The World of Politics http://www.theworldofpolitics.com Political discussion and debate. en Sun, 05 Sep 2010 02:26:57 GMT vBulletin 60 http://theworldofpolitics.com/images/misc/rss.jpg The World of Politics http://www.theworldofpolitics.com US Muslim Oganization Urges U.S. Army to Deny Muslim Soldier’s Request http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10782&goto=newpost Sat, 04 Sep 2010 14:07:15 GMT Islamic Group Asks Army
to Deny 'Traitor' GI's Request
for Conscientious Objector Status

Published September 02, 2010
| FoxNews.com

Pfc. Naser Abdo, 20, filed for conscientious objector status in June, claiming his faith and the military simply don't mix. The Texas native says he's endured harassment and discrimination due to his religious beliefs since joining the military last year.

An American Muslim organization is asking the U.S. Army to deny a Muslim soldier’s request for conscientious objector status, accusing him of treason and urging the military to punish him to the full extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Pfc. Naser Abdo, a 20-year-old infantryman who joined the Army one year ago, filed for conscientious objector status in June, saying his faith and the military don't mix. "As a Muslim, we stand against injustice, we stand against discrimination, and I feel it's my duty as an individual to do this," Abdo told FoxNews.com.

The Army has deferred his scheduled deployment to Afghanistan.

But the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) says Abdo's claim is “patently false.”

"Muslims serve with distinction throughout the United States Military and AIFD sees Abdo’s traitorous public assertions as a slap in the face to all American Muslims especially those Muslims who fight in our armed forces for the liberty and freedom guaranteed by the American Constitution," the group said in a statement it issued on Friday.

Said Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of AIFD: “Abdo’s actions are an affront to every American Muslim who has proudly donned a U.S. military uniform. His assertions are not built on Islamic teachings but on a feeble adherence to the global political ideology of Islamism that threatens our security and radicalizes our Muslim youth.”

Abdo said that in addition to conflicting with his religion beliefs, his military duties were also consuming every part of his day and interfering with his religious duties. "I knew that if I went to Afghanistan and, God forbid, something were to happen, that my faith was so weak that I wouldn't be admitted into heaven," he said.

But AIFD on Friday called Abdo’s claim a cowardly attempt to use his faith to make a political statement and said it belies the religious experience of the vast majority of Muslim-American troops who have found the time to perform their spiritual rituals.

“The Military has made the application for CO status extremely clear so that soldiers, sailors and marines can not abuse the system and run from their military responsibility,” said Jasser, a former lieutenant commander in the United States Navy.

Fort Campbell spokeswoman Kelly DeWitt said Abdo's deployment had been deferred, but according to Army regulations he may be deployed to Afghanistan at any time like other members of his unit.

"The Army recognizes that even in our all-volunteer force, a soldier's moral, ethical or religious beliefs may change over time," an Army statement read. "The Army and Fort Campbell has procedures in place for soldiers who declare themselves to be conscientious objectors and who apply for conscientious objector status."

AIFD says it hopes the military denies Abdo’s claim and punishes him to the full extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The group is also asking other American Muslim organizations to speak out and make it clear that no loyal American Muslim should ever seek CO status.

Abdo's attorney, James Branum, says if Abdo's claim is denied, he can re-file with new evidence, seek to take the matter to a federal civilian court, refuse to deploy or drop the matter altogether. He acknowledged that Abdo could go to jail if he refuses to obey orders to deploy.

"We're trying to avoid that kind of showdown," Branum told FoxNews.com. "At this moment, Abdo is in a place where he's not going to violate his conscience."

(source)

Anyone disagree with the American Islamic Forum for Democracy's (AIFD) stand on this issue?

Oh, but they ALL want to kill or convert us, eh? ]]> Military and History DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10782 The Truth About Illegal Immigration http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10781&goto=newpost Fri, 03 Sep 2010 13:11:04 GMT Illegal immigrants:
Which states have lost the most?

By Mark Trumbull – Thu Sep 2, 7:16 pm ET

The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has declined during the great recession, and the trend has been fueled by an exodus from erstwhile boom states like Arizona and Florida.

That's the message from an analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research organization.

According to the report, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the US stood at about 11.1 million in March 2009, down from 12 million in March 2007, shortly before the recession began. Although the report doesn't claim to have precise numbers, it estimates that most of the declines have occurred in a relative handful of states: Florida, New York, Arizona, New Jersey, and California.

Several of those are Sun Belt locales where a housing boom went bust, affecting the availability of jobs in construction and related fields. For example, the study suggests that the illegal immigrant population in Arizona fell by perhaps 20 percent, even before the governor signed a controversial law on the issue this year.

The Pew researchers estimate these states to have seen the largest declines in unauthorized immigrant population in 2008 and 2009:

Florida: 675,000 illegal residents, down by 375,000.

New York: 650,000 illegal residents, down by 150,000.

Arizona: 375,000 illegal residents, down by 100,000.

New Jersey: 475,000 illegal residents, down by 100,000.

California: 2,550,000 illegal residents, down by 100,000.

Several states next on the list are also fast-growing Southern or mountain states that were hit hard by the real estate slowdown: Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Colorado.

In Texas, a state with many unauthorized immigrants that was not so hard hit by the downturn, the total number of illegal residents has not declined, Pew estimates.

Why are they leaving?

The Pew report merely represents an estimate, not a definitive count for the nation or any one state. But its nationwide conclusion is similar to estimates by other groups.

On Thursday, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) wrote that the Department of Homeland Security has put the total number of illegal immigrants at 10.8 million as of early 2009. And the CIS has also calculated a decline in the number of illegal immigrants to 10.8 million.

"The decline started before the recession, in response to the stirrings of enforcement activity at the tail-end of the Bush administration, and then was accelerated by the economic downturn," writes Mr. Krikorian.

To advocates of stronger enforcement, including the CIS, the decline since 2007 is a sign that better border patrol and other measures can result in progress on what has seemed to many Americans to be an intractable problem. At the same time, to the degree that the reduction relates to a poor economy, pressure on America's borders could quickly reverse if and when the job market improves.

Even if the overall number of illegal immigrants in the US has declined by 1 million or more since 2007, illegal immigrants remain a significant presence as a share of both the overall US population (3.7 percent) and the labor force (5.1 percent).

The states with the largest shares of immigrants in the labor force are Nevada (9.4 percent of the work force), California (9.3 percent), Texas (8.7 percent), and New Jersey (8.7 percent).

In any given year, many unauthorized immigrants leave the US and many arrive. Nearly half the illegal immigrants living in the country in 2009 arrived in 2000 or later.

A campaign issue

Although jobs and unemployment have center stage in the fall congressional campaigns, immigration is as hot a political issue as ever. President Obama is working on an immigration reform proposal, while California Senate candidates Carly Fiorina (R) and incumbent Barbara Boxer (D) sparred over the issue in a debate this week.

In an August CBS News poll, 61 percent of Americans rated illegal immigration as a "very serious" issue.

Some public opinion polls have found a majority of Americans support the idea of Arizona's get-tough law, which requires people to provide documents verifying their status if asked by police. Yet polls have also found the public split over whether to focus on deportation or providing pathways toward legal residency for people in the country illegally.

The Pew Hispanic Center website offers an interactive map of the US, with data on illegal immigration in each state.

(source)

So, Illegal immigration is down? Then why all this hysteria over the issue?

Election-hype. The GOP routinely uses scare-tactics in order to garner votes, and GOP voters eat the shit up, because the majority of them are scared white people who fear losing their perceived power and prestige to others who are non-white. If those coming across the border from the south were all blond-haired and blue-eyed, and spoke English and had names like Jack and Jill, then this would be a non-issue.
Quote:
...Even if the overall number of illegal immigrants in the US has declined by 1 million or more since 2007, illegal immigrants remain a significant presence as a share of both the overall US population (3.7 percent) and the labor force (5.1 percent)...
Hmmm... so 5% of our workforce are illegal immigrants, yet less than 4% of our population is, eh? That would indicate to me that, for the most part, they are carrying their own weight. ]]> Contemporary DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10781 Genuises http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10780&goto=newpost Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:43:39 GMT http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht8PmEjxUfg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht8PmEjxUfg ]]> Contemporary FlyinS http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10780 Alert the Minutemen http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10779&goto=newpost Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:54:02 GMT http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/nyregion/30border.html?_r=1 Border Sweeps in North Reach Miles Into U.S. ROCHESTER — The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border. But when it stops at Amtrak stations in western New York State, armed Border... http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/ny...rder.html?_r=1

Border Sweeps in North Reach Miles Into U.S.

ROCHESTER — The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border. But when it stops at Amtrak stations in western New York State, armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship and take away noncitizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers.

“Are you a U.S. citizen?” agents asked one recent morning, moving through a Rochester-bound train full of dozing passengers at a station outside Buffalo. “What country were you born in?”

When the answer came back, “the U.S.,” they moved on. But Ruth Fernandez, 60, a naturalized citizen born in Ecuador, was asked for identification. And though she was only traveling home to New York City from her sister’s in Ohio, she had made sure to carry her American passport. On earlier trips, she said, agents had photographed her, and taken away a nervous Hispanic man.

He was one of hundreds of passengers taken to detention each year from domestic trains and buses along the nation’s northern border. The little-publicized transportation checks are the result of the Border Patrol’s growth since 9/11, fueled by Congressional antiterrorism spending and an expanding definition of border jurisdiction. In the Rochester area, where the border is miles away in the middle of Lake Ontario, the patrol arrested 2,788 passengers from October 2005 through last September.

The checks are “a vital component to our overall border security efforts” to prevent terrorism and illegal entry, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for United States Customs and Border Protection. He said that the patrol had jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws within 100 miles of the border, and that one mission was preventing smugglers and human traffickers from exploiting inland transit hubs.

The patrol says that answering agents’ questions is voluntary, part of a “consensual and nonintrusive conversation” Some passengers agree, though they are not told that they can keep silent. But others, from immigration lawyers and university officials to American-born travelers startled by an agent’s flashlight in their eyes, say the practice is coercive, unconstitutional and tainted by racial profiling.

The Lake Shore Limited route is a journey across the spectrum of public attitudes toward illegal immigrants — from cities where they have been accepted and often treated as future citizens, to places where they are seen as lawbreakers the federal government is doing too little to expel.

The journey also highlights conflicting enforcement policies. Immigration authorities, vowing to concentrate resources on deporting immigrants with serious criminal convictions, have recently been halting the deportation of students who were brought to the country as children without papers — a group the Obama administration favors for legalization.

But some of the same kinds of students are being jailed by the patrol, like a Taiwan-born Ph.D. candidate who had excelled in New York City public schools since age 11. Two days after he gave a paper on Chaucer at a conference in Chicago last year, he was taken from his train seat and strip-searched at a detention center in Batavia, N.Y., facing deportation for an expired visa.

For some, the patrol’s practices evoke the same fears as a new immigration law in Arizona — that anyone, anytime, can be interrogated without cause.

The federal government is authorized to do just that at places where people enter and leave the country, and at a “reasonable distance” from the border. But as the patrol expands and tries to raise falling arrest numbers, critics say, the concept of the border is becoming more fluid, eroding Constitutional limits on search and seizure. And unlike Arizona’s law, the change is happening without public debate.

“It’s turned into a police state on the northern border,” said Cary M. Jensen, director of international services for the University of Rochester, whose foreign students, scholars and parents have been questioned and jailed, often because the patrol did not recognize their legal status. “It’s essentially become an internal document check.”

Domestic transportation checks are not mentioned in a report on the northern border strategy that Customs and Border Protection delivered last year to Congress, which has more than doubled the patrol since 2006, to 2,212 agents, with plans to double it again soon. The data available suggests that such stops account for as many as half the reported 6,000 arrests a year.

In Rochester, the Border Patrol station opened in 2004, with four agents to screen passengers of a new ferry from Toronto. The ferry went bankrupt, but the unit has since grown tenfold; its agents have one of the highest arrest rates on the northern border — 1,040 people in the 2008 fiscal year, 95 percent of them from buses and trains — though officials say numbers have fallen as word of the patrols reached immigrant communities.

“Our mission is to defend the homeland, primarily against terrorists and terrorist weapons,” said Thomas Pocorobba Jr., the agent in charge of the Rochester station, one of 55 between Washington State and Maine. “We still do our traditional mission, which is to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”

Legal scholars say the government’s border authority, which extends to fixed checkpoints intercepting cross-border traffic, cannot be broadly applied to roving patrols in a swath of territory. But such authority is not needed to ask questions if people can refuse to answer. The patrol does not track how many people decline, Mr. Pocorobba said.

Asked if agents could question people in Times Square, which like most of the nation’s population centers is within 100 miles of international waters, Mr. Pocorobba replied, “Technically, we can, but we don’t.” He added, “Our job is strictly cross-border.”

Lawyers challenging the stops in several deportation cases questioned the rationale that they were aimed at border traffic. Government data obtained in litigation shows that at least three-quarters of those arrested since 2006 had been in the country more than a year.

Though many Americans may welcome such arrests, the patrol’s costly expansion was based on a bipartisan consensus about border security, not interior enforcement to sweep up farmworkers and students, said Nancy Morawetz, who directs the immigration rights clinic at New York University.

One case she is challenging involves a Nassau County high school graduate taken from the Lake Shore Limited in Rochester in 2007. The government says the graduate, then 21, voluntarily produced a Guatemalan passport and could not prove she was in the country legally. A database later showed she had an expired visitor’s visa.

Unlike a criminal arrest, such detentions come with few due process protections. The woman was held at a county jail, then transferred across the country while her mother, a house cleaner, and a high school teacher tried to reach her. The woman first saw an immigration judge more than three weeks after her arrest. He halved the $10,000 bail set by the patrol, and she was eventually released at night at a rural Texas gas station.

“I was shocked,” said the teacher, Susanne Marcus, who said her former student had been awarded a $2,000 college scholarship.

Another challenge is pending in the 2009 train arrest of the Taiwan-born doctoral student, who had to answer the agent after being singled out for intense questioning because of his “Asian appearance,” he said. His account was corroborated in an affidavit filed this month by another passenger.

Similar complaints have been made by others, including a Chicago couple who encountered the patrol on a train to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for the woman’s graduation from Vassar College.

“At least in Arizona, you have to be doing something wrong to be stopped,” said the woman, a citizen of Chinese-American descent who said her Mexican boyfriend was sleeping when an agent started questioning him. “Here, you’re sitting on the train asleep and if you don’t look like a U.S. citizen, it’s ‘Wake up!’ ”

Mr. Pocorobba denied that agents used racial profiling; the proof, he said, was that those arrested had come from 96 countries. Agents say they often act on suspicion, prompted by a passenger’s demeanor. Of those detained, most were in the country illegally — including the Mexican, 24, who admitted that he had sneaked across the southern border at 16 to find his father. Others were supposed to be carrying their papers, like a Pakistani college student detained for two weeks before authorities confirmed that he was a legal resident.

Some American-born passengers welcome the patrol. “It makes me feel safe,” volunteered Katie Miller, 34, who was riding Amtrak to New York from Ohio. “I don’t mind being monitored.”

To others, it evokes travel through the old Communist bloc. “I was actually woken up with a flashlight in my face,” recalled Mike Santomauro, 27, a law student who encountered the patrol in April, at 2 a.m. on a train in Rochester.

Across the aisle, he said, six agents grilled a student with a computer who had only an electronic version of his immigration documents. Through the window, Mr. Santomauro said, he could see three black passengers, standing with arms raised beside a Border Patrol van.

“As a citizen I’m offended,” he said. But he added, “To say I didn’t want to answer didn’t seem a viable option.” ]]> Contemporary FlyinS http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10779 <![CDATA["Who is to say Glenn Beck is not as good as Martin Luther King, or better?"]]> http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10778&goto=newpost Sun, 29 Aug 2010 22:38:10 GMT Who answered Glenn Beck's call
to rally in Washington?

By Finlo Rohrer
BBC News, Washington
28 August 2010 Last updated at 18:09 ET

Thousands gathered in Washington DC for a rally organised by the conservative television presenter Glenn Beck. But who were they and why did they come?

In advance of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, there was much controversy over the choice of date.

Beck denied he had timed the event to coincide with the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, made on the very same spot.

But the coincidence was too much for those still angry at Beck's characterisation of the first black US president, Barack Obama, as a "racist" and someone with "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture".

Standing at the top of the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and looking towards the Washington Monument's obelisk, one saw a huge crowd gathered on either side of the Reflecting Pool.

Beck had called for people not to bring political signs or placards as the event was non-political, and apart from the yellow flags bearing a snake and the legend "Don't Tread on Me" - a staple of the Tea Party movement - the plea was largely respected.

But looking onto the T-shirts and caps of those present you saw a very different story.

Here was a profusion of the rich and varied colours of conservative America. There was everything from slogans about "big government" to a man with a shirt bearing the legend "Eat the Caribou - Drill for Oil".

Activist Jeremy Batterson, manning a stall festooned with posters of President Obama sporting a Hitler-style toothbrush moustache, explained why he was so steadfastly against the nation's leader.

"He is a British agent, a puppet of the British monarchy."

But Mr Batterson was not typical of the views in the crowd.

Joan Schwartz, of Morrisville, Pennsylvania, summed up why many were there.

"I'm here to support our men and women serving and we just want less government. We respect our government, we love our country but we want less government intervention."

There was much evidence of veterans and support for soldiers in the crowd. All profits from the event are going to fund the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, which helps the children of elite soldiers with the costs of an education.

At one point Beck asked the crowd to donate by text message and people were reaching for their phones before he got to the end of the sentence.

Sarah Palin too earned loud cheers when she told the crowd: "I've been asked to speak as the mother of a soldier" [her son has served in Iraq].

Despite being viewed by many as the leading figure in the Tea Party movement, Ms Palin avoided any overt political statements.

The crowd responded rapturously both to her description of "that special love of country that we call patriotism" and also to the exhortation: "Look around you. You are not alone."

"We must restore America" got the biggest cheer of the day.

While there was no partisan politics on stage, there was plenty of it out in the crowd. And much of that was anti-Obama.

"We don't like the way things are going," said Ron Kilmer, of Springfield, Missouri. "It is being shoved in our face since Obama took office."

He alluded to the "birthers", those who believe Obama was not born in the US and therefore not eligible to be president, and also questioned the president's religion. President Obama is a Christian.

"Where was he born and what religion is he? I believe he is a Muslim," said Mr Kilmer.

Charles Rush came with friends from Tennessee for the rally and thought there was no problem that the event coinciding with the anniversary of King's famous speech.

He said he respected Martin Luther King, adding: "Who is to say Glenn Beck is not as good as Martin Luther King, or better?"

The audience at the rally was predominantly white, but there was the occasional African-American in the crowd, some Tea Party-aligned, others without symbols of affiliation.

Student AJ Williamson came down from Howard University with friends and is interested in Beck's television programme. "I like how he challenges you to go and research for yourself."

Despite the coincidence of the event's timing Beck and Ms Palin were happy to embrace it and made frequent references to the work of King.

Indeed, when the civil rights leader's niece, Alveda King, took to the stage, there was perhaps the most rousing reception of the day.

At the climax of the event Beck spoke for nearly an hour, interrupted only by a bagpiped interlude of Amazing Grace.

Any Beck-haters attending, looking for true controversy, would have left disappointed.

Since Beck was not criticising anyone or anything specifically, it would be rather hard for anyone to disagree with much of what he was saying.

"Our children need people to look up to," he said. There were cheers.

"America is only what we choose her to be," he intoned. There were more cheers.

"We must be good so that America can be great," he proposed. Cheers again.

His message was also replete with references to God, and the crowd often murmured its approval.

Beck dealt with the critics who label him a wild conspiracy theorist. He used the example of the lookout on a ship who could surely not be labelled a "fearmonger".

"He was warning the people on the ship," he said to laughter.

To the thousands who turned up to see his rally, Glenn Beck is that lookout.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Glenn Beck

`Former commercial radio DJ
`Started in radio aged 13
`Former alcoholic/drug addict
`Has daily show on Fox News TV
`Show has nearly 2.5 million viewers, easily beating competitors
`Called rally to "restore honour"
`Also raising money for families of elite soldiers

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

A critic of Beck
Alexander Zaitchik

Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance

I've talked to a lot of his fans. Almost universally, they find him entertaining. He is offering them a sort of guide to figuring out everything that frightens them about the country.

There are devils on one side and the angels on the other.

He has a long history going back to his days as a radio DJ of using racial humour and pushing very hard if not breaking through the line. He used to make fun of black victims of police brutality.

He has a special hatred for black social justice activists - Van Jones, Acorn, and the Black Panther Party.

(source)

Sounds like a good time was had by one and all...

I never really noticed the obvious similarities between Beck and Dr. King before... glad I read this article!

In all seriousness, there appeared to be a large crowd there, but I believe it was simply preachin' to the choir. The main purpose of this event (in my opinion) was not the noble causes Beck and Co. were advertising, rather, it was an event designed to shine the spotlight on... Glenn Beck. And it accomplished that goal quite nicely... his fans seem quite pleased.

But, did it really win him (and this warped movement he "leads") any converts?

And, another thing I wonder about: What would have happened to anyone in the audience spotted wearing a turban? ]]> Contemporary DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10778 <![CDATA[It's Them or US!!!!]]> http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10777&goto=newpost Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:00:30 GMT *Michael Enright of Southeast stabs Muslim NYC cabbie in hate crime, police say* By *Terence Corcoran* • tcorcora@lohud.com • August 26, 2010 NEW YORK — Michael Enright, a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker from Southeast, faces charges of attempted murder and assault as a hate crime after being... Michael Enright of Southeast
stabs Muslim NYC cabbie
in hate crime, police say

By Terence Corcoran • tcorcora@lohud.com • August 26, 2010

NEW YORK — Michael Enright, a 21-year-old aspiring filmmaker from Southeast, faces charges of attempted murder and assault as a hate crime after being accused of slashing a Manhattan cabdriver after asking him if he is Muslim.

Enright is accused of uttering an Arabic greeting and telling Ahmed H. Sharif, 43, "Consider this a checkpoint," before the attack occurred Tuesday night inside the yellow cab on Manhattan's East Side, according to a criminal complaint. Police said Enright was drunk at the time.

Sharif of Queens questioned Wednesday whether the attack stemmed from the contentious debate over creating a mosque near Ground Zero.

In a statement provided by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Sharif warned his fellow cabbies.

"Right now the public sentiment is very serious" because of the Ground Zero mosque debate, he said. "All drivers should be more careful."

Sharif, who received stitches at Bellevue Hospital for stab wounds to his arms, throat and face, said the incident made him sad.

"I have been here more than 25 years. I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before," the Bangladeshi immigrant said.

A judge ordered Enright, a resident of Bloomer Road, held without bail on charges of second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime, first-degree assault as a hate crime and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. The handcuffed defendant did not enter a plea during the court appearance. Enright is due back in court on Monday.

Enright, a 2007 graduate of Brewster High School and an aspiring filmmaker, recently returned from Afghanistan, where he filmed Marines as part of a project for the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he is a student. In Afghanistan, he was embedded with a Marine Corps crew that included his fellow Brewster High graduate, Cpl. Alex Eckner.

About 6 p.m. Tuesday, Enright hailed the cab at East 24th Street and Second Avenue, said Deputy Inspector Kim Royster of the New York Police Department.

According to the Taxi Alliance, the conversation with Sharif started out friendly, with the fare asking the cabbie where he was from, how long he has been in America, whether he was Muslim and if he was observing Ramadan. The passenger then went silent before cursing and screaming, the alliance said.

Sharif told authorities that when he said he is Muslim, his passenger pulled out a weapon — thought to be a tool called a Leatherman — and attacked him through the cab's partition, Royster said.

The fare shouted "Assalamu Alaikum," a greeting of peace among Muslims, before pulling out the tool, the alliance said. The fare slashed Sharif across the neck and stabbed him several more times as Sharif tried to knock the weapon out of the man's hands, the alliance said.

The driver then tried to lock the passenger in the cab and drive to a police station, police said. The man jumped out a rear window at East 40th Street and Third Avenue.

An officer there noticed the commotion, found Enright slumped on the sidewalk and arrested him, police said. A case for the tool was found in the cab, but the tool was missing, police said. Sharif was outside the cab, bleeding.

Prosecutor James Zeleta argued against bail, but defense attorney Jason Martin told the judge his client was an honors student at the School of Visual Arts who lives with his parents.

To deny bail, given his background, "I don't think is warranted," Martin argued. He declined to comment outside court.

Enright faces a maximum eight to 25 years in prison if convicted of the attempted murder count.

A spokesman for the School of Visual Arts confirmed that Enright is a student but said federal privacy laws prevented him from commenting further.

Enright volunteers for Intersections International, a multifaith group in Manhattan that seeks to promote justice and peace.

A group representative, the Rev. Robert Chase, called the situation "tragic."

"We've been working very hard to build bridges between folks from different religions and cultures," Chase said. "This is really shocking and sad for us."

He said Enright had been volunteering for about a year on a project involving veterans.

Intersections has come out in support of the mosque project, but Chase said Enright wasn't involved in that.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he had spoken with Sharif, whom he plans to meet with at City Hall today, and "assured him that ethnic or religious bias has no place in our city."

"This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe, no matter what God we may pray to," the mayor said.

Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, said: "This kind of bigotry only breeds more violence and makes taxi drivers all the more vulnerable on the streets, where there are no bully pulpits or podiums to hide behind."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations called on leaders to "repudiate Islamophobia."

"As other American minorities have experienced, hate speech often leads to hate crimes," said Nihad Awad, the group's national executive director.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.



Michael Enright, right, of Southeast sits in a New York City courtroom Wednesday. Enright was held without bail on charges including second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime and first-degree assault as a hate crime. (Steven Hirsch/The Associated Press)



Cabdriver Ahmed H. Sharif, 43, is treated at New York's Bellevue Hospital. He was attacked and slashed across the neck, face and shoulders by a passenger. (New York Taxi Worker Alliance)

(source)

C'mon, tservos. Don't be a puss...

Speak-up, and tell me how this is justified, because it was/is the goal of every Muslim to kill or convert us, right? This cabbie got what was comin' to 'em... he is probably a terrorist anyway.

It's so Goddamn hypocritical... the same stupid inbred motherf*ckers who claim that their hatred and prejudice is justified while professing allegiance to a Messiah who taught love, peace and turning the other cheek... Goddamn every f*ckin' one of you b*stards who think this way!

tservos... why don't you help this Enright-guy with his legal fees? ]]> DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10777 Assimilation and Nativists http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10776&goto=newpost Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:27:12 GMT From Ross Douthat (http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/on-assimilationists-and-nativists/): ---Quote--- Or consider the present day conservative movement. It’s where you’ll find the strongest nativist currents in American life (hello, J.D. Hayworth), and also some of the strongest... From Ross Douthat:

Quote:
Or consider the present day conservative movement. It’s where you’ll find the strongest nativist currents in American life (hello, J.D. Hayworth), and also some of the strongest support for Americanization programs, from English-immersion schooling to more general efforts at patriotic education. Not that there aren’t many pro-assimilation liberals, but they share a political coalition with people of a more multicultural persuasion, who tend to raise an eyebrow at anything that seems to impose American or Western values too vigorously. Whereas while the contemporary right is divided over the rate of immigration, with open-borders advocates sharing space with more anti-immigration constituencies, it’s largely united in its support for the idea of Americanization. The overall politics of the modern conservative movement are very different from the overall politics of the early-20th century progressives, but on these issues, the same pattern holds: A skepticism about the wisdom of admitting too many immigrants (which often shades into more bigoted anxieties) seems to coexist quite naturally with a desire to see the immigrants who do arrive assimilate as swiftly as possible.
Thought this was an interesting point and one also backed up by years of studies. There is a clear push/pull dynamic with immigrant communities and the current animosity towards Muslims will hopefully give way to greater understanding and inclusion down the road. ]]> Contemporary GoRocks http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10776 Incredible Crash Video http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10775&goto=newpost Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:18:51 GMT You've probably seen this already, but in case you missed it, it's well worth a look...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18tKh9WX9rQ

The driver was a 19 yr. old kid who had been released from jail approx. 20 minutes earlier. It's amazing that he's still alive. ]]> DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10775 Fun with Firearms! http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10774&goto=newpost Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:24:50 GMT 'Robbery drill' creates real trauma for Fla. pair

updated 8/24/2010 3:12:14 PM ET

MELBOURNE, Fla. — A 72-year-old Florida woman was accidentally shot by her husband during a "robbery drill" the couple staged to practice how they'd respond to an intruder. The Brevard County Sheriff's Office said Arnold and Patricia Morris had little experience with guns, and the shooting Sunday was an clearly accidental.

Arnold Morris called 911 after the .380-caliber pistol fired, and his wife was airlifted to the hospital for surgery.

The two were fortunate to escape serious injury. Patricia Morris was expected to make a full recovery.

(source)

New Mexico pair arrested in mock shooting prank

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

ROSWELL, N.M. -- Police have charged two people with misdemeanors after a staged fight outside a grocery store sent officers responding to emergency calls about a shooting that turned out to be faked.

Police in the southeastern New Mexico city of Roswell arrested Nevada Smith, 26, and Delilah Cole, 24, on Monday in connection with Saturday's incident.

Officer Travis Holley, a police spokesman, said a group staged an argument in a parking lot about 8 p.m., and as it escalated, Smith fired blanks at another person from a real gun.

The supposed victim used condiments from a fast food restaurant as fake blood, then the group loaded the limp body in a pickup truck and fled, Holley said.

"It was a very immature and a very dangerous stunt to pull," Holley said. "Everybody enjoys a good joke, but there are some things you don't joke about."

Police received multiple 911 calls, including some from "people who were hysterical because they thought they witnessed this shooting," he said.

One of those who called, Donna Clark, said it didn't look like a joke to her.

"It was a prank, but it was real to me at the time," she said. "This joke went too far."

More than a half dozen police officers, plus homicide detectives and a crime scene unit, responded, police said.

Smith was charged with misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct, negligent use of a firearm, public nuisance and discharge of a firearm in city limits. Cole was charged with public nuisance and disorderly conduct, Holley said.

Smith and Cole remained jailed Tuesday morning and officials didn't know if they had attorney.

Holley said other warrants have been issued, also for misdemeanor charges.

(source)

Shot Man Finds Bullet In Head Five Years On

9:53am UK, Wednesday August 25, 2010
Tom Bonnett, Sky News Online

A Polish man had a bullet lodged in the back of his head for five years because he was too drunk to realise he had been shot at a New Year party.



The bullet can be seen in the skin in the top-right of the X-ray

The 35-year-old, who lives in Germany, was at a street party when he was hit by a .22-calibre bullet in the western town of Herne.

The man told police he remembered taking a blow to the head "in 2004 or 2005" but did not get medical help and forgot about the incident because he had been "very drunk".

The bullet did not penetrate his skull and police said he only went to see a doctor when he felt a lump in the back of his head.

After an X-ray showed an object under his skin, doctors operated and found the projectile.

Police believe the bullet may have been fired in celebration by a fellow party-goer.

"It may have been a shot fired up in the air which entered his head on the way down," a police spokesman said.

The bullet was removed on Friday and the man is expected to be released from hospital later this week.

(source)

Television show here in America called "Mythbusters" has shown proof that a bullet fired from a gun up into the air doesn't have enough mass to cause any real damage when it falls back down... especially a .22. ]]> DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10774 Breaking: Julian Assange (Wikileaks) wanted for rape http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10773&goto=newpost Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:24:54 GMT Swedish prosecutors just issued an arrest warrant for Julian Assange - founder of Wikileaks - for the raping of two women in their twenties. One rape is to have occurred last weekend and the other on Tuesday. The women sought out police yesterday. Assange has been in Sweden to lecture for a few... Swedish prosecutors just issued an arrest warrant for Julian Assange - founder of Wikileaks - for the raping of two women in their twenties.
One rape is to have occurred last weekend and the other on Tuesday. The women sought out police yesterday. Assange has been in Sweden to lecture for a few days.

It doesn't seem to have hit international media yet, remember where you heard it first. :thanks ]]> Contemporary Micael http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10773 Link between pandemrix swine flu vaccine and narcolepsy? http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10772&goto=newpost Tue, 17 Aug 2010 21:49:58 GMT There's reports today in Swedish media that the government has started to investigate a potential link between narcolepsy and GlaxoSmithKline's pandemrix vaccine that was widely administered in some countries during the swine flu epidemic.

A physician specialized in narcolepsy contacted the Medical Products Agency after diagnosing six cases of the disorder within a short period of time.
The patients were between the ages of twelve and sixteen and had all received the pandemrix vaccine a few months before the onset of symptoms.
Usually the physician in question diagnoses roughly one new case per year which caused him to get concerned.

The agency also notes that they have received a few reports from members of the public of similar symptoms and that there are more potential cases in the process of being diagnosed by physicians.

If it turns out that there's an actual link I have to say that's a pretty interesting side effect. ]]> Contemporary Micael http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10772 Oh! Such Language! http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10771&goto=newpost Sat, 14 Aug 2010 14:46:50 GMT Liberals Start "F*ck Tea" Party Campaign

Posted by Stephanie Condon
August 12, 2010 3:26 PM

Opponents of the Tea Party movement tried responding to the conservative grassroots movement nicely -- by creating the inclusive, deliberative Coffee Party.

But now they're ready to get mean.

A new progressive group called the Agenda Project has launched the "F*ck Tea" campaign. "Progress is the real American party," reads the campaign website's tag line.

"Set aside your good manners, your tolerance, your measured understanding of policy differences, and your earnest do-gooder ideas for a just a moment to join me in telling the Tea Party what you really think of them," Agenda Project founder Erica Payne said in a press release.

The Agenda Project describes itself as "a public policy organization dedicated to building a powerful, intelligent and well-connected political movement capable of identifying and advancing rational, effective, non-ideological ideas in the public debate."

F*ck Tea is one of several projects the group is advancing to push back against what Payne calls "the rhetoric over results paradigm that is holding our country hostage."

The campaign is selling products like mugs and t-shirts with "F*ck Tea" emblazoned across them and plans to sell other products like a "Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy."

While the Tea Party and the subsequent Coffee Party are grassroots, decentralized movements, Payne's Agenda Project is structured as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Payne is a former Democratic National Committee official who has founded other organizations like the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors whose partners have invested over $100 million in progressive organizations.

(source)

Tea is a good drink, hot or iced, as long as it's sweet (in my ever-so-humble opinion).

The "Tea Party" just sucks.

Let's distinguish between the two.

Oh, and where can I get a "Glenn Beck Bowl Buddy"? ]]> Contemporary DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10771 Coming Soon: A New War in Iran http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10770&goto=newpost Thu, 12 Aug 2010 20:37:56 GMT Will Israel Bomb Iran?

A close reading of Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic article.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2010, at 7:13 PM ET

Jeffrey Goldberg's article in the latest Atlantic, on whether Israel will (or should) attack Iran's nuclear facilities in the coming months, is the best article I've read on the subject—shrewd and balanced reporting combined with sophisticated analysis of the tangled strategic dilemmas.

Whatever you think should be done about the Iranian program to build an A-bomb (and Goldberg describes his own position as one of "deep, paralyzing ambivalence"), read his piece before thinking about it much more.

Based on interviews with dozens of Israeli, Arab, and U.S. officials, Goldberg puts the odds of an Israeli strike by next July—involving 100 or so F-15E, F-16I, and F-16C aircraft dropping munitions on the uranium-enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the nuclear-research center at Esfahan, and maybe the Bushehr reactor, among other sites—at "better than 50 percent."

He fully itemizes the risks and possible catastrophes of such a move: lethal reprisals from Hezbollah, if not Iran itself; a full-blown regional war; a cataclysmic spike in oil prices; a rupture of U.S.-Israeli relations; a rash of terrorist strikes against Jews worldwide; and—not least and most likely—a solidification of the mullahs' rule in Tehran.

Yet there are also considerable risks in letting Iran go ahead and build a small nuclear arsenal. I don't think (though many Israelis, understandably, do) that the mullahs would nuke Jerusalem, once they had the means to do so; Israel has about 100 A-bombs and the means to deliver an obliterating response. (The mullahs may finance suicide bombers, but they aren't so suicidal themselves.)

Still, a nuclear-armed Iran would provide cover (a "nuclear umbrella" of sorts) for Hezbollah and other militant proxies to step up their aggressiveness; it may draw smaller countries in the region into Iran's orbit (and certainly deter them from doing anything against Iranian interests); it could sap the credibility of a subsequent U.S. policy to "contain" Iran (if we declined to use force to stop Iran from building a bomb, some might doubt we'd use force to stop it from using one); and, for this reason, it could spur others in the region to build their own bombs, thus sparking a new nuclear arms race.

Some nuclear-deterrence theorists believe that an arms race might not be a bad thing. If several powers in a region all have nukes, the argument goes, they will be deterred not only from starting a nuclear war but also from starting a conventional war, out of fear that it could easily escalate to a nuclear one. This is one big reason there's been no war between India and Pakistan, or Russia and China, or (during the Cold War years) NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

There is something to this argument, but there are also at least three fallacies. First, all those pairs of rivals have come frighteningly close to nuclear war at various times and, in some instances, were saved as much by luck as by the doctrine of mutually assured destruction.

Second, all those countries' arsenals have been fitted with "permissive action links" and other security measures (in some cases with U.S. assistance) that minimize the chances of inside lunatics launching missiles without authorization. This may not be true in the case of a Middle Eastern arms race.

Third, Iran and Israel are so near each other as to make "warning time" of an attack almost impossible. Therefore, in a crisis, one side might launch a first strike, if just to pre-empt the other side from launching a first strike. (This is what deterrence theorists call "crisis-instability.") Even if neither side really wanted to nuke the other, circumstances might leave them with seemingly no alternative.

So the prospect of an Iranian bomb is very worrisome by any measure and an "existential issue" to Israelis, for whom "Never Again" is not merely a slogan and who therefore must take seriously Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's virulently anti-Semitic statements (which, as Goldberg notes, have been fully endorsed by Iran's leading mullahs).

The real questions, then, are: What can be done, and what should be done, to keep an Iranian bomb from materializing?

As for what can be done, several Israeli officials told Goldberg that—while the task would be difficult and would require some (secret) green-lighting from the Saudis and perhaps other Arab leaders (if just to obtain permission to fly over their territory on the way to the targets)—they could mount an effective attack, not against the entire Iranian nuclear complex but against vital sections of it.

Though he doesn't say so, the Israeli air force has spent much of the last decade equipping many of their U.S.-supplied F-15 and F-16 strike aircraft with external fuel tanks, which would give them the range to reach Iran and perhaps return without refueling.

Still, some Israeli officials tell Goldberg they'd prefer, for political and military reasons, that the United States launch the attack for them. Some U.S. officials fear that Israel might commence an attack with an eye toward drawing them into assisting (on the premise that the assault is too far gone to stop, so we might as well make sure it succeeds). Some Israelis also want President Barack Obama to take a harder line and state firmly that he will attack Iran if it continues on its path to nuclear weapons. Their argument is that Israel might back off from unilateral threats if the U.S. commitment were believable—and that Iran might back off its nuclear program, too. The flipside, however, is that if the firm pledge doesn't faze the Iranians, it practically locks Obama into following through.

This leads to the matter of what should be done, a very different question—and some Israeli (as well as most U.S.) officials think an airstrike would be at least premature and probably a big mistake. Certainly, at least for the moment, it's not the only option.

First, the most pessimistic intelligence projections, including those cited by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, figure the Iranians could have a nuclear bomb sometime between one and three years from now. This is nothing that has to be dealt with right away. (It's also an estimate that has been cited in years past, with no vindication.)

Second, there are signs that the U.N. sanctions against Iran—and, even more, the still stiffer sanctions imposed by the Obama administration and the European Union—are having some effect. Precisely what effect, and how this might impede or foment internal opposition to the nuclear program, is not yet clear. But Suzanne Maloney, a specialist on the Iranian economy at the Brookings Institution, notes that the sanctions are exacerbating a "huge schism" between the mullahs and Iran's more traditional conservatives—though she, too, sees this as a "long-term" development, with uncertain impact in the short term, which is where the nuclear dilemmas arise.

The Iranian leadership, perhaps in response to growing pressures, did recently call for a return to the bargaining table on the question of letting a foreign government enrich its uranium and send it back in a form that cannot be used to build bombs. So far, anyway, this "concession" has involved only a regurgitation of the deal that they had worked out in June with Turkey and Brazil—which amounts to no real concession at all. Still, as the sanctions take their toll, especially on such matters as capital investment, oil refinement, and routine financial transactions, maybe the offers will get more serious.

Finally, there is much more that the Israelis could do to ease the crisis on this issue (assuming they want to, which isn't clear). As Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation pointed out in a blog post about Goldberg's article, they could embark on a round of real diplomacy with the Palestinians.

The point here is not that making nice in Gaza and the West Bank will compel the Iranians to stop spinning centrifuges or Muslim militants in various countries to lay down their arms. (Certainly Clemons, a realist, has no such illusions.) But if Israel made a genuine effort at starting peace talks and freezing settlements, it might help "de-couple" the issue of Iran from the issue of the Palestinians (which Iran and its proxies have always tried to link, an effort that Israel's settlement policies have abetted).

And it may provide cover for the Saudis and other Arab nations—which fear and distrust Iran almost as much as Israel does—to join the pressure campaign against Tehran and perhaps, though covertly, help Israel more than they might otherwise if military action becomes unavoidable.

Those who find this notion outlandish should recall that, in July 2006, a few days after Hezbollah militiamen in southern Lebanon crossed the border, killed three Israeli soldiers, and kidnapped two others, prompting retaliation from Israeli rockets and artillery, the Arab League issued a statement condemning Hezbollah and supporting Israel's right to self-defense. Some specialists urged then-President George W. Bush to seize the moment—a potential strategic turning point—with a round of shuttle diplomacy. But he didn't; the Israelis escalated their strikes to disproportionate levels; and the Arab League backed away.

However, Goldberg doubts that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will initiate this sort of diplomacy, and his analysis of why is one of the most disturbing things about the Atlantic article. The key to understanding this fact is the prime minister's 100-year-old father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a former secretary to Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of the most militant branch of Zionism and a firm opponent of any territorial concessions. A friend of the prime minister's told Goldberg, "Always in the back of Bibi's mind is Ben-Zion. He worries that his father will think he is weak." Another said that as long as the old man is alive, "Bibi could not withdraw more" from the West Bank "and still look into his father's eyes."

It's a thunderbolt of historical revelation to muse that, no less now than in the time of Greek tragedies, the fate of the most ancient turbulent region might be guided less by rational interests or Realpolitik than by father-son psychodramas, first the Bushes, now the Netanyahus.

One thing Goldberg writes is definitely true: Obama may soon be facing a defining moment, similar to John F. Kennedy's with the Cuban Missile Crisis but more complex, in that Kennedy had just Nikita Khrushchev to deal with, while Obama would have not only the (much more unpredictable) Iranians but also the Israelis and a slew of regional players to confront, accommodate, bargain with, or who knows what.

In October 1962, Kennedy and his advisers also had the luxury of 13 days to hammer out a solution, much of it spent in meetings whose very existence was kept secret (and whose deliberations were not truly revealed for a quarter-century with the release of Kennedy's White House tapes).

Obama and his team will not have that luxury. They might have to make momentous decisions and deals on the spot. Now's a good time, then, to figure out what they want the outcome of the coming crisis to be and how far they're willing to go to attain it.

(source)

Great analysis, in my opinion.

Attacking Iran right now is not wise or prudent (again, my opinion).

But by doing so we could eliminate a sizable number of Islamists (who's only goal is to convert or kill us all, right Tom Servo?), thus saving countless non-Islamic souls... I am being sarcastic. :p

If Israel attacks Iran anytime soon, it will end-up costing America dearly... ]]> Contemporary DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10770 <![CDATA[Wonder Why Stimulus Spending Hasn't Provided Jobs....Recession Relief?]]> http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10769&goto=newpost Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:15:33 GMT Real Americans are steaming over waste By Ted Nugent - The Washington Times (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/9/bureaucrats-burn-our-bucks/?page=2) These are some examples of stimulus spending that are repeated in every state in the nation. Sen. John McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn just...
Real Americans are steaming over waste
By Ted Nugent
-

The Washington Times

These are some examples of stimulus spending that are repeated in every state in the nation.

Sen. John McCain and Sen. Tom Coburn just released a report on more of Fedzilla's insane and wasteful blowtorching of our tax dollars on things we don't need or want and only someone mentally deranged would allow. After reading an article that illuminated the most wasteful examples of torching our tax dollars, I'm surprised my request for a federal grant to study gopher hunting with grenades on the White House lawn was denied. Seemed like such a gimme.

Instead of providing after-school guinea-pig woodchipper basketball for rural farm children, Fedzilla shoveled 2 million of our tax dollars into a fire pit so the California Academy of Sciences could send photographers to the Southwest Indian Ocean and to East Africa to take pictures of ants. That's right, ants.

Seventy-two thousand more of our hard-earned tax dollars were given to Wake University so students could set it on fire by studying how monkeys react when stoned on cocaine. Read the Kurt Cobain story. It's been done.

If that isn't insulting enough, Georgia State University received almost $700,000 to determine how monkeys and chimps respond to "distributional inequality" and "unfairness." Rumor has it that Koko the gorilla responded "yes" by pressing a blue button when asked if she thought the study was discriminatory because gorillas were not included. King Kong could not be reached for comment.

A half-million more of our tax dollars were torched recently by replacing windows in a Mount St. Helens visitors center that was closed nearly three years ago because of a lack of interest. Maybe Fedzilla could see fit to hire me for $250,000 to study how fast I could break out all the windows with a slingshot and a bag of a marbles while wearing a live, rabid badger as a loincloth.

Fedzilla set fire to 7.3 million more of our tax dollars on two San Antonio fire stations that the good residents of that city already had agreed to pay for. Now that Fedzilla has entered the picture, the fire stations have not been built because of so many typical Fedzilla conflicting and confusing regulations. I would much rather have seen 7.3 million of our tax dollars used to set a mountainous stack of Fedzilla regulations on fire in front of the Alamo and invited the entire city out for a hotdog and marshmallow roast.

Sixty-two million of our tax dollars went up in smoke to build a light-rail system in Pittsburgh that connects two sports stadiums and a casino. Even Gov. Edward Rendell, a Democrat, called the project a "tragic mistake" in 2009. Imagine that - a Fedzilla project being a tragic mistake.

This mind-boggling report is just the latest in a long line of mind-boggling reports that have identified how Fedzilla torches hundreds and hundreds of millions of our tax dollars in the most bizarre, illogical, unaccountable ways.

Martin Gross wrote a wonderful, albeit outrageous, book a few years ago titled "The Government Racket: Washington Waste From A to Z" that identified dozens and dozens of costly and wasteful Fedzilla projects. Buy this book, send it to your congressman and demand a book report.

The reason Fedzilla can set our tax dollars on fire with reckless abandon is because there is zero accountability in the District of Clowns. They have completely lost touch with ordinary Americans who sent them to the stinky Pelosi Swamp to spend our money wisely and judiciously. Instead, gobs of our tax dollars are wasted or lost, which is standard operating procedure by these out-of-touch Fedzilla pigs


np ]]> Contemporary nickelpapa http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10769 Coming Soon: A New War in Lebanon http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10768&goto=newpost Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:13:23 GMT *Israel expected to launch new war on Lebanon * Editorial - Big News Network.com Tuesday 10th August, 2010 Tensions in the Middle East are rising with many now expecting Israel to launch a new war against Lebanon. Speculation has been building over several months with the trigger-point... Israel expected to launch
new war on Lebanon

Editorial - Big News Network.com
Tuesday 10th August, 2010

Tensions in the Middle East are rising with many now expecting Israel to launch a new war against Lebanon.

Speculation has been building over several months with the trigger-point expected to be indictments of a number of people with links to Hezbollah over the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in February 2005. The UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon which has been investigating the assassination is expected to formally charge suspects in the next few weeks or months.

The twists and turns of the investigation have come amidst a number of events leading to and since the assassination.

Rafic Hariri and 22 others were killed and many more seriously wounded when a devastating bomb blast hit Hariri’s convoy right in the heart of Beirut opposite the InterContinental Hotel on Valentines Day, February 14, 2005. The attack shocked the world and was immediately blamed on Syria, with calls, led by the United States and Israel, for the withdrawal of all 14,000 Syrian troops and intelligence agents which had been present in the country for almost 3 decades. The bombing split Lebanon open resulting in chaos. The government collapsed and protests were staged in many parts of the country both for, and against, Syria.

Pressure on Syria mounted with the threat of international sanctions and increased sanctions by the U.S. Congress. Syria bowed to the pressure and agreed to withdraw all its troops and agents. In less than a month the pull-out began. New elections in Lebanon were scheduled for May and Syria was pressured to get its troops out before then. It complied.

What has become clear in recent times by the arrest of around 150 Israeli spies is that immediately following the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, Israel infiltrated the country with scores of intelligence agents. One of those arrested just last week was Fayes Karam, a former general in the Lebanon army who was in charge of anti-terrorism and counter-intelligence. His arrest shocked the Lebanese military as he was widely respected. Many of the others arrested over the past two years were former employees of Lebanon’s telecommunications companies.

Just five months before the Hariri assassination which led to the Syrian withdrawal, the U.S., France and Britain sponsored a resolution at the UN Security Council which, among other things, called upon all remaining foreign forces to withdraw from Lebanon. UN Security Council resolution 1559 was adopted with six abstentions and no negative votes building upon UN Security Council resolution 520, adopted in 1982, which similarly called for the withdrawal of foreign forces.

The Bush administration, with widespread bipartisan Congressional support, cited Syria’s ongoing violation of these resolutions in applying sanctions on Syria. It also stepped up its rhetoric against the country accusing it of being a state sponsor of terrorism. The U.S. State Department in its reports made no such claims, in fact revealed the country had not been involved in terrorism for at the least the previous two decades.

Twelve days before Hariri was murdered, then President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address on February 2 2005 said, “To promote peace in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region. You have passed, and we are applying, the Syrian Accountability Act , and we expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom.”

On the day of the Beirut attack the Bush administration lost no time in targeting Syria’s “foreign occupation” of Lebanon referring to it three times in the first response to the assassination by the White House.

“The President was shocked and angered to learn of the terrorist attack in Beirut today that murdered former Prime Minister Hariri and killed and injured several others, the White House statement said.

“Mr. Hariri was a fervent supporter of Lebanese independence, and worked tirelessly to rebuild a free, independent, and prosperous Lebanon following its brutal civil war and despite its continued foreign occupation. His murder is an attempt to stifle these efforts to build an independent, sovereign Lebanon free of foreign domination. The people of Lebanon deserve the freedom to choose their leaders free of intimidation, terror, and foreign occupation, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1559. The United States will consult with other governments in the region and on the Security Council today about measures that can be taken to punish those responsible for this terrorist attack, to end the use of violence and intimidation against the Lebanese people, and to restore Lebanon's independence, sovereignty, and democracy by freeing it from foreign occupation.”

It is difficult to escape the fact that the Hariri assassination accelerated the executions of the UN resolutions, one of which had been on the table for 23 years and the other 5 months, in less than a month of the Hariri assassination.

In a little over a year after the expulsion of Syria Israel launched a deadly war against Lebanon, following the capture of two Israeli soldiers, and the death of 3 others, by the militant group Hezbollah. Then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the time insisted Israel would hold Lebanon responsible, notwithstanding it played no part in the Hezbollah operation. He described the capture of the Israeli soldiers as "an act of war." "Lebanon will bear the consequences of its actions," he said.

Israel began extensive aerial bombing campaigns which destroyed much of Lebanon’s transportation, and communications network. Highways, roads, power stations, television stations and airports, including Beirut International Airport, were heavily bombed.

The bombing spread to residential areas and by the end of the 34-day campaign 1,300 people had been killed, and numerous more wounded, most of them Lebanese civilians. Lebanon army posts were bombed even though the army played no part in the war. UN posts were repeatedly targeted with one being hit killing several UN soldiers despite pleas over several hours by the post to its headquarters in New York.

The UN set up a Special Tribunal for Lebanon to investigate the Hariri assassination and a number of other car bombings which killed prominent Lebanese politicians and journalists in a series of attacks which preceded, and followed, the Hariri assassination and heightened the tensions and fear in the country.

The Special Tribunal initially followed the line that Syria was responsible at least for the Hariri murder, and arrested four Lebanese generals with links to Syria, General Jamil Mohamad Amin El Sayed, General Ali Salah El Dine El Hajj, Brigadier General Raymond Fouad Azar, and Brigadier General Mostafa Fehmi Hamdan.

Long after the pandemonium died down statements by witnesses that implicated the generals were recanted by the witnesses. Then on 29 April 2009 the UN Special Tribunal’s Pre-Trial Judge Daniel Fransen ordered the generals be released saying they were no longer considered “suspects,” or “accused persons."

The judge said the Prosecutor Daniel A. Bellemare had agreed to the release as he did not have sufficient evidence to indict the four men or to justify their continued detention. Bellemare said his decision had been based on a review of the statements made by the detained persons; a review of statements made by others that related to the detained generals; a review of credibility assessments of these statements; a review of communications traffic data and analysis; a review of other documents collected; and a review of forensic assessments made in relation to collected physical evidence.

In relation to that evidence Prosecutor Bellemare said in his submission, “Credibility of the evidence is a crucial factor in the decision of any Prosecutor to indict a person. Lack of credibility directly impacts on the sufficiency of the evidence.”

The focus on Syria faded. The four generals had been held in prison for almost four years without being able to communicate with each other, or privately with their lawyers. These orders were dissolved just 9 days before their release. One of them, El Sayed, last month appeared before the UN Special Tribunal demanding copies of the witness statements which he says are required to bring to justice for libel those witnesses that provided “false testimony,” and engaged in “acts based on forgery,” which implicated him in the Hariri murder, and resulted in him being imprisoned from 30 August 2005 to 29 April 2009. The presiding Tribunal judge said he would give his decision on the matter in early September.

Rumors last year then began to build that the Special Tribunal would indict people linked to Hezbollah, which holds a number of cabinet posts in the Lebanon government. The organization’s Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah rejected claims the militant group was behind the bombing of the Hariri convoy. “Hezbollah has never been involved in a political assassination,” he said in a statement two weeks ago.

Last week Nasrallah announced the organization would reveal evidence that would indicate Israel assassinated Hariri. He promised to deliver the evidence at a press conference on Monday. The mainstream media have largely ignored or played down the Hezbollah claim and have given little coverage, if any, of the conference, which was held by video-conferencing from an unknown location and beamed to north-east Beirut where 150 members of the media gathered.

"I promised I would convene a press conference to open up new horizons and help in accusing Israel of the assassination of Rafic al-Hariri, and that is what I am doing," Nasrallah said at the start of the two-hour conference Monday.

"Israel has the ability to carry out operations of this kind and all of its operations in and outside of Lebanon are evidence of this," he said.

Nasrallah alleged Israel was the only party that benefited from the Hariri assassination. He produced surveillance videos of Israeli reconnaissance of routes frequented by the late Lebanese prime minister, including the one taken on the day of the assassination. One tape showed extensive footage of the area between the St. George Hotel, where Hariri was killed by a truck bomb, and the late prime minister’s home in Qoreitem, with repeated shots of turns in the road along Corniche al-Manara. The Hezbollah chief said the video indicated the Israelis were likely studying methods of carrying out bombings and assassinations, as official motorcades slow down at such turns. “This isn’t definitive proof,” he said, “but it opens up new horizons for the investigations.”

Nasrallah produced another videotape of an Israeli spy saying he had approached Hariri in 1997 warning him (Hariri) that Hezbollah was planning to assassinate him, admitting he was acting on behalf of Israel and the warning was false. The Hezbollah chief also named a Lebanese man who he says was spying for Israel, and was at the site of the killing the day before the assassination. The man, however, fled before he could be questioned, he said.

"Since 1993 Israel has been trying, using its agents, to convince al-Hariri that Hezbollah was attempting to assassinate him," Nasrallah said. Nasrallah pointed to the arrests of the huge Israeli spy network, alleging some had been involved in fabricating evidence, including telephone records, for the Special Tribunal.

He was critical of the work of the Special Tribunal because it "does not look into the possibility that Israel is implicated, we believe it is biased," he said.

As an example he said the Tribunal had not even questioned the 150 or so Israeli spies apprehended by Lebanese authorities over the past two years.

Israel refused to comment on the Nasrallah allegations saying to do so would add legitimacy to the claims.

“The international community, the Arab world and most importantly the people of Lebanon all know that these accusations against Israel are simply ridiculous and stem from Nasrallah’s own fears that the investigation will point to his organization,” an unnamed senior Israeli official was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying on Monday night.

Talk of the Special Tribunal investigating Hezbollah links to the assassination plot have been around the Middle East for more than a year. The German magazine Der Spiegel published an article in May last year claiming investigators had reached “surprising new conclusions.”

What must be explained by the Special Tribunal is that why its predecessor concluded high ranking Syrian forces and pro-Syrian generals were behind the plot, and what evidence was then available which was sufficient to detain four people that spent nearly four years in prison before being cleared and released. What was that evidence, where did it come from, and why in the end was it discredited?

Where now has the evidence come from to implicate Hezbollah-linked identities, and how and why has it emerged within two months of the Special Tribunal being set up? And how did Spiegel get wind of this evidence so as to start the ball rolling in building the speculation? It should be noted the German magazine published its article just three weeks after the release and clearance of the four main suspects in the case.

The Tribunal says it doesn’t leak information. Ten months after the Spiegel story was published the Special Tribunal Prosecutor’s office was forced to issue a statement denying it was behind the leaks causing the speculation over its activities. “The Office of the Prosecutor takes strong exception to any allegation or insinuation that it is deliberately leaking information to the press and strongly emphasizes that the communications policy of the Prosecutor is a disciplined and responsible one that places paramount importance on the integrity of the work of his Office and the process he is leading as well as on public confidence," the March 26 2010 statement said. “To be clear: it is not the policy of the Office of the Prosecutor or of the Prosecutor himself to leak information to the media.”

Nonetheless the Spiegel story was most illustrative and articulate and named names: “According to the detailed information provided by the Spiegel source, the fact that the case may have been “cracked” is the result of a mixture of serendipity ŕ la Sherlock Holmes and the state-of-the-art technology used by cyber detectives,” the magazine wrote.

“In months of painstaking work, a secretly operating special unit of the Lebanese security forces, headed by intelligence expert Captain Wissam Eid, filtered out the numbers of mobile phones that could be pinpointed to the area surrounding Hariri on the days leading up to the attack and on the date of the murder itself. The investigators referred to these mobile phones as the “first circle of hell.””

“Captain Eid’s team eventually identified eight mobile phones, all of which had been purchased on the same day in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli,” Spiegel said. “They were activated six weeks before the assassination, and they were used exclusively for communication among their users and, with the exception of one case, were no longer used after the attack. They were apparently tools of the hit team that carried out the terrorist attack.”

“But there was also a “second circle of hell,” a network of about 20 mobile phones that were identified as being in proximity to the first eight phones noticeably often,” said the German magazine. “According to the Lebanese security forces, all of the numbers involved apparently belong to the “operational arm” of Hezbollah.”

“The whereabouts of the two Beirut groups of mobile phone users coincided again and again, and they were sometimes located near the site of the attack," said Speigel. "The romantic attachment of one of the terrorists led the cyber-detectives directly to one of the main suspects. He committed the unbelievable indiscretion of calling his girlfriend from one of the “hot” phones. It only happened once, but it was enough to identify the man. He is believed to be Abd al-Majid Ghamlush, from the town of Rumin, a Hezbollah member who had completed training course in Iran,” said the Spiegel article.

“Ghamlush was also identified as the buyer of the mobile phones. He has since disappeared, and perhaps is no longer alive.”

“Ghamlush’s recklessness led investigators to the man they now suspect was the mastermind of the terrorist attack: Hajj Salim, 45. A southern Lebanese from Nabatiyah, Salim is considered to be the commander of the “military” wing of Hezbollah and lives in South Beirut, a Shiite stronghold. Salim’s secret “Special Operational Unit” reports directly to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah,” the Spiegel report alleged.

“The deeper the investigators in Beirut penetrated into the case, the clearer the picture became, according to the Spiegel source. They have apparently discovered which Hezbollah member obtained the small Mitsubishi truck used in the attack. They have also been able to trace the origins of the explosives, more than 1,000 kilograms of TNT, C4 and hexogen.”

“The Lebanese chief investigator and true hero of the story didn’t live to witness many of the recent successes in the investigation. Captain Eid, 31, was killed in a terrorist attack in the Beirut suburb of Hasmiyah on Jan. 25, 2008,” said Spiegel. “The attack, in which three other people were also killed, was apparently intended to slow down the investigation. And, once again, there was evidence of involvement by the Hezbollah commando unit, just as there has been in each of more than a dozen attacks against prominent Lebanese in the last four years.”

The UN Special Tribunal at the time the Spiegel article was published said it would not comment and that its investigation was ongoing. In a statement issued in May 2009 the Special Tribunal Prosecutor’s office said, “In response to media queries on the news report published on 23 May 2009 by the German magazine Der Spiegel on its Web site under the headline "Breakthrough in Tribunalinvestigation - New Evidence Points to Hezbollah in Hariri Murder", in which it is claimed that the "information" was obtained from "sources close to the tribunal and verified by examining internal documents", the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon states firstly, the public information approach of Prosecutor Daniel A. Bellemare has been and continues to be a principled responsible approach that places paramount importance on the necessity to uphold the integrity of the investigation, in particular through the preservation of its confidential character. Therefore, the Office of the Prosecutor reiterates that in keeping with this approach, the Office will not comment, as a matter of policy, on operational aspects of the ongoing investigation.”

“Secondly, since he took office in his current position at the Special Tribunal and throughout his tenure as head of United Nations International Independent Investigation Commission, Prosecutor Bellemare has consistently declined to respond to speculations and allegations reported by or through the media on the finding of the investigation,” the statement continued.” The Office of the Prosecutor reiterates that is will not argue its case in the media.”

More than a year later the Special Tribunal is expected to deliver its verdict. Syria was the prime suspect at the time of the assassination, and a UN investigation panel implicated Syria within months of beginning work. It appears now Syria has been cleared of any wrongdoing, and within six weeks of the UN Special Tribunal being set up, according to Spiegal, it had accumulated overwhelming evidence to implicate Hezbollah. This is quite astonishing given the painstaking and complex way most investigations proceed, let alone international probes of terrorist attacks.

Speculation is rife the tribunal decision to indict people linked to Hezbollah will deeply divide Lebanon again and open the way for Israel to launch another war. Our view is the Special Tribunal has been badly misjudged, and the speculation about imminent indictments misplaced. We believe the Special Tribunal is in no hurry to indict anyone. Its investigations, as the Prosecutor’s office says, are ongoing and particularly in light of the previous false testimony, and forged documents, used to implicate the four since-released Lebanese generals, the scrutiny of all testimony and documentation tied to the investigation will be intensive.

If any state or group is found to have forged documents, such as telephone records, it is unlikely the forgeries will not be uncovered. Dubai Police earlier this year were able to identify 27 suspects in the alleged assassination of a Hamas commander in the emirate in January, and uncover a plethora of forged and stolen documents that were used to fraudulently obtain official passports from a number of countries including Britain, France and Australia for those who allegedly took part in that murder.

Meantime a cross-border incident last week which resulted in the deaths of an Israeli commander, two Lebanese soldiers, and a journalist may be a taste of things to come. The Israeli lobby group Aipac called for a “tough international response,” to the “provocation,” saying the UN force in Lebanon, UNIFIL, had described it as “the most serious incident,” since the last war ended in 2006. Aipac accuses the Lebanese army and UNIFIL of allowing Hezbollah to re-arm, and says Hezbollah has 60,000 short- and long-range rockets, including hundreds of Syrian M-600 guided rockets, quoting Israeli military intelligence as its source. The Israeli lobby group says “The United States must address this increasingly unstable situation to protect its interests in the region and avoid a renewed conflict.”

Ominously in its final statement on the matter in its August 4 bulletin to Members of Congress Aipac says, “The United States should also continue to stand with Israel and prevent unbalanced and unfair criticism of the Jewish state if Israel is forced to take military action to defend itself.”

On Monday night the U.S. began to tighten the screws on Lebanon. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said he is holding up previously authorized military aid to Lebanon following last week’s incident.

California Democrat Howard Berman said Monday night he is concerned that the $100 million in military aid for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) will be used by Hezbollah.

Earlier Monday, number two GOP Congressman Eric Cantor said he would act to block the military assistance, and Democratic Congresswoman Nita Lowey, who chairs a key House subcommittee, said she too will delay implementation of the military aid.

“The days of ignoring the LAF's provocations against Israel and protection of Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon are over,” Cantor said. ”Lebanon cannot have it both ways. If it wants to align itself with Hezbollah against the forces of democracy, stability and moderation, there will be consequences.”

(source)

It's just not the Middle East without a war somewhere in the region...

:rolleyes ]]> Contemporary DeadZeppelin http://www.theworldofpolitics.com/showthread.php?t=10768