Who owns Kabul Bank? And where has its money gone? Last night, after Obama had finished his speech about how we were sort of almost done in Iraq but still had a lot of lives to lose and money to spend in Afghanistan (see Anderson, Osnos, and Packer for more on that), the Washington Post put a story on its Web site about how the Afghan Central Bank was moving to replace the management of Kabul Bank. This is the bank that handles the payroll for Afghan soldiers and schoolteachers. From the Post:
Kabul Bank’s wayward lending practices, real estate speculation in Dubai and weeks of venomous feuding between major shareholders have threatened to wreak economic and political havoc.
U.S. officials have long worried that Kabul Bank, because of its size and unorthodox practices, could trigger financial mayhem, a prospect that would leave Afghan security forces without pay, threaten unrest by angry—and often armed—depositors and undermine President Obama’s Afghan strategy.
Our war in Afghanistan may be compromised by a bank? And, again, whose bank—who are the major shareholders involved in “venomous feuding?” The Post includes a helpful chart; they all seem to have ties to Karzai, his election campaign, and his cabinet. One is his brother, Mahmoud Karzai. He is in a better position to come out of this well than the depositors who were heading to the bank to get their money out this morning; there is a fair amount of confusion at the moment about who’s in control, what the central bank’s role will be, and, most of all, where all the money has gone. (Some seems to have funded an airline owned by the chairman of the bank.) Are American taxpayers going to end up bailing this bank out, because it’s so entwined with the Karzai government that it’s considered crucial to the war effort? Is there such a thing as a bank that’s too corrupt to fail?
The Wall Street Journal, in a follow-up, described “a massive portfolio of off-the-books loans by the bank’s chairman to himself and to other politically connected Afghans.” The bank has also, according to the Journal, used hawala, a less-than-regulated money-exchange system, “to clandestinely transfer almost $1 billion out of Afghanistan in the past few years.” It was mixed up with New Ansari, a firm that, as the Journal put it, “allegedly helped Afghan politicians, drug barons and even the Taliban move billions of dollars out of the country.” (Karzai recently intervened to get one of his aides, who was accused of taking a bribe to stop an investigation of Al Ansari, out of jail.) The Times said that Kabul Bank and its chairman, Sherkhan Farnood, were “at the heart of the political and economic nexus that sustains—and is sustained by—the government of President Hamid Karzai” and “provided millions to Mr. Karzai’s campaign.” Then there are its business dealings:
First among the beneficiaries was Mr. Farnood himself, the officials said. He invested about $140 million of the bank’s money in the real estate market in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, said Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother and a Kabul Bank shareholder. Among those properties were more than a dozen multimillion-dollar villas in Mr. Farnood’s name, some of them on Palm Jumeria, an island off Dubai’s coast, Mr. Karzai said.
A lot of that value was lost when the Dubai real-estate market fell (assuming, of course, that the transactions were real). More from the Times:
It is not clear what Mr. Farnood did with all the properties he purchased, but he made at least some of them available to his friends and allies. One of them was Mahmoud Karzai, who owns about 7 percent of the bank. Speaking in an interview from Dubai, Mr. Karzai said he had rented one of Mr. Farnood’s villas for the past year and a half.
Mr. Karzai said the bank’s troubles—and Mr. Farnood’s opaque dealings—had made him decide to vacate soon.
“I want to move to a different house,” Mr. Karzai said. “I want to cut this out.”
So President Karzai’s brother has been living in a villa in the Emirates that constitutes a questionable investment by the bank he partially owns; but he might move. The Wall Street Journal said that a U.S. official had tried to make the case that the removal of bank officials was “a sign” that Karzai was getting a little bit serious about corruption. But, the Journal noted,
An Afghan banker with knowledge of the situation offered a less optimistic view, saying the move may have more to do with shifting political and business alliances among the country’s small, clubby elite.
Mahmood Karzai, for example, has recently forged stronger links with the owners of Afghan United Bank, a competitor of Kabul Bank. Afghan United Bank’s chairman owns a 20% stake in a housing development that Mahmood Karzai is building outside the southern city of Kandahar, where U.S. forces are making a major push against the Taliban.
So what is Mahmoud Karzai's new preferred bank like?
Afghan United Bank is owned by the founders of New Ansari, the hawala that is being investigated. U.S. officials say the bank’s owners still control the hawala, although the bank’s owners say they have cut ties to the money-transfer business.
Moving the money from one bank to another, or the President’s dubiously wealthy brother moving himself from one villa to another, doesn’t really count as doing something about corruption. Or, if it does, then we have a long way to go in Afghanistan. It’s a bit like moving soldiers from one war to another, and calling it victory.
So, should U.S. taxpayers bail out Kabul Bank because it is considered so vital to the war effort?
Were that all our foreign policy decisions were so easy.
After reading the textual description that Hugh posted, you may be interested to see interviews with and footage of the characters, from the brave Larisa Kudziyeva to the jihadi Ali.
Human rights activists have described Religious Affairs Minister Suryadharma Ali’s proposal to disband the Ahmadiyah congregation as a “setback” and a national “humiliation”.
Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia’s representative to ASEAN’s Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that Suryadharma’s statement was a setback and was counter to the country’s commitment to religious freedom.
The minister will inflame hard-line groups to commit even more violence with such a statement, he added.
Suryadharma said on Monday that Ahmadiyah “must be disbanded immediately” because it violated a 2008 joint ministerial decree that stated that Ahmadiyah can not propagate its teachings.
The process of dissolving the group will be gradual, Suryadharma said Tuesday, as quoted by kompas.com.
“We will not abruptly disband it. The process will begin with the enforcement of the joint ministerial decree,” he said.
I don't think the good minister understands the basis for criticism of the ban. The concern is not the rate at which the Ahmadiyya will be disbanded. The concern is that the Ahmadiyya will be disbanded at all, and forbidden by law from practicing their religion (which is also Islam, but a heretical enough version for the Sunni majority to consider them un-Islamic). It doesn't even occur to him that Muslims banning the practice of other religions is anything out of the ordinary.
Neither Suryadharma nor the ministry provided evidence supporting the minister’s allegations.
Rafendi said the planned ban of Ahmadiyah was inimical to the country’s efforts to uphold the principles of human rights and democracy.
President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono previously told an audience at Harvard University in the US that Indonesia “has shown that Islam, modernity and democracy — plus economic growth and national unity — can be a powerful partnership.”
Yudhoyono also said that the country wanted to ensure that tolerance and respect for religious freedom became part of its “trans-generational DNA” and that Indonesia was a powerful example of how Islam, democracy and modernity can go “hand in hand”.
Of course, the hands of democracy and modernity have been severed before being held aloft in triumph by the hand of Islam, "hand in hand."
Jamaah Ahmadiyah, which has 200,000 followers in Indonesia, has also been the target of attacks from hard-line Islamic groups, most recently in Manis Lor, Kuningan regency when three were injured.
Hard-line Muslim organizations have demanded that the group be banned.
Home Affairs Ministry spokesman Saut Situmorang told the Post that a mass organization could be banned if it was proven to have disturbed the public order or posed a threat to national unity.
A sufficiently vague standard that could be applied by Muslims to whatever religious groups they want.
Saut said if the Religious Affairs Ministry decided to ban Ahmadiyah group, the Home Affairs Ministry would have to apply the 1985 Law on Mass Organizations, which provides a mechanism to disband groups.
Nurkholis Hidayat, the chairman of the Jakarta Legal Aid Foundation, asked if the Ahmadiyah needed to be banned under the law. “I think the FPI (Islam Defenders Front) meets more of the requirements,” he said. [Cheeky devil,and a brave one at that]
Rafendi said banning Ahmadiyah would justify more violence. “What (Suryadharma) said concerns an inalienable right (of the Ahmadiyah members) to hold religious beliefs that cannot be denied in any kind of situation,” he added.
An update to this story about everyone's favorite baker-murderers. First, Sgt. Derwin Longmire's discrimination lawsuit against the city of Oakland has been dismissed. By Josh Richman for the Chauncey Bailey Project:
A federal judge has dismissed most of a civil-rights lawsuit filed by the former Oakland homicide detective who led the highly criticized investigation of journalist Chauncey Bailey’s 2007 slaying.
Sgt. Derwin Longmire had claimed in his April lawsuit that the Oakland Police Department, Assistant Chief Howard Jordan and Internal Affairs Division Lt. Sean Whent violated his constitutional rights and ruined his reputation by investigating his conduct and allowing information leaks while forbidding him from clearing his own name.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White this week ruled Longmire’s case is full of holes and can’t be sustained by the facts presented in the complaint. He dismissed all but one of Longmire’s claims, allowing Longmire the right to amend and refile his case on the others.
And more interestingly, Yusuf Bey IV's lawyer has been dismissed for smuggling a "hit-list" out of prison. By Thomas Peele for the Chauncey Bailey Report:
OAKLAND — Yusuf Bey IV’s longtime lawyer smuggled a hit list out of jail in March that named witnesses her client wanted killed to prevent their testimony in his upcoming trial on charges of ordering journalist Chauncey Bailey and two others killed in 2007, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
The attorney, Lorna Patton Brown “smuggled written communication and materials out of Santa Rita Jail (in Dublin) without the authorization of the sheriff’s department and delivered the unlawful communication to others” on six occasions, an affidavit in the filing states. It also states she has smuggled unidentified materials into the jail for Bey IV.
Brown also received “documents from others and passed(ed) them on to Bey IV” in jail, the affidavit states. She resigned as his lawyer on April 16. Brown had represented Bey IV and his late father, Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey, in several felony cases.
On one of the documents she smuggled out of the jail “witnesses’ names had been highlighted” so that (a hit man) would know who “he would have to kill so they would not be available to testify at Bey IV’s pending murder trial,” states the affidavit written by Inspector Kathleen Boyovich of the Alameda County district attorney’s office.
The affidavit does not say whether Brown knew why the names were highlighted. Her attorney, Spencer Strellis, declined to comment Tuesday and Brown did not return a message. She has not been charged with a crime. The penal code section cited in the affidavit is a misdemeanor.
The affidavit also states that Bey IV routinely tries to circumvent recording devices during jail visits by “whispering and lip syncing.” In those communications he had tried to intimidate witnesses and asked them to lie and destroy evidence, Boyovich wrote.
Milli Vanilli and Jessica Simpson lip synced. Yusuf Bey IV mouthed words.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at this point that after allegedly attempting to assist in the murder of witnesses, the lawyer simply resigned and walked away. No criminal charges filed, no reprimand from the Bar Association. Maybe she can follow Sgt. Longmire's lead and file a discrimination lawsuit against the city. Ka-ching.
LAHORE, Pakistan – Three bombs ripped through a Shiite Muslim religious procession in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Wednesday, killing 25 people and wounding about 150 others, officials said.
The explosions appeared to be the latest in a string of attacks by Sunni extremists against the minority Shiites they consider infidels. Allied with al-Qaida and the Taliban, the bombers are also seeking to destabilize Pakistan's U.S.-backed government.
The blasts were the first major attacks since Pakistan was hit by devastating floods more than a month ago. Lahore, the country's political capital and home to much of its military elite, has been regularly targeted by militants over the past two years.
The bombs exploded at three separate sites Wednesday evening as 35,000 Shiites marched through the streets of Lahore in their traditional mourning procession for the caliph Ali, one of Shiite Islam's most respected holy men.
[...]
After the blasts, the marchers erupted in fury, setting fire to a police station, another police facility, two police cars and three motorcycles, said Zulfiqar Hameed, a senior police officer. Police lobbed tear gas canisters at the crowd and fired shots in the air to disperse the assailants, he said.
The first blast was a time bomb that exploded in the street near a well-known Shiite building, Hameed said. Footage of that explosion shown on Geo television showed a small blast erupting amid a crowd of people on the street followed by a large plume of smoke. Hundreds of people fled from the blast, while others rushed to the area to carry the wounded to safety.
Minutes later, with the streets in chaos, a male suicide bomber who appeared about 18 years old tried to force his way into an area where food was being prepared for the marchers to break the traditional Ramadan fast and exploded, Hameed said. Soon after, another suicide bomber detonated himself at an intersection near the end of the procession.
Does anyone seriously believe that if the U.S. pulled all troops out of every Islamic nation, and if every Jew left Israel tomorrow, then there would then finally be peace in Dar al-Islam?
WASHINGTON – Two men on a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Amsterdam were questioned by Dutch authorities after U.S. officials found a cell phone taped to a Pepto Bismol bottle and a knife and box cutter in checked luggage connected with the men, a law enforcement official said.
The official identified the men as Ahmed Mohamed Nasser al Soofi and Hezam al Murisi. Al Soofi had a Michigan address, the official said, but it was not immediately clear where the two men were from.
As of Monday night, FBI agents had visited the southwest Detroit neighborhood where several addresses were found for variations of al Soofi's name, according to neighbors who declined to give their names to The Associated Press.
ABC News, which first reported the incident Monday, said al Soofi was from Detroit and that both he and al Murisi were charged in the Netherlands with "preparation of a terrorist attack," but U.S. officials would not confirm that.
Another law enforcement official said, as of Monday night, the men had not been charged with anything in the U.S.
The law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation and sensitive security issues.
Al Soofi was questioned as he went through security in Birmingham, Ala., on his way to Chicago, according to one of the officials. He told the Transportation Security Administration authorities he was carrying a lot of cash. Screeners found $7,000 on him, but he was not breaking any law by carrying that much money. Officials also found multiple cell phones taped together and multiple watches taped together in his checked baggage.
Al Soofi was supposed to fly from Chicago to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia, and then on to Amsterdam, the official said. But when he got to Chicago, he changed his travel plans to take a direct flight from Chicago to Amsterdam. Al Murisi also changed his travel plans in Chicago to take a direct flight to Amsterdam, raising suspicion among U.S. officials. Federal Air marshals were on the flight from Chicago to Amsterdam, a law enforcement official said.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said once officials found suspicious items in luggage associated with two passengers on Sunday night's flight, they notified the Dutch authorities.
"The items were not deemed to be dangerous in and of themselves," Kudwa said. She would not identify the two passengers.
It is not illegal to carry knives or taped cell phones and watches in checked baggage.
No, it's not. It's also not illegal to stand up during a flight and start praying loudly in Arabic; to order seatbelt extenders when they are not needed; switch seats back and forth among a group travelling together; pack a brick of cheese with wires stuck in it into checked luggage; make frequent trips back and forth to the washroom; and take pictures of the flight crew with a cellphone after the crew has told passengers to turn off all electronic devices; all of which Muslims have done in the last few years.
It's also not illegal to start screaming in mock terror in the darkness of an overnight overseas flight; to shine a flashlight into the eyes of your sleeping neighbor on a flight; to urinate into a jar in the restroom and then pour it on the floor and seats of the plane; to scream at the top of your lungs that the elderly woman sitting next to you is a disgusting pig; play electric guitar at full volume; or any of a million other annoying and disturbing things one COULD do that are not technically illegal.
It's not illegal, but we shouldn't do them. We should act with respect towards our fellow passengers, and in cooperation with airline and security personnel who are tasked with ensuring the safety of all passengers. We should loudly and clearly criticize those who intentionally disrupt flights, and take actions to ensure that they cannot disrupt future flights.
You know and I know these are not just rowdy passengers. These are "dry runs", intended to test the boundaries of our security systems, to probe for weaknesses that can be exploited. These are intended to habitualize airline crews to their bizarre behavior, and to cow airline crews into submission with threats of discrimination lawsuits. They are meant to divert attention and resources to monitoring airline flights, while other methods and routes are being used to prepare for future jihad attacks.
Their behavior may not be illegal, but it is unacceptable, and it must stop.
NEW YORK – New revelations about the owner of the Ground Zero mosque building could mean a split between him and the project's influential imam, making it unlikely to ever get built.
Sharif El-Gamal, 37, the owner of the building at the center of the storm over the construction of a "ground zero mosque," is a quintessential American story, a man who went from waiting tables in New York's A-list restaurants to buying and selling properties.
But new revelations are emerging that present a very different narrative. And it could lead to a split between the forces behind the mosque.
Court records from Florida to New York state reveal that Sharif and his younger brother, Samir "Sammy" El-Gamal, 35, a partner with him in his company SoHo Properties, both have a history replete with intersections with tax and debt issues, dating back to at least 1994 and continuing into this year. In one instance, Sharif told a court he didn't hit a tenant from whom his brother and he were trying to collect back rent. He said to police, the tenant's "face could have run into my hand."
I now don't think the mosque will be built at the location staked out near ground zero.
After tracking Sharif's finances and talking to acquaintances about his rough-and-tumble business style, I now don't think the mosque will be built at the location staked out near ground zero. According to people familiar with the mosque project, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and his wife, Daisy Khan, a community leader, were blindsided by the revelations about Sharif, making a partnership unlikely. Moreover, Sharif’s domineering personality troubles them because it doesn't fit into the slow, methodical, and even boring work of building a nonprofit.
Fast jihad, take a seat on the bench. It's slow jihad's turn for a while. We'll put you back in the game in the fourth quarter.
I expect that Rauf and Khan will gracefully bow out of this project near ground zero, lead an interfaith community effort to build an Islamic center elsewhere, and welcome Sharif and his family in the congregation with open arms. To me, that’s the best solution out of this political—and now PR—debacle. I'm also certain that somewhere in there the businessman in Sharif will see a profit.
This is exactly as Hugh and Rebecca predicted. Sharif El-Gamal will ostentatiously be set aside, Imam Rauf will make a magnanimous acceptance of millions of dollars to move the Ground Zero mosque a couple of blocks down the road, and the issue will fade away.
[...]
According to friends, the brothers [Sharif and Samir "Sammy" El-Gamal] ran with a fast crowd in their twenties. Sharif waited tables at the posh restaurant Serafina, while Sammy waited tables at Tao. For a short while, Sharif worked as a waiter at Michael Jordan’s, named after former basketball star. But, according to people familiar with that restaurant, he was fired within two months for arriving reeking of alcohol, among other things. This is around when Sharif started acquiring a criminal record, say people familiar with his life.
This past weekend, capturing this period of Sharif's life, the Daily News ran a headline, "Park51 developer Sharif El-Gamal has a history of run-ins with the law," including pleading guilty in 1994, 1998, and 1999 to disorderly conduct in Manhattan, as well as pleading guilty to disorderly conduct in 1990, a DWI in 1992, and attempted petit larceny in 1993 in Nassau County, N.Y.
According to Broward County court records, on March 3, 1999, Hollywood, Florida, police arrested Sammy, then 25, for "theft/to deprive," a misdemeanor. Later that year, Sammy pleaded guilty, and Judge Sharon Zeller fined him $143 and required him to attend a "substance-abuse through education" course. Just two years ago, during the summer of 2008, the court filed "financial obligation suspension" papers for Sammy's failure to pay his fine.
Neither Sammy nor Sharif responded to a request seeking comment.
After the 9/11 attacks, Sharif told New York magazine that "he just felt like praying." Sharif first started attending Manhattan Masjid, known in the community as "the Salafi mosque," for its adherence to a rigid, puritanical interpretation of Islam, espoused, among other things, on its website.
Why would the 9/11 attacks engender in Sharif a desire to start attending a mosque that teaches adherence to a "rigid, puritanical interpretation of Islam"? Was it for the peace, tolerance, and love that they were espousing?
Then, he discovered Masjid al-Nur, or "Mosque of Light," where Rauf preaches. It's nicknamed "the Sufi mosque" by congregants.
Contrary to current belief, Sufis are not simply peaceful spinning dancers.
Career-wise, Sharif was heading into real estate, collecting commissions off rental leases. He was no big shot, and really never has been, building just a small portfolio of property. In late 2003, he created a website, sohoproperties.com. The three partners were Sharif, Sammy, and Nour Mousa, the young nephew of Amr Mousa, secretary general of the Arab League, a relationship that would later become a lightning rod for critics of the mosque.
On September 10, 2005, New York police arrested Sharif for alleged assault on a Manhattan renter, Mark Vassilieve, when Sammy tried to convince Vassilieve to pay his rent. The charges were dropped when Vassilieve filed a civil suit, which Sharif settled.
On January 24, 2006, according to court records, Nino and Nicola Gaudio won a judgment of $3,300 against Sammy, as well as permission to evict him from property they owned. On February 1, 2006, they won another $3,300 judgment, and on April 6, 2006, N&S Realty won a judgment allowing them to have forcible entry against Sammy. The Gaudios couldn't be reached for comment.
Big things were still in the air though. According to electronic records, Sharif created a website, retailsoho.com, in April 2006. (A visit this weekend showed nothing on the site.) That year, Sharif told the Daily News, he hired a teenager, Francisco Patino, to scout for a new mosque location, when he spotted him on a TV at a Sharper Image store, charming TV viewers of the reality show American Inventor. That same year, according to media reports, Sharif bid on the property at 45-47 Park Place.
The next year, on March 13, 2007, New York state issued a state tax warrant against Sammy for $19,895, according to court records. On April 30, 2007, Sharif bought apartment 6C in a building on W. 93rd Street for $1.075 million with his wife, Rebekka, an American-born convert to Islam.
By this time, the El-Gamal brothers knew Imam Rauf well. In December 2008, Rauf officiated Sammy's wedding to Allison Poole, a scarf delicately draped over the bride's golden brown locks. The young couple clasp hands and gaze softly into each other's eyes in a photo taken at the wedding, as Rauf led the ceremony, smiling, with a microphone hooked to his loose tunic.
On July 7, 2009, after buying the property where he wants to build the Islamic center, Sharif created two companies, 45 Park Place Partners LLC and 45 Park Place LH, LLC. The next day, he started Soho Properties General Partner LLC as a foreign limited liability corporation. On October 16, 2009, Sharif created Soho Properties Inc., naming himself chairman.
Since the controversy erupted, the media has largely portrayed the man behind the mosque effort as Imam Rauf, an Egyptian-born progressive Muslim cleric who could be Sean Connery's body-double [but not his philosophical-double]. His wife, Khan, a Muslim community leader born in Kashmir, India, occasionally shares the spotlight. Known inside the Muslim community as unabashedly ambitious, the couple has irked Sharif and others in his camp. Last week, in a conference call with interfaith partners and others, set up by the Council on Foreign Relations, Khan said, "one of our congregants, Sharif El-Gamal, took it upon himself" to find new space for the overcrowded mosque where Rauf led prayers. Otherwise, there wasn't another word about the Brooklyn-born Sharif. Khan directed folks to the website of the Cordoba Initiative[link by Artemis], an interfaith nonprofit her husband runs, not the developer's website for the effort.
Isn't it interesting that among all the "vast majority of moderate Muslims" who are allegedly trying so hard to build a symbol of "interfaith outreach" to the community, that as soon as you look at who is actually leading these projects, it is either an imam who claims that the C.I.A. carried out 9/11 and who refuses to denounce Hamas, or a low-level thug who allegedly beats tenants? Are these really the "best and brightest" that Islam has to offer?
KHAN BANI SAAD, Iraq – A $40 million prison sits in the desert north of Baghdad, empty. A $165 million children's hospital goes unused in the south. A $100 million waste water treatment system in Fallujah has cost three times more than projected, yet sewage still runs through the streets.
As the U.S. draws down in Iraq, it is leaving behind hundreds of abandoned or incomplete projects. More than $5 billion in U.S. taxpayer funds has been wasted on these projects — more than 10 percent of the $53.7 billion the US has spent on reconstruction in Iraq, according to audits from a U.S. watchdog agency.
That amount is likely an underestimate, based on an analysis of more than 300 reports by auditors with the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. And it does not take into account security costs, which have run almost 17 percent for some projects.
There are success stories. Hundreds of police stations, border forts and government buildings have been built, Iraqi security forces have improved after years of training, and a deepwater port at the southern oil hub of Umm Qasr has been restored.
Define "success". Is it truly a "success story" if the U.S. builds police stations, border forts, and government buildings in Iraq at U.S. expense, for the ungrateful Iraqi people? Is it a "success" to train and arm the Iraqi army and police who are currently in a state of near-war with each other, and who, as soon as we extract our troops, will begin terrorizing and torturing "The Iraqi People"? Or rather, Sunni police and soldiers will terrorize and torture Shi'a, and vice versa. And it will all be the fault of the Evil Empire, the U.S., for having trained and armed them.
But even completed projects for the most part fell far short of original goals, according to an Associated Press review of hundreds of audits and investigations and visits to several sites. And the verdict is still out on whether the program reached its goal of generating Iraqi good will toward the United States instead of the insurgents.
Actually, the jury came back years ago with their verdict, as is made clear later in this article, which we continue to steadfastly ignore.
Col. Jon Christensen, who took over as head of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Iraq this summer, said it has completed more than 4,800 projects and is rushing to finish 233 more. Some 595 projects have been terminated, mostly for security reasons.
Christensen acknowledged that mistakes have been made. But he said steps have been taken to fix them, and the success of the program will depend ultimately on the Iraqis who have complained that they were not consulted on projects to start with.
When the "success" of our strategy depends on the Iraqi people, we are doomed to failure. We should have never gotten ourselves in this position, and we should do everything in our power to get out of this situation as soon as possible.
[...]
Another problem was coordination with the Iraqis, who have been left with health facilities that would cost at least as much as the Americans spent to complete. One clinic was handed over to local authorities without a staircase, said Shaymaa Mohammed Amin, the head of the Diyala provincial reconstruction and development committee.
"We were almost forced to take them," she said during an interview at the heavily fortified local government building in the provincial capital of Baqouba. "Generally speaking, they were below our expectations. Huge funds were wasted and they would not have been wasted if plans had been clear from the beginning."
As an example, she cited a date honey factory that was started despite a more pressing need for schools and vital infrastructure. She said some schools were left without paint or chalkboards, and needed renovations.
"We ended up paying twice," she said.
No, the Iraqis ended up paying nothing. It was U.S. taxpayers' money that was wasted twice. First, by sending it to a people who hate us and who hate each other, to try to improve the horrific lives they have built for themselves, and secondly, by giving that money to Iraqi contractors who built hospitals without staircases, and generally did substandard work while siphoning off funds for their personal use via corruption, mismanagement, and outright theft.
[...]
The Americans committed to rebuilding the former Sunni insurgent stronghold of Fallujah after it was destroyed in major offensives in 2004. The U.S. awarded an initial contract for a new waste water treatment system to FluorAMEC of Greenville, S.C. — just three months after four American private security contractors were savagely attacked. The charred and mutilated remains of two of them were strung from a bridge in the city.
An audit concluded that it was unrealistic for the U.S. "to believe FluorAMEC could even begin construction, let alone complete the project, while fierce fighting occurred daily."
That sounds like a good summary of the entire Iraqi intervention.
[...]
In an acknowledgment that they weren't getting exactly what they hoped for, Iraqi officials insisted the label "state of the art" be removed from a memorandum of understanding giving them the facility. It was described as a "modern pediatric hospital."
The hospital's director, Kadhim Fahad, said construction has been completed and the electricity issue resolved. "The opening will take place soon, God [Allah] willing," he said.
Allah didn't provide their new "modern pediatric hospital", it was the United States of Naïve, Misguided Benevolence.
Residents are pleased with the outcome. One, Ghassan Kadhim, said: "It is the duty of the Americans to do such projects because they were the ones who inflicted harm on people."
We got rid of Saddam Hussein and the Baathists, stopped the Shi'ite militias such as Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army from killing Sunnis, stopped the Sunni militias such as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia from killing Shi'a, and gave the Iraqi people the opportunity to create a democratic government of their own choosing. For that, we owe them.
There is a Chinese proverb, "He who saves a man's life is forever responsible for it." The moral being, I suppose, to be careful who you help; it may be better for a bystander to simply walk away and let the person in trouble perish. That is not a Judaeo-Christian principle, it is not a Western principle. All belief systems are not equivalent, and this is not a proverb that we live by.
Whatever the wisdom of it, we helped the Iraqis. Our obligation to them ended at that point. We didn't "break it," and we don't need to "fix it". The Iraqis are responsible for their own decisions and for the society that they have built for themselves.
This entire article is listing a few individual projects that wasted a few paltry tens or hundreds of million dollars here and there, without questioning the entire TRILLION dollars we have spent during our occupation of Iraq. These few billion "wasted" dollars are insignificant compared to the waste of the entire Iraqi project. Eight years on, we are still not ready to question the reason we are there (to protect the Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Emirati royal families from Saddam's forces), and do the requisite cost-benefit analysis from our point of view. We're just nibbling around the edges, fretting over some empty prison or hospital, when the entire project was a fool's errand from the start.
If Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf's fundraising trip, underwritten by the U.S. State Department, through the Arabian Peninsula to benefit Park 51 the Ground-Zero mosque fails to come through, there is another option: New York City public funds. By Joan Gralla for Reuters:
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Muslim center planned near the site of the World Trade Center attack could qualify for tax-free financing, a spokesman for City Comptroller John Liu said on Friday, and Liu is willing to consider approving the public subsidy.
The Democratic comptroller's spokesman, Scott Sieber, said Liu supported the project. The center has sparked an intense debate over U.S. religious freedoms and the sanctity of the Trade Center site, where nearly 3,000 perished in the September 11, 2001 attack.
"If it turns out to be financially feasible and if they can demonstrate an ability to pay off the bonds and comply with the laws concerning tax-exempt financing, we'd certainly consider it," Sieber told Reuters.
[...]
The mosque's backers hope to raise a total of $70 million in tax-exempt debt to build the center, according to the New York Times. Tax laws allow such funding for religiously affiliated non-profits if they can prove the facility will benefit the general public and their religious activities are funded separately.
Imagine if Japanese-American citizens in 1943 had built a 15-story Shinto shrine dedicated to Emperor Hirohito at Pearl Harbor. Using tax-free funding supplied by Honolulu citizens, no less.
Our forebearers would have had none of it. But then that just proves what a bunch of uneducated, intolerant bigots and racists they were.
As Americans are learning more about Islam, their views about it are becoming less favorable
The Pew Research Center has released a new report, "Public Remains Conflicted Over Islam". The raw top-level questionnaire (some of it redacted) is available here.
Some excerpts:
PEW.4 How much would you say you know about the Muslim religion and its practices?
Nov 2001
Mar 2002
Jul 2003
Jul 2005
Aug 2007
Aug 2010
A great Deal
6
5
4
5
7
9
Some
32
29
27
28
34
35
Not very much
37
37
39
36
33
30
Nothing at all
24
28
29
30
25
25
Don't know/refused
1
1
1
1
1
*
PEW.5 Would you say you have a generally favorable or unfavorable opinion of Islam?
Oct 2001
Jan 2002
Mar 2002
Jul 2003
Jul 2005
Aug 2010
Favorable
47
41
38
40
41
30
Unfavorable
39
24
33
34
36
38
Don't know/refused
13
35
29
26
23
32
Also, note that in Aug 2010, 35% of Americans believe that "the Islamic religion is more likely than others to encourage violence among its believers", compared with 42% who believe that it is not. That 35% number is amazing, considering the constant repetition of the "Islam is the Religion of Peace" canard.
And broken down by political affiliation, my fellow Democrats have much to learn from the Republicans on this issue. Democrats have a 41% favorable, 27% unfavorable view of Islam, compared to Republicans' 21% favorable, 54% unfavorable. Overall, 30% of Americans have a favorable view, compared to 38% unfavorable.
These numbers are heartening for those who wish to defend traditional Judaeo-Christian values against Islamic incursion. If it is inevitable that Islam will continue its assault (both by violent and non-violent means) on the U.S. and the U.K., it is also inevitable that more non-Muslims will take the time to learn more about Islam, and therefore inevitable that non-Muslims' view of Islam will become less favorable. This is how jihad will eventually be controlled and possibly rolled back: by education, not by military invasion and occupation of Islamic-majority nations.
BEIRUT – The most serious fighting in Beirut since 2008 appears to have been touched off by a traffic dispute that escalated into deadly, hours-long street battles between the Shiite Hezbollah group and a small Sunni faction, witnesses said Wednesday.
Security officials said three Hezbollah members and a follower of the conservative Sunni al-Ahbash group were killed Tuesday night in the Bourj Abu Haider district, just outside Beirut's downtown, in running battles with fighters wielding assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
The state news agency also said four people died, although the army put the death toll at three.
It was not clear why the fighting intensified so dramatically, but tensions among the Sunni and Shiite communities have been running high recently amid reports that Hezbollah members will be indicted in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, once the country's top Sunni politician.
[...]
Al-Fakhani and several other witnesses said there was a commotion outside the Bourj Abu Haider mosque about 20 minutes before the gunbattles began, with men fighting over a car.
"They were shouting and yelling insults at each other," al-Fakhani told The Associated Press. "Then a group from Hezbollah approached the mosque and they just kept coming. We were astonished," he said.
[...]
On Wednesday morning, cleaning crews were sweeping the chunks of concrete that had been blown off the mosque by bullets and grenades. At least one gunman holding an AK-47 assault rifle had taken up position in a building across from the mosque.
The article does not mention whether the Burj Abu Haider mosque is Sunni or Shi'ite, but to reiterate, Muslims fired AK-47's and RPG's at a mosque over a traffic incident. We see the "sanctity" that they place on their places of worship. We take note of the frequency that mosques are deliberately targeted by Muslims in bombing attacks, that mosques are used by Muslims as bases from which they fire weapons, and that mosques are used as storehouses for weapons caches.
Another one of those ubiquitous 'rare' intentional shootings
Another one of those 'rare' cases where an Afghan soldier opens fire on Coalition troops. This time hundreds of Afghans tried to join in on the fun. By Aref Karimi for AP:
HERAT, Afghanistan (AFP) – Hundreds of angry men tried to storm a small NATO base in northwestern Afghanistan Wednesday after a shootout left three Spaniards and an Afghan police trainee dead, officials said.
The Afghan policeman killed two Spanish paramilitary police officers and a Spanish interpreter during a training session at the base in the province of Badghis before security forces shot him dead, Afghan and Spanish authorities said.
Hundreds of Afghan men then tried to over-run the Spanish-administered base in protest at the killing of the local officer, in an incident that left more than two dozen men injured, police and doctors said.
"We have 25 people admitted to our hospitals. Some of them suffer from bullet wounds, others from injuries caused by rocks and sticks," said Abdul Aziz Tareq, the provincial public health chief.
Television footage showed crowds of angry men in turbans and shalwar kameez throwing rocks at the front gate of the base.
"In a class, one of the students apparently opened fire on the two Civil Guard policemen and the interpreter, who was also Spanish, and killed all three," Spain's Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said on radio.
"The security forces in turn repulsed the attack, fired on the assailant and killed him."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), to which the officers were assigned, said two of its service members along with a civilian and an Afghan police officer were killed in what it called a "shooting incident".
Of course the motivation for the attack is not clear, and of course this incident will not affect the strategy of Coalition troops working alongside Afghan troops. Of course.
Muslim school in Berkeley starts down ambitious road
While we were all paying attention to Park 51 the Ground Zero Mosque, another Islamic milestone has quietly passed. By Matt Krupnick for Contra Costa Times in northern California:
BERKELEY -- The Quran is the primary textbook at this city's newest institution of higher learning.
Zaytuna College will open today to its first class of 15 students, who will strive to become the first graduates of a Muslim four-year, liberal-arts college in the United States. The school, which hopes to enroll 2,000 students a decade from now, is seeking accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, the same organization that licenses schools such as UC Berkeley and Saint Mary's College.
The endeavor will be a challenge for Zaytuna's three founders, who started down this path with the 1996 opening of a Hayward institute to teach Islam. New nonprofit liberal-arts colleges are rare, and Zaytuna's leaders will be counting on fellow Muslims to sustain the school.
"The Muslim community in the United States is growing," said co-founder Hatem Bazian, who teaches at UC Berkeley, Saint Mary's College in Moraga and Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union. "As such, it is increasingly needing an institution of higher learning.
[...]
But Zaytuna's founders, Sachedina said, will have to be careful how they approach potential Muslim donors. Muslims will be very cautious about the school's curriculum, he said, particularly about the college's teaching of Islam.
"Muslims worry about the eternal life," he said. "If I give money to a Muslim college and Islam is taught badly, I will suffer because I have done something wrong. That is the fear that is in the minds of Muslims."
[...]
The college, which is offering bachelor's degrees in Islamic law and theology and Arabic language, is open to students of any religion. Although all its inaugural students are Muslim, Nawaz said the school accepted students of other faiths.
According to the San Francisco State University campus newspaper The Golden Gater, Bazian was appointed to the paid Discourse position by a lame-duck student-body administration that had recently been defeated in elections.[3]. He was paid a significant sum at a time when there were no publications and when there were no plans to continue publishing the magazine.[4].
A rise in incidents of anti-semitism as reported by Jewish students at San Francisco coincide with Bazian's rise to power on campus[5], and contemporaneous Jewish students have said that Bazian was a critical player in fomenting this environment [6]. Throughout the early 1990s at San Francisco State, Bazian continued his involvement in student politics at San Francisco State even after he was no longer a student, where he publicly obfuscated the difference between Jews and proponents of Zionism.[7]
When a controversial mural of Malcolm X containing dollar signs surrounded by Jewish Stars was painted on the student union building at San Francisco State, Bazian helped to organize students in support of the mural. Furthermore, Bazian was an organizer of and a featured speaker at a press conference in support of the mural held in the public Student Union building. According to the campus newspaper, The Golden Gater Jewish students were forcibly excluded from this press conference despite it being held in the public Student Union building.[8]
Bazian has been accused of anti-semitism. American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us quotes him at a 1999 conference of the American Muslim Alliance as saying:[9]
In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you're on the east side until the trees and stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him! And that's in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment.
Bazian said on The O'Reilly Factor that this statement was falsely attributed to him, and that he was considering legal action as a response.[10][11]
A former SFSU student has alleged that Bazian prevented his appointment to the Student Judicial Council on the grounds that he supported the state of Israel and was therefore a racist.[12].
Here are some quotations from the wikipedia article on co-founder Sheikh Zaid Shakir:
While many have cited Imam Shakir as example of Islamic moderation,[12] his critics have questioned his moderate credentials. In his book America Alone, Mark Steyn challenges the characterization of Shakir as a moderate Muslim, citing Shakir's expressed hope for the conversion of America to Islam and adoption of Islamic law in America.[13]
On November 13, 2009 Imam Shakir issued a lengthy statement regarding the Fort Hood shooting with this introduction:
I begin by expressing my deepest condolences to the families of all of the dead and wounded. There is no legitimate reason for their deaths, just as I firmly believe there is no legitimate reason for the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians who have perished as a result of those two conflicts. Even though I disagree with the continued prosecution of those wars, and even though I believe that the US war machine is the single greatest threat to world peace, I must commend the top military brass at Fort Hood, and President Obama for encouraging restraint and for refusing to attribute the crime allegedly perpetrated by Major Nidal Malik Hasan to Islam. We pray that God bless us to see peace and sanity prevail during these tense times.[14]
This statement was praised by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) but criticized by Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, President of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy and a former lieutenant commander in the United States Navy. Jasser said that "as an American Muslim," he was offended by these comments which he believes reflect Shakir's "disdain for our military."[15] However, Ingrid Mattson, the President of the Islamic Society of North America supported Imam Zaid's response to the Fort Hood tragedy as "solidly grounded in the Islamic legal, ethical and intellectual tradition."[16]
Here are some quotations about the third co-founder, revert Sheikh Hamza Yusuf:
The British newspaper the Guardian called him “one of the West’s most influential Muslim scholars.” Jordan’s Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre placed him on its list of the top 50 most influential Muslims in the world. The magazine Egypt Today described him as a kind of theological rock star, “the Elvis Presley of western Muslims.” [3] Recently, Hamza Yusuf was ranked as "the Western world's most influential Islamic scholar" by The 500 Most Influential Muslims, edited by John Esposito and Ibrahim Kalin, (2009).
Here is a video of rock star Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, telling the story of a woman who spoke disrespectfully to the Islamic prophet Mohammad, not knowing who it was. When she found out, she feared and went to apologize to Him, and He responded that she should have been patient earlier, it was too late now. Note that at 1:50, Yusuf explains, "...it's the, to stop, I'm not going to punch him, because he's a Muslim, right, I'm not going to do that".
ISLAMABAD: Horrified by a brutal incident of vigilante justice, the Supreme Court on Friday came down hard on law-enforcement personnel and their superior officers who stood by and watched as two young brothers were tortured and then hanged by a mob in Sialkot.
It ordered Anti-Corruption Director General Justice (retd) Kazim Malik to investigate the matter. No-one would dare to take law into his own hands if police had the courage and command to eradicate such brutal and inhuman practices from the society, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry observed while heading a bench which had taken a suo motu action on the matter.
On Aug 15, dozens of people publicly beat to death two young brothers, Hafiz Mughees, 15, and Hafiz Muneeb, 19, in the presence of Sialkot District Police Officer Waqar Chauhan and eight other police officers who watched the brutal act as silent spectators. The bodies were later hanged upside down on the chowk.
At the very least, this is a comment on the state of the legal system, and the tenor of society, in Pakistan. There were rumors, disputed by other commenters, that the brothers were involved in some sort of robbery. Even if it were true, this is not an appropriate punishment for theft of material goods. The reports rightly criticize the apathy of the police attending the lynching, but there is strangely little interest shown in the motivation for the attack itself. Of course, the religious affiliation of the victims and the attackers is not mentioned, at least in the English reports.
A civil servant working under Integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni will be assigned new duties after writing a blog saying that there are no good adherents of Islam and comparing the religion to Communism or Nazism.
The man, a non-political appointee, shared his opinion on Islam on his blog in September 2008 when he commented on an article by writer Lena Andersson in which she warned against the "religious terrorism" directed at artists, writers and journalists.
The civil servant's own commentary on the article was that "Islam is like Communism or Nazism. There are no good practitioners - just confused or evil."
Sabuni told the Expressen daily on Wednesday, "I strongly disagree with these views and there is of course no truth in them."
However, neither she nor her state secretary, Christer Hallerby, commented on Wednesday on whether they consider the man man fit to work with immigration issues.
"I cannot conduct personnel policy in the media since this is something we deal with internally," Hallerby told news agency TT. "This is something he has done outside of his duties and as I understand it also before he was hired here."
"For the non-political parts of government offices, the same rules apply as for those in the rest of the labour market in terms of freedom of expression, job security and professional negotiations during a transfer."
Sabuni also stressed that the man is an non-political civil servant and that she cannot keep track of what all the civil servants in the government offices think. She declined to comment on whether the man is suited to work as a researcher in her department.
However, a written statement from Hallerby on Wednesday evening confirmed that he and the staff member had agreed that as the discussion had arisen it was made clear that the man could no longer represent the department "in the same way as before."
The man will "change job duties within the department in the future." A discussion of what these will entail is currently ongoing.
If this civil servant had criticised Christianity or Judaism, would he have suffered the same repercussion, or any repercussion whatsoever? Islam seems to be singularly beyond criticism. For having the temerity to express his personal opinion on his private blog two years ago, possibly before he began working in the government, in the wake of several actual incidents of Islamic violence directed at artists and politicians in Scandanavia, he may well lose his government job.
Xinjiang continues to be "restive", with "ethnic tensions" between (kufir) Han and (Muslim) Uyghurs. By Keith B. Richburg for the Washington Post.
BEIJING -- An attacker riding a three-wheeled vehicle attacked a contingent of security volunteers Thursday in Aksu city, in China's restive western region of Xinjiang, killing seven people and wounding 14 others in the first such incident since bloody ethnic rioting shook the area a year ago.
A statement posted late Thursday on the Web site of the autonomous Xinjiang regional government said the volunteers were on patrol and standing in a line when the attacker struck. The statement said five security force members died at the scene, and two others died later in a local hospital.
The attack occurred in Yoganqi township, on the outskirts of Aksu city, on the highway linking Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, to Kashgar in the west, the statement said.
"At 10:30 a.m., the violent criminal rode a motor tricycle and rushed toward a patrolling group, throwing an explosive device and triggering an explosion," the regional government said. It said the attack came when the 15-member patrol, led by an assistant police officer, reached a T-junction and lined up there. Several police motorcycles were damaged in the blast, it said.
After the attack, "one criminal suspect was caught at the scene," which was quickly cordoned off, the statement said.
Earlier, a spokeswoman for the Xinjiang government, Hou Hanmin described the arrested suspect as a member of the country's Muslim Uighur ethnic group. She said most of the victims also were Uighur and that some of the injuries were serious.
In a telephone interview, Hou said it was too early to say whether the suspect was connected with one of the separatist organizations that Beijing has labeled as terrorist groups. "The explosion was not an accident," Hou said. "It was an intentional, man-made explosion. Whether it's a terrorist attack or not, I can't draw that conclusion right now. We still need time to investigate."
According to an Aksu resident who works for a local transport company, the vehicle may have exploded after it was stopped by local security volunteers at a checkpoint.
"The sound was loud," he said when reached by telephone. "But I thought it was a tire of a vehicle exploding." He said his company had an emergency meeting and organized the workers to be on duty at night to patrol and look for any suspicious people.
[...]
The Uighurs, who speak a Turkic language, consider Xinjiang their homeland, although they now are a minority after years of Han Chinese migration to the area. Many have said the outburst of violence last year was a result of pent-up anger and frustration at the Chinese government's heavy-handed tactics in imposing its control over the region.
In an effort to show a softer touch, Beijing in April replaced the longtime Communist Party chief in Xinjiang, who was considered a hard-liner. The new party boss, Zhang Chunxian, immediately restored Internet access and seemed to emphasize building Xinjiang's economy.
Perhaps a "super happy joy joy" even-softer touch is called for?
Chinese officials lately have been touting their efforts to develop Xinjiang, and this week the Foreign Ministry is hosting a group of foreign journalists on a tightly-scripted tour of Xinjiang to show off China's development projects.
China has also been promoting tourism in Xinjiang, particularly in the far western city of Kashgar, as a way to alleviate persistently high unemployment in the area. In another effort to try to improve the local economy -- and ease ethnic tensions in the process -- Chinese authorities recently said Kashgar would soon be designated a new "economic development zone" for investment and could become a major trading hub for China's Central Asian neighbors.
Ilham Tohti, an economics professor at Minzu University of China in Beijing and a leading Uighur academic, said Xinjiang residents were largely willing to wait to see if the new party secretary keeps his promises and improves the economy.
Muslims willing to wait and see if the kufirs improve the economy. Where have I heard that one before?
Plan To Expel Migrant Children Stirs Israeli Emotions
An Israeli government plan to deport at least 400 children of foreign workers has created deep divisions in the country. The children are to be deported because they don't meet new residency requirements — such as living in Israel for the last five years and attending grade school.
But the decision has prompted heated debate among Israeli Jews over who should have a right to Israeli citizenship.
[...]
Henrietta Yabou, a 38-year-old from Ghana, was pregnant with her daughter when she arrived legally in Israel 15 years ago — but then overstayed her visa.
Alone and scared, she stayed in Tel Aviv, hoping to create a better life for her daughter.
"I'm a single mother. For the past 15 years, I'm the only person who [has] provided everything for her. I decided to stay, to seek a greener pasture," Yabou says.
But now her daughter is at risk of deportation because of a mix-up on her birth certificate, says Yabou.
[...]
Yonatan Bergman is an Israeli lawyer who represents foreign workers.
"Although there is a lot of discourse around the Holocaust and Israeli people being morally committed to giving refuge to people in danger, I think this is merely lip service," Bergman says.
Israel has no formal laws regarding refugees or asylum seekers. The country is struggling to cope with the estimated 250,000 foreign workers who now reside in Israel. While some of those came expressly as migrant workers seeking better wages, many others came from countries like Sudan and Eritrea, fleeing persecution.
The Ministry of the Interior would not answer requests on specific cases like Yabou's. But the minister, Eli Yishai, has emerged as one of the most hard-line supporters of deportation of illegal migrants.
Yishai made headlines this week when he told Israeli parliament members that foreign workers' children in Israel needed to be told that their field trip has ended.
He asked: Are we afraid that these kids are going to stand up and cry?
In the offices of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, director Sigal Rosen points to a group of Filipino children playing with toy blocks.
"They are playing games and speaking Hebrew," she says. "Try telling them they aren't Israeli."
Regardless of whether they have dimples or play with toy blocks, if they do not have permission from Israel to have Israeli citizenship, then they aren't Israeli. It seems to irk some that countries should have the right to decide who can enter and who can stay.
I would support the immigration of those non-Muslims fleeing Muslim persecution in Dar al Islam. I would have little sympathy for Muslims fleeing the economic failure and violence that are the result of Islamic belief. As for those just seeking greener pastures, then it is a question of what they have to offer the destination country. It is up to Israel to decide who will receive citizenship in Israel, based on whatever criteria they choose.
This article studiously avoids any mention of Islam, although Muslims certainly make up a large percentage of immigrants. The Israelis have every right to look at the tenets of Islam, and every right to examine the behavior of Muslims in Israel, in carefully choosing their criteria.
JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesia's best-known radical cleric was charged Wednesday with helping plan terrorist attacks in the world's most populous Muslim nation — a crime that carries a maximum penalty of death, police said.
Abu Bakar Bashir was arrested Monday for allegedly setting up a terror cell and militant training camp in Aceh province that was plotting high-profile assassinations and bloody attacks on foreigners in the capital.
Investigators compiled a strong case against the fiery 71-year-old cleric by monitoring his bank records, tapping phones and compiling confessions from other suspected militants, said Lt. Gen. Ito Sumardi, chief detective for the national police.
[...]
Bashir, best known as a co-founder and spiritual head of JI, has been arrested twice before and spent several years in jail. But this is the first time officials say they can link him directly to terrorist activities.
[...]
Though Bashir faces a maximum penalty of death, few analysts believe he will get that.
[...]
"Looking at the various charges brought against him, my guess is they would produce around a 10-year sentence."
The overwhelming majority of Indonesians are moderate Muslims who reject violence.
Did you find that last sentence jarring? What is that sentence doing there? Why does the AP consider it necessary to again (and again and again) try to enforce the view that Islamic nations are peaceful, Muslims are peaceful?
Literally, it is true that in a Pew Global Attitudes survey, "only" 15% of Indonesians in 2010 responded that violence against civilians is justified to "defend Islam". That's a minority. And it's less than other Muslim nations: Lebanon 39%, Nigeria 34%, Jordan 20%. Huzzah!
But...
That 15% is up 50% from 2007, and it has been trending upwards. And there are other problems: who do they consider to be "civilians"? For example, in Israel where military service is compulsory, would the respondents consider attacks on Israeli citizens wearing civilian clothes at a local grocery store to be an attack on civilians, or "off-duty" military targets, and therefore outside the scope of this survey?
More importantly, why should we only compare Indonesia against Muslim nations in their support for the intentional targeting of civilians? That's kind of biasing the results, innit? I bet Charles Manson's views on violence are not so bad ... compared to other death-row inmates. Compared to some of his serial-murderer cell neighbors, Manson may even be considered a "moderate".
Why not compare the views of Muslims in Indonesia on the question of intentional targeting of civilians to non-Muslims in non-Muslim nations? For example, what percentage of Buddhists in China believe that it is justified to kill civilians to "defend Buddhism"? How many Hindus in India think it's justified to kill civilians to "defend Hinduism"? Wouldn't that be an interesting comparison?
Guess what? Those survey results do not exist. Here are the results of that question for G20 countries: Britain, France, Germany. HOWEVER, please note that the question was only asked of MUSLIMS in those countries. For some reason, Pew thinks it reasonable to only ask Muslims when it comes to a question about the justification for murdering civilians to defend their religion.
Parenthetically, Muslims in G20 countries also support targeting civilians to "defend Islam" at "only" approximately the 15% level. Huzzah! Huzzah!
The defenders of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Magrahi step forward. First, in a story by Tim Castle for Reuters:
Scotland defends Lockerbie bomber's doctor
LONDON (Reuters) – Scottish authorities defended the doctor who said Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi had three months to live, after U.S. senators asked them to release the Libyan's medical records.
The senators are probing the circumstances surrounding the release in August last year of Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 bombing of an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.
Megrahi is still alive a year after Scottish authorities freed him on compassionate grounds. A medical report compiled by Andrew Fraser, the Scottish Prison Service's director of health and care, said he had terminal prostate cancer and could die in three months.
Fraser was "a professional of unimpeachable integrity" who consulted a range of experts before reaching his prognosis, a Scottish government spokeswoman said on Wednesday.
[...]
"Dr Fraser drew on expert advice from a number of cancer specialists in coming to his clinical assessment that a three month prognosis was a reasonable estimate for Mr Al-Megrahi -- it was not based on the opinion of any one doctor," the Scottish government spokeswoman said.
"These specialists included two consultant oncologists, two consultant urologists and a number of other specialists, including a palliative care team, and Mr Al-Megrahi's primary care physician," she said.
"In every regard, due and proper process was followed at every stage."
Cardinal attacks US over Lockerbie bomber reaction
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has attacked the US over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the Scottish government was right to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi last year on compassionate grounds.
US lawmakers want Scots politicians to explain their decision to a committee, but the cardinal said ministers should not go "crawling like lapdogs".
He said Scotland had a culture of care, while the US was fixed on vengeance.
[...]
In an interview with BBC Scotland, Cardinal O'Brien said Americans were too focused on retribution.
"In many states - more than half - they kill the perpetrators of horrible crimes, by lethal injection or even firing squad - I say that is a culture of vengeance," he said.
"An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - that is not our culture in Scotland and I would like to think that the US government, and these states that do still have capital punishment, would learn something from us."
The cardinal said Americans should "direct their gaze inwards" rather than scrutinise how the Scottish justice system worked.
He said the use of the death penalty meant the US kept "invidious company" with countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran.
"In some states it's month by month now that they are killing people who have a right to live, whatever they've done wrong," he said.
With all due respect to the comments of Cardinal O'Brien, I do not think that it is asking too much that the murderer of 270 people stay in prison to serve his sentence.
Medical aid group suffers from end-stage denialopathy
For that matter, phenomenologically speaking, how do we know that the aid workers were killed? Or that they ever existed at all outside our sensations of them? By Andrew Hammond for Reuters:
Aid group doubts Afghan Taliban killed medical team
KABUL (Reuters) – An international Christian aid group on Monday played down claims by the Taliban they had killed 10 members from one of the group's medical teams, saying it was still unclear who was responsible.
Dirk Frans, executive director of the International Assistance Mission (IAM), also told a news conference that an Afghan driver who was with the team was in custody at the Interior Ministry in Kabul.
[...]
Frans's remarks, casting doubt about whether the Taliban were behind the attack, were in contrast with a statement by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton which directly blamed the Islamist group for what she described as a "despicable act of wanton violence."
Saturday, the Taliban claimed responsibility for Thursday's killings, saying the medical workers had been carrying bibles in Dari -- one of Afghanistan's two main languages -- and were killed because they were promoting Christianity.
Another Islamist group also said it had carried out the attack.
But Frans said local police had initially raised the possibility of bandits, adding the team's valuables were stolen.
Another false dichotomy: Was it jihadis, or was it bandits? Never mind that Mohammad, the perfect model of proper behaviour for all people to emulate for all time, was Himself a caravan raider who devoted an entire chapter (Chapter 8) of the Qur'an to the rules for dividing stolen loot.
If jihadis stopped this group of Christian doctors and found them to be carrying heretical proselytising materials (a.k.a. Bibles) within Dar al-Islam, the jihadis would have felt justified, according to the tenets of mainstream Islam, in taking their valuables after murdering the infidels for "spreading mischief in the land".
LONDON – Saddam Hussein's leading lieutenant accused the United States of abandoning Iraq and leaving the country to die, according to a British newspaper interview to be published Friday.
Tariq Aziz, whose long tenure as Saddam's foreign minister made him the international face of the Iraqi dictator's regime, was quoted by The Guardian newspaper a saying that he was hopeful about President Barack Obama at first.
"I thought he was going to correct some of the mistakes of Bush," the paper quoted Aziz as saying from his jail cell in north Baghdad. "But Obama is a hypocrite. He is leaving Iraq to the wolves."
By "the wolves" he means the Shi'a majority. Of course the Shi'a would say that Saddam, Chaldean Christian Tariq Aziz, and the Sunni minority were "the wolves", given the number of Shi'a and Kurds who were killed under their regime. "The wolves" refers generally to the Iraqi people, a hodgepodge of conflicting religious sects and tribal affiliations.
And make no mistake: if the U.S. were not pulling its troops out, Aziz and others would be braying just as loud about the "neverending occupation."
The Guardian said that Aziz slammed the planned withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country, saying that both it and the United Kingdom had an obligation to make sure Iraq was back on its feet before exiting.
"We are all victims of America and Britain," Aziz said, according to the paper. "They killed our country in many ways. When you make a mistake you need to correct a mistake, not leave Iraq to its death."
If Iraq "dies", it will be from suicide. The U.S. and U.K. are not forcing the Sunnis and Shi'a to fight each other. Their conflict started before either country existed. They've been fighting for over a thousand years. They'll be fighting for another thousand years. The U.S. and U.K. have the ability to stand between the combatants, and temporarily moderate the intensity of their fighting against each other at great cost to our own soldiers and economy, but why would we want to?
Perhaps we did make a mistake, as Aziz says, by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Saddam was no threat to the U.S. or the U.K. He was a threat to the Iranians, Saudis, and Kuwaitis, and most of all to his own citizens in Iraq. Perhaps we did make a mistake.
In this article by Mark Lavie for AP, we see a hunt for the underlying reason for one small Israeli-Lebanese clash, and thereby perhaps gain an insight into the coverage of the larger Muslim-infidel war in Israel:
Flare-up over tree accents Israel-Lebanon tension
JERUSALEM – It took no more than cutting down a tree to shatter four years of calm on the Israel-Lebanon border.
[...]
The clash started after an Israeli soldier on a crane dangled over a fence near the border early Tuesday to trim a tree that could provide cover for infiltrators. The Israelis said they clear such underbrush at least once a week and coordinate their actions with UNIFIL, the peacekeeping force that has been in the area for more than 30 years.
This time the tree trimming was followed by gunfire from the Lebanese army, apparently aimed not at the soldier hanging over the fence, but at a base some distance away, where a senior officer was killed by a shot to the head. Another officer was wounded. Israel responded with gunfire and shelling, killing two Lebanese soldiers and a journalist.
On Wednesday the U.N. ruled that the tree, while across the fence, was inside Israeli territory. The U.N. drew the border line in 2000 after Israel withdrew its forces from south Lebanon after an 18-year occupation that followed its invasion in 1982 to fight Palestinian forces and try to install a pro-Israel government in Beirut.
So this was all about the tree, and on which side of the border the tree was located on. Or was it?
