Stealth Jihadists Insruct LA officials on Terror

Two leaders of an Islamist organization, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), are scheduled to lecture Southern California law enforcement officials Monday about radicalization despite a history of opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts.



Salam al-Marayati and Edina Lekovic will join high-ranking officials from all law enforcement agencies from Greater Los Angeles at the two-day conference in Pismo Beach, Calif., entitled "Radicalization Conference 2010: Radicalization and Homegrown Violent Extremism."



Throughout its history, MPAC and its leaders have issued statements in support of terrorist groups like Hizballah and, perhaps most significantly, disseminating incendiary statements that actually cause Muslims to be radicalized. The group also has followed a consistent pattern of opposing U.S. counterterrorism efforts and defending designated terrorist organizations and their supporters.



Those positions also involve perpetuating the false narrative that U.S. policy is engaged in a war against Islam. MPAC has taken aim at many U.S. counter-terrorism efforts and prosecutions. For example:



* In a March 2003 Los Angeles Times article discussing the FBI's relationship with Muslim American communities, al-Marayati attacked the FBI for allegedly profiling only Muslims for prosecution, a demonstrably false charge. "[T]he FBI's policy of targeting people because of their race and religion…That's what they've been doing since the attacks, and we don't know of any case that has resulted in the arrest, indictment or prosecution of a terrorist," al-Marayati said.
* Even though the LA Fusion Center – consisting of representatives of the FBI, Los Angeles Police and Los Angeles Sheriff who exchange intelligence – is hosting this conference on radicalization, MPAC frequently criticized the creation and use of fusion centers. In April 2009, the organization supported a statement released by the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections (AMT) calling for their elimination: "We are fully united in asking the Obama administration to address … use of McCarthy-era tactics, most notably dissemination of Islamophobic analysis by federally-funded 'fusion centers' to local law enforcement agencies."
* MPAC has also targeted the FBI's use of informants and undercover officers whom MPAC alleges instigate terrorist plots. Despite the fact that informants are widely used including in drug, gang, and organized crime investigations, a February 2009 MPAC press release argued that "federal law enforcement cannot establish trust with American Muslim communities through meetings and town hall forums, while at the same time sending paid informants who instigate violent rhetoric in mosques…"



In April 2009, after federal authorities disrupted an alleged plot to bomb synagogues and fire missiles at American military aircraft, Al-Marayati continued his attacks against law enforcement. Asked in an interview whether it was useful to have informants in mosques, Al-Marayati replied by suggesting that the defendants, later convicted, were not real terrorist threats:



"These were individuals who were either petty criminals or gullible people who were guilty of stupidity. They were not imminent threats to our country, as the FBI has stated," Al-Marayati told Fox News. "We want those tax dollars to be used to fight al-Qaeda…"



In a 2003 counterterrorism paper, MPAC advocated the removal of Hamas, Hizballah, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad from the government's list of terrorist groups. The organization argued that Washington's "preoccupation" with these groups "raises the question as to whether targeting Palestinian groups serves true national security interests or is based on political considerations."



And in one of the most high profile cases, MPAC repeatedly went to bat for Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida professor arrested in 2003 for allegedly serving as North American leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), a designated terrorist organization said to be responsible for the deaths of two Americans and more than 100 Israelis. Yet, despite all of this indisputable evidence showing Al-Arian to be an officer in a murderous Islamic terrorist organization, MPAC and al-Marayati defended Al-Arian when he was first arrested, protested that he was being put on trial and even defended him after Al Arian pled guilty in 2006 to one charge of making and receiving contributions of funds, goods, and services to or for the benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A month earlier, , al-Marayati had lauded Al-Arian at a fundraising dinner as a man who "defied the odds in a system that is unfair," adding, "[T]here is no way that you can get a fair trial in view of any of these issues today."



However, the judge presiding over Al-Arian's case saw things differently. Judge James S. Moody, Jr., said Al-Arian continued to lie about seeking "only aid for widows and orphans. Your only connection to widows and orphans is that you create them, even among the Palestinians."



One reason for MPAC's participation in the conference may be traced to the involvement of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Sheriff Lee Baca has become a fixture at events sponsored by Islamist organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and frequently defends their radicalism.



During a House committee hearing earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., questioned Baca his close relationship with CAIR. The Los Angeles Times reported that Baca responded "When you attack CAIR… you attack virtually every Muslim in America." Souder then noted the testimony of an FBI agent identifying CAIR as a Hamas front. "I served in the United States Marine Corps," Baca shot back. "…. CAIR is not a terrorist supporting organization."



The record indicates otherwise. CAIR was listed as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Hamas funding trial of HLF, been described in court as a Hamas front by an FBI agent and had its relationship with the FBI severed based on exhibits which leave open the question "whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and HAMAS."



In featuring MPAC officials, who claim to speak for all Muslims, as speakers before this prestigious law enforcement conference, the organizers and the participants confer respectability on an organization that has helped foster radicalization, not counter it. This action abets a deception deliberately perpetrated by MPAC that it is a "moderate" group that is opposed to Islamist terrorism. For a more extensive examination of MPAC's statements supporting terrorist groups, its record of issuing incendiary statements claiming that the FBI and USG are involved in "selective prosecution" of Muslims simply because of their religion (see the IPT's dossier on MPAC here.)



Conference organizers are ignoring available evidence of MPAC's radicalism, instead believing the organization to be an appropriate partner in countering radicalism. Now it's time to ask whether the other organizers of the event were aware of MPAC's history of radicalism and counter-productive "counter-terrorism" assistance. And if they were aware, or did not bother to ask questions since MPAC is so prominent in Southern California, what does that say about the ability of these law enforcement groups to truly detect threats to American society?

Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2328/executive-summary-la-law-enforcement-conference

Pamela Geller Worst Person In The World! (REALLY!)

Well, that didn't take long. He's baaaaack from a sweet but altogether too-short suspension. Tonight I was Keith Undershtupper's Olbermann's Worst Person in the World. And here I thought my week could not be topped. This makes the honor being given to me this on Friday night at The Breakers, the Freedom Center's Annie Taylor Award for Courage, so much richer.

Now this is the cherry on the yellowcake. This is my what, fourth time honored by this asshat (here and here and here -- kinda). And he calls what I do the "two-minutes hate"? Maybe his conscience was bothering him, if he still has one: the closest thing to a genuine Orwellian two-minutes hate in the media today is Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" segment.
[Play YouTube video]
BTW, I have never heard of the church this maroon is talking about, let alone blogged about it, but so what? Facts are irrelevant. And so what if people asked about a building they thought was a mosque? So what?
Oh, and Keefer, the Ground Zero mosque is a triumphal mosque :)

First Terrorist Trial Disaster

The lesson of Ghailani's trial fiasco Pamela Geller, The Guardian

Al-Qaida declared war on the US in 1998, so let's not be moral idiots: try their combatants in Guantánamo, not civilian courts

Rubble of US embassy in Nairobi after 1998 bombing A woman is carried from the rubble of the US embassy in Nairobi in August 1998 after it was bombed by al-Qaida. At his trial in New York, 17 November 2010, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was found guilty on a single charge of conspiracy for his role in the attack. Photograph: Khalil Senosi/AP

On Wednesday, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Guantánamo detainee to be tried in civilian court in New York, was acquitted of all but one charge, that of conspiracy for his role in jihadist terror bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam, which killed 224 people. His acquittal is the first poisonous fruit of Obama's policy of treating acts of war as law enforcement issues. It also shows what is wrong with doing so.

Apparently, the evidence charging him with 224 counts of murder could not be used in court, because "coercive" techniques were used to get information from him. The jury did find him guilty of "conspiracy to destroy government buildings". So, the al-Qaida terrorist killed 224 people and he's guilty of… destruction of public property?

This is a serious setback for the US – another breathtaking failure on the part of the Obama administraton, yet again putting Americans and national security at risk.

Yet, former prosecutor and executive director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth has argued that such trials, including the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, should be in New York, since "the victims' families have a right to witness these trials." Yet, on 11 September 2001, all of America was under attack, not just the 9/11 families – it was an act of war against the United States of America.

Roth claims that "by choosing a federal court over the discredited military commissions, the US would show that it values the rule of law, trying even those accused of the worst crimes in a system that is broadly recognised as fair." In reality, by choosing a federal court, we are once again refusing to address the root cause. By pretending that these attacks were not intended to take down America, and work toward overthrowing the government and installing a Sharia-based Islamic government, we yet again surrender to Islamic supremacism and imperialism.

There have been close to 20,000 documented Islamist-inspired attacks worldwide since 9/11; all were inspired by the same Islamic jihadi ideology and given the imprimatur of a Muslim cleric. This is war. It takes incomprehensible delusion and a denial of objective reality to think that combatants in that war are comparable to civilian criminals and should be tried in the same way.

Yet, Roth contends that civilian trials are necessary because "any verdict by the military commissions will inevitably be tainted by the stigma of Guantánamo, where they are held." Barack Obama also claimed, in May 2009, that there was "no question that Guantánamo set back the moral authority that is America's strongest currency in the world."

I disagree. If America prosecutes those who kept this country safe from people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as Obama seems prepared to do, that would set back our moral authority. If America turns her back on the jihad against women, Christians, Jews and non-believers, that would set back America's moral authority.

What's wrong with Guantánamo? Allegations of torture there have been politically motivated, spurious, and pale in comparison to Saddam Hussein at his most lenient. The idea that it is a bad thing that Gitmo is holding jihadists who would slaughter thousands if given the opportunity is evidence of dhimmitude and surrender to the enemy narrative, and to the disinformation that the enemy has been producing.

Moreover, detaining enemy combatants without trial is entirely consistent with the "rule of law" that applies in wartime. Indeed, the Obama Justice Department has found itself making just this argument, albeit without fanfare. In short, indefinite detention at Gitmo "destroyed our credibility" only with Bush-deranged leftists – isn't it amazing how uninterested in our credibility they've suddenly become now that their guy is accountable?

Some of Roth's attempts to justify New York civilian trials for jihadis are bizarre; others simply wrong. "Some opponents of holding the trials in New York," says Roth, "cite purported security concerns, but these fears are overblown." Really? Only if you consider human life worthless, as our enemy does. Roth also says that "the war framework is wrong for such awful crimes since it allows the suspects to glorify themselves as combatants."

Actually, a civilian trial is much more likely than a military tribunal to turn into a dog-and-pony show. In a civilian court in New York, the mass-murdering jihadis would not be on trial; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the military would be the real defendants. Such trials will become veritable jihadi circuses, in which jihadists can propagandise to the whole world in courtrooms choked with reporters.

It would also be much easier for them to game the system. Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the jihadists who bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993, recalled that one of them told another: "Tell them, 'I don't know. I'm not talking to you. Bring my lawyer.' Never talk to them. Not a word. 'My lawyer' – that's it! That's what's so beautiful about America.

msnbc tv: Medal of Honor for Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta

msnbc tv: Medal of Honor for Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta
This Medal is presented to a living soldier for the first time in 40 years.

msnbc tv: Debunction Junction

msnbc tv: Debunction Junction

Litigation Jihad

Robert Spencer, Human Events

Islamic supremacists are at war with freedom of speech in the West: The 57-government Organization of the Islamic Conference has been campaigning for years now at the United Nations to compel Western states to criminalize “religious hatred”—that is, honest discussions of how Islamic jihadists use Islamic texts and teachings to justify violence and to recruit peaceful Muslims to their cause. One little-noted weapon in this war is the courtroom: using libel and defamation laws as weapons to cow critics and intimidate them into silence. My courageous and indefatigable colleague Pamela Geller is the latest target.

Muslim foes of the freedom of speech have used this weapon frequently over the years. The Hamas-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has sued many, and has threatened legal action against many more. In 2006 CAIR dropped a $1.35 million libel suit against Andrew Whitehead of Anti-CAIR, who had called CAIR a “terrorist front organization,” after Whitehead’s lawyers asked probing questions about the group during the discovery process.

In another notable case, billionaire Saudi Khalid bin Mahfouz sued writer Rachel Ehrenfeld in libel-friendly Britain for writing in her book Funding Evil that he was involved in funding Hamas and al-Qaeda. Bin Mahfouz denied that he had knowingly given money to either. This case became the foundation for new laws protecting American writers from libel rulings in other countries.

Now Ohio lawyer Omar Tarazi has filed a $10-million defamation lawsuit against Geller for elements of her reporting on the case of Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who kicked off a year-long custody battle when she fled from her home in fear for her life after her Muslim father discovered her conversion to Christianity. (The battle ended when Rifqa turned eighteen and was free to live on her own as a Christian.)


[...]

“Rifqa Bary,” says Geller, “was a rebuke to all of the lies of Islamic supremacist narrative,” since she brought to national attention the Islamic death penalty for apostates, which Islamic apologists in the West routinely deny even exists. The Rifqa Bary affair, Geller explains, was a test case: Would Islamic supremacists be able to manipulate the American legal system to compel someone wishing to leave Islam to return to it, or would her freedom of conscience be upheld?

When Rifqa turned eighteen without having been forced back into her parents’ home, CAIR and its allied forces suffered a major setback. “Her victory,” said Geller, “is a stunning defeat for them and they will take it out on anyone who helped her.”

Fed Up Muslims Declare War on Australia

Muslims at Lakemba listen to speakers / Pic: John Grainger Source: The Daily Telegraph

"We want the Muslim people to have their say. We are telling them that Labor has not done the job and that it's time for them to go."

If this is not, in and of itself, concrete evidence of intent and motive, I don't know what is. It's interesting how Muslims insist upon separate status, special class, sharia, etc in their "host" countries. Parallel societies.

"A house divided cannot stand." Abraham Lincoln.

Check out the headline "fed up" -- indeed. And notice this goes far beyond "extremists." It is mainstream.

Fed-up Muslims to take on ALP Daily Telegraph (hat tip Peggy)

ISLAMIC leaders have declared war on the State Government, calling for pro-Muslim candidates to run in key western Sydney Labor seats.

Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan yesterday used the Eid al-Adha festival at Lakemba to outline his group's political ambitions.

In front of more than 5000 followers, Mr Dandan said Labor had to be kicked out of office at the March election.

"We want the Muslim people to have their say. We are telling them that Labor has not done the job and that it's time for them to go," he said.

Mr Dandan said the Labor seats of Auburn, Lakemba, Liverpool, Bankstown and Canterbury would be targeted. He did not rule out the possibility of running independent candidates at the election.

"I can't disclose our strategy but our message is clear. We need change. Our people have been marginalised and left behind," Mr Dandan said.

Mr Dandan, a member of the Arabic Chamber of Commerce who served as a Muslim Reference Group adviser to former prime minister John Howard, said councils and Labor MPs had discriminated against Sydney's Muslims.

"Enough is enough. Labor thinks these are safe seats. That's why they don't spend the money," he said.

"And the Liberal Party, why would they bother?"

Former NRL star Hazem El Masri has been sounded out by the Liberal Party to stand.

While Labor MPs were nowhere to be seen, Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell sent an Arabic-speaking spokesman.

More than 25,000 people attended the Lakemba mosque yesterday to celebrate the second most important day on the Muslim religious calendar.

Atlas Shrugs