In U.S., fear and distrust of Muslims runs deep

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

In U.S., fear and distrust of Muslims runs deep

By Bernd Debusmann, Special Correspondent

Reuters Photo: Muslim men pray in Lafayette Park near the White House August 12, 2006. Roughly a…

WASHINGTON (Reuters)- When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly.

The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be “off his rocker.” The second congratulated him and added: “Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country … they are here to kill us.”

Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans.”

At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of “the threat in our midst” would alleviate the public’s fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.

“I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland

“For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.

“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous.”

The show aired on November 26, the Sunday after the Thanksgiving holiday, and Klein said in an interview afterwards he had been surprised by the response.

“The switchboard went from empty to totally jammed within minutes,” said Klein. “There were plenty of callers angry with me, but there were plenty who agreed.”

POLLS SHOW WIDESPREAD ANTI-MUSLIM SENTIMENT

Those in agreement are not a fringe minority: A Gallup poll this summer of more than 1,000 Americans showed that 39 percent were in favor of requiring Muslims in the United States, including American citizens, to carry special identification.

Roughly a quarter of those polled said they would not want to live next door to a Muslim and a third thought that Muslims in the United States sympathized with al Qaeda, the extremist group behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

A poll carried out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group, found that for one in three Americans, the word Islam triggers negative connotations such as “war,” “hatred” and “terrorist.” The war in

Iraq has contributed to such perceptions.

Klein’s show followed a week of heated discussions on talk radio, including his own, and online forums over an incident on November 22 involving six Muslim clerics. They were handcuffed and taken off a US Airways flight after passengers reported “suspicious behavior” that included praying in the departure gate area.

The clerics, on their way to a meeting of the North American Imams Federation, were detained in a holding cell, questioned by police and

FBI agents, and released. Muslim community leaders saw the incident as yet more evidence of anti-Muslim prejudice.

IGNORANCE SEEN AS KEY PROBLEM

Several American Muslims interviewed on the subject of prejudice over the past few weeks said ignorance was at the core of the problem.

“The level of knowledge is very, very low,” said Mohamed Esa, a U.S. Muslim of Arab descent who teaches a course on Islam at McDaniel College in Maryland. “There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world and some people think they are all terrorists.”

Hossam Ahmed, a retired Air Force Reserve colonel who occasionally leads prayer meetings for the small Muslim congregation at the

Pentagon, agreed. “Ignorance is the number one problem. Education is of the essence.”

There are no hard figures on how many Muslims have been subject to harassment or prejudice and community leaders say that ugly incidents can prompt spontaneous expressions of support. Such as the e-mail a Minneapolis woman sent to CAIR after the imams were taken off their flight.

“I would like to … help,” the e-mail said. “While I cannot offer plane tickets, I would be happy to drive at least 2 or 3 of them. My car is small, but at least some of our hearts in this land of the free are large.”

And optimists saw signs of change in the November 4 election of the first Muslim to the U.S. House of Representatives, which has 435 members.

Democrat Keith Ellison, a 43-year-old African-American lawyer, did not stress his religion during his campaign for a Minnesota seat, but said his victory would “signal to people who are not Muslims that Muslims have a lot to offer to the United States and the improvement of our country.”

source:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061201/us_nm/usa_muslims_fear_dc

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Repeating The Mistake, Intentionally!

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Repeating The Mistake, Intentionally!

24 Steps to Liberty

December 1, 2006

If a civil war were to happen in Iraq, “our Sunni brothers will be the ones to lose the most.”

That’s what Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the most powerful criminal group in Iraq, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said last week.

What a powerful, full of hidden and obvious meaning sentence that was. I wonder how many hours or days he had to think about it to make it as smooth as it sounded when he said it.

Now we turned into a new era in Iraq. It is time to go public and threaten each other. Because you know what, the Unite States is, again, backing this up.

When Abu Musa al-Zarqawi, the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, called for an overall war against the Shiites in Iraq, the Iraqi government spared no efforts to call him “a terrorist whose goal is to divide Iraq and provoke a civil war.” Most of the lawmakers in Iraq condemned what Zarqawi said and called for Iraqis to unite.

Why when the poisonous turbaned snake, Hakim, publicly threatened his “brothers” the Sunnis, the government did not oppose?

Why did not the devil-Mullah’s speech get enough publicity in Iraq to give an idea what one of the country’s most powerful terrorist wants to turn Iraq into?

What was a total strange coincidence is that what Hakim said came just a few days before the White House leaked information about what the administration intended to do next: Back the Shiites and Kurds, who make about 80% of Iraq’s population, because that’s who you should care about. And leave the Sunnis to themselves and to the mercy of the Shiites.

When I read this in today’s Washington Post, I laughed. You know why? Because in Iraq, we have a proverb that could be roughly translated into “a huge catastrophe makes you laugh.”

What did the American administration do in the early days of the occupation in 2003? It was favoring the Shiites and Kurds and totally ignoring the Sunnis.

What was the result?
A Sunni insurgency, which the Iraqis are still paying a high price for and the Americans too.

Then what?
The American administration, after it was too late, realized that what it’s done was wrong and that they should try to solve the problem.

How?
Include the Sunnis in the political process before the 2005 elections to eventually be included in the government!

What happened?
Many Sunnis were already in prison, accused of insurgency. And their families were angered by how the Iraqi government and the Americans treated them. Many Sunni groups have already joined the insurgency an were blacklisted, so they couldn’t join the political process. Many Sunnis were threatened to be killed by insurgents if they participated in the elections. And the result was a “national unity government” that doesn’t include ONE member who would be willing to stay in Iraq and help. When the members were threatened, they left!

Now, because the White House is under pressure to bring home the American troops and to end the U.S. involvement in Iraq, suddenly the first mistake of ignoring the Sunnis seems to be the best solution.

It would be very easy to show the world that Iraq is stable when the media shows the Kurdish and Shiite leaders shaking hands on T.V. how can I, as a journalist, compete with this image when I cannot go to Anbar, Mosul, Tikrit, Diyala, Basra and other cities where the Sunnis are and show how pissed off they are?

How can I compete with an image of Iraqi leaders smiling and kissing, when I cannot go to the Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad and talk to people about how they feel?

The devil-Mullah, Hakim, threatened the Sunnis that they will be the only losers if they opposed what will happen in the next three months. [Empowering the Shiite militias to kill more Iraqis.] And then flew to Amman-Jordan on his way to Washington D.C. to meet with Bush!

It is true that the Sunnis make 20% of the Iraqi population [maybe less now with all the killings.] But let’s face it, they were able to destabilize Iraq and fail the American plans in the last three years.

When the U.S. ignored the Sunnis earlier after the invasion, it was a mistake. But now, it is not. Now, the want to apply the mistake again because that is the easiest way to solve the problem, not of the Iraqis but of the Americans.

The easiest way to show the world that America has won the war in Iraq is by telling the Iraqis “her you go. This is democracy. 80% of you is ruling the country.” And then the Iraqis themselves should solve the problem of sectarian civil war, although the Americans provoked it when three years ago and under the name of democracy, they called for a Shiite-Kurdish-Sunni- government with some other minorities.

“Our role is not to resolve those issues for them,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters last month! “They are going to have to resolve those issues among themselves.”

source:
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28691&hd=&size=1&l=e

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

US Terrorize The World – 12 Dzulqaidah 1427 H (1.12.06)

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

The ugly face of West Media

The other kind of terror – christian busted for trying to blow up congress- gets 30 years- no media coverage

Imagine, for a moment, what would have happened if a Muslim extremist with an apparent hatred of the American government had been apprehended in, say, Tennessee, and charged with plotting to blow up Congress with a briefcase bomb.

Do you suppose that the case would then be relegated to the back pages of the local papers? Do you suppose it would go unmentioned by the 101st Keyboard Kommandos in their ever-vigilant search for proof that the War on Terror is right here in our midst?

Of course not. You can be certain Fox News would have splashed the case across its broadcasts, and Michelle Malkin and Little Green Footballs would have been all over it.

Now consider the case of Demetrius “Van” Crocker, who just happens to be a white right-wing extremist.

Of course, this story is not even on the front page of the Jackson paper, so I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for any Fox coverage, either.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2006/11/other-kind-of-terror_30.html

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In U.S., fear and distrust of Muslims runs deep

“I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL (http://www.wmal.com/), which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061201/us_nm/usa_muslims_fear_dc

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Pope ‘obstructed’ sex abuse inquiry

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1469055,00.html

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Benedict named as defendant in Texas sex abuse lawsuit; lawyers seek immunity

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050816/w0816101.html

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DICTATORSHIP : Travel only if you don’t mind being seen NAKED

For people who HAVE to travel, get used to it; you WILL be seen naked by some anonymous pervert at the TSA.

But the real damage will be to tourism. What family on vacation will want to come to the US now, knowing that at every airport, they are electronically forced to strip before the eyes of strangers.

And what investors will come to the US to start a business here, when they have to be so humiliated at the airports?
http://worldpressnetwork.net/index.php/Travel

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The Lessons of Iraq, Gates-style

So, let’s see if we can get this straight: With hindsight, his lesson would be that, in the next Iraq-style invasion and occupation, we should focus more on that “post-major combat phase” – a nice phrase that resonates with our President’s famed “mission accomplished” moment on May 1, 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2006/12/02/the-lessons-of-iraq-gates-style/

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Is President Bush Sane?

Bush’s astonishing determination to deny Iraq reality was made the same day that the US-installed Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki and US puppet King Abdullah II of Jordan abruptly cancelled a meeting with Bush after Bush was already in route to Jordan on Air Force One. Bush could not meet with Maliki in Iraq, because violence in Baghdad is out of control. For security reasons, the US Secret Service would not allow President Bush to go to Iraq, where he is “building a stable democracy.”

Bush made his astonishing statement in the face of news leaks of the Iraq Study Group’s call for a withdrawal of all US combat forces from Iraq.
http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10093

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Repeating The Mistake, Intentionally!

If a civil war were to happen in Iraq, “our Sunni brothers will be the ones to lose the most.” That’s what Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the most powerful criminal group in Iraq, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said last week. What a powerful, full of hidden and obvious meaning sentence that was. I wonder how many hours or days he had to think about it to make it as smooth as it sounded when he said it. Now we turned into a new era in Iraq. It is time to go public and threaten each other. Because you know what, the Unite States is, again, backing this up (…) Why when the poisonous turbaned snake, Hakim, publicly threatened his “brothers” the Sunnis, the government did not oppose? Why did not the devil-Mullah’s speech get enough publicity in Iraq to give an idea what one of the country’s most powerful terrorist wants to turn Iraq into? What was a total strange coincidence is that what Hakim said came just a few days before the White House leaked information about what the administration intended to do next: Back the Shiites and Kurds, who make about 80% of Iraq’s population, because that’s who you should care about. And leave the Sunnis to themselves and to the mercy of the Shiites…
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28691&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Maliki’s tools

George Bush is being widely quoted as having said after meeting Iraqi Primi Minister Maliki yesterday. “One of his frustrations with me is that he believes we’ve been slow about giving him the tools necessary to protect the Iraqi people.” Bush didn’t elaborate on what those “tools” might be, nor has any of the news coverage I’ve watched so far, but surely it isn’t merely “training” which A) doesn’t qualify as a “tool”, and B) has been the alleged centerpiece of the U.S. “exit strategy” for several years now. No, as I’ve been writing for a year and a half, I’m guessing the “tools” that Maliki was referring to are the planes and tanks he really needs to emulate the American “success” against the resistance, tools that the U.S. has not only been “slow” about giving the Iraqis, but tools that there isn’t a chance in hell they’re ever going to give to them. Heck, as we just learned a few weeks ago, the U.S. isn’t even supplying armored Humvees to the Iraqi forces, much less tanks and planes…
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28696&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Roadside Bomb Blast in Iraq Kills Kentucky Soldier

http://www.richmondregister.com/localnews/local_story_335231050.html?keyword=secondarystory

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Hartselle (AL) Soldier Dies in Iraq

http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/061130/dies.shtml

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Mobile (AL) Soldier Killed in Iraq

http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/116488213612730.xml&coll=3

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Paratrooper From Decatur (GA) Killed in Iraq

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2006/11/29/1129watts.html

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Austin (TX) Family Mourns the Loss of Marine in Iraq

http://www.topix.net/content/cbs/3910672145106654164640958566192743500817

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Springfield (VA) Marine Dies in Iraq

http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD/MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1149191907174&path=%21news&s=1045855934842

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Dickinson (MI) Soldier Killed in Iraq on Thanksgiving Day

http://www.ironmountaindailynews.com/stories/articles.asp?articleID=4144

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Panhandle Marine (TX) Killed in Iraq

http://www.kvia.com/Global/story.asp?S=5724212&nav=menu193_1

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Iraqi Resistance Report for events of Friday, 1 December 2006.

• Family of accused “Baghdad sniper” says son has limited vision.
• Resistance bomb reportedly kills US soldier in western Baghdad.
• Resistance sharpshooter reportedly kills US soldier in Tall ‘Afar.
• Resistance pounds US base in eastern al-Fallujah with fiercest barrage in months.
• US forces arrest 85 in massive nighttime raids in al-Fallujah.
• US troops round up 30 participants in funeral for Resistance fighter near Samarra’ Friday evening.
• US cancels Friday prayers in Samarra’ as curfew tightens on second day.

http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?mod=art&lapage=../en_articles_2006/1206/iraqiresistancereport_011206.htm

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Time is on the Taliban’s side Time is on the Taliban’s side

US President George W Bush failed to achieve twin objectives of fewer restrictions and more troops for Afghanistan at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Riga this week, shifting focus back to Iraq, where he refuses to draw down military forces. The implicit message to Taliban insurgents and their backers: time can erode an already faltering alliance in the long run.

You cannot control the battlefield (read: the entire country) from the air if you cannot control it from the ground, which NATO troops are proving increasingly incapable of doing.

And one possible approach here is for the Taliban to be recognized as a legitimate force in the country, and included politically.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HL02Df05.html

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UN suggests israel PAY for its crimes

A United Nations human rights inquiry said on Friday that Israel should be made to pay compensation for damage caused by its month-long war in Lebanon, especially losses incurred by civilians.

It suggested setting up an international compensation programme similar to the one which has paid out billions of dollars to cover losses due to Iraq’s 1990-91 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

“Oooh, Veto. VETO! VEEEEEETOH! Veto, veto, veto,vetovetovetovetovetovetovetovetovetoveto! VETO!” — Official White Horse Souse
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/183

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New UN resolutions back Palestinian right to a state

The General Assembly approved Friday night six pro-Palestinian resolutions over U.S. and Israeli objections, culminating in the world body’s declaration of backing the Palestinians’ right to an independent state.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/795347.html

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Israeli WMD ( Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East )

Israeli Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities and Programs Nuclear * Sophisticated nuclear weapons program with an estimated 100-200 weapons, which can be delivered by ballistic missiles or aircraft. * Nuclear arsenal may include thermonuclear weapons. * IRR-2 40-150MW heavy water reactor and plutonium processing facility at Dimona, which are not under IAEA safeguards. * IRR-1 5MW research reactor at Soreq, under IAEA safeguards. * Not a signatory of the NPT; signed the CTBT on 9/25/96…
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m28699&hd=&size=1&l=e

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FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool

mobile providers can “remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner’s knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call.”
http://news.com.com/FBI%20taps%20cell%20phone%20mic%20as%20eavesdropping%20tool/2100-1029_3-6140191.html?tag=st.txt.caro

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Police admit planting evidence

A Huntington Beach police officer’s exoneration for planting a loaded gun in a suspect’s car has led to the revelation that police routinely plant evidence in unsuspecting civilians’ vehicles for training exercises.
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1371805.php

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Nike+ IPod = Surveillance

A report from four University of Washington researchers to be released Thursday reveals that security flaws in the new RFID-powered device from Nike and Apple make it easy for tech-savvy stalkers, thieves and corporations to track your movements. With just a few hundred dollars and a little know-how, someone could even plot your running routes on a Google map without your knowledge.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0%2C72202-0.html?tw=wn_technology_5

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW