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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3671)	6/8/2005 8:35:57 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

Islamic leaders, 2 others held in California terror probe Wednesday, June 8, 2005 Posted: 7:15 AM EDT (1115 GMT) (CNN) -- Federal agents searched the homes of two Islamic leaders in Lodi, California, and have made four arrests since Sunday, part of an ongoing terrorism investigation, according to the FBI and witnesses. Two of those arrested are top Muslim leaders in Lodi, including one who publicly condemned the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and issued a declaration of peace with Christian and Jewish leaders in Lodi three years ago. The other two are a father and son, identified as 47-year-old Umer Hayat and 22-year-old Hamid Hayat. The son allegedly lied about his attendance at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, according to the Los Angeles Times. Details of the investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force based in Sacramento will be made public Wednesday morning and until then officials are saying little about the case. The two Islamic leaders -- Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed -- were detained on immigration charges and will face an immigration hearing, according to FBI Special Agent John Cauthen. Khan is the former imam of the Lodi Muslim Mosque and Ahmed is the current imam, according to Lodi News-Sentinel religion reporter Ross Farrow, who has interviewed both men in the past. Khan has been working to establish the Farooqia Islamic Center, an Islamic charter school for young children in Lodi, Farrow said. In the days following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Khan condemned the attacks, Farrow said. Several months later, Khan joined the leaders of local Christian churches and a synagogue to issue a Declaration of Peace condemning terrorism and stressing the common origins of each religion, Farrow said. The Times reported that Khan and Ahmed were taken into custody after they were seen meeting with the Hayats in Lodi over the weekend. While the FBI spokesman would not discuss the details, the Times quoted an affidavit filed in the case that said the younger Hayat failed a polygraph test Saturday in which he denied having attended an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan. The affidavit said he later admitted he trained there for six months in 2003 and 2004, the Times reported. The elder Hayat was arrested for lying about giving his son a $100 monthly allowance while at the camp, the Times reported. The father is from Pakistan and the son was born in California, according to the newspaper.

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3671)	6/8/2005 8:55:51 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 9838

Government Alert: Hospital Security Breach By The Eyewitness News Investigators (New York-WABC, May 4, 2005) — Imagine - people posing as doctors and inspectors, just walking into a hospital and demanding information and patient records. Now the Department of Homeland Security is taking action. The last two hospitals where it happened were in Newton and New Brunswick, New Jersey. This really has federal authorities puzzled - intruders masquerading as doctors and inspectors probing hospital security. But there is no evidence the cases are connected, including two in New Jersey. Hospital officials and security experts say the similarities are disturbing. It happened on Easter Sunday. Three men of middle-eastern descent entered a Sussex County hospital posing as physicians. Dennis Collette, Newton Memorial Hospital President: "They said they were physicians and wanted a tour of hospital and wanted information about hospital, bed capacity, and wanted a tour of the emergency department." Two days later, a man and woman walked into the emergency room at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, also requesting a tour. Similar suspicious activity at hospitals in Boston, Detroit and Indiana prompted the Department of Homeland Security to issue a alert. It warns about intruders posing as hospital inspectors and doctors trying to gain information. The use of false credentials to gain entry into hospitals is not new and is often done to get drugs or medical supplies. But the Department of Homeland Security says these recent events are different because of the number of similar incidents over a short period of time. William Daly, Control Risks: "That's the most troubling thing, they're more sophisticated." This former FBI counter-terrorism expert says these cases have all the markings of classic reconnaissance. William Daly: "It seems to be almost looking to see how much information they can get how much information is available, what is out there, what people's response will be and they all seem to fade off before anyone's able to get authorities or get these people taken in for questioning." The Department of Homeland Security's bulletin stresses it has no direct threat information related to hospitals. Security experts caution that these cases of fake physicians and inspectors could just be coincidental, however bold and bizarre. Dennis Collette: "It is unusual for three people to come claim to be doctors on an Easter Sunday and ask for a tour." The identity of these intruders remain unknown. We do know that security cameras at the Newton Hospital did capture video of the three men pretending to be doctors. That tape is now in the hands of the FBI. abclocal.go.com

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3671)	6/8/2005 9:05:15 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

Laz, Since I don't like communism, I guess according to your "logic" I want all of the people who live under repressive communist regimes dead, right? "Laz logic"

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3671)	6/8/2005 4:01:03 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

Amnesty International & Moral Idiocy June 7, 2005 By Dennis Prager Sometime in the 1970s, I sent a donation to Amnesty International. As soon as I heard that a group had been formed to combat torture, I knew I had to support it. Unfortunately, like almost all international and most domestic groups, the Left took over Amnesty International, and it devolved into another predictably anti-American, morally destructive organization. That devolution was most apparent years ago when Amnesty International listed the United States as a major violator of human rights because it executed murderers. The organization's inability to morally distinguish between executing murderers and executing innocent people means that Amnesty International is worse than ineffectual; the good it has done notwithstanding, it is becoming harmful to the cause of human rights. Amnesty International reached its nadir two weeks ago when the secretary general of the organization, Irene Khan, branded the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay "the gulag of our times." And rather than fire her, Amnesty International has defended her. Among her defenders is the American head of Amnesty International, William Schultz, who apparently loves America as much as he loves moral clarity. He said on Chris Matthews' "Hardball" that he acknowledges that there is a difference "in scale" between Gulag and Guantanamo, but otherwise the comparison is apt. For the record, at Guantanamo there are about 520 prisoners, the vast majority, if not all, of whom have been rounded up in anti-terror warfare. They were non-uniformed terrorists who are not subject to Geneva Convention rules on prisoners. But even if they did wear uniforms, they would await release at the end of hostilities. They are, even according to Schultz, provided with medical care and a fine diet that honors their religious codes, and they are allowed to practice their religion. Now compare the estimated 20-30 million prisoners sent to the string of camps across the Soviet Union. They obtained no medical care, were served portions of food inadequate to human survival, and were frozen and worked to death by the millions. Moreover, virtually everyone sent there was entirely innocent of any crime. Every prisoner of the Gulag would have given anything to be a prisoner in Guantanamo. Calling Guantanamo "Gulag" smears America and trivializes the suffering and deaths of millions upon millions of innocent people. But this does not matter to leftist organizations and their defenders in the mainstream media. What matters is hatred of President Bush. The apotheosis of liberal moral confusion, The New York Times editorial page, wrote: "What Guantanamo exemplifies . . . may or may not bring to mind the Soviet Union's sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies." Guantanamo "may or may not" be compared to Gulag! What a courageous stand. The rare exception to the mainstream media silence (other than The Wall Street Journal editorial page -- the one major conservative editorial page) was The Washington Post. And the reason the Post condemned Amnesty International was that Anne Applebaum, author of the most definitive work yet on the Gulag, sits on the Post's editorial board. She knows how immoral the comparison is. She knows what happened at Gulag. But I believe that most members of the press do not. Leftist moral confusion and animosity toward America and President Bush are not the only reasons for the widespread acceptance of the Amnesty International libel of America and its trivialization of Stalin's horrors. The other is the simple ignorance of history -- especially concerning Communist atrocities -- among many of the world's journalists. An Associated Press report of May 26th (printed in The Washington Post and countless other newspapers) described the Gulag thus: "Thousands of prisoners of the so-called gulags died from hunger, cold, harsh treatment and overwork." Thousands? This is our mainstream news media. I am certain the average journalist has little idea about how many people Stalin murdered in the Gulag. So, for the record, here are some comparisons between the Gulag and Guantanamo, courtesy of David Bosco and published in The New Republic: Individuals detained: Gulag: 20 million. Guantanamo: 750 total. Number of camps: Gulag: 476 separate camp complexes comprising thousands of individual camps. Guantanamo: five small camps on the U.S. military base in Cuba. Reasons for Imprisonment: Gulag: Hiding grain; owning too many cows; need for slave labor; being Jewish; being Finnish; being religious; being middle class; having had contact with foreigners; refusing to sleep with the head of Soviet counterintelligence; telling a joke about Stalin. Guantanamo -- Fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan; being suspected of links to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Red Cross Visits: Gulag: none that Bosco could find. Guantanamo: regular visits since January 2002. Deaths as a Result of Poor Treatment: Gulag: at least two to three million (Bosco understates). Guantanamo: no reports of prisoner deaths. If Amnesty International does not fire Irene Khan and retract her obscene comparison, it is unworthy of respect or support. A new non-leftist anti-torture organization must be built. realclearpolitics.com