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To: Road Walker who wrote (246757)	8/20/2005 6:48:47 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Respond to of 1571911

Concern Grows Over Prison Islam Converts By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 20, 2:19 PM ET SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Recent arrests have focused attention on a potential terrorism danger that federal officials have been warning about — that inmates in state prison systems are particularly susceptible to radical Islamist ideology. But prison officials across the nation say they so far have seen more potential for recruitment than real threats. Federal officials have arrested three men in Southern California since early July in a plot that allegedly targeted National Guard facilities, the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles and several synagogues. Authorities said they believe the plan originated among a shadowy group known as Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh inside California State Prison, Sacramento. Counterterrorism officials said the danger is not in the number of adherents to radical Islam but in the potential for small groups of dedicated believers to commit terrorist acts after they are released. They point to Jose Padilla, an American Muslim convert arrested in 2002 for allegedly planning a "dirty bomb" radiological attack after he left jail. "Nothing I have suggests there is a widespread Al Qaida recruitment movement within the prison system, but all you need is three or four to conduct an attack," said Gary Winuk, chief deputy director of the state Office of Homeland Security. Prison officials nationwide "are all sort of hearing the chatter" about efforts to recruit inmates to extremist ideologies, said Martin Horn, commissioner of the New York City Department of Corrections. He would not elaborate. However, prison officials in other states, including Pennsylvania and Ohio, where Muslim inmates helped spark an 11-day fatal riot in 1993, said they have seen no signs of recruiting. And Muslim leaders dispute the idea that prisons are producing Islamic militants. In a report last year, the U.S. Department of Justice's inspector general found that the federal Bureau of Prisons was doing inadequate background or ideology checks on its Muslim clerics. It found that inmates and religious volunteers had "ample opportunity ... to deliver inappropriate and extremist messages without supervision." Groups with domestic or foreign terrorism ties have been a prison phenomenon for decades, said Steven L. Pomerantz, a former FBI assistant director and counterterrorism chief. He said there was "no question ... we have a problem with militant Islam and its spread into the American prison system." The Southern California case arose after 25-year-old Levar Haley Washington and another man were arrested July 5 on suspicion of robbing gas stations. Police found jihadist literature and evidence of a target list when they searched Washington's Los Angeles apartment. Law enforcement officials suspect Washington was radicalized in prison before he was paroled Nov. 29. In California, chaplains' clerks or other inmates lead some religious ceremonies and sometimes preach an inflammatory version of Islam, said Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association. But he added, "I find most Muslim inmates to be very respectful, to be very easy to deal with." The California prison system has 30 full- and part-time Muslim chaplains, civil service employees who undergo background checks and must adhere to mainstream Islam, said Terry Thornton, spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Shakeel Syed, a contract chaplain for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, disagreed that prisons are turning out Islamic radicals. He joined representatives of Muslim groups Friday at a news conference in Los Angeles to say that chaplains can be part of the solution by steering inmates away from radical ideology. "Those of us who are on the front lines battling extremism are not being utilized by law enforcement," said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. ___ Associated Press Writer Jeremiah Marquez contributed to this story from Los Angeles.

To: Road Walker who wrote (246757)	8/20/2005 7:10:01 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571911

Can you believe he is still parroting the same crap? Rove must be be very distracted to let him keep telling the same lies--- Bush invokes Sept 11 to defend Iraq war By Tabassum Zakaria President George W. Bush launched a counter-offensive against growing public discontent over Iraq on Saturday, when he defended the war as a way of protecting Americans from another September 11 attack, a message he will reinforce when he takes to the road next week. "Our troops know that they're fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere to protect their fellow Americans from a savage enemy," Bush said in his weekly radio address. Of course not.......his supporters are ideologues. They are not going to give up easily. That's why I worry about the Constitution. I don't put anything past ideologues. In any case, the fight is just starting in spite of the fact that a number of us have been opposed to the war for a couple of years now. To be honest, I didn't think Sheehan got it but after reading her letter, I think she knows exactly how difficult this fight will be. Did you notice that some of her comments were similar to the ones you have made to Ten? ted

To: Road Walker who wrote (246757)	8/20/2005 7:28:38 PM
From: tejek	Respond to of 1571911

Sound familiar? ************************************************ A worldly, not a messianic decision** By Uzi Benziman When the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson lay on his death bed, his followers launched a vigorous revival campaign under the slogan "Messiah now." When he died, Chabad's leadership was forced to explain to its followers that the rabbi was, after all, flesh and blood. Today, 11 years after his death, some of them still brandish his portrait with the caption "Long live the Messiah king." Similarly, some of the evacuated settlers of Gush Katif believed until the last moment in divine intervention that would save them from the uprooting disaster. Some of them, even as the Israel Defense Forces troops were knocking on their neighbors' door, continued praying and declaring at the same time to the cameras, that God's salvation was forthcoming. This is how the right-wing leaders, both religious and secular, see the future of the West Bank. They are clutching talismans and praying for divine intervention that would save the settlements. Effie Eitam is hallucinating about a solution that would annex part of the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip for setting up a Palestinian state on it (and rid the West Bank at this opportunity of 2.5 million Palestinians). Uzi Landau is not coming up with an answer to the question of how his concept - perpetuating the occupation - fits in with Jabotinsky's theory that ruled out an Israeli apartheid regime. Benjamin Netanyahu is zigzagging and deceiving aimlessly, while the settlers' leaders and rabbis are relying explicitly on prayers and the expectation of a miracle. The only realistic approach they have to offer to justify this hope is the saying "in 1948 too, when we were 600,000 people, nobody believed that after 57 years we would reach six million." The hallucinators must be reminded that Zionism rose and implemented its vision with earthly, concrete plans and acts, and not by appealing to a superior power. Had Zionism waited for the belief that the Third Temple would descend from heaven to come true, David Ben-Gurion would not have declared the establishment of the state on the fifth of Iyar, 1948. Israel reached its present place by the power of rational decisions and actions, which were made and carried out by human beings, including realistic religious Jews. The future of Israel's grip on the West Bank must also be determined by criteria appropriate to any developed state - not by wishful thinking or reliance on the grace of God. The decision to evacuate the Gaza Strip derived from human judgment, and divine intervention could not stop it. So, too, future relations between Israel and the Palestinians in the West Bank will be grounded in secular considerations. Interlocutors from outer space will have no bearing on it. Right-wing leaders must therefore adjust their thinking to reality. How can the ratio of a quarter of a million Jews to 2.5 million Palestinians allow Israel to remain in the West Bank? How can a society that wants to be moral continue to accept the injustices the occupation imposes on Palestinians? How can any state flourish under the political and economic siege of a world that rejects its rule over them? How can it reconcile its democratic identity with depriving Palestinians of their rights? How can it divide the land so as to both preserve the Zionist ideal and provide a living space for a Palestinian state? Tomorrow, the state will need more than ever to find answers to these questions and others like them. Right-wing leaders have no convincing answers. The settlers' leaders cannot use the trauma that has allegedly been seared into the public's consciousness by the spectacles of evacuation in Gush Katif as an excuse to put things off. While many were pained to see the settlers' suffering at being uprooted, many others interpreted them as staged shows and as a deliberate, conscious presentation of hysteria. Although it may be delayed, the hour of decision will arrive and it will be totally worldly. haaretz.com