remarks show lawmakers are
really wanting to target the state's Muslims, despite their assurances that
is not the case. "He's a state representative and he holds this view, and he
wants me to trust another state representative to designate us as a
terrorist organization or not. . It's terrifying to think people of his
stature believe that," Abudiab said. (Actually, it is wonderful that a
person of his stature are willing to tell the truth about Islam)

Aaron Nuell, (self-hating Jew) a second-grade teacher from Murfreesboro,
wrote the critical letter to Womick, asking him to "stop attacking your
Muslim constituents." (A liberal Jewish teacher = lethal combination)

 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/yasinkaffir-vi.jpg?w=514&h
=158

Abudiab was one of four Muslims who testified Tuesday against the measure,
which is sponsored by Maury County's Republican state Sen. Bill Ketron.
Tennessee Muslims argue the legislation is unnecessary because of existing
laws dealing with terrorism. They also argue it will be used to declare
Muslims guilty by association of supporting terrorism. (Excellent!)

 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/yasinfilth-vi.jpg?w=514&h=
158

As many as 300 Muslims and representatives of interfaith groups showed up at
the committee meeting at the legislative office complex at the Tennessee
Capitol to oppose the bill. Abudiab said a private meeting after the hearing
involving himself, Republican Speaker Pro Tempore Judd Matheny and other
representatives of the Muslim community turned contentious.

 

[osint] US Federal Land Safe Haven for Drug/Alien Smuggling

[Beowulf]

. April 25th, 2011 12:40 pm PT

 


 

Kimberly Dvorak


 

 

Last week former Border Patrol Agent, George Taylor, testified before a
Congressional Committee hearing regarding America's growing border security
issues. After 43 years law enforcement experience Taylor calls it like he
sees it and this former BP Agent points to the National Parks and designated
Wilderness Land along the southern border as the main culprit in the uptick
of cartel smuggling activities.

"The root problem remains, Federal Wildlife Refuges, Wilderness and
Designated Wildernesses of various varieties that serve to keep Border
Patrol Agents from effectively and safely securing the border on these
federal lands," Taylor explained.

Retired Border Patrol Agent Taylor, who testified on behalf of an
organization he co-founded, National Association of Former Border Patrol
Officers (NAFPBO), a non-political group committed to securing the nation's
borders, gave Congressional members a frank assessment of the unrelenting
violence along the border region.

The designation of millions of acres in Wilderness Parks means one thing-
keeping Border Patrol out. The result is much more ominous- drug cartels can
now operate without law enforcement distraction.

"The violence continues to escalate. Thousands of pounds of illegal drugs
and thousands of illegal aliens from all over the world are traversing the
area," Taylor contends. With this new right-of-way, the smugglers are now
free to commit atrocities like rape, murder and robbery as well as
considerable environmental damage.

This vast federal land set the stage for the murder of Border Patrol Agent
Brian Terry in December of last year.

On that fateful day, Terry's Border Patrol team was responding to reports
that "rip crews" (those who rob/rape illegal aliens making their way into
the U.S.) were operating in the area. It is well-known to Border Patrol
Agents that "rip crews" are heavily armed and very dangerous.

Advertisement

"As the violence becomes more common it begins to spread out and become more
prevalent. Wounded, robbed, raped and murder humans have begun showing up in
the periphery, on streets, in yards and at homes," Taylor says.

So what's the solution? Taylor educated the Congressional panel that Rep.
Rob Bishop (R-Utah) has put a bill forward that would tackle the Border
Patrol's inability to monitor these Wilderness areas.

"This legislation takes the necessary and responsible steps to address the
unacceptable restrictions that prevent Border Security experts from doing
their jobs," Bishop said.

Currently there are more than 20 million acres of federal land along
America's southern border most of which is off limits to Border Patrol
Agents.

"Allowing public land managers and restrictive environmental policies, not
Border Security experts, to dictate how we secure our nation's borders and
keep our country safe is counterintuitive, and as a result, has jeopardized
the safety and security of all Americans," Bishop said.

Bishop also contends that these "protected lands" inadvertently creates a
safe haven for criminals to operate. "The same environmental policies that
are supposed to be protecting the lands are actually allowing them to be
destroyed."

As for the solution, Taylor says it is imperative that Border Patrol Agents
have unencumbered access to every inch of land along the southern border.
"Also they must be willing to give Border Patrol Agents on the ground all
the tools necessary to secure the border."

http://www.examiner.com/county-political-buzz-in-san-diego/u-s-federal-land-
provides-a-safe-haven-for-drug-and-alien-smuggling#ixzz1KZFjpzGC 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





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[osint] Strategic Red Cell: How Terrorists Might Exploit a Hurricane (FOUO) & DHS Weather Forecast: Stormy with a Chance of Terror

[Beowulf]

 

Note: 2003 Report recently posted on the internet, article current.

 

http://info.publicintelligence.net/DHS-HurricaneTerror.pdf Report

 

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/04/dhs-weather-forecast-stormy-with-a-c
hance-of-terror/ Article

 

DHS Weather Forecast: Stormy with a Chance of Terror

*   By Adam Rawnsley

 Email Author
*   April 22, 2011  |  
*

 

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/04/Hurricane_Narda_2001-66
0x517.jpg

Have you ever looked at a hurricane barreling towards the U.S. coastline and
thought: Wow, I wonder how much more dangerous this would be if terrorists
attacked right now? Of course you haven't. You don't work for the Department
of Homeland Security.

In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security decided to gather "35 experts
from intelligence, industry, military, and academia" and have them think
through whether and how terrorists would exploit the chaos caused by a
hurricane in the United States. Their final report
  (pdf) on the
brainstorm session, a red cell report published Friday by Public
Intelligence  , wasn't quite crazy enough to
conclude that a terror-cane was likely to make landfall anytime soon. But if
it did, it would probably involve very small groups using a cyber attack or
targeting evacuation routes.

Before you start packing your disaster kit
  with
shotguns and flak jackets, it's important to put the red cell report in
context. Just because the Department of Homeland Security had some geeks
think through the subject doesn't mean the agency thinks it's necessarily
going to happen. Red cells are the spitballers of the intelligence world.
They're supposed to be provocative
  and challenge existing assumptions to get people
thinking.

Even within the loose confines of this particular red cell's thought
experiment, the participants assessed that the "probability of a terrorist
attack during a hurricane was low." Al-Qaida operatives might be down to
launch suicide attacks. But do you really see them wading through to the
Lower Ninth Ward?

The inability to predict where and when a powerful hurricane might hit over
the long term tends to winnow down the pool of potential attackers. Scratch
off a potential Hurricane Osama. The report discounts Middle East terror
groups like al-Qaida because of their traditionally longer planning cycles.
That leaves loners and splinter groups already able to take advantage of the
opportunity on the ground as the most probable bad guys. In the estimation
of the red cell, they'd be "seeking attention rather than pursuing a
political agenda."

If the image of terrorists having their car bombs flooded under a few feet
of water seems pretty ridiculous to you, it did to the DHS red cell, too. It
identified a strike in the middle of a hurricane as "highly unlikely, due to
the logistical complexities" of trying to turn yourself into a terrorist
Rambo when facing 140 mile per hours winds and rain. Instead, the authors
claimed that the likeliest attacks would take place either before the
hurricane, by attacking evacuation routes and shelters, or in its aftermath,
via a cyber attack on communication infrastructure to spread misinformation.

Of course, in the years since, even those fears weren't born out. Hurricane
Katrina didn't become some kind of natural/man-made disaster mashup. (That
is, if you don't count massive government negligence.)  Moreover, the
scenarios mentioned in the Homeland Security hypothetical involve
perpetrators that even by terrorist standards are small in number, wouldn't
have a lot of capability and could probably cause more damage through
widespread panic, rather than the attack itself.

So do yourself a favor if you live in a hurricane-prone area. Streamline
your worries. Concern yourself with about getting out of the way of a
hurricane.

 

 

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





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[osint] Iran's Control Systems Attacked by Another Virus

[Beowulf]

http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/irans-control-systems-attacked-another-v
irus

 


Iran's control systems attacked by another virus


Published 26 April 2011

Iran admitted it has been attacked by another virus aiming to disrupt its
industrial control systems; the commander of Iran civil defense said,
though, that the virus has been caught in time and neutralized by Iran's
"young experts"; Gholamreza Jalali described the virus as "congruous and
harmonious with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor
damage and might be mistaken for some executive files of government
organizations"; in the summer, nearly 42,000 computers and servers in Iran's
industrial control systems -- many of them in Iran's nuclear weapons program
-- were infected; the damage to uranium enrichment centrifuges was
especially great, causing Iran in mid-November to halt enrichment
operations; Stuxnet has also infected the Bushehr nuclear reactor; the
reactor was supposed to come on line in August, but it is still not
operational, and has missed several start-up deadlines

http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/standard/
jalali.jpg

Gholamreza Jalali at a press conference // Source: iraniandefence.com

Iran's civil defense commander, Gholamreza Jalali said Iran has been under
sustained cyber attack, saying on Monday that yet another piece of malware -
called "Stars" - was about to infect computers and servers used in Iran's
industrial control systems.

Haaretz reports
  that Jalali was quoted as saying that
"Fortunately, our young experts have been able to discover this virus and
the Stars virus is now in the laboratory for more investigations." He did
not specify the target of Stars or its intended impact. "The particular
characteristics of the Stars virus have been discovered," Jalali told Mehr
 , the
semi-official Iranian news agency. "The virus is congruous and harmonious
with the (computer) system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and
might be mistaken for some executive files of government organizations."

EWeek reports
  - based on analysis by Graham Cluley, senior technology
consultant at Sophos, on the Naked Security blog
  - that this description by Jalali suggests the attack was
disguised as a legitimate Word, PDF, or other similar document types in
order to trick unsuspecting victims into infecting government computers.
EWeek notes that several organizations, including federal research facility
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have disclosed that attackers breached their
systems by tricking employees into opening a malicious Word or Excel
document.

Cluley said that there is no proof at this point whether Stars is "really
specifically targeting Iranian systems," said, noting that Sophos
researchers see over 100,000 new unique malware samples every day, and many
of them are designed to spy on victims' computers.

"Presumably the Iranian authorities have reason to believe that the Stars
virus they have intercepted was specifically written to steal information
from their computers and is not just yet another piece of spyware," Cluley
said.

Stars is the second known virus to have targeted Iran's industrial control
systems. During the early early summer months of last year, the malware
Stuxnet, widely believed to have been created by Israeli military
programmers with the assistance of the United States, infected around 42,000
computers and servers used in Iran's nuclear weapons program. The infection
disabled about 20 percent of Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges, leading
Iran, in mid-November last year, to halt enrichment activities (Iran said
that enrichment has been resumed since then).

The Stuxnet virus also infected the Bushehr nuclear reactor, which was
supposed to go on line in August. A Russian delegate to NATO said the
Stuxnet created a situation in which if the Bushehr reactor were to go on
line, it would become "another Chernobyl."

This assertion may have been an exaggeration, but the fact remains that
Bushehr is still not operational, having missed several start-up deadlines.

Haaretz quoted Jalali to say that Stuxnet might still pose a risk. "We
should know that fighting the Stuxnet virus does not mean the threat has
been completely tackled, because viruses have a certain life span and they
might continue their activities in another way."

Jalali expressed his frustration with what he described as foot-dragging by
the Iranian government in the face of the continuing cyber attacks on Iran.
"Perhaps the Foreign Ministry had overlooked the options to legally pursue
the case, and it seems our diplomatic apparatu

[osint] Marxism Redux

[Beowulf]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9340/pub_detail.asp

 

April 26, 2011


Marxism Redux


 
Herbert London



http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110306_Progressives.jpg

 

Writing in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education, Paul Mattick, a
professor at Adelphi University, attempts to explain capitalism's failure in
an article entitled, "Capitalism's Dismal Future." Presumably its future is
a continuation of its past. As Professor Mattick notes, 

 

"Capitalism has been around for so many generations now, proving its
vitality by displacing or absorbing all other social systems around the
globe, that it seems a part of nature, irreplaceable. But its historical
limits are visible in its inability to meet the ecological challenges it has
produced." 

 

Alas, even if one accepts some of the exaggerated claims of ecological
degradation, the evidence does not suggest that capitalism alone is
responsible for the problem. China, which has a state controlled economic
system, has environmental problems that surpass any in the United States and
Europe. Moreover, a free market offers profit as an incentive to address the
problem Professor Mattick identifies.

 

Mattick's overheated rhetoric does not stop there. He also asserts that
depression and recoveries are "a recurrent feature" of the capitalist
economy. As I see it, capitalism has the capacity to create wealth and put
it at risk as well, as opposed to command economies which distribute limited
wealth and keep their citizens in a permanent state of impoverishment. The
choices are not between a self equilibrating system and the Keynesian
concept of government manipulation as Mattick indicates, but rather an
imperfect system of private incentives and a government dominated system for
the allocation of resources. History has already indicated that the former
is to be preferred to the latter, despite Professor Mattick's neo-Marxist
interpretation.

 

Despite the assertion that capitalism is trapped in a cycle of its own
creation, it is clear that capitalism is sufficiently flexible to address
the problems the system has created. For example, Mattick makes reference to
the poor the capitalist system leaves behind. Yet it is clear that the
enormous wealth capitalism produces has allowed for government largess for
the poor in the form of welfare provisions.

 

In fact, one could make the argument that government interference very often
is the factor that imperils capitalist success. The guarantees provided by
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac helped to create a real estate bubble that
ultimately undermined the housing market. To cite another example, the
"carry trade" that gives banks the opportunity to borrow at near zero
interest and invest in 30 year Treasurys at three percent has restored
solvency in the banks, but has not encouraged loans to entrepreneurs or a
reasonable return on the savings accounts of average Americans. These
conditions suggest something that might be described as "crony capitalism"
instead of mere capitalism.

 

However, seeking advantage or privilege, while one dimension of capitalism's
perversion, is a constant, indeed a permanent, feature of command economies.
Corruption in the form of bribery is the elixir that keeps the Chinese
economy going and in the former Soviet Union, pay offs to party officials
were the coin of the realm. 

 

Yes, capitalism is fragile, in large part because people are fragile. But it
is the most adaptable economic system the world has known. The free market,
the essence of capitalism, relies on the aspiration and desire of the people
aggregated into something called demand. That demand quotient changes as
conditions in the society change, including everything from natural
disasters to the availability of fossil fuels.

 

Professor Mattlick has rehearsed a theme that coruscates through Western
Civilization, a utopia of full employment, the fair distribution of
resources, responsiveness to human needs (usually as some elitist sees it)
and equality. But to the dismay of many, such a system does not exist and
cannot exist. What we do have is a capitalism that is robust, with all its
flaws, and sufficiently adaptable to address the most basic human desires.
That is not half bad and certainly does not presage a "dismal future."

 

  FamilySecurityMatters.org
Contributing Editor

Herbert London is president of Hudson Institute and professor emeritus of
New York University. He is the author of Decade of Denial (Lanham, Maryland:
Lexington Books, 2001), America's Secular Challenge (Encounter Books) and
 Decline and Revival in Higher Education (Transaction).

 



[Non-text portions of this m

[osint] Al-Jazeera Ties to al-Qaeda

[Beowulf]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9341/pub_detail.asp

 

April 26, 2011


U.S. Officials Suspected Al-Jazeera Ties to Al-Qaeda


  Cliff
Kincaid


Print This   E-mail This
  



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ShareThis  

 

Comments (0)
 

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110302_AlJazeeraBlood.jpg

 

Al-Jazeera is

spinning the newly released “Guantanamo files,” saying they show that dozens
of enemy combatants detained at the U.S. facility at Guantanamo Bay were
innocent. But that’s not what the previously secret documents say about one
high-profile detainee, Sami al-Hajj, an Al-Jazeera journalist released from
Guantanamo after legal intervention by his Soros-funded lawyer and protests
from human rights and press freedom groups.  

 

The controversial allegations against this former “enemy combatant,” as
detailed in this document, are being
 denounced by al-Hajj’s lawyer
as “false and discredited allegations.” 

 

But they show that U.S. officials suspected high-level cooperation between
Al-Jazeera and al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. The charges also
raise serious questions about why officials of the Obama Administration are
currently praising the channel and cooperating with it. 

 

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110425_Al-Hajj.jpg

 

Sami al-Hajj pictured with his son Mohammed.

 

The document says about Sami Muheidine Mohamed al-Haj, known as Sami al-Hajj
and Prisoner 345, “His involvement as a money courier, involvement in the
transfer of weapons and leadership position within the Muslim Brotherhood,
along with his numerous connections made through Al-Jazeera and his
pro-jihadist propaganda activities, illustrates his intelligence value.”

 

The detailed Department of Defense document,
 posted by WikiLeaks,
is designated, “SECRET / / NOFORN / / 20330404DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
HEADQUARTERS, JOINT TASK FORCE GUANTANAMO U.S. NAVAL STATION, GUANTANAMO
BAY, CUBA APO AE 09360”

 

Dated April 4, 2008, it recommends continued detention under Department of
Defense control for the “Guantanamo Detainee” and is signed by U.S. Navy
Rear Admiral Mark H. Buzby. Incredibly, however, al-Hajj was released only
about a month later. 

 

After the leak of this secret prisoner document, Al-Hajj was quick
 to
appear on Al-Jazeera English, which is desperately seeking access to U.S.
media markets, to once again proclaim his innocence. He says U.S.
interrogators repeatedly asked about a link between Al-Jazeera and al-Qaeda.

 

Al-Hajj says he is happy that his file and others have been released by
WikiLeaks. But the document appears to rely on interviews, interrogations,
intelligence sources, and foreign intelligence services that cannot be
dismissed out of hand. It’s true that some information is presented in the
form of accusations that have not necessarily been verified. But other
information is presented in an official manner and as a matter of fact.

 

It bluntly describes al-Hajj as a member of al-Qaeda and a member of the
Muslim Brotherhood. What’s more, the documents include information
indicating that Al-Jazeera had a “relationship” with al-Qaeda dating back to
1997 and that the channel was involved in Muslim Brotherhood operations
targeting the U.S. 

 

The specific charges about al-Hajj are more controversial and have been
disputed. It says, “Detainee was believed to be a money courier for the UBL
[Osama bin Laden] network…” It cites a foreign government service as saying
that the detainee “was a personal acquaintance of UBL.”

 

“Detainee is reportedly a leader in the Muslim Brotherhood’s Shura council
and was involved in plans and operations to distribute weapons, to include
Stinger missiles, and financial support to a foreign government service,” it
goes on. “It is assessed that detainee worked directly with Taliban Supreme
commander Mullah Muhammad Omar to procure the missiles.”   

 

In a bombshell, the document alleges that the U.S. was a target of this
terrorist network through banking activities that could potentially launder
money for terrorist activities. It says, “Detainee traveled to Qatar to meet
with the head of al-Jazeera and Yusef al-Karadavi (a main proponent of the
Muslim Brotherhood) to discuss creating a banking system controlled by the
‘brothers’ in European countries, the US, and Canada.” The “brothers” is a
term used to describe members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the same group now
poised to take power in Egypt after the “revolution” fed by Al-Jazeera’s
incendiary coverage. 

 

The name, “Yusef al-Karadavi” appears to 

[osint] WikiLeaking on GITMO

[Beowulf]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9339/pub_detail.asp

 

April 26, 2011


WikiLeaking on GITMO


 
James Carafano, PhD



http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110104_CampDELTA.jpg

 

WikiLeaks, which has been sitting on an enormous cache of classified U.S.
government documents, released another batch of materials to U.S. and
European news "partners" including The New York Times. According to
 press
reports, the documents include "intelligence assessments of nearly every one
of the 779 individuals who have been held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since
2002. In them, analysts have created detailed portraits of detainees based
on raw intelligence, including material gleaned from interrogations."

 

A Pentagon official
 stated, 

 

"[i]t is unfortunate that several news organizations have made the decision
to publish numerous documents obtained illegally by WikiLeaks concerning the
Guantanamo (GITMO) detention facility. These documents contain classified
information about current and former GTMO detainees, and we strongly condemn
the leaking of this sensitive information." Further, these documents are
incomplete and according to the official "may or may not represent the
current view of a given detainee."

 

Indeed, having
 made several trips to GITMO, I can attest to the fact that the
government has an enormous stockpile of evidence and materials.

 

While these documents may provide a wealth of details, they largely confirm
what we already know about the detention facilities at Guantanamo. They are
there for a good reason. The detainees who are left are either serious risks
to U.S. security or there is no safe place to release them. Keeping the
facilities open makes sense. As Heritage has noted,
 "The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is first-rate, and detainees
are well treated. Congress should deny funds to close the facility until it
is no longer needed."

 

Furthermore, the Administration has a continuing obligation to ensure that
it detains only individuals who represent a real security risk. Heritage has
said the Administration "
 should conduct a review of all detainees released or transferred from
Guantanamo to evaluate the actual recidivism rate. The review must include
an analysis of the diplomatic agreements the United States had with the
countries that received detainees from Guantanamo to ensure compliance with
the assurances by the receiving country. This review should be reported to
committees of jurisdiction in Congress, utilizing classified hearings."
Meanwhile, the Administration should press ahead with
 military commissions for
detainees suspected of war crimes.

 

As for WikiLeaks, the latest release only reconfirms concerns about the
organization. It is long past time for the U.S. Congress to
 update the nation's espionage laws.

 

  FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor
 James Jay
Carafano, Ph.D., is a leading expert in defense affairs, intelligence, and
strategy, military operations and homeland security at the Heritage
Foundation.

 



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[osint] A Turkish Flotilla - In Reverse

[Beowulf]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9343/pub_detail.asp

 

April 26, 2011


A Turkish Flotilla - In Reverse


 
Leslie Sacks


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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110425_MaviMarmara2.jpg

 

Last year, Turkey claimed the moral high ground in actively supporting the
"Free Gaza" flotilla, aimed at breaking Israel's "siege" of the Gaza Strip.
In truth, of course, the siege is a shared effort with Egypt and relates
primarily to armaments, rockets and other war-faring materials (Israel
itself transferred about 1 million tons of aid, 137 million liters of fuel
and 50,000 tons of cooking gas last year to Gaza, a territory ruled in
authoritarian style by the Islamists of Hamas).  

 

The Israeli navy's raid on the flotilla's Mavi Marmara ended up with 9
activists dead and a public relations disaster for Israel.  Feigning
outrage, Turkey-which appears to view this incident as an opportunistic
goose, laying the golden egg of Turkish pre-eminence in the Middle East-now
plans support for many more and much larger flotillas.  

 

Yet hypocrisy drips deep from Turkey's poisoned well.  Discussion of the
Armenian genocide (never mind its acknowledgement) is still officially
disallowed, while Turkey's large Kurdish population (now at 18%) remains
oppressed and largely disenfranchised.  An estimated 30-40,000 Kurdish lives
have been lost in the last 3 decades, the result of Kurdish attempts to
achieve a degree of autonomy, including political and language rights.
Turkey has already disqualified a number of candidates for the June
parliamentary elections, many from the Kurdish Peace and Democracy party.

 

Moreover, while Turkey sees fit to wax eloquent about Gazans' rights to open
borders, nary a word is said about the more than 15,000 rockets and mortars
fired on Israeli civilians from Gaza since Hamas took power.  

 

To give the Turks a much needed dose of perspective, I propose that a
flotilla sail from Tel Aviv or Cyprus to Istanbul, with Kurdish and Armenian
protestors on board, carrying Kurdish and Armenian books and  cultural
objects and accompanied by journalists and banned political candidates.  I
will not hold my breath waiting for the premier human rights organizations,
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to join - once Israel is
removed as their "Cause Celebre", motivations drop dramatically-but they are
welcome as well.

 

Let Turkey show the world its real taste for free expression, for democracy
at work, for open borders.  Upon arrival in Istanbul, the flotilla should
disembark and a caravan of participants and goods should wind its way
through Anatolia to Eastern Turkey, to the centers of Kurdish and Armenian
culture. There, the rights and freedoms of Turkey's oppressed minorities
should be loudly proclaimed.

 

If the flotilla and caravan proceed unhindered, we should all publicly laud
Turkey for their tolerance and democratic ideals.  I somehow doubt, however,
that will happen. Much more likely, in fact, is that the same access Turkey
demands for Gaza-namely, unhindered access of all people and goods,
including armaments-will be violently refused in the name of Turkey's own
(far more dubious) security considerations.  

  

My $10,000 seed money is ready and waiting, for just such a flotilla.  Any
takers?

 

  FamilySecurityMatters.org
Contributing Editor

Leslie Sacks is an art dealer and gallerist in

Los Angeles.He has a blog called 
Strength and Tolerance. Feedback:

editorialdirec...@familysecuritymatters.org.

 



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[osint] The Case Against CAIR's Terrorist Omar Ahmad

[Beowulf]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9337/pub_detail.asp

 

April 26, 2011


The Case Against Omar Ahmad


  Steve
Emerson



http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110425_OmarAhmad.jpg

 

Reports that the Department of Justice
 declined a request to
prosecute a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) official last year
have left many,
 including U.S. Rep. Peter
King, R-N.Y., wondering what factors DOJ officials considered. A
 new IPT memo
addresses a different question. Why did Texas prosecutors make the request
to prosecute Ahmad in the first place?

 

CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad served as a senior executive in the Palestine
Committee, an
 umbrella organization of U.S.-based Hamas support groups. FBI recordings
and internal documents show. Ahmad worked closely with Holy Land Foundation
for Relief and Development (HLF) officials and served as president of the
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) for two years. Both HLF,
 convicted
in 2008 of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas, and IAP, a U.S. Hamas
propaganda arm, were identified in
 court documents as the Palestine Committee's primary components.

 

Prosecutors say the groups worked to
 support
Hamas both politically and financially. Exhibits introduced during the 2008
HLF trial supported that conclusion. Yet, Ahmad continued to work with HLF
even after Hamas' 1995 designation.

 

Among the findings in the IPT report showing Ahmad's Palestine Committee
leadership:

 

. Almost five years after CAIR's formation, in a 1999

phone call with HLF executive Shukri Abu Baker, Ahmad advocated on behalf of
an HLF official named Mohammed El-Mezain. Though Ahmad was not an HLF
official, he negotiated the amount HLF would pay El-Mezain for fundraising
trips he had made over several years. Ahmad was serving as CAIR's national
chairman at this time.

. Also in 1999, Ahmad was

recorded speaking with HLF official Haitham Maghawri regarding tens of
thousands of dollars Shukri Abu Baker had promised Ahmad for a project.
Maghawri, one of the HLF defendants, never stood trial because he fled the
country before the government could file the 2004 indictment.

. In February 1994, Ahmad

called for a teleconference during which he attempted to resolve a
fundraising dispute between Hamas activist Abdelhaleem Al Ashqar and the
Holy Land Foundation. Hamas operatives Jamil Hamami and Mohamed Siam later
discussed Ahmad's suggestions during a
 meeting with
Ashqar in Mississippi. The dispute was only fully resolved once Hamas
official Mousa Abu Marzook intervened on HLF's behalf.

. Ahmad

planned,

convened and

moderated an October 1993 meeting of the Palestine Committee in Philadelphia
where members discussed ways to "derail" a U.S.-led peace agreement between
the Israelis and Palestinians. The group knew that their Hamas support was
problematic. They
 agreed to reference the group as sister "Samah" [Hamas spelled backward]
and
 warned each other that the U.S. had proposed legislation that would
designate Hamas as a terror organization.

. Under Ahmad's watch, CAIR
 received
 $10,000 from
HLF and solicited donations on HLF's behalf several times after Hamas'
designation.

These examples illustrate Ahmad's authority over the committee and leverage
in making HLF decisions. Internal Palestine Committee documents also affirm
that Ahmad served as a committee executive.

 

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110425_OmarAhmadDiagram.jpg

 

A

[osint] Muslims, Environmentalists, and the Green Jihad

[Beowulf]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.9342/pub_detail.asp

 

April 26, 2011


Radical Muslims, Environmentalists, and the Green Jihad


A Special Report from the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism

Mark Musser


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http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110425_GreenDeen.jpg

 

Rep. Keith Ellison, the Muslim Congressman from Minnesota who shed tears in
protest over the congressional hearings on the growing radicalization of
Muslims in the U.S., wrote the foreword to a book entitled
 Green Deen: What Islam Teaches about
Protecting the Planet. In Arabic, “deen” means religious creed. The author
of Green Deen is Ibrahim Abdul Matin. He wrote his book to demonstrate that
there is a close relationship between Islam and modern environmentalism. 

 

It turns out Ellison would have been a good witness to how Muslims are being
radicalized as foot solders not only for global Jihad but for a “green”
future. It is an unholy alliance that threatens our future but which escapes
the attention of media predisposed to believe that radical Muslims working
with environmentalists could only produce positive results.  

 

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/imgLib/20110425_Matin.jpg

 

Ibrahim Abdul Matin.

 

What is fascinating is that Matin works in New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg’s environmental planning department as a policy advisor for New
York City’s long term sustainability, and was one of the Muslims promoting
the idea that the new mosque being considered near Ground Zero should be a

green one. In fact, Matin devotes one whole chapter of his book to “Green
Mosques” and provides a list of environmentally friendly practices that can
and should be implemented at each local mosque. Being the progressive Muslim
that he paints himself to be, Keith Ellison was very impressed with Matin’s
abilities and proudly decided to endorse his book.

 

One of the reasons Ellison decided to work with Matin was because of his own
growing personal involvement in the green movement, which surprisingly
enough, is becoming more popular among Muslims. In an interview posted on
the   DC Green Muslim’s
 website,
Ellison commented that “my involvement in politics is really rooted in my
desire to try to promote unity among people, trying to promote unity with
the Earth and creation, and trying to promote justice.” Ellison is also
involved in an organization called the “Environmental Justice Advocates of
Minnesota (  EJAM).” Ellison, the first Muslim
Congressman in U.S. history, thus believes in green Islamic social justice
of sorts—a veritable Islamic political ecology. 

 

Ellison first met Matin in 2008 at a Muslim American seminar caucus in
Washington, D.C. Matin was a fellow of “  Green
For All,” the very organization founded by communist
 Van Jones to help
promote the financial wonders of the so-called
 Green
Economy. Matin also helped organize Green For All’s
 National Day of Action calling for “Green
Jobs Now” which more than 50,000 people attended. Ellison was very impressed
by Matin’s influence at the caucus: “Ibrahim made an important connection
that day—that the faith community needs to be involved in the green
movement.” He went on to conclude his foreword by saying that “Green Deen
brings faith communities into the environmental movement by changing the
conversation from the facts of global warming to the fact that we all live
and work here together and have a collective responsibility to keep this
place clean and safe for everyone.”

 

While there is certainly no small controversy over exactly what a
 caliphate
may be, especially with regard to how
 Sunnis and
Shias view it, or how closely it may be tied to the ushering in of
 Sharia law,

Islamic totalitarianism,

terrorism and

violence, it is a word that shows up often in Matin’s Green Deen. Matin
innocuously translates the word “caliphah” to simply mean “steward,” a very
environmentally-correct term. While this may satisfy the environ

[osint] Dossier Shows Push for More Terror Attacks After 9/11

[Beowulf]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/26/world/guantanamo-files-portrait-of-push-fo
r-post-september-11-attacks.html?_r=3

&hp=&pagewanted=print

 

April 25, 2011


Dossier Shows Push for More Terror Attacks After 9/11


By SCOTT SHANE
  and BENJAMIN WEISER
 


WASHINGTON — He peers out from the photo in the classified file through
heavy-framed spectacles, an owlish face with a graying beard and a
half-smile. Saifullah Paracha
 ,
a successful businessman and for years a New York travel agent, appears to
be the oldest of the 172 prisoners still held at the Guantánamo Bay prison.
His dossier is among the most chilling. 

In the months after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Paracha
 ,
63, was one of a small circle of Al Qaeda
  operatives who explored ways to follow up on
the hijackings with new attacks, according to the classified Guantánamo
files made available to The New York Times.
  

Working with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
 , the 9/11 planner who in early 2002 gave him $500,000 to $600,000 “for
safekeeping,” Mr. Paracha

offered his long experience in the shipping business for a scheme to move
plastic explosives into the United States inside containers of women’s and
children’s clothing, the files assert. 

“Detainee desired to help Al Qaeda ‘do something big against the U.S.,’ ”
one of his co-conspirators, Ammar al-Baluchi
 , told Guantánamo interrogators, the
files say. Mr. Paracha discussed obtaining biological or nuclear weapons
  as well, though he was concerned that detectors at
ports “would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the
country,” the file says. 

Mr. Paracha’s assessment is among more than 700 classified documents that
fill in new details of Al Qaeda’s efforts to make 9/11 just the first in a
series of attacks to cripple the United States, intentions thwarted as the
Central Intelligence Agency
  captured Mr. Mohammed and
other leaders of the terrorist network. 

The plots reportedly discussed by Mr. Mohammed and various operatives, none
of them acted upon, included plans for a new wave of aircraft attacks on the
West Coast, filling an apartment with leaked natural gas and detonating it,
blowing up gas stations and even cutting the cables holding up the Brooklyn
Bridge. 

For the small circle of Qaeda operatives described in the December 2008
assessment of Mr. Paracha, terrorism appears to have been a family affair.
There was Mr. Mohammed, the terrorist network’s top plotter, and his nephew,
Mr. Baluchi, who was married to another militant, an American-trained
neuroscientist, Aafia Siddiqui
 . And there was Mr. Paracha and his son, Uzair. 

The newly revealed assessments, obtained last year by the group WikiLeaks
  and provided by another source to The Times,
have revived the dispute, nearly as old as the prison, over whether
mistreatment of some prisoners there and the prison’s operation outside the
criminal justice system invalidate the government’s conclusions about the
detainees. 

Hina Shamsi, director of the national security project at the American Civil
Liberties Union
 , said the assessments
“are rife with uncorroborated evidence, information obtained through
torture, speculation, errors and allegations that have been proven false.” 

Likewise, David H. Remes, a lawyer who represents the elder Mr. Paracha,
said in an interview on Monday that while he had not seen the assessment,
its conclusion that Mr. Paracha posed a “high risk” to American interests
was without foundation. 

“The notion that he ever did anything that justified his detention,

[osint] More Men Charged in 2008 Mumbai Terror Attack

[Beowulf]

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/25/4-men-charged-2008-mumbai-terror-attack
/?test=latestnews

 

More Men Charged in 2008 Mumbai Terror Attack

Published April 25, 2011

.
  

CHICAGO -  U.S. prosecutors charged four Pakistani men Monday in connection
with the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, that killed 166 people,
including six Americans, although none of the defendants is in U.S. custody.

A second superseding indictment filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago adds
Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal and a fourth defendant known only by the
alias "Major Iqbal" to a case that already included an American businessman
and two others with alleged ties to the Pakistani-based terrorist group
Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure).

The U.S. and India say the 10 gunmen in the three-day siege in Mumbai were
trained and directed by Lashkar.

The new defendants were charged with aiding and abetting the murder of U.S.
citizens in India, conspiracy to murder and maim and providing material
support to Lashkar. Mir, Qahafa and Mazhar Iqbal also were charged with
conspiracy to bomb public places.

The fresh indictment comes just weeks before the scheduled trial of American
businessman Tahawwur Rana on charges of helping to plan the Mumbai rampage.
Prosecutors say Rana, who owned First World Immigration Services in Chicago,
helped another American, David Coleman Headley, open a First World office in
Mumbai as cover so that Headley could scout sites for the attack.

Headley pleaded guilty to scouting the Mumbai sites and to plotting an
attack on a Danish newspaper over cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
He agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities in an exchange for a promise
that the government would not seek the death penalty against Headley if he
continues to assist their terrorism investigation.

Randall Samborn, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, would not comment
on whether Headley provided the names of the new defendants or if U.S.
officials know where they are. It is unclear whether Headley will testify
against Rana.

Prosecutors allege that Mir served as a "handler" for Headley and others
involved in the Mumbai attacks on behalf of Lashka, that Qahafa trained
others in combat techniques used in the attacks, that Mazhar Iqbal was a
Lashkar commander and that "Major Iqbal" helped plan and fund the attacks.
Major Iqbal also allegedly passed messages to Headley through Rana,
according to court papers.

Headley attorney Robert Seeder did not return a phone message left at his
office Monday night. But he has said that Headley's decision to help the
U.S. government was "a manifestation and example of his regret and remorse"
and not just because it spares him the death penalty.
Also charged with Rana in a previous indictment were terrorist leader Ilyas
Kashmiri and retired Pakistani military man Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, whose
whereabouts were unknown.

In his plea agreement, Headley admitted that he made surveillance videos and
conducted other intelligence gathering for the Mumbai attack and that he met
with Kashmiri in May 2009 in a tribal area of western
 Pakistan.
He said Kashmiri told him he had a European contact who could provide
Headley with money, weapons and manpower for an attack on Denmark's Jyllands
Posten newspaper, which offended many Muslims in 2005 by publishing a dozen
cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. That attack never happened.

Rana is accused of helping Headley plan the newspaper attack by making
travel arrangements and providing other support.

Rana has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to
terrorism in Denmark and India, as well as to Lashka. A message seeking
comment Monday from Rana's attorney, Patrick Blegen, was not immediately
returned.

 



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only

[osint] IMF Bombshell: Age of America Nears End

[Beowulf]

http://www.marketwatch.com/Story/story/print?guid=25965F12-6D1A-11E0-8CAB-00
212804637C

 

Brett Arends' ROI

April 25, 2011, 7:20 p.m. EDT

IMF bombshell: Age of America nears end

Commentary: China's economy will surpass the U.S. in 2016

By Brett Arends, MarketWatch 

This column has been updated to include a reaction from the IMF. 

BOSTON (MarketWatch) - The International Monetary Fund has just dropped a
bombshell, and nobody noticed. 

For the first time, the international organization has set a date for the
moment when the "Age of America" will end and the U.S. economy will be
overtaken by that of China. 

IMF sees China topping U.S. in 2016

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass
that of America in real terms in 2016 - just five years from now. Brett
Arends looks at the implications for the U.S. dollar and the Treasury
market. 

And it's a lot closer than you may think. 

According to the latest IMF official forecasts, China's economy will surpass
that of America in real terms in 2016 - just five years from now. 

Put that in your calendar. 

It provides a painful context for the budget wrangling taking place in
Washington right now. It raises enormous questions about what the
international security system is going to look like in just a handful of
years. And it casts a deepening cloud over both the U.S. dollar and the
giant Treasury market, which have been propped up for decades by their
privileged status as the liabilities of the world's hegemonic power. 

More China news: U.S., China to hold economic talks in early May,
 Shanghai hit by tightening,
 China 2011 trade surplus may shrink to 2% of GDP
 

According to the IMF forecast, which was quietly posted on the Fund's
website just two weeks ago, whoever is elected U.S. president next year -
Obama? Mitt Romney? Donald Trump? - will be the last to preside over the
world's largest economy. 

Most people aren't prepared for this. They aren't even aware it's that
close. Listen to experts of various stripes, and they will tell you this
moment is decades away. The most bearish will put the figure in the
mid-2020s. 

http://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2011/04/25/Photos/MD/MW-AJ830_china__20
110425083840_MD.jpg

China's economy will be the world's largest within five years or so. 

But they're miscounting. They're only comparing the gross domestic products
of the two countries using current exchange rates. 

That's a largely meaningless comparison in real terms. Exchange rates change
quickly. And China's exchange rates are phony. China artificially
undervalues its currency, the renminbi, through massive intervention in the
markets. 

The comparison that really matters 

In addition to comparing the two countries based on exchange rates, the IMF
analysis also looked to the true, real-terms picture of the economies using
"purchasing power parities." That compares what people earn and spend in
real terms in their domestic economies. 

Under PPP, the Chinese economy will expand from $11.2 trillion this year to
$19 trillion in 2016. Meanwhile the size of the U.S. economy will rise from
$15.2 trillion to $18.8 trillion. That would take America's share of the
world output down to 17.7%, the lowest in modern times. China's would reach
18%, and rising. 

Just 10 years ago, the U.S. economy was three times the size of China's. 

Naturally, all forecasts are fallible. Time and chance happen to them all.
The actual date when China surpasses the U.S. might come even earlier than
the IMF predicts, or somewhat later. If the great Chinese juggernaut blows a
tire, as a growing number fear it might, it could even delay things by
several years. But the outcome is scarcely in doubt. 

  TOP INVESTING TIPS 

Nike for the long run:
 How short-term
problems may be creating a buying opportunity for long-term investors.
http://i.marketwatch.com/_newsimages/icon/video/video.png

Mark Hulbert asks: Should gold bugs
  fear the dollar
 's revenge? 
The possibility that the U.S. dollar may soon stage a rally has gold bulls
worried. But a careful reading of history reveals a  more complex situation.
. David Weidner's take on gold-bug motives


. Boost after-tax income and overall wealth

[osint] "Well-educated" Muslim Makes Bombs

[Beowulf]

  _  


 
 Indonesia: "Well educated" muslim arrested on
bomb making charges 

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 02:19 AM PDT

Obviously, he had an islamic education, which explains a lot.


Alleged Bomb-Maker's Friends Express Shock


As more details emerged
 about the alleged mastermind of a church bombing plot uncovered
last Thursday, his close friends and colleagues expressed disbelief about
his role in the terror plan.

Friends of journalist Pepi Fernando, 30, told reporters last night that he
would make the most unlikely terrorist because he is pro-secular and counts
Christians among his good friends.

By last Friday, police had rounded up 20 men already linked to the plot to
bomb a church in West Java during a morning service on Good Friday.

Police found bombs weighing up to 150kg, set to blow using a timer and a
mobile phone, placed near a gas pipeline near the church.

Fernando, who graduated from Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University
with a major in Islamic religious education, was arrested in Aceh with two
alleged accomplices last Thursday.

Television cameraman Imam Firdaus, to whom Fernando allegedly offered
exclusive coverage of the planned attack in Serpong, West Java, was arrested
a day later.

Police said Fernando was the financier and bomb-maker in the failed terror
plot as well as a string of recent mail bomb attacks. Police also revealed
that his wife is a civil servant and works in the National Narcotics Agency.

Asked about Fernando, Maman Suherman, 45, his former boss at Avicom agency,
said last night: 'Pepi's closest friend, our cameraman, is a Christian, and
Avicom is owned by a Catholic.

'If he really were a terrorist, he must be a great actor. Pepi even often
slept over at his Christian best friend's parents' house. And all of a
sudden, he's a bomb mastermind?

'Was all that just his cover?'

Maman said Fernando was a journalist at Avicom, which produces
advertisements, soap operas and documentary films for television stations,
for about a year from 2006.

Prior to that, he had worked for another agency that produces celebrity news
for local television station SCTV. It was during his time there from early
2000 that he became close friends with the Christian cameraman.

Maman said Fernando had left Jakarta for Aceh in 2007, at the invitation of
his former school mates, as he wanted to volunteer in post-tsunami relief
efforts.

'Then (later) Pepi showed up in Jakarta and offered Avicom a project. He
said he had a concept to make a documentary that would feature interviews
with families affected by (the 2004) tsunami in Aceh,' said Maman,
production director of Avicom.

'We didn't take it, but later we knew he made the film and it was broadcast
on national TV. (There were) about 30 episodes. Pepi made 3 million rupiah
(S$430) each episode. But that was then.'

Yesterday, police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar said in a statement that
anti-terror police and bomb squad personnel had seized dozens of explosives
from Fernando's house in Bekasi, West Java.

'Seized evidence included one grenade, a mixture of explosive materials, an
empty rocket casing, five (homemade) bombs in cans, and several empty
casings supposedly to be used as bomb casings,' the statement said.

Police suspected that Pepi hit on the idea to directly involve journalists
in the plot so as to gain maximum publicity.

Preliminary investigations showed that he had learned to make bombs from
books and on the Internet.

The suspects picked up in connection with the Good Friday bomb plot are
mostly university graduates with no clear links to any major terrorist or
extremist networks, police have said.

The men, most of whom are in their 30s and come from well-off families, are
said to be part of a new trend of terrorists who are not members of known
terrorist groups, and who instead form loose groups which may be in contact
with old terrorist networks.

According to an International Crisis Group (ICG) report, these loose
structures and 'individual jihadists' are emblematic of the evolving type of
terrorists in Indonesia.

Terrorism expert Sidney Jones, who is also a senior adviser to the ICG, said
last night she was sceptical about Fernando's claim to have gone to Aceh for
tsunami-related volunteer work.

'Why go there in 2007 when the tsunami occurred in late 2004? There is a
missing link here,' she said.

Ms Jones noted it was a myth that only the uneducated and the poor could
fall into terrorism.

Citing the case of slain Jemaah Islamiah bomb-maker Noordin Top, she said
people involved in Noordin's cells here were those who graduated from top
universities in Indonesia.

In a continuing swoop, police reportedly raided a house in Cirebon, the home
town of suicide bomber Muhammad Syarif, who blew himself up during Friday
prayers two weeks ago,

[osint] Imperial White House Admits Working On Executive Order Attacking First Amendment

[Beowulf]

 
 Imperial
White House Admits Working On Executive Order Attacking First Amendment 

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:51 PM PDT

 
 


It started with Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission a U.S.
Supreme Court ruling that upheld the right of corporations and unions to
donate to campaigns, throwing out parts of McCain Feingold campaign finance
law. The Court said the law violated the First Amendment to the
Constitution. Little Chucky Schumer tried to create legislation to once
again put restrictions on campaign (and internet free speech). He called it
the "Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections
Act" the DISCLOSE act. DISCLOSE "Get it?" asked Schumer when he announced
the bill. Oh we got it, this is another progressive attempt at silencing
Corporations while allowing labor unions to do just about whatever they
want. Schumer's bill couldn't make it through the Congress dominated by his
own party, so now the President is preparing an executive order that goes
around the legislature and ignores the first amendment. 

The executive order is called the "Disclosure of Political Spending By
Government Contractors," the order would implement parts of Chucky Schumer's
DISCLOSE Act and just like Schumer's law it restricts corporations while
giving unions Carte Blanche

White House Press Secretary
 Jay Carney confirmed Monday that work is underway on the draft order, and
linked the move to President Obama's stated commitment to transparency. 

"We fully acknowledge there is a process underway," he told CNSNews.com. "A
draft is just that. It's a draft until it makes its way through the process.
The president is committed to transparency and he certainly thinks American
taxpayers should know where their money is going." 

Government contractors are already required to disclose contributions to
political candidates. This executive order would require the disclosure of
any donations to independent groups, where conservative groups outspent
liberal ones in the 2010 election. 




Of course that's not quite true, amongst  the biggest spenders in the 2010
election were labor unions.

 
 



This is nothing but an attempt by the President to and his progressive
minions to intimidate businesses away from participating in the election
process, while allowing unions (who donate primarily to Democrats) to do
whatever they want.

McConnell said in a statement last week, after reports of the draft emerged.


"So recent press reports about an unprecedented draft Executive Order raise
troubling concerns about an effort to silence or intimidate political
adversaries' speech through the government contracting system," he said. "If
true, the proposed effort would represent an outrageous and anti-democratic
abuse of executive branch authority. No administration should use the
federal contracting system for campaign purposes." 


Hans A. von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a
conservative think tank, was skeptical of Carney's assertion that the
president was merely committed to transparency. 

"If transparency is the true goal, why isn't the proposed executive order
covering any outside entity that gets federal money? It only applies to
government contractors, not grant recipients like Planned Parenthood," he
told CNSNews.com. "Public employee unions are also exempt from this order." 

The draft executive order would require government contractors to disclose: 

*   "All contributions or expenditures to or on behalf of federal
candidates, parties or party committees made by the bidding entity, its
directors or officers, or any affiliates or subsidiaries within its
control."

*   "Any contributions made to third party entities with the intention
or reasonable expectation that parties would use those contributions to make
independent expenditures or electioneering communications." 

In the end this is just one more attempt by the Obama administration to beat
down the constitution and to go around Congress.  Just as he did with
Obamacare, the Auto Buyout and the Czars this President's arrogance
continues to place him at odds with the welfare of the American People.

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[osint] Warning: Middle East Analysis is Wildly Inaccurate

[Beowulf]

 


 
 Warning:
Middle East Analysis is Wildly Inaccurate 

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 02:21 PM PDT

By Barry Rubin

OK. I admit it. It's hopeless. When prestigious newspapers can't get the
most basic points about the Middle East correct, when they make mistakes
that I wouldn't expect from an undergraduate taking an introductory course
on the contemporary Middle East (by the end of the first semester, not on
the opening day).

Years ago, an acquaintance of mine wrote a novel whose plot involved brain
surgery. His mother was bragging that he had become an expert on brain
surgery. 

  Logo
Muslim Brotherhood


I joked, "Yes, but you wouldn't want him to operate on you!" 

She quickly responded, "He could if he wanted to!"

And that is precisely the situation that exists in regard to understanding
the Middle East today. Most of those carving away with scalpels as analysts
or policymakers-especially since September 11 and even more so since Tahrir
Square-should never be let into the operating room. 

I'm not going to say the newspaper's name because it isn't relevant. This
stuff is omnipresent. The argument is as follows: Syria is in turmoil; the
West is tied up elsewhere. What to do?

Brilliant idea! Turn the problem over to Turkey! It likes getting involved
in things and it should do its best to persuade the Syrian dictatorship not
to kill people. Also (and it is hard not to laugh while writing this): 

"Turkey is able to provide Syria with a model of a well-functioning
democratic and secular Muslim majority state, an example that Syria could
follow."

[Note: The words have been altered so don't try googling it.]

Unfortunately, this robust democratic and secular state has been moving
toward Islamism for most of the last decade, hundreds of people have been
imprisoned on trumped-up charges, Turkey is number one in the world in terms
of jailed journalists, Turkey is an ally of the regime in Syria, and also of
Iran.

Oh, yes, and Syria has been ruled by a largely secular regime for about
fifty years.

Other than that, it's a great idea.

Let's summarize:

There's a problem in Syria an ARAB country that we don't want to go ISLAMIST
or to be allied with IRAN. So let's turn it over to the non-Arab TURKISH
GOVERNMENT who are ISLAMISTS and allied with IRAN and also one of the Syrian
regime's two best allies. (I'm not including Lebanon since that is a
satellite state.)

You see, a lot of the problem for governments and the media in dealing with
the Middle East derives from politics and ideology. But also a lot arises
from just plain total ignorance. 

The general public cannot be expected to know better. Yet when government
officials (the Muslim Brotherhood is secular?; Hizballah is moderate?),
journalists dealing with international affairs, and "experts" who provide
the talking heads (recently I heard a top expert when asked to cite examples
of contemporary moderate Islamists, name two people who have been dead for
almost a century; did a single expert on the mass media point out that the
Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood is a radical group that favors violence?) make
the most basic errors, ignore what they say and expect things will turn out
differently from what they predict.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International
Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader
(seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy
in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan).
The GLORIA Center's webside is: http://www.gloria-center.org/. His blog is
on PajamasMedia: http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/   

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http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com 
 

 
 
 
 

 

[osint] CYBER-WAR! Iran's Nukes Targeted by New Virus, Meet STARS

[Beowulf]

 
 CYBER-WAR!
Iran's Nukes Targeted by New Virus, Meet STARS 

Posted: 25 Apr 2011 06:19 AM PDT

 
 

Stuxnet is the virus which has infected the computers the Iranian nuclear
centrifuges for almost a year, causing them to be damaged. The job of the
centrifuge is to purify Uranium so it could be used for reactors and/or
weapons. Stuxnet "takes control" of the centrifuge and spins them of control
so they burn out. Until recently Iran had repeatedly denied that the complex
computer worm had affected its nuclear program. In November, the UN said
Iran had temporarily halted most of its uranium enrichment. It is clear that
this cyber-attack has slowed down Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon. Both
the United States and Israel have pushed back their time-lines saying that
Iran is now a few years away from achieving nuclear weapons.


Now it seems a second virus has infected the Iranian weapons program, Stars
Iran's Mehr news agency quoted Gholam Reza Jalali, the head of an Iranian
civil defense organization on Monday saying the so-called Stars virus is
compatible with the targeted computer system, but he did not specify the
target or what the virus might do. He said that Stars
  is part of
a cyber-war against Iran's nuclear program (you think?).

"Fortunately, our young experts have been able to discover this virus and
the Stars virus is now in the laboratory for more investigations," Jalali
was quoted as saying. He did not specify the target of Stars or its intended
impact.

"The particular characteristics of the Stars virus have been discovered,"
Jalali said. "The virus is congruous and harmonious with the [computer]
system and in the initial phase it does minor damage and might be mistaken
for some executive files of government organizations."


According to Mr. Jalali the Stuxnet worm, which disabled the centrifuges
associated with Iran's Bushehr nuclear reactor last year, still posed a
potential risk.  Iran said in September that staff computers at Bushehr had
been hit but that the plant itself was unharmed. But Bushehr has not been
started up, missing several deadlines putting Iran's statements about
Stuxnet not doing any damage into question.

Jalali said Stuxnet might still pose a risk. "We should know that fighting
the Stuxnet virus does not mean the threat has been completely tackled,
because viruses have a certain life span and they might continue their
activities in another way."

He urged the government to take action against the enemies he said were
waging cyber war on Iran.

"Perhaps the Foreign Ministry had overlooked the options to legally pursue
the case, and it seems our diplomatic apparatus should pay more attention to
follow up the cyber wars staged against Iran," Jalali said.


Iran has accused the United States and Israel of launching Stuxnet, which
was publicly identified last June and reportedly mutated and infected at
least 30,000 pieces of computerized industrial equipment in the following
months. It will be interesting to follow the development of Stars to see if
it too, does what sanctions haven't, slow down the Iranian march to
attaining status as a nuclear power. 

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free to reproduce any article but please link back to
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com 
 

 
 
 
 

 

[osint] Detroit Transit appeals free speech verdict, demands sharia on Dearborn buses

[Beowulf]

  


 
 Detroit Transit appeals
free speech verdict, demands sharia on Dearborn buses 


  creeping | April 26,
2011 at 10:00 AM | Tags:
 Creeping Sharia,
 dhimmi,
 islam,
 law,
 Legal,
 Life,
 litigation
jihad,   Media,
 Muslim,
 News,
 Politics,
 Religion,
 Sharia,
 travel | Categories:
 Alerts,
 Creeping Sharia,
 Legal,
 Media,
 Michigan,
 News,
 Politics,
 Religion,
 Sharia,
 Stealth Jihad | URL:
 http://wp.me/pbU4v-8qA 


Detroit Transit appeals free speech verdict, demands sharia on Dearborn
  buses


Posted on April 26, 2011 by creeping 

Emboldened by the enforcement of sharia on Terry Jones in Dearborn? Atlas
Shrugs reports, Detroit Transit Appeals Our Free Speech Victory Verdict on
Freedom Buses Seeks to Impose Sharia (Blasphemy) Laws on Dearborn Buses
 :

 

http://creepingsharia.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/6a00d8341c60bf53ef0147e3b0
f2d8970b.jpg?w=468&h=97

Back on April 2,
   I happily announced that we had won in our year-long struggle
against the violation of our first amendment rights in Dearborn/Detroit
after they refused AFDI/SIOA's bus ads offering assistance to apostates
under death fatwas. Thousands of Muslims who have left Islam have been
murdered under the sharia (Islamic law). We have seen an increase in honor
killings in the United States, and resources for Muslims are limited as the
threat comes not just from the family but many times from the mosque and the
community.

Despite the fact that we won and free speech prevailed, Detroit Transit is
appealing the ruling. Your taxpayer dollars are being used to enforce the
sharia. Ghastly. After the court ruled in our favor, we submitted the new
contracts to CBS. But late last week, SMART filed an emergency motion to ask
the court to stay its order so that SMART can appeal. To get the court to
stay its own order, they must show that the court totally blew the call and
SMART has a high probability of succeeding on its appeal. Keep in mind the
court granted our initial relief  because the court found I had a
"likelihood of success." Essentially this is SMART appeal is attempting to
call a mulligan, seeking a second and third bite at the apple.

The bottom line is they will also lose the appeal if the facts and law mean
anything. But seeing as how Pastor Terry Jones first amendment rights were
violated when the Wayne County court ruled to jail him based on the sharia,
and not freedom of assembly and freedom of expression, one can not be sure.

The legal expert and my attorney, Robert Muise of the Thomas More Law
Center, will be arguing on my behalf tomorrow. I will keep you posted.

Read it all, as well as Atlas Shrugs reporting on Clear Channel
 's imposition 

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





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[osint] Queens NY: Razi School Creating More Slaves to Islam

[Beowulf]

http://loganswarning.com/2011/04/25/queens-ny-razi-school-creating-more-slav
es-to-islam/?utm_source=feedburner

&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Loganswarning+%28Loganswarning%29

 


Queens NY: Razi School Creating More Slaves to Islam


April 25, 2011

By admin   

 

http://loganswarning.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Hajj-day-sim-Razi-school
.jpgInstead of teaching the children to assimilate, the Razi school is
creating more slaves to Islam. Just like the El-Ber Islamic school in
Astoria Queens is doing.
  As I have been saying Muslims are not here to
assimilate, and that goes for ones who were born here as well. They are here
to create a United Sharia of America,
  and the molding of the minds
  starts young.

Curriculum  

. Prekindergarten & Kindergarten

In the Pre-kindergarten program, teachers creatively teach readiness skills
in English language arts and mathematics and Islamic studies, thus providing
a solid foundation for the full curricular kindergarten program.

In kindergarten, children from the age of five will build on the Readiness
Program begun in pre-kindergarten and move toward the full curriculum of
reading, language, mathematics, science, social studies, Islamic and Quranic
studies.

Creative art, physical education, naptime, and various field trips also
compliment the curriculum in both areas.

I don't see anything about assimilating there. Do you?

Policies  

Student Dress Code  

The school uniform is a mandatory requirement for all students of Razi
School. The uniform gives a professional look to our school and helps to
break down the social barriers that can sometimes effect the youth of today.
All students are expected to wear the uniform daily. No make-up or
fingernail nail polish is permitted. Excessive jewelry is not permitted;
school staff will determine what "excessive" is. For safety reasons, no
jewelry may be worn during physical education class. The Razi School uniform
will consist of the following:

. Boys:

Navy blue dress pants
White long/short sleeve shirt
Black shoes
Optional: Navy sweater

. Girls:

Navy overcoat with matching navy pants
White scarf
Black shoes
Opaque navy or white socks

Not convinced yet? The School Discipline section, makes it clear.

"Oh Lord! I implore your protection from the excitation
Of greed, the impetuosity of anger;
The domination of envy, the depravity of morals,
The importunity of passion, the excess of zeal,
The submission to desires, the opposition to right;
The drowsiness of negligence, the entrance into troubles,
The preferring wrong to right,
The persistence in sin, the underestimation of guilt,
The over-estimation of service, the pride of the wealthy,
The begging of equals, the despising of the poor;
The ridicule of enemy, the abuse of power;
The omitting to thank, assisting the oppressor; forsaking
The oppressed, aspiring to which I am not entitled and speaking of learning
without knowledge.
And I implore Your protection from observing the weaknesses of others, from
being proud of my good deeds, from indulging in far-fetched hopes,
>From being involved in calamity, from the oppression of the ruler; from
extravagant habits, from want of livelihood, from living in hardship, dying
without asking pardon
And from the chastisement of the fire.
Oh Lord! Bless Muhammad and his descendants
And protect all the true believers, and me
Both male and female, from all these,
By Your Mercy, Oh Most Merciful!

- As-Sahifah AI-Sajjadiyyah, Imam Ali Sajjad (a. s.)

Mohammad was a terrorist
  and
rapist.
  Yet I
have never seen even one Muslim criticize him. The children of this school
are being taught the follow suit. What "morals" they are being taught!

One of our most important aims is to build an Islamic community in school, a
seed that will blossom and take its rightful place as a vital part of the
Islamic ummah.

SNIP

The basis of our Discipline Policy is as follows:

. Every student should act as a responsible Muslim.
. Every student has the right to learn.
. Every teacher has the right to teach.
. No student will prevent a teacher from teaching or a student from
learning.

"Respo

[osint] Pastor Jones vs Dearbornistans Sharia & Hezbo Imam Quazwini

[Beowulf]

http://sheikyermami.com/2011/04/26/pastor-jones-vs-dearbornistans-sharia-hez
bo-imam-quazwini/

 


Pastor Jones vs Dearbornistans Sharia & Hezbo Imam Quazwini


by sheikyermami on April 26, 2011

Pastor Terry Jones now says he plans to protest at City Hall, may file
lawsuit (sharia)
 

 
http://sheikyermami.com/wp-content/uploads/art_pastor-420x0.jpgMake no
mistake: this man is a patriot and a hero.

Diana West:

Michigan Court Establishes
 "Blasphemy"-Free, No-Go-Zone
for Islam

Writing  at The Corner, Nina Shea recaps the latest
  in the saga of Terry Jones, who has been trying to
take a peaceful, non-flammable protest of sharia and jihad to the sidewalk
outside the largest mosque in America in Dearborn, Michigan only to be
outlawed by the Michigan District Court. Like all other envelop-pushing
cases, this latest incident serves as a stress test of the rule of law in
our society. And, like most other such envelop-pushing cases,  it proves
that the rule of law is strong -  only the law that is strong is sharia
(Islamic) law.

The Michigan District Court's egregious ruling against Jones is all about
protecting Islam from criticism, rather than about protecting criticism from
Islam, which is what US jurisprudence, not to mention the American Way,
demands. It is sharia that the US court is enforcing.

One particularly hideous aspect of the ruling.

Read More
 >

KGS, Tundra Tabloids:
 

Hezbo Scum: Dearbornistans Quazwini Claims He Was 'Misunderstood' & 'out of
context..'

 

http://sheikyermami.com/wp-content/uploads/Imam+Hassan+qazwini-300x221.jpg

These people are so full of crap it's pathetic. Imam Hassan Qazwini is a
well known Hezbollah sympathizer
 ,
and friend of anti-Semite, the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakha
 , and someone
Debbie Schlussel has repeatedly proved
  to be a
fundamentalist.

This fake "moderate" has been given hugs and handshakes by many a politician
across the political aisle, and who now stands at the center of the Terry
Jones demonstration circus. This serial liar and friend to anti-Semites now
says his statement about "for some Muslims burning the Quran was worse than
1,000 deaths." was misunderstood.

Yeah, right. We are now led to believe that he was talking about how
"other muslims" around the world would react to koran burning, not Muslims
in the US, let alone his own mosque members. Remember folks, this is no
moderate, he's a Jew hating bigot, or at least one who loves to hang around
Jew hating bigots, as well as being a Heznazi sympathizer. KGS (More here
 )

 



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[osint] Nigeria: Jihad Leaves Another 500 Christians Dead in the Dirt

[Beowulf]

http://sheikyermami.com/2011/04/25/nigeria-jihad-leaves-another-500-christia
ns-dead-in-the-dirt/

 


Nigeria: Jihad Leaves Another 500 Christians Dead in the Dirt


by sheikyermami on April 25, 2011

Update: 

*   Violence Triggered by Election of Nigerian Christian Is Much Worse
Than First Thought
 

Nigeria:
  Charred bodies line
road as Muslims rampage after Muslim candidate loses election

 
http://sheikyermami.com/wp-content/uploads/nigeria-kano.jpgA Muslim mob
hunts down Christians in Nigeria
  (TROP)

"We will never accept any system of governance apart from the one described
by Islam because that is the only way Muslims can be liberated," the fliers
said. "We do not respect the Nigerian government because it is illegal.

"We will continue to fight its military and police because they are not
protecting Islam."

 
http://sheikyermami.com/wp-content/uploads/corpses.jpg

Atlas Shrugs: KADUNA, Nigeria (AP) - Burned corpses with machete wounds lay
in roads and smoke rose above this city where rioting broke out again
Tuesday among Muslim opposition supporters who were angered by the
announcement that the Christian incumbent president had won the election.
READ 
More at The Hive
  hat tip Urban Infidel
 

Why are we fighting for jihad in Libya? Why Libya? If we are going to
militarily intervene, let's start saving the Christians, Jews, Hindus and
all non-Muslims from Islamic supremacism. Why are we helping to install a
universal caliphate?

Deadly bomb blasts rock Nigerian city in latest unrest
 

Note how AP never identifies the perpetrators who are rioting, burning
people to death, and torching churches. It is obvious since the outrage all
stems from the Muslim candidate losing the election, but AP doesn't dare
state the obvious. The only time it identifies anyone who does any of the
actions in this story is when it can cast Islam in a favorable light: "An
armed mob at a bus station also threated another evangelical pastor before a
Muslim man nearby spirited him to safety." This is typical mainstream media
coverage: Muslims can never be identified as such when they are doing evil
in the name of Islam or because of their self-identification as Muslims;
their Muslim identity may only be mentioned when they're doing something
good or playing the role of victim.

The problem with this, besides the obvious bad faith, is that it misleads
the public about the nature of the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. The
consequent ignorance leads to complacency and misdiagnosis of the problem,
resulting in numerous policy mistakes that only embolden the Islamic
supremacists further.

An update on this story
 . "Charred
bodies line road to Nigeria town after riots sweep region after presidential
vote," from the Associated Press
 , April 19 (thanks to Jihad Watch)

Denial & Obfuscation in the Enemedia

AAP April 19, 2011 10:20PM (The Australian online).. "Police said the
rioting had been instigated by those unhappy with the results and it was
"neither ethnic nor religious". The military made similar comments and
warned it was ready to act."

 



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[osint] Stuxnet Has Completely Paralyzed Iran's Bushehr Plant

[Beowulf]

PJM Exclusive: Actually, Stuxnet Has Completely Paralyzed Iran's Bushehr
Plant

Posted By 'Reza Kahlili' On April 26, 2011 @ 12:00 am In Uncategorized | 20
Comments
 

Contrary to the claim made by the Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive
Defense, the Stuxnet virus has disabled Iran's nuclear centers.

Contrary to the claims made by Gholam-Reza Jalali - director of the Iranian
Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense - regarding the nature of the
virus and Iran's capabilities in dealing with the fallout, Stuxnet has
wreaked serious and perhaps fatal havoc on the foundations of energy
structure and the operating systems of the Bushehr nuclear installation.
According to the Green Liaison news group
  [1], over
the past year and a half the Bushehr plant has incurred serious damage and
has lost major capabilities.

An individual involved in Iran's nuclear activities reports that this virus
was placed in the system by one of the foreign experts contracted to Iran.
The virus has automatic updating capabilities in order to track and pirate
information, and can also destroy the system hardware step-by-step. The
internal directives programmed into the structure of the virus can actually
bring the generators and electrical power grids of the country to a sudden
halt, or create a "heart attack" type of work stoppage.

According to reports from within the IRGC - in cooperation with the
Revolutionary Guards Intelligence organization and the Ministry of
Communications and Information Technology - the Iranian Center for
Non-Military Preemptive Defense has set up two computer task forces titled
GOWHAR and MAAHER. The two organizations are said to have spent the last
year and a half investigating the extent of the damage, however due to the
complexity of the virus they have not been successful with a fix.

The Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense is said to be
actively seeking out experts in the fields of electrical and mechanical
engineering, information technology, and artificial intelligence in order to
analyze the virus. Switzerland - which has maintained friendly relations
with Tehran's regime - is said to be cooperating, and has experts covertly
in contact with the Iranian security forces.

As such, the Iranian Center for Non-Military Preemptive Defense is
attempting to produce software and an operating system which will provide
immunity and security against cyber attacks, and which can withstand all
damages incurred by viruses. However, all claims as to the actual production
of these active national systems by the security authorities are said to be
a bluff - nothing more than a pretense to mask the complexity of the virus
and ultimately Tehran's lack of engineering expertise in this area.

The Revolutionary Guards have confirmed that the Iranian Center for
Non-Military Preemptive Defense was created with the cooperation of the
Ministry of Defense, which conducted a study and coordinated among 77
companies in Iran. Each of the companies is involved in the field of
information technology and production, and each has been called upon to make
a formal presentation of their products to Iranian authorities. Though there
have been major setbacks and delays, Iran is said to be relying on only
Iranian experts in this matter.

Due to the extra attention on the industrial sectors of the country, all of
which are stationed in southern Iran, the danger for the virus to strike
other parallel industrial systems that are related to the energy sector is
entirely possible.

Given the fact that Kraftwerk Union (KWU) - a subsidiary company of Siemens
- and other Russian companies such as Atom Stroi Export have not responded,
the Iranian regime authorities are said to be actively seeking the supreme
leader's blessing to create an alternative power station other than Bushehr.
Iranian authorities had not imagined that the work stoppage created by the
virus would be so extensive. And last week, the Iranian parliamentary
committee stated that the Islamic Republic would probably have been better
off building a new nuclear power plant from scratch instead of constantly
trying to finish the decades-old Bushehr.

Bushehr was supposed to join the power grid last year, but in March the fuel
was removed from the reactor due to technical difficulties. The Russian
contractors building Bushehr announced on April 8 that refueling of the
nuclear plant was once more underway. The head of the plant had confirmed
that all necessary inspections have been carried out to complete
satisfaction, and that the plant is ready for the fuel to be transferred
into the heart of the reactor.

(Also see: Iran announces discovery of new cyber attack.
  [2])

  _

[osint] Thanks to Obama, Gas Jumps in a Flash

[Beowulf]

Thanks to Obama, Gas Jumps in a Flash

Posted By Will Collier On April 26, 2011 

It must have looked so simple from Barack Obama's rarely visited Senate
office, or Steven Chu's comfortable digs at Berkeley: if only we stopped
taking advantage of all those nasty fossil fuels, everything would be
better. Three years ago, when then-Senator Obama was dismissing high energy
prices as just another good reason for more government handouts
  [1], and Chu was insisting that Americans ought to pay European
prices 
[2] for gasoline, all they heard in return was applause from their core
constituencies - academics and the media.

Unfortunately for now-President Obama, the reality of $4-$5-a-gallon
gasoline is a much tougher sell to the general public. He's put himself to
work spinning the line that  
"speculators" are at fault [3] for high prices, but the actual explaination
is far more prosaic. Limited supply plus growing demand equals higher
prices. That's a formula so simple, even a community organizer should be
able to understand it.

Asian demand for energy continues to rise as nations in the far east region
- oddly lacking in "stimulus" spending - continue to boom

[4]. Supply, meanwhile, has fallen off, not only as a consequence of the
turmoil in Libya and other oil-producing countries, but also thanks to the
Obama-ordered moritorium on drilling
  [5] in the Gulf of Mexico - and the
recenly ordered moritorium

[6] on future drilling anywhere else off the American coasline.

Obama and his minions have been chasing the green jobs chimera for so long
that it's an instinct. They pompously suggest
  [7] that Americans ought to
trade in their current vehicles
  [8] for pricey, government-approved
matchbox cars   [9],
asserting still
  [10] that there's "no quick fix" for high energy prices. History,
and very recent history at that, indicates that they are mistaken.

Take a look at this chart compiled by metalprices.com
  [11]. It's the price of a barrel of
crude oil over the past 5 years.

See that big peak in the middle? That was the last oil spike, in the summer
of 2008. Notice how the price hit a high point, then fell off a cliff
afterwards?

The day corresponding to that peak, an all-time high of $145.16/barrel, was
July 14, 2008. By some strange coincidence, that was the very same day
then-President George W. Bush lifted, by executive order, a federal ban on
offshore oil drilling.

Bush's order was, of course, immediately dismissed by the "experts." Reuters
  [12] waved away the action as "a largely symbolic move unlikely to
have any short-term impact on high gasoline costs." Barack Obama's campaign
lectured that if "offshore drilling would provide short-term relief at the
pump or a long-term strategy for energy independence, it would be worthy of
our consideration, regardless of the risks. But most experts, even within
the Bush administration, concede it would do neither."

The movement left was even more dismissive. ClimateProgress.org

[13] blasted The Washington Post for failing to headline their story about
the order "Offshore Drilling Raises Oil Prices." In response to Bush's
assertion that additional offshore extraction could equal current U.S.
production in 10 years, they editorialized: "Yes, and monkeys could fly out
of my butt" (emphasis in original).

There was just one problem: reality. Even though, as critcs were eager to
point out, any additional American drilling was years in the future, oil
prices immediately went into free-fall. By Friday, July 18, the price of a
barrel of crude

[14] had dropped to $128.94, a 12% decrease. A month later, on August 14,
the price had fallen to $115.05. In spectacular fashion, Bush's academic and
media critics were proven seriously wrong.

For commodities traders who'd been pricing oil based on a supposition of
scarcity, the potential for millions of additional barrels on the market hit
like a t

[osint] See Trump Run (Run, Trump, Run!)

[Beowulf]

See Trump Run (Run, Trump, Run!)

Posted By Matt Patterson On April 26, 2011 

Is anyone else enjoying the Donald Trump show as much as I am? I'm not
talking about NBC's Celebrity Apprentice (which in any case is less
entertaining since Gary Busey got whacked). I'm talking about the show where
His Donald-ness drops by every conceivable televised news outlet and says
things that you are absolutely not supposed to say, leaving his liberal
interlocutors in fits of sputtering rage and apoplexia. Some of the
unspeakable things the Donald has dared to speak include:

1) China is ripping us off. No question about that, is there? The Middle
Kingdom has long manipulated its currency (the yuan) to the detriment of
U.S. manufacturers, a de facto trade war which U.S. officials have often
ignored because we need China to finance our debt (to fund ObamaCare and
other socialist travesties because, you know, we don't actually have the
money). Recently a bipartisan congressional delegation led by Senate
Majority Leader Harry Reid met with Chinese leaders to broach this exact
issue, discreetly, no doubt, and ever-so politely. Trump calls it a disgrace
and promises to retaliate in kind.

2) The Libya war is a disaster. Trump wants to know, and he's not the only
one:  What are we doing in Libya? Who are the rebels
  [1] we are supporting? Are they any better than Gaddafi? The confused
and confusing "kinetic military action
  [2]" in Libya is exactly what one would expect from a
commander-in-chief with a conflicted view of America's role in the world, a
reflexive antagonism towards our military, and a foolish fetish for
international consensus. Trump's take?  "I'm only interested in Libya if we
take the oil." Be still my heart.

3) Obama has not produced his original, long-form birth certificate. Talk
about an inconvenient truth! Though this is an absolute fact, liberal
journalists find it astonishing that anyone would find it suspicious. Indeed
the media is more interested in portraying anyone interested in this issue
as crazy (not to mention racist), than in actually investigating the issue
itself.

This last is especially troublesome for the media: On the one hand, they are
eager to book Trump, a colorful character who brings ratings and attention,
but in doing so give him a platform for the "outrageous" views they find
offensive.

Recently, some of these liberal journalists, like ABC's George
Stephanopoulos, have tried to square this circle by having Trump on, then
aggressively trying to rebut his points so as to make his seem like the loon
they take him to be. Trouble is - it's not working. Trump has a knack of
pushing back with maddening confidence and alacrity. And to the horror of
the establishment on the left and the right, Trump makes a great deal of
sense to a lot of Americans, and not just on the birth certificate issue.

In fact, Donald Trump has provided a more concise and devastating critique
of the Obama administration than anyone else in the thin GOP presidential
bench. He lambasts the disastrous economic policies which have driven up gas
prices, unemployment, and inflation. From someone whose candidacy is
supposed to be a joke, it is a remarkably effective approach.

What's more, Trump laments the loss of U.S. prestige in the world, and
connects viscerally when he vows that, if he were elected president, America
would be respected again. When he says the Trump doctrine would be "We take
care of ourselves first," he quenches the deep and abiding thirst of
countless Americans who have longed to hear such naked, unashamed sentiments
from our politicians.

Across the country, the sense has settled in that America is in drastic
decline. Trump boldly proclaims that, not only can this downward trajectory
be reversed, it should be reversed, and in doing so speaks to the fervent
fears and desperate hopes of a vast and terrified electorate.

  _  

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/see-trump-run-run-trump-run/

URLs in this post: 

[1] rebels:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/mounting-evidence-of-rebel-atrocities-in-libya/

[2] kinetic military action:
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2011/03/26/the-emperor-seth-and-kinetic
-islam/

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





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[osint] Palestinians in Shooting Spree US-Trained

[Beowulf]

Palestinians in Shooting Spree U.S.-Trained

Posted By P. David Hornik On April 25, 2011 

Since 2007 the U.S. has invested
  [1] hundreds of millions of dollars in training and equipment for
Palestinian Authority security forces. Reports

[2] of rampant torture in the prisons run by these forces, and warnings
  [3] by Israeli military and
other figures of the danger posed to Israel, have gone unheeded.

Early Sunday morning the danger grimly materialized. At least one PA
policeman opened fire on a group of Israeli worshipers in Nablus in the West
Bank, killing one and wounding four, including one seriously.

It appears to have been little short of an ambush. The worshipers, who were
from the Breslav Hasidic sect, were driving back in a three-car convoy from
Joseph's Tomb in Nablus - a site where, according to Jewish tradition, the
biblical Joseph is buried.

According to one report
  [4], the convoy:

. encountered a surprise checkpoint and [was] met with a hail of gunfire
from a Palestinian jeep. The fire continued even after the vehicles turned
back in an attempt to escape. Two of the three vehicles were hit.

As one of the Hasidim put it
  [5]:

The police shot at the vehicles, they were screaming "Allahu Akbar." It was
crazy, they were shooting to kill. I screamed at the driver to drive out of
there quickly.

The Hasid who was fatally hit was Ben Yosef Livnat, 25, married with four
children, and nephew of Israeli Minister of Culture Limor Livnat. Eulogizing
him at his funeral the same day, she said
  [6]:

My brother's son was murdered by a terrorist masked as a Palestinian police
officer.

Shortly after the attack a crowd of Palestinian youths set fire to Joseph's
Tomb (report and video here
  [7]). It was
hardly the first time, the tomb having been burned to the ground by a
Palestinian mob in a famous incident in 2000, early in the Second Intifada,
and desecrated
  [8] many times since then including with graffiti drawings of
swastikas.

Among the reactions
  [9]
by Israeli politicians, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the fact that the
worshipers did not coordinate the visit with the Israeli army could hardly
justify the attack, and demanded that the PA swiftly investigate it and
punish the perpetrator(s). Based on the PA's record going back to the days
of its former Chairman Yasser Arafat, it's impossible to be optimistic.

Member of Knesset Danny Danon:

. called on the U.S. to reconsider its funding of the Palestinian security
forces, as well as the training exercises that it does with them. He passed
this request on to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Chairman of the U.S. House
Foreign Affairs Committee.

This incident comes at a time of mounting terror and brutality both in
Israel and the region as a whole. Since last month Israel has witnessed the
Itamar massacre
  [10] of five members
of a family, a bombing
  [11] of a Jerusalem bus
stop that killed a tourist and wounded about 50 other people, and numerous
projectile attacks from Gaza including the firing

[12] of an antitank rocket at a school bus that killed a 16-year-old Israeli
boy.

In the region, severe violence particularly in Syria and Libya has been
grabbing headlines. Although many Westerners react by supporting "rebels,"
reports of repression
  [13] and strengthened extremism
  [14] in Egypt suggest
that merely replacing one Middle Eastern regime with another hardly
guarantees the flowering of democracy.

The Middle East indeed poses difficult dilemmas for the West, but the
chances of avoiding mistaken policies are higher if it is understood that
violence and repression are endemic to the region for deep-seated cultural
reasons

[osint] REBUTTAL: SOME OBAMA BIRTH RECORDS MADE PUBLIC FOR YEARS (NOT)

[Beowulf]

http://www.newswithviews.com/Stuter/stuter194.htm

 

REBUTTAL: SOME OBAMA BIRTH RECORDS MADE PUBLIC FOR YEARS

 

By Lynn Stuter
April 26, 2011
NewsWithViews.com

In an article published on various websites, Mark Niesse of the Associated
Press, has made various claims regarding Barack Hussein Obama's birth
records.

As always with such stories
 , Niesse has carefully avoided the deeper
issues and the real issues regarding Obama's eligibility to the office of
president.

First of all, Niesse claims that if you go into the Department of Health,
Hawaii, and look in a binder readily available to any member of the public,
you will find, there among the "O's," annotation of the birth of Barack
Hussein Obama.

This binder is a computer print-out; computer print-outs are the result of
data files; and data files are easily changed, easily added.

Is it mere coincidence that when John Charlton requested copies
  of that same index, received by him in January 2010, Barack
Hussein Obama's name did not appear in that same index under the "O's"?

Obviously, Niesse chose to take what was in that binder at face value.

But there is more to the document in that binder than meets the eye. While
Niesse claims this binder contains "birth" information, that is not true. In
an interview, published in the Star Advertiser
 , January 21,
2011, the infamous doubt-talking Janice Okubo said,

The index is just to say who has their records within the department. That's
an indication . I can't talk about anyone's records.

In other words, this binder is really merely an indication that the
Department of Health, Hawaii, holds "records" on Barack Hussein Obama; what
those records are, is anyone's guess. Given the myriad of different ways in
which birth certificates can be obtained in Hawaii, even for foreign-born
children, this binder is no indication that what Department of Health,
Hawaii, holds in "their records" is a Hawaiian long-for birth certificate or
anything that indicates Obama was born in Hawaii; merely that "records"
exist for Barack Hussein Obama at the Department of Health. As Okubo makes
clear, what those records are will not be disclosed.

Niesse further proclaims, with regard to The Donald's "investigation" of
Obama birth documents,

What the would-be sleuths won't find is Obama's "long-form birth
certificate," a confidential one-page document containing his original birth
records kept on file in the first floor of the Department of Health.

First of all, since Niesse hasn't seen that document, it is purely
conjecture on his part that it even exists. As Janice Okubo made clear, what
records Department of Health, Hawaii, holds for Obama is purely speculative.

Again, Niesse takes the matter at face value. If he stood before a judge, in
a court of law, and said, "Judge, I know that document exists because the
Department of Health, Hawaii, has indicated they hold records on Obama," the
judge would tell him that unless he could produce said document, that his
claim of its existence was purely conjecture. The same is true of Niesse's
contention that Obama was born in Hawaii.

Bear in mind, that when AKA ran for the Senate, from the great state of
Illinois, back in 2004, an article appeared in the Sunday Standard in Kenya
proclaiming, "Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate
 ." It is of note, that when the scrubbing bubbles began to
'sanitize' internet sites of articles that would in any way implicate that
Obama was not born on American soil, that this article disappeared. It
didn't, however, disappear from the web archives.

One of those inconvenient truths that also plagues the question of where
Obama was born is the words of his own wife, Michelle Obama, who, before
live audiences, has proclaimed no less than twice - here
  and here
  - that her man was born in
Kenya.

Niesse further contends that Chiyome Fukino, who served as the head of the
Department of Health under former governor Linda Lingle, stated that "she's
convinced the long-form document is authentic" in reference to press
releases published in late 2008
  and mid-2009
 . But if you read those
carefully lawyered press releases, it becomes obvious, very readily, that
such is not what she has stated; that those press releases are carefully
worded to lead people to conclusions that are not stated outright; they are
deliberately insinuative. 

An individual who worked for the State of Hawaii, during the 2008 election
cycle, states

[osint] CBS tries to attack Trump asking about Obama's Education Record by pointing out Bush's SAT Scores

[Beowulf]

  


 
 CBS
tries to attack Trump asking about Obama's Education Record by pointing out
Bush's SAT Scores 


  Scotty Starnes |
April 26, 2011 at 6:31 AM | Tags:
 Bush's SAT
scores,   CBS,
 George W. Bush,
 Harvard,
 Harvard Law
Review,   LSAT,
 mainstream media,
 Obama's
education records,
 President Obama |
Categories:   Political
Issues | URL:   http://wp.me/pvnFC-5aP 

The mainstream media will go to all lengths to protect Obama. Donald Trump
is now asking for Obama's education records, since these are other records
Obama is afraid to make public. Trump points out that Obama was a horrible
student and questions how someone with Obama's grades made it into Harvard.

How does CBS attack Trumps claims? By pointing to an article about... George
W. Bush's grades and SAT scores.

>From a pathetic
 CBSNews.com

Donald Trump knows how to formulate story lines. His reality show stint has
taught him that creating innuendo and suspense is integral to capturing the
attention of an audience, in this case those seeking a Republican opponent
to face off with President Obama in the 2012 election.

In his new role as a presidential aspirant, Trump is applying his tricks of
the trade to question the integrity and origins of the incumbent president,
grabbing headlines in the process. 

The billionaire's (
 how many billions is another Trump tease) strategically aimed probes cast
Mr. Obama as potentially a foreign-born poseur (
 Trump channeling the birther agenda) and an academic underachiever who
somehow managed to enter prestigious Harvard Law School and capture the
White House.

"I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to
Columbia and then to Harvard?"
 Trump told AP. "I'm thinking about it, I'm certainly looking into it. Let
him show his records."

One record for all to see is that  Mr. Obama graduated magna cum laude from
Harvard Law School and was president of the Harvard Law Review. As
undergraduate, he went to Columbia University and Occidental College (a
highly-regarded, small liberal arts school in Los Angeles).

Great, release the records then. It's really simple unless you have
something to hide.

Trump, who is taking his "campaign" to states including New Hampshire this
week, continued, "I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great
boards, great everything and they can't get into Harvard. We don't know a
thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about
our president."

If the sons of his presumably wealthy friends couldn't get into Harvard with
great credentials, then how could a person from Mr. Obama's humble
background and academic achievements get into Harvard? Trump's inference is
that Mr. Obama is a cipher, cannot be trusted and is concealing a dark
secret.

Hurry, deflect attention about nobody really knowing anything about Obama.
Let's point to Bush's education record and SAT scores since we've never seen
Obama's...

Trump might want to read an
 2003
article by Michael Kinsley
  in
which he writes about George W. Bush, who managed to get into Yale without
stellar academic credentials:

"If our President had the slightest sense of irony, he might have paused to
ask himself, 'Wait a minute. How did I get into Yale?' It wasn't because of
any academic achievement: his high school record was ordinary. It wasn't
because of his life experience--prosperous family, fancy prep school--which
was all too familiar at Yale. It wasn't his SAT scores: 566 verbal and 640
math.

"They may not have had an explicit point system at Yale in 1964, but Bush
clearly got in because of affirmative action. Affirmative action for the son
and grandson of alumni. Affirmative action for a member of a politically
influential famil

[osint] The Debt Ceiling Does Not Need Raising to Avoid Debt Default

[Beowulf]

Liars and Lies 
- Posted by Erick Erickson   (Profile
 )  - Monday, April 25th at 5:00AM EDT


Reporters, Democrats, and even some Republicans have begun repeating an
infectious lie in the prelude to the debt ceiling debate. Secretary of
Treasury Tim Geithner started it off and it has been repeated by reporters
in print, on radio, and on television, including Fox News.

The lie is very simple: a failure to raise the debt ceiling will cause a
default on American debt.

This is utterly and categorically a lie. Anyone who says otherwise is a
liar.

As Senator Pat Toomey noted the other day
 :  Next year, about 7 percent of all
projected federal government expenditures will go to interest on our debt.
Tax revenue is projected to cover at least 70 percent of all government
expenditures. So, under any circumstances, there will be plenty of money to
pay our creditors.

Moreover, as the Congressional Research Service has noted, the Treasury
secretary himself has the discretion to decide which bills to pay first in
the event that a cash flow shortage occurs. 

Nonetheless, the media and Democrats keep repeating the lie. And it is a
lie.

Veronique de Rugy and Jason Fichtner chronicled debt ceiling fights
  in the Washington Times and, from their writing, we can
categorically show it to be a lie to claim a failure to raise the debt
ceiling will cause a default on American debt obligations.

In 1985, Congress waited nearly three months after the debt limit was
reached before authorizing a permanent increase. In 1995, 4 1/2 months
passed between hitting the ceiling and congressional action. And in 2002,
Congress delayed raising the debt ceiling for three months. In each case,
the U.S. and the economy survived.

Not only did the economy survive, but the United States did not default on
its debt obligations, the United States did not lose its credit rating, and
interest rates did not go up as a result of the default.

To say that failing to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default is a lie
and anyone who says it is a liar.

If we fail to raise the debt ceiling and do default, it will not because
because of a failure to raise the debt ceiling. It will be because Barack
Obama and Tim Geithner chose to default for political gain. 

Again, as Senator Toomey points out
 :  [A]s the Congressional Research
Service has noted, the Treasury secretary himself has the discretion to
decide which bills to pay first in the event that a cash flow shortage
occurs. Thus, it is he who would have to consciously, and needlessly, choose
to default on our debt if the debt ceiling is not promptly raised upon
reaching it. It takes a lot of chutzpah to preemptively blame congressional
Republicans for a default only he could cause.



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[osint] Iraq, Iran and the Next Move

[Beowulf]

http://tinyurl.com/5v8xp7u

 


Iraq, Iran and the Next Move


April 26, 2011 | 0854 GMT 

  http://w.sharethis.com/chicklets/facebook.gif
 http://w.sharethis.com/chicklets/twitter.gif

http://w.sharethis.com/chicklets/sharethis.gifShareThis

 

By George Friedman

The United States told the Iraqi government last week that if it wants U.S.
troops to remain in Iraq beyond the deadline of Dec. 31, 2011, as stipulated
by the current Status of Forces Agreement between Washington and Baghdad, it
would have to inform the United States quickly. Unless a new agreement is
reached soon, the United States will be unable to remain. The implication in
the U.S. position is that a complex planning process must be initiated to
leave troops there and delays will not allow that process to take place.

What is actually going on is that the United States is urging the Iraqi
government to change its mind on U.S. withdrawal
 , and it would like Iraq to change its mind right now in order to
influence some of the events taking place in the Persian Gulf. The Shiite
uprising in Bahrain and the Saudi intervention
 , along with events in Yemen, have created an extremely unstable
situation in the region, and the United States is afraid that completing the
withdrawal would increase the instability.


The Iranian Rise


The American concern, of course, has to do with Iran. The United States has
been unable to block Iranian influence in Iraq's post-Baathist government.
Indeed, the degree to which the Iraqi government is a coherent entity is
questionable, and its military and security forces have limited logistical
and planning ability and are not capable of territorial defense. The issue
is not the intent of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who himself is
enigmatic. The problem is that the coalition that governs Iraq is fragmented
and still not yet finalized
 , dominated by Iranian proxies such Muqtada al-Sadr - and
it only intermittently controls the operations of the ministries under it,
or the military and security forces.

As such, Iraq is vulnerable to the influence of any substantial power, and
the most important substantial power following the withdrawal of the United
States will be Iran. There has been much discussion of the historic tension
between Iraqi Shia and Iranian Shia, all of which is true. But Iran has been
systematically building its influence in Iraq
  among all factions using money, blackmail and ideology delivered
by a sophisticated intelligence service. More important, as the United
States withdraws, Iraqis, regardless of their feelings toward Iran (those
Iraqis who haven't always felt this way), are clearly sensing that resisting
Iran is dangerous and accommodation with Iran is the only solution. They see
Iran as the rising power in the region, and that perception is neither
unreasonable nor something to which the United States or Saudi Arabia has an
easy counter.

The Iraqi government's response to the American offer has been predictable.
While some quietly want the United States to remain, the general response
has ranged from dismissal to threats if the United States did not leave.
Given that the United States has reportedly offered to leave as many as
20,000 troops in a country that 170,000 American troops could not impose
order on, the Iraqi perception is that this is merely a symbolic presence
and that endorsing it would get Iraq into trouble with Iran, which has far
more than 20,000 troops and ever-present intelligence services
 . It is not clear that the Iraqis were ever
prepared to allow U.S. troops to remain, but 20,000 is enough to enrage Iran
and not enough to deal with the consequences.

The American assumption in deciding to leave Iraq - and this goes back to
George W. Bush as well as Barack Obama - was that over the course of four
years, the United States would be able to leave because it would have
created a coherent government and military. The United States underestimated
the degree to which fragmentation in Iraq would prevent that outcome and the
degree to which Iranian influence would undermine the effort. The United
States made a pledge to the American public and a treaty with the Iraqi
government to withdraw forces, but the conditions that were expected to
develop simply did not.

Not coincidentally, the withdrawal of American forces has coincided with
tremendous instability in the region, particularly on the Arabian Peninsula.
All around the periphery of Saudi Arabia an arc of instability has emerged.
It is not that the Iranians engineered it, but they have c

[osint] Distilling The Facts About Securing The Southwestern Border With Mexico Can Be Tricky

[Beowulf]

Distilling The Facts About Securing The Southwestern Border With Mexico Can
Be Tricky


Submitted by   Kurt
Repanshek on April 24, 2011 - 1:32am

 

What is the truth about the ongoing battles over securing the Southwestern
border against drug runners and illegal aliens?

There is no doubt that there are serious issues along the U.S. border with
Mexico. A ranger at   Organ Pipe Cactus National
Monument, Kris Eggle, was   shot and
killed in August 2002 by members of a Mexian drug cartel, and a prominent
 Arizona rancher was killed in March 2010, possibly by
an illegal immigrant.

But gauging the success, or lack thereof, that the U.S. Border Patrol is
having can be difficult depending on who is talking.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop's continued targeting of environmental laws -- the
Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, the National Environmental
Policy Act -- he maintains are preventing the Border Patrol from securing
the Southwestern border raise conflicting accounts and even accusations that
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sees the issue as a "cash cow" not
to be corralled.

Most recently, the Utah Republican solicited testimony from individuals who
claim the Department of Homeland Security has no interest in securing the
border because it would greatly diminish its budget.

Contrasting those positions offered at an April 15 hearing chaired by Rep.
Bishop were officials from the Border Patrol, Interior Department, and U.S.
Government Accountability Office who not only said environmental laws are
not impeding efforts, but that success is being met in stemming both the
flow of illegals and the environmental degredation they've caused.

Coming away from that hearing, Rep. Bishop in his
 public statements dismissed the viewpoints of the Border Patrol, Interior
Department, and Government Accountability Office.

"It is exceptionally clear after hearing today's testimony that significant
limitations continue to be placed on the U.S. Border Patrol's access to some
of the most highly trafficked areas along the border," he said.
"Environmental policies cannot take precedent over the safety and security
of all Americans and that is exactly what is occurring today. In order for
the Border Patrol to be as effective as possible in deterring and
apprehending criminals they need to have routine access to our federal
lands. The reality is that many parts of the U.S. along the southern border
region are too dangerous for Americans to enter because they are overrun
with drug traffickers and human smugglers. This is unacceptable and I plan
to ensure that law enforcement is no longer hindered from doing their jobs
to keep Americans safe."

Whether Congressman Bishop is foremost concerned with border security, or
sees the issue as a tool to undo some of the country's key environmental
laws, is debateable. But the wide range of opinions over the security of the
border can at times make it seem as if two different situations are being
discussed.

"It would have been impossible to win World War II if the military had been
forced to comply with current laws such as the National Environmental Policy
Act, Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and dozens of other laws
enacted by Congress after World War II," testified James Chilton, Jr., an
Arizona rancher whose land runs along the border. "The construction of
thousands of military bases, airfields, port facilities, training facilities
and ammunition storage areas inside the United States would have been
delayed for years. There is no way the war would have been won if the
military had been obliged to complete endless Environmental Impact
Statements, fund or carry out mitigation projects and suffer through years
of radical environmental corporations' lawsuits and appeals. We must not tie
up our national defense at the border with red tape.

"National Security demands that drug traffickers, terrorists and
undocumented aliens be prevented from entering the United States at the
border. Currently, on our ranch these people often travel 10 to 20 miles
inside our country before the Border Patrol attempts to apprehend them," he
continued. "We have heard that, a few years ago, the Border Patrol found
seven backpacks near our ranch which contained Yemeni passports. Were the
owners of the backpacks tourists or terrorists? We understand that
significant numbers of persons apprehended--the ones who are caught--are not
just Mexican citizens looking for work. The entrants include others with
various motives. We strongly believe the Border Patrol must CONTROL THE
BORDER AT THE BORDER."

>From the viewpoint of George Zachary Taylor, who helped found the National
Association of Former Border Patrol Offi

[osint] Afghan War News - April 26, 2011

[Beowulf]

http://tinyurl.com/3t9rzlv

 


April 26, 2011


War In Afghanistan News 26 Apr 2011


 
 Afghan MapWar in Afghanistan News reports provided by ISAF Joint
Command.  Operations are reported in the following provinces:  Laghman,
Baghland, Helmand, Kandahar, Wardak, Ghazni, Khost, Nangarhar and Badghis.

Khost was not a safe haven for the Haqqani leaders or insurgents, 2 dead, 3
captured!  Troops searching for a Hezb-E Islami Gulbuddin leader also came
up with assault weapons, a chest rack and other weapons in Baghlan Province.
Helmand produced 50,000 Pakistani rupees, a directional fragmentation charge
to name a few of the items recovered and destroyed.

In other International Security Assistance Force Joint (ISAF) Command
Operational News throughout Afghanistan: 

Laghman Province

A combined Afghan and coalition force killed a Taliban leader and one
insurgent while detaining several others during a security operation in
Alisheng district, Laghman province, yesterday.

The operation was conducted to capture Taliban leader Fazil Rabi Badam, who
operated in the Alisheng and Dowlat Shah districts. Badam conducted and
planned attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

Upon arriving, the security force was engaged by a number of armed
insurgents. The insurgents were barricaded inside the building and engaged
the force with grenades. The force responded to the insurgent fire and moved
to safeguard the civilians in the surrounding buildings.

While initiating a call-out for occupants to exit the building, the force
was again engaged by insurgents inside the building.

After ensuring the women and children were moved out of the area, the
combined force called for a precision airstrike on the building. After the
strike, the security force approached the building to attempt a second
callout. Again, the insurgents fired and threw grenades at the security
force.

A second precision air strike was conducted on the building, resulting in
two insurgents, including Badam, being killed. During a follow-on inspection
of the building, multiple grenades and AK-47 rifles were collected.

Initial reports indicate no civilians were harmed in the operation.

Baghlan Province

An Afghan and coalition force detained numerous suspected insurgents while
searching for a Hezb-E Islami Gulbuddin leader during a security operation
in Baghlan-e Jadid district, Baghlan province, yesterday. The leader is the
chief logistics officer for operations and the chief political officer in
Baghlan. He leads a group of 25 fighters.

Based on numerous intelligence sources, the security force targeted two
compounds where suspected insurgent activity occurs in search of the leader.
The force secured and cleared multiple buildings, while ensuring the safety
of the women and children. During both searches, the force conducted
interviews with residents. After completing both searches, the force
detained numerous suspected insurgents. During the search the force
discovered multiple AK-47 assault rifles, a shotgun, a pistol, a chest rack
and multiple magazines.

Helmand Province

A coalition unit operating in Marjeh district, Helmand province yesterday
discovered weapons and currency during a patrol. The find included 600 7.62
mm rounds, three loaded AK-47 magazines, an AK-47 rifle, a directional
fragmentation charge, an ammunition can, a pair of binoculars, a mortar
sight and 50,000 Pakistani rupees (500 U.S. dollars). The weapons were
safely destroyed on site.



Kandahar Province

In Zharey district, Kandahar province, today, Afghan and coalition forces
found 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms) of hashish.

Also.

In the same district and province, a separate combined patrol discovered
5,200 pounds (2,359 kgs) of hashish, 240 pounds (109 kgs) of hash seeds, 250
pounds (114 kgs) of marijuana, one bag of 240 pounds (109 kgs) poppy tar,
100 pounds (45 kgs) of homemade explosives, one half barrel of PKM rounds,
four 9-volt batteries, one victim-operated improvised explosive device with
detonation cord, seven pressure plates, three 82 mm mortar rounds and two
artillery shells.

All drugs and weapons will be or have been destroyed by security forces.

Also.

A combined Afghan and coalition force in Zharay district, Kandahar province
was engaged by multiple insurgents during a patrol yesterday. As a result of
the operation, the combined force detained numerous persons of interest, as
well as finding 6,500 pounds (2,948 kilograms) of marijuana.

Also.

In Panjwai'I district, Kandahar province, yesterday, Afghan and coalition
forces found 30 bags, consisting of 1,540 pounds (699 kilograms) of homemade
explosives along with several red TNT blocks. The explosives will be
destroyed by security forces.

Tailor the way you get your War in Afghanistan News
  

Wardak Province

A combined Afghan

[osint] Qadaffy Son Mocks NATO Airstrikes; Italy Sends in Bombers

[Beowulf]

http://tinyurl.com/6g2v8ay

 

April 26, 2011

Gadhafi's Son Mocks NATO Airstrikes while Italy Sends in Bombers

Libyan TV: NATO Airstrikes Hit Tripoli, Other Cities

25 April 2011 VOA News Libyan state television says NATO warplanes have
bombed civilian and military targets in the capital, Tripoli, and in at
least one other location.

The Libyan report said the attacks took place late Monday in Bir al-Ghanam,
100 kilometers southwest of Tripoli, and in the Ain Zara area of the
capital, causing casualties. No other details were provided. And there was
no immediate NATO confirmation.

Earlier Monday, a NATO airstrike in Tripoli destroyed a building in the
complex where leader Moammar Gadhafi lives. NATO says it targeted a
communications headquarters used to coordinate attacks against civilians.

However, Libyan officials say the strike was an attempt to assassinate Mr.
Gadhafi. Authorities say the bombed building was used for ministerial
gatherings and other meetings. Reporters have not been able to verify
casualties.

Mr. Gadhafi's son, Saif al-Islam, said NATO is fighting a losing battle in
Libya because it is "backed by traitors, agents and spies." He said the
bombing "will only scare children." 

Also Monday, Italy said for the first time it will begin bombing selected
military targets in Libya. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he told
U.S. President Barack Obama about the decision and would call other European
leaders to personally inform them as well.

Italy previously said it would not participate in airstrikes against its
former colony. The two countries have close economic ties and Rome had been
one of Mr. Gadhafi's closest European allies until his violent suppression
of an uprising prompted the U.N. Security Council to authorize the use of
force to protect civilians.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will hold talks on the Libyan conflict
in Washington Tuesday with his British counterpart, Liam Fox.

The Financial Times, quoting a senior British official, says one agenda item
will be whether action can be taken to cut fuel supplies to the Libyan
leader's armed forces on the ground.

Monday's NATO attack came as fighting continued in the western rebel-held
city of Misrata.

Mr. Gadhafi's forces unleashed a new artillery bombardment on the city
Monday, killing at least 10 people. The latest assault brought the death
toll to nearly 60 people in the last three days.

Rebels in Misrata said the bodies of Mr. Gadhafi's troops, some there for
days, litter the streets and buildings. Heavy shelling and gunfire in the
city have left hundreds dead in two months of a bloody government siege.

Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said Sunday that troops halted
their offensive in Misrata so that tribal elders could negotiate with the
rebels.

Also Monday, the Reuters news agency reported that an estimated 30,000
ethnic Berbers have fled Libya's remote Western Mountains region to escape
heavy bombardment by government forces.

Reuters quotes the U.N. refugee agency as saying about 1,500 refugees have
been arriving to camps in southern Tunisia every day since fighting
intensified earlier this month. Berber towns in the area joined a wider
revolt against Mr. Gadhafi's 42-year rule in February.

 



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[osint] Pakistani Intelligence Is 'Terrorist-Supporting Entity'

[Beowulf]

http://tinyurl.com/6cwuryu

 

April 26, 2011

WikiLeak release Document from 2007 Lists Pakistan as Threat to U.S.

Leaked US Documents: Pakistani Intelligence Is 'Terrorist-Supporting Entity'

25 April 2011 VOA News Leaked U.S. documents show U.S. military personnel
labeled the main Pakistani intelligence agency as a terrorism-supporting
entity in 2007.

The secret files show U.S. authorities at the Guantanamo Bay detention
facility placed Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate on the
same list of threats to the United States as al-Qaida, Palestinian militant
group Hamas and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

The documents show Pakistan's ISI is one of more than 30 organizations
labeled "terrorist and terrorist support entities identified as associated
forces." They say any Guantanamo detainee affiliated with the blacklisted
organizations "may have provided support to al-Qaida and the Taliban or
engaged in hostilities against U.S. or coalition forces." 

U.S. security personnel used the documents dated 2007 to determine the
threat posed by suspected militants held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba. Western news agencies say anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks released
the secret files.

The ISI had no comment on the documents, but it has consistently denied any
ongoing links to Islamist insurgents operating in Pakistan and neighboring
Afghanistan. The Pakistani intelligence agency is not on the official U.S.
government list of terrorist organizations issued annually by the State
Department.

The documents show Yemen's intelligence agency also is on the list of
"terrorist and terrorist support entities." The United States has provided
millions of dollars of assistance to the intelligence services of Pakistan
and Yemen in recent years.

Relations between Pakistan's ISI and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
have been strained for years despite the governments of both nations
pledging cooperation in the fight against Islamist insurgencies in the
region. The relationship worsened in January when CIA contractor Raymond
Davis shot and killed two Pakistanis who he claimed were robbing him in
Lahore.

U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen said on a visit to
Pakistan last week that he believes the ISI has a "longstanding"
relationship with the Haqqani network, an al-Qaida-supporting group fighting
U.S.-led coalition forces in Afghanistan. Pakistan's army chief General
Ashfaq Kayani rejected that charge as "negative propaganda."

Allegations of ISI links to Afghan militants date back to the 1980s, when
Pakistan and the United States supported warlords fighting against Soviet
troops occupying Afghanistan.

 



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[osint] As Syria Rolls Tanks Into Cities, 18 Killed

[Beowulf]

http://tinyurl.com/42tfvh8

 

April 25, 2011

As Syria Rolls Tanks Into Cities, 18 Killed

25 April 2011 VOA News At least 18 people are reported dead as Syrian troops
and tanks rolled into the protest flashpoint town of Daraa on Monday,
drawing international criticism.

Witnesses and human rights activists in southern Syria reported the
casualties as Syrian authorities widen their crackdown on a 5-week
anti-government uprising.

The witnesses said they saw bodies in a car that had been attacked by
security forces in Daraa. Video footage distributed by human rights groups
shows tanks in the city along with dozens of soldiers. 

Rights groups also reported gunfire from security forces in Douma, a suburb
of the capital, Damascus.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay demanded that Syria
curtail its military crackdown and investigate the killings of protesters.

The U.S. condemned the violence against Syrian citizens, calling it
"completely deplorable."

A National Security Council spokesman says the U.S. is considering a range
of responses to the brutal crackdown, including targeted sanctions, to make
clear that Syria's behavior is "unacceptable."

Also on Monday, Jordanian officials reported that the border between the two
countries has been sealed and Syria is preventing people from crossing.
Syrian officials denied the report.

On Sunday, rights groups said security forces killed at least four civilians
and detained many opposition activists in the coastal city of Jableh,
following a pro-democracy protest against President Bashar al-Assad the
previous night.

Witnesses say the killings occurred even though no protests were in progress
at the time.

Sweeps against anti-government protesters have escalated in Syria despite
last week's repeal of a nearly 50-year-old emergency law. The New York
Times, quoting the executive director of the Syrian rights group Insan ,
said 217 people have disappeared since Friday.

Funerals were held for those killed in the violence Friday and Saturday.
Rights groups say at least 120 people were killed in the 2-day crackdown.

President Assad signed a decree ending decades of emergency rule last week.
The ruling was part of his effort to end anti-government unrest by meeting a
key demand of protesters.

 



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[osint] 4 Killed, 50 Wounded in Bombing of 2 Pakistan Navy Buses

[Beowulf]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bomb-hits-bus-carrying-navy-employees-in
-southern-pakistan-casualties-feared/2011/04/25/AFGa5QmE_story.html?nl_headl
ines

 


Bombs hit 2 Pakistan navy buses in Karachi, killing 4 and wounding more than
50 people


By Associated Press, Tuesday, April 26, 1:51 AM


KARACHI - Islamist militants bombed two Pakistani navy buses taking
employees to work on Tuesday, killing four people and again bringing their
war to the streets of the country's largest city.

The roadside blasts took place roughly 15 minutes apart in different areas
of the southern city of Karachi, the country's economic heart, said Navy
Commander Salman Ali. More than 50 people were wounded.

The Pakistani Taliban and other extremists have staged repeated attacks on
security forces and other state targets in recent years. Allied with
al-Qaida, they are seeking to overthrow Pakistan's U.S.-allied government or
force a halt in army offensives against their bases close to the Afghan
border.

Karachi, the seaside home of the Pakistan navy, has not been spared attacks,
though hits in the northwest and cities in Punjab have been more common.

Police said the bombs were concealed by the side of the road, and were
presumably detonated by remote control.

The victims included naval officers and employees of the force, said Ali,
adding one of the dead was a female doctor.

Taliban spokesman Ahsanullah Ahsan claimed responsibility for the attacks in
a telephone call to an Associated Press reporter from an undisclosed
location. He said they would keep up the strikes as long as the Pakistan
army continued to attack the group in the northwest.

Islamist terrorism in Pakistan began after the U.S.-led invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001, which caused widespread anger in Pakistan and
destabilized its border regions. The extremists began targeting the
Pakistani state in earnest in 2007 after troops raided a hardline mosque in
the capital, killing dozens of people.

Meanwhile, 14 people, among them women and children, were killed when fire
ripped through a bus in southwestern Pakistan late Monday. Witness Abdul Hai
said the bus in Baluchistan was attacked by gunmen who later set it on fire.
Other officials were quoted in Pakistani media giving a similar account of
the incident.

But police officer Sayeed Farid Shah said the bus caught fire due to an
engine fault.

Hai said the bus was parked at a roadside restaurant where he worked and he
saw the attack

Baluchistan is wracked by separatist violence and civilians are often
targeted, especially settlers from elsewhere in Pakistan. Information from
the region is very to hard confirm, and transparent investigations are
rarely carried out into violent incidents.

 



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[osint] Nationwide Manhunt Under Way for Suspect in Colorado Mall Bombing Attempt

[Beowulf]

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/04/25/nationwide-manhunt-way-suspect-colorado
-mall-bombing-attempt/

 

Nationwide Manhunt Under Way for Suspect in Colorado Mall Bombing Attempt

Published April 25, 2011

A nationwide manhunt is under way Monday for a man wanted in connection with
last week's attempted bombing at a Colorado mall.   

Authorities say they're searching for 65-year-old Earl Albert Moore, who has
an "extensive criminal background," as the main suspect involved in an
attempted bombing Wednesday at the Southwest Plaza Mall in Littleton, Co.

The explosives did not detonate, but the incident alarmed authorities and
residents because the plan took place on the 12th anniversary of the
shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton. 

But investigators on Monday said the event was not likely related to the
anniversary. Investigators have found a motive but aren't releasing
additional information, said an FBI spokesman.

Moore, who is considered dangerous, was released from federal prison April
13 after serving time for his conviction in the May 2005 robbery of a West
Virginia bank, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. Federal court
records show that Moore pleaded guilty to robbing the bank in Crab Orchard,
W.Va., of $2,546.

Surveillance video from April 20 showing 65-year-old Earl Albert Moore.
Authorities believe Moore was behind the attempted bombing Wednesday at the
Southwest Plaza Mall in Littleton, Colo (FBI).

Surveillance video from April 20 showing 65-year-old Earl Albert Moore.
Authorities believe Moore was behind the attempted bombing Wednesday at the
Southwest Plaza Mall in Littleton, Colo (FBI).

Earl Albert Moore has an extensive criminal record and should be considered
dangerous, federal officials said.

Earl Albert Moore has an extensive criminal record and should be considered
dangerous, federal officials said.

A judge sentenced Moore to between 15 and 19 years in prison, but a federal
appeals court in 2006 ruled his stiff sentence was "unreasonable" and
Moore's sentence was reduced to seven years.

Moore was photographed walking into the Southwest Plaza Mall around noon
Wednesday carrying a plastic Target shopping bag, FOX 31 reports.  

Marshall Wood, the employee who found the explosives ablaze in the hallway,
described them as camping propane canisters, which are readily available at
many stores.

"When I first looked, all I really saw were flames," Wood told Fox 31. "It
looked like there was some melting going on."

The explosives included two propane canisters and a pipe bomb that were
placed in a hallway near the mall's food court.

The mall, which was evacuated, is a busy indoor shopping center in Jefferson
County.

Investigators have exhausted all leads locally and have put out an alert to
every FBI
  office in the country, FBI spokesman Dave Joly said.

"Last time we knew where he was locally was around noon Wednesday at the
mall," he said, referring to the previously released surveillance photos.
The photos show a man believed to be Moore riding a public bus leaving the
mall the night before the fire. Other photos showed the suspect carrying a
plastic shopping bag while riding an escalator.

Moore is described as being between 6 feet to 6 feet 2 inches tall and
weighing about 200 to 225 pounds. He's bald with blue eyes and a grey
mustache and has a tattoo of a Viking on each of his arms.

The FBI says Moore has been known to assume the aliases John Lindzy, Earl
Buchanan, Morelli Buchanon, Donald Morelli and Gary Steele, according to Fox
31

 

 



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you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For mor

[osint] Federal warrant issued for mall bomb suspect

[Beowulf]

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-federal-warrant-issued-for-mall-bomb-suspect-2
0110425,0,7713695.story

 


Federal warrant issued for mall bomb suspect


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Exclusive: Federal warrant issued for mall bomb suspect

. Related 

.
 Southwest Plaza mall bombing
suspect still at-large
 Southwest Plaza mall bombing
suspect still at-large 

.
 PHOTOS: Southwest Plaza mall bomb
suspect Earl Moore
 PHOTOS: Southwest Plaza mall bomb
suspect Earl Moore 

.
 Video: Name of
suspect in attempted mall bombing released; former home searched 

. StoriesStories 

.
 Shoppers pack mall as search for
bomb plot suspect continues
 Shoppers pack mall as search for
bomb plot suspect continues 

.   Topics 

.

Justice System 

.

Punishment 

.
 Crimes 

.
 See more topics > 

. X

  West
Virginia 

 
 Labor Legislation 

 
FBI 

 
Prisons 

 
 Judges 

 
 Target Corp. 

Web Staff | KDVR Denver t...@kdvr.com 

7:29 p.m. MDT, April 25, 2011

kdvr-federal-warrant-issued-for-mall-bomb-suspect-20110425 

http://www.kdvr.com/hive/images/ratings/rating_on.jpghttp://www.kdvr.com/hiv
e/images/ratings/rating_on.jpghttp://www.kdvr.com/hive/images/ratings/rating
_on.jpghttp://www.kdvr.com/hive/images/ratings/rating_on.jpghttp://www.kdvr.
com/hive/images/ratings/rating_on.jpg

DENVER -- A West Virginia federal court has issued an arrest warrant for the
ex-con suspected of trying to set off explosives at Southwest Plaza mall
last week, FO31 News has learned.

Earl Albert Moore, 65, is wanted on a probation violation. He was paroled
from federal prison on April 13 after serving time for a 2005 robbery of a
West Virginia bank.

Moore was originally sentenced to 18 years in prison, but a federal judge
cut his sentence to seven years at the suggestion of prosecutors who said
Moore had provided them with "substantial assistance in investigating or
prosecuting another person." 

Moore is being sought as a possible suspect in last Wednesday's plot in
which two propane canisters and a pipe bomb were placed in hallway near the
shopping mall's food court.

The FBI says Moore was photographed walking into the mall around noon
Wednesday carrying a plastic Target shopping bag.

The shopping center was evacuated after a mall employee noticed a device on
fire in the hallway.

Federal law enforcement officials have called the plot an act of "domestic
terrorism."

"Through the course of our investigation, there has been no discovery, at
this point, of any connection between the Southwest Plaza Mall incident and
the Jefferson County School District," FBI spokesperson Dave Joly said in a
statement Monday.

Moore is described as a white male, approximately 

[osint] Why Obama Doesn't Think Much of Easter

[Beowulf]

Because he's a Muslim, or a Marxist?  Or both?

 

B

 

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/Obama-Easter-Christians-message/2011/04/2
6/id/394080?s=al
 &promo_code=C27B-1

 

Why Obama Doesn't Think Much of Easter

Tuesday, 26 Apr 2011 09:42 AM

By L.D. Breen

 

 

 

The media and the blogosphere are abuzz with dumbfounded reactions to the
White House's snub of Christians during the weekend. No presidential
proclamation celebrating Christianity's highest holy day of Easter was
issued, compounded by the White House chief spokesman's scoffing response to
reporters' questions about the omission.


President Obama, Easter Bunny, Christian


President Barack Obama welcomes the Easter Bunny to the annual White House
Easter Egg Roll. The Obama family attended Easter services at the historic
Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington. (Getty Images Photo)

As Fox News noted on Monday, "By comparison, the White House has released
statements recognizing the observance of major Muslim holidays and released
statements in 2010 on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha." On top
of neglecting Easter, the president "also failed to release a statement
marking Good Friday." The White House did, however, "release an
eight-paragraph statement heralding Earth Day," which fell on Good Friday.

What's more, on March 20, President Barack Obama even videotaped an
"important message" that was more than four minutes long commemorating
Nowruz, the Persian New Year that Iranians celebrate. In it, the president
said, "You - the young people of Iran - carry within you both the ancient
greatness of Persian civilization, and the power to forge a country that is
responsive to your aspirations."

He spoke to Iranians the way other presidents have spoken only to Americans,
assuring them that, "though times may seem dark, I want you to know that I
am with you."

When asked about the conspicuous absence of an Easter statement from the
president during Monday's White House press briefing, press secretary Jay
Carney adopted a smirking demeanor.

"You know, the president went to the church yesterday," he said. "It was
well covered. I'm not sure if we put out a statement or not, but he
obviously personally celebrated Easter with his family and went to church to
celebrate that."

"Wait a minute," one reporter interrupted. "The highest Christian holiday
and you don't know if he put out a statement?"

Another reporter immediately chimed in, saying, "Jay, come on," provoking
laughter among other reporters in the briefing room.

Carney trivialized their queries, sarcastically responding, "I'm glad you're
asking these key, important questions, guys." Carney assured them that
President Obama is "a devoted Christian" who "believes it's a very important
holiday for him personally, for his family and for Christians around the
country."

But, as Barack Obama made no bones about admitting in his 2006 memoir, "The
Audacity of Hope," the secularism of his mother, father, and stepfather led
him during his younger days to be far from a devoted Christian when it came
to Easter.

"On Easter or Christmas Day my mother might drag me to church, just as she
dragged me to the Buddhist temple, the Chinese New Year celebration, the
Shinto shrine, and ancient Hawaiian burial sites," Obama remembered. "But I
was made to understand that such religious samplings required no sustained
commitment on my part - no introspective exertion or self-flagellation."

Soon after that passage, Obama noted his mother's now well-known skepticism
and hostility toward religion. "Religion was an expression of human culture,
she would explain, not its wellspring, just one of the many ways - and not
necessarily the best way - that man attempted to control the unknowable and
understand the deeper truths about our lives," Obama wrote.

The future president told of the religious relativism that pervaded the
environment in which he was raised. "In our household the Bible, the Koran,
and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse
and African mythology."

Obama added that "although my father had been raised a Muslim, by the time
he met my mother he was a confirmed atheist, thinking religion to be so much
superstition, like the mumbo-jumbo of witch doctors that he had witnessed in
the Kenyan villages of his youth." Obama's Indonesian stepfather was,
similarly, "a man who saw religion as not particularly useful" in life.

The president did mention Easter in his most recent weekly address, but only
to note that "This is a time of year when people get together with family
and friends to observe Passover and to celebrate Easter" and "to give thanks
for our blessings and reaffirm our faith, while
spending time with the people we love."

A year ago, Obama was criticized for issuing an all-inclusive greeting that
did not salute Christians exclusively but mentioned Hindus,

[osint] Michigan State Police Play Games in "Defense" of Data-extraction Tool for Cell Phones

[Beowulf]

 

http://gcn.com/Articles/2011/04/25/Michigan-state-police-ACLU-cell-phone-for
ensics.aspx?s=gcndaily_260411
 &p=1 

 

 

Michigan State Police defend use of data-extraction tool for cell phones

ACLU told FOIA request for records would cost $500K

oBy Kathleen Hickey

oApr 25, 2011

The Michigan State Police is being challenged by the American Civil
Liberties Union over its use of cell phone data extraction technology.

The portable device, manufactured by Israel-based Cellebrite, can extract
personal data from 95 percent of cell phones on the market, as well as from
GPS devices, in less than two minutes, reported
 NetworkWorld. 

MSP has defended its use of the technology, saying it has been used only
with warrants in cases of serious crimes. But it has not yet supplied
records via Freedom of Information Act requests, and in one case requested
more than a half-million dollars to fulfill the request.

The Cellebrite UFED Forensic System can extract a variety of information,
including contacts, text messages, deleted texts, location information, call
history, audio and video recordings, phone details, such as the phone
number, and, on some handsets, complete memory dumps. According to the
manufacturer, it is used by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, military
and governments in 60 different countries.

In a

letter from the Michigan ACLU, the organization said the police initially
requested $544,680 to disclose under the Freedom of Information Act how and
when the devices are being used, with a $272,340 deposit first. 

"In order to reduce the cost, the ACLU of Michigan narrowed the scope of its
request. However, each time the ACLU submitted more narrow requests, MSP
claimed that no documents exist for that time period and then it refused to
reveal when the devices were used, so a proper request could be made," said
the release. 

In a response, the department said it only uses the devices if a search
warrant has been obtained or if the user gives consent. 

"The department's internal directive is that the DEDs only be used by MSP
specialty teams on criminal cases, such as crimes against children. ... The
DEDs are not being used to extract citizens' personal information during
routine traffic stops," said the release. The department further noted that
the devices used by the police cannot download information without the
officer possessing the handset. 

The department also defended the cost of the requests, noting that, "as with
any request, there may be a processing fee to search for, retrieve, review,
examine, and separate exempt material, if any."

Similar data privacy complaints have been brought up recently with the
Justice Department, which is fighting legislation to tighten privacy laws on
e-mail in the cloud, reported
 Wired. 

Current law - the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, adopted in 1986 -
is based on decades-old technology. Under the law, officials can obtain and
access a cloud e-mail without a warrant if it is older than 180 days,
although a warrant is needed if the e-mail is stored on a hard drive. 

"At that time, e-mail left on a third-party server for six months was
considered to be abandoned, and thus enjoyed less privacy protection," said
David Kravets, author of the Wired article. 

A coalition of technology companies, including Google, AOL and AT&T, spoke
this month to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the topic, arguing that the
law should treat both types of e-mail the same. 

 

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]





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[osint] FW: The High Art of Diplomatic Doubletalk

[Beowulf]

 

 

>From a   JPost 
>story on Jimmy Carter’s current visit to North Korea:

 

"The outlook for the diplomatic engagement is the best it has been in two 
years, but the prospects for a satisfactory outcome have never looked worse," 
said Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in 
Washington.

 

[Can someone please tell me how I can get a sinecure like that? I already own 
quite a few dark gray suits. df]

 

 

Dan Friedman
NYC



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[osint] Another deception

[Beowulf]

  

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/20/us-usa-energy-obama-speculators-idUSTRE73J1NN20110420
or
http://tinyurl.com/3n66e2s


Gasoline Prices and Speculators: They Think You Are Stupid



by Joseph Svetlic 

April 25, 2011

It is with great interest that I read this past week about the President's 
initial response to rising gas prices.  What or who was to blame?  According to 
the President...speculators.  Nameless, faceless speculators 

 .  They are to blame for the rising price of crude oil up and the accompanying 
price at the pump!

 

"The problem is...speculators and people make various bets, and they say, you 
know what, we think that maybe there's a 20 percent chance that something might 
happen in the Middle East that might disrupt oil supply, so we're going to bet 
that oil is going to go up real high.  And that spikes up prices significantly."

 

Now this interested me because I worked in the petroleum industry and I studied 
energy law at law school, and I have taken a strong interest in macroeconomics 
in recent years.  (I read Market Ticker   and Zero 
Hedge  , if you are wondering.)  I'm going to 
disregard for this note the fact that higher gas prices are not objectionable 
at all to our President, despite the fact that they are connected to every 
product we buy.  He doesn't have a problem with high gas prices 
 , only wishing that they become 
high on a gradual basis.  I'm also going to ignore the moratorium on drilling 
in the Gulf and general opposition to domestic exploration and production of 
petroleum by this Administration.

 

No, the main culprit here isn't the nameless, faceless "speculators" that are 
now the object of the President's scorn, but government policy itself, both 
with the Federal Reserve (monetary) and the budget deficits accrued in recent 
years (fiscal).  What is going on is that the government is trying to deflect 
blame to these nameless, faceless speculators for their own disastrous fiscal 
and monetary policies.

 

In other words, they think you are stupid.

 

Let me remind you that the Federal Reserve (Fed) began "quantitative easing" 
(using printed money to buy assets, chiefly Treasury Bonds) in September 2008 
with over $2 trillion 

 .  "QE1" continued through the end of the first quarter of 2010, the end of 
March 2010.   Thereafter, we got QE2 
 , which continues to this very day 
but is slowly wrapping up QE2 is a third the size of QE1, but it means the 
same: monetizing debt.

 

On the fiscal side, our President has run up a lot of debt in the past two 
years, despite running in 2008 on a "net spending cut 
 ."  He's up to nearly 4 trillion 
in debt 

  over just a little more than two years.

 

How are we financing this?  Well, the Fed is stepping up to  buy 70% of 
treasuries 

 .  They're doing it with printed money, "quantitative easing."  What's the 
effect of this?  You're dollar is worth less.  Using printed money to buy the 
debt of the same country will inflate the currency.  Our dollar is not backed 
by anything.  It floats.  Therefore, the money that you have has been 
drastically devalued since the onset of "quantitative easing."  This is what I 
call "loose money."

 

Why is it important to you?  Because inflation is a stealth tax 

  on every dollar you have.

 

Whom does this hurt the most?  The poor and those on fixed incomes.  To any 
progressives reading this who really do want to help the poor reach the middle 
class and get off government assistance: is the way to help them through a 
stealth 20% tax on every dollar they have in their pocket, a unilateral tax 
that bypasses Congress?  That stealth, regressive tax can only drive more 
middle class into being poor, right?  Shouldn't we want every dollar they own 
to have maximum purchasing power, to be worth as much as possible?  Does this 
have anything to do, you suppose, with the record number 
  
on food stamps, one in six Americans?

 

These are the ravages of a loose monetary policy, high-deficit, spendthrift 
government.  It is impoverishment.  It is precisely the opposite of what is 
necessary for a true, strong recovery.  A true recovery will feature fiscal 
responsibilit

[osint] UC Berkeley hosts phony Islamophobia conference feat terror-linked CAIR

[Beowulf]

  


 
 UC Berkeley hosts phony
Islamophobia conference feat terror-linked CAIR 


  creeping | April 26,
2011 at 11:30 AM | Tags:  
cair,   Creeping
Sharia,   Education,
 hamas,
 islam,
 Life,
 Media,
 Muslim,
 News,
 Politics,
 Random,
 Sharia | Categories:
 Alerts,
 California,
 Creeping Sharia,
 Education,
 Media,
 News,
 Politics,
 Religion,
 Sharia,
 Stealth Jihad | URL:
 http://wp.me/pbU4v-8qo 

They should have invited the Islamphobic Dearborn imam
  and his Islamophobic police chief
and mayor friends, who denied Terry Jones his right to speak fearing Muslims
would fly into a violent rage murdering innocents. via PipeLineNews.org, UC
Berkeley Hosts Phony Islamophobia Conference Featuring Holy Land Foundation
Prosecution Unindicted Co-Conspirator CAIR
 :

April 20, 2011 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Nihad Awad,
Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations [CAIR] will
headline a roster of speakers during the dinner break on the first of a two
day public relations event being held at UC Berkeley [April 21-22] which is
intended to further the fraudulent allegation that Islamophobia in the U.S.
is rampant.

Awad was one of the founding members of CAIR, an Islamist organization which
has consistently failed to specifically and by name condemn Hamas as a
terrorist entity. Not surprisingly given the group's history and
associations, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator/joint venturer in
the largest Hamas terror funding prosecution in U.S. history, U.S. vs. Holy
Land Foundation.

http://www.pipelinenews.org/images/2007-05-29-US%20v%20HLF-ListCoConspirator
s.pdf

The trial resulted in the conviction of all of the defendants on a total of
108 charges. Among those convicted was Ghassan Elashi, a co-founder of the
Texas chapter of CAIR. Elashi was already serving a long sentence on a
previous terrorism conviction [U.S. vs. Infocom] involving commerce with
among others, Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader.

In response to legal efforts by CAIR to be removed from the
co-conspirator/joint venturers list the U.S. District Court, North Dallas
stated in its opinion, denying CAIR's plea:

"ISNA and NAIT, in fact, shared more with HLF than just a parent
organization. They were intimately connected with the HLF and its assigned
task of providing financial support to HAMAS. Shortly after HAMAS was
founded in 1987, as an outgrowth of the Muslim Brotherhood, Govt. Exh.
21-61, the International Muslim Brotherhood ordered the Muslim Brotherhood
chapters throughout the world to create Palestine Committees, whose job it
was to support HAMAS with "media, money and men." Govt. Exh. 3-15. The
U.S.-Muslim Brotherhood created the U.S. Palestine Committee, which
documents reflect was initially comprised of three organizations: the OLF
(HLF), the IAP, and the UASR. CAIR was later added to these organizations.
Govt. Exh. 3-78 (listing IAP, HLF, UASR and CAIR as part of the Palestine
Committee, and stating that there is "[n]o doubt America is the ideal
location to train the necessary resources to support the Movement worldwide
. . ."). The mandate of these organizations, per the International Muslim
Brotherhood, was to support HAMAS, and the HLF's particular role was to
raise money to support HAMAS organizations inside the Palestinian
territories. Govt. Exh. 3- 17 (objective of the Palestine Committee is to
support HAMAS)."

http://www.aclu.org/images/asset_upload_file142_36171.pdf

Because CAIR is such a discredited e

[osint] How al-Qaeda Planned to Bomb Heathrow

[Beowulf]

04/26/2011 10:34 AM


Terror Plot


How Al-Qaida Planned to Bomb Heathrow


By Britta Sandberg and Holger Stark

Minutes of the secret interrogations of Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheikh 
Mohammed, the alleged masterminds of the Sept. 11 attacks, show the men 
continued to energetically forge new attack plans even after they struck New 
York and Washington. Guantanamo documents obtained through WikiLeaks outline a 
plot to strike London's Heathrow Airport. 

When two airliners slammed into the World Trade Center in New York and a third 
into the Pentagon in Washington on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Khalid Sheikh 
Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh were traveling in Karachi. When Binalshibh and 
the sheikh reached an al-Qaida safe house a short time later, they switched on 
the television set. It was an hour of triumph for the two chief planners of the 
attacks on America.

The sheikh later told an al-Qaida confidant that attacks using aircraft had 
been a dream of his -- his life's work, in fact. One day, he said, he would 
repeat the attack on the White House, which may have been the target of the 
fourth plane on 9/11, which crashed in rural Pennsylvania. As Binalshibh later 
related when he was in US detention, when Sheikh Mohammed, Binalshibh, Mustafa 
Ahmed al-Hawsawi, the financier of the attacks, and a nephew of the sheikh 
watched the images from America on their television screen, they toasted each 
other and thanked Allah for the success of their operation. 

The detailed accounts are part of the secret US government files on Guantanamo 
to which SPIEGEL has gained access and that are now being published by 
WikiLeaks. The documents also include reports on high-level al-Qaida officials, 
like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh, whom the CIA interrogated for 
years in secret prisons before they were transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.

The summaries of the interrogations reveal the level of enthusiasm with which 
al-Qaida's chief planner, Sheikh Mohammed, continued to pursue similar plans 
after 9/11, most notably an attack on Britain's Heathrow Airport. Nine months 
after the attacks, in early June 2002, Sheikh Mohammed told Binalshibh about 
the Heathrow scenario, which was apparently well developed at that point. The 
idea, the sheikh explained, was to hijack an airliner as it was taking off from 
Heathrow, turn it around and crash it into the airport.

The sheikh wanted to know what Binalshibh thought of the idea.

The operation would be easier, Binalshibh replied, if al-Qaida operatives could 
infiltrate the airport personnel, which would allow them to obtain internal 
information. In addition, he said, they would also need at least one team to 
hijack the aircraft.

Imprisoned and Drugged, Suspected Torture 

The sheikh later told his interrogators that two cells had already been formed 
to carry out the plan. The members of one group, he said, resided in Great 
Britain and had been given orders to complete pilot training in Kenya, so that 
they could fly the aircraft once it was hijacked. A second group was stationed 
in Saudi Arabia and, as was also the case with the 9/11 attacks, its mission 
was to search for potential martyrs to participate in the strikes. According to 
Binalshibh, Sheikh Mohammed was eager to execute the plan.

The statements made by the Guantanamo prisoners should be taken with a grain of 
salt, because they were obtained through torture, at least in part. For 
example, the CIA overcame Sheikh Mohammed's resistance by repeatedly using the 
method known as "waterboarding," in which the prisoner is strapped to a board 
and water is continually poured onto his face until the person thinks he is 
going to drown.

There are many indications that Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 
attacks, was held and tortured 
  in a 
location near Szymany Airport in Poland. For several months, the 9/11 
coordinator was given psychotropic drugs. Other previously published Guantanamo 
documents relating to Binalshibh contain page after page of blacked-out text, 
evidence of the US's determination not to reveal which drugs Binalshibh was 
given.

Nevertheless, the Heathrow plans must apparently be taken seriously. Statements 
by other detainees, including Walid Muhammad bin Attash, confirm that the 
Heathrow scenario was the subject of intense discussion within al-Qaida. Bin 
Attash told the CIA that not only was he in the loop when it came to preparing 
the plan, but that he had in fact proposed it in the first place. Sheikh 
Mohammed was seen as a proud but extremely cooperative prisoner, even dictating 
actions and plans to his interrogators that they had been unaware of until 
then. The prisoner, to whom the Americans referred simply as KSM, repeatedly 
emphasized that he had no greater desire than to be sentenced by the Americans 
and die a martyr's death as soon as possible.

Al-Qaida leader Osama bin La

[osint] Obama: American Self-Hatred Personified

[Beowulf]

Of course there’s no proof he’s even American…

 

Certainly nothing “American personified”!

 

B

 

 

 

[This president is gnawing away at our greatness from within. It will hard 
enough to repair his damage if we replace the man in 2012, and virtually 
impossible if we don’t. df]

 

 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

 

April 26, 2011 

 

 

 The Embarrassed Superpower

 

President Obama oversees a lengthening list of national humiliations. ...[He] 
seems to want to leave the position of the leader of the free world vacant 
deliberately, to prove a point about our limits and our deference to others.

 

By Rich Lowry 

 

When Barack Obama said he’d conduct our affairs with more humility, little did 
we know he meant he’d humiliate us.

 

He is allowing a vicious little tin-pot dictator to fight us to a standstill in 
Libya without bestirring himself to do much of anything about it. His latest 
initiative is to fly two unmanned drones over Libya to send a signal to Moammar 
Qaddafi about our seriousness. He must have thought sending three unmanned 
drones — strong letter to follow — would have been unduly harsh.

 

Obama launched the war with an unconditional demand that Qaddafi’s forces leave 
Ajdabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya. After an initial American barrage, Obama 
outsourced the war to Britain and France, regardless of their ability to make 
good on his own demands. In an interview the other day, the president noted 
that the war was becoming a stalemate on the ground, as if he were an analyst 
at the Council on Foreign Relations commenting on a matter with which he had no 
direct connection.

 

In the worst days of American inaction during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, 
French president Jacques Chirac said, “The position of the leader of the free 
world is vacant.” Pres. Bill Clinton eventually got over his indecision and 
bombed the Serbs. President Obama seems to want to leave the position of the 
leader of the free world vacant deliberately, to prove a point about our limits 
and our deference to others. He’s holding an ongoing world seminar on the 
dispensability of the formerly indispensable nation.

 

Obama’s America is a country whose commander-in-chief makes highly conditional 
suggestions in the guise of unconditional demands, whose allies can’t count on 
it, whose interests and values are negotiable. It is the embarrassed 
superpower, wishing away its unparalleled influence and seeking to hide behind 
euphemism and multilateral fictions. (It’s not “a war” in Libya, and besides 
it’s NATO, not us, fighting to a draw.)

 

When protests broke out in Syria, a country run by an Assad family mafia that 
has facilitated the killing of American soldiers in Iraq, Obama could barely 
summon a harshly negative statement when the regime began shooting people. 
Elsewhere in the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring is a decidedly 
ambiguous affair. It is toppling flawed U.S. allies, with no guarantee anything 
better will replace them. In Syria, it’s much simpler: A ruthless anti-American 
regime seeks its survival by firing live ammunition at funeral-goers.

 

For the realist, the unrest presented the opportunity to give an enemy of the 
United States a good, hard shove. For the idealist, it presented the 
opportunity to stand up for what’s right. The Obama administration initially 
did neither. Softheaded and hardhearted, the administration mumbled bromides 
about how it sure hoped Bashar al-Assad would begin reforming soon. Must 
America be so naïve about its enemies and so shamefaced about its values?

 

Under Obama, we’re making a practice of accumulating national embarrassments. 
The dollar is in decline. The state of the nation’s fiscal house is so shoddy 
that Standard & Poor’s warns that a downgrade in our AAA rating may be in the 
offing. Saudi Arabia is furious at us and is not playing ball on oil 
production. We have to depend on foreign creditors to keep operating our 
government, $14 trillion in the red. We endure lectures from Communist China 
about sound finance. 

 

For his sophisticated defenders, Obama is ushering in the long-overdue 
post-American world. For the rest of the public, for whom national pride still 
means something, it may feel like the 1970s again, when a self-impressed 
Democratic president last tried to get us to accept our supposedly inevitable 
diminishment. Jimmy Carter made his era synonymous with American weakness and 
decline.

 

Carter had the failed Iranian hostage rescue attempt (he called it “an 
incomplete success”) to put an exclamation point on his fecklessness and 
America’s stumbles. Obama has Libya, a perfect expression of his ambiguous 
leadership. At this rate, he’ll give us much to be humble about.

 

— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review

 

 

Dan Friedman
NYC



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[osint] Obama was a terrible Student, Terrible

[Beowulf]

It figures…he’s still STUPID!

 

B

 

 

  


Trump: Obama Was a Terrible Student, Terrible… Not Good Enough For Harvard 
…Update: Black Muslim Nationalist Campaigned to Get Obama Into Harvard


Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, April 25, 2011, 10:27 PM


http://gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com/2011/04/trump-obama-was-a-terrible-student-terrible-not-good-enough-for-harvard/#comments
 

Donald Trump went after Barack Obama’s terrible academic record tonight. Trump 
told reporters that Obama was not good enough for Harvard.
 

 NBC New York reported:

Manhattan real estate mogul Donald Trump suggested in an interview Monday that 
President Barack Obama had been a poor student who did not deserve to be 
admitted to the Ivy League universities he attended. Trump, who is mulling a 
bid for the Republican presidential nomination, offered no proof for his claim 
but said he would continue to press the matter as he has the legitimacy of the 
president’s birth certificate.

“I heard he was a terrible student, terrible. How does a bad student go to 
Columbia and then to Harvard?” Trump said in an interview with The Associated 
Press. “I’m thinking about it, I’m certainly looking into it. Let him show his 
records.”

Obama graduated from Columbia University in New York in 1983 with a degree in 
political science after transferring from Occidental College in California. He 
went on to Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude 1991 and was 
the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

Obama’s 2008 campaign did not release his college transcripts, and in his 
best-selling memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” Obama indicated he hadn’t always 
been an academic star. Trump told the AP that Obama’s refusal to release his 
college grades were part of a pattern of concealing information about himself.

“I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great 
everything and they can’t get into Harvard,” Trump said. “We don’t know a thing 
about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our 
president.”

Katie Hogan, a spokeswoman for Obama’s re-election campaign, declined to 
comment.

UPDATE: It’s likely that Trump knows who was behind Barack Obama’s entry into 
Harvard.
Black Islamic Supremist Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, from Texas,  
 campaigned to get Obama into 
Harvard.

  Khalid Abdullah 
Tariq al-Mansour is a Muslim lawyer and a black nationalist who made news in 
2008 when it was revealed that he had been a patron of Barack Obama and had 
recommended the latter for admission to Harvard Law School in 1988.

Before becoming a Muslim, al-Mansour in the 1960s was named Don Warden. He was 
deeply involved in San Francisco Bay Area racial politics as founder of a group 
called the African American Association. A close personal adviser to Huey 
Newton and Bobby Seale, al-Mansour helped the pair establish the Black Panther 
Party but later broke with them when they entered coalitions with white radical 
groups.

Al-Mansour has been an adviser to Saudi billionaires who fund the spread of 
Wahhabi extremism in America… Al-Mansour is an outspoken hater of the United 
States, Israel, and white people generally.







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<

[osint] Why you should CAIR

[Beowulf]

 


  home
 learn
 act
 donate
 local chapters
 Contact Congress
 


  ACT! for America

 


Visit our
 News page 

 


 


April 26, 2011 

Why you should CAIR 

New Video Documents How the Council on American 
Islamic Relations Has Ties to Hamas 



Last week, we brought to you an explosive story by investigative writer
Patrick Poole, where he, quoting an unnamed DOJ employee whistleblower,
claimed that the brass at the DOJ, under Eric Holder, ordered the squashing
of indictments of several national Islamic organizations and their leaders
due to their ties to the Obama White House. Poole's whistleblower
specifically singled out CAIR and its Chairman Emeritus as beneficiaries of
the squashed indictments.


   



In this context, United States Representative Sue Myrick last week released
the third video in an excellent three part series on the rise of the Muslim
Brotherhood in America. This new video focuses on the early days of the
Council on American Islamic Relations (C.A.I.R.) and documents their ties to
the federally designated terrorist group Hamas. 

Watch video here now
  

After watching this video, please go to our Fire Eric Holder Poll
 . We feel convinced that once you see for yourselves the
overwhelming evidence as to CAIR's founding, its leadership and its stated
goals, that you will demand the Attorney General step down. 

We also ask that you share this email with your friends and family. We need
to step up the grassroots pressure with the goal of forcing a change at the
Department of Justice. 

If you want to stay on top of this issue keep checking back with us at
www.actforamerica.org
  

We have it from reliable sources that several of our ally Members and
Senators on the Hill are ready, willing and able to hold the Attorney
General's feet to the fire on this issue and that they might get their first
chance on May 4th (next Wed) as the Attorney General is scheduled to testify
before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Our own Director of Government Relations, Lisa Piraneo, will once again be
monitoring this hearing and will offer her live tweet commentary on the
issue, should Holder be questioned on this matter. 

Follow Lisa
 's ACT! for America Tweets from the Hill Here 





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sender. If you found this message in your "Bulk" or "Spam" folder, please
click the "Not Spam" button to notify your provider that these are emails
you want to receive. 

 


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P.O. Box 12765 
Pensacola, FL 32591 
www.actforamerica.org 



ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively
organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action
network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and
coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote
America's national security and the defense of American democratic values
against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our
supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our
success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.
  

The news items, blogs, educational materials and other information in our
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commentary on events and issues related to the threat of radical Islam. Much
of this information is

[osint] Muslim Threat: "Royal Family you WILL pay!"

[Beowulf]

  


 
"Royal Family you WILL pay!" 


  barenakedislam
| April 26, 2011 at 12:10 PM | Categories:
 Islamic Britain | URL:
 http://wp.me/peHnV-t93 


"Royal Family you WILL pay!"


Posted: April 26, 2011 | Author: barenakedislam
  | Filed under:
Islamic Britain   |
 7 Comments > 


The Muslims who made this video calling Prince William a Nazi are the same
Muslims threatening a terrorist attack on the Royal Wedding. So, why are
they making videos instead of sitting in jail?


 

http://barenakedislam.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/article-1378527-0bb41ff100
000578-506_634x310.jpg?w=590&h=288

In a recent report published by The Telegraph, disturbing admissions were
once again leaked exposing prince William's yearning desire to commit acts
of terror and Nazism, in Afghanistan; his deliberate and heartfelt
expressions of melancholy and frustration at being prevented from joining
his (crusading) brethren abroad, in imposing democracy by the bullet, are
ample proof of the need to decry what is undoubtedly, the makings of a
modern day Nazi.

With the body count in Afghanistan well into the tens of thousands, it is
extraordinary that the association of any individual with military
servicemen conscientiously bent on fulfilling Britain's bloody foreign
policy, should not be met with extreme rancour and bitterness; subsequently,
it is almost bewildering that the British public continue to be lulled into
a blissful ignorance regarding prince William's blatant military position.

RELATED STORIES/VIDEOS:

uk-muslim-hate-preacher-warns-muslims-to-stay-away-from-royal-wedding-becaus
e-of-possible-muslim-terror-attack
 

uk-muslims-against-crusades-planning-to-disrupt-the-royal-wedding
  

 



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[osint] Father's race on the Obama birth certificate: only a curiosity or a smoking gun?

[Beowulf]

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/35884

 


He does not meet the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution


Father's race on the Obama birth certificate: only a curiosity or a smoking
gun?


 
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 - Lawrence Sellin  Tuesday, April 26, 2011 

I would like to begin by stating unequivocally that, for me, it does not
matter if Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii because he has never been
eligible to be President. He does not meet the natural born citizen clause
of the Constitution i.e. born in the United States, of parents who were both
U.S. citizens at the time of the candidate's birth. 



I admit that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert on birth
documents nor am I terribly familiar with the details of the current birth
certificate controversy.

Nevertheless, there is one thing that I don't quite understand.

On the Certification of Live Birth (COLB), now widely available on the
internet, Obama's father's race is listed as "African".

First, "African" usually defines a location not a race.

Second, the common usage for the race of black Africans in 1961 would have
been "Negro" or "Negroid".

Third, "African" is not listed as a race in the federal Office of Management
and Budget policy documents (1977, 1997).

For the sake of argument, let's say that the terminology is peculiar to
Hawaii and Obama filed a Late Certificate of Birth or perhaps his documents
were updated in recent years.

In that case, the publicly available COLB must reflect what is written on
the source birth documents, even updated ones.

In Appendix B 
"Hawaii Model - Standard for Clustering Race/Ethnicity Categories" contained
in an article published in 2003 by employees of the Hawaii Department of
Health, the word "African" appears as an "Aggregated Ethnic Group" under the
race category "Black (non-Hispanic)". That differs from the categories in
Appendix A, which apparently represented an earlier version and did not
contain the word "African". 

Unless I am mistaken, that information might suggest that Barack Obama's
birth data were updated around 2003 or thereafter.

I don't know. Just asking. Perhaps someone can enlighten me. 

 



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[osint] Obama's ineligibility: Congress is both guilty and gutless

[Beowulf]

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/35841

 


Why does Congress feign ignorance, continue a conspiracy of silence and
display blatant cowardice in regard to this issue?


Obama's ineligibility: Congress is both guilty and gutless


 
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 - Lawrence Sellin  Monday, April 25, 2011 

imageTo the US Congress - Is there not even one among you, who will stand by
your oath of office and state unequivocally that Barack Hussein Obama is not
a natural born citizen and is, therefore, ineligible for the office of
President of the United States?

It serves no purpose here for me to present arguments supporting a case
against Obama's eligibility or recite the background and intent of the
natural born clause of the Constitution. That information is already
available, for example, in the brilliant and exhaustive documentation
provided by Stephen Tonchen
  from whom I liberally
pilfer. 



Why does Congress feign ignorance, continue a conspiracy of silence and
display blatant cowardice in regard to this issue? Is it that members of
Congress are too politically correct, too complicit in a cover-up and are
just stalling in the desperate hope that Obama is not re-elected?

What happens then, if through some tragic mistake of history, Obama is
re-elected? Congress could find themselves, not only in dereliction of their
duty, but potentially contributing to the destruction of our republic.

Edwin Vieira, a leading Constitutional scholar, warns that Obama
 'squestionable
eligibility, if left unresolved, could become precedent and justification
for both continuing the erosion of the Constitution and abolishing the
rights it provides to all Americans:

"If Obama turns out to be nothing more than an usurper who has fraudulently
seized control of the Presidency, not only will the Constitution have been
egregiously flouted, but also this whole country could be, likely will be,
destroyed as a consequence. And if this country is even credibly threatened
with destruction, every American will be harmed-irretrievably, should the
threat become actuality-including those who voted or intend to vote for
Obama, who are also part of We the People. Therefore, in this situation, any
and every American must have "standing" to demand-and must demand, both in
judicial fora and in the fora of public opinion that Obama immediately and
conclusively prove himself eligible for "the Office of President."

Not anything about Obama's ineligibility is either a surprise or an
accident.

As it turned out, Senator John McCain was the perfect Republican opponent
for Obama. Although the argument is now moot, McCain also had questionable
eligibility under the natural born citizen clause of the Constitution.

The controversy surrounding McCain's eligibility was perfectly exploited by
Obama's allies in the main stream media and by liberal legal scholars both
of whom feigned sincerity in their quest to interpret correctly the text and
the intent of the Constitution.

The charade continued on the floor of the Senate, where Republicans and
Democrats colluded by passing the non-binding and phony Senate Resolution
511 declaring John McCain a natural born citizen and, thereby, providing
Obama the smokescreen he needed to circumvent the Constitution.

So when SR 511 was passed in a non-recorded vote on April 30, 2008, the fix
was in and Congress lowered an iron curtain of silence about Obama's
ineligibility, which has continued to this day.

Every U.S. president who was born after 1787, except Barack Obama and
Chester A. Arthur, was born in the United States, of parents who were both
U.S. citizens at the time of the candidate's birth i.e. a natural born
citizen.

It seems that Obama is using the same playbook that Chester Arthur

did. 

In 1880, Chester Arthur was elected Vice President, but voters seemed
unaware that, when he was born, his father had not yet become a naturalized
U.S. citizen and, therefore, Chester Arthur was not eligible to be Vice
President. Arthur assumed the Presidency on September 19, 1881 after the
assassination of President James Ga

[osint] al-Qaeda Leader Killed in Afghanistan

[Beowulf]

http://www.examiner.com/public-safety-in-national/al-qaeda-s-2-targeted-lead
er-killed-afghanistan

 


Al-Qaeda's #2 targeted leader killed in Afghanistan


. April 26th, 2011 5:35 pm ET 

 


Jim Kouri   


 U.S. military source confirmed to the Public Safety Examiner today that an
April 13, 2011 U.S air strike in Kunar province killed the Number Two
targeted al-Qaeda leader in Afghanistan.

Abu Hafs al-Najdi, also known as Abdul Ghani, a top al-Qaeda leader, was a
Saudi Arabian national who operated primarily from Kunar and frequently
traveled between Afghanistan and Pakistan, the military source confirmed.

Abdul Ghani directed al-Qaeda operations in Kunar, including recruiting,
training and employing fighters, obtaining weapons and equipment, organizing
finances and planning attacks against Afghan and coalition forces, officials
previously reported..

Numerous other insurgents, including Waqas, another al-Qaeda commander, also
were killed in the deadly air strike.

Abdul Ghani was responsible for the coordination of numerous high-profile
attacks. On the morning of his death, officials said, he reportedly directed
a suicide attack that killed a tribal elder and nine other Afghan civilians.

Throughout late 2010 and early this year, Abdul Ghani employed his network
of insurgents against security force outposts throughout the province,
including a December attack on a coalition forward operating base and two
February attacks against an Afghan security force outpost.

He commonly instructed subordinate leaders to kidnap foreigners traveling
between Asmar and Asadabad, and he was responsible for directing
suicide-bomb attacks targeting U.S. government officials, international
officials said, regularly circulating throughout Kunar, establishing
insurgent camps and training sites, and teaching insurgents how to build and
use improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

He was also a key financial conduit between Pakistan-based leaders and
insurgent operatives in Afghanistan, streamlining control of assets and
providing funding to insurgent fighters for weapons, explosives and
equipment. 

Abdul Ghani had been the focus of coalition force efforts since at least
2007, and was meeting with Waqas at the time of his death, officials said,
noting that the two insurgents frequently worked together in coordinating
attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

 



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[osint] Confederate Memorial Day

[Beowulf]

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/35848

 


April 26th


Confederate Memorial Day


 
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 - Calvin E. Johnson Jr.  Monday, April 25, 2011 

imageKennesaw, Ga-The original Constitution of the Confederate States of
America will be on display tomorrow Tuesday, April 26, 2011, Confederate
Memorial Day, in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library {on the 3rd
floor of the Main Library} at the University of Georgia, in Athens. See
details  

Ideal Memorial Day for Atlanta Confederates. Thin lines of Gray-Clad
soldiers of the sixties were met with enthusiastic applause all along the
route of the parade.-April 27, 1909, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 



The State of Georgia has officially recognized April 26th as Confederate
Memorial Day since 1874..And proclamations have been signed by governors,
commemorating this honored day. Read more at: Confederateheritagemonth.com

The 150th Anniversary "Sesquicentennial" of the War Between the States
"1861-1865" is now underway through 2015 and the Confederate History and
Heritage Month Committee encourages everyone to make it a family affair and
learn more about this important time in our nation's past. See Georgia
Division SCV Sesquicentennial Committee website  . 

Confederate Memorial Month commemorates the men and women of the Confederate
States of America who came from all races and religions that include:
Irish-born General Patrick R. Cleburne, Black Confederate drummer Bill Yopp,
Mexican born Colonel Santos Benavides, Cherokee Born General Stand Watie,
Jewish born Confederate Nurse Phoebe Pember and Cuban born Colonel Ambrosio
Jose Gonzales.

Mrs. Charles J. Williams of Columbus, Georgia who was among those
responsible for getting Confederate Memorial Day recognized as a legal
holiday in Georgia by act of the Georgia legislature in 1874. For over 100
year's members of the Ladies Memorial Association, United Daughters of the
Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans have held annual Confederate
Memorial day events on or near April 26th. 

  _  

 



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[osint] WikiLeaks: The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection Confirmed, Again

[Beowulf]

As I said.

 

B

 

 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/wikileaks-iraq-al-qaeda-connection-confi
rmed-again_558271.html

 

WikiLeaks: The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection Confirmed, Again

6:31 AM, Apr 26, 2011 . By THOMAS JOSCELYN
 

 
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A former Guantanamo detainee "was identified as an Iraqi intelligence
officer who relocated to Afghanistan (AF) in 1998 where he served as a
senior Taliban Intelligence Directorate officer in Mazar-E-Sharif,"
according to a recently leaked assessment written by American intelligence
analysts. The former detainee, an Iraqi named Jawad Jabber Sadkhan,
"admittedly forged official documents and reportedly provided liaison
between the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq."

WikiLeaks: The Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection Confirmed, Again

Sadkhan's al Qaeda ties reached all the way to Osama bin Laden, according to
the intelligence assessment. He reportedly received money from Osama bin
Laden both before and after the September 11 attacks. 

Identification by senior al Qaeda member

In Afghanistan, Sadkhan served under another Iraqi al Qaeda member: Abdul
Hadi al Iraqi. According to the Gitmo analysts' assessment, al Iraqi
"identified [Sadkhan] in a letter as an Iraqi intelligence officer who
relocated to Afghanistan where he was associated with Taliban and al-Qaida
leadership."

Abdul Hadi al Iraqi's identification of Sadkhan is especially important. Al
Iraqi was a major in Saddam Hussein's military before relocating to
Afghanistan, where he became one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in the
1990s. Al Iraqi led al Qaeda's elite Arab 055 Brigade, which fought
alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. 

In addition to being a top al Qaeda and Taliban military commander, al Iraqi
was also involved in al Qaeda's international operations. For example, al
Iraqi met with two of the July 7, 2005 London bombers in northern Pakistan.
Although the two had volunteered to fight against coalition forces in
Afghanistan or Iraq, al Iraqi recognized their potential for committing
attacks in the West and repurposed them for the 7/7 operation.

Thus, Sadkhan's relationship with al Iraqi deserves closer scrutiny.

Abdul Hadi al Iraqi's identification of Sadkhan came in a letter that al
Iraqi wrote in November 1998. The letter was addressed to another senior al
Qaeda leader, Saif al Adel, who sits on al Qaeda's military committee. In
the letter, al Iraqi identified Sadkhan by one of his aliases, Mullah
Abdullah, and said that Sadkhan was "a former Iraqi intelligence officer or
warrant officer" who was employed as an interrogator by the Taliban's
intelligence directorate. 

The letter indicates that both al Iraqi and Saif al Adel "were personally
acquainted with" Sadkhan and that Sadkhan "was part of a group of Iraqis
that were involved in un-Islamic activities." 

The leaked intelligence assessment does not identify what "un-Islamic
activities" Sadkhan was involved in, but it may have included his ruthless
efforts to recruit fighters for the Taliban's cause. 

Sadkhan "coerced immigrants into service upon threat of imprisonment and
torture," according to the U.S. government's reporting, and also "employed a
team of interrogators who beat and tortured Shiite and Uzbeki prisoners."
According to some reports, Sadkhan's fighting group also indiscriminately
killed Afghan women and children. American analysts concluded that Sadkhan
was involved in the Taliban's narcotics trade, as well. 

Whatever Sadkhan's "un-Islamic activities" were, it did not stop al Qaeda's
senior members from working with him. Abdul Hadi al Iraqi's driver
identified Sadkhan as one of his boss's "close associates." 

In addition, an unnamed "senior Afghan military officer" identified Sadkhan
as one of "several commanders

[osint] How The West is Being Turned Into A Version of the Middle East

[Beowulf]

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2011042613375/editorial/us-opinion-and-editoria
l/how-the-west-is-being-turned-into-a-version-of-the-middle-east.html

 

How The West is Being Turned Into A Version of the Middle East 

Tuesday, 26 April 2011 14:27 Christopher Logan 

 
 E-mail
 Print

I have long thought that we are experiencing what might be called the Middle
Easternization of the West but never fully understood it until a friend
asked me a question.

Why is it, he asked, that when moderates in the Arab world are attacked they
always react defensively and apologetically, trying to prove that they also
hold safely radical views?

The key, I realized, was the existence of basic principles that were beyond
question and could be manipulated to ensure conformity. There are four main
commandments of this type, along with several secondary ones. They can be
expressed in the following terms:

Thou shalt hate Israel with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all
they might.   

Thou shalt have no other ideological deities before the promotion and
protection of Islam.

Remember the importance of Arabism and keep it holy.

Thou shalt not speak well of the West or of its works.

To prove my point, if I had written the previous four lines in Arabic as a
citizen of an Arab country I would be risking my life or more likely my
career. There are individuals who have done so but their number is limited.
They have almost all been either Western-educated or spent many years living
in the West. And they often end up having to flee there. Individual rebels
who disregard the consequences--I can give you a list if you like--they may
be brave but this is not the stuff of which whole movements are made. 

The existence of these imperatives limit debate, not only because someone
crosses the acceptable line but far more often because they can be accused
of doing so. People lie, people misunderstand, people want to win arguments,
and to win or hold onto power. 

That's why the authors of the American Constitution forbade limits on
freedom of speech: because once you start creating off-limit areas the worst
thing that happens is the empowerment of people who have a self-interest in
setting and misusing these limits. They can administer these no-go zones by
declaring anything they don't like to be a hate crime.

Before explaining how this has been transferred to the West, let me give a
random example of how this works in the Middle East.

A few year ago a group of courageous Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals
produced a manifesto calling for Lebanon to be a truly sovereign country
rather than a satellite of Syria. How did the Syrian regime and its stooges
in Lebanon respond? By accusing them of being Zionist lackeys. 

You see, there was no way out of the trap. The authors of the manifesto had
left out the Israel issue. First, that wasn't their subject. But also it was
a no-win situation. If they had gotten into the issue they would have had to
say that, of course, Israel was the main enemy of Lebanon and of the Arabs.
Therefore, since Syria and Hizballah were fighting Israel they had every
right to use Lebanon as a base for the battle. To interfere with those
resisting Zionism and American imperialism was equal to siding with the
enemy.

In short, they had no right to complain about Syrian domination in the first
place. Now imagine that this is extended to every single issue in public
life. 

Women's rights? Do you want to copy the Western enemy? What if this
contradicts Islam?

Peace with Israel? You can imagine. And so on. The response to any statement
or event is entirely predictable. I can tell you the text of the speeches
and newspaper articles in advance. This system becomes a straitjacket.

Incidentally, the transition to electoral politics may well intensify this
problem, since now instead of just the regimes and Islamists slinging mud at
each other, there will be multiple parties competing to use these issues for
their benefit against rivals. In the 1940s and 1950s, the radical
nationalists and Islamists used this to destroy moderate parties in Egypt,,
Syria, Iraq, and among the Palestinians. Already we see this system of
competitive demagoguery being revived in Egypt.

An Arab proverb that applies here is that no voice can be allowed to rise
above the din of battle. If the absolute evils of Zionism, imperialism, and
the infidel West are fighting it out with the absolute goods of Arabism and
Islam, how can there be any real open debate permitted?

Of course, the left has always had its slogans of class warfare. But that's
precisely the problem. One can shout about the downtrodden workers and the
greedy capitalists. Many people, however, don't accept this

[osint] US Charges 4 Pakistani Terrorists for Mumbai Attacks

[Beowulf]

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/us-charges-4-pakistani-terrorists-in-26-11
-mumbai-attack-101498

 


'Major Iqbal' among four charged in 26/11 Mumbai attacks


Indo-Asian News Service
 , Updated: April 26,
2011 18:35 IST 

 

Chicago:  US federal prosecutors have added four top Pakistani terrorists
linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) outfit as accused for helping
Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Rana to plot the November 2008 Mumbai terror
attack.

The four identified as Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa, Mazhar Iqbal and "Major Iqbal"
were charged on Monday in US district court in Chicago, though none of them
is in US custody.

All four are charged with one count of conspiracy to murder and maim in
India, while Mir, Abu Qahafa and Mazhar Iqbal have been additionally charged
with conspiracy to bomb public places in India.

They also face six counts of aiding and abetting the murder of US citizens
in India, which carry maximum sentences of death or life imprisonment. 


The revised indictment comes three weeks before the scheduled May 16 trial
of Rana, a Canadian citizen who is accused of using his First World
Immigration Services business to provide cover to Pakistani-American David
Coleman Headley, to scout targets for the Mumbai attack.

Headley, the son of an American mother and Pakistani father, pleaded guilty
in March 2010 to 12 criminal counts, including aiding and abetting the
murder of Americans in Mumbai, and agreed to cooperate with the prosecution
in a plea deal to escape the death penalty.

Mir, also known as "Wasi", aka "Ibrahim" and "Sajid Majeed", who reportedly
joined the Pakistan based terror outfit LeT at age 16, allegedly worked as
Headley's handler for two years.

Ten terrorists sneaked into Mumbai Nov 26, 2008, and went on a three-day
killing spree, leaving 166 people dead. One of the terrorists, Ajmal Amir
Kasab, was caught alive and arrested. The terror strike strained
India-Pakistan relations. 

The new indictment says that "during the course of attacks in Mumbai, the
attackers were in telephonic contact with defendants Sajid Mir, Abu Qahafa
and Mazhar Iqbal, all of whom were then located in Pakistan".

"More specifically, during the course of the attacks, the attackers were
advised to, among other actions, kill hostages, set fires and throw
grenades," the indictment said.

"Sajid Mir also sought to arrange the release of a hostage in exchange for
the release of a captured attacker."

The US prosecutors also accused Mir of working with Headley to plan a
terrorist attack on a Danish newspaper, which in 2005 published cartoons on
Prophet Mohammed.

There is also a warrant for Mir's arrest in India. During the Mumbai attack,
Indian police intercepted phone calls between Mir and his terror teams in
Mumbai.

Terrorist group Harkat ul Jihad al Islami leader Ilyas Kashmiri and retired
Pakistani military man Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed also were charged in a
previous indictment but their whereabouts are unknown.

Rana faces life imprisonment if convicted on the charges he provided
material support to the Mumbai attackers.



Read more at:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/us-charges-4-pakistani-terrorists-in-26-11
-mumbai-attack-101498?cp



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[osint] Terrorist Was British Agent

[Beowulf]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5j6VT2os03iU-sZfXBRu2g
uXECOyg?docId=N021303770328112A

 

Terror suspect 'was British agent'

(UKPA) - 13 hours ago

An al Qaida operative accused of bombing Christian churches and a luxury
hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was working for British intelligence at the same
time, according to leaked files.

The claim about Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili is made in secret reports
on detainees at the US military's Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

The Algerian citizen, captured in Pakistan in 2003, was described by
interrogators as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al
Qaida".

But the Americans also believed he had "withheld important information from
the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence
Service ... and (was) a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and
Pakistan".

The files, handed to the Guardian and Daily Telegraph by whistleblowing
website WikiLeaks, also indicate that at least 35 terrorists incarcerated at
Guantanamo Bay went to fight against the West after being radicalised by
extremist preachers in the UK.

Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza are identified in the documents as key recruiters
responsible for sending dozens of extremists from throughout the world to
Pakistan and Afghanistan via London mosques.

Meanwhile, The Guardian claims the leaked documents also reveal that a
Guantanamo Bay detainee was freed after informing on 123 other prisoners.

The report said that the Yemeni man captured in Pakistan in December 2001
gave detailed information about al-Qaida activity and identified other
detainees as militants.

However, the documents say some of his claims could not be verified.

The Pentagon has condemned the publication of the documents.

 



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[osint] At Least 35 Gitmo Terrorists Were Radicalized in London

[Beowulf]

http://www.favstocks.com/wikileaks-documents-at-least-35-gitmo-islamists-wer
e-radicalized-in-london/2549586/

 


Wikileaks Documents: At Least 35 Gitmo Islamists Were Radicalized in London


By Right Network   on 04/25/2011 – 6:05 pm PDT --
Headlines  

ShareThisNew 0 0Reddit0Email0 

The UK was paying Osama Bin Laden’s ambassador to Europe over £50,000 in
annual welfare benefits while he was radicalizing youths against the West.

  Abu Qatada was wanted on
terrorism charges in Algeria, the United States, Belgium, Spain, France,
Germany, Italy, and his native Jordan.
But, in   Great Britain, life was good for the
Al-Qaeda leader.
 

http://www.favstocks.com/wp-content/uploads/cache/2011/04/00c40-qatada.jpg
Abu Qatada was paid £8,000 a year  
Abu Qatada for his bad back. (
 Daily Mail)

Today it was reported that Gitmo terrorists were radicalized in Great
Britain before plotting attacks against the West.
The Telegraph

reported:

At least 35 terrorists incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay were sent to fight
against the West after being indoctrinated by extremist preachers in
Britain, secret files obtained by The Daily Telegraph disclose. 

Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, two preachers who lived off state benefits after
claiming asylum, are identified by the American authorities as the key
recruiters responsible for sending dozens of extremists from throughout the
world to Pakistan and Afghanistan via London mosques.

The leaked documents, written by senior US military commanders at Guantánamo
Bay, illustrate how, for two decades, Britain effectively became a crucible
of terrorism, with dozens of extremists, home-grown and from abroad,
radicalised here.

Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, is described as a “haven” for
extremists. United States   intelligence
officials concluded the mosque served as “an attack planning and propaganda
production base”.

The files will raise questions over why the Government and
 security services failed to take action sooner
to tackle the capital’s reputation as a staging post for terrorism, which
became so established that the city was termed “Londonistan”. 

 



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[osint] Ron Paul Blames America For Islamic Jihad.

[Beowulf]

http://weaselzippers.us/2011/04/25/video-ron-paul-blames-america-for-islamic
-jihad/

 

Video: Ron Paul Blames America For Islamic Jihad.

Last time I checked there was no such thing as the United States in the
seventh century, when a warlord named Mohammed invented Islam and used it
unite Arab armies and go on a conquering spree. It's sad because Paul gets a
lot of domestic-spending issues right.

Note: The man he's praising Michael Scheuer blames America's relationship
with Israel for our war with al-Qaeda.

 



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[osint] An Education In Jihad

[Beowulf]

http://propagandistmag.com/2011/04/26/education-jihad

 


An Education In Jihad


Posted by Jonathon Narvey

At Jihadi High School
 , your
teachers praise the glories of jihad and recall Afghanistan's long history
of resistance to foreign occupiers. 

"I send my kid to get an Islamic education, and Hekmatyar gives me someone
who wants to be a jihadi or a suicide bomber," one puzzled parent reports.  

The school he is referring to in the Shamshatoo refugee camp in Afghanistan
is pumping out recruits for jihad. The students learn nothing about reading,
writing and arithmetic and everything there is to know about the best way to
murder an Infidel (whether that means NATO troops, Afghan security forces or
just plain old uppity Afghan heathens who don't follow Taliban standards of
piousness). 

The camp and the school is wholly owned by the warlord fiefdom of Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar -- otherwise known as the "Butcher of Kabul", and not because he
has a talent for serving up fine roast beef. He is perhaps the most
successful -- well, brutal -- brigand in Afghanistan, with ties to
Pakistan's nefarious ISI, known for attacking aid convoys, coalition forces
and his fellow muhajeddin with equal ferocity, whenever it suits him.

Another suffering parent has watched his child transform into yet another
zombie for jihad. The Taliban's recruiting of children as cannon fodder in
the war against the Afghan state is reprehensible.

These kinds of schools, widespread through Afghanistan, Pakistan and
elsewhere, take advantage of two endemic circumstances: hard-scrabble
poverty and a perception that an "Islamic education" may be better than what
students receive in ordinary schools, and certainly better than no education
at all.

As we've seen over these last decades, parents get what they pay for.

A best case scenario is a graduate with a deep understanding of the Koran
who is completely unqualified for just about any professional job that might
pay a living wage. This makes him a candidate for begging for change on the
corner or perhaps joining up with the Taliban. In the worst case scenario,
the student goes off to fight coalition troops long before he even graduates
and spends his last seconds on the wrong end of an M-16.

We've often heard that education is the key to turning Afghanistan around.
It is. But half a world away, we've been hearing about these madrassas
turning out terrorists, thugs and bums for decades. Surely, parents who live
just around the block from these "institutions" can figure out what's in
store before their kids are made into monsters. They can't all be dupes.
They know what happens.

Yes, the Taliban are evil for setting up these schools as jihadist
recruiting centres. And of course, the Afghan government is at fault for
allowing this parallel system to exist, ceding sovereignty to maniacs. But
at what point can we call the parents to account and say "you enrolled your
kid in a school that churns out jihadi cannon fodder every single month.
This insanity has been happening since before the Taliban were in charge in
Kabul. What did you think was going to happen?"

The father mentioned earlier was himself a teacher. He had to know this
much: you don't become an engineer without learning math. You don't become a
professor without reading literature (other than the Koran). And if you want
to have a future in this world, you don't spend the majority of your time
learning about the best way to die to get into Paradise.

Can Afghanistan be saved? The question is very much tied to whether parents
will continue to willingly send their children to get an education in jihad

 



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