After pressure from British and American officials YouTube says it has taken down the videos of the Al Qaida cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Awlaki was born and raised in America, but now lives in Yemen. He is believed to be linked to the recent package bombs, the Ft. Hood shootings, the Christmas day "underwear bomber," and the plot to detonate a car bomb in Times Square. The New York Times quotes YouTube spokeswoman Victoria Grand.
Ms. Grand said that Google, YouTube’s owner, sought to balance freedom of expression with averting calls to violence. “These are difficult issues,” she wrote, “and material that is brought to our attention is reviewed carefully. We will continue to remove all content that incites violence according to our policies. Material of a purely religious nature will remain on the site.”
Awlaki has hundreds of videos on the site. Videos that British authorities say have already resulted in people turning to violence, including one young woman who stabbed a member of parliament.
Scotland Yard detectives who investigated the attack on the legislator said outside the court that 21-year-old Roshonara Choudhury, a theology student, watched YouTube videos that showed sequences from sermons by Mr. Awlaki in Yemen in which the preacher urged Muslims everywhere to join in a worldwide holy war against the West. In a transcript of her interrogation published by The Guardian, she spoke of watching hundreds of hours of his videos. She said her motive was to “punish” the legislator, Stephen Timms, for voting in 2003 for Britain’s participation in the invasion of Iraq.
Palestinian-American Major Hasan
One of the things that worries authorities the most is people like Ms. Choudhury or Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. They're what they call "lone wolf" terrorists. They aren't part of any organized group, but they get radicalized over the internet and then lash out. Because they are plotting alone it is much harder to stop them.
That is utter, total bullshit about Hasan and others acting as "lone wolves". They were coordinated by Awlaki and his network, aided in the USA by terrorist sympathizers along with their useful idiot friends.
"Washington - A Pakistani-born man (Farooque Ahmed) has been arrested for a plot to bomb subway stations in and around Washington DC on Wednesday.
The Virginia man was indicted on charges that he attempted to aid what he thought were al-Qaida operatives in planning the bombings of several subway stations in the Washington area, according to a Washington Post report."
Britton/AP
Photo taken by Virginia neighbor of ex-New Yorker Farooque Ahmed shows federal agents poised to raid the terror suspect's home.
"Ahmed wanted to kill as many military personnel as possible," the complaint alleges.
Ahmed is the second would-be terrorist from Staten Island arrested this week. Abdel Hameed Shehadeh was charged Tuesday with lying to the feds about attempts to join the Taliban.
For some reason, the above quote is not used very much and "METRO riders" replaces "military personnel".
Other items from the story - In Staten Island, he was registered as a Republican in 2002 (note: something not unheard of from radicals trying to stay below the radar) - His wife, Sahar Mirza, ran the Northern Virginia Meetup.Com group Hip Muslim Moms, under the banner of Moderate Muslim Moms. Some reports say she is from Birmingham, England.
- Farooque Ahmed is the son of a retired Pakistani bank executive.
- Farooque Ahmed is reported to have a LinkedIn profile that matches this one.
In predictable form, Salon asks: Did the FBI cook up a fake bomb plot? without so much as a peek at the FBI's legal complaint. They continue to poo-poo several of the pending cases against alleged terrorists. At least they stop short of theorizing that the FBI placed the gun in the hand of MAJ Hasan to cook up a fake shooting spree.
I agree with others, like Joshua Pundit, that a radical wahabi imam/mosque connection is in this story somewhere waiting to be revealed.
"Thanks to Pamela Geller, an interview has how surfaced in which, after being assured that it has ended, Imam Rauf speaks “off-the-record” and reveals some intriguing plans and views that he has regarding America and the world. Geller got the tapes of the interview from the UK and transcribed the whole thing from start to finish.
The interview, given on June 20th, 2006, sees Rauf speaking about his “game plan” for achieving an Islamic State without borders, which — in his mind — has previously existed and should have continued to exist, if not for Western interference in the last century. The Ground Zero mosque imam also discusses some of his other objectives which include: (1) manipulating U.S. foreign policy, (2) advocating for Hamas and (3) getting “power” on his side to push back the opposing “interests.” In one part of the “post-interview,” he also boasts that he advised and influenced former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and that he has a blurb on the back of one of her books."
Expect B. Hussein Obama to blitz Christian Churches of every stripe, most Sundays and maybe Wednesdays, from now until Novembeer 2012. - John Tagliaferro*
If you are not familiar with Reason's Morning Links, you haven't been reading Suki's posts much. I don't remember the last time I posted anything about them. However I do read them regularly.
After Reason's barrage of Ground Zero Mosque (stories that had little or nothing to do with libertarian issues), that seemed like months but was probably just a few days, my annoyance level has been elevated. Today's morning links diffused that a bit when I spotted one to have some fun with: New poll: One in five Americans believes Barack Obama is a secret Muslim. Unfortunately, Rush was talking about this for over an hour (he is talking about it again now) and I just got to it after hearing his take. I did hear about the poll long before Rush's show came on the air.
What would be the libertarian take on this bit of electorate confusion? I know the Libertarian issue: Barry Hussein Obama is not Bob Barr, the small L issues are many.
First, something Rush observed that dovetails with mine: It really does not matter what Obama's religion is. Unless you are a member of a religious party in the US, it really should not make any difference if he is in a Christian sect, a Muslim sect, Jewish or none of the above. It probably matters greatly to Cosmotarians, in some shallow and meaningless way, but to those of us who value freedom of choice, his personal choices matter not one bit to us.
Rush played some MSNBC audio from a Pew Research Center representative who was being interviewed about the survey. I am going to start with the Washington Post article that Radley Balko linked to. Remember his title? One in five Americans believes Barack Obama is a secret Muslim. In the first paragraph, the Post informs us that this is an increase since B. Hussein Obama entered the presidency. Now that is the makings of a headline! Obama has had more air time in a few months than any other president since television was created. No telling how many internet eyeballs he gets. He is mentioned on this blog regularly too. We report, you do what you want.
So, on the social issue, fit for Entertainment Tonight or the 700 Club (is that still on?) more and more people believe Obama is a Muslim. Soon after the Post informs us that this is a trend, they mention that it could be a political problem! "Rising trend in Obama's Supporters Percieving Him as a Muslim could be a Reelection Problem" might sound a little better and more accurate, but the Post article does not mention Democrats and runs off into 'mean media' conspiracy theory for an answer. For some reason, they mention only Republicans and Independants:
More than a third of conservative Republicans now say Obama is a Muslim, nearly double the percentage saying so early last year. Independents, too, are now more apt to see the president as a Muslim: Among independents, 18 percent say he is a Muslim, up eight percentage points.
Note the interesting phrasing. For Republicans, the percentage doubled in a year. For Independents it went up eight percentage points to 18%. Pretty much double there too. What of the Democrats?
First, I had to dig up the Pew results, since neither the Post nor Reason bothered to link there. From their headline and first paragraph, it is a bit of a stretch to say "one in five" since they cite 12%:
A July Pew Research survey found 12% of Americans continue to say Barack Obama is Muslim, virtually unchanged from 10% in March. This misperception is not limited to voters who oppose Obama. Identical percentages of Republicans and Democrats (12% each) think he is Muslim, and 37% of those who think he's Muslim intend to vote him. A quarter doesn't know, but significantly those who have heard different things back McCain (48% to 33%) while those who just don't know back Obama (48% to 33%).
Ah, Democrat perceptions are identical to Republican and rising at the same rate. I like my headline better :)
What could possibly explain all this? Rush pointed out, he does not attend services like other presidents have. I will add that Bill Clinton only went Church crazy when he was well on his way to his impeachment hearings. Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Bush did not need any prompting to attend and made no secret about attending. Maybe something in Obama's actions is giving people these impressions?
George Stephanopoulos tried to help him out, but a copy of the interview floating around does not help:
Looks like about 1:20 into this clip.
How about other factors? Like running to the rescue of the "Allahu akbar" shouting MAJ Hasan, to the point that command influence may be a major defense strategy. Maybe it is how he jumped into the Cordoba/Project 51 Mosque/recreation center issue? Maybe it was when he gave NASA a new mission, to stop exploring space and help Muslims with math and science? How about all that bowing? Skipping the National Day of Prayer? Phoning in his address to the Boy Scouts? Sending the Ground Zero imam on a vacation at tax-payer expense? The only thing the Post can blame on talk radio is the tendancy for them not to ignore these things like the Post and MSNBC tend to do.
*I have heard similar from others already today.
Something else Reasonkeeps missing on this story. The State Department is funding imam Rauf on his world fund raising tour.
Me, little miss newbie to libertarianism, thinks there should be some sort of libertarian issue in there someplace. You would think I could see it at Reason first, right? Not a chance, unless they start calling the rest of us religious bigots for questioning government money for his little fund raising tour. The Cynical Brilliance of Imam Rauf - Article - National Review Online:
"Then we come to Imam Rauf himself. To his liberal defenders, he is a sort of respectable Deepak Chopra who at respectable places like Aspen mouths pop platitudes of interfaith tolerance — so much so that our own State Department has employed him, apparently for quite some time, for goodwill gallivanting abroad.
But to those in the Middle East, he is known equally well for doing what he can, as a Western liberal, to contextualize terrorism, bin Laden, and Islamic extremism within the tired Western postmodern tropes of cultural relativism: “The United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened” on 9/11; “In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the U.S.A.”; “The U.S. and the West must acknowledge the harm they have done to Muslims before terrorism can end”; “The issue of terrorism is a very complex question”; “The Islamic method of waging war is not to kill innocent civilians. But it was Christians in World War II who bombed civilians in Dresden and Hiroshima, neither of which were military targets” — blah, blah, blah, like all the thinkery that one hears in the faculty lounge."
Dig down deep, America. The controversial imam who refuses to condemn violent jihad groups and is a friend of the Muslim Brotherhood, and who is
behind the plan to build a mosque near Ground Zero, is set to depart on a multi-country jaunt to the Middle East -- courtesy of the State Department and your tax dollars -- raising concerns that taxpayers may be helping to raise the money to meed the controversial project's $100 million fund-raising goal.
Luqman Ameen Abdullah (ed. AKA Christopher Thomas) was killed while exchanging gunfire with federal agents at a warehouse in Dearborn, the U.S. attorney's office said.
The FBI was trying to arrrest Abdullah and 10 followers on numerous charges, including conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms.
Thank you FBI.
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