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Posted on 09/11/2004 12:09:10 AM PDT by nwctwx
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Thank you Velveeta.
I'm feeling no pain but I look scary ;)
**Don't miss this one**
City Police Investigate Trespassing Suspect
Thursday, October 7, 2004 at 1:43pm
Oklahoma City police say they're looking into some suspicious materials found inside a vacant building, where a man had apparently set up shop without asking.
Oklahoma City police arrest a 39 year old man for allegedly trespassing at a vacant building near Northwest 16th and Broadway, but it wasn't the fact he'd set up shop with office furniture and a computer which concerned police, it was the books and pictures in the building. While he won't disclose specifics, Capt. Jeff Becker says the subject matter of the books and the pictures were enought to alarm those who discovered them and investigators.
***While Becker won't confirm it, the books are said to be on terrorism and the pictures are of Saddam Hussein and other enemies.***
Becker says currently the suspect, Kelly Sean Spencer, is only facing a trespassing charge, but investigators are researching the materials found in the building to see if there is a need for more concern. -mg
http://www.ktok.com/cc-common/feeds/view.php?feed_id=135&feed=/local.html&instance=1&article_id=8831
LINKS OF INTEREST
http://www.truthusa.com/LinksOfInterest.html
Thank you all4one.
As long as you feel no pain -- that is good.
Getting better -- that is great.
>> I'd say be alert. Have cell phone handy to call in anything suspicious. <<
I guess thats all we can do. That and pray.
btw - the project that had me tied up is on hold waiting for the network upgrade to reach a successful conclusion so I'm able to post a bit more regularly.
Thanks to everyone for keeping me your ping lists. Much appreciated!
Thought I'd dig up this great essay by a British writer, which was written in the days after 9-11. Worth a look if you haven't seen it before. (I really love what his daughter said to him too.)
Why do they hate America? (Excellent essay!)
London Times ^ | 9-23-01 | Bryan Appleyard
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/530883/posts
(Snip)
Or consider what Elisabetta Burba, an Italian journalist, reported for The Wall Street Journal from Beirut. She saw suited, coiffed professionals cheering in the streets. Then she went into a fashionable cafe. "The cafe's sophisticated clientele was celebrating, laughing, cheering and making jokes, as waiters served hamburgers and Diet Pepsi. Nobody looked shocked or moved. They were excited, very excited," she writes.
"Ninety per cent of the Arab world believes that America got what it deserved," she is told. "An exaggeration?" she comments. "Rather an understatement."
(Snip)
But there is something more terrible, more gravely unjust here than 1960s student stupidity, more even than the dancing of the Palestinians and the Lebanese.
Let us ponder exactly what the Americans did in that most awful of all centuries, the 20th. They saved Europe from barbarism in two world wars. After the second world war they rebuilt the continent from the ashes. They confronted and peacefully defeated Soviet communism, the most murderous system ever devised by man, and thereby enforced the slow dismantling - we hope - of Chinese communism, the second most murderous. America, primarily, ejected Iraq from Kuwait and helped us to eject Argentina from the Falklands. America stopped the slaughter in the Balkans while the Europeans dithered.
Now let us ponder exactly what the Americans are. America is free, very democratic and hugely successful. Americans speak our language and a dozen or so Americans write it much, much better than any of us. Americans make extremely good films and the cultivation and style of their best television programmes expose the vulgarity of the best of ours. Almost all the best universities in the world are American and, as a result, American intellectual life is the most vibrant and cultivated in the world.
"People should think," David Halberstam, the writer, says from the blasted city of New York, "what the world would be like without the backdrop of American leadership with all its flaws over the past 60 years." Probably, I think, a bit like hell.
(Snip)
The idea was that America was this big, blundering lummox and we were these terribly refined deep thinkers. Precisely the same attitude inspires the raised eyebrows and condescending tut-tutting of leftish dinner party opinion. They're so naïve, say the chatterers, so innocent - and this, sadly, leads them to do such terrible things.
Well, I've spent some time among the American intelligentsia and I have been awestruck and humbled. They are, without doubt, the best educated, most cultivated and cleverest people in the world. They are also the most humane. There are 30 or more American universities where our best and brightest would be struggling to keep up. Apart from that, how could we be so dumb as to accuse the nation of Updike, Bellow, Roth, DeLillo, Ashbery, Dylan, of Terence Malick, The Simpsons, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola of stupidity, let alone innocence?
(Snip)
Civilisation? It lies exactly 3,000 miles to the west of where I write and some of it is in ruins. I just wish it was closer.
I am sick of my generation's whining ingratitude, its wilful, infantile loathing of the great, tumultuous, witty and infinitely clever nation that has so often saved us from ourselves. But I am heartened by something my 19- year-old daughter said: "America has always been magic to us, we don't understand why you lot hate it so much."
INTERNET SITES UP, DOWN, and RELOCATED:
http://www.internet-haganah.us
http://www.internet-haganah.us/harchives/002874.html
http://www.internet-haganah.us/harchives/002873.html
http://www.internet-haganah.us/harchives/002872.html
Thanks for posting that. I had not read it before and find it very refreshing.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/485939.html
Last update - 22:41 07/10/2004
Blast at Hilton Hotel in Taba, close to Egypt-Israel border
By Amos Harel, Yoav Stern and Revital Levy-Stein, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haartetz Service
An explosion occurred at the Hilton Hotel in the Egyptian town of Taba in the Sinai Desert on Thursday evening, on the border with Israel.
There were reports of casualties in the blast, which took places at around 10 P.M. The Qatar-based satellite channel Al-Jazeera said that most of those wounded in the blast were Israelis.
A ceiling in the hotel collapsed following the blast, Army Radio said.
An Israeli witness at the Hilton said that the hotel was on fire, and that dozens of bodies were lying on the floor.
Within 45 minutes of the blast, seven of the wounded had been taken to Yoseftal Hospital in Eilat, Channel 10 television said.
In the wake of the explosion, the Israeli defense establishment amassed a large number of rescue personnel on the Egyptian border, and Israel Air Force planes were scrambled.
It is unclear what caused the explosion. Some reports suggested that the blast could have been caused by a gas cylinder.
Many Israelis have visited Egypt over the past month, during the period of Jewish holidays. Last month, the defense establishment cautioned Israelis against traveling to Sinai, following warnings of a potential terrorist attack.
This is the second hotel explosion today.
German Spy Chief Says Bin Laden Is Alive
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20041007_533.html
...excerpt...
BERLIN Oct. 7, 2004 — Germany's intelligence chief said Thursday he believes that Osama bin Laden is alive and continues to exert influence in his al-Qaida terror network.
"All indications are that he is alive," August Hanning, head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service, said at a news conference.
German intelligence officials believe, as they have for some time, that bin Laden is living in the Afghan-Pakistani border area, Hanning said. He did not specify which side of the border.
"We continue to see traces of his activity. He tries to organize, to motivate" his followers, Hanning said. He did not elaborate.
The Saudi-born bin Laden's organization is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and a series of worldwide terror strikes since.
Hanning also warned that violence in Iraq risks plunging the country into the chaos of a disintegrating "failed state" resembling terrorist havens like pre-Sept. 11 Afghanistan. U.S.-led airstrikes in Afghanistan ousted the Taliban in late 2001 for harboring bin Laden and al-Qaida.
A breakdown in Iraq would destabilize the Middle East, boost Islamic terrorism worldwide and might allow terrorists to put scientists involved in Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to work for them, the intelligence chief added.
U.S. Examines Chance of Mexico Terror Link
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/americas/9861068.htm?1c
CANCUN, Mexico - Terrorists might try to use existing criminal networks on the border to slip operatives into the United States, but so far there is no evidence any have tried to do so, a high-ranking U.S. official told The Associated Press.
The comments by Michael Garcia, assistant secretary of Homeland Security, come amid concerns international terrorists might be trying to infiltrate organized crime in Mexico and Central America.
"I personally don't know ... (of an) al-Qaida known terrorist trying to come through Mexico into the United States," Garcia said. "What I do know is that obviously there are smuggling organizations very active along the border, and they present a risk."
Garcia spoke in an interview Wednesday during a convention of the global police agency Interpol. In addition to serving as Interpol's vice president for the Americas, he is assistant secretary for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Garcia said drug and people trafficking networks were dangerous because "they will move people for money."
"If a terrorist shows up, has enough money, finds the right organization ... (he) could get across the border," he said. "That's a risk."
On Wednesday, Interpol's chief for Central America, Saul Hernandez, knocked down reports that al-Qaida terrorists had been spotted in Central America.
He said there was no evidence overseas terrorists have tried to contact Central American gangs, as some local officials have suggested.
He also said investigators had been unable to confirm the presence in Central America of a suspected al-Qaida member, Adnan Gushair El Shukrijumah of Saudi Arabia, despite earlier Honduran government reports he had been spotted in that country.
"We do not have information that effectively confirms that this person was there," said Hernandez, who is also El Salvador's police commissioner.
U.S. officials have placed Shukrijumah on a watch list and have said he was implicated in an al-Qaida plot to fill apartment buildings with natural gas and blow them up.
Honduran Defense Minister Federico Breve said his country's intelligence service had no confirmation of an al-Qaida link to gangs.
There have been several recent events that have raised concerns of terrorism in the region.
In August, Security Minister Oscar Alvarez said his country had received intelligence that al-Qaida was trying to recruit Hondurans to attack the embassies of the United States, Britain, Spain and El Salvador.
Terrorist groups have also posted Internet threats against El Salvador for its continuing military support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
And in July, a woman identified as Farida Goolam Mahamed Ahmed was arrested at the McAllen, Texas, airport with a mutilated South African passport and soggy jeans in her luggage after she apparently waded across the Rio Grande from Mexico.
Her illegal entry into the United States raised questions about her activities, but officials haven't said whether she is being investigated for links to terrorists. She pleaded innocent Aug. 20 to three immigration violations.
Garcia said authorities should be "very aggressive" against traffickers exploiting vulnerabilities on the border to slip drugs, people and contraband into the United States.
He said Mexican officials have been cooperative, recognizing that the gangs are "a risk to both our countries."
But that does not mean "we're seeing terrorists come across our border," Garcia added.
Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said earlier in the week that Interpol members shared a database with the names of 6,000 suspected terrorists.
Also Thursday, Mexico's former Interpol director, Rodolfo de la Guardia, said officials were discussing ways to make extraditions faster and easier, a proposal put forth by India.
"All the delegates have promised to take this message back to their local authorities," he said.
(SUBS 21st graf pvs, "Interpol Secretary to correct to Ronald sted Robert Noble.)
FBI studies powder sent by mail to newspapers
http://www.oregonlive.com/business/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/business/109715087827560.xml
...excerpt...
The FBI is investigating envelopes containing suspicious powder that were recently sent to several newspapers.
The newspapers included The Oregonian, The News in Detroit, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Charlotte Observer and The Des Moines Register. The Cleveland Plain Dealer received a similar envelope, but the substance turned out to be onion powder and other seasonings.
The Oregonian received a letter Friday with a return address from a post office box in Arlington, Va., company officials said.
Robert Forsythe, business manager for the paper's FoodDay section, said a mail sorter opened the envelope and found a light-brown powder inside, along with a three-page letter with the words "Snail Poison" on the top line.
Forsythe, who read the letter, said it contained a diatribe suggesting President Bush had poisoned the nation.
FBI to get help on Election Day plots
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-10-07-fbi-help_x.htm
WASHINGTON — Attorney General John Ashcroft quietly has issued a sweeping directive that authorizes the FBI to use hundreds of law enforcement agents from other federal agencies to help investigate any terrorist plots that target the Nov. 2 elections. (Related story: Election warning causes anxiety)
The directive — the first of its kind since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — allows the FBI to tap agents from the U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as part of a nationwide effort by FBI-led counterterrorism units to seek out and stop any plots against the elections.
U.S. law enforcement officials continue to say that beyond intelligence reports indicating that al-Qaeda wants to disrupt the elections, they have no specific information about an existing plot, method or target of a potential attack.
The directive was issued without fanfare at a time when the Bush administration is being accused by Democrats and civil-rights activists of using terrorism alerts to discourage people from voting. But it offers insight into the government's ongoing concern about an attack similar to the deadly train bombings in Madrid last March, just before the Spanish elections.
"In this time of heightened threat, I am directing that all of the (Justice) Department's law enforcement resources be available ... if and when necessary to prevent terrorist attacks," Ashcroft said in the directive, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY.
FBI and Homeland Security authorities have acknowledged that the government has deployed an undisclosed number of agents across the country to improve security during the presidential campaign and through the inauguration in January.
Ashcroft's directive, which was to remain in effect for 60 days, allows FBI field supervisors unusually broad authority to use personnel from other agencies to conduct interviews, assist in any surveillance of potential terrorism suspects and help in other anti-terror duties. It's not clear whether the FBI has used this special authority. But agents have begun meeting with Muslim leaders across the country to try to gather intelligence — a move that some Muslims have criticized, saying it puts them in a position of being forced to reveal their political views or talk about their neighbors.
Agents have begun surveillance on an undisclosed number of people whom the FBI views as potential terrorism suspects. Agents also are asking owners of rental storage units whether they have noticed any customers moving suspicious materials into and out of the facilities.
The frenzy of law enforcement activity is similar to what took place before the national political conventions and the Summer Olympic Games in Athens, where authorities were concerned that al-Qaeda might attempt an attack.
But the persistent warnings about terrorism also have drawn skepticism from some Democratic election officials and civil-rights advocates who have accused the Republican White House of creating a climate of fear that, among other things, could suppress voter turnout. Heavy voter turnout historically has favored Democrats in U.S. elections.
Some local officials in Indiana accused Secretary of State Todd Rokita, a Republican, of trying to intimidate voters after he asked election clerks to develop responses to "an immediate and present danger."
Engy Abdelkader, civil-rights director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says that Arab-Americans and other minorities could choose to stay away from the polls if they believe that federal agents will be questioning people there.
"This could have a very politically chilling effect on our community," Abdelkader says. "We are monitoring this very closely."
I read it now and then when I get discouraged. It helps.
FNC reporting 3 explosions in Egypt and at least 23 dead.
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