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Posted on 10/12/2004 8:58:00 PM PDT by nwctwx
I hope you are wrong about the follow up on subs. I am a recently retired elem. teacher. Security was always a concern in the schools where I taught. There was little scoffing or concern for PC when it came to safety. Most of the nuts we dealt with, however, were parents. Nevertheless, school personnel, regardless of political leanings, MUST now be extremely vigilant.
North Korea, up to a couple weeks ago, was acting like a crazy guy waving a gun around while surrounded by cops. They were mobilizing to a certain extent and alarming the neighbors with their missile exercises and nuclear "sea of fire" threats. (Maybe) China is the cop that decided enough was enough, stepped in, and put the gun to their head.
If I were talking to a North Korean military or intelligence officer (or the "Dear Leader"), I'd say that the nuclear and missile brinkmanship your country has been pursuing has reached a dead end and is now making a bad situation even worse as all your immediate neighbors are now talking about intervention. China is lining up on the border, Japan is talking preemption, and South Korea has leaked a military plan to move north and reunify - - all in the span of the past 2-3 weeks.
And what provoked all this? National maneuvers with nuclear-capable missiles.
Some deterrent.
Self reliance? Hardly. Self destruction? Definitely.
It's a dog-eat-dog world and you're the one wearing milk-bone underwear.
(That probably doesn't translate well, but you get the idea.)
The nuclear and missile programs are not your salvation. They have become your undoing. They are not deterring intervention but forcing it. Get rid of it. Put down the gun and don't commit "suicide by cop". Invite a UN force of acceptable neutral nations to oversee and verify the dismantling of these programs and simultaneously they would serve as de facto "human shields" from intervention. The UN could put a humanitarian assistance force together like they did for Albania in the mid-90s. No one is going to intervene with a multinational UN force on the ground.
Think about it.
Conn. mosque leader says FBI raided home
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Terror%20Financing
WOLCOTT, Conn. -- A Connecticut Islamic leader said Thursday that FBI agents raided his home as part of an investigation into a Sudanese charity that federal officials have accused of supporting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists.
Majeed Sharif, president of United Muslim Mosque in Waterbury, would not discuss what investigators took from his Wolcott home on Wednesday. But he told The Associated Press that he did volunteer work for the Islamic African Relief Agency, a charity the Bush administration said Wednesday was financing terrorism.
Sharif, 57, referred all other questions to his attorney, who said Sharif has done nothing wrong.
"He is an absolutely amazing humanitarian and person," attorney Rosa C. Rebimbas said Thursday. She would not discuss the search.
The FBI confirmed it executed a search warrant in Wolcott but would not identify the address. Federal agents searched the Islamic African Relief Agency's office in Columbia, Mo., on Wednesday.
Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said the searches were part of an ongoing investigation.
"There is no danger or immediate threat to the local community," Sierra said.
The Treasury Department alleged the charity, headquartered in Khartoum, Sudan, and five of its officials "provided direct financial support" for bin Laden. It also said that the group "engaged in a joint program with an institute controlled by (bin Laden) that was involved in providing assistance to Taliban fighters."
The government alleged that the overseas branches of the group provided "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to bin Laden in 1999.
The Treasury Department's action means U.S. banks must block any assets found in this country belonging to the Islamic African Relief Agency and the five officials. People in the United States are not allowed to provide money to them.
Sharif was not named by the Treasury Department. No charges have been filed and documents related to the search are sealed.
The Islamic African Relief Agency's Web site describes its efforts to provide food for Sudanese refugees and to renovate orphanages in Baghdad, Iraq.
As they always have, local Muslim leaders condemn beheadings
http://www.rep-am.com/story.php?id=7428 : September 23, 04
This week's beheadings of civilian American captives in Iraq have been condemned by Muslim leaders in Waterbury who also said Wednesday it's time Americans learned that Islam has always abhorred such atrocities.
"This is something that is against our Islamic teachings," said Muhammad Kammar, who took over in July as the first full-time imam at the United Muslim Mosque in Waterbury. "The Quran tells us that he who spares a life has spared the whole of humanity and he who destroys a life has destroyed the whole of humanity. It's very sad that people do these things in the name of Islam."
Majeed Sharif, president of the mosque, called the killings barbaric. "They are all way out of Islamic laws. It has nothing to do with Islam at all. ... Somehow the media never get the information that Muslims condemn this," he said.
"Muslims don't do that. The Quran doesn't say chop somebody's head off," said Azmi Isaku, president of the Albanian-American Cultural and Islamic Center on Columbia Boulevard, another city mosque.
Kammar said the Quran, Islam's holy book, prohibits killing noncombatants in a war. He said the Iraqi militants who are guilty of the beheadings are acting on their own. "They cannot blame it on Islam," he said. "They cannot say that Islam told them to do this."
The Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations sees a growing tide of hate crimes against Muslims, citing Friday's attempted firebombing of a mosque in El Paso, Texas.
Isaku said the militants' violence against American and other foreign civilians in Iraq is having consequences for Muslims in this region. "Sure it makes things tougher for us," he said.
Kammar conceded that some Muslims feel uneasy about how they're now viewed by non-Muslim Americans as a result of the killings but added that "it's wrong to blame it on a whole community, just like anybody else who does something. If a Christian does something somewhere it 's unfair to blame all Christians."
Kammar said he hasn't encountered hostility, nor has his 10-year-old daughter, who attends a Waterbury public school, even though she wears a hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by Muslim females.
It's "very, very wrong to think Muslims hate this country," added Kammar, who plans to talk about Islam in the U.S. during upcoming sermons. He said he will remind his congregation that "Islam has been here for a long time. You must not look at yourselves as strangers in this country."
Sharif said national Muslim organizations are constantly making statements to disassociate their religion from the militants, pointing to the council's statements, which are on the Web at www.cair-net.org.
Better detail. But it doesn't mention Nuweiba.
It does seem to reinforce the Debka assertion (along with the early Russian articles) that a second bomb was involved at the Ras al-Satan location.
Amen.
The Mystique of Osama Bin Laden
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=10384&catcode=13
..excerpt..
How many times during these last weeks have Americans heard the words, ''If President Bush had just not lost sight of Bin Laden and not let him escape from Tora Bora, this war on terror would be over.'' What a foolish and ignorant statement.
When Adolf Hitler put a bullet in his head, the war in Europe was officially over. That war had been lost by Germany the day the coalition of the willing got a foothold on the beaches of Normandy, but Hitler just didn’t realize it. Ask yourself this question: Did the Nazi ideology die with Hitler? Of course, it didn’t. It is alive and well all over the world including right here in America. Could the Nazi ideal attain its lofty goals today? Hopefully it would not--but only because the world recognized the Nazi plan for the evil that it was, and stopped it over 50 years ago.
The world now faces a similar enemy, with the same basic ideals as the Nazi ideal. A ''Master Race'' that is not blonde and blue-eyed, but made up of strict Islamists who believe that the Prophet Mohammed instructed them to rule the world and that all the ''infidels'' should either be eliminated or subjugated under them. That is their belief and these radical, fundamentalist followers of Islam believe that any action they take to attain this goal is justified--and they are very patient. And this is the belief of Osama bin Laden.
But Osama bin Laden is a figurehead who has been made far more important than he is, in the world’s war against terrorism. It is unknown at this time if Osama is alive or dead and it doesn’t seem to matter to the terrorists. Terrorists don’t need bin Laden to carry on their war. Alive Osama is a mystery and dead he is a martyr, but either way the war will go on. Terrorists do not need some group called ''al Qaeda'' to carry on the killing. All terrorists need is the firm belief in their cause, and they seem to have that in abundance. A mullah in England just issued an edict to his female followers to produce many children who will be trained to kill the infidel. This shows very clearly that this war is not going to be won in a year or a decade or by finding Osama bin Laden, who may or may not even be alive.
Look closely at what has happened to the terrorists and their cause since the day bin Laden carried out his attack on the United States. The wrath of hell has been brought down on their radical heads since their brief celebration over the attack on the ''Great Satan.'' The Taliban has lost control of Afghanistan which had been a safe haven for terrorists from all over the world. Many terrorists have died since that foolish frontal attack on their most formidable enemy, America. Saddam, another financial supporter and the dictator of Iraq--a country that was also a safe haven for terrorists--is now in prison awaiting justice at the hands of his people. While these fundamentalists all over the world longed to strike the United States on our own soil, none were foolish enough to do it--until bin Laden.
South Carolina : FBI increases amount of reward for information in Upstate ricin case
http://www.wistv.com/Global/story.asp?S=2432655&nav=0RaPS15a
(Columbia-AP) Oct. 14, 2004 - The FBI has increased a reward for information leading to the arrest of anyone responsible for leaving a package containing the deadly poison ricin at an Upstate postal facility a year ago.
The reward has been increased $20,000 to $120,000.
The increase was announced Thursday, a day before the one-year anniversary of the discovery of the package at a facility serving Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. The package also contained a letter. The author claimed to be the owner of a tanker fleet company with access to large amounts of pulp from castor plants, which are the source of the poison ricin.
The letter was one of two intercepted last year signed "Fallen Angel." The second letter was addressed to the White House and bore a postmark from Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was discovered by the Secret Service at a Washington offsite mail processing facility.
In both letters, the author complained about new regulations that mandate more rest periods for long-haul truckers.
A Nuclear 9/11 Could Shut Us Down
http://www.opinioneditorials.com/guestcontributors/rneuwirth_20041015.html
...excerpt...
In our war on terror, the enemy is now positioning to strike America from yet another direction and with a potentially fatal blow, with many thanks to France. The 9/11 Commission pointed out that our biggest failure was ''a failure of imagination.'' That is, our thinking lagged the evolving reality and our key leaders failed to grasp the possibility of such a daring attack and hence we were caught unprepared. We not only failed to imagine such a scenario but we also underestimated the enemy’s intent and its capabilities even as we also ignored those people who tried to warn us about our exposure.
Americans already anticipate a variety of possible internal terror threats and we hope and assume that our government is on the job. But now another ominous warning comes from Professor Howard Bloom. He is a visiting scholar at the Graduate Psychology Department at New York University, an author of two books and articles. If he is right, then there is an urgent need to understand this emerging threat and to respond in time.
After 9/11, President Bush asserted that Islam is a religion of peace and that we need to fight only that small minority of Moslems who are extremists. By now the term ''war on terror'' is gradually being replaced by terms like Islamism, Islamo-Fascism, Islamic extremism, etc. The actions of Moslems around the world, and even inside America, are raising disturbing questions about the mindset of large numbers of people within the greater Moslem community.
King Abdullah of Jordan, after the bombing of the train in Madrid, Spain, made a brief but significant comment. He said that the real conflict was going on within the Moslem world and it was between the moderates and the extremists. He did not say who is winning. This is part of the big picture that the west does not fully understand and hence it is not providing a sufficiently effective response.
Professor Bloom, on his web site addresses Islamic intent and also the rapidly emerging Islamic military capability. This article will summarize both issues from his web site and also include remarks from his lengthy radio interview on the Art Bell show of August 21, 2004.
CANNON fire signalled the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan early today.
During the holiest of months, all Muslims will abstain from life's normal habits in order to cleanse and purify their bodies and minds.
During the fasting day, which begins at dawn and continues until immediately after sunset, Muslims must refrain from drinking, eating, smoking and sexual relations - the subjection of passions and appetites, being designed to purify the soul and bring it close to God.
The Justice and Islamic Affairs Ministry has issued an order forbidding restaurants and coffee shops to open during daylight in Ramadan.
It also forbids smoking, drinking or eating in public places during the day for everyone, until after sunset.
Those found guilty of such acts will be punished by the court according to the law.
Although non-Muslims are allowed to eat during the daylight hours, it is illegal to do so in public.
Even though Bahrain is renowned for cosmopolitan tolerance, during this month non-Muslims are expected to show particular respect and sensitivity towards those who are fasting.
Newcomers to Bahrain may be under the impression that Ramadan is held at roughly the same time each year. However, this is not the case. The date of the start of Ramadan is 11 days or so earlier each year.
A devout Muslim should refrain from telling lies, backbiting and committing sinful acts. Muslims believe that if a person commits a sinful act while fasting, God will not reward him.
During Ramadan, Muslims wait for the night of Lailat Al Qadir, which falls in the last 10 days of Ramadan.
They believe that prayers on the night will be answered and God will reward the faithful who stay up late at night praying for the atonement of their sins and a place in paradise after resurrection.
Thank you tmp02 for that summary.
Wonder whose eyes were watching today while police investigated this and whose eyes will be watching tomorrow when they return? When they do their missions for real, they'll be completed based on hours upon hours of preparation from having observed our reactions or lack of them on all of those test runs.
Airline security (all agencies involved) you need to take passengers seriously who are reporting incidents involving ME men. You are failing us by ignoring this problem and making your organizations appear toothless.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
I'm not familiar with ING except knowing the name from a few commercials.
http://www.assistnews.net/Stories/s04100065.htm
ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 2126, Garden Grove, CA 92842-2126 USA
E-mail: danjuma1@aol.com, Web Site: www.assistnews.net
Thursday, October 14, 2004
EXODUS OF IRAQI CHRISTIANS IN FULL FLOOD AS TARGETED KILLINGS GROW
By Michael Ireland
Chief Correspondent, ASSIST News Service
BAGHDAD, IRAQ (ANS) -- Seven Christian workers from the Baghdad Hunting Club were recently killed and two others injured when four men, their faces covered by keffiyehs, blasted the believers’ Kia minibus with gunfire, writes Kim Sengupta in an October 12 article on the www.independent.co.uk website.
“It was midnight in Baghdad, not a time to be out in this place of violence. But the workers from the Baghdad Hunting Club had almost made it back home through the deserted streets when the tires of their Kia minibus were shredded by a burst of gunfire,” Sengupta wrote.
“The shots had come from a black Opel saloon which had tracked them from the club -- a prestigious haunt of Iraq's new rich -- after finishing the late shift. Four men, their faces covered by keffiyehs, slid open the door of the minibus and sprayed the occupants with Kalashnikov fire.
“Their targets, seven Christians, were killed almost instantly. Two others were injured but survived. The dead were all breadwinners for their families in the close-knit Christian community in the suburb of al-Doura. These families now want to leave Iraq, joining the exodus of thousands of their co-religionists since the war.”
The murders were the latest deadly attack against Iraq's Christians, a systematic and brutal campaign by Islamic extremists which began soon after the "liberation" by the United States and Britain, Sengupta said.
So far, 110 have been killed. In August, four churches in Baghdad and one in Mosul were blown up in a co-ordinated series of car bombings, killing 12 people and injuring 61 others.
“In September, another Baghdad church was bombed. There have also been mortar attacks on community centres, shootings of Christian shopkeepers and kidnappings of businessmen for extortion,” she said.
The result had been a flow of Christians -- mostly middle-class and members of the intelligentsia and entrepreneurs -- out of the country, with a marked acceleration in the past few months. About 45,000 have gone so far out of a community estimated to be between 600,000 and 700,000.
Pascale Warda, the Iraqi interim government's minister for displacement and migration, who is herself a Christian, says there is no chance of halting the exodus while the attacks continue.
Christians in Iraq faced little religious persecution under the secular regime of Saddam Hussein, Sengupta says.
Senior members of the Baath party, including Tariq Aziz, the deputy prime minister, were Christians. Now, they say, they receive scant protection from the US and British military in the face of the onslaught. Some of the early killings, mainly of shopkeepers, happened in the supposedly safer, British-run south of the country.
Sengupta writes that he interim government's national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, blames the church bombings on followers of the Jordanian-born Sunni militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Iraqi police say fighters from Muqtada Sadr's Mehdi Army could be responsible for those and other sectarian attacks. But whatever the truth, hardly anyone has been arrested.
“Those killed in the minibus shooting worked as cooks and waiters at the hunting club. The expensive institution once used by the Baath elite has now reopened. Membership stands at 1,500 with plenty more willing to pay the annual $450 (£250) subscription to use its tennis courts, pools and restaurants,” she said.
Among the dead were Emanuel Markus, 42, and his 16-year-old son, Maradona. Another son, Elias, 17, who was shot in the arm, is so terrified and traumatized that he has now fled the family home.
Dressed in a black mourning gown, Kisno Markus sat at home clutching photographs of her husband and two sons. The remaining seven members of the family are all women. They now have to survive in an Iraq where work is scarce for all, and even more so for working-class women, Sengupta wrote.
"I know it is going to be very hard, but I cannot think about that now," said Mrs Markus. "I have looked at the dead faces of my husband and my son, and that is what keeps on going through my mind.
"They were very close -- my husband named my son after his favorite footballer. They used to laugh about that. My other son, Elias, has gone to Zakha, the last village in Iraq before you get to Turkey. That is how frightened he is. We are frightened as well. We must leave. We cannot afford to go abroad right now, but we are moving to stay with relations in another part of Baghdad. We are all very scared."
Across the street, 50-year-old Khuki Elias Kreto mourned her son, Nabin, aged 25. "He was my only boy -- the only one -- and they took him away," she said. "What kind of people are these? My son was so quiet that the neighbors said they did not even know when he was in the house. He has never harmed anyone."
Another victim, Emir Shabo Gorgis, supported his wife, six children, an elderly father and his sister on basic pay of $10 a week, Sengupta said.
"He had worked very hard all his life," said his widow, 27-year-old Ilhan. "We never got involved in politics. We have good Muslim friends and neighbours. I do not know why there is so much hatred."
She said the Iraqi police and American forces turned up at the scene of the shooting, but the families say they do not expect anyone to be arrested.
The director of the hunting club, Maksood Al-Sanjary, said: "What has happened is very sad. We would like to help in some way, but these people were the responsibility of a contractor to the club. We are living in very bad times."
Christians are often targeted in Iraq's thriving abduction industry because they are perceived as being well off, Sengupta said. Samir Sajouri, 33, was kidnapped from his furniture shop and held for a week until his family paid a ransom of $35,000. Now he is taking his wife and three children to Jordan.
"We did not have the money," he said. "My wife had to sell stock and borrow to pay this. I was treated very badly by the men who had kidnapped me. They beat me and kicked me. There were always insults because I am a Christian. It is strange -- 90 per cent of those I employed were Muslims," said Mr Sajouri.
At the Church of the Holy Rosary in Karada, Father Butros Haddad was seeing a parishioner seeking her son's baptism certificate.
"It means they are leaving Iraq," he said. "Every day I hear about one or two families leaving from this parish and others. I have been a priest for 35 years and I have never seen the community face such a time of lawlessness.
"It is not bad just for the Christians: our fellow Iraqis -- Muslims -- are also suffering. But on top of all other troubles, the Christians feel they are being especially targeted. The problem is that the Americans don't seem to be able to do anything about security. There is a sense of terrible fear."
** Michael Ireland is an international British freelance journalist. A former reporter with a London newspaper, Michael is the Chief Correspondent for ASSIST News Service of Garden Grove, CA. Michael immigrated to the United States in 1982 and became a US citizen in Sept., 1995. He is married with two children. Michael has also been a frequent contributor to UCB Europe, a British Christian radio station.
** You may republish this story with proper attribution.
"North Korea, up to a couple weeks ago, was acting like a crazy guy waving a gun around while surrounded by
cops"
It's hard to reason with a madman slowly dying from syphilis of the brain...Caligula was another similar case.
Give me a break.
So today starts ramadamn. Guess today is the beginning of some very tense weeks ahead.
Sorry about your loss Ex...I recently lost both of my horses in two days. Though it was painful, it was nothing compared to my house pets. Lost both cats two weeks later. sniffles to you . . .
***FBI probes possible bullet holes on US Airways jet***
http://www.floridatoday.com/topstories/101504orlusair.htm
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