From your friends at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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After the arrests of two University of South Florida students in early August, CAIR-Tampa executive director Ahmed Bedier cried foul.| ...To Bedier, at least from what he has said, the arrests were nothing but a case of racism or, as he put it, “racial profiling.” He stated, “Obviously their heritage and background is playing a major role in blowing this out of proportion.” And “We believe that there’s an overreaction that [is] happening here just because of their Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds...” |
| ...deputies pulled over 21 year old Youseff Megahed and 24 year old Ahmed Mohamed for speeding... Deputies then noticed what are being called suspicious items. [Authorities said] the men told deputies they had items in the car for making fireworks... |
| U.S. authorities have refused Egyptian embassy officials access to two engineering students held on explosives charges in the U.S. state of South Carolina, Egypt's state news agency said on Saturday. The two Egyptian students, Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed and Youssef Samir Megahed, are charged with transporting explosive materials across state lines without permits. "U.S. authorities have refused to allow the Egyptian embassy and cultural office in the United States to contact them," news agency MENA reported... MENA quoted Egyptian embassy sources as saying that Egyptian officials had repeatedly tried to contact the students, but that U.S. authorities were "evading" their requests. MENA said authorities would either say that the students did not want to talk to the embassy, or would give incorrect information about where they were being held... |
Surge working: top US general THE US troop surge in Iraq has thrown al-Qa'ida off balance and produced a dramatic reduction in sectarian killings and a drop in roadside bombings... David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, said the build-up of American forces in Baghdad since late January had produced positive outcomes. These included the killing or capture of al-Qa'ida fighters, causing the terrorist group to lose influence with local Sunnis."...we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress and we believe al-Qa'ida is off balance at the very least," he said. ...Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, after being briefed by General Petraeus in Baghdad, said he now had a clear picture of progress in Iraq. He said John Howard and Mr Bush would discuss future military requirements for the conflict when they met at the APEC summit in Sydney next week... "Our support for continuing support and involvement in Iraq is a minority position but we have a moral responsibility to these people to see this job through," Dr Nelson said... |
IT'S OFFICIAL: We live in a republic of fear... Photos, which spread across the city and state last week, showed two Middle Eastern-looking men accused of seeming suspicious on state ferries... A ferry crew member (who took the photos) and the FBI (which released them) didn't lose sleep over the guilt or innocence of the men in the snapshots... And why should they? The authorities had fear as an ally. They blithely enlisted a fearful public to do their bidding -- to be dutiful patriots and report them.The two men in question could have been innocents on vacation. Or they could have been mistaken for another pair of dark-complexioned guys seen wandering ferries... |
| Robert, How many Muslim-Americans do you think take the ferries? Two? And both were unfairly targeted by the FBI? This pair was identified on six different runs, they repeatedly attempted to gain access to secure areas, took pictures of bulkheads and other elements of the structure and employees, and -- in general -- acted like terrorists who were preparing for an attack. And, let me guess, you'd be the first person to pillory the Feds had a ferry gone up in a fiery explosion and killed scores of innocents. Brilliant work, Robert, I'm sure the Pulitzer committee will be calling momentarily.
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The Politico's Ben Smith has transformed himself into a world-class dissembler with his latest defense of the Clintons in the Hsu affair.| So is the Hsu story more sinister because Norman Hsu, the controversial donor, is Chinese-American, born in Hong Kong? ...But the Republican National Committee has been pushing this angle pretty hard, and apparently attempting to revive the — never proven — allegations of a Chinese "spy ring" buying its way into the 1996 Clinton campaign. ...This morning, [the RNC] e-mailed [a] transcript of an interview between the Wall Street Journal's John Fund and Alan Colmes:
Nothing conclusive came out of those 1990s investigations. |
In this position at the DNC, Huang raised $3.4 million. The DNC was later forced to return nearly $2 million when a Congressional investigation revealed "problems" with the source of the funds. Huang was later convicted of crimes related to illegally reimbursing campaign contributions with Asian funds. Riady was also convicted of related campaign finance crimes. A U.S. Senate campaign finance report stated that Riady had a, "long-term relationship with... Chinese intelligence."
Remember those two jamokes caught speeding near a military installation in South Carolina? Messrs. Megahed and Mohamed were arrested for possession of explosive devices. In conjunction with that arrest, a search of a Tampa home linked to two of the FBI's most wanted terrorists was executed.
Tampa Bay Online is reporting that a federal grand jury has requested DNA and hair samples from Youssef Megahed. If anyone knows the reason for the request, they're not talking.
Jawa speculates that the only reason the grand jury would need DNA is to match it with evidence collected in some other plot. But what would that entail? Does it have something to do with the house in Tampa?

The URL the phishing message attempts to reach is http://paraplan.lipetsk.ru/cpg134/albums/edit/images/index.php. I've got a hunch that isn't a US government site.
It makes me want to submit a question to the GOP candidates for the Fox debate:
Election records show that six members of the Paw family have donated a total of $200,000 to Democratic candidates since 2005, including nearly $50,000 to Hillary Clinton. All six list their address as a 1,280-square-foot house that they recently refinanced for nearly $300,000. William Paw, the head of the household, is a 64-year-old mail carrier who earns around $49,000 annually. His wife, also 64, lists her occuption as a homemaker.
The Jebediah Hankee family: nearly $50,000 since 2005 and use of the family's private jet.
Mr. and Mrs. F. Booger Cunningham and extended family, around $120,000.
Orville "Champ" Prendergrast, $26,500.
Milton Weemus and family, $42,000.
Ebenezer "Running Sores" Pooter, $17,250.
Bubba "Duke" Clampers: around $75,000.
A spokesman for the Council for American-Quaker Relations, Ham Scooper, responded to reporters' questions. When asked if he would condemn organizations that use terror to achieve their goals, Scooper said "It's not our job to go around denouncing... we're not in the business of condemning."
* Over at Daily Kos, a diarist asserts that "George W. Bush's Property Should Be Seized."| Note: apparently aware of this embarrassing secretion, Kos or his editors have purged the entry. This raises an interesting dichotomy: Kos routinely has to censor his diarists when they become out-and-out deranged, an all-too-frequent occurrence; LGF, on the other hand, has never deleted a single post to my knowledge. |
| Though present-day Jews and Christians are not all saints, there is no getting around the fact that neither of those religions has sprouted a contemporary movement aimed at world domination to be achieved by terror and war. |
* I Can't Believe It's Not Sausage!
* Buckeye Fish Brittle
* Somalia's Finest Anchovies
* "National Security" Democrats
The deported Elvira Arellano continues to speak out despite her cruel and unusual residency south o' the border:| Having returned to Michoacán after ten years of having worked in the USA without documentation, Elvira Arellano demanded that the government of Mexico take a firm position and protest against the hate and racism that exists in the USA toward all 12 million or more of its undocumented workers from Mexico, who every single day face raids, deportation, and the separation of their famllies. |
| "The United States is the one who broke the law first. By letting people cross over without documents. By letting people pay taxes." |
We get it, Elvira. America shouldn't have worn tight-fitting clothes and high heels. Because, in so doing, America was asking to be violated.| "I believe in my heart that the people of this nation do not, in their hearts, want to destroy our lives, our families and our communities." |
But her love for her son doesn't appear to quite outweigh his value as a political tool. Just one more question, Elvira: which of our laws are okay to break and which are not?
| With both legs badly bruised from a vicious beating, Shaher Abu Oda can only move around with a painful shuffle. In the town of Beit Hanoun, on Palestine's Gaza strip, however, he is just one of many young men bearing limps, plaster casts, and stitches - the black and blue aftermath of an unprecedented crackdown on dissent by the strip's new rulers, the Islamist group Hamas... Its officials snatched Mr Abu Oda off the streets two weeks ago as he was trying to find his younger brother Miqbil, himself badly beaten after club-wielding Hamas policemen broke up a wedding party. The revellers' crime had been to sing a few songs associated with the Fatah party, the rival Palestinian faction which Hamas ousted from the Gaza Strip two months ago. "They threw me in a room," said Mr Abu Oda. "From 11.30 to 3.30 in the morning, they came in every 15 minutes and beat me with sticks, fists, kicks, and a black leather crop." ...human rights groups and ordinary Gazans say Hamas is committing exactly the same crimes as its Fatah predecessors, whose corruption and brutality were one of the main reasons why support for Hamas grew. "We are receiving reports of political detentions every day," said Mahmoud Abu Rahma, of the Gaza City-based Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights. "Hamas is conducting wide sweeps and interrogations to collect information. The interrogations include harsh treatment, and in many cases, torture and beatings..." |

| Hamas militiamen tried to arrest a prominent Palestinian journalist late Saturday, but left the scene at the urging of Hamas political leaders... The attempted arrest of Agence France Press reporter Sakher Abu El Oun came a day after Hamas beat a group of journalists covering a demonstration protesting the Islamic militant group's rule in the Gaza Strip... |

| Hamas security officers opened fire after protesters hurled rocks at them in the Gaza Strip yesterday in the biggest demonstration against the Islamist group since it seized control of the territory in June... Demonstrators chanted "jihad, jihad" as they marched down the streets of Gaza City, applauding as others smashed an unmanned Hamas security post on the roadside. Dozens of protesters threw rocks at a security post the Executive Force commandeered during the brief civil war against Fatah fighters two months ago... |
Democratic House Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina has to be so disappointed. After all, he told the Washington Post last month that good reports in Iraq would be "a real big problem for us" Democrats... Good news for Iraq = bad news — "a real big problem for us" — for Democrats.What sort of idiots put themselves in such a fundamentally flawed position? Oh yea, Democrats. |
FBI and Department of Homeland Security sources tell me they're concerned about a strange incident in Washington state they fear may indicate terrorists are casing ferries for attacks. The FBI's Seattle division this week made the extremely rare move -- with full approval of the bureau's counterterrorism division in D.C. -- of releasing photos of two men who allegedly have been spotted on up to six different ferry runs... The pair, who have not yet been identified or apprehended for questioning, tried to access restricted areas on the ferries, which haul 26 million people a year [and] that the suspects were "taking photographs of doors not seabirds..."...sources say that the suspicious actions of the men... is disquieting because of the present heightened threat this summer and the unresolved question of who the men are and why they were trying to photograph the ferries' inner workings and procedures. The case has risen to the top of daily intel briefings in recent days, including at the FBI field office in New York, a source said... |
The Seattle office of the Council on American-Quaker Relations (CAQR-Seattle) today expressed concern over the potential for racial and religious profiling in a new security initiative by the FBI and US Coast Guard. The initiative focuses on publishing photos of "suspicious" passengers and objects. "The Seattle Quaker community is generally supportive of all reasonable security measures necessary to ensure the safety of our citizens," Said Benjamin Ostrow, CAQR-Seattle's Director of Communications. "All of us feel safer knowing the authorities are proactive in their attempts to root out the terrorist threat, even though it is overblown." Ostrow did caution against the use of racial and religious profiling in carrying out the new security measures."Previous practices have shown that profiling promises persistent and pernicious paranoia in the profiled parties. We ask that the FBI persist in its promise to prohibit any pertinent profiling policies.'" |