Terror Trial Starting Against Ex-Sailor

Just a quick heads-up, as you’ll probably be hearing more about this in the next few weeks:

By JOHN CHRISTOFFERSEN – Feb 24, 2008

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — A former Navy sailor faces a trial beginning Monday on terrorism charges alleging he communicated with suspected terrorists while on duty and leaked information that could have doomed his own ship.

Prosecutors allege that Hassan Abu-Jihaad sent details of the location and vulnerabilities of a Navy battle group to suspected terrorism supporters in London.

“If we have members of our military who are aggressively passing on secrets to terrorists, that’s cause for concern,” said Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland. “It’s a very aggressive act which would have brought real danger to the United States.”

Abu-Jihaad, 32, of Phoenix, has pleaded not guilty to charges he provided material support to terrorists with intent to kill U.S. citizens and disclosed classified information relating to the national defense. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

Abu-Jihaad, an American-born Muslim convert formerly known as Paul R. Hall, was a signalman until he received an honorable discharge in 2002. He worked in a warehouse in Phoenix and has two children, friends said.

“He was very opinionated,” Miguel Colon, a friend questioned about Abu-Jihaad by FBI agents, said last year. “He would talk about things in regard to the way the Iraq war was going. It was something he disagreed with.”

Colon said he rarely saw his friend angry, though. Colon, who met Abu-Jihaad at a mosque in Phoenix, said Abu-Jihaad was dedicated to his prayers, reading Islamic literature and following rules against drinking.

Muslim students In Australia want Preferential Treatment

Creeping Sharia alert

MUSLIM university students want lectures to be rescheduled to fit in with prayer timetables and separate male and female eating and recreational areas established on Australian campuses.
-No special treatment should even be considered.

International Muslim students, predominantly from Saudi Arabia, have asked universities in Melbourne to change class times so they can attend congregational prayers. They also want a female-only area for Muslim students to eat and relax.
-Who cares what they want they are students. When they build their own universities, they can set the rules.

But at least one institution has rejected their demands, arguing that the university is secular and it does not want to set a precedent for requests granted in the name of religious beliefs.
-Exactly one set of rules for everyone.

La Trobe University International chief officer John Molony said several students had approached the Bundoora institution about rearranging class times to fit in with daily prayers.

Mr Molony said the university was attempting to “meet the needs” of an increasing number of Muslim international students, including doubling the size of the prayer room on campus.
-Why, do you think they will all leave for a more complainant facility-you should be so lucky.

La Trobe University International College director Martin Van Run said that although it was involved in discussions with the Muslim students who had made the requests, the university was not planning to change any timetables.
“That would seriously inconvenience other people at the college and it is not institutionally viable,” he told The Australian. “We are a secular institution … and we need to have a structured timetable.”
-Well said.

Mr Van Run said that Saudi students were fully aware that the university was secular before coming to study there. “They know well in advance the class times,” he said.
-This was never about prayer times it is about control and domination.

Study: 3 in 4 U.S. mosques preach Islamic extremism

No surprise to anyone who even casually follows the news. This article is a must read and should be shared with all your co-workers (especially liberals) and a copy saved. This article shows the magnitude of the problem and a comparison should be done regularly to measure progress or lack of. February 23, 2008, WorldNetDaily
An undercover survey of more than 100 mosques and Islamic schools in America has exposed widespread radicalism, including the alarming finding that 3 in 4 Islamic centers are hotbeds of anti-Western extremism, WND has learned.
-3/4 follow widespread radicalism and the rest? Do they follow a lessor form of extremism?

The Mapping Sharia in America Project, sponsored by the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, has trained former counterintelligence and counterterrorism agents from the FBI, CIA and U.S. military, who are skilled in Arabic and Urdu, to conduct undercover reconnaissance at some 2,300 mosques and Islamic centers and schools across the country.
-Well that was until this story broke – now they know we have infiltrated them.

“So far of 100 mapped, 75 should be on a watchlist,” an official familiar with the project said.
Many of the Islamic centers are operating under the auspices of the Saudi Arabian government and U.S. front groups for the radical Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt.
-Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia being friends of the Bush White House. Not that the Democrats think differently.

Frank Gaffney, a former Pentagon official who runs the Center for Security Policy, says the results of the survey have not yet been published. But he confirmed that “the vast majority” are inciting insurrection and jihad through sermons by Saudi-trained imams and anti-Western literature, videos and textbooks.
-Again, no surprise here.

The project, headed by David Yerushalmi, a lawyer and expert on sharia law, has finished collecting data from the first cohort of 102 mosques and schools. Preliminary findings indicate that almost 80 percent of the group exhibit a high level of sharia-compliance and jihadi threat, including:

* Ultra-orthodox worship in which women are separated from men in the prayer hall and must enter the mosque from a separate, usually back, entrance; and are required to wear hijabs.

* Sermons that preach women are inferior to men and can be beaten for disobedience; that non-Muslims, particularly Jews, are infidels and inferior to Muslims; that jihad or support of jihad is not only a Muslim’s duty but the noblest way, and suicide bombers and other so-called “martyrs” are worthy of the highest praise; and that an Islamic caliphate should one day encompass the U.S.

* Solicitation of financial support for jihad.

* Bookstores that sell books, CDs and DVDs promoting jihad and glorifying martyrdom.

Sunday Funnies

[Click on Images to Enlarge]

ChangedForever Sent in the following:

Church of England Bishop defies Muslim’s Death threat

24 February, 2008, AOL News
A senior Church of England bishop who received death threats in the wake of comments he made about Islamic extremists has insisted it is his “duty” to speak out.
-Excellent point, his job is to lead his flock toward God not away from it. By ignoring the evil that is Islam you are guilty of passively supporting it.

The Bishop of Rochester, The Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, was placed under police protection after writing in a national newspaper in January that Islamic extremists are creating “no-go areas” for non-Muslims in Britain.

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph he said communities dominated by radical Islam give a hostile reception to Christians and those from other faiths.
-They do this everywhere, infidels find themselves un-welcome in most Muslim enclaves. Visit an enclave and you are rapidly welcomed by a large group of Muslim men who want to know who you are and what you want.
His comments provoked a strong reaction, with Muslim groups angrily denying the claims and many fellow bishops distancing themselves from the remarks. Prime Minster Gordon Brown also joined those rejecting the comments.
-The other Bishops should read the Koran and the Bible, the differences rapidly surface. If they are scared to defend their beliefs, they should resign their positions.

In his first interview since his controversial comments the bishop told the Sunday Telegraph: “The issue had to be raised. There are times when Christian leaders have to speak out. It’s my duty.

“If you disagree, that must be met by counter-arguments, not by trying to silence people. It was a threat not just to me, but to my family. I took it seriously, so did the police, it gave me sleepless nights.”
-Islamic minions have attached people for far less, the threats should be taken seriously.

Serbs look to history to explain fury at what they see as Western affront over Kosovo

A short history that explains the issues surrounding the theft of Kosovo.

February 24, 2008, (AP)
BELGRADE, Serbia: Masked rioters torch the U.S. Embassy. Mobs throw U.N. border kiosks into a river. Demonstrators burn American and EU flags.

Serbs are furious at Kosovo’s declaration of independence, and the nationalist-backed government is stoking the flames of a visceral passion for a province where Serbs have long been a minority — but that is seen as the sacred heartland of the Serb nation.

By breaking free, Kosovo has touched several raw nerves in the Serbian psyche.

This war-shattered nation feels it is being unfairly punished for the sins of late strongman Slobodan Milosevic. It is wounded by the loss of yet another big chunk of its territory. Its youths are bitter and restless over the deep poverty brought on by four lost wars.

And now it is faced with the trauma of saying goodbye to what its people are taught to cherish as the cradle of their culture.

The vehemence of the Serb response to the Kosovar declaration may then seem less surprising — perhaps even inevitable — when viewed in this context. And Serb leaders have not hesitated to manipulate the psychological scars to rally the masses for political gain.

Serb unanimity over Kosovo extends even to pro-Western leaning politicians such as President Boris Tadic, who hopes that Serbia might eventually join the European Union.

That unity confounds many Western leaders who argue it is natural Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians should have an independent homeland in a territory where they represent 90 percent of the population — especially since they lost thousands of lives under Milosevic.

But ask just about anyone about giving up Kosovo on the streets of this drab capital and they would fail to understand the Western viewpoint. Serbs overwhelmingly feel it’s like asking an American whether Los Angeles should be ceded to Mexico because many Latinos live there.

In light of other separatist movements around the world, from Spain’s Basque country to Kashmir, the dilemma raises a searing question about whether self-determination is an absolute right when a slice of one nation is overwhelmingly populated by what is otherwise a minority ethnic group.

For Serbs, the answer is easy.

“Kosovo is ours,” said Dragoljub Stojanovic, 61, a retired factory worker from Leskovac. “We can’t give that away.”
To Serbs, Kosovo is the place where Serb identity was forged in 1398, when Serbian Prince Lazar chose to fight against overwhelming odds to stop a Turkish onslaught. Though he lost, the battle helped to stem the Turkish tide — safeguarding Christianity in the rest of Europe.

To mark his sacrifice, the Serbs put down roots in the area, building monasteries, churches and shrines, including the Pec Patriarchy — the ancient seat of the Serbian Orthodox Church — the 13th Century monastery in Gracanica and the Decani monastery, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

The buildings safeguarded a rich culture: Byzantine-style icons painted by ancient masters are protected in the inner walls; the paintings depict the elongated faces of past rulers, saints, the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ.
For Serbs, these images stir up pride and defiance.

“As long as we exist, Kosovo … is our Jerusalem, and we cannot give it up, just as we cannot give up our soul and our destiny,” Bishop Amfilohije, a church hard-liner, told worshippers at a prayer service Thursday following the Kosovo protest.

Politicians in Serbia have long manipulated the symbol of national identity to suit their own goals. Milosevic famously invoked the specter of an independent Kosovo in a pivotal 1989 speech that marked the rebirth of Serb nationalism after decades in which communist leaders sought to erase ethnic identities.