Israel phones in warning to flee Gaza Strip strikes

By Abraham Rabinovich in Jerusalem

RESIDENTS at certain addresses in the Gaza Strip have been receiving unusual phone calls since the Israeli air assault began on Saturday - a request that they and their families leave their homes as soon as possible for their own safety.

More unusual than the recorded message is the Arabic-speaking caller, who identifies himself as being from the Israeli defence forces, The Australian reports.

Dipping into their bag of tricks for the updated Gaza telephone numbers, Israel's intelligence services are warning Palestinian civilians in Gaza living close to Hamas facilities that they may be hurt unless they distance themselves from those targets.

In some cases, the warning comes not by telephone but from leaflets dropped from aircraft on selected districts.

Such warnings clearly eliminate the element of surprise, but for Israel it is of cardinal importance to minimise civilian casualties, and not just for humanitarian reasons.

The principal calculation is fear that a stray bomb hitting a school or any collection of innocent civilians could bring down the wrath of the international community on Israel, as has happened more than once in the past, and force it to halt its campaign before it has achieved its objectives.

Israel Radio reported that leaflets had been dropped at the beginning of the operation in the Rafah area near the border with Egypt, warning residents that the tunnels to Egypt through which weapons and civilian products were smuggled would be bombed.

Many of the residents, mostly youths, are employed in the tunnels. Initial reports said two people were killed when the tunnels were bombed.

Gaza is one of the most densely built-up areas in the world, making it extremely difficult to pinpoint targets without collateral damage.

Israeli officials say that the small percentage of civilians killed so far is due to precise intelligence regarding the location of Hamas targets and accurate bombing and rocketing.

Infectious Air Travelers Watch List Flawed But Working

Two of 33 persons on 'Do Not Board' list are known to have attempted to evade US air travel restriction.

Reports Highlight Emergency Preparedness Crisis

by Anthony L. Kimery

Three new reports reinforce what emergency public health preparedness authorities have been sounding alarms about for the last half-decade. And that is emergency care and individual preparedness for emergencies has continued to worsen—despite the billions that have been spent on preparedness and efforts to emphasize individual disaster readiness.

.... Federal, state and private sector public health authorities meanwhile have been warning that the nation's emergency health care system is unprepared for such a mass casualty attack.

The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) 2009 Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine concluded that “the emergency care system in the United States is in serious condition, with numerous states facing critical problems.”

The group stated that its “overall grade for the nation is C-, with 90 percent of the states earning mediocre or near-failing grades.”

“We’ve been saying for years that trauma and EDs [Emergency Departments] are in a worsening crisis,” said National Foundation for Trauma Care (NFTC) Executive Director Connie Potter.

HSToday first reported on the crisis in trauma care in its nationally recognized investigative report, The Trauma in America’s Trauma Care. HSToday.us followed up last May with a two-part series, The Crisis in Trauma, ER Care, and, Crisis in Mass Casualty Medical Care.

ACEP’s annual report card is the most comprehensive assessment of the emergency care environment across the country. For the last several years, the scores it’s given states and the federal government have steadily declined.

“The emergency care system in the United States remains in serious condition, with numerous states facing critical problems. That is the disturbing but unmistakable finding,” declared ACEP about its objective assessment of emergency care in the United States.

“The results of the 2009 report card present a picture of an emergency care system fraught with significant challenges and under more stress than ever before,” the association’s report stated. “The overall grade for the nation across all five categories is a C-.

“This low grade is particularly reflective of the poor score in access to emergency care (D-). Because of its direct impact on emergency services and capacity for patient care, this category of indicators accounts for 30 percent of the report card grade, so the poor score is especially relevant. This category also incorporates many of the issues that states have identified as their top areas of concern,” which are:

• Boarding of patients in emergency departments and hospital crowding;
• Lack of adequate access to on-call specialists;
• Limited access to primary care services;
• Shortages of emergency physicians and nurses;
• Ambulance diversion;
• Inadequate reimbursement from public and private insurers, and;
• High rates of uninsured individuals

Meanwhile, on December 9 the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released the sixth annual Ready or Not? Protecting the Public's Health from Diseases, Disasters, and Bioterrorism report, which found “that progress made to better protect the country from disease outbreaks, natural disasters and bioterrorism is now at risk, due to budget cuts and the economic crisis.”

The report concluded that major gaps remain in many critical areas of preparedness, including hospital surge capacity for mass casualty and catastrophic crises, rapid disease detection and food safety.

The surge capacity of the nation’s hospitals is vital to being able to care for mass casualties from a catastrophic terrorist attack or major natural disaster. However, as the July 2008 HSToday report, Seeking to Surge, detailed, national hospital surge capacity is below par, with a great many hospitals already operating at full capacity incapable of adequately coping with a sudden influx of patients. HSToday earlier explored the problems in emergency care preparedness in the report, Emergency Response: Intensive Care Needed.....

Hugging Shari'a Finance at the Fed

By Alyssa A. Lappen

The first market day after President-elect Obama announced plans to appoint Federal Reserve Bank of New York president Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, U.S. equities rose 6.5%. Pundits praised his experience handling crises and understanding of the troubled economy. But possibly, the market hoopla was premature, or even unwarranted. Some analysts seek his retirement.

As turmoil built, Geithner criticized Wall Street's self-regulatory system, negative incentives and market forces, sought tighter supervision and berated insufficient “derivative securities” regulation and “credit-default” swaps allowing investors to “insure” against loses---only to fail. The Treasury Department's former attaché to the International Monetary Fund had overseen U.S. responses to the 1990s Mexican, Indonesian and Korean bailouts. But at the Fed, Geithner did not use regulatory powers to check abuses, or advocate for more regulation, impartial supervision or new laws. He even concluded that markets were improving---and after Bear Stearns' collapse confessed, nobody “understands [the causes] yet.”

Worst of all, since Nov. 2003, Geithner let dangerous new Islamic and shari'a-based securities, markets and financial institutions gain business currency---despite the Fed's role in U.S. monetary policy, currency distribution, government securities markets, legal supervision, regulatory enforcement, bank and capital markets investigation, foreign accounts and a payments mechanism handling over $4 trillion daily in funds and securities transfers. Not to mention Fed officials' admitted lack of understanding.

On July 1, 2004, eight months after Geithner assumed command, the New York Fed hosted Asim Ghanfoor (sic), AG Group founder and managing director, to address its Seventh Annual Global Economic Forum on “ABCs of Islamic Financing” and Islam's increasing global financial role. A month later, a href="http://www.globalterroralert.com/faisalgillletter.pdf">Senators Charles Grassley and John Kyl identified Ghafoor as a representative of Boston's terror-funding Boston's Care International, the Global Relief Foundation (GRF) and the Al Harimain Islamic Foundation, which the U.S. Treasury specially designated a terrorist organization in September 2004 and again in June 2008. Given Ghafoor's connections, how could the Fed have featured him, much less warmly accepted Islamic finance?

In fairness, the New York Fed began authorizing obscure shari'a banking institutions, structured shari'a issues, and opaque Islamic securities trading long before Geithner arrived. “Islamic bankers have been quite ingenious in developing financial transactions that suit their needs,” New York Fed first vice president Ernest T. Patrikis told an Islamic Finance conference in May 1996. “We bank supervisors, too, can be ingenious and will want to work with any of you should you decide that you want to engage in Islamic banking” in the U.S.

The dangers of Islamic finance should have been apparent. From 1996 on, all 12 Federal Reserve banks received, and were charged to enforce many Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control circulars designating Islamic groups and banks as terrorist-financing institutions, organizations and individuals. In 1998, OFAC warned the Fed against transactions with Osama bin Laden and his affiliates, in 1999 froze Taliban assets, in 2002 reminded banks to check customers against known terrorist lists and in 2003 warned against trading with any unnamed counter-party.

Meanwhile, had the Fed only noticed, there were warning signs elsewhere too. In 1999, Saudi scholar Mohammad Nejatullah Siddiqi proposed at Harvard that banning interest would “cure the ills of contemporary finance,” “create a safer, saner financial world,” incorporate the “institution of waqf [Islamic trust]” in economics and create “morally inspired” behavior. In 2001, Siddiqi openly labeled shari'a finance a revolution-driver---an “universal endeavor” to replace “excesses of capitalism.”

Alarm bells should have gone off at a New York Fed event on Nov. 21, 2002, furthermore, where shari'a banking proponent Wafiq Fannoun described Islam as “Peace through submission to Allah (God), however, “revelation-based [the Qur'an, Hadith] ... complete way of life” --- that is, a system of religious law proscribed by the U.S. Constitution from inclusion in secular legislation or regulatory systems. Equally at odds with Constitutional law and Western capitalism are other Islamic notions he described---namely that Allah is both creator and “owner” of all material things, and that “individuals” may not possess “natural resources important to society.” as “alternative financing for Muslims” and others recognizing individual ownership rights.

True, most of that happened before Geithner ran the New York Fed. But after he took the helm in November 2003, the bank missed several still more critical red flags on Islamic banking.

First came Basel II Capital Accord, supposedly designed to strengthen the “regulatory capital framework” for big international banks. Authorities increasingly expected to trust banks to internally assess their own credit and operational risks. However, in July 2004 Switzerland's Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reported, 53% of Middle Eastern bank supervisory staffs lacked the necessary training to meet Basel II's December 2007 deadline. Middle Eastern banks originated and still predominate in Islamic banking. Nevertheless, by 2007, they still needed historical data to fashion reliable risk models but instead counted on “heavy” collateral and “exceptional” economic conditions to eliminate risks.

Islamic institutions had manufactured “special purpose entities” (SPEs)---renamed, “special-purpose vehicles (SPVs)”--- such as coincidentally helped destroy Enron. These legal devices restructured “interest-bearing debt, collecting interest [as] rent or [a] price mark-up,” Rice University Islamic economics chairman Mahmoud el-Gamal warned in May 2007. “Interest-based” Islamic finance equaled “shari'a arbitrage,” concerned only “religious identity” and merely employed Western securitization methods to transform liquid, traceable cash flows from interest-bearing debt into illiquid, opaque assets.

Shari'a banking, though, had far fewer regulatory and accounting protections than sub-prime mortgages---and like “portfolio insurance” in 1987, mortgage-backed bonds in 1994, and sub-prime mortgages in 2008, could also cause huge market declines. Islamic banking purveyors admitted shari'a regulations could “override commercial decisions;” didn't “standardize” documentation; and used complex “inter-creditor agreements” and “off-balance sheet financing.”

Even hosting hosting Islamic financier Asim Ghafoor, a representative to three terror-funding organizations, on July 1, 2004 apparently gave no one inside Geithner's Fed reason to pause from its rush to further accommodate shari'a banking.

In March 2005, New York Fed general counsel Thomas C. Baxter Jr. asserted the Constitutional “wall of separation between church and state” Thomas Jefferson had described was “not absolute.” Chief Justice Warren Burger had in 1984 suggested that the Constitution “affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions,” Baxter told an Islamic financial industry “Legal Issues” seminar. “[S]ecular law should ... accommodate differing religious practices,” he indicated, apparently even if that meant specially excepting Islamic banking from secular laws and regulations.

In April 2005, New York Fed executive vice president William Rutledge admitted that the bank was “in no position to take a stance on shari'a interpretation.” He also claimed the bank would hold Islamic finance to “the same high licensing and supervision standards” as conventional banks.

Despite the New York Fed's role as a legal supervisor of Islamic banking, neither Rutledge nor Geithner noticed, however, that shari'a banking, a 20th century “tradition” invented by the Muslim Brotherhood, can't be severed from Islamic law---statutes that Mohammed initiated, which caliphs, scholars and jurists developed over the last 1,400 years. They hold that shari'a grants Muslims (the ummah) supremacy over all others---along with all land and property to hold in trust for Allah. Thus as Fannoun effectively told the Fed in Nov. 2002, land or property, once conquered or acquired by Muslims (or for Allah), can't generally revert to their original owners. Shari'a commands Muslims to wage jihad warfare until they subdue all “infidels” under universal Muslim rule, as Ibn Khaldun avowed in the Muqaddimah (trans., Franz Rosenthal, Princeton Univ. Press, 9th printing, 1989, p. 183).

Confiscating possessions from non-believers exacts “revenge,” wrote jurist Abul Hasan al Mawardi (d. 1058). Qur'an 57:2 argued, “To Him belongs all dominions of the heavens and earth.” Qur'an 59:7 echoed, “That which Allah giveth as spoil [war booty] unto his Messenger…” Allah authorized 2nd Islamic Caliph, Umar Ibn Khattab, to confiscate property by force, fulfilling an Islamic trust, or ruling under Allah’s law. It was thereby just to take anything from nonbelievers, (The Laws of Islamic Governance, Taha Publishing, 1996, pp. 207-251) including all territories Islam ever controlled.

Apparently, Fed officials also neglected to investigate the alliances and beliefs of shari'a advisors and their affiliates in the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) and Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB) standards agencies.

The shari'a-based Islamic Development Bank established the AAOIFI in 1990 to set Islamic finance standards. Its trustees include executives of Kuwait Finance House, Saudi Arabia's Dallah al Baraka Group and al-Rajhi Banking & Investment Corporation---all implicated in al-Qa’ida and other terror-funding---and Sudanese (and until recently Iranian) officials, both U.S. Treasury-sanctioned countries.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir in 2002 christened IFSB “a universal Islamic banking system” and “a jihad worth pursuing….” Its board members include the terror-funding Iranian, Sudanese and Syrian central banks and Palestinian Monetary Authority.

Yusuf Qaradawi, an U.S.-designated foreign terrorist barred entry since 1999 for example, supports wife-beating, suicide bombings, murder of American military forces and female suicide “martyr operations.” A large shareholder of Al Taqwa Bank, Qaradawi also chairs the recently designated terrorist-funding Union of Good “charity,” Qatar National Bank, its al-Islami subsidiary, Qatar Islamic Bank, and Qatar International Islamic Bank---and follows AAOIFI standards he helped create.

Similarly, Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes (DJIM) shari'a board uses “stringent and published” methods to determine “compliance of index-eligible companies.” But its industry screens, financial ratios and biographies omit advisors’ affiliations or beliefs. Dow Jones Citigroup Sukuk Index (DJCSI)’s shari'a board certifies Islamic asset-backed bonds if structures meet “AAOIFI standards” and shari'a principles, but don't mention AAOIFI history or governance.

Until July 2008, shari'a banks, the Dow Jones Islamic Index board and an North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) fund also employed a 20-year veteran of Pakistan’s Shari'a Supreme Court, former judge Taqi Usmani, who taught at the Taliban spawning ground, Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi, headed the AAOIFI religious board, endorsed suicide bombing, and in 2007 advised U.K. Muslims to impose shari'a when their numbers suffice.

Shari'a finance advisor Muslim Brother Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo advised Pakistan's tyrannical Zia ul-Haq from 1981 to 1984, and ran the Virginia Islamic Saudi Academy educational program cited in 2008 for using hateful Islamic texts. Trained at Karachi's terror-espousing Jamia Al Alomia Al Islamia, he served the Muslim Brotherhood International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and from 1989, was secretary to the MB's Fiqh Council of North America.

Perhaps Treasury Secretary-designate Geithner seriously meant to keep Rutledge's promise to grant Islamic financiers no special favors. But allowing shari'a finance to exist at all is itself a special favor.

Moreover, on November 23, 2008 Geithner, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke agreed to add another $20 billion taxpayer-gilded bailout to Citibank's previous $25 billion bailout---and offer $306 billion in new loans to cover Citi's losses on soured real estate debts and securities.

Only three days earlier Citigroup uber-shareolder Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a godfather of Islamic finance, had announced plans to up his stake in America's largest (failing and “underpriced”) bank from 4% to 5%. On March 20, 2006, the Saudi Kingdom Holding Co. CEO was “honored for humanitarian contribution to Islam” at a “glittering gala to celebrate excellence in Islamic Finance” that also featured terror-financier and Dallah al-Baraka founder and president Saleh Abdullah Kamel.

‘Bloodthirsty Jews Brutally Murder Hamas Babies’

by Rick Moran

My traffic has been down this holiday season so I thought a headline like the one above might draw the curious – and at least some liberals and far right wackos who think it an accurate statement and wish to read something with which they agree.

Sorry to disappoint, but the truth is a lot less prosaic. The fact is, even a lot of Palestinian sympathizers are wondering what the heck Hamas was thinking. The terrorists launched hundreds of rockets at Israel, trying to kill babies – hoping to kill babies – and as is their right under the UN Charter, the Jewish state is choosing to defend itself.

Even the “Blame Israel First” crowd is acknowledging these facts. So what’s the beef? Incredibly, it seems that the quality of Israel’s arms and their supremely competent air force is the problem. They are hitting back and it’s just not fair.....

Researchers unlock secrets of 1918 flu pandemic

Scenic Pakistani valley falls to Taliban militants

By NAHAL TOOSI

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Taliban militants are beheading and burning their way through Pakistan's picturesque Swat Valley, and residents say the insurgents now control most of the mountainous region outside the lawless tribal areas where jihadists thrive.

The deteriorating situation in the former tourist haven comes despite an army offensive that began in 2007 and an attempted peace deal. It is especially worrisome to Pakistani officials because the valley lies away from the areas where al-Qaida and Taliban militants have traditionally operated and where the military is staging a separate offensive.

"You can't imagine how bad it is," said Muzaffar ul-Mulk, a federal lawmaker whose home in Swat was attacked by bomb-toting assailants in mid-December, weeks after he left. "It's worse day by day."

The Taliban activity in northwest Pakistan also comes as the country shifts forces east to the Indian border because of tensions over last month's terrorist attacks in Mumbai, potentially giving insurgents more space to maneuver along the Afghan frontier.

Militants began preying on Swat's lush mountain ranges about two years ago, and it is now too dangerous for foreign and Pakistani journalists to visit. Interviews with residents, lawmakers and officials who have fled the region paint a dire picture.

A suicide blast killed 40 people Sunday at a polling station in Buner, an area bordering Swat that had been relatively peaceful. The attack underscored fears that even so-called "settled" regions presumptively under government control are increasingly unsafe.

The 3,500-square-mile Swat Valley lies less than 100 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

A senior government official said he feared there could be a spillover effect if the government lost control of Swat and allowed the insurgency to infect other areas. Like nearly everyone interviewed, the official requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by militants.

Officials estimate that up to a third of Swat's 1.5 million people have left the area. Salah-ud-Din, who oversees relief efforts in Swat for the International Committee of the Red Cross, estimated that 80 percent of the valley is now under Taliban control.

Swat's militants are led by Maulana Fazlullah, a cleric who rose to prominence through radio broadcasts demanding the imposition of a harsh brand of Islamic law. His appeal tapped into widespread frustration with the area's inefficient judicial system.

Most of the insurgents are easy to spot with long hair, beards, rifles, camouflage vests and running shoes. They number at most 2,000, according to people who were interviewed.

In some places, just a handful of insurgents can control a village. They rule by fear: beheading government sympathizers, blowing up bridges and demanding women wear all-encompassing burqas.

They have also set up a parallel administration with courts, taxes, patrols and checkpoints, according to lawmakers and officials. And they are suspected of burning scores of girls' schools.

In mid-December, Taliban fighters killed a young member of a Sufi-influenced Muslim group who had tried to raise a militia against them. The militants later dug up Pir Samiullah's corpse and hung it for two days in a village square — partly to prove to his followers that he was not a superhuman saint, a security official said on condition of anonymity.

A lawmaker and the senior Swat government official said business and landowners had been told to give two-thirds of their income to the militants. Some local media reported last week that the militants have pronounced a ban on female education effective in mid-January.

Several people interviewed said the regional government made a mistake in May when it struck a peace deal with the militants. The agreement fell apart within two months but let the insurgents regroup.

The Swat insurgency also includes Afghan and other fighters from outside the valley, security officials said.

Any movement of Pakistani troops from the Swat Valley and tribal areas to the Indian border will concern the United States and other Western countries, which want Pakistan to focus on the al-Qaida threat near Afghanistan.

On Friday, Pakistani intelligence officials said thousands of troops were being shifted toward the border with India, which blames Pakistani militants for terrorist attacks in Mumbai last month that killed 164 people. But there has been no sign yet of a major buildup near India.

"The terrorists' aim in Mumbai was precisely this — to get the Pakistani army to withdraw from the western border and mount operations on the east," said Ahmed Rashid, a journalist and author who has written extensively about militancy in the region.

"The terrorists are not going to be sitting still. They are not going to be adhering to any sort of cease-fire while the army takes on the Indian threat. They are going to occupy the vacuum the army will create."

Residents and officials from the Swat Valley were critical of the army offensive there, saying troops appeared to be confined to their posts and often killed civilians when firing artillery at suspected militant targets.

The military has deployed some 100,000 troops through the northwest.

A government official familiar with security issues estimated that some 10,000 paramilitary and army troops had killed 300 to 400 militants in Swat since 2007, while about 130 troops were killed. Authorities have not released details of civilian casualties, and it was unclear if they were even being tallied.

The official, who insisted on anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, disputed assertions that militants had overrun the valley, but said a spotty supply line was hampering operations. He said the army had to man some Swat police stations because the police force there had been decimated by desertions and militant killings.

A Swat militant boasted that "we are doing our activities wherever we want, and the army is confined to their living places."

"They cannot move independently like us," said the man, who was reached over the phone and gave his name as Muzaffarul Haq. He claimed the Swat militants had no al-Qaida or foreign connections, but that they supported all groups that shared the goal of imposing Islamic law.

"With the grace of Allah, there is no dearth of funds, weapons or rations," he said. "Our women are providing cooked food for those who are struggling in Allah's path. Our children are getting prepared for jihad."

___

Associated Press writers Zarar Khan in Islamabad and Riaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.

Are Americans safe from U.S. mosques?

(Compiler's note: A must read)

By Art Moore

Detroit mosque

When the five Muslims convicted this month of plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Fort Dix were charged, the New Jersey mosque where four of the men worshipped reacted to negative publicity by holding an "emergency town hall meeting" to calm neighbors and persuade Americans that Islam poses no threat.

But having investigated the Islamic Center of South Jersey one year ago, Middle East expert and former Air Force special agent Dave Gaubatz insists not only is the mosque a threat to national security, it represents a pattern that has prompted him to launch a massive project to systematically classify every known mosque in the U.S.

Mapping Shariah in America: Knowing the Enemy seeks by the end of next year to document in a rigorous, scientific fashion the controversial premise that the more a mosque or community of Muslims adheres to Shariah, or Islamic law, the greater its threat to U.S. national security.

"That's exactly, that's what the data are showing," Gaubatz told WND, who has charted about 100 of the estimated 2,300 mosques his team has identified across the country. "The more adherent you are to Shariah, the more likely you are going to find the material to back that up at the mosque."

No one else is doing this work in the United States – not the FBI, not the police, not the Department of Homeland Security. You can support the work of the Mapping Sharia Project here.

For the observant Muslim, Islamic law is an all-encompassing system that dictates every aspect of life, from food and clothing to the duty to participate in making the religion dominant over the entire world.

At the Islamic Center of South Jersey in Palmyra, where three of the Muslims in the Fort Dix case regularly worshipped and a fourth prayed a few times, Gaubatz found a strict, Shariah-adherent leadership that eagerly distributed jihadist materials supportive of seminal Shariah proponents such as Sayid Abul Maududi, the founder of the radical Pakistani party Jamaat-e-Islami, and Syed Qutb, whose ideas shaped al-Qaida

"What is being overlooked in the Fort Dix case is where the suspects worshipped," he said. "Were they Shariah adherent? Who is the imam, what materials were at the mosque? They came up with the idea to attack Fort Dix for some reason. How and why?"

Using a sophisticated matrix developed by Gaubatz and his colleagues, including a former jihadist, the Jersey mosque was ranked an 8, with 10 being the greatest threat and 1 the lowest.

In the study, Gaubatz and his team – which includes people of different faiths and nationalities, including Muslims – employ 62 different factors to assess a mosque's compliance to Shariah.

Dave Gaubatz with Iraqi child

"We don't rely on talking to anyone about anything, because if we did, you're going to get some people giving you half-answers and some not answering at all," he said.

The focus is on the observed facts, he said, such as how many of the women wear a hijab, how many wear Western-style clothing and the type of threads in an imam's garment.

The team recognizes the distinctions between the Shiite branch of Islam and the four primary schools of thought within the Sunni branch. But Gaubatz says those factors are not scored in the study. The premise is that all streams and sects of Islam recognize a form of Shariah. His primary concern, for the purpose of assessing the threat to the U.S., is the mosque's degree of adherence.

Of interest to most Americans, of course, is the threat of violent jihad. But Gaubatz notes there are two other forms of jihad at work in the U.S. to advance Islam, the pen and the tongue.

"We focus too much on why we haven't had an attack since 2001 in the United States, because the pen and the tongue right now are winning here," Gaubatz said. "Why would you go for number three, the physical jihad, if you're already achieving goals one and two?

Strict adherence

The significance of the Mapping Shariah project is underscored in the conflicting message to the public by a trustee at the Islamic Center of South Jersey, Ismail Badat, who insisted Muslims in the U.S. promote only peace.

Badat said the purpose of the emergency town hall meeting in the wake of the Fort Dix charges in May 2007 was "to clarify for our American friends and neighbors the fundamental beliefs, teachings and practices of Islam, and to make it clear that Muslims here, who are also Americans, do not in any way sanction the forms of violent and offensive behavior which have recently attained prominence in the media."

But Gaubatz found evidence to the contrary not only at the New Jersey mosque but at mosques related to other high-profile cases.

He personally conducted the mapping of the mosque tied to the Muslim who went on a shooting rampage at Salt Lake City's Trolley Square mall last year, and he found it ranked high on his scale.

In Blacksburg, Va., Gaubatz met the imam who was asked to pray at the nationally televised service for slain students at Virginia Tech last year and discovered he leads a Shariah-compliant mosque that backs the genocidal Islamist regime in Sudan.

The imam clearly did not like Virginia Tech, Gaubatz said, and handed him material by Maududi and the Saudi regime, which spends billions of dollars spreading the strict Wahhibist interpretation of Islam around the world.

"He said, if I want to be pure Muslim, and a true Muslim, study these. Look at these," Gaubatz said.

Gaubatz and his team gave its highest rating, a 10, to the Brooklyn mosque of Imam Siraj Wahhaj.

Wahhaj, a former board member of the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, "is in my opinion the most dangerous person in the U.S. in regards to our national security," Gaubatz said.

He has documented Wahhaj declaring in a lecture, "Muslims in America are the most strategically placed Muslims in the world. The U.S. government can't bomb them."

Gaubatz said his week-long assessment of Wahhaj's mosque also uncovered violent material calling for the death of law enforcement officers and instructing Muslims who commit a crime how to go underground.

Wahhaj also has called for recruiting gang members to help carry out jihad.

"Give them Islam, then send them back to the streets with UZIs," the imam said, according to Gaubatz.

Gaubatz contends many Islamic groups and organizations take on a legal and peaceful veneer in English-speaking settings but often preach quietly in Arabic, Farsi and Urdu "a very violent and anti-American jihad."

Virtually all Islamic leaders in the U.S. have been particularly careful since the 9/11 attacks about what they say publicly, Gaubatz said. But many Shariah-compliant mosques and schools distribute materials supporting or calling for violent jihad. In a widely distributed DVD, for example, an Islamic scholar in the U.S., Ahmad Sakr, declares in a pre-2001 sermon, "Do not follow the laws of the U.S. Constitution, do not follow the congressmen and other U.S. leaders, they will all go to hell, follow Shariah law."

Gaubatz pointed out Wahhaj sells old, pre-2001 lectures.

"He says nothing off-line in any of his lectures now," said Gaubatz. "But he says if you want to understand pure Islam, to do the right thing, this is what you do, you take from this one (lecture) and this one and this one – and they are all prior to 2001."

Gaubatz has spent a considerable amount of his time investigating CAIR, which has enjoyed access to the White House, the State Department, Homeland Security and other branches of government despite evidence of its ties to Hamas and other radical groups.

Gaubatz noted CAIR has a campaign to put Shariah-promoting materials into American libraries.

"I've gone to several hundred public libraries and this material is in there," he said. "People don't realize what it is until you start looking at the author, and it came from Saudi Arabia, sent to CAIR. And CAIR is putting it into our public libraries."

As WND reported, Gaubatz publicly served CAIR leaders in November with legal notice of a lawsuit on behalf of Muslims who claim the group victimized them in a fraud scheme involving a lawyer who is unqualified to practice.

Gaubatz, a U.S. State Department-trained Arabic linguist and counter-terrorism specialist, has more than two decades of experience in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan and Iraq. He was deployed to Nasiriyah, Iraq, in 2003, where he collected intelligence on weapons of mass destruction and espionage.

The mapping project's administrator and legal adviser, David Yerushalmi, is an expert on Islamic law and its intersection with Islamic terrorism and national security. He also serves as general counsel and policy adviser to the Center for Security Policy, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank headed by Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan-administration official.

The mapping project is sponsored by a group formally established by Yerushalmi in January 2006, the Society of Americans for National Existence, or SANE.

Robert J. Loewenberg, the project's senior police director, is the founder and president of the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies, a Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem-based think tank specializing in geo-strategic, security and political analysis on Western relations with the Middle and Near East, and the former Soviet Union.

Minimizing the threat

Gaubatz points out federal authorities have attempted to track financial transactions between U.S. Muslims and foreign terrorist entities, but he says there is no evidence that a systematic study like Mapping Shariah has been carried out.

His website explains: "If we do not know the organizational structures of these organizations and who provides the religious and political instruction, we will never have a satisfactory picture of the threat from jihad."

Already, according to Gaubatz, his team has received positive feedback from local law enforcement authorities. The ultimate aim, he said, is to "assist law enforcement in focusing their manpower and resources to the areas with the highest ratings."

FBI agents on the ground have been positive, he said, but once the information "gets up the chain, then it just disappears."

"There's no action taken. It becomes political," Gaubatz said.

Gaubatz said his group has been told by many sympathetic Muslims that to minimize the threat of another attack, authorities should ask foreigners seeking entry into the U.S. if they agree with Shariah.

"If they agree, according to the Muslims who have told us this, then they should probably not even be given entry here," he said.

"It's so easy. You can't agree with Shariah law and say that you are peaceful," Gaubatz continued. "You can't do it. Now there are Muslims in the United States who do. They say, we don't agree with Shariah law, we don't want Shariah law. But then, to the pure Muslim, they are not Muslim."

Some Muslims want to reform Islam, he said, and retain only peaceful elements.

"That's fine, but then you are not pure Muslim," Gaubatz said.

Similar to Christianity or Judaism, he argued, you can decide to adhere to some of the Ten Commandments and reject others, and form a religion based on that belief, but it's not Christianity or Judaism.

"What we are looking at is pure Islam," he said. "That's where you have strict adherence to all factors of Shariah."

The plan

Gaubatz and his team have completed the first two phases of the project: to identify all of the known mosques, Islamic day schools, political organizations and social clubs in the U.S., and to conduct a pilot to test field protocols, methodology and assumptions.

Phase Three is to identify the strain of Shariah taught or preached at each locale and the adherence to Shariah by the leadership and the members. Phase Four will incorporate the data into a central data base and apply link and data analysis technology, which permits a thorough analysis of interrelationships. Phase Five is an annual data update and re-analysis.

Gaubatz said nobody really knows exactly where all the mosques are, because some move from month to month, and the majority are in residential areas, in homes. The contact number often is the cellphone of the person who happens to be leading at the time.

No one else is doing this work in the United States – not the FBI, not the police, not the Department of Homeland Security. You can support the work of the Mapping Sharia Project here.

Holiday Sales Drop to Force Bankruptcies, Closings (Update4)

Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. retailers face a wave of store closings, bankruptcies and takeovers starting next month as holiday sales are shaping up to be the worst in 40 years.

Retailers may close 73,000 stores in the first half of 2009, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Talbots Inc. and Sears Holdings Corp. are among chains shuttering underperforming locations. ....

As if Things Weren't Bad Enough, Russian Professor Predicts End of U.S.

By ANDREW OSBORN

MOSCOW -- For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument -- that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S. -- very seriously. Now he's found an eager audience: Russian state media.

Igor Panarin

In recent weeks, he's been interviewed as much as twice a day about his predictions. "It's a record," says Prof. Panarin. "But I think the attention is going to grow even stronger."

Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry's academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russia relations.

But it's his bleak forecast for the U.S. that is music to the ears of the Kremlin, which in recent years has blamed Washington for everything from instability in the Middle East to the global financial crisis. Mr. Panarin's views also fit neatly with the Kremlin's narrative that Russia is returning to its rightful place on the world stage after the weakness of the 1990s, when many feared that the country would go economically and politically bankrupt and break into separate territories.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

"There's a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur," he says. "One could rejoice in that process," he adds, poker-faced. "But if we're talking reasonably, it's not the best scenario -- for Russia." Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces -- with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

In addition to increasing coverage in state media, which are tightly controlled by the Kremlin, Mr. Panarin's ideas are now being widely discussed among local experts. He presented his theory at a recent roundtable discussion at the Foreign Ministry. The country's top international relations school has hosted him as a keynote speaker. During an appearance on the state TV channel Rossiya, the station cut between his comments and TV footage of lines at soup kitchens and crowds of homeless people in the U.S. The professor has also been featured on the Kremlin's English-language propaganda channel, Russia Today.

Mr. Panarin's apocalyptic vision "reflects a very pronounced degree of anti-Americanism in Russia today," says Vladimir Pozner, a prominent TV journalist in Russia. "It's much stronger than it was in the Soviet Union."

Mr. Pozner and other Russian commentators and experts on the U.S. dismiss Mr. Panarin's predictions. "Crazy ideas are not usually discussed by serious people," says Sergei Rogov, director of the government-run Institute for U.S. and Canadian Studies, who thinks Mr. Panarin's theories don't hold water.

Mr. Panarin's résumé includes many years in the Soviet KGB, an experience shared by other top Russian officials. His office, in downtown Moscow, shows his national pride, with pennants on the wall bearing the emblem of the FSB, the KGB's successor agency. It is also full of statuettes of eagles; a double-headed eagle was the symbol of czarist Russia.

The professor says he began his career in the KGB in 1976. In post-Soviet Russia, he got a doctorate in political science, studied U.S. economics, and worked for FAPSI, then the Russian equivalent of the U.S. National Security Agency. He says he did strategy forecasts for then-President Boris Yeltsin, adding that the details are "classified."

In September 1998, he attended a conference in Linz, Austria, devoted to information warfare, the use of data to get an edge over a rival. It was there, in front of 400 fellow delegates, that he first presented his theory about the collapse of the U.S. in 2010.

"When I pushed the button on my computer and the map of the United States disintegrated, hundreds of people cried out in surprise," he remembers. He says most in the audience were skeptical. "They didn't believe me."

At the end of the presentation, he says many delegates asked him to autograph copies of the map showing a dismembered U.S.

He based the forecast on classified data supplied to him by FAPSI analysts, he says. He predicts that economic, financial and demographic trends will provoke a political and social crisis in the U.S. When the going gets tough, he says, wealthier states will withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the union. Social unrest up to and including a civil war will follow. The U.S. will then split along ethnic lines, and foreign powers will move in.

California will form the nucleus of what he calls "The Californian Republic," and will be part of China or under Chinese influence. Texas will be the heart of "The Texas Republic," a cluster of states that will go to Mexico or fall under Mexican influence. Washington, D.C., and New York will be part of an "Atlantic America" that may join the European Union. Canada will grab a group of Northern states Prof. Panarin calls "The Central North American Republic." Hawaii, he suggests, will be a protectorate of Japan or China, and Alaska will be subsumed into Russia.

"It would be reasonable for Russia to lay claim to Alaska; it was part of the Russian Empire for a long time." A framed satellite image of the Bering Strait that separates Alaska from Russia like a thread hangs from his office wall. "It's not there for no reason," he says with a sly grin.

Interest in his forecast revived this fall when he published an article in Izvestia, one of Russia's biggest national dailies. In it, he reiterated his theory, called U.S. foreign debt "a pyramid scheme," and predicted China and Russia would usurp Washington's role as a global financial regulator.

Americans hope President-elect Barack Obama "can work miracles," he wrote. "But when spring comes, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

The article prompted a question about the White House's reaction to Prof. Panarin's forecast at a December news conference. "I'll have to decline to comment," spokeswoman Dana Perino said amid much laughter.

For Prof. Panarin, Ms. Perino's response was significant. "The way the answer was phrased was an indication that my views are being listened to very carefully," he says.

The professor says he's convinced that people are taking his theory more seriously. People like him have forecast similar cataclysms before, he says, and been right. He cites French political scientist Emmanuel Todd. Mr. Todd is famous for having rightly forecast the demise of the Soviet Union -- 15 years beforehand. "When he forecast the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976, people laughed at him," says Prof. Panarin.