Posted on 12/17/2006 4:03:30 PM PST by DAVEY CROCKETT
Food Safety Network Porous (back)
February 12, 2007
The year 2006 saw two major E. coli outbreaks in the U.S. and a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests food safety is one of the nation's high-risk areas.
Every year about 76 million people contract food-borne illnesses in the U.S. , in which about 5,000 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
While E. coli outbreaks are dangerous, the report outlines the potential dangers, both microbial and terrorist-related, that lie in the nation's porous agriculture inspection system.
Although there have been no major outbreaks or agro-terrorist attacks yet, David Walker, Comptroller General of the United States said at a House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing today that agencies need to be proactive, rather than responsive to the problem.
The number one problem the report found in the nation's food inspection is the fragmentation of responsibilities.
Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) are responsible for the majority of food inspection, there are 13 other agencies that also share the responsibilities.
'The patchwork nature of the federal oversight of food safety calls into question whether the government can plan more strategically to inspect food production processes, identify and react more quickly to any outbreaks of contaminated food, and focus on achieving results to promote the safety and integrity of the nation's food supply,' according to the GAO report.
The report also questions whether the current patchwork is financially efficient. The GAO uncovered the complicated, subtle differences that separate the tasks of one agency from another. For example, the USDA is responsible for inspecting packaged meat sandwiches with one slice of bread while the FDA inspects sandwiches with two or more slices.
The report found many instances of overlapping duties, wasting taxpayer dollars.
While some duties were overlapped, others were nearly overlooked. For example, the report notes that 80 percent of seafood is imported but one percent is inspected.
While neither the report nor Walker would suggest dissolving the 15 agencies' duties into one, he did say, 'There's no doubt in my mind that we need to streamline. We need to consolidate what we have right now.'
The bipartisan attendance at today's Agriculture Subcommittee meeting seemed to embrace the report with open arms, but any legislative action, which would possibly require massive changes, is likely a long ways off.
Recalls Ineffective
But one simple way to begin mending the bungled system is to give the FDA and USDA greater recall powers and to improve the effectiveness of recalls, Walker suggested.
Currently, the FDA and USDA have no power to recall, with the exception of infant formula.
All recalls are voluntary and both agencies have no data on the effectiveness of recalls or whether all the stores and supply chains involved even find out about recalls. This problem was highlighted with the E.coli spinach outbreak where stores across the nation were still selling spinach, leaving the consumer responsible for knowing about the dangers.
Walker estimated that only 10 percent of a recalled food product is actually pulled off shelves.
Source: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/02/cong_food_safety.html
Bush Did Not Manipulate Intel on al-Qaeda (back)
February 12, 2007
by Craig Hammond
In an editorial that appeared on Bluefieldnews.net (February 10, 2007), the writer seems to suggest that recent testimony, by the Pentagon's Acting Inspector General, before the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the 'beginning of the end of the Bush Adminiatration's remaining credibility on invading Iraq.'
The testimony, if anything, may confirm the beginning of the end of the competence of our intelligence community. The link between Al Qaeda and Iraq was made at least nine years ago by President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Pickering and National Security expert Richard Clarke.
This link was made in August of 1998, right after U.S. Tom ahawk cruise missiles struck and destroyed the al-shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum , the capital of the Sudan . The attack was in response to the bombings two weeks earlier of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania orchestrated (according to The Counterterrorism Center of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) by Osama bin Laden. The intelligence community linked the two bombings to Osama bin laden, and linked the pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan both to bin Laden and Chemical Weapon development.
Soil samples taken by an agent in the Sudan proved that the plant was producing VX nerve gas. Pickering later said ' we see evidence that is quite clear on contacts between the Sudan and Iraq .' He then said that pharmaceutical plant officials were in direct contact with Iraq 's VX program. Every year thereafter, link after link confirmed a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, a linkage that the Czech intelligence service still claims existed right up to the time of the invasion.
The fact is that our intelligence rarely has had consensus on anything. They didn't have consensus on Lebanon , Somalia , or Libya . The writer of the editorial concluded Bush must have manipulated the intelligence because there wasn't a consensus among the spy agencies. No consensus among the intelligence services? Wow, that's some really earth shaking news!
To understand the reason why some people charge Bush with manipulation, but insist Clinton acted decisively and responsibly, you must understand why some people hate George W. Bush and want him to fail in Iraq. This hatred is so deep that they are willing to give Saddam the benefit of the doubt, presume Iraq innocent until proven guilty, but always assume American guilt. Beware of these sick, twisted, and tortured people before they get us all killed.
Source: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/070212-hammond- comment.html
Italian Police Arrest 15 in Raids Against Red Brigades (back)
February 12, 2007
Police arrested 15 people across northern Italy on Monday in raids against a far-left terrorist group with ideological ties to the Red Brigades movement that terrorized Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, officials said.
The arrests took place in Milan , Turin , Padua and other cities in northern Italy . Those arrested were accused of subversive association and forming an armed gang, state police said in a statement.
'Probably, this time, we succeeded in preventing a Brigades attack,' said Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, whose ministry includes state police and civilian intelligence agents. He gave no details.
Italian news reports, citing judicial sources, said among the militants' targets were a house in Milan owned by former premier Silvio Berlusconi, as well as an Italian professor and Italian media businesses, including Berlusconi's Mediaset. Sky TG24, a private TV network, said that its own network was among the targets cited by investigators in seeking the arrest warrants.
The group targeted in the raids 'was a structured and highly dangerous organization' and not the last of the extreme left-wing domestic terrorists, Amato said in a statement.
'The one (group) we broke up, we know, isn't the last,' the minister said.
Police conducted 80 searches, mainly of gathering places for leftists.
The investigation into the group began in 2004, when police searched a Milan basement where they found documents, a blow torch, a timer and other electronic equipment, the statement said.
The Red Brigades plagued Italy with attacks that included the 1978 kidnapping and slaying of former Premier Aldo Moro. After about a decade of silence, an offshoot of the group reappeared, killing two government advisers, in 1999 and 2002.
The group targeted in Monday's raids financed itself through armed robberies and spread propaganda in leftist clubs and in factories where some of the alleged members worked, anti-terrorism official Giovanni Calesini told SKY TG24 TV.
Their activities also included 'finding targets,' including people, to attack, he said.
Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/02/12/europe/EU-GEN- Italy-Red-Brigades.php
The Tiny Airline Spy that Spots Bombers in the Blink of an Eye (back)
February 10, 2007
Tiny cameras the size of a fingernail linked to specialist computers are to be used to monitor the behaviour of airline passengers as part of the war on terrorism.
Cameras fitted to seat-backs will record every twitch, blink, facial expression or suspicious movement before sending the data to onboard software which will check it against individual passenger profiles.
Scientists from Britain and Germany are spending £25million developing a system which they hope will make it virtually impossible to hijack an airliner by providing pilots and cabin crew with an early warning of a possible terrorist attack such as 9/11.
They say that rapid eye movements, blinking excessively, licking lips or ways of stroking hair or ears are classic symptoms of somebody trying to conceal something.
A separate microphone will hear and record even whispered remarks. Islamic suicide bombers are known to whisper texts from the Koran in the moments before they explode bombs.
The software being developed by the scientists will be so sophisticated that it will be able to take account of nervous flyers or people with a natural twitch, helping to ensure there are no false alarms.
'We're trying to develop technologies that indicate the differences between normal passengers and those who may be a threat to others, or themselves,' said Catherine Neary of BAE Systems.
Mrs Neary, team leader of the Onboard Threat Detection System for the Paris-based Security Of Aircraft In The Future European Environment (SAFEE) project, added: 'Blink rates come from lie-detection research and suggest the stress level is higher than normal.'
The project is also developing automated flight controls that will prevent a hijacker taking over an airliner and sensors at the aircraft's doors to detect if someone is carrying explosives or chemicals.
Mrs Neary said that under the Data Protection Act, all video, audio and other recordings would be destroyed at the end of every flight so that passengers' civil liberties were not infringed.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty , said: 'Watching people constantly on aircraft and trying to work out patterns of behaviour is a difficult road to travel.
'I suspect that it will put people off flying because they will feel uncomfortable if their every blink and twitch is being monitored.'
Airlines gave the scheme a cautious welcome, indicating it would be too expensive to fit on existing commercial aircraft and that it would probably be ten years before such systems were fitted to new planes.
A British Airways spokeswoman said: 'While we welcome new research and development which advances aviation security, we believe the emphasis and funding for any new initiatives would be better placed on preventing terrorists boarding aircraft in the first place.
'For example, research and development of better screening and detection equipment on the ground would be of more value at this time.'
Source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23385096-details/ The+tiny+airline+spy+that+spots+bombers+in+the+blink+of+an+eye/ article.do
To Quell Terrorism: Get Out! (back)
February 11, 2007
NOTE:
Islam of course requires the subjugation of the entire world, not leaving anywhere to get out to.
Nor has appeasement been showed to be a useful policy.
'The first step in trying to curb terrorist activity is for U.S. forces to vacate these countries. If they would, half the job of containing 'terrorism' would have been accomplished … the key original demand of al-Qaeda was for the United States to completely pull out of the Holy land .'
[granny's note, above by newsletter editor, added to the below post.............which is anti...]
By Dr. Ijaz Ahsan Pakistan – The Nation – Original Article (English)
A senior Pentagon official wants Americans to be prepared for what he calls 'generational war' against Muslim radicals, who he says are committed to a 50 to 100 year long battle plan.
U.S. [Air Force] Brigadier General Mark Schissler claims that al-Qaeda's ultimate goal is to establish an extremist 'caliphate' stretching through North Africa and Southern Europe, along a path through the Middle East to central and Southeast Asia .
General Schissler is the Pentagon's deputy director for the War on Terror at the Office of Strategic Plans.
Schissler recently told the Washington Times, 'We're in a generational war. You can fight the enemy where they are and where they're attacking you from, and you can defend your homeland. But that's not enough to stop it. We have to break the chain … and that is the ideology. We need to show the errors in Islamic extremist thinking .'
Schissler continued: 'I care about people understanding the facts of what's our enemy is thinking about, what's our strategy to defeat them, and for [Americans] to understand that it will take a long fight, mostly because our enemy is committed to the long fight. They're absolutely committed to the 50-, 100-year plan. We're pretty convinced that the extremists are not ever going to give up the fight.' General Schissler said.
He also noted that they are driven by the concept of jihad, which makes it a religious duty to wage terrorist war. Schissler added, 'we didn't beat ...the communists by militarily taking them to the battlefield … We took them to the intellectual battlefield and beat them with their ideas … the ideology of communism.'
According to a recent Pentagon report, 3,000 al-Qaeda terrorists are under arrest in 100 countries - 500 in Pakistan alone. (I suppose these are the people who are 'disappearing' one after the other in this country, and whose relatives are being thrashed about by the police for protesting).
One of the goals of the United States is to disrupt al-Qaeda's efforts to 'radicalize' young Muslims between the ages of 19 and 25 through educational efforts.' (Incidentally, our federal minister for education, Javed Ashraf Qazi, visited Washington recently for a strategic dialogue on education, which is aimed at achieving the Americans' above-mentioned objective).
Most Westerners talk of ending terrorism but very few consider the causes. Even today, most remain unconcerned about the fact that as a direct result of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq by America and its allies, 'terrorism' has escalated. Nor is their any attention paid to the fact that the first step in trying to curb terrorist activity is for U.S. forces to vacate these countries. If they would, half the job of containing 'terrorism' would have been accomplished. If they do not do so, 'terrorism' will persist and continue to grow.
According to the anonymous author [Michael Scheuer ] of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, the American occupation of Iraq is like a Christmas gift for Osama bin Laden, since it provided the global jihad a failed state from which to operate even more conducive to terrorism than Afghanistan.
The book also includes words to the effect that a continued American occupation of Iraq is the best thing for Osama's recruitment drive.
I disagree that Americans defeated the Soviet Union ideologically. Actually, there were two things that destroyed the Soviets. The first was their centralized control over everything, which killed initiative. The second was their Afghan adventure, which bankrupted an already fragile economy and ended in their being routed and losing their superpower status.
The goal of the United States may well be to prevent the radicalization of Muslim youth. But the author of the Pentagon report fails to address why young people are becoming radicalized in the first place. The key original demand of al-Qaeda was for the United States to completely pull out of the Muslim holy land, Saudi Arabia . If the U.S. had understood how seriously al-Qaeda takes the presence of non-Muslims in their holy land and how grave the consequences of ignoring that Muslim call would be, they might have chosen a different course and prevented much conflict and suffering.
Even today they would improve the situation by vacating Afghanistan and Iraq , but they won't give up on controlling Iraq 's oil. In Afghanistan , they want to continue to hold military bases due to their proximity to the borders of three world powers: Russia , China and India .
For these reasons, it is unlikely that the U.S. will leave either Afghanistan or Iraq willingly, and as a result, we can expect much more bloodshed and torment. I asked a friend whether he thought America would attack Iran . When he said yes, I asked him why they would, given the contrary advice of the entire world and generals and statesmen in their own country. His reply was: 'Because Bush is plain nuts, that's why.'
Source: http://watchingamerica.com/thenationpk000046.shtml
A Strengthening Bond (back)
February 11, 2007
The revelation that Islamist terrorists in Birmingham were planning to kidnap, torture and behead a Muslim British soldier, and then post video footage of this on the internet, introduces a new refinement of barbarity into Western societies.
It is true that the IRA kidnapped and killed a Northern Irish Catholic who was a soldier in the British army when the IRA regarded itself as at war with the British state. That was barbaric too and it was ultimately the revulsion of the Catholic community of Northern Ireland against the IRA's tactics that led to the IRA eventually accepting defeat. It did this by abandoning its effort to separate Ulster from Britain constitutionally and by ending its armed struggle.
But the terror plot in Birmingham would have involved sadistic torture and murder against someone purely because of their religion. It would have been Muslim torturing and killing Muslim in the name of Islam, something frequently seen in Iraq , not previously in Britain .
The media reaction to the revelation was instructive. Last Friday, the second day of the story, it was already off the front pages of most British newspapers. The Times and The Telegraph still had the story on their front page. The left-leaning Guardian did not. Its main contribution was a full-page article arguing that prejudice against Muslims was the same as anti-Semitism in London 100 years ago.
Now let's be quite clear. Prejudice against Muslims is wrong, notwithstanding the depredations undertaken by Islamist terrorists in the name of Islam. But this is truly an absurd comparison which only a certain type of intellectual could believe.
While The Guardian author could hardly claim that 100 years ago there was a worldwide Jewish terrorist threat to rival the threat of Islamist terror today, the Jews, it was argued, were seen as being behind Bolshevism. But just as the majority of Jews were not Bolsheviks, so the majority of Muslims are not terrorists, and therefore the two prejudices are equally unjustified. A crazy logic chop.
Another piece in The Guardian argued quite reasonably that the majority of British Muslims were integrated into society and did not support extremist causes.
The also left-of-centre Independent newspaper ran an editorial expressing its chief concern that when the British parliament increased the detention without charge period for alleged terrorists from 14 to 28 days, it had 'imposed a dangerous curb on our civil liberties'.
The conservative Telegraph editorialised on almost exactly the opposite lines, saying that the police action in handing out leaflets to the Muslim community explaining the raids was a mistake, because it continued the idea that Muslims should be treated differently, that the police had to explain or apologise for their actions. When police arrest a Chinese gang they don't feel the need to explain that they are not outlawing Chinese-ness.
The BBC, which consistently shows that there are networks more biased than the ABC, ran some of its coverage with a line focusing on British Muslim soldiers and posing the scenario that serving your country contradicts serving the Koran. It was monstrous for the BBC to do this, as it accepts the Islamist contention that serving in the British army somehow contradicts the Islamic religion.
Too often when engaging the extremists, Western media and governments unconsciously accept part of the extremists' agenda. Numerous Australian Government leaflets about Australia and Islam feature women in traditional Islamic headdress. But many, probably most, Muslim women don't wear the headdress, so depicting them that way reinforces if not the extremists, at least the very conservative view that true Muslims cover up their women and true Muslim women cover up.
Several British papers reported that among Birmingham 's Muslim community, and indeed among many of its notionally moderate mosques and Islamic clerics, there was a widespread belief that the British police had made the plot up. It was all an invention to secure political support for Tony Blair and the war on terror. But the most interesting press reaction came in The Financial Times, which ran a thoughtful opinion piece focusing on recent polls of British Muslim attitudes.
Here, I'm afraid, we enter very troubling territory. The piece noted that with only 330 Muslims in the entire British armed forces, British Muslims enlist at about one-20th of the rate of the rest of the population. With 100 or so Muslims in the Australian armed forces, our performance is a little better than that of the Brits, but not much.
It is, I think, absolutely clear that the vast majority of British Muslims do not support terrorism. But what do they believe?
Only last year, the respected Pew polling organisation found that European Muslims have a more benign view of Europe than do Muslims in the Middle East . The exception is Britain , where 63 per cent of Muslims find Westerners 'arrogant'.
Such polls are important because a multitude of different people claim to speak for British Muslims and it's important to get as much real data as possible.
A wide ranging survey, Living Apart Together, carried out by the think-tank Policy Exchange, showed the majority of British Muslims have generally moderate attitudes. But the size of the minority with extremist attitudes is very troubling.
And in every category, younger British Muslims are more extreme than their parents. About 57 per cent of Muslims prefer British law to sharia law, but among 16 to 24-year-olds, 37per cent would prefer to live under sharia. About 36 per cent of young Muslims believe apostasy - that is, a Muslim changing their religion - should be punished by death. About 13 per cent of young British Muslims admire al-Qa'ida and similar organisations.
About 74 per cent of young Muslims want women to wear conservative headdress, compared with only 28 per cent of those over the age of 55.
It is fair to see this as a failure of British multiculturalism and integration, but these attitudes also represent a failure by the Muslim community.
It doesn't help Muslims to be unwilling to ask them the same questions that all citizens need to confront about freedom of religion, the rule of law and the rest.
Thomas Keneally in this week's Australian Literary Review is typical of a certain type of Western liberal in seeing all criticism of Muslim attitudes as reprising earlier strands of 'ethnic hysteria', previously directed at Asians, east Europeans and before that the Irish. Keneally is here being ahistorical even as he affects to survey Australian history. There was nothing in any of these earlier groups that in truth, as opposed to rhetoric, resembles either today's global Islamist terror or its ideological close cousin, extremely conservative and paranoid Islamism that may fall short of actually endorsing violence.
The liberal mind finds these questions impossible to deal with. The liberal state, on the other hand, cannot avoid them.
Source: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,2118816 5-25377,00.html
Muslim Critic of Islam Finds New Home in U.S. (back)
February 11, 2007
The Council on American-Islamic Relations‘ Hooper contends that she exaggerates to further her agenda. 'She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit,' he said.
As a child, Ayaan Hirsi Ali fled violence in Somalia with her family. As an adult she fled Kenya to escape an arranged marriage. She left her adopted Holland after she was caught up in political turmoil and had her life threatened.
Hirsi Ali joined the American Enterprise Institute last September, after a sometimes stormy 14 years in the Netherlands , where she was a member of parliament and became a central figure in two events that jolted the nation.
Next, a fight within Hirsi Ali‘s political party over her Dutch citizenship brought down the government.
'I‘m an apostate. That‘s why the book is called ‘Infidel,‘' she said in a telephone interview from New York.
'We believe that she will bring an increase to the level of anti-Muslim bias in this country that we saw her bring to the situation in Europe,' the council‘s communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in an interview Saturday. 'Unfortunately her message is one of bigotry, not one of mutual understanding.'
'She‘s very original, a very courageous thinker, and she has independence of mind,' said Christina Hoff Sommers, an institute fellow who specializes, among other things, in feminism.
Many institute scholars have had a close relationship with the Bush administration. Among its senior fellows are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; John R. Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations ; and Lynne Cheney , wife of Vice President Dick Cheney .
'I‘ve been accused of selling out,' she said. 'I‘ve been told, ‘You‘re hanging the dirty laundry outside.‘'
She also describes a time when she was a teenager in Kenya , a majority Christian country with many Muslim Somali refugees, and a Quran teacher cracked her skull after she challenged his insistence that students write Quranic verses on wooden boards and memorize them.
She lied to be accepted as a refugee in Holland , became a Dutch citizen, graduated from prestigious Leiden University and won a seat in the Dutch parliament for a party that was tough on immigration. She became known as a firebrand.
That led to her collaboration with van Gogh on the short television movie, 'Submission.' In 2004, a man enraged by the movie shot van Gogh seven times and slit his throat on an Amsterdam street, leaving the note threatening Hirsi Ali.
Her lie when she entered the country — she used an assumed name — caught up with her last year. By that time her falsehood was widely known, even to her good friend Rita Verdonk, the immigration minister. Because of a notorious similar case in which Verdonk expelled a young woman, she came under pressure to cancel Hirsi Ali‘s citizenship. She did, and the six members of the government‘s smallest coalition party resigned in protest. The government fell, although Verdonk had used a technicality to restore Hirsi Ali‘s Dutch citizenship.
Considering van Gogh‘s death, and her continuing outspokenness about Islam, Hirsi Ali said she no longer can feel safe without bodyguards in the presence of even moderate Muslims.
Unlike many world leaders, including Bush, who say Muslim terrorists are distorting the peaceful Islamic religion, Hirsi Ali said the terrorists in large part have truth on their side: The violence is in the Quran and the hadith, the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, she said.
Islam today, she said, 'is not my grandmother‘s amulet-wearing, superstitious sort of Islam that is just comforting for the believer.' Today‘s Islam sees the world as its enemy, she said. 'And you wage war against your enemies.'
The Council on American-Islamic Relations‘ Hooper contends that she exaggerates to further her agenda.
'She is just one more Muslim-basher on the lecture circuit,' he said.
Source: http://www.localnewsleader.com/olberlin/stories/index.php? action=fullnews&id=60517
EU Ministers OK Plan for Iran Sanctions (back)
February 12, 2007
by Constant Brand
European Union foreign ministers approved plans Monday for implementing U.N. sanctions against Iran , a move that is meant to punish Tehran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment.
The United Nations Security Council agreed in December to impose sanctions targeting people and programs linked to Iran 's nuclear program, which the EU and others fear is geared toward making weapons.
The council also gave Iran two months to return to negotiations. Talks collapsed a year ago over Tehran 's refusal to suspend enrichment, a potential pathway to developing nuclear arms.
In the first negotiations since then, EU officials met Sunday in Munich , Germany , with Iran 's top national security official Ali Larijani.
'It was a good meeting, but Iran knows what is our position,' said Javier Solana, the EU's foreign police chief. 'We are open to negotiation, but Iran knows what we want them to do.'
Monday's decision means that all 27 EU governments will implement regulations imposing the U.N. sanctions, which include a ban on selling materials and technology that could be used in Iran 's nuclear and missile programs and a freeze on the assets of 10 Iranian companies and individuals.
A dispute between Spain and Britain over how the disputed territory of Gibraltar would implement the sanctions had held up the deal.
The U.N. Security Council imposed limited sanctions to punish Iran for defying a resolution demanding that it suspend uranium enrichment, a process that can produce material to fuel nuclear reactors or to build bombs.
The EU already has in place a de-facto 10-year ban on the sale of weapons to Iran . Its foreign ministers reiterated that a package of economic incentives remains on offer if Tehran abandons nuclear enrichment.
Monday's decision on the U.N. sanctions does not go far enough for Washington however, which has called on Europe to follow the U.S. in cutting trade ties with Tehran . Diplomats in Brussels said EU governments are free to go beyond the U.N. sanctions if they wish.
EU nations have long been divided over whether to cut trade ties with Iran , especially when many of them are eager to keep investments in Iran 's lucrative oil and gas sector.
In Munich , Larijani said Iran was ready to restart negotiations but said it would not suspend its nuclear program as a precondition for talks.
The head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, on Sunday welcomed Iran 's willingness to resume negotiations with the West on its uranium enrichment plans, but called for nothing short of 'full transparency' on Iran 's part.
'I still hope that they will try through dialogue to create the conditions to go back into negotiations,' ElBaradei told AP Television News.
Source: http://www.comcast.net/news/international/index.jsp?cat= INTERNATIONAL&fn=/2007/02/12/584944.html
Five Charged with Terrorism (back)
To:
February 9, 2007
Five men were charged early today with terrorism offences following the Birmingham raids last week. One of the men has been accused of hatching a plot to kidnap a member of the British armed forces, the Crown Prosecution Service said.
They will appear at Coventry Magistrates Court later today.
Two were earlier released without charge and a third was released today.
Information leaked to the media alleged that the arrests were prompted by an alleged plot to kidnap and behead a Muslim soldier serving in the Armed Forces.
The head of the CPS counter terrorism division, Sue Hemming, told a press conference at West Midlands police headquarters that Parviz Khan and four other men, who were detained in Birmingham on January 31, had been charged with various offences under the Terrorism Act.
Khan, who was named in papers released after the news conference, is accused of engaging in conduct 'to give effect to his intention to kidnap and kill a member of the British armed forces' between November 1 last year and the time of his arrest last week.
Khan and the other men, named as Mohammed Irfan, 30, Zahoor Iqbal, 29, Hamid Elasmar, 43, and Amjad Mahmood, 31, are due to appear before magistrates in central London later on Friday. Three of the nine men arrested on January 31 have been released without charge while another man remains in custody at Coventry 's Chace Avenue police station.
Khan is also accused of two other offences contrary to the Terrorism Act, including an allegation that he attempted to supply equipment for use in committing acts of terrorism. A further charge alleges that he became concerned in an arrangement through which money or other property was made available or was to be made available for the purposes of terrorism.
Police have until 4am tomorrow to question the last remaining suspect, who is still in police custody.
Eight suspects were picked up in a dawn swoop by anti-terror cops in Birmingham last Wednesday.
A ninth was stopped on a motorway in the city several hours later.
On Thursday, Abu Bakr, one of those arrested, spoke out after he and another man were released without charge a day earlier.
Mr Bakr, who works in the Maktabah bookshop, targeted in the raids, told BBC News the UK was 'a police state for Muslims'.
Prime Minister Tony Blair later rejected the accusation as 'categorically wrong'.
Source: http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/news/news.php?article=12336
Cole Victims' Lawsuit Resumes This Week (back)
February 12, 2007
by Bill Geroux
A lawsuit against Sudan by the families of the 17 sailors killed in the terrorist bombing of the destroyer Cole resumes in Norfolk federal court this week. It could disclose new details about the al-Qaida plot and attack that nearly sank the Norfolk-based warship in 2000 in a harbor in Yemen .
Sudan , a strife-torn East African nation where Osama bin Laden once lived, has denied any role in the Cole bombing.
But Sudan has decided to take no further part in the lawsuit. Insisting that the U.S. District Court has no authority to hear the case, Sudan has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider stepping in.
The lawsuit is scheduled to go forward without the defendant, starting on Thursday with a hearing called by U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar to determine which laws apply, 'if any,' in a case filed in the United States against Sudan over an event in Yemen.
A trial before Doumar is scheduled to begin March 7 on the heart of the case -- the claim by the Cole families that Sudan 's government helped al-Qaida kill their loved ones in Aden harbor on Oct. 12, 2000. The list of expert witnesses includes former CIA director R. James Woolsey.
In a recent court filing, the Cole families' lawyers offered more particulars about the case they hope to make. The document identified 11 men the plaintiffs say trained for acts including the Cole attack at a 20-acre al-Qaida camp just south of Khartoum , Sudan 's capital.
Those men, the papers assert, relied on the Sudanese government for safe harbor, money, weapons and explosives -- including the explosives that blew a 40-foot hole in the Cole's hull near the waterline.
The papers assert that Sudanese officials repeatedly smuggled weapons and explosives for al-Qaida in diplomatic pouches. They say a former Sudanese government official once tried to sell al-Qaida 'a 3-foot-long cylinder of weapons-grade uranium' for $1.5 million, but give no further details.
In a recent motion, the plaintiffs complained to Doumar that Sudan deserved to be sanctioned for not responding to requests for documents in the case.
They claimed Sudan possessed correspondence between its government officials and bin Laden specifically describing Sudan 's contributions to the Cole plot.
The plaintiffs also asked in vain for bin Laden's tax returns in Sudan , where he lived from about 1991 to 1996 before U.S. pressure forced him to move to Afghanistan .
The plaintiffs' list of expert witnesses includes Woolsey, who led the CIA between 1993 and 1995 and now is a vice president at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc. in McLean . The list also includes an economist from Florida International University , and two former journalists who have become consultants on Islamic terrorism, Steven Emerson and Douglas Farah.
'There is going to be some new information' revealed in the course of the lawsuit, Hall said.
The lawsuit seeks more than $100 million in damages from Sudan for the families of the 17 sailors, some of whom left behind small children. The Cole, a 500-foot guided-missile destroyer, was nearly sunk by two suicide terrorists in a skiff laden with explosives. The men guided the skiff directly alongside the hull of the Cole at a refueling stop in Aden harbor.
Some relatives of the Cole dead remain angry at the Navy and the U.S. government. Several said in recent interviews that they would have rather seen the plotters brought to justice than seek money in a courtroom.
After the suit was first filed in 2004, Sudan hired the law firm of Hunton & Williams to argue that Sudan enjoyed sovereign immunity from such cases.
But the Cole families' lawyers, who have won multimillion-dollar damages awards for other clients in similar terrorism cases against Libya and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, argued Sudan did not qualify for immunity because it is considered by the U.S. State Department a 'state sponsor of terrorism.'
The fact that Yemen is not on the list of state sponsors of terrorism precluded the Cole families from suing Yemen .
The lawsuit has advanced slowly, first in Doumar's court in Norfolk in 1995, and then in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond , which refused to dismiss the case last fall and sent it back to Doumar for trial.
Soon afterward, in December, Sudan notified Doumar through its lawyers that 'it will not defend or otherwise participate in this proceeding.' Sudan reiterated its position that it was immune from the suit and would ask relief from the Supreme Court.
Hall, the Cole families' lawyer, said Sudan has followed the pattern of defendants in other terrorism cases he has brought -- fighting in court only until all its technical arguments were exhausted, then withdrawing and leaving a judge to weigh evidence the plaintiffs present.
Sudan is widely regarded as a poor nation, Hall said, but it has oil wealth, and the plaintiffs may be able to tap into some of its assets that have been frozen in the U.S.
Gregory Stillman of Hunton & Williams, who has been representing Sudan in the case, said Friday that he plans to sit in on the proceedings in Norfolk but will not take part. He said he continues to represent Sudan in its request for a hearing before the Supreme Court.
Source: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename= RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&c id=1149193152803&path=!news&s=1045855934842
Defence Suffers Setback in CIA Abduction Hearing (back)
February 11, 2007
A judge in Milan on Tuesday rejected a series of requests from defence lawyers representing Italian and CIA spies during a preliminary hearing that saw prosecutors demand indictments over the alleged abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect.
During the closed-door session, judge Caterina Interlandi ruled that Prime Minister Romano Prodi and his predecessor, Silvio Berlusconi, would not be called to testify in court, as had been requested by Italy 's former intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari.
Pollari is one of 35 defendants, including 26 US agents, accused of kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an imam who is also known by the name of Abu Omar, from the streets of Milan , in 2003.
The alleged kidnapping is believed to have been a CIA 'extraordinary rendition' operation, one of the most controversial aspects of US President George W Bush's global 'war on terror. '
Abu Omar was secretly flown to Egypt , where he says he was tortured and beaten during questioning. Abu Omar is still believed to be held in a cell in Cairo , where he is yet to be charged.
During Tuesday's hearing, the judge also objected to Pollari's request for the case to be referred to Italy 's Constitutional Court , which would be called to decide whether he can be brought to trial.
Pollari insists he cannot be indicted as he would not be able to defend himself in court without disclosing sensitive state secrets.
Addressing the judge Tuesday, Milan prosecutor Ferdinando Pomarici reiterated his request for the 35 suspects to be charged, saying Pollari's agency had 'explicitly authorized' the abduction.
The hearing was set to continue later this month.
Source: http://www.jurnalo.com/jurnalo/storyPage.do?story_id=15834
German-Syrian Sentenced to 12 years (back)
February 11, 2007
A German-Syrian dual national believed to have known the Sept. 11 hijackers received a 12-year prison sentence Sunday from a Syrian court, a Syrian human rights group said.
The Higher State Security Court on Sunday sentenced Mohammed Haydar Zammar to life in prison for membership in the banned Muslim Brotherhood organization. But the court immediately commuted the sentence to 12 years, the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria said in a written statement.
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3363804,00.html
Iraqi Court Sentences Saddam VP to Death (back)
February 12, 2007
by Ahmed Rasheed
The Iraqi High Court ruled on Monday that Saddam Hussein's former vice president should follow him to the gallows, despite appeals from UN officials and international human rights groups for his life to be spared.
'I swear by God almighty that I am innocent and he will take revenge on everyone who oppressed me,' Taha Yassin Ramadan said after he was sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the killing of 148 Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in the 1980s.[snipped]
[end of article]
Ramadan and Saddam's former deputy Izzat Ibrahim, now believed by Iraqi officials to be in Syria or Yemen, are the sole survivors of the plotters of the 1968 coup that returned the Baath party to power.
Ramadan, a hawkish member of Saddam's inner circle, was trusted by the Iraqi leader to carry out his orders to crush dissent and put down revolts.
When made industry minister in the 1970s, he reportedly told colleagues: 'I don't know anything about industry. All I know is that anyone who doesn't work hard will be executed.'
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2007/02/12/AR2007021200360.html
Ex-child Sex Offender Wins Compensation for Anti-Muslim Diet (back)
February 12, 2007
by Hedley Thomas
A CHILD sex offender fed vegetables, nuts and 'fatty and salty' tinned meat because prison authorities would not provide him with fresh halal meat prepared in accordance with Muslim religious laws has won a discrimination case against the Queensland Government.
In a ruling the Government fears could trigger an avalanche of claims from other prisoners denied special dietary requests, the Supreme Court found Sharif Mahommed, who was sentenced to eight years' imprisonment in 2000, had been discriminated against.
He will be allowed to keep $2000 in compensation and will not need to contribute to a legal bill of tens of thousands of dollars, which will be funded from the public purse unless the Queensland Government attempts to take the matter to the High Court.
Mahommed, now out of prison, said he had suffered stress and lost weight behind bars because he ate more vegetables and nuts to make up for the denial of fresh halal meat.
He blamed prison authorities for their 'lack of knowledge in understanding my religious beliefs, poor training skills, coupled with a no-care and negative attitude to inmates in general'.
The Supreme Court defined halal meat as 'meat which has been blessed and slaughtered by
Muslim slaughtermen and prepared, cooked and stored in accordance with religious law'.
The finding on Friday by judge Ann Lyons in the Supreme Court is an embarrassing defeat for Police and Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence.
Ms Spence, who has predicted the opening of floodgates 'to other prisoners requesting all manner of special diets', had instructed Crown Solicitor Conrad Lohe and barrister Christopher Murdoch in a bid to quash an Anti-Discrimination Tribunal judgment by barrister Jean Dalton SC.
Ms Spence said yesterday she found Justice Lyons's decision 'surprising'.
'I have asked Queensland Corrective Services to review the judgment to consider grounds for appeal,' she said.
'At the moment, Queensland Corrective Services provides diets requested on the basis of cultural or religious needs where possible.'
Ms Dalton, who heard the original case, found that Mahommed 'received substantially more than his fair share of unacceptable meals because he was put on a vegetarian diet when he was not vegetarian (and) at the time fresh halal meat was difficult to source and extremely expensive, so he was provided with canned meat instead'.
The vegetarian diet consisted of salad and a protein replacement at lunch, with hot lunches such as vegetable patties or vegetarian sausages three times a week. At night the vegetarian dinners include vegetarian lasagnas, curries, pizzas, quiches and kebabs.
'They'd send me down a salad with chicken in it, they would send me down a pie, they'd send me down a salad with luncheon meat in it,' Mahommed said.
While rice and noodles were provided to Asian prisoners and special diets - gluten-free, low-fat and low-cholesterol - were afforded to prisoners with health concerns, no allowance was made for Mahommed's religious preference for halal meat.
Ms Dalton ruled: 'There was evidence that nutmeat was served with regularity. He actively disliked some of it, such as the nutmeat and the sausages. He was served more salad and tinned meat than was provided on the general menu and found this unacceptable. It is not a matter of being fussy, or expecting restaurant quality food; no doubt he had to endure his fair share of poor meals, just like every other prisoner.'
A Corrective Services spokesman said yesterday: 'Where possible, fresh halal meat is served in our prisons.'
Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21210351-421,00.html
[I had heard of this site.......some radio program, I think]
Officer Safety Alert: Whosarat.com (back)
February 12, 2007
Please be advised and let everyone know that the Whosarat.com website has become a very serious issue with undercover law enforcement tactics.
It is a reverse look up site that will grab the inquirer's web IP address and add your info to the list of inquiring officers.
The website is owned by a former defense attorney who developed his plan. He originally sent a flyer to almost every law enforcement agency in the US , informing them that there is a website coming out known as, 'whosarat.com'.
He failed to mention he was the owner. He informed all LE agencies that they should have their undercover personnel go on the site to see if they had been compromised. Initially, he did not have any intel but as soon as many LE Officers/Agents in the country began checking the site, he soon had a great list to add to his site.
If your curious, stay off the site. If you're not on there already, a simple inquiry from you will easily add you to the site.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; Whosarat.com is a controversial website, which, in its words, allows individuals to 'post, share and request any and all information that has been made public at some point to at least 1 person of the public prior to posting it on this site pertaining to local, state and federal Informants and Law Enforcement Officers.'
The site was founded in August 2004 by Sean Bucci, who is fighting marijuana dealing charges. A Boston Herald story quoted him as saying 'I'm trying to level the playing field.' His experiences gave him 'a deep, deep hate for the system for the way they handle informants.'
The site's extensive disclaimer notes that in part that 'All posts made by users should be considered as inaccurate opinions unless backed by official documents.' It urges members to 'Please post informants that are involved with nonviolent crimes only.'
The Department of Homeland Security issued an advisory about the site, warning law enforcement officers not even to view the site. 'Visiting the site could result in the compromise of government IP addresses.
Searching the site for a particular name could result in that name being cross-indexed to the IP address of the computer used to make the inquiry. Searching for the names of officers or informants could compromise those individual's identities. Any website is capable of collecting IP address and search information from visitors, but this site is different because it makes visitor information public.'
The site believes it is protected by legal precedents set in connection with another website, charmichaelcase, which also posts information about informants. ProEthics, Ltd., an ethics training and consulting firm, named Whosarat.com its Unethical Website of the Month for August, 2004.
Source: No url
Mosques are Importing Jihad (back)
February 9, 2007
Gina Khan is a British Muslim woman who lives near the men suspected of a plot to kidnap and kill a Muslim soldier. She says that it’s time to stop the radicals, and to stop being afraid of themOur mosques are importing jihad
Gina Khan is a very brave woman. Born in Birmingham 38 years ago to Paki-stani parents, she has run away from an arranged marriage, dressed herself in jeans and dared to speak out against the increasing radicalisation of her community.
'There are mosques springing up on every street corner,' she says, pointing them out to me as we drive to her tiny house in Birmingham, near the district where nine men were arrested last week on suspicion of plotting to kidnap and behead a British Muslim soldier. Two suspects have since been released without charge.
We pass the biggest mosque, Birmingham Central, where Dr Mohammad Naseem preached at the weekend that British Muslims were being treated like Jews under the Nazis and that the Government had 'invented the perception' of a terrorist threat.
'He is not the voice of Muslims in Birmingham ,' says Khan, angrily. 'I don’t how he has got himself that position. He does not know what he is talking about, he is 80 years old and needs to retire. If you want someone to be running these establishments, you need a British Asian, modern, liberal man.'
Over the past 15 years, she says, there has been an influx of jihadist thinking into her part of Birmingham . Bookshops sell radical literature and the mosques preach separatism and hatred. The Government and the white Establishment have allowed it to happen. And she is outraged about it. 'It’s all happening on your doorstep,' she says, 'and Britain is still blind to the real threat that is embedded here now.
'I truly believe that all these mosques here are importing jihad. The radical teaching is filtering through, and these mosques are not regulated. They are supporting everything that is wrong about Islam. We within the community knew this. People are lying. They are in denial. They knew they were bringing in radicals.
'But there are still more English and British people, no matter what, and if they got together and wanted to stamp out this radicalism, they could. I am wasting my time talking to my own people; that is why I am sitting here talking to you, to open your eyes.'
Khan is particularly worried about how mosques are brainwashing children and young people: 'To me, it is starting to look like a cult.' And her local community certainly seems to be in denial. 'After the raid I went to the corner shop here, and they were all saying it was a conspiracy. I turned round and said, ‘No, it is not. Let us be honest’.
'They say we’re being victimised. We’re not. The truth is coming out at last, but it’s 20 years too late.' The trouble is, says Khan, that many of the Pakistanis who have come to Birmingham are all too easily swayed. 'Most of them are ignorant, uneducated, illiterate people from rural areas. It is very easy for them to be brainwashed, very easy. These are people who have been taught from the beginning that our religion is everything, it is the right way. You are going to Hell simply because you were not born a Muslim.' Khan is far too independent-minded to accept these beliefs wholesale. 'I would say to my mum, ‘Are you telling me that Mother Teresa is going to Hell?’ and she didn’t have an answer. My mum was not backward, but everyone is being taught that Islam is going to take over, there are going to be mosques everywhere. This is something jihadists have planned for centuries. They were just looking for our weaknesses, which they have found.'
Khan believes that the radicals have coopted concerns about foreign policy to suit their cause. When she began to be worried about what the mosques were teaching her children, she decided instead to ask a female student to instruct them at home. Khanpicks up the story: 'She was in the kitchen making the tea and it was after the London bombings. She said, ‘What do you think about what’s happening in Palestine ?’ I got angry. I didn’t realise how patriotic I was getting. I turned round and said, ‘I do not care what is happening in Palestine or Israel . I give a damn about what is happening on my doorstep. I have family in London . Look at what is going to happen because of these few people. Look at the people who have died or had limbs amputated. Where were the Muslims then? Why did not anyone care? Because they were mostly white Christians’. And now they’ve turned the bombers’ graves into shrines! They’re just killers.'
Khan says she would be delighted if her son joined the British Army or the police. 'I say to him, ‘You have these options, you can go into the army and police. You are British, do not listen to anybody else’. I had too much rubbish fed in me that I would be too Westernised. I was told to keep my distance from you because I am a Muslim. It is still really hard to explain to you how you are conditioned. From a young age those thoughts are put in your head: ‘I am a Muslim. I do not mix with those people’. I would honestly say that we are more racist and more prejudiced than the English.'
Yet she feels utterly British herself, and senses no conflict between her race, her religion and her nationality. 'I am definitely British. I have a British passport. I love this country. When I went to Pakistan I missed my baked beans. It was as simple as that for me. I went in the 1980s and found that there was more rock music, head-bangers, modern kids there than what was happening here. I came back and said to my mum, ‘What have you been doing to me in this country?’ ' What has been done to her — and so many other Muslim women — is what incenses Khan most, and has emboldened her tospeak out. Muslim society, she says, is based on male domination and the oppression of women. The mosques are run entirely by men, the Sharia councils are run by men, the 'voice' of the Muslim community is always male. And it is women who suffer as a result.
Three issues in particular enrage her: forced or arranged marriages for teenage girls, polygamy and the veil. Khan herself was pressurised into marriage at the age of 16 by her father, against her mother’s wish-es. 'I was manipulated by my dad’s side of the family into a teen marriage — you know, you are a passport for someone from Pakistan . My mum wanted me to study and make something of my life because she knew what this country had to offer.'
Khan married and became pregnant, but after her baby died she says that she suffered terrible postnatal depression and left the marriage. Her family disowned her, as did the Muslim community. 'Where is the support in the community for women?' she asks. 'Where is it? It is not here. The best thing you can do is go to the social services.' She is full of praise for the instruments of the British state: social services, the police, job centres. If she were prime minister, she says, the first thing she would do is ban teen marriages. 'They are still being pulled out of the local girls school here and taken back home, aged 16 or 17, not allowed to get an education. These girls are so young, they can be manipulated by their family’s culture and religion. They don’t have a chance. To wait until they are 25 or so would make more sense.'
The mosques, she says, collude in these marriages, as they do in the informal polygamy that she claims is rife in Muslim communities. 'It is still very, very common here, polygamy. This is Pakistan I have just brought you back into,' she says, gesturing at the streets of terraced and semidetached houses. 'I know enough stories from women who have come out from abroad, settled with their husbands in arranged marriages and then their husbands have gone back to Pakistan to marry someone else and work out a legal way to get them in the country. In 21st-century Britain the men in the mosques are saying that polygamy is OK, when it does nothing but increase depression in women. No woman in her right mind can share a man. I defy any woman to say she can.'As a result, the first wives get desperately depressed. 'I am not exaggerating this. There is a majority of mothers with depression. Fathers commit polygamy; any child you ask tells you it is an unhappy and sad situation to be in. It is damaging to society. It should not be happening in 21st-century Britain . They need people to stop it happening.'
But the mullahs are implicitly condoning both forced marriages and polygamy. 'They do not question or do anything about the fact that there are two people who do not want to get married. They are no good with these issues because their answer will be, ‘Yes, he is a man, he can have two wives. Yes, you should listen to your parents and marry the person they have chosen’.'
So, although polygamy is illegal in Britain , it is still, says, Khan, being practised with a Muslim seal of approval. The 'marriages', after all, are being sanctioned in the mosques. 'My mum would turn in her grave if she knew Sharia was here. This is England , how can this be happening, how in this country? People in Pakistan are fighting for it not to happen there.'Khan is also vociferous on the subject of the veil, which is not, she says, a religious requirement: 'It’s a 7th-century garment that should not be in this country.' In places like Pakistan , where there is little protection by the police from sexual harassment, she can see the point of it, but not here.
'It hurts me,' she explains. 'This was once a nice, mixed area. It hurts me that people are on the streets and women are afraid to walk around. No one is talking to each other, white women on one side, veiled women on the other, walking around. They are ignoring me too. I do not know them and I cannot say hello to them either.'
As for the woman who was recently photographed in a burka, sticking two fingers upto the photographer, 'To me, I felt she did that to me. To me it was a sign of the real thing which you don’t see. They are not all pious and vulnerable and dignified under that garment. If she was, she would not have done that.'
Khan often dresses in Western clothes, but not immodestly. Her sleeves are long, and she wears jeans, not a skirt. But she resents being judged by men and more fundamentalist women for choosing to do so. 'On one side you have liberal Muslims who do their own thing and on the other, you have the fundamentalists and they are looking down at you. That’s the worst thing, they look down at you because you do not want to be like them. You get grass thrown inyour face, you cannot be a good person unless you are reading the Koran, unless your children are and you are living as an Asian woman should.'
Having banned teen marriages and the veil, cracked down on polygamy and ensured women’s representation in mosques, Khan’s next priority as prime minister would be to get rid of faith schools and teach Britishness more effectively. Although her children are taught well at an excellent Catholic school, she fears that Muslim schools exacerbate separatism. 'Britishness should be compulsory in schools, taught by English teachers. And we should let kids know how valuable their British passports are around the world.'
Khan would love to start a movement of like-minded people, who are grateful for what Britain has given them. 'I am trying to get together people, whether Christian, white, black, Turkish. Whoever you are, we have one thing in common: we care about Britain , we care about our country. Whoeveryou are, we want this country to be a safe place. We want to live here, we know we have the best place.
'Compared with Third World countries, compared with every Muslim country, we Muslims are a lot safer here, I know that still. I would not want to leave and move to Pakistan or anywhere on my own as a woman with a grown daughter. I know that now, though it may have taken me a lifetime to realise it. I am so lucky to have been born here.
'We are women, we are treated equally here. If I am raped or sexually abused, the cruellest things that can happen to a woman and leave a residue on your life, this is a country that supports you. I do not have to hide. They are going to help me, give me counselling. What are they going to do in a Muslim country? Stone me. I need four witnesses. They are going to ostracise me, as if I am dirty.'
But still, within the British Muslim community, women are not equal. 'We are just treated as second-best. It has always been like that. It does not matter whether you are from a village and backward or from a cultured Asian family — the mentality across the board is the same.
'You are fighting this mentality all your life, so it is hard to be who you are. You can either be miserable, as I was for 34 years, or you can say, ‘You know what? I am ahuman being, God gave me a brain equal to the brain he has given you and I am not going to bend over and pray behind you just because you are a man’. Nobody can change that about me because I totally believe that.
'Muslim women aren’t suppose to make waves. I didn’t even hear my own screams and tears for 34 years. I have now stepped back and decided to understand and challenge my religion.'
So Khan wants like-minded women (and men) to join her. 'We need to get together. We need mothers getting together. You know what? It is one thing to sit and talk about it and be angry about it; it is another thing if they play psychological games. We can show how mentally strong we are, we women, we can do it, mothers can.
'Let us have a stronger voice. Let us start with the real problems and say, ‘Whether you like it or not, this is what we demand’. We could start with all the things that should have been done a long time ago. I would start by ending the teen marriages.'A whole generation of us have been messed up by these arranged marriages. Women like me lived in depression for 30, 40 years. We do not want to be depressed any more. We want to have a strong voice.'
But it is a very brave course to embark upon. Already Khan has had bricks through her car window for speaking out locally about domestic violence and sexual abuse, issues that are taboo in the Muslim community.
She is determined, though, to stand strong. 'It has been a constant mental battle for me all my life until I decided I am who I am, I am not afraid. I have been living in this community, but lots of thing I say people will not like.
'I fear no one. I fear God punishing me for never revealing the truth. Women like me usually jump in front of a running train. I was close once, but I’ll be damned if I let another jerk put the fear back in me again. I have freedom of speech, too.
'I am not going to live in fear. I have been told not to say too much. I have been told to be careful what you say, there are people, men, out there who won’t like it.'
But there are thousands, millions perhaps, who will. They will cheer for Gina Khan, admire her courage and pray that she remains safe. 'The bottom line for my agenda is to eradicate the radicals,' she declares. 'We need to say, ‘Wake up, you have to understand you are not being taught the right thing’.'
Source: http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/ article1354063.ece
CAIR
February 10, 2007
There are plenty of facts that show that the organizations that fund terrorism also fund CAIR. The Islamic Association of Palestine is an Islamic terrorist organization that raised funds in the US for terrorist attacks in Israel. Are you aware that CAIR's co-founder, Omar Ahmed, also co-founded the Islamic Association for Palestine? CAIR's executive director, Nihad Awad, has described himself as a 'supporter of the Hamas movement. You did know that lower-level CAIR officials have been arrested and indicted on terrorism-related charges in the United States?
Here are some more facts for you
The Saudi-based Islamic Development Bank, gave CAIR $250,000 in August 1999. The IDB also manages funds (Al-Quds, Al-Aqsa) which finance suicide bombings against Israeli civilians by providing funds to the families of Palestinian 'martyrs.'
The International Institute of Islamic Thought, an organization linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, gave CAIR's Washington office $14,000 in 2003, according to IIIT tax filings. David Kane, who investigated IIIT as part of Operation Green Quest's probe into some one hundred companies and organizations, described in a sworn affidavit the various ways in which it may have funded suspected terrorist-front organizations.
The International Relief Organization (also called the International Islamic Relief Organization, or IIRO), a Saudi-financed organization being investigated by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance for terrorism financing donated at least $12,000 to CAIR.
Randall Royer, CAIR's communications specialist and civil rights coordinator, was indicted on charges of conspiring to help Al-Qaeda and the Taliban to battle American troops in Afghanistan. He later pled guilty to lesser firearms-related charges and was sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Ghassan Elashi, the founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, was convicted in July 2004 along with his four brothers of having illegally shipped computers from their Dallas-area business, InfoCom Corporation, to Libya and Syria, two designated state sponsors of terrorism. In April of 2005, Elashi and two brothers were also convicted of knowingly doing business with Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior Hamas leader and Specially Designated Terrorist. He continues to face charges that he provided more than $12.4 million to Hamas while he was running the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF), America's largest Islamic charity.
Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's community relations director, pleaded guilty in September 2003 to lying on his visa application and for passing bad checks for substantial amounts in early 2001, for which he was deported. Khafagi was also a founding member and president of the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA), an organization under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for terrorism-related activities.
Rabih Haddad, a CAIR fundraiser, was arrested on terrorism-related charges and deported from the United States due to his subsequent work as executive director of the Global Relief Foundation, a charity he co-founded; in October 2002, GRF was designated by the U.S. Treasury Department for financing Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations. According to a CAIR complaint, Homam Albaroudi, a member of CAIR's Michigan chapter and also a founding member and executive director of the IANA also founded the Free Rabih Haddad Committee.
Siraj Wahhaj, a CAIR advisory board member, was named in 1995 by U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White as a possible unindicted co-conspirator in connection with the plot to blow up New York City landmarks led by the blind sheikh, Omar Abdul Rahman.
Ihsan Bagby, a future CAIR board member, stated in the late 1980s that Muslims 'can never be full citizens of this country,' referring to the United States, 'because there is no way we can be fully committed to the institutions and ideologies of this country.'
Ibrahim Hooper, the future CAIR spokesman, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune on April 4, 1993: 'I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.'
Omar Ahmad, CAIR's chairman, announced in July 1998 that 'Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran . . . should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.'
Source: http://www.anti-cair-net.org/
Egyptian Cleric Allegedly Abducted by CIA in Italy Released (back)
February 12, 2007
An Egyptian Muslim preacher allegedly kidnapped by CIA agents off the streets of an Italian city and taken to Egypt has been released, his lawyer and a security official said Monday.
Attorney Montasser al-Zayat said Osama Hassan Mustafa Nasr, known as Abu Omar, was ordered free Sunday by an Egyptian State Security Court that found his detention in Egypt 'unfounded.'
Al-Zayat said Nasr was set free from a police station in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. A security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, confirmed the court's ruling and Abu Omar's release.
[snipped]
Egyptian officials have not publicly acknowledged Nasr's abduction or his detention in Egypt. They also have not publicly confirmed his country took part in renditions. But Egypt's Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif told NBC's 'Meet the Press' in 2005 that 'people have been sent' to Egypt but would not say how many or discuss their cases.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-02-12-milan-cleric_x.htm
Envoy Calls for Muslim Unity to Overcome Difficulties (back)
February 12, 2007
Iranian Ambassador to Oman Morteza Rahim in a meeting with the Grand Mufti of Oman, Sheikh Ahmad bin Hamad al-Khalili on Monday urged the need to safeguard the unity of the world of Islam to overcome the existing difficulties.
The Iranian diplomat said that the enemies of Islamic Ummah intend to sow seed of discord between Shiites and Sunnis as well as all religious factions.
Turning to the recent remarks of Iran's Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution, he said that ever since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, Iran has become the forerunner of unity among world Muslims.
Condemning the Zionist regime's insulting measures against Masjed al-Aqsa, he underlined that the Islamic states should have a unique stance on the issue.
At the meeting, Rahimi submitted a letter of invitation to the Grand Mufti of Oman to attend a conference on Islamic unity in Tehran.
For his part, Al-Khalili appreciated Iran's approach to the world of Islam, in particular to Palestine.
'Just as Sultan Qaboos has urged the need for unity among Islamic states, we have always been hearing Iran's call for unity aiming to unify the Islamic Ummah,' added the Grand Mufti of Oman.
He hoped that he will manage to attend the conference on Islamic unity in Tehran.
Source: http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-17/0702123606170915.htm
Iran, Venezuela to Open Air Route (back)
February 11, 2007
Iran will begin direct flights to Venezuela in March, an indication of the increasingly warm relations between the two countries, Iran’s Fars News Agency reported.
Iran Air, the country’s national airline, will operate a weekly commercial flight route linking the two capitals. Flights departing from Tehran will stop over in the Syrian capital Damascus on their way to Caracas.
The government of Venezuela confirmed news of the new air route on Friday.
The two countries have bolstered ties since Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad came to power in 2005. The president visited the Latin American country last year and signed a series of agreements with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, including oil exploration and car production.
The two oil-rich countries share a strong animosity towards the United States, which they see as an imperialist country.
Chavez has said his country would defend Iran in the event of an attack.
Iran is under heavy international pressure over its controversial nuclear program, which the United States fears is covertly being used to manufacture nuclear weapons.
Caracas has expressed its support of Iran possessing a peaceful nuclear program and has demonstrated its diplomatic support of Iran in international forums such as the United Nations.
The new air route will likely enhance the relations between the two countries by facilitating travel and bringing together families dispersed across the two regions, Iranians officials say.
Iran Air opened a new office at the headquarters of Venezuela’s state airline Conviasa on Friday, and Conviasa will soon aopen a commercial office in Iran, according to Fars.
During Ahmadi Nejad’s visit to Venezuela in January, the second visit in four months, the two governments signed additional agreements to cooperate in tourism, education and mining.
Iran and Venezuela, both of which are members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), have announced they will form a $2-billion fund to finance investments in their countries, as well as in other countries seeking to curtail U.S. domination.
Source: http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=16710
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