Posts
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Pakistani Woman Extradited to New York for Alleged Attack on U.S. Soldiers
NEW YORK — An MIT-educated Pakistani woman once identified as a possible Al Qaeda associate has been brought to New York to face charges she tried to kill U.S. agents and military officers during an interrogation in Afghanistan, federal prosecutors said.
Aafia Siddiqui, who was shot and wounded last month during the confrontation, was expected to be arraigned Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan on charges of attempted murder and assault, U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in a statement. ...
.... according to a criminal complaint. Police searched her handbag and discovered documents containing recipes for explosives and chemical weapons and describing "various landmarks in the United States, including New York City," according to the complaint, which did not identify the landmarks.
Police also found maps of Ghazni on her, including the provincial governor's compounds and the mosques he prayed in, said governor spokesman Sayed Ismail Jahangir.
Siddiqui also was carrying "chemical substances in gel and liquid form that were sealed in bottles and glass jars," the complaint said. It did not elaborate. Jahangir said she was carrying "liquid poison." ....
Violations rife in hospital's studies on veterans
An investigation of research conducted at an Arkansas veterans hospital has uncovered rampant violations in its human experiments program, including missing consent forms, secret HIV testing and failure to report more than 100 deaths of subjects participating in studies.
The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Tuesday will release its findings in a report on human subject protection violations at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System in Little Rock. The studies involved thousands of veterans who had volunteered for behavioral and drug experiments. ....
How dare you say Islam teaches "kindness" and "human dignity"? demand prominent Muslim leaders
Now, if Omar's pact of dhimmitude plainly states that non-Muslims are not to teach their own children the Koran, the following report makes clear the hysteria a non-Muslim teaching the Koran to Muslim students can cause: "Muslims blast Israel for reading kindness into the Koran," from Israel Today, August 5:
Arab media around the Middle East this week reacted hysterically after learning that a Jewish professor at Haifa University is using verses from the Koran to teach Arab Muslim psychology students how to treat their future Muslim patients.Professor Ofer Grosbard developed the Quranet course using specially chosen verses from the Muslim holy book to help students reinforce in their patients concepts like respect, responsibility, honesty, dignity and kindness. ....
Despite the fact that the Quranet course was developed together with 15 Muslim students and was reviewed by three Islamic clerical figures, Muslim authorities around the Middle East denounced the project because it was overseen by a Jew.
Speaking to Gulf News, Dr. Abdullah Al Mutlaq of the Senior Ulema Board in Saudi Arabia insisted that all Jews hate Islam, and that Prof. Grosbard's efforts to emphasize the Koran's few lessons in human dignity and kindness would give Muslims the wrong impression of their religion. ....
Jihadis take on Gandhi's strategy
And go on a hunger strike? Would this count as martyrdom? What about the famous "Do not kill yourselves" Koranic verse 4:29? "Islamist suspects stage hunger strike in Lebanon jail," from AFP, August 5:
BEIRUT - Several hundred suspected members of an Islamist group involved in a deadly 15-week standoff with the Lebanese army last year have launched a prison hunger strike, a security official said on Tuesday. "Detainees in Rumieh prison went on hunger strike on Monday to protest at the delay in their trials," the official said on condition of anonymity. About 300 people have been detained by Lebanese authorities for their alleged links with Fatah al-Islam, an Al-Qaeda-inspired group that fought against the Lebanese army last year in a Palestinian refugee camp near the northern port city of Tripoli. ....The Dissident
... Arguably the greatest of the anti-Soviet dissidents, and certainly the best known, Solzhenitsyn strode across the world at the height of the Cold War, urging presidents and prime ministers to stand up to the communist menace. Armed only with a pen, he defied one of history’s most brutal tyrannies and revealed its horrors to a world that was not always ready to believe. ....
In The Gulag Archipelago, he recounted what set him on the road to conversion. “It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political classes either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.” ...
Papers found on Jihadist in China
It's official: recent Chinese attacks were prompted by jihad fi sabil Allah: Terror bombing was 'Muslim jihad,'" by Malcolm Moore, for the Telegraph, August 5:
The Chinese government has said the bombing which killed 16 policemen in Kashgar was a premeditated jihad and promised an iron-fisted response to terrorists."We found papers on one of the suspects saying that their religious beliefs are more important than their lives, the prosperity of their families and even the well-being of their mothers. They were trying to perform a jihad," said Shi Dagang, the Communist party secretary of Kashgar.
The two men were named as Abdul Rahman, 28, and Rabangar Amint, 33, both from Kashgar. Mr Dagang said one was a taxi driver, the other was a hawker. ....
Forgotten Investigation, Emails Offer Insight into IIIT Probe
A Northern Virginia think-tank is suspected of being a pivotal cog in the Muslim Brotherhood's high command in America, newly released federal law enforcement records indicate.
The Investigative Project on Terrorism obtained 596 pages of records from a closed FBI investigation through a Freedom of Information Act request. Dozens of the pages released are redacted. But other sections show that International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) board members Jamal Barzinji and Yaqub Mirza are listed among "members and leaders of the IKHWAN." Barzinji was identified as the secretary general for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at that time. The Ikhwan is an Arabic reference to the Muslim Brotherhood. (Click here to read the IPT's profile of the Brotherhood.)
ICE Head Discusses “Domestic Off-Shoring”
In an ICE blog posted on July 29, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary Julie Myers discussed a recent enforcement case that is emblematic of the activities that unscrupulous businesses engage in to gain unfair advantage - domestic off-shoring. This practice involves building a business around the importation and employment of illegal aliens in an effort to avoid paying higher wages to, and taxes for, American workers.
The case involved El Pollo Rico restaurant in Wheaton, Md., which was at the center of a multi-million dollar criminal conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens into the U.S. Last week, the restaurant's owners pleaded guilty to conspiracy to harbor aliens, conspiracy to commit money laundering and structuring bank transactions to evade reporting requirements in connection with the restaurant’s operation. They also agreed to forfeit $8.7 million in illicit proceeds they gained over the years.
As Myers noted in the blog:
The American public has heard numerous accounts of jobs being outsourced to workers offshore who work for less money than do American workers...But little attention has been paid to the use of undocumented aliens as part of a domestic off-shoring scheme...Companies that build their workforce using illegal aliens here in the United States take jobs away from law abiding American citizens and residents who are authorized to work. By cutting corners to cut costs, they unfairly acquire market share to the detriment of responsible businesses playing by the rules.
As of May, ICE made more than 850 criminal arrests during this fiscal year tied to worksite enforcement investigations. 75 of these were owners, managers, supervisors or human resources employees facing charges including harboring or knowingly hiring illegal aliens. The remaining 775 workers criminally arrested facing charges including aggravated identity theft and Social Security fraud.
California Man Arrested in H-1B Visa Scheme
Last week, a Riverside, Calif. man was arrested for allegedly filing almost 1,000 fraudulent documents with the U.S. Department of Labor and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an effort to obtain H-1B visas for illegal aliens, according to an ICE press release. The elaborate scheme described by ICE, which is similar to the type of fraud perpetrated under the employer-based visa programs that Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) are trying to expand, enabled Alexander Sales Vista to make $5 million by charging illegal aliens for fraudulent work visas and employment records.
Over the course of more than 10 years, Vista allegedly sought work visas for more than 550 aliens, whom he claimed were going to work at companies he owned. Vista charged the aliens, many of whom are now being deported for overstaying their tourist visas, between $7,000 and $12,000 to file a petition.
Many of the aliens were granted work visas, but the jobs often did not exist because his “shell” companies did not conduct any real business. Vista would issue the aliens fake pay stubs showing they worked for one of his companies. In return, the aliens paid him a regular fee, which he either kept for himself or paid to the government as payroll taxes to give the illusion that they were actually working for him. ....
'Worst' Job Reports from Feds Today, But Sen. Menendez and Rep. Lofgren Fight for Hundreds of Thousands More Foreign Workers
U.S. Headed Toward Bankruptcy,
“We know that for a fact,” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) told CNSNews.com in a video interview. “All the actuaries, all the objective scorekeepers of the federal government, are predicting this.”
To back up this claim, Ryan cited an estimate by the non-partisan Government Accountability Office that says the government faces a $53-trillion shortfall to cover the costs of promised benefits in its entitlement programs.
“They say we are $53 trillion short of fulfilling the promises the government is making to the American people, in today’s dollars,” said Ryan.
“Meaning that if we want to keep the promises of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which are basically the three major entitlement programs, today we would have to set aside $53 trillion dollars and invest them at Treasury rates in order to do it,” he said.
Ryan said that to deal with this situation the government must either reform the entitlement programs or eventually impose massive tax increases on American workers.
“For the last 40 years, the federal government has had to tax every dollar made in America at 18.3 cents on that dollar to pay the bills of the federal government,” said Ryan.
“By the time my three children – who are three, five and six years old—are my age, the federal government will have to tax 40 cents out of every dollar made in America just to pay the bills for the federal government at that time,” he said.
Ryan asked the Congressional Budget Office to determine what the tax rates would need to be to cover federal spending at that level.
“What they told me was really startling,” said Ryan. “They said that the current low rate, the 10-percent bracket for low-income Americans, would have to go up to 25 percent. The middle-income tax rate for middle-income Americans would have to go up to 66 percent, and the top rate, which is what small businesses pay, would have to go to 88 percent.
“Those would be the tax rates you would have to have if you wanted to tax your way out of this problem,” he said. “And if you did that, all experts conclude, you would literally crash the American economy.”
Ryan portrayed the long-term budget crisis he believes the country is now facing as a generational challenge.
“The legacy of this country has always been that each generation confronts the challenges before it so that the next generation is better off,” said Ryan. “In the past, we brought down the Iron Curtain and won the Cold War. We got through World War I. We got through World War II. We won the war on the Great Depression.
“The problem that we have right now—putting foreign policy aside and our fight with Islamic radicalism—is that we have an economic crisis, we have a fiscal crisis, and, that is, we will bankrupt this country, and the best century in America will be the last century,” he added.
“Unless we turn our fiscal situation around and pay off this debt, and change the way these programs work to a more sustainable path, the next generation will have inferior living standards,” said Ryan.
Ryan and his Budget Committee staff have developed a comprehensive plan for reforming federal taxing-and-spending policies that they believe will restore long-term solvency to the federal government.
Entitled “A Roadmap for America’s Future: A Plan to Solve America’s Long-Term Fiscal and Economic Crisis,” the plan has been introduced as legislation (H.R. 6110) in the current Congress.
Saudis to Christians: Get out!
More than a dozen Christians in Saudi Arabia who were accused by government officials of worshipping in their homes have been ordered deported.
According to a report from International Christian Concern, the Christians will be expelled tomorrow for one specific home worship service in Taif in April.
The deportation conflicts with the message stated just weeks earlier by Saudi King Abdullah, who called for interfaith dialogue and held a summit in Spain with a representatives from several major religions.
"Deporting Christians for worshipping in their private homes shows that King Abdullah's speech is mere rhetoric and his country is deceiving the international community about their desire for change and reconciliation," said Jeff King, the president of ICC. ....
Builder sent to jail for flood mitigation
An Idaho man is being sent to prison for meeting his local government's demands during a subdivision development to fix a drainage problem that periodically had left the town of Driggs flooded, after federal officials then said their regulations banned such work.
The dire situation for developer Lynn Moses is being publicized by Bryan Fischer, the chief of Idaho Values Alliance, who said the "crime" for which Moses has been sentenced to 18 months in prison was, "Protecting the city of Driggs from flooding."
Moses' lawyer, Blake Atkin of Salt Lake City, confirmed the circumstances of the case, explaining that although the federal government repeatedly has denied having jurisdiction over the work involved, an opinion shared by the U.S. Supreme Court, Moses nevertheless was convicted on charges relating to his work on the streambed of Teton Creek, an intermittent runoff channel that has water in it for probably eight weeks out of the year.
"Worse, Mr. Moses has been convicted of 'pollut(ing) a spawning area for Yellowstone cutthroat trout,' despite the fact that there have been no fish in this stream bed for more than 150 years," Fischer wrote. "[A resident] who has lived near the flood channel for 18 years, says he has never seen fish in this stream bed. And it's not even possible for the stream bed to serve as a spawning ground since it only has water two months out of every year in the first place." ....
Pact lifts threat of border fence from UT-Brownsville
BROWNSVILLE — A federal court agreement reached Thursday with the Department of Homeland Security removes the threat of an 18-foot fence splitting the campus of the University of Texas-Brownsville/Texas Southmost College.
Instead, the federal agency agreed to accept the bolstering of an existing fence along the university perimeter and use the site to test and study technological alternatives to a physical barrier to curb illegal immigration. ....
Lawyers for property owners said there were all sorts of issues to sort out, ranging from having to move water wells on the fence path to recouping lost revenue from white wing dove hunts.
Texas RioGrande Legal Aid attorney Robert Doggett said there was still an issue of whether Congress called for a fence "along the border," meaning it couldn't go on places a quarter-mile inland. The actual U.S.-Mexico border is the middle of the Rio Grande. ....
Therapist says Bruce Ivins was planning to kill
Jean Carol Duley, a psychotherapist who had treated Ivins for six months, told the court July 24 that the microbiologist had purchased a bulletproof vest and gun and boasted of roaming the streets hoping to stab someone.
Case against bin Laden driver goes to jury
Al Qaeda now recruiting, deploying female militants across Europe
This is now of a much greater scale than we have ever seen before. The problem is differentiating who is just fundraising or running websites, who is recruiting and who is a potential bomber," said one French intelligence specialist. ...
"The issue is a very high priority," one EU official said.
In Iraq, United States intelligence officers say that militants are marrying women then allowing them to be raped in the knowledge that the subsequent dishonour and rejection will make them easier to groom as bombers. The officers have also noted a strong incidence of women who have had relatives, civilians or militants, killed in the fighting turning to violence.
According to the source, militants "seek to recruit women with a brother, father or son already with the extremist groups".
