The Political Conundrum!

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=110601&sectionid=351020403

In a rare fatal incident, two American troops have drowned in Afghanistan, while trying to recover equipment from a northwestern river, security officials say.

The soldiers died on Wednesday, while trawling in the Badghis province’s Bala-Murghab River for lost supply packages, the area’s Deputy Police Chief Mohammed Jabbar told a Press TV correspondent.

The supplies were lost as a US aircraft was dropping caissons and food parcels on the troops’ base.

It is such a waste and so sad that these two brave Sergeants had to die this way. It either goes to show how important those supplies were that one of them risked his life to retrieve them from a fast-moving river or that he was that dedicated to being a soldier and making sure no supplies were lost. It does show that one soldier cared so much about his “battle-buddy” that he ignored the risks and jumped in after his buddy to save him, but lost his own life.

It is stories like this that make me want to work harder at what I do, as I work with the folks that have influence in the technologies into making sure that supply drops are more accurate and don’t end up in a tragedy like this. I feel for the families of these brave and courageous young men.

An October 2009 shootout at a warehouse in Dearborn, Michigan, claimed the life Luqman Abdullah, the imam of Detroit’s Masjid al-Haqq, and in the process garnered national attention. Abdullah had been a Detroit representative to al-Ummah, which the Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA) describes as “an association of mosques in several cities in the U.S. that coordinates religious and social services primarily in the Black American community.” In contrast, a criminal complaint filed by an FBI special agent describes al-Ummah as “a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African-Americans.

The shootout occurred during an FBI raid designed to disrupt a variety of illegal activities being carried out by Abdullah and at least ten of his associates—activities that were uncovered by an undercover investigation stretching back for about three years, and a series of transactions pursuant to a Group I Undercover Operation. According to local news reports, the shooting came after FBI agents and police from the Joint Terrorism Task Force “surrounded a warehouse and trucking firm on Miller Road near Michigan Avenue where Abdullah and four of his followers were hiding.”

Abdullah did not surrender when ordered to; instead, he opened fire. He was shot to death, as was an FBI K-9, a three-year-old Belgian Malinois named Freddy. Although press reports do not detail how the dog was shot, it is common practice for the FBI to introduce a K-9 to “locate and detain” a suspect who refuses to surrender. The four men with Abdullah did lay down their arms and allow themselves to be arrested, although the DOJ’s press release leaves some ambiguity as to whether they did so before or after Abdullah was killed.

The FBI has arrested ten of Abdullah’s associates, most of whom were members of his mosque and the al-Ummah movement. Three of them—Yassir Ali Khan, Mohammad Philistine, and Abdullah’s son Mujahid Carswell—were arrested in Windsor, Ontario, to which they fled following the raids. Windsor is located directly across from Detroit, over the U.S.-Canada border.

The arrested men face charges that include conspiracy to receive and sell goods that the defendants believed were stolen from interstate shipments, conspiracy to commit mail fraud through an insurance scam involving arson, providing firearms to a known convicted felon, and tampering with motor vehicle identification numbers to further the theft of a vehicle.

The Al-Ummah Movement

Al-Ummah is either a splinter from, or a cover for, the Darul Islam movement. One commonality between the two movements is the leadership of Jamil al-Amin, who was formerly known as 1960s firebrand H. Rap Brown. Though al-Amin is reportedly still considered al-Ummah’s leader by the group’s members, he has not been involved in day-to-day operations for some time: he is currently serving a life sentence at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, following his 2002 conviction for shooting two police officers in Georgia.

In May 2009 in Alabama, Luqman Abdullah claimed while under surveillance that al-Amin had created al-Ummah out of fear of government interference. Two years before Abdullah became part of the movement, several Darul members were killed in a shooting in New York. “Jamil Al-Amin said they had to divide the group because having too many people in one organization made them an easy target,” the criminal complaint against Abdullah recounts. “According to Abdullah, the group is still Dar-Ul, but this is not widely known because of the United States government. The Ummah is a cover name for Dar-Ul.”

The full article, co-written by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, can be read at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies web site. This is an excerpt from the upcoming issue of CTR Vantage, titled "The Luqman Abdullah Shooting and Cause Célèbre Islam."

A New York-based Muslim extremist group known for its unabashed support for violence against Jews and others posted a link on its website Tuesday branding American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) Executive Director, M. Zuhdi Jasser, a "murtad," or apostate. Being labeled an apostate – a Muslim who renounces Islam – is a very serious accusation, often resulting in a death sentence in many places throughout the Muslim world. And while this is not a certainty in all cases and contexts, it is troubling that Revolution Muslim (RM) thought it acceptable to bestow upon themselves the license to label a pious Muslim as such.

And it's not the first time the group has slurred Jasser this way.

RM's latest attack against Jasser came in reaction to a video, originally posted by AIFD, showing him and U.S. Representative Keith Ellison (D-MN) engaged in a Capitol Hill forum about Islam's internal struggle against radicalism. Rather than assessing the complete debate, RM elected to post just one segment (of nine) where, it says Ellison "gives the Murtad Zubi [sic.] Jasser a schooling." We at IPT News must have heard something completely different when we attended and reported on the forum last month.

Jasser, a Navy veteran, is a devout Muslim who challenges radical Islamists and advocates a separation between religion and political ideas such as the spread of Shariah law.

RM's radical reaction is hardly surprising considering the group's record. As noted in an October 2009 Anti-Defamation League (ADL) "backgrounder" on RM, the group has, on numerous occasions, promoted attacks against Jews, Hindus, Americans, and other non-Muslims. In one recent case, "RM posted to its Web site a poem asking God to 'kill the Jews' and listing ways Jews could be hurt, including by burning 'their flammable sukkos while they sleep' and throwing 'liquid drain cleaner in their faces.'" Fox News reports that the post was removed and replaced with a more innocuous article soon after it caught the eye of the NYPD.

Similarly, just last week, RM posted a video on YouTube in which group member Abdullah As-Sayf Jones rants on the streets of New York City to passersby about the justification for Major Nidal Hasan's wanton act of violence at Fort Hood. In an effort to show Hasan's act had the moral upper-hand as compared to U.S. military actions overseas, Jones says:

"This did not take place at a hospital. This was not a civilian target. Not a school, not a hotel, nothing else. This took place at a military base….compared to American military tactics, in which they drive drones over the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, indiscriminately killing Pakistanis. A U.S. drone does not tell the difference [between legitimate targets and civilians]…but yet, here it is, the so-called terrorist making sure specifically to target military targets."

In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting, RM also posted a link to another controversial video – this one put out by a group called AIM Films – in which a man identified as Bilal Abdul-Kareem defends Hasan's killing spree as an act against an enemy in a state of war, rather than a criminal or terrorist act.

RM's mission, as stated on its website, includes uniting the "Muslim world…under the banner of Islam." In pursuing this mission, RM regularly pushes the limits of 1st Amendment freedom of speech protections in showing support for violence. This strategy is very similar to yet another New York-based group, with whom RM shares membership and often cooperates: the Islamic Thinkers Society (ITS). ITS, "an offshoot of a British group by the name Al Muhajiroun…that supports violence in order to create a global Islamic state," according to the ADL report, has openly shown support for Al Qaeda and has spewed hate against the FBI, CIA, and others.

President Obama predicted that professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be convicted and executed as Attorney General Eric Holder proclaimed: Failure is not an option." Even if a terror suspect were acquitted, Holder said, he would not be released in the United States.

Kurdish political leaders threatened Tuesday to boycott January's national elections unless Kurdish areas receive more seats in parliament, throwing into doubt the vote which could determine how quickly U.S. troops can go home.

U.S. military investigators who examined a collision earlier this year between two Navy vessels in the Persian Gulf say the accident was preventable and that some submarine crew members habitually fell asleep and spent too much time away from their stations.

President Barack Obama says he won't set a new deadline for closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison, but does expect the facility to shut down sometime next year.

A Newport News man was sentenced to three life terms Tuesday for his role in the murder-for-hire slaying of Naval officer Cory Allen Voss in April 2007.

Richard Martin keeps a rearview mirror on his desk to prevent co-workers from startling him in his cubicle. The walls are papered with sticky notes to help him remember things, and he wears noise-canceling headphones to keep his easily distracted mind focused.

Richard Martin keeps a rearview mirror on his desk to prevent co-workers from startling him in his cubicle. The walls are papered with sticky notes to help him remember things, and he wears noise-canceling headphones to keep his easily distracted mind focused.