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More on the grisly bus murder in Canada, where Vince Weiguang Li, a Chinese Muslim, stabbed Tim McLean 50 times and then cut his head off with a huge knife.
* More grisly details emerge in Canadian bus murder
Western intelligence services have been warning us that terrorists may engage in individual terror acts (”personal jihad“) because due to increased anti-terror measures, the opportunities for pulling off another 9/11 or 7/7 in the West have become extremely limited. Their “leaders” therefore urge them to commit acts even at the “micro level”, i.e., even if it means killing a single individual only – provided the act instils and spreads fear and terror.
* Sheik yer’mami reported: Jihad in the strangest places: Aussies stabbed in Banff, Canuckistan Rocky Mountain Jihad: Bail denied in Banff stabbing
Well, according to a Chinese newspaper, it is reported, Vince Weiguang Li is, in fact, a Muslim (also see here). Some sources also report that Li was overheard screaming, “There can be only one.” This, however, has not been confirmed by any reliable sites or media yet.
Who knows what’s going on? A recent stabbing in Banff, Alberta, in which an Australian was attacked by Muslims, also showed all the signs of a “micro leveljihad“. Then, there was that one Muslim who recently tried to take a gun and ammunition on board a plane at Calgary airport, and the various IEDs found alongside the light-rail tracks in downtown Calgary.
All this thanks to Canada’s dysfunctional immigration system. No wonder the Americans are beginning to hate our guts more and more.
(Compiler's note: You'll want to read this entire article.)
I have two grandchildren, ages 5 and 7. If you're a parent or grandparent yourself, I challenge you not to think about a child you love when you read what I'm about to tell you.
I challenge you not to share my disgust with the barbarians who use the blood of innocents to further their political agendas.
And I challenge you not to share my contempt for the bureaucrats who think they can appease them.
For the governments that think their actions don't have consequences. ...
"American companies are on sale," reporter Ben Steverman announced in Business Week last week. "Foreign buyers are circling, taking advantage of a weak U.S. dollar and a depressed stock market to snap up U.S. companies at discounted prices."
Steverman cited three recent high-visibility deals to prove his point:
Last week, Red Alert announced GE and Mubadala Development Corporation, an investment arm of the government of the oil-exporting nation Abu Dhabi, had reached an agreement in which the Abu Dhabi Sovereign Wealth Fund would become one of GE's "top ten institutional investors," through a strategy of buying shares on the open market.
As WND reported, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with estimated assets of $500 billion, last year invested $7.5 billion for a 4.9 percent equity stake in Citibank.
A different investment group, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, announced earlier this month that it would buy a 90 percent in New York's historic Chrysler Building.
WND has reported a decision by the U.S. Department of Commerce Bureau of Economic Affairs to quit publishing data on the amount of foreign investment in the United States.
This follows a decision in March 2006 by the Federal Reserve to stop publishing M3 data, a money-supply measure closely watched by economists.
The decision to quit publishing M3 data set the stage for the Federal Reserve to pump, without reporting as M3 data, some $500 billion into troubled banks and investment firms so far in 2008. It did this largely by holding rates low at a wide-open discount window and by a series of highly unusual multi-million dollar money auctions.
With the Commerce Department's decision to stop releasing data on foreign investment in the United States, many experts are concerned the Bush administration is setting the stage for an unprecedented amount of foreign investment to acquire U.S. corporate interests, high-visibility real estate and key infrastructure projects at discount prices, all without explicit summary data being reported in an easy-to-track manner.
Is the United States quietly being sold to foreign investors? Read more on Jerome Corsi's Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by a best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist.
In preparation for the jihad against Dar al-Harb. "UK faces threat from British Muslims returning from Afghan" from the Economic Times, August 3:
LONDON: The UK faces serious security threat from British Muslim extremists returning from Afghanistan after fighting alongside Taliban, a top British commander has said."There are British passport holders, who live in the UK, being found in places like Kandahar," Brig Butler was quoted as saying by a daily newspaper.
The British commander said he had seen evidence that terror groups based in southern Afghanistan were plotting with Muslim extremists in Britain to carry out attacks in the UK. ....
European intelligence chiefs have launched a major investigation into the threat posed by female Islamic militants within the EU, whose involvement runs from logistics or propaganda activity to suicide bombing, they say.
'This phenomenon has not been really taken into account yet and we need to explore and understand it,' said one diplomatic official connected with the probe. 'It is a new strategy by al-Qaeda.'
The moves follow a spate of attacks in the Middle East conducted by women bombers and increasing concerns among European security services about increased radicalisation of female militants. The officials specifically cite the UK and North Africa as problem areas. ...
The next president has a great opportunity to stabilize Iraq and lay the basis for a decisive turn in the war against jihadist radicalism and for a more peaceful Middle East. Surely he will want to assess the situation on the ground before setting a strategy for his term. He should not be limited by rigid prescriptions to vindicate maxims of the past, no matter how plausible they once seemed. Withdrawal is a means; the end is a more peaceful and hopeful world.
The writer was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.
Just when one thought al-Qaeda's jihadi recruiting prerequisites were set at age 15, now comes this. Wonder if suicidal bunnies, bees, or rats were used to recruit these children for the "great jihad"? "Child soldiers trained by the Taliban to kill British soldiers," by Nick Owens, for the Mirror, August 2:
The pictures come from a video filmed at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, where Taliban warlords are turning boys as young as FIVE into trained killers. Recorded only weeks ago, it captures a dozen nervous-looking boys in camouflage uniforms with headbands which say: There is no God but Allah. ...
If accurate -- and, considering other reports indicate that jihadists have been fleeing Iraq for Afghanistan -- this may bode well for Iraq. "Iraq Nabs Hundreds of Al-Qaeda Suspects," from Alalam, August: 2
BAQUBA, Iraq, Aug 2--Iraq military backed by US forces arrested on Saturday hundreds of suspects during an offensive aimed at stamping out Al-Qaeda in a restive central province, officials said. ...Do you suppose this lean, slick orator gave the general who engineered the "surge" – credited by all with turning the war in Iraq around from apparent defeat to undeniable victory – a useful preview of what he was in for? That he would soon be taking direct orders from a kid who never wore a uniform or carried a gun?
And another book, surprisingly ignored by media and book reviewers, is a must-read for future voters. Gen. Georges Sada, former air vice marshal to Saddam Hussein, has chronicled in minute detail the existence of the weapons of mass destruction, the labs, the gas, the nuclear supplies and plans – and how he helped Saddam airlift all the damning evidence and substance into northern Syria just as the allied troops were advancing on Baghdad. ...
Both books show, in footnoted and documented factual detail, all we really need to know about why this country must ignore all the manufactured, rehearsed and scripted blather and hype from a political and media mouthpiece – and elect a proven, experienced leader and patriot.
Hey, if we want to elect a president who's been nowhere and done nothing, why not Paris Hilton? She's prettier! rca
A man whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War ll owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism.'Very few people were true Nazis 'he said,' but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.
'We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectra of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the 'peaceful majority', the 'silent majority', is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.The average Japanese individual prior to World War ll was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilian s; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun. Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghan is, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts: the fanatics who threaten our way of life. Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems of expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this - think about it - and send it on.
Emanuel Tanay,
M.D.Ann Arbor, MI
rca
... In an interview with Israel Today, Azzam Khatib, director of the Islamic Trust (or Waqf) that safeguards the mosques that sit atop the Temple Mount, said that Jews and Christians who try to pray at the ancient holy site are effectively declaring war.
Any non-Muslim "who seeks such an approach is really seeking a religious war," said Khatib, who insisted that the Temple Mount is an exclusively Muslim site and that Jews and Christians should not even want to pray there.
Khatib even took issue with the use of the term "Temple Mount," angrily demanding the site be called al-Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary.
Khatib refused to consider the possibility that the site was once home to the First and Second Jewish Temples, calling such claims unsubstantiated myths. When presented with a citation from a 1929 tourist guide published by the Supreme Muslim Council that acknowledged the Temple Mount as the site of Solomon's Temple, Khatib rejected the idea that such a book was ever published by a Muslim authority. ...
``It is an existential threat,'' Mofaz said at a forum on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. ``We have to make sure we are prepared for every option.'' ...
A top commander for al-Qaida says American people are as responsible for the U.S. military's ability to "wage war and spill the blood of Muslims" as is the American government.
"Islam does not distinguish between the American people and the American government, since both are in a state of war with Islam," Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid said in a recent interview.
The comments came in a report from Pakistan's independent television network Geo News, which was monitored and translated the Middle East Media Research Institute.
The MEMRI report said al-Yazid is considered al-Qaida's No. 3 man and "top commander in Afghanistan." The interview was in Arabic and broadcast with a voiceover in Urdu, and later was posted on Islamic websites.
In early 1950 Senator McCarthy made a speech in which he probably said that there were 57 Communists in the State Department. It was sometimes erroneously reported as 205 Communists; it probably should have been 56. Whatever he said, the truth as we now know it with access to Soviet and FBI files from the period is that substantially more than 57 Communist spies, Party members, and propagandists taking orders from the Soviet Union were working for the State Department, for international organizations after working for the State Department, or elsewhere in the government after working for the State Department.
State Department Risks
The espionage problem in the State Department was fairly severe. The FBI had put together a good espionage case (Amerasia), but the Truman administration through Tommy "The Cork" Cocoran had fixed the U.S. Attorney's office to prevent a successful prosecution.
The Democrats, who knew that the loyalty/security situation was far worse than reported, feared that a public discussion would lead to an electoral disaster for them. The administration feared that exposure of the extent of Communist influence in the China section of the State Department would jeopardize the pre-Korean War, Acheson-Truman Cold War strategy of setting up our Asian defenses much further East than Eisenhower eventually did.
For these reasons and probably because of personal grudges, Democrats talked about things like expelling McCarthy. However, it turned out that he had more than 50 detailed files on Communists in the State Department. The Democrats had to back off for the moment. We now know that the FBI and the Truman White House had fierce battles over loyalty/security issues that were not made public at the time.
The loyalty/security problem had much more to do with dedicated Communist spies and propagandists than with people who were simply sympathizers. At that time, discipline within the Communist Party was extremely rigid. There were more than enough idiots around who thought it was fine to lend confidential, secret, and topsecret documents to their Communist friends or relatives. ...
FORT WORTH, Texas -- An East Texas congressman wants Gitmo moved to Supreme Court grounds You can practically see the sarcasm dripping off the wording in this bill U.S. Rep. Louis Gohmert of Tyler filed last week proposing a new location for Guantanamo Bay.
In light of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that Gitmo detainees are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s habeas corpus protections, Gohmert wants to move the controversial jail to the Supreme Court grounds, "confined by adequate fencing."
"There can be no better way for the United States Supreme Court to exercise its new self-appointed war powers than to house the prisoners whom it has taken a greater role in overseeing," Gohmert writes.
It's impossible to miss Gohmert's feelings toward the justices when he offers, "Should the detainees need the use of restroom facilities, they shall use the facilities inside the United States Supreme Court building."
The bill also allows the justices to take over guard duty whenever they want and threatens to cut the court's budget in half if they don't follow the bill's guidelines.
Suspicions that Brits were fighting for the Taliban were raised earlier this year after that RAF experts overheard secret transmissions spoken in broad Midlands and Yorkshire accents.
Now Brigadier Ed Butler has also said militant Islamic groups in Helmand Province are suspected of assisting terrorist plots in the UK.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Brig Butler, who led British troops in Helmand Province for six months, said: "There are British passport holders who live in the UK who are being found in places like Kandahar.
"There is a link between Kandahar and urban conurbations in the UK. This is something the military understands, but the British public does not." ...
Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, 29, faces a maximum life in prison, if convicted of the terror charges. The charges were sworn out by the Pentagon case prosecutor on May 28 but posted for the first time on the Defense Department Web site on Tuesday.
The eight-page charge sheets allege that Mohamed convertedto Islam, trained as an al Qaeda bomb-maker in Afghanistan and then moved on to Pakistan, where in April 2002 he allegedly plotted a ''dirty bomb attack'' with the Brooklyn-born, former gang member José Padilla. ...
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The U.S. Navy said that one of its nuclear-powered submarines had leaked minimally radioactive water earlier this year, threatening to cause a stir in Japan where both the U.S. military presence and its nuclear vessels are controversial.
The Navy said Friday it discovered the leak July 17 when a gallon of water spilled from a valve while the submarine was in dry dock for routine maintenance at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. An investigation showed water may have been slowly leaking from the valve since March as the Los Angeles-class submarine traveled around the Pacific.
The total amount of radioactivity released into the environment from the USS Houston at each stop was less than one half a microcurie, U.S. Pacific Fleet spokesman Capt. Scott Gureck said. ...
If this outrages you, contact the CEO, Richard (Dick) L. Bond:
Tyson Foods Inc.SHELBYVILLE — Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.
According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new 5-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant.
Tyson’s director of media relations Gary Mickelson said the contract includes eight paid holidays — the same number as the old contract.
Eid al-Fitr — which falls on Oct. 1 this year — marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.
Union leaders say implementing the holiday was important for the nearly 700 Muslims, many of them Somalis, who work at the plant that employs a total of 1,200 people.
Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, responded yesterday to attempts by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) to discredit a panel on State Department outreach to Islamic groups that appear moderate but which seem likely to be anything but (including MPAC itself). He declared:
"This hearing will go on. We need to make sure that the State Department is not giving U.S. tax dollars to those on the other side in the war on terrorism." He added "The Muslim Public Affairs Council should apologize for the statements of its executive director on September 11, 2001."MPAC, ISNA and a constellation of other radical groups and individuals have been supported by the State Department. Perhaps Thursday's testimony will signal a turning point, seeing the State Department implement stricter guidelines to avoid past mistakes and embarrassments, which have damaged America's national security.
It is encouraging to see someone in Sherman's position take the issue on so fearlessly and directly.
"I think one of the greatest fears of people in the United States is somebody may call you a racist...they may call you an Islamophobe," he said in the hearing. "And what we've seen with some of these organizations is their message is clear: ‘Give us money or we'll call you an Islamophobe'...that's what they say to the State Department. What they say to us in Congress is ‘Don't question the fact that we're getting money or we'll call you an Islamophobe.'"
Bravo, Sherman! Read it all: "Emerson Exposes Radical Ties of State Department Outreach Partners," from IPT News, July 31 (thanks to Andrew Bostom).
The world of illusion isn’t only for stage acts—old tricks can also make for dangerous new threats in the nation’s airports and beyond.
One night in the summer of 2005, I was having drinks with prestidigitator Harry Anderson at his club, Oswald’s, in New Orleans, discussing the finer points of sleights of hand and, more broadly, the legerdemain of magic. ...
I explained that counterterror intelligence analysts had examined information indicating Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations had studied the discipline of his craft at some point—techniques like classic misdirection, sleights, illusions and gaffed tricks. These counterterrorists were concerned that some terrorists had experimented with using parlor tricks to do things like sneak explosives on board an aircraft.Given his long career in the arcane art of conjuring, I asked Harry if he thought it was possible that a highly motivated individual like a terrorist could train well enough to successfully employ some of these gimmicks for nefarious purposes. ...
The concept of terrorists as magicians was rekindled this past February when the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis issued an intelligence advisory warning about the possibility that Al Qaeda or other terrorist organizations might try to use women jihadists hiding explosives inside “pregnancy prosthetics … that mimic the look of a pregnant woman.” ...
Earlier this year, terrorists began to use a crude form of deception in their dispatching of female jihadists. In Iraq, Al Qaeda used Muslim women wearing suicide vests to carry out bombings after increased security and protective concrete walls made car bombings more difficult.
But as security authorities wise up to terrorists’ new ruses, the more astute among counterterrror intelligence authorities are pondering truly frightening scenarios terrorists are believed to have studied to hide explosives—like lining pregnancy prosthetics with sheet plastic explosives. They warn that the wearer may be able to get through airports that have no effective trace explosives sniffers or whole body imagers.
“This suddenly has become a very viable possibility,” said a veteran counterterrorist HSToday regularly talks to on background.
Combined with well-rehearsed misdirection and deception to cause momentary confusion and diversion, terrorists might be able to whisk any prosthetic-wearing jihadist past some airports’ security, the counterterrorist mused—“it would only take one.” ...
“Terrorists are getting exponentially smarter,” Kushner said. And according to counterterror experts, they’re coming up with more and more ways to slip past our first lines of defense. To do so, they’ve been experimenting with some really off the wall methods of deception to disguise their suicidal methodologies, like hiding upwards of three pounds of C-4, Semtex or some other plastic bonded explosive (PBX) rectally, vaginally and even surgically. The explosive could be remotely detonated while the bomb is inside terrorists’ bodies. ...
Philip Mudd, a high-ranking FBI counterterrorism official, told CBS news that European citizens of Pakistani descent and a few Americans were discovered to have been recruited as jihadists.
“They’ve realized that if they want to operate successfully they need to have people who look like us, act like us and are very difficult to find,” Mudd said.
“Whether it’s Americans or whether it’s people who can launch from Europe, because they have visas or passports that allow them to travel to the United States, [Al Qaeda is now] looking for people who can operate in the West.”
“…Or be recruited from the West,” another senior federal counterterror official told HSToday. ...
NOTE: This goes on, and on. Please go to the original source and read the entire article.
Over the past two years, as presidential campaign 2008 has ground on, the public has been constantly exposed to seemingly nanosecond-by-nanosecond saturation coverage. We’ve been subjected to nearly all aspects of political effluvia and arcana, from analyses of personality quirks and conflicts, image crafting, election tactics, opinion polls, fundraising, advertising spots and fine points of debating style and lapel pins.
Largely lost from view is the fact that political campaigns are primary vehicles for the creation of “brain trusts” which, in the case of winning campaigns, will generate many of the chief advisory posts of a new administration. ...
“Nonetheless,” he added, “if you look not so far beneath the surface, all of these issues are integrally connected to homeland security. So you can say that homeland security is an important subtext. ...
“One key thing that distinguishes Senator Obama’s approach as a candidate both from his Democratic rival[s] and, even more so from Senator McCain,” Michael Ortiz, Senator Obama’s communications director, told HSToday, “is his insistence on a pragmatic, analytical method in defining funding needs based on risk. In theory, everyone is in favor of prioritizing funding according to risk, but in practice homeland security funding has been politicized in a very counter-productive way so that every location, whether it warranted it or not, could get a piece of the pie.”
Obama sought to translate his rhetoric into legislation by co-sponsoring the Risk-Based Homeland Security Grants Act of 2007 (S. 608). Citing the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission that “homeland security assistance should not remain a program for general sharing,” Obama’s amendment to the bill called for decreasing the current minimum funding each state received under the state homeland security grant program to .25 percent, with an increase to .45 percent for border states. ...
One outspoken supporter whom Obama and his policy team have enlisted as a national and homeland security guru is Lee Hamilton, former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees and vice-chairman of the 9/11 Commission. ...
Hamilton’s perspectives on the challenges ahead for homeland security can be seen in a commentary—titled “Reckoning with Radical Islam”—published last summer by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
“Our current counter-terror strategy is inadequate,” Hamilton wrote. ...Richard Clarke, an informal advisor on homeland security and related matters to the Obama campaign, has said he believes Obama “offers a comprehensive, sophisticated approach to terrorism, recognizing the importance of stopping repressive police and intelligence activities in countries threatened by Al Qaeda,” while also acknowledging, “that we are not at war with Islam but partners with Muslims threatened by Al Qaeda.” ...
Taken in tandem, these positions signal potentially large differences in policy priorities between the candidates.
On July 31, 2008, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released the National Emergency Communications Plan. This plan comes out of DHS’s Office of Emergency Communications (OEC) and gives long and short term recommendations to address the problems with national emergency communication. Title XVII of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 requires that such a plan be developed, especially in light of recent terrorist attacks and significant natural disasters.
The press release reports that the ultimate goal of the NECP is to ensure that communications during emergency situations is efficient among all levels of government and private industry. Perhaps the best part of NECP is that it isn’t another “well this a list of the thing we want.” NECP gives a list of goals as well as a strategic look on how to accomplish those goals. To ensure smooth communications during disasters, the NECP gives the following three goals: ...
You can find the press release here. You can find the actual communication plan at this location. It will be intersting to see how the different levels of government and industry react to The National Emergency Communications Plan. It will be intersting to see if the NECP conflicts with existing plans and strategic goals. Please leave comments below if you can shed some light on the subject.Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Friday announced an “Emergency Economic Plan” that would give families a stimulus check of $1,000 each, funded in part by what his presidential campaign calls “windfall profits from Big Oil.”
Details are in this six-page policy paper.
I just sent the below missive to my elected representatives. Unfortunately, I don’t expect any action. They are busy as I write, changing into their ‘vacation’ attire. As you may discern from my tone, I think they are a bunch of dunderheads who are more interested in themselves than the needs of the Nation. I got the idea to do this from a retired soldier friend of mine,
Here is what I sent to each of them:
Dear Senator/Representative,
When can we out here in the hinter-lands expect the Congress to lift the ban on Off Shore Drilling? You have done nothing, but you are going to take a vacation?
It does not take a rocket scientist to realize increasing domestic supply will reduce the massive outflow of wealth, and, as evidenced by the market’s reaction to the President’s recent action in lifting the executive ban on offshore drilling, will reduce costs of fossil fuels while this nation gets moving on alternative energy sources.
I agree with a starting point recommended by Mr T. Boone Pickens. "Natural gas and wind generated electricity.” A friend of mine suggested to me the other day and I feel it merits passing along to you, maybe a good starting place for the wind generators might be in a close proximity to Capitol Hill, at least some of the ineffective rhetoric (hot air) coming out of that facility might be put to good use!
When will some meaningful business be conducted for the people of this Republic in that facility instead of the constant bipartisan bickering and profiling for reelection.
Bottom line is simple; do we need a massive changing of faces in the Congress to get anything accomplished? I am tired of hearing the old platitudes about having a ‘comprehensive plan’ before we do anything. That is just the traditional
One T-d off voter, (slight modification to this last sentence by this compiler)
SignedIt's not that Al-Arian has admitted to aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and has clearly been deeply involved in jihadist activity in the U.S. It's that his prosecutor is "anti-Muslim." This is another variation of the phenomenon I discussed here: if you tell the truth about jihad and Islamic supremacism, it must be because you "hate Muslims." The focus shifts from defendant to prosecutor -- which is just what the jihadists want to accomplish.
"A Prosecutor Is Called 'Relentless,'" by Josh Gerstein for the New York Sun, July 28 (thanks to all who sent this in):
A federal prosecutor who has led a series of investigations into Islamic militants and Muslim groups based in Virginia, Gordon Kromberg, may soon be facing a trial of sorts himself, if defense lawyers get their way.Attorneys for a former Florida college professor who pleaded guilty two years ago to aiding Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Sami Al-Arian, are asking a federal judge to hold a hearing on whether anti-Muslim bias led to the government's decision to obtain a new indictment of Al-Arian in June for contempt for refusing to testify before grand juries pursuing the Virginia organizations.
While the motion claims Muslim terrorism suspects are generally treated unfairly by the Justice Department, Al-Arian's lawyers argue that Mr. Kromberg, 51, has a particularly egregious record of intemperate statements and actions in a series of terrorism-related cases and investigations.
"Defense attorneys have objected for years that Mr. Kromberg, the lead counsel in many of these cases, has been using the Eastern District of Virginia to mete out his own brand of justice for Muslim terrorism subjects, often openly displaying his personal animus," Al-Arian's lead counsel, Jonathan Turley, wrote. "This long and controversial record forms the backdrop for the allegation of selective and malicious prosecution in this case." ...
By Professor Joseph B. Varner
American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.
The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region. The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas. ...Posted by Kurt Opsahl (EFF Blog)
Today’s Washington Post reports on a newly released memo, “Memorandum for William J. Haynes II, General Counsel of the Department of Defense Re: Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States” (March 14, 2003) , which which was declassified and released publicly yesterday. Balkinization has commentary on the very troubling opinion.
While the newly released memo focuses on “asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators,” it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:
… our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 2001). (emphasis added)
Dallas' recently-wrapped deployment, though unusual for a quasi-military law enforcement agency, continues an accelerating trend in the U.S. sea services. The Navy and Coast Guard are shifting away from traditional missions in favor of "soft power" exercises in the the world's neglected shallow-water zones (aka "littorals"). Navy amphibious and hospital ships carry trainers, doctors, aid workers and scientists to Africa and South America, with the goal of alleviating environmental and humanitarian problems that could bloom into crises. Coast Guard cutters, Dallas included, bring law-enforcement training teams to developing countries in order to improve the countries' ability to police themselves.
Dallas skipper Captain Robert Wagner said the Coast Guard is perfect for the African mission. Dallas paid visits to Cape Verde, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, among other nations. ...
Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are.
Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.
This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.
The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb-- and they can make 9/11 look like child's play.All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand-- however outrageous those demands might be-- or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.
All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.
They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East.
They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden's threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.
The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s-- and our "leaders" and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the "leaders" and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.
We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River, oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.
What does this have to do with today's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.
One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.
There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.
But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.
On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.
Like altar boys who used to strike their breasts and mutter "mea culpa" ("through my fault") during the beginning of the Latin mass while confessing that they had sinned, Democrats are in full confessional mode, apologizing for every real or imagined sin against a particular group they believe their country once offended.
In the latest example of sheer looniness that has marked the current Democrat-controlled Congress, surely the worst if not the craziest Congress in all U.S. history, the House officially sought forgiveness from Native Americans and the victims of Jim Crow-ism.
They did that in our name, laying upon our shoulders the alleged sins of long-dead Americans and having us cringe at the feet of today's casino-rich Native Americans, and our black brothers and sisters whose votes they lust after.
Just a minute here. Neither I nor any of my immediate ancestors ever lifted a finger against a single American Indian or black American. I have no apologies to make to people I have not offended. If offenses were committed they weren't my fault, or for that matter yours or that of any living Americans.
How dare these congressional demagogues associate us with alleged sins of the distant past committed by people who have long been gone from this world. ...
"The war of ideas is a very important aspect of the non-kinetic part of the war on terror," Mr. Glassman said in an interview this week. "In fact, it may be the most important aspect of the war on terror."
Mr. Glassman's office is the lead federal agency in organizing both policy and programs designed to "push back against violent extremist ideology." Most of the focus is on al Qaeda and other radical Islamist groups.
The war of ideas is supposed to be one of three equal components of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, after military operations and law enforcement and intelligence counterterrorism.
However, it is by far the least developed aspect, according to U.S. officials.
Mr. Glassman said the specific mission of the new programs is to "create an environment that is hostile to violent extremism." ...
One key aspect of the new campaign is to encourage credible voices from the Muslim world to speak out against extremism. ...
A second U.S. government effort involves ... educational and other programs to "divert" Muslims, especially young people, away from extremism. ...
Another U.S.-backed program is a Farsi-language social-networking site called Parsloop.com in which Farsi speakers in Iran and outside the country can discuss issues of importance to Iranians. A second "dot-gov" Farsi site directly promotes American messages and ideas. ...
NOTE: Be sure and read the rest of this report!!
This is worth watching and thinking about. Maybe, just maybe, this will snowball enough to get changed back to what we once had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MApnr5026M
Please distribute this far and wide to see if we can keep this up and running on Youtube. (The more that visit the site, the longer it stays up.) Please spread the word! It's the story of the broken promise made for a life time of healthcare to military retirees.
So many have completed their end of the deal and now they are without the promised healthcare.
Semper Fidelis,
XXXX
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