Posted on 06/19/2007 4:43:36 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
WHITESBORO — The Rev. Mike Ballman has two full-time jobs — working as a pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in New York Mills and caring for his chronically ill son, Noah.
Noah, 7, was born with a rare metabolic disorder and requires constant monitoring.
Mike Ballman and his wife, Pam, have to stay up all night with Noah when he’s ill or when they’re short on nursing staff. They rarely get to spend time together, since they care for Noah in shifts.
Amid the chaos of his son’s illness, Mike Ballman’s church is moving to Oneida Square in Utica.
Noah’s disorder complicates the Ballmans’ relationship with God, they said. The church congregation is their built-in support group.
“We always say, it takes a community to raise Noah,” Mike Ballman said.
Ballman shares his duties with a co-pastor, Leon Hayduchok, so his hours are flexible. The congregation understands when Noah’s hospitalizations whisk the Ballmans, who live in Whitesboro, out of town for weeks at a time.
Church members often stop by with homemade meals. Some offer to clean the house or mow the lawn, and others come over just to keep the Ballmans company, the couple said.
A severe condition
Doctors say they know of no other child with Noah’s exact condition, which leaves him unable to stand, walk or talk, the Ballmans said. Noah also has developmental delays.
Noah has chronic problems with nausea and vomiting. He goes through unpredictable phases of feeling well and getting sick.
When he’s feeling well, he can stay sitting up on his own. He smiles easily, looks at books and watches television. He gets occupational therapy and physical therapy, his parents said. His favorite activity is aqua therapy, where he gets to splash around in the water.
Noah is social. Sometimes, his expression changes as he takes you in. His eyes, bright blue, are wide and alert.
In these moments, Pam Ballman imagines what Noah would say if he could talk.
“I wish I could hear your thoughts once,” she told her pajama-clad son Tuesday afternoon as he curled up in her lap on the living room floor.
From October 2006 until April of this year, Noah experienced relative good health. The Ballmans call the breakthrough the “happy months.”
But then the medications stopped working.
Even though Noah is seeing the best doctors in the country for his disorder, the details of his condition remain a mystery even for expert physicians.
He has no prognosis. He’s had many surgeries. Last summer he was in the hospital for two months straight: a month in Syracuse, a month in Boston.
When the medications abruptly stopped working this past spring, doctors could not explain why, the Ballmans said.
Bouts of vomiting can last seven days or more. Noah can stay awake for days in a row without sleeping when he’s feeling ill, and he has no verbal way of expressing his pain.
Another ongoing challenge is keeping a full nursing staff, the Ballmans said. Noah can get 20 hours of private nursing care per day, but it’s difficult to find qualified nurses with Medicaid provider numbers, the Ballmans said.
And when Noah needs extended hospitalization, it can be impossible for the Ballmans to retain nurses while they’re out of town.
Maintaining faith
Mike Ballman said he often questions why God would allow such a small boy to suffer as much as Noah does.
Noah first was diagnosed as an infant in 2000. Ballman was walking through a hallway in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore when he realized just how many other families were suffering.
So many children on Noah’s floor were battling serious illnesses, Ballman said.
“It’s not just about us,” Ballman said.
Pam and Mike Ballman said they hope their family’s ordeal makes them more compassionate to the troubles of others.
“It’s learning how to be transparent about our own struggle as a way to lead people,” Mike Ballman said. “We’re sharing our struggles, rather than pretending everything’s great.”
Outreach and support
Grace Wu, a member of Cornerstone Community Church, visits her friend Pam Ballman whenever she can.
The congregation as a whole has come together to provide the Ballmans with financial and emotional support, said Wu and her husband, Steve.
Grace Wu said she hopes her company makes her friend feel less isolated and alone.
Pam Ballman does part-time administrative work for a local doctor’s office and stays home with Noah the rest of the time. She often works from home.
Sometimes, Grace Wu and Pam Ballman just sit with Noah and talk, Wu said.
“Wherever he goes, I think people notice him,” Grace Wu said of Noah. “He often has a smile on his face...He’s just such a trooper. He really brings people together.”
Co-pastor Leon Hayduchok said he and Mike Ballman are very close. Hayduchok sometimes helps the Ballmans with projects around the house. He tries to serve as Mike Ballman’s sounding board whenever possible.
“What’s really amazing is how resilient Mike and Pam are,” Hayduchok said. “With how much direct care Noah needs, I often don’t understand how they survive day to day — their energy level, their ability to give.”
And for Hayduchok, Mike Ballman is more than a colleague.
“Mike’s been the best friend that I’ve ever had,” Hayduchok said. “He’s very able to listen and be there for other people ... I have never heard him say to anybody, ‘You think you’ve got it bad?’”
By Stephanie Veale
Observer-Dispatch
sveale@utica.gannett.com
http://www.uticaod.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070822/NEWS/708220338
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=mystery+illness&yhdr_submit_button=Web+Search&fr=ush1-mail
This one pulls the illnesses and so much more, talk about odd news:
http://www.wbtv.com/news/topstories/9352106.html
Fire at American Freight Services in North Charlotte
A large metal shed caught fire at American Freight Services on Johnson Road, just off of North Graham Street.
The building was fully engulfed by the time firefighters arrived on scene.
No one was hurt.
Story Created: Aug 24, 2007 at 6:45 AM EDT
http://www.wbtv.com/news/topstories/9355491.html
Shootout at Gas Station in Indian Trial
The Union County Sherif’s Office is investigating a possible gang-related shooting at a gas station Friday morning.
Two Hispanic men were at the BP gas station on Highway 74 and Wesley Chapel Stouts when a dispute broke out between a group of people.
Deputies said shots were fired, luckily no one was injured.
The two men were arrested a short time later on Sardis Church Road near the Crooked Creek Public Works facility.
Story Created: Aug 24, 2007 at 11:57 AM EDT
Story Updated: Aug 24, 2007 at 12:28 PM EDT
Thanks to Milford421 for this report:
[This one you should read....granny]
Posted: Thursday, 23 August 2007 7:39PM
Yale Student Faces Additional Weapons Charges
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A Yale University student was charged with
attempting to make a bomb and possessing armor-piercing ammunition
Thursday, a month after he allegedly shot blanks from a
semiautomatic pistol into the ceiling at his fraternity.
David Light, 21, was arraigned on numerous new charges, including
criminal attempt to commit the manufacture of bombs, 12 counts of
reckless endangerment, eight counts of second-degree breach of
peace, 23 counts of possession of armor-piercing ammunition, and
manufacture or storage of explosive material near the property of
another.
An arrest warrant affidavit filed in New Haven Superior Court
portrays Light as a college student fascinated with chemicals and
throwing them in lakes and the ocean to create explosions, but does
not accuse him of plotting to intentionally harm anyone.
Continued.............................
http://www.1010wins.com/pages/851525.php?contentType=4&contentId=834702
Thanks to Milford421 for this report:
Huge fire, explosions rip plant - Canada
Huge fire, explosions rip plant
Port Alberni and Cherry Creek firefighters spend two hours to get
the blaze under control
Julia Caranci, Alberni Valley Times
Published: Thursday, August 23, 2007
A spectacular fire, complete with explosions that rocked local
homes, ripped through the former Nation’s Seafood building on the
corner of Josephine Street and River Road early Wednesday morning.
Area resident Asker Naesgaard had already gone to bed that night
when he was awakened by a noise he mistakenly took for pelting rain.
“I heard a crackling sound,” he said. “It sounded like raindrops but
I knew it wasn’t supposed to rain. Then I heard the sirens.”
Email to a friend
Printer friendly
Font: ****Worried about his pump house nearby, Naesgaard got out of
bed, got dressed and walked outside.
He was shocked to see the fish plant ablaze.
“The whole roof was completely in flames,” he said, adding he also
heard explosions rip through the building.
Port Alberni Fire Department Capt. Duncan McVie told the Times the
fire was reported at about 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning by residents
who saw the flames shooting up through the roof. Fire crews from the
Port Alberni Fire Department and Cherry Creek Volunteer Fire
Department arrived on scene quickly. The building was fully engulfed
in flames by that time, McVie said.
No one was inside the building at the time of the blaze and
firefighters fought the conflagration from outside. This ended up
being a fortunate choice, as several “pretty significant explosions”
occurred inside, rocking homes in the neighbourhood.
It is believed an expanding liquid explosion was caused by the
rupture of a 30-lb propane tank stored inside the building, McVie
explained.
Firefighters fought the massive blaze for two hours, bringing it
under control.
“We ended up staying all night because of the hot spots,” McVie said.
He added that it is a blessing the weather has been wet and cool
lately, because a tremendous amount of hot ash was created by the
blaze and fell over the surrounding area.
The forest around the building and nearby homes would have been at
great risk if the weather conditions had been hot and dry, say fire
officials.
Police and firefighters were still at the scene of the fire
Wednesday morning.
Officers took photographs of the building while firefighters mopped
up from the night’s effort.
According to an RCMP press release on the blaze, the cause of the
fire is unknown at this time and a full investigation is being
conducted.
RCMP staff sergeant Lee Omilusik told the Times the building was
vacant at the time of the blaze. The investigation is in its
preliminary stages and there is no indication yet as to what started
the fire.
The building is located on Hupacasath land but is owned by Ron
Hamilton, confirmed chief Judith Sayers.
Anyone with any information on the blaze is asked to contact the
local RCMP at 723-2424 or their local Crimestoppers.
Sudan throws out Canadian diplomat
Meagan Fitzpatrick
CanWest News Service
Friday, August 24, 2007
Sudan has expelled Canada’s top diplomat, acting charge d’affaires Nuala Lawlor, the Department of Foreign Affairs confirmed yesterday.
“We asked the Sudanese authority for more information on why she was expelled,” said departmental spokesman Rodney Moore. He declined to say whether Canada had heard back from Sudanese officials.
“I can add that she was really acting in the finest traditions of Canadian diplomacy, standing up for freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law in Sudan,” said Moore.
Sudan’s SUNA news agency reported that Lawlor and a European Commission diplomat were expelled for meddling in Sudan’s internal affairs.
continued.............
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=b5539ce2-6b1d-4e13-b297-d17c82263d76
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=e07d0df1-ddde-4474-b1e6-27f6640ca58e
Women, children taken in fierce Iraq al-Qaeda battle
Times Colonist
Published: Friday, August 24, 2007
BAGHDAD - Al-Qaeda fighters kidnapped 15 Iraqi women and children after attacking two villages north of Baghdad yesterday and killing a religious leader who had been trying to form an anti-terrorist tribal alliance, police said.
Police said 32 people had been killed in an hour-long battle between villagers and al-Qaeda. The attackers, who struck just after dawn, dragged the imam of the local mosque, Younis Abd Hameed, and three worshippers outside and executed them. — Reuters
© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=faba7f9e-09d3-4bab-b22a-3d85d243908a
Richmond fires blamed on arsonist
CanWest News Service
Published: Friday, August 24, 2007
VANCOUVER - An early-morning arsonist is believed responsible for more than 30 fires around Richmond that have caused $100,000 in damage since July, Richmond RCMP said yesterday.
Cpl. Nycki Basra said the majority of the fires have been “mischief” blazes started in garbage cans, grass or trees near Richmond schools and parks as well as some businesses. Some of the fires have spread to playground equipment and benches, causing extensive damage.
Police would not say what is being used to start the suspicious fires, which usually occur between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. It was not known whether the same person is responsible for all the fires, Basra said.
Two Spanish police wounded by suspected ETA bomb
Andrew Hay
Reuters
Friday, August 24, 2007
A police official examines bomb damage following an explosion in Durango, August 24, 2007. REUTERS/Vincent West
CREDIT:
A police official examines bomb damage following an explosion in Durango, August 24, 2007. REUTERS/Vincent West
Police officials examine bomb damage following an explosion in Durango, August 24, 2007.
CREDIT: REUTERS/Vincent West
Police officials examine bomb damage following an explosion in Durango, August 24, 2007.
MADRID (Reuters) - Two Spanish police were slightly wounded by a bomb in the Basque region early on Friday in what police called the first bombing by ETA separatist guerrillas since they ended a ceasefire in June.
The bomb, placed in a stolen van parked outside a police barracks in the central Basque Country town of Durango, caused considerable damage to the building. The two officers were hit by flying glass, a Civil Guard police spokesman said.
There was no prior warning of the attack nor any immediate claim of responsibility, but the police spokesman said: “We have little doubt it was (ETA).”
The explosion at about 3:30 a.m. (9:30 p.m. EDT) also damaged buildings adjacent to the barracks and shook locals in their beds, witnesses and media said.
“The damage was not only to the barracks, but to our houses as well, because they are completely destroyed — windows, glass, balconies, it’s all destroyed,” a local resident told state radio.
For weeks Spain’s Socialist government has warned of an imminent ETA attack after the arrests of members of the guerrilla group and the capture of explosives.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero attempted peace talks with ETA last year, despite fierce opposition criticism, but called them off after the rebels bombed Madrid Airport in December, killing two people.
Ending the talks seems to have largely defused the Basque struggle as a national political issue ahead of general elections due by next March, although analysts suspect the guerrillas might try a big attack before the vote.
In recent years, ETA attacks, including December’s bombing of Madrid airport, have usually been preceded by warning calls to avoid casualties.
The al Qaeda-inspired bombing of Madrid trains in 2004, which killed 192 people, made terror tactics so unpopular here that ETA was forced to tone down its violence, analysts believe.
COULD HAVE BEEN BLOODBATH
But Friday’s bomb contained 80-100 kg (175-220 lb) of explosives and was planted by an ETA squad containing more than one guerrilla, the head of Spain’s Civil Guard police force, Joan Mesquida, told reporters.
“This could have been a bloodbath,” Mesquida said.
The central government’s representative in the Basque Country, Paulino Luesma, said that the families and children of police also lived in the barracks.
“That makes the attack even more detestable,” he said.
ETA said on June 5 it was calling off a 15-month-old ceasefire, although it had already effectively broken it with the airport bombing.
A second vehicle, believed by police to have been used by the bombers to flee the attack in Durango, exploded in the town of Amorebieta about an hour later, the spokesman said.
ETA guerrillas have killed more than 800 people in a four-decade campaign for independence for Basque areas in northern Spain and southern France.
Opinion polls show most inhabitants of Spain’s Basque region, which already enjoys considerable autonomy, do not want full separation from Madrid.
(Additional reporting by Blanca Rodriguez)
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=d4daf610-f1df-49ff-b798-29470e5311bd&k=21900
Thanks to Milford421 for this update:
Radioactive” story equals fed charges - WI
Radioactive” story equals fed charges
By John Diedrich
Thursday, Aug 23 2007, 11:00 AM
Back in January, the Milwaukee Sheriff’s department reported that a
box of radioactive material bound for a hospital was missing.
Authorities were concerned because the material could cause burning
on the skin or poisoning if ingested.
The driver, Randall U. Kubsh, of Green Bay, told investigators
including the FBI and U.S. Department of Transportation that someone
must have broken into his truck and stolen the box. Besides
launching a criminal investigation, authorities began an exhaustive
search for the box between Milwaukee and Madison where Kubsh was
driving, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Mel Johnson, the
prosecutor in this case and most recently was on the team that won
convictions in the Frank Jude beating case.
Now Kubsh, 53, is charged with two counts of lying to federal
agents, which is against federal law. If convicted, he could face up
to 10 years in prison, but it’s unlikely he would ever get that much
time.
According to an indictment handed down this week, Kubsh lied about
the box being stolen “when, as the defendant well knew, the box was
missing because it had fallen out of his truck.”
The box appeared a few days later when a Waukesha man, who found it
near N. 46th and W. Lisbon Ave., turned it in, Johnson said. That
man, who works near N. 28th and W. North Ave., is not being charged,
he said.
Kubsh later told investigators he got lost on his way to Aurora
Sinai Medical Center because of construction, Johnson said. He knew
the box had fallen off near Lisbon but when he went back to look for
it, it was gone, he said.
Kubsh, who was driving for an Oregon company, could not be reached
for comment.
http://blogs.jsonline.com/proofandhearsay/archive/2007/08/23/quot-radioactive-quot-story-prompts-fed-charges.aspx
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2007/0709/holl/holliday_evil.html
In the current war of Islamic extremists against the West, communication superiority is a prerequisite for success, this essay argues, and the Islamists have seized the verbal high ground. However, the author believes, we currently have an exceptional opportunity to regain the rhetorical initiative and improve our performance in the global struggle for hearts and minds. —Ed .
Strategic Communication Changes: It’s Time to Call Evildoers Evil Strategic Communication Changes: It’s Time to Call Evildoers Evil
The apparent renunciation of terrorism by the person who provided the rationale for the global Muslim revivalist movement presents an opportunity for the United States to improve its performance in strategic communication.
In Foundations of Preparation for Jihad, Sayid Imam al-Sharif prescribed a Third Jihad for the Islamization of the world. Al-Sharif founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad; his supporters assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and he was with Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan fighting against the Soviet Union. He is a medical doctor and was an associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, another Egyptian doctor, who is now Osama Bin Laden’s deputy. Al-Sharif was captured after 9/11 and has been in an Egyptian jail since 2004.
There have been several reports that Al-Sharif will soon publish a book in which he states that the use of terror, and the killing of innocent nonbelievers, in the name of Jihad violate the Qur’an. On July 27, 2007, the Guardian (London) reported him as citing the injunction: “Fight in the cause of God those who fight you, but do not transgress the limits; for God loveth not transgressors. Qur’an 2:190” In other words, he now condemns the violence that has been an integral part of all three Jihads. This would mean a modification in how to achieve the Great Caliphate.
A caliphate, which combines religious and political authority, is the only form of governance approved by traditional Islamic theology. There have been caliphates in the Middle East since the seventh century. The Great Caliphate is a goal; it would replace all secular governments from Morocco to Indonesia with a single caliphate that would then be able to convert the rest of the world to Islam. This was Al-Sharif’s original vision that has had a major influence on the global Muslim revivalist movement—an effort to achieve Islamic conquest through violence known to its partisans as the Third Jihad.
It has been reported that Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden’s deputy in Al Qaeda, is very unhappy with Al-Shairf’s recantation since it might cause many others to question their basic ideas about the Third Jihad. Also it has been reported that hundreds of other former Islamic militants now imprisoned are prepared to join Al-Sharif in renouncing the use of violence to spread their beliefs and are ready to accept the free flow of religious ideas.
THE OPPORTUNITY
It is too early to know what impact Al-Shairf’s book will have. Yet it is not too early to consider how this renunciation of terror might be used to improve our strategic communication. Our enemies have called their cause Jihad (holy war), and their assassins “mujahiddin” (holy warriors), or Servants of Allah, or “martyrs.” All of these have positive emotional and religious connotations. And all too often, these are the words that the politically correct—and faint of heart—in Europe and America have also used. U.S. officials have refrained from using words with Islamic religious implications that might somehow offend Muslims in general as well as the politically correct in Europe and America. This usage is both inaccurate and dangerous. The leaders of the Third Jihad have exploited this weakness to their advantage.
Our leaders need to make changes in order to capitalize on al-Sharif’s new views, since they can potentially take away the protection of the Qur’an from those who use terror. By accurately stating that we are fighting against evildoers—not holy warriors, we can remove some of the communication advantage that the leaders of the Third Jihad have enjoyed. We must reach out and hold our people, our enemies, and people around the world.
THE THIRD JIHAD
Today the leaders of Islamic militants throughout the world, regardless of their organizational or sectarian affiliation, consider their violent efforts part of the Third Jihad. It is an aggressive revivalist movement that is accepted, respected and supported by peaceful and naïve Muslims. Of course, most of the terrorists that are the foot soldiers of the movement have no such historical perspective, although they share common beliefs. They are in numerous organizations of many sizes and with various tactical agenda. They are motivated by feelings of envy, frustration, greed, prejudice and hatred that are the result of manipulation by the leaders.
After Muhammad’s death in the seventh century, the First Jihad spread under the caliphs (vice regents) west from Medina across North Africa and then into Spain, France and Italy, and east across the Middle East deep into Southwest Asia. Then Islam consolidated its control of the lands conquered. The First Jihad ended in 1492 when Islam was driven out of Spain. The Second Jihad started with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The Ottoman Turks then implanted Islam in the Balkans and established hegemony over lands from North Africa to India. The Second Jihad was stopped in 1682 with the second unsuccessful attempt to capture Vienna; it was held in check during the Modern Era (eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) by European power, and ended in 1924. In 1979 the Third Jihad started with the Shah of Iran being overthrown by Shiite followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was given focus in February 1998 with a Sunni fatwa, which declared war on America and its allies. For its leaders, the Third Jihad is just another effort to spread Islam until everyone is governed by “the ways of the Prophet”—and to take down the Great Satan. For the foot soldiers, it is a way to express their feelings. In all three Jihads violence has been an accepted way to eliminate, or convert, non-believers (infidels).
The goal of the Third Jihad is to weaken all of those who oppose the establishment of a single caliphate from Morocco to Indonesia, and to remove the influence of Western Civilization from the Islamic world. This goal of cultural takeover was al-Sharif’s original message. However, many Muslims oppose the Third Jihad and its goal; indeed Muslims are its most numerous victims. Yet they will condemn only “terrorism” but not the goal of a Great Caliphate.
Many Americans and Europeans either do not understand or deny the threat of the Third Jihad, claiming that Islamic terror is caused by our actions in Islamic countries. They stress the differences between Shiites and Sunnis. They often speak of Islamophobia - a term invented to shut down legitimate and vital debate about the threat of the Third Jihad - and narrow their focus to the personal, inner, nonviolent Jihad al Akbar. They are weary, and want to enjoy the good life without effort or worry.
It is clear why our enemies would call their movement a holy war—Jihad. But this puts a positive spin on something that under international law is considered aggression, and for the past 300 years has often been called imperialism.
Therefore, we need to distinguish those who advocate Islamic conquest through violence, i.e. the Third Jihad, from those who merely use Islam for spiritual guidance to improve their personal behavior. Some Islamic scholars consider it impossible to make such a distinction since both a “defensive” Jihad (to regain territory that was once part of a caliphate) and an “offensive” Jihad (to conquer new territory) sanction warfare without limits. They can cite Muhammad himself on this. They point to the refusal of “moderate” Muslims to condemn, and work against, the global Muslim revivalist movement. However, the words Hirabah (unholy warfare) and hirabahists (evildoers who use terror and will incur Allah’s condemnation on Judgment Day) allow this distinction to be made.
It is necessary for most Muslims to be convinced that this distinction can be made in accordance with authentic Qur’anic Islam. The conversion of al-Sharif allows this distinction to be better communicated to all Muslims. The struggle over whether such a distinction can be made illustrates why communications is the center of gravity in irregular warfare—the oldest form of conflict among humans: insurgents using any means available to them to weaken those in authority. The current Muslim revivalist movement has simply changed the battlefield—the result of changes in transportation and communication. Formerly waged within a specific group or in the territory of a single state, we must now face worldwide irregular warfare. This conflict will be won or lost in this new battlefield.
THE USE OF WORDS
It is long overdue for U.S. officials to use Hirabah (unholy warfare) rather than Jihad (holy war) and use hirabahists rather than jihadists, terrorists, or Islamists. This usage will be understood by, and have meaning for, those who speaks Arabic. There is no way we can prevent our enemy from calling their movement the Third Jihad. But we can attempt to discredit aggressive, unholy warfare using terror being justified by the Qur’an. Also we should refer to Warfare against Hirabahists rather than War on Terror or GWOT (Global War on Terror). To date, our leaders and the foreign policy establishment have not been receptive to this usage. Let us hope that this will now change.
However, the changes needed are not primarily in semantics. They are primarily contextual: how the leaders and people of America and Europe view irregular warfare and what changes they are prepared to made to become more effective in this form of conflict.
We need to condemn in religious terms, rather than in Western secular terms, those whom many in the West called terrorists and those who give them aid and support. No longer should we adopt the language of those falsely claiming they are fighting a Jihad for Islam. Hirabahists is the correct term for those who bombed the transportation system in London on 7/7, those who did the same in Madrid on 11/11, those using car bombs in Iraq, those who killed over 3,000 Americans on 9/11, and like-minded killers around the world who are active participants in the Third Jihad or give aid and support to the hirabahists. If used effectively the apparent renunciation of terrorism by al-Sharif can facilitate such a change.
HOW TO USE AL-SHARIF’S NEW VIEWS
We must recognize that al-Sharif’s newly stated views do not reflect a total conversion, a renunciation of Islam. Yet they are significant and no doubt genuine. He surely remains a dedicated Muslim, opposes the introduction of Western Civilization into Islamic countries, and would like to have all Jews and Christians convert to Islam. His “conversion” is probably more a pragmatic change rather than a revelation. After all, his main concern is that hirabahists are killing fellow Muslims declared non-believers. He no doubt has noted that such killings are opposed by most Muslims, and thinks it a wise tactical move to focus on the removal of all non-believers from Muslim countries, rather than on the use of terror. Yet, in strategic communication we can make good use of this apparent renunciation of terrorism. He is undermining the theological basis of an integral part of all three Jihads: violence against non-believers by true believers.
We need to encourage all Islamic clerics to issue fatwas (religious edicts) that condemn anyone that uses terror against nonbelievers as an “apostate,” or “kafir” (infidel), to authentic Qur’anic Islam. In their condemnation, the Islamic clerics must state that:
1. Faithful and peaceful Muslims must never support the criminality of those who use terror against nonbelievers since it violates the teaching of authentic Islam.
2. The ongoing attacks on Europe and the United States are not an authentic Jihad (holy war), but a Hirabah (unholy warfare)—which in secular terms is called a “crime against humanity.”
Islamic clerics who will not issue such a fatwa, and “Islamic moderates” who will not state the same, would themselves be considered hirabahists.
Rather than using politically correct words, U.S. officials should be willing to use accurate words—that have meaning for our enemies—when talking about our enemies. There is an emotional, spiritual, religious component to this conflict. They should readily charge that the use of terror in the name of Islam is playing God “in the name of Allah.” Anyone who believes in Western Civilization should consider those who use terror as Servants of Satan, and refer to them as hirabahists engaged in crimes against humanity in violation of authentic Qur’anic Islam. We need to remember that Western Civilization was born in Christianity. Europe was called Christendom for centuries, and during these centuries there was conflict between the Crescent and the Cross. If Christianity is abandoned can the Third Jihad be defeated in today’s world?
The leaders of the Third Jihad will surely condemn al-Sharif. Such condemnation presents an opportunity for U.S. officials to capture the initiative and achieve success by making the distinction between hirabahists and devout Muslims who oppose violence. Apologists will claim that al-Sharif has been tortured into making these statements. But this must be refuted by proof that his change of heart is the result of reflection and debate among those who believe deeply in the authentic Qur’an.
Also we should benefit from knowledge of the process that produced al-Sharif’s apparent renunciation of terrorism—the Egyptian government’s “counter radicalization program.” Al-Sharif and other prisoners have been allowed to meet and discuss religious matters with Muslim clerics who oppose the use of terror in the name of Islam. This program has not converted them into pacifists, Christians, or Jews but into reasonable human beings who want to live without violence in a stable society with more than one set of beliefs.
CONCLUSION
Communication superiority is a prerequisite for success in irregular warfare, just as air superiority is a prerequisite for victory in conventional war. Although we do not know the depth of Al-Sharif’s “conversion,” his view that the Qur’an prohibits terror has given us the opportunity to improve our performance in strategic communication for the hearts and minds of our own people, of our enemies, and of people around the world. Let us hope that our leaders have the wisdom to seize this opportunity.
Copyright © 2007 Armiger Cromwell Center, 3750 Peachtree Road, NE, Suite 374, Atlanta, GA 30319-1322 armigercc@comcast.net Permission is granted to download this essay, or to forward it to friends or colleagues, on a fair use basis. For reprint permission contact Armiger Cromwell Center.
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August 28, 2007
American Diplomacy
Copyright © 2007 American Diplomacy Publishers Chapel Hill NC
www.americandiplomacy.org
Sam C. Holliday is a graduate of the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, a former director of Stability Studies at the Army War College, and a retired army colonel. He earned a master’s in public affairs from the University of Pittsburgh and a doctorate in international relations from the University of South Carolina.
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2006/0406/frus_200604.html
The Office of the Historian, U. S. Department of State, released the following notice on April 17, 2006, as part of its series of policy documents published continuously since 1861. For additional details, see the sources at the end of this notice. – Ed.
FRUS Volume released in electronic format: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, Volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969-July 1970
The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969-1976, volume VI, Vietnam, January 1969-July 1970, the first of five volumes to cover the end of the Vietnam War. The Presidential election of November 1968 had demonstrated just how divisive Vietnam had become in American society and politics. Vietnam was the new President’s first priority. The volume demonstrates that in the early months of 1969 there was no specific plan to end the war. Rather, the Nixon administration searched for ways to demonstrate to the leaders in Hanoi that there was a new “firm hand at the helm” prepared to both talk and fight. Nixon and his advisers hoped to convince Hanoi that it was dealing with an adversary that would negotiate only from a position of strength. This volume documents the search for the formula to convince Hanoi: the secret bombing of Cambodia, Vietnamization and U.S. troops withdrawals, integration of the secret war in Laos with the conflict in Vietnam, covert operations against North Vietnam, and most importantly the U.S. and South Vietnamese attack on the enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia.
The volume also covers the negotiations to end the war, with the initial negotiations focusing on the private talks in Paris between the heads of the delegations at formal, but sterile, peace talks. The Nixon administration also sought to engage the Soviet Union to moderate North Vietnamese behavior, but without much success. The secret negotiations between Henry Kissinger; Xuan Thuy, the head of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s delegation in Paris; and Politburo member Le Duc Tho are all covered in detail.In the autumn of 1969, Kissinger sent the President a bleak assessment of the present course in Vietnam. He suggested that the best military strategy was a sharp escalation designed to achieve an acceptable negotiated settlement. Kissinger already had his NSC staff brainstorming about such possibilities under the code name Duck Hook. The President instructed the military to plan for sharp, high intensity air and naval operations against the North to achieve maximum psychological and military impact. Nixon and Kissinger were keen to take some positive action to coincide with a major speech Nixon planned on Vietnam, but they were reduced to using a military alert exercise to try to send a signal to Hanoi.
The last part of the volume focuses on Cambodia, where in March 1970 General Lon Nol overthrew Norodom Sihanouk. The documentation suggests that U.S. officials did not have much foreknowledge of the coup, but nevertheless the Nixon administration was quick to support the new regime. The Nixon administration moved from shoring up Lon Nol to deciding that his regime was under such pressure from the North Vietnamese that a joint U.S.-South Vietnamese invasion of the Cambodian sanctuaries was required. The Cambodian operation caused a firestorm of protest in the United States and abroad. Such a reaction made Nixon adamant to prove that the operation had been a success and worth all the agony.
The volume ends in July 1970, with the President and his advisers reviewing the situation after U.S. troops left Cambodia. While this volume does not have any Nixon presidential tape recordings-they did not begin until February 1971-it does rely on transcripts of Kissinger telephone conversations and a broad range of documents from the Nixon Presidential Materials, the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Haldeman Diaries, and the Kissinger and Lodge papers.
The volume, the summary, and this press release are available at the Office of the Historian website at www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/frus/nixon/vi . Copies of this volume can also be purchased from the U.S. Government Printing Office at bookstore.gpo.gov (GPO stock number 044-000-02602-3; ISBN 0-16-075260-4). For further information contact Edward Keefer, General Editor of the Foreign Relations series, at (202) 663-1131; fax (202) 663-1289; e-mail to history@state.gov.
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VENONA
The Cold War’s “Smoking Gun”
By Rorin M. Platt
Did the Cold War actually begin during the Second World War? Was the Roosevelt administration riddled with Communists, fellow travelers, and Soviet agents? Were the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss Soviet spies or innocent victims of anti-Communist hysteria aimed at discrediting the New Deal? Was the American Communist party (CPUSA) a fifth column for Soviet intelligence? Was Communism a real threat to American security? Did Senator Joseph McCarthy fabricate a “Red Scare,” which produced the darkest chapter in America history?
Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars have been able to examine declassified documents from American and Communist archives, which have enabled us to answer these questions. The most closely guarded secret of the Cold War and most revealing of these sources, the Venona Project, was concealed within the bowels of the National Security Agency (NSA) until 1995. It is comprised of nearly three thousand decrypted telegraphic cables U.S.-based Soviet agents sent to Moscow during World War II.
In VENONA: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, the two preeminent authorities on American Communism, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, provide the first comprehensive examination of these files, which constitute one of U.S. counterintelligence’s greatest achievements. Haynes, Twentieth Century Political Historian at the Library of Congress, and Klehr, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History at Emory University (author of The Heyday of American Communism), are co-authors of other works in Yale University’s “Annals of Communism” series: The Soviet World of American Communism and The Secret World of American Communism. They also co-authored The American Communist Movement.
Benefiting from Venona as well as material from the archives of the Comintern and the Soviet and American Communist parties, this detailed, thorough description of Soviet espionage in America demonstrates how the Venona transcripts became the “touch-stone” of U.S. counterintelligence. Using the decrypts, the FBI and CIA were able to corroborate testimony from defectors like Elizabeth Bentley and Whittaker Chambers. Indeed, Venona decryptions identified most of the Soviet agents the FBI and MI-5 (British counterintelligence) arrested between 1948 and the mid-1950s. Venona confirmed the guilt of the atomic spies, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and Julius Rosenberg. Most importantly, the authors believe that Venona “provide(s) a solid factual basis for” “the widespread public consensus. . . that Soviet espionage was serious, that American Communists assisted the Soviets, and that several senior government officials had betrayed the United States.”
The Venona Project began in 1943, when code-breakers in the Signal Intelligence Service (later designated the NSA) began to analyze coded Russian cables to verify rumors of secret Nazi-Soviet peace talks. After World War II, the NSA expanded its operations and moved to Arlington Hall in northern Virginia, where its cryptanalysts began to document evidence that an extensive, “unrestrained” Soviet espionage campaign against the U.S. had originated during a war in which Washington and Moscow were allies.
Haynes and Klehr make a convincing case that the first “shot” of the Cold War was fired in 1942, when Stalin’s ideologically-motivated agents began to penetrate nearly every important agency of the U.S. government. A significant number of them occupied high-level positions in the White House, Congress, Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Manhattan [atomic bomb] Project, and departments of State and Treasury. Exploiting the lax internal security of the Roosevelt administration, they were able to send Moscow a vast amount of diplomatic, military, scientific, and industrial secrets. National security was most severely damaged with the theft of America’s atomic secrets, which gave Stalin information on the atomic bomb’s design, assembly, and detonation. Consequently, he developed Russia’s nuclear arsenal much sooner and more cheaply than he otherwise would have.
The authors claim that Americans identified by the Venona transcripts to be Soviet agents were members of the Moscow-controlled CPUSA, an “auxiliary” of Soviet intelligence, whose active collaboration facilitated Stalin’s espionage offensive against the U.S. Fueled with an “ideological affinity for the Soviets,” these idealistic Marxist-Leninists betrayed what they considered a “morally illegitimate” American capitalist system. Few defected or renounced Communism, even after Stalin’s purges and 1939 pact with Hitler.
According to the Venona decryptions, Stalin’s agents included:
* Lauchlin Currie, senior White House aide to FDR, who alerted the NKVD (Soviet intelligence) to FBI investigations of its top agents.
* Martha Dodd, licentious daughter of the American ambassador to Berlin, whose passionate affair with the first secretary of the Russian embassy included passing confidential diplomatic correspondence to Moscow.
* Alger Hiss, chief of the State Department’s Office of Special Political Affairs, who accompanied Roosevelt to Yalta in 1945 and chaired the founding conference of the UN. This senior assistant to the secretary of state gave Soviet military intelligence diplomatic cables concerning Axis threats to Soviet security.
* Laurence Duggan, head of the State Department’s Division of American Republics and the secretary of state’s personal adviser for Latin America, who gave the NKVD Anglo-American plans for the invasion of Italy.
* Michael Straight, a family friend and protege of President and Mrs. Roosevelt who was recruited into the NKVD by Soviet spy Anthony Blunt while attending Cambridge University.
* Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury, U.S. director of the IMF, senior adviser to the American delegation at the founding conference of the UN, who facilitated employment for Soviet sources in his department.
* Harold Glasser, vice-chairman of the War Production Board and assistant director of the Treasury’s Office of International Finance, who gave the NKVD a State Department analysis of Soviet war losses.
* Gregory Silvermaster, a Treasury economist whose spy network provided Moscow with prodigious amounts of War Production Board data on arms, aircraft, and shipping production.
* Victor Perlo, chief of the Aviation Section of the War Production Board whose spy ring supplied the Soviets with aircraft production figures and included a Senate staff director.
* Judith Coplon, Justice Department analyst who alerted Moscow to FBI counterintelligence operations.
* Duncan Lee, descendant of Robert E. Lee and senior aide to OSS chief William J. Donovan, who became the NKVD’s senior source in American intelligence; he divulged secret OSS operations in Europe and China.
* William Weisband, NSA linguist who informed Moscow that the Venona Project had deciphered its messages.
While Haynes and Klehr acknowledge that there were “sensible [security] reasons” for keeping Venona secret (so secret that even President Truman lacked direct knowledge of it), they argue that “This decision denied the public the incontestable evidence afforded by the messages of the Soviet Union’s own spies.” Proof of Soviet espionage and “American Communist participation” based on the testimony of defectors was “inherently more ambiguous than the hard evidence of the Venona messages.” If Venona had been made public, they maintain, government investigations and prosecutions of Communist party members would have been more defensible. The guilt of the Rosenbergs would have been indisputable and the innocence of secretaries of state Dean Acheson and George C. Marshall would have been clearly established. Manhattan Project director J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Communist background and indifference to possible Soviet infiltration of Los Alamos (until 1943) would have been verified, but so would Moscow’s failure to recruit him as an agent.
Paradoxically, the success of the Venona secret has skewed our understanding of the Cold War. Haynes and Klehr are correct to note that those histories of the Stalinist era that belittle the Soviet threat have indeed “perpetuated many myths that have given Americans a warped view of the nation’s history.” Hopefully, these invaluable Venona files will help us see more clearly just how much of a threat Soviet espionage and Communist subversion posed to American security. The much-desired opening of all Russian intelligence archives dealing with this period would go far in doing just that.
An earlier version of this review appeared in the June 1999 issue of the Foreign Service Journal. Republished with permission.
Rorin M. Platt teaches history at Peace College in Raleigh, NC, and serves as book review editor for American Diplomacy. The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of this journal.
WAR NEWS
Superbombs Spreading In Afghanistan (back)
August 23, 2007
by David Hambling
EFPs, the Explosively-Formed Penetrator weapons used by Iraqi insurgents, are now spreading in Afghanistan as well. After one was used in Kabul in June, recent reports indicate that four more have since been captured. However, there is not necessarily any direct connection between them.
According to Col. Tom Kelly, ‘deputy chief of ISAF Counter-Explosives Operations’:
‘We don’t see Afghanistan and Iraq are associated on the improvised explosive devices (IEDs). We think Afghanistan and IEDs seen in Afghanistan really have their own unique signature.’
The EFPs were captured in both Western Herat and in Kabul , implying at least two different finds rather than in a single cache. Kelly says that most Afghan groups lack the sophistication to build EFPs and tend to rely on much cruder types of IED, but he was dubious about an Iranian origin for the weapons.
‘Some EFP components may be made in Iran , but it doesn’t necessarily mean the Iranian government is behind it,’ says Kelly. He adds that components may be smuggled into Afghanistan by ‘criminal elements’ rather than foreign governments.
Five EFPs are not a crisis. But this is a far more advanced weapon than the region has seen before, and if the experience in Iraq is anything to go by, potentially a significant threat. As we saw in Iraq , once the technology is introduced it is likely to spread and be copied beyond the original users, leading to a creeping increase in Allied casualties. Locating the real source of the Afghan EFPs - and shutting it down - has to be a priority task.
Source: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/08/superbombs-spre.html
British Embassy in Sudan Remains Closed After Terror Threat (back)
August 21, 2007
The British Embassy in Sudan ‘s capital, Khartoum , remained closed to the public Tuesday following reported threats to Western interests there. Arjun Kohli has more on the story from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi .
British expatriates in Khartoum have been told to be on their guard following terrorist threats against Western individuals and institutions. The British Embassy issued a warning to all its nationals and has closed its embassy to the public for the past three days.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who did not want to be named, says Western interests, including British official interests, may be targeted.
‘We were advised of the threat of terrorist attacks in Khartoum and the fact that western interests including British official interests may have been targeted,’ she said. ‘We never discuss where intelligence matters come from and on this occasion I cannot confirm whether it came from the Sudanese government or not. The threat was against Western interests so that would have covered potentially other western embassies in Khartoum .’
Last week eight Sudanese men were arrested on charges of stockpiling explosives and grenades in an underground bunker. British press reports have commented on potential links between the arrests and the terror threats, but statements from Sudan ‘s ministry of the interior downplay links between the men and internationally supported terrorist activity.
Rather, they say the munitions they found are a symptom of a more general arms problem in Sudan and the Horn of Africa.
The British embassy estimates 1,300 Britons live in Sudan with 2,500 dual nationals.
Sudan’s government hosted Osama bin Laden in Khartoum between 1991 and 1996. Although it eventually expelled him and began co-operating with the West in the war on terrorism, there are reports that al-Qaida still has a presence in Sudan .
Source: www.voanews.com/english/2007-08-21-voa33.cfm
Police Bust Hamas Jihad Fundraiser in Jerusalem (back)
August 23, 2007
Police broke up a Hamas fundraising meeting in Jerusalem attended by Israeli-Arab Islamist leader Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, who says he was wounded in the process.
The meeting, which included dozens of Islamic leaders associated with the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror gangs, was held illegally at Jerusalem ’s Commodore Hotel.
The stated purpose of the meeting was to raise charity for Muslims in need, but the guests of honor were Sheikh Salah and Muhammed Hussein, who serves as the Mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority.
Police arrived at the meeting and forcibly shut it down, though did not arrest any of those involved.
The meeting then continued on the roof of the private home of a Hamas supporter in one of the capital’s Arab neighborhoods. Police arrived at the home and dispersed the crowd by force, firing stun grenades onto the roof. Sheikh Ra’ed Salah, who heads the radical Israeli-Arab Islamic Movement’s northern branch and has called for an ‘Israeli-Arab Intifada’ said he felt sick following the raid and checked himself into an eastern Jerusalem hospital.
Salah is facing an indictment for incitement to violence based on statements he made at riots against Israel ’s repairs of the ramp leading to the Temple Mount from the Western Wall Plaza .
Source: www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/123471
Red Brigades Member Arrested in Paris (back)
August 22, 2007
A former member of Italy ‘s disbanded Red Brigades group, Marina Petrella, was arrested Tuesday near Paris after 20 years on the lam for murder, kidnapping and armed attack, the justice ministry said.
Petrella, 53, was sentenced to life by a court in Rome on March 6, 1992 for killing a police officer and seriously wounding his driver. She was also charged with holding a magistrate and of staging an armed attack.
She was arrested in the Argenteuil suburb of Paris during a routine police road check.
Petrella was arrested in December 1982 with another Red Brigades member, Luigi Novelli, in Italy . She married him in prison in 1983 and was freed on bail temporary probation three years later.
She then fled to France and was living in the ‘Parisian region’ for several years, a judicial source said.
The Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist group formed in the 1970s, sought to create a revolutionary state through armed struggle and to separate Italy from the Western alliance.
Source: www.france24.com/france24Public/en/news/world/20070823-brigades-red-france-arrest-italy-marina-petrella.html
Material Support to Terrorism: U.S. to Fatah (back)
August 22, 2007
American-run programs that train Fatah militias were instrumental in the ‘success’ of the Palestinian intifada that began in 2000, a senior Fatah militant told The New York Sun.
‘I do not think that the operations of the Palestinian resistance would have been so successful and would have killed more than one thousand Israelis since 2000 and defeated the Israelis in Gaza without these [American] trainings,’ a senior officer of President Abbas’s Force 17 Presidential Guard unit, Abu Yousuf, said.
America has longstanding training programs at a base in the West Bank city of Jericho for members of Force 17, which serves as de facto police units in the West Bank , and for another major Fatah security force, the Preventative Security Services.
This weekend diplomatic security officials announced that the State Department will begin training Force 17 again this year in an effort to bolster Mr. Abbas against Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in June when the terror group easily defeated American-backed Fatah forces in the territory.
Meanwhile, those lovable moderates from Fatah (the ones whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel ), while they collect hundreds of millions in U.S. funding and resources, are reportedly in secret negotiations for a rapprochement with Hamas. They have even begun releasing Hamas detainees. Maybe soon we’ll be able to fund and train all of them together — y’know, as part of that ‘peace process.’
Source: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzZiOWU3ZjRlN2M3MzcxMzk3MTczYjJjOWE0OGEwYmI=
Anti-Islamist Rally Banned in Brussels (back)
August 22, 2007
An eagerly awaited public rally was to take place in Brussels – the capital of the European Union – on September 11 of this year. Called ‘Against Islamisation of Europe,’ its intent was to protest the spreading of Islamic sharia law across the European continent and honor by a minute of silence the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks.
The event was being organized by SIOE (Stop the Islamisation of Europe), an alliance of people from across Europe whose objective is to prevent Islam from ‘becoming a dominant political force in Europe .’ Concerned about the Muslim subversion of the continent’s cultures and institutions, SIOE’s has this to say about Islam:
No other religion demands more from those who do not adhere to its doctrine. This would not be a problem if our leaders actually stood up for Western values and insisted that Muslims live within our laws and accepted our cultures and social systems. Instead, it is we who are told we must abandon our values, cultures and societies in order not to offend Muslims. It is Islam that is being rammed down our throats and the throats of our children. It is not only in the West that Islam is causing misery and mayhem. All around the world Islam is battling the ‘infidels’.
In a clear sign of public support for the planned demonstration, 20,000 people from across Europe have pledged their participation.
But now it looks the event will not be allowed to proceed. On August 13, Brussels ’ Mayor Freddy Thielemans, a socialist, made the decision not to issue a permit for the march.
The Mayor’s decision is a very unusual one, because Brussels is known as a demonstration friendly city. In fact, it is the demonstration capital of the world with two or three events taking place on average every day. In the last six years alone, the Mayor’s office has received 3,600 requests for public protest permits of which only 6 have been denied.
But the Mayor is trying to do more than just stop people from voicing their concerns about the ongoing Islamization of their culture. This is what he wrote on August 20 in an op-ed piece in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard:
First and foremost the organizers have chosen the symbolic date of 9/11. The intention is obviously to confound the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists on the one hand and Islam as a religion and all Muslims on the other hand. […] Such incitement to discrimination and hatred, which we usually call racism and xenophobia, is forbidden by a considerable number of international treaties and is punished by our penal laws and by European legislation. The European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly pronounced judgments condemning this type of acts.
In what is a truly surreal development, a European public official calls those concerned about the encroachment of Islam on their life extremists and threatens criminal prosecution if they don’t desist.
The Mayor’s concern about extremism is very selective, however. In December of 2004, for example, he allowed a demonstration to proceed where more than 20,000 Iranians protested against the inclusion of People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran in EU’s list of terrorist organizations. This is how this group was once described by the US Department of State:
The Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a leftist revolutionary group, was formed in 1963. Its founding principles included the creation of a Marxist-oriented Islamic government in Iran ; opposition to ‘imperialism’ as supposedly embodied by the United States ; opposition to Zionism and Israel ; and a close affinity to Third World radical movements. […] To achieve its political objectives, the MEK almost from its inception has engaged in acts of terrorism and violence; the organization was responsible for fatal attacks on several Americans in Iran in the 1970s.
Not only was the demonstration allowed to go on – it took place in front of the EU’s headquarters – it received extensive official backing. Numerous speeches were made by European parliamentarians and various public personalities seeking to remove the group’s terror designation.
This makes for a remarkable situation: In the EU capital, Iranian Muslims are allowed to show their solidarity with a questionable organization while native citizens are being turned into criminals for seeking to voice their concerns about the unfolding Islamic takeover of their lands.
To add insult to injury, on the very day the organizers of the 9/11 rally were protesting the decision to block the event, Mayor Thielemans approved a permit for another demonstration to take place on September 9. Organized by an alliance of ‘various truth, peace and human right movements in Europe ’ calling themselves United for Truth, they claim that the 9/11 attacks were staged by the Bush administration with possible support from some European governments. A message posted on their website on July 30 reads in part:
Recently the French Minister for Housing and the City Mme Christine Boutin expressed her doubts about the official 9/11 report. Before, Michael Meacher, secretary of state in Britain and Andreas Von Bulow, ex Minister from Germany , stated clearly that 9/11 and the war on terror are orchestrated by the Bush administration. Prof. David Ray Griffin held on September 14th, 2006 a lecture (’Should the truth be revealed or concealed’) in Copenhagen . In this lecture he asked for a European investigation to the facts of September 11, 2001. To make this demand stronger, the United for truth organization in Belgium is organizing a European protest rally through Brussels . […] They [protesters] agree the 9/11 attacks and other terrorist acts, no matter if they were carried out by some so-called Afghan cavemen or by the governments themselves, inflicted the current policy of fear.
It is hard to believe that in Europe Muslims and far-left radicals are allowed to march in support of their causes and inane theories while those concerned about the ongoing disintegration of their societies are not only being silenced but threatened with legal action.
The controversy surrounding the planned 9/11 rally in Brussels is emblematic of Europe ’s rapid descent into madness. Today Europe is a place where things are turned upside down and where common sense is not only commonly disregarded but actively suppressed.
Having lost both its sense of identity and sanity, Europe stands on the brink of being overtaken by Muslims who may well be able to claim their prize without so much as a fight. Brussels ’ socialist Mayor Freddy Thielemans is only one of many among Europe ’s leftist elites who are not only willing to capitulate to the barbarian invaders of our age but are actively facilitating their progress. America better take heed, for these are the very people its own liberals admire and in whose steps they would like to follow.
Source: http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=5BA45BF2-4BE8-4696-B483-1BAF74DE199E
Egypt Activist Fears Arrest, Stays in US (back)
August 22, 2007
One of Egypt’s most outspoken government critics, an Egyptian-American academic, said he has been warned not to return to his native country for fear of arrest ‘or worse’ amid a crackdown on dissidents.
In an opinion piece that appeared Tuesday in the Washington Post, Saad Eddin Ibrahim described a regime squeezing all forms of opposition in order to engineer an unpopular father-son succession.
‘Sadly, this regime has strayed so far from the rule of law that, for my own safety, I have been warned not to return to Egypt ,’ the 68-year-old sociologist wrote. ‘Regime insiders and those in Cairo ‘s diplomatic circles have said that I will be arrested or worse.’
One of Egypt’s best known democracy advocates, Ibrahim was among the first to publicly criticize the grooming of President Hosni Mubarak’s son to succeed him and was jailed for tarnishing Egypt’s reputation before the charges were overturned.
Mubarak’s son, Gamal, has publicly denied any interest in running the country, but his meteoric rise through the ruling party’s hierarchy has led many Egyptians to believe his eventual succession is a given.
Ibrahim’s wife, Barbara, an American citizen, said the threat against her husband has come in the form of lawsuits and complaints filed by private citizens that could enmesh the scholar in court battles for years and even land him back in jail.
‘We know of at least nine, so obviously that’s the kind of regime overkill that they love to do,’ she told The Associated Press from her home in Cairo on Wednesday. ‘Almost all of them involve accusations of treason and undermining the economic interests of the country.’
Private law suits by government supporters have been used against other regime opponents, including former presidential candidate Ayman Nour, who was imprisoned in 2005 and still has dozens of cases pending against him.
Ibrahim is in Virginia and, according to his wife, has no immediate plans to return to his position as a sociology professor at the American University in Cairo .
‘I think these investigations stay open for at least six months during which time the charges can be formally brought, so he will stay outside for at least six months, if not longer,’ Barbara Ibrahim said.
An Egyptian security official said neither the police nor the prosecutor’s office had any case against Ibrahim, but that he knew of at least three of lawsuits brought by individuals.
The complaints accuse Ibrahim of harming national interests by persuading the U.S. Congress to cut Egypt ‘s aid, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
In May, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced legislation to withhold $200 million in military aid until Egypt takes steps to curb police abuses and stop arms smuggling into the neighboring Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian government at the time denounced the proposed U.S. legislation as an ‘unacceptable’ interference in Egypt ‘s internal affairs. In July, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit warned the United States it would face the ‘Egyptian people’s wrath’ if the meddling continued.
Since the move came only a few days after Ibrahim spoke with President Bush at a summit for dissidents from countries around the world, the activist believes the Egyptian government holds him responsible for the proposed bill.
‘I was solely to blame, according to the regime. Would that I had a fraction of the influence attributed to me by the state-controlled media!’ wrote Ibrahim, who in the past has advocated cutting Egypt ‘s $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to pressure for democratic reforms.
Ibrahim was arrested and charged in 2000 for smearing the country’s reputation abroad and embezzling foreign funding. He spent years in jail until a three-year odyssey of trials and appeals ultimately resulted in his acquittal.
The editorial comes during a period of political crackdown in Egypt with 40 leading members of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood facing military trial and dozens of others arrested on an almost weekly basis.
The country’s security services are also coming under increasing criticism for their heavy-handed tactics during both anti-terrorism and ordinary criminal investigations.
A report released earlier this month by the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights said abuse and torture by Egyptians security forces has become increasingly common, citing hundreds of cases over the last decade.
In remarks carried Tuesday night by the official Middle East News Agency, Interior Minister Habib el-Adly said his institution has always been vigilant against violations of human rights.
‘Immediate prosecution is the constant method of the Interior Ministry against any individual violating human rights,’ he said.
Source: www.comcast.net/news/international/middleeast/index.jsp?cat=MIDDLEEAST&fn=/2007/08/22/745658.html
British Muslim Cleric Linked to USS Cole Blast (back)
August 22, 2007
Abu Hamza may be linked to the attacks on the USS Cole battleship in Yemen , which killed 17 sailors and injured over 30 on October 12, 2000. The evidence has been there all the time, but not looked at properly. The United States has a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the location of those persons who committed or aided in the attack on the USS Cole.
Even before the USS Cole terror attack, Hamza seemed to suggest his groups dislike US ships using the port of Aden . In statement made in January 1999, Abu Hamza said: ‘The events in Yemen of hostage taking are a direct protests by the Yemeni people against the severe oppression the Yemeni government is forcing on its own people and a direct protest against the American and British use of Port Aden as a re-fueling base to launch the second phase of the attack on the Iraqi people!’
In a video tape recorded in August 1998, Hamza talks about a ship coming into a Muslim harbor, calling it a ‘booty’. This interest in Western military shipping was repeated in the 1999 statement by his Supporters of the Shariah group at www.supporttersofshariah.org. At the 1998 meeting recorded on a 2 hour video, Hamza is sat next to two of the British jihadis who were caught with his son trying to bomb British and American targets in Aden .
Two nights before Christmas 1998, a white Daewoo car with three people inside drove into Aden from Abyan. Arriving at a traffic roundabout, the car went around in a clockwise direction - a bizarre mistake for a Yemeni driver but one that a British driver, accustomed to traveling on the left, could easily make.
A traffic policeman stopped the car and asked the driver for his license. But instead of handing the officer a few riyals to forget about it as most Yemenis would do, the driver suddenly accelerated away and a chase ensued.
Had it not been for this small traffic incident, events would have turned out very differently. If the Yemeni authorities’ claim is correct, Christmas Day would have brought bombings and slaughter to Aden on a huge scale. Several of the places where Western Christians gathered for their festivities were targeted: the Anglican church, a restaurant popular with foreigners, and the Moevenpick hotel. The British consulate, a UN office and a hotel used by American forces helping to clear land-mines were also allegedly on the list
But the plot failed. The Daewoo car, with Malik Nasser Harhara from Birmingham UK at the wheel, sped on for a few minutes until it collided with another vehicle near a petrol station and its occupants ran off. Police arrived and found explosives and guns inside the car. Shortly after that five Britons were arrested, along with an Algerian who had arrived from Britain with a false French passport.
The other four were arrested on January 27 (along with two others who were later on trial in Zanzibar for kidnapping 16 Western tourists) following a siege in a mountainous part of Abyan province.
Eight of the 10 on trial in Aden have British nationality. The other two were living in Britain , but are believed to be Algerians - though they entered Yemen using false French passports. One of them was Abu Hamza’s son and two other men were from the 1998 video where they discussed jihad and ships being a booty.
Abduction of 16 tourists in Abyan on December 28, 1998, was not only the largest kidnapping in Yemen ‘s recent history, it was the first in which hostages died.
One tourist and the driver of the first vehicle escaped to raise the alarm. The occupants of the remaining vehicles - 12 Britons, two Australians, two Americans and four Yemeni drivers - were all taken captive.
First reports suggested it was just another tribal kidnapping - and indeed, several of the kidnappers came from the same tribe in Upper Aulaqi . But the affair rapidly assumed a more sinister dimension when it became known that on this occasion the kidnapping was organized by the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan, an offshoot of Islamic Jihad, led by Abu al-Hassan al-Mihdar.
The hostages were driven northwards about 6 miles from the main road to an area of rocks and scrub land. On the way they were seen by local tribesmen who recognized some of the kidnappers. Traders from a village nearby sold them bottled water and bread.
Barely an hour after the kidnapping, Abu al-Hassan was busy making calls on a satellite phone - sent to him from London by his friend, Abu Hamza al-Masri. In one of these calls - overheard by a Yemeni driver with the tour group - the kidnappers’ leader is said to have referred to the hostages as ‘ordered goods’. According to the driver, he said: ‘We’ve got the goods that were ordered - 1,600 cartons marked ‘British’ and ‘American’’.
It is not known if Abu al-Hassan was speaking to Abu Hamza at the time, but Abu Hamza was certainly among the first people he called. According to an interview with al-Wasat magazine that was published on January 1, 1999, Abu al-Hassan told Abu Hamza he had been hoping the tourists would be mainly Americans, and seemed disappointed. The British cleric urged against harming the hostages and Abu al-Hassan agreed, saying that wanted to exchange them for nine Islamists who were under arrest.
The nine prisoners consisted of two groups: Sheikh Salih Haidara al-Atawi and his two brothers who had been arrested at the beginning of December, and the six men (five Britons and an Algerian living in Britain ) who had been arrested on 23/24 December.
So the kidnappers took the hostages in exchange for Hamza’s son and the other under arrest on terror charges. the next day government troops approached and a battle ensued, with the kidnappers shielding themselves behind hostages as they fired at the army.
It is clear from evidence given in court that the security forces were approaching from several directions. It is also reasonably certain that the kidnappers fired the first three shots, probably hoping to halt the army’s advance. Possibly they hoped, too, that by placing five hostages directly in the line of fire, they would keep the army at bay.
Later, at his trial, Abu al-Hassan seemed to support the government’s version of events. He admitted giving orders to kill the hostages in the event of a rescue operation. He said his instruction was ‘to kill only the men, and not the women, if Yemeni police intervened to free the hostages.’
Later Hassan Said Awadh Khemeri, one of the hostage-takers who tried to secure the release of Abu al-Hassan al-Mihdar, the leader of the islamic army and long term friend of Abu Hamza, was believed to be the second suicide bomber who attacked the USS Cole. Yemeni national, alleged to have trained in Afghanistan . He had been arrested in 1999, but was later released. His arrest was in connection with a plot to kidnap Americans working at a Baptist hospital in Jiblah. The kidnap was apparently aimed at securing the release of Abu al-Hassan al-Mihdar, leader of the Islamic Army. All interlinking the different cases together and to Hamza.who on film and in press statements was talking about shipping and us shipping using the port of Aden .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YW8QUMR7f3E
Abu al-Hassan fought in Afghanistan and on his return to Yemen became associated with the Jihad organization, which included Afghan war veterans from various countries. It is not known when he first met Abu Hamza al-Masri, but they have certainly been in contact for several years. Both were in Afghanistan and Abu Hamza is reported to have spent some time in Yemen afterwards.
Abu al-Hassan claims to be the creator of the Islamic Army of Aden-Abyan which began in a rather haphazard fashion about 1996 or 1997. Nothing was heard of the group until 29 May 1998, when it issued the first in a series of political/religious statements on Yemeni and world affairs.
The Islamic Army praised the attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in August 1998 as ‘a heroic operation carried out by heroes of the jihad’. It also announced its support for Usama bin Laden following the Americans’ reprisal raid on his camp in Afghanistan , called on the Yemeni people to kill Americans and destroy their property.
This praise was also forth coming at the same time by Abu Hamza on video at the same time showing Hamza and Abu al-Hassan working as one as early as 1998.
Every terror organization needs a speaker and the Islamic Army of Aden found that in Abu Hamza, he also seemed a useful planner for them from the case of the British bombers to the kidnappers and the attack on USS Cole link together as in
each case members of the Islamic Army of Aden interlinked with their support for the other terrorists and members involved in one or more of the plots in the case of Hassan Said Awadh Khemeri: ‘Hamza seems to be the master mind that the worker anti’s all reported to and again got off! Most terrorist groups around the world claim the attacks was the idea of their leaders in this case.’
Bin Laden may have supported it, but it looks like Abu Hamza’s interest in ships shows he had a hook in planning it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzmwapCGZDA
Source: www.globalpolitician.com/articleshow.asp?ID=3302&cid=1
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