Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (2982)	1/29/2003 7:48:15 PM
From: Machaon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 15987

<< ... the Muslim world is facing a demographic baby boom which is creating economic and social pressures that these corrupt non-democratic nations can not cope with. >> Along with the increased demand for water, increase in pollution, increase in the millions of tons of untreated raw sewerage spilled out into the world waterways... As the civilized world is trying to hold back the hordes of terrorists, millions more are hatching each day. << 50% of the Saudi population is under the age of 18 RIGHT NOW >> How did the parents find time for terrorist activities? << ... or disengaging (and leaving it to the Europeans, Russians, Indians, and Chinese to deal with). >> I look at Iraq's neighbors, who are giving the US very poor backing. Is it because they don't want to take a chance and back us, only to have the US pull out (like we did in Iraq before), leaving them to fend off Saddam's attacks by themselves? And ...... Europe? Where are they? It's more in their neighborhood than ours? How about China and Russia. They are neighbors of North Korea. Why are we the principle protector of world sanity, in THEIR back yard? India is also strangely silent about world terrorism. I realize that they are fighting their own terrorist war in Kasmir, but ........ Sometimes I want the U.S. to just tell our allies in Europe, plus Russia, China, and the Middle East dictators, to deal with it themselves, and let us know when the mushroom clouds blow our way.

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (2982)	1/29/2003 8:12:51 PM
From: lorne	Respond to of 15987

U.S. Civil Liberties Group Protests FBI Scheme to Count Mosques Tue Jan 28, WASHINGTON, D.C. Jan 28 (OW-US) - The American Civil Liberties Union (news - web sites) (ACLU) has called a controversial new scheme by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI (news - web sites)) to base inquiries and wiretap goals on demographic data--including the number of mosques in a given area--ethnic and religious profiling of the kind that gave rise to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. "This is blatant religious and ethnic profiling," said Dalia Hashad, ACLU's Arab, Muslim, and South Asian advocate. "After Timothy McVeigh (news - web sites) blew up the federal building in Oklahoma, the FBI did not install more resources in areas with large populations of military veterans." A major Islamic-American group also protested the plan Monday and called for it to be scrapped. "This policy makes as much sense as counting Catholic churches in America in order to initiate an investigation of the Mafia," the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) charged in a statement. The scheme was first reported in the February 3 edition of Newsweek magazine. According to the report, orders have gone out from FBI headquarters for its 56 field offices to develop "demographic" profiles of their areas, including tallying the number of mosques. Those profiles will then be used to set specific numerical goals for counterterrorism and national-security wiretaps in each region. ACLU cited FBI officials as acknowledging that mosque tallies would be used to set quotas for investigations and wiretaps. "Top bureau officials have signaled that if field offices don't meet their pre-established goals, they may be subjected to special reviews by inspection teams from headquarters," according to the Newsweek account, which noted that some FBI officials had raised concerns about the program. The article quoted one "top FBI official" as saying that the plan arose due to concerns about undetected "sleeper cells" and evidence that some mosques were being used as cover for terrorist activity. "[I]t would be stupid not to look at this, given the number of criminal mosques that may be out there," the source was quoted as saying. ACLU said the program is tailor-made for a witch hunt; instead of justifying why it is investigating a particular mosque, the FBI now has to justify why it is not. This notion, according to the group, is remarkably similar to the backdrop against which the Japanese-American internment 60 years ago was set. "This misuse of resources is as ineffective as it is un-American, undermining both national security and civil liberties," said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU legislative counsel. "This Washington-driven plan requires trained and experienced field agents to use their limited resources to target Muslim communities and institutions -- even if the evidence doesn't back it up." ACLU also noted how this may compound threats to civil liberties embodied in Attorney-General John Ashcroft (news - web sites)'s relaxation of FBI political spying guidelines last year that permit agents to monitor constitutionally protected religious activity without probable cause to suspect criminal activity. "The FBI guidelines encourage agents to infiltrate mosques and other houses of worship," Hashad said. "The mosque-counting scheme virtually guarantees this invasion." The FBI has issued a statement countering claims made by the groups. "Any suggestion that the number of mosques in a field division is being used to set investigative goals for that division is wrong," according to the Bureau's assistant director Cassandra Chandler. "The survey, a small part of the FBI's much larger re-engineering effort, looked at a wide range of demographic and other measures." oneworld.org