WASHINGTON — Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.
The requirement applies to former South African leader Mandela and other members of South Africa’s governing African National Congress (ANC), the once-banned anti-Apartheid organization. In the 1970s and ’80s, the ANC was officially designated a terrorist group by the country’s ruling white minority. Other countries, including the United States, followed suit.
Because of this, Rice told a Senate committee recently, her department has to issue waivers for ANC members to travel to the USA.
"This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it’s frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela," Rice said.
Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, is pushing a bill that would remove current and former ANC leaders from the watch lists. Supporters hope to get it passed before Mandela’s 90th birthday July 18.
"What an indignity," Berman said. "The ANC set an important example: It successfully made the change from armed struggle to peace. We should celebrate the transformation."
In 1990, Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison for crimes committed during the struggle against Apartheid, a repressive regime that subjugated black South Africans. In 1994, he was elected South Africa’s first black president.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., called ANC members’ inclusion on watch lists a "bureaucratic snafu" and pledged to fix the problem.
Members of other groups deemed a terrorist threat, such as Hamas, also are on the watch lists.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says "common sense" suggests Mandela should be removed. He says the issue "raises a troubling and difficult debate about what groups are considered terrorists and which are not."
When ANC members apply for visas to the USA, they are flagged for questioning and need a waiver to be allowed in the country. In 2002, former ANC chairman Tokyo Sexwale was denied a visa. In 2007, Barbara Masekela, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006, was denied a visa to visit her ailing cousin and didn’t get a waiver until after the cousin had died, Berman’s legislation says.
Read between the lines people and you’ll see why our borders are open.
EL PASO, Texas — The key to curbing illegal immigration rests in the hands of Congress, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector said Tuesday.
Chief Patrol Agent Victor M. Manjarrez Jr., in an interview with The Associated Press, said without comprehensive immigration reform border agents continue to split their attention between "economic migrants," criminals, and potentially terrorists.
"Most of these people are economic migrants but we have to deal with them between the ports of entry because we have not, in terms of a legislative fix, determined what we do with these people," Manjarrez said. "I think it’s pretty obvious that the country has a need for economic migrants. To what degree, I don’t know. That’s for the country to decide and for the politicians to decide."
In the El Paso Sector, an area that encompasses 268 miles of border stretching west from Hudspeth County in far West Texas to the Arizona state line, agents arrested about 75,000 border crossers in fiscal year 2007. Manjarrez estimates that at least 87 percent of those were just looking for work.
Immigration reform stalled in 2006 amid a flurry proposed bills that included everything from criminal sanctions for illegal immigrants to guest worker programs to paths to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already living in the United States.
Approved were efforts to build a fence at the Mexican border and hire thousands of new agents to patrol vast stretches of open desert separating the U.S. from Mexico and the thick woods and lakes that divide the U.S. and Canada.
And with the Border Patrol’s new focus on terrorists and weapons of mass destruction _ the agency changed its official focus with the creation of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security _ Manjarrez said agents need help.
"When you look at the series of events that have happened over the last five, six years … our mission changed," Manjarrez said. "Our primary mission changed from our traditional focus. Our primary mission now is terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. That’s what we should be focused on. We can’t focus on that as much as we would like because of all the other issues that we deal with."
The chief said agents "have encountered situations which lead us to believe there is a terrorism nexus." He declined to provide specific details.
Manjarrez, a veteran agent who has served in various sectors including Tucson, Ariz. and the Washington D.C. headquarters, said based on intelligence received "by the DHS family" and hunches based on experience, he believes the threat of a terrorist or weapon of mass destruction being smuggled across the border exists.
And by reducing "the clutter" of immigration issues his agents respond to every day, agents could focus their attention more closely on looking for would-be terrorists, criminals, and weapons.
"If there is anything that can reduce that flow, and those stresses" it would help, Manjarrez said.
The latest Democratic smear against John McCain shows gruesome images of war — including two American soldiers apparently killed by an IED. The commercial has two edited clips of McCain deliberately taken out of context to make it appear he’s saying "staying in Iraq for 100 years is fine with me."
——
About 6 or so months ago CNN was running a commercial for a special on the Iraq war. In that commercial they showed a few Humvees being blown-up. It was an endless loop of watching our soldiers die. I called CNN and talked to the producer who claimed he was not aware of the commercial. Sure he wasn’t. After all, he’s only the fuckin’ producer. Anyway, the commercial was pulled and rightly so. Speak up people. I did and it yielded results.
The Dirty Hands Caravan, made up of about 120 people including actor-director Sean Penn, are traveling from Indio, Calif., to New Orleans and made a stop in Las Cruces on Tuesday night.
The participants boarded a string of bio-diesel buses in an effort designed to engage a new generation of activists.
The group is doing different volunteer activities in select cities on the trip.
Which cities they are stopping in and what activities they are involved in is not known in advance because an itinerary is not available on the group’s Web site.
The Dirty Hands Caravan had a special guest speaker at dinner on their campground in Las Cruces, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.
"It was another really cool day on the Dirty Hands Caravan!," Pat Pedraja wrote on the group’s blog on the Do Something Web site. "We finally stopped driving around 8 pm at the State Fairgrounds in Los (sic) Cruces, New Mexico. Everyone set up their tents in a circle, and a fire was built while a catering company was cooking dinner in the back of a truck. It was too dark to play baseball, but I played catch with my mom - she can’t catch :). I even learned a new guitar chord with a new friend.
"We all sat around the campfire while we waited for dinner, and then I was asked to speak. I told them my story - about surviving leukemia and starting Driving for Donors - and that everyone on the trip has the power to make a difference by doing something important. My mom started to cry because she was proud of me and everyone else started to cry too!
"Dinner was delicious! I had steak and mashed potatoes with apple cobbler; no vegan food for me! After dinner, Cindy Sheehan spoke. I didn’t know who she was until I heard her story. Her son died in the Iraq War in 2004 and she camped outside Bush’s Texas ranch for 30 days in April 2005 trying to talk to President Bush. She called the youth of today the ‘WE Generation’ because WE need to work together to make change! Cindy chatting us up around the campfire
"I was so tired that I fell asleep in a chair as she was talking - sorry, Cindy! She is running for Congress in San Francisco www.cindyforcongress.org and she even offered to do a marrow drive with me!"
A Guatemalan national made it easy for illegal immigrants on the Eastern Shore to drive, according to the FBI.
The FBI arrested Felipe Jesus Mazariegos-Perez at his home Tuesday on federal charges of buying hundreds of Tennessee and Mississippi license plates and car titles and selling them to immigrants who cannot prove their residency, as Virginia requires.
The FBI raided Mazariegos-Perez’s home in Nelsonia, Accomack County, on Tuesday morning, looking for the out-of-state plates and titles. He was arrested and taken into U.S. District Court that afternoon, where a magistrate ordered him jailed pending a bond hearing Thursday.
Mazariegos-Perez, speaking through an interpreter, told the judge he could not afford to hire his own lawyer. His wife, Elvia Elizabel Soto-Ortiz, also was charged, but she was allowed to turn herself in by Monday.
The FBI has been investigating Felipe Perez, as he is known, for more than a year and a half, and following reports in The Virginian-Pilot in October 2005 of a swell of car crashes, some fatal, involving unlicensed, undocumented Hispanics driving cars with Tennessee plates.
The agents were led to Mazariegos-Perez, who turns 44 today, after breaking up an Eastern Shore prostitution ring that catered to Hispanic migrant workers, an FBI agent said in a court affidavit unsealed Tuesday. Several people convicted in that case as well as other illegal immigrants became cooperating witnesses in the Perez matter, the affidavit says.
In 2003, the Virginia State Police actually caught Mazariegos-Perez with 19 new Tennessee license plates and 31 new vehicle titles but never charged him.
He "claimed it was common knowledge among people in the area that vehicle titles and license plates can be easily obtained in Tennessee," the agent wrote in the affidavit. The case wasn’t pursued again until fall 2006.
After Tennessee tightened up its requirements for obtaining plates and titles, Mazariegos-Perez switched to Mississippi, where identification requirements are more lax, according to the FBI.
The FBI said it learned through the witnesses that Mazariegos-Perez was charging $300 to $350 per set of license plates, but that his price increased to $450 as of January, the FBI affidavit says.
About twice a month, he would drive to Mississippi to pick up orders delivered to two post office boxes he rented there, the papers say.
The FBI said he typically used phony Social Security numbers and false names.
One witness told the FBI he saw 50 to 100 license plates in Mazariegos-Perez’s trailer one day in 2006, the FBI said. In one deal about a year ago, Mazariegos-Perez sold five sets of license plates and titles to an individual for $1,010, the agent said in the affidavit.
Undocumented Hispanic drivers have been a menace on Eastern Shore roads for years, according to statistics and past interviews.
Thirteen fatal accidents between 2002 and 2005 involved Hispanic workers, most without insurance, and six of the vehicles involved bore Tennessee tags, according to a Virginian-Pilot investigation in 2005.
"It has contributed to a large volume of vehicular accidents involving illegal immigrants with poor driving skills and no automobile insurance, and many people have been seriously injured or killed," the agent wrote in the affidavit.
The FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the case.
The couple face as much as 10 years in prison each if convicted.
Soto-Ortiz, suspected of being in the country illegally, also faces possible deportation. Mazariegos-Perez’s immigration status could not be verified Tuesday.
A young inventor has created a motorbike with a twist – it uses two wheels but they are positioned right next to each other, giving it the illusion of being a powered unicycle. And even better, it might help save the planet.
Ben Gulak has spent several years building the electric Uno that uses gyroscopic technology - like the infamous Segway commuter device - to stay upright.
The bizarre-looking contraption has only one switch - on or off - and is controlled entirely by body movement.
The rider leans forwards to accelerate to speeds of 25mph and back to slow down. It has two wheels side-by-side and has been turning heads wherever it has been ridden.
Ben Gulak designed the Uno himself with the help of a simple 3D program
The green machine is so small and light it can be taken indoors and carried into lifts - and is recharged by being plugged into the mains.
The wheels are completely independent, allowing the bike to turn on a sixpence and the technology takes the balance and guesswork out of riding a unicycle.
Its 18-year-old creator is now looking for investors to get the Uno into production and onto the streets.
Ben, from Ontario, Canada, said: "I was inspired to make the bike after visiting China a few years ago and seeing all the smog.
"They all drive little bikes that are really polluting and I wanted to make something to combat that.
"I started with the concept because if something doesn’t look cool people just won’t be interested.
The Uno works like a Segway - just tilt your body forward to start moving
Ben Gulak turns heads from onlookers as he rides past them
"After coming up with the concept I started to build it and now have the first prototype and the reaction has been amazing.
"It has two wheels side by side and that means it is easier to turn as they are completely independent and have their own suspension.
"The bike has a ‘neutral point’ and when you lean forward it accelerates to keep the neutral point in the right place.
"It has a couple of gyros and is basically self-balancing - it takes the guesswork out of riding a unicycle.
"The bike takes a bit of getting used to because you have to learn to trust it. But it doesn’t take long.
"It takes any weight and weighs 120 lbs and can fit into a lift so you can take it indoors to charge it up.
"Currently it has a top speed of 25mph, but that will be increased greatly with bigger motors.
"It has a range of about 2.5 hours and it is designed for the commute to work through busy towns. I believe this could be electrical alternative to the car. I’m just looking for an investor to help me get it into production."
LAHORE: Around 60 to 70 percent of all inmates in the French prison system are Muslims despite them making up only 12 percent of the country’s total population, according to a report released by the Washington Post on Tuesday.
“The high percentage of Muslims in prisons is a direct consequence of the failure of the integration of minorities in France,” the report quotes Moussa Khedimellah, a sociologist who has spent several years conducting research on Muslims in the French penal system, as saying.
However, French prison officials blame the high numbers on the poverty of people who have moved to France from North African and other Islamic countries in recent decades.
“Many immigrants arrive in France in difficult financial situations, which make delinquency more frequent,” said Jeanne Sautière, director of integration and religious groups for the French prison system. “The most important thing is to say there is no correlation between Islam and delinquency.”
But Muslim leaders, sociologists and human rights activists argue that more than in most other European countries, government social policies in France have served to isolate Muslims in impoverished suburbs that have high unemployment, inferior schools and substandard housing. This has helped create a generation of French-born children with little hope of social advancement and even less respect for French authority, the report states.
In Britain, 11 percent of prisoners are Muslim in contrast to about three percent of all inhabitants, according to the Justice Ministry.
Research by the Open Society Institute, an advocacy organisation, shows that in the Netherlands 20 percent of adult prisoners and 26 percent of all juvenile offenders are Muslim; the country is about 5.5 percent Muslim.
In Belgium, Muslims from Morocco and Turkey make up at least 16 percent of the prison population, compared with 2 percent of the general populace, the research found.
A ghost town in northern Colorado could prove to be the battleground for another fight over uranium mining as a Grand Junction-based company prepares to launch its own campaign to extract the resource.
According to Weld County records, Geovic Mining Corp. has signed mining leases with nearly 130 landowners near Keota in the past year in preparation to mine uranium.
The price of uranium and demand for alternative energies have recently fueled speculation for the mineral — especially in places such as mineral-rich northern Colorado — after high overhead, low prices and environmental concerns forced many energy companies to abandon the mining in the 1980s. Uranium prices are at about $65 per pound, down from a high of nearly $140 per pound in July 2007, but up from a low of around $7 per pound in 2000.
The company is early in the process, but Andy Hoffman, Geovic’s vice president of investor relations, said the resources are clearly present in Weld. They have to file any permitting requests with the county.
Former Unocal employees who are now employed by Geovic first established there was uranium in the area in the 1970s, according to a 2007 earnings report released in early April.
Exploratory drilling will be done to affirm the presence of the uranium before other studies are done, according to the earnings report.
Hoffman said approval of the mining is a delicate political process. He said he wanted to have a chance to speak with the president of his company to get the latest on the project before releasing further information.
Geovic — which reported a net loss of $6.8 million in 2006 and $7.8 million 2007 — focuses mostly on mining cobalt in Cameroon. The company spent $2.8 million to acquire mineral leases on 15,500 acres of land in northern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming, according to the earnings report.
In the report, officials indicated that the uranium deposits are in roll-front formations of sandstone 120-600 feet below the surface. That is similar to the Canadian-firm Powertech Uranium Corporation’s uranium mine proposal for a mine near Nunn.
Lilias Jarding, an outspoken opponent of that mine said Geovic’s plan to mine is one of six proposed uranium mining operations in northern Colorado.
It’s been difficult for the public to find out anything about the projects, however, because Colorado law keeps nearly every aspect of a proposed mining operation secret, Jarding said.
"Nobody knows about these exploration permits until they decide to tell somebody," Jarding said.
Meanwhile, some Colorado lawmakers are trying to make it easier for residents to find out about proposed mining efforts in their area.
House Bill 1161 would require companies such as Powertech and Geovic to clean groundwater at their sites to pre-mining quality after a company finishes mining the radioactive material.
A second bill — Senate Bill 228 — would make prospecting for minerals a matter of public record while protecting the proprietary rights of mineral owners. That bill passed the state Senate on Monday and now heads to the House for consideration before the legislature adjourns next week.
A similar bill — HB 1165, which also would have required mining companies to make public their intent to prospect — died in committee in early April.
What’s next?
HB 1161 — Would strengthen mining standards. Will soon be considered by the full Senate.
SB 228 — Would make certain pre-mining activities public record. Passed the full Senate and now moves to the House for consideration.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff accepted the Gold Medal of the Union League of Philadelphia here last night on behalf of the men and women of the U.S. military, who he said make America’s freedom possible.
Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told the league members that he was honored and humbled to receive the award, but that the men and women of the armed forces are the real honorees.
“We should remember tonight those who serve around the world, particularly those who serve in harm’s way,” Mullen said. “It is their service that is the foundation for us as a nation. They make such a difference, and they make all of us proud.”
The chairman told the black-tie crowd that, while the world is full of challenges, U.S. servicemembers have risen to surmount them. He told of a recent visit he made to Iraq and the fact that he walked through neighborhoods in Baghdad and northern Iraq. “This is something you couldn’t do just weeks earlier,” Mullen said. “It is like that in many places in Iraq, and it wasn’t that way a year ago.”
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of Multinational Force Iraq, deservedly gets credit for turning the country around, the chairman said. “But the individuals who really get the credit in my book are the soldiers, the Marines, sailors and airmen who are on the streets making that happen,” he added. “They’re the ones who made the surge succeed. They’re the ones that get the credit. They have done it with their blood, with their sacrifices and with the American spirit, which has tied them to those who first served when our country was formed.”
Mullen said he spends a lot of his time trying to understand the pressure the ground forces are under. He said he has traveled to visit servicemembers stateside and overseas “to be in touch with what’s on the ground,” so he can use that input in the decisions he makes or when he recommends courses of action.
Servicemembers are not shy about telling him their feelings, especially when they are in a combat environment, he said. “I treasure that,” he told the audience. He said he has seen that troops are under pressure, “but they are performing at an exceptional level.”
“They are resilient, and they are proud of what they are doing,” he added. “They are seeing themselves succeed in a way they weren’t a year ago, and they have a skip in their step.”
The chairman said that, although work remains to be done in Iraq and a growing insurgency in Afghanistan isn’t going to go away, the military must manage the conflicts in such a way that servicemembers have more time between deployments with their families.
“It is in getting it right for the immediate future that consumes a great deal of my time,” he said. “But it is not just the immediate future that I am concerned about, because this war we’re in, and the extremists that we are fighting, is going to be around for decades, not for months or years. And we’re going to have to stay focused on this.”
The United States has to build a military for the future that can handle the unconventional enemies of today and conventional threats that may crop up, the chairman said, and the country cannot do it alone. “We’ve got to build relationships and partnerships with countries around the world,” Mullen said.
During and after World War II, the admiral noted, U.S. leaders understood the need for allies in the struggle against fascism and communism, and the same is true today. “We need those partners. We need those relationships,” he said.
The United States must continue to bolster on-going relationships and cultivate emerging relationships with other nations, Mullen said.
“We live in an incredible time, a time of great uncertainty, very unpredictable, and the only way I can see us moving ahead is together — with allies and partners who have the same objectives in mind,” he said.
Mullen stood in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln, who received the league’s first Gold Medal in 1863. Since Lincoln received the honor at the height of the Civil War, 35 Americans have been so honored, including Army Maj. Gen. George G. Meade in 1866, Secretary of War Elihu Root in 1915, President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, General of the Armies John J. Pershing in 1928, President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1962, Chief Justice Warren E. Burger in 1986, and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2006.
Some of you may have seen parts of this before, but I’ve added some new stuff and rearranged it quite a bit. Be sure to check out the latest addition regarding Ayers’ group being trained by KGB agents while in Cuba. It’s a long read but an important one if you really want to know what kind of people Barack Obama has selected to associate himself with. ie, they weren’t just "domestic terrorists", they were revolutionary communist "domestic terrorists" who actually allied themselves with the Viet Cong. They were only against the war because they wanted South Vietnam to fall to the North. In fact, both Bill Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, to this day, openly admit they’re communist, yet Hannity, Limbaugh and nearly every other popular conservative pundit refuses to call them such and get into these sorts of ‘details’!
Fortunately, as an organization, the Weather Underground didn’t kill anyone, other than three of their own in the NYC townhouse explosion. But they definitely tried.
From David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org: March 6, 1970: "three members of the Weather Underground accidentally killed themselves in a Manhattan townhouse while attempting to build a powerful bomb they had intended to plant at a social dance in Fort Dix, New Jersey – an event that was to be attended by U.S. Army soldiers. Hundreds of lives could have been lost had the plot been successfully executed." http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
From David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org: "On October 20, 1981 — long after the Weather Underground had ceased to exist — former Underground member Kathy Boudin and her soon-to-be husband, David Gilbert, were accomplices in the robbery of a Brinks armored car in Nyack, New York. In the course of that heist, one Brinks guard and two Nyack police officers were murdered. Also involved in the robbery was Judith Clark, who had served a prison term for her participation in the ‘Days of Rage.’ Boudin hired attorney Leonard Weinglass, a law partner of her father, to defend her in the case.
Weinglass arranged for a plea bargain whereby Boudin pled guilty to one count of felony murder and robbery, in exchange for a prison sentence of twenty years to life. She was paroled in 2003, however, over strong opposition from New York State police. Gilbert remains in New York’s Attica State Prison, having refused to bargain.
In 1985, former Weather Underground members Susan Rosenberg (who also was implicated in the Nyack robbery) and Linda Evans were apprehended while transporting 740 pounds of explosives which they both acknowledged were slated for use in additional bombings. Rosenberg was sentenced to 58 years in prison, Evans 40; President Bill Clinton pardoned both women in January 2001." http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
The 1981 Former Weather Underground members/Black Liberation Army Brinks truck robbery/murder:
"David J. Gilbert, 37, rented the vehicle that same day in the Bronx. Gilbert was a long time member of the Weather Underground and a fugitive from the state of Colorado where he faced charges of assault and possession of explosives. The passenger in the front seat of the U Haul was Kathy Boudin, on the run from the law since the townhouse explosion in 1970. The couple had dropped off their one-year old child with a babysitter in the morning and was waiting for the return of the red van."
"In the back of the red van were Cecilio ‘Chui’ Ferguson, 35, Samuel Brown AKA Solomon Bouines, 41, Samuel Smith AKA Mtayari Sundiata, 37, and Donald Weems AKA Kuwasi Balagoon, 35. There were others present, but it has never been proven who, or how many. All the men in back of the van were members of a group they called ‘The Family.’ Most of them had ties to the Black Panthers or the Black Liberation Army, radical political groups that had many violent confrontations with police during the 1970s."
"At approximately 3:55 p.m., Paige, a 24-year Brink’s veteran and his partner, Joe Trombino, 48, exited the doors to the Mall rolling out the moneybags on a hand truck. They walked over to the Brink’s truck and began to load up the bags onto the rear deck. Simultaneously, the red van pulled up and the rear doors swung open. One of the suspects, armed with a shotgun, ran to the front of the truck and immediately fired two blasts directly at the bulletproof windshield. The guard in the front seat ducked just in time and was unhurt.
Another suspect, wearing a ski mask, opened up with his M-16 automatic rifle before his feet even hit the pavement, striking Paige in the neck, arm and chest. He was killed instantly.
Joe Trombino fired just one shot before he was hit several times in his upper arm and shoulder. The bullets all but severed his arm off his shoulder. "I’ve got no arm!" he screamed. But Trombino would survive that day, only to perish years later in another terrorist attack at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001."
Allies in War By David Horowitz FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001:
ON THE MORNING OF THE ATTACKS on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, along with a million other readers of the New York Times including many who would never be able to read the paper again, I opened its pages to be confronted by a color photo showing a middle-aged couple holding hands and affecting a defiant look at the camera. The article was headlined in an irony that could not have been more poignant, "No Regrets For A Love Of Explosives."
The couple pictured were Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, former leaders of the 1960s’ Weather Underground, America’s first terrorist cult. One of their bombing targets, as it happened, was the Pentagon.
"I don’t regret setting bombs," Ayers was quoted in the opening line of the Times profile; "I feel we didn’t do enough." In 1969, Ayers and his wife convened a "War Council" in Flint Michigan, whose purpose was to launch a military front inside the United States with the purpose of helping Third World [Maoist-communist] revolutionaries conquer and destroy it.
Taking charge of the podium, dressed in high-heeled boots and a leather mini-skirt – her signature uniform – Dorhn incited the assembled radicals to join the war against "Amerikkka" and create chaos and destruction in the "belly of the beast."
Her voice rising to a fevered pitch, Dohrn raised three fingers in a "fork salute" to mass murderer Charles Manson whom she proposed as a symbol to her troops. Referring to the helpless victims of the Manson Family as the "Tate Eight" (the most famous was actress Sharon Tate) Dohrn shouted:
"Dig It. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
(big snip)
Today William Ayers is not merely an author favored by the New York Times, but a Distinguished Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
His Lady Macbeth [Bernardine Dohrn] is not merely a lawyer, but a member of the American Bar Association’s governing elite, as well as the director of Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center. [it’s true! see: http://www.law.northwestern.edu/aclu/]
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund’s website. Obama served on the board with Ayers, who was a Weathermen leader and has written about his involvement with the group’s bombings of the New York City Police headquarters in 1970, the Capitol in 1971 and the Pentagon in 1972.
"I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough," Ayers told the New York Times in an interview released on Sept. 11, 2001, "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," Ayers wrote in his memoirs, titled "Fugitive Days." He continued with a disclaimer that he didn’t personally set the bombs, but his group set the explosives and planned the attack.
A $200 campaign contribution is listed on April 2, 2001 by the "Friends of Barack Obama" campaign fund. The two appeared speaking together at several public events, including a 1997 University of Chicago panel entitled, "Should a child ever be called a ’super predator?’" and another panel for the University of Illinois in April 2002, entitled, "Intellectuals: Who Needs Them?"
The charges against Ayers were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance. Ayers is married to another notorious Weathermen terrorist, Bernadine Dohrn, who has also served on panels with Obama. Dohrn was once on the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List and was described by J. Edgar Hoover as the "most dangerous woman in America." Ayers and Dohrn raised the son of Weathermen terrorist Kathy Boudin, who was serving a sentence for participating in a 1981 [Brinks truck] murder and robbery that left 4 people [actually 3, 2 police officers and 1 Brinks truck guard] dead.
"Sara Jane Olson and former fugitive Bernardine Dohrn chatted before Dohrn was to lead a panel discussion about conspiracy prosecutions of political activists in 2000. Olson (former Symbionese Liberation Front captor of Patty Hearst) has been sent back to prison for her role in a murder committed during a bank robbery, but **Dorhn and Ayers never had to serve a day in prison for their deeds in the Weather Underground, thanks to bleeding heart judges who threw the case out of court on a technicality."–source unknown
**"Dohrn once was on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted List. She served seven months in prison for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating a 1981 armored truck robbery in Nyack, N.Y., in which two police officers were killed." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20011101/aponline190504_000.htm
"All charges against him [Bill Ayers] were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives. They later became legal guardians of Chesa Boudin, the son of former Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin, after his parents were arrested for their part in the Brinks Robbery of 1981.[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers
"During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states, taking names of dead babies in cemeteries who were born in the same year as he. He describes the typical safe house: there were usually books by Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, and Che Guevara’s picture in the bedroom; fermented Vietnamese fish sauce in the refrigerator, and live sourdough starter donated by a Native American that was reputed to have passed from hand to hand over a century."
(snip)
"Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as:
‘Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at,’ is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
And he says he doesn’t actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ‘it’s been quoted so many times I’m beginning to think I did,’ he said."
(snip)
"He also writes about the Weathermen’s sexual experimentation as they tried to ’smash monogamy.’ The Weathermen were ‘an army of lovers,’ he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend."
Bill Ayers, TODAY, April 6, 2008, begging to debate communism vs capitalism with Sean Hannity! Yet Hannity, O’Reilly, Limbaugh and nearly every other conservative commentator FAILS to mention that these people were and still are revolutionary communists. Instead, they describe them as simply "domestic terrorists". Seems nearly everyone these days is afraid to use the ‘C’ word! Even in this extremely rare case where one of them actually admits it.
Bill Ayers, April 6, 2008: "Imperialism. I’m against it, and if Sean Hannity and others were honest, this is the ground they would fight me on. Capitalism played its role historically and is exhausted as a force for progress: built on exploitation, theft, conquest, war, and racism, capitalism and imperialism must be defeated and a world revolution—a revolution against war and racism and materialism, a revolution based on human solidarity and love, cooperation and the common good —must win.
We begin by releasing our most hopeful dreams and our most radical imaginations: a better world is both possible and necessary.
Note: Ayers is very likely quoting Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, with the phrase ‘both possible and necessary’ in regards to a communist overthrow of the US government. See these Yahoo search results for "bob avakian" + "possible and necessary"–Eye On The Left
From wikipedia.com: 6 March 1970 – Another group blows themselves up when their ‘bomb factory’ located in New York’s Greenwich Village accidentally explodes. WUO [Weather Underground] members Theodore Gold, Diana Oughton, and Terry Robbins die in this accident.
The Center for Public Intellectuals & The University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) April 19th-20th, 2002, Conference [Participants include: William/Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, Sen Barack Obama]
April 19th-20th, 2002 Chicago Illini Union 828 S. Wolcott
This conference is part of the Center’s mission of helping to create a more engaged civil society, working towards social change, fostering coalitions between theorists and activists, and combating anti-intellectualism in contemporary culture. It will be both a celebration of ideas and a rigorous examination of the roles and responsibilities that intellectuals play in society.
I. Why Do Ideas Matter? (a keynote panel)
We introduce the “meta” theme of the conference by hearing “success stories” from diverse voices discussing their experiences intervening intellectually.
Timuel Black, Chicago activist; Prof. Emeritus, City Colleges of Chicago Lonnie Bunch, President, Chicago Historical Society Bernardine Dohrn, Northwestern University Law School, Children and Family Justice Center Gerald Graff, UIC, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Richard Rorty, Stanford University, Philosophy
III. Lunch and Public Encounters
Alternative breakout tours led by Chicago activists. Tours of Bronzeville and other communities, and visits to organizations that are working on partnering theorists with activists.
IV. Intellectuals in Times of Crisis Experiences and applications of intellectual work in urgent situations.
William Ayers, UIC, College of Education; author of Fugitive Days Douglass Cassel, Northwestern University, Center for International Human Rights Cathy Cohen, University of Chicago, Political Science Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune; In These Times Barack Obama, Illinois State Senator Barbara Ransby, UIC, African-American Studies (moderator)
"They’re certainly friendly" –quote from ‘Obama’s chief strategist (and reigning expert on Chicago’s political tribes), David Axelrod.’
"In July 1969, Dohrn, Eleanor Raskin, Dianne Donghi, Peter Clapp, David Millstone and Diana Oughton, all representing ‘Weatherman’, as Dohrn’s faction was now called, traveled to Cuba and met with representatives of the North Vietnamese and Cuban governments." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardine_Dohrn
From David Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com/DiscoverTheNetworks.org: "FBI files from 1976, recently made public under the Freedom of Information Act, confirm the connections between Weatherman, Havana, and Moscow. Weatherman leaders like Mark Rudd traveled illegally to Havana in 1968 to engage in terrorist training. There, camps set up by Soviet KGB Colonel Vadim Kotchergine were educating Westerners both in Marxist philosophy and urban warfare." http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6808
**Note: the video missilethreat.com has is the ORIGINAL youtube video of Senator Obama discussing his plans to cripple the US militarily. It comes from the Obama camp itself. There is another, titled, "In 52 seconds why Obama can never win the general election". However, though it is being circulated far more widely (over a million hits vs a few thousand), it is a poor quality, and therefore suspicious to some, COPY someone made from this one. The original is titled "Obama-Caucus4Priorities". So if you’re going to pass the clip around, please use the original. –Eye On The Left: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o84PE871BE
You can also find the original, and many other authentic Obama camp releases, at this site through a search for "Obama-Caucus4Priorities" (use the lower of the two search features): http://www.youtube.com/user/BarackObamadotcom
As Barack Obama’s candidacy comes under increasing scrutiny, his account of his religious upbringing deserves careful attention for what it tells us about the candidate’s integrity.
Obama asserted in December, "I’ve always been a Christian," and he has adamantly denied ever having been a Muslim. "The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam." In February, he claimed: "I have never been a Muslim. … other than my name and the fact that I lived in a populous Muslim country for 4 years when I was a child [Indonesia, 1967-71] I have very little connection to the Islamic religion."
"Always" and "never" leave little room for equivocation. But many biographical facts, culled mainly from the American press, suggest that, when growing up, the Democratic candidate for president both saw himself and was seen as a Muslim.
Obama’s Kenyan birth father: In Islam, religion passes from the father to the child. Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) was a Muslim who named his boy Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. Only Muslim children are named "Hussein".
Obama’s Indonesian family: His stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, was also a Muslim. In fact, as Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng explained to Jodi Kantor of the New York Times: "My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." An Indonesian publication, the Banjarmasin Post reports a former classmate, Rony Amir, recalling that "All the relatives of Barry’s father were very devout Muslims."
Barack Obama’s Catholic school in Jakarta.
The Catholic school
: Nedra Pickler of the Associated Press reports that "documents showed he enrolled as a Muslim" while at a Catholic school during first through third grades. Kim Barker of the Chicago Tribune confirms that Obama was "listed as a Muslim on the registration form for the Catholic school." A blogger who goes by "An American Expat in Southeast Asia" found that "Barack Hussein Obama was registered under the name ‘Barry Soetoro’ serial number 203 and entered the Franciscan Asisi Primary School on 1 January 1968 and sat in class 1B. … Barry’s religion was listed as Islam."
The public school: Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times learned from Indonesians familiar with Obama when he lived in Jakarta that he "was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended." Haroon Siddiqui of the Toronto Star visited the Jakarta public school Obama attended and found that "Three of his teachers have said he was enrolled as a Muslim." Although Siddiqui cautions that "With the school records missing, eaten by bugs, one has to rely on people’s shifting memories," he cites only one retired teacher, Tine Hahiyari, retracting her earlier certainty about Obama’s being registered as a Muslim.
Barack Obama’s public school in Jakarta.
Koran class
: In his autobiography, Dreams of My Father, Obama relates how he got into trouble for making faces during Koranic studies, thereby revealing he was a Muslim, for Indonesian students in his day attended religious classes according to their faith. Indeed, Obama still retains knowledge from that class: Nicholas D. Kristof of the New York Times, reports that Obama "recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them [to Kristof] with a first-rate accent."
Mosque attendance: Obama’s half-sister recalled that the family attended the mosque "for big communal events." Watson learned from childhood friends that "Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." Barker found that "Obama occasionally followed his stepfather to the mosque for Friday prayers." One Indonesia friend, Zulfin Adi, states that Obama "was Muslim. He went to the mosque. I remember him wearing a sarong" (a garment associated with Muslims).
Piety: Obama himself says that while living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, he "didn’t practice [Islam]," implicitly acknowledging a Muslim identity. Indonesians differ in their memories of him. One, Rony Amir, describes Obama as "previously quite religious in Islam."
Obama’s having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president.
An British pilot flying solo around the world was arrested by U.S. police today after trying to land his plane at George Bush’s ranch in Texas.
Retired vet Maurice Kirk, 63, wanted to "drop in" on the president to say thanks after American coastguards saved his life two months ago.
Mr Kirk was impressed when they rescued him from shark-infested waters of the Caribbean after his World War II plane ditched in the sea on the latest leg of his around-the-world adventure.
But when the former drinking pal of hellraising actor Oliver Reed touched down six miles from the Bush ranch armed security officials quickly surrounded his light aircraft.
He was arrested, handcuffed and taken to Austin State Hospital where he was being assessed.
U.S. officials confirmed Mr Kirk was arrested for flying into the prohibited airspace over Mr Bush’s Prairie Chapel ranch near Waco, Texas.
The president was not at home at the time but has been told of the security breach.
Mr Kirk’s wife Kirstie was waiting for news of him yesterday (tues) at the family home near Barry, South Wales.
Village vet Mrs Kirk, 48, said: "Maurice realised he could not land at the president’s ranch so he put his aircraft down nearby.
"He intended to walk to the ranch gates and pin a thank you note on them for Mr Bush.
"But instead a car drove towards him and he found two Smith and Wessons pointed at him.
"He was handcuffed, put in a police car while several other cars drew up - he thinks there were 11 altogether."
The father-of-four was initially accused of being drunk but tests proved he was sober.
His wife said: "He was later told that he needed to be cleared by a medic and was driven to Austin State Hospital where he has what he describes as a ‘minder’. "He is required to have a psychiatric assessment before the CIA or FBI question him further.
"A vision of Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest comes to mind."
Mr Kirk was attempting to fly solo around the world when his vintage plane crash landed in the shark-infested waters of the Caribbean in February.
The accident-prone pilot was rescued after U.S. coastguards picked up a signal from his emergency beacon.
He was discovered bleeding from a head wound sitting on the wreckage of his museum-piece aircraft - 80 miles from the nearest land.
The 1,583 acre Prairie Chapel Ranch is subject to a four-mile no-fly zone, imposed by America’s Federal Aviation Administration. Mr Kirk had flown straight through it.
When the president is home the aircraft-ban is extended to 12 miles.
The property, which is around 90 miles north of Austin, was bought by Bush and his wife Laura in 1999.
McLennan County chief deputy sheriff Randy Plemons said Mr Kirk had been taken to the psychiatric unit after talking about his flying experiences — including his brush with sharks off the Dominican Republic.
US and Iraqi troops continue to battle the Mahdi Army in Baghdad. Forty-one Mahdi Army fighters were killed in recent clashes in Baghdad and Hussaniyah. Twenty-two were killed in a single engagement as they attack a checkpoint in Baghdad. Most of the Mahdi Army fighters were killed as they attacked checkpoints and patrols during a sandstorm in Baghdad.
Mahdi Army fighters used the sandstorm to take advantage of the lack of air cover to attack US and Iraqi positions in eastern and northeastern Baghdad. Helicopters, fighters, and unmanned aerial vehicles were grounded due to lack of visibility. The biggest clash occurred on Sunday after a "large group of criminals" attacked a joint Iraqi and US Army checkpoint in a region in northeastern Baghdad with small-arms fire. Twenty-two Mahdi Army fighters were killed after the soldiers at the checkpoint returned fire. A US Abrams tank was also involved in the fighting. "The criminals’ small-arms fire was ineffective and there were no U.S. Soldier or ISF [Iraqi Security Forces] casualties in the attack," Multinational Forces Iraq reported in a press release on the incident.
The same day, US soldiers killed 16 Mahdi Army fighters during a series of engagements in northeastern Baghdad. Mahdi Army fighters attacked patrols with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. In several instances, Mahdi Army fighters engaged US Abrams tanks, with no effect. No US casualties were reported in the fighting.
On April 26, Iraq soldiers from the 37th Iraqi Army Reconnaissance killed three Special Groups fighters in the town of Hussaniyah north of Baghdad. Hussaniyah has been a hotbed of Mahdi Army activity in the recent past, and Iraqi and US troops are conducting operation in the town "to disrupt Special Groups leadership by limiting their ability to coordinate large scale operations against Iraqi and Coalition forces." Iraqi troops killed nine Mahdi Army fighters in Hussaniyah on April 22.
The Mahdi Army has suffered a heavy toll during the fighting over the past eight day since Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, threatened to conduct a third armed uprising. US and Iraqi troops have killed 151 Mahdi Army fighters in northeastern Baghdad since Sadr issued his threat on April 20.
New Delhi: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in India to try to seal a $7.6 billion pipeline deal linking the world’s second-largest gas reserves to growing South Asian economies.
It is his his first official visit to India. Ahmadinejad will meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in a brief stop-over trip. The Iranian leader visited Pakistan on Monday before moving on to Sri Lanka.
Gas pipeline project
Islamabad and Tehran said they had settled a host of issues over the pipeline project, which could be completed by 2012.
It would initially transport 60 million cubic metres of gas (2.2 billion cubic feet) daily to Pakistan and India, half for each country, but capacity would be raised later to 150 million cubic metres.
New Delhi also wants to revive a 2005 agreement to import 5 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas from Iran.
US objections
Ahmadinejad’s visit has already sparked diplomatic tension between New Delhi and Washington, which opposes the pipeline because of fears it will fund Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Washington urged India this month to use Ahmadinejad’s visit to encourage Iran to stop nuclear enrichment.
India, which has been growing closer to the United States in recent years, responded sharply - saying that it did not need any "guidance" on its bilateral relations.
Today Barack Hussein Obama denounced Rev. Wright’s anti-white/anti-American bullshit. Yeah well, I don’t buy it. I think it’s a gawddamn shakedown. I think Barack came out today and pretended to denounce Wright’s bullshit because Barack is a Marxist and being anti-American doesn’t set well with most voters. He needs to cover up his true Marxist self if he’s to have a chance to get elected to the U.S. presidency. Barack will certainly be perceived as patriotic if he comes out now and denounces his comrade Wright. It’s all about the votes.
Call me paranoid, but I think Barack and Wright are in on this bogus denunciation together.
(Editor’s Note: If Bos Smith, who holds a law degree from Wake Forest University can be hauled away by an angry group of angry Muslims in Islamic garb to the basement of a mosque where a group of 20 “security guards” in karate suits all for taking a photo, what about a tourist taking pictures for his travelogue? The working man’s lament, “It’s a free country, isn’t it?” doesn’t seem to work anymore.)
A tree grew in Brooklyn.
No longer.
It has been uprooted by the Masjid At-Taqwa and other radical mosques that have sprouted up like huge mechanical mushrooms throughout the borough.
If you tarry in front of the Masjid At-Taqwa in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district and dare to take a photo, you might get hauled away by a group of angry Muslims in Islamic attire to the basement of the facility where a group of twenty “security guards” in karate suits will interrogate you.
This sounds preposterous.
But it happened on a weekend in late April at 3:00 in the afternoon.
Ali Kareem, the head of security for Siraj Wahaj’s mosque, conducted the grilling. A small, muscular man with a wispy black beard that has been dyed red with henna, Kareem demanded to know the reason why a trio of kafirs had dared to photograph the building on a public street without securing his permission.
He further insisted on securing our identities and obtaining our motives for such a violation of Islamic space.
Being surrounded by a group of militant guards in a mosque basement from which there is no means of escape is not a comforting place to be for a Wall Street financier.
We tried to explain that we found the neighborhood with its halal meat vendors and food stores; Islamic dress shops, featuring the latest styles in burqas and hijabs; Muslim souvenir outlets, replete with bumper stickers stating “Don’t Be Caught Dead Without Islam”; and Middle Eastern restaurants offering a variety of goat dishes to be rather quaint and interesting.
This explanation was not sufficient.
Kareem was impatient and did not want a detailed explanation of the reason for our excursion (simple sight-seeing) or a graphic account of the sights we had seen and photographed.
“I ask the questions here,” he said, “and you provide the answers.”
Realizing that we were in a bit of a pickle, my companion explained that we were interested in various religions and knew Siraj Wahaj, the imam of the mosque, was a prominent Muslim figure whom we would like to interview for a news outlet.
This didn’t work too well since we could not produce a business card from a wacko blog, let alone credentials from a national publication.
At last, we blurted out that we were admirers of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Blessings Be Upon Him) and wanted to obtain information about conversion. We were even knowledgeable enough to blurt out “Salaam” and “Allahu akbar.”
The last utterance seemed to be the “Open Sesame” that got us out of the basement and back to Bedford Street, where we managed to take a picture of the mosque before hailing a cab and making a getaway.
The experience was disconcerting. Surely, anyone who takes a picture of St. Patrick’s Cathedral or the Riverside Church is not hauled off to a basement for questioning by a threatening figure in a karate uniform and a band of Ninjas.
What is taking place within Masjid At-Taqwa?
And what about Siraj Wahaj, the celebrated imam of this mosque who claims to be a moderate?
Masjid At-Taqwa at 1226 Bedford Street was an abandoned clothing store, which Wahaj purchased at an auction in 1979 for $30,000 with cash from oil-rich Saudis. The interior is divided into spacious, windowless rooms that have been painted green and beige.
At Friday afternoon prayers the meeting room is crammed with hundreds of congregants. Some show up in do-rag stocking caps and Sean John sweatshirts; others wear finely embroidered, authentic-looking Muslim caps and flowing robes of crimson and gold. About half of the attendees are African-Americans. The others are immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. Worshipers range from Brooklyn street bums to the local celebrities, such as former heavy-weight champion Mike Tyson.
The place has played host to a number of notorious exponents of radical Islam, including Clement Rodney Hampton-El (Dr. Rashid), a key player in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Mr. Hampton-El is presently cooling his heels in a federal slammer since he was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. Mr. Hampton-El, who was born and raised in Brooklyn, fought as a mujahadeen under Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the holy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Upon his return, Hampton-El was hailed as a hero by members of the mosque. Imam Wahaj has said that he was sought out by young and old alike for spiritual advice as an “elder” in the community. Wahaj, in fact, appeared as a character witness for Hampton El when the former mujahadeen stood trial before Judge Michael Mukasey in New York’s Federal District Court on charges of seditious conspiracy and attempted bombing.
Hampton-El is currently serving thirty-five years in a supermax prison for America’s most dangerous inmates.
Blind Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman visited Masjid At-Taqwa on many occasions while serving as the imam of the nearby Masjid al-Fooqra at 554 Atlantic Avenue, several blocks from Masjid At-Taqwi. On the second floor of Rahman’s mosque, al Qaeda had opened an office under the name of the al-Kifah Refugee Center. It became a favorite haunt for members of Wahaj’s congregation.
Rahman also spoke on occasion at Masjid At-Taqwa. In one speech, the fiery sheikh suggested that Muslims should rob banks to benefit Islam.
In 1995, Sheikh Rahman was hauled into court as the alleged architect of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and for planning to blow up the United Nations, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and buildings throughout Manhattan. At his side was his good friend Siraj Wahaj who provided testimony of the sheik’s sterling character.
In a Feb. 2, 1995, letter to defense lawyers in the landmarks-bombing case, then-U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White named about 170 people as “un-indicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators.” Imam Wahaj was on the list.
Other infamous characters reportedly have made their way to the Bedford Street mosque, including Imam Gulshair el-Shukrijumah, whose son Adnan has been singled out by the Justice Department as “the next Muhammad Atta.” Gulshair, it turns out, served a stint as imam at another radical Brooklyn mosque - - the now defunct Masjid Nur a-Islam, at 21 Church Street.
Another visitor, according to informed sources, was Sheikh Gilani, the founder of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, who served as the imam of yet another Brooklyn mosque - - the Yasin Masjid at 777 Saratoga Avenue. This infamous mosque is now a beauty salon. From 1980 to 1995, it served as a recruiting center for the jihad and for paramilitary Islamic compounds that remain in existence throughout the country.
Since the time of its inception, Jamaat ul-Fuqra has been responsible for more terror attacks on American soil (30 and counting) than all other terrorist groups combined. Members of ul-Fuqra, which maintains headquarters in Pakistan, have been convicted in US courts of such crimes as homicide, conspiracy to commit murder, firebombing, gun smuggling, grand theft, counterfeiting, and workers’ compensation fraud. Others remain leading suspects in criminal cases throughout the country, including ten unsolved assassinations and seventeen fire-bombings. Some of the better-known adherents of ul-Fuqra are Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and John Allen Muhammad, the Beltway sniper.
But what of Wahaj? Is he an exponent of radical Islam - - a man who poses a threat to millions of Americans?
He is a well-known and welcome figure in Washington, DC. He was the first Muslim cleric to offer the invocation at the opening session of Congress. He has dined with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and serves on the boards of no less than five major Muslim organizations. He has received commendations from the Brooklyn police for eradicating crime from the Bedford-Stuyvesant area. In 2003, Siraj Wahaj Day was celebrated in Brooklyn in recognition of what one borough official called a “lifetime of outstanding and meaningful achievement.”
But the proof of the real Wahaj is in the proverbial pudding.
In one of his sermons, Wahaj announced that the “real terrorists” are the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency. In another, he said, “In time, this so-called democracy will crumble, and there will be nothing. And the only thing that will remain will be Islam.” He proclaimed that a society governed by strict Islamic law, in which adulterers are stoned to death and apostates beheaded, would be vastly superior to American democracy.
To a Muslim audience in New Jersey, Wahaj advocated the idea of Muslims forming a coup to take control of the federal government. “If we are united and strong,” he said, “we’d elect our own emir [leader] and give allegiance to him. Take my word for it, if six to eight million Muslims are united in America, the country will come to us.”
His so-called “moderate” interpretation of the Qu’ran became clear by this remark: “If Allah says 100 strikes, 100 strikes it is. If Allah says cut off their hand, you cut off their hand. If Allah says stone them to death, through the Prophet Muhammad, then you stone them to death, because it’s the obedience of Allah and his messenger—nothing personal.”
Wahaj informed an audience of black women wearing Muslim head coverings in Orlando, Fla., that Islam condones a man’s marrying up to four wives, and that this rule, when introduced in the seventh century, served as a restriction on arrangements involving even more wives per husband.
And there are the national organizations to which Wahaj remains affiliated. He served as emir (president) of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which has been charged with funneling millions to terror groups, and as an advisory board member of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which has been labeled by author and counter-terrorism expert Steven Emerson as a “radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas.”
All this may be well and good, save for the fact that Wahaj and his mosque retains a small army not of brown-shirts but black-belts who now claim the right to collar ordinary citizens on the sidewalk and to haul them off for interrogation.
You’re only safe in Brooklyn at this writing if you say your prayers - - meaning, of course, the Basmalah.
Here’s a way to show your patriotism as the 2008 Democratic National Convention approaches. The Denver committee hosting the convention has teamed with Xerox to expand the company’s “Let’s Say Thanks” campaign to support troops in Iraq.
Denver area schoolchildren aged 6 to 14 are invited to submit drawings and artwork that could grace a postcard. Suggested designs are patriotic themes to local and regional landmarks.
Xerox will pick designs and add them to its existing inventory. The program allows you to go to their site and pick a card to send to troops for free. So far, the company, which has many partners in this endeavor, says it has sent 16 million of the cards.
Host committee spokesman Chris Lopez says the committee got the idea to help Xerox expand the program during talks with the company about sponsorship. The host committee is trying to raise $55 million in cash and services to help stage the convention. Lopez says he expects Xerox to join the committee’s pool of sponsors soon.
Artists interested can learnthe details for submission from the host committee or Xerox. The deadline is May 16.
[Note: Contra Costa Times refers to aliens, whether legal or not, as "immigrants"]
California’s burgeoning population of immigrants could bring a huge wave of voters, especially as their U.S.-born children reach voting age, a study released today found.
Under the most aggressive prediction, one-third of state voters in 2012 would be an immigrant or have at least one parent who is, the study says. This scenario, however, is likely to occur more gradually than predicted: It depends on how many eligible residents will be or can be naturalized, whether immigrant citizens and their children will register, and whether they will cast ballots.
Even so, the coming wave has huge political and social implications if politicians and philanthropic groups engage these groups and encourage them to naturalize and vote, the report’s authors and funders conclude. The study was funded by members of the nonpartisan Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, an umbrella group that includes the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
"The civic potential of immigration in California is rarely discussed," especially on the local and state legislative district level, said Rob Paral, the report’s author. And on the statewide level, it’s staggering: "If you naturalize these 2.3 million people who are eligible, you would grow the adult citizen population by 10 percent and dramatically expand your electorate." Santa Clara County ranks third, behind Los Angeles and Orange counties, in terms of the raw number of immigrant voters and their children who potentially could be on the rolls by 2012, a presidential election year.
Based on Census Bureau and federal immigration data, the county has a maximum potential for 539,908 voters by 2012.
However, immigration rules almost certainly will affect the growth.
Because there are quotas that limit the number of immigrants from individual countries, and because in Santa Clara County, for example, there is such a long backlog of people from India and China who have applied for a green card, some immigrants from those countries may be unable to complete the naturalization process by 2012, even if they have already started it.
The study also estimated the number of children of immigrants, who they suggest are more familiar with the immigrant experience than other native-born voters.
They found nearly three in four Latinos who will be 18 by 2012 will have an immigrant parent, rising to a dramatic nine in 10 for Asians in that category.
The political implications almost certainly will be debated. While immigrant-rights advocates welcome the study as evidence that federal immigration reform and drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, for example, might find new supporters, others predict that the effect of these potential voters will be more gradual.
Studies and exit polling show that lack of language skills, affluence and understanding of the voting process tend to depress voter registration and turnout among ethnic groups and younger voters. The participation rates generally are increasing, but they still lag behind native-born, non-Latino white adults. However, other studies indicate that naturalized Latinos have higher registration percentages than native-born Latinos.
"There needs to be an investment from civic organizations, political parties and unions to educate and mobilize the voting eligible electorate," said Louis DeSipio, a professsor of political science and Chicano studies at UC Irvine. "Whether that impact of immigrants begins in 2012, 2016 or 2020, it will be felt eventually." Even in California, where Latinos generally support Democrats, Republicans see potential, too.
The study found, on average, in Republican-held state Senate and Assembly districts, the potential immigrant voters could make up as much as 20 percent of the electorate.
"It shows a number of seats with high immigrant populations are already held by Republican legislators. And a lot of these immigrants are Asian, and that demographic is certainly more supportive than Latinos" are of Republicans, said GOP legislative strategist Kevin Spillane.
"The key word is potential, not real," he said. "It’s not all bad news for Republicans." Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, said he was not surprised that by 2012 one in three of his district’s electorate could be immigrant voters and their children. In Assemblyman Joe Coto’s district, which covers East San Jose, the maximum potential could be half.
"We’ve followed the transition of Silicon Valley," Beall said, "but this is news in many other parts of the state that you have to pay attention to the issues of immigrants." And, he added, Democrats cannot take those votes for granted, especially as decline-to-state voters rise in number, including among ethnic voters.
"Many are independent-minded voters and are not committed to one party or another," he said.
(Editor’s Note: If 
All this may be well and good, save for the fact that Wahaj and his mosque retains a small army not of brown-shirts but black-belts who now claim the right to collar ordinary citizens on the sidewalk and to haul them off for interrogation.