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There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize ... She was not selected.
Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.
(Compiler's note: Excuse me, I think I'm going to be sick! rca)
The creation of one-man terror cells seems to be the new strategy of Al Qaeda terrorists.
Intelligence officials have discovered an online Al Qaeda manual that prescribes that group leaders should training new recruits to operate as smaller cells around the globe.
The manual, called Method for Building the Personality of a Terrorist Mujahid and written by an Islamist forum contributor nicknamed “Shamil al-Baghdadi,” encourages militant followers to stop focusing on pulling off attacks on the scale of 9-11 and to start executing numerous smaller attacks.
If for some reason the mission fails, the Jihadi must not abort, but instead carry on alone, as a one-man cell, the paper quotes New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly as saying while quoting from the manual.
It advocates assassinations by shooting, poisoning and booby-trapping cell phones and computers.
Further, targets are to be prioritised by ranking them into categories such as “high profile,” which represent presidents and prime ministers.
Recruits are also told to organize credit card scams and to rob police stations in order to get hold of weapons.
(Compiler's note: I wish this were not true, but I close my eyes and it still does not go away. rca)
By WILLIAM MAYER and BEILA RABINOWITZ
Continuing their campaign of intimidation aimed at censoring official dialogue of the terms most useful in describing the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism, on August 7, CAIR - an unindicted co-conspirator in the ongoing Holy Land Foundation Hamas terror funding prosecution - joined with an assortment of nominally Christian and Jewish groups, selecting California GOP Congressman Ed Royce as their newest target.
A letter addressed to Mr. Royce reads in part:
"As a diverse group of Southern California interfaith leaders, intellectuals and activists, we are deeply concerned by your continued use of inflammatory rhetoric linking Islam to terrorism. For example, in your June and July newsletters you stated , "Given the threat from Islamist terrorism facing our country, we need to be acting urgently to protect the United States everyday…"
The communication then goes on to suggest that Islamic terrorism doesn't exist, "Linking any faith to violence or terrorism is not only inaccurate but also casts a negative shadow on the peaceful followers of that faith," an absurd statement, unsupported by fact.
As these authors noted in Terms "Jihadist" And "Islamo-Fascist" Booted By Feds For Fear Of Antagonizing Jihadists and Islamo-Fascists and Minor Victory In War On Terror, Fed PC Thought Police Defeated the intent of this faux interfaith coalition is to enforce a pro-Islamist intellectual straightjacket keyed toward removing from the counter terror lexicon those concepts and descriptors most appropriate and useful in understanding the forces seeking to Islamize the Western world through force. It should go without saying that the Islamofascists use these very terms themselves when communicating among themselves as well as with the outside world.
"In a brief selection taken from the September 11, 2006 message by the al-Qaeda leader [Ayman Al Zawahiri], he states:"...The target that the mujahideen should aim at are...our fighting should be jihad for the sake of Allah until religion is all for the sake of Allah...the jihad should strive to liberate Palestine in its entirety, and to liberate any land that was once Islamic from Adalusia [Spain] to Iraq...our Emir the shaykh, the mujahid, the lion of Islam Osama bin-Laden has assigned me to bring the good tidings to all Muslims and to my brothers, the mujahideen, wherever they are..." [source, as translated by MEMRI.org, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvlpY4MHdXg]Rather that lending unintentional legitimacy - as claimed by these internal memorandums - to an enemy which employs terror and justifies its actions using Islamic theology, the use of jihad, mujahideen and other now apparently proscribed terms should be viewed as communication based upon a frank statement of fact.
The breathtaking mental gymnastics and level of moral equivalency required by whomever put these recommendations together is indicative of the crisis in clarity that confronts the West as it faces down barbarism.
In no previous war has the United States engaged is such absurd breast beating, self-doubt and equivocation, and to do so in the current conflict is suicidal and defeatist.
Why the use of even arguably questionable rhetoric might serve to further enrage those already intent on killing us is preposterous."
What the Islamists are attempting to do, in this case supported by people and organizations whose grasp on reality is tenuous, is to suppress freedom of speech in the most important conflict of our time using as justification a Shari'a centric flawed logic demanding that none speak ill of "the religion of peace," in any context.
Make no mistake, this is a prescription for defeat of the West and the Islamists know it. That the stakes in this struggle and the enemy's methodology is being potentiated by the co-signatories to this document is a sad commentary and indicative of their childish naievete.
http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=royceid=8.13.08%2Ehtm
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3566
Red Cavaney, President and Chief Executive Officer of API sent this response to the Senate’s “Group of 10″, ....
API must express its opposition to the approach outlined by the Group of 10 because it falls far short of what is needed.
Unfortunately, the proposal appears to be a classic case of one step forward, two steps back — or in this instance “light on new production/heavy on new taxes”. Current world events only reinforce the critical importance of ensuring that our nation develops the full range of its domestic energy resources for economic competitiveness and national security reasons.
The proposal’s approach to access to federal oil and natural gas resources is far too limited in its scope. And, it is unfortunately paired with the imposition of at least $30 billion in new taxes on the oil and natural gas industry that would have the effect of limiting needed oil and gas investment. A lesson learned well in the 1970-80 period. These measures create an environment that will virtually assure a future with less, not more, domestic production.
While this new proposal would expand access in the waters of the Outer Continental Shelf, it unfortunately limits any expansion over current law to the eastern Gulf of Mexico and waters off four Atlantic Coast states in the South. Even in these areas, development in federal waters less than 50 miles offshore would be banned - despite the fact that offshore facilities would need to be 12 or fewer miles from shore to be visible from land. Leasing in the North Atlantic and off the Pacific Coast would be banned and plentiful hydrocarbon resources in Alaska would remain off limits. Significant regulatory burdens on new development would remain in place. The imposition of $30 billion in clearly discriminatory new taxes, to pay for federal investment in alternatives and renewables, ignores the fact that the industry already provides more than 70 percent of all North American investment in research and development in emerging energy technologies.
Americans today are calling for Congress to do much more to supply their needs for additional energy. Our companies are supplying more energy - and more kinds of energy - to meet this growing demand. The U.S. Energy Information Administration continues to point out that oil and natural gas will be an essential part of this nation’s energy future for decades to come. Opening all available domestic resources to safe and environmentally responsible development would significantly boost U.S. supplies of oil and natural gas; increase the nation’s energy security; add more well-paying American jobs; help with our balance of payments and economic growth during a time of recessionary fears and bring billions of dollars into the Treasury instead of sending them abroad.
Huge and discriminatory new taxes on the U.S. oil and gas industry make no sense. The only beneficiaries of such an ill-advised approach would be international competitors in the global oil markets, who would benefit as US companies were made less competitive in the quest to find and develop global energy supplies. ....
HARROLD, Texas — A tiny Texas school district may be the first in the nation to allow teachers and staff to pack guns for protection when classes begin later this month, a newspaper reported.
Trustees at the Harrold Independent School District approved a district policy change last October so employees can carry concealed firearms to deter and protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting teachers follow certain requirements.
In order for teachers and staff to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun; must be authorized to carry by the district; must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and have to use ammunition that is designed to minimize the risk of ricochet in school halls.
Superintendent David Thweatt said the small community is a 30-minute drive from the sheriff's office, leaving students and teachers without protection. He said the district's lone campus sits 500 feet from heavily trafficked U.S. 287, which could make it a target.
"When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that's when all of these shootings started. Why would you put it out there that a group of people can't defend themselves? That's like saying 'sic 'em' to a dog," Thweatt said in Friday's online edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Thweatt said officials researched the policy and considered other options for about a year before approving the policy change. He said the district also has various other security measures in place to prevent a school shooting.
"The naysayers think (a shooting) won't happen here. If something were to happen here, I'd much rather be calling a parent to tell them that their child is OK because we were able to protect them," Thweatt said.
Texas law outlaws firearms on school campuses "unless pursuant to the written regulations or written authorization of the institution."
It was unclear how many of the 50 or so teachers and staff members will be armed this fall because Thweatt did not disclose that information, to keep it from students or potential attackers. Wilbarger County Sheriff Larry Lee was out of the office Thursday and did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment, the newspaper said.
Barbara Williams, a spokeswoman for the Texas Association of School Boards, said her organization did not know of another district with such a policy. Ken Trump, a Cleveland-based school security expert who advises districts nationwide, including in Texas, said Harrold is the first district with such a policy.
The 110-student district is 150 miles northwest of Fort Worth on the eastern end of Wilbarger County, near the Oklahoma border.
CBNNews.com - As we approach the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, a debate is raging among counterterrorism experts: what is the current state of al Qaeda?
Have the group's serious losses in Iraq left it fatally weakened? Or do one safe haven and several new fronts make it as dangerous as ever?
Let's begin this discussion by examining the state of al Qaeda in what the Bush administration considers the central front in the War on Terror: Iraq. ....
French Nobel prize winner and reformed communist Andre Gide once said, “The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” We in the United States, especially those who are politically aware, can identify with this phrase because our political parties have taken to questing for political power rather than the execution of good government. While there are some elected officials who sincerely strive to serve our nation and its people, the great majority of those who inhabit the halls of government – whether at the local, state or national levels – do so to move their political agendas forward and to institute their party’s special interests. In doing so they abdicate the duty of their positions in that they are not representing the will of their constituents.
Examples of elected officials placing politics before government are abundant. An overwhelming majority of the American public have expressed, in no uncertain terms, that they want their elected officials to, among other things:
? Utilize our nation’s natural resources to break from the chains of foreign energy dependence.
? Secure the borders.
? Simplify and make more equitable the tax codes.
? Balance the budget by maintaining fiscal responsibility (read, don’t spend what you don’t have, keep your checkbook balanced and stop raising taxes to institute new programs of entitlement).
? Institute an effective and practical solution for the looming Social Security crisis.
? Eliminate foreign aid to countries that consistently oppose the United States on the world stage.
The list could go on and on but the point is clear; politicians consistently put politics, power and financial special interests before the issues most important to the American people: A small, elite group of Progressives, beholden to the environmental lobby, uses their governmental powers to usurp the will of the people by refusing to allow drilling in places we know there are oil deposits; politicians on both sides of the aisle pander to an illegitimate voting demographic in the illegal alien population for fear that if they stand up for America’s sovereignty they may be voted out of office by those who shouldn’t be voting in the first place; politicians of both major political parties refuse to banish the earmark and reserve the right to raid the government treasury to provide bribes to their constituencies in an effort to garner re-election; the tax code continues to overburden the middle class and penalize the family while expanding entitlement increases the number of those feeding from the public trough and the mega-rich evolve into an elitist class; etc, etc, etc...
But perhaps the most devious, the most troublesome example of elected officials putting political opportunism before good government comes in the form of “the perfect storm.”
Our nation faces two enormous threats, one externally and one from within, and we do so without a proper understanding of why we should be fighting them both with every fiber of our collective being.
The mainstream media and the progressive, anti-war left feverishly contend that Iraq and Afghanistan are two separate conflicts – one illegitimate and one poorly managed. They continue to deny – adamantly – that Western Civilization is at odds with the aggressive ideology that is fundamentalist Islam. They do so insisting that dialogue is always the answer and believing that the actions of the United States in the Middle East justify the violence of the jihadi movement.
“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.”
Facts are stubborn things and the facts surrounding this third major attempt to establish a global Caliphate are no different.
Wahhabists and Salafists like al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah and Yusuf al Qaradawi, perhaps the most influential voice within the Muslim Brotherhood, have stated in no uncertain terms that the catalyst for their violent jihadi movement transcends the actions of the United States.
While bin Laden and al Zawahiri used the excuse of US forces in Saudi Arabia as a catalyst to launch their aggression, the rhetoric that surrounds their every action exposes the totalitarian tenets of their religious beliefs. Their Wahhabist beliefs call for the conversion or extermination of the infidel and the institution of Sharia law world wide; the establishment of a global Caliphate.
Hassan Nasrallah – the figurehead of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and mouthpiece for Hezbollah’s creators, the Iranian mullahs – pursues the extinction of Israel and, like his ideological master, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, yearns for the return of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, who can only come when the world is in chaos at the “end of days.”
Al Qaradawi and his Sunni Muslim Brotherhood – perhaps the most dangerous of them all – promotes the proselytization of Wahhabi Islam throughout the world. It should be noted that Wahhabi Islam is the brand of radical, violent Islam practiced by Osama bin Laden and all of the 9/11 hijackers.
Understanding that those who believe in Wahhabism and/or Salafism and those who practice the brand of Shi’ite Islam practiced by Ahmadinejad, hold their beliefs as strict religious dogma, understanding that ingenuous dialogue – but for capitulation – with anyone who embraces the strict tenets of radical Islam is then impossible, why would any elected official, true to good government, deny the enormity of the threat posed to the United States and the West by radical Islamist elements?
The second serious threat is less immediate and less violent, but caustic and lethal to the American philosophy and the continued existence of our country just the same. This threat comes from the American Fifth Column; the threat from within.
Emanating from the failed ideologies of Maxist-Leninst socialism and communism, the American Fifth Column dedicates itself to the transformation of the United States from a representative republic to a system of democratic socialism. This movement is personified by the progressive-left that has effectively hijacked the Democrat party.
Those leading the American Fifth Column have instituted a shadow government by instituting a shadow set of laws known as political correctness. They strive to legislate acceptable thought (no hate speech, the Fairness Doctrine) while Balkanizing the country employing the false notion that diversity makes us a stronger nation. Using the simple science of etymology it is clear that diversity is based on division, not unity. This diversity is anchored in the failed ideology of multiculturalism. Examples of how devastating the institution of multiculturalism is to a society can be witnessed in the incremental disappearance of the national identities of all the nations of Europe. Europe is now abandoning multiculturalism in favor of nationalism.
By promoting moral relativism the American Fifth Column strives to move away from the doctrines of Judeo-Christianity and Natural Law; the ideologies our Founders and Framers understood to be essential for a nation that championed individual rights.
Through unconstitutional entitlement programs and the legislation of inequitable tax burden on those who have successfully employed the capitalist system to their benefit, those leading the American Fifth Column strive to artificially create economic equality through the redistribution of wealth. Ironically, those who lead the American Fifth Column have established an elitist class for themselves, as most of them are millionaires (like Nancy Pelosi) and even billionaires (like Peter Lewis and George Soros). They do so to reduce the “influential footprint” of the United States on the world in a quest for a one-world order administered by the elite.
Interestingly, the progressive-leftists of the American Fifth Column are playing the roll – either unwittingly or recklessly – of the useful idiot to radical Islam’s quest for a global Caliphate.
So, the people of the United States face these two incredibly potent threats – each which could affect the end of the great American experiment – yet we are apathetic to the threat. Why? Because we face these challenges constitutionally illiterate.
We in the United States – but for those who have served to protect our liberty – stand apathetic to the threats because we do not understand the worth of our liberty, the worth of our freedoms and therefore we cannot adequately value them. Because we do not value our liberty, because we do not understand the worth of our freedoms, it is easier to incrementally abdicate them and to abdicate the responsibility to protect them. In doing so we invite the nefarious – those with ulterior motives, totalitarian quests and special interests – to take on the façade of public servant while they institute ideological agendas that literally kill out nation.
Our educational system has been hijacked by progressive-left ideologues. They rewrite our school’s textbooks to place more emphasis on the notion that Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, that Benjamin Franklin had a tendency to philander or any number of human frailties possessed by our Founders and Framers rather than exploring the incredible intellect of these men, rather than examining the philosophies that so affected these men that they would create the genius of the Charters of Freedom – the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In today’s classrooms the American Fifth Column provides a curriculum short on Hobbes, Locke, Aristotle and Cicero and heavy on tolerance, diversity and the proper use of condoms.
It is time that parents from all over the country – all over the world – embrace the idea that we have to take charge of educating our children. In the long run we have to run for school boards and take an interest in our schools’ curriculum development. In the short run we have to engage and support organizations that are sounding the alarm about not only the indoctrination being perpetrated on our children through “special interest education” but the threats we face from dangers internally and externally; the perfect storm.
Edmund Burke is quoted to have said, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” It is time, patriots, to ask ourselves, are we supporting those fighting the good fight? Or are we doing nothing.
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Right Balance with Greg Allen on the Accent Radio Network and on The Captain's America Radio Show catering to the US Armed Forces around the world. His opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally.
Certain recent proposals to ostensibly expand health care "choice" and "competition" would have exactly the opposite effect. One such recent proposal is to create a national health care "market" through a congressionally designed "national health insurance exchange" where a government health plan would compete directly with private health plans.[1]
The declared purpose of this arrangement is to give those Americans who were not enrolled in employment-based health insurance coverage, or those with insecure coverage, the opportunity to get stable, affordable health insurance that would have a guaranteed set of government standardized benefits (such as Medicare or a version of Medicare) calibrated for a younger population. Usually, this kind of proposal is accompanied by an employer mandate, whereby employers who do not offer private coverage are required to pay a tax that would, in turn, help to finance coverage in the competing public program.
Government as Player and Umpire ....
(Compiler's note: Long, but a "must read" article. rca)
by Baker Spring
Section 1062 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 created a congressionally appointed commission to review the strategic posture of the United States.[1] The Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States is charged with assessing the entire strategic posture of the U.S., including offensive and defensive forces and conventional and nuclear forces. It is chaired by former Secretary of Defense William Perry and co-chaired by former Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger. The commission's initial report is due later this year. The commission's review comes at a perilous time for U.S. strategic forces. The U.S. nuclear arsenal and stockpile have been atrophying since the end of the Cold War. Strategic defenses, which were all but abandoned during the Cold War, continue to lag behind the threat resulting from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and their delivery systems. Congress has been reluctant to pursue conventional strategic strike programs, which are also referred to as prompt global strike systems. However, the commission's most pressing problem is adapting the U.S. strategic posture to maintaining national security and stability in the multipolar world that has replaced what commentator Charles Krauthammer has called the "unipolar moment" that immediately followed the end of the Cold War.[2] This multipolar world has resulted from the post-Cold War proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons and related delivery systems. In this multipolar environment, the commission should recommend to Congress that the U.S. adopt a damage limitation strategy to replace the retaliatory deterrence strategy that dominated U.S. policy during the Cold War. A damage limitation strategy would seek to protect the peoples, territories, institutions, and infrastructure of the United States and its allies against attacks by defeating such attacks and, barring the outright defeat of such attacks, limiting their attendant damage to the greatest extent possible. ....
DUBAI -- The former chief executive of Dubai-based Islamic mortgage lender Tamweel is being held by police here as part of a financial probe, a law-enforcement official said.
The former executive, Adel Al Shirawi, was arrested after a case was filed on Aug. 5, according to the police official, who declined to be identified. Mr. Shirawi hasn't been charged, the official said.
According to Dubai Public Prosecution records seen by Zawya Dow Jones, Mr. Shirawi and Feras Kalthoum, a former head of investments at Tamweel, are being probed as part of an alleged "embezzlement and mistrust" investigation. Dubai Public Prosecution officials declined to comment on the details of the probe. Mr. Kalthoum was arrested earlier this month, but hasn't been charged, a Dubai Public Prosecution official confirmed to Zawya Dow Jones. ....
US Department of Defense: 1-2% of individuals may experience severe vaccine effects that "could result in disability or death."
American Academy of Pediatrics: 2+ % of children have "defects" that cause vaccine "risks" ....
The Justice Department has proposed a new domestic spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.
The proposed changes would revise the federal government's rules for police intelligence-gathering for the first time since 1993 and would apply to any of the nation's 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive roughly $1.6 billion each year in federal grants.
Quietly unveiled late last month, the proposal is part of a flurry of domestic intelligence changes issued and planned by the Bush administration in its waning months. They include a recent executive order that guides the reorganization of federal spy agencies and a pending Justice Department overhaul of FBI procedures for gathering intelligence and investigating terrorism cases within U.S. borders.
Another benefit of EMP hardening, which is considerably more practical, is that it can protect electronic equipment against the effects of lightning and everyday power-line surges.
I strenuously urge Washington to consider re-establishing FEMA's EMP protection program. Electronic devices have permeated our lives so deeply that any disruption of these systems on which we so dearly depend could prove disastrous.
LONDON -- Specialists for Britain's MI5 intelligence service, responsible for monitoring Britain's eight maximum security prisons where convicted al-Qaida terrorists are held, have unearthed a plan to kidnap a prison officer and behead him, then transmit the images onto the Internet, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
The discovery was described by MI6 director-general, Jonathan Evans, in a report this week to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith as "a real live threat."
The plot is centered on Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire and Frankland jail in County Durham. Between them, they house more than a dozen convicted terrorists.
"In all eight prisons, there is mounting racial tension, but the specific threat to execute an officer and film it on mobile phones is new," states the MI5 report. ....
Rep. John P. Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat known for delivering federal money to defense contractors in his district, is now going to bat for a constituent's company that was convicted last year of illegally exporting components of military equipment.
Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee, wrote State Department officials in late June urging them to meet with the president of Electro-Glass Products, a 50-employee company that was convicted in April 2007 of illegally exporting components of night-vision goggles to a company in India. The Mammoth, Pa., firm has been sanctioned by the State Department, and Murtha argues that the action threatens to put the firm out of business. ....
Well, more bad news from the Census Bureau.
Looking at today's trends in immigration and in immigrant fertility, the Bureau now says that its previous projection of 420 million people in the U.S. in 2050 is too low.
Instead, it now looks like we are headed to 439 million in 2050 -- if Congress doesn't finally start correcting the collossal immigration mistakes set in motion in 1965, accelerated in 1990 and snowballing because of the effects of Chain Migration.
At least four-fifths of the additional 135 million people crammed on top of the 304 million already in our communities will be the result of new immigrants and births to immigrants, according to Census data.
The good news is that we don't have to ruin the future quality of life of our children and grandchildren.
If Congress adopts the plan of action advocated by NumbersUSA, U.S. population in 2050 won't have to be anywhere near 400 million.
The key is to eliminate the Chain Migration categories that create endless chains of relatives of immigrants coming to America, without regard to their skills, education or their ability to serve the national interest. (Please continue to use our free faxing system to press your Members of Congress to co-sponsor bills to end Chain Migration and to carry out the other solutions to our immigration problems.) ....
Russian military aircraft have deployed controversial and indiscriminately deadly cluster bombs on civilian areas of Georgia according to an international rights group.
Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said today that it has obtained evidence proving that the weapons, which were banned by more than 100 countries in May, have killed at least 11 people so far during the conflict in the Caucasus.
Cluster bomb systems scatter small “bomblets” across a wide area and can prove deadly to civilians - particularly children - who pick up munitions which have failed to detonate on impact. The bombs effectively leave behind a trail of landmines. ....
* Not only that they blow up schools along with students and teachers, nothing is what they want:
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Iraqi assassination squads are being trained in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah for attacks in Iraq, a US military official said Friday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Shiite "special groups" were being trained in Qom, Tehran, Mashad and Ahvaz in assassination and bombing techniques to target specific Iraqis as well as US troops and Iraqi security forces.
"We have intelligence reports confirming Iranian-sponsored groups are planning to return back to Iraq and are targeting specific coalition forces, ISF (Iraqi Security Forces) and Iraqi citizens," the official said.
The intelligence, if it proves out, raises the prospect of a deadly new security challenge at a time when the US military is hoping to make further cuts in its forces.
The official, who spoke from Iraq, said the information has been turned over to the Iraqi government "and they are taking the lead in handling the situation."
The groups were being trained in "reconnaissance, small arms, small unit tactics, cellular operations, EFPs and other IEDs, RPGs and assassination techniques," the official said. ....
Click here for additional information on this topic.Her arrest serves to remind how invisibly most Islamist infiltration proceeds. In particular, an estimated forty Al-Qaeda sympathizers or operatives have sought to penetrate U.S. intelligence agencies.
Such a well-placed infiltrator can wreck great damage explains a former CIA chief of counterintelligence, Michael Sulick: "In the war on terrorism, intelligence has replaced the Cold War's tanks and fighter planes as the primary weapon against an unseen enemy." Islamist moles, he argues, "could inflict far more damage to national security than Soviet spies," for the U.S. and Soviet Union never actually fought each other, whereas now, "our nation is at war."
 Aafia Siddiqui is accused of working for Al-Qaeda. |
Here are some American cases of attempted infiltration since 2001 that have been made public:
The Air Force discharged Sadeq Naji Ahmed, a Yemeni immigrant, when his superiors learned of his pro-Al-Qaeda statements. Ahmed subsequently became a baggage screener at Detroit's Metro Airport, which terminated him for hiding his earlier discharge from the Air Force. He was convicted of making false statements and sentenced to eighteen months in jail.
The Chicago Police Department fired Patricia Eng-Hussain just three days into her training on learning that her husband, Mohammad Azam Hussain, was arrested for being an active member of Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H), a Pakistani terrorist group.
The Chicago Police Department also fired Arif Sulejmanovski, a supervising janitor at its 25th District station after it learned his name was on a federal terrorist watch list of international terrorism suspects.
Mohammad Alavi, an engineer at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, was arrested as he arrived on a flight from Iran, accused of taking computer access codes and software to Iran that provide details on the plant's control rooms and plant layout. He subsequently pleaded guilty to transporting stolen property.
 Nada Nadim Prouty pleaded guilty to multiple charges. |
Waheeda Tehseen, a Pakistani immigrant who filled a sensitive toxicologist position with the Environmental Protection Agency, pleaded guilty to fraud and was deported. World Net Daily explains that "investigators suspect espionage is probable, as she produced highly sensitive health-hazard documents for toxic compounds and chemical pesticides. Tehseen also was an expert in parasitology as it relates to public water systems."
Weiss Rasool, 31, a Fairfax County police sergeant and Afghan immigrant, pleaded guilty for checking police databases without authorization, thereby jeopardizing at least one federal terrorism investigation.
Nadire P. Zenelaj, 32, a 911 emergency operator of Albanian origins, was charged with 232 felony counts of computer trespass for illegally searching New York State databases, including at least one person on the FBI's terrorist watch list.
Three other cases are less clear. The Transportation Security Administration fired Bassam Khalaf, 21, a Texan of Christian Palestinian origins, as an airport baggage screener because lyrics on his music CD, Terror Alert, applaud the 9/11 attacks. FBI Special Agent Gamal Abdel-Hafiz "showed a pattern of pro-Islamist behavior," according to author Paul Sperry, that may have helped acquit Sami Al-Arian of terrorism charges. The Pentagon cleared Hesham Islam, an Egyptian immigrant, former U.S. Navy commander, and special assistant to the deputy secretary of defense, but major questions remain about his biography and his outlook.
Other Western countries too - Australia, Canada, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom - have been subject to infiltration efforts. (For details, see my weblog entry, "Islamists Penetrate Western Security.")
This record prompts one to wonder what catastrophe must occur before government agencies, some of which have banished the words "Islam" and "jihad," seriously confront their internal threat?
Westerners are indebted to Muslim agents like Fred Ghussin and "Kamil Pasha" who have been critical to fighting terrorism. That said, I stand by my 2003 statement that "There is no escaping the unfortunate fact that Muslim government employees in law enforcement, the military and the diplomatic corps need to be watched for connections to terrorism."
A new congressional study has found that more than 20 Muslim nations deny entry to American and other foreign religious workers, WND has learned, even as the U.S. State Department grants entry to hundreds of clerics from their countries each year.
The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and most other Middle Eastern countries still refuse to offer religious visas, and deny entry to U.S. clergy as official policy, according to a report by the Law Library of Congress, the foreign legal research arm of the U.S. Congress. In a shocker, U.S. allies Afghanistan and Iraq also made the list of religious refuseniks.
"Of this group, the vast majority constitute Arab or Muslim states," said Wendy Zeldin, senior legal research analyst for the Library of Congress.
"Since Islam prohibits proselytism by other religions, foreign religious workers will in effect be denied entry to conduct religious work," Zeldin wrote in the three-page report, a copy of which was obtained by WND.
At the same time, Washington routinely issues R-1 religious visas to clerics from the Middle East, including jihadi hotbeds Saudi Arabia and Egypt, even though an alarming number of foreign imams have been suspects in terrorism investigations since 9/11.
The Department of Homeland Security, in fact, considers visiting imams as nonthreatening as Buddhist monks. Screening procedures call for both visitors to be treated as the same level of security risk at the border.
Also, R-2 visas are routinely granted to relatives of foreign imams. ....
By Katya Andrusz
Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and Poland signed a preliminary accord today that will allow for 10 U.S. interceptor missiles to be based in the eastern European country, completing a defense system that Russia opposes.
The U.S. has agreed to Polish requests including modernization of its armed forces in exchange for the location of the missiles, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in an interview with private broadcaster TVN24 this evening.
``We are now harvesting the fruit of many months of hard work,'' said Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski at a joint press conference with U.S. Undersecretary of State John Rood in Warsaw. ``Only people of ill intent should fear this agreement.'' ....
A licensed gunmaker who has reported retaliatory attacks on his work by federal agents upset over his testimony on behalf of a man sent to prison for having a broken gun has ordered the government to return one of his projects.
"You have seized company property without any cause or court order to date. The company firmly demands the return of the firearm in question," Len Savage told John Spencer and other officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in a letter, a copy of which was sent to WND and also later posted online at the War on Guns blog run by David Codrea.
"Therefore please return the property of the company [the firearm in question] immediately," he wrote. ....
"The President was informed immediately on Friday, when we received news of the first two SS-21 Russian missile launchers into Georgian territory," Jeffrey said at a recent news briefing. ....
| by Federal Computer Week | |
| Wednesday, 13 August 2008 | |
| The Homeland Security Department has made great strides in three years in developing relationships with state and local law enforcement authorities, said Robert Riegle, director of DHS’ state and local programs. But as the department prepares to continue under a new presidential administration — its first transition — many questions remain open. Riegle touted the progress his office has made in information sharing and building relationships with the nation’s 800,000-officer state and local law enforcement community in an article he published in the July issue of the Homeland Defense Journal. Riegle singled out the network of more than 50 state and local intelligence fusion centers that nonfederal authorities have created around the country. |
Editor's note: Naperville Police Chief David Dial's column, which normally is published every other Monday, was inadvertently omitted this Monday. It is being published here now, and will return to its normal position Aug. 25 on Page 2.
In 1996, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Detective Larry Richards helped to create the Los Angeles County Terrorism Early Warning Group. The TEW Group was designed to integrate a multi-disciplinary (police, fire and health) network made up of local, state and federal agencies for sharing intelligence about terrorist threats. The former Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, has since recognized the TEW Group as a national model for fusion centers.
The terrorist attacks of 2001 represented exactly the kind of action the TEW Group was created to prevent. The 9/11 Commission attributed our failure to prevent the attacks to a breakdown in the sharing of intelligence, resulting from a failure of management, a failure of policy, a failure of capability and a failure of imagination.
Now, we are finding that national level documents and executive orders stating the need to share, collaborate and coordinate homeland security intelligence within the national, state and local context have become juxtaposed with some of the realities of actually doing it.
This became evident in 2006 when it was learned that a Marine gunnery sergeant gave classified military information to Detective Richards who, in addition to being a detective on the sheriff's department, was also a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve.
The gunnery sergeant stated that he was recruited by Detective Richards to collect the classified documents and pass them on to the TEW Group.
During a court-martial hearing, the gunnery sergeant admitted releasing the classified documents to two Los Angeles law enforcement officials, including Detective Richards. Although he received no personal gain for the release of the documents and said he did so out of patriotism, he was given a 26-month prison sentence for his conduct.
Last month it was announced that, because of a widening probe of this matter, two additional Marine Corps reservists were called back to Camp Pendleton for allegedly sharing secret files with the TEW Group. Both of them are being charged with dereliction of duty and several orders violations.
Additionally, internal investigations are ongoing in both the police and sheriff's departments in Los Angeles.
This entire situation has turned into an intelligence-sharing nightmare. It is clear that laws were broken. It is also clear that we need to find a way to enable information exchange between first responders and our military in matters of national security.
Marine Colonel and a long-time TEW Group participant G. I. Wilson has described this incident as "a huge indictment of the stove-piped systems we continue to propagate after wasting billions of dollars (in intelligence). It kind of makes you wonder who the bad guys are."
The public should not be shocked after the terrorist attack on America to learn that critical information was not shared.
“There was clear-eyed and bipartisan recognition after the attacks that we needed to be able — and allowed — to collect intelligence in the United States,” he said in a speech prepared for an anti-terrorism conference in Portland, Ore. “Indeed, there was a loud demand for it.”
By Thomas Frank, USA TODAY
A government program to find gaps in airport screening is "a waste of money" because it doesn't follow up on why screeners failed to spot guns, knives and bombs on undercover agents, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee says.
A Government Accountability Office report obtained by USA TODAY says Transportation Security Administration inspectors posing as passengers do not record why individual screeners failed to spot weapons. The TSA ran 20,000 covert tests at the USA's 450 commercial airports from 2002 to 2007, and the results ought to be used to improve screening, the report says.The TSA disputed the report and said it has adopted many new screening practices and technologies to close holes revealed by testing.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., plans a hearing next month to press the TSA on making better use of covert tests. ....
The number of Pakistan Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) members who believe in the Islamist jihad of Al Qaeda and the Taliban is growing exponentially, US and Western intelligence authorities say. For its part, the ISI historically has supported the Taliban.
As a result of this burgeoning sympathy within ISI for Taliban and Al Qaeda jihadists, including protecting these terrorist organizations' training safe havens along the Afghanistan border, Al Qaeda has become much more capable of attacking the US on its own soil than it’s been able to do since 9/11, Ted Gistaro, National Intelligence Officer for Transnational Threats in the Office of Director of National Intelligence, said Tuesday. ....
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, ruling in Manhattan, said Saudi Arabia and members of its royal family were protected from being sued because the State Department had not officially designated the desert kingdom as a supporter of terrorism.
....In their lawsuits, the victims alleged that over a period of a decade or more, officials of the government of Saudi Arabia had financed Islamic charities that, in turn, had become the sources of funding for Islamic terrorists, first in Afghanistan and then later in Bosnia Herzegovina and, ultimately, in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The victims offered as evidence testimony by senior U.S. Treasury and State Department officials and other U.S. government findings that the charities had become conduits for terrorist financing, beginning in the mid-1990s. U.S. officials have said that although the Saudis have taken some steps to crack down on the charities, they remained concerned that some charities continue to be sources of funding for al-Qaeda.
From Jihad Watch ... rca
It was "hate," you see. It was "anti-Muslim."
Now, I haven't seen the email in question, but if all it does is say that Muslims who want Islamic law should leave the country, then the reaction to it from Muslim leaders is very telling. On the one hand we are supposed to believe that every Muslim in the United States completely accepts American pluralism and Constitutional rule, and has no intention of imposing Sharia here at any time in the future. If you don't believe that, you're a venomous "Islamophobe."
And yet if that were true, wouldn't Khalid Mozaffer of the American Islamic Association be standing up and saying that Yes, he agreed with this email, and that he would aggressively resist any agitation to replace American Constitutional government with Sharia? By labeling this email "hate," isn't he admitting that many, if not most, American Muslims do want Sharia here? And isn't the presence of a large group that wants to destroy the ideas of the equality of all people before the law and the freedom of speech, and replace them with a legal system that institutionalizes discrimination against women and non-Muslims, something that Americans should be concerned about?
Is it really "hate" to want to defend republican pluralism and resist a totalitarian and draconian system that establishes an elite class and relegates others to permanent inferior status?....In June, the Senate Ethics Committee began an initial look into Dodd's and Conrad's discounted Countrywide Financial VIP loans, as is fitting. Meanwhile, with all of the ethics stink bombs lurking in Washington, the committee, chaired by California Democrat Barbara Boxer, is aiming its guns at Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., for "a serious violation of Senate rules."
Coburn's bad? An obstetrician by profession, Coburn won't heed the committee's threat to reprimand him for delivering babies back home in Oklahoma -- for free.
"On my own time, I'm taking care of women who have a need, and I'm going to continue to deliver babies," Coburn told Politico.com.
And, bully for him: "I'm not going to stop." When a member of the House, Coburn delivered 400 babies under an agreement with ethics meisters that allowed him to do so -- if he charged only enough to cover his expenses.
....What's really going on here? The senator -- who prefers to be called Dr. Coburn -- has been a thorn in the side of both big-spending Republicans and Democrats. He calls earmarks "the gateway drug" to Washington's spending addiction. The Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote back in 2006 when the GOP ran the Senate, "Tom Coburn is like an imam at a pig roast: He sees pork everywhere, and he doesn't like it."
Coburn bucked party leaders as he tried to block Stevens' $229 million earmark, largely for a bridge between Anchorage and an island with 50 residents, infamously dubbed the "Bridge to Nowhere."
When Democrats took over the Senate, Coburn challenged their pork-barrel projects as well.With Democrats in charge, the Senate Select Committee on Ethics is no more ethical than it was under the GOP. In going after Coburn, its mandate is clear: Forget Ethics, It's Payback Time.
Al Qaeda is regrouping in northwest Pakistan. The FBI is worried about terror attacks during the fall election season. So how are senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security reacting to these potential threats? By going to Hawaii, of course.
In early October, around a dozen top Homeland officials, including the undersecretary for science, retired Admiral Jay M. Cohen, will be doing their part to protect the country by attending what they say is a critical trade show and convention—on Waikiki Beach.
Homeland officials have been criticized in the past for junkets like this one. So it's no surprise that dismay about the upcoming Honolulu excursion is already surfacing on Capitol Hill. ....
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) | Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country's largest power providers say the problems that turned out the lights on 50 million people have largely been resolved, but they fear that larger, systemic issues could soon lead to even bigger and more damaging outages.
Excess capacity in the system is shrinking and construction, as well as plans for new plants, has slowed as costs to build and operate them have soared.
At the same time, it is estimated that electricity use will increase 29 percent between 2006 to 2030 - much of it driven by residential growth, according to a government report issued in June. ....
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