This makes no sense...I don't like this at all. WHAT is the rationale?????The rationale:
Posted on 10/08/2002 10:58:46 PM PDT by Grampa Dave
The woman who was killed while sitting on the bench was on Georgia Ave. No significance at all.
Thirty, my love, we are all wondering the same thing here. I have a feeling you hadn't had your second cup of coffee yet when you posted that. It really makes me miss Colorado but it doesn't help me with the sniper deal. ; )
When Thirty gets home from work I will ask her to help us out. Or at least get us a picture of CO with a nice big bull elk in it.
Authorities said they believe the card could have been left by a prankster.
Without a doubt you are right. The subjects of The Peoples Republic of Maryland have chosen to put their security entirely in the hands of LE. Their only recourse now, in the face of this sniper threat, is to hide in their homes until LE catches the perp. or go out and be willing submissive targets.
Of course, when this perp. is caught, they still have those two choices to make since there will always be predators in any society. Cower in fear or be a target. They are not going to assign a SS agent or a police officer to accompany every citizen any time soon.
Self defense is a natural right. The 2nd Ammendment protects that right from government infringement. The disarmed person is a subject not a citizen. The subjects of Maryland have surrendered that right for temporary safety. The safety they bargained for has expired.
Thinking too of the SS agents who left Vice President Cheney's schedule at the counter of the gift shop at the Olympics.
Terrifying lapses of judgement and training.
This makes no sense...I don't like this at all. WHAT is the rationale?????The rationale:
[Black Muslims] are profoundly racist, and do not attack other blacks.Nonsense.
Bull.
Refreshing change, huh? :o)
All those idiots marching against our country do not realize how lucky we are this man came into our nations highest office at the time that he did. We are truly blessed.
We shudder to imagine our country in another 8 years if the ethics and cowardess of the previous administration had continued via Clintons cronies. Seeing what has already happened "SHOULD" have woke up the most ignorant of our populace, but apparently/sadly it did not. I guess some can't believe the horrors of something unless they experience it firsthand.
President Bush and his administration are more than we dreamed they would be. We give thanks for them daily!!
By John J. Miller, NR national political reporter
January 31, 2001, 9:05 a.m.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Pakistani authorities have arrested Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani on charges related to the abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who went missing more than a week ago while attempting to interview Gilani for a story about shoe-bomber Richard Reid. Pearl's captors have threatened to murder their hostage today if the United States does not release Pakistani prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
There are a lot of Baptist churches along rural Virginia's Route 615, just south of Appomattox-"where America reunited," as the county welcome sign puts it-but there's only one Sheikh Gilani Lane. A gate and a guardhouse prevent the public from driving very far down it. What lies beyond, however, isn't a closed-off community of rich retirees. Instead, it's a trailer-park compound of black Muslims, or "The Muslims of America," according to a green billboard by the entrance, where an armed guard keeps a wary eye on the main road's traffic. Until recently, this was the home of Vicente Rafael Pierre, a 44-year-old Brooklyn native with a shadowy past and a dim future. He may never see this home again. Shortly after September 11, federal agents snared him in their roundup of crime suspects who have links to terrorist outfits. Nobody has accused Pierre of any direct connection to the atrocities in New York or elsewhere-he and his wife, Traci Upshur, were taken in on unrelated gun charges and convicted of them on November 30. Yet authorities have detailed Pierre's extensive ties to al Fuqra, a violent group of black Muslims whose members have been implicated in at least 17 bombings and 12 murders over the past twenty years. Pierre's Virginia compound, near the tiny crossroads hamlet of Red House, is believed to serve as an al Fuqra base. Pierre's story is compelling in its own right — anybody connected to al Fuqra is also connected to killers, bombers, and arsonists. During Pierre's detention hearing in October, Thomas P. Gallagher of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms said he and his colleagues were worried about the possibility of "another Waco situation" developing in rural Virginia. More unsettling is the potential for al Fuqra to wreak mayhem beyond its remote compound. Pierre's case shows how militant groups organize and finance themselves-and also how federal law-enforcement authorities are responding to these known threats. Pierre, for instance, might still be free today but for 9/11. He was the subject of an ongoing gun probe when federal agents decided to accelerate his indictment. U.S. attorney John Brownlee explained the strategy: "Prevent first and prosecute second." Although Pierre has not been charged with any violence, he's close to those who have been, including at least one person involved in the 1998 embassy bombings and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Al Fuqra — which means "the impoverished" in Arabic — was founded in 1980 when Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani traveled from Pakistan to an African-American mosque in Brooklyn. On this and subsequent trips, the charismatic sheikh helped create al Fuqra, which is said to have between 1,000 and 3,000 members nationwide. It is not aligned with a more prominent and homegrown black Muslim group, the Nation of Islam, and in fact it has serious theological differences with Louis Farrakhan's flock. And it may pose a much greater threat to civil society. About two dozen families live at the 44-acre compound near Red House, but al Fuqra is headquartered in Hancock, N.Y., and maintains extensive ties to Gilani in Lahore. Members of the sect occasionally travel abroad for what Gallagher calls "paramilitary and survivalist training" under Gilani's supervision. Although Pierre has testified that he has not visited Pakistan, the BATF says at least one of the other Red House residents did go there, and Gallagher claims there is evidence of training in Afghanistan as well. Gilani recruited Americans to fight with the mujaheddin against the Soviets during the 1980s. Al Fuqra demonstrated its violent streak and national reach early on. A study written by Yehudit Barsky and published by the Anti-Defamation League catalogues the group's activities. From its first days more than two decades ago, members have attacked a virtual rainbow coalition of targets, including Hare Krishnas in San Diego, Hindus in Toronto, Sikhs in Seattle, and Buddhists in Illinois. Many of their favorite victims have links to India; Gilani is obsessed with the Kashmir conflict and views India as a mortal enemy. In 1983, al Fuqra firebombed a Portland, Ore., hotel owned by the late Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. But al Fuqra's hatred also extends to Muslims with whom they have doctrinal differences. A month after the Portland attack, for instance, two members murdered a rival Muslim leader in Michigan, and then were themselves killed when they set fire to an Islamic center in Detroit. An incident in 1989 demonstrated the group's calculated ruthlessness and also introduced Pierre to federal agents. Police on a search warrant raided a Colorado Springs storage locker registered to Pierre's father-in-law, who is also an al Fuqra member. Inside they found information on a scam Pierre and others were running against Colorado's workers' compensation fund; they had defrauded the state of some $355,000 over several years. The locker's other contents were more alarming: ten handguns and silencers, 30 pounds of explosives, and target-practice silhouettes pierced with bullet holes and labeled "FBI Antiterrorist Team" and "Zionist Pig" (in Pierre's handwriting, according to Gallagher). Police also found information on local military installations and electrical power lines, plus "attack plans" against various targets. One of the targets, a moderate imam, was stabbed to death four months later. Pierre dropped from sight, but he was located several years later working as a security guard in Pennsylvania. Put on trial in Colorado in 1993, he was convicted for his role in the workers'-comp swindle and sentenced to four years of probation. He was not linked to the murder of Khalifa, however; that crime was charged to James D. Williams, who remained a fugitive until last year, when he was arrested in Lynchburg, Va., not far from the Red House compound where he is believed to have lived and where he would have been one of Pierre's neighbors. (Earlier this year, Williams was sentenced to 69 years in prison.) During his detention hearing in October, Pierre denied knowing Williams, even though their names appeared alongside each other on documents found in the storage locker; he also denied the existence of al Fuqra. "This is a phantom, nonexistent organization which does not exist," said Pierre. "It's just a figment of someone's imagination due to their ignorance of the Arabic language or perhaps due to their hate or prejudice of al-Islam." This was a surprising claim, because many others — including Sheikh Gilani — have discussed al Fuqra's activities. Pierre's very real participation in the al Fuqra plot to rip off the state of Colorado is what made his arrest this year possible: Because of his 1993 felony conviction, federal law bars him from buying firearms, yet this is precisely what he tried to do at a gun store near Red House by having his wife make a "straw purchase" on his behalf. Al Fuqra's activities may be small-scale compared to those of al Qaeda, but there is evidence linking the two groups. According to Gallagher, one of the men who assisted al Fuqra in monitoring the murdered imam in 1989 was Wadih el-Hage, an al Qaeda member sentenced to life in prison this October for his role in the 1998 embassy bombings. Pierre and his wife won't be sentenced until April 5, and there's reason to think that others who live in the Red House compound continue to stockpile illegal weapons. On December 3, another Red House man, Bilal Abdullah Ben Benu, was indicted on federal firearms charges. Some have questioned why the Bush administration wants to detain and prosecute people like Pierre and Benu, who have no apparent connection to the events of September 11. But the alternative to charging them with relatively minor crimes is to wait and see if they commit major ones later, and to catch them afterwards — if we can, and when it's too late. |
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ilani is the head of an international organization known as al Fuqra. The group was recently banned in Pakistan, but it also has an extensive network in the United States. NR's John J. Miller wrote about al Fuqra for the December 31 edition of the magazine, reprinted below.