Chicago Politiics and the Mosque

I just don't know when this mosque news will end but here is an interesting new twist on the story.  This is from the Weekly Standard.

Who is Funding Alexi Giannoulias?
Influence.
By Daniel Halper

The Ground Zero mosque controversy has reawakened concerns about some Islamic Centers in the United States and their funding sources. As Claudia Rosett recently noted, we really don’t know where Feisal Abdul Rauf found $100 million to fund his mega-project in lower Manhattan. Congressman Peter King has asked the New York attorney general to investigate the piece of the puzzle as well, and Senator John McCain thinks, “If they move forward, [Rauf’s financing] clearly needs to be investigated.” 

The timing of all of this couldn’t be worse for Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias who faces questions of his own regarding who is funding his campaign. Take Mohammed Sahloul for example, who contributed $1,000 to the Giannoulias campaign on June 22.  

Sahloul is the former president of the Mosque Foundation, a Bridgeview mosque that has numerous links to terrorist organizations. The Mosque Foundation contributed roughly $400,000 to four Islamic charities that were later shut down by the federal government for links to terrorism. According to the Chicago Tribune, the organizations receiving funds were: the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the Benevolence International Foundation, the Islamic American Relief Agency, and Global Relief Foundation. 

In 2004, the Chicago Tribune wrote of one instance where Sheik Jamal Said, the mosque’s imam, raised $50,000 from his congregants for the legal defense of Sami Al-Arian, a former University of South Florida professor who pled guilty in 2006 to raising money for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. While soliciting the contributions, Said reportedly called Israel “a foreign, malignant and strange element on the blessed land.” 

There’s a lot of talk about radical influences and funding these days. Someone might want to take a closer look at these influences in political campaigns as well.

Indeed, someone should take a closer look at every politicians money bags. There are a lot of dots to be connected in these stories.

Radical Islam by other names - self described

Charles Krauthammer writes about this in the Washington Post:

Terror -- and candor in describing the Islamist ideology behind it

The Fort Hood shooter, the Christmas Day bomber, the Times Square attacker. On May 13, the following exchange occurred at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee:

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Tex.): Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?

Attorney General Eric Holder: There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions. . . .

Smith: Okay, but radical Islam could have been one of the reasons?

Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people --

Smith: But was radical Islam one of them?

Holder: There are a variety of reasons why people do these things. Some of them are potentially religious-based.

Potentially, mind you. This went on until the questioner gave up in exasperation.

A similar question arose last week in U.S. District Court when Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square attacker, pleaded guilty. Explained Shahzad:


"One has to understand where I'm coming from . . . I consider myself a mujahid, a Muslim soldier."


Well, that is clarifying. As was the self-printed business card of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, identifying himself as SoA: Soldier of Allah.


Holder's avoidance of the obvious continues the absurd and embarrassing refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge who out there is trying to kill Americans and why. In fact, it has banned from its official vocabulary the terms jihadist, Islamist and Islamic terrorism.

This head in the sand tactic does nothing to help make us more secure. It does make us less secure and an angry populace to boot.  Eric Holder knows the truth, he also knows he doesn't dare say it.
There is more, read it here.

It's Official -- Free Speech on the "Threatened List"

Update to this piece (10/04/2010)
-- The Muslim Revolution org in NYC removed the posting referenced below due to grassroots pressure.
-- YouTube removed the interview with Parker and Stone due to Muslim pressure.

------------------------------
Go read it for your self.

First -- Comedy Central censored the creators of South Park and wouldn't let them portray the prophet Mohammed in a bear suit due to death threats from Muslims (see website).

Read the threats from the Muslims (and justification of their threats) here on their blog -- which is allowed by free speech, by the way: http://revolutionmuslim.blogspot.com/

Then, if that weren't bad enough, in this interview, creators of South Park (Matt Stone and Trey Parker) talk about the hypocricisy of the media -- saying "It's open season on Jesus" you can say anything you want about him, but you can't make fun of the Muslims because you're afraid of them blowing you up." They go on to talk about how they are disappointed in Comedy Central.

They make the point very clearly -- Comedy Central is a business and has the right to censor their show all it wants -- as a business. But Comedy Central does not have free speech because they are getting threats for mentioning or even portraying Mohammed.

In this blog/threat the Muslims say defending the Muslim faith and killing those who insult Mohammed is not negotiable.

Free speech is not negotiable.

As much as we don't want to admit it, this is the beginning of a battle for basic rights. And someone must lose this fight.

John Brennan and the Flying Imams

From Front Page Magazine:

 It’s bad enough that John Brennan, President Obama’s national security deputy, thinks Gitmo jihadi recidivism is “not that bad.” But in his talk last week with Islamic law students at New York University, Brennan made even more reckless comments about our counterterrorism programs while pandering to one of the worst Muslim grievance-mongers and sharia peddlers in America.

During the question-and-answer session, Brennan welcomed a question from Omar Shahin. He identified himself as the head of the “North American Imams Federation.” What he didn’t mention was his role as the chief ringleader of the infamous flying imams. You remember them: They were the six Muslim clerics whose suspicious behavior — provocatively shouting “Allahu Akbar!” before boarding the plane, fanning out in the cabin before take-off, refusing to sit in their assigned seats, requesting seat-belt extenders, which they placed on the floor — led to their removal by a U.S. Airways crew in 2006.

h/t Jim H Little

Important News from Today

I am busy packing for a Christmas trip so do not have much time to spend posting on the blog. This is going to be a fairly long post with many links I think are very important.  I know I will be leaving out some but please read these and any links that come up with them.

From American Thinker:Merry Christmas, from Harry

     

 According to the latest news, Harry Reid has the 60 votes needed to pass Obamacare. While the legislation itself is not available for reading, to my knowledge, the Congressional Budget Office did report on it December 19. I parse that CBO report here so we know what is about to happen to us.

     The CBO does not make the accounting all that easy, despite its many tables of numbers. The number Democrats like to cite is that this plan will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the 10 years from 2010 to 019.

     Imagine that, more people insured and the deficit reduced. How do they do that? The short answer is: over $1 trillion in Medicare cuts and tax increases. For the longer story, read on.

From Investors Business Daily:
Penetration Even At The Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy
This is Part 3, read Part 1 and Part2

   

  The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level

Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

     An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.     As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book "Muslim Mafia." (Be sure to read all three parts of this.)

 
Read and support Michael Yon reporting from Afghanistan.
As Christmas Approaches
            As Christmas approaches, many people are thinking about the troops, who in turn are thinking about loved ones at home. Cards and letters are tacked up on many walls. The favorites are from the little kids, with questions like, "How do you go to the bathroom?" "Can you eat dinner?" "Does it hurt to get shooted?" It goes on.
               I emailed to Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger, asking if he had any words for the troops this Christmas. Jeff came right back with this awesome letter: Read the letter here.  
 
From the Telegraph UK more on the ongoing scandal and fraud of Climategate.
Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri        

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

       No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

        Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.  (my emphasis)

     What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

     These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year. Read the whole thing.

Michael Goodwin in the NY Post writes about the Baby Boomers shame
Dreading our future                 

      I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.

     Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

     I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.

     Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.

     Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the United Nations is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs.

     Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.

     President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.

Read more, but remember he is one of those who voted for him and we ALL suffer for it.

 
Take a look at these important blogs:
Power Line  (poll data; Lockerbie bomber)
 
Gateway Pundit  Watch a video of John McCain stand up for Sarah Palin, I saw it live this morning and it was a treat.
 
Trying to Grok has three good links. CBO assesment from the Corner;  and why the insistence for healthcare.
 
Leon Hale, if you've read his columns through the years you will enjoy reading his blog posts. He is still great.

The Miranda Question

The prosecution of KSM: It is obvious Eric Holder has not thought it through
By TigerHawk

Watch this selection from Eric Holder's Senate testimony on the use of the civilian criminal justice system to try jihadis who kill Americans. Leaving the substantive arguments to Andy McCarthy, who has just been beating the hell out of them over at The Corner for days, how is it possible that Holder was not ready for the Miranda question? Boggles my mind.

TigerHawk is a blog I check daily, sometimes several times. Go give him a look.

Is this the Real Reason for the NYC Trials?

Friday, November 13, 2009

From National Review Online:

Holder's Hidden Agenda, cont'd . . .   [Andy McCarthy]

This summer, I theorized that Attorney General Eric Holder — and his boss — had a hidden agenda in ordering a re-investigation of the CIA for six-year-old alleged interrogation excesses that had already been scrutinized by non-partisan DOJ prosecutors who had found no basis for prosecution. The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department's obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the "reckoning" that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring "torture" and "war crimes" indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama's base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.

Today's announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.

Let's take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs' execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today.

Moreover, KSM has no defense. He was under American indictment for terrorism for years before there ever was a 9/11, and he can't help himself but brag about the atrocities he and his fellow barbarians have carried out.

So: We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

If you listened to Rush Limbaugh yesterday he had a long and well reasoned monologue on this article by Andy McCarthy. You will want to read Rush’s transcript along with this.

It’s a Little Late, but…

From the Urgent Agenda blog:

AT LEAST IT'S A START - AT 7:53 P.M. Although this has clearly brought some anguish to the Associated Press, whose writer seems to feel the jihadists' pain, the United States has taken some limited financial action against Iran.  From AP:

NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors Thursday took steps to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.

In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets of the Alavi Foundation and an alleged front company.

The assets include Islamic centers in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston, more than 100 acres (40 hectares) of land in Virginia, and a 36-story office tower in New York.

Seizing the properties would be a sharp blow against Iran, which has been accused by the U.S. government of bankrolling terrorism and seeking a nuclear bomb.

No, it's not a sharp blow.  It's a baby step.  This will not stop one centrifuge.

There is more to read, this is one of my daily musts.

Mark Steyn Always Delivers the Truth

The Hole at the Heart of Our Strategy
We’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives terrorism.

Thirteen dead and 31 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a “tragedy” (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the “War on Terror.” Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America’s enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy — a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does.

And he’s a U.S. Army major.

And his superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity — as if believing that “the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the “noble” “heroism” of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base.

When it emerged early on Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: “Please judge Major Malik Nadal [sic] by his actions and not by his name.”
Concerned Tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that — and not just in the sense that the New York Times’s first report on Major Hasan never mentioned the words “Muslim” or “Islam,” or that ABC’s Martha Raddatz’s only observation on his name was that “as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer’s wife told me, ‘I wish his name was Smith.’”

What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man.

Since 9/11, we have, as the Twitterers recommend, judged people by their actions — flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on the whole we’re effective at responding with action of our own — taking out training camps in Afghanistan, rolling up insurgency networks in Fallujah and Ramadi, intercepting terror plots in London and Toronto and Dearborn.

But we’re scrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like “radical Islam” or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old “radical extremism.” But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates “radical Islam” from non-radical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate. An army psychiatrist, Major Hasan was an American, born and raised, who graduated from Viriginia Tech and then received his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, which works out to the best part of half a million dollars’ worth of elite education. But he opposed America’s actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and made approving remarks about jihadists on American soil. “You need to lock it up, Major,” cautioned his superior officer, Col. Terry Lee.

There is another page, read it here.

VDH on the Ft Hood Massacre

As always he is spot on:

Fort Hood—A now familiar horror

News accounts are spotty; emotions run high; reliable information is rare; rumor abounds. Nevertheless, what are we to make of Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan’s horrific rampage at Ft. Hood, Texas, where in cold-blooded fashion he murdered 12, and wounded at least 31?

I think on the one hand we will see the familiar therapeutic exegesis, in which we hear of traumatic stress syndrome, justified and principled opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars, generic mental illness, anger at being deployed overseas, or maltreatment from fellow soldiers due to his Muslim faith and various other efforts to “contextualize” the violence. (I am watching Major Hasan’s cousin on the news right now  [I think], on spec, explain that the otherwise normal killer was a victim of bias and was ill at ease with firearms (after shooting over 40 victims and surviving the carnage). I cannot imagine the trauma of family members of the dead hearing such sentiments aired, or knowing that the killer apparently had voiced prior  extremist sympathies.

On the other hand, one could instead see Hasan in a long line of killers and would-be murderers of the last decade that in some loose way express an Islamic anger at either American culture or the United States government or both, as a way of elevating their own sense of failure into some sort of legitimate cosmic jihad.

Prior to 2009, there have been at least 20 terrorist plots broken up after September 11, 2001—aimed at subways, malls, military bases, airports, bridges, and synagogues. Those foiled cabals are in addition to more common scattered murdering by freelancing angry killers, who in some very general way either evoked radical Islam, their own faith, the Palestinian cause, al-Qaedistic Islamism, or solidarity with worldwide Islam (from the Beltway sniper to the UNC and the San Francisco car murderers), and a number of lethal attacks on Jewish centers and temples resulting in numerous deaths (from the LAX attacks to the San Francisco and Seattle shootings).

In 2002, long ago, I wrote an article in which I called this al Qaedism and updated it with more recent examples in 2007.

In this year alone, aside from the recent mass murdering at Ft. Hood,  there have been four more terrorist plots uncovered. Colorado resident Najibullah Zazi  was recently indicted for conspiring to use explosives in the U.S., apparently as part of a plot to let off a bomb in New York on the anniversary of 9/11. In addition, North Carolina residents Daniel Patrick Boyd and Hysen Sherifi were arrested and charged with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel at Quantico, Virginia. In Texas, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi—a 19-year-old Jordanian citizen who was in the U.S. illegally—was arrested and charged after he placed a would-be bomb near Fountain Place, a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas.

Most recently in Boston, a Massachusetts man was arrested in connection with terrorist plots that included attacks on U.S. shopping malls and on two White House officials. Tarek Mehanna, 27, of Sudbury, Mass, was charged with plotting with other terrorists from 2001 to May 2008 to carry out overseas and domestic terrorist attacks— including killing shoppers and first responders at malls.

While there is sometimes  talk of backlash and anti-Muslim hysteria since 9/11, I don’t think the number of Muslims attacked or killed is comparable to the number of non-Muslims killed by Muslims who evoked Islam in some way as a catalyst for their angers. Nor do we see comparable serial Christian, Hindu, or Jewish-inspired attacks either against mosques and Muslims or the policies of the United States government, either by single actors or more active and organized plotters. I do not quite then understand our official government statements that “the attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the continued efforts of these extremists to engage in violence against civilians has (sic) led some in my country to view Islam as inevitably hostile not only to America and Western countries, but also to human rights. This has bred more fear and mistrust.” In theory this sounds magnanimous and serious. In fact, I would like to see  examples of “some” and serial incidents where very many Americans out of unwarranted furor have helped breed “fear and mistrust”.

This is the first page, read the second page here.

I Missed the Wall Street Journal Online Yesterday

I've had a busy several days lately and my trying to keep up with all the newspapers online and all the blogs has been a little slack. I know, I know, I've sure managed to post a lot of "stuff." But I have missed a lot, too. Today I finally happened on this article from the Wall Street Journal. It needs to be read by everyone.

Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’ by Debra Burlingame
The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in.

Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.”

On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner—Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber”—were being
allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others.

This is just the first two paragraphs, read it all.

Just Not That Into You

That is what Laura Rosen Cohen says about Muslims in Front Page Magazine. Cute title, but a very serious subject. Here's just a portion of her article. Click on the link above to read it all.

“I have the highest respect for the religion of Islam, and recognize the heroic efforts of many religious leaders in contemporary Iran to stand up to the repressions wrought by the ruling system,” says Jewish human rights activist Irwin Cotler.“I refuse to associate these crimes generically with the mullahs of Iran, and I deplore any attempt to do so,” he continued in his July 24th letter to the editor. And thus began yet another misguided chapter of the never-ending Jewish and liberal quest for the Islamic world to “like us”.
Cotler’s bizarre statements have little to do with reality. Iran is where
religious fervour , led by a religious leader-the Ayatollah Khomeni, brought upon the Islamic revolution. It is religious fervour -- inspired by a perverse interpretation of Shiia Islam -- that motivates Iran’s genocidal leader, with the continued blessings of the religious establishment. It has been said that a definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Certainly, there can be no better explanation for Jews, and particularly liberal Jews to keep trying new ways of currying favour in the eyes of the Islamic world.