Author Archives: taffy

‘Ban this far-Right rally’: Police move to halt march over riot fears

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MailOnline… A chief constable is seeking emergency powers to ban the far-Right English Defence League from marching through a city’s Muslim neighbourhood, amid fears it could provoke widespread violence.

Up to 10,000 EDL supporters are expected to descend on Bradford over the bank holiday weekend in what is claimed will be a rally against Islamic extremism.

But residents fear the provocative march could cause a repeat of the 2001 race riots.

Then, the West Yorkshire city suffered violent clashes between white and Asian youths after a demonstration by the National Front.

Police now face the prospect of clashes between the EDL and the Left-wing Unite against Fascism group, which plans a counter-protest in Bradford on the same day, as well as outraged local Muslims.

Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of the West Yorkshire force, has asked Home Secretary Theresa May for permission for a ban on all marches in the city for three days from Saturday, August 28.

In a statement explaining his request, Sir Norman issued a public plea to locals to support the police and ‘avoid confrontation’.

But he also issued a stern warning that officers would not allow violent disorder.

The powers, granted under the 1986 Public Order Act, do not stop all protests  –  they are permitted as long as demonstrators do not attempt to march.

Sir Norman said: ‘We will continue to try to talk to all those who plan to demonstrate and advise anyone intent on causing trouble to stay away.’

It is only the second time in the past three years that a police force has requested the powers. It would be unusual for Mrs May to refuse the request, and a decision is expected later this week.

A similar order was approved by then Home Secretary Alan Johnson for a proposed EDL march in Luton in August last year.

The EDL’s spokesman, Guramit Singh, denied the organisation intended violence. He said: ‘We don’t want ugly scenes at all.

We are coming for a peaceful demonstration.’

But critics have drawn comparisons between the rise of the EDL and that of 1930s fascism led by Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts.

The group was formed in Luton last year, in response to protests by Islamic radicals when troops returned home from Iraq.

Since then it has staged a number of rallies, many of which have ended in violence. Last month there were clashes between police and protesters at a demonstration in Dudley, the second in the West Midlands town this year.

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We will carefully consider any application to ban a march that comes forward from Bradford.’

Just the Facts, Imam

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Canada Free Press… Just the facts, Imam. A Muslim terrorist attack damaged a building, allowing Muslims to pick it up for a fraction of the price, in order to build a mosque on the spot. Some people might say that sort of thing is tacky. A little like coming by to make an offer on the house, after your cousin murdered the entire family who lived there. Sure, you might claim that you’re not responsible, but it just doesn’t look good. Especially once you start paling around with your cousin, and suggesting that maybe he was just misunderstood. And maybe that family brought it on themselves.

But the media still insists that Islam had nothing to do with 9/11. Or if it had anything to do with 9/11, it was those “other Muslims”, not these Muslims. The media isn’t really good at explaining the difference between these Muslims and those Muslims. Often the media insists that those Muslims are actually these Muslims. Sometimes they claim that those Muslims are actually not Muslims at all, but people who are upset about foreclosures and work related stress.

When Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, the media spent thousands of gallons of ink claiming that he was suffering from some airborne form of PTSD that he picked up from the soldiers he was abusing—all evidence to the contrary. When the Times Square Bomber tried to kill a few thousand New Yorkers, the media claimed that he was upset because his house had been foreclosed on. Inconveniently enough, he turned out to be a Muslim terrorist, complete with his very own Al Queda martyrdom video. Continue Reading →

Germany closes Hamburg mosque 9/11 attackers used

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guardian…The Taiba mosque in Hamburg, once frequented by some of the September 11 attackers, was searched by police and shut down today because German authorities believed it was again being used as a meeting point for Islamist radicals.

The Taiba mosque was closed and the cultural association that ran the mosque was banned, state officials said in a statement:. “We have closed the mosque because it was a recruiting and meeting point for Islamic radicals who wanted to participate in so-called jihad or holy war,” said Frank Reschreiter, a spokesman for Hamburg’s state interior ministry.

He said that said 20 police officers were searching the building and police had confiscated material, including several computers, but a spokesman was not aware of any arrests.

Officials have said the prayer house, formerly known as the al-Quds mosque, was a meeting and recruiting point years ago for some of the September 11 attackers before they moved to the United States.

The ringleader, Mohamed Atta, as well as Marwan Al-Shehhi and Ziad Jarrah, had studied in Hamburg and frequented the al-Quds mosque. Reschreiter said today marked the first time the mosque had been closed, and that it had been under observation by local intelligence officers for “quite a long time.”

A 2009 report by a German intelligence agency said the mosque had again become the “centre of attraction for the jihad scene” in the port city. It said some people who belonged to the mosque’s cultural association and prayed there had travelled to a radical training camp in Uzbekistan.

A group of 11 militants that traveled to military training camps in Uzbekistan in March 2009 was formed at Taiba mosque, the report said.

Most of the group’s members were either German converts, of Middle Eastern origin or from the Caucasus region.

“A very important factor for the radicalisation of the group members was certainly their joint visits to the mosque,” the intelligence report stated.

It appears that one man from the group joined the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terrorist organisation in central Asia, the report said.

Judge rules Khadr confession admissible

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NATIONALPOST…U.S. NAVAL BASE GUANTANAMO, Cuba — The judge in Omar Khadr’s war crimes case has ruled that self-incriminating statements the Toronto native made during interrogations are admissible at trial – and were not the product of torture, as the defence claimed.
The judge also ruled that a video apparently showing Khadr making and planting land mines is admissible, rejecting the defence argument it was obtained based on information coerced from Khadr.
Omar Khadr has pleaded not guilty to all five war crimes charges he faces at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, among them the murder of Special Forces Sgt. First Class Chris Speer, who died in a grenade attack.
Earlier Monday, in a video shown at the Canadian-born terror suspect’s hearing, he warns Guantanamo Bay guards trying to weigh him for the International Red Cross that “God will take … revenge” on the United States.
“I am here in prison, but there are millions of people outside,” Mr. Khadr says in the May 2006 clip. “What’s happening to you is not for nothing.”
Khadr’s defence opposes a prosecution bid to have the video admitted into evidence at his trial, which is expected to begin Tuesday with selection of U.S. military officers who’ll serve on the jury as commission “members.”
Mr. Khadr, 23, alleges in a February 2008 affidavit that guards mistreated him during the weighing session, claiming they “pressed on my pressure points.”
The clip appears to show the guards somewhat restrained as they push him toward the scale and point out that all his “brothers” — a reference to other detainees — had allowed themselves to be weighed without protest.
“Come on man, it’s not that bad,” says a guard after Mr. Khadr claimed the treatment was a “very small example of what’s really going on” at the detention facility.
“We’re not doing this to hurt you, torture you,” another guard’s voice is heard saying, amid explanations that his weight was simply needed for his health record and Red Cross review records.
Indeed, after Mr. Khadr had spent about 20 minutes resisting the guards, there came indications that he had been playing to the camera as he switched from the English he used to speak to the guards, to Arabic to speak with fellow detainees in nearby cells.
“May God reward him. The camera is with him,” a detainee shouts in Arabic, which had been translated in subtitles.
Mr. Khadr was in court to watch the video after saying at his last hearing last month that he intended to boycott further sessions, saying he didn’t want to help the United States further its “political goals.”
Monday’s session had been scheduled to essentially conclude defence arguments that a slew of prosecution evidence — mostly self-incriminating statements Mr. Khadr had made, but also the “weighing” video — should be “suppressed.”
Army Col. Patrick Parrish, presiding judge, is expected to rule later Monday on the defence request, which contends that Khadr made the self-incriminating statements to a series of officers after enduring interrogations that involved the use of coercive techniques.
Mr. Khadr, 15, at the time of his capture in Afghanistan in July 2002, faced interrogations at the U.S. base in Bagram in that country before being transferred to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in October 2002, where he remains.
“By the time he left Bagram, he was broken … by the actions of people in uniform … specifically Interrogator No. 1,” said Lt. Col. Jon Jackson, Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed attorney, as he referred to Khadr’s chief Bagram interrogator — a soldier who was later convicted in a court martial for “maltreatment” of another detainee.
Lt.-Col. Jackson recalled that the interrogator had sought to frighten Khadr by making up a story of how an uncooperative Muslim detainee had been dispatched to a U.S. prison and raped there by other inmates.
“Once he said those words to Mr. Khadr, the well was poisoned, and the government can’t cleanse the well … by saying someone (else) came in and was nice to him,” Lt.-Col. Jackson told the court.
“To him, when he was interrogated, all those faces were the same.”
Lt.-Col. Jackson urged the judge to consider the “outcry” by the U.S. government if a U.S. soldier had been the victim of such a scenario.
“Tell the world that we actually stand for what we say we stand for,” Lt.-Col. Jackson said to the judge.
But air force Capt. Chris Eason, one of the prosecutors, said Mr. Khadr had switched to speaking in detail about his alleged actions not because he had faced any tough interrogation, but after the United States presented him with a video U.S. forces had found that showed the Toronto native appearing to take part in a mine-making and laying operation.
Capt. Eason quoted from the earlier testimony of one of the interrogators, who said: “That’s when the floodgates opened.”
According to Capt. Eason, statements in which Mr. Khadr speaks of tossing the hand grenade that fatally wounded a U.S. soldier, and other matters relating to his alleged terrorist background, should be admitted as evidence at trial.
“It’s truth that we can rely on,” he said.
Mr. Khadr faces up to life in prison if convicted of the five charges he faces.

As David Cameron calls for Turkey to join the EU, PETER HITCHENS on the disturbing picture of growing repression at the heart of ‘Eurabia’

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DAILYMAIL…Down a glum, dark back alley in Istanbul, I found a sinister sight. In a workshop two stern and bearded men were bent over sheets and patches of very black cloth, their sewing-machines whirring urgently.

I was plainly unwelcome and they objected to the very idea of being photographed. I quickly saw why. They were making dark robes and masks for women to wear. They looked to me as if they longed for the day when every woman in sight was clad in their workmanship.

They knew the women would wear them, because one day, not far off, they would have to. These robes would be, literally, a ‘must-have’ for the women of Turkey.

Those who think of Turkey as a relaxed holiday destination, or as a Westernised Nato member more or less ‘on our side’ need to revise their view.

And that very much includes our Prime Minister, David Cameron, who last week joined in the fashionable chorus urging Turkish membership of the European Union. Mr Cameron plainly hasn’t been properly briefed.

Leave aside the fact that such a step would allow millions of Turks to live and work in Britain, and give us  –  as EU members  –  a common border with Syria and Iraq. Mr Cameron really ought to realise that the new Islamist Turkey he so ignorantly praises is much more interested in making friends with Iran than it is in joining the EU. And it is becoming less free and less democratic by the day.

I would say there is a strong chance that we will soon lose Turkey to the Islamic world, much as we lost Iran to the ayatollahs 30 years ago. And there is not much we can do about it  –  least of all the daft scheme to include this nation in the EU. 

Panic-mongering? Well, perhaps. But I would rather monger a bit of panic now than ignore what I saw. Continue Reading →

Israeli air strikes on Gaza kill Hamas commander

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GUARDIAN…Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip have killed a Hamas commander and wounded 11 other people.

Warplanes fired missiles at five targets across Gaza, including Gaza City, last night for the first time since Israel’s three-week offensive in the territory ended 18 months ago.

Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the territory, said the man killed was Issa Batran, 42, a commander of its military wing in central Gaza and a rocket maker. Eight of its supporters and three civilians were also injured.

The air raids came after a Palestinian rocket attack struck the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon on Friday, causing no casualties but damaging buildings and cars in the city.

The city’s mayor said the attack was the most serious since the end of Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli offensive that left around 1,400 Palestinians dead, in January last year. Renegade militant groups have fired dozens of rockets and mortars into southern Israel since then, although most of those attack have been ineffective, with rockets mostly landing in open fields.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, earlier said he took the rocket attack on Ashkelon, which lies seven miles north of Gaza, “very seriously”. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The cross-border violence has raised concerns of further escalation.

A Hamas spokesman said the group would avenge Batran’s killing.

“Hamas will not be quiet over the blood of its martyrs,” said Hamad al-Rakabi. “Israel is opening all the gates of fire. This blood will cascade into rage and fire.”

The targets hit in last night’s air strike included a military training camp in Gaza City, smuggling tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border and Batran’s shack, on the outskirts of the Nusseirat refugee camp, according to Hamas security officials.

Missing Afghan soldiers legally in Canada

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NATIONALPOST…At least eight members of the Afghan military wanted by U.S. authorities after fleeing a Texas air force base have attained permanent resident status in Canada or are awaiting decisions on refugee claims.

Of 17 Afghan National Army personnel who have gone AWOL in the last eight years while receiving English training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Tex., 13 have been located.

Two of them are now living as permanent residents in Canada and six are awaiting rulings on refugee claims, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Education & Training Command in Universal City, Tex. The remaining four are being deported from the United States, while one has been granted a conditional resident permit.

“It would be bizarre in the extreme that they would qualify as refugees,” said retired Canadian Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, adding it is “disturbing” the individuals may have been able to settle in Canada despite being on a U.S. criminal watchlist.

“With the most liberal immigration methodology in the world, I would certainly hope they don’t qualify.” Continue Reading →

Saudi technology guards against women escaping

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JERUSALEMPOST…When women’s rights activist Wajiha Al-Huwaidar flew out of Saudi Arabia last week for a holiday in Italy with her family, she was hoping for a brief respite from what she describes as the ‘gender apartheid kingdom.’

She wasn’t so lucky.

As she left, her husband received an automated SMS text message from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs informing him that his wife, legally considered his ‘dependant’ under Saudi Arabia’s strict gendered guardianship system, had left the country.
Al-Huwaidar’s husband received the same text, she learned last week, when she had left Saudi Arabia on another recent trip to Germany.

“It is sad how Saudis use technology in a way not intended to be used for,” she told The Media Line. “In Saudi Arabia, technology brings more restrictions and misery! They use it to have more control over people’s lives, especially women.”

“I am an adult woman that has been earning my own income for over a decade now but according to the Saudi government, I am a dependent until the day I die because of my gender,” Al-Huwaidar said. “I’m not sure how it works, but lately we get to be informed through our mobile phones about our bank accounts, sale ads, jobs, donation campaigns and others. I’m sure it’s a new service that the government is using for different purposes. They don’t state which country the dependent left for, but simply state that they did leave.” Continue Reading →

Khaled Abu Toameh: The Palestinian victims no one talks about

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NATIONALPOST… When was the last time the United Nations Security Council met to condemn an Arab government for its mistreatment of Palestinians?

How come groups and individuals on university campuses in the United States and Canada that call themselves “pro-Palestinian” remain silent when Jordan revokes the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians?

The plight of Palestinians living in Arab countries in general, and Lebanon in particular, is one that is often ignored by the mainstream media in West.

How come they turn a blind eye to the fact that Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and many more Arab countries continue to impose severe travel restrictions on Palestinians?

And where do these groups and individuals stand regarding the current debate in Lebanon about whether to grant Palestinians long-denied basic rights, including employment, social security and medical care?

Or have they not heard about this debate at all? Probably not, since the case has failed to draw the attention of most Middle East correspondents and commentators.

A news story on the Palestinians that does not include an anti-Israel angle rarely makes it to the front pages of Western newspapers. Continue Reading →

Guards for Somali Leader Join Islamists

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NEWYORKTIMES… NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali officials acknowledged on Thursday that members of Somalia’s presidential guard had defected to the Shabab, the radical Islamist insurgent group that claimed responsibility for the recent bombings in Uganda that killed more than 70 people watching the final game of the World Cup. 

The defection of some of the president’s best-trained men is the latest setback for Somalia’s beleaguered transitional government, which has lost important pieces of territory in the past few days. Insurgents are now 300 yards — a rifle shot away — from the presidential palace.

The Shabab gleefully introduced three former members of the presidential guard at a news conference in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Wednesday. The soldiers said they quit working for the government because it was being protected by African Union peacekeepers, who they said were killing Somali civilians with indiscriminate shelling. Continue Reading →

RCMP discriminated against Muslim cadet, court rules

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I thought the idea of a drill sergeant is to give abuse as way to test merit and character.

NATIONAL POST… The RCMP engaged in racial and religious discrimination when it expelled a Muslim man from its cadet academy, the Federal Court of Appeal has ruled, paving the way for the man’s return to training 11 years after his dismissal.
The decision upholds a finding by a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in 2008 that Ali Tahmourpour, 37, faced verbal abuse and hostility from instructors, ridicule over his wearing of religious jewellery, and poor performance evaluations while enrolled in the RCMP’s Regina cadet academy (known as the Depot).
“I finally have vindication,” Mr. Tahmourpour told the National Post from his Mississauga home, saying he intends to return to the academy to fulfill his dream of becoming a member of the RCMP. “My great-grandfather was a mounted police chief in the western mountains of Persia, so it runs in the family.” Continue Reading →

Muslims ‘Prepare’ For Pope Visit To UK

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FOXNEWS….The controversy surrounding Pope Benedict’s September trip to the United Kingdom has kicked up a bit after an Islamic website invited Muslims to “tell the pope just what they think of him after his insults against the Prophet Muhammad.”

The Islamic Standard welcomed the change of venue for an event on the last day of the pontiff’s visit, Sept. 19, from Coventry to Birmingham.

Birmingham, the second-largest city in England after London, is about 15 percent Muslim, and the website said it was a good opportunity for Muslims to confront “disbelievers” and to “tell the pope in no uncertain terms what Muslims think of his evil slanders against the last Prophet of God and his message.”

The Islamic Standard also referred to the Catholic Church as the “sodomite child-molesting Church of Rome.”

Pope Benedict angered Muslims on a 2006 trip to Regensburg, Germany, in which during a long, academic discourse he quoted a Byzantine emperor who said, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

While Benedict has tried to repair relations with Muslims, and even prayed in a mosque while in Turkey, clearly not everything has been smoothed over.

‘BMWs’ Help Afghans Go AWOL From Texas Air Base

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Whether they are illegals or not, by helping these Afghans, thier loyalties are clear.

FOXNEWS…A loose network of Mexican-American women, some of whom may be illegal immigrants, have been responsible for helping numerous Afghan military deserters go AWOL from an Air Force Base in Texas, FoxNews.com has learned.

Many of the Afghans, with the women’s assistance, have made their way to Canada; the whereabouts of others remain unknown. Some of the men have been schooled by the women in how to move around the U.S. without any documentation.

The Afghan deserters refer to the women as “BMWs” — Big Mexican Women — and they often are the first step in the Afghans’ journey from Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to Canada, a diplomatic official told FoxNews.com. He requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly during an ongoing investigation by U.S. and international authorities into who helped the Afghans leave the Defense Language Institute’s English Language Center at Lackland.

The official’s account was supported by a source at the Defense Language Institute (DLI), who also requested anonymity. Foreign soldiers attend DLI to learn English before they receive specialized military training at various installations in the U.S.  

The Afghan military men usually meet the women at three nightclubs in San Antonio, according to the DLI source, who accompanied some of the men to these locations and has been privy to discussions among them about the establishments and the women. The nightclubs include two military hangouts — Tiffany’s Cocktails and Mirage, located outside Lackland’s main gate — and Graham Central Station, a massive warehouse-like building in downtown San Antonio that houses “six nightclubs under one roof” that host a variety of theme nights. Photos on Graham Central’s website show scantily clad women rolling around in what appears to be Jell-O. 

In the past eight years, no fewer than 46 members of the Afghan military have gone absent without leave from DLI.  As most Afghans on the base do not have cars, many of them depended on the women to pick them up at Lackland’s back gate in the middle of the night and help them vanish. Continue Reading →

Indonesian Muslims ‘praying in wrong direction’

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 Jakarta, Indonesia (CNN) — Indonesian Muslims have been praying in the wrong direction, the country’s highest Islamic authority has said.

The Indonesian Ulema Council told the country’s Muslim populace in March to turn west when they offered their daily prayers. Muslims are supposed to face the Kaaba, the religion’s most sacred site in the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

At the time, the council said that the direction of Kaaba from Indonesia laid to the west.

Turns out, it didn’t. Africa did.

So, on Friday, the council issued a new edict: face northwest.

“After the first fatwa (edict) a few months ago that stated that the praying direction is west, we have announced that the correct direction for praying is indeed northwest, and we have issued a new fatwa (edict) to correct it,” said Ma’ruf Amin, the head of fatwa division in the Indonesian Ulema Council.

“This is important because facing west will mean that people were facing Africa when they pray,” he said.

Amin said the new edict does not mean that mosques in the country will need to be torn down. “They (those praying inside) just need to adjust their praying direction slightly,” he said.

Some residents of the world’s most populous Muslim country took the change in stride.

“I don’t really worry about the praying direction,” said Riza Irwansyah, an office worker in Jakarta. “The important thing is I prayed to Allah and I believe He will listen, no matter which way I’m facing.”