Posted on 06/19/2007 4:43:36 PM PDT by DAVEY CROCKETT
Saudi King Says Middle East Crisis Will Affect The World
DUBAI, June 19 (Bernama) -- The Saudi king has warned of an impending "explosion" in the Middle East, saying that it will not only affect the region but will spread all over the world, the English daily Gulf News reports.
"The Middle East region suffers from the longest conflict in our contemporary history which is the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel's occupation of Arab lands," King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz, said in an interview with the Spanish El Pas newspaper which was published simultaneously in Al Riyadh newspaper yesterday.
"At this point in time we are exerting efforts to solve this conflict, but we are witnessing an expansion of the crisis to include other countries like Iraq and Lebanon," he said.
"This makes the region replete with troubles that pose grave concerns for us. My fears are the fears of all reasonable men that the explosive situation will not be confined to the region but will extend to the whole world," he added.
The Saudi monarch yesterday began a five-nation trip that will take him to Spain, France, Poland, Egypt and Jordan.
King Abdullah also underlined the importance of solving the problem of Iran's nuclear programme peacefully in a way that guarantees all countries in the region to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes in accordance with the standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_lite.php?id=268361
(Excerpt) Read more at bernama.com ...
Another Guyanese Suspect Arrested over JFK Airport Plot (back)
July 14, 2007
THE HAGUE , Netherlands (AFP): A fifth suspect has been arrested over an alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks and pipelines at New York ‘s John F. Kennedy International airport, the Dutch ANP news agency reported Friday.
It said the unnamed man, from Guyana and the subject of an international warrant, had been arrested on Sint Maarten, the Dutch part of a West Indies island shared with France .
Last month a court in New York charged Trinidadian Kareem Ibrahim and three men from Guyana , parliamentarian Abdul Kadir, Russell Defreitas, who worked at the JFK airport terminal, and Abdel Nur, with plotting between January 2006 and June 2007 to bomb the airport.
All were arrested earlier in June, Defreitas in the United States and the other three in Trinidad .
Critics however, played down the import of the conspiracy, saying the defendants could have caused little damage.
Source: http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-2548—13-13—.html
Police Find 40 High-Powered Bombs in Poso Cemetery (back)
July 19, 2007
Poso police in Central Sulawesi have discovered 40 active homemade high-explosives, following information provided by citizens.
The Central Sulawesi , Poso Police Department has discovered 40 active homemade explosives along with 48 detonators buried in a public cemetery in Kayamana sub-district, Poros Kota district. Police also found other explosive materials including a plastic bag containing sulfur-based fertilizer, 16 fuses, solder lead and other bomb-making materials.
Poso police chief Ade Nimohan said the discovery was made following a tip-off at 2100 GMT via text messaging from a public citizen. The chief did not disclose who the informant was, saying the identity of the source is protected. The chief added that the explosives found were high-powered ones and presented a serious threat in the hands of irresponsible people.
Regarding the terrorist threat in Poso, Ade Nimohan said that they remain vigilant and continue to set up checkpoints along the trans-Sulawesi road including at Poso’s borders with other regencies. So far, there is no indication of any terrorist threat in the region, he said. [end recording]
[Description of Source: Jakarta Radio 68H in Indonesian — Independent producer of news bulletins rebroadcast on private stations throughout Indonesia ]
Source: https://www.opensource.gov
Man Charged With Illegal Export of Fighter Jet Parts (back)
July 20, 2007
by David Pomerantz
Federal authorities yesterday arrested a man on charges of illegally exporting parts for an American fighter jet now used solely by Iran . Jilani Humayun, 59, of Lynbrook , N.Y. , allegedly sold parts of F-5 and F-14 jets to a company in Malaysia without government approval, according to a complaint filed by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in U.S. District Court in Manhattan . Iran is the only country that still flies F-14s, which were manufactured by Grumman. America sold Iran a fleet of the jets when the countries were allies during the 1970s; the Bush administration froze sales of spare F-14 parts in January.
Mr. Humayun applied for an export license before he set up his business in 2004, but the State Department allegedly turned him down, saying his Malaysian customer was ‘unreliable,’ according to the complaint.
The filing alleges that Mr. Humayun sold the parts anyway. He is charged with 11 counts of illegal exports, as well as mail fraud and money laundering. If convicted on all counts, he could face up to 150 years in prison.
Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/58807
Court Ruling Could Impede Seizure of Terror Funds (back)
July 20, 2007
by Josh Gerstein
A lawyer for victims of terrorism is decrying a new federal appeals court ruling that could delay or even prevent private litigants from seizing funds belonging to terrorist groups.
On Wednesday, 15 judges from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected an appeal from relatives and the estates of Yaron and Efrat Ungar, a couple killed by Hamas gunmen in 1996. The unusual decision from the appeals court’s full bench upheld a restraining order a lower court issued in September 2004 blocking private legal action to take over bank accounts and other assets belonging to the Holy Land Foundation of Richardson, Texas. The order was issued at the government’s request soon after the foundation and seven of its officials were indicted for providing material support to Hamas, which has taken responsibility for dozens of terrorist attacks in Israel , Gaza , and the West Bank .
‘The money was literally about to be wired to me. Then the Justice Department went to court in Texas and targeted the Ungar orphans in the restraining order,’ an attorney for the family, David Strachman, said. Early in 2004, he won a $116 million default judgment against Hamas on behalf of the family.
The New Orleans-based appeals court’s decision overruled a 21-year-old precedent, which required notice to affected parties before blocking funds that the government sought to have forfeited in a criminal case.
‘It would be a significant burden on the Government to have to defend the forfeiture order from attack by a third party during the course of an ongoing criminal prosecution,’ Judges Fortunato Benavides and Carl Stewart wrote .
The trial for the foundation and five of the seven indicted officials began earlier this week in federal court in Dallas and is expected to last five months. Appeals could go on for years.
Mr. Strachman called the appeals court’s ruling ‘upsetting,’ but he directed most of his anger at the Justice Department.
‘The Justice Department has taken an adverse position with respect to terrorism victims almost universally and has done virtually nothing to help terrorism victims have their judgment satisfied,’ the lawyer said. He noted that the family won its court award months before a grand jury indicted the foundation.
Mr. Strachman noted that one of the Ungars’ children narrowly escaped death in the drive-by shooting attack that killed the couple in Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem . ‘These are kids who really suffered, and it’s sort of like the government is toying with them and playing with them,’ the attorney said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman, Jaclyn Lesch, cited the pending trial as she declined to comment on the ruling or Mr. Strachman’s assertions.
A lawyer who handled another terrorism-related lawsuit seeking money from the foundation, Stephen Landes, said the government probably felt obliged to block the Ungars because ordinary creditors could have used the same logic to seek money targeted in run-of-the-mill criminal prosecutions. ‘It’s not just because its terror victims. It had an impact that was much, much broader,’ the lawyer said.
Mr. Strachman declined to say how much money the Holy Land Foundation had when the government effectively shut it down in 2001. However, he said the foundation was permitted to spend $2 million on legal fees for a civil suit that it brought against the government. With more money being spent on the foundation’s defense against the criminal case, it is possible the coffers could be bare by the time the Ungars’ claim is considered, he added.
Mr. Strachman said federal officials are frustrating Congress’s decision to allow terrorism victim to sue. ‘Why would anybody bring a terrorism suit when their own government thwarts any possible means to collect?’ he asked.
Source: http://www.nysun.com/article/58852
Paving the Way for a Muslim Parallel Society (back)
March 29, 2007
GERMAN JUSTICE FAILURES
A recent ruling in Germany by a judge who cited the Koran underscores the dilemma the country faces in reconciling Western values with a growing immigrant population. A disturbing number of rulings are helping to create a parallel Muslim world in Germany that is welcoming to Islamic fundamentalists.
She didn’t know it, nor did she even expect it. She had good intentions. Perhaps it was a mistake. In fact, it was most certainly a mistake. The best thing to do would be to wipe the slate clean.
Last week, in the middle of the storm, Christa Datz-Winter, a judge on Frankfurt ‘s family court, was speechless. But Bernhard Olp, a spokesman for the city’s municipal court, was quick to jump in. Olp reported that the judge had been under emotional stress stemming from a murder that had been committed in her office 10 years ago, and that she was now planning to take a break to recuperate. He also mentioned that she was ‘outraged’ — not about herself or her scandalous ruling, but over the reactions the case has triggered.
The reactions were so fierce that one could have been forgiven for mistakenly thinking that Germany ‘s Muslims had won the headscarf dispute and the controversy over the Mohammed cartoons in a single day and, in one fell swoop, had taken a substantial bite out of the legal foundations of Western civilization.
The ensuing media furor came from both sides of the political spectrum. The left-leaning daily Die Tageszeitung ran a story on the case titled: ‘In the Name of the People: Beating Allowed,’ while the right-wing tabloid Bild called it ‘An Outrageous Case!’ The same unanimity across party lines prevailed in the political realm. ‘Unbearable,’ was conservative Bavarian Interior Minister Günther Beckstein’s ruling, while Lale Akgün, a member of parliament of Turkish origin and the Social Democratic Party’s representative on Islamic issues, commented that the Frankfurt judge’s ruling was ‘worse than some backyard decision by an Islamist imam.’ Even the deputy head of the Green Party’s parliamentary group, Hans-Christian Ströbele, noted that a German judge is obligated to uphold German law.
The original purpose of the case was not to carry the clash of cultures into the courtroom. Instead, the case brought before Frankfurt ‘s family court was that of a 26-year-old German woman of Moroccan origin who was terrified of her violent Moroccan husband, a man who had continued to threaten her despite having been ordered to stay away by the authorities. He had beaten his wife and he had allegedly threatened to kill her.
But German law requires a one-year separation before a divorce can be completed — and exceptions for an expedited process are only granted in extreme situations. When the woman’s attorney, Barbara Becker-Rojczyk, filed a petition for an expedited divorce, Judge Christa Datz-Winter suddenly became inflexible. According to the judge, there was no evidence of ‘an unreasonable hardship’ that would make it necessary to dissolve the marriage immediately. Instead, the judge argued, the woman should have ‘expected’ that her husband, who had grown up in a country influenced by Islamic tradition, would exercise the ‘right to use corporal punishment’ his religion grants him.
The judge even went so far as to quote the Koran in the grounds for her decision. In Sura 4, verse 34, she wrote, the Koran contains ‘both the husband’s right to use corporal punishment against a disobedient wife and the establishment of the husband’s superiority over the wife.’
A disturbing pattern of rulings
Put plainly, the judge argued that a woman who marries a Muslim should know what she’s getting herself into. In Germany , no less. Leading German feminist Alice Schwarzer argued that this was tantamount to a ‘softening of our legal system’ that is ‘by no means a coincidence.’ Germany’s only minister of integration at the state level, Armin Laschet, a member of the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from the state of North Rhine Westphalia, sees the Frankfurt ruling as the ‘last link, for the time being, in a chain of horrific rulings handed down by German courts’ — rulings in which, for example, so-called honor killings have been treated as manslaughter and not murder.
This, says Berlin family attorney and prominent women’s rights activist Seyran Ates, is part of the reason one should ‘be almost thankful that (judge Datz-Winter) made such a clear reference to the Koran. All she did was bring to the surface an undercurrent that already exists in our courts.’ Out of a sense of misguided tolerance, says Ates, judges treat the values of Muslim subcultures as a mitigating circumstance and, in doing so, are helping pave the way for a gradual encroachment of fundamentalist Islam in Germany ‘s parallel Muslim world. It’s an issue Ates often runs up against in her ca ses. ‘In Frankfurt ,’ she says, ‘someone expressly openly for the first time what many are already thinking.’
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, an Islam expert from the central German university town of Marburg , has a similar take on the matter. ‘Do we already have Sharia here?’ she asks, adding that the Frankfurt case shows that ‘things are getting out of hand here.’
Does the unspeakable decision by a single Frankfurt family court judge truly mark a new stage in the German judiciary’s unspoken policy of appeasement toward aggressive Muslims? Or is the collective outcry so loud and nonpartisan this time because the case is so clear? Is it because everyone believed that the debate, raging for years and still unresolved, over the issue of how much immigration the Germans should tolerate and how much assimilation they can expect was finally coming to an end? And because this particular case was about violence, the lowest common denominator on which everyone from left-leaning feminists to neoconservatives could agree?
And now that the danger has been recognized, is it being addressed quickly? Not exactly.
An abuse of the liberal state
Frankfurt family court judge Datz-Winter was removed from the case and the courts proved themselves capable of acting responsibly. In many other cases in Germany , however, the liberal nature of the constitutional state has been misused — and a misguided approach to tolerance has been turned into self-sacrifice. But isn’t it the court’s job to protect the liberalism that has taken Germans so long and so much effort to achieve — and with zero tolerance for intolerance, if need be?
The questions this raises in the context of social reality are agonizingly difficult, even insulting to many, and they lead us into a web of taboos that has developed over time. Those who move within this web often cannot help but rub someone the wrong way.
The debate that Judge Christa Datz-Winter has now revived once again seems to afflict Germans like bouts of fever. It revolves around the question of how much assimilation the constitutional state can or must demand from immigrants. Will the Germans accept the sometimes outmoded customs of other cultural groups? In other words, will they permit groups to not just live in a society that parallels German society, but to also live their lives in an entirely different age and at a completely different pace? Is Germany not obligated to integrate those who are foreign to its society and bring them into the present?
Just as battles are often waged around flags, social conflicts tend to erupt around symbols — the headscarves worn by female teachers, the minarets that are changing the appearance of some towns, the severed head of the Prophet Mohammed in the Berlin production of the opera ‘Idomeneo,’ and the harmless Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed, triggering an outcry that led to the torching of Western flags and embassies worldwide in 2005. But social conflicts also arise over seemingly minor issues. For example, if churches can ring their bells, why shouldn’t the muezzin be allowed to call the Muslim faithful to prayer — at 5:45 in the morning?
Because Germany became a country open to immigration some time ago, it now urgently needs guidelines on how rigidly it should enforce its standards and how it should treat its new arrivals — as well as how the country expects them to behave.
As this debate becomes more and more urgent, Germans ought to be thankful to the Frankfurt judge for naively stepping into the web of taboos. The problem Germany faces with its deeply religious Muslim immigrants is not unlike the challenge modern Israeli society faces in dealing with orthodox Jews. Fundamentalists — including Muslims in Germany -— tend to produce large families, so that the men and women of the past could very well lay claim to a substantial share of the future. According to a study by the University of Tübingen , the number of fundamentalist Muslims in the country will have more than doubled by 2030.
For far too long, Germany ‘s muslim immigrants were not asked to put much effort into integrating. For decades, German judges essentially paved the way for Islamic fundamentalists to form a parallel society. They raised little opposition to the strategy employed by Islamic groups to demand their supposed religious freedom in court until they got it. But the judges must have known, argues Johannes Kandel, that ‘giving preferential treatment to groups violates the principle of equal treatment in a secular legal system.’ Kandel heads the intercultural dialogue group at the political academy of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, which is closely alligned with the center-left Social Democrats.
Citing the freedom of religious expression guaranteed under the German constitution, judges in Germany permitted Muslims to withdraw their children from swimming lessons or to forbid them from taking part in school celebrations or school trips. This allowed outdated concepts of chastity from places like Turkey ‘s highly traditional eastern Anatolia region to survive in an otherwise enlightened Europe . But religious freedom, says Udo Di Fabio, a judge on Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, the country’s highest judicial institution, is no ‘basic right deluxe,’ but rather one of many constitutional rights — and one that constantly has to be weighed against other rights.
‘We were far too negligent for much too long,’ says Andreas Jacobs, the coordinator for Middle East policy and Islamic countries at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which is aligned with the conservative Christian Democrats. Wolfgang Bosbach, the deputy chairman of the CDU’s parliamentary group says he sees the ruling as an indication ‘that we are gradually putting our own concepts of the law and values up for grabs.’ But Jacobs believes it is instead a kind of aftershock of the naïve multicultural illusions of recent decades.
A much-delayed wake-up call
‘Finally the reactions to this nonsense are showing that sensitivity has become much greater than it was in the past,’ he says. The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, he believes, served as a much-delayed wakeup call for most German judges and politicians.
In the autumn of 2004 Mohamed Bouyeri, the son of Moroccan immigrants who was born in Amsterdam and attended school there, slit van Gogh’s throat as if he were slaughtering an animal on an Amsterdam street. He felt that van Gogh’s film ‘Submission,’ about the oppression of women in Islam, was offensive to him and his religion. Van Gogh had shot the film together with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born Dutch who is one of the most prominent critics of Islam. The murder set the Netherlands into a deep state of shock. Suddenly the country was faced with the wreckage of its much-touted tolerance. Before long mosques and Koran schools were going up in flames, followed by retaliatory acts against churches.
The clash of cultures in the neighboring Netherlands also drew Germany ‘s attention to conditions that many had preferred to play down as ‘cultural diversity.’ Suddenly Germans were waking up to the creeping Islamicization on the fringes of their society, and to the existence of parallel worlds in German cities. Ironically, until only a few years ago all of this was happening with the enthusiastic support of the constitutional state and its servants.
German judges were accommodating to Muslims in many minor rulings, and often with good reason. In 2002, the state labor court in the northern city of Hamm ruled that prayer breaks are permissible during working hours, but must be coordinated with the employer. The case had come to the fore after a company reprimanded a Muslim worker who wanted to pray several times a day. The worker demanded his rights, citing religious freedom.
In a number of cases dealing with halal butchering, German courts were forced to grant exceptions to Muslim butchers similar to those applied to butchers who adhere to Jewish kosher butchering rituals. In 2002, the Federal Constitutional Court issued a landmark decision allowing butchering according to Muslim ritual, after Rüstem Altinküpe, a butcher in the eastern city of Wetzlar , had filed a lawsuit.
Muslims can also often count on the support of German courts when it comes to building mosques. As far back as 1992, the Federal Administrative Court ruled that neighbors must ‘fundamentally accept’ being woken before sunup.
The muezzin, who calls the faithful to prayer from the minaret in traditional mosques, can also usually look to German judges to support his cause. Attempts by cities to appeal decisions favoring mosques have rarely succeeded.
In Dillenburg, a town in the state of Hesse , a rural district office attempted to use the highway code to silence the local muezzin, arguing that his devout calls to prayer could irritate drivers. The Giessen Administration Court overturned the decision.
In theory, the Muslim call to prayer could be enforced in court in all German communities, the logic being that where Christians can sing their hymns the Muslims must be allowed to call the faithful to prayer.
As the courts saw it, the principle of equal treatment also applied to those with little interest in equality. But most mosques voluntarily waive this right to equal treatment.
Muslims can also often depend on courts that deal with the laws governing the press. The outcome of a legal dispute last May between the former imam of Berlin ‘s Mevlana mosque, Yakub Tasci, and the ZDF public television network before the district court in Potsdam outside Berlin was especially absurd. Judge Klaus Feldmann barred the network from referring to the imam as a ‘hate preacher’ on its Web site. And yet Tasci, according to an investigative piece in the magazine Frontal21, had characterized Germans during his sermons as the equivalent of stinking infidels. According to the court, Tasci had not been referring to Germans in particular but atheists in general, and had only preached about Germans’ alleged lack of hygiene and apparent body odor outside of the mosque.
Issues of fundamental importance
While these cases may seem trivial, the matter becomes more sensitive when cases revolve around issues of fundamental importance. In some cases German courts choose to do little more than dabble, as with the headscarf dispute. In 2003, Fereshda Ludin, a teacher in the southern state of Baden-Württemberg, sued for the right to wear the headscarf in the classroom. Her case was referred to the Federal Constitutional Court , which ruled that schools are the business of the states. In other words, it would be up to the states to enact the appropriate legislation if they wanted to ban teachers from wearing the headscarf. This hasn’t happened yet in many German states, and the debate continues.
In some cases German courts are even more accommodating to Muslims than those in secular Turkey . In 1984, the Wiesbaden Administrative Court upheld a Muslim woman’s demand that she be allowed to wear her headscarf on photos for official identification documents. In the grounds for its decision, the court wrote: ‘The Islamic faith requires the plaintiff to cover her head in public.’ Even though the ruling is not legally binding, Muslims have used it to support their arguments.
Experts view a 1993 decision by the Federal Administrative Court as one of the most blatant mistakes on the road to establishing a legal framework to protect Islamic parallel words. The judges decided to allow a 13-year-old Turkish girl to be excused from physical education and swimming instruction if it could not be offered in a way that kept boys and girls strictly separated. The girl’s family had argued that the headscarf could very well slip off during these activities.
The court was not even swayed by the school district’s objection — which now seems downright prophetic — that granting special rights would make it increasingly difficult for schools to offer class trips, sex education classes and outings to the theater. The judges ruled that it was ‘unreasonable’ to require pupils to take part in physical education classes. They decided in favor of the parents’ religious freedom and against the development opportunities and rights of personal liberty of the child — and of many other children.
In a similar case, a judge argued that whether the Koran does in fact require certain behaviors is immaterial, and that a perceived precept is already sufficient. In fact, the judge continued, it could not be argued that these religious rules ‘are, according to Western standards, one-sided and do not favor adolescent women.’
This was an attitude that still prevailed in the minds of German judges one year after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
At the time, the higher administrative court in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia ruled that a female Muslim student in the 10th grade should be permitted not to take part in a school trip. The family had argued that Islam prohibits allowing girls to go on such trips without being accompanied by a male family member. The family also insisted that the girl was constantly worried about losing her headscarf. The judges found that such fears were ‘comparable with the situation of a partially mentally impaired person who, because of her disability, can only travel with a companion.’ This assessment was devastating because it accepted the rules of a camel drivers’ society in the modern age — literally, because a few years earlier, an Islamic legal opinion dubbed the ‘camel fatwa’ had been added to the professional literature.
Amir Zaidan, the then chairman of the Islamic Religious Community in the state of Hesse, wrote the opinion. He argued that a Muslim woman could travel no more than 81 kilometers (50 miles) from the home of her husband or parents without being accompanied by a male blood relative. The opinion came to be known as the ‘camel fatwa,’ because this was the distance a camel caravan could travel within 24 hours in the days of the Prophet Mohammed.
Zaidan even defended this position at a 2001 conference of Germany’s protestant churches in Frankfurt. His argument was that a woman who traveled farther would run the risk of being raped. Apparently one could spout such nonsense to the good church people who had gathered in Frankfurt without running the risk of being run off the premises for committing rape against religious freedom.
A bonus for polygamists
In another letter from Absurdistan, the Federal Ministry for Social Affairs issued the following announcement to German health insurance agencies in the summer of 2004: ‘Polygamous marriages must be recognized if they are legal under the laws of the native country of the individuals in question.’
What the policy statement boiled down to was this: In certain cases Muslim men from countries where polygamy is legal — like Morocco, Algeria and Saudi Arabia — could add a second wife to their government health insurance policies without having to pay an additional premium.Such excesses are rare today. Judges are increasingly accepting the responsibility that legal expert and Islam scholar Mathias Rohe demands of them: to use the law ‘to signal to a society what is allowed and what is not.’
For example, in 2005 a Düsseldorf judge ordered that a Muslim boy could be required to attend school swimming sessions together with girls. In his grounds, the judge argued that in Germany Muslims are ‘confronted with more liberal values, which they must be able to handle. The same applies to required swimming instruction.’
But this change of heart within the judiciary has not brought about fundamental social change. On the contrary, the genie that the courts once let out of the bottle continues to shape social reality. ‘More and more girls are not taking part in swimming instruction or are not going on class trips,’ says Christa Stolle of Terre des Femmes, a women’s rights group. ‘Or they are simply taken out of school.’ The wearing of headscarves has also increased tremendously, says Stolle, who is convinced that ‘it’s getting more difficult for girls.’
Experiences in urban German schools show just how much integration has suffered as a result of the decisions of timorous judges in past years. At the Carlo Mierendorff School in Preungesheim, a Frankfurt neighborhood, about one-third of students in the upper grades are permitted to not attend class trips for religious reasons, says Alexander Zabler, the school’s principal. To prevent their daughters from traveling with schoolmates, many Muslim parents have either called the girls in sick or simply ordered them not to show up. Zabler tried many approaches, including talking to the parents, visiting them at home, offering special meals for Muslims during travel — but all to no avail. Finally he turned to the government and asked the local school board for help — also to no avail. He has since resigned.
Last month parents, teachers and students at the Carlo Mierendorff School decided to cancel future class trips altogether if more than 10 percent of students could not attend. ‘On this issue integration has failed here,’ complains Zabler.
That failure is at least partly attributable to the activities of people like Yavuz and Gürhan Özoguz, two brothers who offer sample letters for parents seeking to exempt their children from swimming instruction on their Web site, Muslim-Market.de. The parents then use the letters to demand special rights for their children from teachers and principals.
‘Doing their best to survive’
If the parents’ strict faith expresses itself as an extreme form of modesty in girls, then it often leads to rowdiness in Muslim boys. Paul Reiter, 47, an English and French teacher at a school in the western city of Bochum, constantly experiences the results of self-imposed, aggressive exclusion in the classroom. Reiter says he knows many ‘poor students with gold chains’ who routinely use anti-American, anti-Semitic and sexist language, often addressing German women as ‘whores.’ Reiter says female teachers ‘are doing their best to survive’ in some classes.
Marie-Luise Bock, the principal of Martin Luther Middle School in Herten, a city in the industrial Ruhr region, says her efforts to integrate Muslim girls are torpedoed from two sides: ‘arch-conservative’ Muslim parents and ‘macho brothers.’ About one-third of female Muslim students wear headscarves, ‘and one in two are unhappy about it,’ says Bock, who has occasionally reserved spots in a women’s shelter for some of her former female students. ‘It deeply upsets me that we can do so little for these girls,’ she says.
Ursula Spuler-Stegemann, the Islam scholar, also has stories to tell about desperate teachers. ‘Many have no idea where they are allowed to draw the line when it comes to Muslims,’ she says. More dangerous, says Spuler-Stegemann, is a ‘dramatic development that is currently unfolding in the education sector, practically unnoticed by the general public: There are groups that truly want to establish a separate world.’
She is referring to organizations like the Association of Islamic Cultural Centers, which operates a number of children’s centers throughout Germany. Critics say the children, who often have no exposure to the outside world, are subjected to religious indoctrination — an allegation the association’s leadership denies. Milli Görüs and the Islamic Community of Germany — two groups that are under observation by Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency — are also heavily involved in working with youth. Muslim organizations in Germany, Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble warns, must behave in a way ‘that indicates partnership with us’ — at least if they hope to steer clear of investigators and the courts.
Muslim organizations are also beginning to establish their own schools, arguing that Christian nuns teach at some German schools. The Muslims tout their concepts as being integrative, and education officials believe them and approve the schools. But then, far from being integrated, the schools end up attracting only Muslims.
Domestic intelligence kept a close watch on the King Fahd Academy in Bonn for years. The mosque and associated school were criticized because some of the schoolbooks they used glorified jihad. But even the ordinary Koran schools, which exist at practically every German mosque, often forcefully draw their roughly 70,000 children and adolescents back into the world of their grandfathers.
Of course, in many families there is no escaping the closeness justified by Muslim traditions and rules. Women are brought up to serve and obey. Boys are alternately spoiled and beaten, as custom requires. According to a study conducted by the Lower Saxony Criminology Research Institute, physical abuse of boys is more than twice as common in Turkish families than German families. And ‘girls from conservative families say that their fathers and brothers have the right to hit them,’ reports Judith Gerling-Tamer, an educator at the Elisi Evi Support Center for women and girls in Berlin’s heavily Muslim Kreuzberg district.
The authorities are generally aware of little of what happens in families. Nevertheless, laws and court decisions do send signals. If the wrong signals are sent, as was the case in many past court rulings, this also affects families. And lawmakers’ failure to enact legislation that is urgently needed can also have devastating effects.
Young women routinely come to support centers after being married off against their will, but such arranged marriages are neither illegal nor regulated in Germany.
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According to a 2004 study commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, 17 percent of Turkish women surveyed considered their marriage forced. The Turkish twins Ayse Auth and Hatice Nizam know what it’s like to be forced into an arranged marriage in Germany. They were born in the state of Hesse into a large Turkish guest worker family. Both girls did well in school and trained to become hairdressers. But then, the twins say, their parents insisted that it was time for them to marry. Hatice was married at 18, Ayse at 19. The two sisters spent four years trying to separate themselves from their husbands they neither loved nor wa nted. When they finally succeeded, the family treated them as outcasts.
Unlike many other girls with similar stories, the girls have now confidently made a life for themselves in Germany. They own two hairdressing salons and both live with their German partners. Arranged marriages, says Hatice Nizam, are ‘unfortunately still’ part of everyday life for many women of Turkish origin in Germany, ‘and it’s incredibly difficult to extract yourself from them.’
Ayten Köse, 42, who manages a shelter in the Neukölln Rollberg district, tries to help. She doesn’t resemble most of the Muslim women here. Instead of a headscarf, she wears her hair uncovered. Köse knows how difficult it is for Muslim women in Germany to be courageous and rebel. But she is constantly reminding women that the German state will not let them down. ‘But what should I tell them now, after this Frankfurt ruling?’ Köse asks furiously. ‘That it can happen sometimes?’ Trust in the constitution and the hope that it will be enforced, says Köse, is sometimes the only thing Muslim women can rely on for encouragement.
The problem for many women, says Köse, is that they are completely alone, alone against their own family or their husband’s family. ‘And if they haven’t attended school in Germany,’ Köse explains, ‘they usually don’t even know about human rights.’
A political system too paralyzed to act
Chances are slim that they can expect much help from the political end anytime soon. German lawmakers have repeatedly considered raising the age at which guest workers are allowed to come to Germany as a way of protecting young girls against forced marriages. Many immigrants are very young when they are forced into arranged marriages. A law outlawing forced marriages still doesn’t exist today, although the German criminal code has been updated somewhat to deal with the problem. Even some of the measures other countries established are nonexistent in Germany. In Britain, for example, women who are worried that they could be forced into hastily arranged marriages while on vacation can leave information with the authorities before leaving the country. If they fail to report back by a prearranged date, officials, including those at the British Foreign Office, begin searching for them.
Germany is still a long way off from such well-meaning approaches and the symbolism they convey. In fact, some of the women who contact the women’s rights group Terre des Femmes do so because they feel stabbed in the back by the constitutional state. If they are taken to their native countries against their will for forced marriages, the door often slams shut behind them — permanently. If the brides are unable to extricate themselves and return to Germany within six months, their residency permits automatically expire in most cases.
Berlin attorney Seyran Ates says: ‘We are at a crossroads, everywhere in Europe. Do we allow structures that lead straight into a parallel society, or do we demand assimilation into the democratic constitutional state?’
The answer is clear, at least if one studies the literature of conservative Muslims. For example, in his book ‘Women in Islam,’ Imam Mohammed Kamal Mustafa of Spain recommends how women should be beaten. If you beat their hands and feet with ‘whips that are too thick,’ he warns, you risk leaving scars. Abdelkader Bouziane, an Algerian imam who calls two women his own, recommends handing out beatings in such a way that the consequences are not apparent to infidels.
Although Islamic groups do their best to condemn marital violence, there are clear indications of how ubiquitous beatings are in many Muslim marriages. Experts say that a disproportionately high percentage of women who flee to women’s shelters are Muslim. This sort of domestic violence in the family has even ended in death for more than 45 people in Germany in the last decade. According to an analysis by the Federal Office of Criminal Investigation on the ‘phenomenon of honor killings’ in Germany, woman are often slaughtered in the most gruesome of ways for violating archaic concepts of morality. In many cases an entire family council has ruled on the execution of a rebellious female family member.
In 2005, Hatun Sürücü, a young Berlin woman, was killed because she was ‘living like a German.’ In her family’s opinion, this was a crime only her death could expiate. Her youngest brother executed her by shooting her several times, point blank, at a Berlin bus stop. But because prosecutors were unable to prove that the family council had planned the act, only the killer himself could be tried for murder and, because he was underage, he was given a reduced sentence. The rest of the family left the courtroom in high spirits, and the father rewarded the convicted boy with a watch.
It is by no means unusual for people put on trial for honor killings in Germany to be convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter in the end. In 2003 the Frankfurt District Court handed down a mild sentence against a Turkish-born man who had stabbed his German-born wife to death. She had disobeyed him and was even insolent enough to demand a divorce.
Muslim moral precepts as mitigating factors
The court argued that one could not automatically assume that the man’s motives were contemptible. He had, after all, acted ‘out of an excessive rage and sense of outrage against his wife’ — who he had regularly beaten in the past — ‘based on his foreign socio-cultural moral concepts.’ According to the court’s decision, the divorce would have violated ‘his family and male honor derived from his Anatolian moral concepts.’ The Federal Constitutional Court reversed the decision in 2004.
Even though higher courts usually reverse these sorts of rulings, judges are still handing down sentences based on the same logic. For example, the municipal court in the western city of Leverkusen sentenced a Lebanese man to probation in 2005 after he had severely beaten his daughter several times for resisting his efforts to force her into an arranged marriage. He hit her on the head with a stick. When it broke he choked her and threatened to stab her to death. The court argued that the fact that his actions were based on his Muslim moral concepts served as a mitigating factor.
The district court in Essen was equally lenient when, in 2002, it sentenced a Lebanese man who had applied for asylum — and who routinely beat his children and wife with a belt and also raped his spouse — to nothing more than probation. The judge cited the man’s cultural background as a mitigating circumstance. In commenting on his crimes, the man said: ‘I am a Muslim, a normal person. I pray, fast and fulfill do my duties.’
Both criminal courts and family courts have often gone soft on violent parents whose concepts of honor were more important to them than the well-being of their child. In 2000 the Cologne Higher Regional Court ruled that a couple from Kosovo who had planned to force their 17-year-old daughter into an arranged marriage at home should be denied custody of the girl. This was a reversal of a lower court’s decision to send the girl, who had sought protection from the youth welfare office, back to her parents. It was only the higher court that clarified something that should have been obvious: that it is completely irrelevant as to whether ‘the parents, based on their origin, have different ideas about family obligation and the duty to obey.’ Family attorneys say that social workers have even been known to turn away girls who have turned to youth welfare officials for fear of being forced into a marriage. The social workers’ response to the girls is that that sort of thing is, well, ‘n ormal with you people.’
Jutta Wagner, a family attorney and president of the German Association of Female Lawyers, says that she is constantly hearing about ‘attorneys with a migration background’ who have studied law in Germany but conclude marriage contracts ‘in which they attempt to adapt a sort of ‘Sharia light.’’ According to Wagner the purpose of the contracts, which are barely acceptable for German courts, is to make Islamic law acceptable in small steps.
Christa Datz-Winter, the Frankfurt family court judge, argued as if she had already accepted the basic tenets of Sharia law. In the Koran, she wrote, ‘the honor of the man, simply put, is tied to the chastity of the woman.’ Therefore, she continued, ‘for a man with an Islamic upbringing the fact that a woman is living according to Western cultural rules is already considered a violation of his honor.’
Matthias Bartsch, Andrea Brandt, Simone Kaiser, Gunther Latsch, Cordula Meyer and Caroline Schmidt
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,474629,00.html
Post 1865 is a long one on how sharia law takes over a country.
There have been many posts to all.
Terrorists Sue Cops (back)
July 19, 2007
Islamic extremists told a court Thursday that Indonesia’s anti-terror squad should be disbanded, saying the U.S.-trained police were violating human rights in making arrests and garnering confessions.
Among those who attended the hearing was Abu Bakar Bashir, who was found guilty of giving his blessing to the 2002 attacks on Bali island that killed 202 people. His conviction was overturned after he spent more than three years in jail.
The anti-terror squad, known as Densus 88, «must be disbanded because it damages the interests of Islam by arbitrarily arresting Muslims and labeling them as terrorists,» Bashir told reporters at the South Jakarta District court.
«It also should not be allowed to receive funds from America, which is led by (U.S. President) George Bush, who is known for his anti-Islam attitude,» Bashir said.
Lawyers representing suspected militants filed the lawsuit last month demanding that Indonesia disband Densus 88, saying it violated their clients’ human rights. Police have denied violating the law.
Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks in recent years blamed on the al-Qaida linked militant group Jemaah Islamiyah, the most deadly being the 2002 Bali blasts. Many of the victims were foreign tourists.
Densus 88, funded and trained by Australia and the United States, has been instrumental in arresting scores of militants since then, and nearly 200 have been convicted.
Judge Wahyono, who goes by only one name, said police would be invited to court next week to respond to allegations that the anti-terror squad used torture to coerce confessions and violated human rights while carrying out arrests.
Under Indonesian law, judges study lawsuits and if necessary call witnesses from both sides before deciding whether to hear them.
Hundreds of Islamic activists attended Thursday’s hearing.
Source: http://www.pr-inside.com/print177549.htm
Police Search for ETA Suspect Who left Bag with Explosives (back)
July 19, 2007
Police on Thursday searched for an alleged member of the Basque separatist group ETA who avoided a police checkpoint by jumping out of a taxi, leaving behind a gym bag containing explosives, authorities said.
The suspect fled near the tourist resort of Torreblanca, said an Interior Ministry official speaking on condition of anonymity.
ETA declared a ceasefire in March 2006 but grew frustrated with the ensuing peace process with Spain’s Socialist government, set off a car bomb that killed two people in December 2006 and last month formally declared the truce over.
The newspaper El Mundo reported on its website that the gym bag contained two lunch boxes with cables, timers, explosives and detonators with the symbol of ETA.
In recent weeks Spanish authorities have said they have thwarted at least three plans by ETA to carry out terror attacks.
In June, investigators found a car loaded with 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives in southwestern Spain near the Portuguese border.
On July 4 Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said ETA had intended to cause casualties in a bomb attack it had planned for the end of June. The attack was thwarted when authorities in France intercepted a van packed with explosives.
Last week police detained an alleged ETA member in the northern Spanish coastal city of Santander who had plans to carry out a terror attack using a car bomb.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s government has been pursuing a hardline policy against ETA since it broke a cease-fire by exploding a bomb at Madrid airport Dec. 30.
ETA, whose name stands for Basque Homeland and Freedom, has been waging a violent campaign since the late 1960s for an independent Basque state.
Source: http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6735970
TERROR MODUS OPERANDI
When Hizballah Trumps Old Glory (back)
July 16, 2007
Most Americans know that burning our nation’s flag is protected by the First Amendment. No matter how distasteful to some, the Supreme Court has consistently held flag-burning to be protected as expressive political conduct.
So if burning an American flag is protected speech, burning other flags - say, the flags of political parties considered to be terrorist groups by our government - would also be protected speech, right?
Right - except at San Francisco State University (SFSU), where the First Amendment takes a backseat to Hamas and Hezbollah. As part of an anti-terrorism rally held on campus last October, SFSU’s College Republicans stepped on homemade replicas of Hamas and Hezbollah flags drawn on butcher paper. Unbeknownst to the group, both flags contain the word ‘Allah’ in Arabic - prompting a student to file a complaint accusing the College Republicans of ‘walking on a banner with the word ‘Allah’ written in Arabic script.’
Even though the flag-stomping was protected speech - a fact pointed out twice to SFSU President Robert Corrigan in letters from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - SFSU administrators decided to put the College Republicans on trial for ‘attempts to incite violence and create a hostile environment’ and ‘actions of incivility.’ An SFSU spokesperson even told the San Francisco Chronicle that the real issue was ‘the desecration of Allah.’ The ensuing investigation and hearing lasted more than five months before SFSU finally dropped the charges against the group under intense public criticism.
The College Republicans filed a federal lawsuit this week, arguing that SFSU violated the group’s First Amendment rights by subjecting the group to an investigation instead of dismissing the charges out of hand. The suit also challenges SFSU’s speech code, which requires students ‘to be civil’ to one another - a rule that can only be selectively enforced against dissenting opinions on a campus as polarized as SFSU.
Constitutionally speaking, this case isn’t even close: There’s no exception for Hamas, Hezbollah or even Allah under the First Amendment. Now SFSU has to answer for violating the Constitution in court.
Source: http://www.nypost.com/seven/07162007/postopinion/oped columnists/when_hezbollah_trumps_old_glory_opedcolumnists_.htm
US-Iranians Reveal Links to US Democracy DriveBy (back)
July 18, 2007
Iran Wednesday defied US outrage to broadcast a television programme in which two US-Iranians jailed since May on charges of harming national security ‘revealed’ their links to a US democracy drive.
Haleh Esfandiari and Kian Tajbakhsh said in separate interviews that they had contacts with US institutions whose ultimate aim was to bring about change in the Islamic republic.
The programme — ‘In the Name of Democracy’ — also showed pictures from the popular uprisings that swept Ukraine and Georgia in an apparent bid to link their case to alleged US efforts for regime change in Iran.
While the United States said it was ‘appalled’ that the pair were to make apparent televised confessions, state television dubbed their interviews as ‘revelations’.
The programme showed neither of them making any clear confession to harming national security. Iranian judicial officials have also been at pains to emphasise the pair’s statements carry no legal validity.
‘Their aim (the United States) is to bring about a change in the decision making bodies in Iran from within, to bring about a change in the decision makers themselves,’ Esfandiari said.
Iranian officials have repeatedly protested that the United States is seeking a ‘Velvet Revolution’ in the Islamic republic along the lines of the largely peaceful overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe.
‘How does a Velvet Revolution start? Who guides them? Who is next?’ asked the narrator of the programme, before cutting to footage of Esfandiari.
Bizarrely, no mention was made in the programme that the two academics are currently jailed or face charges of harming national security.
Instead, the programme attempted to portray them as experts commenting at length on their US links while looking relaxed and seated in comfortable, well furnished rooms.
Both detainees looked in relatively good health, with Esfandiari, in a black headscarf, seated next to a potted plant, a large white fridge and her spectacles resting on a coffee table.
Tajbakhsh, sporting a neat beard and glasses, sat in a room equipped with a Persian carpet, television and a large shelf filled with books. He had papers on his lap to which he referred.
Esfandiari said she had been central in organising academic conferences that brought speakers from the Islamic republic to the United States.
She said a crucial aim of these conferences was to bring Iranian thinkers together with Western policymakers to create a growing international ‘network’ between Westerners and Iranians.
‘My real aim in contacting these people was, in my opinion, to identify the key figures.’
The aim was ‘to invite them to these sessions, speeches and conferences and connecting them to a domestic and external network,’ she said.
Esfandiari, 67, heads the Middle East programme at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. She was arrested after returning to Iran late last year to visit her ailing 93-year-old mother.
Tajbakhsh meanwhile is an urban planning expert who had ties with the Open Society Institute of US billionaire George Soros, accused by Iran of seeking to overthrow the Islamic authorities.
‘The fact that the US administration gave money to the Soros Foundation reflects the fact that Soros and the United States share the same views on Iran,’ Tajbakhsh said in the programme.
‘I was giving consultations to Soros about the social and political affairs of Iran,’ said Tajbakhsh.
A second part of the programme is due to be broadcast on Thursday at 10:45 pm (1915 GMT).
‘They’re not party to any of the ongoing government disputes between the government of Iran and government of the United States,’ commented White House spokesman Tony Snow.
‘And it is just ridiculous for anybody to harbour notions that they represent a threat to the regime,’ he said.
Two other US-Iranians face similar charges but were not referred to in the programme.
By HOLLY YAN / The Dallas Morning News
hyan@dallasnews.com
The markings on the car were so believable, they fooled real law-enforcement officials.
A Dallas County sheriff’s deputy was on Interstate 20 near Bonnie View Road late Wednesday afternoon when he thought he saw a police car zip past him.
[Click image for a larger version] Dallas County Sheriff’s Department
Dallas County Sheriff’s Department
The car Malcolm Hawkinson was driving Wednesday belongs to the owner of an automobile repossession business.
“At first glance, he thought it was another police agency on a hot call,” said Michael Ortiz, spokesman for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department. “But he took a closer look at the decals on the car, and it wasn’t any agency that he had seen before.”
The deputy pulled the driver over for speeding. He and others who arrived at the scene soon became more suspicious.
The decals on the car simply said “Dallas, Texas” but were designed in a way that looked very similar to those on sheriff’s deputy cars. The driver had a BB gun fashioned to look like a police gun. The dashboard camera was fake and mounted with Velcro. Deputy Ortiz said investigators also found handcuffs, a walkie-talkie and a scanner set to monitor county law-enforcement channels.
Authorities arrested the driver, Malcolm Hawkinson, 39, for having an improper vehicle registration and failing to show adequate insurance. Investigators might file a charge of impersonating a peace officer if they determine Mr. Hawkinson intended to mislead anyone into thinking he was an officer.
Mr. Hawkinson, a registered sex offender, was released from the Lew Sterrett Justice Center on a “promise to appear” citation. Details of that charge were not available. Mr. Hawkinson could not be reached for comment.
Sheriff’s deputies called the vehicle’s owner, who owns a car repossession business.
“He said he put the decals on the vehicle, but he did it for the protection of his employees,” Deputy Ortiz said. “He finds there is less resistance when [people] are approached by someone they think is a police officer.”
The Sheriff’s Department declined to identify the owner, who was not arrested.
“It’s not against the law to possess a vehicle with the insignia,” Deputy Ortiz said. “What makes it against the law is how you use it.” He noted that the owner was not caught using the vehicle.
By Thursday afternoon, the Sheriff’s Department received several calls from women who said they were treated inappropriately during traffic stops. Officials had not determined whether the cases are linked to Mr. Hawkinson.
Authorities also were investigating documents found from the traffic stop.
“There were papers that were drawn up to look like repossession paperwork,” Deputy Ortiz said. “They were crimped with some seal and drawn up to look official. We’re looking to see if that paperwork is really official [or] whether this was auto theft.”
Thanks to Milford421 for this report, I could not find it.......
Suspicious U-Haul Truck Reported at Dallas Courthouse Where Hamas Case Is on Doc
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290537,00.html
[Don’t forget the message a few days past of the middle eastern man
with guns in the same area.]
Suspicious U-Haul Truck Reported at Dallas Courthouse Where Hamas
Case Is on Docket
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
DALLAS — Authorities are investigating reports of a suspicious U-
Haul truck at the Earle Cabell Federal Building in Dallas where
opening statements are scheduled in a case against alleged Hamas
fundraisers.
Prosecutors are set to spell out their case today against leaders of
a Muslim charity that federal officials say funneled millions of
dollars to the Middle Eastern militant group Hamas.
The trial in federal district court in Dallas caps an investigation
into the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development that lasted
more than a decade and spanned half the world.
Defense attorneys say Holy Land supported humanitarian efforts in
Palestinian neighborhoods but didn’t knowingly aid Hamas.
The five men on trial aren’t accused of being terrorists.
Rather, they are charged with illegally giving money to Hamas after
it was designated a terrorist group in 1995. Authorities say some of
the money went to support the families of suicide bombers.
The trial is expected to last several months.
Holy Land was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States.
This is a developing story. Refresh your browser for updates
July 24, 2007 Anti-Terrorism News
(Iraq) Suicide car bomb kills 26 at Iraq children’s hospital - wounding 69 - in Hilla
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/ts_afp/iraqunresthilla_070724075835;_ylt=AvOlZaxJXuUXDdH.06pQQH5X6GMA
(Iraq) New U.S.-Iran talks on Iraq begin in Baghdad
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/ts_nm/iraq_dc_9;_ylt=AhDdJNZa_bteoeoRrMyRzUpX6GMA
(Iraq) U.S. sets 2008 goal for Iraq security
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_petraeus_plan_2;_ylt=AjQ1TqY6IliUO.7dvh4ZDFlX6GMA
(Iraq) US military drafts plan to keep troops in Iraq until mid-2009: report
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/24/africa/24military.php
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/wl_mideast_afp/usiraqmilitary_070724091648;_ylt=Aqrl1gX1AIaDLSldYhiYVu1X6GMA
(Iraq) Al-Qaida affiliate in Iraq denies in Web posting that U.S. troops captured its top Iraqi
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/24/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Al-Qaida.php
(Afghanistan) 75 Taliban killed in Afghan clashes
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan_22;_ylt=ApqPY2tw4AMXM3YbhXFQQ33OVooA
Afghan, foreign troops kill dozens of Taliban
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/wl_nm/afghan_violence_dc_7;_ylt=AnaGinnA7TEAfG98.cz4pavOVooA
(Afghanistan) Taliban deadline looms for South Koreans, fears for German sick — Taliban deadline
for South Koreans in 1430 GMT (10:30 EDT)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/ts_afp/afghanistangermany_070724105512;_ylt=At2QPn3tiTJcO8Z_1l9nG7LOVooA
(Afghanistan) Report: Taliban moving closer to Kabul
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/07/24/report_taliban_moving_closer_to_kabul/6692/
(USA) Anti-Terrorism Trial Begins In Dallas - Holy Land Foundation trial - accused of funneling $36
million to the group Hamas
http://www.nbc5i.com/news/13742180/detail.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/24/america/NA-GEN-US-Muslim-Charity-Trial.php
(USA) Pressure on Capitol Hill Representatives to Get “John Doe” Provision in Homeland Security
Bill (my title) — provision would protect the public from lawsuits for reporting terror-related
suspicious behavior
http://video1.washingtontimes.com/politics/2007/07/the_dems_the_john_does_and_the.html
(USA) Ex-sailor charged in terror case discussed attacking military personnel, prosecutor says
- former Navy sailor Hassan Abujihaad charged with supporting terrorism by disclosing secret
information
http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/news/193036.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/nyregion/24mbrfs-suspect.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
(Pakistan) 20 militants, 2 soldiers killed in Pakistan fighting — 2 soldiers died in shootouts
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070724/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_militant_attacks_5;_ylt=AueVF5h8KGkAQyMb6HKDLifzPukA
(Pakistan) Militants kidnap, kill two Pakistani soldiers
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/July/subcontinent_July1026.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
(Pakistan) Wanted Pakistan militant blows himself up — former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abdullah
Mehsud - wanted for 2004 kidnapping
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/July/subcontinent_July1029.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanunrest_070724112134;_ylt=Ai9lF0cNY8Tzs0qDj0Jq8sLzPukA
(Pakistan) Brother of Taliban commander arrested in Pakistan - Abdul Rehman Masood
http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=1006321
(Pakistan) Official: Islamic militants have launched fresh attacks on security forces
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/War_Terror/2007/07/24/4363322-ap.html
Pakistani students display a radical Islam
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/23/news/islam.php
(Pakistan) Intelligence on “bases” given: Washington — US provided Pakistan with intel about senior
Al Qaeda leaders in tribal region
http://www.dawn.com/2007/07/24/top4.htm
(Pakistan) Standing US offer of air support, ‘supporting fires’ to Pakistan: officials — rebuffed by
Pakistan
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/wl_sthasia_afp/pakistanunrestusmilitarypace_070724055506;_ylt=AuZkrMqlQvNa3RZ8o1Wo5oPzPukA
(Pakistan) US: No unilateral military strikes in FATA
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\07\24\story_24-7-2007_pg1_1
Pakistan Foreign Office: Foreign attacks in Pakistan intolerable
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\07\24\story_24-7-2007_pg1_3
Pakistan: Govt investing in equipment to curb suicide bombs
http://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.1134885676
(Indian Kashmir) Three Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militants among five persons killed in Jammu and
Kashmir
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=7/24/2007#3
(India) Three sentenced to die over India’s worst bombings in 1993
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070724/wl_nm/india_blast_sentences_dc_1;_ylt=Auq2lCvCQTjttqKIee0lFLJA7AkB
(India Assam) One Adivasi National Liberation Army militant killed in Assam
http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/detailed_news.asp?date1=7/24/2007#4
(Trinadad) Charges officially read to JFK terror suspects — extradition case
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article_news?id=161180301
UK parliamentarians soften on Hamas
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1184766045678
(Israel) Norway behind Hamas tape of Israel prisoner: report
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/wl_mideast_afp/mideastconflictgazaisraelprisonernorway
Israel bombs Gaza target, none hurt, Hamas says
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/CrisesArticle.aspx?rpc=401&storyId=L24386863
Hamas propaganda influences children
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56814
New Fatah terror group ‘to target Israel’
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56817
(Lebanon) 11 Lebanese soldiers wounded in clashes with Islamists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070723/wl_mideast_afp/lebanonunrest_070723183141;_ylt=AjXK7R3K6Y9eDVxZLNHW5tLagGIB
(Hezbollah) Israeli-Arab Hizbullah agent arrested
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184766052127&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
‘Hizbullah’s military might is restored’ - Israel defense official states Syrian transferring weapons
with full knowledge of Lebanese army and behind UNIFIL’s back
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1184766044844&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
(Iran) IAEA to inspect Iranean nuclear site next week
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/wl_mideast_afp/irannuclearpoliticsiaea_070724113138;_ylt=Ap0BvSKrgELUpXXkUov5_mRSw60A
(Russia) update: 11 police officers wounded in Chechnya
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070723/ap_on_re_eu/russia_chechnya_1;_ylt=ApZPWYoPARIgTag6F2LyvLh_5GIA
(UK) Fake schools targeted by visa law — fake students being given visas to come to the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6913242.stm
(UK) Shark skin treatment for Glasgow terror suspect Kafeel Ahmed
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=990815cb-d8b5-495d-9ce4-9be51ebd27acindiandocsinukterrorplot_Special&&Headline=Shark+skin+treatment+for+UK+terror+suspect+Kafeel
Spanish police continue search for ETA suspect
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=81&story_id=42152
Algerian forces kill further 20 al-Qaeda fighters — update
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/africa/news/article_1334034.php/Algerian_forces_kill_further_20_al-Qaeda_fighters
(Somalia) U.N.: 10,000 Somalis flee capital
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070723/ap_on_re_af/somalia_1;_ylt=AhH24eqFQPvcy1GzjVZtoiSQLIUD
Somalia: Islamic Jihadists Claim Responsibility for the Attacks in Mogadishu
http://allafrica.com/stories/200707230956.html
Philippine Muslim rebels issue advisory to ambassadors
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/asiapacific/news/article_1334040.php/Philippine_Muslim_rebels_issue_advisory_to_ambassadors__2nd_Roundup_
(Sri Lanka) 14 soldiers killed in blast in Sri Lanka
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/14_soldiers_killed_several_wounded_in_blast_in_Sri_Lanka/articleshow/2230158.cms
Sri Lanka rebels kill 4 village policemen
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/July/subcontinent_July1024.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=
(North Korea) US targets 2008 for implementing full North Korean nuclear deal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/ts_afp/nkoreanuclearweaponsus_070724020146;_ylt=AsJL95M6sMj7t9IM9CZ4656CscEA
(North Korea) Hill: No relations with nuclear N.Korea
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2007/07/24/hill_no_relations_with_nuclear_nkorea/5135/
Other News:
(Iran) On patrol with Iran’s fashion police
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070724/wl_mideast_afp/iranwomenfashion_070724113459;_ylt=Ah60Hsxf3_MD4onMidfPdTdSw60A
Libya frees 6 foreign medics in HIV case
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/24/europe/EU-GEN-France-Libya.php
(Turkey) US hails Turkish election of Islamist
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070723/pl_afp/turkeyvoteuswhouse_070723142110;_ylt=ArMeWB4Ar4pPOagxpi0RSq7tfLkA
Terrorists Behead ‘ US Spy’ in Bajaur (back)
July 20, 2007
KHAR: Suspected Islamic militants in a restive Pakistani tribal town beheaded a man accused of spying for US forces across the border on Wednesday, officials said.
The militants dumped the body of the unidentified victim in his 20s in an isolated area near the northwestern town of Khar in the Bajaur tribal district, local administration official Fazle Rabbi said. ‘Villagers found the beheaded body and informed us,’ he said. The militants, the official said, had left a note near the body, which read, ‘Those who spy for US forces will meet this fate.’
It was the second killing this week of an alleged US spy in the area, after militants on Tuesday slit the throat of a 40-year-old Afghan refugee from the neighbouring Afghan province of Kunar . Hundreds of extremists fled into Pakistan ’s mountainous border areas after the ouster of the Taliban regime in the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, where they found support from conservative Pakistani tribesmen.
Source: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2007\07\19\story_19-7-2007_pg7_8
Playing with Firebrands in Pakistan (back)
July 23, 2007
Pereuz Musharraf may be the dictator of Pakistan , but ever since the jihad genie got out of the bottle on Sept. 11, he has become a prisoner of circumstance.
In the old days, Pakistani secret services were more or less in control of the ‘fanatic factor.’ Islamist extremists were useful instruments of Pakistani foreign policy. Support for the Taliban, when they were in power, gave Pakistan influence over Afghanistan and served as an outlet for Pakistani and foreign militants who wanted to establish an Islamic utopia. (It’s always preferable to conduct such dangerous experiments next door instead of in your own backyard.)
Meanwhile, other fundamentalist groups were permitted to use Pakistani territory and logistics to wage a proxy war against India over the disputed land of Kashmir without getting into a full-fledged military confrontation, which Pakistan would be sure to lose and which it barely managed to avoid more than once.
However, when the Taliban teamed up with al-Qaida to attack American cities, the lid was blown off the terror jar. The extremists could no longer be contained – they had become free radicals by setting their own agenda and declaring open warfare against the United States , an ally of Pakistan .
(It is true that the U.S. had financed, with Pakistan ’s acquiescence, Islamist warriors in their quest to boot the Soviet army out of Afghanistan . But those who call 9/11 ‘blowback’ miss an important distinction: The U.S. never trained the mujahedeen, the 1980s precursors to the Taliban, to direct their attacks against hapless Russian civilians in the streets of Moscow . Perhaps the winding path leading from local resistance to global terror should have been foreseen, but it certainly was not blazed by the CIA.)
In the wake of 9/11, Gen. Musharraf was forced, under intense U.S. pressure, to abandon the Taliban and to rein in other extremists. He made his choice, but it was never as clear-cut as it sounded. Mostly, he pursued a policy of containment, trying to manage the sympathies of millions of Pakistanis for the Taliban with the exigencies of the war on terror.
Recently, he had even brokered a ceasefire in the lawless northern tribal areas, used by the resurgent Taliban as a safe haven from which to attack NATO troops in Afghanistan and where al-Qaida is believed to have recovered much of its pre-9/11 coherence.
That deal greatly benefited the outlaws while buying breathing space for Gen. Musharraf. But extremists can’t help themselves; sooner or later, they take extreme action. Last week, suicide bombers attacked Pakistani military and civilian targets in the north, as well as a crowd in the capital. Pro-Taliban spokesmen called off the 10-month-old truce and declared holy war in response to the storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad earlier this month. Here again, the religious radicals, who had links both to the Taliban-friendly north and to a group responsible for terrorist attacks on Indian soil, forced Gen. Musharraf’s hand.
Not only were they calling outright for his assassination, but they had become a law unto themselves. The chief cleric had decreed the capital should follow religious law and students from the affiliated seminaries followed up with acts of vigilantism, like kidnapping prostitutes and intimidating the owners of film and music outlets. Not only that, the mosque complex had been turned into an armed camp, and when finally besieged by the Pakistani commandos, its leaders had refused repeated entreaties to surrender.
They were bent on a bloody showdown, perhaps hoping the bloodbath would spark a pro-Taliban revolution. Gen. Musharraf has nothing left to gain, except time, by playing with these firebrands. He himself has expressed alarm at the creeping ‘Talibanization’ of the 13,000 or so religious seminaries in Pakistan . Talibanization doesn’t end there – sympathizers also exist in parliament, in the ranks of the army and of the secret service.
Gen. Musharraf still seems inclined to try appeasement. Yet if he hesitates to use force now, he is lost. A crackdown is in order for those schools that have become jihad factories. As well, Pakistan ’s powerful military needs to impose a semblance of order in the remote northern tribal areas.
This is not just Gen. Musharraf’s problem. Defanging the Taliban inside Pakistan enhances the prospects for Canadian and other NATO troops in the restless south of Afghanistan . Even more important, however, is preventing Taliban types from seizing power in nuclear-armed Pakistan .
Source: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Editorial/848792.html
20 Dead, 20 Arrested in Raids on al-Qaeda Hub (back)
July 23, 2007
Civilians helped coalition and Iraqi forces conduct a massive raid on an al Qaeda hideout in the town of Sherween , leaving 20 suspected terrorists dead and 20 more in coalition custody, the U.S. Military said Wednesday.
A member of a Sunni militia guards two suspected al Qaeda member in Diyala province Wednesday.
The militants were caught off guard when U.S. Aircraft dropped eight 2,000-pound bombs and 14 quarter-ton bombs on river crossings and a bridge in the town northeast of Baghdad , said Staff Maj. Gen. Abdul Kareem.
Kareem, who commands the Iraqi Security Forces in Diyala province, said the bombings isolated the terrorists who had infiltrated Sherween. The town’s residents fought alongside the Iraqi forces during the raid, helping them kill and capture the terrorists, a U.S. Military news release said.
‘This operation was very important for the people of Sherween because we were able to find a very big hideout for the terrorists,’ Kareem said of Operation Saber Guardian, which began early Tuesday. ‘It was a very big surprise for the terrorists and the people that support them.’
The raid will have a political impact on Diyala, which the U.S. Military says has become a hotbed for al Qaeda terrorists who fled Baghdad after the U.S.-led security crackdown there, said Maj. John Woodward, executive officer of the U.S. Troops involved in the operation.
The raid will help ‘facilitate Sunni resistance fighting in the Muqdadiya area as the people have grown tired of the destruction al Qaeda offers,’ he said.
Raids net 22 arrests
The U.S. Military continued to target al Qaeda in raids early Wednesday, killing two suspected terrorists and arresting 22.
In one southwestern Baghdad raid, forces arrested a ‘suspected secret cell terrorist’ believed to have connections to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army, which is suspected of launching attacks in the capital.
In Mosul , troops detained five suspects believed to be members of al Qaeda in Iraq , the military said. Another terrorist was killed after threatening troops with a knife, according to the military.
Coalition forces killed another suspected terrorist in western Baghdad after he ‘continued to resist and made threatening motions toward the ground force,’ the military said. Troops also arrested an insurgent suspected of involvement in Baghdad bombing operations.
In Samarra , raids netted the arrests of four people suspected of kidnappings, assassinations and mortar attacks on coalition forces, the military said.
Various other raids resulted in the arrests of 11 suspected terrorists thought to have ties to al Qaeda in Iraq .
Other developments
At least 20 gunmen stormed the house of Samarra ‘s deputy mayor Abboud Hamid, shot him several times and killed him Wednesday.
Iraqi police found 30 bullet-riddled bodies across the capital Wednesday, some of them blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs and showing signs of torture. Also, the U.S. Military found 12 unidentified bodies Tuesday on a highway between Samarra and Tikrit.
A British cleric trying to negotiate the release of five British hostages seized in Baghdad has returned to the United Kingdom amid reports that extremists were distributing threatening pamphlets that labeled him a spy, according to the cleric’s office and the British Embassy in the Iraqi capital.
A U.S. Airstrike Tuesday killed three ‘suspected secret cell terrorists’ near al-Majar al-Kabir, a predominately Shiite town close to the Iranian border, the military said Wednesday. The suspected terrorists are thought to have links to Iranian elements responsible for providing funds, weapons and military assistance to insurgents.
A German woman held hostage in Iraq since February was freed Tuesday, but the fate of her adult son — who was also kidnapped — was not immediately known, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a statement issued Wednesday.
The Associated Press reported that an investigating officer has recommended dismissing murder charges against a Marine accused in the slayings of three Iraqi men in an operation that left 24 civilians dead in Haditha. Lt. Paul Ware said in a Tuesday report that the government’s theory that Lance Cpl. Justin L. Sharatt executed the men was ‘incredible’ and relied on contradictory statements by Iraqis, AP reported.
Four people were killed and 15 others were wounded when three mortar rounds landed in a residential area in Iskandariya on Tuesday.
Gunmen attacked an Iraqi police patrol Tuesday evening, killing four Iraqi police officers and wounding two others in northern Baghdad . E-mail to a friend
CNN’s Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.
Source: No Source
I don’t know either. But I saw Plum Island and grabbed if for file.
al-Qaeda Parallels Paint Worrisome Picture (back)
July 22, 2007
by Eric Rosenberg
Set aside the debate about whether al-Qaida is as potent now as it was in 2001, an issue raised by last week’s release of a national intelligence estimate on the terrorist group. The fact is that there are eerie parallels between al-Qaida today and al-Qaida during the period immediately preceding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes.
Among those parallels:
The Islamist group has found a haven from which to hatch attacks and accrue financing.
Gaining confidence, al-Qaida has stepped up its attacks and frequency of public messages about the need to strike the U.S. and its allies.
The president and Congress are distracted by other matters. President Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress were focused on impeachment, and President Bush and Democratically controlled Congress are consumed by the war in Iraq .
Back in 2001, al-Qaida took advantage of the changing of the reins of government to finalize and ultimately carry out the Sept. 11 strikes. Transitions from one administration to another historically are months-long unfocused periods due to the massive changeover in personnel and shifting of priorities. Another transition is some 16 months away.
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called it ‘very unsettling’ that al-Qaida once again operates with relative impunity, this time in Pakistan. ‘When they had a safe haven in Afghanistan , they trained, they prepared and they planned, and they were successful,’ he said.
Al-Qaida, said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University , ‘is husbanding their resources and gathering momentum, much as they were during and before the 2000 U.S. presidential elections.’
Parallels notwithstanding, there is one key difference.
Where al-Qaida previously resided in Afghanistan , a remote and technologically backward nation, it now nestles in Pakistan , an unstable Islamic country with nuclear weapons and a history of peddling nuclear secrets.
Pakistan increasingly has been wracked by civil unrest and suicide bombings fomented by al-Qaida and other Islamic extremists - most recently after a government raid on an extremist mosque. Its leader, Pervez Musharraf, who gained power in a military coup in 1999, has been the target of two assassination attempts.
Musharraf is a key American ally in the battle against al-Qaida, although the U.S. has been concerned about his commitment ever since his government signed a peace treaty with tribal chieftains in remote Pakistani provinces in 2006. That allowed remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaida to take root in the mountainous region and use it as a base of operations.
While Pakistan asserts that it has strong controls over its nuclear arsenal, al-Qaida’s move there is destabilizing and raises the possibility that nuclear weapons could fall into the wrong hands.
‘I would hate to think of what potentially could happen if the Musharraf government went down and you got a radical jihadist or radical Muslim government in charge of Pakistan, in charge of a country with nukes,’ said Hoekstra.
Pakistan has not publicly disclosed the size of its nuclear arsenal, which it developed to offset the military superiority of its historic foe, India . Estimates range up to 100 nuclear warheads, most manufactured with highly enriched uranium as well as a handful made from weapons-grade plutonium.
Pakistani authorities maintain that for added security they store nuclear bomb components in separate locations, so that the weapons are never wholly assembled. But, as the Federation of American Scientists concludes, ‘no one has been able to ascertain the validity of Pakistan ‘s assurances about their nuclear weapons security.’
Pakistan already has a worrisome history of selling nuclear weapons technology. In 2003, U.S. and British intelligence agencies broke up a black market nuclear ring headed by A.Q. Khan, Pakistan ‘s one-time chief nuclear scientist. Khan sold nuclear secrets - uranium centrifuges, bomb designs and uranium - to Iran , North Korea and Libya through a global network of middlemen.
Thomas Simons, a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan , said it is unlikely that Pakistani officials would sell or give a nuclear weapon to al-Qaida or another Islamist group.
More worrying, he said, is the nation’s growing instability. Pakistan ‘s tolerance of al-Qaida and other extremists ‘is rotting the Pakistani state,’ he said. ‘It is poison for them. And the decay of the (Musharraf) regime is creating the instability.’
NJ: Spend Anti-Terror Dollars Wisely (back)
July 22, 2007
New Jersey seems to be one of the winners in the annual Homeland Security Department terrorism funding sweepstakes. The state will get $92 million from the federal government, an increase of $40 million, including nearly $31 million that is to be used to update the communications equipment of firefighters, police officers and other first responders so they will be able to talk across departmental lines and to each other during a disaster. The inability of firefighters and police to communicate was one of the many shortcomings illuminated by Sept. 11.
While there is something to cheer in the latest development, the process remains flawed. At the federal level, more money is going to the areas perceived to be under greatest threat of terrorist attack, but there are still lots of dollars flowing to places that are unlikely targets. And the investment is still paltry, especially when compared to the government’s own risk assessment, also issued last week, that showed the threat of terrorism rising.
In New Jersey, meanwhile, officials often have ridiculed the federal government for its formula, but then have engaged in the same sorts of practices, divvying up the state’s important funding according to political allies rather than potential targets. No one should forget the debacle of several years ago, when the Democrats who run Trenton doled out federal anti-terrorism dollars almost exclusively to municipalities within their political control. New Jerseyans then watched as much of the cash went unspent, while equally deserving Republican districts went entirely without.
While some of the money given by the federal government is tied to particular regions and programs, there is still plenty of money to be given at the state’s discretion. It must endeavor to spend those funds wisely, and to make the process as objective and transparent as possible. The state has too many targets and too many potential casualties to do otherwise.
Much of the money is directed to the six New Jersey counties that surround New York City , which is reasonable enough; but the federal government did not include any South Jersey counties in its calculation of the Philadelphia metropolitan region, so the state may need to direct some funding there.
Of course, given the state’s density, its bridges, its ports, its chemical plants and its nuclear reactors, there are any number of places to spend the money. The Department of Homeland Security will issue separate grants in the coming week to cover ports and public transit. Hopefully, New Jersey , home to an enormous, vulnerable port and the primary user of an important, vulnerable train tunnel, will get a fair share of that money, too.
Source: http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070722/OPINION01/707220343/1079
Fort Monmouth Crucial to War on Terrorism (back)
July 22, 2007
Fort Monmouth cannot be closed until its communications and electronics command’s critical technology and infrastructure — and the specialized work force needed to run and maintain it — are completely duplicated at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., or else the nation’s efforts in the global war on terrorism could be compromised.
But the Army will have difficulty in finding experienced people to fill the new positions and may not be able to replicate the current Fort Monmouth work force for a number of years.
Those are the main conclusions of a draft internal memo by Fort Monmouth officials destined for Army brass. The July 11 draft, obtained by the Asbury Park Press, is meant to help Secretary of the Army Pete Geren report to Congress on the impact of closing the fort on the war on terrorism.
As part of its August 2005 decision to close Fort Monmouth and move most of its mission to Aberdeen , the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure commission required that the Army secretary assure Congress in writing that the closure would not adversely affect the war on terrorism.
Tim Rider, spokesman for Fort Monmouth , said that although fort officials are preparing a report ‘for use as a resource for the development of the Army’s report to Congress,’ no official Army response yet exists.
‘There is no report, or draft of such a report, that represents the official views of the Army or the U.S. Army Communications-Electronics Lifecycle Management Command regarding this matter,’ Rider said. C-E LMC is a component of the fort’s mission.
Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J., who last week introduced a bill in the House of Representatives that, among other things, calls for a Government Accountability Office review of the Army’s report on the proposed Fort Monmouth move, said the fort’s memo ‘sounds like an indictment of the whole process.’
‘I believe the military will have an impossible hurdle, and I’m glad it’s there, and they can’t meet the standard that was set up as a result of the BRAC language,’ Smith said. ‘It would be an egregious mistake if the DOD (Department of Defense), in light of this, was to effectuate this move.’
This latest development is part of an Asbury Park Press continuing investigation into the process behind the decision to shutter Fort Monmouth . The investigation has found that the cost of closing the fort has doubled — from $780 million to $1.5 billion — since the 2005 decision. It also has revealed that DOD officials knew the official cost estimate to close the fort was wrong, but chose to ignore the information.
In the four pages of the memo reviewed by the Press — the final version of which will be sent early next month to the Army’s Material Command — Fort Monmouth officials say the federally mandated assurance can only be made if the critical elements of the command’s mission are duplicated in Maryland while they are still operational at the fort.
‘There are a number of critical capabilities essential to GWOT (global war on terrorism) and operations in theater which could be adversely affected if this transition does not include appropriate funding for systems and infrastructure which will need to be duplicated at APG rather than being relocated,’ the memo states.
That’s because there are ‘literally thousands of daily interactions supporting theater, all of which have the potential for disruption as Team C4ISR realigns onto Aberdeen Proving Ground,’ the memo states. C4ISR is an acronym for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, which makes up Fort Monmouth ‘s mission.
But even with the duplication of technology and people in Aberdeen, the memo warns, ‘(t)he projected loss of more than half of this work force due to BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) will result in a loss of expertise not found elsewhere in the Army that will take years to reconstitute.’
‘Team C4ISR must continue to support warfighters’ use of the total C4ISR suite of critical capabilities’ through a number of forms of correspondence, ‘much of which is classified,’ the report notes.
‘This transitional hardware and infrastructure is essential to ensure that we retain the ability to perform the total C4ISR mission,’ the report continues.
Among the things — many of which affect soldiers on the battlefield — that C4ISR supports, creates and repairs, are:
A satellite-based communications network.
A ‘full suite’ of battle command capabilities.
A tracking system giving battlefield commanders ‘situational awareness’ of allied positions.
The future combat systems program office.
‘Each of these offices require an experienced, specialized staff that is able to apply the iterative, spiral development process required to develop the right systems, on time and at the best value to the warfighter,’ the report states.
To ensure there is no disruption in the services provided by the Team C4ISR, the report states, each of those offices ‘would have to be staffed with personnel skilled in all facets of the particular office’s requirements and develop a split-operations process that prevents disruption of the day to day mission. It is therefore assumed that there would have to be a spike or plus-up in work force staffing to allow for positioning personnel on both ends of the operation.’
Any significant disruption of the command’s work force ‘has the potential to impair the ability to make fixes or improvements to existing capabilities . . . and respond to emerging, urgent requirements,’ the report continues.
Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said the report ‘clearly comes to the conclusion’ that the fort can’t be closed without adversely affecting the war on terrorism.
‘In my opinion, it comes to the conclusion that the move would negatively impact the global war on terrorism and therefore shouldn’t take place,’ he said.
Pallone said he will be interested to see the versions of the report that are sent to the AMC, the Department of the Army and, eventually, the Congress.
‘If it changes, I would ask the Government Accountability Office to find out what justifies the changes,’ he said.
Pallone and other Shore area federal legislators last month won a commitment from the GAO and DOD’s Inspector General to investigate the process behind the decision to close the fort.
Pallone also said that running duplicate C4ISR functions at Fort Monmouth and Aberdeen are ‘completely not workable and not envisioned by the BRAC.’
Rep. Jim Saxton, R-N.J., has repeatedly asked the Army for the report. His spokesman, Jeff Sagnip, said Friday that the fort’s draft response supports the position of fort supporters that qualified personnel will not be easy to find in Aberdeen .
The fort’s mission ‘would have to be duplicated, not recreated, and that sounds pretty expensive,’ he said.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., said fort officials were finally coming out of their shell and touting the fort’s contribution to the Army.
‘In the past, the brass at the fort were almost under orders from Washington not to blow their own horn,’ said Holt, whose district includes Fort Monmouth . ‘But now, the impending situation is so dire that the fort must talk about the impact of these actions on the soldier.’
The report also notes the accomplishments of ‘Team C4ISR’ in the five-year-old war on terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, including the thousands of pieces of technology that have been delivered to the battlefield since the start of the war.
Some of that technology, such as improvised explosive device counter-attack technology, was delivered in about two weeks, the memo states.
Source: http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070722/NEWS/707220383/1004/NEWS01
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