When it comes to publicly protesting the sentences of death row inmates, celebrity outrage for a convicted cop-killer is off the charts, but a Christian pastor in Iran about to die for his beliefs doesn’t even rate a “tweet.”

Last month Troy Davis, convicted of the 1989 murder of Georgia officer Mark MacPhail, the married father of two, was executed for his crimes despite a wave of urgent protests on the part of celebrities proclaiming his innocence and horrified by his imminent execution. Kim Kardashian, P. Diddy, Russell Simmons, and Alec Baldwin were among the many stars who felt that the evidence of his guilt was insufficient to overcome reasonable doubt (Ann Coulter was not among the doubtful – in her recent column, she detailed the overwhelming evidence condemning Davis and described him as “the media’s new baby seal”).

The celebs used their substantial platforms like the social media network Twitter to raise awareness about the case and demand clemency. “If Troy Davis is executed in Georgia it will be a crime,” “tweeted” novelist Salman Rushdie, himself still living under a death fatwa for his book The Satanic Verses, denounced as blasphemous by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini the same year as MacPhail’s murder. (Contrary to a common assumption, the fatwa has never been rescinded; Iranian authorities have said merely that they have no intention of carrying out Rushdie’s sentence.)

But the celebrity silence regarding an even more outrageous and clearcut injustice is deafening. At any moment, Iranian Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani may be killed because he refuses to renounce his Christianity and embrace the Islam of his ancestors, which he maintains he has never followed as an adult. His “crime” does not even exist in the Iranian penal code, and no one has been executed in Iran for apostasy since 1990. But the judge has upheld his conviction and sentence based on the religious writings of clerics including Khomeini, unless Nadarkhani – like MacPhail, the married father of two – recants his faith, which he has refused to do on four official occasions before the judge. Even if his execution is commuted, he could still face life in prison. And even if released, he would still be in mortal danger. “In Iran about 18 years ago, they had released a pastor, but then came and assassinated him and his bishop later,” said a Member of the Council of Elders for the Church of Iran.

The pastor of a 400-member Christian “house church,” Nadarkhani has been imprisoned since October 2009 when he complained about his son being forced to read the Koran at school. His wife, also arrested in an attempt to pressure her husband to “return” to Islam, was released a year ago. “Let believers, who are heirs of the glory, be examples for others in order to be a witness of the power of Christ for the world and the future,” he recently wrote from prison, in a testament to his belief.

The couple is not alone in terms of Iran’s persecution of its Christian minority. Between June 2010 and January of this year, 202 Christians were arrested solely for practicing their faith. They face torture in prison, violent abuse outside prison, and sometimes disappearance altogether. “We have very little leverage in Iran,” religious civil rights advocate Rev. Keith Roderick says. “[Iranian president Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad is at war with the Christian church there, but our influence has diminished.”

Recent press reports regarding the outrage at a convicted cop killer’s parole have all omitted one crucial fact about the subject Shuaib A. Raheem, a former New York State inmate.  He was in fact a member of the Dar ul-Islam movement and the incident in which Police Officer Stephen Gilroy was killed was an attempted by radical Islamic members of the group to obtain weapons to fight in a holy war.  That was in 1973 when little was known of the word “jihad” or the group.

Founded in the early 1960′s in a mosque in Brooklyn, Dar ul-Islam was an alliance between orthodox African American Muslim clergymen Yusef Abdul Mu’min and Yahya Abdul Karim and Middle Eastern clergyman Sheik Daoud Fasil.  In 1968, Dar ul-Islam started a prison discipleship program with the goal of establishing a Sunni/Salafi mosque in each one of the state prisons.

In January 1973, four members of the movement stormed into John & Al’s Sporting Goods Store in New York City in an attempt to procure weapons for a radical Islamic uprising.  The siege lasted two days before the hostages were released.  During the gun battle, one NYPD officer, Stephen Gilroy was killed.  All four of the members of the movement were arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms.  At the time of the incident, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Ward described the four as members of an orthodox Muslim sect whose motive in the armed robbery was not to obtain money but weapons for jihad.

In prison, Gary Earl Robinson, 23, also known by the Muslim name Shuaib Abdul Raheem, Salih Ali Abdullah, Dawd Abdullah Ar-Rahm and Yusef Abdul, continued to preach the doctrine of the movement, which was the creation of an Islamic state separate from the United States.  They were encouraged and supported by the head Imam of the New York State Department of Corrections, Warith Deen Umar and his chosen clergy.  While incarcerated, they were also able to meet several Middle Eastern inmates such as El Sayyid Nosair, Rashid Baz, and Abdel Zaben who had ties to radical Islamic organizations overseas including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

In 1999, Shuaib was named in an FBI report as a member of the Talem Circle in Shawangunk State Prison.  This Islamic Sharia group consisted of members of the Black Liberation Army, a Pakistani inmate, and a Saudi Arabian inmate with ties to Yemen.  The group’s goal was to train Muslim inmates in jihad and to coordinate the training between African American Muslim inmates and their Middle Eastern counterparts.  They were aligned with the Dar ul-Islam movement.

The spiritual leader of the movement, Jamil al Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown) is himself a former New York State inmate and a leader of the Black Panther Party.  H. Rap Brown’s method of choice for change was violence.  He is credited with the most memorable statement of this belief when he stated “violence is as American as cherry pie.”  His conversion to the more Salafist Sunnah of Islam, then know as Dar ul-Islam, or “house of Islam,” was completed in prison and he took the new name of Jamil Al Amin.  Following his release in October 1976, Brown made his haj, or pilgrimage to Mecca.  He later settled in Atlanta and started the Community Mosque of Atlanta in the West End district of the city.  His mosque was formally associated with about thirty others throughout the United States and was based on the founding principles of Dar ul-Islam in Brooklyn in the 60s.

Brown had hoped for a revival of the original movement’s Islamic fervency, but is currently serving a life sentence in the Federal Super Max Prison in Florence, CO for the shooting deaths of two policemen.  Another prominent member of the group was Imam Luqman Abdullah, who was killed by FBI agents in Detroit during a shootout in October 2009.

The Ummah or Dar ul-Islam movement has a long history of violence against authority and involvement in criminal activity in the name of Allah. If Shuaib Raheem had committed the same crime today and not in 1973, it would be classified as a terrorist act. Why this was overlooked by both the Parole Board or the mainstream media should be examined.

Patrick Dunleavy is the former Deputy Inspector General of New York State.

Inmates are converting to Islam in order to gain perks and the protection of powerful Muslim gangs, the Chief Inspector of Prisons warns today.

Dame Anne Owers says that some convicted criminals are taking up the religion in jail to receive benefits only available to practising Muslims.

The number of Muslim prisoners has risen dramatically since the mid-1990s -- from 2,513 in 1994, or 5 per cent of the population, to 9,795 in 2008, or 11 per cent. Staff at top-security prisons and youth jails have raised concerns about the intimidation of non-Muslims and possible forced conversions.

Dame Anne's report, Muslim Prisoners' Experiences, published today, says that, although several high-profile terrorists have been jailed recently, fewer than 1 in 100 Muslim inmates have been convicted of terrorism.

She says that prison staff are suspicious about those practising or converting to the faith and warns that treating Muslim inmates as potential or actual extremists risks radicalising them. The report says: "Many Muslim prisoners stressed the positive and rehabilitative role that Islam played in their lives, and the calm that religious observance could induce in a stressed prison environment. This was in marked contrast to the suspicion that religious observance, and particularly conversion or reversion, tended to produce among staff."

All prisons offer a halal menu, which some inmates see as better than the usual choices. Muslims are excused from work and education while attending Friday prayers. Some converts, who are known as "convenience Muslims", admitted that they had changed faith because they got more time out of the cells to go to Friday prayers. One quoted in the report said: "Food good too, initially this is what converted me."...

But of course, halal food is just the beginning.

President Bush famously said after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that every country had to decide whether they were with us or against us. Unfortunately, several so-called allies have decided to tackle some terrorist groups and not others, believing that the U.S. has no other option but to accept their half-hearted collaboration. Recent news from Yemen and Pakistan show that these two countries are double-dealing and need to be held accountable.

The Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi announced that high-level Al-Qaeda leader, Anwar al-Awlaki, will not be extradited to the United States if they capture him, even though he is an American citizen. Al-Awlaki is thought to be connected to the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas Day underwear bomb plot. The Al-Qaeda branch in Yemen is becoming increasingly active, with up to 36 former prison inmates in the U.S. having joined the group.

This follows an earlier incident where al-Qirbi said that his government was not actively trying to arrest al-Awlaki, saying he was seen as a preacher. He then clarified that statement, saying he was only referring to the period when al-Awlaki initially moved to Yemen from the U.S. and was not accused of being involved in terrorism. He explained that the Yemeni government wants to arrest al-Awlaki, but blamed the U.S. for not providing adequate intelligence to allow them to locate him. We have heard the Pakistanis use a similar defense over the years when confronted with their resistance to arresting Taliban leaders.

Yemen has long harbored Al-Qaeda and radical Salafi elements, making various deals with them and openly negotiating truces when conflict arose. President Saleh’s government and security forces are known to have close ties to the Salafi tribes, whose members are reliable allies when fighting the radical Shiite Houthi rebels.

Imprisoned Al-Qaeda members frequently “escape” from prison. In February 2006, 23 Al-Qaeda members, including some involved in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the 2003 bombings in Riyadh, found their way out of a high-security prison. When they were rearrested, the Yemeni government pardoned them after they disavowed terrorism. In February 2009, Yemen released 170 Al-Qaeda members after they promised not to return to terrorism. The Arab press reported last year that two Al-Qaeda camps were in Yemen, with one in Abyan Province housing about 400 terrorists.

The problem is similar in Pakistan. Although the Pakistani military has launched offensives to take back territory held by Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and like-minded terrorists, the government is still allowing some terrorist groups and Taliban figures to have freedom on their soil. The arrest in February of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the second-in-command of the Taliban, was seen as a turning point, but at least two other senior Taliban officials were released.

The Haqqani network, which is allied to the Taliban, remains immune from Pakistani counter-terrorism efforts. Last May, U.S. intelligence found that the Taliban’s capabilities had expanded due to the assistance of members of Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service which was providing money, weapons and even “strategic planning guidance.” The ISI’s S-Wing was accused of supporting the branch of the Taliban in Quetta in Baluchistan Province, where Mullah Omar is believed to be, as well as the Haqqani network and the forces led by Guldbuddin Hekmatyar, another Taliban ally.

The failed plot by Faisal Shahzad and the Pakistani Taliban to set off a car bomb in Times Square proves that all jihadist groups in Pakistan must be eliminated in order to stop attacks on the homeland and on American interests. At least four members of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) have been arrested by the Pakistani authorities as part of their investigation into Shahzad, and he has told his captors that he met with a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) while in Pakistan. In December, five Americans who traveled to Pakistan to join the Taliban and Al-Qaeda stayed at a safehouse provided by a member of Jaish-e-Mohammed.

The leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed openly preaches anti-Western extremism and jihad in Pakistan and although Lashkar-e-Taiba is banned, it continues to operate under the name of Jamaat-ud-Dawa. Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba, is on house arrest but still preaches to thousands in Lahore.

The two groups are even allowed to operate schools. Reporters have found two madrasses openly run by Jaish-e-Mohammed. After the 2008 Mumbai attacks, the LET said it ran over 202 schools as well as hospitals and charities in the country. Only a handful of the schools have been closed. Reporters have also observed the JEM’s headquarters in Bahawalpur in Punjab Province operating freely. After their presence was learned of, a checkpoint was established but the facility remained open.

Arnaud de Borchgrave wrote in The Washington Times recently that Pakistan “is still producing an estimated 10,000 potential jihadis a year out of 500,000 graduates from Pakistan’s 11,000 madrasses.” Any school run by extremist needs to be seen as an enemy base, no different than a training camp.

The U.S. cannot afford to allow Yemen and Pakistan to continue their current behavior. The governments of these two countries may argue that aggressive action could cause a backlash. The U.S. must emphasize that if action is not taken by them, then the CIA’s drones will take the action for them. The public pressure they fear will become a reality due to their own inaction.

This conflict is more than a war against Al-Qaeda. It is a war against an entire radical Islamic infrastructure with each component being as important as the next. There must be no distinction made between Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, like the one in Yemen, and similar but separate groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed in Pakistan.

Apologists might claim this is "un-Islamic," and possibly suggest that a more rigorous application of Sharia would prevent this sort of thing. But the problem itself emanates from the position of women under Islamic law as fundamentally under the control of male relatives (Qur'an 4:34) -- essentially, possessions. "Sex slave girls face cruel justice in Iraq," by Mohammed Jamjoom for CNN, May 5:

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- At one of Baghdad's two female juvenile prisons, the young Iraqi girls live in limbo, sadness and desperation permeating every aspect of their interrupted lives.

Some face punishment for prostitution. Others are charged with ties to terrorism. And then there are the victims, also behind bars.

Fifteen-year-old Zeina's sad journey to prison began two years ago when she says was sold into sex slavery. "My father came and took me to go visit my grandfather in Syria," says Zeina, "and I went with him."

The family trip turned out to be a cover story, and Zeina found herself faced with the most horrific possible reality. She says she was then forcefully taken from Syria to the United Arab Emirates and sold into sexual slavery.

But Zeina refused to surrender to such a horrendous fate. And when the opportunity presented itself, she ran away. "I'm proud of myself," explains Zeina. "I turned myself into the police and decided not to stay in that situation."

Authorities in Dubai helped her return to Iraq, but more cruelty awaited her in Baghdad. The only way Zeina could make it home was to travel on a forged passport -- a very serious crime in Iraq.

After escaping her ordeal, Zeina found herself being prosecuted, rather than being comforted. As punishment, she's now serving two years in jail. A prison official confirmed her story.

Iraqi women's rights activists are outraged. "She refused to accept that her body had been sold. So this is how they reward her?" said Dalal Rubaie with the Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, "To put her in jail for two years? Where's the justice?"

Trafficking is a growing problem in Iraq. Some vulnerable women, desperate to support their families, are tricked into it by accepting fake marriage proposals. Many young girls, their parents facing dire economic circumstances, are just sold outright.

"In some ways, their fate is worse than death," explained Samer Muscati from Human Rights Watch. "Once they've been trafficked, there's a stigma even though they're the victims in this horrific situation. They've been exploited and they've been trafficked to another country with no real recourse."

According to Muscati, even if the girls do manage to escape the cruelty of their circumstances, it will be very difficult for them to escape the judgment of their families.

"When they do come back to Iraq, if the family does accept them it's very difficult because they've brought great shame to the family, they're subjected to honor crimes. And we've come across cases where young women have preferred to stay in prison or custody than to be released and to face tribal justice," Muscati said.

Rubaie puts it even more bluntly when discussing what little future awaits trafficked girls who manage to return home.

"I'm sure the girl's family won't take care of her," said Rubaie. "I'm sure that neighbors and relatives and society will judge her, they'll know that the girl had been a prisoner and the family will be ashamed of her.

"I'm sure they won't let her travel. I'm sure she won't be able to complete her education, if she had been studying. Or they will force her to marry a cousin so they can exert control over her. Any cousin. They'll end her life."

A sense of injustice pervaded every story told by the prisoners. Some inmates had actually discovered they were to be trafficked and tried to stop it.

When Fatin found out her father was attempting to sell her, she immediately sought help from the law.

"I ran away from Najaf and escaped to Baghdad where I found my mother and asked her if she knew what my father was planning," says 22-year-old inmate Fatin, "So she took me to court in Baghdad, we got a lawyer and brought a case against my father."

Months passed and the lawsuit was never heard. While awaiting justice, Fatin says her father raped her. After the attack, she killed him, was tried, and is currently serving the fifth year of a 15 year sentence.

Muscati, who's studied trafficking extensively in Iraq, can't understand why Iraqi officials aren't doing more to stop it.

"Why is the Iraqi government not prosecuting the traffickers?" Muscati asked. "There hasn't been a case of prosecution against a trafficker that we're aware of. Why is the Iraqi government not passing a law to make it more difficult for trafficking?"

At 22, Fatin, like several of her fellow inmates, is too old to remain in a juvenile facility. She'll soon have to serve out the rest of her term in a prison for adults, a much harsher environment.

Qassim Abdul Ameer, warden of the juvenile prison, is worried for Fatin and other inmates in the same situation. "Of course she will find it difficult there," Abdul Ameer says about Fatin, "because the environment will be difficult there. In the adult prisons, they usually take advantage of the younger girls."

Fatin does fear the transfer, but it's her eventual release still a decade away that she's even more afraid of.

"Yes, there is freedom outside," says Fatin, "but people don't forgive. They don't have mercy."

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/06/iraq-girls-sold-as-sex-slaves-then-prosecuted-for-prostitution-and-other-crimes/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/id-go-so-far-as-to-say-that-polygamists-here-in-france-are-breeding-for-cash.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/id-go-so-far-as-to-say-that-polygamists-here-in-france-are-breeding-for-cash.html#comments Mon, 03 May 2010 01:13:54 +0000 Robert As well as in service of a supremacist agenda. "Polygamists 'breeding for cash,'" from AP, May 2 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The burqa, or face-covering veil, is getting all the attention in the debate over Muslim immigrants in France. But another controversial tradition among some immigrants is less noticed and far more widespread: Polygamy.

The issue resurfaced last week after a woman received a traffic citation in the western city of Nantes for driving with a veil over her face. Officials then accused her husband of having at least three other wives, and said he may be profiting from them financially while the state pays the bill.

Polygamy is one of several issues, like forced marriage or genital mutilation, that France and other European nations face, as immigrants arrive with customs that conflict with the law of the land. But experts say polygamy in France can also be linked to fraud, where husbands hijack a generous social welfare system to line their pockets with state funds from each of their wives.

"They practice polygamy just for that," said Jean-Marie Ballo, founder of an association that helps women escape from polygamous situations, Nouveaux Pas, or New Steps. "I'd go so far as to say that polygamists here (in France) are breeding for cash."

Ballo said he's even aware of cases where a legal wife's papers are used for hospital care for a second - a health risk as medical records intermingle.

It's hard to count how many polygamous families live in France because of the secrecy of the practice. But the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights in a 2006 report made a minimal estimate of 16,000 to 20,000 polygamous families in France, or some 180,000 people, including children. That compares to fewer than 2,000 women who are thought to wear burqa-style garments.

For decades, polygamy was legal in France for immigrants arriving from any of about 50 countries where it is legally recognised. Historically, taking numerous wives was either a social and economic necessity in poor countries with high death rates, or a sign of external wealth or male domination.

France banned polygamy in 1993. At the same time, it launched a process of "decohabitation" to help multiple wives trapped in small apartments with numerous children to move into their own homes. Experts say that system has been largely successful.

But abuses thrive. Especially vulnerable are women who arrived in France after 1993 - often here illegally and, therefore, with limited means to extricate themselves....

Chantal Brunel, a lawmaker from the governing conservative UMP party, called last weekend for a region-by-region examination of the family subsidies program to stop corruption by men profiting from state aid to illegal wives. Brunel, who has written a book about violence against women, said she has polygamous families in her district east of Paris "and since 2004-2005 I have asked that the state stop closing its eyes."...

Other countries in Europe also struggle with polygamy. Fines and prison sentences, in some cases up to seven years, are the norm for those convicted of polygamy in Europe. An exception is Norway. In France, marriage to more than one person is punishable by a year in prison and a 45,000 (almost $60,000) fine.

However, the law is being challenged in Ireland. And in Cyprus, with a 5-year prison term, the court can take into account arguments that the accused's culture or religion permits polygamy.

Carina Hagg, a Swedish lawmaker for the opposition Social Democrats, warns against mixing notions of polygamy and culture.

"You have to be careful not to make it an issue about ethnicity," she said. "Fundamentally it's about women's rights."...

Ballo, whose Malian father and grandfather were both polygamous, said he helped "decohabit" 12 households with 26 wives and 145 children in Les Ulis, south of Paris, where his group is based.

The human rights commission report notes that "there is, of course, no question of generalising and considering all polygamous men as executioners."

Ballo is more cynical: "There are always people in life who defend hell."

How very true!

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/02/id-go-so-far-as-to-say-that-polygamists-here-in-france-are-breeding-for-cash/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/jihad-the-threat-just-keeps-growing.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/05/jihad-the-threat-just-keeps-growing.html#comments Sun, 02 May 2010 00:43:58 +0000 Robert While Obama fiddles.

"The threat keeps growing: List of terrorists in our midst gets longer and longer," an editorial from the New York Daily News, May 1 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

...Hard on the heels of Najibullah Zazi's subway bomb try, the Manhattan U.S. attorney has indicted two Brooklyn men, U.S. citizens, for allegedly conspiring to abet Al Qaeda's communication needs and its capacity to detonate explosives.

Count the arrests of Wesam el-Hanafi and Sabirhan Hasanoff as another victory for America's anti-terror forces, but do not sleep well, for the enemy is determined and dispered [sic] among us.

Even a partial inventory of attempted attacks by radicalized Muslims on these shores puts the threat into terrifying perspective:

• Jose Padilla, arrested in 2002 as the so-called dirty bomber, was convicted of conspiring with Islamic terrorists.
• The Lackawanna Six - Sahim Alwan, Faysal Galab, Shafal Mosed, Yasein Taher, Yahya Goba and Mukhtar al-Bakri - were busted in 2002 and convicted of aiding Osama Bin Laden.
• Ohio truck driver Iyman Faris was charged in 2003 with conspiring to topple the Brooklyn Bridge. He was sentenced to 20 years.
• Eleven men, known as the Virginia jihad network, were charged in 2003 with planning to train at terrorist camps. Nine were U.S. citizens. They were sentenced to prison.
• U.S. citizen James Elshafay admitted plotting in 2004 to blow up the Herald Square station.
• Yassin Araf and Mohmmad Hossein were arrested in Albany in 2004 for trying to buy a grenade launcher to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat. They got 15 years.
• U.S. citizens Umer Hayat and Hamid Hayat, his son, were arrested in California in 2005 after lying to the FBI about Hamid's attendance at an Al Qaeda training camp. They were convicted.
• Four members of terror cell Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh were charged in 2005 with conspiring to attack the Los Angeles airport. Three went to prison, one to a mental facility.
• Michael Reynolds was busted in 2005 for plotting to blow up a Wyoming natural-gas refinery. He was sentenced to 30 years.
• Syed Haaris Ahmed, a Pakistani, and Ehsanul Islam Sadequee, an American of Bangladeshi descent, were charged in 2006 with conspiring to make videos for extremists. They were convicted.
• Seven men, including five U.S. citizens, were charged in 2006 with conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower. Six were convicted.
• Former U.S. sailor Hassan Abujihaad was accused in 2007 of giving locations of Navy ships to a group that supports terrorists. He got 10 years.
• Six New Jersey men were imprisoned in a 2007 conspiracy to attack Fort Dix.
• An American and three others allegedly plotted to bomb fuel lines at JFK. They await trial.
• Christopher Paul, a U.S. citizen, was arrested in 2008 for conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. and European targets. He got 20 years.
• Four men were charged in 2009 with plotting to bomb Bronx synagogues. They await trial.
• Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a Jordanian living in Dallas, was charged in 2009 with trying to car-bomb an office tower.
• Michael Finton of Illinois was busted in 2009 in a courthouse bomb plot inspired by American Taliban John Walker Lindh.
• Bryant Neal Vinas of Long Island was busted in 2009 for allegedly giving Al Qaeda information on the subways and Long Island Rail Road.
• Brooklyn-born Betim Kaziu was charged in 2009 with trying to join an Al Qaeda affiliate in hope of killing U.S. troops.
• Twelve Americans were indicted in 2009 for allegedly supporting Al Shabaab, a terror group seeking to overthrow the Somali government.
• Colleen LaRose, aka Jihad Jane, was charged this year with plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had depicted the Prophet Mohammed.
• Sharif Mobley, a 26-year-old New Jersey man, was arrested in March in a roundup of Al Qaeda suspects in Yemen.

Zazi admitted he and pals planned to suicide-bomb Grand Central and Times Square subways....

Hmmm. What do all those people have in common? What, oh, what, could it be?

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/01/jihad-the-threat-just-keeps-growing/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/draft-version-of-french-burqa-ban-calls-for-fines-jail-for-forcing-a-woman-to-cover.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/draft-version-of-french-burqa-ban-calls-for-fines-jail-for-forcing-a-woman-to-cover.html#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 03:33:17 +0000 Marisol "No-one may wear in public places clothes that are aimed at hiding the face." An update on this story. "French anti-burqa law to jail offenders," from Indian Express, April 30 (thanks to Ed):

France will jail and impose huge fines on anyone who forces a Muslim woman to wear a full-face veil, according to a leaked version of a proposed law revealed on Friday.

While women will face only a 150 euro penalty if they choose to don a burqa or a niqab, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to slap one-year prison terms and USD 20,000 fines on those who make others wear them.

"No-one may wear in public places clothes that are aimed at hiding the face," says the text of a new law that is to be presented to parliament in July, according to a copy seen by the pro-government newspaper Le Figaro.

The law will create a new offence of "incitement to cover the face for reasons of gender," the paper said, and this offence will incur a 15,000 euro fine and a year in prison.

Legislators decided to impose a much smaller fine on women caught wearing the veil in public "because these women are often victims," one of the authors of the law told Le Figaro on condition of anonymity.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/30/draft-version-of-french-burqa-ban-calls-for-fines-jail-for-forcing-a-woman-to-cover/feed/ 0 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/29/lying-leftist-criminal-robert-creamer-keeps-spewing-pro-obama-propaganda/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/29/lying-leftist-criminal-robert-creamer-keeps-spewing-pro-obama-propaganda/#comments Fri, 30 Apr 2010 03:56:12 +0000 Matthew Vadum http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=51006

You’d think going to prison for bank fraud might a humble a man a little.

Well, clearly you don’t know radical leftist crusader Robert Creamer, one of the architects of ObamaCare, very well. Creamer, by the way, is a convicted felon who defrauded a bank in order to fund his leftist pressure group.

The name of his article at the liberal Huffington Post is Republicans Are So Drunk on Wall Street Money They’re Driving Off a Political Cliff.

Creamer, who is husband of obnoxious socialist Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), writes that Republians “voted against even debating a bill to hold the big Wall Street banks accountable. And the reason: they were drunk on Wall Street money.”

It’s balderdash and Creamer knows it which is why he doesn’t produce a single statistic to prove his claim. Not one single figure. None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

It’s an obvious smear.

Anyone who has studied the issue knows the Democratic Party practically owns Wall Street.

As Timothy P. Carney notes, a recent report shows that ”the Securities and Investment Industry, Wall Street, gave 63% of its money to Democrats.” Carney also notes that ” the top three Wall Street recipients are all Democrats, and 8 of the top 10 are Democrats.”

And the subject of this week’s inquisition on Capitol Hill, Goldman Sachs, is similarly close to Democrats.

Goldman’s employees gave President Obama $994,795 during the last election cycle, making the employees of the bank the Obama campaign’s largest private sector financial backer, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The nearly $1 million sum is “more than the combined Goldman haul of every Republican running for president, Senate, and the House,” Carney noted in a separate article.

As I noted previously, the idea that Republicans are close to Wall Street is pure nonsense that has been eagerly lapped up by those who want to believe the worst about Republicans, capitalism, and America itself. Note that the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit against Goldman for securities fraud was filed just in time for the bank to bend over for a televised spanking in Congress.

But Goldman, which engages in the ritual of public self-flagellation from time to time on advice of counsel, is the best friend that Democrats and leftists ever had on Wall Street. Its alumni and enablers have pushed faddish, left-wing, pro-Big Government policies for as long as I’ve been a journalist.

Goldman’s business model is simple: the bigger and more stifling government gets, the more profit Goldman makes.

That’s it in a nutshell.

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/29/lying-leftist-criminal-robert-creamer-keeps-spewing-pro-obama-propaganda/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/italy-imam-of-milans-central-mosque-jailed-on-terror-charges.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/italy-imam-of-milans-central-mosque-jailed-on-terror-charges.html#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 19:39:15 +0000 Marisol "The Viale Jenner mosque has been linked to Islamist terrorism several times but has so far managed to avoid closure, despite a July 2008 order from the government."

Why? "Italy: Imam 'arrested' in Milan after terror conviction," from Adnkronos International, April 29 (thanks to Sr Soph):

Milan, 29 April (AKI) - A radical Muslim preacher was arrested in the northern city of Milan on Thursday, sources close to Milan's Muslim community told Adnkronos International (AKI). Italy's top appeals court on Wednesday jailed Egyptian-born Abu Imad on terrorism charges.

The imam, who previously led prayers at Milan's central mosque was taken to police headquarters and was to be transferred to the city's San Vittore prison, the sources told AKI.

Imad was the imam at Milan's Viale Jenner mosque until early 2009 but was not previously arrested. Under Italian law, suspects can remain at liberty until they have completed their appeal, if a judge does not consider they are likely to flee the country or tamper with any evidence against them.

Italy's highest appeals court, the Court of Cassation, on Wednesday upheld a previous prison sentence imposed on Imad by a Milan court in December 2007.

The court sentenced Imad to three years and eight months in prison for conspiracy to carry out a terrorist act.

Ten other people were also jailed for the same offence, receiving sentences that varied from two to 10 years, while four others were acquitted due to lack of evidence.

Milan prosecutors had asked for jail terms ranging from four years and six months to 15 years for all the defendants.

Imad and his co-defendants had allegedly set up a Salafite cell that was active in Milan and elsewhere in the northern Lombardy region.

The cell's mission is believed to have been recruiting suicide bombers, trafficking illegal immigrants and indoctrination.

The Viale Jenner mosque has been linked to Islamist terrorism several times but has so far managed to avoid closure, despite a July 2008 order from the government.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/29/italy-imam-of-milans-central-mosque-jailed-on-terror-charges/feed/ 0 http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/29/prison-convert-cases/ http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/29/prison-convert-cases/#comments Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:20:08 +0000 Ryan Mauro http://frontpagemag.com/?p=59174

New extremists are being created in our prisons, the very institution meant to deter crime. Two stories recently broke about people who converted to Islam in prison that acted in violent compliance with their new ideology. The media, for the most part, dropped the stories, leaving the American people unaware of the growing trend.

The October arrest of a man in Ohio named Abdullah Mohammed Muslim, formerly known as Johnnie Clagg, has now come to light. He was pulled over and arrested by a police officer for identity theft in order to get a passport so he could leave the country. Law enforcement searched his house and found a large stockpile of weapons.

The arsenal included the material for five pipe bombs, two AK-47s, smoke canisters, an assault rifle, a ballistic vest and ballistic face mask, a semiautomatic rifle, a flak jacket and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Additional facts help to identify the intent behind this collection. The police found a CD containing parts of “The Anarchist Cookbook,” a well-known guide to making explosives, and a CD with photos of the crash site of a small plane in the state. And as CBN’s Erick Stakelback has found out, the purpose behind the attempted passport fraud was so he could flee the U.S. before being sentenced for previous weapons-related charges.

Muslim’s attorney has confirmed that he had spent time on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan, the exact spot that radical Islamic militants have found safe haven, have constructed terrorist camps, and are recruiting Westerners to come for training and deployment. To any rational observer, Muslim would appear to be involved in terrorism, but federal authorities told Ohio’s Channel 10 News when the story broke that there was no connection to terrorism. As a result, the story failed to gain traction in the media outside of the local news and a follow-up report by CBN. At the time of this writing, a Google News search of the suspect’s name only brings up two results.

On April 14, a prison convert named James Larry slaughtered his family in Chicago. His brother says that in the days prior to the attack, he was acting differently, carrying around a Koran and saying it called for killing. The sister of his wife said he had begun talking about “going to Allah” and was fighting with his wife because she refused to wear a hijab. An apparent act of mass honor killing followed.

Larry shot and murdered his family. His pregnant wife, 7-year old son named Jihad, and two of his nieces, including one who was pregnant, were killed. His mother and nephew suffered severe injuries and went to the hospital. His 12-year old niece escaped as Larry shot at her as she fled. She managed to run into a gas station and have a worker call her mom. When the police arrived, Larry said he was bringing his family to Allah and said, “I wish I had more bullets. I wish I had more bullets.” His attorney says he is mentally ill and “suffering greatly” over his actions.

This just continues the pattern of the media failing to bring proper emphasis to worthy reports and the government steering the country into complacency by automatically downplaying suggestions that nearly any incident is connected to terrorism or radical Islam.

Last September, another American who converted to Islam while in prison named Michael C. Finton, who also went by the name of Talib Islam, was arrested in Illinois. He was a fan of Anwar al-Awlaki and traveled to Saudi Arabia in April 2008 using $1,375 sent to him from someone inside that country. Upon his return, he told an undercover FBI agent that he desired to go to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip to fight Israel, but he also wanted to attack the United States. The FBI gave him fake explosives which he loaded into his truck so he could destroy the Paul Findley Federal Building in Springfield. After he tried to detonate the bombs with his cell phone and nothing happened, he found himself in handcuffs and in federal custody.

This is just an accounting of some recent incidents involving prison converts that didn’t receive the attention they are due. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee says that up to 36 American-Muslims who have served time in prison have recently gone to Yemen, claiming they are learning Arabic. Al-Qaeda has a vibrant branch there that may have recruited some of these so-called students. U.S. forces are trying to stop the next generation of terrorists from being bred overseas, but plenty are being born among Westerners who converted to Islam while serving time or shortly thereafter.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/29/prison-convert-cases/feed/ 17 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/new-york-muslim-student-pleads-guilty-to-jihad-terror-charge.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/new-york-muslim-student-pleads-guilty-to-jihad-terror-charge.html#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:09:23 +0000 Robert Will the Islamophobia never end? "NYC student pleads guilty to terrorism charge," by Larry Neumeister for Associated Press, April 27 (thanks to Block Ness):

NEW YORK (AP) -- An American student who prosecutors say helped a friend deliver some protective clothing to an al-Qaida military commander fighting Americans has pleaded guilty to a single terrorism charge.

Syed Hashmi (Sigh-IHD' HASH'-mee) entered the plea Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to conspiracy to provide military support to al-Qaida.

Both sides in the case recommended a maximum prison term of 15 years for the plea.

The 30-year-old Hashmi had faced up to 70 years in prison if convicted of four criminal counts....

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/27/new-york-muslim-student-pleads-guilty-to-jihad-terror-charge/feed/ 0 http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/20/the-beholden-state/ http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/20/the-beholden-state/#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 04:00:31 +0000 Steven Malanga http://frontpagemag.com/?p=58453

This article is reprinted from City Journal.

The camera focuses on an official of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California’s largest public-employee union, sitting in a legislative chamber and speaking into a microphone. “We helped to get you into office, and we got a good memory,” she says matter-of-factly to the elected officials outside the shot. “Come November, if you don’t back our program, we’ll get you out of office.’

The video has become a sensation among California taxpayer groups for its vivid depiction of the audacious power that public-sector unions wield in their state. The unions’ political triumphs have molded a California in which government workers thrive at the expense of a struggling private sector. The state’s public school teachers are the highest-paid in the nation. Its prison guards can easily earn six-figure salaries. State workers routinely retire at 55 with pensions higher than their base pay for most of their working life. Meanwhile, what was once the most prosperous state now suffers from an unemployment rate far steeper than the nation’s and a flood of firms and jobs escaping high taxes and stifling regulations. This toxic combination—high public-sector employee costs and sagging economic fortunes—has produced recurring budget crises in Sacramento and in virtually every municipality in the state.

How public employees became members of the elite class in a declining California offers a cautionary tale to the rest of the country, where the same process is happening in slower motion. The story starts half a century ago, when California public workers won bargaining rights and quickly learned how to elect their own bosses—that is, sympathetic politicians who would grant them outsize pay and benefits in exchange for their support. Over time, the unions have turned the state’s politics completely in their favor. The result: unaffordable benefits for civil servants; fiscal chaos in Sacramento and in cities and towns across the state; and angry taxpayers finally confronting the unionized masters of California’s unsustainable government.

California’s government workers took longer than many of their counterparts to win the right to bargain collectively. New York City mayor Robert Wagner started a national movement back in the late 1950s when he granted negotiating rights to government unions, hoping to enlist them as allies against the city’s Tammany Hall machine. The movement intensified in the early sixties, after President John F. Kennedy conferred the right to bargain on federal workers. In California, a more politically conservative environment at the time, public employees remained without negotiating power through most of the sixties, though they could join labor associations. In 1968, however, the state legislature passed the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act, extending bargaining rights to local government workers. Teachers and other state employees won the same rights in the seventies.

These legislative victories happened at a time of surging prosperity. California’s aerospace industry, fueled by the Cold War, was booming; investments in water supply and infrastructure nourished the state’s agribusiness; cheaper air travel and a famously temperate climate burnished tourism. The twin lures of an expanding job market and rising incomes pushed the state’s population higher, from about 16 million in 1960 to 23 million in 1980 and nearly 30 million by 1990. This expanding population in turn led to rapid growth in government jobs—from a mere 874,000 in 1960 to 1.76 million by 1980 and nearly 2.1 million in 1990—and to exploding public-union membership. In the late 1970s, the California teachers’ union boasted about 170,000 members; that number jumped to about 225,000 in the early 1990s and stands at 340,000 today.

The swelling government payroll made many California taxpayers uneasy, eventually encouraging the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 (see page 30), the famous initiative that capped property-tax hikes and sought to slow the growth of local governments, which feed on property taxes. Government workers rightly saw Prop. 13 as a threat. “We’re not going to just lie back and take it,” a California labor leader told the Washington Post after the vote, adding that Prop. 13 had made the union “more militant.” The next several years proved him right. In 1980 alone, unionized employees of California local governments went on strike 40 times, even though doing so was illegal. And once the Supreme Court of California sanctioned state and local workers’ right to strike in 1985—something that their counterparts in most other states still lack—the unions quickly mastered confrontational techniques like the “rolling strike,” in which groups of workers walk off jobs at unannounced times, and the “blue flu,” in which public-safety workers call in sick en masse.

But in post–Proposition 13 California, strikes were far from the unions’ most fearsome weapons. Aware that Proposition 13 had shifted political action to the state capital, three major blocs—teachers’ unions, public-safety unions, and the Service Employees International Union, which now represents 350,000 assorted government workers—began amassing colossal power in Sacramento. Over the last 30 years, they have become elite political givers and the state’s most powerful lobbying factions, replacing traditional interest groups and changing the balance of power. Today, they vie for the title of mightiest political force in California.

Consider the California Teachers Association. Much of the CTA’s clout derives from the fact that, like all government unions, it can help elect the very politicians who negotiate and approve its members’ salaries and benefits. Soon after Proposition 13 became law, the union launched a coordinated statewide effort to support friendly candidates in school-board races, in which turnout is frequently low and special interests can have a disproportionate influence. In often bitter campaigns, union-backed candidates began sweeping out independent board members. By 1987, even conservative-leaning Orange County saw 83 percent of board seats up for grabs going to union-backed candidates. The resulting change in school-board composition made the boards close allies of the CTA.

But with union dues somewhere north of $1,000 per member and 340,000 members, the CTA can afford to be a player not just in local elections but in Sacramento, too (and in Washington, for that matter, where it’s the National Education Association’s most powerful affiliate). The CTA entered the big time in 1988, when it almost single-handedly led a statewide push to pass Proposition 98, an initiative—opposed by taxpayer groups and Governor George Deukmejian—that required 40 percent of the state’s budget to fund local education. To drum up sympathy, the CTA ran controversial ads featuring students; in one, a first-grader stares somberly into the camera and says, “Pay attention—today’s lesson is about the school funding initiative.” Victory brought local schools some $450 million a year in new funding, much of it discretionary. Unsurprisingly, the union-backed school boards often used the extra cash to fatten teachers’ salaries—one reason that California’s teachers are the country’s highest-paid, even though the state’s total spending per student is only slightly higher than the national average. “The problem is that there is no organized constituency for parents and students in California,” says Lanny Ebenstein, a former member of the Santa Barbara Board of Education and an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “No one says to a board of education, ‘We want more of that money to go for classrooms, for equipment.’ ”

With its growing financial strength, the CTA gained the ability to shape public opinion. In 1996, for instance, the union—casting covetous eyes on surplus tax revenues from the state’s economic boom—spent $1 million on an ad campaign advocating smaller classes. Californians began seeing the state’s classrooms as overcrowded, according to polls. So Governor Pete Wilson earmarked some three-quarters of a billion dollars annually to cut class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. The move produced no discernible improvements in student performance, but it did require a hiring spree that inflated CTA rolls and produced a teacher shortage. (The union drew the line, however, when it faced the threat of increased accountability. Two years later, when Wilson offered funds to reduce class sizes even more but attached the money to new oversight mechanisms, the CTA spent $6 million to defeat the measure, living up to Wilson’s assessment of it as a “relentless political machine.”)

During this contentious period, the CTA and its local affiliates learned to play hardball, frequently shutting down classes with strikes. The state estimated that in 1989 alone, these strikes cost California students collectively some 7.2 million classroom days. Los Angeles teachers provoked outrage that year by reportedly urging their students to support them by skipping school. After journalist Debra Saunders noted in LA’s Daily News that the striking teachers were already well paid, the union published her home phone number in its newsletter and urged members to call her.

Four years later, the CTA reached new heights of thuggishness after a business-backed group began a petition to place a school-choice initiative on the state ballot. In a union-backed effort, teachers shadowed signature gatherers in shopping malls and aggressively dissuaded people from signing up. The tactic led to more than 40 confrontations and protests of harassment by signature gatherers. “They get in between the signer and the petition,” the head of the initiative said. “They scream at people. They threaten people.” CTA’s top official later justified the bullying: some ideas “are so evil that they should never even be presented to the voters,” he said.

The rise of the white-collar CTA provides a good example of a fundamental political shift that took place everywhere in the labor movement. In the aftermath of World War II, at the height of its influence, organized labor was dominated by private workers; as a result, union members were often culturally conservative and economically pro-growth. But as government workers have come to dominate the movement, it has moved left. By the mid-nineties, the CTA was supporting causes well beyond its purview as a collective bargaining agent for teachers. In 1994, for instance, it opposed an initiative that prohibited illegal immigrants from using state government programs and another that banned the state from recognizing gay marriages performed elsewhere. Some union members began to complain that their dues were helping to advance a political agenda that they disagreed with. “They take our money and spend it as they see fit,” says Larry Sand, founder of the California Teachers Empowerment Network, an organization of teachers and former teachers opposed to the CTA’s noneducational politicking.

Public-safety workers—from cops and sheriffs to prison guards and highway-patrol officers—are the second part of the public-union triumvirate ruling California. In a state that has embraced some of the toughest criminal laws in the country, police and prison guards’ unions own a precious currency: their political endorsements, which are highly sought after by candidates wanting to look tough on crime. But the qualification that the unions usually seek in candidates isn’t, in fact, toughness on crime; it’s willingness to back better pay and benefits for public-safety workers.

The pattern was set in 1972, when State Assemblyman E. Richard Barnes—an archconservative former Navy chaplain who had fought pension and fringe-benefit enhancements sought by government workers, including police officers and firefighters—ran for reelection. Barnes had one of the toughest records on crime of any state legislator. Yet cops and firefighters walked his district, telling voters that he was soft on criminals. He narrowly lost. As the Orange County Register observed years later, the election sent a message to all legislators that resonates even today: “Your career is at risk if you dare fiddle with police and fire” pay and benefits.

The state’s prison guards’ union has exploited a similar message. Back in 1980, when the California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) won the right to represent prison guards in contract negotiations, it was a small fraternal organization of about 1,600 members. But as California’s inmate population surged and the state went on a prison-building spree—constructing 22 new institutions over 25 years—union membership expanded to 17,000 in 1988, 25,000 by 1997, and 31,000 today. Union resources rose correspondingly, with a budget soaring to $25 million or so, supporting a staff 70 deep, including 20 lawyers.

Deploying those resources, the union started to go after politicians who didn’t support higher salaries and benefits for its members and an ever-expanding prison system. In 2004, for example, the CCPOA spent $200,000—a whopping amount for a state assembly race—to unseat Republican Phil Wyman of Tehachapi. His sin: advocating the privatization of some state prisons in order to save money. “The amount of money that unions are pouring into local races is staggering,” says Joe Armendariz, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Taxpayers Association. A recent mayoral and city council election in Santa Barbara, with a population of just 90,000, cost more than $1 million, he observes.

The symbiotic relationship between the CCPOA and former governor Gray Davis provides a remarkable example of the union’s power. In 1998, when Davis first ran for governor, the union threw him its endorsement. Along with those much-needed law-and-order credentials, it also gave Davis $1.5 million in campaign contributions and another $1 million in independent ads supporting him. Four years later, as Davis geared up for reelection, he awarded the CCPOA a stunning 34 percent pay hike over five years, increasing the average base salary of a California prison guard from about $50,000 a year to $65,000—and this at a time when the unemployment rate in the state had been rising for nearly a year and a half and government revenues had been falling. The deal cost the state budget an additional $2 billion over the life of the contract. A union official described it admiringly as “the best labor contract in the history of California.” Eight weeks after the offer, the union donated $1 million to Davis’s reelection campaign.

Even cops who run for office have felt the wrath of public-safety unions. Allan Mansoor served 16 years as a deputy sheriff in Orange County but angered police unions by publicly backing an initiative that would have required them to gain their members’ permission to spend dues on political activities. When the conservative Mansoor ran successfully for city council several years back in Costa Mesa, local cops and firefighters poured resources into helping his more liberal opponents. “I didn’t like seeing my dues go to candidates like Davis, so I supported efforts to curb that,” Mansoor says. “Union leaders didn’t like it, so they endorsed my opponents by claiming they were tougher on crime than I was.”

Even more troubling are the activities of the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs (COPS), a lobbying and advocacy group that has raised tens of millions of dollars from controversial soliciting campaigns. In one, COPS fund-raisers reportedly called residents of heavily immigrant neighborhoods and threatened to cut off their 911 services unless they donated. In another, a COPS fund-raiser reportedly offered to shave points off Californians’ driving records in exchange for donations. The group has dunned politicians, too. In 1998, it began publishing a voter guide in which candidates paid to be included. Pols considered the money well spent because of the importance of a COPS endorsement—or at least the appearance of one. “We all use them [COPS] for cover, especially in years when law enforcement is a big issue in elections,” one state senator, Santa Clara’s John Vasconcellos, admitted to the Orange County Register. “It stopped the right wing from calling me soft on crime.”

The results of union pressure are clear. In most states, cops and other safety officers can typically retire at 50 with a pension of about half their final working salary; in California, they often receive 90 percent of their pay if they retire at the same age. The state’s munificent disability system lets public-safety workers retire with rich pay for a range of ailments that have nothing to do with their jobs, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. California’s prison guards are the nation’s highest-paid, a big reason that spending on the state’s prison system has blasted from less than 4.3 percent of the budget in 1986 to more than 11 percent today.

California’s third big public-union player is the state wing of the SEIU, the nation’s fastest-growing union, whose chief, Andy Stern, earned notoriety by visiting the White House 22 times during the first six months of the Obama administration. Founded in 1921 as a janitors’ union, the SEIU slowly transformed itself into a labor group representing government and health-care workers—especially health-care workers paid by government medical programs like Medicaid. In 1984, the California State Employees Association, which represented many state workers, decided to affiliate with the SEIU. Today, the SEIU represents 700,000 California workers—more than a third of its nationwide membership. Of those, 350,000 are government employees: noninstructional workers in schools across the state; all non-public-safety workers in California’s burgeoning prisons; 2,000 doctors, mostly residents and interns, at state-run hospitals; and many others at the local, county, and state levels.

The SEIU’s rise in California illustrates again how modern labor’s biggest victories take place in back rooms, not on picket lines. In the late 1980s, the SEIU began eyeing a big jackpot: tens of thousands of home health-care workers being paid by California’s county-run Medicaid programs. The SEIU initiated a long legal effort to have those workers, who were independent contractors, declared government employees. When the courts finally agreed, the union went about organizing them—an easy task because governments rarely contest organizing campaigns, not wanting to seem anti-worker. The SEIU’s biggest victory was winning representation for 74,000 home health-care workers in Los Angeles County, the largest single organizing drive since the United Auto Workers unionized General Motors in 1937. Taxpayers paid a steep price: home health-care costs became the fastest-growing part of the Los Angeles County budget after the SEIU bargained for higher wages and benefits for these new recruits. The SEIU also organized home health-care workers in several other counties, reaching a whopping statewide total of 130,000 new members.

The SEIU’s California numbers have given it extraordinary resources to pour into political campaigns. The union’s major locals contributed a hefty $20 million in 2005 to defeat a series of initiatives to cap government growth and rein in union power. The SEIU has also spent millions over the years on initiatives to increase taxes, sometimes failing but on other occasions succeeding, as with a 2004 measure to impose a millionaires’ tax to finance more mental-health spending. With an overflowing war chest and hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers, the SEIU has been instrumental in getting local governments to pass living-wage laws in several California cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. And the union has also used its muscle in campaigns largely out of the public eye, as in 2003, when it pressured the board of CalPERS, the giant California public-employee pension fund, to stop investing in companies that outsourced government jobs to private contractors.

Armed with knowledge about California’s three public-union heavyweights, one can start to understand how the state found itself in its nightmarish fiscal situation. The beginning of the end was the 1998 gubernatorial election, in which the unions bet their future—and millions of dollars in members’ dues—on Gray Davis. The candidate traveled to the SEIU’s headquarters to remind it of his support during earlier battles against GOP governors (“Nobody in this race has done anywhere near as much as I have for SEIU”); the union responded by pumping $600,000 into his campaign. Declaring himself the “education candidate” who would expand funding of public education, Davis received $1.2 million from the CTA. Added to this was Davis’s success in winning away from Republicans key public-safety endorsements—and millions in contributions—from the likes of the CCPOA.

Davis’s subsequent victory over Republican Dan Lungren afforded public-worker unions a unique opportunity to cash in the IOUs that they had accumulated, because Davis’s Democratic Party also controlled the state legislature. What followed was a series of breathtaking deals that left California state and municipal governments careening from one budget crisis to another for the next decade.

Perhaps the most costly was far-reaching 1999 legislation that wildly increased pension benefits for state employees. It included an unprecedented retroactive cost-of-living adjustment for the already retired and a phaseout of a cheaper pension plan that Governor Wilson had instituted in 1991. The deal also granted public-safety workers the right to retire at 50 with 90 percent of their salaries. To justify the incredible enhancements, Davis and the legislature turned to CalPERS, whose board was stocked with members who were either union reps or appointed by state officials who themselves were elected with union help. The CalPERS board, which had lobbied for the pension bill, issued a preposterous opinion that the state could provide the new benefits mostly out of the pension systems’ existing surplus and future stock-market gains. Most California municipalities soon followed the state enhancements for their own pension deals.

When the stock market slid in 2000, state and local governments got slammed with enormous bills for pension benefits. The state’s annual share, estimated by CalPERS back in 1999 to be only a few hundred million dollars, reached $3 billion by 2010. Counties and municipalities were no better off. Orange County’s retirement system saw its payouts to retirees jump to $410 million a year by 2009, from $140 million a decade ago. Many legislators who had voted for the pension legislation (including all but seven Republicans) later claimed that they’d had no idea that its fiscal impact would be so devastating. They had swallowed the rosy CalPERS projections even though they knew very well that the board was, as one county budget chief put it, “the fox in the henhouse.”

The second budget-busting deal of the Davis era was the work of the teachers’ union. In 2000, the CTA began lobbying to have a chunk of the state’s budget surplus devoted to education. In a massive rally in Sacramento, thousands of teachers gathered on the steps of the capitol, some chanting for TV cameras, “We want money! We want money!” Behind the scenes, Davis kept up running negotiations with the union over just how big the pot should be. “While you were on your way to Sacramento, I was driving there the evening of May 7, and the governor and I talked three times on my cell phone,” CTA president Wayne Johnson later boasted to members. “The first call was just general conversation. The second call, he had an offer of $1.2 billion. . . . On the third call, he upped the ante to $1.5 billion.” Finally, in meetings, both sides agreed on $1.84 billion. As Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters later observed, that deal didn’t merely help blow the state’s surplus; it also locked in higher baseline spending for education. The result: “When revenues returned to normal, the state faced a deficit that eventually not only cost Davis his governorship in 2003 but has plagued his successor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Having wielded so much power effortlessly, the unions miscalculated the antitax, anti-Davis sentiment that erupted when, shortly after his autumn 2002 reelection, Davis announced that the state faced a massive deficit. The budget surprise spurred an enormous effort to recall Davis, which the unions worked to defeat, with the SEIU spending $2 million. At the same time, union leaders used their influence in the Democratic Party to try to save Davis, telling other Democrats that they would receive no union support if they abandoned the governor. “If you betray us, we won’t forget it,” the head of the 800,000-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor proclaimed to Democrats. Only when it became apparent from polls that the recall would succeed did the unions shift their support to Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante, who finished a distant second to Schwarzenegger. Taxpayer groups were euphoric.

But as they and Schwarzenegger soon discovered, most of California’s government machinery remained union-controlled—especially the Democratic state legislature, which blocked long-term reform. Frustrated, Schwarzenegger backed a series of 2005 initiatives sponsored by taxpayer groups to curb the unions and restrain government growth, including one that made it harder for public-employee unions to use members’ dues for political purposes. The controversial proposals sparked the most expensive statewide election in American history. Advocacy groups and businesses spent a staggering $300 million (some of it, however, coming from drug companies trying to head off an unrelated initiative). The spending spree included $57 million from the CTA, which mortgaged its Sacramento headquarters for the cause. All of the initiatives went down to defeat.

California taxpayers nevertheless received a brief respite, thanks to the mid-decade housing boom that drove the economy and tax collections higher and momentarily eased the state’s budget crisis. Predictably, state politicians forgot California’s Davis-era deficit woes and gobbled up the surpluses, increasing spending by 32 percent, or $34 billion, in four years. Then the housing market crashed in 2007, prompting a cascade of budget crises in Sacramento and around the state. Only too late have Californians recognized the true magnitude of their fiscal problems, including a $21 billion deficit by mid-2009 that forced the state to issue IOUs when it temporarily ran out of cash. In the municipal bond market, fears are rising that the Golden State could actually default on its debt.

Municipalities around the state are also buckling under massive labor costs. One city, Vallejo, has already filed for bankruptcy to get out from under onerous employee salaries and pension obligations. (To stop other cities from going this route, unions are promoting a new law to make it harder for municipalities to declare bankruptcy.) Other local California governments, big and small, are nearing disaster. The city of Orange, with a budget of just $88 million in 2009, spent $13 million of it on pensions and expects that figure to rise to $23 million in just three years. Contra Costa’s pension costs rose from $70 million in 2000 to $200 million by the end of the decade, producing a budget crisis. Los Angeles, where payroll constitutes nearly half the city’s $7 billion budget, faces budget shortfalls of hundreds of millions of dollars next year, projected to grow to $1 billion annually in several years. In October 2007, even as it was clear that the area’s housing economy was crashing, city officials had handed out 23 percent raises over a five-year period to workers. (See the sidebars on pages 22 and 26.)

In the past, California could always rely on a rebounding economy to save it from its budgetary excesses. But these days, few view the state as the land of opportunity. Throughout the national recession that began in December 2008 and carried through 2009, California’s unemployment rate consistently ran several points higher than the national rate. Major California companies like Google and Intel have chosen to expand elsewhere, not in their home state. Put off by the high taxes and cumbersome regulatory regime that the public-sector cartel has led the way in foisting on the state, executives now view California as a noxious business environment. In a 2008 survey by a consulting group, Development Counsellors International, business executives rated California the state where they were least likely to locate new operations.

More and more California taxpayers are realizing how stacked the system is against them, and the first stirrings of revolt are breaking out. Voters defeated a series of ballot initiatives last May that would have allowed politicians to solve the state budget crisis temporarily through a series of questionable gimmicks, including one to let the state borrow against future lottery receipts and another to let it plug budget holes with money diverted from a mental-health services fund. In a clear message from voters, the only proposition to gain approval last May banned pay raises for legislators during periods of budget deficit.

With anger rising, taxpayer advocates now plan to revive older initiatives to cut the power of public-sector unions. Mark Bucher, head of the Citizens Power Campaign, is pushing for an initiative that’s similar to propositions that failed in 1998 and in 2005—but their prospects may be brighter today, he argues, because the woes of municipalities like Vallejo have made citizens more aware of union power and more supportive of reform. “The mood has clearly shifted in California,” Bucher says. “You can see that in the rise of local Tea Party antitax groups around the state. People are fed up.”

Another initiative that could mend California’s broken politics is a 2008 vote that took the power to delineate electoral districts away from the state legislature—which had used it to make it difficult to defeat incumbents—and gave it to a nonpartisan commission. If this commission succeeds in making legislative races more competitive and incumbents more responsive to voter sentiment, the legislature would almost certainly become less beholden to narrow union interests, and a whole series of reforms would be possible: a new, cheaper pension plan for state employees; fewer restrictions on charter schools, which often educate kids more effectively and less expensively than public schools do; and regulatory reforms that would reduce the estimated $493 billion cost that regulations impose on California businesses each year.

It will take an enormous effort to roll back decades of political and economic gains by government unions. But the status quo is unsustainable. And at long last, Californians are beginning to understand the connection between that status quo and the corruption at the heart of their politics.

Steven Malanga is the senior editor of City Journal and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He is the author of The New New Left. Research for his article was supported by the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/20/the-beholden-state/feed/ 9 http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/13/reza-kahlili-a-time-to-speak-out-against-iran-part-one-of-three/ http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/13/reza-kahlili-a-time-to-speak-out-against-iran-part-one-of-three/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:00:30 +0000 Elise Cooper http://www.newsrealblog.com/?p=48395

Reza Kahlili (an alias) recently wrote the book, A Time To Betray, a portrayal of his double life as a Revolutionary Guard member and CIA Agent. Although it is impossible to independently verify his recounting of all the events and facts it is a fascinating read about the despotic Iranian regime. The best part of the book is when he discusses his personal experiences and reactions to the brutal Iranian government from its inception in 1979 through today. NewsRealBlog talked with the author about his feelings, past and present, regarding the radicalized extremist Iranian system.

NewsRealBlog: Why did you write the book?

Reza Kahlili: I am trying to get the word out about the dangers of the Iranian regime. I am the first one coming out. They did not know I existed as an American spy inside the system. I want to alert the American people that the US government has a reactionary foreign policy where they wait for something to happen and then react. My goal is to stop a nuclear Iran from happening.

NRB: Don’t you think by coming out you are endangering more Iranians since the regime is so paranoid?

Reza: This is the same line of thinking that has prevented any meaningful action against Iran. The Iranian government arrested people for espionage, interrogated, tortured, and killed them, regardless if I wrote the book or not.

NRB: A very riveting part of the book was your description of Roya, a girl arrested, sent to Evin Prison, and tortured because she was falsely accused of being part of an opposition group. Here is a portion of her letter to you before she hung herself:

“I wish I was one of those girls who were lucky enough to go in front of the firing squad. They took everything from me in that prison. I have nothing left…When I was in solitary confinement these filthy, evil men would come to my cell…not even animals would do what they did. They raped me, but it was more than rape. When they were through they kicked me in the back as hard as they could, threw me down next to the toilet…They would make us hold one leg up for a long time. If you got tired, they would lash you on the tired leg. Some would faint from the pain and bleeding. They cut my arm with a knife and told me that they would cut my throat the next time if I did not confess. The next day they sent me to a small dark room where another guard raped me. This was the routine.”

How do you feel when you read about the CIA being criticized for its harsh interrogation techniques compared to what happened to Roya?

Reza: Comparing those techniques, like putting someone in a cell with an insect, if they call that torture then they don’t know what torture is. Torture is what was done in that prison, the most disgusting things to innocent people. Besides that description they hang people upside down and beat them for hours, burning them with cigarettes, breaking bones until they protrude out, and gouge eyes out. This is torture.

NRB: Another powerful segment in the book was your description of a girl’s, Asieh, stoning for committing adultery:

“From what I could tell her sin was trying to feed her two children by the only means available: selling herself to a man…Now she was to face the punishment decreed by fanatical mullah’s in Allah’s name. A young woman was being slaughtered, and I had to know her pain. They’d covered her body from the waist down with dirt. The Guards started shoveling more dirt in the hole until they buried Asieh up to her shoulders. The crowd attacked the pile of rocks. Soon Asieh’s face was veiled in blood and her head tilted to one side. She was gone. But the crowd continued to assault her.”

It seems that Iran is made up of two different worlds: a medieval society VS a modern society. Do you agree?

Reza: Currently, the minority rules the majority. The minority are the fanatics that follow every word of the Koran. They want nothing more than the blood of all non-believers. The stoning of a human being is savage. This is their idea of justice. They believe that this idea of Islam will conquer the world.

NRB: Are you upset that the feminists in this country do not speak out more against these acts?

Reza: They have a responsibility to speak out. They should voice their support of women everywhere.

NRB: You described how you view yourself. Can you explain?

Reza: Iranians don’t see themselves as Arabs. We see ourselves as Persians.

NRB: Are you a practicing Muslim?

Reza: I was born a Shiite Muslim. I was a devout Muslim. Because of all the terrible things I saw in Allah’s name my family is not practicing as Muslims. This is currently a family of infidels.

NRB: Can you describe the Revolutionary Guard?

Reza: They are part of the establishment, formed to confront military leaders sympathetic to the Shah. They are the main radical base that secures the government. If they would be taken out this regime would topple. It is a separate organization from the regular military army.

NRB: Why did you join the Revolutionary Guard?

Reza: After graduation I was very hopeful that Khomeini would bring freedom and democracy to Iran. I joined when my best friend asked me to be a part of the Revolutionary Guard.

NRB: Why are you using an alias?

Reza: Besides the safety of my immediate family and myself, I have a good many friends and relatives back in Iran. I have recruited many agents for the Agency. If I blew my cover they would torture those who I knew in Iran and know all my contacts.

]]> http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/04/13/reza-kahlili-a-time-to-speak-out-against-iran-part-one-of-three/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/uk-muslim-prisoners-intimidating-non-muslim-prisoners-getting-preferential-treatment.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/uk-muslim-prisoners-intimidating-non-muslim-prisoners-getting-preferential-treatment.html#comments Sun, 11 Apr 2010 21:06:39 +0000 Robert And prison authorities are afraid to cross them. "Islamic inmates hand back TVs to escape X Factor," by Ben Goldby for the Sunday Mercury, April 11 (thanks to Twostellas):

[...] Islamic inmate Abu Dira wrote to lag magazine Inside Time about the X Factor protest at the Worcestershire jail.

He said: "Many Muslims in Long Lartin have handed back their televisions, as they are viewed as nothing more than a distraction to religious study.

''I do not envisage hordes of crying Muslims lamenting the loss of X Factor."

The inmate also blasted plans to fight Islamic extremism by flooding the prison library with books from moderates, saying no-one would read them, "let alone accept the viewpoint of those individuals who align themselves with occupational forces".

Figures revealed by the Sunday Mercury last year show the Muslim population inside Long Lartin has doubled in just two years, with a quarter of all prisoners now followers of Islam.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that extremists held in the maximum security terror detainee unit are being given fresh sheets after every cell search by drug dogs - so that their religion is not offended.

Yet non-Muslim prisoners have complained that Islamic inmates are being offered preferential treatment as others are not offered clean sheets....

And a former Long Lartin prison officer has also claimed non-Muslim prisoners are being intimidated for refusing to abide by unofficial rules imposed by Islamic gangs, about eating pork and listening to Western music. One Christian prisoner was even stabbed for refusing to read the Quran, she claimed.

"Prison officers feel helpless against this situation," she said. "It seemed to me like the prison authorities were scared to upset the detainees so they had to be seen to protect them - even if they were in the wrong."...

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/11/uk-muslim-prisoners-intimidating-non-muslim-prisoners-getting-preferential-treatment/feed/ 0 http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/09/herbert-daughtry/ http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/09/herbert-daughtry/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 10:00:23 +0000 John Perazzo http://frontpagemag.com/?p=57603  

Called the “People’s Pastor” for his long activist career, Herbert Daughtry in 1953 was convicted of armed robbery and assault charges. In prison, he had a religious conversion to Pentecostalism which led him to become a pastor in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1980 Daughtry helped establish the National Black United Front, which helped organize the national campaign for reparations and has worked alongside the New Black Panthers. In 1982 he founded the African People’s Organization, which teaches the black origins of Christianity. In 1984 Daughtry became a special assistant to Jesse Jackson during the latter’s presidential campaign. He has also helped organize a number of initiatives with Al Sharpton, particularly the 2006-2008 demonstrations protesting a police shooting of a young black man in New York City.

A fervent proponent of Black Liberation Theology, Daughtry has served in a number of prominent positions with the World Council of Churches. He also has been one of the principal leaders of the reparations-for-slavery movement in America. His church in Brooklyn is adorned with a banner for slavery reparations, proclaiming, “They Owe Us.”

To view the full Herbert Daughtry profile, click here.

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/09/herbert-daughtry/feed/ 5 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/qatari-joking-smoking-non-shoe-bombing-diplomat-was-on-his-way-to-meet-jailed-al-qaeda-jihadist.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/04/qatari-joking-smoking-non-shoe-bombing-diplomat-was-on-his-way-to-meet-jailed-al-qaeda-jihadist.html#comments Thu, 08 Apr 2010 22:07:16 +0000 Robert Just a coincidence. Just a coincidence. Just a coincidence. Just a joke. Just a joke. Just a joke. "Qatar diplomat was to meet jailed terrorist," by Matthew Lee and P. Solomon Banda for The Associated Press, April 8 (thanks to all who sent this in):

WASHINGTON -- A Qatari diplomat was on his way to an official visit with an imprisoned al-Qaida sleeper agent when he touched off a bomb scare by slipping into an airline bathroom for a smoke, officials said Thursday as the diplomat prepared to leave the U.S.

The diplomat, Mohammed Al-Madadi was going to meet Ali Al-Marri in prison, according to a State Department official and another person close to the matter. Al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar, is serving eight years in prison after pleading guilty last year to conspiring to support terrorism.

Al-Marri was arrested after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, accused of being a sleeper agent researching poisonous gasses and plotting a cyberattack.

Consular officials frequently visit foreigners held in the United States to make sure they are being treated well.

The purpose of his visit raises further questions about Al-Madadi's behavior, such as why someone familiar with terrorism cases would apparently flaunt [sic] airline security rules. Law enforcement officials said Al-Madadi later joked that he had been trying to light his shoe -- an apparent reference to the 2001 so-called shoe bomber, Richard Reid....

Some air travelers at Denver International Airport Thursday were amazed that Al-Madadi would not be charged with anything.

"I think it's wrong. I'd get busted. I don't think that (immunity) should be a factor," said one of them, Hank DePetro, a retired psychologist from Greeley, Colo....

But even without charges being pressed against him and without such a waiver, the U.S. could have moved to declare Al-Madadi "persona non grata" and expel him from the country. However, officials said they would not pursue this, given the close nature of U.S.-Qatari ties and the importance the country plays in the Middle East....

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/08/qatari-joking-smoking-non-shoe-bombing-diplomat-was-on-his-way-to-meet-jailed-al-qaeda-jihadist/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/illinois-muslim-inmates-sue-because-prison-doesnt-allow-them-enough-time-with-family-and-friends.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/illinois-muslim-inmates-sue-because-prison-doesnt-allow-them-enough-time-with-family-and-friends.html#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 22:01:17 +0000 Robert These prisoners have committed crimes. That's why they're in prison. That can tend to lead to a certain curtailing of one's freedoms. Only because they recognize American officials as the hopeless dhimmis that they generally are do they dare to bring such a suit. Courtroom Jihad Update: "Inmates Say Prisons Violate Rights: Inmates In Federal Prisons Seek Added Face Time With Family and Friends," by Adriana Correa for NBC Chicago, March 31 (thanks to Twostellas):

A group of 60 to 70 Muslim prisoners in highly restrictive jail programs, in Terre Haute, Indiana and Marion, Illinois are suing because they don't get enough time to visit with family and friends.

The suit, brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights claims the prisoner's constitutional rights are being violated at the "Communications Managment Units," a set of experimental prison facilities.

They are taking a case to court on behalf of inmates that have been placed in highly secured prisons in the U.S.

The jail birds complain the prisons are not allowing them ample outside contact time with relatives and their buds.

Yes, lots of jihad to plan!

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/31/illinois-muslim-inmates-sue-because-prison-doesnt-allow-them-enough-time-with-family-and-friends/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/torture-jihadists-including-ksm-allowed-to-use-laptops-at-gitmo.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/torture-jihadists-including-ksm-allowed-to-use-laptops-at-gitmo.html#comments Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:00:38 +0000 Robert Living large at Gitmo

"...raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials."

Uh, yeah.

Will the self-deception and dhimmi idiocy never end?

"Gitmo suspects allowed laptops while in custody," by Bill Gertz at the Washington Times, March 19 (thanks to all who sent this in):

The Pentagon allowed five captured al Qaeda members currently held at the Guantanamo Bay prison to use laptop computers in detention, raising concerns among security officials that the terrorism suspects could pass sensitive data to terrorists in the future, according to U.S. officials.

The computers, without Internet access, were provided to Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other suspected 9/11 conspirators at the prison at the U.S. naval base in Cuba after approval by senior Pentagon officials in September 2008.

The battery-powered laptops were kept in the detainees' cell areas, and limitations on their use were imposed, defense officials said. The practice continued until January, when charges against the five were temporarily dropped after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the men would be tried in civilian court, not by military commission.

Mr. Holder then backed off plans to hold trials in federal court in New York City and said this week that a decision on where to conduct the trials is expected in the coming weeks.

In addition to Mohammed, the other al Qaeda members who were given computers were Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al-Hawsawi.

The computer access was granted by Guantanamo authorities before an Oct. 6, 2008, ruling by Marine Corps Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann, a military judge, that formally granted the five terrorism suspect the right to use computers, said Col. Les Melnyk, a Pentagon spokesman....

]]> http://frontpagemag.com/2010/03/19/torture-jihadists-including-ksm-allowed-to-use-laptops-at-gitmo/feed/ 0 http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/head-of-algerias-superior-islamic-council-a-misunderstander-of-islam-says-that-prison-for-violent-hu.html http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/03/head-of-algerias-superior-islamic-council-a-misunderstander-of-islam-says-that-prison-for-violent-hu.html#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:39:21 +0000 Robert "Good women are obedient....As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them." -- Qur'an 4:34

But...but...doesn't Qaher Sharif know that Islam protects women's rights? He must be some kind of Islamophobe!

"Algeria: Prison for Violent Husbands Is Against Koran, Mufti," from ANSAmed, March 15 (thanks to Block Ness):

(ANSAmed) - ALGIERS, MARCH 15 - The proposal to introduce prison terms for men who beat their wives goes against the Koran and the teachings of the prophet Mohamed, according to the head of Algeriàs Superior Islamic Council. Qaher Sharif fiercely criticised the bill presented to the head of state Abdelaziz Bouteflikàs by the head of the Consultative Council on Human Rights Farouk Qustantiti. "This man's aim is to violate a law of the Koran and of the Sunnah, and he meddles in subjects that are beyond his competence", Sharif said in an interview with the Arab-language edition of the daily newspaper El Khabar. "Hés done it before with the death penalty, and now with beatings," he added, asking "what difference can it make to him what goes on between a man and his wife?" The President of the Islamic Council said that he was stunned by Qustantinìs proposal, because "God has already pointed out precisely the way that a husband must behave towards his wife". He quoted verses 34 and 35 of the Surah on women, in which men are advised to "admonish women, confine them to their bed and beat them" should they commit "nushooz", a term signifying both infidelity and a refusal of sexual intercourse. Sharif pointed out that the text is so precise that it indicates the method of punishment to be used against the wife, and that this should be neither "too insistent, nor provoke disfigurement".

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