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Invasive Questioning of US Citizens at the Border

Suzanne Ito | ACLU | December 16, 2010

Over the past several years, at ports, land border crossings, and international airports across the country, U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are Muslim, or who are perceived to be Muslim, have been targeted by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers for questioning about deeply personal beliefs, associations and religious practices protected by the First Amendment. On their way home to the U.S., these Americans have been asked about their religious identity, what mosques they attend, how often they pray, their religious charitable giving, and their views on U.S. military engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some have had their electronic devices, such as laptops and cell phones, searched and data copied.

The U.S. government has a legitimate interest in verifying the identity and citizenship or legal status of individuals seeking to reenter the country. It also has an interest in ensuring that individuals who pose a threat to national security are detected and brought to justice.

But no legitimate government interest is served when CBP officers question a citizen or lawful resident about his or her religious or political beliefs, associations, or religious practices, or religious charitable giving when there is no reasonable suspicion, based on credible evidence, that the person has engaged in criminal activity. This practice harms our country’s national security interests by wasting scarce government resources, generating false leads, and eroding the trust of these religious and racial/ethnic communities in law enforcement and government.

On December 16, 2010, the ACLU and Muslim Advocates sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner requesting an investigation into this troubling practice. The ACLU and Muslim Advocates also filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection for information records about whether and when government officials are permitted to ask citizens and legal residents about their protected beliefs, associations, and activities during border inspections

Questioning individuals about their protected religious and political beliefs, associations, and religious practices (like charitable giving) may infringe upon rights guaranteed by the Constitution and federal law — rights that are not surrendered at the border.

Aun Hasan Ali is a U.S. citizen, a resident of Montreal, Canada, and a Muslim. He is a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal, works as a teaching fellow, and frequently travels to New Jersey to visit his family. On August 6, 2009, Mr. Ali sought to enter the United States from Canada with his wife and three-month-old daughter on a trip to visit his parents in New Jersey. After providing a CBP agent at the Champlain border crossing with his and his wife’s U.S. passports and his daughter’s birth certificate, Mr. Ali and his family were held for over an hour of questioning and searches by CBP. Three CBP officers questioned Mr. Ali and asked, “Do you go to the mosque?”; “Why?”; “How often?”; “What mosque?”; “Are you an Imam at the mosque?”; and “Are you Shi’a or Sunni?”

The August 2009 incident was not the first time that CBP officers subjected Mr. Ali to questioning about protected beliefs and practices. In April 2004, Mr. Ali returned to the United States from Yemen, where he was studying Arabic, in order to attend his sister’s wedding. After arriving at Newark International Airport, he was pulled out of the passport control line by a CBP officer and taken to a room where he was questioned by three other CBP officers and asked, “Do you prefer Fox News or Al-Jazeera?” “How do you feel about the U.S. occupation in Iraq?” and “What are your attitudes regarding American policy in Israel?” He was held for questioning and searches by CBP for nearly three hours before being permitted to leave.

As a result of these experiences, Mr. Ali feels that he must watch what he says while he is in the United States. He is reluctant to have open and honest conversations about political or potentially controversial topics in the United States, in contrast to Canada, where he feels comfortable expressing his opinions about the government and foreign policy.

 

December 23, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

CAIR slams Islamophobic US trainers

Press TV – December 22, 2010

The largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization in the United States has slammed the US government for using anti-Muslim trainers to teach the police.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, criticizing the US Justice Department for employing anti-Muslim trainers to teach city and state police how to deal with the Muslim community.

In his letter, CAIR’s Executive Director Nihad Awad says openly Muslim-bashing groups such as the Center for Security Policy run by neoconservative Islamophobe, Frank Gaffney, have been employed to train state and federal police about Muslims.

He argued that using taxpayers’ money to hire such extremist groups, who purposefully misinform those whom they train, must stop.

“What is shocking to us is that those who are training the government, those who are informing them about Islam and the Muslim community in the counter-terror area are the ones who see Islam as the enemy, and the Muslim community as the enemy of the United States,” Awad said in an interview with Press TV.

“So they give the government, therefore, inaccurate information — biased information — and we believe this is counterproductive and it is going to impact negatively the policies, the attitudes and the practices of the government law enforcement agencies at all levels vis-a-vis the Muslim community and Islam itself.”

He complained that the US government is hiring experts openly contemptuous of the Muslim population, who see them as a suspect community, who are teaching the police that radical Muslims are involved in a “jihad” in the United States to take over the country.

The CAIR director rejected the allegations and called on Washington to make sure the information the police are provided with is accurate.

“There are agenda-driven, anti-Islam activists, who under the facade of having institutions, come to the government and get paid with my — and everyone else’s — tax money to misinform the government about the Muslim population and Islam in general.”

The CAIR says it plans to send letters to the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to complain about the Islamophobic practice by the US Department of Justice.

See also:

Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.

“Alabama, Colorado, Vermont,” said Montijo, a former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los Angeles Police Department investigator who is now a private security consultant. “California, Texas and Missouri,” he continued.

What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.

“They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House – not on my watch!” he said. “My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders.”

Source

December 22, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Teens held over mosque arson: Britain

Press TV -December 5, 2010

Britain’s police have arrested four teenagers in connection with a “racist” arson attack on a mosque in Staffordshire, which damaged the newly completed building.

Staffordshire police said three men and a woman, aged 16 to 19, were arrested after an investigation into the fire at the mosque in Hanley, Stoke-On-Trent.

A blaze alert came at around 6:30 after CCTV footage showed smoke coming out of the building.

Police said they are examining any connection between damage to a nearby gas main and the fire, which did not affect the mosque’s structure.

“We are treating this incident as a racist attack on a religious building,” said Chief Inspector Wayne Jones, who called the attack ‘appalling.’

“Local neighborhood police officers are meeting with members of the community to keep them informed and to address their concerns and obvious anger about this criminal incident,” Jones added.

Police said they are questioning the four suspects while reviewing CCTV footage from the area and leading house-to-house inquiries.

Stoke-On-Trent has been the scene of racial tensions against ethnic minorities including Muslims after the far-right British National Party won five seats at the local council elections in May.

Ethnic minorities comprise some 7 percent of the city’s population.

December 5, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Anti-Muslim Hate Group Leader to Teach Islam at Oregon College

CAIR | December 3, 2010

SEATTLE, WA — The Washington state chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-WA) today called on an Oregon community college to replace a leader of an anti-Muslim hate group who is scheduled to begin teaching a course on Islam in January.

CAIR-WA reported that Barry Sommer, president of an Oregon chapter of the hate group ACT! for America, will teach a course called “What is Islam” at Lane Community College in Eugene, Ore. (1) Sommer also produces a weekly local cable access program “Islam Today” on Comcast’s CTV29. The contact e-mail for the program is “act4americaor@yahoo.com.” His personal blog features one of the infamous Danish cartoons mocking Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Sommer has a history of making false and misleading statements about Islam.

The preface to Sommer’s online book, “From the Mouths of Our Enemies,” states: “Our enemies want us destroyed not because of our riches, or our liberties, although they say that is so. No, they want us gone because Allah told them so. Foundational Islam demands that ALL citizens of planet earth convert to Islam, pay a tax (jizya) or die. It is now demanded of us that we make a stand, draw the line and decide who wins this clash once and for all. If it means war, so be it.”

In a July 16, 2010 letter to Eugene’s Register-Guard newspaper, Sommer wrote: “Until Islam changes its 1,400 years of subjugation and conquest by the sword, the atrocities will continue to escalate.”

In a letter to Lane Community College President Mary Spilde, CAIR-WA Executive Director Arsalan Bukhari wrote: “Unless the goal of this course is to promote anti-Muslim bigotry, Lane Community College should replace Mr. Sommer with someone who will offer students a balanced and objective analysis of the subject matter.”

Bukhari said ACT! for America national leader Brigitte Gabriel claims an American Muslim “cannot be a loyal citizen” and that Islam is the “real enemy.” She once told the Australian Jewish News: “Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.” She also claimed that “Islamo-fascism is a politically-correct word … it’s the vehicle for Islam … Islam is the problem.”

When asked whether Americans should “resist Muslims who want to seek political office in this nation,” Gabriel said: “Absolutely. If a Muslim who has — who is — a practicing Muslim who believes the word of the Koran to be the word of Allah, who abides by Islam, who goes to mosque and prays every Friday, who prays five times a day — this practicing Muslim, who believes in the teachings of the Koran, cannot be a loyal citizen to the United States of America.”

Gabriel stated: “America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam.” (2)

(1) SEE: LCC Offers “What is Islam” Class
CTV29: Islam Today Oregon
Lane Community College: What is Islam (Scroll down to “What is Islam.”)

(2) SEE: Islam’s March Against the West
Along with her stated desire to have Muslims barred from public office, Gabriel has also claimed that Arabs “have no soul” and that Muslims worship “something they call ‘Allah,’ which is very different from the God we believe [in].”
SEE: A Case Study in Sincere Hypocrisy: Brigitte Gabriel
Video: Brigitte Gabriel Says Arabs Have No Souls

December 3, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia | Leave a comment

The Neocons, Sarah Palin and the Tea Party

Eli Clifton | Lobe Log | November 11th, 2010

Founding editor of The American Conservative, Scott McConnell, has just published an in-depth analysis of the origins of the Tea Party’s foreign policy and how the Tea Party may influence foreign policy in the new Congress.

McConnell, in an article for Right Web, traces the Tea Party’s foreign policy pronouncements back to Sarah Palin and her close relationship with neoconservative heavyweight Bill Kristol. Kristol, as described by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, “discovered” Palin the summer before John McCain put her on the Republican national ticket.

McConnell writes:

McCain enlisted influential neoconservative Randy Scheunemann as a policy advisor, and in turn Scheunemann brought on Steve Biegun as her chief foreign policy staffer. Palin’s previous foreign policy pronouncements had been vague and scattered, but she became an eager student. She made hawkish noises during the campaign: while she spoke more loosely than expected about the possibility of war with Russia, she forthrightly supported an Israeli strike on Iran. Despite efforts by paleo-conservatives to reach out to her and provide some counter-influence, she stayed on message—which would have considerable significance as she became a political star in her own right.

Palin has continued to hit neoconservative talking points even while the Tea Party movement has, at times, called for cuts in government spending and rejected the Bush administration’s military adventurism.

McConnell observes:

She reliably echoes neoconservative talking points about war with Iran. When addressing the Tea Party Convention in Nashville last February, she hit neocon talking points by citing Ronald Reagan, “peace through strength,” and “tough action” against Iran.

And

Wearing an Israeli flag pin, she charged that President Obama was causing “Israel, our critical ally” to question our support by reaching out to hostile regimes.

But Palin’s apparent willingness to uphold Bush’s “freedom agenda” of spreading democracy has not always been received with enthusiasm by Tea Party audiences who embrace small-government.

McConnell writes:

Even David Frum, the prominent neoconservative writer and Iraq war enthusiast who has expressed deep skepticism regarding Palin and the Tea Party, praised the foreign policy segments of her speech, claiming that she sounded as “somebody who knew something of what he or she was talking about.” Live blogging her talk, Frum tellingly observed that Tea Partiers sat on their hands during these segments: “Interesting—no applause for sanctions on Iran. No applause for Palin’s speculation that democracies keep the peace.”

While Tea Party members are, understandably, skeptical of the benefits of “nation building,” neoconservatives such as Frank Gaffney have capitalized on the movement’s nativist leanings by hyping the threat of “creeping Shariah.” Islamophobic fear mongering has proven itself a more effective tool for bringing, otherwise isolationist, Tea Partiers behind the neoconservative’s foreign policy.

And besides, a militarist foreign policy is far less expensive—dare I say “more fiscally responsible”?—if the nation building is cut from the budget.

McConnell writes:

Asked at a recent Washington forum whether the new Congress would support or oppose an attack on Iran, Colin Dueck, author of Hard Line: The Republican Party and U.S. Foreign Policy since World War ll, quipped that if you do air strikes you don’t have to do nation building. In this sense, the budget constraints which Tea Party candidates worry about may be much less a barrier to near term neoconservative foreign policy ambitions than might be imagined.

November 11, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Speaking out on Kashmir and Palestine in the US

Yasmin Qureshi, The Electronic Intifada, 9 November 2010

The United States has become a battleground for both the struggles of the peoples of Palestine and Kashmir, for freedom from military occupation and for justice. Awareness amongst the US public is broadened as the repression of both struggles grows ever more violent, and meanwhile those wishing to stifle debate on these issues in the US resort to harassment and intimidation.

The same day that renowned activist and writer Arundhati Roy commented that “Kashmir was never an integral part of India,” for which her home was later attacked, I was subjected to harassment here in the US while I spoke about the human rights situation in Kashmir. Though not threatened in the way that Roy was, what we both experienced were attempts to silence us. Forces sympathetic to the same right-wing ideology as those who attacked Roy mobilized their ranks by putting out an alert stating: “An Indian Muslim Woman is speaking about azadi [freedom] of Kashmiris and we should protest.”

After my presentation at the main public library in San Jose, California last month, I was told by one member of the audience that “You are the very reason why we Hindus hate Muslims,” and that comment was followed by many that were worse. I was called an extremist and told “Your presentation is a lie; this is India-bashing.” The abuse I received will be familiar to those who have been on the receiving end of the backlash when speaking about the Palestinian cause.

Indeed, a week earlier, Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa was called an extremist by Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz at the Boston Book Festival after she presented well-established facts about Palestine. He resorted to name calling and ad hominem attacks.

Israel and India are often represented in US media as bastions of democracy in the Middle East and South Asia, respectively. Supporters of the policies of both governments delegitimize any resistance or criticism and discourage revelation of the truth through intimidation and personal attacks.

Kashmir is the most militarized zone in the world with close to 700,000 Indian troops. According to Professor Angana Chatterji of the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), between the years of 1989 and 2000, “In Kashmir, 70,000 are dead, over 8,000 have been disappeared and 250,000 have been displaced … India’s military governance penetrates every facet of life. … The hyper-presence of militarization forms a graphic shroud over Kashmir: detention and interrogation centers, army cantonments, abandoned buildings, bullet holes, bunkers and watchtowers, detour signs, deserted public squares, armed personnel, counter-insurgents and vehicular and electronic espionage” (“Kashmir: A Time For Freedom,” Greater Kashmir, 25 September 2010).

Because she has spoken out, Chatterji has become a target of right-wing Hindutva groups — those espousing an exclusivist Hindu nationalist ideology in India that often denigrates and denies the legitimacy of non-Hindus in India. Hindutva groups in the US and India have attacked her because of her work tracking funding to Hindutva groups from the US after the 2002 pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat and more recently as co-conveyor of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir. Chatterji told me: “I was threatened with rape by Hindutva groups in 2005. Since announcing the Kashmir Tribunal in April 2008, each time I have entered or left India since, I have been stopped or detained at immigration.” Richard Shapiro, her partner and chair and associate professor at CIIS, was banned from entering India on 1 November 2010.

Hindutva groups try to scuttle any broader discussion about human rights violations in Kashmir, the conditional annexation by India in 1947 or right to self-determination by limiting it to the issue of the displacement and killings of the upper caste minority Kashmiri Hindu Pandits in the late 1980s and by insisting that Kashmir is not an international issue.

Similarly, Zionists seeking to draw attention away from Israel’s abuses of Palestinians’ human rights often focus exclusively on suicide bombings or the rule of Hamas. Their aim is to silence any discussion of the historic Palestinian demands for the implementation of the refugees’ right of return, an end to the military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and equality for Palestinian citizens in Israel.

And the front line in the battle to influence US public opinion towards both the Kashmir and Palestine struggles can be found at the university campus.

“There is a well-orchestrated and funded campaign of intimidation and harassment by Zionist and Hindutva groups on campuses to target academics,” says Sunaina Maira, Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis campus. Zionist academics tried to pressure the University of California, Berkeley to cancel an event last month titled “What Can American Academia Do to Realize Justice for Palestinians,” organized by the Students for Justice in Palestine. In a letter to the school’s chancellor, the groups urged him to withdraw official university sponsorship of the event and publicly condemn the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid at the school’s campus.

A similar attempt was made in 2006 by Indian American members of AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobby, when they tried to cancel a panel titled “South Asian-Arab solidarity against Israeli apartheid” at Stanford University. The objective was to bring South Asians and Arabs together to take a unified stand against US imperialism and Israeli apartheid and speak up against the Zionist-Hindutva alliances. Despite the attempts by outside groups to stifle free speech, both these events eventually did take place on the campuses and were quite successful.

The attempts to silence those who speak out in the US are not the only thing that Kashmir and Palestine have in common. Both Kashmiris and Palestinians are struggling for justice and freedom against highly-militarized occupations. The recent protests by stone-throwing Kashmiri youth drew comparisons to the first intifada in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

And it is perhaps the linking of these struggles that those who stand in the way of freedom for oppressed peoples fear the most. Notably, Zionists and Hindutva advocates have adopted a similar Islamophobic language and worldview that considers any grievances or struggles by Muslims to be simply a cover for “jihadism” or “wahhabism” and thus justifies treating all such movements for justice — however they are conducted — as “terrorist.”

While the situations in Kashmir and Palestine are not completely analogous, in recent years India and Israel have fostered political and military links, including arms sales, joint intelligence, trade agreements and cultural exchanges.

Historically India has been supportive of the Palestinian struggle. But in 1992 India established diplomatic relations with Israel and ties were further strengthened in 2000 when India Home Minister L.K. Advani visited Israel; Advani is considered the architect of the rise of the Hindutva movement in the 1980s and ’90s. Today India is the largest buyer of Israel’s arms and Israel is training Indian military units in “counter-terrorist” tactics and urban warfare to be used against Kashmiris and resistance groups in northeast and central India.

The repressive governments of both India and Israel enjoy a warm relationship with the the US. Bilateral defense ties between US and India — based on the new strategic realities of Asia — is one of the objectives of US President Barack Obama’s current visit to India, according to the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), a Washington-based think tank. The US also gives $3 billion in military aid to Israel annually.

Such alliances between states, which aim to perpetuate injustice and maintain regimes that are rejected by those forced to live under them, underscore the need for education and solidarity among supporters of those long denied their freedom, equality and self-determination.

Those in the US who defend the status quo may resort to tactics of intimidation. But just as state repression in Kashmir and Palestine has failed to quell those struggles for freedom, those of us in the US concerned with justice in Palestine and Kashmir — and the US government’s role in each — will not be intimidated into silence.

Yasmin Qureshi is a San Francisco Bay Area professional and human rights activist involved in social justice movements in South Asia and Palestine. Her article on Kashmir, “Democracy Under the Barrel of a Gun,” was published in June 2010 by CounterPunch and ZCommunications.

November 9, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Islamophobia, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Why won’t the Tampa Trib tell you what people in Nashville know about Steve Emerson?

By John Sugg | Creative Loafing | November 2, 2010

Steven Emerson, a self-styled terrorism expert, is a guy who had a profound and caustic impact on Tampa for more than a decade. Emerson has had much less of an impact on another city, Nashville, although his corrosive brand of often-inaccurate smear jobs recently slithered into Tennessee.

Still, Nashville’s citizens know a whole lot more about Emerson than folks in Tampa, despite his relatively recent arrival on the Tennessee hate-Muslim soapbox, where he jostles for the limelight with loopy religious fanatics and just plain old-fashioned Southern bigots.

Why that imbalance of knowledge about Emerson? The answer lies in a horrible miscarriage of journalism committed over many years by The Tampa Tribune, a series of atrocities the Trib could easily correct by just providing a dash of fair and accurate reporting, something history indicates the newspaper won’t do. Nashville should be grateful that it has a newspaper, The Tennessean, which unlike the Trib will fearlessly dig out the truth.

In tandem with his vassal reporter at the Tampa Trib, Michael Fechter, Emerson waged a decade-long jihad against a professor at the University of South Florida, Sami Al-Arian, accused by Emerson and Fechter of being a terrorist mastermind. Emerson and Fechter were backed by a shadowy network of former federal agents and foreign spooks, notably a disinformation specialist for Israel’s ultra-right Likud party named Yigal Carmon and a controversial ex-FBI official named Oliver “Buck” Revell – and a lot of money whose origins have never been revealed.

However, where their information came from was clear. As the great Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz explained before Al-Arian’s 2005 federal trial: “Israel owns much of the copyright for the case; a well-informed source termed the prosecution an ‘American-Israeli co-production.’ The Americans are running the show, but behind the scenes it was the Israelis who for years collected material (and) transmitted information…” How did they transmit information? In part, via “secret evidence” slipped to our federales, evidence and accusers Al-Arian wasn’t allowed to confront (who needs that nasty old Sixth Amendment?). But reporters were also conduits for scurrilous “intelligence” claims. Fechter himself wrote that “former and current senior Israeli intelligence officials” loaded his stories with information. Those allegations, many ludicrous on their face, were rejected by a federal jury, despite a highly prejudiced judge and rulings that, if they had been issued against Martin Luther King Jr. would have prevented him from mentioning Jim Crow in his defense.

Over the years, while a Weekly Planet and Creative Loafing editor, I had a great deal of fun exposing Emerson, and the prevarications by Fechter and the federal government. I tried to put into context what the anti-Muslim crusaders were up to. I joined a rather elite cadre of journalists that had tangled with Emerson – including famed investigative reporters Seymour Hersh, Robert I. Friedman and Robert Parry, who provided me with insight into Emerson’s real agenda.

Emerson filed two bogus lawsuits against me, the Weekly Planet (AKA Creative Loafing) and an AP reporter who had told me about questions he had had over the provenance of a document Emerson gave the news service. We obtained a court order that would have forced Emerson to produce real proof of his allegations – and he knew we were digging into who he really was and who paid his bills – so he ran away from the fight he started; the good guys (me, for example) prevailed.

It’s noteworthy that a number of dispassionate analysts had observations similar to mine. New York University scholar Zachary Lockman, for example, (as quoted on “Right Web”) wrote in 2005: “[Emerson’s] main focus during the 1990s was to sound the alarm about the threat Muslim terrorists posed to the United States. By the end of that decade Emerson was describing himself as a ‘terrorist expert and investigator’ and ‘Executive Director, Terrorism Newswire, Inc.’ Along the way, critics charged, Emerson had sounded many false alarms, made numerous errors of fact, bandied accusations about rather freely, and ceased to be regarded as credible by much of the mainstream media . The September 11 attacks seemed to bear out Emerson’s warnings, but his critics might respond that even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day.”

Again, it’s sadly significant that the Trib never even provided such mild doses of context about its primary source, Emerson, in its inflammatory, intentionally erroneous and misleading, and often racist diatribes against Al-Arian. The Trib still gives Emerson ink – never questioning his claims and guilt-by-association-and-innuendo tactics, and never vetting his background, associations, financing and motives.

Some insight on Emerson’s millions has now been provided by The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, citing the Tennessean’s reports, on Oct. 26 awarded Emerson his nightly “Worst Person in the World” citation. Olbermann expressed regret that the network had previously used Emerson as a chattering head on terrorism topics. (Similarly, CBS did not renew its contract with Emerson after he claimed that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing had “a Middle Eastern trait” because it was carried out “with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible.” That was a big “Oops.”)

The Tennessean reported that Emerson collects money through a non-profit, the Investigative Project on Terrorism Foundation, and then funnels that money to his for-profit SAE (as in Steven A. Emerson) Productions. Quoting Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, a nonprofit watchdog group, the Nashville paper reported: “Basically, you have a nonprofit acting as a front organization, and all that money going to a for-profit. It’s wrong. This is off the charts.”

That little bit of information on Emerson, contained in one report, is far more than the Trib told you about Emerson over a decade – despite Emerson using the Trib to provoke a legal firestorm that is still ongoing.

You do recall the firestorm, right? Emerson and Fechter launched a series of attacks on Muslims. No amount of hyperbole and vitriol-spewing was considered excessive by the Trib or Emerson. Fechter, for example, darkly hinted that the FBI found documents about MacDill Air Force Base among Al-Arian’s papers, insinuating some dastardly design. Nope. Al-Arian had twice been invited to speak to large groups of military and intelligence officers, and the sinister documents were, well, just the hand-out materials. Fechter, following the lead of his guru, Emerson, also tried to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Arabs, an egregiously false story the Trib has never seen fit to correct. Emerson, meanwhile, said in February 1996 that Palestinian advocates at USF were involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Emerson promised proof “in the near term.” The proof never came, and the Justice Department said it had no records supporting the allegation.

You think the Trib might have called Emerson on that one? Hahaha.

The former head of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tampa, Robert O’Neill, twice concluded during the 1990s there was no evidence to prosecute Al-Arian, according to my multiple sources in the Justice Department. I don’t like quoting anonymous sources so I’ll be clear: O’Neill, now the U.S. Attorney for Florida’s Middle District, himself told me he had looked at the evidence and found no reason to prosecute. In 1998, the then FBI counterterrorism chief Bob Blitzer also told me “no federal laws were broken” by the Tampa Muslims.

Yet, after 9/11, propelled by hate-Muslim diatribes from Bill O’Reilly (who had been funneled highly slanted information by Fechter) and the fear by Jeb Bush that the University of South Florida would conclude a settlement with Al-Arian that would prove embarrassing to the Bushite regimes in Washington and Tallahassee, the federal government indicted Al-Arian. The trial concluded with the government failing to win a single guilty verdict against Al-Arian or his co-defendants, an immense disaster for the Bush Justice Department.

Al-Arian later plea bargained in order to preclude another trial on counts on which the jury didn’t reach a verdict – although notably no more than two jurors felt he was guilty on even those “hung” counts.  Al-Arian’s plea bargain stipulated that he had had no involvement in terrorist activities. Rather, he had provided some minor support to people who might have become terrorists, although it’s clear from the trial that any such activities by Al-Arian occurred when they were legal. The plea agreement supposedly ended all business between Al-Arian and the federal government. However, due to legal chicanery by a rogue federal prosecutor in Virginia, Gordon Kromberg – who has been called a doppelganger of Emerson – Al-Arian remains entangled in federal courts and on house arrest.

According to my federal sources, the Al-Arian case cost our government at least $50 million, and, no, the Trib and Emerson didn’t offer to pay part of the bill (you and I had that honor). And, with so many FBI agents chasing a guy whose “guilt” was mostly in exercising his First Amendment rights, the FBI missed another fellow flitting around Florida, a real terrorist with blood on his mind, Mohammed Atta.

The final chapters in the Trib’s pogroms against Muslims had a sadly humorous angle. Fechter, who had long been a tool of Emerson’s, finally got slightly honest and went to work for his mentor. And Fechter dumped his wife and children and shacked up with one of the federal prosecutors who tried Al-Arian. I don’t recall where Fechter got his journalism training, but he must have skipped the classes on journalistic objectivity and not sleeping with your sources.

So, The Tennessean’s articles might have provided an excellent opportunity for the Trib to revisit and maybe heal a terrible wound it was complicit in inflicting in Tampa. On Friday, I asked Trib Managing Editor Richard “Duke” Maas if he had such an inclination – heck, I inquired, aren’t you interested in what The Tennessean wrote about a guy who had so much impact on Tampa and your newspaper? Well, not really, Maas responded, sounding more irritated than journalistically curious. He added that Fechter had left the newspaper, which I gather meant he felt the Trib was thereby absolved of responsibility.

If you happen to have a spare backbone, you might send it to the pathetic folks at The Tampa Tribune.

John F. Sugg was editor of the Weekly Planet in the 1990s, and group senior editor of Creative Loafing Newspapers until he retired in 2008.

November 7, 2010 Posted by | Islamophobia, Subjugation - Torture, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

French Woman Fined for Attacking a Muslim Woman

Al-Manar – 05/11/2010

A French court has sentenced a retired female teacher to one month in jail for attacking a Muslim woman in a shop for wearing the burka, a face-covering Islamic veil.

The court ruled Thursday the defendant’s “violent behavior reveals an intolerance of others that defies explanation and denies cohabitation and dialogue between people who have different ways of life or opposing beliefs,” Gulfnews.com reported.

The victim of the attack was a 26-year-old United Arab Emirates tourist who was shopping at a luxury Paris boutique last February.

The defendant, 63-year-old Jeanne Ruby, assaulted her by trying to pull off her burka and then proceeded to hit, scratch and bite her.

Ruby was charged with “aggravated violence” and was slapped with a one-month suspended jail sentence, as well as being forced to pay 800 Euros (USD 1,140) in damages to the victim.

“I knew that I was going to crack one day. This burka story was beginning to annoy me,” the defendant told police.

The ruling comes just days after France approved a bill banning the face covering, with punishment of up to 150 Euros (USD 189) in fines or having to go to a “citizenship” class, Reuters reported.

The burka ban will take effect after a six-month period in order to inform veiled women about the law.

France has an estimated Muslim population of six million, the largest community in Western Europe. It is believed that approximately 2,000 women wear a full face veil there.

November 5, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Danish party urges Arab TV ban

People’s Party says Al Jazeera and other Arabic channels sow hatred against Western society in immigrant communities

Awad Joumaa | Al-Jazeera | 02 Nov 2010

Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of the far-right Danish People’s Party, is calling for a ban on satellite antennas in residential areas with large immigrant populations in Denmark.

She has since pushed for the national broadcasting authority to prevent Al Jazeera and other Arab satellite channels from broadcasting in Denmark.

Kjærsgaard accuses them of “broadcasting indoctrination from the Middle Eastern world”, and “inoculating the viewers in Denmark to hate Denmark and the West”.

The controversial proposal has so far been met with criticism from the Danish People’s Party’s coalition partners, the liberal and conservative parties.

Although both main parties disagree with the proposed ban, they fundamentally agree with the People’s Party’s claims – as a spokesman for the conservatives put it – that Arab channels “espouse anti-Jewish and anti-Western propaganda”.

But banning Arab channels will give the impression that Denmark is suppressing Arab points of view, the spokesman said.

The current government has relied on Kjærsgaard and the People’s Party for its majority since 2001, when the coalition came to power following campaign laced with anti-immigration rhetoric.

The ruling party’s Kristian Jensen says Denmark should defend freedom of speech, but cautions that there is an opportunity to make a case to the country’s broadcasting authority if the channels break the law.

Conflicting opinions

Kjærsgaard says that the broadcasting authority can move to ban a channel it sees as promoting hatred.

Meanwhile, opposition parties are outraged, describing the People’s Party’s proposal as a “desperate” attempt to maintain its grip on the debate on Muslims and immigrants in Denmark.

The main opposition party, the Social Democrats, thinks that it is “un-Danish” to forbid people from deciding which TV channels they can access.

“We live in Denmark, not in North Korea or China,” the party has said.

Al Jazeera broadcast a documentary in 2009 entitled Confrontation in Copenhagen, which dealt with the racialised debate on crime in Denmark as well as the new anti-immigrant laws, sparking a huge debate in the country.

Calls to strip me, the producer of the piece, of my citizenship were heard on the fringes.

In the lead-up to the film’s screening, headlines such “A Palestinian-Dane produces a dark film that portrays Denmark as a racist country” filled the screens and front pages of many Danish media outlets.

The main two television broadcasters, TV2 and Danish Broadcast Co-operation, as well as all major national news papers, treated the film as second “cartoon crises in making”, referring to the controversy stirred when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005.

In the hours before the documentary’s screening, there was a heightened state of alert across Danish embassies in the Arab and Muslim world. As Al Jazeera went on air with the film, Denmark’s main TV channel picked up the telecast live.

Nasser Khader and Fathi al-Abded, two Danish politicians and representatives of the communities, concluded that the film would harm Danish national interests, especially if the “imams” made use of it.

Sober evaluation

The verdict of independent media experts and the Danish ministry of foreign affairs was considerably less alarmist. They judged the film “innocent”, “critical”, “fair and balanced”.

The next day the Danish press reported that no embassy representatives across the Arab and Muslim world had reported any attacks or threats against Danish embassies. The story died down.

Nonetheless, the initial panic was reflective of how the Danish People’s Party, major media outlets and the government have been dealing with any critique of Denmark’s treatment of its Muslim minorities.

However, unlike during the cartoon crisis, the shoe was on the other foot this time around. It was Denmark that was under the spotlight. It was Denmark that was reacting, not so-called outsiders, as we saw during the cartoon crisis.

November 2, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

CCTVs put in Birmingham Muslim areas

Press TV – October 27, 2010

Two hundred surveillance cameras were put up “by mistake” in largely Muslim areas of Birmingham, West Midlands Police Authority have admitted. The cameras, some of which were hidden, were paid for with £3 million of government money earmarked for tackling terrorism, according to state-funded BBC.

The police had to apologize after angry Muslim residents said they had not been informed.

The scheme, called Project Champion, was made up of the city council, police and agencies in the Washwood Heath and Sparkbrook districts. It involved cameras being put up by the Safer Birmingham Project (SBP).

Last month, West Midlands Police Chief Constable Chris Sims apologized after the report by Thames Valley Police said the force showed “little evidence of thought being given to compliance with the legal or regulatory framework” before the cameras were put up, according to the BBC.

In a statement, Derek Webley, chairman of the West Midlands Police Authority, said, “We acknowledge that we did not get things right and want to take a positive approach to addressing what the report has found.”

He also said that it is wise for the authority to work with the community in order to consider this matter as an important issue in order to rebuild the trust and confidence of those in the area.

“Without this we know that we cannot deliver the policing that the public want to keep them safe from harm.”

Civil liberties groups have warned authorities that they would take legal action if all the cameras are not removed in two weeks.

October 27, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Islamophobia | Leave a comment

Obama extends his Islamophobia to include Sikhs as well

By Ali Abunimah | October 19, 2010

US President Barack Obama has ruled out a visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, sacred to Sikhs, because Obama does not want to wear the head-covering that is required as a sign of respect in case it makes him look like a Muslim. From The New York Times:

But the United States has ruled out a Golden Temple visit, according to an American official involved in planning. Temple officials said that American advance teams had gone to Amritsar, the holy city where the temple is located, to discuss a possible visit. But the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple.

“To come to golden temple he needs to cover his head,” said Dalmegh Singh, secretary of the committee that runs the temple. “That is our tradition. It is their problem to cover the head with a Christian hat or a Muslim cap.”

Gawker, which drew my attention to the report, also quotes the Indian Express newspaper on efforts to come up with a “compromise” that would allow Obama to wear a baseball cap – a piece of head gear that would presumably not offend American racists back home:

The White House team which visited India last month ruled out Obama wearing the traditional scarf on his head. Indian officials were informally told that Obama wearing a headscarf to visit the Golden Temple may convey an image of him appearing to be a Muslim. This is one misinterpretation Obama’s advisors did not want at any cost, given the political sensitivities over this issue in the US.

And then:

Obama’s aides finally came up with the idea of a “modified” baseball cap. It would have to be modified because the Golden Temple does not permit a baseball cap instead of a headscarf. In fact, the temple authorities have no problems with skull caps.

As Giani Gurbachan Singh, head priest of the Golden Temple, puts it: “We have no problems if he wears a skull cap, the kind that Muslims wear to the mosque – or any other cap that is modified to something similar. But we don’t allow baseball caps or Army hats.”

It’s hard to imagine anything more insulting to his hosts than this. But of course Obama had absolutely no qualms about wearing a religiously-mandated head-covering when he visited the Wailing Wall, holy to Jews, in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem as part of his pandering to US Zionists and other racists when he was running for president, as the photo above from his July 2008 visit to Israel and occupied Jerusalem shows (The Guardian).

This is only the latest in a long line of incidents of Obama pandering to Islamophobia rather than standing up to it. During that same election campaign visit to Israel and Jordan, Obama  aides were instructed not to wear green clothing, as that is supposedly the color of Islam. Also during the campaign two Muslim women enthusiastically attending an Obama rally were required to move out of camera shot, so that the Post Racial candidate would not be pictured with them.

More recently, Obama has repeatedly failed  to stand up to Islamophobic incitement ginned up about the planned lower Manhattan Islamic Center and has basically hung American Muslims out to dry.

If Obama had refused to wear a kippah – the Jewish ritual head-covering – when he went to Jerusalem, and instead insisted on wearing a baseball cap, he would have been declared not only disrespectful, but anti-Semitic as well. Of course the whole point of going to Jerusalem was for the photo-op in order to buttress his pro-Israel credentials.

But in the current atmosphere of routine, endemic and escalating anti-Muslim incitement Obama has no fear of offending and denigrating Muslims. He also feeds racism against, and misunderstanding of Sikhs, whom racists often mistake for Muslims. Indeed this happened most tragically when Balbir Singh Sodhi, a 52 year-old Sikh man in Mesa, Arizona was shot five times and killed on September 15, 2001 by Frank Roque in “revenge” for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Sikhs, along with Muslims and so many others, are just the latest to be thrown under Obama’s election campaign bus

October 19, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

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