Murtha goes to bat for firm that broke export law

Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat known for delivering federal money to defense contractors in his district, is now going to bat for a constituent's company that was convicted last year of illegally exporting components of military equipment.

Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, wrote State Department officials in late June urging them to meet with the president of Electro-Glass Products, a 50-employee company that was convicted in April 2007 of illegally exporting components of night-vision goggles to a company in India. The Mammoth, Pa., firm has been sanctioned by the State Department, and Murtha argues that the action threatens to put the firm out of business. ....

New Nightmare Census Projections Reveal CHAIN MIGRATION Still Choking Our Future

By Roy Beck,

Well, more bad news from the Census Bureau.

Looking at today's trends in immigration and in immigrant fertility, the Bureau now says that its previous projection of 420 million people in the U.S. in 2050 is too low.

Instead, it now looks like we are headed to 439 million in 2050 -- if Congress doesn't finally start correcting the collossal immigration mistakes set in motion in 1965, accelerated in 1990 and snowballing because of the effects of Chain Migration.

At least four-fifths of the additional 135 million people crammed on top of the 304 million already in our communities will be the result of new immigrants and births to immigrants, according to Census data.

ELIMINATE CHAIN MIGRATION FOR A BETTER FUTURE

The good news is that we don't have to ruin the future quality of life of our children and grandchildren.

If Congress adopts the plan of action advocated by NumbersUSA, U.S. population in 2050 won't have to be anywhere near 400 million.

The key is to eliminate the Chain Migration categories that create endless chains of relatives of immigrants coming to America, without regard to their skills, education or their ability to serve the national interest. (Please continue to use our free faxing system to press your Members of Congress to co-sponsor bills to end Chain Migration and to carry out the other solutions to our immigration problems.) ....

Russia accused of dropping cluster bombs on Georgian civilians

Russian military aircraft have deployed controversial and indiscriminately deadly cluster bombs on civilian areas of Georgia according to an international rights group.

Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said today that it has obtained evidence proving that the weapons, which were banned by more than 100 countries in May, have killed at least 11 people so far during the conflict in the Caucasus.

Cluster bomb systems scatter small “bomblets” across a wide area and can prove deadly to civilians - particularly children - who pick up munitions which have failed to detonate on impact. The bombs effectively leave behind a trail of landmines. ....

Taliban wages war on aid groups

By Anand Gopal/CSM

* Not only that they blow up schools along with students and teachers, nothing is what they want:

Nineteen aid workers have been killed this year, ....

Iran training Iraqi hit squads: US military

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Iraqi assassination squads are being trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah for attacks in Iraq, a US military official said Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Shiite "special groups" were being trained in Qom, Tehran, Mashad and Ahvaz in assassination and bombing techniques to target specific Iraqis as well as US troops and Iraqi security forces.

"We have intelligence reports confirming Iranian-sponsored groups are planning to return back to Iraq and are targeting specific coalition forces, ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) and Iraqi citizens," the official said.

The intelligence, if it proves out, raises the prospect of a deadly new security challenge at a time when the US military is hoping to make further cuts in its forces.

The official, who spoke from Iraq, said the information has been turned over to the Iraqi government "and they are taking the lead in handling the situation."

The groups were being trained in "reconnaissance, small arms, small unit tactics, cellular operations, EFPs and other IEDs, RPGs and assassination techniques," the official said. ....

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Hezbollah ‘Five-Times’ Stronger Than It Was During Israeli War

In terms of weaponry, strategic and political positioning, and its ever-expanding international reach; Hezbollah is “five times more capable today,” than it was at the beginning of the July 2006 war with Israel: A fact, according to experts, that prompted Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to tell his troops during a Tuesday morning tour of positions along the Golan Heights, "It's not for nothing that we're training here." ....

The West's Islamist Infiltrators

By Daniel Pipes

Siddiqui, 36, is a Pakistani mother of three, an alumna of MIT, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Brandeis University. She is also accused of working for Al-Qaeda and was charged last week in New York City with attempting to kill American soldiers.

Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In particular, an estimated forty Al-Qaeda sympathizers or operatives have sought to penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies.

Such a well-placed infiltrator can wreck great damage explains a former CIA chief of counterintelligence, Michael Sulick: "In the war on terrorism, intelligence has replaced the Cold War's tanks and fighter planes as the primary weapon against an unseen enemy." Islamist moles, he argues, "could inflict far more damage to national security than Soviet spies," for the U.S. and Soviet Union never actually fought each other, whereas now, "our nation is at war."

Aafia Siddiqui is accused of working for Al-Qaeda.

Here are some American cases of attempted infiltration since 2001 that have been made public:

• The Air Force discharged Sadeq Naji Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, when his superiors learned of his pro-Al-Qaeda statements. Ahmed subsequently became a baggage screener at Detroit's Metro Airport, which terminated him for hiding his earlier discharge from the Air Force. He was convicted of making false statements and sentenced to eighteen months in jail.

• The Chicago Police Department fired Patricia Eng-Hussain just three days into her training on learning that her husband, Mohammad Azam Hussain, was arrested for being an active member of Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H), a Pakistani terrorist group.

• The Chicago Police Department also fired Arif Sulejmanovski, a supervising janitor at its 25^th District station after it learned his name was on a federal terrorist watch list of international terrorism suspects.

• Mohammad Alavi, an engineer at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, was arrested as he arrived on a flight from Iran, accused of taking computer access codes and software to Iran that provide details on the plant's control rooms and plant layout. He subsequently pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property.

• Nada Nadim Prouty pleaded guilty to multiple charges.

  Nada Nadim Prouty, a Lebanese immigrant who worked for both the FBI and CIA, pleaded guilty to charges of: fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship; accessing a federal computer system to unlawfully query information about her relatives and the terrorist organization Hizballah; and engaging in conspiracy to defraud the United States.

• Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani immigrant who filled a sensitive toxicologist position with the Environmental Protection Agency, pleaded guilty to fraud and was deported. World Net Daily explains that "investigators suspect espionage is probable, as she produced highly sensitive health-hazard documents for toxic compounds and chemical pesticides. Tehseen also was an expert in parasitology as it relates to public water systems."

• Weiss Rasool, 31, a Fairfax County police sergeant and Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty for checking police databases without authorization, thereby jeopardizing at least one federal terrorism investigation.

• Nadire P. Zenelaj, 32, a 911 emergency operator of Albanian origins, was charged with 232 felony counts of computer trespass for illegally searching New York State databases, including at least one person on the FBI's terrorist watch list.

Three other cases are less clear. The Transportation Security Administration fired Bassam Khalaf, 21, a Texan of Christian Palestinian origins, as an airport baggage screener because lyrics on his music CD, Terror Alert, applaud the 9/11 attacks. FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz "showed a pattern of pro-Islamist behavior," according to author Paul Sperry, that may have helped acquit Sami Al-Arian of terrorism charges. The Pentagon cleared Hesham Islam, an Egyptian immigrant, former U.S. Navy commander, and special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, but major questions remain about his biography and his outlook.

Other Western countries too - Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom - have been subject to infiltration efforts. (For details, see my weblog entry, "Islamists Penetrate Western Security.")

This record prompts one to wonder what catastrophe must occur before government agencies, some of which have banished the words "Islam" and "jihad," seriously confront their internal threat?

Westerners are indebted to Muslim agents like Fred Ghussin and "Kamil Pasha" who have been critical to fighting terrorism. That said, I stand by my 2003 statement that "There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism."

20 Muslim nations ban U.S. religious workers

A new congressional study has found that more than 20 Muslim nations deny entry to American and other foreign religious workers, WND has learned, even as the U.S. State Department grants entry to hundreds of clerics from their countries each year.

The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and most other Middle Eastern countries still refuse to offer religious visas, and deny entry to U.S. clergy as official policy, according to a report by the Law Library of Congress, the foreign legal research arm of the U.S. Congress. In a shocker, U.S. allies Afghanistan and Iraq also made the list of religious refuseniks.

"Of this group, the vast majority constitute Arab or Muslim states," said Wendy Zeldin, senior legal research analyst for the Library of Congress.

"Since Islam prohibits proselytism by other religions, foreign religious workers will in effect be denied entry to conduct religious work," Zeldin wrote in the three-page report, a copy of which was obtained by WND.

At the same time, Washington routinely issues R-1 religious visas to clerics from the Middle East, including jihadi hotbeds Saudi Arabia and Egypt, even though an alarming number of foreign imams have been suspects in terrorism investigations since 9/11.

The Department of Homeland Security, in fact, considers visiting imams as nonthreatening as Buddhist monks. Screening procedures call for both visitors to be treated as the same level of security risk at the border.

Also, R-2 visas are routinely granted to relatives of foreign imams. ....