Posted on 02/22/2006 5:48:52 AM PST by saveliberty
Always have to get that dig in......okay, now for the obligatory....IT'AS NOT FRISCO, IT'S SAN FRANCISCO.
;>) If you're not nice I'll send Supervisor Sandoval to your neck of the woods!!
See how he picks on me!! ;>)
Even though the legislative branch and the executive branch are SEPARATE, but equal....Congresscritters really get their panties in a wad...if they see the POTUS do anything without their approval.
He's just terrible. Shame on you, FOX.
Thanks for another great show on this port issue.
;>)
Hey, have a nice day, PTD. 8 )
He was talking about the misinformation that was spreading and mocking the liberals
You know this guy has gone round the bend....Even the San Francisco Chronicle and the other loonies on the Board are rushing to say he doesn't speak for them!! If you're in the mood for a-- kicking, come on out, and I can get a line going for a--es that need to be kicked out here!! ;>)
You have a great day too!
" But again, I do know that we are not endangering the National Security of the US by this."
The deal may be a home run strategically and DWP may be as honest and trustworthy as the driven snow.
But, the WH failed to appreciate the primal, visceral reaction of the American people to the news that an Arab country , in a post 9/11 world would be involved on any level with US ports.
No matter how great an ally in the WOT.
They should have laid the ground work long, long before this thing exploded in their face.
Like so many others, my head says from a business standpoint, it probably makes sense, but, my gut is still not onboard.
And the conservative talk show hosts who condemn those of us who still have qualms as either being afraid of Muslims or morons do not do the deal or the President any favors.
A couple of days ago your music before the second hour had a wonderful jazzy number with good percussion.
I sent Tony an email with the particulars.
It was great! It moved and made you want to dance.
Who the heck was it?
Khalid Salahuddin is still the Deputy Director by the way as noted in the second article, but again the Govt. is protecting us so don't worry.
Port of Miami or Port of Jihadi
December 28, 2003
By Joe Kaufman and Beila Rabinowitz
In December 2002, the Washington Post published an alarming report stating that “U.S. intelligence officials had identified approximately 15 cargo freighters around the world that they believed were controlled by al Qaeda or could be used by the terrorist network to ferry operatives, bombs, money or commodities over the high seas.” It further stated that, since September 2001, the U.S. maintained a list of up to 50 al Qaeda “mystery ships.”
The greatest fear, according to the Post article, is a scenario where one or more of these vessels would be used to blow holes in cruise ships, as what happened to the USS Cole and the French oil tanker Limburg, both off the coast of Yemen.
One American location that has been of particular concern regarding this is Miami, where just recently a 50-foot wooden freighter, undetected by authorities, ran aground whilst 220 undocumented Haitian passengers took to the shore. Bruce Stubbs, an ex-Coast Guard captain and now security consultant asked, “If the Coast Guard can't stop 200 people on a freighter from coming into the port of Miami, how can they stop a terrorist with a dirty bomb?”
This question becomes that much more difficult to answer, when the port you’re discussing is governed by those that possibly harbor sympathies for the attackers themselves.
Khalid Salahuddin, or Brother Khalid as he is affectionately known, is the Deputy Director for the Seaport of Miami. He received the position via an appointment from Director Chares Towsley, shortly after scandal had rocked the port when illegally diverted port funds had made their way into Democratic Party coffers.
As Deputy Director, Salahuddin’s responsibilities are many. He solicits Miami business via cargo and cruise ships; he attends and participates in various diplomatic functions, including trade missions, symposiums, news conferences and government briefings, with members of the international community; and he oversees port employment.
That last part came under scrutiny in late 2001, when an NBC 6 news report emerged questioning the hiring practices of the port. In it, it was stated that, out of 1300 members of the three major Longshoremen’s unions listed in port records checked, every one in five were convicted felons in Florida, with offenses that included “attempted murder, armed robbery, assault and battery, trafficking in cocaine, grand theft, auto theft, and sex with a child.”
When confronted about this, Salahuddin had this to say: “From our standpoint, what benefit would it do to kick him out on the street? We see none”
The report also had something ominous to say about easy access to the port. Jim McDonough, Florida Drug Control Director stated, “I think we have to be very prudent about who we put in the hen-house. We generally don't put the wolf in the hen-house, based on the promise that reform has taken place.”
But almost two years later, is the wolf still guarding the hen-house?
Aside from being the Deputy Director of the port, Salahuddin is also the imam of what is said to be the oldest and largest mosque in South Florida, Masjid Al-Ansar. That in itself doesn’t pose a problem, but his views and affiliations do.
Before coming to “the pure teachings of al-Islam,” and before becoming a “true believer,” Salahuddin was a member of the Nation of Islam, the organization headed by the virulently anti-Jewish and anti-American Louis Farrakhan.
This bit of information is found on a website for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which is selling a tape featuring Salahuddin. ISNA is an organization that serves as “an umbrella group for hundreds of Islamic organizations in North America, some of which promote the Islamic fundamentalist doctrine of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad” (Steven Emerson, American Jihad, 2002). Upon his death, Salahuddin gave a memorial speech for Hamid Iqbal Siddiqui, an East Zone Representative for ISNA.
The other individual featured on this video is Maulana Shafayat Mohamed, the spiritual leader of Darul Aloom, the Islamic center where “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla worshipped and where Imran Mandhai and Mossa Jokhan are said to have plotted attacks on a National Guard armory and South Florida electrical power stations.
On February 16, 2002, Salahuddin officiated a fundraising event sponsored by the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), a group whose website boasts anti-homosexual material and contains a graphic link to www.islamonline.net, a site which features religious/legal opinions in support of suicide bombings.
On September 21, 2002, Salahuddin was one of the main speakers in an event sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR was formed by three leaders of a front for the terrorist organization Hamas and has had numerous high ranking members suspected of and convicted of terrorist activity. The Executive Director of CAIR, Nihad Awad, has stated that he supports Hamas.
Other speakers at this event were:
• Muhammad Musri, who like Salahuddin also has his speeches sold by ISNA, believes about Arab Christians that claim they converted from Islam that they “are lying and that they were actually Christians all along” and that “they are using tales of conversion to get financial backing from evangelical ministries.” And he took a jab at Christianity, when he said, “We don't want the Muslims to end up with 700 determinations of Islam.”
• Zulfiqar Ali Shah, the ex-Ameer (President) of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), an organization which “proclaims in writing its support for jihad, or holy war, against the ‘enemies of Islam’” and whose “hatred of Jews is so fierce that it has taunted Jews with a repetition of what Hitler did to them.” Ali Shah gave a lecture on how “stories and descriptions [in the] Old Testament” have been “corrupted by the hand of man” and how “many teachings presently in the Old Testament actually go against all human logic and morality.”
• Hassan Sabri, the imam of the Islamic Center of South Florida, who came to the U.S. via the Palestinian territories on a “special travel document” that expired 16 years ago. On April 6, 2002, Sabri attended an anti-Israel rally outside the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, where allusions to Nazis and genocide were broadcast. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called the references “a disgusting trivialization of the Holocaust.”
• Mohammed Qazi, the Orlando President of the American Muslim Alliance (AMA), a group that has been described as “Radical Islamic activists.” Hillary Clinton returned a $50,000 donation the AMA had made to her New York Senatorial campaign for statements made by members of the group she deemed “offensive and outrageous.”
• Sayed Hemayed of the Muslim American Society (MAS). The July 4, 2003 edition of the MAS’s on-line publication, The American Muslim Magazine, features an article titled ‘Reaching the Roots of Terrorism,’ which validates terrorism, including suicide bombing, as “a reaction to injustice.”
• Ahmed Bedier, the Florida Communications Director of CAIR, who used his position, on numerous occasions, to defend Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian was arrested for his role as the North American leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization, was found to have aided in the murder of Americans, and has screamed “Death to Israel.” Bedier has openly complained that the post 9/11 climate “has been an effective tool to silence anti-Israeli views in the country.”
• Altaf Ahmad Ali, the Florida Executive Director of CAIR, who used a joint press conference with the FBI to defend 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Ali, on a radio show just one month after 9/11, wavered on the question of whether or not the people that died in the 9/11 attacks were innocent.
• Parvez Ahmed, the Florida Chairman of the Board of CAIR, who is the registered agent for the Independent Writers Syndicate, an organization created by CAIR which distributes violent and hate-filled commentaries to publications throughout North America. It syndicates such radical Islamist authors as: Hesham A. Hassaballa, Arsalan Tariq Iftikhar, Riad Z. Abdelkarim, and Fedwa Wazwaz.
• Khalid Hamza, the co-founder of the Islamic Center of Boca Raton, a mosque that’s website features material from a web based book (‘This Is The Truth’) that is published by the Al-Haramain Foundation, a Saudi-backed organization that raised millions of dollars for the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. Hamza was denied tenure from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) for “misstating his qualifications on his resume and behaving unprofessionally in the classroom” and used a Texas A & M University internet forum to defend Sami Al Arian.
• Rafiq Mehdi, the imam of Masjid Al-Iman, the mosque where ‘dirty bomber’ Jose Padilla converted to Islam and where Adham Hassoun worshiped. Hassoun was the Florida registered agent for Benevolence International Foundation, a charity “charged with financing Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.”
• Akhtar Hussein, an attorney who had his license suspended in 2002 for improper council in two cases, one involving cocaine distribution and the other involving possession of firearms and car theft, and who had his license suspended in 1994 for two years, due to his own felony conviction. Hussein was also the lawyer for Adham Hassoun. He called the government’s case against Hassoun “ridiculous.”
Khalid Salahuddin’s mosque is tied to another attorney with troubles. The registered agent for Masjid Al-Ansar is Nashid Sabir, a lawyer that has numerous business dealings with ex-State Representative Willie Logan. In 1997, the Bar admonished Sabir for missing a key hearing for one of his clients. In 2001, the Bar found probable cause to believe he violated ethics rules in the 1997 deportation case of a Dominican man. And in 2002, Sabir was reprimanded for professional misconduct regarding an immigration case.
And just like Akhtar Hussein, Sabir also provided legal services to a radical. In 2002, Sabir was the lawyer for convicted terrorist Imran Mandhai (see above). But that makes sense, because, while he’s the registered agent for Masjid Al-Ansar, he’s also a Founding Director and the Assistant Secretary for Darul Aloom, Mandhai’s house of worship.
The website of Masjid Al-Ansar contains only two outside links, one to Yahoo Maps and one to iviews.com, a site that features rabidly anti-Jewish and anti-American writings. Prior to being arrested earlier this year on firearms and conspiracy charges in relation to a group associated with al Qaeda, Randal Todd “Ismael” Royer served as iviews.com’s Washington Bureau Chief.
All of these things must be taken into account, when considering the sensitive nature of the position Khalid Salahuddin holds at the Seaport of Miami.
On Oct 15, 2003, a forum was held by the Coordinating Committee on Public Safety to discuss Florida’s unique security concerns. The meeting, which was attended by law enforcement and state government officials, highlighted the Port of Miami’s vulnerability to attack. A proposal was put forth regarding the building of a “security wall” around the port. However, when the time comes, no wall can hold out the terrorists, when they have a sympathizer sitting in charge, right on the inside.
Joe Kaufman is the Chairman of Americans Against Hate. You could visit Joe’s personal interactive website, at joe4rep.com. Beila Rabinowitz is an international journalist and translator. (Thanks to Faithfreedom.org.)
Port purchase draws more heatCriticism mounted over the takeover of some American port operations by a government-owned firm from the United Arab Emirates.BY STEVE HARRISONsharrison@MiamiHerald.comTwo Democratic U.S. senators said Friday they will attempt to stop a sale that gives a state-owned company from the United Arab Emirates control of significant commercial operations at six American ports -- including the Port of Miami-Dade.
Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey said they will file legislation prohibiting companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from purchasing port operations in the United States, citing national security dangers. The bill targets the sale of the British firm P&O Ports to Dubai Ports World.
But some maritime and security experts said the DP World deal posed no particular risks and called the pushback political.
''We've worked with Dubai Ports, and their management company is committed to improved security at all of their acquired ports,'' said Kim Petersen, president of Fort Lauderdale-based SeaSecure, a consultant. ``The vast majority of their managers are ex-pats. It's not like you will find Dubai nationals running security or even managing the operation at an American port.''
P&O Ports owns 50 percent of the Port of Miami Terminal Operating Co., which handles about half the cargo containers at the Port of Miami-Dade. There are two other terminals at the port.
''It's a nonissue,'' said Harlan Ullman, a senior advisor on national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ``If someone is going to infiltrate, you can infiltrate an American company as well as anyone else.''
They noted DP World will have an American board of directors for its American operations and must comply with new, tougher worldwide security standards promoted by the U.S. Coast Guard.
LOOKING FOR WEAPONS
To protect the country against weapons of mass destruction being imported in a cargo container, U.S. Customs and Border Protection established programs to flag suspect containers for inspection and has sent teams of inspectors to dozens of ports worldwide to review manifests before ships leave.
But it's estimated only 3-to-5 percent of containers entering the country are scanned, prompting criticism of gaping security holes.
''Our ports are the front lines of the war on terrorism. They are both vulnerable targets for attack and venues for smuggling and human trafficking,'' Menendez said. ``We wouldn't turn the border patrol or the customs service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one either.''
Earlier this week, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers expressed concern about the Dubai deal's impact on national security, as well as what some say was the ''secretive'' manner in which a U.S. government committee signed off on the sale.
After the White House defended the sale, saying it had been fully vetted, lawmakers from both parties lobbed more criticism Friday at President Bush, who was visiting the Port of Tampa.
''How can President Bush come to Florida and talk about homeland security when he's outsourcing the security of our ports?'' said Karen Thurman, chair of the Florida Democratic Party. ``The threat to major ports, including those in Tampa and Miami, is real. The United States, not a foreign company, should be responsible for keeping our ports secure.''
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said she plans to hold a briefing next month with port security experts to review the takeover. Ros-Lehtinen chairs the House subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia.
DUBAI IS NOT A FOE
The UAE is considered an ally in the war on terrorism, and the tiny emirate has become one of the few places in the Middle East where freewheeling capitalism has taken root and been successful.
But the emirate's banking system was used by 9-11 hijackers, and the UAE was one of three nations that had recognized the brutal Taliban government in Afghanistan.
DP World is offering no public statement, other than noting the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States had approved the deal. CFIUS reviews foreign investments to make sure they don't endanger American security.
Some lawmakers called for CFIUS to conduct a full, formal 45-day investigation.
The UAE's interest in global ports comes as it prepares for the end of its petroleum reserves.
Its DP World became a major ports operator in 2004 when it bought CSX Terminals, a subsidiary of Jacksonville-based CSX Corp. The former CEO of CSX was U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow, who left the company for Treasury before the sale.
The Treasury Department is one member of CFIUS, along with Homeland Security, Defense, Commerce, Justice and State departments.
DP World bid $6.8 billion for the venerable British firm Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Navigation Co. in 2005.
It's believed that most of P&O's employees will remain with DP World, and that little will change at the American ports, said Rick Eyerdam, editor of The Florida Shipper.
Port of Miami-Dade executives aren't concerned.
''They are not buying the Port of Miami,'' said Deputy Port Director Khalid Salahuddin. ``They are buying part of one of the operators at the port.''
Miami Herald staff writer Lesley Clark contributed to this report from Washington.
So I'm not really sure what your point is. If you're upset with Mr. Salahuddin already being part of the port leadership, I guess you could take it up with the Miami Port Authority.
I don't think the government should be managing the port system. Think it was Feinstein who suggested this and I just cringed. No, no and no!
I leave you with this, and will trouble you no more on this issue. As SaveLiberty would say, "we agree to disagree" on this issue. I think this issue is worth a debate, and I thank you for adding your input.
Fitzgerald: What's wrong with the Dubai port deal
Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald explores the madness of the Dubai port deal:
Even if every reviewing committee that examines the Dubai port deal declares that there is "no security threat," there are nevertheless three considerations.
1) The Administration, and the government generally, no longer can be trusted to know what is best. The warnings before the 9/11 attack were clear; Condoleeza Rice's attempt to fudge all of that should not be forgotten. The Administration and the State Department suffer from the same myopia that, 30 years ago, led to an inability among their predecessors to figure out that Saudi Arabia was not our "staunch ally" -- and that an energy policy needed to be forged that would cause the price of oil to go up because we would tax ourselves, and not wait for the Saudis to raise prices. That could have saved, oh, about a trillion dollars (for more on this, google "Posted by Hugh" and "recover oligopolistic rents"). No "security threats" today does not mean that there will be no "security threats" tomorrow.
2) People living in New York and Baltimore will be made distinctly uneasy knowing that their ports are controlled by a company whose owners are Muslims from the United Arab Emirates, a collection of statelets -- Abu Dhabi and Dubai being the best known -- which are full of people who loathe us as Infidels. Some of them are distinctly unpleasant. All kinds of ruling families and the others who rule the economic and political roost in the constituent statelets of the U.A.E., for example, seemed to find nothing morally wrong, were in deed indifferent to, those thousands and thousands of tiny children, often under the age of 4, snatched from their Pakistani or Indian or Somali or Bangladeshi homes, brought to the U.A.E., trained under horrible conditions to be tied on the backs of camels, and during either the training, or in the actual races, were so often maimed or killed on the spot. (When the outside world began to notice, and to protest, and only then, did the U.A.E. begin to substitute robots for those tiny sacrificial slave-jockets). After all, who cared -- they were from Pakistan and Bangladesh and Somalia; they weren't Arabs, they were expendable, and camel races are such fun, after all. That is the level of moral development in the United Arab Emirates.
3) We now witness the spectacle of Bush using, for the first time, his power to veto, in order to protect the United Arab Emirates -- instead of agreeing that Americans are perfectly justified in mistrusting, and wishing to discourage, any Arab control of any sensitive business. We would not dare to sell the running of any airports to, say, an Algerian company, or a Saudi company, or any other Muslim-owned company, would we? Why are the ports different?
This deal has symbolic importance. To Bush, the symbolism is: we have nothing against that fine religion of Islam, and in the "war on terror" which is all we are told, repeatedly and idiotically, we are fighting, the U.A.E. is a "staunch ally." This attitude, this desire to curry favor with Arabs and Muslims, will always get us in trouble. It gets us in trouble as we overlook so much of what Pakistan, that incubator of the Taliban and its diplomatic and military supporter, pretends to fight on our side against Al Qaeda while half the Pakistani army, at least, would choose Al Qaeda over the Infidel Americans any day, and 85% of the Pakistani population would readily do so.
The phrase "War on Terror" is a good example of what is wrong with Bush's view of things, and of the way he has failed to educate the public. He is timid and ignorant. He cannot identify the enemy but merely one of the tactics of the enemy. He apparently does not know how to use synecdoche.
Someone please send him Arthur Quinn's little handbook "Figures of Speech."
Meanwhile, CAIR is attempting to bludgeon Congress by claiming that opposition is "anti-Arab bigotry." Let them try to bludgeon. But if Bush shows he cannot figure out that many people in this country are far ahead of him in comprehending the nature and menace of Islam, and at this point it is doubtful that he can, he should simply get out of the way, shut up, and not dare to use that veto. We are all getting fed up with his obstinacy and inability to figure things out, and to respond coherently, articulately, cleverly. I don't care that he came out of Andover and Yale knowing nothing. That's his problem. But he has been President for five years. His inability to come to grips with Islam, to stop being sentimental about a "world religion," can no longer be hidden or explained away. The large-scale presence of Muslims in the Lands of the Infidels, behind what they themselves have been so clearly taught to regard as behind enemy lines (the lines of Dar al-Harb, as opposed to Dar al-Islam) has everywhere created a situation that for Infidels is much more unpleasant, much more expensive, and much more physically dangerous, than it would be without that large-scale presence. Bush cannot bring himself to even think a thought like that, or to begin to study Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira as those whose duty it is to protect us should be doing. He should have been devoting his time not to reassuring the UAE, or calling its ownership as innocuous as would be such ownership by the British, but instead he ought to be moving heaven and earth to rally NATO around Denmark (remember "an attack on one member of NATO will be considered an attack on all"?), and to standing up for, reminding the Western world of, the principles of individual liberty enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and every one of which is flatly contradicted by the Shari'a. He should be having the Pentagon and the State Department (not its Arabists, but its Europeanists) and the C.I.A. figuring out how to campaign, as they once did in Western Europe (remember the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Encounter magazine -- the best use of C.I.A. money conceivable) undertaking a vast effort of pedagogy to counter, and end, the influence of the Islamintern International at the U.N., at the E.U., in the European press and television, and in halting, and even reversing, the jihadist presence in the Lands of the Infidels.
He doesn't have to say it all quite the way it has been said above. But he has to grasp its undeniable truth.
The point was that you say to trust those in charge. I posted facts that show we shouldn't trust our officials at any level because we end up with articles like those I posted. Here is a man who is clearly a threat, yet because we are worried about public relations and profiling he is allowed to continue his role at the port.
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