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World Terrorism: News, History and Research Of A Changing World #7 Security Watch
Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich ^ | 23 February 2007 | Sam Logan for ISN Security Watch

Posted on 02/26/2007 4:18:14 PM PST by DAVEY CROCKETT

No one to counter Chavez In a region where the leading ideology is Bolivarianism, there is not one leader positioned to offer a better idea for a brighter future.

Commentary by Sam Logan for ISN Security Watch (23/02/2007)

For over two decades, the prevailing ideology in Latin America was neo-liberalism, a Washington-born idea that claimed the power of open markets would lift the region’s poor from misery. It did not, and corruption ran rampant.

While democracy still remains strong, resentful voters ushered in a new generation of neo-populist leaders touting a new idea: a form of socialism, called Bolivarianism, that has slowly but surely become the loudest and most prevalent ideology.

Bolivarianism is anti-capitalist, supports nationalization, regional trade with like-minded countries and above all, suggests that a country should rely on itself or fellow socialist states, not imperialist powers, as a source of the economic growth that will lift all from poverty. It is a sort of refurbished socialism that is not a guiding light for the future.

Latin America cannot readily absorb the economic shock of open markets, nor can it get bogged down in the trappings of old socialist ideas. A blended ideology must be promoted, but the problem is that no one is strong enough to counter Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the leader of Bolivarianism.

Chavez calls it Socialism for the 21st Century. Cuba's Fidel Castro passed him the torch. Leaders around the region pay homage to their own past as socialist upstarts through hugging and laughing with Chavez on the international stage while taking care of often pro-capitalist, neo-liberal business at home.

Brazilian President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva is a perfect example. He has the leftist background and eye for fiscal conservatism to become a great ideological counterweight to Chavez. His politics represent an ideal blend for the region. But his politically weak position at home and strong voices from his own left deter any would be shouting match with Chavez.

Within a week after winning his second term in office, Lula visited Chavez for a photo opportunity on a bridge linking both countries. That was in November, and it looks like Lula’s administration will remain bogged down until March as he struggles to get past his party’s sordid past and form a working cabinet willing to share the same table.

Argentina of the past could have been a counter weight to the Bolivarian ideology. But since Nestor Kirchner has come to power, Argentina has become a Venezuelan puppet.

Chavez has literally bought the support of his southern neighbor with over US$3 billion in purchases of Argentine debt. The most recent purchase occurred on 16 February, when Venezuela dumped another US$750 million into Argentine government coffers.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has the politics to promote an ideological battle with Chavez. Colombia has been a model of economic growth through a mixture of neo-liberal policies and social programs. But Uribe has serious problems.

Political allies are falling like dominos due to links with former paramilitary leaders. And if Uribe took the time to speak out for neo-liberalism and against Chavez, he would be dismissed as another of Washington's puppets. Colombia is a top recipient of US aid.

The only other leader who could take up an ideological fight with Chavez is Mexican President Felipe Calderon. He has the right politics and his country has a history of not blindly supporting the US. Voting against the US invasion of Iraq at the UN is a clear indication. But Calderon won on the thinnest possible mandate. His opposition controls enough seats in the Mexican Congress to block any unwanted initiative, and his focus is on Mexican organized crime, not on verbal sword play with Chavez.

Finally, the US has launched a diplomatic offensive in the region. This is to be a year of engagement, but the US president is clearly obsessed with the war in Iraq, not with putting a muzzle on Venezuela’s leader for the sake of the region’s future. Washington is doubly discredited, first for promoting an ideology that clearly did not work, and second for doing nothing about it.

Latin America needs an independent leader willing to stand up to Chavez, but that leader does not exist on the region’s geopolitical map. Bolivarianism will continue to seep into the minds and hearts of millions across Latin America. Chavez and his pool of allies will control the headlines until the next round of presidential elections tell the world how the region has embraced this new ideology.

As Chavez puts it, Socialism for the 21st Century is just getting started. If that is true, then he will continue to trumpet his ideology until Latin Americans learn, the hard way, that Bolivarianism did not carry them much farther from poverty than neo-liberalism. Disillusionment with reality may then spread faster than hope for the future.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sam Logan is an investigative journalist who has reported on security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism and black markets in Latin America since 1999. He is a senior writer for ISN Security Watch based in Brazil.

The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author only, not the International Relations and Security Network (ISN).


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Extended News; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: globaljihad; kt; research; russia; terrorist; wot; wt
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To: All; FARS

April 14, 2007 PM Anti-Terrorism News

Iraqi militants say 20 security force members ‘detained’ - Islamic
State of Iraq wants Sunni women released, alleged rapists turned over
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/04/14/iraq.rape/index.html?eref=yahoo

(Iraq) British forces kill eight gunmen in southern Iraq and British
“shoot 27” in hunt for Turbinator
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070414/ts_nm/iraq_basra_dc;_ylt=AmJPu1sKHJx6_C6Azrly24LMWM0F
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1654876.ece

(Iraq) British troops in Iraq kill roadside bombers
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070414/wl_uk_afp/iraqbritainattack_070414121838;_ylt=ArVaL.Uw8F7phaGOXzuD_h5X6GMA

(Afghanistan) France analyzing video of Taliban hostages
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070414/ts_afp/afghanistanfrance_070414121317;_ylt=ApfEsbBaTymzLrXyw741T9jMWM0F

(Lebanon) UN pushes for tribunal on Lebanon killings
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070414/ts_nm/lebanon_tribunal_un_dc;_ylt=Am7Zc5lpFtPAErJ9zMTn2orMWM0F

Somali courts leader says to target peacekeepers - Islamic Courts
leader threatens to target them
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14444101.htm

Morocco attacks hit near U.S. center - two suicide bombers blew
themselves up - one woman injured
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070414/ap_on_re_af/morocco_explosion

(Ethiopia) New Jersey Man Amir Mohamed Meshal Appears As Terrorism
Suspect Before Tribunal in Ethiopia
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/world/africa/14ethiopia.html?ex=1334203200&en=54fde63b1a400219&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Norway: Islam critic beaten unconscious
http://www.judeoscope.ca/breve.php3?id_breve=3478

US claims inroads in terror fight in Southeast Asia
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/US_claims_inroads_in_terror_fight_i_04142007.html

Former Detroit schools administrator faces terrorism trial
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/nation/17078997.htm

(Canada) Two Montreal Muslims charged with crimes targeting city’s
Jewish community
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=485fefb7-fc25-44a0-8ff1-8a69c7ebf600&k=97449

(”Flying Imams” Lawsuit) Lawmaker blasts imams’ attorney
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20070414-122733-9161r.htm

Former US Senator Expresses Concern Over Growing Risk of Nuclear Attack
http://voanews.com/english/2007-04-13-voa60.cfm

(California) Sentence Restored for former SLA Member who tried to bomb
LAPD
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/14/news/state/22_00_244_13_07.txt


5,101 posted on 04/15/2007 8:50:02 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; struwwelpeter; Calpernia; FARS; Founding Father

Press-release of the Ministry of Information and Press
Monday, 09 April 2007

Press-Release of the Ministry of Information and Press of the CRI No 51

In the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful

Officially

On April 9, Monday, an official information came from the Chechen
Republic of Ichkeria confirming death of Amir Khayrullah, Commander of
the Eastern Front of the Armed Forces of CRI, Vice Prime-Minister of
CRI. Amir Aslanbek is commissioned to command the Eastern Front.
Chechen
sites will deliver more exhaustive information in nearest time.

About Amir Khayrullah

Amir Khayrullah, Suleyman Imurzaev, was born on April 8, 1974, in
Dagestan. In July he commanded a group of Modjaheds in Dagestan in a
battle at Avtury. Since October 2004 he was Amir of the regions of
Vedeno, Kurchaloy and Nozhay Yurt of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.
Since November 2004 he was the first substitute of Shamil Basaev.
Amir Khayrullah commanded the South-Eastern Front of the CRI since
August 2006. In September 2006 he was raised to a degree of brigadier
general by a decree of the President of the CRI.
Amir Khayrullah was appointed Vice Prime-Minister of CRI by a decree of
the President of CRI on March 7 2007.

http://www.caucasuslive.org/eng/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82&Itemid=2


5,102 posted on 04/15/2007 9:07:56 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; milford421

Air Force Two Involved In Minor Mid-Air Collision

Vice President Cheney Gets The Bird
As Air Force Two, carrying Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter,
Liz,
neared O’Hare International Airport on Friday, it was involved in a
mid-air
collision — with a bird.

After the C-32 transport (the military version of a Boeing 757, shown
above)
landed without incident, mechanics checked the engine over while the
vice
president proceeded to his speaking engagement at the annual leadership
conference of the Heritage Foundation.

“A bird hit the right engine of the plane upon landing,” said Megan
McGinn,
a spokeswoman for Cheney. “He was told after he delivered his remarks.”

The incident did not delay the VP’s return to Washington.

FMI: www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/
aero-news.net


5,103 posted on 04/15/2007 9:37:29 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS

April 15, 2007 Anti-Terrorism News

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day

(Iraq) 4 bombs kill 37 in Baghdad Shiite areas; 2 UK helicopters crash,
killing 2
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/15/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq.php
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Gaza: Explosions rock bookstore, cafes - 2 Internet cafes and Christian
bookstore - nobody hurt
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152796059&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

(Afghanistan) Suicide car bomber kills 4 Afghans - U.S. private
security firm targeted
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_re_as/afghan_violence;_ylt=As2c.KjKXUd9pBn9KSYx5y3MWM0F

(Afghanistan) Arab Al Qaeda suspect among 16 killed in Afghan
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2007/April/middleeast_April233.xml&section=middleeast&col=

(Afghanistan) Nine people die in fresh Afghan violence
http://www.kuna.net.kw/NewsAgenciesPublicSite/ArticleDetails.aspx?id=1724710&Language=en

Afghan government pledges to end hostage deals
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070415/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanfranceunrestkidnap;_ylt=AjYvVC4uWcI9IkLMFTPT030Bxg8F

(Pakistan) Clerics holding Musharraf hostage? - Islamabad and
Rawalpindi madrassas used “as extremist fodder”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Clerics_holding_Musharraf__hostage/articleshow/1911474.cms

(Pakistan) Musharraf: No joint Pakistan-US anti-terror raids - “The
whole population of Pakistan will rise against it”
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\15\story_15-4-2007_pg1_1

(Pakistan) Female Jamia Hafsa madrassa students battle Musharraf: “What
we are demanding is rule of Sharia” - threatening to launch suicide
attacks if demands not met
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/15/wpak15.xml

(Pakistan) Female commandos may crack down on Hafsa girls
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\15\story_15-4-2007_pg1_4

(Pakistan) Lal Masjid Clerics issue edict over sinful hugging
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_forbidden_hug_2;_ylt=AgWfLkBxVuCDtr73dqFnlcHzPukA

Pakistani woman minister fears for life
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-04/14/content_5977154.htm

(Pakistan) Lal Masjid Cleric refuses to set time frame for negotiations
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\15\story_15-4-2007_pg1_3

(Pakistan) “Taliban” attack video shop in Islamabad
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\15\story_15-4-2007_pg1_5

(Pakistan) Internal extremism biggest threat to country: Musharraf
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\04\15\story_15-4-2007_pg1_2

(Pakistan) Push for Islamic morality reaches Pakistan capital
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/news/178452.php

Algerian security services identify 2 of last week’s suicide bombers,
minister says
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/15/africa/AF-GEN-Algeria-Bombings.php

Algeria criticizes U.S. attack warning
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070415/ts_nm/algeria_bombings_usa_dc_1;_ylt=Apm9cRiSPjoz2IoKqiXScLh6CC8A

(Algeria) Underground Islamist groups target Algerian armed forces
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/africa/news/article_1291639.php/Underground_Islamist_groups_target_Algerian_armed_forces

(Nigeria) Report: Dozens die in Nigerian voting
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_re_af/nigeria_elections_8;_ylt=Aj40ieWtKgTW.ZLNsJmMVHrZ9YEA

(Sudan) Gunmen kill African Union officer in Darfur
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070415/wl_nm/sudan_darfur_au_dc_2;_ylt=AgYP8RidwuZ8cnWJnM4OZogShIMA

Iran plans to build 2 nuke plants - Seeking bids to build nuclear power
plants
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear;_ylt=AmKfQ1.mFmI41JJ0r7bXGHCs0NUE

Philippine retaliation kills 8 Muslim rebels in the south
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070415/wl_nm/philippines_militants_dc_4;_ylt=AvKVxPg3YPaKaEZe1GoczIpUKYUA

Philippine troops capture camp of Muslim militant - camp of Habier
Malik, a commander of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070415/wl_asia_afp/philippinesunrest_070415051753;_ylt=AqxUT6IZuIdEH2jpK1KeSiNUKYUA

(India) 4 rebels killed, man beheaded in Indian Kashmir
http://khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/April/subcontinent_April573.xml&section=subcontinent&col=

(India) ULFA rebels on the run after crackdown: army - 48 United
Liberation Front of Asom killed since September
http://khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/April/subcontinent_April567.xml&section=subcontinent&col=

(Indonesia) 2 bombs explode in Indonesia town - Poso towned plagued by
religious violence
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070415/ap_on_re_as/indonesia_explosions_1;_ylt=AosA1xP5SYuMHXiY4LrxgmnaHXcA

(Indonesia) Commentary: In Indonesia, apprehension about a changing
Islam
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/15/news/indo.php

(Thailand/Malaysia) Malaysian border train service halted after attack
- south of Yala, because three passengers were hit and wounded by
gunfire from the Islamist extremists, including two children
http://www.bangkokpost.com/topstories/topstories.php?id=118105

(Gaza) Group claims it executed BBC reporter Johnston - Palestinian
Interior Ministry raised doubts as to its credibility
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152799522&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Report: Hamas is training to kidnap IDF soldiers
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152795168&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

(Miami) US terror suspect Padilla set for trial in Miami
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070414/ts_alt_afp/usattacksqaedatrialpadilla_070414155025;_ylt=AlK_UXxuv0UbIqetcqcVgCUTv5UB

(Miami) Slain journalist Daniel Pearl to be remembered with Holocaust
victims at ceremony in Miami
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/15/america/NA-GEN-US-Journalist-Remembered.php

(Sweden) Youths clash with police on Malmö estate
http://www.thelocal.se/7002/20070415/

(Germany) Minister: Risk of terrorist attacks on Germany rising
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-04/15/content_5978376.htm

(Australia) Islamic pro-terrorism hate film gets PG rating
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21556613-421,00.html

(Australia) Pro-terror films banned within a fortnight
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21560495-1702,00.html

Jihad call via Internet - seeks to recruit youth for Jihad in Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) states
http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=ODQzNDg2NDE3

(Thailand) Second Buddhist killed, body burned - shot dead a 70 year
old villager then set his body on fire
http://www.bangkokpost.com/breaking_news/breakingnews.php?id=118108

(Thailand) Insurgents exchange fire with military in southern Thailand
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-04/15/content_5980044.htm

(Sri Lanka) Suspected rebels kill rival Tamil in Sri Lanka
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070415/wl_sthasia_afp/srilankaunrest_070415065359;_ylt=At5P1rSSvHUEsuAF56z0VQwtM8oA

(Sri Lanka) LTTE-Lanka battle for Catholic support
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=a9387022-9762-48fc-bba2-c2dc6c10618f&MatchID1=4448&TeamID1=10&TeamID2=25&MatchType1=2&SeriesID1=1104&PrimaryID=4448

(North Korea) U.S. tells North Korea bank funds are available
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070415/wl_nm/korea_north_dc;_ylt=AlCaQBLsPZDWIaGHogfWRkXMWM0F

(North Korea) U.S. to North Korea: carry out deal
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/04/15/us_to_north_korea_carry_out_deal/

Other News:

(UK) Muslims will not waver over veils
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=A451PDMDVXCKNQFIQMFCFF4AVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/15/nveils15.xml

Report: Anti-Semitic attacks up 50% - greatest increase in attacks in
UK, also great rise in Australia, France, and Canada
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152798169&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

UK reporters union to boycott Israel
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1176152792457&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

(UK) Beheadings turned into black comedy in Britain
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article1654985.ece

Spain: Garage-Mosques A Threat, Warns Muslim Body - risk becoming
cradles of extremism
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level_English.php?cat=Religion&loid=8.0.404607414&par=0

(NYC) Plans for New York Arabic school draw protests, ‘jihad’ labels
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/04/15/america/NA-GEN-US-Arabic-School.php

Commentary: The Anglosphere vs. Jihad
http://www.nypost.com/seven/04152007/postopinion/postopbooks/the_anglosphere_vs__jihad_postopbooks_john_osullivan.htm?page=1


5,104 posted on 04/15/2007 9:43:40 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Founding Father; Calpernia

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2JhMTAxOTVkNTI5MWM5MmYyNzE0YWM3NTE1ODM4OTk=

[a snippet, showing that the 1998 Fatwa by OBL, was to protect Iraq...........more dots connected, hard for the “No al-qaeda connection to Iraq, before we started the war” crowd]

First, for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors, and turning its bases in the Peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples. If some people have in the past argued about the fact of the occupation, all the people of the Peninsula have now acknowledged it. The best proof of this is the Americans’ continuing aggression against the Iraqi people using the Peninsula as a staging post, even though all its rulers are against their territories being used to that end, but they are helpless. Second, despite the great devastation inflicted on the Iraqi people by the crusader-Zionist alliance, and despite the huge number of those killed, which has exceeded 1 million... despite all this, the Americans are once against trying to repeat the horrific massacres, as though they are not content with the protracted blockade imposed after the ferocious war or the fragmentation and devastation. So here they come to annihilate what is left of this people and to humiliate their Muslim neighbors. Third, if the Americans’ aims behind these wars are religious and economic, the aim is also to serve the Jews’ petty state and divert attention from its occupation of Jerusalem and murder of Muslims there. The best proof of this is their eagerness to destroy Iraq, the strongest neighboring Arab state, and their endeavor to fragment all the states of the region such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan into paper statelets and through their disunion and weakness to guarantee Israel’s survival and the continuation of the brutal crusade occupation of the Peninsula.


5,105 posted on 04/15/2007 10:26:19 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Founding Father

http://hereticallibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/04/fatwa-frenzy-in-malaysia.html

Friday, April 13, 2007
Fatwa Frenzy in Malaysia

If today’s Middle East Times is any indication, it must be fatwa season in Malaysia:

-First, a museum exhibit on ghosts and the supernatural was canceled after a fatwa was issued against it:

The National Fatwa Council Thursday reportedly ruled that exhibitions on ghosts, ghouls, and supernatural beings were forbidden, as they could undermine the faith of Muslims.

“Supernatural beings are beyond the comprehension of the human mind. We don’t want to expose Muslims to supernatural and superstitious beliefs,” council chair Abdul Shukor Husin was quoted as saying in the Malay-language daily Berita Harian Friday.

Abdul Shukor said that the council’s decision would be presented to all of Malaysia’s state governments for gazetting as religious law.

“Only state governments have the power to take action, especially concerning the ghostly exhibitions,” he said.

So, if I read this correctly, the National Fatwa Council (NFC) wants Malaysia’s state governments to ban any future exhibits on the supernatural. If they succeed, I wonder what other types of exhibits would fail to pass muster as well.

But that’s only half the fatwa fun, for the NFC also found time to decry Internet trading:

National Fatwa Council chairman Abdul Shukor Husin said that non-Muslim investment schemes accessed through the Internet pay interest and guarantee a steady profit, which is banned under Islamic or Sharia law.

“We advise those making investments via the Internet to stop immediately,” Abdul Shukor was quoted as saying in Malay-language daily Berita Harian.

“There are many alternative investment schemes based on Islamic principles initiated by the government which Muslims can participate in,” he said.

Islamic funds ban the earning of interest and cannot invest in companies associated with tobacco, alcohol, or gambling, which are considered taboo by Muslims.

Yes, these are relatively minor and even silly instances of Islamist censorship and intolerance. What makes them important is that they are symptoms of a broader culture war within most Islamic societies. For the last several decades, Islamist extremism exported from the Middle East has encroached on traditionally tolerant customs and practices throughout the Muslim world. The rise of jihadist terror organizations such as Al Qaeda is merely a reflection of this process. If radical Islamists succeed in remaking the Muslim world in their image, the consequences for intellectual freedom worldwide would be disastrous.

posted by Dave at 11:02 PM


5,106 posted on 04/15/2007 10:32:03 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Founding Father

http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2007/04/baal-and-palestinian-arabs.html

Ba’al and the Palestinian Arabs
Commenter ER mentioned a strange chapter of PalArab history that I was unaware of.

Palestinian Arabs, especially their terror leader Arafat, have always claimed that today’s PalArabs are descendants of the ancient Canaanites. Just as the PalArabs want to deny Jewish history they also have a habit of making up their own. While the Canaanite claim is of course nonsense (Canaanites were not Arab,) a funny episode occurred as a result.

Embracing their fake Canaanite origins, the PA issued a postage stamp honoring an ancient Canaanite god, known as Ba’al.

There were in fact a number of local dieties named Ba’al, but the characteristics of the Ba’al worshipers are perhaps appropriate for today’s Palestinian Arab death cult.

Ba’al Hammoun and Ba’al of Moloch were said to sacrifice their children. This could be why Ba’al was such an attractive symbol to Arafat, as the PalArab tradition of sacrificing their own children in the name of Jihad is entrenched if not quite as ancient.

Ba’al Peor, in Jewish tradition, was worshipped via excrement, also an appropriate symbol for a people who prefer to use sewage pipes to create rockets.

Interestingly, the Italian Muslim Association known to be pro-Israel issued a fatwa against any Muslim owning or using this stamp. What is amazing is that no principled Arab Muslim issued any similar fatwa as far as I can tell, which makes it appear as if Muslim religious law is more concerned about politics than religion. It cannot be denied that Islam would consider Ba’al as a false god and the sin of blasphemy is deserving of death in Islamic law.

posted by Elder of Ziyon at 6:34 AM


5,107 posted on 04/15/2007 10:34:41 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; milford421; Founding Father

http://www.iris.org.il/blog/

Muslims Charged With Firebombing Montreal Jewish Center

Here’s a surprise about the recent firebombing attack in Montreal: apparently it was Muslims who did it:

Two Montreal men have been accused of a raft of attacks against the city’s Jewish community, including the firebombing of a Snowdon community centre that police are treating as a hate-related crime.

Omar Bulphred, 21, and Azim Ibragimov, 23, appeared briefly in Quebec Court on Friday to be arraigned on charges stemming from incidents that began last fall. Both were denied bail.

Azim Ibragimov, left, and Omar Bulphred face nine charges each stemming from events that began last fall.

The case is due back in court on Monday, at which time a date could be set for a bail hearing. In addition to their alleged roles in a rash of firebombings, the two are accused of conspiring to commit kidnapping and armed robbery. But it’s not known who or what their potential victims were.

Of course, the authorities are still stuck on stupid, thinking that Muslim terror requires group membership, a terror leader issuing orders, and a secret handshake. No one has apparently mastered the fact that the only group membership required for constant propaganda to commit anti-Semitic violence is in mainstream Islam:

The pair were arrested Thursday morning and questioned. The investigation did not turn up links to any terrorist or hate groups, said Constable Christian Emond, of the Montreal police fraud and arson squad.

If you want to look this hatred in the eye, see this jaw-dropping video about an anti-Semitic mini-intifada in Montreal:

Confrontation in Concordia

This has been an extremely popular video, which Muslims and Leftists have managed to have censored from video sites such as YouTube.

Via: Little Green Footballs
Posted by Barak at 18:11 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)


5,108 posted on 04/15/2007 10:40:16 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Founding Father

A blog full of good information and history, mid east/Israel:

http://smoothstone.blogspot.com/


5,109 posted on 04/15/2007 10:45:26 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; struwwelpeter

Protesters, police clash in Russia

Associated Press

Sunday, April 15, 2007

By STEVE GUTTERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Club-swinging riot police clashed Sunday with opposition supporters as
an anti-Kremlin protest dispersed in Russia’s second-largest city,
chasing small groups of demonstrators, beating some on the ground and
hauling them into police buses.

It was not immediately clear what sparked the violence after the rally,
which city authorities had authorized and took place under a heavy
police presence with at least one helicopter hovering above.

Although city authorities gave permission for the rally in a square on
the edge of central St. Petersburg, they had banned plans for the
demonstrators to march afterwards to the city government headquarters.

Police trucks and helmeted officers blocked the planned march route. At
the end of the 90-minute-long rally, organizers did not exhort them to
conduct the banned march but suggested they go on their own to the city
government building over the next few days. When the rally dispersed,
most participants went to a nearby subway station, where clashes broke
out.

In one, police chased a group that included Sergei Gulyayev, a member
of the city legislature who had been arrested at a protest in March.
Police grabbed some members of the group and pounded them in the head with
nightsticks before putting them on buses; it was not immediately known
if Gulyayev was among those taken away.

In another clash, police charged a group holding a banner professing
love for the city.

The violence came a day after clashes at a similar opposition protest
in Moscow, where police detained at least 170 people, sometimes with
harsh force. The protests in both cities were called to focus on
complaints that Russia under President Vladimir Putin is strangling democracy
ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections.

“Yesterday, it became clear that the authorities won’t be making any
concessions. They have started a war on people,” Eduard Limonov, head of
the National Bolshevik Party, told the rally.

“Putin and his team are sitting on sacks of gold, at the same time the
country is breaking apart in all spheres,” said demonstrator Sergei
Niluopv, a 56-year-old teacher.

One of the rally organizers, Olga Kurnosova, told The Associated Press
that police detained her near her home a few hours before the rally.

She said by telephone from a police station that she was held for
distributing brochures about the rally, which she said was an artificial
pretext because city authorities had given permission for the
demonstration.

“It’s clear that the reason was to keep me away from the
demonstration,” she said.

The weekend protests were part of a series of “Dissenters’ Marches”
called by the Other Russia umbrella group that brings together an array of
opposition factions including one led by former world chess champion
Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov was among those arrested in Moscow and was released late
Saturday night after being fined $38 for disrupting public order. He did not
go to St. Petersburg for the Sunday rally.

Kurnosova, who heads the St. Petersburg branch of Kasparov’s United
Civil Front, had said Saturday that she expected the tough police action
in Moscow to provoke a large turnout in St. Petersburg. But the crowd
appeared to be less than organizers had hoped for, filling only about
half of the area marked off by metal barricades for the rally.

Putin, whose second and last term ends in 2008, has created an obedient
parliament, and the government has reasserted control over major
television networks, giving little air time to its critics.

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.


5,110 posted on 04/15/2007 11:22:49 AM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; DAVEY CROCKETT; Calpernia; Founding Father

I heard the son last night on Coast to Coast, he says he has a tape about the JFK murder, at this stage we will never know the truth, so one story is as true as the next, in my opinion....LOL

This can be a useful site, it is mainly death reports, all kinds of the famous of the world, or connected with history...granny]

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/dcfc2fc78f45c0e0/fd04c10ada051743#fd04c10ada051743

The Sunday Times
April 15, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article16...

The secrets and lies that a Cold-War warrior took to his grave

The disgraced spymaster, a movie star, the assassination of JFK, and a
dubious confession

When the old spymaster thought he was dying, his eldest son came to
visit him at his home in Miami. The scourges had been constant and
terrible recently: lupus, pneumonia, cancers of the jaw and prostate,
gangrene, the amputation of his left leg. Long past were his years of
heroic service to his country.

In the CIA, he had helped to mastermind the violent removal of a duly
elected leftist president in Guatemala and assisted in subterfuges
that led to the murder of Che Guevara. But no longer could you see in
him the suave, pipe-smoking, cocktail-party-loving clandestine
operative whose cold-war exploits he himself had, almost obsessively,
turned into novels. Diminished too were the old bad memories, of the
Bay of Pigs debacle that derailed his CIA career for good, of the
Watergate hotel fiasco, of his first wife’s death, of 33 months in US
prisons. But his first-born son – he named him St John; Saint, for
short – was by his side now. And he still had a story or two left to
share before it was all over.

They were in the living room, him in his wheelchair, watching Fox
News. He had Saint wheel him into his bedroom and hoist him onto his
bed. It smelt foul in there; he was incontinent; but he was beyond
caring. He asked Saint to get him a diet root beer, paper and a pen.

Saint had come to Miami from California. Though clean now, he had been
a meth addict for 20 years, and a source of frustration and anger to
his father for much of his life. He had two convictions to his name,
for drugs. The old spymaster was a convicted criminal too, but that
was different. He was Everette Howard Hunt, a true American patriot,
who had served his country. That the country repaid him with almost
three years in jail was something he could never understand, if only
because the orders that got him in such trouble came right from the top.

For years, he and Saint had hardly spoken. Then Saint came to him
wanting to know if he had any information about JFK’s assassination.
His father had sworn in two government investigations that he didn’t.
But now, in August 2003, propped up in his sick bed, he began to write
down the names of men who participated in a plot to kill the
president. He had lied during those two federal investigations. He
knew something after all. He told Saint about his own involvement,
too. It was explosive stuff, with the potential to reconfigure the
JFK-assassination-theory landscape. And then Hunt got better and went
on to live for four more years.

They don’t make White House bad guys the way they used to. It seems a
little nutty now, but in 1972 it was serious business. These guys
meant to take the powers of the presidency and run amok. Hunt, an
ex-CIA man who loved operating in the shadows and joined Nixon’s
special investigations unit (aka “the Plumbers”) as a $100-a-day
consultant in 1971, specialised in political sabotage. Among his first
assignments: forging cables linking the Kennedy administration to the
assassination of South Vietnam’s president. After that, he began
sniffing around Ted Kennedy’s dirty laundry. But of all his
subterfuges, in the end, only one mattered: the failed burglary at the
Watergate hotel in Washington, DC, in spring 1972.

Hunt enlisted Cuban pals from his Bay of Pigs days to bug the
Democratic National Committee HQ, which was located inside the
Watergate. Also on the team were a couple of shady ex-government
operators, James McCord and Frank Sturgis. The first attempt ended
when the outfit’s lock picker realised he’d brought the wrong tools.
The next time, Hunt was stationed in a hotel room across the way,
communicating with the burglars by walkie-talkie as the team entered
the office. Unfortunately, on the way into the building, they had
taped open an exit door to allow their escape, and when a night
watchman found it, he called the cops. The burglars were arrested on
the spot. One of them had Hunt’s phone number, at the White House, no
less, in his address book. Following this lead, police arrested Hunt
and charged him with burglary, conspiracy and wiretapping. Abandoned
by his bosses at the White House, he began trying to extort money from
them to help pay his mounting bills – the deal being that if the White
House paid, all those arrested would plead guilty and maintain silence.

His wife, Dorothy, was staunchly loyal to him and, after his arrest,
helped him with his plans to blackmail the White House. In December
1972 she boarded a flight to Chicago, carrying $10,000 in what is
regarded as extorted hush money and, some say, evidence that could
have got Nixon impeached. The plane crashed, killing all on board,
including Dorothy. Foul play was suspected but never proved.

Two years later, impeachment imminent, Nixon resigned his presidency.
And in 1973, Hunt, who had set all these events in motion, pleaded
guilty and spent 33 months in prison. After his release, he moved to
Miami, where he remarried, had two more children and spent 30 years
living an unexceptional life, refusing to talk about Watergate, much
less JFK’s assassination.

His connection to the assassination came about almost serendipitously,
when in 1974 a researcher stumbled across a photo of three tramps
standing in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. It was taken on November 22, 1963,
the day of Kennedy’s shooting, and one of the tramps looked like Hunt.
Hunt always denied any involvement. Then, earlier this year, aged 88,
he died, but not before writing an autobiography, American Spy: My
Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond. Not surprisingly, those
things he wrote down about JFK’s death and gave to his eldest son
don’t appear in the book, at least not in any definitive way. Hunt had
apparently decided to take them to the grave. But Saint still has the
memo – “It has all this stuff in it,” he says, “the chain of command,
names, people, places, dates. He wrote it out to me directly, in his
own handwriting, starting with the initials ‘LBJ’ ” – and he’s decided
it’s time that his father’s last secrets finally see some light.

At the moment, Saint doesn’t have a job; his criminal records have got
in the way. “I’d have loved to have lived a normal life,” he says.
“I’m happy with who I am, but all that shit that happened really spun
me over.” And not only him but his siblings too – a brother, David,
who has had his own problems with drugs, and two sisters, Kevan and
Lisa, who still hold their father responsible for the tragedy of their
mother’s death. “My parents had lots of marital problems,” Saint says,
“but when it came down to it, she had his back and could hang in there
with the big dogs. She was really pissed at Nixon, Liddy, all those
guys, and was saying, ‘We’re not going to let them hang you out to
dry. We’re gonna get them.’ So I’ve never held what happened against him.”

At times, he even seems to think of his dad with pride: “Did you hear
that the character Tom Cruise plays in the Mission: Impossible movies
is named after him? Instead of Everette Hunt, they named him Ethan
Hunt. My dad was a really good spy.” But then he starts talking about
what it was like growing up the eldest son of Hunt, and a different
picture emerges. “He loved the glamorous life, cocktail parties,
flirting, all that,” Saint says. “He was unfaithful to my mom, but she
stayed with him. He thought of himself as a cool dude, sophisticated,
intellectual. He was Mr Smooth. A man of danger. He was perfect for
the CIA – he never felt guilt about anything.”

At the start of the cold war, the CIA’s mandate was simple: to contain
the spread of communism by whatever means necessary. For much of the
cold war, it was answerable to nobody. And if you were lucky enough to
become one of its agents, you had every right to consider yourself a
member of an elite corps. The middle-class son of a New York attorney,
Hunt graduated from Brown University in 1940 with a bachelor’s in
English, joined the navy in the second world war, served in the North
Atlantic, slipped and fell, took a medical discharge, then wound up in
China working in the newly formed Office of Strategic Services. When
the OSS was transformed into the CIA, Hunt jumped on board. He was
instrumental in planning the 1954 coup in Guatemala that overthrew the
left-leaning, democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, and
ushered in 40 years of military repression that cost 200,000
Guatemalans their lives. Later he said: “Deaths – what deaths?”

In the early 1950s, Hunt could be seen cruising around in a white
Cadillac convertible; he loved that car. He also loved his cigars and
his wine and his country clubs. He had quite an imagination, too. When
he wasn’t off saving the world from reds, he spent much of his time in
front of a typewriter, hacking out espionage novels, some 80 in all.
He and his family lived lavishly and well, all presumably to lend
credence to his cover job as a high-ranking embassy official. Sadly,
he treated his children the way he and the CIA treated the rest of the
world. They were supposed to bend to his will and otherwise be
invisible. “He was a mean-spirited person and an extremely cruel
father. I was his first-born son, and I was born with a club foot and
had to have operations. I suffered from petit-mal seizures. I was
dyslexic and developed a stutter. For the super-spy not to have a
super-son was the ultimate disappointment.”

Later, Hunt moved the family to the last home it would occupy as a
family, in Potomac, Maryland. Hunt wanted Saint to attend a top-flight
prep school, St Andrew’s, and took him to a dinner there to get him
enrolled. During the meal, Saint leant over to his dad and whispered:
“Papa, I have to go to the bathroom.” His father glared at him. Soon
Saint was banging his knees together under the table. “Sit still,” his
father hissed. Saint said: “Papa, I really have to go.”

“I ended up pissing in my pants at the dinner,” Saint says. “Can you
imagine how humiliating that was? Unbelievable.”

In 1970 his father retired from the CIA after being relegated to the
backwaters for his role in the Bay of Pigs. The following year, his
lawyer pal Chuck Colson, who was special counsel to Nixon, called him
up with an invitation to join the president’s special investigations
unit as a kind of dirty-tricks consultant. He signed on.

Around the time of Saint’s Miami visit in 2003 to talk to his father
about JFK, other people were also trying to get things out of Hunt,
including the actor Kevin Costner, who played a
JFK-assassination-obsessed district attorney in the Oliver Stone film
JFK. Saint believed there could be up to $5m on offer for his father
telling the truth about what happened in Dallas. As Saint later
discovered, Costner had already met Hunt once. That meeting didn’t go
well. That meeting ended with Hunt grumbling to himself about Costner:
“What a numbskull.”

But then Saint got involved, and he knew better how to handle the
situation. For one thing, he knew his stepmother wanted to forget
about the past. Consequently, she and her sons often found themselves
in conflict with Saint. “Why can’t you go back to California and leave
well enough alone?” they asked him. “How can you do this? He’s in the
last years of his life.”

But Saint’s attitude was: “This has nothing to do with you. This stuff
is of historical significance and needs to come out, and if you’re
worried that it’ll make him out to be a liar, everyone knows he’s a
liar already.” So when Saint arrived in Miami to talk to his dad, the
two men spent a lot of time waiting for Laura to leave the house. And
when Laura left, they talked.

Afterwards, another meeting was to be arranged with Costner, this time
in Los Angeles, where the actor was thought to have had 50
assassination-related questions ready to go. (The actor declined to
comment for this article.) Though the $5m figure was still floating
around, Saint said Costner only wanted to pay Hunt at this point for
his time. Saint recalls telephoning Costner and saying: “That’s your
offer? A hundred dollars a day? That’s an insult. You’re a
cheapskate.” “Nobody calls me a cheapskate,” said Costner. “What do
you think I’m going to do, just hand over $5m?”

They could not agree terms for the meeting and discussions broke down,
with Costner saying: “I can’t talk to you any more, Saint.” And that
was the end of that. It looked like what Hunt had to say would never
get out.

One evening, Saint explained how he came to suspect that his father
might be involved in the Kennedy assassination. “Around 1975, I was in
a phone booth in Maryland when I saw a poster on a telephone pole
about who killed JFK, and it had a picture of the three tramps. I saw
that picture and I f***ing? like a cartoon character, my jaw dropped,
my eyes popped out of my head? It looks like my dad. There’s nobody
that has those same facial features. Then, like an epiphany, I
remember ’63, and my dad being gone, and my mom telling me he was on a
business trip to Dallas. I’ve tried to convince myself it’s some kind
of false memory, something I heard years later. But his alibi for that
day is he was at home with his family. I was in the fifth grade. We
were at recess. I was playing on the merry-go-round. We were told to
go home, because the president had been killed. I remember going home
but I don’t remember my dad being there. Then he has this whole thing
about shopping for Chinese food with my mother that day, so they could
cook a meal together.” His father testified to this in court on more
than one occasion, saying he and his wife often cooked meals together.

Saint pauses. “I can tell you that’s the biggest load of crap in the
f***ing world. He was always looking at things like he was writing a
novel; everything had to be just so glamorous. He couldn’t even be
bothered with his children. James Bond doesn’t have children. So, my
dad in the kitchen? Chopping vegetables with his wife? I’m so sorry,
but that would never happen. Ever.”

Not that it was all bad back then, in Potomac. Hunt played the trumpet
and his son was into music too, so sometimes the pair went down to
Blues Alley in Georgetown to hear jazz.

Back home, Hunt would slap Benny Goodman’s monster swing-jazz song
Sing, Sing, Sing on the turntable. Sometimes he would jump to his
feet, lick his lips and play the air trumpet for all he was worth.
“I’d sit there in awe,” Saint says. But the best was yet to come.

It was well past midnight on June 18, 1972. Saint, 18 years old, was
asleep in his basement bedroom, surrounded by his Beatles and Playboy
posters, when he heard someone shouting: “You gotta wake up! You gotta
wake up!” When he opened his eyes, Saint saw his father as he’d never
seen him before: he was a sweaty, dishevelled mess. “I don’t need you
to ask a lot of questions,” his father said. “I need you to get your
clothes on and come upstairs.”

He disappeared into the darkness. Saint changed out of his pyjamas.
Upstairs he found his father in the master bedroom, labouring over a
green suitcase jumble-filled with microphones, walkie-talkies,
cameras, tripods, cords, wires, lots of weird stuff. His father
started giving him instructions. Saint went to the kitchen and
returned with window cleaner, paper towels and rubber dishwashing
gloves. Then the two of them began wiping fingerprints off all the
junk in the suitcase. After that, they loaded everything into Hunt’s
Pontiac Firebird and drove over to a lock. Hunt heaved the suitcase
into the water, and it gurgled out of sight. They didn’t speak on the
way home. Saint still didn’t know what was going on. All he knew was
that his dad had needed his help, and he’d given it, successfully.

The next day, dressed in one of his prep-school blazers, he drove to a
Riggs Bank in Georgetown and met his father inside the
safety-deposit-box cage. His father turned him around, lifted his
blazer and shoved about $100,000 cash down the back of his pants. The
boy made it home without being followed. Then his father made him get
rid of a typewriter. Saint put the typewriter in a bag and tossed it
into a pond.

“Don’t ever tell anybody that you’ve done these things,” his father
said later. “I could get in trouble. You could get in trouble. I’m
sorry to have to put you in this position, but I really am grateful
for your help.”

“Of course, Papa,” Saint said. Standing there with his father, hearing
those words of praise, he was the happiest he’d ever been.

Years later, when Saint started trying to get his father to tell him
what he knew about JFK, he came to believe the information would be
valuable. He both needed money and thought he was owed money, for what
he’d been through. Also, like many a conspiracy nut before him, he was
more than a little obsessed. “After seeing that poster of the three
tramps,” he says, “I read two dozen books on the JFK assassination,
and the more I read, the more I was unsure about what happened. I was
trying to sort out things that had touched me in a big way.”

Touched him and turned him upside down, especially the death of his
mother. He had been particularly close to her, but Saint also felt he
had never got to know her. She told him that during the second world
war, she’d tracked Nazi money for the US Treasury Department, and
Saint believes that early in her marriage to his father, she may have
been in the CIA herself.

Once his father went to prison, Saint moved to Wisconsin, where he
worked in a potato-processing plant and spent the rest of his time
dropping acid. In 1975 he moved to the Oakland, California area,
started snorting coke and for five years drove a bakery truck. He was
in a band and hoped to become a rock star, though touring alongside
Buddy Guy was about the biggest thing that ever happened. Then he gave
up coke and took up meth and a while later started dealing meth.
Twenty years flew by. He had wild sexual escapades; he shacked up with
two sisters – “nymphs”, he calls them. But mainly his life, like his
father’s, was a rolling series of misfortunes. He received insurance
money after his mother died, and bought a house; a week later it burnt
down in some drug-related fiasco.

Finally, in 2001, on the heels of two drug busts, Saint decided to go
straight. With his ex-girlfriend, their daughter and her son, he
stayed in a series of shelters, then took them to live in Eureka,
several hours north of Oakland. He has since earned a certificate in
hotel management, but jobs don’t last. And the questions about his
father continue to circulate in his head.

That time in Miami, with Saint by his bed and him thinking he was six
months from death, Hunt finally put pen to paper. He scribbled the
initials “LBJ”, standing for Kennedy’s vice-president, Lyndon Johnson.
Under “LBJ”, connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer
was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was
murdered, a case that has never been solved. Next, his father
connected to Meyer’s name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent;
also connected to Meyer’s name was the name David Morales, another CIA
man and a well-known, vicious black-operations specialist. Then his
father connected to Morales’s name, with a line, the framed words
“French Gunman Grassy Knoll”.

So there it was: according to Hunt, LBJ had Kennedy killed. It had
long been speculated upon, largely because he was ambitious almost
beyond words and it would enable him to rise to the presidency without
having to campaign for it. Now Hunt was saying that’s the way it was.
And that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the only shooter in Dallas. There
was also, on the grassy knoll, a French gunman, presumably the
Corsican mafia assassin Lucien Sarti, who has figured prominently in
other assassination theories.

“By the time he handed me the paper,” Saint says, “I was in a state of
shock. His whole life, to me and everyone else, he’d always professed
to not know anything about any of it. But I knew this had to be the
truth. If my dad was going to make anything up, he’d have made
something up about the mafia, or Castro, or Khrushchev. He didn’t like
Johnson. But you don’t falsely implicate your own country, for
Christ’s sake. My father is old-school, a dyed-in-the-wool patriot,
and that’s the last thing he’d do.”

Later that week, Hunt gave Saint two sheets of paper that contained a
fuller narrative. It starts out with LBJ again, connecting him to Cord
Meyer, then goes on: “Cord Meyer discusses a plot with [David Atlee]
Phillips who brings in Wm Harvey and Antonio Veciana. He meets with
Oswald in Mexico City? Then Veciana meets w/Frank Sturgis in Miami and
enlists David Morales in anticipation of killing JFK there. But LBJ
changes itinerary to Dallas, citing personal reasons.”

David Atlee Phillips, the CIA’s Cuban operations chief in Miami at the
time of JFK’s death, knew Hunt from the Guatemala-coup days. Veciana
is a member of the Cuban exile community. Sturgis, like Saint’s
father, is supposed to have been one of the three tramps photographed
in Dealey Plaza. Sturgis was also one of the Watergate plotters, and
he is a man whom Hunt, under oath, has repeatedly sworn to have not
met until Watergate.

In the next few paragraphs, Hunt describes the extent of his own
involvement. It revolves around a meeting he claims he attended in
1963 with Morales and Sturgis. It takes place in a Miami hotel room.
Here’s what happens:

Morales leaves the room, at which point Sturgis makes reference to a
“big event” and asks Hunt: “Are you with us?”

Hunt asks Sturgis what he’s talking about.

Sturgis says: “Killing JFK.”

Hunt, “incredulous”, says to Sturgis: “You seem to have everything you
need. Why do you need me?” In the handwritten narrative, Sturgis’s
response is unclear, though what Hunt says to Sturgis next isn’t: he
says he won’t “get involved in anything involving Bill Harvey, who is
an alcoholic psycho”.

After that, the meeting ends. Hunt goes back to his “normal” life and
“like the rest of the country? is stunned by JFK’s death and realises
how lucky he is not to have had a direct role”.

After reading what his father had written, Saint was stunned. A few
weeks later, Saint received in the mail a tape recording from his dad.
Hunt’s voice on the cassette is weak and grasping, but he essentially
remakes the same points he made in his handwritten narrative.Soon
afterwards, Laura found out what had been going on, and with the help
of Hunt’s attorney put an end to it. Saint and his father were kept
apart and never got a chance to finish what they’d started. Instead,
Hunt set about writing his autobiography and turned his back on his
son. He wrote him a letter in which he said that Saint’s life had been
nothing but “meaningless, self-serving instant gratification”, that he
had never amounted to anything and never would. He asked for his JFK
memos back, and Saint returned them, though not before making copies.

There is no way to confirm Hunt’s allegations – all but one of the
co-conspirators he named are long gone. Saint, for his part, feels his
father was lucid when he made his confession and believes, if
anything, his father was holding out on him, the old spy keeping a few
secrets in reserve, just in case. “There were probably dozens of plots
to kill Kennedy, because everybody hated Kennedy but the public,”
Saint says. “The question is, which one of them worked? My dad always
said, ‘Thank God one of them worked.’ ”

In Eureka, Saint has been reading an advance copy of Hunt’s
autobiography, American Spy. In it, his father looks at LBJ as only
one possible person behind the JFK killing, and then only in the most
half-hearted, couched and cloaked way. He brings up various other
possibilities, too, then debunks each of them.

But of all the shadings and omissions in the book, the only one that
truly upsets Saint has to do with the happiest moment in his life,
that time in 1972, on the night of the Watergate burglary, when he
helped his father dispose of the spy gear, then ran money for him and
ditched the typewriter. The way it unfolds in the book, Saint doesn’t
do anything for his dad. And it’s Hunt himself who dumps the typewriter.

“That’s a complete lie,” Saint says, almost shouting. “I’m the one who
helped him that night. Me! And he’s robbing me of it. Why?”

Like so many other things, he will never know why, because on January
23, in Miami, the spymaster dies. Later in the day, Saint started
reading a few of the obituaries. One starts off: “Sleazebag E Howard
Hunt is finally dead.”

“Oh, God,” Saint says and goes looking for how The New York Times
handled his father’s death. The obit reads: “Mr Hunt was intelligent,
erudite, suave and loyal to his friends. But the record shows that he
mishandled many of the tasks he received from the CIA and the White
House. He was ‘totally self-absorbed, totally amoral and a danger to
himself and anybody around him. . . ’ ”

“Wow,” Saint says. “I don’t know if I can read these things. That is
one brutal obituary.”

But the Times is right, of course. Hunt was a danger to anybody around
him, and any list of those in danger would always have to include,
right at the top, his first-born son, Saint.

Are these the men who plotted to kill JFK?

The lead players in the assassination of President John F Kennedy,
according to the late CIA spymaster E Howard Hunt

The successor: Lyndon B Johnson

Hunt’s theory: changes JFK hit site from Miami to Dallas

As a Texan, LBJ had the connections to lure JFK down to Dallas. As a
Freemason, he secured the cover-up by packing the Warren Commission
full of fellow masons (including Gerald Ford and Allen Dulles) to
stand by the lone-gunman story.

The lInchpin: Cord Meyer

Hunt’s theory: sets plot in motion with David Atlee Phillips

Never linked to the assassination before, Meyer was the CIA agent in
charge of the domestic propaganda programme.

The Middleman: David Atlee Phillips

Hunt’s theory: recruits William Harvey and Antonio Veciana

CIA lifer involved in Guatemala and the Bay of Pigs. When Lee Harvey
Oswald visited Mexico City, Phillips was in charge of the CIA station
there.

The spook: William K Harvey

Hunt’s theory: dreamt of leading the CIA under LBJ

Longtime CIA honcho. Loathed JFK for not invading Cuba and for
demoting him.

The recruiter: Antonio Veciana

Hunt’s theory: enlists Frank Sturgis and David Morales

A Cuban-born would-be assassin who testified before the White House
that he saw his CIA contact in Dallas travelling with Lee Harvey
Oswald in August 1963.

The mercenary: Frank Sturgis

Hunt’s theory: tried to recruit Hunt into the plot

A hired gun working as a go-between for the CIA and the mob. Was
quoted as saying that Watergate was part of the JFK cover-up.

The hitman: David Morales

Hunt’s theory: brings in shadowy ‘French gunman’

CIA thug who first worked for Hunt in Guatemala. Tight with the mob
but liked to get drunk and talk. Died mysteriously in 1978.

The French gunman: Lucien Sarti

Hunt’s theory: the second assassin on the grassy knoll

Could Hunt’s “French gunman” have been the Corsican drug trafficker
Sarti? If so, he would be the most dubious name in Hunt’s scenario.
Hardly anything concrete is known about him. He was killed by the
police in 1972.


5,111 posted on 04/15/2007 1:22:32 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Founding Father; milford421; DAVEY CROCKETT

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/312adeae0dc2557b/d75e08eb05b724d9#d75e08eb05b724d9

[take a look at the photo in link #2, he has jihadi eyes]

Body of North Naples man found behind motorcycle shop

By Ryan Mills contact
Thursday, April 12, 2007
http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2007/apr/12/body_north_naples_man_foun...

A garbage collector working behind a Fort Myers Harley-Davidson store
early Thursday morning found the body of a 23-year-old North Naples
man in the driver’s seat of his luxury car, Fort Myers police reported.

http://media.naplesnews.com/img/photos/2007/04/12/070412NS-HallerMatt...
Matthew Haller

The body of Matthew Haller, 15513 Monterosso Lane, was discovered by
the garbage collector around 3:43 a.m., authorities said. Haller had
been shot and was found in his blue 1985 Mercedes. The Mercedes was
taken from the scene at 2160 Colonial Blvd., to a Florida Department
of Law Enforcement facility for processing, police said.

Investigators are attempting to piece together a timeline of what may
have occurred overnight and determine why Haller was behind the store
in the first place, said Fort Myers police spokeswoman Maureen Buice.

“We’re waiting for forensic evidence from the Florida Department of
Law Enforcement, and we’re waiting on autopsy results from the medical
examiner’s office,” Buice said.

Buice did not know when the autopsy would be performed.

“We have a lot of information to gather and a lot of information to
piece together,” Buice said. “That’s what we are doing.”

Haller was in Fort Myers visiting friends, said his father, Timothy
Haller.

“He was a wonderful young man,” Timothy Haller said. “He didn’t
deserve this.”

Neighbors on Monterosso Lane awoke around 6 a.m. Thursday to a woman’s
scream and police cars in the Hallers’ driveway, said Michael Lissack,
president of the Monterosso at Mediterra Homeowners Association.

“The Hallers are wonderful people who do not need this kind of tragedy
visited upon them,” Lissack said. “The entire Monterosso and Mediterra
communities are feeling their loss.”

Lissack said Matthew Haller was living in the community but was
frequently not home.

“He was a resident in the community, but he was not particularly
visible,” Lissack said. “He was here, but we didn’t see a lot of him.”

Haller was arrested in Lee County on Nov. 2, 2006, and charged with
possession of cocaine, a felony, and refusing to submit to a DUI test,
a misdemeanor.

On his MySpace page, Haller listed his occupation as “street
pharmacist.” He also wrote that he likes “waking up some mornings
wondering if I might be arrested for what I don’t remember doing last
night.”


5,112 posted on 04/15/2007 1:45:15 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/f31fa407465e1238/6c2c8f7ee68f88bd#6c2c8f7ee68f88bd

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18109589

“List of Titanic’s doomed passengers goes online: Handwritten pages include
names, details of people aboard ill-fated liner”
[http://www.findmypast.com/titanicTranscript.action]

REUTERS
Updated: 2 hours, 47 minutes ago

LONDON - The names, ages and professions of passengers listed on the Titanic’s
fateful journey have gone online for the first time, 95 years after the
luxury ocean liner sank on its maiden voyage.

Dozens of pages featuring the original handwritten passenger list are
available, revealing the cabin class of passengers.

They poignantly show the emigration plans of many hopefuls setting sail from
Southampton for a new life in America in 1912.

The White Star liner, touted as “unsinkable,” left port on April 10, only to
sink after hitting an iceberg, with the loss of 1,523 lives.

Among the passengers, for example, was George Mackay, a 20-year-old butler
from Scotland travelling third class and hoping to start a new life in
America.

In first class the Countess of Rothes is recorded as travelling with her
cousin Gladys Cherry and her personal maid Roberta Maioni. They survived
after being picked up by the ship Carpathia.

The list, which is available for free for one week at www.findmypast.com,
could help genealogists trace family members. Previously, the list could
only be seen at the National Archives in Kew, southwest London.

Findmypast is an online research site that provides information on
genealogy.

The online listing coincides with a commemoration service to be held in the
British port of Southampton on Sunday for the hundreds of residents who took
the voyage as either passengers or crew and who died when the Titanic went
down mid Atlantic.

The list completes the set of passengers lists for the ships leaving the UK
during the decade between 1910 and 1919.

A spokesman for findmypast said the lists were considered so high-profile by
the National Archives that they qualified for the same level of security as
Henry VIII’s divorce papers and the Domesday Book and could only be
consulted under supervision.

He said it also gives details of the lucky few who narrowly escaped the fate
of the other passengers when they disembarked from the ship in France.

The original documents also show that some passengers who intended to board
at Queenstown (Cobh in County Cork) did not actually embark, despite having
purchased tickets, he said.


Actually, a full list including biographical information has been
available for almost 15 years online at Encyclopedia Titanica. This
recently released list happens to be the original one, and of course
has significant historical value, but there are a lot of errors. The
crew names were often deciphered incorrectly (the crewmembers wrote
their names down, which as you can imagine sometimes makes them
difficult to read) and a number of passengers were travelling under
assumed names. Also, at least one crewmember deserted the ship in Cork
to go visit his mother.

Maybe, however, this new list will stop every Tom, Dick, and Harry
from claiming that their great-aunt Tillie was on the Titanic “but got
off on the last boat”. If every great-aunt Tillie or great-uncle Hiram
who claimed to have been on Titanic as it sailed had actually been
aboard, the ship would have sunk like a stone in Southampton Harbour.


5,113 posted on 04/15/2007 1:51:29 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/a2580df9f406c847/755e92f532e7bfa4#755e92f532e7bfa4

News of Abraham Lincoln’s Death

OUR GREAT LOSS

Death of President Lincoln.

The Songs of Victory Drowned in Sorrow.

LOSING SCENES OF A NOBLE LIFE.

The Great Sorrow of an Afflicted Nation.

Party Differences Forgotten in Public Grief.

Vice-President Johnson Inaugurated as Chief Executive.

MR. SEWARD WILL RECOVER.

John Wilkes Booth Believed to be the Assassin.

Manifestations of the People Throughout the Country.

OFFICIAL DISPATCHES.

Photo:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/lincoln-resolutions/images/...

FROM: The New York Times (April 16th 1865) ~
By Telegraph Dispatches

War Department, Washington, April 15 - 4:10 A.M.

To Major-Gen. Dix:

The President continues insensible and is sinking.
Secretary Seward remains without change.
Frederick Seward’s skull is fractured in two places, besides
a severe cut upon the head.

The attendant is still alive, but hopeless. Maj. Seward’s
wound is not dangerous.

It is now ascertained with reasonable certainty that two
assassins were engaged in this horrible crime, Wilkes Booth
being the one that shot the President, and the other companion
of his whose name is not known, but whose description is so
clear that he can hardly escape. It appears from a letter found
in Booth’s trunk that the murder was planned before the 4th of
March, but fell through then because the accomplice backed
out until “Richmond could be heard from.” Booth and his
accomplice were at the livery stable at six o’clock last evening,
and there left with their horses about ten o’clock, or shortly
before that hour.

It would seem that they had for several days been seeking their
chance, but for some unknown reason it was not carried into
effect until last night.

One of them has evidently made his way to Baltimore — the
other has not yet been traced.
Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of War.

War Department, Washington, April 15.

Major Gen. Dix:

Abraham Lincoln died this morning at twenty-two minutes after
seven o’clock.
Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of War.

War Department, Washington, April 15 - 3 P.M.

Major Gen. Dix, New-York:

Official notice of the death of the late President, Abraham
Lincoln, was given by the heads of departments this morning to
Andrew Johnson, Vice-President, upon whom the constitution
devolved the office of President. Mr. Johnson, upon receiving
this notice, appeared before the Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Chief
Justice of the United States, and took the oath of office, as
President of the United States, assumed its duties and functions.

At 12 o’clock the President met the heads of departments in
cabinet meeting, at the Treasury Building, and among other
business the following was transacted:

First - The arrangements for the funeral of the late President
were referred to the several Secretaries, as far as relates to their
respective departments.

Second - William Hunter, Esq., was appointed Acting Secretary
of State during the disability of Mr. Seward, and his son
Frederick Seward, the Assistant Secretary.

Third - The President formally announced that he desired to retain
the present Secretaries of departments of his Cabinet, and they
would go on and discharge their respective duties in the same
manner as before the deplorable event that had changed the head
of the government.

All business in the departments was suspended during the day.

The surgeons report that the condition of Mr. Seward remains
unchanged. He is doing well.

No improvement in Mr. Frederick Seward.

The murderers have not yet been apprehended.
Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of War.

THE ASSASSINATION.

Additional Details of the Lamentable Event.

Washington, Saturday, April 15

The assassin of President Lincoln left behind him his hat and a
spur.

The hat was picked up in the President’s box and has been
identified by parties to whom it has been shown as the one
belonging to the suspected man, and accurately described as the
one belonging to the suspected man by other parties, not
allowed to see it before describing it.

The spur was dropped upon the stage, and that also has been
identified as the one procured at a stable where the same man
hired a horse in the evening.

Two gentlemen who went to the Secretary of War to apprize
him of the attack on Mr. Lincoln met at the residence of the
former a man muffled in a cloak, who, when accosted by them,
hastened away.

It had been Mr. Stanton’s intention to accompany Mr. Lincoln to
the theatre, and occupy the same box, but the press of business
prevented.

It therefore seems evident that the aim of the plotters was to
paralyze the country by at once striking down the head, the heart
and the arm of the country.

As soon as the dreadful events were announced in the streets,
Superintendent Richards, and his assistants, were at work to
discover the assassin.

In a few moments the telegraph had aroused the whole police
force of the city.

Maj. Wallach and several members of the City Government
were soon on the spot and every precaution was taken to
preserve order and quiet in the city.

Every street in Washington was patrolled at the request of Mr.
Richards.

Gen. Augur sent horses to mount the police.

Every road leading out of Washington was strongly picketed
and every possible avenue of escape was thoroughly guarded.

Steamboats about to depart down the Potomac were stopped.

The Daily Chronicle says:

“As it is suspected that this conspiracy originated in Maryland,
the telegraph flashed the mournful news to Baltimore and all the
cavalry was Immediately put upon active duty. Every road was
picketed and every precaution taken to prevent the escape of
the assassin. A preliminary examination was made by Messrs.
Richards and his assistants. Several persons were called to
testify and the evidence as elicited before an informal tribunal,
and not under oath, was conclusive to this point. The murderer
of President Lincoln was John Wilkes Booth. His hat was found
in the private box, and identified by several persons who had
seen him within the last two days, and the spur which he
dropped by accident, after he jumped to the stage, was
identified as one of those which he had obtained from the stable
where he hired his horse.

This man Booth has played more than once at Ford’s Theatre,
and is, of course, acquainted with its exits and entrances, and
the facility with which he escaped behind the scenes is well
understood.

The person who assassinated Secretary Seward left behind him
a slouched hat and an old rusty navy revolver. The chambers
were broken low from the barrel, as if done by striking. The loads
were drawn from the chambers, one being but a rough piece of
lead, and the other being smaller than the chambers, wrapped in
paper, as if to keep them from falling out.

CLOSING SCENES.

Particulars of His Last Moments
Record of His Condition Before Death

His Death

Washington, Saturday, April 15 - 11 o’clock A.M.

The Star extra says:

“At 7:20 o’clock the President breathed his last, closing his
eyes as if falling to sleep, and his countenance assuming an
expression of perfect serenity. There were no indications of
pain and it was not known that he was dead until the
gradually decreasing respiration ceased altogether.

Rev. Dr. Gurley, of the New-York avenue Presbyterian
Church, immediately on it being ascertained that life was
extinct, knelt at the bedside and offered an impressive prayer,
which was responded to by all present.

Dr. Gurley then proceeded to the front parlor, where Mrs.
Lincoln, Capt. Robert Lincoln, Mrs. John Hay, the Private
Secretary, and others, were waiting, where he again offered a
prayer for the consolation of the family.

The following minutes, taken by Dr. Abbott, show the condition
of the late President throughout the night.

11 o’clock — Pulse 44.
11:05 o’clock — Pulse 45, and growing weaker.
11:10 o’clock — Pulse 45.
11:15 o’clock — Pulse 42.
11:20 o’clock — Pulse 45; respiration 27 to 29.
11:26 o’clock — Pulse 42.
11:32 o’clock — Pulse 48 and full.
11:40 o’clock — Pulse 45.
11:45 o’clock — Pulse 45; respiration 22.
12 o’clock — Pulse 48; respiration 22.
12:16 o’clock — Pulse 48; respiration 21 — echmot. both eyes.
12:30 o’clock — Pulse 45.
12:32 o’clock — Pulse 60.
12:35 o’clock — Pulse 66.1.
12:40 o’clock — Pulse 69;right eye much swollen and
echmoses.
12:45 o’clock — Pulse 70.
12:55 o’clock — Pulse 80; struggling motion of arms.
1 o’clock — Pulse 86; respiration 30.
1:30 o’clock — Pulse 95; appearing easier.
1:45 o’clock — Pulse 86 — very quiet, respiration irregular.
Mrs. Lincoln present.
2:10 o’clock — Mrs. Lincoln retired with Robert Lincoln to
adjoining rooms.
2:30 o’clock — President very quiet — pulse 54 — respiration
28.
2:52 o’clock — Pulse 48 — respiration 30.
3 o’clock — Visited again by Mrs. Lincoln.
3:25 o’clock — Respiration 24 and regular.
3:35 o’clock — Prayer by Rev. Dr. Gurley.
4 o’clock — Respiration 26 and regular.
4:15 o’clock — Pulse 60 — respiration 25.
5:50 o’clock — Respiration 28 — regular — sleeping.
6 o’clock — Pulse failing — respiration 28.
6:30 o’clock — Still failing and labored breathing.
7 o’clock — Symptoms of immediate dissolution.
7:22 o’clock — Death.

Surrounding the death bed of the President were Secretaries
Stanton, Welles, Usher, Attorney-General Speed,
Postmaster-General Dennison, M.B. Field, Assistant Secretary
of the Treasury; Judge Otto, Assistant Secretary of the Interior;
Gen. Halleck, Gen. Meigs, Senator Sumner, R.F. Andrews, of
New-York; Gen. Todd, of Dacotah; John Hay, Private
Secretary; Gov. Oglesby, of Illinois; Gen Farnsworth, Mr. and
Miss Kenney, Miss Harris, Capt. Robert Lincoln, son of the
President, and Doctors E.W. Abbott, R.K. Stone, C.D. Gatch,
Neal Hall, and Mr. Lieberman. Secretary McCulloch remained
with the President until about 5 o’clock, and Chief Justice Chase,
after several hours’ attendance during the night, returned early
this morning.

Immediately after the President’s death a Cabinet meeting was
called by Secretary Stanton, and held in the room in which the
corpse lay. Secretaries Stanton, Welles and Usher,
Postmaster-General Dennison, and Attorney-General Speed,
were present. The results of the conference are as yet unknown.

Removal of the Remains to the Executive Mansion — Feeling in
the City.

Washington, Saturday, April 15.

The President’s body was removed from the private residence
opposite Ford’s Theatre to the executive mansion this morning at
9:30 o’clock. in a hearse, and wrapped in the American flag.
It was escorted by a small guard of cavalry, Gen. Augur and
other military officers following on foot.

A dense crowd accompanied the remains to the White House,
where a military guard excluded the crowd, allowing none but
persons of the household and personal friends of the deceased
to enter the premises,

Senator Yates and Representative Farnsworth being among the
number admitted.

The body is being embalmed, with a view to its removal to Illinois.

Flags over the department and throughout the city are at half-mast.
Scarcely any business is being transacted anywhere either on
private or public account.

Our citizens, without any preconcert whatever, are draping their
premises with festoons of mourning.

The bells are tolling mournfully. All is the deepest gloom and
sadness. Strong men weep in the streets. The grief is
wide-spread and deep in strange contrast to the joy so lately
manifested over our recent military victories.

This is indeed a day of gloom.

Reports that Mr. Frederick W. Seward, who was kindly
assisting the nursing of Secretary Seward, received a stab in the
back. The shoulder blade prevented the knife or dagger from
penetrating into his body. The prospects are that he will recover.

A report is circulated, repeated by almost everybody, that
Booth was captured fifteen miles this side of Baltimore. If it be
true, as asserted, that the War Department has received such
information, it will doubtless be officially promulgated.

The government departments are closed by order, and will be
draped with the usual emblems of mourning.

The roads leading to and from the city are guarded by the
military, and the utmost circumspection is observed as to all
attempting to enter or leave the city.

AUTOPSY UPON THE BODY OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

Washington, Saturday, April 15.

An autopsy was held this afternoon over the body of President
Lincoln by Surgeon-General Barnes and Dr. Stone, assisted by
other eminent medical men.

The coffin is of mahogany, is covered with black cloth, and lined
with lead, the latter also being covered white satin.

A silver plate upon the coffin over the breast bears the following
inscription:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
SIXTEENTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES,
Born July 12, 1809,
Died April 15, 1865.

The remains have been embalmed.

A few locks of hair were removed from the President’s head
for the family previous to the remains being placed in the coffin.

THE ASSASSINS.

Circumstances Tending to the Inculpate G.H. Booth -
Description of his Confederate in the Crime.

Washington, Saturday, April 15.

There is no confirmation of the report that the murderer of the
President has been arrested.

Among the circumstances tending to fix a participation in the
crime on Booth, were letters found in his trunk, one of which,
apparently from a lady, supplicated him to desist from the
perilous undertaking in which he was about to embark, as the
time was inauspicious, the mine not yet being ready to be
sprung.

The Extra Intelligencer says: “From the evidence obtained it is
rendered highly probable that the man who stabbed Mr.
Seward and his sons, is John Surratt, of Prince George
County, Maryland. The horse he rode was hired at Naylor’s
stable, on Fourteenth-street. Surratt is a young man, with light
hair and goatee. His father is said to have been postmaster of
Prince George County.”

About 11 o’clock last night two men crossed the Anacostia
Bridge, one of whom gave his name as Booth, and the other
as Smith. The latter is believed to be John Surratt.

Last night a riderless horse was found, which has been
identified by the proprietor of one of the stables previously
mentioned as having been hired from his establishment.

Accounts are conflicting as to whether Booth crossed the
bridge on horseback or on foot; but as it is believed that he
rode across it, it is presumed that he had exchanged his horse.

From information in the possession of the authorities it is
evident that the scope of the plot was intended to be much
more comprehensive.

The Vice-President and other prominent members of the
Administration were particularly inquired for by suspected
parties, and their precise localities accurately obtained; but
providentially, in their cases, the scheme miscarried.

A boat was at once sent down the Potomac to notify the
gunboats on the river of the awful crime, in order that all
possible means should be taken for the arrest of the
perpetrators.

The most ample precautions have been taken, and it is not
believed the culprits will long succeed in evading the
overtaking of justice.

The second extra of the Evening Star says:

“Col. Ingraham, Provost-Marshal of the defence north of the
Potomac, is engaged in taking testimony to-day, all of which
fixes the assassination upon H. Wilkes Booth.

Judge Olin, of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia,
and Justice Miller, are also engaged to-day, at the Police
Headquarters, on Tenth-street, in taking the testimony of a
large number of witnesses.

Lieut. Tyrell, of Col. Ingraham’s staff, last night proceeded
to the National Hotel, where Booth had been stopping, and
took possession of his trunk, in which was found a Colonel’s
military dress-coat, two pairs of handcuffs, two boxes of
cartridges and a package of letters, all of which are now in the
possession of the military authorities.

One of these letters, bearing the date of Hookstown, Md.,
seems to implicate Booth. The writer speaks of “the
mysterious affair in which you are engaged,” and urges Booth
to proceed to Richmond, and ascertain the views of the
authorities there upon the subject. The writer of the letter
endeavors to persuade Booth from carrying his designs into
execution at that time, for the reason, as the writer alleges,
that the government had its suspicions aroused. The writer of
the letter seems to have been implicated with Booth in “the
mysterious affair” referred to, as he informs Booth in the letter
that he would prefer to express his views verbally; and then
goes on to say that he was out of money, had no clothes, and
would be compelled to leave home, as his family were
desirous that he should dissolve his connection with Booth.
This letter is written on note paper, in a small, neat hand, and
simply bears the signature of “Sam.”

At the Cabinet meeting yesterday, which lasted over two
hours, the future policy of the government toward Virginia
was discussed, the best feeling prevailed. It is stated that it
was, determined to adopt a very liberal policy, as was
recommended by the President. It is said that this meeting
was the most harmonious held for over two years, the
President exhibiting throughout that magnanimity and kindness
of heart which has ever characterized his treatment of the
rebellious States, and which has been so littly requited on their
part.

One of the members of the Cabinet remarked to a friend he
met at the door, that “The government was to-day stronger
than it had been for three years past.”

Washington, Saturday, April 15 - 3:30 P.M.

To-day no one is allowed to leave the city by rail conveyance,
or on foot, and the issuing of passes from the Headquarters of
the Department of Washington has been suspended by Gen.
Augur.

THE SUCCESSION.

Mr. Johnson Inaugurated as President.

The Oath Administered by Secretary Chase.

He Will Perform His Duties Trusting in God.

Washington, Saturday, April 15 - 12 A.M.

Andrew Johnson was sworn into office as President of the
United States by Chief-Justice Chase, to-day, at eleven
o’clock.

Secretary McCullough and Attorney-General Speed, and
others were present.

He remarked:

“The duties are mine. I will perform them, trusting in God.

SECOND DISPATCH

Washington, Saturday, April 15.

At an early hour this morning, Hon. Edwin M. Stanton,
Secretary of War, sent an official communication to Hon.
Andrew Johnson, Vice-President of the United States, that,
in consequence of the sudden and unexpected death of the
Chief Magistrate, his inauguration should take place as soon
as possible, and requesting him to state the place and hour at
which the ceremony should be performed.

Mr. Johnson immediately replied that it would be agreeable to
him to have the proceedings take place at his rooms in the
Kirkwood House as soon as the arrangements could be
perfected.

Chief Justice Chase was informed of the fact and repaired to
the appointed place in company with Secretary McCullough,
of the Treasury Department, Attorney-General Speed,
J.P. Blair, Sr., Hon. Montgomery Blair, Senators Foot of
Vermont, Ramsay, of Minnesota, Yates, of Illinois, Stewart,
of Nevada, Hale, of New-Hampshirre, and Gen. Farnsworth,
of Illinois.

At eleven o’clock the oath of office was administered by the
Chief Justice of the United States, in his usual solemn and
impressive manner.

Mr. Johnson received the kind expressions of the gentlemen
by whom he was surrounded in a manner which showed his
earnest sense of the great responsibilities so suddenly
devolved upon him, and made a brief speech, in which he
said:

“The duties of the office are mine. I will perform them. The
consequences are with God. Gentlemen, I shall lean upon you.
I feel that I shall need your support. I am deeply impressed with
the solemnity of the occasion and the responsibility of the duties
of the office I am assuming.

Mr. Johnson appeared to be in remarkably good health, and
has a high and realizing sense of the hopes that are centered
upon him. His manner was solemn and dignified, and his whole
bearing produced a most gratifying impression upon those who
participated in the ceremonies.

It is probable that during the day President Johnson will issue his
first proclamation to the American People.

It is expected, though nothing has been definitely determined
upon, that the funeral of the late President Lincoln will take place
on or about Thursday next. It is supposed that his remains will be
temporarily deposited in the Congressional Cemetery.


Portraits:
http://utopia.utexas.edu/project/portraits/lincoln.jpg

http://tomroeser.com/blog/img/f22221/abe%20lincoln.jpg


5,114 posted on 04/15/2007 1:56:23 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; Calpernia

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.obituaries/browse_thread/thread/a5db00847f4de8af/1a1e34fa2fab7857#1a1e34fa2fab7857

http://www.abc4.com/news/national/story.aspx?content_id=2ecf3875-8f1d...

The last three people elected to serve as governor of New Jersey now
share a similar fate. They’ve all broken a leg while in office.

Current governor Jon Corzine became the latest victim last night. He
is suffering from a broken left leg and a number of other injures from
a car crash. Corzine is hospitalized in critical but stable
condition.

The person elected before him, James McGreevey, broke his left leg in
2002. He was taking a nighttime stroll along a beach with his wife.

And in 1999, then-governor Christie Whitman broke both bones in the
lower part of her right leg while skiing in the Alps.


5,115 posted on 04/15/2007 2:00:23 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Calpernia; Founding Father; milford421

http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?fr=yalerts-keyword&c=&p=gun+at+school&ei=utf-8

*
Mrs. Tennessee’s son charged with bringing gun to school Open this result in new window
Eyewitness News Memphis - Apr 15 10:48 AM
The 18-year old son of the reigning National Mrs. Tennessee is charged with having a gun at school, authorities say.
* 2.
Mrs. Tennessee’s son charged with bringing gun to school Open this result in new window
WMCTV Memphis - Apr 14 6:23 PM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The 18-year old son of the reigning Mrs. Tennessee is charged with having a gun at school. Brandon Evans, who is the son of the current Mrs. Tennessee, Melissa Evans, also faces
* 3.
Mrs. Tennessee’s son charged with bringing gun to school Open this result in new window
WMCTV Memphis - Apr 14 5:38 PM
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. The 18-year old son of the reigning Mrs. Tennessee is charged with having a gun at school. Brandon Evans, who is the son of the current Mrs.
* 4.
Police arrest teen after call about alleged gun, school threat Open this result in new window
The Commercial Dispatch - Apr 14 8:05 PM
WEST POINT - A Cedar Bluff youth was arrested Friday afternoon in connection with a call placed to the West Point Police Department that the teenager might attempt to enter a school with a gun.
* 5.
Air gun prompts school lockdown Open this result in new window
The San Francisco Examiner - Apr 14 2:59 AM
(Juan Carlos Pometta Betancourt/Special to The Examiner) Students leave Taylor Middle School on Friday. The school was put on lockdown after a student brought an air gun to class.
* 6.
Middle school student brings gun to class Open this result in new window
FOX 10 Phoenix - Apr 13 5:16 PM
A Maricopa Middle School, forced into lock down after a student brings a gun to school. It happened at Maricopa Wells Middle School, and police say the gun was unloaded. Students were sent home with a letter, explaining to their parents what happened. The 13 year-old boy may have been involved in some sort of gang activity. We’ve learned that when officers arrested him, he had a panic attack, but ...
* 7.
Maricopa middle-schooler caught with gun at school Open this result in new window
12 News Phoenix - Apr 13 3:49 PM
A city of Maricopa middle school was temporarily locked down Friday after a student was found with a gun. “The student brought an unloaded gun to school and was immediately caught with the gun,” said John Flores, Maricopa Unified School District superintendent.
* 8.
James City teen charged with having gun at school Open this result in new window
Richmond Times-Dispatch - Apr 14 9:36 AM
A 16-year-old student at Jamestown High School was caught yesterday bringing an unloaded .380-caliber handgun to school, James City County police said.
* 9.
Student takes loaded gun to school Open this result in new window
Washington Times-Herald - Apr 13 8:59 AM
ELNORA — A 12-year-old North Daviess Elementary School student took a loaded handgun to school Wednesday morning. Elementary principal Jodi Berry and assistant principal Renee Judy approached the boy after another student gave them a tip that he might have a gun.
* 10.
Teen charged with having gun at school Open this result in new window
Daily Press - Apr 14 1:23 AM
A 16-year-old Jamestown High School student was charged with possession of a firearm on school property Friday after an unloaded handgun was found in his backpack.


5,116 posted on 04/15/2007 2:25:17 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: nw_arizona_granny
http://nord-ost.org/kniga-pamyati/oftaeva-anna-2.html

Anna Oftayeva



My wife and I had always dreamed of having a daughter - a little, blonde-haired girl with a voice like a bell. And that is exactly the girl we got. This happy event happened in Potsdam, in the German Democratic Republic, while we were serving there in the military.

'Anyuta' differed from children her age, quite literally from her first years of life. She was extremely curious and interested in everything: why did the sun shine, why did rain fall, where was it that snow would not melt in the summer - we were always having to answer thousands of "whys". And not only us: she would quickly befriend everyone, child or adult, whom she wanted to meet and in order to learn more about everything. Since childhood her tiny heart was open to all. Because her mama was a professional musician, music was always heard in our home, and this served Anyuta well in music school. She graduated from there with honors. She also attended art school, and graduated with honors from there as well.

Anyuta never had problems relating to other people, despite the fact that during our long service in the military we were always on the move, traveling from city to city and from republic to republic. She spent her summers with her grandparents on either side, alternating between the Ulyanovsk district village of Nikolayevka, and the city of Tolgyatti. Not only they loved her, but everyone who knew her did as well, for she was a bright ray of sunshine no matter where she appeared.

Anyuta began reading at four years of age. In kindergarten, Anyuta's teacher would sit her down with the other children and have her read fairy tales to them. She read quickly, intelligibly, and with great expressiveness. But oh, how she loved to participate in school plays! She was a born leader. She never hurt her classmates' feelings and was never full of pride or boastful. She was tactful, but performed the roles assigned by her teachers with talent. She memorized texts and poems, sang songs, danced, and helped the other children who were having difficulties. And she was always full of joy. A happy face and shining eyes - this was our daughter.

In 11th grade, Anyuta moved to the city of Chita with us. She found her classes easy, and she was interested in school, receiving almost all '5s' (A's). The rare '4' (B) that she received caused her to worry: not out of vanity, but because of her sense of responsibility and high standards for herself. She had absolutely no idle time, and she tried to manage to do everything: playing with her brother, reading, doing homework, watching the latest shows, talking with friends, and helping her mother around the house. She actively participated in after school activities, yet did very well in her studies. She was loved not just by her friends, but by her teachers as well.

Here are excerpts from the school report on Anna Oftayeva, while an 11th grade student in Chita city middle school #12: "…In her studies she has shown brilliant abilities in all subjects, taking first place in the city Russian language Olympiad. 'Anya' possesses exceptional literacy. In history class her answers are exceptional in their mature reasoning and with skillful orientation to the political life of the nation. In the medically oriented classes she has received in-depth knowledge of chemistry and biology. The instructors at the Chita state medical academy selected Anya as one of their most capable students. At the city and district Olympiads in chemistry and biology Anyuta took first place more than once. Sympathetic, kind, and with a huge sense of responsibility, she is a great authority not only among her classmates, but also in the entire school. She is a born leader. Decency and providing assistance to others are rare qualities in our day, and not intrinsic to many. Anya possesses these."

Anyuta finished school with a medal.

Since childhood our little girl had but one dream - to become a doctor. To our great sorrow, it was never meant to be. Throughout her short life she pursued this goal. She studiously prepared for the I.M. Sechenov medical academy, and our family was overjoyed when she was accepted. Anyuta, however, was simply relieved. She made many friends among the other medical students, and many new impressions. Joy and happiness seemed to join our family forever.

Among all her enthusiasms and passions, Anyuta's studies were number one. She joined the science student clubs to gain supplemental knowledge, and read much of the special technical literature. At the same time, however, Anyuta was awfully frightened of exams. To her it always seemed as if she had not completely learned everything, or that she did not know the given subject well enough. The night before an examination she would worry terribly. But after taking the test, it was with such joy in her voice that she declared: "I got a '5'!" We never had any doubt, but all the same we were just as happy as our daughter. And surprisingly, on the very same day that Anyuta had taken a test, she would begin preparing for the next. In her fourth year of the academy she began to work at 'Nord-Ost'.

There is no greater sorrow in life than burying one's children. Our home has forever become empty. We have no right to stop living, but the bright light of our life is gone. Pain does not leave us, not even for a minute. In our thoughts we constantly talk with our daughter, and we feel her nearby. Yes, it is so: Anyuta is still with us; we love one another other so very much. Only we cannot embrace her, for she is very far from us…

What we lost, heaven found. For us it is very painful, and lonely…


Written by her parents.
5,117 posted on 04/15/2007 5:45:24 PM PDT by struwwelpeter
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To: struwwelpeter

What we lost, heaven found. For us it is very painful, and lonely…

<<<

And God has another wonderful healing Angel.


5,118 posted on 04/15/2007 8:43:57 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; FARS; Founding Father

Bangladesh: Democracy Saved or Sunk?

By Jalal Alamgir

Foreign Policy

Posted April 2007

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/ story/cms. php?story_ id=3765

Many in Bangladesh are relieved that the military stepped in to liberate them from political chaos. But this move has set the country on a slippery slope to authoritarian rule. In the long run, the best formula for success is to build Bangladesh into a showcase for democracy in the Islamic world.

Guardians of democracy? Bangladesh’s new authoritarian rulers are destroying what’s left of the country’s democratic institutions.

On January 11, Bangladesh began yet another tumultuous political transformation. A caretaker government backed by the military took over power, declared a state of emergency, and postponed national elections. Most Bangladeshis sighed relief.

Within weeks, the newly installed government began a “war” against corruption, arresting scores of top politicians in dramatic midnight raids and sending them straight to prison. Most Bangladeshis became exuberant, and many are demanding summary trials for the corrupt.

While stressing that democracy needs to be restored eventually, foreign diplomats also cheered on the new government’s assertive line. The British High Commissioner said he was “pleased with the approach that was taken,” and more recently, the U.S. assistant secretary of state said his country was “strongly supportive of the reform steps.” After a 16-year experiment with democracy, Bangladesh’s return to authoritarianism feels to many like a refreshing change.

It wasn’t always like this. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations used to hail Bangladesh as an example to the rest of the Islamic world: a moderate Muslim democracy. As recently as 2002, public support for democracy was overwhelming in the country, as several surveys showed. Bangladesh enjoyed secular institutions and a growing economy. It held regular elections, and power rotated between the two major parties, the center-right Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the center-left Awami League. But, despite the public’s commitment to democratic institutions, contempt was growing against the many politicians who regularly subverted those institutions.

That contempt peaked toward the end of BNP’s 2001-06 tenure. The party’s reign had been anything but democratic. With its Islamist allies, it had gone on a rampage against political and religious minorities. Its feared paramilitary force, the Rapid Action Battalion, operated with impunity, and extrajudicial deaths jumped to nearly 400 in 2005, a 20-fold increase from the average during the Awami League administration (1996-2001). Corruption had become so rampant that Transparency International rated Bangladesh as the most corrupt country in the world four out of the last five years. Extortion was commonplace, especially for businesses. Some could not even pay their utility bills without bribing someone. Gruesome terrorist attacks took place, but the cases went mysteriously unsolved. Finally, BNP tried to rig the January 2007 elections, a move that was protested en masse by the opposition, and the country came to a standstill. That’s when the military intervened.

With these conditions, Bangladeshis could be forgiven for welcoming their new military rulers with open arms. After the chaos of the past six years, who can blame them?

The new caretaker government’s stated goal is to “save” democracy by ensuring “a level playing field” before holding elections. In the process, it wants to change the system comprehensively, involving everything from how political parties operate, to the authority of the courts, to the balance of power between the president and the prime minister, to even considering a “National Charter” to rival the Constitution.

All this is a familiar refrain. From Burma and Pakistan in the 1950s to Thailand or Fiji in 2006, saving democracy or saving the nation through enacting large-scale reforms has been the common pretext for authoritarian power grabs. Bangladesh itself experienced such takeovers in 1975, 1977, and 1982.

Already, there are troubling signs that the country’s new authoritarian order may be more than just temporary. The caretaker government’s drive to “clean up” politics has reached far beyond the top rungs of power. As of early April, more than 70 people have been killed extrajudicially. More than 100,000 people- many of them mid-level workers of various political parties-have been detained so far, often without charges, and thousands more are being added every day in what amounts to a massive political purge.

To speed up the process, the government has substantially increased its authority to arrest without charges, deny bail, and conduct summary trials. It has curtailed the right of citizens to appeal its verdicts. Military personnel now head most of the important administrative committees, such as the Anti-Corruption Commission. A powerful National Security Council is in the works that will allow authorities to interpret political issues as security issues.

As for elections, the civilian face of the government has dismissed any possibility of holding them in the next year and a half. The Army chief has gone much farther, declaring outright in a recent speech, “We do not want to go back to an elective democracy,” and proposing that some kind of a homegrown system be devised as an alternative.

This is exactly what Islamists, happy to see the principle of popular sovereignty eviscerated, want to hear. But a homegrown system could be disastrous for both national and regional stability. Accustomed to political freedom, Bangladeshis would eventually resist authoritarianism, ushering in another round of violent conflict.

This unsavory outcome can only be nipped through continuous pressure on the temporary government. But because political activity is banned and fundamental rights are suspended, it’s up to outside powers to take the lead, especially in four key areas.

First, Western diplomats should keep pressing the government to announce an election date soon. The caretaker government is going well beyond its initial mandate of organizing elections. It is making major policy decisions that should be the preserve of an elected government.

Second, international organizations and trading partners should resist the urge to cut easy deals. Sensing quick wins, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank are pushing policy reform initiatives, while individual countries, like India and China are dangling lucrative business agreements. Big contracts signed away from the public eye will reopen doors for corruption.

Third, Britain, the United States, and the European Union should insist that the government restore fundamental rights. Its current path of rule by fiat threatens to destroy the very political and legal institutions that need to be revived from the damage wrought on them in the last six years.

Finally, Western powers should support the democratic process and resist the urge to pick preordained winners. The entry of Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the microfinance pioneer and Nobel Peace laureate, who wants to form a political party in which power would be decentralized, has shaken up the dinosaurs of BNP and Awami League. The ongoing political purge will improve his electoral prospects. Some, however, want to hold off elections in favor of an appointed, Palestinian- style “national unity government.” More extreme would be a Pakistan-style outcome, in which a secular military dictatorship acts as a U.S. ally in its war on terror. As tempting as these options may be, the West must let Bangladeshis decide for themselves through free elections, held reasonably soon. For a working democracy that protects fundamental rights would be a much better showcase for the larger Islamic world than another pliable regime whose domestic legitimacy is becoming increasingly questio nable.

Jalal Alamgir is assistant professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.


5,119 posted on 04/15/2007 9:04:52 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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To: All; milford421; DAVEY CROCKETT; FARS; Founding Father

NEWS: A “Jew’s-eye-view” of the Nation of Islam convention and leader
Louis
Farrakhan

Don Cohen
Special to the Jewish News
http://www.jewish.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=673

http://www.jewish.com/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=673

Analysis

I admit I was expecting trouble.

Attending the Saviors’ Day convention of the Nation of Islam (NOI) at
Cobo
Hall and Minister Louis Farrakhan’s speech at Ford Field in Detroit, I
went
in with my Jewish antenna up. I’m no stranger to the NOI. I’ve attended
previous Farrakhan events, read their publications and even been
threatened
with violence by NOI members - and that’s before I worked for the
Anti-Defamation League, which keeps a sharp eye on their activities.

What I found last weekend was a leaner group that seems to be
struggling to
keep itself alive and relevant. Mainstream Sunni Islam is trying to
reach
out to the NOI, hoping to bring its members into the fold, while the
Nation
is trying to bring Christians its way. Israel and Jews are largely
irrelevant to these efforts, though they still play a role.

I had never attended a Saviors’ Day before, but the guys hawking copies
of
The Final Call newspaper, the men in their suits and bowties and the
women
dressed in white, and the security-minded “Fruits of Islam” are
standard at
NOI gatherings. While some might have wondered what I was doing there,
no
one treated me anything but kindly. The color of my skin and my
association
with the Detroit Jewish News didn’t noticeably raise eyebrows.

My first stop Friday was afternoon prayers led by Imam Siraj Wahhaj. I
got
there early and walked the gauntlet of about 20 men on each side who
patted
me high and low as I walked into the room. Women came in another
entrance,
with similar security, and sat separately starting at about the 20th
row.

Imam Wahhaj, a controversial and often fiery speaker, heads a new Sunni
organization, the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). He has
called for
imposing Islamic law on the United States, said the “real terrorists”
are
the FBI and CIA, and is an alleged co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing
of the
World Trade Center in New York City.

Having a Sunni lead the NOI in prayer was a move to strengthen the
connection between the two groups, and Imam Wahhaj made the most of it.
His
call for unity of all Islamic people was well received, as was his
prediction that “Allah is going to get those people” for what they are
doing
to the Palestinians and in Iraq. But when he told of his NOI roots and
how
“some of the greatest followers of Islam” came from NOI, his prediction
of
unity was met with silence. It seemed the assembled realized the love
they
were getting came with a bit of a slap in the face.

At the next session, President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan filled the role
held
in previous years by Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Sani Abacha of
Nigeria as
a significant human rights abuser whitewashed (pardon the expression)
by
NOI.

Al-Bashir appeared on several screens set up in a massive room with
thousands of empty seats. Many of the 500 who did attend were shooed in
from
the lobby so the audience wouldn’t look so paltry to those watching us
simultaneously on Sudanese television.

The Sudanese president was introduced as a black African leader under
siege
by the West and who was getting a bad rap from the news media. The
audience
seemed largely unaware that human rights groups like the Save Darfur
Coalition estimate that 400,000 people have been killed and 2 million
made
homeless by militias aligned with al-Bashir. The Coalition says on its
Web
site: “Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a
calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape and mass
slaughter.”

The organizers said, “It’s a shame that we rely on the New York Times”
for
news of Darfur.

For his part, Al-Bashar said no more than 5,000 people had been killed
and
that his government “protects all freedoms and liberations and all
political
formations.” He blamed the media, the U.S, Britain and Israel for his
troubles, saying he would continue to defy U.N. Resolution 1706 that
called
for a robust peacekeeping force to be sent to Sudan.

Egged on by sympathetic questioners who wanted him to be more
forthright
about who was against him, he said the United States was planning to
invade
his country as they had Iraq “to fulfill the Zionist and colonialist
interests.”

Following the Sudan session, people seemed to head for hundreds of
vendors
tables in another large hall instead of to other sessions. The vendors
were
an eclectic bunch selling food, posters, books, clothes, insurance,
DVDs,
CDs, tapes and more.

On “Writers Row,” the book Synagogue of Satan, written by a NOI member,
was
featured prominently. The ADL charges that the “book trades heavily in
Jewish conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial.”

I was surprised more anti-white and anti-Semitic materials weren’t
openly
available. There was hardly a mention of Israel or Palestinians, and no
collection of anti-Zionist materials, just a few scattered books. I
couldn’t
even find a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has been
a
NOI mainstay. Nor was there the NOI report blaming Jews for the
transatlantic slave trade - The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and
Jews
- which Farrakhan in his speech recommended as important reading.

Likely the most objectionable material was contained in the audio and
video
collections of previous speeches by NOI leaders and classic texts like
“Message to the Blackman” by NOI’s first minister, Elijah Muhammad,
which
preaches black racial supremacy. The NOI began in Detroit in 1930.

While copies of Farrakhan’s speeches predominated, you could find
copies of
the violent anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Arab and anti-gay rhetoric of
Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a onetime NOI leader who even Farrakhan
distanced
himself from. I was told that on Saturday night, Khalid Abdul Muhammad
was
lionized by Dr. Zulu Malik Shabbaz, chairman of the radical anti-white
and
anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party. The Rev. Al Sharpton was part of
the
same forum by satellite hookup.

Wooing The Christians

Farrakhan’s appearance was eagerly awaited especially since he hadn’t
been
seen in public for seven months due to complications from prostate
cancer
treatment.

In front of about 25,000 people at Ford Field - which he renamed “Fard
Field” after W.D. Fard, who established the NOI in Detroit in 1930-
Farrakhan, 73, looked strong. On the stage with him were Detroit Mayor
Kwame
Kilpatrick - who greeted him with a bear hug - U.S. Reps. John Conyers
and
Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Detroit, various Detroit City Council
members,
NOI officials and dozens more.

His speech, “One Nation Under God” was Farrakhan as religious prophet,
powerful and expertly delivered. Mostly political and theological, with
repeated references to Jesus Christ as a prophet of Islam, he quoted
Christian scripture more than the Koran.

He blasted President Bush and American foreign policy, calling it
“wicked”
and starting a war that would soon engulf the whole world. Defending
Saddam
Hussein - saying all had been good under his rule - he called for the
end of
the war and for the impeachment and removal of members of the Bush
administration, whom he called “liars” and “murderers” led to war by
neoconservatives.

He bemoaned Jews “who do not wish to live by the law set down by
Moses,” but
spoke the same way of Christians “who use the name of Jesus Christ to
shield
their evil practices” and Muslims who “want to tamper with the Koran.”
He
defended Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas for wanting to establish an Islamic
theocracy, saying “democracy is no replacement for the rule of God.” He
said
Hurricane Katrina showed God’s anger at the United States and that
everyone
should “prepare for the war of Armageddon that has already begun.”

Denying he is anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-gay or anti-American, he
said
the “evil” spoken against him was to silence him or to encourage
someone to
kill him. That this hadn’t happened was evidence he was “protected by
God.”

At the end of his two-hour speech, he listed required reading that
included
some anti-Semitic books, books on black history and criticisms of the
United
States. He also listed Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid by former
President
Jimmy Carter, criticized as being a biased view that portrays Israel’s
policies toward Palestinians in the territories as racist; and By Way
of
Deception by former Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky, which the ADL says
makes
unsubstantiated claims about Israel’s intelligence agency.

Though early in his talk, Farrakhan observed, “What good is a leader if
he
doesn’t prepare others to stand up when he sits down?” his speech gave
little indication that he had done that preparation. Many questions
remain
about where the NOI is headed and who will lead it there.

It seems likely to me that without Farrakhan at the helm, the group
will
fold into other African American Muslim groups growing faster than the
NOI,
with a remnant re-emphasizing the cultish black nationalist-separatist
roots
that target whites and Jews.

So while I didn’t find all the trouble I was looking for, I suspect the
trouble still will be looking for us.

Special writer Don Cohen of West Bloomfield is former director of the
Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dayton
and
former director of the Anti-Defamation League Michigan Region.


5,120 posted on 04/15/2007 9:18:28 PM PDT by nw_arizona_granny (With God for a pilot, anything is possible.......!!!)
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