SHAKEELSREFLECTIONS

Let's burn the village to save it

2012-01-01T10:15:00.000-08:00

Friends of all persuasion ... Are you as deeply mad as I am today to begin 2012? Never in my half a century of life I was so mad to start a new year.

The charming fool made lawlessness, a law!

What other choice do I have, but to re-commit to never accept and always refuse to be subjected by the legal lawlessness of our country!

I was near convinced in 2011 but now fully at peace to embrace the adage of the sages ... "let's burn this village to save it." Would you join me?

shakeel.
Jan 1, 2012.

Mic Check for Holy-days & Holi-days

2011-12-23T09:42:00.000-08:00

Mic Check for Holy-days & Holi-days
Shakeel Syed, Dec 24, 2011

I say Mic Check, for the holy-days and
You say Mic Check, for the the holi-days

You say Mic Check, for 2011 that was theirs
I say Mic Check, for 2012 that will be ours

O my people of faith and persons of conscience
Let us all sing Mic Check for the sake of Mic Check

Mic Check for Hanukkah and Moses
Mic Check for Christmas and Jesus
Mic Check for Kwanzaa and King

Mic Check for the faithful and Mic Check for the faithless
Mic Check for the jobless and Mic Check for the homeless
Mic Check for the voiceless and Mic Check for the powerless

O my people of faith and persons of conscience
Let us all sing Mic Check for the sake of Mic Check

Mic Check to gut the greed and Mic Check to castigate the corruption
Mic Check to hound the hunger and Mic Check to prune the poverty
Mic Check to over the oppression and Mic Check to toss the tyranny

O my people of faith and persons of conscience
Let us all sing Mic Check for the sake of Mic Check

Mic Check for the wretched of the earth
Mic Check for their freedom and dignity, and
Mic Check for our revolution and not their reform

I say Mic Check, for the holy-days and
You say Mic Check, for the the holi-days

You say Mic Check, for 2011 that was theirs
I say Mic Check, for 2012 that will be ours.

Occupy LA - Sanitizing City Hall Park

2011-12-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

Sanitizing City Hall Park & Sanitizing the Story

Is There Any Difference Between Bush & Obama?

2011-11-29T14:25:00.000-08:00

Is There Any Fundamental Difference Between the Bush and Obama Presidencies in the Area of Domestic Civil Liberites?
Obama's Assault: 20 Examples
By Bill Quigley
COUNTER PUNCH

The Obama administration has affirmed, continued and expanded almost all of the draconian domestic civil liberties intrusions pioneered under the Bush administration. Here are twenty examples of serious assaults on the domestic rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, the right to privacy, the right to a fair trial, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience that have occurred since the Obama administration has assumed power. Consider these and then decide if there is any fundamental difference between the Bush presidency and the Obama presidency in the area of domestic civil liberties.

Patriot Act

On May 27, 2011, President Obama, over widespread bipartisan objections, approved a Congressional four-year extension of controversial parts of the Patriot Act that were set to expire. In March of 2010, Obama had already signed a similar extension of the Patriot Act for one year. These provisions allow the government, with permission from a special secret court, to seize records without the owner's knowledge, conduct secret surveillance of suspicious people who have no known ties to terrorist groups, and to obtain secret roving wiretaps on people.

Criminalization of Dissent and Militarization of the Police

Anyone who has gone to a peace or justice protest in recent years has seen it - local police have been turned into SWAT teams, and SWAT teams into heavily armored military. Officer Friendly, or even Officer Unfriendly, has given way to police uniformed like soldiers, with SWAT shields, shin guards, heavy vests, military helmets, visors, and vastly increased firepower. Protest police sport ninja turtle-like outfits and are accompanied by helicopters, special tanks, and even sound-blasting vehicles first used in Iraq. Wireless fingerprint scanners, first used by troops in Iraq, are now being utilized by local police departments to check motorists. Facial recognition software introduced in war zones is now being used in Arizona and other jurisdictions. Drones just like the ones used in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan are being used along the Mexican and Canadian borders. These activities continue to expand under the Obama administration.

Wiretaps

Wiretaps for oral, electronic or wire communications, approved by federal and state courts, are at an all-time high. Wiretaps in 2010 were up 34 per cent from 2009, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

Criminalization of Speech

Muslims in the U.S.A. have been targeted by the Obama Department of Justice for inflammatory things they said or published on the Internet. First Amendment protection of freedom of speech, most recently stated in a 1969 Supreme Court decision, Brandenberg v. Ohio, says the government cannot punish inflammatory speech, even if it advocates violence, unless it is likely to incite or produce such action. A Pakistani resident legally living in the U.S.A. was indicted by the DOJ in September 2011 for uploading a video on YouTube. The DOJ said the video was supportive of terrorists, even though nothing on the video called for violence.

Domestic Government Spying on Muslim Communities

In activities that offend freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and several other laws, the NYPD and the CIA have partnered to conduct intelligence operations against Muslim communities in New York and elsewhere. The CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans, works with the police on "human mapping," commonly known as racial and religious profiling to spy on the Muslim community. Under the Obama administration, the Associated Press reported in August 2011, informants known as "mosque crawlers" monitor sermons, bookstores and cafes.

Top Secret America

In July 2010, the Washington Post released "Top Secret America," a series of articles detailing the results of a two-year investigation into the rapidly expanding world of homeland security, intelligence and counterterrorism. It found that 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence, at about 10,000 locations across the U.S.A. Every single day, the National Security Agency intercepts and stores more than 1.7 billion emails, phone calls and other types of communications. The FBI has a secret database named Guardian that contains reports of suspicious activities filed from federal, state and local law enforcement. According to the Washington Post,Guardian contained 161,948 files as of December 2009. From that database, there have been 103 full investigations and at least five arrests, the FBI reported. The Obama administration has done nothing to cut back on the secrecy.

Other Domestic Spying

There are at least 72 fusion centers across the U.S.A., which collect local domestic police information and merge it into multi-jurisdictional intelligence centers, according to recent report by the ACLU. These centers share information from federal, state and local law enforcement and some private companies to secretly spy on Americans. These all continue to grow and flourish under the Obama administration.

Abusive FBI Intelligence Operations

The Electronic Frontier Foundation documented thousands of violations of the law by FBI intelligence operations, from 2001 to 2008, and estimate that there are over 4,000 such violations each year. President Obama issued an executive order to strengthen the Intelligence Oversight Board, an agency which is supposed to make sure the FBI, the CIA and other spy agencies are following the law. No other changes have been noticed.

Wikileaks

The publication of U.S. diplomatic cables by Wikileaks and then by main stream news outlets sparked condemnation by Obama administration officials, who said the publication of accurate government documents was nothing less than an attack on the United States. The attorney general announced a criminal investigation and promised, "this is not saber rattling." Government officials warned State Department employees not to download the publicly available documents. A State Department official and Columbia University officials warned students that discussing Wikileaks or linking documents to social networking sites could jeopardize their chances of getting a government job, a posture maintained for several days until reversed by other Columbia officials. At the time this was written, the Obama administration continued to try to find ways to prosecute the publishers of Wikileaks.

Censorship of Books by the CIA

In 2011, the CIA demanded extensive cuts from a memoir by former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan, in part because it made the agency look bad. Soufan's book detailed the use of torture methods on captured prisoners and Agency mistakes that led to 9/11. Similarly, a 2011 book on interrogation methods by former CIA agent Glenn Carle was subjected to extensive black outs. The CIA under the Obama administration continues its push for censorship.

Blocking Publication of Photos of U.S. Soldiers Abusing Prisoners

In May 2009, President Obama reversed his position of three weeks earlier and refused to release photos of U.S. soldiers abusing prisoners. In April 2009, the U.S. Department of Defense told a federal court that it would release the photos. The photos were part of nearly 200 criminal investigations into abuses by soldiers.

Technological Spying

In August 2011, hearing rumors to protest against fatal shootings by their police, the Bay Area Transit System shut down cell service in four rail stations. Western companies sell email surveillance software to repressive regimes in China, Libya and Syria, to use against protestors and human rights activists. Surveillance cameras monitor residents in high crime areas, street corners and other governmental buildings. Police department computers ask for and receive daily lists from utility companies, with addresses and names of every home in their area. Computers in police cars scan every license plate of every car they drive by. The Obama administration has made no serious effort to cut back these new technologies of spying on citizens.

Use of "State Secrets" to Shield Government and Others from review

When the Bush government was caught hiring private planes from a Boeing subsidiary to transport people for torture to other countries, the Bush administration successfully asked the federal trial court to dismiss a case by tortured detainees, because having a trial would disclose "state secrets" and threaten national security. When President Obama was elected, the "state secrets" defense was reaffirmed in arguments before a federal appeals court. It continues to be a mainstay of the Obama administration effort to cloak their actions and the actions of the Bush administration in secrecy.

In another case, it became clear in 2005 that the Bush FBI was avoiding the Fourth Amendment requirement to seek judicial warrants to get telephone and Internet records by going directly to the phone companies and asking for the records. The government and the companies, among other methods of surveillance, set up secret rooms where phone and Internet traffic could be monitored. In 2008, the government granted the companies amnesty for violating the privacy rights of their customers. Customers sued anyway. But the Obama administration successfully argued to the district court, among other defenses, that disclosure would expose "state secrets" and should be dismissed. The case is now on appeal.

Material Support

The Obama administration successfully asked the U.S. Supreme Court not to apply the First Amendment and to allow the government to criminalize humanitarian aid and legal activities of people providing advice or support to foreign organizations, which are listed on the government list as terrorist organizations. The material support law can now be read to penalize people who provide humanitarian aid or human rights advocacy. The Obama administration solicitor general argued to the court, "When you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs." The court agreed with the Obama argument that national security trumps free speech in these circumstances.

Chicago Anti-war Grand Jury Investigation

In September 2010, FBI agents raided the homes of seven peace activists in Chicago, Minneapolis and Grand Rapids, seizing computers, cell phones, passports, and records. More than 20 anti-war activists were issued federal grand jury subpoenas and more were questioned across the country. Some of those targeted were members of local labor unions, others - members of organizations like the Arab American Action Network, the Columbia Action Network, the Twin Cities Anti-War Campaign, and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. Many were active internationally and visited resistance groups in Columbia and Palestine. Subpoenas directed people to bring anything related to trips to Columbia, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Israel or the Middle East. In 2011, the home of a Los Angeles activist was raided, and he was questioned about his connections with the September 2010 activists. All of these investigations are directed by the Obama administration.

Punishing Whistleblowers

The Obama administration has prosecuted five whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, more than all the other administrations in U.S. history put together. They charged a National Security Agency advisor with ten felonies under the Espionage Act for telling the press that government eavesdroppers were wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on misguided and failed projects. After their case collapsed, the government, which was chastised by the federal judge as engaging in unconscionable conduct, allowed him to plead to a misdemeanor and walk. The administration has also prosecuted former members of the CIA, the State Department, and the FBI. They even tried to subpoena a journalist and one of the lawyers for the whistleblowers.

Bradley Manning

Army Private Bradley Manning is accused of leaking thousands of government documents to Wikileaks. These documents expose untold numbers of lies by U.S. government officials, wrongful killings of civilians, policies to ignore torture in Iraq, information about who is held at Guantanamo, cover-ups of drone strikes and abuse of children, and much more damaging information about U.S. malfeasance. Though Daniel Ellsberg and other whistleblowers say Bradley is an American hero, the U.S. government has jailed him and is threatening him with charges of espionage, which may be punished by the death penalty. For months, Manning was held in solitary confinement and forced by guards to sleep naked. When asked about how Manning was being held, President Obama personally defended the conditions of his confinement, saying he had been assured they were appropriate and meeting our basic standards.

Solitary Confinement

At least 20,000 people are in solitary confinement in U.S. jails and prisons, some estimate several times that many. Despite the fact that federal, state and local prisons and jails do not report actual numbers, academic research estimates tens of thousands are kept in cells for 23 to 24 hours a day in super-maximum security units and prisons, in lockdown, in security housing units, in "the hole," and in special management units or administrative segregation. Human Rights Watch reports that one-third to one-half of the prisoners in solitary are likely mentally ill. In May 2006, the U.N. Committee on Torture concluded that the United States should "review the regimen imposed on detainees in supermax prisons, in particular, the practice of prolonged isolation." The Obama administration has taken no steps to cut back on the use of solitary confinement in federal, state or local jails and prisons.

Special Administrative Measures

Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) are extra harsh conditions of confinement imposed on prisoners (including pre-trial detainees) by the attorney general. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons imposes restrictions such as segregation and isolation from all other prisoners, and limitation or denial of contact with the outside world, for example such as: no visitors except attorneys, no contact with news media, no use of phone, no correspondence, no contact with family, no communication with guards, 24-hour video surveillance and monitoring. The DOJ admitted in 2009 that several dozen prisoners, including several pre-trial detainees, mostly Muslims, were kept incommunicado under SAMs. If anything, the use of SAMs has increased under the Obama administration.

* * *

These twenty concrete examples document a sustained assault on domestic civil liberties in the United States under the Obama administration. Rhetoric aside, how different has Obama been from Bush in this area? COUNTER PUNCH -

Bill Quigley is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans. He also serves as associate legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

On 10 Year Anniversary of US Killing in Afghanistan

2011-10-07T22:24:00.000-07:00

Interfaith Communities United for Justice & Peace organized a public rally and civil disobedience commemorating 10 year anniversary of US invasion on Afghanistan - now the longest war.

One of the main street in downtown Los Angeles was shut down while we marched that's followed by talks and some music. Pasted below is my brief remarks and then some press clips from the action today.

My remarks: At this ten year anniversary of the US invasion on Afghanistan, I stand with my fellow Americans as a “bruised American” in a “broken America” --- whose ideals I cherish but whose policies I despise. If the U.S. policy of pre-emptive war is any justification to stop potential threats then America may be bombed every day!

Today, I mourn all victims of America … the young soldiers of our nation and also the suckling children of the wailing mothers and the grieving fathers in Afghanistan.

On this day, I renew my pledge to oppose any leader of any color - for invading countries and killing innocent people and calling them a mere collateral damage.

I believe, the old America 1.0 is near dead --- and

I believe, the new America 2.0 is born in Manhattan and growing up here in Los Angeles.

I ask America to join me today – not in mourning the death of old America but to nurture the new America

A New America - that does not shy in questioning the wisdom of waging wars

A New America – that refuses to submit to the policies of death and destruction

A New America – that insists for life and for health, for education and for work

And most importantly --- a New America – that embraces all of humanity as the creation of God

Press Coverage from the action today:

- ABC - Channel 7

- NBC Channel 4

- Yahoo News & KCAL - Chnnel 9

- ICUJP video collage Part-1 and Part-2

My Tear Drops

2011-09-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

My Tear Drops
shakeel syed – september eleven – two thousand eleven
…….

My tears are more than a drop - they are an ocean pregnant with silent sorrows

In it are my tears for the thousands on the morning of september eleven
Those who were dressed in slacks and shorts, and
Those who were running or being run in the strollers
… full of colors and cheers were they.

They were each on their own way but apart from one another, and yet …
Every one of them were one created by the same One

My tears are more than a drop - they are an ocean pregnant with silent sorrows

In it are my tears for the millions since october seven
Those who were shirtless and in jilbabs
Those who were plowing their fields and playing with their children
… full of life and love were they.

They were each on their own way but apart from one another, and yet …
Every one of them were one created by the same One

My tears are more than a drop - they are an ocean pregnant with silent sorrows

In it are my tears for tens of thousands since march nineteen
Those who were shoeless and in burqas
Those who were idling around the corner and learning in madrassat
… full of hope and happiness were they.

They were each on their own way but apart from one another, and yet …
Every one of them were one created by the same One

My tears are more than a drop - they are an ocean pregnant with silent sorrows

In it are my tears for the hundreds since january eleven
Those who were innocent fathers and carefree sons
Those who were simply striving and shyly singing
… full of mercy and mischief were they

My tears are more than a drop - they are an ocean pregnant with silent sorrows

My tears are for all and not for some
My sorrow is same for the New Yorkers, the Baghdadis and the Kabulis
My grief is equal for the Washingtonians and the West Bankers
My love is for all and not only for some

My tears are more than a drop - they are an ocean pregnant with silent sorrows

The NYPD & CIA nexus

2011-08-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (AP) — In New Brunswick, N.J., a building superintendent opened the door to apartment No. 1076 one balmy Tuesday and discovered an alarming scene: terrorist literature strewn about the table and computer and surveillance equipment set up in the next room.
The panicked superintendent dialed 911, sending police and the FBI rushing to the building near Rutgers University on the afternoon of June 2, 2009. What they found in that first-floor apartment, however, was not a terrorist hideout but a command center set up by a secret team of New York Police Department intelligence officers.
From that apartment, about an hour outside the department's jurisdiction, the NYPD had been staging undercover operations and conducting surveillance throughout New Jersey. Neither the FBI nor the local police had any idea.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying.
Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what's going on.
The department has dispatched teams of undercover officers, known as "rakers," into minority neighborhoods as part of a human mapping program, according to officials directly involved in the program. They've monitored daily life in bookstores, bars, cafes and nightclubs. Police have also used informants, known as "mosque crawlers," to monitor sermons, even when there's no evidence of wrongdoing. NYPD officials have scrutinized imams and gathered intelligence on cab drivers and food cart vendors, jobs often done by Muslims.
Many of these operations were built with help from the CIA, which is prohibited from spying on Americans but was instrumental in transforming the NYPD's intelligence unit.
A veteran CIA officer, while still on the agency's payroll, was the architect of the NYPD's intelligence programs. The CIA trained a police detective at the Farm, the agency's spy school in Virginia, then returned him to New York, where he put his new espionage skills to work inside the United States.
And just last month, the CIA sent a senior officer to work as a clandestine operative inside police headquarters.
While the expansion of the NYPD's intelligence unit has been well known, many details about its clandestine operations, including the depth of its CIA ties, have not previously been reported.
The NYPD denied that it trolls ethnic neighborhoods and said it only follows leads. In a city that has repeatedly been targeted by terrorists, police make no apologies for pushing the envelope. NYPD intelligence operations have disrupted terrorist plots and put several would-be killers in prison.
"The New York Police Department is doing everything it can to make sure there's not another 9/11 here and that more innocent New Yorkers are not killed by terrorists," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said. "And we have nothing to apologize for in that regard."
But officials said they've also been careful to keep information about some programs out of court, where a judge might take a different view. The NYPD considers even basic details, such as the intelligence division's organization chart, to be too sensitive to reveal in court.
One of the enduring questions of the past decade is whether being safe requires giving up some liberty and privacy. The focus of that debate has primarily been federal programs like wiretapping and indefinite detention. The question has received less attention in New York, where residents do not know for sure what, if anything, they have given up.
The story of how the NYPD Intelligence Division developed such aggressive programs was pieced together by the AP in interviews with more than 40 current and former New York Police Department and federal officials. Many were directly involved in planning and carrying out these secret operations for the department. Though most said the tactics were appropriate and made the city safer, many insisted on anonymity, because they were not authorized to speak with reporters about security matters.
The story begins with one man.
___
David Cohen arrived at the New York Police Department in January 2002, just weeks after the last fires had been extinguished at the debris field that had been the twin towers. A retired 35-year veteran of the CIA, Cohen became the police department's first civilian intelligence chief.
Cohen had an exceptional career at the CIA, rising to lead both the agency's analytical and operational divisions. He also was an extraordinarily divisive figure, a man whose sharp tongue and supreme confidence in his own abilities gave him a reputation as arrogant. Cohen's tenure as head of CIA operations, the nation's top spy, was so contentious that in 1997, The New York Times editorial page took the unusual step of calling for his ouster.
He had no police experience. He had never defended a city from an attack. But New York wasn't looking for a cop.
"Post-9/11, we needed someone in there who knew how to really gather intelligence," said John Cutter, a retired NYPD official who served as one of Cohen's top uniformed officers.
At the time, the intelligence division was best known for driving dignitaries around the city. Cohen envisioned a unit that would analyze intelligence, run undercover operations and cultivate a network of informants. In short, he wanted New York to have its own version of the CIA.
Cohen shared Commissioner Ray Kelly's belief that 9/11 had proved that the police department could not simply rely on the federal government to prevent terrorism in New York.
"If anything goes on in New York," one former officer recalls Cohen telling his staff in the early days, "it's your fault."
Among Cohen's earliest moves at the NYPD was making a request of his old colleagues at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. He needed someone to help build this new operation, someone with experience and clout and, most important, someone who had access to the latest intelligence so the NYPD wouldn't have to rely on the FBI to dole out information.
CIA Director George Tenet responded by tapping Larry Sanchez, a respected veteran who had served as a CIA official inside the United Nations. Often, when the CIA places someone on temporary assignment, the other agency picks up the tab. In this case, three former intelligence officials said, Tenet kept Sanchez on the CIA payroll.
When he arrived in New York in March 2002, Sanchez had offices at both the NYPD and the CIA's station in New York, one former official said. Sanchez interviewed police officers for newly defined intelligence jobs. He guided and mentored officers, schooling them in the art of gathering information. He also directed their efforts, another said.
There had never been an arrangement like it, and some senior CIA officials soon began questioning whether Tenet was allowing Sanchez to operate on both sides of the wall that's supposed to keep the CIA out of the domestic intelligence business.
"It should not be a surprise to anyone that, after 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency stepped up its cooperation with law enforcement on counterterrorism issues or that some of that increased cooperation was in New York, the site of ground zero," CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said.
Just as at the CIA, Cohen and Sanchez knew that informants would have to become the backbone of their operation. But with threats coming in from around the globe, they couldn't wait months for the perfect plan.
They came up with a makeshift solution. They dispatched more officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and, according to one former police official directly involved in the effort, instructed them to look for reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police needed to persuade someone to become an informant.
For Cohen, the transition from spying to policing didn't come naturally, former colleagues said. When faced with a decision, especially early in his tenure, he'd fall back on his CIA background. Cutter said he and other uniformed officers had to tell Cohen, no, we can't just slip into someone's apartment without a warrant. No, we can't just conduct a search. The rules for policing are different.
While Cohen was being shaped by the police department, his CIA background was remaking the department. But one significant barrier stood in the way of Cohen's vision.
Since 1985, the NYPD had operated under a federal court order limiting the tactics it could use to gather intelligence. During the 1960s and 1970s, the department had used informants and undercover officers to infiltrate anti-war protest groups and other activists without any reason to suspect criminal behavior.
To settle a lawsuit, the department agreed to follow guidelines that required "specific information" of criminal activity before police could monitor political activity.
In September 2002, Cohen told a federal judge that those guidelines made it "virtually impossible" to detect terrorist plots. The FBI was changing its rules to respond to 9/11, and Cohen argued that the NYPD must do so, too.
"In the case of terrorism, to wait for an indication of crime before investigating is to wait far too long," Cohen wrote.
U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. agreed, saying the old guidelines "addressed different perils in a different time." He scrapped the old rules and replaced them with more lenient ones.
It was a turning point for the NYPD.
___
With his newfound authority, Cohen created a secret squad that would soon infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods, according to several current and former officials directly involved in the program.
The NYPD carved up the city into more than a dozen zones and assigned undercover officers to monitor them, looking for potential trouble.
At the CIA, one of the biggest obstacles has always been that U.S. intelligence officials are overwhelmingly white, their mannerisms clearly American. The NYPD didn't have that problem, thanks to its diverse pool of officers.
Using census data, the department matched undercover officers to ethnic communities and instructed them to blend in, the officials said. Pakistani-American officers infiltrated Pakistani neighborhoods, Palestinians focused on Palestinian neighborhoods. They hung out in hookah bars and cafes, quietly observing the community around them.
The unit, which has been undisclosed until now, became known inside the department as the Demographic Unit, former police officials said.
"It's not a question of profiling. It's a question of going where the problem could arise," said Mordecai Dzikansky, a retired NYPD intelligence officer who said he was aware of the Demographic Unit. "And thank God we have the capability. We have the language capability and the ethnic officers. That's our hidden weapon."
The officers did not work out of headquarters, officials said. Instead, they passed their intelligence to police handlers who knew their identities.
Cohen said he wanted the squad to "rake the coals, looking for hot spots," former officials recalled. The undercover officers soon became known inside the department as rakers.
A hot spot might be a beauty supply store selling chemicals used for making bombs. Or it might be a hawala, a broker that transfers money around the world with little documentation. Undercover officers might visit an Internet cafe and look at the browsing history on a computer, a former police official involved in the program said. If it revealed visits to radical websites, the cafe might be deemed a hot spot.
Ethnic bookstores, too, were on the list. If a raker noticed a customer looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn. The bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny. If a restaurant patron applauds a news report about the death of U.S. troops, the patron or the restaurant could be labeled a hot spot.
The goal was to "map the city's human terrain," one law enforcement official said. The program was modeled in part on how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank, a former police official said.
Mapping crimes has been a successful police strategy nationwide. But mapping robberies and shootings is one thing. Mapping ethnic neighborhoods is different, something that at least brushes against what the federal government considers racial profiling.
Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said the Demographic Unit does not exist. He said the department has a Zone Assessment Unit that looks for locations that could attract terrorists. But he said undercover officers only followed leads, disputing the account of several current and former police and federal officials. They do not just hang out in neighborhoods, he said.
"We will go into a location, whether it's a mosque or a bookstore, if the lead warrants it, and at least establish whether there's something that requires more attention," Browne said.
That conflicts with testimony from an undercover officer in the 2006 trial of Shahawar Matin Siraj, who was convicted of planning an attack on New York's subway system. The officer said he was instructed to live in Brooklyn and act as a "walking camera" for police.
"I was told to act like a civilian — hang out in the neighborhood, gather information," the Bangladeshi officer testified, under a false name, in what offered the first narrow glimpse at the NYPD's infiltration of ethnic neighborhoods.
Officials said such operations just made sense. Islamic terrorists had attacked the city on 9/11, so police needed people inside the city's Muslim neighborhoods. Officials say it does not conflict with a 2004 city law prohibiting the NYPD from using religion or ethnicity "as the determinative factor for initiating law enforcement action."
"It's not profiling," Cutter said. "It's like, after a shooting, do you go 20 blocks away and interview guys or do you go to the neighborhood where it happened?"
In 2007, the Los Angeles Police Department was criticized for even considering a similar program. The police announced plans to map Islamic neighborhoods to look for pockets of radicalization among the region's roughly 500,000 Muslims. Criticism was swift, and chief William Bratton scrapped the plan.
"A lot of these people came from countries where the police were the terrorists," Bratton said at a news conference, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. "We don't do that here. We do not want to spread fear."
In New York, current and former officials said, the lesson of that controversy was that such programs should be kept secret.
Some in the department, including lawyers, have privately expressed concerns about the raking program and how police use the information, current and former officials said. Part of the concern was that it might appear that police were building dossiers on innocent people, officials said. Another concern was that, if a case went to court, the department could be forced to reveal details about the program, putting the entire operation in jeopardy.
That's why, former officials said, police regularly shredded documents discussing rakers.
When Cohen made his case in court that he needed broader authority to investigate terrorism, he had promised to abide by the FBI's investigative guidelines. But the FBI is prohibited from using undercover agents unless there's specific evidence of criminal activity, meaning a federal raking program like the one officials described to the AP would violate FBI guidelines.
The NYPD declined to make Cohen available for comment. In an earlier interview with the AP on a variety of topics, Police Commissioner Kelly said the intelligence unit does not infringe on civil rights.
"We're doing what we believe we have to do to protect the city," he said. "We have many, many lawyers in our employ. We see ourselves as very conscious and aware of civil liberties. And we know there's always going to be some tension between the police department and so-called civil liberties groups because of the nature of what we do."
The department clashed with civil rights groups most publicly after Cohen's undercover officers infiltrated anti-war groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. A lawsuit over that program continues today.
During the convention, when protesters were arrested, police asked a list of questions which, according to court documents, included: "What are your political affiliations?" ''Do you do any kind of political work?" and "Do you hate George W. Bush?"
"At the end of the day, it's pure and simple a rogue domestic surveillance operation," said Christopher Dunn, a New York Civil Liberties Union lawyer involved in the convention lawsuit.
___
Undercover agents like the rakers were valuable, but what Cohen and Sanchez wanted most were informants.
The NYPD dedicated an entire squad, the Terrorist Interdiction Unit, to developing and handling informants. Current and former officials said Sanchez was instrumental in teaching them how to develop sources.
For years, detectives used informants known as mosque crawlers to monitor weekly sermons and report what was said, several current and former officials directly involved in the informant program said. If FBI agents were to do that, they would be in violation of the Privacy Act, which prohibits the federal government from collecting intelligence on purely First Amendment activities.
The FBI has generated its own share of controversy for putting informants inside mosques, but unlike the program described to the AP, the FBI requires evidence of a crime before an informant can be used inside a mosque.
Valerie Caproni, the FBI's general counsel, would not discuss the NYPD's programs but said FBI informants can't troll mosques looking for leads. Such operations are reviewed for civil liberties concerns, she said.
"If you're sending an informant into a mosque when there is no evidence of wrongdoing, that's a very high-risk thing to do," Caproni said. "You're running right up against core constitutional rights. You're talking about freedom of religion."
That's why senior FBI officials in New York ordered their own agents not to accept any reports from the NYPD's mosque crawlers, two retired agents said.
It's unclear whether the police department still uses mosque crawlers. Officials said that, as Muslims figured out what was going on, the mosque crawlers became cafe crawlers, fanning out into the city's ethnic hangouts.
"Someone has a great imagination," Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said. "There is no such thing as mosque crawlers."
Following the foiled subway plot, however, the key informant in the case, Osama Eldawoody, said he attended hundreds of prayer services and collected information even on people who showed no signs of radicalization.
NYPD detectives have recruited shopkeepers and nosy neighbors to become "seeded" informants who keep police up to date on the latest happenings in ethnic neighborhoods, one official directly involved in the informant program said.
The department also has a roster of "directed" informants it can tap for assignments. For instance, if a raker identifies a bookstore as a hot spot, police might assign an informant to gather information, long before there's concrete evidence of anything criminal.
To identify possible informants, the department created what became known as the "debriefing program." When someone is arrested who might be useful to the intelligence unit — whether because he said something suspicious or because he is simply a young Middle Eastern man — he is singled out for extra questioning. Intelligence officials don't care about the underlying charges; they want to know more about his community and, ideally, they want to put him to work.
Police are in prisons, too, promising better living conditions and help or money on the outside for Muslim prisoners who will work with them.
Early in the intelligence division's transformation, police asked the taxi commission to run a report on all the city's Pakistani cab drivers, looking for those who got licenses fraudulently and might be susceptible to pressure to cooperate, according to former officials who were involved in or briefed on the effort.
That strategy has been rejected in other cities.
Boston police once asked neighboring Cambridge for a list of Somali cab drivers, Cambridge Police Chief Robert Haas said. Haas refused, saying that without a specific reason, the search was inappropriate.
"It really has a chilling effect in terms of the relationship between the local police department and those cultural groups, if they think that's going to take place," Haas said.
The informant division was so important to the NYPD that Cohen persuaded his former colleagues to train a detective, Steve Pinkall, at the CIA's training center at the Farm. Pinkall, who had an intelligence background as a Marine, was given an unusual temporary assignment at CIA headquarters, officials said. He took the field tradecraft course alongside future CIA spies then returned to New York to run investigations.
"We found that helpful, for NYPD personnel to be exposed to the tradecraft," Browne said.
The idea troubled senior FBI officials, who saw it as the NYPD and CIA blurring the lines between police work and spying, in which undercover officers regularly break the laws of foreign governments. The arrangement even made its way to FBI Director Robert Mueller, two former senior FBI officials said, but the training was already under way and Mueller did not press the issue.
___
NYPD's intelligence operations do not stop at the city line, as the undercover operation in New Jersey made clear.
The department has gotten some of its officers deputized as federal marshals, allowing them to work out of state. But often, there's no specific jurisdiction at all. Cohen's undercover squad, the Special Services Unit, operates in places such as New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, officials said. They can't make arrests and, if something goes wrong — a shooting or a car accident, for instance — the officers could be personally liable. But the NYPD has decided it's worth the risk, a former police official said.
With Police Commissioner Kelly's backing, Cohen's policy is that any potential threat to New York City is the NYPD's business, regardless of where it occurs, officials said.
That aggressiveness has sometimes put the NYPD at odds with local police departments and, more frequently, with the FBI. The FBI didn't like the rules Cohen played by and said his operations encroached on their responsibilities.
Once, undercover officers were stopped by police in Massachusetts while conducting surveillance on a house, one former New York official recalled. In another instance, the NYPD sparked concern among federal officials by expanding its intelligence-gathering efforts related to the United Nations, where the FBI is in charge, current and former federal officials said.
The AP has agreed not to disclose details of either the FBI or NYPD operations because they involve foreign counterintelligence.
Both Mueller and Kelly have said their agencies have strong working relationships and said reports of rivalry and disagreements are overblown. And the NYPD's out-of-state operations have had success.
A young Egyptian NYPD officer living undercover in New Jersey, for example, was key to building a case against Mohamed Mahmood Alessa and Carlos Eduardo Almonte. The pair was arrested last year at John F. Kennedy Airport en route to Somalia to join the terrorist group al-Shabab. Both pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
Cohen has also sent officers abroad, stationing them in 11 foreign cities. If a bomber blows himself up in Jerusalem, the NYPD rushes to the scene, said Dzikansky, who served in Israel and is the co-author of the forthcoming book "Terrorist Suicide Bombings: Attack Interdiction, Mitigation, and Response."
"I was there to ask the New York question," Dzikansky said. "Why this location? Was there something unique that the bomber had done? Was there any pre-notification. Was there a security lapse?"
All of this intelligence — from the rakers, the undercovers, the overseas liaisons and the informants — is passed to a team of analysts hired from some of the nation's most prestigious universities. Analysts have spotted emerging trends and summarized topics such as Hezbollah's activities in New York and the threat of South Asian terrorist groups.
They also have tackled more contentious topics, including drafting an analytical report on every mosque within 100 miles of New York, one former police official said. The report drew on information from mosque crawlers, undercover officers and public information. It mapped hundreds of mosques and discussed the likelihood of them being infiltrated by al-Qaida, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.
For Cohen, there was only one way to measure success: "They haven't attacked us," he said in a 2005 deposition. He said anything that was bad for terrorists was good for NYPD.
___
Though the CIA is prohibited from collecting intelligence domestically, the wall between domestic and foreign operations became more porous. Intelligence gathered by the NYPD, with CIA officer Sanchez overseeing collection, was often passed to the CIA in informal conversations and through unofficial channels, a former official involved in that process said.
By design, the NYPD was looking more and more like a domestic CIA.
"It's like starting the CIA over in the post-9/11 world," Cohen said in "Securing the City," a laudatory 2009 book about the NYPD. "What would you do if you could begin it all over again? Hah. This is what you would do."
Sanchez's assignment in New York ended in 2004, but he received permission to take a leave of absence from the agency and become Cohen's deputy, former officials said.
Though Sanchez's assignments were blessed by CIA management, some in the agency's New York station saw the presence of such a senior officer in the city as a turf encroachment. Finally, the New York station chief, Tom Higgins, called headquarters, one former senior intelligence official said. Higgins complained, the official said, that Sanchez was wearing both hats, sometimes acting as a CIA officer, sometimes as an NYPD official.
The CIA finally forced him to choose: Stay with the agency or stay with the NYPD.
Sanchez declined to comment to the AP about the arrangement, but he picked the NYPD. He retired last year and is now a consultant in the Middle East.
Last month, the CIA deepened its NYPD ties even further. It sent one of its most experienced operatives, a former station chief in two Middle Eastern countries, to work out of police headquarters as Cohen's special assistant while on the CIA payroll. Current and former U.S. officials acknowledge it's unusual but said it's the kind of collaboration Americans expect after 9/11.
Officials said revealing the CIA officer's name would jeopardize national security. The arrangement was described as a sabbatical. He is a member of the agency's senior management, but officials said he was sent to the municipal police department to get management experience.
At the NYPD, he works undercover in the senior ranks of the intelligence division. Officials are adamant that he is not involved in actual intelligence-gathering.
___
The NYPD has faced little scrutiny over the past decade as it has taken on broad new intelligence missions, targeted ethnic neighborhoods and partnered with the CIA in extraordinary ways.
The department's primary watchdog, the New York City Council, has not held hearings on the intelligence division's operations and former NYPD officials said council members typically do not ask for details.
"Ray Kelly briefs me privately on certain subjects that should not be discussed in public," said City Councilman Peter Vallone. "We've discussed in person how they investigate certain groups they suspect have terrorist sympathizers or have terrorist suspects."
The city comptroller's office has audited several NYPD components since 9/11 but not the intelligence unit, which had a $62 million budget last year.
The federal government, too, has done little to scrutinize the nation's largest police force, despite the massive federal aid. Homeland Security officials review NYPD grants but not its underlying programs.
A report in January by the Homeland Security inspector general, for instance, found that the NYPD violated state and federal contracting rules between 2006 and 2008 by buying more than $4 million in equipment through a no-bid process. NYPD said public bidding would have revealed sensitive information to terrorists, but police never got approval from state or federal officials to adopt their own rules, the inspector general said.
On Capitol Hill, where FBI tactics have frequently been criticized for their effect on civil liberties, the NYPD faces no such opposition.
In 2007, Sanchez testified before the Senate Homeland Security Committee and was asked how the NYPD spots signs of radicalization. He said the key was viewing innocuous activity, including behavior that might be protected by the First Amendment, as a potential precursor to terrorism.
That triggered no questions from the committee, which Sanchez said had been "briefed in the past on how we do business."
The Justice Department has the authority to investigate civil rights violations. It issued detailed rules in 2003 against racial profiling, including prohibiting agencies from considering race when making traffic stops or assigning patrols.
But those rules apply only to the federal government and contain a murky exemption for terrorism investigations. The Justice Department has not investigated a police department for civil rights violations during a national security investigation.
"One of the hallmarks of the intelligence division over the last 10 years is that, not only has it gotten extremely aggressive and sophisticated, but it's operating completely on its own," said Dunn, the civil liberties lawyer. "There are no checks. There is no oversight."
The NYPD has been mentioned as a model for policing in the post-9/11 era. But it's a model that seems custom-made for New York. No other city has the Big Apple's combination of a low crime rate, a $4.5 billion police budget and a diverse 34,000-person police force. Certainly no other police department has such deep CIA ties.
Perhaps most important, nobody else had 9/11 the way New York did. No other city lost nearly 3,000 people in a single morning. A decade later, police say New Yorkers still expect the department to do whatever it can to prevent another attack. The NYPD has embraced that expectation.
As Sanchez testified on Capitol Hill: "We've been given the public tolerance and the luxury to be very aggressive on this topic."
____
Associated Press writers Tom Hays and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

FBI's Informant Factory ...

2011-08-22T17:21:00.000-07:00

As reported in Mother Jones Magazine.

Enjoy your tax dollars at work.

What is Islamophobia?

2011-07-28T15:36:00.001-07:00

Two high school students video project about Islamophobia.

Shared Leadership: An Old-New Concept

2011-05-26T16:56:00.000-07:00

Does not matter what religion we claim we are of, or we think we belong to: we all share one non-qualifying belief – that we have the right to laugh. This right you will agree is old and even ancient but always also refreshingly new – isn’t it?

So let me try laughing with you … we - justice and peace loving activists are battering ourselves a bit too much, surrounding ourselves with deep anxieties and a bit of self-suffering, sometimes simply for not having enough choices of fine grape juices around us (remember Muslims don’t drink fermented grape juice) … no that’s not the joke!

Well, look at the ancient Greeks: smart guys. They understood that comedy (the gods' view of life) is superior to tragedy (the merely human way to look at life). I think our culture - western culture has grandly screwed this up. We overvalue tragedy and undervalue comedy.

My kids were perplexed watching me super giddy these past few days. I could not help it. I was very happy to hear that we all were “scheduled to meet the Lord” on the 21st of May at 6 pm! I thought to myself: “at least we will not have any budget problems to grieve about!” And no, that’s not the joke either! Here’s a real joke for you:

The young lady's hopes had been high for two whole years while this handsome young man remained silent on the question of marriage. Then one evening he said to her, "I had a most unusual dream last night. I dreamed that I asked you to marry me. I wonder what that means." "THAT MEANS," said his girlfriend, "THAT YOU HAVE MORE SENSE ASLEEP THAN WHEN YOU ARE AWAKE."

All right my good friends – enough laughing – let’s be real … let’s suffer a bit now …
Among ourselves, I think we can claim that this is a live gathering of the oldest religions with shared values that each one of us would die fighting for.

The question I pose to you today is, “What is old that is also new? And what is new that is also ancient?”

I find the answer to this question in the research conducted by two management experts Kouzes & Posner. They titled it – I think appropriately – “The 21st Century Leadership Challenge.” They interviewed 10,000 CEO’s from over 100 different countries between 2001 & 2010 & published their work. Their entire research project can be summed up in one word: “honesty.” A quality that 21st century leadership does not have; an ancient concept but badly needed for our times.

Indeed the leaders of our time are very honest when they report and celebrate our nation’s progress in reducing joblessness. They said we made progress when joblessness dropped from 10% to 9.98%. I guess they are right, technically, down to the very last decimal point.

But when I ask my good friend David who is unemployed for over a year about this version of progress, he politely reminded me of Malcolm’s response to nation’s racial progress at the time. He said, “You don’t stick a knife in a man’s back nine inches and then pull it out six inches and say you are making progress.”
There is now a new paradigm emerging as an acceptable norm in the collective psyche and culture of our country: that the powerful and the rich have an inherent right and entitlement to exploit the poor and the powerless in the most inhumane way!
Here are two most recent examples …

I believe the muscular moron (former Governor of our State) did not just have a relationship out of heartfelt love for the maid but rather simply took full advantage of her poverty. Similarly, the rapist-in-chief of the International Monetary Fund physically assaulted a powerless single mother while his organization did (& continues to do) exactly the same figuratively to many under-developed countries.

Then how dare we have the audacity to expect the victims of rape to be silent and not scream out loud for justice?

I am one of those victims and you are one of those victims. Yes, I am also a perpetrator and you are a perpetrator. It is in my name and your name that our leaders are pillaging our State and our Country and the powerless people of the world.

This must stop and no one is better suited to do so than we are. We have the ability so long as we are full of authentic anger and are committed to work with genuine humility to better our world.

I seek refuge in this ancient expression from a scholar of Quran from the 8th century: “Nothing you seek relying on your Lord will ever be difficult, and nothing you seek relying on yourself will ever be easy.”

As people of faith, our equation of reliance is perhaps a bit out of balance. Clearly we (in our times) are conditioned differently than our ancient sages.

One such sage from the 3rd century was asked by a disciple about reliance and he answered, “when I see my pantry all empty – my reliance on God is complete.”

While the rich of our times are reveling in Rolls Royces and roll-overs we are asking our poor in the pews to wait patiently for a better day, but we know they are being raped and are forced to survive with pangs of hunger into perpetuity!

I do believe from the depths of my heart that neither Moses, nor Jesus nor Muhammad (peace & blessings be upon all of them) nor any man or woman of true piety and virtue could resist boiling over in pain and rage for the deception, dishonesty and exploitation of the poor in our society.

The Prophets of God embraced the poor for they are - the most loved by our Creator and that all of us are inherently entitled to live with equal dignity and honor as one people. And this vision, we must uphold.

A while back I heard a friend speaking on “Unity, Purity, and Miracle.” Unity, he says, means “y’all come,” purity means “most of y’all go away,” and for the two to be resolved “would take a miracle.”

So I ask myself today if we should wait for a miracle or must we intentionally create one?

Let us not remain fooled by the modern maniacs of mathematics who lure us to invest our pension funds in derivatives and bundle our homes into a sovereign wealth fund and when nothing works, encourage the populace to go shopping.

As we depart today, I would like us to remain fiercely vigilant about who we are: we are created by God, uniquely gifted by Him with intellect and intelligence bestowed on no other creature, so no more shall we be fooled by anyone, including those who are tasked by us to work for us and not against us.

We have all inherited the responsibility to lead a shared vision for our society. Shared leadership, after all, is to create a diverse world that is inter-dependent and not independent of each other. Our world was created neither with windows or doors nor in colors of red, blue or purple.

Since I started invoking (this talk) with the right to laugh let us return to laugh again for a minute …

A man meets an old friend and says "It's funny, but I was told you were dead." The friend says, "Well, you can see I'm still alive." But the first man disputes this on the grounds that "the man who told me you were dead is much more reliable than you."

Yes my brother – yes my sister – you are more reliable to me than those who brings us the daily dose of deceptions on the morning and evening news. The death of democracy may be a lie, but while it is not dead it is indeed sick. I know, however, that we can rely on each other to help it regain its vigor. We will continue this fight together, not for a penny but the fortune that is owed to us all.

In closing, as a person of faith I admonish myself and may I dare say admonish all of us with a 200 year old - Revolutionary Proclamation (of the Junta Tuitiva) made in La Paz in 1809 which states: “We have maintained a silence closely resembling stupidity.”

The time to speak is now. The moment to act is here. And it is only with our shared leadership that we can restore the old virtues in our broken new world!

A talk at California Faith for Action – a statewide Interfaith coalition for a moral budget – May 25, 2011 – Sacramento.

Mad as Hell and for a Good Reason

2011-05-16T13:59:00.000-07:00

(May 16, 2011): As thousands of innocent peace and freedom loving people are being
butchered by the dictators in Middle East & North Africa - the headlines today read
Dubai hires
Maradona and UAE will pay half a trillion dollars to Blackwater, the
infamous American killing machine!

Go figure why the common people in Middle East are damn mad as hell against their
dictators, who are now only loved by United States & Israel.

On the killing of Usama bin Laden

2011-05-07T13:45:00.000-07:00

As a Muslim I am expected to mourn the loss of life at all times and of all people and not rejoice in the death of any, even my worst enemies. Hence I mourn and I pray for the innocent victims killed ten years ago in New York just as I mourn and pray for the millions of innocent people killed in Iraq and hundreds of thousands in Afghanistan. As a Muslim I say, "we come from God and to Him we return." (Quran 2:156).

I pray that the indiscriminate violence comes to an end with the death of Usama bin Laden although recent history teaches us otherwise. The hanging of Saddam Husain did not bring peace to the people in Iraq nor the killing of Usama bin Laden will make the world safe. But a just world will inevitably give birth to peace and hence safety for all.

Retributive forms of justice does not allow the humanity an opportunity to experience true peace. Restorative justice does.

Although the nation was told by former President Bush eight years ago (May 1st, 2003), that the “Mission (is) Accomplished” in Iraq, but yet American soldiers continue to occupy Iraq until today. The then Presidential candidate Barrack Obama promised to end wars and bring back troops but after getting elected, President Obama broke his promise by sending more troops to Afghanistan. As a result of ongoing wars, hard working Americans are suffering and are unable to afford rising costs of education, lack of health care while losing jobs and homes.

Both wars, in Iraq and in Afghanistan, have given us tears and drained our treasure and both wars must stop now. Humanity has been a victim of much death and destruction while Americans continue to live in fear from the "other."

As a person of faith and conscience I am committed to imagine and work for a new paradigm that is void of violence in all its forms and full of love in every form. I invite my fellow Muslims to either take lead in restoring justice and peace for all people or join those who are working for the same cause.

"To God belongs whatever is in the heavens and whatever is on the earth. And to God will [all] matters be returned." (Quran 3:109).

To be able to work is an inherent right

2011-04-30T10:43:00.000-07:00

My Friday reflections on the May Day and the "right to work" from an Islamic perspective.

for Mr. Obama ...

2011-04-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

A memo from an Israeli to Mr. Obama.

An Uneven Contest: Powerful Television & Innocent Children

2011-04-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

Sometime back a row erupted between France and the US over television programming. "Too many American made programs are being shown on French television," protested the French. To a casual observer this may sound strange. After all, what is the difference between French and American values? True, the French consider the Americans uncultured but the matter goes beyond culture.

The French argued that American television series were undermining their values; that American programs depicted and glorified violence whose effect would be felt on French society as well. Even when sharing common societal roots, people are concerned about preserving their own values. Imagine the situation when we, as Muslims approach life from altogether a different perspective.

Muslims believe in One God, Allah; they believe the Quran is the revealed Book of Allah through Prophet Muhammad, upon whom be peace; and they believe in family values. This means no pre-martial sex; abhorrence of violence and waste; no drugs nor alcohol, and respect for elders and love for the young ones. The western value system stands at the completely opposite role. Yet, are Muslim parents in North America aware of the challenge facing them?

It is of paramount importance to know how Muslim children are subliminally being assimilated into the greater North American society. One of the most powerful tools which influences them is television.

Already, Muslim children are used to processed foods and automated living. They are now being trained for 'processed thinking' and 'automated culture', as well, through television.

A parent's worst nightmare is a six to 13-year-old television addict who watches television in the morning before going to school; fixing himself/herself in front of the set as soon as he gets home in the afternoon and gets another dose before going to bed at night. Variety of e-gizmos have turned favorite shows and movies into an endlessly repeatable pastime. Video games have added to the home box's allure.

Children are in love with Barney today which is nothing more than a jumping doll, filled with cute critters and special effects. A child may learn how to force a smile upon himself but that will be the end of learning. Because of indoctrination by the television, children have little patience to pursue anything that requires a steady stream of thought or the linking of one thought with another. It is potentially addictive to undermine a child's imagination. Even these electronic amusements take a backseat in comparison with the kind of passive activity they induce.

This passive experience crowds out other, more active endeavors, such as congregational prayers at home, playing indoors and outdoors with family members, reading, etc. These traditional forms of interaction with children are most definitely not passive. They are all physically, mentally and spiritually active. A child watching television cannot build a model at the same time or let his/her imagination soar in a good book. Instead, they are cut off from participation, imagination, even from the rest of the family. The child's facial expression is transformed. The jaw is relaxed and hangs open slightly; the tongue rests on the front teeth (if there are any) and eyes develop a glazed, vacuous look?

Television reveals to children all of the 'backstage' activity of adults. It exposes children to behavior that the adults have spent centuries trying to hide from children. The average child watching television sees adults hitting or killing each other or breaking down and crying. It teaches them that adults do not always know what they are doing. Revealing the 'secrets' of adulthood has virtually destroyed the notion of childhood as a discrete period of innocence. There are now more adult-like children and more childlike adults!

An average child will have watched 5,000 hours of television by the time he/she enters first grade and 19,000 hours by the end of high school - more time than he/she will spend in classroom. They spend 28 hours a week watching television - more than doing any other single activity except sleeping. Those 28 hours do not include the time spent watching videotapes, playing video games, or listening to iPod's or CDs.

Research has shown that prolonged television viewing by children is associated with more aggressive behavior, lack of creativity, patience, imagination, participation, and physical, mental and spiritual development. So who will correct it and how?

No institution plays a bigger role in shaping the attitude of children than the family. The ultimate responsibility rests with the parents. It is imperative to strictly limit TV watching time and other electronic amusements, and continually monitor children's behavior. At the same time, the influence and impact of the short time they spend watching television should be counterbalanced with other healthy activities such as reading, Islamic quiz or general knowledge competitions within the family and/or friends, games which require thinking, congregational prayers and indoor/outdoor activities with the family. In this way, TV can at least be put into proper focus, if not completely out of the picture, inshaAllah.

Talking with children also helps. 'Not to them, but with them.' Encourage them to share their thoughts and ideas, and to think things through. Let them know that both logical reasoning and creative thought are wonderful accomplishments. Encourage children to read books and to consider their significance in the larger scheme of things.

Avoid 'drilling' your children or forcing them to 'listen' to you. Rather, 'you' should listen to them !

Racialization of & Racism against Muslim Americans

2011-04-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

talk at UCI Law School – April 14, 2011)

I’d like to extend my thanks to the Asian-Pacific American Law Students and the entire team who organized this timely event: examining the racialization of and racism against Muslim Americans.

Assuming that most of you are law students or justice advocates, I prefer tonight to expand the scope of my presentation beyond my grievances as a Muslim and instead have us all think and speak simply as Americans and examine where and how do we all fit in this discussion of racism, hate, and bigotry in our country today.

Racism is as old as America. It was that vicious racist ideology and practice of White supremacy that left its permanent scar on all spheres of American life since its founding. The earliest slave traders propagated seeds of racism in the most formative days of this nation.

The problem of bigotry in the twenty-first century remains the problem of the color line -- not just Black but every ethnic and racial group and all the possible combinations – now compounded by the new dynamic of racism based not only on color but religion.

For our purposes tonight, we’ll focus on the religion is Islam, …. “the religion that is evil” as Jerry Falwell declared. “It is the religion of pure hate,” according to Falwell’s minion, Deborah Pauly, city councilmember of Villa Park, which she proclaimed loudly at a recent hate rally in Yorba Linda.

I will not deny that there has been racial progress in America but I would dare you to deny the lingering legacy of white supremacy in America. It is deliberate, it is visible, and it is a poison to our society.

To engage in a serious discussion tonight about racism and hate, we must begin not with the current problem of Islamophobia but with the flaws of American society – flaws rooted in historical inequalities and longstanding cultural stereotypes. How we frame the terms for discussing hate and bigotry shapes our perception and response to these issues. As long as Muslims are viewed as “they,” the burden falls on Muslims to do all the internal moral work necessary to become part of “us”. The implication is that only certain people can define what it means to be American, and the rest must simply fit in. Well, I have news for you America: I am ME and I refuse to fit in!

It is not necessarily only our actual skin color that has been the source of our separation of races; it’s also our attitude. Historic figures such as Malcolm X have made great studies of the language of hate in our society. Naturally, his experiences with Whites in America had shaped his attitude. But despite his ethnocentric view of Whites and Blacks, it was the Whites with blue eyes who helped him in the desert of Makkah to judge humanity by virtue of their attitude and not by color. Whites in America treated Malcolm as sub-human but the non-American and non-European Whites in Makkah transformed him from Malcolm X to El Hajj Malik Shabazz. Indeed, attitudes matter.

So now it is the attitudes of politicians, pundits and also of the populace that has given birth to this new wave of Islamophobia, a prejudice borne of historic racism in America impregnated by today’s economy and fear of the “other”. It appears, my brothers and sisters, that we Muslims are now the “other.”

However, more than a century before al-Qaeda, there was “Al-Klan” – the Ku Klux Klan! More than a century before Usama bin Laden, there was the Grand Wizard Nathan Forest. It was not in the caves of Afghanistan but at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1867, the Klan was declared as “the Invisible Empire of the South.” In their night raids, KKK did not cry out Allahu Akbar - but they burnt crosses on the lawns of churches and public spaces. Shall we tally these acts on a terrorism scoreboard?

About two years ago, in early 2009, Ali Mohammad, a father, husband and an Imam for the high desert Muslim community, was burnt alive in his own house while tied to a chair. It is well you should gasp. It was reported that on the walls of his house graffiti was painted that said: "F*** you Arab," "KKK”, “sand n**er”, and "go home Arab".
A few months later a Mosque in Cypress was vandalized with graffiti, reading, "F**k You”, "we're going to kill you”, and "US Military is going to kill you all."
And on the evening of February 13, 2011 in Yorba Linda was a replay of the morning of Sunday, November 14, 1960 when five little girls braved the mob and entered into McDonogh #19 Elementary School, in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, Louisiana.

At the Yorba Linda event on February 13th, as I was tending the main door, a young Muslim girl, clinging to her father’s chest asked me this:“What do we do after the program – how do we go back to our cars without being beaten up by these people?” I clenched my fist, bit my tongue, hid a tear in my eye and replied to this young Muslim: “Don’t you worry my little sister. We will still be here and they will be gone.”

I did not live the ugly sixties but I am reminded of a poet, philosopher, activist - Leroi Jones (later named Amiri Baraka after conversion to Islam) who reflected on those times: “It is hard enough to be a human being under any circumstances, but when there is an entire civilization determined to stop you from being one, things get a little more desperately complicated. What do you do then?”

I wonder if the young girl I spoke with on February 13 asks herself the same question: “what do I do now?”

Friends … She may or may not ask that question, but I find myself asking it on behalf of many young Muslims in schools or answering the many mothers who find their car vandalized after they return from shopping (as it happened in Anaheim) and so many of our community members whose Mosques are vandalized (two of them within these past few weeks – as recently as one yesterday in Los Angeles) - “what do we do now?”

I ask you the same question: “what would you do differently than what Muslims in America are doing today?”

It is in the search for the answer to this question, my friends, I invite you to commit tonight to be fiercely vigilant and humbly virtuous in our collective efforts to meet the formidable challenges that face us in our country today. For most of us, it should be an urgent question of power and morality. For Muslims, it is an everyday matter of life.

And in some cases death.

Thank you.

A Perspective from West for the Middle East

2011-04-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

The revolutions in Middle East today are rooted in two historical calamities of the last century.

The first major historical calamity is Colonialism – (from middle to the 90’s of last century) - divided the entire region into colonial entities delinking the historically linked peoples and communities whose language, culture & faith for the most part was shared.

For example, Syria became a French colony and Iraq was occupied by British and neither people were able to travel, communicate or trade with eachother.
Another interesting example of colonialism is in South Asia which was although occupied by only one foreign power - British - but yet the populations of India and Pakistan were kept separate and hostile to each other.

The second major historical calamity is the Cold War era – another source of delinking the countries and dividing the societies. Countries that were together for centuries became enemies.

For example, Turkey was (& is) part of NATO and Syria was pro-Soviet. And Yemen became a divided population – partly Communist and partly traditionally Islamic. Same was the case in South Asia – India embraced Soviet Union and Pakistan was courted by the United States.

We may say that the uprisings & revolutions in Middle East now are a “delayed historical correction”. They should have happened in the late 80s and 90s just as it happened in the Eastern Europe.

Post colonialism and cold war, the West preferred that the Arab countries remain in the hands of authoritarian regimes – primarily for their geopolitical interests – that is now framed in the name to prevent the “Islamist radicalism” for the good of regimes and the population!

So the foreign colonial masters were replaced by domestic dictators – yet serving the foreign colonial master. Populations knew all along of the “grand chess game” (Brezenski) but the yoke of oppression was on their necks and the barrel of the gun on their head that kept them quiet but angry.

And what we see today is that anger … among ordinary Arabs – may they be Tunisians or Egyptians or Libyans or Syrians who are totally determined to help history correct itself – they are simply reclaiming their own dignity and restoring their right to their own resources and destiny.

Of course there are four other important factors that contributed to the unfolding of uprisings & revolutions …

first demographics … a phenomena termed as “the youth bulge” – that has been itching to challenge the powerful - unlike their parents & grandparents … for example the data indicates of the youth under age 24 in Yemen at 65%, Saudi Arabia and Iraq at 62%, Iran at 59% and Algeria at 57%.

When we examine the social movement[s] of the past – we will always find two major components in its success – (1) that the youth plays a major part in bringing about a change and (2) that they are dozed in or inspired by either spirituality or nationalism.

second the birth of internet - connecting the people across the region “digitally” despite of the (artificial and) physical barriers throughout the region
… diversion for a minute – the geographical arrangement of the Middle East is almost diametrically opposite to the geographical model in Europe – (a) although it’s smaller in size than Middle East – yet it’s declared as a continent – (b) most European countries have their distinctly unique culture unlike in Middle East, (c) most Europeans have their own language (French do not speak Dutch) unlike in Middle East, and (d) now Europe is a Union without barriers (for the most part) and Middle East has been kept divided …

So the physical but artificial barriers that were erected in Middle East post colonialism – that still remains alive and well – are now broken by the digital age … people are no longer subjected by the censorship of “foreign perspectives” on one hand while on the other hand conditioning the populace with the “propaganda” best suited for the continuity of dictators ….

third – the 24X7 media first from CNN & then to Al- Jazeera (1996) – a phenomena that, despite its brief history, has changed the face of a formerly parochial Arab media and the political equation in the entire Middle East. We can confidently say that there is a pre-Al Jazeera and a post-al Jazeera era in Middle East.

The walls erected by Colonialism and the Cold War are now broken, near completely !

fourth - social media – a 21st century phenomena … Facebook & Twitter did not invent courage but undoubtedly facilitated the “deepening of courage” and “broadening the courageous” --- as is abundantly evidenced in the unfolding revolutions in Middle East.

Digital media (Internet, Satellite broadcast & the social media) is now a paradox for the dictators … the very medium that enabled them to stifle change has accelerated it.

Now all of the Middle East is set on an irreversible course of change – most important of which, I believe, is complete absence of fear and near total presence of courage. No people can ever progress and prosper without these two basic aspects in any human endeavor.

People in the Middle East have now figured out the recipe for their destiny. Question is how we in the West will respond to their intense passion to be simply free and fight for the right of self determination.

We must now understand that these societies were bound to reconnect themselves some day …. their communities, tribes and ethnicities after all share a common destiny.

Patronizing would simply not work.

We need to undertake four simple but equally important steps.

• First save lives and protect property.
• Second help them to restore a level of new-normalcy.
• Third assist them in rebuilding what is lost.
• Fourth work with them as equal partners for the greater good.

Without these four equally critical steps, I am afraid we will be seen as an opportunist and hence will be dealt as such.

Museum of Intolerance does it again!

2011-04-08T10:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/173516.html

UN Resolutions - Who Resolves What for Whom & Why?

2011-03-20T11:11:00.001-07:00

To ignore the ethical disparities of United States love and hate for United Nations is near foolish. United Nations is loved by the United States only when its resolutions are for any country but Israel.

The United States has vetoed nearly all of UN resolutions toward Israel’s perpetual rejection of international law for many decades. But the United States is always ever ready to embrace and over-zealously implement UN resolution[s] against Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya. Any sane person with snail's brain ought to question these disparities if not expose them.

The world now knows why United States jumped in to save Iraqis from Iranians, Kuwaitis from Iraqis and now allowing Saudis to save Bahrainis from Bahrainis. It was not for and has never been to save the lives of innocent people but to rob their natural resources and advance its geo-political interests.

The United States humanitarian concern is always selective and questionable. Yes for Libya but not for Bahrain and Yemen.

People of reason must remain vigilant toward the United States' rationale for United Nations resolutions that it either authors or supports and acknowledge them for what they are - they are a license to kill innocent people in the name of protecting them, but only in certain countries. Go figure Yankee!

Islamophobia

2011-02-27T20:50:00.000-08:00

A presentation on Islamophobia at Media Reform Summit at Occidental College by Shakeel Syed

History teaches us that in every era demagogues spread hateful propaganda against marginalized religious and ethnic minorities, often as a prelude to violence ...
Here are some examples of propaganda - couched in satire - to condition the minds of populace … “big nosed mean carpenter” … the “big-lip-mama” … the diseased illegal aliens (according to Lou Dobbs) and of course the feathered Chiefs, the Japs, the Huns, the Reds and now the Towel-heads …

And such propaganda is almost always followed by violence … remember Wounded Knee; Kunta-Kinte and Manzanar … and now in our times, it is Bagram, Abu Gharaib, Guantanamo and the Renditions!

I am reminded of an example of how one people can be conditioned for “total demonization” of another people …

A hijabi clad Muslim doctor spoke of Mr. Johnson, a blind patient who not knowing of his own physician said this … “Muslims must be hung naked with the nooses from Home Depot … we will save our country, cheap”

T. S. Eliot has a chilling phrase in his play - Murder in the Cathedral … “sin grows with doing good.”

So now some righteous people in our nation have taken up this responsibility of doing good … “getting rid of the diseased,” “healing the nation” and “giving prosperity to the wretched!”

Islamophobia today is cheered by the Chinese-made American flag- waving patriots in the leadership of Glen Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and the ilk … and as a result of their bullhorn our communities are directly impacted from Adelanto to Tennessee and Temecula to Madera.

In some cities, “patriots” protest against building or expanding of Mosques and in other towns – Mosques are simply torched – such as in the City of Adelanto where an Imam was tied to his chair & burnt alive (2008)… similarly a copy of the Quran was actually burnt and placed at the door of one of our member Mosques in Costa Mesa - unlike the Pastor in Florida who planned to burn Quran but spared us with his adventure.

And I am sure most of you have heard of the hate filled circus in Temecula Valley – not to mention a recent circus in Yorba Linda and earlier in Lomita, Cypress and Mission Viejo among others. Not to mention scores of hate crimes against young Muslim students – particularly girls with Hijab …

OC Human Relations Commission reported this (2009) …

- Hate crimes against Muslims & Arabs have risen at a highest rate since 2001
- Twice as many hate crimes from 2008 and almost equal to the 2003/2004 levels
- 50% increase in hate crimes targeting people, because of their religious beliefs --- and
- Hate crimes at religious places have increased by four times
Another angle at play is economics in the business of hate mongering. Islamophobia is now a cash cow industry. Near unknown and obscure people are made out to be "Islam experts" teach the world to keep an eye out on the next door neighbor just as LA Police Department wanted to accomplish in their now defunct Muslim Mapping Program but succeeded in deploying their i-Watch Program.

Most Muslims now say - it is time to move on ... Here are some ways Muslims are working to undo the damage - with the help of good people like youselves …

• Helping good Americans – thru’ dialogs & debates, seminars and symposiums, papers and projects - about the social cancer of Islamophobia and that it should be just as unacceptable as anti-Semitism and homophobia in our society today.
• Working with faith communities and their congregations for conversations on interreligious relations and co-existence with mutual respect for each other.
• Asking media to feature programs that deal with the scope and dangers of Islamophobia just as they do with anti-Semitism.
• Demanding from Politicians to demonstrate their integrity and denounce those of their party who are willing to trade hate speech for votes.
• Working with fellow citizens to reclaim a vision of America in which all citizens - regardless of their religion or lack of it are respected for who they are rather than otherwise.

In addition, for me personally, most encouraging are our programs that offer …

• Scholarships for young Muslims to pursue journalism, media studies, etc
• Hands on workshops teaching writing, speaking, producing their own independent work as they see it rather than relying on mainstream corporate media

My friends – some in our country are addicted – seemingly for life – to create the “other” and then perpetuate hate against them. But then, there is also you – who not only does not run in the opposite direction when you hear the name Muslim or Islam but in fact run toward to stop, listen and challenge the discourse if it is hateful. And it is in you I have hope for a better America that does not hate anyone but loves all, unconditionally.

Revolt to Revolution

2011-02-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

Blessed be the [Egyptian] revolutionaries for they are the peacemakers. Peaceful revolt in Egypt has shown the world that when the wretched of the earth rise, the tyrants flee.

Egyptians must not stop at the fleeing of the Mubarak. They must demand the ouster of Mubarak’s cabal and make them meet their fate in the court of law.

Egypt has rediscovered its most awesome asset – the young believers, passionate and resilient who have reclaimed the dignity and honor of their nation. Egyptians have realized that it is only them who can restore the legacy of Misr as Umm ad-Dounia. Egyptians have dispelled the myth that Arab countries are neither suited for democracy nor may welcome modernity. Their courage and perseverance has shattered this fallacy. They now have to begin the real work – to transform the nation and do it in a hurry. Here are some key pre-requisites for a true Egyptian revolution.

1. Rid the country from all the tyrants’ partners. They have no place in your new Egypt.
2. Write a new constitution that shares and checks the powers of all.
3. Re-engineer all system[s] that serves the people and complete your revolution.
4. Reject the “guidance” from the international community.
5. Refuse to pay all debts incurred by the tyrant & refuse to accept any new loans.
6. Reclaim your dual heritage of being African and Arab.
7. Restore the historical legacy of Egypt that embraces people of all faiths and traditions.

The path to ultimate freedom in your country can only come from the circles & corners - streets & squares of your country. So keep marching forward and complete your revolt to the revolution … Si Si Peude to you and Mabrook la-Mubarak.

O Lord – the wretched of the earth have risen

2011-01-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

The wretched of the earth have risen
O Lord – do not save the tyrants

The hungry of the world are singing
The weak of the world are swinging
The oppressed of the world are smiling
O Lord – do not save the tyrants

O Lord – do not save the tyrants and
The brothers of the tyrants, and
The helpers of the tyrants,
The hypocrites who hail the tyrants,
O Lord – do not save the tyrants

O Lord – do not save the tyrants
From Maghrib to Iskandaria
From the Mediterranean to the Red Sea
From the Medina of Tunis to the Medina of the Prophet
O Lord – do not save the tyrants

O Lord – do not save the tyrants, and
Grant the wretched a scent of the freedom
Give the wretched a taste of dignity
Honor the wretched with crowns on their heads
O Lord – the wretched of the earth have risen
---------
by Shakeel Syed – Jan 28, 2011 – reflecting on the Middle East uprising[s].

Role of Religion in Palestine/Israel Conflict - A Muslim Perspective

2011-01-21T17:59:00.001-08:00

Presentation at Pepperdine University – Malibu on Jan 19, 2011
Topic – Role of Religion (or lack there of) in Palestine/Israel Conflict – A Muslim perspective by Shakeel Syed
-------------------------------
I begin in the name of God (the Creator of all of us), All praise be to God, the Most Compassionate & the Most Merciful, Lord of the Worlds.

Muslims are commanded to recognize the Jews and the Christians as, “People of the Book” a special status granted by Islam to the fraternity of monotheists – (2:62).

Moses and Jesus are my brothers, said Muhammad. (peace & blessings be upon all of them).

Makkah, Madinah and Jerusalem are cities of great reverence in Quran. Jerusalem has multiple distinctions: it was the first and the original Qibla (direction of prayer), Muslims prayed towards and the miraculous journey of Prophet Muhammad from Makkah to the Al-Aqsa Mosque before ascending to the heavens.

The chapter 17 of Quran (al-Isra), refers as follows: “Glory be to God who did take his servant for a journey by night from the Sacred Mosque (in Makkah) to Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) whose precincts We did bless - in order that We might show him some of Our signs.”

It is these aspects – Al-Quds being the first Qibla -- the travel of Prophet Muhammad to the heavens thru al-Aqsa -- the birthplace & the ascension of Prophet Jesus to the heavens and the resting place of Prophet Abraham in Hebron – which connects all Muslims to the land that is holy to all of us. And perhaps this is the only extent to which religion plays a role in the place and not necessarily a role in the conflict.

Karen Armstrong in her book Jerusalem: One City Three Faiths, writes that Umar Ibn al Khattab, the Islamic leader (Caliph) at the time, “expressed the monotheistic ideal of compassion more than any previous conqueror of Jerusalem, with the possible exception of King David. He presided over the most peaceful and bloodless conquest that the city had seen in its long and often tragic history. Once the Christians had surrendered, there was no killing, no destruction of property, no burning of rival religious symbols, no expulsions or expropriations, and no attempt to force the inhabitants to embrace Islam. If a respect for the previous occupants of the city is the sign of the integrity of a monotheistic power, Islam began its long tenure in Jerusalem very well indeed.”
The Islamic rule was interrupted by the brutal conquest of Crusades who persecuted and banished not only Muslims, but also Jews and Orthodox Christians from Jerusalem. It was not until Islamic forces, under the leadership of Salah-ed-Din (Saladin), invited all to return as he held this city sacred. (I urge you to relive these times in Ridley Scott’s – Kingdom of Heaven). For the most part, the indigenous Jews, Christians, and Muslims continued to live in harmony even during the Ottomans Empire.
But today, after several decades, this sacred city is full of bad faith: bad faith engendered by the seizing of land, expulsion of the indigenous population, denial of re-entry, and colonizing the rest of the land.
As a person born in India to parents who lived under the Victorian Majesty, I understand a thing or two about colonization. Let me share some examples from the discriminatory policies of Israel.

The Israeli Law of Return, I argue, is inherently racist because it provides automatic Israeli citizenship to any Jew born anywhere in the world. My good friend Rabbi Mark Diamond can, if he so wishes, become an Israeli citizen with all its privileges under this Law of Return, just as the current Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, did. Mr. Oren’s is a rather exclusive case. He did his Aliyah and then chose to renounce his American citizenship in order to become the Israeli Ambassador to the United States.

Juxtapose the distinct privilege of being Jewish against a Christian or Muslim Palestinian who may have been born and raised in--and later displaced from--what is now Israel and that person is denied the right to return home.
Similarly we know of the Absentee Law that is the basis for justifying government land acquisition and transfer of the same from native Palestinians to Jewish settlers. The Absentee Law had a sweeping effect on the Palestinian Arab population and created a basic premise for future land confiscation and treating these forced absentees as “internal refugees,” now accounting for about 25% of all Palestinian citizens in Israel.

The Planning & Construction Law has an impact on hundreds of Palestinian Arab communities in Israel as “unrecognized villages” as they were not incorporated into the planning schemes and instead classified as agricultural. Consequently, the indigenous Palestinians in these unrecognized villages are near completely deprived of paved roads, sanitation, water, electricity, schools and medical services. Interestingly, surrounding these unrecognized villages are exclusively Jewish settlements with all amenities.

This brings us to the “Jewish only settlements” in the occupied Palestinian territory in West Bank inhabited by more than 400,000 settlers and growing, all of whom enjoy full citizenship rights of Israel, yet they do not live in Israel proper.

With the Jewish only settlements comes The Wall, 600+ checkpoints, hundreds of militia outposts, roadblocks, exclusive Jewish-only roads, separate schools, public facilities…And then there are the home demolitions, confiscation of the land of indigenous Palestinians who are forcibly evicted in middle of the night at gunpoint. This is especially evident in East Jerusalem where evicted Palestinian families are living in tents on the pavement across from the very homes in which they used to live and which now are occupied by Jewish families under police protection.

Discussing peace from our position of comfort is definitely a “good idea”, just as Gandhi replied when asked what he thought of democracy.

But to a mother in occupied Palestine who watches each day the Jewish-only settlements with swimming pools, paved roads, parks, and libraries, peace may seem rather distant, just as the idea of democracy was to Gandhi under British colonization.

This Palestinian mother and millions like her do not look at this conflict as a matter of religion but rather a matter of gross political and racial injustice.

In whose name and what faith can we justify this prolonged occupation, subjugation and humiliation of a people left with nothing but crumbs, cowering behind the walls and the barbed wires for decades?
The occupied always resist and eventually prevail … The French ousted the Germans; the Algerians kicked out the French; the Black South Africans threw out the White apartheid regime; the Irish sent the British home; the Afghans ousted the Soviets (and are now resisting the American occupation); and Kashmiris continue to resist the Indian occupation. And the Palestinians continue to heroically resist the Israeli occupation and its total monopoly over power, resources and their movement.
A prominent South African, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, reminds us with these profound words … "My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?"

My friends, I believe that Palestine is already at its knees militarily, but I also believe that the Palestinians are standing tall on their feet and when a population rises up as we are seeing in Tunisia no military power could ever make them sit down, forever.

The Holy Quran calls Jews and Christians “The People of the Book” and Abraham our common father.

“Moses and Jesus are my brothers,” said Muhammad (peace & blessings be upon them). And that makes you - Christians and Jews - my cousins.

So I call upon all of us tonight – the extended family of Abraham - to recognize that our Abrahamic religions invite us to “be-come” better people and I pray that none of our religions mistakenly believe that we already are a better people!
May peace be with you.

Abhorred & Harvested

2009-12-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

Abhorred & Harvested
(commemorating Gaza massacre and
lamenting Israelis harvesting organs of the Palestinians)

Life abhorred
Death harvested

Moments into eternity
pain slows time

Days fly away
joys speed moments

Robbed and ripped
from adolescence to age

Tender hands - oblivious
tears on the white beard

Grandma’s wrinkles
long stories and sighs

Maidens - tippy toes
hope across the Wall
Hope renews itself
and [often] buries itself

Uprooted trees
dew drops homeless

Mountains, rivers
waiting to be trampled, splashed

Hamlets, villages
last few pearls left on the bride

Church - loudly still
Mosque - silently screaming
Synagogue - peacefully afraid

God All-Mighty, the All Hearing, the All Knowing
we are abhorred when alive and harvested when dead!

Shakeel Syed
Culver City – Dec 27, 2009

A Hostile Takeover of Zionism

2009-09-30T14:46:00.001-07:00

A Hostile Takeover of Zionism (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/a-hostile-takeover-of-zionism/article1302318/)

The rise of Israel's Military Rabbis ...

2009-09-30T14:44:00.000-07:00

The Rise of Israel's Military Rabbis (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article23551.htm)

BBC Newsnight: Monday, 7 September 2009

Israel's army is changing. Once proudly secular, its combat units are now filling with those who believe Israel's wars are "God's wars".

Global List of BDS against Israel's Occupation

2009-09-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Global Actions to end Israel's Occupation & Human Rights Violations.

Organizations and governments worldwide are taking action that can help bring freedom for Palestinians and an end to the colonization of Palestinian land. This representative review of diverse approaches was initiated by the Palestine-Israel Action Group, Ann Arbor, Michigan Quakers (piag_@mac.com). As new actions are taken, the list is updated by Interfaith Peace Initiative. Information for inclusion is welcome at apassionforpeace@aol.com.

For a global list of organizations signed on to BDS (Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions) - click here.

Educated Racism in Israel

2009-09-03T10:07:00.001-07:00

Old problems, new challenges
Sep. 2, 2009
DR. YOUSEF JABAREEN , THE JERUSALEM POST
On the opening week of the school year, amid the already staggering conditions of the Arab education system in Israel - grossly unequal funding, nominal Arab representation on curricular committees, substantial lack of classrooms and often basic facilities or outdated textbooks, all contributing to significantly lower performance and matriculation rates than Jewish pupils - it seems that the new school year and the new education minister are bringing new challenges as well.

If in the past Arab students have had to face discrimination in funding, access and quality of education, it appears that the coming era is one of cultural exclusion - or even repression.

ALREADY IN mid-July, the Ministry of Education announced that it would ban the use of the term "Nakba" (catastrophe) widely used in the Arab narrative to describe the events that led to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948. Although Arab Palestinians, who comprise 25 percent of schoolchildren in Israel, generally recall a different experience of the war and its consequences in 1948-1949, their lessons at schools will even further ignore their collective history, replaced with the Jewish narrative.

This is the case, despite the fact that before the end of her term, former education minister Yuli Tamir appointed a joint team of Arab and Jewish education experts to produce a host of recommendations for a "shared life" program in public schools - one that would foster mutual understanding between Arabs and Jews, coexistence and shared, equal participation in society.

Current Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar has frozen the implementation of the recommendations, and instead is pushing for a new "Jewish heritage and culture" program for fourth through ninth grades, which he hopes to bring to all public schools starting in the 2010/11 school year. In the program, Jewish and Arab students alike will learn about the Hebrew calendar, the centrality of Jerusalem in Jewish history, the significance of the flag and national anthem and will be encouraged to enlist in the IDF.

What is more, last week Sa'ar proposed a plan under which schools with high rates of student army enlistment will be rewarded financially - and parents too! To be sure, Sa'ar is as aware that no Arab school will qualify for such rewards as he knows of the blatant discrepancy between the budgets allocated to Arab versus Jewish schools.

In fact, last summer under Tamir, a joint committee of the Ministry of Education and Arab civil society representatives published findings detailing the exact shortage of funds and human resources in the Arab education system. According to the committee's projections, as we enter the present school year, if action is not taken immediately, Arab schools will continue to lack NIS 500 million in funds for curricular and pedagogical programs; NIS 300m. in rent for Arab kindergartens; 9,236 classrooms; 200 school psychologists and 250 guidance counselors (already there are no guidance counselors in 75% of Arab schools).

DESPITE THE bleakness of this picture, however, the good news is that although the challenges are mighty, the solutions are at everyone's fingertips - they just need to be implemented. After all, the "shared life" program, and the joint committee's fully detailed plan and budget for improving the Arab education system simply await the green light from Education Minister Sa'ar.

And should the ministry continue to neglect Arab schools, the movement for an independent, professional Arab pedagogical council is growing rapidly among Arab educators, as it becomes increasingly clear that without direct influence over its own education policy, budgets, standards and curricula, the Arab minority will continue to be repressed - both in access to equal opportunity to succeed in life and break the cycle of poverty, and in the ability to fully participate in Israeli society as truly equal citizens.

The writer is the general director of Dirasat, the Arab Center for Law and Policy, based in Nazareth. He also teaches minority rights at the University of Haifa.

O Palestine - My Bride

2009-08-08T16:35:00.000-07:00

O Palestine, My Bride …
(Jerusalem, July 2009)

Dreams … Aspirations,
Love … Laughter,
Tears … Sorrow,
All in you, yet unrealized,
O Palestine, My Bride …

Your Silwan … screams,
Your Gaza … gagged,
Your Hebron … horrified,
Your Ramallah … wrenching,
All in you, yet in tears,
O Palestine, My Bride …

Your green gardens … brown,
Your flowing rivers … dried,
Your mighty mountains … humbled,
Your dreamy deserts … ruined,
All in you, yet you smile,
O Palestine, My Bride …

O Palestine, My Bride …
You measure yourself not in miles … but in Checkpoints and Roadblocks,
You name your cities & towns - not by name … but by Walls, Fences & Barriers,
You visit your Villages and Hamlets … but through Trenches and over Boulders,

All in you – keep smiling and
All of me - keep dreaming
for your Love & Laughter,
for my Tears & Sorrow,

One Day – O Palestine
You Will Be My Bride.

Alarming (NOT surprising) Record of FBI

2009-07-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

The Alarming Record of the F.B.I.'s Informant in the Bronx Bomb Plot
(http://www.villagevoice.com/content/printVersion/1246457)
By Graham Rayman
published: July 08, 2009

Last month, police and the FBI arrested four Newburgh men on charges that they had plotted to bomb synagogues in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and fire a missile at a military jet.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly held press conferences at the synagogues to reassure New Yorkers about their safety. During Kelly's remarks, it was startling to hear the commissioner refer to al-Qaeda by name, if only to say that the four purported home-grown terrorists had no ties to Osama Bin Laden's organization.

As more details emerged, however, the less the four defendants sounded like men with the skills to plan a sophisticated terror plot. They were small-time crooks, felons with long criminal records whose previous activities revolved around smoking marijuana and playing video games. One defendant, Laguerre Payen, was arrested in a crack house surrounded by bottles of his own urine; his lawyer describes him as "mildly retarded."

It seemed fairly astounding that, for a full calendar year, such a group could remain interested in and plan anything more complex than a backyard barbecue, let alone a multipronged paramilitary assault, as the indictment against them alleged.

But what the indictment didn't say, and what the initial news reports didn't fill in, was the extent to which the fifth man in the plot, an unnamed FBI informant, had provided the glue to hold the Newburgh 4 together.

That informant was a Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain, code-named "Malik," who agreed to work for the FBI to obtain leniency after he was arrested in 2002 for fraud.

Over a period of about a year, Malik met with defendants James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Payen while under FBI surveillance. Cromitie allegedly said he was upset about U.S. forces killing people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He talked about being willing to die as a martyr, and threatened to "do something to America."

The Newburgh bomb plot isn't the first of Malik's operations for the government. He played a similar role four years ago in an Albany case, in which he helped the FBI arrest a man named Mohammed Hossain, a cash-poor pizzeria owner, and his imam, Yassin Aref, after persuading them to launder $50,000 in a made-up plot to bring a missile to the U.S. and assassinate the Pakistani prime minister.

In both cases, Malik did not stumble upon active terror cells plotting to bring destruction on American soil. Instead, in both Newburgh and Albany, he needed long periods of time to recruit his Muslim contacts, spin elaborate tales about his terror contacts, and develop solid plans of action, all the while providing the defendants with large amounts of resources and cash incentives.

Malik was so successful that in Riverdale, the Newburgh 4 planted what they believed were actual bombs at two synagogues. In Albany, the defendants were only involved in a cash transaction that, theoretically, was tied to the sale of a weapon.

But in each case, the question remains: Would either set of defendants have done anything remotely like plant bombs or launder money for terrorists if not for the prodding and plotting and encouragement of Malik and the FBI?

And there's a more troubling question: When Malik tells his FBI handlers that the defendants are saying menacing things about America, is he actually telling the whole truth? Translations from the Albany case transcripts suggest that Malik routinely exaggerated and, in some cases, wholly fabricated the words of the defendants. When they talked about Islam being a religion of peace and of jihad being a way of inspiring fealty to Islam, Malik instead told his handlers that they had talked about Islam inspiring them to kill. Those exaggerated reports became the basis for the FBI's case against Hossain and Aref, who were both convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Aref is now housed in a maximum-security federal prison in Marion, Illinois, where he is held under strict rules that limit his ability to speak with the outside world, in a unit euphemistically called the Communication Management Program. Under the program's rules, he is allowed just one 15-minute phone call each week and is not allowed any contact visits. Hossain is housed in a federal prison in New Jersey.

The Newburgh 4 will face far longer sentences because they are accused of actually planting what they believed were explosive devices.

Like in the Albany case, however, they will be prosecuted almost entirely on the work done by Malik, who arrived in Newburgh about a year ago, driving a shiny black BMW and flashing a lot of cash.

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As he had done in Albany, Malik showed up in Newburgh, went to a local mosque, and started looking for recruits.

He found them in four convicted felons with dozens of arrests between them. He initiated the conversations, introduced the idea of a terror plot, and delivered the money, equipment, and resources to back it up. He quickly became known as the guy with ready cash who was interested in the lives of others and was quick to provide aid and comfort.

Malik even offered to pay medical bills when he found out that one of his targets, David Williams, had a brother fighting liver cancer.

Williams's mother, Elizabeth McWilliams, tells the Voice that Malik approached her son with an offer of monetary assistance for her ailing younger son, Lord McWilliams, 20.

"He told my son [David] that he was going to help with the bills," she says. "He only met him [Malik] in March. My son came to me and said, 'Mom, don't worry about Lord. I met this Muslim brother who says he's going to help us.' "

Her younger son had signed up for the U.S. Navy and was preparing to ship off to boot camp when he was diagnosed with the disease. He was hospitalized for three months and had his spleen removed. Malik not only offered to help with her son's bills, McWilliams says, but also talked about sending him to Universal Studios, the Florida amusement park, when he was well enough to travel.

McWilliams says that Malik was supposed to hand over the cash on the very day that the police made the arrests.

Her son has been taken away, but the medical bills remain. "Right now, we're waiting to see a specialist in Manhattan," she says. "The liver is enlarged right now. We'll have to do another biopsy. He goes to Westchester every Thursday to have his blood checked."

Kathleen Baynes, girlfriend of defendant James Cromitie, says Malik was always around, driving in one luxury car or another—a Mercedes, a BMW, a Hummer, an Expedition, a tan Jeep.

"At one point, he promised to give James $10,000 with no problem," she says. "He came around so much that it was like he was stalking us. James would hide from him."

Baynes says that Malik also gave his targets large amounts of marijuana. He offered to pay an outstanding fine that Baynes owed. He gave the couple $217 for rent. He bought chicken and soda for the family. He paid for a birthday party for Baynes's child. He took them out to dinner on several occasions. He gave away a cell phone. He promised to buy the child a kid-size motor scooter. He offered to give Cromitie his BMW, and bought him a camera.

Baynes says she never heard her boyfriend make comments about Afghanistan: "He just liked to work and play video games and smoke a little weed."

Once, Baynes says, Cromitie was in North Carolina. Malik called him and demanded that he return to New York. "Brother," he said to Cromitie, according to Baynes, "You bring your ass the fuck back, and I will pay you even more. I'll send you a plane ticket."

"I was always skeptical," Baynes says. "I would say to James, 'What the hell is going on with this man? Something is not right. He's fraudulent, a fake.' He just came up here and ruined a lot of lives."

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Malik came to the attention of law enforcement in 2002, when he was seen hanging around the Albany office of the State Department of Motor Vehicles.

Although he owned a dollar store, Malik approached people at the DMV offices offering his services as an interpreter. He would tell immigrants that the written test for a driver's license was very difficult and that, for a price, he would take the tests for them. He fraudulently took tests for other people about 90 times before he was arrested.

Things soon got worse for him. He declared bankruptcy in the summer of 2003. Then, in October, a building he owned was destroyed in a fire—it was uninsured, and he lost everything.

With so many setbacks at one time in his life, Malik may not have been difficult to persuade to accept work as an FBI informant in return for wiping away his criminal case and the assurances that he wouldn't be deported.

His first case: helping the agency set up a sting to catch two DMV employees who had aided him in his own illegal schemes.

Next, he was given the names of men who wanted to distribute heroin. Malik wore a wire, bought some of the heroin, and even received a shipment of the stuff from Afghanistan. In that case, 11 people were arrested and pleaded guilty. One man escaped and became a fugitive.

Then began an even more elaborate case. In what may have been their first meeting, the pizzeria owner and father of six, Mohammed Hossain, approached Malik in July 2003, asking for help in obtaining a DMV learner's permit for his brother.

After gaining Hossain's trust, Malik spun a remarkable tale over the next few months: He was actually a wealthy arms importer who backed radical Islamic groups. He told Hossain that he was a smuggler bringing Stinger missiles into the U.S. and laundering the money to pay for them. He eventually claimed that he had been hired by a group of terrorists to bring a shoulder-mounted rocket into New York to assassinate Pakistani prime minister Pervez Musharraf. And he said he would eventually be paid $50,000 to do it.

Malik asked Hossain to loan him $50,000, and Hossain consented, with Malik agreeing to pay the money back at a rate of $2,000 per month. According to Islamic custom, such an informal loan needed a witness. Hossain brought in Yassin Aref, his imam at the local mosque, Masjid Al-Salam.

It turned out that Aref was already being watched by the FBI, for reasons that are somewhat bizarre.

Earlier that year, on a battlefield in Iraq, American soldiers searching dead Iraqi fighters came across a scrap of paper bearing Aref's name, a phone number, and an Arabic word that the Americans mistranslated as "commander."

Actually, the word was Arabic for "brother," a common term used by Muslims the way Americans use "dude" or "buddy."

Aref is a well-educated Iraqi Kurd who had fled the regime of Saddam Hussein and spent several years in Syria before gaining status as a United Nations–sponsored refugee, which allowed him to come to the United States in 1999. Federal investigators say that while in Syria, Aref befriended a man who later formed a terrorist organization. But Aref was not a part of that group himself. The fact that his phone number was found on a soldier, however, understandably made the FBI curious about his connections.

By 2003, Aref was a trusted friend to Hossain, and he agreed to witness the loan to Malik.

Aref's attorney, Terence Kindlon, points out that the imam's participation was minimal: He simply witnessed a transfer of cash—he wrote out receipts for it and gave each of the men a copy.

Hossain and Aref were arrested on August 4, 2004, with the same sort of pronouncements of national salvation that would follow the Newburgh arrests.

Then-Governor George Pataki hailed it as a victory in the War on Terror. Albany mayor Jerry Jennings reassured the public that the government was watching: "We want people to feel good about what happened today because we are on top of it. We are being proactive . . . to make sure our communities are safe."

In the subsequent trial, neither Aref nor Hossain was ever linked to any known terror group.

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Shamshad Ahmad believes he may have been the target of Malik's first attempt at a terror case.

Like Aref, he's an imam at Masjid Al-Salam, the Albany mosque. He says Malik contacted him in September 2002 about providing shelter to a battered Pakistani woman and her children. But Ahmad was immediately skeptical, and cut all association with him.

Other members of Ahmad's mosque told him that Malik had approached them with various illegal schemes, apparently trolling for possible targets. In July 2003, he found a potential target in Hossain. (Since the arrest and trial of Hossain and Aref, Ahmad has written a book about the case.)

Ahmad says that Hossain was extremely vulnerable to Malik for three reasons: He was desperate for money to keep his pizzeria afloat; he was a religious zealot; and he was prone to rambling on about religion and politics. As in Newburgh, Malik gave gifts to his target—in this case, toy helicopters for Hossain's children.

The two men met more than 50 times over the next year, resulting in 50 hours of government surveillance tapes.

FBI protocol called for Malik to speak with his FBI handler, Tim Coll, both before and after each of his meetings with Hossain. Memos were then prepared for FBI files to detail each meeting. These memos are known as "302s" in FBI parlance, and provide the agency with a developing summary of evidence that will be used later at trial.

Time and again, however, the material in the 302s in the Albany case were very different from the actual transcripts of recordings that the FBI secretly made of conversations between Malik and his targets.

While Hossain and Aref did make statements that could be construed as anti-American, they were also resistant when Malik tried, repeatedly, to get them to make statements supporting violence against Americans.

"Malik would depict Hossain as anti-American [in the 302s], while the actual translations done several months later showed that Hossain was actually espousing his respect for the United States and criticizing the terrorists," Ahmad writes.

The Voice compared the FBI's 302 memos to actual transcripts of conversations between Malik and Hossain, and found many discrepancies:

• An August 7, 2003, meeting. The 302 memo: Malik arranges to give Hossein's brother the answers to a driver's license test for a $75 fee. The transcript: This meeting actually contains a long discussion on politics and religion. Hossain describes himself as a law-abiding citizen. "I never harming anybody," he says. "People like me, society get benefit." When talk turns to Bin Laden, Hossain notes that suicide is against the Koran. "It is totally wrong—there is no right to suicide yourself," he says. "If someone [commits] suicide, it is haraam [a wrong]. They cannot enter Paradise." The transcript also shows that Hossain criticized the World Trade Center attack as "bad, very bad." He also says, "We should have a good relationship with unbelievers, then because of our goodness, Islam will spread."

• September 30. The 302 memo: The two men meet at Hossain's pizzeria. Malik reports that "Hossain stated it was OK to kill nonbelievers in the name of Allah." The transcript: "Jihad is seeking knowledge," Hossain tells Malik, according to the translation. "Get up early in the morning while the sleep is overwhelming you, do brush, wash up, and go to the morning prayer." At another point, Malik says, "Infidels are killing Muslims left and right. I want to fight with them and teach them a lesson." But Hossain doesn't take the bait: "Muslims are suffering because they are not following the religion, the teaching of the Prophet."

• October 20. The 302 memo: Hossain is reported to say, "Anything you do in the name of Allah is not a sin, including killing people." The transcript: Malik is heard to ask, "What about committing jihad in the name of Allah?" Hossain answers, "Our jihad is to live a righteous life and help guide so many Muslims to the right path, stop the wrong actions, to come to the prayer. This is jihad."

• November 20. The 302 memo: The investigation reaches a critical stage. Malik reveals that he is a weapons dealer. He shows Hossain what he claims is the tube of a surface-to-air missile, which he plans to sell to people in New York for $50,000. Malik reports that Hossain responds by saying, "It was OK to kill the nonbelievers; however, it was not OK to commit suicide bombings because the Koran forbids suicide." The memo also reports that Hossain says that al-Qaeda was "good for Muslims" and that "if Muslims united, they could be the police of the entire world, not America." The transcript: When Malik invites Hossain to participate in his scheme, Hossain refuses, saying that it is illegal. He then goes on at length to say that "creating violence here or there is neither the solution nor the practice of the Prophet." He tells Malik to stay away from the people who are plotting to use the missile. Malik insists that attacking non-Muslims and killing them are his way of pleasing Allah and going to Paradise. "You have your own ways, but Allah will not allow you in a billion years to kill yourself or someone else," Hossain says. "Establish the five daily prayers. That's the way to begin."

• December 5. The 302 memo: Another meeting at Hossain's pizzeria. Malik tells the FBI that Hossain says, "If [I] did not have a family to think about, [I] would pick up arms and start killing Mushriqs [Muslims who betray other Muslims]." Malik reports that Hossain supports the (fictional) attempt to bring in weapons. The transcript: Hossain again speaks against violence. "I don't believe in your method—that's why I don't take that path," the pizzeria owner says.

• January 14, 2004. The 302 memo: Malik meets Hossain's friend, Aref, and tells him that he gets money from selling missiles and ammunition to an Islamic radical group. Malik reports that he tells Aref that the people he is selling weapons to plan to attack the Pakistani prime minister, Musharraf. The report goes on to say that Aref blames Musharraf for betraying Muslims to side with America, that he has heard of the radical group Malik claims to be selling to, but doesn't know much about it, and he warns Malik that anyone with links to the group could go to jail. The memo specifies that Aref doesn't tell Malik not to help the group, but only to be careful. The transcript: Besides telling Malik to be careful, Aref also says he knows little about the group, but if they are fighting for their independence, he may help them. He tells Malik to help refugees and the needy. "I am neither asking you to help them or not help them because I don't know them very well," Aref says. Malik then asks Aref about his views on Bin Laden, but Aref fails to take the bait. Instead, he points out that out of 14 million Saudis, perhaps only 400 follow Bid Laden. "A Muslim leader is whom every Muslim follows," he says.

• July 1. The 302 memo: Malik reports that he has criticized Hossain for pro-American comments he has made in a newspaper article. According to the memo, Hossain responds by saying that he "only loves America's money," and actually hates America. In his heart, Hossain says he feels like Bin Laden. The transcript: When Malik ridicules Hossain for saying positive things about the United States at the same time that he is helping plot a terrorist attack, Hossain objects. He shouts that he is not Bin Laden, and that he came to the U.S. because he saw the good in this country.

In the transcript, Hossain repeatedly says that Muslims should treat Americans well for the good of their religion.

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Asked at trial whether the things he told the FBI were the things that Hossain and Aref had actually said, Malik testified that he told his FBI handlers what the defendants had meant.

Defense lawyers for Hossain and Aref tried to make an issue of that at the trial, arguing that Malik misled his FBI handlers about the views of the defendants. In a case that had no real terror plot, in which the defendants did not buy any weapons or make any plans to blow anything up, Malik's portrayal of the two men as anti-American was a key element of the prosecution.

During the trial, Malik was so resistant to the cross-examination that he repeatedly argued with the defense lawyers, gave roundabout or incoherent answers, and said, "I don't recall" a total of 50 times. He was admonished multiple times by Judge Thomas McAvoy to answer the questions that had been asked.

At one point, McAvoy's frustration was reflected in a statement fairly startling for a judge: "Is someone going to read this someday and understand it?"

"I am not sure, at this point," a defense lawyer replied. "I'm working on it."

During Malik's time on the witness stand, federal prosecutors questioned him using only 17 pages of the transcripts, an indication that they wanted only limited testimony from the informant.

Defense lawyers, on the other hand, cross-examined him by referring to more than 100 transcript pages.

"What they're presenting to you was manipulative and deceptive," Hossain's lawyer, Kevin Luibrand, told the jury in his closing statement. "Malik essentially persuaded my client to take part in the scheme.

"Hossain was just a hardworking businessman before Malik arrived," Luibrand argued. "If Malik had not come into his life, Hossain would be making pizzas, tending to his family, and practicing his religion," he said.

Despite whether either Hossain or Aref would have had anything to do with terror organizations without the constant prodding of Malik, the receipts that Aref made out for the $50,000 loan proved to be powerful evidence for the Albany jury.

The two men were found guilty of money laundering, conspiracy to engage in money laundering, conspiracy to provide material support in connection with an attack with a weapon of mass destruction, and conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Aref was also convicted for lying to an FBI agent about whether he knew the founder of a radical Islamic group.

Aref, now in special lockup at the Marion, Illinois, federal penitentiary, is among other prisoners caught up in similar stings, says Kathy Manley, one of Aref's lawyers—men who weren't planning on attacking the United States until informants recruited them, who were convicted for laundering money, violating federal rules for reporting financial transactions, or sending money overseas to questionable groups.

A report by the Center on Law and Security at New York University found that of 619 terror cases brought by federal prosecutors, only 10 percent actually resulted in convictions for terrorist charges.

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In the Newburgh case, because the four accused men actually did plant what they thought were bombs, the government will have to rely less on statements made on tape. But once again, Malik's role, and what he told his FBI handlers, will be at the center of the case.

There is no publicly disclosed FBI rule about confidential informants giving gifts to the targets of the investigation, but the issue will certainly come up if the defendants don't plead guilty and a trial is scheduled. Defense attorneys will argue that Cromitie and the others did what Malik asked because he was handing out gifts and promising much more.

"One is essentially buying one's way into the confidences of the targets," says Scott Greenfield, a criminal defense attorney not involved in either the Albany or Newburgh cases. "The problem is that as a prosecutor, you want to show that the targets wanted to commit a crime, and the informant simply facilitated that. Now, you have an entirely different motivation."

"Someone up high in the Justice Department has to take a look at this policy of doing cases where it looks like and feels like entrapment," says Terence Kindlon, the lawyer who represented Aref. "You're taking advantage of gullible people in Newburgh. In Albany, you're taking advantage of Hossain's financial needs and Aref's naïveté.

"They manufactured a crime and found four dolts to be defendants," he adds. "If Malik had gone to Newburgh and wanted to have a conspiracy that distributed guns, drugs, did prostitution, he could have found the same four people. I'd be willing to bet my car that not one of these guys could even find Afghanistan on a map."

If convicted, the Newburgh plotters face long sentences. The men convicted of plotting a similarly far-fetched plot to make a military assault on Fort Dix, New Jersey, for example, were sentenced to life in federal prison.

As for Malik, he has now been used in four different stings: the driver's license scam, the Afghanistan drug case, the Albany case, and now the Newburgh case. Will the FBI use him again? A spokesman declined to discuss details of the case.

grayman@villagevoice.com

Same old boring drama with a new title

2009-05-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

Who do "they" really think "we" are ... bunch of lolly pop sucking kids ... well, some say that some Muslims are precisely just that ... why - becuase they seem to be ever so ready to happily take a sit-down shower under the breaking news by CNN & the crackling leaks of falsehood & baloney by NY Times. I think the adage fits well here ... "shame on you if you fool me once & shame on me if you fool me twice" ...
Well, friends, other than the barrage of press releases & statements praising spooks ... plz ALSO read this - an informed citizenry with a bit of fire in the belly almost guarantees good democracy.
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1) FBI blows it (http://www.alternet.org/world/140209/fbi_blows_it%3A_supposed_terror_plot_against_ny_synagogues_is_bogus/)

2) The Newburgh Four (http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/the_newburgh_four_--_and_the_goverment_mole_who_be.php?ref=m1)

3) Portrait of an idiot (http://www.schneier.com/essay-174.html)

4) Connect the dots that tells us spooks are idiots (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090521/ap_on_re_us/us_foiled_terror_plots_glance)

5) This is a long but essential read in view of FBI's agents/provocateurs recently confirmed to be inside the Mosqaues (http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/neglected.pdf).

6) Not much different across the pond - see this http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/1216106b024ae722.

A CITIZEN'S FILE ON OBAMA'S 100 DAYS

2009-05-10T23:04:00.000-07:00

A Citizen’s File On President Obama’s One Hundred DaysBy Shakeel Syed

While appreciating the first one hundred days of President Obama’s term, let us examine one of his key foreign relations issue, i.e. Palestine and ask of him to match his rhetoric with actions.

1. Dec ’08 / Jan ‘09: Israeli massacre of Gaza started on Dec 27, ’08 and stopped three days before Obama’s inauguration on Jan 17, ‘09. President Obama chose to remain silent saying, “there’s only one President at one time.” Unlike his silence toward the Israeli massacre in Gaza, he was quite vocal during a similar but relatively less violence in Mumbai.

2. Jan ’09: At his inauguration, although President Obama talked about poor people of the world and the nations with plenty but did not speak of the abject poverty under occupation and their prospects and our promise for peace in Middle East.

3. Jan ’09: Iran’s attempt to make itself energy independent is routinely condemned by the President but he failed to answer the question of Helen Thomas (ABC) – “if he knows of any State in the Middle East region who does have nuclear arms,” and the President answered – “I do not like to speculate.” President Obama clearly lacked the courage to acknowledge the Nuclear Israel and its arsenal.

4. Jan / Feb ’09: President Obama rightfully advocated speaking with all known and perceived adversaries (Iran & North Korea) except Hamas. Even John McCain at one point expressed the importance of speaking to Hamas for peace in Middle East.

5. Feb ’09: In spite of the recent Gaza massacre (arguably war crimes by Israel) and continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, President Obama grants more than $3 billion financial aid (not counting the military aid) to Israel and $900 million to the Palestinians. This is clearly an ethical disparity worth of reconciliation.

6. March ‘09: President Obama deserves to be commended for his stated policy of diplomacy and dialog (Iraq, Iran, Korea, Venezuela, etc) over his predecessor’s preferences. However his administration chose to completely boycott the Durban-II conference (in Geneva) on racism unlike George W. Bush who at least sent a delegation (2001) even though they had walked out.

As the first African-American President one would have expected Obama to champion the discussions on racism even if this conference were to question Israel’s (alleged) apartheid policies.

7. March ’09: The Obama administrations pick to become the nation’s top intelligence analyst has withdrawn his nomination after an intense lobbying campaign by backers of Israeli government policies. Former US Ambassador Charles “Chas” Freeman had come under Republican-led opposition over his comments criticizing Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land. Freeman has years of diplomatic experience, including stints as US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and assistant secretary of defense. Some Democrats joined in on the opposition to Freeman’s appointment.

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer took credit for Freeman’s withdrawal, saying, “I repeatedly urged the White House to reject him, and I am glad they did the right thing.”

Chas Freeman blasted lobby groups, lawmakers and pundits who support Israeli government policies for forcing his withdrawal. Freeman wrote, “The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency…The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views, the substitution of political correctness for analysis, and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.” Freeman continued, “I regret that my willingness to serve the new administration has ended by casting doubt on its ability to consider, let alone decide what policies might best serve the interests of the United States rather than those of a Lobby intent on enforcing the will and interests of a foreign government.”

One ought to question President Obama what happened to his objectivity and transparency and fairness?

8. March ’09: The same month President Obama appoints Dennis Ross (Israel firster) as a special adviser for Iran and Persian Gulf issues. Ross had already served and failed as Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton’s peace negotiator for Middle East (1980 – 2000) without peace in Middle East. It is paradoxical that Obama, who campaigned on dialoging with everyone, including Iran, would hand the Iran file to Ross, a cog in the machine of Israel's Washington lobby.

9. March ’09: Netanyahu gives his first interview to The Atlantic, in which he threatens to attack Iran to wipe out its nuclear facilities. Following day, President Obama calls Netanyahu and reassures 100% commitment to Israel's defense. One wonders about the anti-war candidate Obama versus the President Obama who is instead of asking Netanyahu to rethink his bombing rhetoric, reassures him.

10. March ’09: Israel attacks Sudan. US media reports that Israel has conducted three military strikes against targets in Sudan. President Obama chooses silence over Israel’s attack on Sudan. Juxtapose his silence toward Israel attacking Sudan versus his vocal demands on Russia to respect Georgia’s territorial sanctity.

11. April ’09: Avigdor Lieberman, a Soviet-born Jew turned Israeli citizen becomes Israeli Foreign Minister. Lieberman, the immigrant/settler Jew from Soviet Union won the Israeli elections, because of, among other rants - “no loyalty, no citizenship,” for Israeli-Arab citizens – who are born and brought up on their Palestinian land occupied by Israel. A fascist demand by any standard but President Obama is quiet to the America’s largest recipient of aid.

These are but few disparities of the US double standards in its dealing with the issue of Israel toward Palestine. So long as the US does not give up these blatant double standards it cannot be an honest broker for peace, neither in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict nor in any other. We must remind President Obama that unless his rhetoric for change is matched by action, peace in Palestine is not possible and without which peace in Israel is impossible.

An Eye Witness Account of Israeli Terror in Gaza

2009-01-01T13:42:00.001-08:00

December 29 6:05 PM, Marna house, Gaza city, Vittorio Arrigoni, Volunteer, International Solidarity Movement

An acrid smell of sulphur fills the air while the sky is shaken by earth-shattering rumbles. My ears are now deaf to the explosions, while my eyes are all out of tears from all the corpses. I stand in front of Al Shifa hospital, Gaza's main hospital, and we've just received Israel's terrible threat that they intend to bomb its wing under construction. This would be nothing new, as Wea'm hospital was bombed just yesterday, along with a medicine warehouse in Rafah, the Islamic university, which was also destroyed, along with various mosques scattered along the Strip. Not to mention many CIVILIAN structures.

Apparently, they can no longer find "sensible" targets, the air force and the navy is targeting places of worship, schools and hospitals. It's another 9/11 every single hour, every minute around here, and tomorrow is always a new day of mourning, always identical to the previous one. You notice the helicopters and airplanes constantly overhead, you see a flash, but you're already a goner and it's too late to take flight.

There are no bunkers against the bombs in the Strip and no place is really safe. I can't contact my friends in Rafah, not even those who live North of Gaza City, hopefully because the phone lines are overloaded. Hopefully. I haven't slept in 60 hours, and same goes for every Gazan. Yesterday three other ISM members and I spent the entire night at the al Awda hospital in the Jabalia refugee camp. We were there because we were fearing the much dreaded ground raid that never happened. But the Israeli tanks are posted all along the Strip's border, and their corpse-hungry creaks will apparently form a funeral march tonight. Around 11:30 PM a bomb fell about 800 metres from the hospital, the shock wave blow several windows apart, injuring the injured.

An ambulance arrived, then they blew up a mosque, thankfully empty at that time. Unfortunately, though it actually has nothing to do with bad luck but with the criminal and a terrorist will to massacre civilians, the Israeli bomb has also struck the building adjacent to the mosque, which was also destroyed. We watched as the tiny bodies of six little sisters were pulled out of the rubble – five are dead, one is in life-threatening conditions.

They laid the little girls out on the blackened asphalt, and they looked like broken dolls, disposed of as they were no longer usable. This wasn't a mistake, but a voluntary, and cynical horror. We're at a toll of 320 dead, more than a thousand wounded and, according to a doctor at Shifa, 60% of these are destined to die in the next few hours or days, after prolonged agony.There are many missing, and for the last two days despairing wives have been searching for their husbands or children in hospitals, often to no avail. The morgue is a macabre spectacle. A nurse told me that after hours of searching, a Palestinian woman recognized her husband from his amputated hand. All that's left of her husband, and the wedding band on her finger from the eternal love they had sworn one another.

Out of a house inhabited by two families, very little has remained of their bodies. They showed their relatives half of one bust and three legs. Right now, one of our Free Gaza Movement boats is leaving the port in Larnaca, Cyprus. I spoke to my friends on board. They've heroically amassed medicine and steeped it everywhere in the boat. It should reach the port of Gaza tomorrow around 8:00 AM. Here's to hoping that the port will still exist after another night of endless bombing. I'll be in touch with them for the entire night. Please, someone stop this nightmare. Choosing to remain silent means somehow lending support to the genocide unfolding right now. Shout out your indignation, in every capital of the "civilized" world, in every city, in every square, covering our own screams of pain and terror. A slice of humanity is dying in pitiful in a useless listening.

Change Goes Vacation?

2008-12-30T01:20:00.001-08:00

I wonder if ‘change’ could ever rest. I however wish President-elect Obama a relaxing break in Hawaii before he has to make his way to the haunted house climbing over world’s corpses, left behind by his predecessor.

I applauded President-elect when he quickly intervened to fix the economic carnage by convening his economic experts while taking to task the other economic experts. That’s leadership.

I am now bewildered to find President-elect AWOL and instead his Axelrod doing the reckless driving; “President-elect Obama is closely monitoring global events, including the situation in Gaza, but there is one president at a time,” he said on your behalf. And, I ask where is the leadership?

What is worse I ask, the economic crisis or human carnage? And what is better - to lead for the sake of getting a car loan or saving a human life?

I recall the then Presidential candidate Obama preaching humility while campaigning in Israel for American Jewish votes. Here is how the macho mutt expressed his humility during his visit to Sderot in Aug of 2008. “If somebody was sending rockets into my house, where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that,” he told reporters in Sderot, a small city on the edge of Gaza that has been hit repeatedly by rocket fire. “And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing,” said the humble-to-be-commander-in-chief.

Had then Presidential candidate crossed the border into Erez or any other city in Gaza after visiting Sderot, he could have related the lives of Malia and Sasha of South Chicago with Maryam and Fatima of North Gaza. It really is not rocket science to understand the reasons for rockets.

Malia and Sasha are worried about their dog while Maryam and Fatima are worried about their next meal. Malia and Sasha will drive (with a secret service escort) most likely to a private elite school while Maryam and Fatima will walk to a school without desks and books. Maryam and Fatima will play with pebbles as marbles and Malia and Sasha will be listening to Hannah Montana on their iPods.

Yes, Mr. President-elect, you have every reason to watch your daughters sleep and defend them while sleeping under down comforters. And just so the parents of Maryam and Fatima in Erez and million other parents in Gaza, wish to do - watch them sleep and defend them while they are sleeping. But those parents watch something else. Each night, they watch their equally lovely daughters - turning and twisting (on a hard floor) without down comforters and with hungry stomachs.

The change that you often refer to, Mr. President-elect, must be measured not only in how well your daughters can enjoy the slumber but why others’ daughters are unable to merely nap.

Unless you worry about and work for changing the lives of Maryam and Fatima to become just as good if not as better from the lives of Malia and Sasha, you did not really change anything? And, unless these contradictory and painful truths are reconciled, change cannot go vacation.

Palestinians have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary

2008-12-28T11:21:00.000-08:00

Having watched the year[s]/decade[s] long dehumanization, denial of basic human rights of all Palestinians, especially in Gaza, I believe they've the right to defend themselves to restore their dignity and honor - just as anyone else - by any means necessary.

The champions of human rights - may they be of whatever faith (including Muslims and Muslim organizations) need to take a moral Viagra to wake themselves up to their responsibilities.

While CIA is reportedly distributing Viagra to lure the loyalty of Afghan tribal chiefs - let's ask them to also share some with other Muslim chiefs in town! It's about time, don't you think?

Shame on Bush Administration

2008-12-07T16:30:00.001-08:00

Washington Post Federal Courts Reporter Del Wilber discusses the case of the Uighur detainees being held at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center. In October of 2008, U.S. District Judge Richard Urbina ordered the release of the 17 Uighur men into the United States. The Uighurs were cleared for release as early as 2003 but fear they will be tortured if returned to China. Later, the attorneys who represent the 17 Chinese Uighur Muslims participated in a Congressional briefing.

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-13069

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/watch.aspx?MediaId=HP-A-13052

Perils in Parallels

2008-12-05T23:15:00.000-08:00

To call the Mumbai tragedy, “India’s 9/11” would be parallel to the chatter of Texan cowboy. Indian officials, I believe, ought to be smarter than that. The 9/11 lexicon is proven to be perilous.

The ashes in Mumbai raise more questions than the number of dead from several countries. It was an international tragedy that the Indian government is partly responsible for, exposing its sorrowful state of intelligence and law enforcement.

Reading the Western press, it seems India is about to bomb Pakistan, which itself is home to the “Islamic Nuclear Bomb.” Reading the Indian press, it seems there are many sane Indians who are questioning the lethargy of the Indian government and challenging the hyper Hindutva leadership. The former is still trying to figure out who to blame and the latter wants to rush and unleash the “Hindu Nuclear Bomb.”

We must not forget that a recent train bombing being assigned to “Pakistani agents” was indeed the work of a serving Indian army officer and his comrades.

Bomb talk is dumb. Bombing Afghanistan was dumb. Bombing Iraq was dumber. The Mumbai tragedy merits a thorough investigation followed by a thoughtful analysis, in that order. The people in India and around the world have learned much since the bomb talk of Cheney & Bush, also in that order.

As an Indian by birth and having watched “investigations” of all sorts while growing up, I say that the current Mumbai “investigation” will be a farce at its best. And, now as an American by choice, I am equally comfortable to say that I do not trust the American government, either.

The sane Indians and Pakistanis must urgently and immediately demand the following:

1. Pakistanis must demand their government ask the United Nations to convene an Investigation Task Force comprising of its nation members but excluding the countries such as Israel, Britain and the United States - parties with direct interests in India and the region.
2. The Indians must demand their government give unfettered access to the United Nations Investigation Task Force to complete its full, independent and impartial investigation of the tragedy.
3. Indians, Pakistanis, Americans and all people of good conscience should call upon United Nations to play its role and not merely remain a spectator.

It is time to act for all people, not just Indians or Pakistanis. In allowing the Indian discourse of 9/11 parallels is perilous for all people.
--------------
An awesome essay by Arundhati Roy crystallizing more --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/dec/12/mumbai-arundhati-roy

Symbolism VS Substance

2008-11-06T10:32:00.000-08:00

As I watch --- Royal Decrees and Presidential Memos issued; official letterheads wasted; websites flooded; cheerleaders lined up; loyalists elated and all of them believing in themselves more than ever, simply because they are told to do so.

Muslim-Americans in particular are euphoric and have silently accepted Limbaugh’s allegation that “the Saviour has come.” I offer a two word advice to Muslim-Americans - “read history.”

Nelson Mandela did not change South Africa. Václav Havel did not change Czech Republic. Hamid Karzai did not change Afghanistan, nor the good hearted Noor Maliki changed Iraq.

Blindly storing hope in a man who refuses to acknowledge any part of Islam, including even a symbolic recognition of fifteen centuries old faith with more than a billion followers, is foolish, to say the least.

Loyalists must remind the Constitutional Law Professor that his day one’s assignment ought to be invested in restoring the Constitution - by freeing of the innocent from the Guantanamo Bay, by ending illegal surveillance of law abiding citizens and by recognizing the beauty and meaning of his first and middle name and not be ashamed of it.

Being the “first” is good but to become “great” is better, Mr. President.

And as for the citizenry, patriotism is good but patriotism of dissent is better.

And to all – “Symbolism is good but substance is much better.”

Episcopalian Bishop of Washington DC reflecting on his visit to Palestine

2008-10-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

Here's an Episcopalian Bishop speaking of his visit to Palestine. Incidentally, I visited to the Tent of Nations (Daher Farms) where he too was hosted by the Daud Nassar family.

Please listen to the Episcopal Bishop of Washington John Chane's Oct. 5, 2008 sermon on his recent trip to Israel and Palestine, including his visit to the Tent of Nations and to Gaza:

http://www.columba.org/listen/sermon/sermon2008-10-05JBCau.mp3.

May God bless the hands of all peace-makers.

The FBI's reach (read this in light of what LAPD wanted to do in LA)

2008-09-21T11:21:00.000-07:00

LA Times Editorial
The FBI's reach
A plan to boost the agency's intelligence-gathering power at home raises concerns about rights.
September 20, 2008

Citing a post-9/11 change in its mission, the FBI is planning to relax guidelines for the surveillance of groups and individuals who might -- and the key word is "might" -- harbor terrorists or spies. Because the actual wording hasn't been released, it's difficult to make a definitive judgment about whether the new guidelines for initial investigative "assessments" would revive the bad old days when the FBI engaged in massive and unjustified spying on Americans. But explanations from Bush administration officials are unsettling.

This debate doesn't involve the most intrusive techniques open to the FBI, such as wiretapping (for which a court order is required) or even the warrantless subpoenas for records known as national security letters. Rather, the FBI wants more leeway to send agents or informants to public places and conduct "pretext interviews" -- FBI jargon for conversations in which an investigator asks questions without identifying himself as an agent. This first-stage surveillance doesn't require reasonable suspicion that those under surveillance are terrorists; it could take place on the basis of speculation or rumor.

In media briefings and congressional testimony by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, the agency paradoxically has portrayed the proposed guidelines both as urgently required for national security reasons and as a routine harmonization of investigative procedures.

Present guidelines make it harder for agents to investigate possible terrorism plots than to probe potential criminal conspiracies, Mueller has claimed. He offered the example of an agent who suspects that drug dealing is happening at a bar and mingles with patrons in an attempt to acquire information. By contrast, he complained, an agent couldn't conduct the same sort of reconnaissance in a tavern where fundraising for Hezbollah might be occurring.

The comparison is doubly flawed. First, unless the FBI were to conduct a covert dragnet of hundreds of bars, it probably wouldn't focus on a particular tavern unless it had a tip. The same probably would be true of surveillance of a tavern where terrorist activities were suspected. Such surveillance is perfectly all right under existing rules. If retaining them means that the FBI couldn't go on a fishing expedition to every bar with Arab American customers, so be it.

More important, under the rules proposed by the FBI, agents and informants could insinuate themselves into mosques and political organizations whose only "suspicious" behavior is to criticize U.S. policy toward Iraq or support the Palestinian cause. That treads dangerously close to violating free speech and religion rights guaranteed under the 1st Amendment.

Given the FBI's sordid history of spying on and harassing innocent political activists, the burden is on the agency to demonstrate that it wouldn't abuse its authority, as some agents did in circumventing legal requirements for national security letters. If it can't convincingly make the case, the proposal should be abandoned.

Demonizing the other ... a response to the obsessive campaign of hate

2008-09-18T15:26:00.000-07:00

Sin Grows With Doing Good

This past week, Clarion Fund, mailed over 28 million anti-Islam propaganda DVD's as a gift to Americans, wrapped in major newspapers delivered in the battleground states. Anyone with half a brain would understand the genius of Clarion’s marketing tactic to demonize the "other."

Googling generally reveals much but not in case of Clarion. It yielded only their 646, New York-based telephone number.

History teaches us that in every era demagogues spread hateful propaganda against marginalized religious and ethnic minorities, often as a prelude to aggressive military action.

Propaganda precedes action. First the “satire” – big-nosed mean carpenter, the big-lip-mama, the diseased illegal aliens and of course the feathered Chiefs, the Japs, the Huns, the Reds and now the “Towel-heads.”

Action gives death to many and almost permanently demonizes the survivors. Remember Wounded Knee, Kunta-Kinte, Manzanar and now it is Bagram, Abu Gharaib, Guantanamo and the renditions.

Here is a sample of “total demonization.” A hijab (head scarf) clad Muslim nurse shares her post 9-11 encounter with Mr. Neuville, a blind patient who admires her caring support for him. After listening to the post 9-11 radio and television, Mr. Neuville confided in the hijab clad Muslim nurse that, “Muslims must be hung naked with the nooses from Home Depot - we will save our country, cheap!”

Nazis similarly argued that by killing “diseased” members of the society they would heal the “national body.”

Fast forward … “What is infected, must be cut out” said the Khmer Rouge justifying the slaughter of Cambodians.

Fast forwarding to our times, we are taught of the Afghanis and the Iraqis as the monsters in the mountains with the missiles. And oh yes, they are coming and in fact they may be right here amid us.

We were also conditioned by the typical Hollywood fare with its dark-skinned villains ala “Delta Force, Executive Decision, Rules of Engagement, The Seige.”

What is hate? An ambiguous term. I hate overcooked eggs, perhaps you love them.

The advisors and the speech writers know this well. They spiced the recipe of “hate” with “evil.” We remember Bush: “our war is war against terrorism and evil,” of course followed by the infamous maxim of “axis of evil.”

There does not seem to be much difference between George Bush and Mullah Omar. The President said, “you are with us or against us,” and the still missing Taliban Chief responded – “the U.S., U.K., U.N. are all made up of evil doers.”

Evil is a moral issue - far more complex than hate. T.S. Eliot’s phrase in “Murder in the Cathedral” is chilling - “sin grows with doing good.”

The United States of America is doing good - “getting rid of the diseased,” “healing the nation” and “giving prosperity to the wretched.”

On the eve of the American Revolution in 1775, – Dr. Samuel Johnson said, “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Over 225 years later, the Americans are being asked to wave a Chinese-made-American-flag in one hand and salute the President with the other. The almost-direct divine-connection of the Cowboy, he claims calls him to “rid the evil” by “doing good.”

Now, a hockey mom with a stick in one hand, a barrel in the other wishes to do the same: “rid the evil” by “doing good.”

Eliot was right, “sin grows with doing good.”

Shakeel Syed is Executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.

At JFK, Denying Basic Human Rights is Just Another Day at Office

2008-09-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

By Emily Feder, AlterNet
Posted on August 18, 2008, Printed on September 5, 2008

I arrived at JFK Airport two weeks ago after a short vacation to Syria and presented my American passport for re-entry to the United States. After 28 hours of traveling, I had settled into a hazy awareness that this was the last, most familiar leg of a long journey. I exchanged friendly words with the Homeland Security official who was recording my name in his computer. He scrolled through my passport, and when his thumb rested on my Syrian visa, he paused. Jerking toward the door of his glass-enclosed booth, he slid my passport into a dingy green plastic folder and walked down the hallway, motioning for me to follow with a flick of his wrist. Where was he taking me, I asked him. "You'll find out," he said.

We got to an enclosed holding area in the arrivals section of the airport. He shoved the folder into my hand and gestured toward four sets of Homeland Security guards sitting at large desks. Attached to each desk were metal poles capped with red, white and blue siren lights. I approached two guards carrying weapons and wearing uniforms similar to New York City police officers, but they shook their heads, laughed and said, "Over there," pointing in the direction of four overflowing holding pens. I approached different desks until I found an official who nodded and shoved my green folder in a crowded metal file holder. When I asked him why I was there, he glared at me, took a sip from his water bottle, bit into a sandwich, and began to dig between his molars with his forefinger. I found a seat next to a man who looked about my age -- in his late 20s -- and waited.

Omar (not his real name) finished his fifth year in biomedical engineering at City College in June. He had just arrived from Beirut, where he visited his family and was waiting to go home to the apartment he shared with his brother in Harlem. Despite his near-perfect English and designer jeans, Omar looked scared. He rubbed his hands and rocked softly in his seat. He had been waiting for hours already, and, as he pointed out, a number of people -- some sick, elderly, pregnant or holding sobbing babies -- had too. There were approximately 70 people detained in our cordoned-off section: All were Arab (with the exception of me and the friend I traveled with), and almost all had arrived from Dubai, Amman or Damascus. Many were U.S. citizens.

We were in the front row, sitting a few feet from two guards' desks. They sneered at each bewildered arrival, told jokes in whispers, swiveled in their office chairs and greeted passing guards who stopped to talk -- guards who had a habit of looping their fingers into their holsters. One asked his friend how many nationalities were represented in the room. "About 20. Some of everything today."

No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility.

There was one British tourist in the group. Paul (also not his real name) was traveling with three friends who had passed through customs soon after their plane landed and were waiting for him on the other side of the metal barrier; he suspected he had been detained because of his dark skin. When he asked if he could go to the bathroom, one of the guards said, "I wouldn't." "What if someone has to?" I asked. "They will just have to hold it," the guard responded with a smile. Paul began to cry. I watched as he, over the course of four hours, went from feeling exuberant about his trip to New York to despising the entire country. "I speak the Queen's English," he said to me. "I'm third-generation British. I came to America because I've always wanted to come here, and now they've got me so scared that all I want to do is go home. We're paying for your stupid war anyway."

To be powerless and mocked at the same time makes one feel ashamed, which leads quickly to rage. Within a few hours of my arrival, I saw at least 10 people denied the right to use the bathroom or buy food and water. I watched my traveling companion duck under a barrier, run to the bathroom and slip back into the holding section -- which, of course, someone of another ethnicity in a state of panic would be very reluctant to do. The United States is good at naming enemies, but apparently we are even better at making them, especially of individuals. I don't know if it's worse for national security -- and more embarrassing for Americans -- that this is the first experience tourists have of our country, or that some U.S. citizens get treated this way upon entering their own country.

The guard who had been picking his molars for hours quietly mispronounced the names of people whose turn it was to be questioned, muttering each surname three times and then moving on. When he called Omar from City College to his desk, I moved closer to hear the interview. "Where did you go?" the officer asked. "What is your address in the United States? Is your brother here illegally? Do you support Hezbollah? What do you think of Hezbollah in general? How do you pay for your life here? How many people live with you? Are you sure it's just you and your brother? Who are your friends?" Omar answered respectfully and emphatically; he was then asked to wait by the side of the desk, from which he was ushered toward one of the rooms.

After four hours, I finally demanded to speak to the guards' supervisor, and he was called down. I asked if the detainees could file a formal complaint. He said there were complaint forms (which, in English and Spanish, direct one to the Department of Homeland Security's Web site, where one must enter extensive personal information in order to file a "Trip Summary") but initially refused to hand them out or to give me his telephone number. "The Department of Homeland Security is understaffed, underfunded, and I have men here who are doing 14-hour days." He tried to intimidate me when I wrote down his name -- "So, you're writing down our names. Well, we have more on you" -- and asked me questions about my address and my profession in front of the rest of the people detained. I pointed out a few of the families who had missed their flights and had been waiting seven hours. His voice barely controlled, his lip curled into a smirk, he explained slowly, condescendingly, that they need only go to the ticket counter at Jet Blue and reschedule so they could fly out in an hour. One mother responded with what he must have already known: Jet Blue goes to most destinations only once or twice a day and her whole family would have to sleep in the airport.

A large crowd began to gather. Everyone wanted to voice complaints. I explained to the supervisor that his guards had been making people afraid. He flipped through the green files, tossing the American passports to the front of the pile. "You should have gone first, before these people. American citizens first -- that's how it should be." In the face of dozens of requests and questions, he turned and left.

The guards processed me then, ignoring the order of arrivals, if there ever had been one. They refused to distribute more complaint forms or call the supervisor back down at the request of Arab families. One officer threatened, "I'm talking politely to you now. If you don't sit down, I won't be talking politely to you anymore." One announced that because "the American girl" had gotten angry, the families would have to wait a few more hours. "The supervisor is not coming back."

I reassured my Homeland Security interrogator that I did not make any connections with Hezbollah or with anyone I knew to be associated with such an organization. I am not a member of any terrorist group. In fact, my visit to Syria had been so apolitical and touristy that I felt an embarrassing affinity with the pastel-shirted families waiting by the Air France baggage carousels in the distance, whom I knew I would eventually join.

As I walked out of the enclosure, some people thanked me, squeezing my arm and putting their hands on my shoulders. It was shocking that briefly standing up to someone overseeing an abuse of civil rights -- in JFK airport, in the United States, where we supposedly have laws and a democratic judicial system -- could be perceived as heroic. I had nothing to lose, but the other people being detained had everything to lose.

In the past five years I have worked for human rights and refugee advocacy organizations in Serbia, Russia and Croatia, including the International Rescue Committee and USAID. I have traveled to many different places, some supposedly repressive, and have never seen people treated with the kind of animosity that Homeland Security showed that night. In Syria, border control officers were stern but polite. At other borders there have been bureaucracies to contend with -- excruciating for both Americans and other foreign nationals. I've met Russian officials with dead, suspicious looks in their eyes and arms tired from stamping so many visas, but in America, the Homeland Security officials I encountered were very much alive -- like vultures waiting to eat.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/95351/

Song of FGSS & FORTY SIX

2008-08-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

After reading my friend Huwaida Arraf's email today (during the day) - as she sets sail on FREE GAZA in the hope for a FREE GAZA, I found myself sleepless ...
My routine of embracing slumber while reading was defeated tonight. I woke up past midnight and wrote the following ...

"FGSS" is pronounced in this poem as figs (theen in Arabic) - a native fruit of the Occupied Holy Lands &
the "46" are the forty six sailors sailing to save the soul of humanity ...
This poem is dedicated to FGSS (Free Gaza & SS Liberty) and 46

With much love and prayers
Aug 21 past midnight in California ... to
the beloved FGSS & the most loved 46 on their dawn of Aug 22nd

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

SONG OF FGSS & 46

Strong shore is every ship's beloved
but FGSS restless to set sail
Sea is her sweetheart and
They are united by love.

Comfy blankies and fireplaces are everyone's dream
but the 46 on FGSS are eager to
Brace the winds and
Laugh at the waves
They are full of purpose and mercy.

The Gazzans are bread-less
Yet they bride their bay to Ahlan the FGSS & the 46

Hope has no rules
Love has no regulations
Stop them if you can
The Gazans are for FGSS
and the FGSS are for them.

Their combined passions are deeper than the seas
At each restless eventide
They will sing the song of hope
Printing wild Bosa upon each other

Together, they will lift the drowning soul of hopelessness
and carry it tenderly to the home of hope.

Stop them if you can
O' The Peaceful Blue and the Pointy Star!

May God Almighty be with you - O Makers of Peace

2008-08-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

My friend Huwaida sent an email today of her voyage to FREE GAZA ... As I read her email with awe and admiration & a feeling of guilt for not joining them because of my familial obligations ... with teary eyes I raise my hands to the God Almighty for their protection and a successful mission for justice & peace.

I bid you farewell - O You the Peacemakers - with you is God and with you are our prayers and our unconditinal support for our common struggle against injustice - know that "any harm to you is harm to us - any danger to you is danger to us." We will not retaliate with more harm and more danger to the perpetrators but will hold them accountable in this life and the life Hereafter for ultimate justice that no one can ever escape.

In struggle & in solidarity with the LIBERTY & FREE GAZA peacemakers.
Shakeel.
-------------------------

Dear friends and family,

On Wednesday, August 20, after a number of frustrating delays, our ships, the LIBERTY and the FREE GAZA, arrived in the port of Larnaca, Cyprus. We've spent the last day and a half equipping the boats for the next, and most important leg of our jouney, Cyprus to Gaza. A lot has happened over the past couple of weeks that I do not have type to write to you about (this internet cafe closes in 15 minutes). I just wanted you to know how much I've appreciated all your support. I have not had time to respond to email messages but I have read them all.

Please refer to www.freegaza.org for updates on our voyage and photos. You will not be able to watch us via live streaming as I had previously indicated, but you will be able to monitor our progress. The Isreali authorities have announced that they will blockade us, and may use force to turn us back. We need the Israelis to know that we're not just 46 people on those boats, whatever they decide to do to us, but we're millions of people around the world that will not stay silent in the face of gross and systematic violations of the human rights of an entire people.

We have been met with amazing support for our mission at every port where we have stopped along the way, which has been heartening. The Cypriot Port Authorities have now checked our boats and certified that we are not carrying any weapons or contraband of any kind. We set sail in just a few hours. My phone will work as long as we're not too far from shore: +970-599-130-429. We also have 4 satellite phones on board the two ships:

1) 00 870 773 160 151
2) 00 870 773 160 156
3) 00 881 651 442 553
4) 00 881 651 427 948

Thanks for your support!
FREE GAZA!

In solidarity & struggle,
Huwaida

SS Free Gaza & SS Free Liberty

2008-08-08T17:38:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends ... This summer, I had the privilege of spending two weeks with Huwaida Arraf, a Detroit born Yankee of Palestinian heritage. She currently lives in Palestine and teaches human-rights-law at Al-Quds University. She also co-founded International Solidarity Movement - with her Brooklyn born Jewish husband - Adam Shapiro. I didn't meet Adam but Huwaida is a young Rosa Parks in the body of Cesar Chavez. She gave up her comfortable life in United States (her home) to fight for the rights of oppressed in Palestine.

Her following appeal deserves, if nothing else, our prayers for her and comrades on SS Liberty voyaging to break the illegal, immoral & shameless seige of Gaza and Gazans. Yes, the United States of America is an accomplice in the killings of innocent people in Gaza. And you & I my friend, are directly responsible for allowing our own government to send its largest aid to the killers of Gazans, the Israeli Defense Forces.

Pray & Act.
Shakeel.
-----------

From: huwaida arraf
Date: Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 5:08 PM
Subject: Personal note re: Free Gaza Movement

Dear friends & family,
I should have written to you earlier to inform you of a very important civilian direct-action effort to break the siege on Gaza that I am a part of. Unfortunately, writing is not my strong point.

As many of you know, the Gaza Strip, in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) is suffering under a brutal siege imposed by the Israeli military -- a siege that has been deemed illegal by international, as well as Israeli human rights organizations and legal experts, including the former Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, John Dugard. Click here for the UN Rapporteur’s Report.

Israel, which despite its evacuation of its approximately 9000 illegal settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005, still effectively controls Gaza and thus has obligations, as an occupying power, to the residents of Gaza under international humanitarian law. See e.g.:"Disengaged Occupiers, the Legal Status of Gaza", Gisha Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, available here. Yet, instead of complying with these obligations, Israel has imposed a total blockade on Gaza even cutting its fuel and electricity supply. Click here to learn more.

Over the past year, a reported 200 plus patients have died from a lack of access to adequate medical care, meaning Israel denied these patients the right to leave the Gaza Strip in order to receive the care that they needed. See related recent report by Physicians for Human Rights Israel, "Holding Health to Ransom". Hundreds of Palestinian students with scholarships or other arrangements to study abroad are trapped in Gaza, unable to pursue their education. Eighty percent of the Gazan population is living on food aid.

Gaza's unemployment rate, currently at 45%, is the highest in the world. The most tragic part of this humanitarian crisis is that it is man-made -- a result of deliberate policies by the State of Israel. While various parties have expressed their concern, including the United Nations, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, no body has been willing to take concrete action to break the siege or to hold Israel accountable for Palestinain lives. Not only is Israel being allowed to get away collective punishment of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza, defined as a war crime under international law, but international institutions ate getting away with silence in the face of such atrocity, or with paying mere lip service to Palestinian human rights.

Due to the shameful incompetence of of governments and international institutions tasked with defending and upholding human rights, and because this incompetence is costing lives every day, a small group of civilians from around the world have organized an effort to break the siege of Gaza by boat. Within the next few days, 40 civilians from around the world, including 3 other Palestinians from the Diaspora, an 83-year-old Holocaust survivor, and 81-year-old Catholic nun, an Israeli peace & justice activist, and over 30 other amazing people will set sail from Cyprus towards the shores of Gaza. Although we will be carrying some medical supplies, such as hearing aids (for children of Gaza going deaf as a result of Israel's military operations and sonic booms constantly carried out in and over Gaza), ours is not a humanitarian mission. Rather, our mission is a human rights one. We are horrified that such an illegal and immoral siege can be allowed to continue without more of an international outcry about it. We're saddened for the state of our world when decision-makers can sit back and watch an entire people being slowly and purposefully starved and humiliated.

Everyone participating in this mission is quite aware of the dangers involved. We have taken note of the various scenarious that can play out, from being blockaded, boarded and arrested, to being fired upon or otherwise attacked at sea. Of course, we hope that none of these happen and that we reach Gaza, where we are told that thousands will be awaiting our arrival on the beach.

In a few hours I will leave Cyprus, where I have been for the last 8 days training and working on other preparations for the voyage, and head to meet the boats in Chiana, Crete (press release below). I realize that for those of you in the United States, this email might be the first you are hearing of this effort as the story has not broken through the U.S. media censors. We have been getting very good coverage in the rest of the world though. Please stay with us as we make this voyage, as the eyes of the world are our safety and our goal if we aim to make change. You can get the latest information on the Free Gaza Movement, including watch the voyage in real time (satellite video streaming) on our website: www.freegaza.org.

Yes, we can make change.

In solidarity & struggle,
Huwaida

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty Arrive in Chania, Crete, Saturday, 9 August at
21:00 p.m.

For further information, contact: 6932 766496 for directions, Greta Berlin,
037 99 08 17 67

*Nicosia/Lefkosia, Cyprus, August 7.* The Free Gaza Movement announced
today that their boats, destined to break the Israelis' siege of Gaza, will
arrive in Chania, Crete, on Saturday, August 9, at 9 p.m. and that a press
conference will be held to welcome their arrival. "Internationals are
gathering across the world – in Beijing and Cyprus – with the common dream
of peace and justice for everyone."

Human rights activists Lauren Booth (sister in law of former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair), Huwaida Arraf (a Palestinian-American residing in
Ramallah, Palestine), and Jeff Halper (an Israeli Jew who was nominated for
the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for opposing demolitions of Palestinian homes)
will be available at the press conference for interviews.

"This will be the first time that our two boats will be publicly displayed
and photographers are welcome to come, take photos and post their images."
said Paul Larudee, on board the boats sailing toward Chania.
The Free Gaza Movement is endorsed by an impressive array of international
groups and personalities including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and
Former Prime Minister of Lebanon Dr. Salim Al-Hoss. For additional
information, www.freegaza.org

Welcome to the Seizure States of America

2008-08-01T09:27:00.000-07:00

Last week, a prominent community leader returning from overseas was victimized by this insanity. His laptop & cell phone was detained by the CBP at LAX. Although that was retrieved in less than 48 hours but that may not be the case always. Knowing that most of us travel reasonably frequently and many of us serve several Boards and are involved with justice & peace work (yes - we speak truth to power), I thought, at the minimum, we'd take due precautionary measures, in protecting our own work and others' in and from our own data!

I am neither surprised nor shocked by yet another insane policy but I guess this is a parting gift to all of us by our loving President ... Thank You Sir - Mr. President ... We're damn happy that you are going to get rid of yourself this November & Yes Sir, we're going to celebrate, wild! You better believe it ... In the meantime, we'll fight with all that we have to restore the rule of law that you've destroyed, Mr. President, including this unconstitutional suspicion & search & seizure of innocent citizens & their property.

Welcome to the Seizure State of America. If you, friends, don't find me after I publish this piece, you know where to look for me!!!
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Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border
No Suspicion Required Under DHS Policies

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2008; A01

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices had been taken -- for months, in at least one case -- and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

Reasonable measures must be taken to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material, the policies say, but there is no specific mention of the handling of personal data such as medical and financial records.

When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed. Copies sent to non-federal entities must be returned to DHS. But the documents specify that there is no limitation on authorities keeping written notes or reports about the materials.

"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy." In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had "plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant" to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that "the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices." Searches have uncovered "violent jihadist materials" as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.

With about 400 million travelers entering the country each year, "as a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary [for a more thorough examination] when there is some level of suspicion," Chertoff wrote. "Yet legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers' often split-second assessments are second-guessed."

In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco upheld the government's power to conduct searches of an international traveler's laptop without suspicion of wrongdoing. The Customs policy can be viewed here.

THE DUST ON MY SHOES

2008-07-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

Note: After reading the writing below, I could not resist but ask my fellow delegate (Wendy) to permit me to publish her piece at this blog. Many thanks Wendy for teaching us to look at things with eyes in the heart and in it, a pair of eyes!
Shakeel.
-------------

IFPB MAY 31, 2008

THE DUST ON MY SHOES
By Wendy H.

Today I took a lot of notes, as has become my custom. But tonight is different, because I have a personal connection story to tell.

It happened this way. After the talk by Abir Kopty of Mosawa, who told us of current issues of racism and inequality facing Israeli citizens who are Palestinians, we lunched on Palestinian “hoagie style” sandwiches, and then rode the bus to begin the tour of destroyed villages. At the second village, Birwe, we were met by Ali, a second generation, middle aged man who works with the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced Persons in Israel, and two men in their late 60’s, Abu and Akim, survivors of the Naqba, and Cyrine, the beautiful 14 – 15 year old granddaughter of Abu. The men were dressed in (wrinkle free) spotless short sleeve buttoned shirts, tucked into belted trousers. They could have been at a business meeting, and perhaps they were, standing on the dry, dusty earth littered with stones, desiccated thistles, and patches of cowpats. Cyrine is small, slender in her black South Park tee shirt, her wavy black shoulder length hair crowned by a perky black and white checked baseball cap.

As Abu Asad began to tell us the story of his village’s destruction, my mind began to run on two tracks. Abu was born in 1939 (he is 3 years older than I), and was 9 years old at the time of the 1948 assault on his village. The Israeli military surrounded the village on the North, West and South, leaving the East open for an escape route. There were 1600 residents in the village, Muslims and Christians, sharing one life. There were no problems between the two faiths. Even though the town priest was the Christian leader, the Muslims participated in his selection because he represented the village.

The Israelis forced everyone to flee; this was equal opportunity oppression. Although some have remained living in nearby villages, others have scattered to cities in Israel, and the occupied territories, to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the United States – a full diaspora. No one is allowed to return. Israeli Jewish Settlers have built houses on the land. A barn stands where the church used to be.

Abu is a short man with sun weathered complexion and grey-white hair. He has deep creases on his face, and speaks with clarity and emphasis. He is a good storyteller. Hearing him put me in mind of my Grandma Bertha. She was born in a Jewish village in Russia near the end of the 19th century. In the year 1900, after suffering pogroms and attacks by the Cossacks, Bertha’s mother decided to send her two daughters to what she prayed would be a better life in America. Bertha, age 13 years, took her 8 year old sister, Jeannette, by the hand and joined a group of refugees to walk out of Russia and across Europe to an Atlantic port. They hid in barns during the day, progressing under cover of nighttime darkness. Sometimes they had to stay in hiding before crossing a border, waiting for the right (bribed) guard to be on duty. My grandmother made it to America, but she never saw her mother or her village again. Bertha was a good storyteller, like Abu. As I saw and heard him telling his story to us, and to his granddaughter, probably for the umpteenth time, I had a sensation of merging circles, of my family history merging with theirs.

People want to live their lives in harmony with their families, neighbors and land. When a mighty oppressor overpowers and displaces the people and demolishes the villages, it crushes more than houses and lives, it breaks the harmony composed by people and land that has been created and sustained for countless generations. The Israeli military has demolished Abu’s village, trying to change the landscape by knocking down all the homes and the mosque and church. They have taken stones from the church to use in road construction. They destroyed 3,000 – 4,000 olive trees. They desecrated the cemetery. Yet every refugee believes he will return. They come each year to plant new trees, and each time the Israeli bulldozers uproot the plantings.

Abu’s granddaughter, Cyrine, says, “We can’t give up. It is important not to forget…. Tell (young) people in the U.S. not to give up if they are oppressed. Keep hope.” A delegate asked what she would say to George Bush. A brief pause, and then, “I’d ask him what he would do if what happens to us happened to his kids.”

When I removed my shoes this evening, I noticed the crevices on the soles had retained the dust gathered by walking through the destroyed village. I shall not wash off this dust.

Happy July 4th - 232 Years of Independence, BUT for Who?

2008-07-03T07:27:00.000-07:00

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ كُونُواْ قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاء لِلّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَى أَنفُسِكُمْ أَوِ الْوَالِدَيْنِ وَالأَقْرَبِينَ إِن يَكُنْ غَنِيًّا أَوْ فَقَيرًا فَاللّهُ أَوْلَى بِهِمَا فَلاَ تَتَّبِعُواْ الْهَوَى أَن تَعْدِلُواْ وَإِن تَلْوُواْ أَوْ تُعْرِضُواْ فَإِنَّ اللّهَ كَانَ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ خَبِيرًا

O you who believe! Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin and whether it be against rich or poor: For God can best protect both. Follow not the lusts (of your hearts), lest you swerve, and if you distort (justice) or decline to do justice, verily God is well acquainted with all that you do. (Nisa, 135)

رَبِّ اشْرَحْ لِي صَدْرِي وَيَسِّرْ لِي أَمْرِي وَاحْلُلْ عُقْدَةً مِّن لِّسَانِي يَفْقَهُوا قَوْلِي

May our hearts be free of the lusts and may God make our hearts pristinely enlightened and mightily empowered for the love of Him and for the love of fellow human being, InshaAllah …

And, may our tongues be relieved of the twists and may our speech become clear and firm (qawlan sadida) for the causes of justice ...

As we celebrate the 232 years of our nation’s independence, we need to reflect …
what exactly did the people gain from this independence and what this independence must mean to us and what are our responsibilities as “independent people” …

God relieves those who are in “bondage & enslaved” in many ways but those who are “independent” do not have the same privilege.

The “independent” are obliged to follow the laws of the Creator… there’s no fursa for them from the principles, such as - “ta’amaruna bil ma’aroof wa tanhauna minil munkar” OR كُونُواْ قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاء لِلّهِ

At a personal level, the struggle to excel against all odds & at a collective level to work against injustice and struggle for justice giving voice to the voiceless (the musta’adafeen) is an imperative for an “independent believer” that one cannot escape from …

Brothers and Sisters … by the Grace of Allah, we are privileged to live in a land of laws … we have many privileges and we have much prosperity & security, but …the question we may ask ourselves is if these laws are “just” &/or offer “ justice to the oppressed as his/her right and not as his/her privilege?”

Almost all aspects of our lives are governed by some or the other law … and within them are many anomalies … for example :

Having a firearm is your “constitutional right” but a drivers license is a “privilege” … strange one may say!

The question we may like to reflect this week of ‘independence’ is …

Is there a significant difference between a set of laws and a system of justice?
I say a big yes, and I like you to reflect on this using your own rationale and perhaps at some point we can have an open discussion & dialog, for the larger good of all of us and our generations to come, InshaAllah …

The Declaration of Independence stated, in 1776 that “all men are created equal,” … the question one may ask is … “if that was the case in 1776” … the answer is NO …

The slavery in our country was rampant & in fact the very framers of the constitution at the time were owners of many slaves, but yet they were writing “all men are created equal!”

The native American female warrior who stands atop the Capital Dome, as the statue of freedom (please do not mix her with the lady of liberty) was in fact casted by a Foundry of enslaved labor!

And, then the very building in which we make laws today, the Capitol building, a.k.a. the Hill, was constructed with enslaved labor!

No, my brothers & sisters “all men were NOT created equal” although the Declaration of Independence did say so … this is the weakness of human beings …

And it is because of that precise reason, Allah reminds us frequently and commands us to “ … stand firm for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin and whether it be against rich or poor …”

This is a MIGHTY challenge to the “believers” … you and I … and hence the reward is disproportionately generous in this life and in the life Hereafter, if we embrace this challenge in our lives!

What does it mean to be “independent” and what “responsibilities” do we have as “independent people.”

Let us fast forward now 232 years later … while we do enjoy “a level” of freedom and equality on one hand but on the other hand, we continue to have in our country …
· the indefinite detentions of innocent,
· the desperate youth wandering around for a job, and lawlessness among them,
· the (mostly) enslaved press who neither speak nor pursue the Truth in face of Tyranny (eg; Iraq) …
· The growing socio-economic divide and disparity …. Where “the top 1 percent of (American) households owns 40% of the nation’s household wealth[1]
What does it mean to be “independent” and what “responsibilities” do we have as “independent people.”

The independent America has become more debt-dependent than ever before in its entire history, with a total debt of $48 trillion, or $161,287 per man, woman and child!
Your son or your daughter … 2 day old or 12 year old is already in debt by $161,287 In other words, one may argue even before a child is born in America today, he/she is indebted to the State!

This is a massive economic injustice by those who are in power … “enslaving our generations” to come for no fault of theirs …

What does it mean to be ‘independent’ and what responsibilities do we have as ‘independent people’ that’s the question we need to ask ourselves today!

Thomas Jefferson, the founding father of this nation had said, "I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared."

The true concept of independence, my dear brothers and sisters in our Islamic tradition is simple, "to free oneself from the vices and to inculcate virtues." … Ta’amaruna bil Ma’aroof wa Tanhauna Anil Munkar … and then كُونُواْ قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاء لِلّهِ

Not just individually but collectively, a society (a State) , has an obligation to strive …
to “establish good and be just” & hence the idea of a State & its obligations and the idea of “independence” and the role & responsibility of “independent people” …

these are mighty big responsibilities we have, as a people & as Believers …

we cannot simply go on with our lives & remain oblivious to the injustices of ourselves and our society … this must change and “we” must participate in the process of change …

indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a people unless they commit to change themselves … we have heard this quite frequently … didn’t we???

Pursuing independence from the shackles of evil is a mandate and not a choice. Gaining independence from the yoke of oppression in this world is not only necessary but also imperative.

The true independence lies in absolute servitude to the One Creator and freedom from the created.

It is time that we reflect rather soberly in our individual and institutional triumphs.
I believe, we have more possibilities in each moment, every breathing & living moment that we are blessed with, than we can ever realize!

It is too late if we don’t embrace this challenge in our lives, today …

Let us celebrate in the hope of Prophetic promise …

"Remember your Lord (swt) in times of ease, and He will recognize you in times of distress. What hit you could not have missed you, what missed you could not have hit you. Remember that success comes with patience, relief comes with affliction and ease comes with hardship.” (reported Abu 'Abbas' Abdullah) …

Let us renew our commitment to these Prophetic principles for the sake of celebrating life (in true independence & justice for all) & in our unconditional servitude of God All-Mighty and from total freedom of man over man!

Only then, we may have a chance to experience the “tranquility of our heart and peace in our soul” that Quran so emphatically talks about & asks us to pursue.

[1] http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/GSSW/schram/sossinequality.html

Jim Crow - Part II

2008-07-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Jim Crow – Part II
By Shakeel Syed

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, under criticism for frequent absences from Los Angeles, recently defended his trip to Israel by asserting that he is a global leader and not the mayor of "some small town in the desert somewhere." Yet the problem lies not only in his absence from Los Angeles, but in what he has brought back from his trip. He seems prepared to adopt parts of the outdated bigotry of the small-town Jim Crow era practiced today by Israel.

Israel ethnically profiles at its airport and discriminates against Palestinians in all aspects of life. At Israel's Ben Gurion airport, Palestinians – even those with American or Israeli citizenship -- stand in separate lines from Jewish Israelis and are routinely harassed and intimidated for hours.

As a leader of the Southern California Muslim community, it worries me that Israeli tactics of ethnic profiling and segregation may be copied here. Already the Muslim community has deep concerns that we are singled out for unfair scrutiny at American airports. Arab Americans have modified a term from African Americans to describe their discriminatory flying experience: FWA or Flying While Arab. A city as diverse as ours and one whose law enforcement officials are desperately attempting to mend relations with ethnic communities across the spectrum should shun Israel's discriminatory security practices.

Yet the mayor signed an agreement on behalf of the city for three Ben Gurion Airport security officials to advise LAX on security procedures. They will each earn $1,000 a day in city funds that could better be used for myriad other pressing needs in our city.

The mayor, a man I generally admire, invited me to participate on his recent trip to Israel. I declined because I was already scheduled to visit Israel and Palestine with an interfaith delegation of Americans organized by Interfaith Peace-Builders and the American Friends Service Committee. I am certain that I got a dramatically different view of Israel than our mayor.

My delegation was profiled from the moment it arrived. Co-leader Michael Brown breezed through security. Co-leader Miryam Rashid did not. A Palestinian American, she was held for five hours of questioning and faced repeated threats to bar her entry – despite the fact that her family roots are in occupied Palestinian territory. Palestinian Americans are regularly singled out by security. And whole families of Palestinians returning home through Ben Gurion can be seen waiting for interrogation in the holding room. The State Department notes numerous reports of "American citizens, of Arab descent, subjected to harsh and degrading treatment at border crossings."

How would Los Angelinos feel if they were interrogated for carrying literature about global warming or for a political candidate when traveling through LAX? I was challenged at Ben Gurion for possessing United Nations literature explaining the consequences of Israel's 41-year military occupation of Palestinian territory. Political litmus tests for travelers ought to be strongly denounced by city hall, not embraced.

The discrimination practiced at Ben Gurion is a feature of Israel's treatment of Palestinians in general. Mayor Villaraigosa might have traveled on Route 443, the apartheid road Israel has constructed on West Bank land. Israeli citizens are allowed to drive on this road, but the Palestinians living in the West Bank cannot, despite the fact that Palestinian land was expropriated to build it. According to Limor Yehuda of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, "There is already a separate legal system in the territories for Israelis and Palestinians. With the approval of separate roads…the word for it will be 'apartheid’." I can only imagine the outcry if Los Angeles designated certain roads for whites and others for African Americans or Latinos.

And the mayor also may have visited the Dead Sea. Palestinians have been barred from swimming in parts of the Sea. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Israelis managing the beaches there complained that a "mix" of patrons was hurting their business interests. An Israeli brigade commander has set up a checkpoint on weekends and holidays to keep local Palestinians away.

I grew up in India and Pakistan after the departure of the British colonial forces. But I will never forget the painful stories my parents told me of the exclusivist practices the British instituted that made parts of my parents' own country off limits to them. South Africa, of course, separated people on the basis of race, including at beaches. And the Jim Crow South kept African Americans away from whites-only swimming pools. We look back on those days as a shameful era in our nation's remarkable history. Why do our mayor and some City Council members – using our tax dollars -- now take inspiration from those who practice these same policies?

My Friday Sermon on my Visit to Palestine/Israel

2008-06-30T09:28:00.000-07:00

أَوَلَمْ يَسِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَيَنظُرُوا كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَكَانُوا أَشَدَّ مِنْهُمْ قُوَّةً وَمَا كَانَ اللَّهُ لِيُعْجِزَهُ مِن شَيْءٍ فِي السَّمَاوَاتِ وَلَا فِي الْأَرْضِ إِنَّهُ كَانَ عَلِيمًا قَدِيرًا
وَلَوْ يُؤَاخِذُ اللَّهُ النَّاسَ بِمَا كَسَبُوا مَا تَرَكَ عَلَى ظَهْرِهَا مِن دَابَّةٍ وَلَكِن يُؤَخِّرُهُمْ إِلَى أَجَلٍ مُّسَمًّى فَإِذَا جَاء أَجَلُهُمْ فَإِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ بِعِبَادِهِ بَصِيرًا

Have they not traveled in the land and seen how those in the past ended up, even though they had been more powerful? God is not that nothing in the heavens or in the earth can escape Him. Indeed, He is all-Knowing and all-Powerful!

If God held people accountable as they deserve, that would not leave a single living creature in its wake; however, He lets them stay for a certain term. Then, when their term is up, it turns out that He has been ever-watchful of all mankind.
(35:44-45 … Al-Fatir)

God has blessed me recently to travel to the land of Moses, Jesus & Muhammad (peace and mercy be always with them) … where the revelations descended and the Prophets ascended.

The streets of Jerusalem and the alleys around Al-Aqsa were silently screaming in my ears as I walked the streets of Old Quarters of Jerusalem, a.k.a. Al-Quds …

There were, in my ears, the silent screams of one thousand years from the violent era of Crusaders [1099].

Their reign of terror ended with Salahuddin Ayyoub, a.k.a. Saladin. During his reign & thereafter for seven hundred sixty one years, the people of Star, the Cross and the Crescent lived as neighbors in relative peace.

It was thereafter in 1948 that the Palestinians were humiliatingly displaced from their homes & farms; dispossessed of their belongings & property, and deprived of a living with honor and dignity.

It is these sixty years of continued occupation that we now call the Naqba, that I went to commemorate and also to witness the wrongs in our midst, in 2008!

Brothers & Sisters ... the verse I recited refers to “travel & witnessing the past” … in it are lessons for mankind, only if they wish to learn.

‘Power & Authority’ is an ‘Amanah’ (trust) that God bestows upon those whomever He chooses.
Wise are those who receive this honor in the selfless service of the humanity.

Those who are unwise rely on ‘power’ alone, only to realize in time that their term was, but for a limited time and their tyranny of oppression will be held against them in the eternal life Hereafter.

The Occupation of Palestinian land and its people by Israel is abhorrently immoral and illegal by any and all standards.

Whether it is the East Jerusalem or the West Bank, the oppression and occupation is vividly blatant & calling upon all people of faiths and conscience to end it.

I had the painful privilege to travel through a great deal of the Occupied West Bank such as the cities of Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron & also part of Israel, such as the cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa & Nazareth …

I met restaurant waiters & bus drivers, professors & students, young & old, rich & poor, men & women, religious & secular & their cry and call is one … “Occupation Must End.”

In the city of Bethlehem, the city of birth of Jesus (may peace be always with him), I met an elected official of the city, where, in spite of a Muslim majority, the Mayor of the City is always a Christian and their City Council has always a Christian majority … clearly demonstrating that people of faiths can live side by side, in peace, with mutual respect, and as equal citizens and loving neighbors.

Contrary to Bethlehem … … in Hebron, the City of Prophet Ibrahim (the father of all – may peace be always with him), where a New York born Baruch Goldstein had killed Muslim worshippers in Masjid al-Khaleel during the Fajr prayers in the Ramadan of 1994 … continues to remain under siege by the Occupying forces of Israel & the Jewish Settlers …

In Hebron, I met and patiently listened to, a New Jersey born David Wilder (a Settler), now an Israeli Citizen (under the Israeli Law of Return) …
– who consciously chooses not to even recognize the term “Palestinian or Palestine”
– who believes that the Jewish land has in fact been stolen by Arabs for thousands of years,
– who claims that without this land, there can be no faith Judaism,
– David has the right of carrying a loaded weapon to protect less than five hundred settlers in the settlement (Kiryat Arba) while tens of thousands of Palestinians can neither walk free in the streets nor can open their stores to earn a livelihood, and …
– He & others can return from any part of the world and claim Israeli citizenship and receive full services but a Palestinian born in Hebron or Ramallah or any other occupied city, now living anywhere or in Southern California, cannot return to his homeland, if & when he/she so chooses.

Brothers & Sisters, God is indeed most just … and will hold everyone accountable to what they do and what they don’t … what they say and what they don’t and of course when they are unjust and violate the sanctity of life, dignity and honor.

We know that God alone can render ultimate justice and He tests us by giving us time to prove ourselves worthy of his grace & mercy.

As Quran is emphatically clear … that “if we were to be held accountable (fully) then not one of us would pass His test & indeed He is letting one group over the other stay in control & power for a certain term. And that term will be up sooner or later.”

There is much to say of the persecuted lands and the people of Palestine. About them and in their suffering is a heart wrenching story.

There is a wall that is continually being built, anywhere from 5 to upto 28 feet tall (with barbed wire), tearing apart families, businesses and lives.

There are check-points, where each day thousands of Palestinians’ basic human dignity is stripped bare …

Neither students nor teachers can reach their classrooms - with certainty each day

Neither doctors can render nor patients can receive medical care when needed …

Neither a son can visit his mother nor a wife can visit her beloved, at will …

But, at will, the American made Israeli bulldozers can raze orchards full of olive and fig trees and demolish homes while the inhabitants are sleeping or barely awake …

In the midst of seemingly perpetual fog and gloom, I find hope … reflecting the Quranic principle …

وَلاَ تَهِنُوا وَلاَ تَحْزَنُوا وَأَنتُمُ الأَعْلَوْنَ إِن كُنتُم مُّؤْمِنِينَ

“Neither despair nor grieve - for if you are true believers, you will eventually be relieved.” (3:139)

I find hope …
In the owner of that restaurant in the outskirts of Jerusalem … who offered baklawa to our group members of various faiths & said - "sweets are on-house, although we live in bitterness."

I find hope …
In Bassam Aramin, who co-founded Combatants for Peace (along with Israeli refuseniks), whose ten year old daughter, Abir, was killed by a teenage IDF soldier (January 16, 2007). A grieving but patient father, Bassam, is calling for “justice” and not for “revenge.”

I find hope …
In Emad, a father of four, from the village of B’lin, who is leading a weekly vigil, against the apartheid wall that divides his village in two parts … his part with nothing and the part on the other side, now stolen by the Israeli Military, full of olive trees and fertile land.

I find hope …
In Daoud & his family who suffer but refuse to leave their farmland (Daher’s Vineyard) in spite of being land-locked (by settlers and roadblocks) & tempting offers from ‘anonymous buyers’ offering blank checks. Instead they host people of all faiths & nations in their symbolic tent-of-nations and extend their warmth, hospitality and love to all.

And, then you’ve the concerned Jewish mothers in the southern outskirts of Haifa, whose movement calls for “civil-izing” and not “militar-izing” the society and educate and empower their sons not to join military …

And, I have also witnessed people of Judaic faith, my friends … accompanying me in the travels, courageous enough to stand by me when I was questioned of my origins and ethnicity (by the Israeli security), and who were also brave enough to visit the refugee camps and hold the hands of a Palestinian grandmother and say sorry for what had happened to her and her grandchildren.

Such is the courage, that my dear brothers and sisters, I house my hope in, for a better tomorrow.

But before I and you, hope for a better tomorrow, we ought to also recommit ourselves of our duty … “to be a firm witness for justice even if it be against ourselves.”

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ كُونُواْ قَوَّامِينَ بِالْقِسْطِ شُهَدَاء لِلّهِ وَلَوْ عَلَى أَنفُسِكُمْ

We also must remember the Prophetic legacy … “that, when you see wrong, right it with your hand, or speak against it or at least feel it in your heart – indeed that’ll be the weakest of your faith.”

Let us pray that we become of those who stand firmly for justice and are resolved against any form of injustice anywhere, against anyone by anyone.

Let us pray that we eagerly lend our ears to the silent cries of the ancient al-Aqsa, the alleys of Ramallah, the corners of Hebron and the circles of Nablus.

Let us pray that the grandmothers and grandfathers, orphans and widows, be embraced by all of us, as people who deserve dignity and honor and who are no less or more, than any other people, and that we all, one day can enjoy the fragrance of olives and the shade of a fig tree sitting with a person of any faith or color, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation with respect of all.

It is indeed, my dear brothers and sisters that we learn when we travel and explore the lands & the seas that God created and God owns … there is nothing hidden from him, neither in the depths of the oceans nor in the heights of skies … all is known to Him and we seek refuge in Him and ask him to bless us with courage, patience and perseverance to work for justice and peace for all people, everywhere, and in particular in Palestine. Amen.

A response to Los Angeles Mayor's visit to Israel

2008-06-30T09:23:00.000-07:00

Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you
Shakeel Syed

In my recent travels to the cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron, Haifa, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and my meeting with peasants and politicians, cab drivers and academics, occupiers and occupied, victims and victimizers, refugees and settlers, people of Abrahamic faiths and agnostics, I did learn one simple reality … “Ending Israeli occupation of Palestinians and their land is a mandatory prerequisite to any form of peace.”

Having missed the opportunity to accompany the Mayor Villaraigosa, who had so graciously invited me to visit Israel with him, I thought I might write about some questions I would have liked to have asked some of the leaders whom the mayor wanted us to meet.

Mr. Prime Minister Olmert: Will Palestinians ever be free of Israeli occupation in their lands? Do you believe the 500 miles long apartheid wall that separates families from their loved ones and farmer from their lands is helpful for peace? Why do you allow Jewish-only illegal settlements to continue to usurp Palestinian land? Can you please explain your policy of demolishing homes and uprooting orchards? Do you agree with UN monitors who say there are 607 road blocks (as of April 2008) in the Occupied Territories? Is it true that your prisons have held more than 5,000 Palestinians who have been jailed without charges for years?

Mr. Shimon Peres: As a Nobel Peace Prize owner do you think Israeli’s nuclear arsenal is helpful or harmful to the regional and to world peace? The oft repeated claim that Israel is a role model for democracy in Middle East is , I believe, like looking to South Africa for racial equality and justice. Do you agree with this, Mr. Peres? Is it true that the Zionist aspiration is to keep usurping “maximum land” (for Jews) with “minimum people” (Palestinians)?

Ms. Tzipi Livni: Just as the law-of-return grants automatic Israeli citizenship to Jews born anywhere in the world, is it too utopian for more than a million Palestinian refugees to have the right-to-return to their homeland? Can I please get a line item breakdown of the annual $3 billion plus US aid, which includes my tax dollars to your country?

Mr. Uri Lupolianski: I, a Muslim from America was able to argue my way into the Al-Aqsa Mosque on a Friday, but I witnessed many native Jerusalemites denied the right to pray – why? Do you know the number of checkpoints and special permits a Palestinian needs to travel for medical care between Ramallah and Jerusalem?

While I am happy to wait for the answers from Israeli leaders, I would like my mayor to consider the following while signing agreements with the Ben Gurion Airport Security and the International (Israeli) Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

How would Los Angelinos feel if they were interrogated for carrying United Nations material (explaining the consequences of Israeli occupation) as I was leaving Ben Gurion Airport last week?

How could the Los Angeles Police Department benefit from the Israeli Police and Military who indiscriminately shoots children and fires teargas during peaceful protests, such as in the village of B’lin each Friday? I am now an owner of few of these empty teargas shells, perhaps bought by Israel with your and my tax dollars.

I urge my Mayor to add the besieged Gaza to his itinerary while touring Sderot and visit with the starving mothers of Palestinian children killed by the Israeli military.

I await my mayor’s return so that I could give him a T-shirt with the slogan “Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you,” that I bought for him from a store in the old quarters of Jerusalem last week.

(This op-ed was submitted to but not accepted by LA Times. I am also aware of another activist writing her response that LA Times chose not to publish it.)

O' For The Day - That Is Dying!

2008-06-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

For the day that is dying!

(Dedicated to a fierce fighter for justice – dearest Huwaidaa Arraf)

I thought I was indulging in a tour … and lost myself
At home I was ignorant and unknown
When I left home, my courage spread far & wide
The pious & the agnostics laid their merit at my feet.
O’ for the day that is dying!

Palestine is like a warehouse filled with rare merchandise,
That draws people from all “three quarters,”
Now its richness is gone, it has no worth.
O’ for the day that is dying!

Its people were of high standing,
Now they are made to feel the lowest of the low,
O’ for the day that is dying!

The Israeli is happy, he owns the aeroplane and the Uzi,
The Zionist is gratified, he controls the trade & tyranny,
Palestinians are but empty drums, subsisting on God’s grace,
For them is a pile of biscuit crumbs & lemonade bitter,
O’ for the day that is dying!

Palestine, I see is a supremely beautiful woman,
Almost impersonal and above all human desires,
It’s feminine beauty of river & valley & graceful trees,
O’ for the day that is dying!

Palestine, I see is a masculine magical beauty,
Of hard mountains and precipices,
The rugged peaks & the cruel deserts
O’ for the day that is dying!

Palestine has a thousand faces, sometimes smiling,
Many times sad and full of sorrow,
Watching this magical spectacle, I feel faint,
It seems dreamlike and unreal,
Like the hopes and desires that fills us wholesome,
But seldom finds fulfilled
O’ Palestine – you are the face of the beloved
That I see in a dream that
Keeps fading away when I am wakened,
O’ for the day that is dying!

….

O’ for the day that is dying!

We, the people of the Stars & the Stripes
How dare we slumber in the shade of complacence
Leading lives as frivolous as the fallen petals
While our fellow man has no dwelling –
Save the saddles of camels and the bellies of the valleys

Blood has been spilled all around the three quarters
Beautiful young dames have been shamed, and
The angelic innocence of children has been robbed
Dignity of the wrinkled man, and
Honor of the wailing woman

The crying church,
The moaning mosque, and
The wailing wall … calling on you,

The man of slumber in the stars, and
The woman of colors in the stripes
O’ for the day that has not “yet” died!

Shakeel Syed – Jerusalem – June 6

Echoes of the Past

2008-06-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

Echoes of the PastThursday, May 29

Silent screaming streets of Jerusalem violently echoed the past of the Star, Cross and the Crescent. This is the first time I ever stepped on these holy lands of the Prophets and their people. Accompanying me, are young and old, men and women, and the followers of human conscience and of Abrahamic faiths. We are an Interfaith group visiting the Holy Lands for self discovery and learning of the past in the present.

1099 was the year Crusaders reigned.
1187 Saladin (Salah al-Din) reclaimed.
1948 the Jewish State came into being.

Empires are generally rooted in religion. Dominions can only be secured by victory. And victory is always on the side of those who are committed to the unity of purpose.

Self-proclaimed atheists, Moshe Dayan and Ben Gurion had ample unity of purpose in the creation of a Jewish State. After all, they knew of the sufferings of European Jewry, the pogroms in Tsarist Russia and the slaughter houses of Auschwitz. Their hearts were united and coordinated, with the help of God of David and Solomon, Jacob and Isaac.

A thousand years of religio-secular cycle of death, displacement and despair, I thought, as I walked the streets of Jerusalem.

A T-Shirt slogan stared me in the eye. “Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you.” Yes, it was displayed in a shop in the Muslim quarters of Jerusalem.

Ah, the great Untouchable! A nascent country that regularly invades neighboring States, routinely defies UN resolutions, occupies land, treats its people inhumanely and possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons, enough to light up the entire region, once and for all.

A twenty plus year old bright Irish lady volunteering at a women’s empowerment center summed up well. “North Ireland and South Africa combined is Palestine, with no hope.”
An Arab restaurant owner after catering lunch to our Interfaith group offering baklawa said it differently, “sweets on-house, although we live in bitterness.”

“Abir was barely ten when she was killed by a teenage IDF soldier (January 16, 2007), who perhaps saw her as a terrorist target.” These were the words of her father, Bassam Aramin, co-founder of Combatants for Peace. Kids killing kids!

From Ben Gurion to Yasser Arafat, from Ehud Olmert to Mahmoud Abbas, the Priests, the Rabbis and the Muftis – all need to lend a moment to the Taoist scripture.

“How did the great rivers and seas get their kingship over the hundred lesser streams?
Through the merit of being lower than they: that was how they got their kingship.
Therefore the sage (the leaders and the politicians) in order to be above the people,
must speak as though he were lower than they.
In order to guide them, he must put himself behind them.
Thus when he is above, the people have no burden, when he is ahead, they feel no hurt.”

The silent cries of the ancient Jerusalem are just as loud in the alleys of Ramallah, the corners of Hebron and the circles of Nablus, as it is in the malls of New York, the cafes of Rio de Janeiro and the streets of Mozambique.

Choice is ours – either we can be deafeningly loud or screamingly silent, merely calling for or fiercely working for peace. Else, the echoes of the past will continue to haunt us in the future as it is the case in the present in the silent screaming streets of ancient Jerusalem.

My Journey to Al-Aqsa

2008-05-24T08:15:00.000-07:00

Sat - May 24, 2008 - AM ... Phew ... did away with packing ... with the help of my youngest daughter Aasiya, the namesake of Moses's caretaker, I am ready to take off to the land of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (peace be upon all of them). Here I come, O land of the Prophets & the people of my Book!

Never before, I was called upon by so many friends and family cautioning me what to be aware of and what to refrain from. Strange, that everyone is so concerned!

Never before, my son, Mujahid sent me off with a river of tears. Upon asking, he replied with childish innocence that he may not see me again! He went on to say, I knew well when you traveled to Europe, China, Central Asia, India and among so many other places that you WILL be back but Palestine ... "don't they kill people there," he asked. I couldn't help but add few tears to his river & hugged & hugged even tighter and in silence, I prayed for a time (hopefully in my lifetime) when a kid in Los Angeles don't have to be so afraid to travel to Palestine & experience the land of the Prophets and their legacies.

The whole purpose of my trip is just beginning to reveal itself. Very interesting, rather fascinating. I have no plans. Don't have the slightest idea who I may meet & where and who would help me discover myself and how. Join me, if you like, and come along. I will share with what I learn & together we'll let our children heal us!

A US Citizen of Jewish faith spied for Israel, an ardent ally?!

2008-04-23T07:00:00.000-07:00

- LA times had a 500 word story in the inside pages
- NY Times forgot to cover this story ... ooops
- WP story is pasted below

This is NOT the first but the second known case of a Jewish-American (Jonathan Pollard) spying for Israel whom we call an ally of different proportions. In both cases, the spying was done by the State of Israel, for the State of Israel, using Jewish-American citizens!

Should the US call for a Jewish-Integration Program just as we ask of Mexican-Americans & Muslim-Americans to give up their Mexican-ness & Mulim-ness ...

Think for a moment if this were to have been a Muslim-American spying for a Muslim country, how the media & the government would have covered it ...

-------------------------------------------------------

Man, 84, Is Charged With Spying for Israel in 1980s

By Carrie JohnsonWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, April 23, 2008; A04

For more than two decades after he allegedly furnished an Israeli operative with secrets about U.S. nuclear initiatives and sensitive weapons programs, Ben-Ami Kadish lived unnoticed by law enforcement authorities in suburban New Jersey.

Until yesterday, that is, when Kadish, 84, was arrested at his home, taken to a federal courthouse in Manhattan and charged with four counts of conspiracy allegedly for serving as an foreign agent and allegedly for lying to the FBI about a recent telephone conversation he had with his alleged Israeli handler.

Kadish, a mechanical engineer, worked at the U.S. Army's research arsenal in Dover, N.J., in the early 1980s. He routinely checked classified documents out of a library there and passed them to an unnamed Israeli official who had provided a list of what he wanted, according to a four-count criminal complaint the FBI filed yesterday.

The official photographed pages related to nuclear weaponry, the F-15 fighter jet program and the U.S. Patriot missile defense system, according to an FBI affidavit on which the complaint is based.

Kadish's actions appear to have escaped detection for years even though his handler allegedly also collected classified information from Jonathan Pollard, a former Navy intelligence analyst. Pollard is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Butner, N.C., after pleading guilty to an espionage-related crime in 1986.

"It's a fascinating case of another agent in place, another sleeper, with the very same handler," said Joseph E. diGenova, the former U.S. attorney in the District who prosecuted Pollard. "We always suspected there were other people. His tradecraft was apparently better than Pollard's."
DiGenova said the espionage, which the charging documents indicate ceased in 1985, doubtless have come to the government's attention because of wiretap evidence obtained by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Manhattan. FBI agents first interviewed Kadish last month about his activities at the Army's Picatinny Arsenal, where he worked between 1963 and 1990, according to the filing.

Kadish, a U.S. citizen who was born in Connecticut, told the agents that he "borrowed" classified documents at the urging of his handler, who encouraged him to help "protect Israel" by sharing papers that had a "direct correlation to Israel's security." He accepted only small gifts and occasional family dinners in exchange for his services, the FBI said.

Kadish told Special Agent Lance Ashworth that between August 1979 and July 1985, he provided the handler with 50 to 100 documents, according to the affidavit.

The handler is identified in the criminal complaint only as "co-conspirator 1," but he has been named in Israeli publications and by a former prosecutor as Yosef Yagur. He lived in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and worked as an adviser on science affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York.

Yagur left the United States in November 1985, shortly after Pollard was charged with espionage-related offenses, and has never returned.

The handler called Kadish's home at least 22 times between July and November 1985, according to an FBI account of the phone records. The two men have since allegedly maintained contact through periodic e-mail messages and phone calls. They met in Israel four years ago, but their dealings since 1985 have been "purely social," Kadish told investigators.

The handler and Kadish renewed their ties on March 20, according to the FBI affidavit, after federal agents interviewed Kadish for the first time. "Don't say anything," the handler allegedly said. "Let them say whatever they want. . . . What happened 25 years ago? You didn't remember anything."

The next day, FBI agents again questioned Kadish, who allegedly denied the call had taken place. His statements eventually became the basis for two criminal conspiracy charges that accuse him of hindering an investigation and of lying to law enforcement officials. He was also charged with conspiracy to serve as an Israeli agent and conspiracy to disclose documents related to U.S. defense programs.

A federal magistrate judge in New York released Kadish yesterday afternoon on a $300,000 personal recognizance bond secured by his home in Monroe Township, N.J. He was required to surrender his passport, and he will not be allowed to travel beyond New Jersey and New York.
Bruce Goldstein, a defense lawyer for Kadish, did not return calls. David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said that "we were formally informed of the indictment by the relevant authorities," but declined to comment further.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/22/AR2008042202590_pf.html

CA Governor's selective representation

2008-04-21T10:16:00.000-07:00

Governor of California's selective representation

The Governor's Cold Shoulder to MuslimsRebuffing California's Islamic leaders sends a message of intolerance.
By Shakeel Syed, executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California.
August 25, 2006.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, with war raging in the Middle East, I saw that my governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was meeting with rabbis and others who support Israel. As executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, a federation of more than 75 mosques and Muslim organizations serving half a million Muslims, I thought that such a high public official should also meet with members of my community.

I wrote to him on Aug. 7. I wanted to talk to the governor about three important points.

I wanted him to know that my community felt that the deaths of innocent Israeli civilians from the rockets of Hezbollah were painfully tragic, and just as tragic as the deaths of innocent Lebanese people and the destruction of their country's infrastructure by the Israeli bombing.

I wanted to ask him to listen to another, equally important side of the story.

And I wanted to urge him to remember that the governor should represent and listen to all the people of California.

After waiting for more than a week, and following up with at least 10 phone calls to the governor's office, I had gotten no response. I felt it was my duty and my right as a citizen to avail myself of a public forum to reach the governor. When a reporter from the L.A. Times called, I spoke with him and, on Aug. 16, The Times correctly reported my perspective: The fact that the governor had ignored my request to meet was disrespectful and insulting.

I believe what I did comes under the heading of Democracy 101. Politicians govern and win elections by responding to the populace. And when they do not, the populace has two remedies: the power of the vote and the power of public opinion.

Finally, when the governor agreed to meet with two Muslims, it was as individuals, not on behalf of any organization. He refused to meet with me. His communications director, Adam Mendelsohn, was forthright in a public statement: "We did not meet with Mr. Syed [because] it was inappropriate for the governor to meet with someone who uses the media to demand meetings and threaten political retaliation."

I think the governor's communications director needs work on his communication skills. What he calls demanding a meeting, I call paying attention to constituents; what he calls political retaliation, I call voting.

I think that deliberately avoiding a meeting with me solely because I made use of my 1st Amendment rights is simply un-American. This isn't a personal matter between me and the governor. It's about making sure that the half a million people I represent are heard in Sacramento.

Marginalizing Californians who are Muslims subtly reinforces anti-Muslim stereotypes, which all too often cast us as outsiders. This is not principled, it's not good politics and it's not good for the state.

In these volatile times, with attacks on Muslims and our mosques, we cannot afford to be ignored by our governor; we can't stand by when his actions deepen religious and cultural divisions. Californians are, by and large, decent and well-intentioned. They want to solve problems; they want to break down barriers.

Shouldn't their governor be helping them bring down the walls that separate us rather than building them higher?

Published as an Op-Ed in Los Angeles Times on Aug 25, 2006.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-syed25aug25,0,2973237.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail)

Beware the Tax Collector, Cometh!

2008-04-21T10:09:00.000-07:00

Beware the Tax Collector, Cometh!

Beware, the Tax Collector Cometh!
By Shakeel Syed, Executive Director of the Islamic Shura Council

Romans craftily taxed small farmers, artisans and businesses but exempted the senatorial class, the descendants of anyone who had served in the Roman Senate. Farmers who could not pay their taxes were enslaved (along with their wives and children) and had to give their lands and themselves to the local members of the senatorial class, losing both their freedom and their farms.

History shows us that tax collection is often used by the state as a chief instrument of power. From the ancient Egyptians and Romans to the recent British Empire and now to the emerging Empire of the United States of America, both taxes or the lack there-of is meant to demonstrate power.

The state is now using that power against All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena over a 2004 sermon by Rev. Dr. George Regas in which he said Jesus would have told President Bush, “Mr. President, your doctrine of preemptive war is a failed doctrine [that] has led to disaster.”

Beware, the Tax Collector Cometh!

The Tax Collector claims Regas’s sermon implied endorsement of the then presidential Democratic nominee for president, John Kerry. Such discourse from the pulpit is evil, said the Tax Collector and threatened to take away the church’s 501C3 status, one of the key benefits awarded by the state.

Hypocrisy of the tax collector of our time, a.k.a. the I.R.S. (I Are Us as in With Us or Against Us), cannot be but at its worst.

The spiritually and socially responsible All Saints Church is being threatened, for merely calling for justice to the destitute and impoverished while the multi-million dollar 700 Club of the infamous Pat Robertson can continue to get richer in spite of calling for the assassination of a head of state, using the tele-pulpit!

Such are the hypocrisies of the I Are Us; very similar to the Roman inequities. When commoners could not bare the injustices, they rebelled, leading to the downfall of empires. The emerging American Empire should learn from history. Downfall is near.
The role of tax agencies all along in history was to serve as the bullies of the monarchs and dictators. The IRS is no different. Selective enforcement of good law is a demonstration of such corrupt power. A moral audit of IRS is imperative for the health of our society.

501C3 or not. The call to redress inequities and injustices often begins from the pulpit. And that never has, nor will ever change. Else, the Mayflower would never have sailed.

Much before man created the I.R.S. and such three-letter acronyms, the three-letter word, God, always has and always will remain simply supreme. Pulpit or no pulpit, 501C3 or no 501C3, man will always be inspired, like George Regas, to speak for justice and equity for the destitute and impoverished. No I.R.S. can ever succeed in auditing the word of truth to the power.

An Op-Ed in support of All Saints Church, Pasadena and the threats it received from IRS.
Published in Pasadena Star News.

A Semblance of Justice

2008-04-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

Thursday, August 31, 2006

A Semblance of Justice

An Op-Ed by OCRegister upon release of Abdel Jabbar Hamdan after his two years unjust detention by the US Government. ---Thursday, August 3, 2006

A semblance of justiceEditorial: Release of Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan was overdueAn Orange County Register editorialAbdel-Jabbar Hamdan of Buena Park said his arrest and detention for two years in federal custody came from the "paranoia" of an overzealous government in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. We're not qualified to make psychiatric diagnoses, but his detention at Terminal Island in San Pedro for two years certainly seems unjustified. It was right that U.S. District Judge Terry J. Hatter finally ordered him released.

Mr. Hamdan does not deny he was a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based Muslim charitable organization that the U.S. government says is a front for Hamas, the Palestinian organization the State Department has classified as terrorist but which recently won elections in the Palestinian territories. The U.S. government shut the Holy Land Foundation's U.S. operations down in 2001, but Mr. Hamdan says that all his work was strictly charitable in nature, not related to supporting terrorism.

That claim might be disingenuous. Money is fungible; money contributed to an organization for one purpose can be diverted to other purposes. But the U.S. government did not document any claim that Mr. Hamdan was knowingly supporting a terrorist group.

He was not arrested for or charged with supporting terrorism, but on charges he overstayed a student visa he got 27 years ago to attend USC. He had appealed deportation and would ordinarily have been released while the appeal was heard. But the government claimed he was a national security threat.

Shakeel Syed, executive director, Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, sees it this way: "It looks to us as if the government is making examples of people who speak out or are prominent in the community. Otherwise, this was a simple immigration violation case."

Assuming Mr. Hamdan did overstay his 27-year-old visa, he had not been in trouble with the law (before this), according to one of his attorneys, and there was an amnesty in 1986. The attorney believes it unlikely the government will be successful in deporting him to Jordan.

If the government was going to make a claim about national security, it should have at the very least have filed charges that backed up the accusation. Keeping people in prison because somebody in government says they're a national security threat is the way of tyrannies, not of constitutional republics governed by the rule of law. The fact that the judiciary finally recognized this injustice is encouraging, but the fact that Mr. Hamdan could be imprisoned for two years on such frivolous grounds suggests that American traditions of fair play and due process are shakier than we might have hoped.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/editorials/article_1231652.php

Riad Hamad - Pal-American Peace Activist found dead in Austin, TX

2008-04-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

55 years old, husband and father of one son & one daughter, Riad Hamad, Palestinian-American School Teacher & a peace activist, under investigation by FBI, for sending books to children in Palestine, found dead floating in a lake in Austin, TX.

May we all be blessed to honor his legacy by reaffirming our unconditional & unwavering commitment to justice & peace for all oppressed & voiceless people.

- Obituary in Austin Statesman

- Hamad’s project - Palestinian Children's Welfare Fund

- Did Riad Kill Himself ?

- Riad's body condition according to the Imam who washed him before burial

FBI Hunts Looking Backward

2008-04-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a WP piece that proves yet once again how FBI loves catching innocent people and then parading them on national Television. But, never once the shameless DOJ 'apologized' for ruining their lives. I have personally witnessed few such cases in Southern California. This immoral & unjust DOJ practices may never end until the citizens starting suing DOJ for their lives, altered forever!
---------------------

Few Clear Wins in U.S. Anti-Terror CasesMoving Early on Domestic Suspects Often Does Not Bring Convictions

By Carrie Johnson and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff WritersMonday, April 21, 2008;

When seven ragtag men in a Miami religious sect were indicted in 2006 for their role in a bizarre plot to blow up the FBI Miami office and Chicago's Sears Tower, then- Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the case represented "a new brand of terrorism" among homegrown gangs that "may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al-Qaeda."

Justice Department officials used similar rhetoric in a 2003 case against a Tampa-area man and his associates who allegedly supported a reign of terror by a violent Palestinian group. The officials did so again in a 2004 case involving a Dallas charity known as the Holy Land Foundation, which they said provided "blood money" to finance overseas suicide bombings.
But juries in all three cases saw things differently than the government's national security team. In the most recent disappointment for federal prosecutors, a jury last week did not reach a verdict in the Miami case for the second time. In the Holy Land case, one defendant was cleared of the charges and jurors deadlocked on charges against the others. After 12 days of deliberation, jurors in the Tampa case acquitted two men and could not agree on the charges against the main defendant.

The department's domestic terrorism record to date -- no new attacks, but few blockbuster convictions and some high-profile hung juries or acquittals -- has provoked criticism of its early strategy for going after homegrown terrorist cells and the people who fund plots well before deadly events occur.

Jurors appear to be particularly troubled by a controversial element in the Miami case, part of several other early prosecutions, in which FBI informants encouraged others to perform acts they otherwise may not have done.

This week, federal prosecutors in Miami will announce whether they will seek to try the defendants for the third time. The government's incentive to do so is powerful: Two years ago, it intended the case to be a model for intervention against potential terrorists before they acquire the weapons and insight needed to act.

Independent commissions have urged the FBI to become more aggressive at detecting threats and neutralizing them before they explode. But what emerged was an approach where investigators sometimes acted very early, charging conspiracies to commit minor crimes or immigration and tax violations as a way to preempt potential threats, while avoiding the disclosure of sensitive intelligence.

Justice Department officials say they are pleased to have won a few high-profile convictions as well as some little-noticed guilty pleas. Increasingly, authorities say, their current goal is broader than a courtroom victory: It is collecting enough intelligence to eradicate a threat by using informants, wiretaps and other tools to get as clear a picture as possible .

"Our mission is not just to disrupt an isolated plot, but to thoroughly dismantle the entire network that supports it," FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told an audience this month.

* * *

The Miami case revolved around a part-time contractor who gathered a loose band of men in a rented room in a downscale neighborhood known as Liberty City. The group, distantly affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple religion, talked about Muhammad, Jesus, Confucius and Buddha, and also practiced martial arts.

Its leader, Narseal Batiste, told his Yemenese grocer in October 2005 that he wanted to conduct jihad to overthrow the U.S. government. The grocer, an FBI informant who himself had a criminal record, told the bureau. The FBI then employed a second informant, this one an Arab from overseas who depicted himself as a representative of Osama bin Laden.

Batiste confided, somewhat fantastically, that he wanted to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, which would then fall into a nearby prison, freeing Muslim prisoners who would become the core of his Moorish army. With them, he would establish his own country.

The FBI informant, under bureau guidance, refocused Batiste on what he said was bin Laden's plot -- to bomb FBI offices in several U.S. cities. Batiste's group was enlisted by the FBI informant to aid in the attack. The informant then wrote out what he termed an al-Qaeda oath, and got Batiste to lead his men in taking it -- an act that the government argued was key evidence of their guilt.

After one of the seven left Miami to get away from the group, an internal dispute developed and it fell apart. They were then arrested, charged with conspiracy to commit a terrorist act and placed in prison, where they remain.

Jurors in the case, which ended in a mistrial last week, have not spoken about it publicly. But panel members who deliberated in the first trial told reporters they were skeptical that the defendants were as dangerous as prosecutors asserted.

* * *

Formerly the largest Muslim charity in the United States, the Holy Land Foundation was "funding the works of evil" and encouraging suicide bombings on behalf of Hamas, according to a press conference statement in 2004 by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

Earlier that morning, authorities had arrested a group of men with ties to the foundation for supporting Hamas, violating laws that bar financial transactions that threaten national security, and money laundering, among 42 counts that could have sent the men to prison for decades.
But the prosecution ended in a mistrial last October, when Dallas jurors could not reach agreement on charges involving two defendants and mostly cleared another of criminal wrongdoing. Jurors have offered contrasting accounts of the problems they faced, but at least one cast doubt on the quality of the evidence. Prosecutors are scheduled to retry the case later this year.

A less-publicized case involves Javed Iqbal, a Brooklyn businessman who provided overseas cable access to clients and data to others, including U.S. government agencies. In August 2006, Iqbal was arrested for conspiring to supply financial support to a terrorist agency. His alleged crime was selling access to Al-Manar, the news and information cable channel run by Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

According to court filings, the case started when a confidential informant told the FBI in February 2006 that Iqbal was selling access to Al-Manar. At the time, it was not illegal, but the next month the Treasury Department added Al-Manar to the list on the grounds that funds it obtained went to Hezbollah, which the United States considers a terrorist group.
In June, the FBI's confidential informant went back to Iqbal's company and again offered to buy the overseas cable service that included Al-Manar. Iqbal told the informant that Al-Manar was temporarily unavailable, but would return. Iqbal also allegedly said he knew the channel was now on the terrorist list, but he expected that to change.

After being arrested for conspiring to violate the law, Iqbal was released on $250,000 bail. In November 2006, he was indicted again, along with a partner, this time on multiple charges of conspiracy to provide support to Hezbollah.

At the time of the arrests, Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said, "As terrorist organizations become more sophisticated, it is critical that we respond using all the law enforcement tools the law provides." They are awaiting trial.

* * *

The Justice Department, U.S. attorneys and the FBI have doggedly pursued individual suspects in these domestic terrorism cases, even when their initial steps are unsuccessful.

In Miami, prosecutors not only sought a retrial after the first hung jury but also went after the one person, Lyglenson Lemorin, whom the jury found not guilty. Instead of turning him loose, they immediately had him detained for possible deportation to his native Haiti on grounds that he had been indicted on a felony charge.

Law enforcement officers say that in deciding when to indict, they weigh whether the targets might flee overseas, whether the cost of surveillance is paying adequate dividends, and whether a group is likely to take actions that could cost human lives.

"There's a risk here that while we're trying to perfect our evidence that something very bad could happen," said Patrick Rowan, acting chief of the Justice Department's National Security Division. "It's certainly the case that there is a value in stopping a plot, even if you aren't 100 percent certain that a conviction is assured."

Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University who studies the government's terrorism cases, said the picture is complicated. "The bottom line is that they are doing considerably better than is often reported . . . but they certainly aren't doing perfectly and they've had plenty of black eyes along the way," Chesney said.

One senior law enforcement official recently said, "We may have been too aggressive at the beginning." He thinks that early cases, such as the one in Miami, were pushed too hard and that the FBI and U.S. attorneys now understand that getting a full picture of potential threats by groups is as important as making cases.

J. Wells Dixon, a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the Miami case is among the "few and far between" disappointments in the government's aggressive campaign to attack the sources and funding of possible terrorist groups. These outliers, Dixon said, are not a signal that terrorism cases are too complex for juries but rather a sign that the current system is working.

"If you have 12 jurors who decide that an individual or an organization should not be convicted, I think that suggests these people are in fact not guilty of anything," Dixon said.
Andrew C. McCarthy prosecuted Omar Abdel Rahman, the man known as the blind sheik, for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bomb plot. McCarthy said that had the first Trade Center bombing, which killed six people, not happened, he still wonders whether the government could have secured convictions of the same defendants on more nebulous charges that they had made "fantastical" plans to blow up the United Nations and the Lincoln Tunnel.

"The argument that the people really are pathetic, hapless, incapable, has more resonance if you strike at an early stage," he said. "In a way, you're undone by your own efficiency. I do think it's harder to be a prosecutor today."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

The Fitna of Fitna (Documentary)

2008-04-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

Devolution of intellectual thought
By Shakeel Syed

Freedom of expression is an inherent right that many societies protect by law. But that does not make every expression made in the name of freedom of expression, right.

The inflammatory content including the tearing of Quran in the so-called seventeen-minute-documentary, Fitna, is pure anti-Semitism reborn as "Islamophobia," an increasingly popular vocation among secular fanatics. The world is smarter than the likes of Geert Wilders. Thanks to history.

Neither the two World Wars, genocides of Bosnians in Europe, of Native Indians in Americas, and of the Aborigines in Australia nor the killing fields in Cambodia or the just ended apartheid in South Africa and the ongoing apartheid in Israel has any parallel in Islam.

And it was Europe that gave the world the Inquisition and the Holocaust. And it was within the Christian cultures of Italy & Germany that Mussolini & Hitler became heroes. Contrasting Islam and Muslims with such rival cultures and butchers is an intellectual corruption.

Islam’s conquests were by cooptation and conversion unlike thru genocides and extermination camps.

From the Islamic perspective, freedom of speech and expression (hurriyyat al-qawl wa bayan) is "vindication of truth" and "protection of human dignity," with embedded maxims of morality and legality. Slander and libel are not protected under free speech.

Fitna is yet another failed attempt in inciting hatred against Islam that has successfully survived the taunts by the like of Geert Wilders for more than fourteen centuries.

Muslims are well aware of the double standards West places in regard to freedom of speech and expression. Neither the West could tolerate the demonization of any other faith nor the dehumanization of any other people (with occasional exceptions from Hollywood), but seemingly it is all acceptable to bash Islam and Muslims in the name of freedom and secular civility.

The twenty first century has divided the world into two camps – the secular and the religious, living together but without knowing one another. What is sacred in one is deranged in the other.

Fostering an environment where nothing is sacred in the faith of secularism will not help a sage civilization of fifteen centuries in which the sacred is all that counts. Thanks to many leaders of several faith groups and the secular world (UN Secretary General among many) for their calls to sanity.
History does not end with the discovery of what is best in us but after we recognize the worst that we can do to ourselves. Failing to see beyond that imperative will result in a life that sees all within one’s own closed circle as good and all outside as evil. In an ever more interconnected and interdependent world, this is a sure disaster of colossal proportions.

All strands of artists and academics, journalists and politicians must embrace a thoughtful discourse over mindless cartoons and documentaries. The discourse of history ought to continue its conversation but not with the military might or the stoned intellectualism but within the wider rhythms of human experience.

Only then could we as a human society be free, genuinely attempting to engage each other to learn from rather than creating Fitnas.