Saturday, May 12, 2012

British agent in underpants bomb plot had been working undercover 'for up to a year'

Future operations and Intellience sharing between Britain and the US may have been endangered by the leaking of sensitive details about the agent who infiltrated an al-Qaeda cell plotting an underpants bomb attack.

By , Tom Whitehead
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/
11 May 2012


Both MI6 and the CIA are thought to be extremely unhappy that details of British undercover agent became public.

President Obama’s Administration was criticised yesterday and a top-level investigation opened in Washington after accusations that the information, released initially by unnamed US sources to an American news agency, had been used for political pointscoring.
Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary, condemned the disclosure. “As a former Director of the CIA, I have to tell you that those kinds of leaks are very harmful to the efforts of the intelligence community,” he said.
Downing Street declined to comment on the case. David Cameron's official spokesman told reporters at a regular daily briefing: "I understand there is an investigation under way, being led by the Americans. It is clearly a matter for the US authorities. Clearly, we think that sensitive information should be protected."
Nigel Inkster, a former assistant chief of MI6, said in a Twitter message: "The revelations about the British agent in AQ [al Qaeda] remind us that Beltway leaking is a major security threat," referring to the area of Washington DC.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, chairman of the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, said that leaks about operations could be "extremely harmful."

"It can prevent the effective involvement of intelligence officers or agencies in operations that are designed to save lives either in this country or other countries," he added.

"Whether a leak arises in the US, the UK or elsewhere it is equally serious."

Patrick Mercer, the former chairman of the parliamentary sub-committee on Counter-Terrorism, said there was "inevitable friction" between the US and UK intelligence agencies, partly because the British agencies have to deal with a plethora of different American agencies.

The British agent who risked his life to infiltrate the al-Qaeda cell plotting had been working undercover for up to a year, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.

As well as smuggling out the latest version of the bomb, the agent was able to pass on vital information to his handlers about the movements of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

His covert mission in Yemen also gave him an insight into the future plans of master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, which include using cameras and hard disk drives to try and hide explosives.

Sources have told The Daily Telegraph that the agent was moving in fundamentalist Islamic circles in Britain and at least one other European country when he was recruited by MI5, with the help of Saudi intelligence.

He is said to be in his late twenties or early thirties and of "Middle Eastern" origin. According to a report by the Associated Press last night, he was not originally a British citizen but was given the passport "as part of the ruse."

He travelled to Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, where he joined an Arabic language school in order to make contact with al-Qaeda extremists.

In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who had studied in London and tried to blow himself up on a trans-Atlantic flight to Detroit on Christmas Day three years ago using a similar device.

British and Saudi intelligence officers were hoping that the agent's British passport would make him an "irresistible" attraction for al-Qaeda seeking to get a suicide bomber onto a US-bound plane.

His handler was a Saudi intelligence officer who travelled with him to Yemen and helped him attract the attention of al-Qaeda and communicate with headquarters once he was undercover, one source said.

He is said to have been in the mountainous region of Shabwa in southern Yemen for several months and was waiting in Sanaa for some time before that, the source added.

He left two weeks ago on his "mission" and once he was safely back with his handlers, the CIA began a series of drone strikes against AQAP.

The risk he was taking was illustrated in March, while he was still under cover, when a video was released by AQAP in which three men confessed to being paid by the authorities to provide information for American drones to target the fighters.

The video then showed a prisoner being forced to his knees, as one of the fighters declared the man was a Saudi spy who hoped to infiltrate al-Qaeda and sentenced him to death.

The screen then went blank and a shot was heard to cries of "Allahu Akbar" [God is great].

In a rare public speech two years ago, Sir John Sawers, the chief of MI6, made a plea for secrecy, adding: "a lot is at stake."

"Secret organisations need to stay secret," he added. "If our operations and methods become public, they won't work."

The reason for the secrecy was to avoid putting undercover agents – the secret sources used by MI6 officers - at risk, he explained.

If they are exposed they "can get identified, arrested, tortured and killed by the very organisations who are working against us," he added.

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Geert Wilders: Marked for Death

By Fjordman
http://frontpagemag.com/
May 11, 2012


The courageous Dutch politician Geert Wilders released his book Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me in May 2012. The foreword to this title was written by the eloquent Canadian-born political commentator and cultural critic Mark Steyn, who has a special talent for writing about serious topics in a humorous way. He has published several books and written essays for publications ranging from the Jerusalem Post and the Chicago Sun-Times to the National Review, The Australian and Canada’s National Post.

Steyn is honest enough to admit that when he was first asked to contribute to Wilders’ new book, his initial reaction was to say no. The main reason for this is the potentially high cost of being associated with a man who lives with constant death threats.

Yet, after taking a stroll in the woods, Mark Steyn felt ashamed at the ease with which he was caving in to the enemies of freedom, and decided to accept the offer after all. He recalled how the Canadian Islamic Congress boasted that their attempts by legal aggression to silence Steyn’s critical writings about Islam had cost his magazine substantial sums, and thereby attained their “strategic objective” of increasing the cost of publishing anti-Islamic material.

In the case of Geert Wilders, that cost is not merely limited to money. Despite being an elected Member of Parliament in what used to be one of Europe’s freest and most tolerant countries, he is regularly vilified by Western mass media. When trying to enter Britain, a nation that once was a champion of liberty, he was detained by plainclothes border guards on arrival at London’s Heathrow airport in February 2009 and deported from the country.

The democratic Dutch MP had been invited to the House of Lords, where Baroness Cox and Lord Pearson wanted to show his 17-minute Islam-critical film Fitna. The Home Office refused him entry on the grounds he “would threaten community security and therefore public security,” not because he threatened to use violence, but because Muslims might use it.

Lord Ahmed from the Labour Party, Britain’s first Muslim member of the House of Lords, the upper house of the British Parliament, pledged to bring a 10,000 strong force of angry Muslims to lay siege to Parliament. A spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain claimed that Wilders has been an open and relentless preacher of “hate.” At the same time, London has become a notorious intentional center for Islamic militants, who spew hate on a daily basis.

Geert Wilders accused the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of being “the biggest bunch of cowards in Europe.” He was later allowed entry to the UK, however. He was also put on trial in the Netherlands accused of criminally insulting religious and ethnic groups. Wilders was eventually found not guilty in 2011, but the entire process took several years.

As Mark Steyn puts it, “He is under round-the-clock guard because of explicit threats to murder him by Muslim extremists. Yet he’s the one who gets put on trial for incitement. In twenty-first century Amsterdam, you’re free to smoke marijuana and pick out a half-naked sex partner from the front window of her shop. But you can be put on trial for holding the wrong opinion about a bloke who died in the seventh century. And, although Mr. Wilders was eventually acquitted by his kangaroo court, the determination to place him beyond the pale is unceasing: ‘The far-right anti-immigration party of Geert Wilders’ (the Financial Times)… ‘Far-right leader Geert Wilders’ (the Guardian)… ‘Extreme right anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders’ (AFP) is ‘at the fringes of mainstream politics’ (Time). Mr. Wilders is so far out on the far-right extreme fringe that his party is the third biggest in parliament.”

Maybe those who are out on the fringe are the ones who think that disliking Islam is “far-right.”
Yet it’s not just Wilders himself who is being attacked in this fashion. Those who dare to meet him or support some of his views could find themselves attacked by the mass media and the political elites in a comparable manner. Cory Bernardi, born and raised in Adelaide and currently representing the state of South Australia for the Liberal Party in the Australian Senate, in 2011 came under fire not only from members of other parties but also from his own — allegedly conservative — party when he wanted to facilitate a trip to Australia by Wilders.

The Sydney Morning Herald simply labeled Geert Wilders “an Islamaphobic Dutch politician.” The Melbourne-based The Age claimed that Wilders’ “objectionable” and “poisonous anti-Islam views” are “abhorrent and plainly wrong” and that his ideas are self-evidently “repugnant.” The newspaper continued to suggest that if Senator Bernardi did not dissociate himself from Mr. Wilders’ views, then perhaps his own party should demote him.

Wayne Swan, Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister of Australia under PM Julia Gillard, said Bernardi has right-wing extremist views. Other senior Labor Party members indicated that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott should discipline the senator and remove him from his portfolio responsibilities. Labor frontbencher Peter Garrett declined to say whether he believed Abbott should have Bernardi expelled from the Liberal Party, or copy the way former Prime Minister John Howard had Pauline Hanson disendorsed as a candidate ahead of the 1996 national election due to her vocal opposition to non-European mass immigration. Australian Greens senator Richard Di Natale also condemned Bernardi’s associations with Wilders. “Multiculturalism is one of this country’s great successes and it must be defended,” he stated.

Wilders commented in an essay published in The Washington Times on May 4 2012 that “As I write these lines, there are police bodyguards at the door. No visitor can enter my office without passing through several security checks and metal detectors. I have been marked for death. I am forced to live in a heavily protected safe house. Every morning, I am driven to my office in the Dutch Parliament building in an armored car with sirens and flashing blue lights. When I go out, I am surrounded, as I have been for the past seven years, by plainclothes police officers. When I speak in public, I wear a bulletproof jacket. Who am I? I am neither a king nor a president, nor even a government minister; I am just a simple politician in the Netherlands. But because I speak out against expanding Islamic influence in Europe, I have been marked for death. If you criticize Islam, this is the risk you run. That is why so few politicians dare to tell the truth about the greatest threat to our liberties today.”

Wilders received his first death threats in 2003 after asking the government to investigate a radical mosque. In November 2004, after a Muslim fanatic murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh, policemen armed with machine guns pushed him into an armored car and drove him off into the night. That was the last time he was in his own house. Since then, he has lived “in an army barracks, a prison cell and now a government-owned safe house.” The security detail has become part of his daily routine, but it must still be hard getting used to being a virtual prisoner in your own country and unable to visit a restaurant or cafe in a normal manner.

Hostile journalists often denounce Wilders and his Party for Freedom as “populists,” but they are popular for a reason: They state uncomfortable truths that the ruling elites want to sweep under the carpet. The natives are rapidly being turned into a harassed minority in Amsterdam, Rotterdam or The Hague, a pattern that can now be seen in far too many European cities.

Fifty-seven percent of the Dutch people say that mass immigration was the biggest single mistake in Dutch history. Yet what is arguably the greatest change their country and their continent have experienced in historical times is beyond honest discussion in the mainstream media.

Wilders goes on to note that “I have read the Koran and studied the life of Muhammad. It made me realize that Islam is primarily a totalitarian ideology rather than a religion. I feel sorry for the Arab, Persian, Indian and Indonesian peoples who have to live under the yoke of Islam. It is a belief system that marks apostates for death, forces critics into hiding and denies our Western tradition of individual freedom. Without freedom, there can be no prosperity and no pursuit of happiness. More Islam means less life, less liberty and less happiness.”

Geert Wilders has sacrificed his personal freedom of movement and the prospects of a normal life in order to warn his country, his continent and his civilization against serious threats to their freedom. We should honor that sacrifice by listening carefully to what he has to say.

Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: Click here.
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Friday, May 11, 2012

Bryce Harper makes an immediate impact in a variety of ways for Nationals

By
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports
May 11, 2012


LOS ANGELES, CA - APRIL 29: Bryce Harper #34 of the Washington Nationals bats against the Los Angeles Dodgers on April 29, 2012 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers won 2-0. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

I’ve never seen a player enjoy his first 10 games in the big leagues as much as Washington Nationals rookie Bryce Harper, just revel in them, rise to them and gobble each day like he’s waited for it since he was born. And I’ve never seen a teenager have an impact on so many of those games in so many different ways, even as he has ignored the mistakes that reveal his age and skimpy pro experience.

This is a moment in baseball time that doesn’t come often and won’t last forever. They tell me the arrival of Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle in ’51 had the same aura of amazement and delicious uncertainty. I watched it with Ken Griffey, Jr., when he was 19 and combined every skill Harper now has, plus the grace of having played center field since first putting on a glove. Pete Reiser had it all, too, led the NL in nine categories at 22 in ’41, before he ran into so many walls he was taken off on a stretcher 11 times, given last rites on the field once and — with a fractured skull — still threw the ball back to the infield.

There aren’t many of them, these players who are both too talented and too young to believe, who might be anything or everything or, with one wrong component in their makeup, washed up before they’re 30, like Reiser.

I have no idea how good Harper will ultimately be, and no one else does either. Or, if they do, please report to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, because precise knowledge of the future should be put to better use.

Harper entered Thursday hitting .265 with six doubles and a .381 on-base percentage, which seems pleasant but normal, unless you’ve watched his games. He’s found a way to be a force in every one. He’s not a hitter, fielder, slugger, thrower or runner as much as he’s a hellbent here-I-am-world ballplayer.

Very few rookies, even those much older, seem so comfortable (if you can be comfy with your faux hawk on fire) as Harper clearly is now. He’s not faking focus; he’s just having a ball, except when he gets picked off or pops up the first pitch with men on base. Then he’s total get-you-next-time.

At roughly the same stage — very young and with similar plate appearances to Harper — famous bloom-early stars such as Griffey (.175), Tony Conigliaro (.152), Cal Ripken Jr. (.128), Mays (.139) and Mantle (.211) — weren’t doing so well. The record book says Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, from their first week, were already Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio. So, if you trust such dusty old data (harrumph), Harper ain’t so hot.

But with Jayson Werth out for three months because of a broken wrist, it’s nearly certain that Harper, as long as he’s healthy, will be in the Washington outfield almost every day for the rest of the season. If Werth returns in August, the Nats aren’t going to send Harper to Class AAA only to jerk him right back up when rosters expand Sept. 1. Not happening. He’s here to stay.

Harper plays like a five-tool Pete Rose. That’s why Harper is so electric, so instantly accepted by his teammates, despite his age and occasional brashness. That’s why I will never forget to record a Nats game this season — okay, unless he goes 7 for 123.

So far, Harper has crashed into the Dodger Stadium center field wall to make a leaping catch. He has stomped on first base after a hellhound-on-my-trail sprint every time he has hit a routine grounder, even to the pitcher. He has taken an extra base, then stole home to get instant revenge against the Phillies for being drilled with a Cole Hamels fastball.

He has stretched singles that went barely beyond the infield into doubles. He has scored from second on a hit that rolled six feet onto the outfield grass. He has thrown out runners at the plate, including one on a low whistling 300-foot peg that the umpire nonetheless called, “Safe,” probably because he couldn’t believe what he had seen.

See, that .265 batting average isn’t, maybe, capturing everything that’s going on here. All those feats within 10 games don’t even count his violent batting practice, which sounds like an evening thunderstorm. Asked if he had ever seen anybody swing so hard in BP (while maintaining balance and mechanics), Davey Johnson said, “Mantle.”

Harper has made more adjustments, at-bat to at-bat, within one game than I’ve seen other young Nats player do at 23 to 26. Harper, so far, hasn’t chased many bad pitches, a telltale sign, and has more walks (six) than strikeouts (four). The only other man who played 100 games as a teenager who had more walks than strikeouts in his first 10 games was Rusty Staub (2,716 hits).

A few pitches around his letters have lured Harper. And low change-ups can be troublesome. But Harper looks like he’s jotting notes in his “book” just as fast as the pitchers are scribbling in theirs.

Once in a great while, a player makes our imaginations behave irresponsibly. Stephen Strasburg has already taken us there in the pitching realm. Now it’s Harper, too. We hear ourselves say silly things. As my wife admired Captain America in “The Avengers,” I whispered, “That’s how Bryce Harper is put together — well, if Captain America were about 30 pounds bigger.”

We know, eventually, his strengths and limits will be measured. In time, some air of professionalism will replace his wolfish open-grin ebullience. Why, before too many years pass, Harper will even learn what is impossible for him on a baseball field.

Right now, he honestly doesn’t know. But he’s trying to find out. We get to watch. It’s hard to imagine how baseball could be much more fun.



For Thomas Boswell’s previous columns, visit washingtonpost.
com/boswell.
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Echoes of ‘67: Israel unites

By
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
May 11, 2012


Israeli troops salute their flag as they occupy Syrian territory during the Six Day War. (Photo by Stan Meagher/Express/Getty Images). 12th June 1967

In May 1967, in brazen violation of previous truce agreements, Egypt ordered U.N. peacekeepers out of the Sinai, marched 120,000 troops to the Israeli border, blockaded the Straits of Tiran (Israel’s southern outlet to the world’s oceans), abruptly signed a military pact with Jordan and, together with Syria, pledged war for the final destruction of Israel.

May ’67 was Israel’s most fearful, desperate month. The country was surrounded and alone. Previous great-power guarantees proved worthless. A plan to test the blockade with a Western flotilla failed for lack of participants. Time was running out. Forced into mass mobilization in order to protect against invasion — and with a military consisting overwhelmingly of civilian reservists — life ground to a halt. The country was dying.

On June 5, Israel launched a preemptive strike on the Egyptian air force, then proceeded to lightning victories on three fronts. The Six-Day War is legend, but less remembered is that, four days earlier, the nationalist opposition (Mena­chem Begin’s Likud precursor) was for the first time ever brought into the government, creating an emergency national-unity coalition.

Everyone understood why. You do not undertake a supremely risky preemptive war without the full participation of a broad coalition representing a national consensus.

Forty-five years later, in the middle of the night of May 7-8, 2012, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shocked his country by bringing the main opposition party, Kadima, into a national unity government. Shocking because just hours earlier, the Knesset was expediting a bill to call early elections in September.

Why did the high-flying Netanyahu call off elections he was sure to win?

Because for Israelis today, it is May ’67. The dread is not quite as acute: The mood is not despair, just foreboding. Time is running out, but not quite as fast. War is not four days away, but it looms. Israelis today face the greatest threat to their existence — nuclear weapons in the hands of apocalyptic mullahs publicly pledged to Israel’s annihilation — since May ’67. The world is again telling Israelis to do nothing as it looks for a way out. But if such a way is not found — as in ’67 — Israelis know that they will once again have to defend themselves, by themselves.

Such a fateful decision demands a national consensus. By creating the largest coalition in nearly three decades, Netanyahu is establishing the political premise for a preemptive strike, should it come to that. The new government commands an astonishing 94 Knesset seats out of 120, described by one Israeli columnist as a “hundred tons of solid concrete.”

So much for the recent media hype about some great domestic resistance to Netanyahu’s hard line on Iran. Two notable retired intelligence figures were widely covered here for coming out against him. Little noted was that one had been passed over by Netanyahu to be the head of Mossad, while the other had been fired by Netanyahu as Mossad chief (hence the job opening). For centrist Kadima (it pulled Israel out of Gaza) to join a Likud-led coalition whose defense minister is a former Labor prime minister (who once offered half of Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat) is the very definition of national unity — and refutes the popular “Israel is divided” meme. “Everyone is saying the same thing,” explained one Knesset member, “though there may be a difference of tone.”

To be sure, Netanyahu and Kadima’s Shaul Mofaz offered more prosaic reasons for their merger: to mandate national service for now exempt ultra- Orthodox youth, to change the election law to reduce the disproportionate influence of minor parties and to seek negotiations with the Palestinians. But Netanyahu, the first Likud prime minister to recognize Palestinian statehood, did not need Kadima for him to enter peace talks. For two years he’s been waiting for Mahmoud Abbas to show up at the table. Abbas hasn’t. And won’t. Nothing will change on that front.

What does change is Israel’s position vis-a-vis Iran. The wall-to-wall coalition demonstrates Israel’s political readiness to attack, if necessary. (Its military readiness is not in doubt.)

Those counseling Israeli submission, resignation or just endless patience can no longer dismiss Israel’s tough stance as the work of irredeemable right-wingers. Not with a government now representing 78 percent of the country.

Netanyahu forfeited September elections that would have given him four more years in power. He chose instead to form a national coalition that guarantees 18 months of stability — 18 months during which, if the world does not act (whether by diplomacy or otherwise) to stop Iran, Israel will.

And it will not be the work of one man, one party or one ideological faction. As in 1967, it will be the work of a nation.

letters@charleskrauthammer.com
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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Today's Tune: Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson - Just To Satisfy You

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Author Geert Wilders: No Difference Between Islam, Radical Islam

By Henry J. Reske and Kathleen Walter
http://www.newsmax.com/
May 4, 2012


Controversial Dutch politician and author Geert Wilders is speaking out against Islam, but unlike most Westerners he does not draw a distinction between Islam and radical Islam, but claims that they are the same.

Wilders is a member of the Dutch parliament and founder of the Party for Freedom. He said outspokenness about Islam has taken a toll on his life. He has been threatened with death, been taken court, and been banned from other European countries.

“Anybody who dares to speak out against this ideology called Islam will pay a heavy price,” he in an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV. “I lived with my wife for six months in a prison cell for security reasons. We didn’t commit any crime. We lived in army barracks and safe houses. I always say if I spoke up, which I’m not planning to do, but just for argument’s sake, if I spoke out against Christianity, all those things would not have happened. We use the pen and, unfortunately, they use the ax.”

Wilders is a controversial critic of Islam, campaigning against what he sees as the "Islamisation of the Netherlands." He has compared the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and has called for the book to be banned. He also advocates ending immigration from Muslim countries.

Wilders was banned from entering Britain for nine months in 2009; the ban was overturned in October 2009 after he appealed. In June 2011, he was acquitted of hate charges.

The author of “Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me” said that Islam, “at the end of the day, will cost us our freedom, our freedom of speech.”

“I acknowledge the fact that the majority of the Muslims are law-abiding people,” he noted. “It would be ridiculous to even suggest that the majority of the Muslims are terrorists. They are not. There is only one Islam; this is the Islam of the holy book the Quran and the Islam of the prophet Mohammed. It’s not so much a religion, it’s an ideology.

“It’s an ideology that should be compared not with Christianity or Judaism, but with communism or with fascism. Let me give you one example: If you want to leave Islam ... the penalty for that is death. You have to be killed. This is not the case with Christianity or with Judaism. But it was the case in Nazi Germany or with Communist Russia. You have to see Islam for what it is because if we don’t, we will lose our free, Christian-based society.”

Wilders said that Islam has spread throughout Europe and led to honor killings, genital mutilation, and Sharia courts, aided by the “disease called cultural relativism.” He said that all cultures are not equal.

“In my book, I tell the American public, Europe is in very, very bad shape today and please don’t think that what’s happening to Europe today will not happen to America tomorrow,” he said. “It will happen to America tomorrow unless you fight for freedom, you fight for your own identity and you cut back on the Islamization of our society.”

One key bulwark in the fight against Islam is Israel.

“I know that we should all support the state of Israel,” Wilders said. “Israel is fighting our fight. Israel is exactly on the border of Jihad and reason and Israel is a beacon of light, a canary in a coal mine, so to say, in an area of darkness and tyranny. I believe that parents in America and Europe can sleep easily at night because Israeli parents lay awake at night worrying about their children defending our borders. The border of Jihad is our border.

“We share the same cultural values as Israel does. If Jerusalem falls, Athens will fall, Amsterdam will fall, and America will fall as well. They are fighting our fight. We should do anything possible to support the state of Israel. Certainly against this barbaric regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”


© 2012 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


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Asian sex gang: young girls betrayed by our fear of racism

Vulnerable teenagers were abandoned to their abusers because of our society’s nervous respect for their 'different' culture.

By
The Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/
9 May 2012


Paedophile ring: eight of the nine men convicted of abuse: top, Adil Khan, Mohammed Amin, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid; bottom, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Qayyum, Hamid Safi and Kabeer Hassan Photo: PA

Nine white men are found guilty of grooming young Asian girls, aged between 13 and 15, whom they picked up on the streets of London. The girls were lured with free fish and chips before being raped or pimped as prostitutes. One Asian girl from a children’s home was used for sex by 20 white men in one night. Police insist the crimes were not “racially motivated”.

Imagine if that story were true. Would you really believe that race was not a factor in those hateful crimes? Do you think that, despite conclusive DNA evidence from a girl raped by two men, the police would have hesitated to press charges because the suspects were white and it could make things a bit sensitive in the white community? Would the Crown Prosecution Service have refused to prosecute, allowing the child-sex ring to flourish for three more anguished years?
OK, now let’s try switching the ethnic identities round. Change the fish and chips to kebabs, London to Rochdale, white to Asian and vice versa and you have the case that ended yesterday at Liverpool Crown Court. Nine British Muslim men were jailed for a total of 77 years for rape and trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation. The whole case made for disturbing reading, but somehow it was the tiny, paralysing details that made it real. Like the fact that one of the convicted men, father-of-five Abdul Rauf, was a religious studies teacher at a local mosque. Rauf asked his 15-year-old victim if she had any younger friends, and drove some of the girls to meet other men, who had sex with them despite knowing they were under-age.
You will already have noticed a lot of embarrassed evasiveness about this disgusting case, particularly on the BBC. Turning a blind eye to appalling, illegal practices because “it’s their culture” is what has brought our country to this obscene pass. I have watched it unfolding since I did my teaching practice in 1982 in Southall, west London. I remember being encouraged to “teach the children their own culture” even as I found myself wondering why British Muslim girls couldn’t be taught the enlightened beliefs of the egalitarian land in which they lived.
When it comes to women’s rights, not all cultures are created equal, particularly those whose attitudes are frozen some time in the mid‑14th century. But we weren’t allowed to say that. Actually, we weren’t even allowed to think that. If you inhaled enough toleration of the intolerable, then you were well on your way to the opium of political correctness.

All those years ago in the classroom, it was clear to me how dangerous it would be if we didn’t insist that newcomers signed up to our social norms. What was going to happen if we were nervous of offending them, not the other way around? This week, over Liverpool, the sky was dark not with rain clouds but with chickens coming home to roost.

Rochdale girls who were living in what is imaginatively known as “care” were recruited into sexual factory farming by Muslim men described as “pure evil” by detectives. The 59-year-old ringleader was banned from court for calling the judge a “racist bastard”. His barrister explained that his client “had objected from the start to being tried by an all-white jury. He believes his convictions have nothing to do with justice but result from the faith and race of the defendants.” In other words, a racist who treats poor white girls as sub-human seriously believes it is he who is the victim of racism, when he is called to account for organising the gang-rape of under-age females. To be fair, it takes 40 years of well-intentioned multiculturalism to achieve that kind of moral mess.

The layers of denial run so deep that it’s important to try to be clear where we can. First, it is an insult to Hindus, Sikhs and decent, integrated Muslims to classify those brutes under the catch-all title of “Asian males”. All but one are Pakistani Muslims who come from a patriarchal peasant culture that obviously regards young white British girls as easy meat. Those children were considered fair game for degrading sexual acts on an almost industrial scale. The men took a calculated gamble that no one gave a damn about the girls. And you know the worst thing? They were right.

The number of adolescents “passed around” like a congenial hookah pipe by the gang is believed to be more than 50. There were 631 documented cases of abuse over a five-year period, and many will have been too afraid to tell their story. Some may not even be alive to tell it. We will never know the full extent of their pain.

Nazir Afzal, Chief Crown Prosecutor for North West England, who at least had the guts to bring the case to court after social workers and the police turned away for fear of being seen as racist, admitted that “imported cultural baggage” played a role in the crimes. That’s the same baggage that brought quaint customs like forced marriages, honour killing and female genital mutilation to these isles.
Crucially, Mr Afzal says that what defined the convicted men was their attitude to the opposite sex. “They think that women are some lesser beings. The availability of vulnerable young white girls is what has drawn men to them… These girls were on the streets at midnight. It made them easy prey for evil men.”

So the case turns out to be a tale of two cultures. On the one hand, we have white girls, raised in a godless, under-parented, over-sexualised society, who have little respect for themselves or their bodies and – even worse – no adults taking responsibility. On the other, we have a different kind of “respect”, the warped creed of a sub-section of unreconstructed, brutally over-parenting men. Their own daughters and young female relatives must not be violated or they will lose their market value, so why not take out your sexual frustration on the despised native slappers instead? It’s as simple as that.

It’s not just the Pakistani men who considered their prey to be beneath contempt. “I think the attitude of the local authorities for many years was that these chaotic girls were not held in very high regard,” explains Simon Danczuk, the MP for Rochdale, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t know if it’s political correctness, but the attitude was, 'These are the life choices the girls are making’.”
Life choices? Dear God, they were raped for years. One girl left a letter for the staff at her children’s home saying she was being abused. It was ignored. So the poor kid wrote another. It was only when a teacher spotted that one pupil was pregnant and a suspicious number of Asian-looking men were picking her up at the school gate that the alarm was raised.

I spoke to Mr Danczuk yesterday, and he strenuously disputes claims that this is a one-off case, or even a recent phenomenon. The grooming of white girls by a small sub-section of the Pakistani community was being discussed in Blackburn council 15 years ago. Recently, the MP was outraged when male relatives of the accused in a similar child-sex case came to his constituency surgery to ask for support. “They spoke about white women in an exceptionally derogatory way. I nearly threw them out.”

While the majority of Asian men in Rochdale are “extremely respectful towards women”, Simon Danczuk laughs at the view of Keith Vaz that “this was not a race issue”. One can only marvel at the skill of the optician who continues to supply Mr Vaz, the chairman of the Commons’ home affairs committee, with spectacles of ever-rosier hue.

Mr Vaz warned yesterday that blaming a particular race or religion for grooming young girls for sex “risks opening up a Pandora’s box over race relations”. If he would only take off his goggles for a minute he might spot the National Front supporters strutting their rancid stuff outside the Liverpool courtroom. The intimidation of two Asian barristers to the point where, shockingly, they withdrew from the case suggests that the contents of Pandora’s box are swarming all over the place.

What a relief to hear Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a moderate Muslim youth group, accusing Pakistani community elders of “burying their heads in the sand” over this poisonous problem. He welcomes police intervention and insists that race is “central to the actions” of the criminals. “They think that white teenage girls are worthless and can be abused without a second thought; it is this sort of behaviour that is bringing shame on our community.”

By now, even the most trusting and generous-minded liberals must have woken up to the fact that our fear of being tarred as racist has allowed ugly practices and outmoded attitudes to flourish, hidden away behind a nervous respect for “difference”. Stymied by political correctness, social workers, carers, police, lawyers and council staff all failed to protect those young Rochdale girls.

They were victims twice over. First, of the despicable men who traded and abused them, and second, of our well-meaning, foolish and deadly desire to avoid the issue of race at any cost. They deserved better.

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Taxing jobs out of existence

By
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
May 10, 2012

Bloomington, Ind. -

Bill Hewlett and David Packard, tinkering in a California garage, began what became Hewlett-Packard. Steve Jobs and a friend built a computer in the California garage that became Apple’s birthplace. Bill Cook had no garage, so he launched Cook Medical in a spare bedroom in an apartment in this university town. Half a century ago, in flight from Chicago’s winters, he settled here and began making cardiovascular catheters and other medical instruments. One thing led to another, as things have a way of doing when the government stays out of the way, and although Cook died last year, Cook Medical, with its subsidiaries, is the world’s largest family-owned medical devices company.

In 2010, however, Congress, ravenous for revenue to fund Obamacare, included in the legislation a 2.3 percent tax on gross revenue — which generally amounts to about a 15 percent tax on most manufacturers’ profits — from U.S. sales of medical devices beginning in 2013. This will be piled on top of the 35 percent federal corporate tax, and state and local taxes. The 2.3 percent tax will be a $20 billion blow to an industry that employs more than 400,000, and $20 billion is almost double the industry’s annual investment in research and development.

An axiom of scarcity is understood by people not warped by working for the federal government, which can print money when it wearies of borrowing it. The axiom is: A unit of something — time, energy, money — spent on this cannot be spent on that. So the 2.3 percent tax, unless repealed, will mean not only fewer jobs but also fewer pain-reducing and life-extending inventions — stents, implantable defibrillators, etc. — which have reduced health-care costs.

The tax might, however, be repealed. The medical device industry is widely dispersed across the country, so numerous members of Congress have constituencies affected by developments such as these:

Cook Medical is no longer planning to open a U.S. factory a year. Boston Scientific, planning for a more than $100 million charge against earnings in 2013, recently built a $35 million research and development facility in Ireland and is building a $150 million factory in China. (Capital goes where it is welcome and stays where it is well-treated.) Stryker Corp., based in Michigan, blames the tax for 1,000 layoffs. Zimmer, based in Indiana, is laying off 450 and taking a $50 million charge against earnings. Medtronic expects an annual charge against earnings of $175 million. Covidien, now based in Ireland, has cited the tax in explaining 200 layoffs and a decision to move some production to Costa Rica and Mexico.

Already 235 members of the House of Representatives — 227 Republicans and eight Democrats — are co-sponsors of a bill to repeal the tax. Twenty-three Republican senators but no Democratic senators favor repeal. The Democrats who imposed this tax on a single manufacturing sector justified this discrimination by saying Obamacare would be a boon to the medical devices industry because, by expanding insurance coverage, it would stimulate demand for devices. But those insured because of Obamacare will be disproportionately young and not needing, say, artificial knees. And well before Obamacare, the law had long required hospitals to provide devices to the needy who are uninsured.

Unsurprisingly, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) supports repeal of the tax. Surprisingly, so does his opponent, Elizabeth Warren, an impeccably liberal Obamacare enthusiast who notes that in Massachusetts the medical devices industry has 24,000 employees and accounts for 13 percent of the state’s exports. Warren is experiencing another episode of New England remorse: “When Congress taxes the sale of a specific product through an excise tax . . . it too often disproportionately impacts the small companies with the narrowest financial margins and the broadest innovative potential.”

Well, yes. In 1990, when President George H.W. Bush’s recanted his “no new taxes” pledge, he enabled the Democratic-controlled Congress, with a legion of New England liberals in the lead, to impose a 10 percent tax on yachts costing more than $100,000. Yacht sales plunged 70 percent in six months, a third of all yacht-building companies — many in New England — stopped production and more than 20,000 workers lost their jobs. In 1993, the tax, although not the damage, was repealed.

Given humanity’s fallen condition, almost everyone’s tax policy is: “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that fellow behind the tree.” There are, however, vulnerable wealth-and-job creating businesses behind most trees.

georgewill@washpost.com
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Craven and Pusillanimous at the Chronicle

By Roger Kimball
http://pjmedia.com/
May 9, 2012


The Chronicle of so-called higher education, that is.

On April 30, Naomi Schaefer Riley wrote a column for “Brainstorm,” the Chronicle’s blog, called “The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations [1].” When I say that there was nothing new in Ms. Riley’s column, I do not mean to disparage it. No: it is a splendid piece, a public service, really. It performs exactly the same service as the child in Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Everyone knows, though few have the temerity to say, that “Black Studies” is an awful confidence game: an exercise in racial grievance mongering utterly without scholarly merit. In this, I hasten to add, it resembles many other pseudo-disciplines invented since the late 1960s to provide a home for intellectually challenged but politically fermenting denizens of our universities: Women’s Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies, Transgender Studies, etc. etc. Kingsley Amis once observed that much that was wrong with twentieth century academia could be summed up in the word “workshop.” “Studies” is the new “workshop.” Take a look at the “dissertations” Ms. Riley describes. They are cringe-making in their awfulness. Consider:
  • “‘So I Could Be Easeful’: Black Women’s Authoritative Knowledge on Childbirth,” by Ruth Hayes. “It began,” Riley writes, “because she ‘noticed that nonwhite women’s experiences were largely absent from natural-birth literature, which led me to look into historical black midwifery.’ How could we overlook the nonwhite experience in ‘natural birth literature,’ whatever the heck that is? It’s scandalous and clearly a sign that racism is alive and well in America, not to mention academia.”
  • Then there is “Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis of the 1970s,” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. “Ms. Taylor believes there was apparently some kind of conspiracy in the federal government’s promotion of single family homes in black neighborhoods after the unrest of the 1960s. Single family homes! The audacity! But Ms. Taylor sees that her issue is still relevant today. . . . She explains that ‘The subprime lending crisis, if it did nothing else, highlighted the profitability of racism in the housing market.’ The subprime lending crisis was about the profitability of racism? Those millions of white people who went into foreclosure were just collateral damage, I guess.”
  • Riley’s pièce de la résistance is a work by La TaSha B. Levy. “Ms. Levy,” the Chronicle writes, “is interested in examining the long tradition of black Republicanism, especially the rightward ideological shift it took in the 1980s after the election of Ronald Reagan. Ms. Levy’s dissertation argues that conservatives like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, John McWhorter, and others have ‘played one of the most-significant roles in the assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.’” Riley asks: “The assault on civil rights? Because they don’t favor affirmative action they are assaulting civil rights? Because they believe there are some fundamental problems in black culture that cannot be blamed on white people they are assaulting civil rights?”
And on it goes. Riley concludes with this sterling bit of advice: “If these young scholars are the future of the discipline, I think they can just as well leave their calendars at 1963 and let some legitimate scholars find solutions to the problems of blacks in America. Solutions that don’t begin and end with blame the white man.” But of course if you subtract the racialism from such works you would be left with… nothing. That’s what they essentially are: politicized exercises in race mongering.

As I say, Riley’s brief column only highlights what we all know to be true about the pseudo-discipline of Black Studies. And what was the upshot of her foray into the forbidden territory of truth about this embarrassing subject? A cataract of outrage from readers of the Chronicle’s blog — almost all of whom are academics — and, in an exhibition of academic editorial independence and courage, a craven apology and dismissal notice from Liz McMillen, the editor of the Chronicle.
Why is it that more and more editors these days seem to respond to any controversial piece — controversial in challenging the reigning political pieties, that is — by public rituals of ostracism?
Their first response to speech they or some of their readers don’t like is to rusticate the offender while loudly assuring the public of their own spotless virtue. Ms. McMillen’s “Note to Readers [2]” is an especially emetic example of the genre. Riley’s column did not, she began, “did not conform to the journalistic standards and civil tone that you expect from us.” Really? In what ways was it deficient, either in substance or tone? Read what Riley says above: her chief sin seems to have been to shine a bit of daylight on the shadowy academic racket.

“We heard you,” Ms. McMillen pleadingly cries to her mob. We heard you and “We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles. As a result, we have asked Ms. Riley to leave the Brainstorm blog.” “Now.” What a world of smarmy evasiveness is contained in the little adverb. Now that the mob is baying for blood, I am happy to chuck the ideal of robust journalism and throw Naomi Riley under the bus. Back when she published it, all was well. (Though I never reviewed it! It was not my fault!) It was only when there was public criticism that my politically correct antennae began to twitch and I found that craven capitulation was the best route to editorial high-mindedness.

Disgusting. Even more craven is Ms. McMillen’s concluding apology “for the distress these incidents have caused our readers.” Are the Chronicle’s readers really such delicate plants? Well, as I say, almost all of them are academics, so the answer is undoubtedly Yes.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has long been receding into semi-senescent irrelevance. This latest episode underscores its moral bankruptcy as well. What a pathetic showing.

[UPDATE: see Riley's splendid op-ed in the WSJ today: "The Academic Mob Rules [3]."]

See also Ron Radosh: How the Academic Establishment has Silenced a Major Critic of the Field of “Black Studies” [4]


Article printed from Roger’s Rules: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball

URL to article: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/05/09/craven-and-pusillanimous-at-the-chronicle/

URLs in this post:

[1] The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations: http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-most-persuasive-case-for-eliminating-black-studies-just-read-the-dissertations/46346



[4] How the Academic Establishment has Silenced a Major Critic of the Field of “Black Studies”: http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball../../ronradosh/2012/05/08/how-the-academic-establishment-has-silenced-a-major-critic-of-the-field-of-black-studies/
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The FBI’s Muslim Outreach Follies

Revisiting the bureau's long history of failure.

By Patrick Poole
http://pjmedia.com/
May 9, 2012


When FBI Director Robert Mueller testifies today for a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing [1], undoubtedly he will be questioned about the FBI’s ongoing “Islamophobia” purge [2].
Specifically, members of Congress are concerned about the FBI’s continued secrecy [3] regarding the identity of the three outside subject matter experts (SME) the bureau brought in to help with the purge (two other SMEs from inside the FBI assisted). One reason for congressional skepticism about the FBI’s use of these outside SMEs is that the bureau has an extensive history of failure when vetting Muslim outreach partners.

In June 2002, Director Mueller took fire [4] for a speech to the American Muslim Council (AMC), which his spokesman described [5] as “the most mainstream Muslim group in the United States.” During his speech Mueller asked the group [6] for their help in fighting terrorism. But the head of AMC at the time was Abdurahman Alamoudi, who was videotaped [7] in October 2000 delivering a speech just yards away from the White House, proclaiming: “I have been labeled by the media in New York as being a supporter of Hamas. We are all supporters of Hamas. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.”

That same year, AMC board advisor and former acting President [4] Jamil Al-Amin was arrested for murdering a Georgia police officer. Alamoudi was arrested [8] in 2003 in a Libyan assassination plot targeting the Saudi crown prince, and was later identified [9] by the U.S. Treasury as one of al-Qaeda’s top fundraisers [10] in the United States.

At the time of Mueller’s speech in 2002, Alamoudi had been under investigation by the FBI for almost a decade for funneling money [11] between Osama bin Laden and “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman. During the AMC conference at which Mueller spoke, Alamoudi approached [12] Jewish Forward D.C. bureau chief Eli Kintisch are warned him that it might not be “good for your health” to remain at the event (ironically, during a panel discussion on “American Muslims and the Media”), prompting the reporter to leave.

In October 2003, just days before a ceremony honoring Detroit Muslim leader Imad Hamad and bestowing on him the Director’s Award for exceptional public service, the FBI contacted Hamad to tell him he wasn’t receiving the award [13]. The FBI initially claimed they had decided to give the award to a victim of the 9/11 terror attacks, but later an FBI spokesman revealed that unflattering information about Hamad had been made public during the deportation proceedings for one of his close associates.

In fact, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) fought for two decades to deport Hamad for his suspected support for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist organization. That information had come to light not due to any checking or vetting by the FBI, but thanks to an article published [14] by the New York Post days before Hamad was stripped of the award. In recent days, Hamad has been quoted [15] encouraging the FBI’s ongoing “Islamophobia” purge.

During the trial of Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian, the terror leader’s attorney attempted to subpoena evidence of meetings and conversations that Al-Arian had with high-ranking officials at the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the speaker of the House of Representatives, and even the White House. Al-Arian had gained access [16] to the highest levels of the U.S. government despite having been subject to FISA wiretap warrants [17] since the early 1990s and having his home raided in 1995. As part of a plea deal [18], Al-Arian admitted [19] to being part of the leadership structure of the terrorist group and knowingly supporting the terrorist organization.

In 2008, Mueller handed [20] one of his Director’s Community Leadership Awards to Imam Yahya Hendi, who had testified [21] during Al-Arian’s trial as a defense witness. According to testimony [22] delivered to the 9/11 Commission, Hendi had served as a moderator during a 2000 fundraiser for the Benevolence International Foundation, which was shut down in November 2002 by the U.S. government and designated [23] a terrorist organization for its support of al-Qaeda and several other Islamic terrorist groups.

The FBI has a long history of partnering [24] with groups accused of supporting Islamic terrorism. Among the first groups appointed [25] to the FBI’s Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Advisory Council following the 9/11 attacks was the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). After CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator [26] in the largest terrorism financing trial in American history, an FBI agent testified [27] during that trial that CAIR was a front for the terrorist group Hamas. Federal prosecutors also told [28] a federal court: “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists.” The FBI was publicly forced to sever ties [29] with CAIR.

As I reported exclusively [30] here at PJ Media last year, top FBI officials have continued to meet unofficially with CAIR, even to the point of working to conceal [31] their ongoing relationship. This is despite CAIR warning its members last year to avoid speaking [32] with the FBI.

Another story I broke [33] in September 2010 detailed the inclusion of known Hamas cleric Kifah Mustapha. As part of a six-week FBI Citizens’ Academy, he was treated to guided tours of the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), FBI Headquarters, and the FBI Academy at Quantico. Mustapha’s participation in the FBI program came after he was personally named [34] an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial and his appointment as a Muslim chaplain to the Illinois State Police had been revoked [35] (a background check revealed his terrorist ties and support [36]).

After the publication of my report, the FBI doubled-down [37] on its support of Mustapha, dismissing his extensive Hamas connections and calling him an important Chicago-area Muslim leader. But when Mueller was asked [38] about it following a speech he gave a week later, he refused to answer questions [39] about Mustapha’s participation in the program. Court documents filed by the Chicago U.S. Attorney’s Office in response to Mustapha’s discrimination lawsuit [40] against the Illinois State Police revealed that the special agent in charge of the Chicago FBI field office — the same office that had sponsored the Hamas cleric in the FBI Citizens’ Academy — had warned the state police that Mustapha would never be able [41] to pass a background check for a similar position with the FBI. Yet the FBI’s own website [42] states that a background check and interim security clearance are necessary for participation in the FBI Citizens’ Academy.

When Time featured a profile [43] on Mohamed Majid — imam of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center and current president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) — in November 2005, it highlighted Majid’s award [44] from the FBI for “the imam’s cooperation in the war on terror,” claiming that “Majid regularly tips off the bureau.” But in a letter [45] to the ADAMS Center community the day after the Time article appeared, Majid told his mosque members that he did no such thing (the letter has now been taken down from the ADAMS Center website, but is still available [45] through Internet Archive).

Majid made clear that he never reported on anyone in the Muslim community, and his relationship with the FBI was one-sided, with the outreach meetings intended “solely to create avenues to work with law enforcement to preserve our civil liberties and civil rights.” It should come as no shock that Majid has recently met with top DOJ officials urging the criminalization of criticism of Islam [46] and has been one of the most vocal cheerleaders for the FBI’s training “Islamophobia” purge, meeting at least twice [47] with FBI Director Mueller on the topic.

Last September, Mohamed Elibiary was given [48] the FBI’s Louis E. Peters Memorial Award in a ceremony at Quantico for his help with the FBI as a “deradicalizer” within the Muslim community. But the two cases that Elibiary trumpets — the case of five D.C. kids who went to Pakistan to fight U.S. troops, and that of “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — are cases of his “deradicalization” subjects jumping headlong into terrorism, not away from it.

Questions were raised in October 2010 when Elibiary was appointed [49] to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council in light of his previous appearance at a Dallas conference honoring Ayatollah Khomeini [50], his defense [51] of jihadist ideological godfather Sayyid Qutb, and his veiled threats [52] against the life of Dallas Morning News editor Rod Dreher.

As I reported here exclusively at PJ Media back in October, Elibiary was caught downloading documents [53] from a secure DHS server, which he then tried to market to a left-leaning publication claiming they represented a pattern of Islamophobia by the Texas Department of Public Safety. I subsequently reported that Elibiary’s non-profit organization had its tax exempt status revoked [54] for failing to file the required IRS Form 990s. Elibiary continues to work with the FBI and serve on the DHS Advisory Council today, and he too has been an outspoken advocate of the ongoing “Islamophobia” purge. He was described in one article [55] as the “FBI’s Key Muslim Ally” and complained that “bigoted briefings make my job harder.”

The FBI’s Muslim outreach hasn’t always gone as planned, such as during the March 2008 Community Relations Executive Seminar Training (CREST) program hosted by the Ohio chapter of CAIR. During the session tempers reportedly flared [56] and the three FBI agents addressing the crowd barely escaped violence. More recently, an FBI outreach event in Seattle intended to improve communications and to build trust with the Muslim community grew heated [57] when attendees complained that the FBI’s presentation focused too much on Islamic terrorism, and that a slide on state-sponsored terrorism showed a picture of former Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini.

Unfortunately, the above are just a small selection from the FBI’s Muslim outreach follies. But they are representative of the ongoing failure by the FBI under Director Mueller’s tenure to properly vet their outreach partners.

With these episodes in mind, the concerns expressed by members of Congress — concerns regarding the FBI’s selection of outside SMEs chosen to purge their training programs and materials for supposed “Islamophobia,” and the FBI’s refusal to divulge the names of the SMEs claiming such information is classified — are reasonably rooted in the bureau’s long history of Muslim outreach failure.

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[44] highlighted Majid’s award: http://www.time.com/time/photoessays/imam_america/
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