Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Relaxed Curbs At Shoe Bomber’s Prison Angers Security Experts

(Analyst's note:  Troubling at best.)


By Tom Mashberg


Three terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 have sent 90 letters exhorting holy war to overseas al-Qaeda units from the same prison in Colorado where shoe bomber Richard C. Reid is doing life, angering security experts who question why the feds have relaxed curbs on Reid’s access to the outside world.

The letters were brandished like trophies and printed in Arabic newspapers, said Debra Burlingame, a member of the board of directors for the National Sept. 11 Memorial Foundation. She noted that some of those letters went to terrorists associated with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, known as the Spanish 9/11.

The Sunday Herald reported yesterday that earlier this summer, the Obama administration quietly dropped tough restrictions on Reid, who tried to blow up a Paris to Miami flight in December 2001 by igniting a bomb in his shoe. The Justice Department refused to say why the special administrative measures were lifted in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Reid challenging them. ....

Israel speechless at Zbig's plan to protect Iran

JERUSALEM – Both the Israeli government and the military here refused to respond to comments by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, who said the U.S. should confront Israeli jets if that nation chooses to take military action against Iran's nuclear installations. ....

Hamas-linked CAIR: Jump. Pennsylvania school district: How high?

by Robert Spencer

Dhimmitude and ignorance from a Pennsylvania public school district. At the slightest hint of pressure, most individuals and groups who find themselves in this position cave in faster than you can say "Islamophobia" -- and most of the time, as in this case, they don't make the slightest effort to verify whether or not the pressure group's claims are true. "CAIR: Penn. High School Drops Anti-Islam 'Obsession' Video," a CAIR press release, September 22 (thanks to James):
Civil rights group calls film 'vehicle for promoting anti-Muslim bigotry'
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-PA) announced today that a high school in that state has dropped an anti-Islam video listed for use in one of its classes.
Earlier this month, CAIR-PA sent a letter to the superintendent of the Council Rock School District expressing concerns about a hate-filled video, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West," listed in the syllabus of a course at Council Rock High School in Newtown, Penn.

In her letter, CAIR-PA Director of Civil Rights Marwa El-Turky wrote in part:
"'Obsession' is a vehicle for promoting anti-Muslim bigotry that seeks to blur the distinction between violent extremism and mainstream Islam. The use of such an inaccurate and inflammatory film in a world history class would inevitably result in both the promotion of stereotypes and the creation of a hostile learning environment for Muslim students.
"The hate-filled agenda promoted by the film has been repudiated by the Hate Hurts America Multifaith Community Coalition (HHA), a group of religious and civic organizations seeking to challenge hate speech in our society... Those interviewed in Obsession constitute a veritable who's who of Muslim-bashers. SEE: http://www.obsessionwithhate.com/

". . .this film is obviously not suitable teaching material for a captive audience of impressionable youth. We therefore respectfully ask that 'Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West' be dropped from the curriculum and that representatives of the local Muslim community be invited to offer balanced and accurate information about Islam and the American Muslim experience."
These are all highly debatable claims. Did Superintendent of Schools Mark J. Klein seek to verify CAIR's (false) claim that Obsession "seeks to blur the distinction between violent extremism and mainstream Islam"? In fact, the movie bends over backwards not to blur that distinction -- so much so that some say it errs too much on the other side, giving viewers the impression that the Islamic jihad globally is just the property of a few nuts, and is condemned and actively opposed by the vast majority of Muslims. Did Klein receive this claim from CAIR and investigate it? Or did he receive it and immediately move to accommodate these thugs and bullies, without giving it a moment's thought?
In his response to CAIR-PA's concerns, Superintendent of Schools Mark J. Klein noted that the course was eliminated from the curriculum for the 2008-2009 school year and that, "Along with the elimination of this course, we will represent to you that this film will not be used in any other course in Council Rock."

"We appreciate the school district's prompt and appropriate response and hope that any future courses touching on Islam will use accurate and balanced educational materials," said El-Turky....
"Balanced." Does Mark J. Klein really want CAIR to decide what is a balanced curriculum? Does Mark J. Klein know or care that CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case -- so named by the Justice Department? Does he know or care that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups? Does he know or care that several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror? Does he know or care that CAIR's cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Honest Ibe Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements?

Cops use stun gun twice on unarmed amputee

(Analyst's note:  Maybe it is just me, but I really tire of seeing this weapon misused time after time by our own police forces -- troubling.)

New York jihad plot: Authorities know of "three distinct teams of four men each"

(Analyst's note:  Absolutely must read.)

from Jihad Watch

An update on this story. "Active Terror Cell Prepared NYC Attack, Officials Say," by Brian Ross, Richard Esposito, Clayton Sandell, and Megan Chuchmach for ABC News, September 21:
After overnight arrests this weekend in the alleged New York terror plot, FBI agents believe an active terror cell directed by al Qaeda was preparing an attack on New York City, and authorities say they have yet to identify everyone involved.
Officials tell ABC News they know of three distinct teams of four men each, but there may be others linked to the plot that remain unidentified.
Law enforcement agents say they're watching a number of people on round-the-clock surveillance who they suspect might have been part of the alleged terror cell. [...]
Court records show [Najibullah] Zazi ran up more than $50,000 in debt on 20 credit cards, leading to concerns he was preparing for a suicide mission. He declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in Mar. 2009, and while he told investigators he had been traveling to Pakistan see his wife, he checked the "not married" box on his application form....
Uh, whoops.

Cap and Trade: The Wall Street Tax

(Analyst's note:  Absolutely must read and carefully consider.)

by Rep. Michele Bachmann

The cap and trade national energy tax is being sold to the American people as a free-market answer to environmental problems. Dressed in green as it is, people are led to believe that it was a scheme hatched by the environmentally conscious. The truth is that cap and trade is a product of the very same minds that gave us subprime loans and market bubbles, credit default swaps and the financial meltdown. Cap and trade is actually a child of Wall Street. But, nowadays, that doesn’t help in the marketing, does it?

Cap and trade is based on government setting a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally. Companies will then be allowed to buy or sell permits to emit carbon dioxide. So, at a time when Congress is already grappling with the appropriate solution for restructuring our nation’s financial regulatory system, Congress also wants to simultaneously introduce a new, and potentially the largest, commodity market into the mix? As Tyson Slocum, director of energy for Public Citizen, has stated, “You have to ask yourself if it is wise policy to create a new derivatives market on the heels of the collapse of derivatives markets.”


Some environmental watch groups who support the climate change goals of cap and trade have withheld support for the legislation in part because they know that the financial risked posed by this piece of legislation would shake an already volatile financial market. In a recent report, Friends of the Earth warned that the U.S. carbon market could be the next “subprime market” since it carries the same high-risk characteristics. Their report notes that the high risk comes from the fact that carbon credits can be sold before credits are officially issued. As they become more and more scarce, as the legislation guarantees year after year, these new financial products with essentially no actual value will increase in price. The report continues to warn that this provides the potential for speculators to push up market prices, which will “create a bubble and spur the development of subprime assets,” setting the stage for another potential financial meltdown.

They have good reason to worry. After all, the very same people who created the risky financial products which contributed to our financial collapse helped create and then promote cap and trade. And, those very same institutions will be selling carbon credits on Wall Street. Cap and trade’s creator, Goldman Sachs, which is reported to have spent $3.5 million to lobby on climate issues last year, envisioned it as a tax imposed by Washington with the revenues collected by private interests.

According to the Washington Post, Enron – which has gained a more notorious public reputation than most others in corporate America, was one of cap and trade’s chief promoters because they believed it would bring them a major financial windfall. In an internal memo, according to the Post, Enron stated that the Kyoto Agreement, which would regulate energy use, would “do more to promote Enron’s business than almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and gas industries in Europe and the United States.” When the Kyoto Agreement failed, Enron executives pushed hard for the implementation of a cap and trade policy.

As hedge fund director Michael Masters told Rolling Stone in its article, The Great American Bubble Machine, “We’re saying that Wall Street can set the tax and Wall Street can collect the tax.” The author of that article, Matt Taibbi, remarks that, “This is worse than the bailout: It allows the bank to seize taxpayer money before it’s even collected.” (Emphasis is the original author’s.)

Of course, with the creation of this new market also comes the creation of a new bureaucracy. Bart Chilton, commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) estimates that it “could be a $2 trillion market within five years.” And, to handle that expansion and meet its responsibilities to police the new futures market for allowances, the CFTC would have to expand its workforce by at least 31%. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which would be overseeing day-to-day trading, would also have to expand its workforce by 20-30%.



Not to be outdone, the EPA would have to grow to go from regulating 330 million tons of pollution each year to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions from nearly 7,500 facilities. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the cost of the expanded government alone would be $8 billion over 10-years. It would require about 1500 new regulations and mandates under 21 or more federal agencies.

It is interesting that the same lawmakers who are continuously blaming Wall Street for the financial meltdown are the lead cheerleaders for Wall Street’s plan to buy and sell carbon credits. Perhaps they have bought their own hype and truly believe that this is a plan for climate change. But, the American people are beginning to see through all that. When so many analyses and reports conclude that cap and trade will only result in negligible – if any – changes in the earth’s climate, the American people wonder who is really benefitting from the extra tax they are paying?

Michele Bachmann represents Minnesota’s Sixth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mexico-USA Flights See Increased Security Measures

Mexican federal police will intensify security measures on flights inbound to the United States from Mexico at the request of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to press reports in Mexico.

Who’s Really Threatening Obama?

by Cliff Kincaid

.... This disinformation effort needs to be analyzed carefully to understand where the real threat to Obama may actually lie. If scribbling like that of Boehlert is taken seriously, Obama’s life could be put more in jeopardy from the real extremists, who are on the left and in the Islamic camp. ....

Rifqa Bary, Islam, Muslims, Shar’iah, and Apostasy (Part Two of Two)


If global Muslim Brotherhood icons cannot be criticized frankly and openly as I did in my visit to Noor, reform will never become a reality. ....

Audio - 'Elite level' terror plot in progress? Terrorism expert: Upcoming events in NYC may have prompted urgent arrests

MI6 to train Gadhafi's guards Libyan strongman claims he's target for al-Qaida

Islamic rally on Capitol clouded by organizer's terror ties As 50,000 Muslims prepare for D.C. event, leader's history questioned

Another Obama program caught in undercover sting 'Milk it, baby – It's free money'

Feds unsure if arrest of Najibullah Zazi and two others has foiled al-Qaeda terror plot

BY James Gordon Meek In Washington and Rocco Parascandola and Alison Gendar

Mass Transit Warning To Be On Alert For Terrorism

(Analyst's note:  As a citizen, thought you'd like to know.)

from National Terror Alert

There’s a reminder today from federal officials that rail and transit systems can be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The reminder is being sent out to law enforcement around the country. The FBI and the Homeland Security Department warn that improvised explosive devices are the most common method used to blow up mass transit and rail systems overseas.

Officials are recommending that transit system security officials conduct random sweeps at terminals and stations, and that police make random patrols and board some trains and buses.
Officials have said privately that the investigators who searched some New York City apartments earlier this month were worried about the possible use of backpack bombs on New York City mass transit trains.

Source
From Around The Country

Philadelphia – Philadelphia police said they have already been operating on an elevated security level before this weekend, supporting Septa and Amtrak on random sweeps. And for passengers we spoke to they say these days you can’t depend on anything to be completely safe.
“I was surprised there were so many Amtrak police officers here this afternoon. I thought something was going on here,” said Leslie Thompson.
But Thompson suspects they’re trying to make themselves visible after federal authorities say two men could have been plotting to attack the mass transit system somewhere in the U.S. Other passengers noticed.
Source
San Francisco- Bay Area mass transit operators tightening security following a nationwide terror alert. Bay Area operators are heeding the call to conduct random patrols and board some trains and buses to look for anything unusual. BART says it already does this. The agency will not announce any details about exactly how it will adhere to the warning.

“Many of the things that they are suggested are already taking place, many of them are behind the scenes,” BART spokesperson Jim Allison said. “The one exception to that is bag checks, and unless the alert level would be raised to a red level, then we would consider bag checks.”
Golden Gate Transit says it is also following recommendations to tighten security.

Read More – See Video

All Your Art Are Belong To Us

(Analyst's note:  This report is more than a little troubling.)

from Pajamas Media

Unless you are old enough or foolish enough to still try to extract something like news out of the mainstream media, you probably already know about the NEA phone call transcripts.  They were released today through the work of artist/blogger Patrick Courrielche at Andrew Breitbart’s new website Big Government Breitbart and his merry gang seem to have taken it upon themselves to print all the news that apparently isn’t fit to print, also known as “the truth about the Obama administration and their friends.”

The transcripts prove, despite the earlier denials and obfuscations of the participants, that officials from the White House, the National Endowment of the Arts and a federally overseen initiative called United We Serve joined in hosting a conference call on August 10th with a group of artists.  The point of the call was to cajole these artists into making artistic propaganda in support of President Barack Obama’s agenda.

There is so very much to be disgusted by here that it’s hard to know what to gag on first.  The NEA is the largest single funder of art in the country.  They give away tens of millions of bucks in grants to artists and art organizations.  Although the NEA wasn’t actually offering to give money to artists in return for their services to the all-powerful state, their very presence on the line creates the implied offer of access and favor.  This in and of itself is deeply corrupt and potentially corrupting to artists in a difficult economy desperate for any means of support.

Oh, but that’s not the half of it.  Go here and take a look at the legislation that authorized and created the NEA in the first place, its founding document as it were.  Read its original principles and mission:  how the arts are for all Americans, how the NEA is there to nurture freedom of thought, imagination and inquiry.  In fact, just for fun, see if you can find a single proposition in this document that the NEA did not violate, corrupt and/or betray in the course of this phone call.

Then there’s the arrogance.  Michael Skolnick, political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons, says he’s speaking at the behest of the White House and the NEA when he tells the assembled artists, “You are the thought leaders.  You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art, or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be into; and what’s cool and what’s not cool.”

I’ll retire to Bedlam!  Having spent my life in the arts, I was indeed surprised to learn that my role in life was to use my abilities to convince people that some politician’s agenda was cool.  In fact, if I’d wanted to be a state prostitute, I’d've moved to Nevada.

I have always believed that art is one of the most powerful tools we have in the search for spiritual truth, a form of communication that can, at its best, reach into the deepest part of the human soul.   The Communists, and other tyrants, always understood that.  Why do you think they always arrested and silenced the artists first?

No need for that here, thanks very much.  Already largely corrupted by the ideology they’ve learned in our universities, our artists are standing by to take Big Brother’s call.

Pakistani jihadists recruiting entire families to join the jihad -- from Europe

by Robert Spencer

Eurabia is already proving to be a fruitful recruiting ground for the jihadists. "A German Jihad Colony: Islamists in Pakistan Recruit Entire Families from Europe," by Yassin Musharbash and Holger Stark for Spiegel, September 21 (thanks to Davida):
The German government is trying to secure the release of a group of suspected German Islamists who were arrested by Pakistani authorities while making their way to a jihadist colony in the Waziristan region along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Entire families from Germany are moving to the region to join the jihad.

The young speaker, who calls himself "Abu Adam," praises the stay in the mountains -- almost as if he were shooting an ad for a family holiday camp. "Doesn't it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!" Abu Adam says, raising his index finger. He lists all the things this earthly paradise has to offer: hospitals, doctors, pharmacies as well as a daycare center and school -- all, of course, "a long way from the front." After all, they don't want the children to be woken up by the roar of guns.

The latest recruitment video from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) is a half-hour in length and is addressed to our "beloved" brothers and sisters back in Germany. The video is presented by, among others, Mounir Chouka, alias "Abu Adam," who grew up in the western German city of Bonn.

The video shows shacks erected against a backdrop of lush greenery and craggy rock formations. Women wearing blue burqas are seen surrounded by their children. One small girl is holding an artillery gun.

Welcome to the wild world of Waziristan, the region along the Afghan-Pakistani border controlled by Pashtun tribes, al-Qaida and other splinter groups which has become a regular target of US drones and their remote-controlled missiles.

Islamists Recruiting Entire Families
The ad for Waziristan appears to be finding fertile ground in Germany. Security officials here believe the IMU is currently the largest and most active Islamic group recruiting in the country. But there's an unusual development here, too -- militants don't normally recruit women and children as the IMU appears to be doing. The families move to mujahedeen villages in the rough terrain which are used as bases for supporting the battle against the US troops and the Afghan army.

The German government in Berlin is also examining the propaganda offensive. For several weeks, diplomats in the German Foreign Ministry have been negotiating with Islamabad over the fate of a group of suspected Islamists from Germany's Rhineland region who have been held in custody in Pakistan for several months now. The group includes a young Tunisian and six Germans, including Andreas M. of Bonn, a Muslim convert, and his Eritrean wife Kerya....

The Pakistani government has signalled that it might not prosecute the group for entering the country illegally or for supporting a terrorist organization and instead put the Germans on a plane back to Frankfurt....
What a surprise!