tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199407312024-03-07T01:08:34.454-08:00Karin FriedemannKarin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.comBlogger195125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-26324421632943482042013-10-24T17:06:00.000-07:002013-10-24T17:06:57.004-07:00Tsarnaev Banned from Group Prayers Under SAMs<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?author=8" rel="author" style="color: #2255aa; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by TMO">TMO</a><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span></h1>
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On October 2, 2013, Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team submitted a request that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) be removed from their client. These measures severely restrict his communication. His lawyers, William Fick, Miriam Conrad and Judy Clarke, argue in court papers that the measures create “obstacles” that have a “dramatic chilling effect on the defense team’s ability to prepare a thorough and vigorous defense.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“His lawyers also said Tsarnaev has done nothing during his incarceration to warrant such restrictions or to suggest he is dangerous, nor is there evidence the attack was “directed by others still at large or that Mr. Tsarnaev ever had operational authority to direct the activities of others” to whom he may want to communicate,” reports CNN.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The SAMs were put into place on August 27, at the request of notoriously dirty player US prosecutor Carmen Oritz four months after he was put in prison awaiting trial. Under the SAMs, Tsarnaev is detained in a single cell and may not communicate with other inmates. He may not engage in group prayer with other inmates, and his access to newspapers and other publications is restricted.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The reason stated by US prosecutors for these additional restrictions is that the 20 year old, who was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, received over 1000 letters of support while in prison. The government alleges that Tsarnaev committed the bombing because he wanted to engage in jihad, and therefore any communication with the outside world could result in him encouraging others to commit acts of violence.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Defense lawyers say the SAMs limit Tsarnaev’s interactions with individuals assisting defense counsel and restrict the communications and other activities of the defense team. Under these new restrictions, he was not allowed to look at photos of his family that his lawyer had brought him. Defense counsel first learned of the SAMs on Friday, August 30, 2013, after members of the defense team were denied entrance to FMC Devens for a previously-scheduled and approved visit with Tsarnaev.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Tsarnaev’s defense argues that SAMs are unlawful and unwarranted. “The government has provided scant factual support for its conclusory assertion that SAMs are required now, more than four months into Mr. Tsarnaev’s already highly restrictive pretrial confinement, in order to protect others from ‘death or serious bodily injury.’ The government has not alleged that Mr. Tsarnaev has done or said anything since his arrest to commit violence, incite violence, or engage in communications that pose a security threat. Moreover, the SAMs violate the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The Court therefore should declare that the SAMs are unlawful and order that they be vacated.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The Attorney General may issue an order for SAMs based upon a finding of “reasonable suspicion” that an “inmate may use communications with attorneys or their agents to further or facilitate acts of terrorism.” Holder okayed the restrictions based on “Tsarnaev’s participation in planning and executing the Boston Marathon bombings; his ensuing acts of violence and flight to avoid apprehension; his extensive obstruction of justice; and his explicit and continuing desire to incite others to engage in violent jihad.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
It is indeed worrying that the Attorney General is assuming guilt before trial, as well as claiming to know the intentions of the suspect, which have not been stated in any public forum. There is really no evidence that the suspect had any jihad-focused mindset prior to the bombing. This claim is based on unsubstantiated and unrecorded statements made by the FBI based on hospital bed interrogations without any lawyer present. Prosecutors claim that “Tsarnaev has openly said he was inspired by al Qaeda, and he hopes his actions inspired others.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Defense lawyers said that Tsarnaev had not responded to any of the mail that he received and should not be punished for receiving mail he had no control over.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“The government also fails to mention that none of this unsolicited mail could be characterized as ‘jihadist’ in nature. Rather, it consisted almost entirely of letters and cards from individuals who believe he is innocent and people urging him to repent and convert to Christianity.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Tsarnaev’s defense lawyers argued that there is no evidence their client has inspired violence or that he would try to inspire further violence. They said the restrictions unduly put him in near isolation, affecting his mental health, and interfere with their ability to properly prepare a legal defense, reports Milton Valencia in the Boston Globe.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Under US Department of Justice guidelines, US Attorney General Eric Holder will ultimately decide whether to seek the death penalty against Tsarnaev. Prosecutors had planned to make a recommendation to Holder by Oct. 31, and they gave Tsarnaev’s lawyers until Oct. 24 to make a presentation on “mitigating factors,” arguments why Tsarnaev should not be subject to the death penalty. Last month, Tsarnaev’s lawyers asked O’Toole to postpone the deadline. They also filed a separate request asking the judge to order prosecutors to turn over the information.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
US District Court Judge George O’Toole complied with the US attorney request by rejecting Tsarnaev’s lawyers’ request to postpone deadlines set by prosecutors, saying that he has no authority to grant such a request. So basically, the death penalty is being argued even before the prosecution has turned in its evidence.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On October 16, Senator Chuck Grassley called for detailed answers to questions regarding FBI involvement in the Boston case. It appears the FBI had been operating without consulting with local police, and that the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier took place while the campus was swarming with FBI agents.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Blogger B. Blake comments: “With the Collier murder charge against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appearing weaker by the day, point blank refusals to comment are becoming increasingly frowned upon. The evidence purporting to demonstrate Tsarnaev’s complicity in the crime is extremely flawed with many now asking why he was ever charged with the crime in the first place.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-48943314281241174622013-10-21T15:08:00.000-07:002013-10-21T15:08:15.422-07:00Redistributing Wealth on a Local Level: Possible<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span><a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?author=8" rel="author" style="color: #2255aa; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by TMO">TMO</a><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span></h1>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Redistributing-Wealth-on-a-Local-Level-P_E485/ff_logo.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="ff_logo" border="0" height="149" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Redistributing-Wealth-on-a-Local-Level-P_E485/ff_logo_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="ff_logo" width="244" /></a>Why does food get wasted in America? We live in a rich country. To a large extent, our nation is built upon the backs of the poor. It is popular to complain about the unfair distribution of goods and services and even to assign blame to a malicious conspiracy. Conspiracies might exist, on the level of the international banking cartels, but the truth is, there is actually a lot of freedom in this country to recycle and redistribute wealth in the form of goods and raw materials. Restaurants, produce warehouses, and bakeries throw away food because it is easier than recycling. Someone has to pick up the food at a time and in a manner that is convenient to the donors. Someone has to have the time and the means to pick up the food – and the desire.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The Good Samaritan Law, which exists in all continental US states, offers protection against law suits brought by anyone who becomes ill after eating donated food. There are also some tax benefits to donating surpluses. So, if food, lumber, paint and other basic human needs are rotting in a dumpster, it is mainly due to benign neglect. There is no one stopping people in the community from rescuing the goods.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“A store may order more produce than it ends up needing, trucks may be too full to ship all of the ordered produce, or shipments can be delayed or arrive too early due to weather, market fluctuations, and equipment malfunctions. Often, entire pallets of usable food will be refused by markets because some items have slight cosmetic imperfections. The problem with surplus produce is that unlike canned goods, which could be resold or redistributed later, produce will spoil if it sits too long,” reads the website of Fair Foods, a non-profit organization based in Boston, Massachusetts.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Rescuing food and redistributing it to the people requires intensive work and planning. Trucks and strong men are need to pick up the fresh food that is being discarded and to bring it to some location for sorting and cleaning. The food must then be transported into poor communities – especially to locations where people do not have cars or who have other mobility limitations, such as the elderly. Repairs will be needed for the trucks, and of course there is the cost of gasoline. Even free food is never free, but Fair Foods has found a way to distribute huge amounts of fresh food in low income neighborhoods with limited supermarket access for about 10 cents a pound. They truck food in from all over New England and sell 20 pound bags of assorted produce, which will feed a family for a week, for $2 a bag. Their primary pick up location is the Chelsea Market on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean, where huge container loads of produce sit in boxes piled up on the docks and warehouses.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Fair Foods has distributed hundreds of millions of pounds of food over the past 20 years, but the food that they have distributed is only a fraction of the food that is available. The organization currently relies on one medium sized truck like that used for movers, which is very old and requires frequent tinkering, in order to pick up the food in bulk; and a pickup truck to take the produce to various locations around Boston. There are a handful of core volunteers who work around the clock and share a home with Nancy Jamison, the founder of Fair Foods. The huge house itself is suffering from benign neglect – the roof leaks and the entire place is in need of a fresh coat of paint. Jamison, 63, though a carpenter by trade, is suffering from health problems and cannot keep up with the home repairs in addition to feeding the poor, so she feeds the poor.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Hundreds of other volunteers pitch in when they can. But if Americans want the poor to be fed, including themselves, more strong hands are needed. The government solution of bureaucracy is not a solution: Food Pantry executives receive 6-digit incomes and only distribute a fraction of the amount of fresh food that Fair Food volunteers distribute at the various drop off locations.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Daniel Fitzpatrick told the Dorchester Reporter, “Everyone looks forward to it. If they don’t show up, people starve.” 10,000 families in Boston rely on the produce.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Fair Foods began in the mid-1980s when Dorchester’s Nancy Jamison, 58, loaded up the back of her pick-up with discarded carrots and parked it in front of her home. As her neighbors walked home from their jobs, they scooped up the carrots. “They were gone in an hour and a half,” she said. Food redistribution is “something that I believe all Americans should do with all the assets and blessings that we have,” said Jamison.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Right now, most people are over-extended, underpaid and exhausted from working jobs to make enough money to buy food and pay bills for their family. Or else, they are unemployed and suffering the mental and emotional breakdown that goes along with having no income. When you are struggling night and day to keep yourself alive, volunteer work does not seem like an option. But when you are underemployed, giving a few hours of work in exchange for a bag of food starts looking really nice.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Rescuing food can address many of our basic problems: we are lonely, we are anxious, we are hungry, and we need more exercise. This author, after volunteering at Fair Foods, realized how deeply and blissfully she could sleep if she simply physically exhausted herself during the day. In order for discarded food to reach the masses, a reorganization of society needs to take place so that communities begin to take personal care of each other. For example, somebody needs to fix Nancy’s roof. People with children need to coordinate their time so they can take turns contributing to society. That means husbands and wives as well as friends and neighbors. Some major grants or donations are required to buy new trucks so that the available volunteers can be used to their capacity.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The good news is, there is so much hope. All we have to do is revolutionize our thinking. Instead of just earning wages in order to pay for groceries and babysitters and cable TV, we can work together to meet our needs and escape the lonely prison of the flat screen. Some people have muscle, some people have personal warmth, some people are super organized, and everyone has something to contribute.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There is no one stopping us. There is just nobody helping us. That in itself is not the worst thing because with help comes dependency and debt. We don’t need help. We just need to get to work.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-70066671963085745202013-10-10T15:20:00.000-07:002013-10-10T15:20:14.381-07:00Israel’s US Funding Rests on Nuclear Secrecy<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?author=8" rel="author" style="color: #2255aa; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by TMO">TMO</a><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span></h1>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Israels-US-Funding-Rests-on-Nuclear-Secr_C5A6/images.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="images" border="0" height="212" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Israels-US-Funding-Rests-on-Nuclear-Secr_C5A6/images_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="images" width="244" /></a></div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The United States, United Kingdom, Russia, China, France and Germany (known as the P5+1) have a meeting scheduled in Geneva on October 15 and 16 to hear new, concrete proposals from Iran designed to assure the peaceful nature of its nuclear program. In return, Iran would get some relief from economic sanctions, reports Walter Pincus in the Washington Post. He then wonders, “Behind closed doors, do the P5+1 acknowledge Israel has nuclear weapons?”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski in the New York Times similarly note: “While the world endlessly discusses Iran’s nuclear capabilities and the likelihood that it will succeed in developing an atomic arsenal, hardly anyone in the United States ever mentions Israel’s nuclear weapons. Obama, like his predecessors, pretends that he doesn’t know anything about them.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
If this October 15 meeting would bring up the subject of Israel’s leaking nuclear reactor and Israel’s stockpile of atomic weapons, it will be a happy birthday for Mordechai Vanunu, who lives under permanent house arrest in Israel. He turns 59 on October 13.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, worked from 1977-1985 at the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, an Israeli facility that develops and manufactures nuclear weapons. Just before he was fired (for advocating Palestinian rights), Vanunu secretly took 57 photographs of the Dimona facility in 1985.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On October 5, 1986, the British newspaper The Sunday Times ran the story with photos on its front page under the headline: “Revealed: the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal.” In this interview with Peter Hounam, Vanunu gave detailed descriptions of lithium-6 separation required for the production of tritium, an essential ingredient of fusion-boosted fission bombs. Vanunu described the plutonium processing used, giving a production rate of about 30 kg per year, and stated that Israel used about 4 kg per weapon. From this information it was estimated that Israel had sufficient plutonium for about 150 nuclear weapons.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
With the help of a female secret agent, the Mossad kidnapped Vanunu, who was subsequently imprisoned for 18 years in Israel, 11 years of which he spent in solitary confinement. But it was too late to stop the press. The world now already knew that Israel possesses nuclear weapons.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Upon his release in 2004, Vanunu immediately began speaking to the media despite being ordered by Shin Bet not to talk to any foreigners. He has been re-arrested several times since then. Vanunu continues to call for Israel’s nuclear disarmament, and for its dismantlement as a Jewish state.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In July 2004 he warned the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Al Hayat that the Dimona reactor endangers millions with its radioactive pollution. Vanunu advised the Jordanian government to prepare for possible leaks from the reactor, since the reactor operates mainly when “the wind blows toward Jordan.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
But by then, this was already old news. On February 6, 2000 the London Sunday Times had quoted Professor Uzi Even, formerly a senior scientist at the reactor, saying, “The Dimona reactor is old and dangerous; It should be closed.” Another scientist, who was not named, stated that the structure of the reactor has been damaged as the result of radiation and is now “vulnerable and dangerous.”<br />Furthermore, Dimona’s buried nuclear waste has resulted in skyrocketing cancer rates in Palestinian and Bedouin villages near Southern Hebron and Negev. The leaking reactor in Dimona has now been active without any foreign inspection for 50 years.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
However, closing Dimona wouldn’t stop Israeli nukes, said Dr. Daniel Rohrlich, a research physicist at Tel Aviv University.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“In August, 1998, Israel joined an international initiative to cut off production of nuclear materials, i.e., plutonium and enriched uranium… But Israel only pretended to join… One day, a treaty to cut off production of fissionable materials will be ready for signing, and Israel will have to decide whether or not to go along. Signing a cutoff treaty would oblige Israel to demonstrate that it does not produce fissionable materials. If Israel is unwilling to open the Dimona reactor to international inspection, it has another option: to close and dismantle the reactor once and for all.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“It does not need the reactor. Israel already has enough fissionable material for hundreds of nuclear bombs. Over the decades, the reactor has produced hundreds of kilograms of plutonium. A cutoff would not affect this supply. Since the half-life of plutonium is 24,000 years, this plutonium would remain at Israel’s disposal for thousands of years,” said Rohrlich.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Walter Pincus reports in the Washington Post, “Back in the 1960s, Israel apparently hid the nuclear weapons program being carried on at its Negev Nuclear Research Center (NNRC) at Dimona. It deceived not only the international community but also its close U.S. ally. It repeatedly pledged “it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the area.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In early 1966, at the time of a U.S. sale of F-4 fighter-bombers to Israel, the Johnson administration insisted that Israel reaffirm that pledge. “Foreign Minister Abba Eban told Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara that Israel did not intend to build nuclear weapons, ‘so we will not use your aircraft to carry weapons we haven’t got and hope we will never have,’” according to the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XVIII.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“America is locked into covering up Israeli nuclear bombs because of a 1969 agreement between President Richard M. Nixon and Israel’s prime minister, Golda Meir,” write Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski in the New York Times.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“If Washington wants negotiations over weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East to work — or even just to avoid making America appear ridiculous — Mr. Obama should begin by being candid. He cannot expect the countries participating in a conference to take America seriously if the White House continues to pretend that we don’t know whether Israel has nuclear weapons, or for that matter whether Egypt and Israel have chemical or biological ones.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
So why is Israel so hesitant to admit its capabilities, which have long been public?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
By not acknowledging possession of nuclear weapons, Israel avoids a US legal prohibition on funding countries which proliferate weapons of mass destruction. Open possession of nuclear weapon capabilities would prevent Israel from receiving over $2 billion each year in military and other aid from United States’ taxpayers.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-62860059979471099192013-10-10T15:16:00.000-07:002013-10-10T15:16:06.209-07:00Extraordinary Rendition and Citizenship Stripping<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?author=8" rel="author" style="color: #2255aa; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by TMO">TMO</a><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span></h1>
<br />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Friends of Ibragim Todashev, a Chechen man murdered in his Orlando home by the FBI, told the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that FBI agents asked them to spy on Orlando-area mosques, threatening arrest if they failed to comply. CAIR “has received several corroborating reports from friends of Todashev that FBI agents have threatened to wrongfully arrest them if they do not work with the agency to spy on local mosques, Muslim restaurants and hookah lounges.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
But a similar case involving a young Somalian man has flown under the public radar. It was only because of his month long hunger strike inside a Brooklyn, New York prison (MCC) that this author heard about the extraordinary rendition of Mahdi Hashi.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Falguni Sheth reports that Hashi, a British citizen of Somali descent “was continually pressured by M15 (the British equivalent of the CIA) to cooperate with them and spy on fellow Somalis.” His friend, Nur Mohamed, said a British intelligence officer told him, “If you do not work for us we will tell any foreign country you try to travel to that you are a suspected terrorist.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
When Hashi refused to become an informant, he became a target of government harassment. The reason for suspicion seems to be his interest in studying Arabic language abroad. When he was 16, he was arrested in Egypt and held for 11 days for a visa violation, even though his visa was not expired. During that time he was interrogated and pressured to confess something he knew nothing about.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Egyptian authorities are saying that you have links to Al-Qaida and other terror networks, specifically the Chechen mujahedeen and also the mujahedeen in Caucasus.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I didn’t know what ‘Caucasus’ was,” Hashi told Cageprisoners. “They said that you’ve actually trained as well, you done training with them, extremist training.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
After being deported back to the UK, he decided to go to Syria to continue his studies. Upon his return, he was interrogated and fingerprinted at Heathrow airport and told he was on a Terrorism Database. Hashi was told that his ‘suspect’ status and travel restrictions would be lifted only if he agreed to co-operate with M15. Hashi complained to his Member of Parliament, Frank Dobson and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the body which oversees M15, that he was being harassed by security officers because he had refused to work as a spy in his North London Muslim community.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Soon later, his grandmother became ill so he decided to fly back to Somalia for a visit. He was stopped at Gatwick airport and a man from M15 warned him not to get on the plane, saying, “Whatever happens to you outside the UK is not our responsibility.” Hashmi got on the plane anyway.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
When he landed, he was immediately arrested by police in Djibouti who told him, “We don’t know why you’re here but we’ve been told to keep you here. It’s coming from the government and its coming from your government.” He was deported back to the UK.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Finally, in 2012, Hashi returned to Somalia where he married and had a child.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shortly thereafter, British Home Secretary Theresa May sent him a letter in the mail which stripped him of his UK citizenship. “The reason for this decision is that the Security Service assess that you have been involved in Islamicist (sic) extremism and present a risk to the national security of the United Kingdom due to your extremist activities,” wrote May, even though Hashi had never been accused of any crime.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
A few weeks later, he disappeared from Mogadishu. “Worried, his family appealed to the British government, who informed them that their hands were tied, because—alas—he was no longer a citizen,” reports Falguni Sheth in Salon. Hashi had been kidnapped and secretly rendered to The US drone base at Camp Lemmonier in Djibouti. His family learned of his whereabouts from someone who had recently been released from the prison in Djibouti that Mahdi had been detained alongside him.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Hashi was detained, abused, and interrogated in Djibouti for several months before being handed over for more interrogations to the Americans. After several months, he suddenly appeared in handcuffs in a Brooklyn Federal Court right before Christmas of 2012, along with 2 Swedish men of Somali descent,” reports Sheth. He is being held in solitary confinement under special administrative measures (SAMs), which restrict his communication with attorneys.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Saghir Hussain, the attorney for Hashi’s family, said they learned of his hunger strike through a phone call with Hashi, which was interrupted “after about 60 seconds or so.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
CBS news reported that a letter, written by US Attorney Loretta Lynch, has suddenly appeared in Hashmi’s file, alleging without providing any evidence, that Hashi and two other Somalis, Ali Yasin Ahmed and Mohammed Yusuf “had substantial knowledge that al-Qaida was building a chemical weapons factory, and that they had substantial countersurveillance expertise.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Tom Foot writes in the Camden New Journal, “According to the FBI, Mr Hashi was ‘deployed in combat operations to support al-Shabaab action in Somalia.’” Further details of the case against him have not been made available to the defense team. Mr Hashi has not been told of what he is accused. Campaigners fear that his rights will be denied to him in what they describe as a “secret court” set-up. They are calling for him to face charges in Britain and for his citizenship to be restored.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Geoffrey Robertson, QC, a prominent human rights barrister told the Daily Mail, UK: “The increase in orders under this Government of depriving British people of their citizenship on non-conducive grounds is a matter of concern because it is always very difficult to challenge fairly. It means people are being deprived of their rights as a British citizen on the say-so of security officials who can’t be challenged in court.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Several other Britons have had their citizenship stripped as soon as they left the country. Bilal al-Berjawi and Mohamed Sakr of London were stripped of their UK citizenship and were then killed by two US drone strikes in Somalia.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Meanwhile, a Nigerian man Lawal Babafemi, 33, has also been targeted by the same US Attorney Loretta Lynch in Brooklyn. Babafemi, who pled Not Guilty on September 27, 2013, was detained in Nigeria in 2011 and then transferred to the US, for working on the online magazine “Inspire,” whose publisher, Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen. </div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<br />Hashi is taking liquids but no food. So far he is not being force-fed.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-91504860619457058812013-09-26T16:05:00.000-07:002013-09-26T16:05:37.664-07:00Tsarnaev Sister Charged: Government Hiding Key Info<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; width: 590px;"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Tsarnaev-Sister-Charged-Government-Hidin_AFD3/marathon18n-1-web.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="marathon18n-1-web" border="0" height="244" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Tsarnaev-Sister-Charged-Government-Hidin_AFD3/marathon18n-1-web_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="marathon18n-1-web" width="178" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><div align="justify" style="padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<em>Bella Tsarnaeva appears in a New Jersey court to face drug possession and distribution charges.</em></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The story of the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar, the alleged Boston bombers, is becoming increasingly complex. On September 16, their stunningly lovely sister, Bella Tsarnaeva appeared in Superior Court in Hackensack, New Jersey, charged with marijuana possession and distribution. She “was arrested in December 2012 after police responded to a domestic violence call to her Fairview home, which they said they searched after smelling marijuana,” reports Kibret Markos of North Jersey News. Bergen County prosecutors said Bella Tsarnaeva will be admitted to a pretrial intervention program, but the case was adjourned till next month while prosecutors and defense attorneys continue to work out a plea deal for her co-defendant, Ahmad Khalil. Bella “will likely be admitted into a diversionary program that could spare her a criminal record.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Under normal circumstances, a marijuana charge like this is not very interesting news. However, the Federal government has previously tried to link the Tsarnaev family with a triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, where three marijuana dealers were murdered in their own home and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana. An associate of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Ibragim Todashev was murdered by the FBI and Boston police in Florida as they interrogated him in his home. Officials claim he was about to confess to these murders along with implicating Tamerlan, even though he was actually in Atlanta at the time of the crime. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was said to be involved in dealing marijuana, had frequented the house where the triple murder took place. Most likely out of fear, he did not attend the funeral, even though one of the deceased was said to be his best friend.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Two of the three murdered persons are said to be Israelis. This would point to the involvement of the Russian mafia supplying them with the marijuana. It is widely assumed that the deaths were a warning from a rival drug gang, perhaps El Salvadorians.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Do the Tsarnaevs have links to organized crime? While it appears that while the US government has scant evidence that they were actually guilty of the Boston bombing, there seems to be some politics going on behind the scenes. Why would the FBI murder one Chechen man who barely knew the Tsarnaevs, on mere suspicion that he was linked to a drug distribution ring, while not pursuing any type of investigation or prosecution of Bella Tsarnaev, who was actually busted for dealing drugs?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
It has been reported that the Tsarnaevs had close ties with the FBI. Their mother, Zubeida Tsarnaeva told reporters that the two brothers spoke with the FBI two days after the bombing on the phone, and that the FBI had been closely monitoring them and meeting with them periodically for some years. Other reports claim that their uncle worked for the CIA. The Russian government contacted the FBI and CIA for a background check on Tamerlan, when he applied for a visa to visit Russia.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
With all this governmental investigating going on, it is curious that Bella is not being connected to any of the issues facing her brothers. She is essentially being dismissed. Probably she is a harmless pot smoker but if the US is not going after her to the full extent of their power, like they did with her brothers, it does make one wonder, what exactly is the US government’s relationship with the Russian mafia?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Did the Boston bombing or its prosecutorial aftermath have anything to do with tensions between Russia and the US regarding Syria? Did the government need a Russian fall guy to justify some political actions? Russia has been protecting Syria from a possible US bombing campaign, while Syria protects Hizbollah’s vast marijuana and opium fields on the Syria-Lebanon border, rumored to be much bigger than anything in Afghanistan that is controlled by the CIA. This month, the US shrank back from attacking Assad but instead, sent troops to this Lebanon border area, reports the BBC. In any case, there seem to be a lot of dimensions to this case that are not being openly discussed.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On September 23, 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team, Timothy Watkins, Judy Clarke and Miriam Conrad spoke to Judge A. O’Toole Jr. about wanting more time to prepare their defense. Unfortunately, the status hearing turned into a debate over the death penalty without focusing on first establishing the guilt of the suspect. The death penalty is not allowed in Massachusetts, but because the trial is taking place in federal court, the death penalty is an option.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley will decide whether to recommend the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by or before October 31. Eric Holder has ultimate say regarding the death penalty against Tsarnaev. He’s expected to make his decision by January 31.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Could the government have completely made everything up?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Defense attorney Judy Clarke told the court she was concerned that the prosecutors planned to decide whether to seek execution before the defense had finished reviewing the evidence.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“It’s pretty stunning to say they can make a decision based on what they know without any defense input,” Clarke said. “They may have an erroneous story.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clarke told U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. in Boston that prosecutors did not furnish the defense with key evidence including grand jury testimony by Tsarnaev’s relatives. She said the prosecution had not presented the defense with all of the evidence it plans to use in the case, making it difficult for the defense to create a solid argument against the death penalty.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“We would like to know if they have accurate information,” Clarke said.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“We do plan to deliver to the government, hopefully by the end of the business day today, a detailed discovery request letter,” defense attorney Miriam Conrad said. “But, that is not going to be the end all be all in the discovery requests for this case.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Tsarnaev’s defense team believes the government is withholding evidence that might help their client.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The case for the prosecution so far seems to be based solely on spurious claims that the brothers were inspired by al-Qaeda publications and that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev allegedly wrote a confession message on the wall of a boat, that justified the bombings as payback for U.S. military action in Muslim countries.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In 2011, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wrote an English assignment while attending UMass Dartmouth about the West Memphis Three, who many believe were wrongly accused.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“In this case it would have been hard to protect or defend these young boys if the whole town exclaimed in happiness at the arrest. Also, to go against the authorities isn’t the easiest thing to do. Don’t get me wrong though, I am appalled at the situation but I think that the town was scared and desperate to blame someone. It’s because of stories like this and such occurrences that make a positive change in this world. I’m pretty sure there won’t be anymore similar tales like this. In any case, if they do, people won’t stand quiet, I hope.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-91576646776836036172013-09-17T14:21:00.000-07:002013-09-17T14:21:50.847-07:00Robel Phillipos Pleads Not Guilty: Kate Russell's Parents Testify<div class="p1">
<br /></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">On September 13, Robel Phillipos, the third friend of Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to appear in front of Federal Magistrate Marianne Bowler, pled “Not Guilty” at Moakley Federal Courthouse.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Tsarnaev faces the possibility of the death penalty for the bombing, which killed three and injured over 260 people. Three of his friends were also indicted for allegedly lying to investigators and trying to cover up his role after the bombings, according to a grand jury indictment filed August 29. They are accused of throwing away a backpack containing fireworks and removing a laptop computer from Tsarnaev’s dorm room at UMass Dartmouth. Phillipos is alleged to have concealed from the FBI the fact that the three men had gone into Tsarnaev’s room. Phillipos, who was interrogated without a lawyer present, was charged by the grand jury of making “numerous false and misleading statements to the agents.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">All three face 20 years in federal prison and could be fined $250,000.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Robel Phillipos, a Cambridge resident and US citizen, is being held on home confinement while Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov, who were foreign students from Kazakhstan, await trial under conditions of 24 hour isolation in prison. Tazhayakov’s family was in court during the brief arraignment. The family plans to remain in the United States until the case is resolved.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">All three teenagers were scheduled to appear together in court at 10am but only Kadyrbayev and Phillipos arrived there on time. Azamat Tazhayakov's attorney was delayed on a train from New York when a tree fell across the tracks, so his hearing took place at 2pm. Despite the fact that he was late due to circumstances beyond his control, the attorney received a harsh verbal rebuke from Judge Bowler, who had wanted the three to be heard as a group. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">According to US District Attorney spokeswoman Christina Dilorio-Sterling, Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov, who already pled Not Guilty last month, will not face any new charges, but their indictment has changed to include Phillipos.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Phillipos’ attorneys Derege Demissie and Susan Church stated that Phillipos had nothing to do whatsoever with the Boston Marathon bombing or destroying any evidence. In the end, it will be clear that this prosecution should never have been brought in the first place.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Kadyrbayev's attorney Robert Stahl describes his client as "a law-abiding college student whose only crime was befriending a fellow student who spoke his more comfortable native language." </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Tazhayakov’s attorney, Nicholas Wooldridge, said the government “rushed into things” in prosecuting his client. Tazhayakov’s family believe he is being "scapegoated," according to attorney Arkady Bukh.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">"If he wanted to assist in terrorism, he would have hid the computer," Bukh said, adding that he gave the computer to investigators as soon as they asked for it.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“This is a witch hunt,” Wooldridge told reporters. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">All three friends are due back in court Oct. 29 for a status conference.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">The day before, on September 12, the in-laws of Tamerlan Tsarnaev testified in front of a grand jury. Tamerlan is the brother who was killed in a shootout with Boston police. Judith and Warren Russell, parents of Tamerlan’s widow, Katherine Russell appeared after being subpoenaed to testify. Josh Dratel, a lawyer who represents Katherine Russell and her family, said her parents “told the truth.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“We know that there’s been pressure on law enforcement and the Justice Department in this case. We don’t want her to be scapegoated as a result of that pressure,” Dratel told reporters.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Amato DeLuca, an attorney for Katherine Russell and her family, told reporters she didn’t suspect her husband of anything before the bombings, and nothing seemed strange in the days after. DeLuca said Russell was working 70 to 80 hours per week as a home health aide and had no reason to suspect her husband of anything. Dratel told reporters that the grand jury’s investigation “is not necessarily an investigation of Katherine.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">DeLuca said on Thursday that Russell’s parents also knew nothing about their son-in-law’s alleged involvement in the bombing that killed three people and wounded more than 260, until after he was publicly identified by authorities.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“They don’t know anything. They have no knowledge,” he said. “They met Tamerlan, so I’m sure they’re being asked about his background.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Russell, 24, is from Rhode Island. She and Tamerlan Tsarnaev met at Suffolk University in Boston. She had converted to Islam and married him at a Boston mosque in June 2010 — against her family’s wishes and advice, said her grandmother. She gave birth to their daughter soon after and dropped out of college.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">Russell and her daughter moved into her parents’ Rhode Island home immediately after her husband was killed and her brother-in-law was captured in a massive manhunt that shut down the Boston area. Russell has never been charged with any wrongdoing, but she has been questioned several times and was followed for several weeks after the bombings by federal authorities. Federal officials ended surveillance of her home around the time her brother-in-law was indicted, according to neighbors, reported the Associated Press.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">The new head of the FBI in Boston, Vincent B. Lisi, said on September 16 that the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombing is ongoing and a priority.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“We owe that to the victims of the bombing,” he said. “Our focus, commitment, is that nobody in our office will rest until we’ve identified everyone that had anything to do with the bombing and make sure they face justice.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">On September 23, family and friends of Sunil Tripathi circulated a heartbreaking statement via social media to commemorate his birthday. Tripathi was found dead in a lake after TV news announced he was the Boston Bomber. Their statement reads:</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1">“We are all thinking of Sunny very much today, as today would have been his 23rd birthday. Today we remember Sunil’s gentleness, his care for others, his desire never to be in the spotlight (yup, we messed up on this one!), his musical talent and passion, his principled stands, his incredible ability to debate abstract philosophical concepts, his hugs, and his deep love and kindness for his family, friends, and strangers alike... Keep reaching out to one another in honor and celebration of Sunil. Remember to always slow down. Turn around and look behind you. Be gentle. Be compassionate. Take care of one another. Lend your hand. We need it. The world needs it. Our family will never be the same, Sunny, without having you close to us. We love and miss you so very much. Happy 23rd birthday, Sunny!”</span></div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-19629259648319100282013-09-13T06:24:00.001-07:002013-09-13T06:24:53.754-07:00What Makes You Feel New?<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/What-Makes-You-Feel-New_10042/12LEVINE-articleLarge.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="12LEVINE-articleLarge" border="0" height="206" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/What-Makes-You-Feel-New_10042/12LEVINE-articleLarge_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="12LEVINE-articleLarge" width="244" /></a>The school year has begun, bringing order and discipline (or the need thereof) to families that had been enjoying the late night sluggishness of summer. This year, my four children began their first year of Kindergarten, Elementary School, Middle School and High School, leaving me home alone for the first time in 15 years. The change is not quite as shocking as thinking about the change: the weeks leading up to my new freedom were characterized by heart palpitations, migraines, sleeplessness, and vertigo. The vertigo, caused by an inner ear infection, gives me the sensation that the ground is no longer a stable place for standing but will suddenly shift so that I slide without warning at any moment into an abyss. This physical sensation oddly mimics my psychological trepidation of the unknown future.<br />So, thoughts must turn forward, while also returning to who I am, or who I used to be, before I had children sucking all the strength out of me while at the same time giving me a reason to keep going. If nothing else, my responsibilities require me to continue living. We survived summer. Now what? Part of me wants to have another baby, in order to avoid that question. But a more reasonable part of me realizes it’s time to center my life.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“What makes you feel new?” someone asked me. My most immediate response was love – with the disclaimer that such feelings of new beginnings have always been short lived. It is quite astonishing how quickly pure joy turns into total insecurity. Another person asked, “So does feeling pure joy and thinking life is beginning only happen for you when a man is in your life? Does this happen at other times too?”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
I saw her point clearly, though admittedly when human contact remains an unfulfilled need, like food and water, the desire for it becomes all consuming. Nevertheless I’ve lived this long without anyone understanding me or comforting me. There must be other ways I have found a sense of life within myself.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Before I had children, I loved to travel. Nowadays, going to the salon is my confidence boost. One time I went to the gym in the morning, as the guest of a friend. I felt genuinely awake after that workout. Makes me want to join a gym. But that costs money. Seeing old friends reminds me that I’m still a person. But that’s a plane ticket.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
So, what makes me feel new that doesn’t involve spending money? A smile from a stranger is always huge (but that also requires another person’s cooperation). All I can think of is sleep. My midwife used to teach, “The difference between total despair and hope is often a good night’s sleep.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
What makes me sleep deeply? The only thing that works for me lately is a sense of personal accomplishment. I’m not sure if personal accomplishment constitutes feeling renewed, or just totally exhausted. A deep prayer or a good cry is often cleansing to the soul. Sometimes the best one can do, rather than feeling “new” is feeling “not scared.” One of the most healing mantras for me, when faced with panic, is the realization that “I can do whatever I want.” In most cases we do have choices.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
So many of us are not really able to change our situations to become brand new in any outward sense of the term. We must face each day with less than we need. Maybe we don’t have enough sleep, nor enough time, nor enough food, nor enough money. Maybe we have to worry about being shot by hoodlums, framed by the FBI or bombed with chemical weapons. Maybe we are in prison or maybe we are ill. Yet we all have to get up and deal with each day in the best manner possible.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There are two things we can do to improve our quality of life that cost no money, especially when the kids are at school and we have a little bit more free time. We can stretch and exercise, and we can do housework. Physical activity helps us gain strength, and with strength, our everyday tasks become easier to manage. When get some exercise, we sleep better too. Meanwhile, a clean home creates a feeling of peace and satisfaction that cannot be quantified. Taking the time to cook the leftover things in the refrigerator turns what might have soon become garbage into a dish our family will enjoy. We can all choose to do the best we can with what we have, as long as we possess the mental stamina.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Thinking too much can cause us to burn out. Like the vertigo which turns my world into a rocking boat, too many deep and relentless questions can cause one to flounder. We might ask ourselves, “What if everything I think is true turns out to be false?” and at the same time, “What if everything I doubted turns out to be true?” While there are certainly answers to these questions, they will rarely be found by dwelling on the questions to an unhealthy degree. It is necessary to research, meditate, and to develop trust.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
When I was young, a rock climbing friend told me I need to trust that the rock will hold me. Ultimately a rock is just a rock. But the difference between slipping and falling or catching and climbing is the personal confidence that comes with oneness with nature. Trust that the rock wants you to climb it, or that you were born to climb rocks.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In this world, we cannot always think too deeply. Ultimately a rock is not a rock. It is a number of spinning molecules with vast space in between them. A rock might at one time have been flowing lava, and in the future it might become dust. But right now, all we have is that rock to hold onto.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
God is infinite beyond description and if we think too much about what He is, we will become dizzy. But right now, right here, we have a rock to lean on. “The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge,” wrote David in the Psalms. We came from Him and we will return to Him. During this life, we climb the rocks that He created.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-19317576813845284302013-09-05T17:45:00.001-07:002013-09-05T17:45:48.425-07:00Anti-War Protesters Surround Kerry’s House<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;">Boston–On August 31, 2013, approximately 200 people from very divergent political persuasions gathered at Boston Common to rally against a US military strike on Syria. The Boston demonstration was one of many “nationwide demonstrations opposing military strikes against the Syrian government as President Barack Obama announced he would seek congressional approval for such a move,” according to FOX News.</span></h1>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The event, organized by United for Peace and Justice, made a very strong statement against adding another foreign war to the US repertoire:</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The demonstration brought together left wingers, right wingers and the undecided, secular Assad supporters as well as Muslims who weren’t speaking – by their own choice – as the microphone was given to anyone who wanted to make a statement. In spite of all the political confusion and attempts to sort out fact from fiction in the media as well as in alternative media, the people of Massachusetts who converged on Boston all agreed that escalation of war is not in anyone’s best interest.“We the People do not accept another illegitimate War of aggression in our name! We the People do not believe that bombing Syria, or any other overt Act of War, will help the people of Syria. We are demanding that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama, cease all threats of aggression against Syria. We are demanding that the People of the United States are not strapped with the burden of another War, a burden that that we bear through our taxes and blood.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Garret Kirkland, founder of the Massachusetts Pirate Party told TMO, “Does bombing Syria do anything to help the Syrians, when regime change isn’t even on the table? This is punishment, not aid. The people always take the brunt. For the sake of the Syrian people, we need to back off until the international community has come to the table.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
When asked about the Pirate Party platform, Kirkland responded: “We are concerned with 4th Amendment, Freedom of Information, and Transparency in Government.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Protesters chanted ‘Don’t Bomb Syria! Don’t bomb Syria! Don’t bomb Syria!’ during breaks between speeches that included Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The original plan was to march directly to Fanueil Hall but “everything is fluid on the battlefield,” said Kirkland. Marchers spontaneously redirected their route towards Secretary of State John Kerry’s home on Beacon Hill, knocked on the door and left a handwritten sign that said ‘Stay Out of Syria.’ Kerry was not at that particular property of his many properties, at that time, but photos were taken of protesters from the window.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The anti-war demonstrators then marched on to Faneuil Hall and concluded with a vibrant peace rally.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
It was a major victory for anti-war activists that FOX News even covered their event, to the effect that there is a feeling like they actually saved the world. Let’s hope so! It is so important for other people of Massachusetts to realize how important it is to come to Boston Common to express their political opinion every Saturday at Park Street Station, because whatever happens here, whatever YOU want, will be looked upon by the general public as whatever the Founding Fathers would want.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
This author was present at the rally. I felt very uncomfortable with some of the Islamophobic language that was used during the rally in support of Assad, including a Syrian flag with Assad’s face on it. One speaker went so far as to say that there are Chechen al Qaeda terrorists in Syria that are connected with the Boston bomber (who has yet to have any evidence demonstrated against him and has not yet been tried).</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Luckily the rally represented many different opposing factions that just all agreed to agree we don’t need bombs to solve anything, and they let anyone speak.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Someone should step forward to explain to the Americans about the Syrian resistance against Assad that has been going on for decades. I hope that some Syrians who are part of the Muslim majority will dare to speak in future rallies. The Americans that I spoke to on the sidelines of the demonstration seemed genuinely interested in understanding world politics, but at the same time they also seemed very confused. The good thing was that they have decided to keep their focus on the positive, which means peace on earth and respect for the earth and each other.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
We should support political freedom for Syrians without bombing Syria. US bombs are known to be radioactive and cause hideous birth defects as we are seeing in Iraq.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Assad is busy completely obliterating any trace that Syrian history ever existed, to the service of Israel, which views Syria as a suburb, claiming that he is pushing out foreign fighters. The CIA has brought in criminals they call al Qaeda to commit atrocities to undermine the Syrian people’s legitimate struggle for political freedom, not to weaken Assad. Yet it is really ridiculous to refer to a Syrian fighter as al Qaeda and use this slur to dehumanize the majority Syrian population. That some volunteers (and who are they calling foreign?) have come to help defend their cousins, or that CIA mercenaries exist, does not negate the people’s genuine struggle for representational governance.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
But we can work that all out later. Right now, we need to counteract those political “experts” like Chandler Atwood and Michael Knights, who are pushing the US to declare war for Israel. Binyamin Netanyahu is the one who is funneling “intelligence” at Obama. “Israel has its own agenda. Should they be trusted here?” writes Kevin Zeese.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
163 members of Congress wrote letters to President Obama in order to stall the pending US bombing of Syria. This letter, drafted by Rep. Scott Rigel (R-VA) got 140 signatures, 119 Republicans and 21 Democrats. Rep. Barbara Lee of California also got 53 signers to a letter that calls on the president to seek congressional approval.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The Rigel letter warns Obama that engaging in military action “would violate the Separation of Powers Clause that is clearly delineated in the Constitution.” They also note that the justification for war in Libya also violated the Constitution. The Lee letter warns that “we all swore to uphold and defend” the Constitution; and that we should not engage in an “unwise war – especially without adhering to our own Constitutional requirements.” In their concluding paragraph they warn “Before weighing the use of military force, Congress must fully debate and consider the facts and every alternative.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-15983500133361017882013-09-02T09:01:00.002-07:002013-09-02T09:02:31.260-07:00Community Demands Shabazz Murder Investigation<br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; width: 590px;"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/046ddc621b4e_F51F/Malcolm-Shabazz.png" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="Malcolm-Shabazz" border="0" height="175" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/046ddc621b4e_F51F/Malcolm-Shabazz_thumb.png" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="Malcolm-Shabazz" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><em>File: Malcolm Shabazz</em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On May 9, 2013 Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, aka Malcolm X, was murdered in Mexico. Since then, there has been a total media blackout, and no meaningful investigation. No public debate has occurred regarding the only male heir of the civil rights history legend, as with the murder of Trayvon Martin.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Mama Dee, a radio talk show host in New Orleans thinks African Americans should be organizing, protesting, demanding justice. “Why are we allowing our children to be killed?” she implored.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shabazz was in Mexico City to strengthen ties between African American and Mexican activists. His host, Miguel Suarez said Shabazz was killed during a dispute over a $1200 restaurant tab in the wee hours of the morning at an establishment of ill repute. Two waiters David Hernandez Cruz and Manuel Alejandro Perez de Jesus were arrested for homicide, though five men were said to have been involved. An autopsy found that Shabazz died of blows to the head, face and torso. The men who beat Malcolm Shabazz to death not only punched and kicked him but also used a bat or stick during the attack, Mexico City’s top prosecutor Rodolfo Rios said.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Suarez said that he and Shabazz were lured to the bar by a young woman who made conversation with Shabazz in English, reported CBS. Suarez, who is still in Mexico, is not being investigated.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
According to the Mexico City District Attorney’s Office, “the owners of the business committed severe irregularities, such as the alteration of video cameras and the modification of the crime scene.” The Palace Club has now been completely renovated and its name changed to La Regadera, according to an article published recently in La Jornada. “Authorities in the Cuauhtémoc District speeded up the approval of permits for the reopening of the business.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
According to Wilner Metelus of the Naturalized and Afro-Mexican Citizens Defense Committee, this is “one more proof of the corruption and complicity of the authorities with organized crime; it’s shameful and shows a lack of respect for all the citizens in the capital city and especially the Afro-Mexican community… We want to see that video. And we want a Truth Commission set up to investigate Malcolm Latif’s death, composed of both Mexican and international citizens. Those are our demands.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Luis González Placencia, head of the city’s Human Rights Commission, refused to meet with hunger strikers demanding an investigation, who protested outside Mexico City government offices for one week. Then he sent 500 riot police to clear them out.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Sabrina Green told W.E.A.L.L.B.E. Radio that hundreds of Mexican federal police savagely beat and kicked Afro-Mexican hunger strikers who “took to the streets of Mexico City” supporting Malcolm Shabazz on July 11, 2013.” The demonstration coincided with another protest supporting Nigerian immigrant Isaac Nwachukwu, killed by Mexican police who just paid a $210 fine after being charged. Police officers ripped up photos of Shabazz and confiscated demonstrators’ signs.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There have been multiple demonstrations in front of the Mexican Embassy in DC throughout July and August. Those participating included Razakhan Shaheed of the Philadelphia Innocence Project; Pam Africa of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal; Basiymah Muhammad of the World Body of the United Negro Improvement Association; Archbishop John Lewis III of the African Orthodox Church; and Dr. Randy Short of the Black Autonomy Network Organization and Chairman of Malcolm Shabazz Truth and Justice Committee.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Both governments U.S. and Mexico are in violation of The Foreign Relations Act. Malcolm is entitled by Law to have a proper national and international assassination investigation… it’s about holding both governments to accountability. African Americans have rights! We demand Justice for Malcolm!” commented Dr. Short, who travelled with Shabazz to Libya to meet with Muammar Gadhafi one week prior to NATO intervention, as part of a delegation led by Cynthia McKinney.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shabazz supporters are now petitioning Secretary of State John Kerry for an investigation via change.org. So far, over 3,500 signatures have been collected.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“This is a very grave matter and those of us who have signed this petition are scrutinizing the U.S. and Mexican government very closely for their lack of interest in and/or coverage of this young man’s savage torture and assassination in a foreign country. We would like the steps of Malcolm Lateef Shabazz retraced from the time that he entered Mexico. The last month of his life are of the utmost importance in getting to the bottom of how he was murdered and who actually murdered him. Considering how closely he was being watched by your government’s FBI and CIA agencies, there is no reason why they should not be able to provide this information in great detail. Unless, of course, they were complicit in young Malcolm Shabazz’s assassination,” reads the statement, filed by Rozlyn Cross-Ratliff.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Dr. Short told W.E. A.L.L. B.E. Radio, “We know the CIA did it because of premonitions he had before his death.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shabazz had posted on Cynthia McKinney’s Facebook page shortly before his assassination:</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then (be) deemed justifiable, and when the time arrives for these hits to be carried out, you’re not going to see a CIA agent with a suit & tie, and a badge that says ‘CIA’. What they will do is to out-source to local police departments in the region of their target, and to employ those that look like the target of interest to infiltrate the workings in order to set up the environment for the eventual assassination (character, physical/incarceration, exile) to take place.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Mauri’ Saalakhan of the Peace and Justice Foundation told TMO: “Malcolm Shabazz impressed me from afar as a gifted and committed young brother with enormous potential to do great things. The fact that his life ended so soon, like that of his imminent grandfather, should give us all pause and force us to reflect over several important lessons: (1) that life and death are twin halves of each other, and none of us knows when or where the end will come; (2) those of us involved in “political” work should not only be careful of how we live our lives, but who we allow into our inner circle. I do hope… that a campaign for accountability will grow, and that a full and transparent investigation will follow.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-47160079350102114142013-08-20T15:44:00.000-07:002013-08-20T15:47:54.538-07:00“Tragedy Made us a Family”: Todashev widow visits Tsarnaevs in Dagestan<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<br /></div>
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; width: 590px;"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/f9ddc0f85290_E6A7/ladies.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="ladies" border="0" height="184" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/f9ddc0f85290_E6A7/ladies_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="ladies" width="244" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><div align="justify" style="padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<em>Reni Todashev and Zubeidat Tsarnaev comfort each other in Makhachkala, Dagestan</em></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Zubeidat and Anzor Tsarnaev’s lives were changed forever April 19, 2013 when they learned their eldest son Tamerlan was killed by Boston police and their younger son Dhzokhar (also called Jahar) was severely wounded and in prison, accused of bombing the Boston marathon.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Reni Todashev’s life was changed forever on May 22, when she heard the news that her husband Ibragim had been killed by the FBI during a related interrogation in their Orlando, Florida home.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Ibragim Todashev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev only knew each other from the gym and were not close friends, but Reni travelled to Dagestan on July 31 to visit the Tsarnaevs after burying her love in Chechnya. They had never met before. The Muslim Observer asked Reni what made her decide to visit.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Tragedy made us a family and, just like I felt that I wanted to be in the courtroom – same here,” she replied. “We cried so much there’s just no more tears left.” She described the Tsarnaevs as a “thoughtful, blessed, loving each other couple.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“We just prayed for Jahar, and for our boys who were killed by the FBI. [Zubeidat] is a very strong woman and I have learned from her a lot. I am strong but she gave me more power to fight. She’s my family as well. That tragedy connected us. She lives with her husband Anzor. I love them as my parents. That pain they have no one can feel. That pain in their hearts and eyes only Allah knows. They lost one son and another kid in jail for no reason. Worst part no one can do anything but wait. Time is killing,” said Reni, who was working in Atlanta, Georgia at the time of her husband’s murder.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Ibragim came to the US to study. In Russia he was an English translator. He met Reni through a mutual friend in May of 2010, and they got married in Boston in July of 2010.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“We had always dreamed to go home together and we did but in different sections of the plane,” Reni replied sadly. “I was the passenger, he was the baggage.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I had problems with shipping the body,” Reni told TMO. “Delta company refused to take my husband’s body. They say it’s a business decision, they can’t jeopardize their reputation. I still found a company who took my husband’s body.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“At the airport they have marked me when I was getting my boarding pass. Then they took me to search me… of course didn’t find anything. Of course I’m a Muslim widow – too dangerous.”<br />
Todashev’s June 20 funeral was “pretty big,” she said.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Reni’s sister Yana Manukyan told supporters, “Our mom (Ibragim’s mother in law) works for the US Army. She has health problems, she had a few surgeries and no longer can work for the Army due to her health condition. She has already completed all the documents for quitting the Army, she has few months left before she stops serving. The FBI froze her files her files and is trying to cancel the process, they have cancelled her benefits. FBI is now doing everything to our family to stop us to live a life. They want us to stop Ibragim’s investigation. FBI doesn’t want us to continue fighting to find out the truth of what happened. They want us to forget what happened by shutting down our family with problems. And they think that they will make us to forget what they have done to Ibra. Why is FBI messing with our family? They are making it more obvious they are guilty of murder. This has to stop. They have to give us the autopsy report… they have to give us the money they took from his house… they have to give back the personal stuff that belongs to Reni and Ibragim.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The FBI took many things from their home: thousands in cash, all their personal identity documents, personal clothing, shoes, all electronics (phones, laptops, iPads), the kitchen table, a decorative sword, saying it’s evidence, “God knows evidence of What,” remarked Yana.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I’m so not lettin that go,” Reni told TMO.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“They were following Ibragim everyday everywhere he goes, following in civilian cars,” Yana said. “No one was at the house of the murder day. Hussein Taramov came with him but they didn’t let him in. He and another local FBI agent Chris were outside of the apartment 4 hours, from 7:30pm until 11:30pm. Three Boston agents went inside with Ibragim to his house. At 11:30pm a Boston agent came out and told the local agent and Hussein that they can go. Hussein wanted to stay but they told him he can’t even wait in the parking lot.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“We can only guess what was going on there, until there is an official investigation,” Ibragim’s father, Abdulbaki Todashev said.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The FBI claims that right before they killed him, Todashev was about to confess to an unsolved 2011 triple murder in Boston, but there were no questions raised related to this issue. Ibragim was in Atlanta at the time of the Boston murders, Reni said.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Reni said she and her mother in Savannah, Georgia were also visited by FBI agents that same evening. They were only questioned about Ibragim’s relationship with Tamerlan, who had called him a few days before his death to inquire how Ibragim was doing after knee surgery.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Photos of their home, published in Russian media, [<a href="http://kavpolit.com/eksklyuzivnye-fotografii-s-mesta-ubijstva-ibragima-todasheva/" target="_blank">http://kavpolit.com/<wbr></wbr>eksklyuzivnye-fotografii-s-<wbr></wbr>mesta-ubijstva-ibragima-<wbr></wbr>todasheva/</a>] show blood near the front door. Ibragim was clearly trying to flee when he was killed after several hours of interrogation. His eye was badly bruised and indented, said Reni. FBI agents hit him hard with something before they shot him several times in the heart, one time in the liver and a final “kill shot” to the back of the head.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Reni told Russian Times that there were no shots to the arms or legs. The FBI was clearly trying to kill Ibragim, not to subdue him. The FBI is preventing officials from releasing the autopsy report.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Ibrahim’s father Abdulbaki Todashev called the earlier claims that Ibragim was shot attempting to attack an FBI agent “absurd,” saying four or five police and FBI officers could have easily handled such an attack without needing to kill his son, who was still limping from surgery.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Reni told Russian Times, “I think by killing Ibrahim they make it more suspicious about the bombing incident… They killed one brother Tamerlan, so they need somebody who’s alive, who can speak, so they can tell them what happened, if they was thinking Ibrahim is involved in that, but they strangely killed him, it means they were not trying to see what actually happened… He’s definitely not a witness. He didn’t know anything, but they are trying to connect him with the Boston bombing.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Meanwhile, the surviving Tsarnaev brother, who didn’t used to practice regular prayers, fasted this Ramadan in prison. “Mama Zubi” told supporters to send him religious books: “Jahar feels better reading something about Islam! It brings his spirit up and helps him to become stronger.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-19846505044721446282013-08-19T22:21:00.000-07:002013-08-19T22:30:44.875-07:00Khazak Teens Arraigned for Tossing Fireworks in Boston Case<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
On May 1, 2013, Dias Kadyrbayev, 19, and Azamat Tazhayakov, 19, were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstructing justice with the intent to impede the Boston Marathon bombing investigation. The two college friends of the surviving bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, are nationals of Kazakhstan who were residing in New Bedford, Massachusetts on student visas. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant US Attorneys Stephanie Siegmann and John Capin under Carmen Ortiz.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
The Muslim Observer (i.e. yours truly) was at the Moakley Federal Courthouse for the arraignment on August 13. The boys were brought into the courtroom handcuffed. US Marshalls removed their handcuffs for the hearing. They turned around briefly to meet eyes with family and supporters. The thin young Asians, who are being kept in 24 hour isolation, looked nervous but hopeful in their orange jumpsuits. They confirmed that they understood the charges and said “Not Guilty” in response to both counts. Azamat Tazhayakob's parents and siblings were in the front row. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Judge Marianne Bowler interrupted US Attorney Siegmann while she was talking, in order to tell the Tazhayakoub family that they can't let the baby crawl all over the courtroom. It seemed unnecessarily abrupt, since she was not making any noise. An older sister took the baby outside. The judge then asked Siegmann to repeat the charges, as they exchanged chummy smiles. Siegmann maintained a light, breezy demeanor as she informed the two teens that they face 25 years in prison plus a $250,000 fine and deportation if found guilty. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
They are accused of throwing Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s backpack containing fireworks and a jar of Vasoline into a dumpster and taking his laptop after receiving a text suggesting they go to Tsarnaev’s room to “take what’s there,” around the time his face appeared on TV as a wanted suspect. The FBI claims to have found this backpack, conveniently identified by a UMass Dartmouth homework assignment, in a landfill.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Siegmann announced that government prosecutors have 15-20 witnesses, and that the trial is likely to take 2 weeks. The next court date is an "initial status hearing" on Sept. 26. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Azamat's mother was crying inconsolably on the way out. An Asian woman who observed the hearing told Azamat's father, "Your son is very strong." Azamat's family doesn't speak English well and was not responding to questions. Diaz Kadyrbayev's father was talking through a Russian translator. Both fathers were very well dressed. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Azamat’s father, Amir Ismagulov owns oil fields in Kazakhstan. Azamat came to the US to study oil engineering so he could work in the family business. Ismagulov insists his son had no knowledge of Tsarnaev’s alleged role in the bombing.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
“The entire family feels that the government is scapegoating them because they are Muslims and foreign students,” Tazhayakov’s attorney, Arkady Bukh told reporters. “He is absolutely not guilty. If he wanted to assist in terrorism, he would have hid the computer."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Kadyrbayev's attorney Robert Stahl described his client as "a law-abiding college student whose only crime was befriending a fellow student who spoke his more comfortable native language."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"We look forward to the evidence eventually proving that Dias did not obstruct justice, nor knowingly or intentionally take evidence from Dzohkhar Tsarnaev's dorm room. The FBI recovered all of the items because of Dias' complete cooperation with their investigation," Stahl said. "Dias Kadyrbayev and his family also grieve for the victims' families and want justice for the victims." </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Yet - even if the defendants did remove fireworks from Tsarnaev’s apartment, what does that prove? Since fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts, it would be reasonable to want them to be gone, if you knew the police was likely to stop by. There has been no evidence or federal agency report citing that the fireworks were used in the bombing but rather, were simply found in the suspect’s room. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
“The fireworks devices allegedly found during the investigation... contain limited quantities of explosive or combustible chemical composition designed to deflagrate (burn) rather than detonate like dynamite, TNT or military explosives,” said Julie Heckman, Executive Director of the American Pyrotechnics Association.<br />
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
"We believe it is virtually impossible to create the level of destruction and devastation caused in Boston with legitimate consumer fireworks and suspect that the investigation will ultimately point toward other materials being responsible for the creation of the deadly pressure cooker bombs," she concluded.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
The two former UMass Dartmouth students were originally detained for immigration violations. They were then questioned for 12 hours over two days by the FBI without a lawyer present. Another friend, Robel Phillipos, who is being tried separately, was charged with lying to the FBI. Phillipos could face up to eight years in jail and a $250,000 fine. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
The original criminal complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is based entirely on an unsubstantiated claim made by an FBI agent - which is why his friends are so important to the prosecution. If government prosecutors can get Tsarnaev’s friends to “cooperate,” they no longer need to present any convincing evidence. When the defendants are Muslims accused of Terrorism, very few juries ever question government claims.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Attorney Carmen Ortiz with the same Judge Bowler convicted Tarek Mehanna based on inflammatory rhetoric. To get around the lack of evidence, the government threatened Mehanna’s friends into becoming cooperating witnesses.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
She also prosecuted Rezwan Ferdaus, a US citizen who was entrapped by the FBI and sentenced to 17 years. Because Ortiz intimidated him into accepting a plea bargain, there was no trial and therefore no public evidence to support the charges against him.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Ortiz’s usual gameplay links the accused with a vague global Islamic Conspiracy. Court proceedings are conducted in a racist, demeaning way, with expert witnesses giving false testimony. Evan Kohlmann, who narrated Ortiz’s prosecution of Mehanna and Yassin Aref has already testified to Congress regarding the Boston bombing’s link to “al Qaeda.”</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
The politically ambitious lead US prosecutor was investigated by Congress for “blatant prosecutorial intimidation” when computer hacker Aaron Swartz committed suicide after Ortiz threatened him with 50+ years in prison and a $4 million fine. Judges have reprimanded her for “overkill” using federal charges. Glenn Greenwald contrasted her predatory prosecution of the young and powerless with the “incredible leniency given by Ortiz's office to large companies and executives accused of serious crimes.” </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
Attorney Harlan Protass writes in Slate, “Given the heinous nature of the marathon bombing and the international spotlight on the attack, Ortiz must be under enormous pressure to go after Kadyrbayev and Tazhayakov with everything she’s got. The Boston community and local law enforcement are probably encouraging her to do so.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-14462505319872311712013-08-09T12:17:00.001-07:002013-08-09T12:17:07.566-07:00Mehanna Appeal Hearing Draws Large Crowd<div class="p1">
The courtroom was packed and the spillover room was filled, with over fifty supporters observing Dr. Tarek Mehanna’s appeal hearing in Federal court in Boston on July 30, 2013, where Attorney Sabin Willett asked a panel of three judges to throw out Mehanna’s conviction that resulted in a sentence of 17 1/2 years. Mehanna, who is imprisoned at CMU Terre Haute, was not present at the hearing.</div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Mehanna, who pled not guilty, was found guilty by the jury in 2011 of conspiracy to provide material support for al Qaeda by translating Arabic documents online, and planning to join a terror training camp in Yemen. Mehanna insists he went to Yemen to study Arabic. There is no evidence that he ever picked up a gun or planned anything illegal. The prosecution relied solely on statements by informant Kareem Abuzahra, who was granted immunity by the FBI in exchange for wiretapping and testifying against Mehanna at trial. The government’s case was framed by scouring Mehanna’s computer for evidence that Mehanna had an “obsessive interest” in jihad. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">He had indeed voiced strong political opinions and made some crude jokes via IM chats with his friends online, but Attorney Willett told the Boston Globe, “Our view is that if the government cannot tie the knot between Mehanna and Al Qaeda, this is simply speech, just protected opinion... All he has done is talk a lot, and talk loudly.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Willet argued in Tuesday’s hearing that government prosecutors prejudiced the jury by showing them a huge number of irrelevant videos such as the World Trade Center explosions, beheading videos, Osama bin Laden, and other widely available images that had nothing to do with Mehanna’s case but which poisoned the trial outcome.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Assistant US attorney Elizabeth Dorsey Collery, who works for prosecutor Carmen Ortiz, claimed that Mehanna had received an email from someone named Murabed, who informed him that al Qaeda was looking for translations, and yet he continued to translate Arabic texts for the Tivian website. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Willett argued that Mehanna was translating these texts, which were primarily religious texts, out of personal interest. He never even opened that email from Murabed.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The US had used Evan Kohlmann as a trial witness to frame the case as part of a global Islamic conspiracy. “Kohlmann doesn’t use science,” argued Attorney Willett.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Attorney Collery argued, “These were ideological crimes. Mehanna believed that he had a moral obligation to assist al Qaeda and to engage violently against the US in Iraq.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Judge Selya seemed to scold the prosecutor, saying, “The government grossly overdid it. Stick to the facts.” He acknowledged that overwhelming the jury with evidence, relevant or not, can have a cumulative effect, causing prejudice “to show intent.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Collery continued to insist that Mehanna was not as he claimed, “a scholarly man in search of enlightenment” but that he worked as a “propagandist for al Qaeda... he was radicalized and radicalized others.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Mehanna was convicted only on the Yemen travel related indictments. The propaganda charges were dropped. However, the conviction was based on spillover arguments from the irrelevant evidence. The prosecution relied heavily on mention of IM chats, open to interpretation. The defense pointed out that many of these statements, such as the comment about being “al Qaeda’s media wing” were followed with LOL, Lots of Laughs. These chats were never quoted verbatim but paraphrased by the prosecutors.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Judge Thompson asked, “Was the inflammatory evidence necessary (for conviction)?”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The prosecution then engaged in a long discussion about legal technicalities regarding permissible evidence. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">The snickering of some of the journalists at the end of the hearing revealed prejudice.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Mehanna supporters gathered in fellowship after the hearing, including a technician for a Walgreens pharmacy, who often conversed with Tarek at the Worcester Islamic Center since Mehanna was a pharmacist at CVS. “We used to compare notes about all the nice little old ladies,” he said. “Some even brought us baked goods!”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Kate Bonner-Jackson, an organizer of the Tarek Mehanna support committee said, “Tarek was vocal about the right to self defense of US invaded people.” She noted the American double standard when discussing self defense when it comes to Muslims, mentioning the recent Zimmerman acquittal. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“We are looking for justice,” Ahmed Mehanna, Tarek’s father told the Muslim Observer. Smiling, Tarek’s father said, “The judge vented my anger. He vindicated me!” He was referring to Selya’s comments during the hearing, where the judge seemed to empathize as a father: </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“What could they find if they looked through three years of my three young sons’ electronic records? What disgusting pictures did they look at? What gross movies did they watch? What kinds of things did they joke about with their friends? What topics did they flirt with?” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">We agreed that the defense lawyer had a strong, calm tone of voice while the prosecutor’s voice was noticeably shaky. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“Because she has no case!” Ahmed Mehanna exclaimed. “She was just dancing in circles around the issues.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Mauri Saalakhan of Peace and Justice Foundation said he was not overly optimistic as “98% of first appeals are denied. But there will be more appeals.”</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Tarek Ismail of Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute is working on a study of 35 government prosecutions of Muslims. Ismail said Mehanna’s appellate brief is over 100 pages long and raises many issues. During the hearing, each side had only 20 minutes to talk, so they focused on the prejudicial evidence that was rampant during the trial. Photos that were cached or downloaded on Mehanna’s computer were used as evidence, whether or not he ever opened them.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“They argued over whether evidence was prejudicial or probative (proving the case). An overwhelming amount of evidence that is not entirely related was presented instead of clear evidence of crime. The government was able to stronghold the jury because of so much evidence used as emotional manipulation. The cached computer files were used to construct a story.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Activist Laila Murad added, “So much is speech protected under the 1st Amendment: opinions, translations of public documents.” </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">Younger brother Tamer Mehanna told the Muslim Observer, “Attorney Liz went to some liberty in interpreting "between the lines" of the actual statements made in the conversation. The way the government set it up is as follows: typically, the burden of proof is on the government to establish that he went there for violent reasons. The government found a workaround to that tall task by finding Tarek's friends and threatening them into becoming cooperating witnesses for the government, and recruited the services of Evan Kohlmann to tie it all together into a tidy narrative. Once it accomplished this, it had those cooperating witnesses agree that there was a conspiracy to go to Yemen for violent training, had Kohlmann "validate" the theory behind the conspiracy, and that Tarek was a part of it. Because this established Tarek as part of this conspiracy, the burden of proof now gets laid on the defense to prove that Tarek was not part of this conspiracy. </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">“This is part of the government's tactic-- it creates a frame within a frame within a frame so that your task of defending yourself becomes that much more complex, until you agree to cut a deal just to end it. Needless to say, we'll never look for that exit in this case.”</span></div>
<br />
<div class="p2">
<span class="s1"></span><br /></div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-29082498351120729962013-08-02T10:07:00.003-07:002013-08-02T10:07:53.310-07:00Boston Bombing Mystery: Leaked Photos Prove Police Lied<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span><a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/?author=8" rel="author" style="color: #2255aa; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none;" title="Posts by TMO">TMO</a><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;"> </span></h1>
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px;" />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<br /></div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Boston-Bombing-Mystery-Leaked-Photos-Pro_CE52/boston-bomber_2622293b.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="boston-bomber_2622293b" border="0" height="154" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Boston-Bombing-Mystery-Leaked-Photos-Pro_CE52/boston-bomber_2622293b_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="boston-bomber_2622293b" width="244" /></a>It is deeply offensive and un-American to slander someone as a bomber or terrorist without any evidence, long before the trial. Assuming someone guilty before proven innocent threatens the Constitutional rights of all Americans who at some point might be accused of a crime.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
It is naive to assume good will on the part of government prosecutors, especially in these fake “Islamic terror” cases, knowing how much foul play has gone on in courtrooms especially over the past few years that involved the FBI and high ups in the government misrepresenting evidence and engaging in illegitimate smear campaigns. It appears that the government’s purpose for putting a Muslim on trial in America is rarely to establish the facts of the case but to create deliberately misleading narrative for the purpose of bolstering a political agenda that most Americans would not agree with if they knew the facts.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
At this point there is zero proof being offered that the Tsarnaevs were responsible for the Boston marathon bombings, and even less convincing evidence that if they did, that their motivation was religion. That’s all part of a stereotypical, false narrative-with-an-agenda the media promotes, similar to Nazi journalism about Jews in the 1940s. While the agenda is unclear here in the US, the narrative is spectacular.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
We have countless unverified statements made by FBI and Boston police to the media. These media claims are then used as evidence in court. This is standard operating procedure for a frame up. Many of these claims are obviously implausible, like the “confession letter” that mysteriously appeared inside the boat nearly 3 months after the suspect’s capture. The entire world is laughing their heads off about that one.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Now we have photographic proof that a member of the Boston police brazenly lied on TV saying Tsarnaev had a throat wound. Leaked photos of his capture on April 19 clearly show that the young man had a head injury and his hand was badly mangled but his larynx was fine – there was no blood dripping down his neck.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Photos leaked to the internet that were taken at the hospital clearly show a straight slash about 5 inches long down the side of his neck near the ear, but his larynx is just fine. Why was the public told he could not speak? And what happened to him afterwards?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
At the court hearing on July 10, “his eye was almost completely swollen shut, his cheek was very swollen – I’m pretty sure these were on the left side of his face- and one side of his mouth was droopy.. His mouth kind of reminded me of when someone has a stroke… the swelling wasn’t bruised from what I could see,” an onlooker told TMO.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There are many questions remaining. The marathon bombing took place April 15, 2013. On April 21, government prosecutors submitted a motion to the court to seal Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s case. The judge granted the motion. On the same day they submitted their criminal complaint under seal. This all took place on a Sunday, oddly enough. On April 22, Tsarnaev was handed over to US Marshals by the FBI and was charged with using a “weapon of mass destruction” and property damage resulting in death. He nodded in response to the judge a couple of times, then he said “No” once. The case was then unsealed, but many files are missing from the docket.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
A probable cause hearing was scheduled for May 30, but on April 20, it was rescheduled to July by agreement of both parties “in view of the complex factual and legal issues present in this case and the need for adequate time to obtain and review evidence.” The Federal Grand Jury indicted the suspect on June 28, so the probable cause hearing never happened.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
What is bizarre is that the killing of MIT police officer Sean Collier was added to the multiple grave charges, even though Cambridge police never claimed the murder was related to the bombing suspects. Why was the cop-killing charge thrown in later?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s friends and family all describe him as a friendly, laid back guy and without exception, they are universally confused by government accusations that he bombed the Boston marathon. The predatory media could not find one person to say a bad thing about him. Meanwhile, on June 9, police found someone who actually fits the profile of a psycho killer.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
27-year-old Daniel Morley “had all the materials needed to build a pressure-cooker bomb before this kind of weapon was used in the Boston Marathon attack in April,” according to comments made by the man’s own mother in a recently unsealed police affidavit.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Police also said they found a shoe box with the head of a decapitated bird, dismantled cell phones, flex cuff restraints, black gun powder, and a burnt green stuffed animal that had been stabbed repeatedly,” wrote Tim McLaughlin for Reuters. The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force said it is investigating. But the only investigation that has been reported is whether or not the man has any ties to the Tsarnaevs.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
All we know for sure about the Tsarnaevs is that they were fleeing from the police, shortly after their faces appeared on TV. Lightly armed, Tamerlan engaged in a shootout with police, which was filmed from a window. The brothers appeared vulnerable and crouched behind a car on the side of the street. Then, there were some loud explosions and smoke filled the air. But there was no property damage, no shrapnel, nor any reported injury from these explosions, just some marks on the pavement on the opposite side of the street – not where the Tsarnaevs were crouched. When the smoke cleared, Tamerlan was dead and Dzhokhar was on the run.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
It will be interesting to see if government prosecutor Carmen Ortiz will provide proof that Dzhokar Tsarnaev bombed the marathon, or if she will resort to the cheap tactic of using “secret evidence” against the accused. Other than wild media stories about the manhunt that resulted in the cities of Boston, Cambridge and Watertown being shut down under martial law, all the public has to go on is surveillance camera footage showing Dzhokhar and Tamerlan walking peacefully through the crowd at the Boston marathon wearing light backpacks. The criminal complaint is based solely on the affidavit of one FBI agent, Daniel Genck, who, based on video footage that no one else has seen, claims that the men were carrying large heavy backpacks and that they set their backpacks down prior to the explosions.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The public should demand to see a real investigation of all the actors in this drama, not just the accused. The FBI should not be simultaneously investigating a case and framing a case for the prosecution. That’s a conflict of interest.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Jon Roland of the Constitution Society wrote, “The Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been charged with multiple federal offenses, but none of them are authorized by the U.S. Constitution… If the federal courts were constitutionally compliant, they would be compelled to dismiss them all, and let the State of Massachusetts prosecute him under its laws.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-35287025794389948182013-07-18T14:43:00.000-07:002013-07-18T14:43:38.460-07:00Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Faces Accusers<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 22px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 24px; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px;">
<br /></h1>
<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; width: 590px;"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><a href="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-Faces-Accusers_CD0D/2013-07-10T211954Z_1427801647_GM1E97B0EKF01_RTRMADP_3_USA-EXPLOSIONS-BOSTONbw.jpg" style="color: #2255aa; text-decoration: none;"><img align="left" alt="USA-EXPLOSIONS/BOSTON" border="0" height="378" src="http://muslimmedianetwork.com/mmn/windows-live-pictures/Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-Faces-Accusers_CD0D/2013-07-10T211954Z_1427801647_GM1E97B0EKF01_RTRMADP_3_USA-EXPLOSIONS-BOSTONbw_thumb.jpg" style="background-image: none; border: 0px; display: inline; float: left; margin: 0px 15px 0px 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="USA-EXPLOSIONS/BOSTON" width="464" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td valign="top" width="590"><div align="justify" style="padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<em>Family members of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev leave the federal courthouse following the arraignment of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in Boston, Massachusetts July 10, 2013. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to committing the worst mass-casualty attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, a crime that could bring the death penalty. REUTERS/Brian Snyder</em></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There was “pin-drop silence” in the courtroom as the surviving Boston marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev took the stand during his first pre-trial hearing on July 10, 2013. A crying baby held by Tsarnaev’s sister pierced the silence. Watching the trial were about 30 people representing the victims’ families, as well as a row of family members and supporters of the defendant. The grand jury indictment by the FBI in coordination with federal and local authorities charged Tsarnaev with 30 counts of federal crimes including using a weapon of mass destruction and killing a police officer.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Represented by Federal attorneys Miriam Conrad and William Fick with input from Attorney Judy Clarke and Prof. David Clarke, Dzhokhar pled “Not Guilty” to all charges. Reporter Pam Gelly describes: </div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<br />“Assistant US Attorney William Weinreb… continues reading through groups of charges: possession and use of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence resulting in death; carjacking resulting in serious bodily injury; bombing of a place of public use resulting in death.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Not Guilty,” Tsarnaev says again. More charges are read.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Not Guilty,” he says and rubs his mouth.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Not Guilty,” clenching his hands together.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Not Guilty.” He says it seven times.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The judge explains that the United States will bring 80 to 100 witnesses to the trial. It will take 3 to 4 months, starting on September 23 at 10 am.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The hearing was presided over by Judge Marianne Bowler. Time will tell if Tsarnaev will settle for a plea bargain or if he will fight for his innocence in court. If the case goes to trial, Judge George O’Toole, who convicted Tarek Mehanna to 17.5 years for “material support for terrorism” on account of internet speech, will be presiding. Attorney General Eric Holder will decide whether Dzhokhar will get the death penalty, if convicted.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
According to witnesses, Tsarnaev, who wore an orange jumpsuit, kept turning around to look at his family and friends in a row behind him. At one point he waved at his sisters, whereupon one of them burst into tears. He appeared to be heavily medicated and not entirely aware of the seriousness of the proceedings. Friends say he was not acting like himself. According to his wrestling teammates Tsarnaev, who went to high school in the US and was thoroughly Americanized, spoke in court with an uncharacteristically heavy Russian accent that his friends called “weird.”<br />A former schoolmate and wrestling teammate said Tsarnaev looked tired and “beat up.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“His face was swollen on one side. He looked exhausted.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Brittany Gillis, who went to UMass Dartmouth at the same time as Tsarnaev, was inside the courtroom. “It was very nerve wracking,” she said. “His family was crying as soon as he walked in. And the victims’ families were very upset. You could just tell they were upset just by seeing him. His family was crying and he kept looking back at his family. It seemed like he was very nervous.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
A small rally in support of Dzhokhar Tsnarnaev and suspicious of the government gathered outside the courthouse. At least one protester wore an “Anonymous” mask.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There is certainly reason to doubt the veracity of government accusations – and if Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev really did use homemade bombs to kill and injure hundreds of Boston marathon spectators, there is good reason to suspect FBI and CIA involvement. Some years back, when Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan applied for a travel visa to visit relatives, Russian authorities reportedly asked the CIA to investigate the Muslim family, whose female members had recently started wearing hijab. The brothers had met with the FBI multiple times in the two years before the marathon bombing. Their mother Zubeida Tsarnaev, who was also reportedly on a government watchlist, said the FBI was closely scrutinizing her son’s online activity. </div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
It will be interesting to see if government prosecutor Carmen Ortiz will provide proof of Tsarnaevs’ criminal wrongdoings, or if she will resort to the cheap tactic of using “secret evidence” against the accused. Other than wild media stories about the manhunt that resulted in the cities of Boston, Cambridge and Watertown being shut down under martial law, all the public has to go on is surveillance camera footage showing Dzhokhar and his brother Tamerlan walking peacefully through the crowd at the Boston marathon wearing light backpacks.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
All we know for sure is that the police shot the brothers multiple times, killing Tamerlan while he was handcuffed in police custody, and severely wounding the unarmed Dzhokhar in the process of capturing him.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Circulating on Twitter is a rumor stating that, according to the wife of a Boston police officer, “all the cops took turns beating the crap out of him… jumped on his chest and everything.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The 19 year old immigrant was aggressively interrogated for 18 hours and pressured to confess without a lawyer present after arriving at the hospital with multiple bullet wounds upon his arrest. It looks like someone broke his arm rather recently, as he appeared in court with a new cast on his arm. However, the defense was not permitted to discuss anything about police brutality.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In an interesting twist of events, the proceedings of the secret hearing were illegally videotaped by someone standing behind the court camera and aired by a television station in Russia. Grainy cell phone photos from inside the courtroom showing the thin, young, pensive looking man seated next to his lawyer, were also circulated widely online via social media.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The intense international interest in this court case is unique for a US “Muslim terrorist” prosecution in that there are so many vocal advocates insisting on his innocence and demanding a fair trial – balancing the huge number of unquestioningly pro-establishment American citizens ready for another public hanging of a foreign Muslim.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
This time, the public wants to know what’s really going on. If the Boston marathon bombing was really simply carried out by two youths playing with homemade explosives, why is that being treated as a federal terrorism case rather than a local violent crime under the jurisdiction of Boston police?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Did the Tsarnaevs do it? If yes, they probably did not act alone. It is important not to let this kid become a scapegoat to cover up for a deeper government conspiracy.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-71695382632577420382013-07-14T12:49:00.000-07:002013-07-14T12:49:48.864-07:00Write a Letter This Ramadan<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Letter writing has become a lost art. In today’s world of texting and emailing, a letter received by postal mail, written on paper with pen, is something really special. Fewer and fewer children these days even know how to write in cursive, and thus have trouble reading the sometimes very personal script of their grandparents and great-grandparents.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Practicing our penmanship is only one of many reasons why we should encourage our family members to keep in touch with loved ones this Ramadan, and also to initiate contact with those Muslims who are isolated in US prisons.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
National Coalition To Protect Civil Freedoms (NCPCF) has initiated a letter writing campaign for the second year in a row for Ramadan. Part of the mission of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms is to educate the public about the erosion of civil and political freedoms in our society, and the abuses of prisoners within the U.S. criminal justice system especially after 9/11. Many individuals have been the victims of government prosecutorial overreach and pre-emptive prosecutions based on thought crimes, entrapment, and manufactured charges.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Last year was a big success with even more letters being requested from the community. “As a result of your letters, many prisoners received communication with the outside world for the first time. Let’s write a short note to tell someone you care, to tell them that they matter, and that they are not forgotten. Let them know they will always be part of our Community and that they are in our prayers. It’s an easy process that takes only a few minutes, but would mean so much to the prisoners and their loved ones.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
NCPCF also organized a Ramadan gift program, sending $100 to the poorest prisoners’ commissaries, enabling them to buy things for Ramadan like dates, honey, books, and things they need. Those who wish to donate or to participate in the letter writing program should contact prisoners@civilfreedoms.org. Since there are hundreds of Muslim prisoners on the list, greeting them all is more work than one person can reasonably promise to do. Writing to the prisoners needs to be a community activity. Why is this so important?</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Sharmin Sadequee of NCPCF explains: “Believing the media and government, the larger Muslim American community isolates and ostracizes Muslim political prisoners and their families and treats them as “other”. Different sections of the Muslim community in US have internalized the meta-narratives of our government about their own community, faith and religion, and abandoned the prisoners and their families. But, Muslims have a duty to help prisoners according to traditions of our prophet (pbuh). ” She states:</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“We have received many letters from prisoners saying they did not know that there were people and organizations in the US that care about Muslim prisoners, although many Muslims from Europe have been writing to prisoners in the US.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
NCPCF is looking for volunteers from around the country to organize letter writing activities and events in their own community, which would be done as a group. The volunteers will receive pre-addressed envelopes as many as they want. Some people request 100 others request 200 or 50 or 75.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The paintball man, Ismail Royer wrote to NCPCF: “Greetings…I am very grateful for the money your organization sent last Ramadan. It was the first time I’d had that much money in my account for many years and it made Ramadan that much more special.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
TMO asked Ghaliyaa Haq of freedetainees.com why a similar campaign does not exist for the detainees at Guantanamo, who are on hunger strike for freedom or death. She explains that “the reason no one has a specific to Guantanamo letter writing campaign is because the prisoners almost never get the mail. I have never heard of a single prisoner getting mail from anyone but their lawyers and very rarely a wife or mother. I don’t really ask people to send to Guantanamo because they simply don’t give it to them.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The current update is “they just decided that despite an attempted lawsuit they will go ahead and force feed during Ramadan – albeit at night instead of daytime.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There are many things going on that are worse than the lack of mail.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“There are some seriously needy prisoners here in the US though. I mean young people who have no one at all. There are women too like that. Sr. Fatima (Colleen LaRose) has no one. Jamie Ramirez is the other one… I am sure you are aware of the fact that once a prisoner is convicted CAIR and places like that vanish as quickly as possible. The prisoner is almost always left to his own devices then,” concludes Haq.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In May 2013, the female relatives of political prisoners organized a demonstration at the Department of Justice in DC to protest how the DOJ turned their relatives into political prisoners and buried them alive in federal prisons. It was the first time women relatives from around the country, whose loved ones have been snatched away from them in preemptive prosecution cases, came together to demand justice for their loved ones.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“It was historic and beginning of a movement like the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina,” Sadequee told TMO.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Unfortunately people do not know enough about what is going on in their own country. People are being imprisoned for crimes that they did not do…. They are basically being framed. They’re being put into prison for feeding hungry children,” said a prisoner’s daughter during the rally,” reported PressTV.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Attorney Steve Downs told TMO: “NCPCF has a data base of over 800 cases that includes all of the preemptive prosecution cases which we are following. We have determined that about 90% of the cases which the government has listed as “terrorism” cases are either preemptive prosecutions or have “elements” of preemptive prosecution (in which the government prosecuted on fake or manufactured charges individuals who seemed suspicious but who had not committed any crime). </div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Downs continues: “Many innocent prisoners were abandoned by their Mosque or Community or family following conviction, and are living in isolated conditions that amount to torture. Just the human contact of a letter can make all the difference. This Ramadan, we should do what we can to keep up their spirits and hope until a solution to our civil rights crisis can be found and the prisoners can be freed.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-11367996571884560302013-07-05T10:47:00.000-07:002013-07-05T10:47:20.951-07:00Dzhokahr Tsarnaev Claims Innocence<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Even as a federal grand jury returned a 30-count indictment against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for his alleged role in the Boston Marathon bombing, this week, supporters are gathering messages and poems to wish him a happy 20th birthday on July 22, which he will most likely spend at Devens Federal Medical Center in Ayers, Massachusetts, where he is now. The allegations against the young immigrant from Dagestan are being doubted world wide, and suspicions of an FBI frame up are growing. The addition of “using a firearm to intentionally kill Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Police Officer Sean Collier” to the list of charges against Tsarnaev is certainly odd, since previous police reports stated that the shooting incident was unrelated to the bombing suspects. </div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“This indictment is the result of exemplary cooperation between federal prosecutors and a wide range of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to investigate the horrific attacks on the Boston Marathon two months ago,” said Attorney General Eric Holder, who did not mention the heavy Israeli involvement in the aftermath of the bombing, investigation, and televised fundraising campaign for Homeland Security, where Israeli agents were treated deferentially by the Boston Police Department.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
NBC news reported: “Under normal circumstances, the government must issue an indictment within 30 days of arrest, which would have been May 19 in Tsarnaev’s case, but no indictment had been issued.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
A probable cause hearing had been scheduled for July 2. The purpose of this hearing would have been in order to determine whether the government has a strong enough case to continue legal proceedings. Because of the grand jury indictment, the case will move directly to arraignment and trial.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Further adding to public skepticism is the FBI execution-style shooting of Ibragim Todashev in Orlando Florida last month. Todashev was someone who knew Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed by Boston police after being arrested and stripped naked. The FBI claimed that just before they killed Todashev, he was about to sign a confession stating that he and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were guilty of three bizarre murders that took place in Waltham, Massachusetts in 2011, where the victims were found with their throats slashed and their bodies sprinkled with marijuana. Most people assumed the victims, who were local marijuana dealers, were killed by the police, angry about the recent decriminalization of marijuana in Massachusetts, who wanted to send some kind of warning to marijuana dealers.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Another bizarre story that the FBI fed to the news media just this week – over two months after the event, is that the Tsarnaev wrote a confession message with a pen on the inside of the boat where he was hiding and was eventually captured after being shot at 200 times by the police and miraculously survived. According to CBS news, the alleged note said the bombings were retribution for what the U.S. did to Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims collateral damage in the way Muslims have been in the U.S.-driven wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” the note allegedly says.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
A member of the Free Jahar Movement, Cindy Chapman, told TMO she doesn’t buy that story. “If he was injured as he is – and was shot in his left hand – And he is left handed. He came out of the boat holding his left arm kinda funny. And the way he was pictured laying in the boat he was laying on his right side. I guess his right side is also hurt I am not really sure. But he could NOT have not written it. And why did they NOT find that note or notes sooner. I mean really why are they just coming out now with it? I mean like really – just before the trial?”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
While Tsarnaev is not allowed to discuss his case with anyone except his lawyer, his mother Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the Associated Press that her son told her he is innocent. “I could just feel that he was being driven crazy by the unfairness that happened to us, that they killed our innocent Tamerlan.” She also told reporters that Tamerlan called her just before his death saying “The police are chasing us and shooting at us” and told her, “I love you, Mama.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Tsarnaev’s supporters have taken to the internet to demand a fair trial. The Dzokhar Tsarnaev Jahar Facebook page, which has more than 8,000 members, states that the 19-year-old’s “life has been stolen and has been made into a public object of hate, created by the inaccurate reports by the media.” His fans are also twittering using the hashtag #freejahar and handles that include @FreeJaha @Fighting4Jahar and @PrayForJaharr. Some news reports claim that young people are even getting tattooed with his name.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
A rapper named Beacorn wrote a rap song called “Free Jahar Tsar” that goes, “A boy with his cap backwards, hoodie down and white bag just / walking behind his brother past surveillance cameras / He wasn’t even tryna be hidin’ his facial appearance / And that’s all it took to take his rights as an everyday American? / Besides the bags shown blown to bits were both black / so how does that account as hard evidence after the fact?”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The birthday messages being collected from all over the world for the young man – mainly from strangers – are deeply moving – full of prayers, intense love, encouragement, telling him not to give up and that he’s not alone, with unshakable faith in his innocence. Many people, when they learned about Tsarnaev’s ordeal, realized that if this could happen to him it could happen to any young Muslim, and it immediately made them decide to start practicing their religion and in some cases, convert to Islam. Someone in Boston wrote, “I’m so glad you opened my eyes, Jahar. I’m so glad I snapped out of being brainwashed by the media.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Tsarnaev will need that level of support to spread to the wider population if he is going to receive anything that even resembles a fair trial. All Americans should want Tsarnaev to get a fair trial, to make sure they got the right guy – because if he’s not the marathon bomber, then whoever actually did it is still at large.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-32001304093283288802013-07-01T13:17:00.001-07:002013-07-01T13:17:36.320-07:00CMU Prisoner Shifa Sadequee’s Sister Speaks to TMO<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
As a little boy, Sharmin’s brother often reminded her to not to step on bugs. As a young man, he worked with his sister Sonali at Raksha, an Atlanta-based organization dedicated to the eradication of violence against women. The US-born Bangladeshi, who had attended a private Islamic high school in Canada, used his knowledge of classical Arabic to translate ancient Islamic texts into English for the former Tibyan Institute website. (The current website appears to be run by US government agents.) Some of the religious opinions that he translated he agreed with, and some he did not agree with. Some of the scholarly work he translated analyzed the concept of ‘jihad.’</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shifa engaged in frank and sometimes wild chat discussions with his online friends. The teenagers who connected through this website discussed Freemasonry and the New World Order as well as their obligations as Muslim men.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shifa’s mother, Shirin Sadequee said her son was just “talking” about jihad and exploring ideas with other youth.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shifa Sadequee’s sister Sharmin told TMO that the online chats “consisted of teenagers discussing religious and spiritual matters and opinions of scholars on various issues, political comments, wars abroad, etc.” The mostly South Asian teenagers “used cultural idioms, slang terms that a lot of second generation immigrant youths use in their conversations, but the government interpreted a lot of those phrases and conversations as ‘code’ words.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“He was not at all planning to join Taliban. He was living in Bangladesh in 2001, when the war in Afghanistan broke out. He emailed some websites wanting to know how he could help the Muslims in Afghanistan. Which the government interpreted as ‘joining’ the Taliban.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In August 2005, Shifa was detained and questioned at Kennedy International Airport in New York on his way to Bangladesh to get married.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On April 17, 2006, twelve days after his wedding, Shifa was disappeared by Bangladeshi authorities. At a press conference in Bangladesh, his father begged for help from the public in finding his missing son. The Bangladeshi government kept silent.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The FBI brought him to New York aboard a “secret” CIA rendition aircraft via Alaska, stripping off his clothes and wrapping him in clear plastic wrap. FBI agent Michael Sherck requested the warrant for Shifa’s arrest.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In New York, Shifa was charged with making a “false statement” to the FBI but the case was later dropped. In August, 2006, the US government transferred Shifa to Atlanta Federal Penitentiary on “terrorism” related charges. No government agencies communicated about his arrest to his father and wife in Bangladesh or to his family in Atlanta. Shifa was held for three years in solitary confinement without trial, during which time he was pressured to testify against his friends in exchange for a plea bargain. He refused.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Sharmin told TMO, “When my brother was arrested, Atlanta Muslim community leaders and members, when they went to talk with the US Attorneys to learn more about the case, the US Attorneys acknowledged that my brother and his friend did not do anything, but that they really needed to prosecute someone to let others know not to talk or do things like these youth.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shifa was targeted due to online association with FBI targets including the Toronto 12. Tarek Mehanna was translating for the same online publication and they knew each other from online. There is no evidence that there was any plan to do anything illegal.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Sadequee was charged with supporting a foreign terrorist organization, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET), a group struggling to liberate Muslim-dominated Kashmir from India––although LET was not designated as a terrorist organization in the U.S. in 2005 and did not even exist as an organization then.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
““The LET… one of the terrorist organizations that they’re accusing him of beginning to intend to start becoming a part of, didn’t even exist at the time and also was not registered in the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization until two weeks after Shifa was arrested,” stated Atlanta activist Stephanie Guilloud.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
He was also accused of sending videos of tourist sites in Washington, D.C. to his online friends, who supposedly were in contact with LET. However, the government could not demonstrate a single conversation or sentence from the online chats about plans or plots for attacking these sites.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Evan Kohlmann testified as an “expert” witness at Sadequee’s trial. Kohlmann, who is connected with Steve Emerson and Israel lobbies, has a history of giving false testimony about Muslim political groups – at Yassin Aref’s trial he absurdly claimed that Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda and Kurdish separatists were working together.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The religious debates of teenagers were taken out of context by the government to paint them as terrorists and to preemptively prosecute them. Yet the actual chats remained classified as “secret evidence” and were not presented to the jury.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
FBI agents testified that online chat conversations by Sadequee discussed robbing people at ATMs and selling marijuana to raise travel money. Sadequee cross examined FBI Agent James Allen regarding the conversations, pointing out that the term “LOL” (laugh out loud) indicated that the conversations were not serious. The judge allowed Allen to interpret evidence which he, as a fact witness, should not have done.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“When ethnocentrism guides in the making and application of the law, jurors and courts/judges as products of culture and bound by culture and politics will always find certain groups ‘guilty.’” said Sharmin.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shifa was convicted on August 13th, 2009 and sentenced to 17 years. He was also sentenced to an additional 30 years probation, during which time he cannot access the Internet. He spent some time at the CMU in Marion, Illinois before being moved to the CMU in Terre Haute, Indiana in May 2012.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Within 24 hours of my brother’s conviction, the Director of the US Attorney Office in GA, David Nahmias, was promoted as a Judge to the Georgia Supreme Court– it was headline news in the local media the morning after my brother’s verdict. And a few years later the lead US Attorney in the case was also placed as a judge in the Fulton County System. Not sure what kind of promotion the FBI agents received,” Sharmin told TMO.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Community organizing played a large role in Shifa’s relatively light sentencing, who was faced with up to 60 years and defended himself without help of a lawyer. 2,900 people wrote letters to the judge asking for leniency. Sharmin explains:</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“From the very beginning it was the progressive non-Muslim community and the queer community who stood by us. And, communities that were active around Imam Jamil Al Amin’s case and campaign were very supportive and understood how my brother was targeted for his spiritual and political beliefs and how the case against him was an attack on his First Amendment Rights because he was brown and Muslim.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“This attack was not only on Shifa who is a critical thinker, or on our family, but it was also a violence on the whole community and our ability to think critically about our beliefs, practices, politics, and the way of the world. So, our community-based cross-racial and interfaith alliance helped us to create collective resiliency to respond to the violence of the War on Terror.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Of course this case was in 2006, and a lot of Muslims in America then believed only the ‘bad’ Muslims are under surveillance and get targeted but now we know this is not true. Things are improving, however. I think more people are realizing keeping quiet is not going to take them anywhere.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-13895713286518372382013-06-21T08:07:00.001-07:002013-06-21T08:07:20.986-07:00Spring Cleaning<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
<em>“Cleanliness is half the faith.” – Prophet Mohammed (s)</em></div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Next to a clean conscience, there is almost nothing that makes a person feel more relaxed than a clean house. When our home is tidy, we feel more eager to invite somebody inside, and we feel more able to think clearly.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
According to Tirmidhi, the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) said: “Allah is pure and likes purity, He is clean and likes cleanliness, He is generous and likes generosity, He is hospitable and loves hospitality, so clean your courtyards.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
When our home is a mess, cleaning up that mess usually takes up space in our brains as something that must be dealt with before we can truly focus on our true life goals and desires. Living in a cluttered or dirty home drains one’s energy and mood so much that the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) taught that living in filth erodes the faith. He taught that a Muslim is not even supposed to look at filth. Obviously we cannot clean something properly without looking at it. But what we should never do is look at filth and leave it there, forcing others as well as ourselves to look at it again and again, while telling ourselves we will get around to cleaning it up later. Looking at a messy house is often more mentally draining than the actual work of cleaning it.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“People who constantly live in a state of chaos are prone to procrastination and an inability to commit to work or relationships. They get anxious and overwhelmed with change and usually give up before they even start the project. Their finances and time are wasted; they feel stuck and bad about themselves,” writes Ranka Burzan, author of The SOS Guide to Organize and Clean Your Home.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
How many marriages have stalled, because one or both partners have felt overwhelmed by organizational tasks, so that year after year they promised their spouse, “I’ll have time to pay attention to you after I do x,y and z”? Let’s pretend x,y, and z are fixing the garage door, filing taxes, and finding gainful employment. These things could be seriously delayed by lack of organization, in other words they are dependent on u,v and w – finding one’s lost tools, locating one’s lost receipts, and overcoming a lost sense of self. Meanwhile, the hair becomes grey and youth fades away. The house is still messy but years of potential joy and togetherness have been wasted without being fully lived.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Regina Leeds, author of One Year to an Organized Life, writes that to remove the chaos, we must examine the psychological inner workings that influence our behaviors in order to create lasting change. Leeds states that clutter creates a “brain dance,” an agitation and inability to think clearly amidst the stuff. She believes that “our clutter makes noise” keeping us “upset and churned.” When confronted with the piles and junk drawers we are also haunted with the “tyranny of shoulds,” stemming from our feelings of guilt about our disorganization. Leeds goes on further to describe disorganization as a “waste of time, waste of money, and waste of energy.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Imam al Baqir said: “Cleaning of the house banishes misery”.Islamic ahadith suggest that satans and djinn live in dusty and neglected places. Some of the unseen beings that could result in evil might also include germs, mold and bacteria. The good news is that the actual act of cleaning your house not only improves your state of mind but cures spiritual lethargy.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Cleaning up significantly improves your quality of life without spending a penny. It’s something a poor person can do to make his or her home more beautiful and valuable. Islam teaches that the act of cleaning up actually increases your blessings.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Remove cobwebs from your house, for they cause poverty,” the Prophet reportedly said.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Sherrie Bourg Carter discusses in Psychology Today that not only is clutter a symptom of mental clutter and a side effect of stress, but in a vicious cycle, clutter in itself causes us stress: “Clutter can play a significant role in how we feel about our homes, our workplaces, and ourselves. Messy homes and work spaces leave us feeling anxious, helpless, and overwhelmed… Why does mess lead to so much stress?”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Clutter bombards our minds with excessive stimuli (visual, olfactory, tactile), causing our senses to work overtime on stimuli that aren’t necessary or important.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be on.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter makes it more difficult to relax, both physically and mentally.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter makes us anxious because we’re never sure what it’s going to take to get through to the bottom of the pile.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter creates feelings of guilt (“I should be more organized”) and embarrassment, especially when others unexpectedly drop by our homes or work spaces.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter inhibits creativity and productivity by invading the open spaces that allow most people to think, brain storm, and problem solve.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Clutter frustrates us by preventing us from locating what we need quickly (e.g. files and paperwork lost in the “pile” or keys swallowed up by the clutter).”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
One of the best things we can do as parents is to teach our children how to clean, by giving them the responsibility and showing them how to do it. Many children will respond best to cleaning up with help, as a group. In time, this will give children the confidence and organizational skills that come with experience. It’s best if we can find a way to make it fun, like “Let’s pretend we are playing basketball with the toys into the toy box!” rather than screaming and demanding. But even if you have to force them to clean, every boy and girl will need to know how to clean a toilet, how to mop a floor, how to scrub a stovetop or it will hurt their future chances for marriage!</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Most of us often find it hard to muster up the excitement to throw ourselves into organizational tasks. In order to conquer this feeling, we can make a fun plan for what we are going to do after we finish cleaning. For example, “After cleaning the kitchen, I will set up candles and flowers to romance my spouse,” or “After I fix the leak under the sink, I will go out and play tennis with my neighbor.”<br />Viewing home upkeep as a step towards goal, not the goal, will make the task seem less daunting or at least more worthwhile.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-48371762754573278882013-06-16T12:58:00.002-07:002013-06-16T13:00:10.709-07:00Pakistani Rape Laws Islamic or Un-Islamic?<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Murtaza Haider in an important article, “A License to Rape” published in Dawn newspaper, discusses the British (not Islamic) origins of the Hudood laws of Pakistan, which prosecute women and even minor girls for being raped, while excusing the rapists.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Prof. Asifa Quraishi’s Michigan Journal of International Law article entitled “Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective,” details how the rape provisions of Pakistan’s Hudood Ordinance directly contradict Islamic law regarding sex crimes.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The Quran states: “Those who defame chaste women and do not bring four witnesses (shuhada) should be punished with eighty lashes, and their testimony should not be accepted afterwards, for they are profligates” (24:4).</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“The Quranic speech is clear and without confusion. The requirement to produce four witnesses, and not just male witnesses, is required by the Quran to prevent false accusations of fornication against women,” Haider writes.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
However, in Pakistan and in some other Muslim countries that have experienced the legacy of British rule, a woman is considered guilty UNLESS she can provide four male witnesses to prove that she is innocent!</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
This has given a lot of ammunition to Western and feminist critics of Islam and Muslims, because of the obvious injustice – especially regarding high rates of incest involving children within extended families. In the Journal of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Pakistan in 2010, Dr. Iram Manzoor wrote that most rape victims were aged between 10 and 19 years old.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“A series of events in the past few weeks have again highlighted the injustices being committed against women in the name of Islam in Pakistan,” writes Haider. “Recently, the three accused of raping an 18-year old woman at Jinnah’s Mausoleum were set free by a court in Karachi. The court refused to entertain the DNA evidence, which reportedly proved the guilt of the accused, and gave the accused the benefit of the doubt because the victim could not produce four eyewitnesses to the rape. Weeks later, the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) decreed that the DNA evidence in the absence of four righteous men as witnesses to rape is not sufficient for conviction under Islamic law.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“By turning our collective backs on science, logic, and ijtihad, we have brought ourselves to a state where discrimination against women and the disenfranchised is being committed in the name of Islam.” The CII ruling “contradicts the Islamic tradition of using scientific procedure to determine the truth or falsehood of rape accusations,” concludes Haider.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Anwar Mahmud Dabur in al-Qara’in wa Dawruha fi al-fiqh al-Jina’i al-Islami narrates the story of a woman who falsely accused another man of rape. She spread egg white on herself and her clothes and brought it as evidence to Caliph Umar ibn Khattab. The Caliph consulted another woman who confirmed the woman’s clothing bore semen stains. The Caliph consulted Ali (subsequently the fourth Caliph), who immersed the stained cloth in boiling water that turned the stains into white solid, which smelled and looked like egg.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In another case, “The Prophet himself (saw) is reported to have consulted an expert on face recognition to settle a paternity dispute (Sunan al-Dar Qutni).</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Modern feminist theory considers rape to be a violent crime to be understood within the context of the power relationship between the rapist and the victim. A woman who is pressured into sex by an employer, or a prisoner who consents to sex with a prison guard, is considered blameless. The Quran similarly warns against raping slave women, and absolves the raped woman of sin.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“… And do not, in order to gain some of the fleeting pleasures of this worldly life, coerce your slave women into whoredom if they are desirous of marriage, and if anyone should coerce them, then, verily, after they have been compelled (to submit in their helplessness), God will be much forgiving, a dispenser of grace (to them)” (24:33).</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
During the time of the Prophet (saw), punishment was inflicted on the rapist on the solitary testimony of the victim. Wa’il ibn Hujr reports of an incident when a woman was raped. Later, when some people came by, she identified and accused the man of raping her. They seized him and brought him to Allah’s messenger, who said to the woman, “Go away, for Allah has forgiven you,” but of the man who had raped her, he said, “Stone him to death.” (Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud).</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
During the time when Umar (raa) was the Khalifah, a woman accused his son Abu Shahmah of raping her; she brought the infant borne of this incident with her to the mosque and publicly spoke about what had happened. Umar (raa) asked his son who acknowledged committing the crime and was duly punished right there and then. There was no punishment given to the woman. (Rauf)</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Uzma Mazhar writes in “Rape & Incest: Islamic Perspective,” that traditional Islamic legal scholars interpret rape as a crime in the category of hiraba (violent crime). Rape and incest are not considered a subcategory of zina (fornication). Al-Dasuqi held that if a person forced a woman to have sex, his actions would be deemed as committing hiraba. Ibn ‘Arabi held that “hiraba with the private parts” is much worse than hiraba involving the taking of money, since anyone would rather be subjected to the latter than the former.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Each school of Islamic law has held that where a woman is harmed through sexual intercourse (some include marital intercourse), she is entitled to financial compensation for the harm. Further, where this intercourse was without the consent of the woman, the perpetrator must pay the woman both the basic compensation for the harm, as well as an additional amount based on the ‘diyya’ (financial compensation for murder, akin to a wrongful death payment),” concludes Mazhar.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Holding rapists accountable for their crimes is a good start, but in the long run we must also look at the social conditions that lead to rape. In the west, free mixing of men and women is often viewed by Muslims as leading to fornication (consensual sex). However, the extreme cultural segregation of men and women in some Muslim countries can also be viewed as possibly leading to rape and incest, in the same way that priestly celibacy leads to pedophelia and homosexual perversions within the Catholic church.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Respectful and appropriate interaction rather than total avoidance of females should probably be encouraged before secret perversions develop, so that boys and men will more likely respect girls and women as equally valuable human beings.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-84883055880364124882013-06-10T16:27:00.002-07:002013-06-10T16:27:50.514-07:00Timeline of Zionist Criminality<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Supporting the existence of a State for Jews is a total betrayal of<br />fundamental American values.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
===</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1902<br />Forced transfer of native Palestinian population proposed by<br />Zionist leader Theodor Herzl.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1908<br />Racist Eastern European settlers organize to terrorize the native<br />people of Palestine.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1933-39<br />Zionists collaborate with Nazis to fund the creation of a Jewish<br />State on Palestinian land.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1934<br />Arab leaders offer asylum to European Jews fleeing the Nazis and<br />present a plan for legal Jewish immigration to Arab countries.<br />Zionist leader Ben-Gurion refuses offer and condemns millions of<br />Jews to death.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1947-48<br />Zionists begin genocide of Palestinians to create a racist Jewish<br />State. Arab states attempt humanitarian intervention but fail.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1948-56<br />Israel destroys hundreds of Biblical villages, murders or expels<br />700,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1956-67<br />Israel wages two aggressive, premeditated wars against Arab<br />nations, grabs land from Syria, Egypt, and Jordan, expels hundreds<br />of thousands of people, and kills thousands of Egyptian and<br />Palestinian prisoners.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1982<br />Israel invades Lebanon and starts a war in which 20,000 Lebanese<br />civilians are killed. 2,000 unarmed Palestinian women, children and<br />old men are massacred at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1988<br />Arafat initiates the Middle East Peace Process at the UN General<br />Assembly in Geneva.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1993<br />Oslo agreement solidifies Israel’s apartheid system and<br />disenfranchises Palestinian refugees.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2000<br />Arafat rejects Israel's “generous offer†to imprison<br />Palestinian natives on isolated reservations.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2002<br />Israel begins construction of a 650-km Wall to surround and starve<br />Palestinian population areas.<br />Israel attacks Jenin refugee camp with bulldozers and buries<br />Palestinians alive in the rubble.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2003<br />Israeli bulldozer deliberately crushes and kills 23-year old<br />American peace activist Rachel Corrie while she takes part in<br />nonviolent protest to stop the demolition of a Palestinian doctor's<br />home.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2003-04<br />Worldwide Boycott of Israeli products, vacations, and investments<br />gains momentum.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2004-05<br />Racist Ethnic Ashkenazi Neoconservatives manipulate the USA into<br />attacking Iraq for the benefit of Israel and to the detriment of the<br />national interest. Americans die for Israel. American wealth is<br />wasted for Israel. The increasing debt needed to support Zionist-<br />dictated policy threatens the economic well being of all Americans.<br />Now the USA is directly involved in the same sort of criminal<br />occupation that the State of Israel maintains. Increasing hatred of<br />the USA spreads throughout the world.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Support the Palestinian Right to Return.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
REJECT RACISM. REJECT ISRAEL.<br />israelinspires-racism.org</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Endnotes and References</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1902 Muhammad Ali Khalidi details the forced transfer plan in<br />“Utopian Zionism or Zionist Proselytism? The Journal of Palestine<br />Studies, 120, Volume XXX, Number 4, Summer 2001, pp. 55-67. A<br />careful reading of Altneuland by Herzl is also worthwhile. A<br />carefully prepared edition may be found in 'Wenn ihr wollt, ist es<br />kein Märchen' from Juedischer Verlag bei Athenaem. Walid Khalidi<br />reproduces and analyzes the forced transfer text in “The Jewish-<br />Ottoman Land Company: Herzl's Blueprint for the Colonization of<br />Palestine, Journal of Palestine Studies 21, no. 2 (Winter 1993), pp.<br />30-47.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1908 Zionist paramilitary groups existed before 1908, but haShomer,<br />which is the best known, was founded in that year. Asher Ginzburg or<br />Ahad ha`Am) criticizes them; he even accuses them of 'fundraising,'<br />creating incidents that could be used in campaigns to solicit<br />contributions. Rashid Khalidi provides a good discussion in<br />Palestinian Identity on pp 89-117 of Bar Giora and HaShomer, which<br />were paramilitaries established to prevent Palestinians from<br />exercising water rights. Zionism and the Arabs (1882 - 1948) by<br />Yosef Gorny (p. 100) discusses Ahad ha`Am's opinion of Zionist<br />attempts to suppress the native population. Dr. B. Hofman discusses<br />the Zionist militias and their intimidation and terrorization of the<br />native Palestinian population in Meyn Reyze in Erets Yisroel. Anita<br />Shapira includes a somewhat mendacious discussion of early Zionist<br />terrorism in Hereb hayyonah.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1933-39 Because of the close collaboration of Zionists and Nazis<br />during the 1930s, Hannah Arendt called this period the Zionist phase<br />of Nazism (viz. Heidegger's Children by Richard Wolin). Edwin<br />Black's book, The Transfer Agreement, is the standard text on Nazi-<br />Zionist collaboration. It makes clear that the transfer of funds<br />from Nazi Germany under this agreement made the Jewish State<br />possible.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1934 Al-Jabiri, Ihsan, 'La Visite de M. Ben Gurion - la delegation<br />Syro-Palestinienne Geneve, La Nation Arabe (Nov-Dec 1934), 144-146.<br />If the Zionists had accepted the offer, at least one million more<br />European Jews could have survived WW2.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1947-48 The international legal definition of genocide is assumed<br />(viz. <a data-mce-href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM" href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM">http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM</a>). Benny<br />Morris' The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949, is<br />the basic text on Zionist ethnic cleansing. The War for Palestine,<br />Rewriting the History of 1948, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Avi<br />Shlaim, updates Morris' data and conclusions. The web page,<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html," href="http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html,">http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/History/arab_invasion.html,</a> gives a<br />somewhat inadequate translation of the Arab League's declaration of<br />reasons for humanitarian intervention in Palestine in 1948. The<br />Arabic title of the document uses the phrase humanitarian<br />intervention and not invasion.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1948-56 The web site, <a data-mce-href="http://www.palestineremembered.com%2C/" href="http://www.palestineremembered.com%2C/">http://www.palestineremembered.com,</a> provides a<br />tremendous amount of data on this issue. Facts on the Ground by<br />Nadia Abu el-Haj discusses the ideology of destroying the physical<br />record of the presence of Palestinians as does Meron Benvenisti's<br />Sacred Landscape: Buried History of the Holy Land Since 1948.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1956-67 How Israel Was Won, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli<br />Conflict, by Baylis Thomas (pp 115-172) provides a reasonable<br />summary (with citations) of the history of the premeditated<br />aggressive war by UK, France and Israel's against Egypt in 1956.<br />Thomas discusses the issue of the 1967 aggression on p. 165, and his<br />assessment is not much different from what Moshe Dayan has said in<br />his memoirs and comments on the 1967 war. The web page,<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www.time.com/time/international/1995/950828/israel.html," href="http://www.time.com/time/international/1995/950828/israel.html,">http://www.time.com/time/international/1995/950828/israel.html,</a><br />discusses the IDF killing of Egyptian POWs in 1956. The web page,<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www.mideastfacts.com/pow_ap.html," href="http://www.mideastfacts.com/pow_ap.html,">http://www.mideastfacts.com/pow_ap.html,</a> discusses the IDF killing<br />of Egyptian and Palestinian POWs in 1967.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1982 Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation provides the standard description<br />of Israel's aggression against Lebanon.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1988 Arafat's speech to the UN General Assembly<br />(<a data-mce-href="http://mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/arafat88-en" href="http://mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/arafat88-en">http://mondediplo.com/focus/mideast/arafat88-en</a>) speaks for itself.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
1993 The Oslo Agreement gave the Israeli State the legal basis for<br />setting up the checkpoint and pass system within the occupied<br />territories that is so similar to (actually much worse than)<br />Apartheid South Africa. The Oslo Agreement ignores refugee claims.<br />Uri Savir's The Process discusses the history of Oslo. The web page,<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www.cardamon.org/oslo/oslo_documents.htm" href="http://www.cardamon.org/oslo/oslo_documents.htm">http://www.cardamon.org/oslo/oslo_documents.htm</a> provides an index of<br />Oslo documents.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2000 The web page,<br /><a data-mce-href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article518.shtml," href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article518.shtml,">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article518.shtml,</a> provides a good<br />summary with maps of the proposed Palestinian reservations.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2002 The relationship of the Wall to increasing Palestinian hunger<br />is clear on visiting Palestine. Food must be shipped through the<br />checkpoints, and the IDF hinders such shipments. But perhaps a more<br />important issue has been the confiscation of Palestinian farmland<br />near the Wall and on what is now the Israel side of the Wall.<br />Palestinians are still mostly an agricultural population. If Israel<br />takes away their farmland, it takes away their food. Jenin Jenin<br />starring and directed by Mohamad Bakri addresses the IDF rampage<br />through Jenin. It is worth noting that Jenin (Biblical `Ein Gannem)<br />is probably the second oldest city on the planet. The web document,<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/d9jenin.pdf," href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/d9jenin.pdf,">http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hfc/mideast/d9jenin.pdf,</a> describes<br />the attack on Jenin from the standpoint of an Israeli reservist.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2003 Senior IDF commanders seem to have decided to try to drive<br />internationals out of the Occupied Territories (by treating them<br />like Palestinians) in order to obtain the freedom to commit greater<br />acts of terrorism and brutality. In short succession the IDF<br />murders Rachel Corrie, mortally wounds Tom Hurndall and shoots the<br />face off Brian Avery (see<br /><a data-mce-href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml," href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml,">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1248.shtml,</a><br /><a data-mce-href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1358.shtml" href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1358.shtml">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1358.shtml</a> and<br /><a data-mce-href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1332.shtml." href="http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1332.shtml.">http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1332.shtml.</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2003-04 The Israeli tourism industry is for all intents and purposes<br />dead. Investment in Israel has dried up, and Israeli academics are<br />personae non gratae throughout Europe.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
2004-05 Presidential advisers Perle, Feith and Wurmser wrote A Clean<br />Break:A New Strategy for Securing the Realm<br />(<a data-mce-href="http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm" href="http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm">http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm</a>) as a strategy to serve<br />Israeli interests. This strategy has become US policy. Either<br />these advisers cannot distinguish US interests from Israeli<br />interests, or they can. In either case, their behavior is probably<br />treasonous, and Bush by accepting this policy recommendation has<br />effectively renounced his duty to serve the USA and to uphold the<br />constitution for the sake of Israel. Bush is now guilty of high<br />crimes and misdemeanors. He should be impeached, convicted, removed<br />from office, sent to Guantanamo so that he can be interrogated to<br />determine the extent of his treason.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
ISRAEL IS RACIST. Zionism is un-American and racist because Zionism<br />presumes that the 'national, ethnic or historical rights' of Jews to<br />Palestine are superior to the human rights (including property<br />rights and residence rights) of the native population - a statement<br />of volkisch and colonialist racism. The only workable solution in<br />Palestine requires without limitation: (1) absolute rejection of<br />the concept of an ethnicity-based nation state as unethical, (2)<br />establishment of a nonracial multicultural democracy in Palestine,<br />(3) a sincere apology from Zionists to the Palestinian people, (4)<br />complete restitution to Palestinians for their losses, (5) return of<br />all property to its rightful owners, (6) repatriation of all<br />Palestinians, who will receive full citizenship in the nonracial<br />state, and (7) creation of Nuremberg-style tribunals for all<br />Zionist perpetrators of crimes against humanity. Supporting the<br />existence of Israel as a State for Jews is a total betrayal of<br />fundamental American values.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Joachim Martillo</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
===</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Israeli History 101</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
By Mazin B. Qumsiyeh, PhD</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Chaim Weizmann (1874?-1952) was born in Motol, Russia and became a<br />British subject in 1910. During World War I, Weizmann discovered an<br />improved method of making acetone and butyl alcohol for explosives<br />to aid British war efforts. He was thus instrumental in securing<br />British government commitment to Zionism in the form of the Balfour<br />Declaration (which was secured in a letter addressed to Weizmann).<br />He also served as special advisor to the British Ministry of Supply.<br />For his efforts on behalf of the Zionist project he was rewarded by<br />becoming first president of the state of Israel.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
David Ben-Gurion was born David Green in Plonsk, Russia (now in<br />Poland). He settled in Palestine in 1906. As chairman of the<br />Executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine from 1935 to 1948, Ben-<br />Gurion directed all Jewish affairs to transform the country from<br />multi-ethnic/multi-cultural area to a Jewish state "to redeem its<br />Jewish nature". His activities ranged from land development and<br />settlement of immigrants to secret activities against natives and<br />later (after the Palestinian revolt of 1936 jolted the British<br />rulers) against the British. Here is an excerpt from Rabin's memoirs<br />about Ben Guion: "We walked outside, Ben-Gurion accompanying us.<br />Allon repeated his question, 'What is to be done with the<br />Palestinian population?' Ben-Gurion waved his hand in a gesture<br />which said 'Drive them out!'" (Yitzhak Rabin's memoires, leaked<br />censored version of Rabin memoirs, published in the New York Times,<br />23 October 1979; Rabin's description of the conquest of Lydda, after<br />the completion of Plan Dalet).</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Moshe Sharett, 1894?1965, Born in Russia, originally named Shertok.<br />In 1906 he settled in Palestine where he was active in the labor<br />movement. In 1933 he became head of the political department of the<br />Jewish Agency for Palestine. Sharett was David Ben-Gurion's closest<br />associate in the struggle for an independent Jewish state. In 1948<br />he was appointed foreign minister of Israel and from 1953 to 1955<br />served as prime minister. He resigned from the government in 1956.<br />Sharet sought to strengthen Israel's position by statesmanship<br />rather than confrontation. His replacement as premier by Ben-Gurion<br />in 1955 and retirement in 1956 reflected the movement in Israel<br />toward confrontation that resulted in the 1956 Arab-Israeli War.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Levi Eshkol (1895?1969) was born Levi Shkolnik in Ukraine (then<br />under Russian control). In World War I he served in the Jewish<br />Legion, which supported the British forces in Palestine. He moved to<br />Palestine and helped build up the Haganah, the Jewish underground<br />organization that helped ethnically cleanse Palestine between 1947-<br />1949.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Golda Meir (1898-1978) was born Golda Mabovitz in Kiev, Ukraine. Her<br />family moved to Milwaukee in 1906. In 1921, she and her husband,<br />Morris Meyerson (the name was changed to Meir in 1956) settled in<br />Palestine. She once declared "There are no such thing as<br />Palestinians." Her secret agreements with King Abdullah in 1947 was<br />instrumental in thwarting the formation of a Palestinian state and<br />in the Hashemite's control over the area known as the "West Bank"<br />(see Avi Shlaim "Collusion across the Jordan")</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Menachem Begin was born in Brest-Litovsk, Russia (now Brest,<br />Belarus). In the 1930's, he became active in the Zionist underground<br />terror movement and moved to Palestine in 1942 whereupon he engaged<br />in terrorism including bombings in civilian areas. Wanted for murder<br />by the British mandate authorities. Once called<br />Palestinians "cockroaches"</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Yitzhak Shamir was born 1915 in Ruzinoy, a village in eastern<br />Poland. His last name was Jazernicki and he changed it. He joined<br />the Irgun Zvai Leumi, an underground Jewish terrorist group in 1937<br />and was involved in several terrorist attacks against civilians. In<br />1940, Shamir joined the more radical Lohamei Herut Yisrael (Israel<br />Freedom Fighters), or Stern Gang. He was twice arrested for his<br />terrorist activities by the British and fled to France in 1946. When<br />Israel was established, he came back and then worked for the Mossad,<br />Israel's intelligence agency responsible for continuing terrorism<br />against the native Palestinians.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Yitzhak Rabin (1922-1995), was born in Jerusalem to Zionist settler<br />parents. In 1941, Rabin joined the Palmach, a unit of the Jewish<br />underground army in Palestine and was deputy commander of the<br />Palmach in 1947-1948 when the group engaged in ethnically cleansing<br />Palestinians (as Benny Morris documented expulsion of Palestinians<br />in the LOd and Ramle areas were carried out under Rabin's command).<br />Famous as Israeli defense minister in the late 1980s for ordering<br />troops to "break the bones" of Palestinian demonstrators (mostly<br />children). Rabin stated that "The Oslo "Peace Process" is "A new<br />instrument for reaching traditional [Israeli] objectives" (according<br />to Uri Savir, his chief negotiator, from<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www.fmep.org/reports/v10n3.html" href="http://www.fmep.org/reports/v10n3.html">http://www.fmep.org/reports/v10n3.html</a> ). Henry Kissinger stated "I<br />ask Rabin to make concessions, and he says he can't because Israel<br />is too weak. So I give him arms, and he says he doesn't need to make<br />concessions because Israel is strong" (quoted in Findley's<br />Deliberate Deceptions p.199). Yitzhak Rabin, once said (in the<br />Knesset): "For all its faults, Labor has done more and remains<br />capable of doing more in the future [in expanding Jewish<br />settlements] than Likud with all of its doing. We have never talked<br />about Jerusalem. We have just made a 'fait accompli.' It was we who<br />built the suburbs in [the annexed part of] Jerusalem. The Americans<br />didn't say a word, because we built these suburbs cleverly."</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Ehud Barak, was born 1942 as Ehud Brog, son of East European<br />immigrants in Palestine. He later adopted the Hebrew name Barak<br />[meaning lightning]. He began his military service in 1959. He was a<br />member of a secret assasination unit that killed a number of<br />Palestinian political leaders in Lebanon (e.g. Beirut 1976) and<br />liquidating resistance in teh occupied territories. He was rewarded<br />by rising quickly through the ranks to become the youngest army<br />chief of staff in Israeli history.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Ariel Sharon (Arik Scheinerman) was born in British-ruled Palestine<br />in 1929 from Russian immigrant settlers. In 1953, he was asked to<br />set up a unit for "preemeptive strikes" across the borders.<br />This "unit 101" spread terror and murderous violence among the<br />Palestinian population to force them to flee from their homes and<br />land near the border. On October 14, 1953, Sharon committed a<br />massacre in the village of Qibya (then under Jordanianrule). Ben<br />Gurion lied when he said the massacre was committed by enraged<br />Israeli villagers (as later documents showed). 69 civilians (mostly<br />women and children) were murdered. In the early 1970s, his forces<br />were charged with the task of "pacifying" the recalcitrant Gaza<br />Strip. He imposed a brutal policy of repression, blowing up houses,<br />bulldozing large tracts of refugee camps, imposing severe collective<br />punishments and imprisoning hundreds of young Palestinians. The<br />whole area was effectively transformed into a jail. He was to become<br />involved in the settlements project, in founding Likud, and a number<br />of other "acheivements." He was the archjitect oF Israel's invasion<br />of Lebanon. His funded and armed a mercenary/proxy Phallange forces<br />committed the massacres at Sabra and Shatila for which he is being<br />indicted for war crimes. His crimes continue to date unchecked (both<br />Amnesty and Human Rights Watch stated that recent actions in teh<br />past two months amount to war crimes). See<br /><a data-mce-href="http://www.geocities.com/indictsharon/" href="http://www.geocities.com/indictsharon/">http://www.geocities.com/indictsharon/</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Shimon Peres (1923 -) was born as Shimon Perski in Vishniva, Poland<br />(now Belarus). He and his parents came to Palestine in 1934 (under<br />British rule). He joined the underground Israeli forces, the<br />Haganah, and served as a chief of its manpower division in the<br />1940s. He is the architect of Israel's nuclear program. Appointed in<br />1953 as dorector general of the ministry of defense, he immediately<br />started exploring teh nuclear development. In teh late 1950s and<br />early 1960s, Israel developed its nuclear program primarily with eth<br />help of France while maintaining the Peres doctrine of "ambiguity."<br />The US and Britain and other countries looked the other way. He was<br />awarded (with Rabin and Arafat) the Nobel Peace Prize for their Oslo<br />accords. The Nobel committee members recently signed a letter<br />regretting their awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize (based on his<br />recent actions as member of the Sharon government).</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
*********************************************************************</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-70158153200297303032013-06-07T07:19:00.001-07:002013-06-07T07:19:25.679-07:00Lost Innocence at Guantánamo<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Rebuffing President Barack Obama’s latest plea, House Republicans last week proposed keeping open the military-run prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, barring the administration from transferring its terror suspects to the United States or foreign countries, and giving the Pentagon $247.4 million to upgrade Guantanamo.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Former Guantánamo guard Terry Holdbrooks, who worked at Camp Delta from June 2003 through July 2004 and wrote a book about his experiences entitled “Traitor,” said that the US military base in Cuba “was essentially chosen for the legal limbo that it posed so long ago, being that it was not under Geneva Convention soil. We have held people there in nearly every conflict, particularly, WW2, Cold War, Desert Storm, and now this. At any rate, there is no longer a concern for legal limbo, as with the War on T’error’ and the bills that have been passed, Bush, and now Obama can essentially do as they please, legal or not, and claim that it is in the best interest of the US.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
There are currently 166 men left at Guantánamo. They are indefinitely detained at a cost of $1 million a year per inmate, despite nearly all being cleared for release. The only men at Guantánamo who are still considered guilty of terrorism are the so-called “masterminds” of 9/11: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid Muhammad Salih Mubarak Bin ‘Attash, Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is famous for confessing.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
These five men are not being held with the general population, but housed in Camp 7, otherwise known as “Camp No.” Holdbrooks told TMO he has never seen them and has no idea who is in charge of guarding them. He has no doubt the men are being severely tortured, but also expressed certainty that there is nobody who cares.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“No one is coming for them. It would not matter if the men in Guantánamo were in the US, they would still be locked up, and no one would come for them.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The U.S. Justice Department released a 2005 memo which states that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 alone. As a result of these interrogations, he confessed to 26 pages of terrorist acts around the globe.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The US government seriously charges him with “training hijackers to hide knives in carry-on bags before boarding the planes. Under Mohammed’s direction, the hijackers learned how to slit the throats of passengers by practicing on sheep, goats and camels.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
On May 5, 2012 CNN reported, “The five refused to co-operate with court proceedings in various ways. They are each charged with terrorism, hijacking aircraft, conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury and destruction of property in violation of the law of war.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The actual evidence against the five men ranges from wiring relatively small amounts of money to suspicious persons to repeatedly applying for US tourist visas after being rejected. They seem to be most guilty of not recognizing the US government’s authority to try them and using the trial as a platform to make political statements. </div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
During his pretrial hearing, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed stated that the U.S. government sanctioned torture in the name of national security and compared the plane hijackings that killed nearly 3,000 people to the millions who have been killed by America’s military. After Mohammed’s remarks, military judge Captain James Pohl refused to allow any other personal comments by the accused at trial.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“If martyrdom happens to me today, I welcome it. God is great! God is great! God is great!” Binalshibh told his trial judge, Marine Colonel Ralph Kohlmann.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
While it appears that the five men are seeking execution as a way of escaping prison, many more men are starving themselves to death to protest their indefinite detention.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Emaciated and frail, more than 100 men lie on concrete floors of freezing, solitary cells in Guantánamo, silently starving themselves to death,” reports Terri Judd in the Independent, UK.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“They’ve lost hope. They’ve decided it’s better to die,” Holdbrooks said. “One of them is down to 70 pounds… With nothing to do but read a book you have memorized, or pace in a 6 by 8 cell, there really isn’t much to be hopeful for.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Terry Holdbrooks described their situation: “You are on an island, surrounded by a mine field, surrounded by fences with lookout towers, in a cage within a larger cage called a block in a larger cage called a camp in a larger cage known as Camp Delta. You have at a minimum 4 sally ports to make way out of, each requiring ID, keys, and searching of persons. The cells are guarded by people like me, who walk up and down a block all day and night… Guantánamo is not a place people can break out of, it is impossible, literally, impossible. 90 miles from land (Florida) surrounded by mine fields, men in towers, automatic weapons and grenade launchers and sniper rifles…”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Author David Hicks, an Australian man who was kidnapped in Afghanistan by the Northern Alliance and sold to the US for bounty wrote in a letter to his father that his confessions made at Guantánamo were false and made only to get released. Hicks told his father that he was pressured into pleading guilty to a wide-range of war crimes charges and he feared that if he didn’t comply he would be sent to “Camp 5,” a “very bad place with complete isolation…”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Know that if I make a deal it will be against my will,” Hicks wrote. “I just couldn’t handle it any longer. I’m disappointed in our government. I’m an Australian citizen. If I’ve committed a crime I can be man enough to accept the consequences but I shouldn’t have to admit to things I haven’t done or listen to people falsely accuse me. We can’t let them get away with it.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I feel bad about the idea that Guantánamo is even in existence,” concludes Holdbrooks. “I would love to see Guantánamo given back to Cuba and for the facility and land to be free of US persons. None the less, what will happen with Guantánamo when these men go home is what worries me. It will get filled again, probably with Americans… Guantánamo is really, to me, nothing more than a blatant example of where we as a country are heading if citizens do not take back control of our own country.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-4824722411557148842013-06-04T18:11:00.000-07:002013-06-04T18:11:10.163-07:00Jericho Conference Convenes in Boston<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The annual National Jericho Conference to support political prisoners in the US was held on May 25-26 in Boston, Massachusetts. The small but intense gathering brought together community organizers and activists from near and far.</span><br />
<span style="color: #37404e; font-family: lucida grande, tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Ethiopia Belay of Portland, Oregon told TMO, “I joined Jericho because I can’t imagine living in a world where f</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">ighting for freedom and justice results in your freedom being taken away... All these people were fighting for their people, for all people, for me. Their work paved the way for our own work as activists.”</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />The civil rights movement of the 60s and 70s was crushed by government spying, assassination and imprisonment of the leadership. Activists today face similar threats, but there is no longer a community standing together. Individualism has caused the movement to degenerate into a “workshop seminar culture, remiss of infrastructure,” said Jericho co-chair Jihad Abdulmumit, who largely presided over the conference. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />“There is no movement anymore. Unless we build it. Don’t know how to talk? Learn it. Study what we’re about. Learn what you are about. Then talk to people... We are each others’ responsibility,” said Abdulmumit.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />“We are living in an age where they can detain you without trial, where they can arrest you for speaking, for associating with the wrong people. If they come for me today they’ll come for you tomorrow. Those who stand silent while others are incarcerated for their political beliefs don’t deserve freedom themselves,” said Ray Luc Levasseur, who spent 20 years in Marion and Florence ADX for his involvement with United Freedom Front.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Dozens of political prisoners from the Civil Rights era lost their lives behind bars. Jalil Muntaqim of the Black Liberation Army (BLA) has spent the past 39 years in solitary confinement inside Attica Prison. David Gilbert from the Weather Underground is maintaining spiritual calm living out his life sentence. Former Black Panther Veronza Bowers served out his 30 year sentence but on the day of his release nearly ten years ago, was slapped with the new “terrorism” designation and remains imprisoned, despite model behavior. Some activists, like Lefty Gilday, have died in prison. Jericho empowers people to make sure these aging warriors don’t die alone, to work for their release, and failing that, to demand that their body be returned to friends and family for burial.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />“Prison is social death. As long as we talk about them and remember them, they are not dead,” said Ahmad Rahman, associate professor of African and African-American History at the University of Michigan Dearborn, who spent nearly 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, because of his organizing work with the Black Panthers. He also believes it is necessary for social justice advocates to revise their tactics, because what worked in previous decades is ineffective now.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Rahman spoke to TMO about his concern that Muslim prison chaplains are being hired by the government to recruit informers. “These Arabs have developed a reputation of yearning badly to be recognized as equally white with the prison guards and administrators. This makes them identify more closely with these non-Muslims in opposition to the ‘black criminals’ they were hired to serve... After 911 especially, the federal and state law enforcement agencies have sought to use them in prisons to "protect national security" from the ‘Islamic threat.’”</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Several former political prisoners and family members of political prisoners were in attendance at the conference, including Sharmin Sadaquee, the sister of Ehsanul Shifa Sadaquee, who was kidnapped in Bangladesh and is serving a 17 year sentence. The new baby daughter of Black Panther alum Ashanti Alston was applauded as a symbol of hope for the future. Also inspiring hope were students from Youth Against Mass Incarceration, who work to raise the political awareness of communities affected by the prison system.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />“These young people are the answer to our prayer!” exclaimed Sheila Hayes, the wife of Robert Seth Hayes, who is serving a life sentence due to his involvement with the Black Panther Party. She said that for a prisoner, knowing that there are people out there who support you makes a huge difference, especially young people who learn about the huge sacrifices of the Civil Rights era and who say, “I appreciate that you fought for my rights before you even knew me.” Hayes loves that her husband walks proudly and without shame, knowing that he fought a government that was wrong.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Sheila Hayes married Robert Seth Hayes five years ago while visiting him in prison. “I’ve been happy ever since!” she told TMO, glowing. She pledged to her husband, “I know you are not going anywhere, but you don’t have to worry because I am not going anywhere!” </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Hayes is concerned about the ailing health of the 65 year old prisoner who suffers from diabetes, neuropathy in his legs, and a broken finger, and has not received adequate medical attention. He was recently found passed out in a diabetic coma in his cell. Hayes calls the prison regularly to demand they take care of him. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Paulette Dauteuil, who has been an activist since the Vietnam War, told TMO, “These men are people I met on the street. As a single mother who had never been arrested, it became my responsibility to take care of the prisoners - visiting, providing material support, helping out family members, and it became my responsibility to organize white people and educate them about political struggle... It is my duty to support Muslim political prisoners who have been framed by the government as much as these men who have been inside for a long time, because we cannot allow the government to do this to people.”</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Dauteuil moderated a discussion on the deteriorating health conditions of several other long term political prisoners and the need for the public to lobby aggressively for their release. Mutulu Shakur had a stroke last February. Abdul Maumin Khabir is suffering respiratory failure. Thomas Manning has not been able to walk for three years due to inadequate treatment of a knee infection. A damaged shoulder prevents him from wheeling his wheelchair. Anthony Jalil Bottom, the first political prisoner to ever submit a petition to the UN in 1976 has suffered a stroke. Mondo We Langa needs an oxygen tank, and Attorney Lynn Stewart, who represented Shaykh Omar Abdul Rahman, and who was jailed for giving a press conference about the his innocence, has Stage 4 breast cancer, which is spreading to her lungs. </span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />According to a new report by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, the federal Bureau of Prisons could save taxpayer money and reduce overcrowding if it better manages a program for the “compassionate release” of inmates who are dying or facing other extraordinary circumstances. However, this process requires that the Bureau of Prisons director appeals to the original sentencing judge for permission to release the prisoner! This is impossible without intense public pressure.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Former BLA political prisoner Kazi Toure who did 10 years of time commented, “If we can’t get Lynn Stewart out - a white woman who is not charged with any violent crime - who can we get out?”</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br />Kate Bonner Jackson of the Tarek Mehanna Defense Committee said, “The long haul is harder than mobilizing people to attend a trial,” as it involves teaching community members how to avoid becoming victims of the system themselves. One of the first things we must encourage people to do is to stop using the word terrorist,” advised Jackson. This word “delegitimizes the people’s struggle and is used to repress us.”</span>Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-36718232148732220552013-06-04T18:01:00.000-07:002013-06-04T18:02:08.950-07:00Exclusive interview with Jihad Abdulmumit<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
The legendary Jihad Abdulmumit spent 23 years in prison for his involvement with the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He now serves as co-chair of the National Jericho Movement and is on the Majlis Ash-Shura of Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA). Jihad Abdulmumit told TMO the story of how he found Islam in prison:</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
“I was a Marxist-Leninist in the Black Panther Party. That was the vibe back then - Maoism was the language we learned from revolutionary independence movements in North Africa in the 1950’s. My mother was a Christian, but I considered it the slavemaster’s religion, with the white Jesus - I ran from that. I always believed in God but my first exposure to the Nation of Islam seemed ludicrous, like a Black form of Christianity, with the Prophet considered God. Also, I had too many white friends to believe in the theory of the blue-eyed devil. Even though I was in BLA, I had white hippie friends. That era reflected struggle: the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Black Power. </div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
“In prison I was invited to Jummah. There I met Kamau Siddiki (Fred Hilton), who fathered Assata Shakur’s daughter. He was someone whom I greatly admired and respected, and I was surprised to find out that he was now a Muslim. He got out of prison, but he is back in prison now. For the first time, I saw brothers coming out of the bathroom after making wudu. It was all new to me. Kamal gave me some pamphlets, which I read. I used my Marxist mind to critique it. I looked for flaws in it but found no flaws in the concept of La ilaha il Allah. I made Shahada quickly - it took me about two weeks to decide. Islam answered my questions about the beginning of Creation and satisfied my confusion about whether matter has always existed or whether a Supreme Entity has always existed, with supreme divine consciousness. Now I understand that we will return to that Entity in the same way as our body, as matter, returns to the Earth. I was also moved to learn that the Prophet was illiterate.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
“I realized that the real me was the philosophical part, not just the outward revolutionary activist engaged in community building. Once my questions were answered about where we came from and where we are going, and about Allah being the Creator of the universe, and then the whole revelation of the Prophet, understanding his life, I bore witness to the fact that I believe that to be true. My involvement in the community hasn’t changed but my motivation has changed: Now it’s pleasing Allah, doing good deeds, being a good person. My fight against injustice and oppression hasn’t changed but my methods have changed to Quran and Sunnah. I believe it’s the best way of life. I try to set an example and I value other people and their beliefs also. I work with a lot of different people and I relish that. I recognize that we are truly diverse.”</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-85334648420812395672013-05-24T07:09:00.000-07:002013-05-24T07:11:10.485-07:00Muslim Legal Fund of America works for the people<br />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
TMO spoke to longtime community activist Muthanna al-Hanooti about the importance of the work of the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA), which opened a new Greater Detroit office in September 2012. MLFA also has offices in Dallas, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New Jersey, New York, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Al-Hanooti is the regional director for MLFA in Southfield, Michigan.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
This author first met al-Hanooti 20 years ago while doing charity work with Life for Relief and Development, while a Wayne State University undergrad student trying to raise awareness about the tragic effects of US sanctions on Iraqi children.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Al-Hanooti, a descendant of Palestinians expelled from Haifa in 1948, was born in Iraq, raised in Kuwait and moved to the US in 1980. He became interested in human rights at age 15 when he learned about relatives being persecuted by the former Iraqi regime. “I had a bad confrontation with the regime when I was 18 when I was denied enrollment in Baghdad University because I was not ‘Ba’thist.’ This experience was a great eye opener to me. Since then I was adamant advocate for the human rights violations in Iraq and elsewhere,” he told the Arab American News. His background involves TV production and management. Much of his career was spent in government and international relations.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I’m a beneficiary of the Muslim Legal Fund of America,” Al-Hanooti said. “My experiences opened my eyes to the negative and positive things about the legal system.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
In 2003, al-Hanooti was wrongfully accused of being a spy for Iraq working for Saddam Hussein’s foreign intelligence arm, the Iraqi Intelligence Service, after inviting US Congressmen to Iraq to observe the humanitarian situation. People who knew him personally were shocked to learn about the charges, because of his upstanding character and long time service to the community. He helped establish Life for Relief and Development, the Council on American Islamic Relations of Michigan, Focus on American and Arab Interests and Relations and other organizations. The US government charges carried a 15-year sentence, and were eventually all dismissed.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Al-Hanooti’s attorney Linda Moreno, who was provided to him by MLFA, spent 18 months examining classified documents, and the prosecution’s allegations, and created a strong defense that saved Al-Hanooti’s dignity and freedom. Judge Paul Borman sentenced al-Hanooti to serve 10 months, citing his life of charitable and civic work in rejecting the government’s call for considerably more prison time.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“As an attorney handling federal national security cases across the country, I have never seen a judge depart so radically from the government’s recommended sentence,” stated Ahmed Ghappour, an Egyptian-American trial attorney who focuses on national security law. “This underscores the fact that al-Hanooti is a committed humanitarian and a role model for the community he so dearly served. In the end, a stunning trajectory for Muthanna al-Hanooti: from spy to patriot.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
While MLFA has been criticized because the high profile Holy Land Foundation trials, and that of Aafia Siddique did not go well, resulting in life sentences, MLFA director Janney told Ihsan Alkhatib, Esq., PhD in an interview that “MLFA has won many other important cases, including that of Jamal Abusamhadeneh, who was falsely accused of being a member of a foreign organization. MLFA funded his defense and was successfully cleared of those charges. He is now a free American citizen; Linda Mahmoud, who had her 20-year security clearance revoked by her employer, the U.S. Department of Defense. MLFA funded her defense against accusation she was tied to Palestinian terrorists, and her security clearance was reinstated; Mohammad Salah, who has been wrongfully designated as a terrorist for the past 17 years, despite a jury finding him innocent. MLFA funded the lawsuit to lift the crippling designation. He is now free of this designation and can function normally in society; Imam Foad Farahi, who was the victim of government heavy-handed attempts to turn him into a spy against his congregation. He refused to deceive his community, but it nearly costs him his bid for citizenship. MLFA funded his defense and he is now on his way to becoming a U.S. citizen again.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
MLFA is currently funding around a dozen cases and has handled nearly a dozen past cases on the basis of each case’s potential impact on the status of civil liberties in America.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
One of the initiatives MLFA is launching this year is a preventative campaign aimed at increasing awareness of informants who try to snare community members into manufactured plots. They are providing posters for mosques to display that warn their communities that “If that new friend starts calling for ‘violent jihad,’ he might be an informant.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Law enforcement should focus on preventing crime, not creating it. Every community member needs to be aware of this issue. We also include our phone number on these posters for people who believe they are being targeted by informants,” said Janney.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Janney told Forum and Link that the Muslim Legal Fund of America is a charity organization started in late 2001 by a group of activists in the Dallas, TX area. “After watching the Clinton Administration lock away over two dozen Muslims and citing ‘secret evidence’ as justification, we knew that things could be taking a bad turn for Muslims in America. After the 9/11 terrorists attacks the government raided and shutdown Muslim charities and business in various American communities and prosecuted their leaders. We witnessed new laws being passed that grant the government unprecedented power to criminalize speech, treat religious observation as suspicious activities and violate the very civil liberties that serve as the basis of our society. Fortunately, we have MLFA, our supporters, and other like-minded organizations that are actively standing up to these challenges.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The MLFA is one of the nation’s leading organization’s committed to upholding justice. It is a 501(c)(3) charity that supports legal cases impacting the civil rights and liberties in America. Its staff, volunteers and supporters all share the common belief that treating people unfairly because of their religious beliefs undermines the core values that make America great. In addition to financially and logistically supporting legal cases, MLFA promotes justice by informing the media of the important issues and cases it supports in order for the public to learn more about them and see first hand the discrimination surrounding Muslim Americans.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19940731.post-52561990723027931992013-05-17T08:53:00.001-07:002013-05-17T08:53:38.493-07:00Malcolm X’s Grandson Gone at 28<br />
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
28 year old Malcolm Shabazz, the grandson and only male descendant of Malcolm X, who reportedly embraced Shia Islam recently and was becoming known as a political activist engaged with and serving to unite many different causes and communities, was murdered in Mexico on May 9, 2013.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“As the son of Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm Shabazz was apparently in the process of putting his life on a positive and productive path, attending the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and writing his memoirs. But now the family has to deal with yet another devastating setback,” writes Herb Boyd in the Daily Beast.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shabazz had made recent headlines in March 2013 when he was arrested after applying for a visa to travel to Iran to be a participant of the International Fajr Film Festival, in order to give a lecture addressing the issues of Hollywood and violence; in particular he was to address the use of film to promote modern violence & terrorism, and provoking clashes between religions & populations. He had already been featured from January 15th through 18th, 2013 as a featured interviewee for the Press TV documentary “The Façade of the American Dream.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Soon after his arrest, he appeared live on Iran’s Press TV reporting from New York under a headline reading, “They drew guns on my mother and me.” He also issued a public statement to former US Representative and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney that she posted on her Facebook page:</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“Given the storm of lies, and half-truths that come with being associated with being the descendant of El Hajj Malik el Shabazz, also known as Minister Malcolm X, any and everything that I do; great or small, good or not so good, real or imagined is subject to controversy. However, in this missive I will take this opportunity to properly & fully disclose what transpired. In the beginning of 2012 I had been informed that I was under investigation by the F.B.I.’s Counter Terrorism Task Force Unit located in Goshen, N.Y.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Shabazz goes on to describe various incidents of police harassment that had transpired recently, including the questioning of his neighbors. “They seek to neutralize my networking abilities… The formula for a public assassination is: the character assassination before the physical assassination; so one has to be made killable before the eyes of the public in order for their eventual murder to then deemed justifiable,” he wrote to McKinney last March. He also had this to say:</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I was not arrested by federal agents. I was taken in by a squad from the City of Middletown, N.Y.’s Police Department. I was not being held in an “undisclosed location” so to speak. I was actually being held in the Orange County Jail in Goshen, N.Y. However, from the time that I was booked at the precinct, to standing before a Judge the next day who told me to come back in 7 more, to being processed at the Orange County Jail and up until 7 days later I was not permitted to make any calls to notify anyone of my status; as though I had just been kidnapped from of the street.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Dave Zirin writes in the Nation: “Malcolm Shabazz had everything going for him. He was 28 years old, handsome as hell and a remarkably charismatic public speaker. He was an activist, an organizer and a proud father… He wanted to wield Malcolm’s memory to fight for a better world.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Malcolm Shabazz was the guest of a Mexican labor organizer, Miguel Suarez, who had recently been deported from the US, when he was reportedly thrown off the roof of the Palace Bar in Mexico while resisting robbery at 3am. Speculation abounds, about whether this Suarez, who was allegedly affiliated with narcotics trafficking, had lured him into a trap, or if he was just a new friend with a very stupid idea of fun.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
Herb Boyd writes in the Daily Beast: “With the confirmation of Malcolm Lateef Shabazz’s death, it marks the third generation in which the family has lost a member violently. Malcolm X’s father, Earl Little, was killed by the Black Legion or the Ku Klux Klan in 1931. As Malcolm X recalled in his autobiography, “Negroes in Lansing have always whispered that he was attacked, and then laid across some tracks for a streetcar to run over him. His body was cut almost in half.” Three of his father’s brothers were also killed by white men in Georgia, which prompted his father to leave the state. Malcolm Sr. was shot by assassins on February 21, 1965, as he prepared to address an audience at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. Along with the tragic deaths in the family’s patrilineal line, Betty Shabazz was killed in 1997 by a fire in which her grandson, Malcolm Shabazz, was accused and convicted of setting.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
His grandmother, Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, was killed in a fire he started 11 years ago. He was 12 years old. He had been shuttled in and out of correctional institutions until his release from Attica Prison in February 2007. Malcolm Shabazz at age 24 declared to media that he was on a mission: to clear his name, stay out of jail and rise from the ashes of his past. In an extensive interview with NewsOne in 2004, Shabazz explained the terrible event that led to his imprisonment as a youth.</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
“I didn’t mean for my grandmother to get hurt. I wasn’t thinking anything like that would happen. [I thought] she would go to the fire escape [but] she walked through the fire to get to me. I didn’t think she would walk through a fire for me.”</div>
<div align="justify" style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Verdana; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; padding: 0px 0px 15px;">
The death of Malcolm Shabazz at 28 makes him the youngest in the family to have his life end so violently. His grandfather was 39, still in the prime of his life, and on the road to even greater success after meaningful contacts with world leaders in Africa and the Middle East.</div>
Karin Friedemannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18385622231294561950noreply@blogger.com0