When Muslims walked off their jobs after demanding JB Swift accommodate prayer times over the observance of Ramadan.

Muslims are back at it in meat plants with a new EEOC lawsuit. Picking up where they left off in September 2008, when Muslims walked off their jobs after demanding JB Swift accommodate prayer times over the observance of Ramadan.

According to the Tribune, about 100 Somalis planned to march to the Swift plant and protest “peacefully”, unlike Friday when there were reports that they rampaged in the plant when told they could not have their break when they wanted it. For background see my posts yesterday here and here.

that Swift has fired 130-150 of the Somali workers who walked off the production line in protest over break times last Friday. We have reported that there was some sort of violence by the Somalis inside the plant that caused the company to ask for police to be on hand when the workers were let out that evening.

The following day, non-Muslim workers, many of them legal Hispanic workers, protested saying that the “Somalis are running our plant.”

At one point, JBS moved up the second-shift dinner break, so that Muslim workers could observe the holiday -- but management was forced to change its position after nearly 400 non-Muslim workers walked off the job, protesting that the company's decision unfairly catered to their peers.

Fast forward to Obama's America. The feds have filed a lawsuit against JB Swift for not submitting to Islam.

Feds say JBS discriminated against Muslim workers

Federal officials said JBS USA’s Grand Island, Neb., beef plant must provide Muslim workers prayer time and not retaliate against those who request it.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Monday filed a lawsuit on behalf of 86 Somali Muslims who were fired after walking off the job during Ramadan of 2008.

“[JBS] has engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination by (1) unlawfully denying reasonable religious accommodation to its Somali Muslim employees; and (2) unlawfully terminating its Somali Muslim employees because of their religion, national origin, and in retaliation for their requests for religious accommodation, and their complaints of denied religious accommodation,” the complaint states.

The suit seeks backpay and other compensation for the workers.

A similar suit was filed in Colorado aimed at JBS USA's Greeley, Colo., beef plant, an EEOC spokeswoman told Meatingplace.

JBS did not respond to requests by Meatingplace for comment.

The company fired the workers in the fall of 2008 for repeatedly walking off the line while bartering for prayer accommodations during Ramadan, a month-long holiday during which worshipers fast from sunrise to sunset.

At one point JBS resolved to move up second-shift dinner break up to 7:45 p.m. from 8 p.m. so Muslim workers could observe the holiday. However, management changed its position after nearly 400 non-Muslim workers walked off the job, protesting that the company's decision unfairly catered to their peers.

The EEOC spokeswoman said the break-time requests the Muslim workers made were within timeframes permissible in their bargaining agreements.

FBI refuses to cave in to Hamas-linked CAIR's intimidation tactics over Spencer invitation

A month after the Hamas-linked Islamic supremacist hate group CAIR tried to intimidate the FBI into apologizing for inviting me to speak in Virginia some time ago, Politico noticed the story and asked the FBI about it. The FBI, which is on to CAIR, wouldn't throw the wolves any red meat.

"FBI defends invitation to Islam critic," by Ben Smith at Politico, August 31:

The FBI is defending its invitation to a prominent critic of Islam in America, who is also one of the leaders of the fight to stop a downtown Manhattan mosque and Islamic Center.

The Council on American Islamic Relations complained late last month that Robert Spencer, who runs the Jihad Watch site and is co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, had spoken to the Tidewater Joint Terrorism Task Force, a combination of state, federal, and local law enforcement centered in Norfolk, Virginia.

Spencer, along with his confrontational stand toward the New York project, has long been at odds with Muslim leaders for alleging links between American Muslim leaders and extremism. He has also been a critic of the religion of Islam itself, suggesting that the historical Mohammed, for instance, did not exist, and that the portrayal of him in the Qaran [sic] is of a "con man."

Highly compressed and tendentious. A fictional con man? This is what happens when ideologically biased reporters in a hurry try to summarize positions they don't understand.

"Our nation's law enforcement personnel should not receive training from the head of a hate group that seeks to demonize Islam and to prevent American Muslims from exercising their rights as citizens," said CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, who also noted that Spencer and blogger Pamela Geller recently published a book subtitled, "The Obama Administration's War on America."

But the chief division for the Norfolk FBI field office, Phil Mann, defended the invitation to Spencer.

"We invite speakers who represent a variety of viewpoints and the special agent in charge of the Norfolk office has invited local Muslim leaders to speak to his staff. That doesn’t mean we enodrse [sic] our [sic] adopt the view of any particular speaker," Mann said. "Broad knowledge is essential for us to better understand and respond to the threats that we face. Knowledge also helps us defeat ignorance and strengthen relationships with the diverse communites that we serve." [...]

Spencer responded to a question about CAIR's attack with a link to his own press release on the matter, dismissing CAIR as a "hate group" and citing praise of his work from prominent conservatives.

Smith doesn't tell his readers, of course, that CAIR operatives have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Nor does he mention that CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case. Or that several of its former officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. Or that two of its other officials have made Islamic supremacist statements. Nor does he mention that CAIR also was involved in the Flying Imams' intimidation suit against the passengers who reported their suspicious behavior.

CAIR's attempt to intimidate the FBI and JTTF and dictate their choice of speakers contained numerous false charges, defamation, distortions, and outright lies about me, SIOA, and Pamela Geller.

CAIR has a long record of duplicity and deception. Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.

Although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to Islamic supremacist and jihad groups. CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR's executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993 where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.

Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror:

* Ghassan Elashi, founder of CAIR's Texas chapter, in 2009 received a 65-year prison sentence for funneling over $12 million from the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation to the jihad terrorist group Hamas, which is responsible for murdering hundreds of Israeli civilians
* Mousa Abu Marzook, a former CAIR official, was in 1995 designated by the U.S. government in 1995 as a "terrorist and Hamas leader." He now is a Hamas leader in Syria.
* Randall Royer, CAIR's former civil rights coordinator, in 2004 began serving a 20-year prison sentence for aiding al-Qaida and the Taliban against American troops in Afghanistan and recruiting for Lashkar e-Taiba, the jihadist group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai jihad massacres.
* Bassem Khafagi, CAIR's former community relations director, was arrested for involvement with the Islamic Assembly of North America, which was linked to al-Qaida. After pleading guilty to visa and bank fraud charges, Khafagi was deported.
* Rabih Haddad, a former CAIR fundraiser, was deported for his work with the Global Relief Foundation (which he co-founded), a terror-financing organization.

In 1998 Omar Ahmad, CAIR's co-founder and longtime Board Chairman, said: "Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth."

After he received unwelcome publicity as a result of this statement, Ahmad denied saying it, several years after the fact. However, the original reporter, Lisa Gardiner of the Fremont Argus, stands by her story.

CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper once said: "I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future."

So I asked Smith why he didn't tell his readers any of this. He responded by saying that he already had told his readers about CAIR, just yesterday, in fact -- and directed me to this piece, which, as you'll see, says nothing about CAIR's Hamas ties or anything else, but instead actually touts CAIR, weirdly, as an "alternative" to Hamas. Smith explained in an email to me: "I understand that you're asking me why I didn't restate the entire case against CAIR, and their response, your response to them, and so on, in my blog item. This is a complaint of a form I get five or ten times a day. I write a blog, and mostly take little bites of stories. I was writing a small item about your appearance -- and your prominence around the mosque issue, and your stance toward obama [sic], make that of modest interest to me, and to readers in general I think, beyond the context of CAIR's complaint -- to speak to the FBI. There are a lot of things I don't write every day, and the history and controversies around CAIR were, indeed, among them."

Every day, or any day. Par for the course for the mainstream media.

Questions Raised About Rauf's Nonexistent Mosque

Questions Raised About Rauf's Nonexistent Mosque

IPT News
September 1, 2010

www.investigativeproject.org

The federal government considers the Muslim group founded by Ground Zero Mosque leader Feisal Abdul Rauf to be a tax-exempt church. But federal records show the group obtained that status by claiming to hold prayer services for up to 500 people in a Manhattan apartment building that has no space to hold that many people.

The application for tax exempt status from the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA) in 1998 claimed the group had an established place of worship at 201 W. 85th St. in New York. That is a 17-floor apartment building.

The 1998 tax filing, called a 1023 form, is required for any institution that wants to be considered a religious house of worship and therefore exempt from taxation. In the filing, Rauf is identified as ASMA's founder. The application said the group was already operating as a prayer center for between 450 and 500 daily worshipers.

ASMA claimed to hold prayer services in this Manhattan apartment building, which has no space for group activity.

However, a review of the building and real estate records indicates there is nowhere in the building to house that many congregants. ASMA lists its office address as 201 W. 85th St., Apt. 10E on the tax form, while it cites only the building address as its location for prayer services.



The building has apartments only and no public spaces, such as a conference or a board room, to accommodate 450 people. Apartment 10E, building records show, is a one-bedroom apartment with about 800 square feet of living space. In the 1997 incorporation records filed with the state of New York, Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, was named as an ASMA director living at that address.

But when ASMA filed for its church status with the IRS, Khan was no longer listed as a director. Instead, Rauf signed the form that said ASMA's address was the same as Khan's apartment – 201 W. 85th St., Apt. 10E.

Rauf was traveling in the Middle East on a State Department-sponsored tour and could not be reached for comment. In an email late Wednesday, Khan claimed the IPT story was inaccurate, but did not specify what she thought was wrong:

"I have received your enquiry, and notice that it includes inaccurate and outdated information. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you can appreciate, we are extremely busy right now and will not be able to provide you with answers by the time of your deadline. I look forward to communicating with you in the future, so that all the facts can be known."

Khan did not respond to a subsequent telephone call seeking details of what she thought was inaccurate.

Since ASMA's creation in 1997, its organizers have listed three separate addresses in their filings with state and local governments, records show.

When Rauf and Khan first filed their incorporation papers with the state of New York in July 1997, the group was called the American Sufi Muslim Association (ASMA). Its address was 227 78th St., North Bergen, N.J. That was Rauf's home.

A year later, when ASMA filed for tax-exempt religious status from the IRS, it cited the 201 W. 85th St. address in New York. Khan, however, was no longer listed as an ASMA director in the 1998 IRS filing.

Eight years later, when the group filed records with New York State to formally change its name to the American Society for Muslim Advancement, it listed the North Bergen, N.J., address.

Finally, a Feb. 2, 2008, filing with New York State lists ASMA's address as 475 Riverside Dr. in New York. That's an office building called the Interchurch Center, which is home to many religious groups.

Just as Rauf and Khan now say they want to build a mosque and cultural center to house worshipers two blocks from the site of the former World Trade Center, they said in the 1998 tax filing that they wanted to build a larger prayer facility:

"ASMA intends to continue its present activities, as well as to expand its services by establishing a permanent large scale prayer center in New York City," the group reported in its 1998 filing for tax-exempt status. "The center will include a mosque (prayer place) where every Friday and daily large congregation prayers and meditation centers will be held."

ASMA records don't indicate that the center was ever built. The group's corporate filings and website only show the 475 Riverside Dr. address.

Instead of leading prayers at a building controlled by ASMA, Rauf was the imam at the al-Farah mosque in lower Manhattan, about 10 blocks from the site of the proposed mosque and community center. In an interview posted on the ASMA web site, Rauf said he started preaching at al-Farah in 1983.

A search of ASMA's web site shows that Rauf and other group officials led no prayers at any ASMA offices or prayer centers. Instead, any prayer groups were conducted at other mosques in New York or out of town.

ASMA also told the IRS in 1998 that it had a school "for the religious instruction of the young." There are no records on the ASMA site of it operating a school.

ASMA now enjoys tax-exempt church status because the IRS accepted its 1998 application. As a church and not a nonprofit foundation, ASMA pays no taxes and files no public disclosure of its expenses and activities, including the salaries it pays to Rauf and Khan. That has made determining the sources of its funding and where it spends its money more difficult.

The lack of any financial disclosure is also an issue in the Ground Zero Mosque debate. Rauf, Khan and building developer Sherif el-Gamal say they hope to raise $100 million to build the center. So far, however, Khan has said the group has no money. El-Gamal has also said the group plans to create a foundation to handle whatever funds it raises.

As we reported last week, tax records for Rauf and Khan's other non-profit, the Cordoba Initiative, do not list contributions from at least two charitable foundations that have supported its activities. Nearly $100,000 donors gave since 2007 have not been reported as revenue by Cordoba.

The 1023 is a significant form because the IRS relies on it to decide whether to grant an organization recognition of tax-exempt status, said Bruce Hopkins, a senior partner at the law firm Polsinelli Shughart. Hopkins has written several books on non-profit tax law, including The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations.

Under the federal tax law, houses of worship all fit under the category of "churches" regardless of the religion practiced. There is no strict IRS definition for what constitutes a church. For years, a 14-point set of criteria has served as a guide. Courts, however, have set the bar at the presence of a congregation, worship services and a structure in which to hold those services, Hopkins said.

The most recent case was decided Aug. 16 by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. It was a "huge development," Hopkins said, because the court tried "to understand in the modern world what it means to be a church."

In that ruling, the court stripped a group operating in California and Oregon called the Foundation of Human Understanding of its church status. When it received church status, it had its own building and held four to five services each week.

Since then, the building was sold and the foundation shifted to online services. That was not enough to be considered a church exempt from financial disclosure, the court ruled:

"With respect to the Foundation's in-person services, the record shows that during the three-year audit period at issue the Foundation did not hold regular services at any location, including its facility at the Tall Timber Ranch in Selma, Oregon."

Hopkins reviewed ASMA documents provided by the IPT and looked through its current website.

"It says nothing in here about being a church," he said.

Yet, ASMA's website contains this September 2007 letter from the IRS to Khan acknowledging its updated name and address. "Our records indicate that your organization is also classified as a church under sections 509(a)(1) and 170(b)(1)(i) of the Internal Revenue Code," it said.

Although Khan was not listed as an ASMA official in the group's 1998 IRS filing, she had written the IRS on ASMA's behalf in 2007.

Should the IRS review ASMA's current status and find it no longer qualifies as a church, it could try to determine when it stopped qualifying and request financial disclosures for as many as the last three years.

A recent series of reports in New York newspapers indicates Rauf, Khan and el-Gamal have a variety of financial problems or issues with real estate tenants. An Aug. 29 story in The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reveals how tenants in apartment buildings owned by Rauf have complained about the condition of their buildings.

Khan told The Record that Rauf doesn't get paid as an imam and must make his living through real estate investments. ASMA's tax exempt status means that any salary Rauf or Khan earn from that group is private.

The New York Post reported Aug. 29 that el-Gamal owes more than $224,000 in back property taxes on the site of the proposed mosque.


Read more at: http://www.investigativeproject.org/2150/questions-raised-about-raufs-nonexistent-mosque

Expert warns of omen behind Ground Zero mosque Suggests supporters actually consider it a 'conquest'

The hijacked planes that plowed into the World Trade Center nine years ago and the mammoth mosque now cleared for construction only blocks away from the ruins of the towers both, despite vastly different appearances, actually represent degrees of the same goal: Islamic conquest.

Such is the warning of an author and expert with arguably the most unique terror insight imaginable.

"If they can establish (global rule) in a peaceful manner, that's fine," Mosab Hassan Yousef says of the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood. "But they are required by the Quran to establish this global Islamic state on the rubble of every civilization, every constitution, every government."

That threat, he says, is embodied in the controversial 9/11 mosque and emboldened in the era of the Obama administration.



Yousef should know. He's the son of a Hamas co-founder and former terrorist himself who became a Christian and a spy for Israel. Granted asylum in America after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security tried to deport him, Yousef knows the many forms jihad can manifest. The author of the acclaimed "Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices," served as a consultant to the Holy Land Foundation terror-finance trial.

The 2008 Dallas trial, the largest terror-finance case in U.S. history, revealed intricacies of the Brotherhood's "100-year plan." Its crux: undermining American institutions, eroding Western civilization and establishing an environment for Islam to reign supreme over all religions. Integral to success were spin-offs whose true intents hid behind smiley faces – chiefly the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. (In that trial, CAIR and some of its leaders were confirmed by the Justice Department as unindicted co-conspirators.)

On the strength of a six-month undercover penetration of CAIR, the best-selling WND Books exposé "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America" revealed in harrowing detail just how duplicitous a front CAIR puts up.

At the Holy Land Foundation trial, the FBI presented a transcript from a wiretap of a 1993 meeting in Philadelphia in which Hamas supporters sought to establish Muslim organizations in the U.S. "whose Islamic hue is not very conspicuous."

Thousands of pages of documents recovered in the "Muslim Mafia" investigation confirmed CAIR's coziness with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. And CAIR, never denying the book's findings, sued the investigators to recover the documents. But WND attorneys proved in court that from a legal perspective, CAIR actually doesn't even exist, following a name change to deflect negative publicity from the trial.

Still, according to Yousef, the battle for Islamic dominance assumes many forms. He points to the 9/11 mosque. Emotions run white-hot over the city-approved Cordoba House – aka Park 51 – and its $100 million construction budget as well as plans to accommodate as many as 1,000 worshipers.

When President Obama expressed support, then backed away, then reaffirmed support for the project, his public approval suffered a slump that still persists. While a recent CBS poll puts public disapproval for the mosque at 71 percent, the project enjoys strong support from many policy makers and opinion makers.

"This is plain and simple people trying to stir up things to get publicity and trying to polarize people so that they can get some votes," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently told Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show."

Expect the news coverage to project a turn in public opinion, predicts Chuck Morse, author of "The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism," especially following allegations of a New York City cab driver getting stabbed after being asked if he was Muslim.

Morse warns about the "Taqiyya," a sanctioned deception Muslims employ as long as it's "spoken in the greater interest of Islam." Morse recently cited how Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Sufi Muslim imam and the founder of the Cordoba Initiative, cuts a sympathetic figure to the left. With its mystical emphasis, Sufism appeals to liberals enamored with New Age leanings, he says.

Nevertheless, Morse explains, this doctrine "adheres to an absolute and literal interpretation of the Quran and Hadith, the holy books of Islam, with a particular emphasis on Shariah law."

More than once, Rauf blamed Sept. 11 on U.S. policies and refused to admit Muslims committed the attacks. During a July radio interview with Aaron Klein, WND senior writer and author of the New York Times Best-seller "The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists," Rauf refused to affirm the U.S. designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization or call the Muslim Brotherhood extremists.

Yet as Yousef maintains, the two are one in the same – explaining Hamas specifically was created to engage Israel and protect the Muslim Brotherhood from the consequences of a direct confrontation.

"(T)hey choose people like my father, from the Muslim Brotherhood originally," he said, "and they ask them to establish an independent movement that shares the same exact doctrine."

Yousef worked alongside his father, Sheik Hassan Yousef, in the West Bank city of al-Ghaniya near Ramallah while secretly embracing Christian faith and serving as a Shin Bet spy. Since publicly declaring his faith in August 2008, he has been condemned by an al-Qaida-affiliated group and disowned by his family.

Describing Islam more as a subversive system than a traditional religion, Yousef advises resisting its advances.

"Even if it's a religion, and 1.5 billion people around the world believe in it, this doesn't mean that they are right; and this doesn't mean that we compromise with them," he said. "We tell them, 'You're accepted, but guess what? This is the red line: We don't compromise with your god. We don't compromise with your belief system.'"

Unfortunately, he says, American foreign policy under President Obama is capitulating and buying "the lie of Muslim groups who are trying to make Islam look good in the eyes of Westerners." This posture gives Muslims "the courage to come forward with a very aggressive symbol" in the Manhattan mosque.

"If it was any other American president," he said, "we wouldn't have this aggressive step."

Money rolling in by the millions - Arizona's Anti-Immigration Firebrands: Fueled by Out-of-Staters

Robert Acheson has never been to Phoenix. His house, nestled amid the bucolic, forested hills of tiny Dixfield, Maine, is more than 2,800 miles away from the nation's illegal immigration front lines. Still, the retired paper mill worker says he decided to give $35 to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's 2012 re-election campaign this summer because Arpaio is "supporting America." "I'm very much against illegal immigration, and he seems to be against it too," Acheson, 65, says in a telephone interview. "And he seems to be the only guy who has the testosterone - the balls - to stand up to the federal government on this issue."

Donations from people such as Acheson have fed the political frenzy surrounding illegal immigration and framed key Arizona debates, such as the one Republican Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and her Democratic opponent, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, engaged in Wednesday in Phoenix. Having people outside of Arizona's borders help shape its border policy may be one of the state's great political ironies. (See the reinvention of Arizona governor Jan Brewer.)

Senate Bill 1070, which Brewer signed into law on April 23, called for, among other things, allowing law enforcement officers to ask about someone's immigration status during a traffic stop detainment or arrest if reasonable suspicion exists that they are in the country illegally. In response to criticism that the new law would promote racial profiling, Brewer created a legal defense fund to give the cops some cover. Now the fund is more than $2 million, a Brewer spokeswoman says, and much of that is coming from people outside Arizona. In-state contributors accounted for $320,544, according to data on AZcentral.com. Contributions from California, Texas, Florida, New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Virginia accounted for $703,171 - outspending Arizonans by more than 2 to 1. And that excludes money from the rest of the country, because people from all 50 states have donated. (See pictures of the Great Wall of America.)

Although more Arizonans donated to the legal fund than residents of any other U.S. state, they were eclipsed in per-capita giving. In-state contributors gave an average of $50.76 per person, while donors from Alaska, Wyoming and Hawaii gave $57.97, $55.83 and $52.05 per person, respectively. (On July 28, a federal judge temporarily blocked the most controversial parts of SB 1070 from taking effect.)

These aren't the only signs of outside influence on Arizona's illegal immigration debate or the political fortunes of its candidates. On Aug. 11, almost two weeks before Arizona's primary election, Sheriff Arpaio turned in campaign finance reports that showed he had pulled in $480,669 over the summer, bringing his total to $2.3 million. Arpaio's campaign manager Chad Willems says the last official number-crunch they did on the numbers was six months ago, and at that time, 26% of the money was coming from Arizonans. The rest was from out of state. "If it's Arizona versus the rest of the country," says Willems, "more funds flow to the Arpaio campaign from outside Arizona." A 50-page sample pulled from the most recent 1,354-page campaign finance record shows an 80-20 split, with donors outside of Maricopa County having the larger presence.

The fundraising looks more like a major congressional campaign than a stumpfest for a local sheriff's office, and it's even more astonishing considering Arpaio is not up for re-election until 2012. Arpaio spent much of the new funds on advertising that pummeled his political opponents - even if they weren't running against him. Interim Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley, a Vietnam veteran and moderate Republican who often clashed with Arpaio, says the attack ads cost him his job and run counter to donors' intentions for the money. "But the real factor was that I believe he illegally used the money to influence this election," Romley says. "It was really a fraud on the people who gave to his re-election campaign." County election officials agree. They ruled against Arpaio's use of the election funds for the attack ads, fined his campaign and, last week, gave his campaign 20 days to produce more documentation of the expenditures. The Arpaio campaign is appealing the ruling.

But with a national network of support - people from places like Roach, Missouri, and Ponce Inlet, Florida, who give $30 or $40 apiece - the impact of the local fines could be muted. And for some, it may seem like Arizona elections aren't truly "local" races these days. "Arizona is sort of a boiling point for a national movement," says David Berman, a senior research fellow and political science expert at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

Even if that's true, the debate still originates in Arizona. It's just that standing up to the federal government on a key issue like illegal immigration moves Arizona's debates beyond its borders, says Arpaio campaign manager Willems. "Politics is always local, and it will always come down to local issues," Willems says. "[Arpaio] has just been elevated to a national stage."

Mitchell on Arizona: Illegals don't want any law enforced But video reveals sheriffs, congressional candidates, citizens say it should be upheld

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily




Sign illegally posted in Arizona in opposition to state's attempt to enforce immigration law

Editor's Notee: This is the third in a three-part series about Arizona's immigration war.

Sheriffs, citizens and politicians alike in Arizona support the state's controversial S.B. 1070, the law that would allow enforcement officers to crack down on illegal aliens.

There's really only one group opposing it, according to filmmaker Molotov Mitchell, who produced a series of videos after being dispatched by WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah to Arizona to investigate the truth about the controversy over Arizona's state plan to enforce a federal law against illegally entering the United States.

The opponents are the individuals who are in the nation illegally or advocate for them.

"Maria," for example, told Mitchell that S.B. 1070 is "very racist," although she admitted she had read "some" of it. But she said it was racist because her ex-brother-in-law, with blue eyes, was asked by police for his ID.

She reports police said he was holding a fake ID.

"Angelo," who also was at a protest against the state law, stated flatly that undocumented workers in the U.S. illegally should not be prosecuted.

Added Maria, "They're really not breaking the law."

Mitchell said the issue, then, appears not to be over immigration or changes in the law, but the fact that there are groups whose members don't want any law against illegal immigration enforced.

"Suddenly it all made sense," Mitchell reported. "The protesters didn't want existing law upheld."

In Part One, Mitchell had reported that in some places along the Mexico-U.S. border, misshapen barbed wire is the only barrier.

In Part Two, he described how Gov. Jan Brewer fought for H.B. 1070, which would let authorities crack down on illegals by enforcing the federal law against entering the U.S. illegally. Mitchell also told how militia members who are protecting the country are not the racists portrayed by the mainstream media.

Mitchell also interviewed several sheriffs, who are accountable to the citizens of Arizona, citing them as leaders in the fight against the hordes of illegals invading Arizona and the United States.

And he talked with Janet Contreras, a candidate for Congress in Arizona's 4th district who supports the law..

"And I will continue to do so," she said.

Mitchell also pointed out the irony that developed at a protest against the law making it illegal to be in the state illegally. A group of protesters had – illegally – suspended a banner from a construction crane.

Mitchell told WND that he wore the body armor he later would need while interviewing militia members close to the Mexican drug cartel routes while traveling because of luggage issues.

"People would ask me, 'Are you headed to Afghanistan?' and I'd shake my head. 'Nope,' I'd smile. 'I'm headed to Arizona.' And every person I told was not surprised. One worried man even wished me luck," he said.

When he arrived in Arizona, the situation was even more stunning.

"In any normal situation, when a dead body is found, the whole CSI unit shows up and there's a thorough investigation with media coverage, you know. But in Arizona, there are so many dead bodies. One rancher, Fred Davis, had just found a dead man on his property a couple of weeks before our interview. So in Arizona, there are so many dead bodies found along the border and up into Tuscon, that a body's lucky to get a basic autopsy," he said.

He also said he discovered evidence of the value of militia members.

"There were real militia out there that were actually having shootouts with cartels and would never want their faces on TV for fear of reprisals. Those were the guys living out of mines under the radar, and rumor has it that they'd just killed some cartel bandits only days before I'd arrived. They were the real deal," he said.

"This was an orderly, national effort to protect Americans from violent drug cartels that decapitated people, raped women to death and burned kidnap victims alive in barrels if ransom wasn't paid. If the government wasn't going to secure the border, it was in some ways quite inspiring to see decent, friendly Americans uniting to do the job themselves," he said.

Best of' edition includes list of 'worst' colleges Civil-rights organization highlights universities that are 'unrepentant' violators

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ood0sXfRVFU&feature=player_embedded


By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

A permanent blemish on a student's record for a parody, an attempted expulsion for criticism of a "social injustice" and the formal censorship of a political satire: All of these actions have earned American colleges and universities a citation in a full-page ad in U.S. News & World Report's 2011 edition of its "Best Colleges" issue.

But the ad warns parents and students to "think twice" about considering attending the schools.

The ad was taken out by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which highlighted Bucknell University, Brandeis University, Colorado College, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State and Tufts University – warning parents and students alike about the rights violations to which they could be subjected by attending.

"Every year, college guidebooks fail to inform prospective college students and their parents about atrocious abuses of the freedom of speech and expression," said Greg Lukianoff, president of the nonprofit educational foundation that fights on behalf of individual rights, due process, freedom of expression and academic freedom.

"This freedom is the engine behind the marketplace of ideas," he said. "People should share the facts about [Andre] Massena's case and those at the Red Alert schools with their friends, relatives, colleagues, and classmates, or look up the policies of the schools they want to attend. Americans are staunch believers in liberty, and the more people who hear about how badly student rights are abused on campus, the more they will advocate for schools to protect student and faculty rights. FIRE can only achieve its goals with the help of the public."


Highlighted on the ad, besides the offending schools, is the story of Massena, a graduate student who nearly was expelled from SUNY-Binghamton "for expressing his views about a faculty member he thought was responsible for social injustice."

It is the third year such a report has been released, and Lukianoff said, "America's universities must understand that they can no longer abuse students' rights outside the light of public scrutiny."



Massena's case developed when he publicly criticized the executive director of the Binghamton Housing Authority because he believed the executive was responsible for evicting people from public housing.

But the housing executive also was on the faculty at Binghamton and expulsion proceedings were started against Massena. He fought back, with help from FIRE.

In another of the situations highlighted, FIRE reports that officials at Colorado College, "although given numerous opportunities to reverse [their] finding," violated the school's own speech protections by determining that student Chris Robinson and another student violated the school's "violence" policy.

The students had posted a flyer parodying a "Feminist and Gender Studies" promotion.

"Colorado College has refused to remove the guilty finding from the students' records and reaffirm its commitments to free speech for all viewpoints on campus," the FIRE report said.

The college took the action even though its own policy states, "On a campus that is free and open, no idea can be banned or forbidden. No viewpoint or message may be deemed so hateful that it may not be expressed," FIRE reported.

The organization reported Bucknell "repeatedly used flimsy or patently false excuses to censor a conservative group's satire of President Obama's stimulus" and Brandeis "found a professor of nearly 50 years guilty of racial harassment for using the word 'wetbacks' in his Latin American Politics class – in the context of criticizing the term."

Johns Hopkins suspended a student "for what it deemed an 'offensive' Halloween party invitation posted on Facebook.com" and Michigan State "found a student government leader guilty of 'spamming' after she e-mailed eight percent of the faculty to encourage them to express their views on ... the school calendar."

Tufts "found an entire student newspaper guilty of 'harassment' for publishing two pieces satirizing affirmative action and Islamic Awareness Week. The latter of these two pieces included only factually verifiable information about Islam, as well as quotes from the Quran."

FIRE also is running ads in the first issue of the student newspapers at the six schools, officials said.

Officer challenging Obama's credentials on Farber show Interview scheduled day after Army hearing on evidence of president's eligibility

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=212Eq0t6ffQ&feature=related


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCAaU5FA24U&feature=player_embedded

By Bob Unruh
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

The statements came in an affidavit from retired Lt. Gen. Thomas G. McInerney, a Fox News military analyst, that was disclosed by the foundation

Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin

Lakin had invited his own court-martial because he is unable to follow orders under the chain of command with Obama at its head unless the president's eligibility is documented.

A hearing is scheduled in Lakin's court-martial case Thursday at which a ruling is expected on defense requests for the very evidence that McInerney is citing.

The general, who retired in 1994 after serving as vice commander in chief of USAF forces in Europe, commander of the 3rd Tactical Fighter Wing and assistant vice chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, among other positions, said the chain of command issue is critical, since officers are obligated both to follow orders and to disobey illegal orders.

"Officers in the United States military service are – and must be – trained that they owe their highest allegiance to the United States Constitution," he said in the affidavit.

"There can be no question that it is absolutely essential to good order and discipline in the military that there be no break in the unified chain of command, from the lowliest E-1 up to and including the commander in chief who is under the Constitution, the president of the United States. As military officers, we owe our ultimate loyalty not to superior officers or even to the president, but rather, to the Constitution."

He continued, explaining, "good order and disipline requires not blind obedience to all orders but instead requires officers to judge – sometimes under great adversity – whether an order is illegal."

"The president of the United States, as the commander in chief, is the source of all military authority," he said. "The Constitution requires the president to be a natural born citizen in order to be eligible to hold office. If he is ineligible under the Constitution to serve in that office that creates a break in the chain of command of such magnitude that its significance can scarcely be imagined."

Lakin's defense counsel has asked for the president's school records as well as a deposition from the custodian of Obama's birth records that may exist in Hawaii.

The hearing is scheduled at 11 a.m. Thursday at Ft. Meade, Md., at the courthouse at 4432 Llewellyn Ave., inside the military base. The court is open to the public.

Lakin is a physician and in his 18th year of service in the Army. He posted a video asking for the court-martial to determine Obama's eligibility.

He is board certified in family medicine and occupational and environmental medicine. He has been recognized for his outstanding service as a flight surgeon for year-long tours in Honduras, Bosnia and Afghanistan. He was also awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Afghanistan and recognized in 2005 as one of the Army Medical Department's outstanding flight surgeons.

Said McInerney on his command of crews with nuclear weapons:

"In my command capacity I was responsible that the personnel with access to these weapons had an unwavering and absolute confidence in the unified chain of command, because such confidence was absolutely essential – vital – in the event the use of those weapons were authorized," the general wrote.

"I cannot overstate how imperative it is to train such personnel to have confidence in the unified chain of command. Today, because of the widespread and legitimate concerns that the president is constitutionally ineligible to hold office, I fear what would happen should such a crisis occur today."

He said Lakin is acting "exactly" as "proper training dictates."

The controversy stems from the Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, which states, "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President."

A number of challenges and lawsuits have been based on the constitutional requirement, some alleging Obama does not qualify because he was not born in Hawaii in 1961 as he claims. Others say he fails to qualify because he was a dual citizen of the U.S. and the United Kingdom when he was born, and the framers of the Constitution specifically excluded dual citizens from eligibility.

Complicating the issue is the fact that besides Obama's actual birth documentation, he has kept from the public documentation including his kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, files from his years as an Illinois state senator, Illinois State Bar Association records, baptism records and his adoption records.

Lakin declined to follow deployment orders after he tried through military channels to affirm the validity of orders under Obama's command and was rebuffed. He had been scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan again.

Note: A legal-defense fund has been set up for Lt. Col. Terry Lakin.

Is Obama 'blackmailing' Israel amid U.S. summit? Threat would create Palestinian country outside of coordination with Jewish state

By Aaron Klein
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

U.S. President Barack Obama steps off Marine One as he arrives back on the South Lawn at the White House in Washington August 31, 2010. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES - Tags: POLITICS)

JERUSALEM – If Israel and the Palestinian Authority fail to reach an agreement within the next year, the Obama administration could support a United Nations resolution that would unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state, senior PA officials told WND.

The officials were speaking ahead of a major summit that starts today in Washington to launch direct talks between Israel and the PA. The foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan will also take part in the summit.

Sources in both the PA and Israel told WND the Obama administration did not impose any preconditions for the summit, a move that is somewhat out of character for the U.S. president. It was Obama who urged Israel to halt all Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem as a precondition for indirect negotiations last November.

Under intense pressure, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu froze Jewish West Bank construction for 10 months, a moratorium set to expire at the end of September.


PA officials told WND they received an American pledge against any new Jewish construction into the foreseeable future in the West Bank or eastern sections of Jerusalem, excluding what are known as the three main settlement blocs – Gush Etzion, Maale Adumin and Ariel.

The PA officials said the U.S. has been negotiating the borders of a future Palestinian state that would see Israel eventually withdraw from most of the West Bank and some areas of eastern Jerusalem with the exception of the three blocs.

While the PA does not believe it will see an actual Palestinian state within a year, it expects in that time it will take over many more neighborhoods in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem that are normally controlled on the ground by Israel.

The PA said the expectation is based on pledges by the Obama administration.

Still, both Israeli leaders and PA officials told WND that following today's summit they do not expect any major momentum toward a future Palestinian state until after November's midterm elections. Officials on both sides believe Obama sees a heavy-handed approach toward Israeli-Palestinian talks as a potential liability in the run-up to the elections.

Netanyahu is headed to today's summit with the knowledge that if talks are not ultimately fruitful, Obama could back the unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state outside the framework of coordination with Israel.

The threat to create a Palestinian state using a U.N. vote is not new.

Last year, Ahmed Qurei, former PA prime minister and member of the Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee, told WND in an interview that the PA "reached an understanding with important elements within the administration" to possibly bring to the U.N. Security Council a resolution to unilaterally create a Palestinian state.

Asked to which "elements" he was referring, Qurei would only say they were from the Obama administration.

Despite widespread assumptions the U.S. would veto any such U.N. Security Council resolution, PA officials told WND the Obama administration did not threaten to veto their conceptual unilateral resolution.

"The U.S. has a history of never before vetoing any U.N. move to create a new state," a PA negotiator pointed out.

Today's summit will begin with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosting one-to-one discussions with Netanyahu, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt, and Tony Blair, envoy of the 'Quartet' of Middle East peace negotiators – the United Nations, the U.S., the European Union and Russia.

Later, speeches will be delivered by the Middle East leaders as well as by Obama.

Is this why Bloomberg champions Ground Zero mosque? Major Middle East business deals, opening of 'Islamic finance portal'

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a staunch supporter of the proposed Islamic cultural center and mosque near Ground Zero, recently has been expanding his business dealings in the Arab and Muslim world, including opening a new "Islamic finance portal."

Some critics are questioning whether Bloomberg's unpopular decision to back the controversial mosque project may be colored by his billion-dollar financial software, news and data company's decision to build a hub in the United Arab Emirates and North Africa.

The mayor's privately held company, Bloomberg L.P., has been increasing its revenue in the Middle East while its U.S.-based division has taken hits due to the country's economic woes.

In 2008, Bloomberg announced it was expanding its Dubai office into a regional hub, a move that sought to quadruple its local staff. The new hub will covers Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Max Linnington, Bloomberg regional head of Middle East and South Asia, told The National newspaper that the company developed an "Islamic finance portal," which would be helped by having more people on the ground building relationships.



“Particularly since the meltdown of the Western capitalist system, there has been an increasingly large focus on the virtues of Islamic finance," he said. "Today, there is no one single provider of information that caters to the Islamic finance market. So by Bloomberg being here, we are in the process of building out an Islamic finance product. We are very confident that we can build a product that meets the needs of the market right now."

The growth plan continued in 2009, when Bloomberg opened a news bureau in Abu Dhabi.

Peter T. Grauer, Bloomberg chairman and president, met with UAE Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to discuss Bloomberg's future expansion in the United Emirates, North Africa and India.

Grauer stated that while Bloomberg was hit by the recent U.S. economic woes, the company's Middle East revenues were growing.

"Despite the difficulties faced by the financial sector in the economic turmoil, our terminal sales in the region grew by 2 percent in the past nine months, when globally we faced a major setback," he said.

In March, the Khaleej Times reported that Bloomberg "has drawn up a five-year plan that will see it achieving a two-fold increase in revenue from the Middle East region by 2014."

Bloomberg's expansion in the Middle East and Arab world has more than a few critics asking questions about his repeated support for the Cordoba Initiative's plan for a $100 million, 13-story Islamic cultural center and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero.

Bloomberg was one of the mosque's earliest supporters and has repeated that support even in the face of polls that show an overwhelming majority of national voters oppose the plan.

Bloomberg said in July, "I happen to think this is a very appropriate place for somebody who wants to build a mosque, because it tells the world that America, and New York City, which is what I'm responsible for, really believes in what we preach."

Asked last month about GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio's demands that Democratic rival Andrew Cuomo investigate the mosque, Bloomberg replied that investigating or vetting religious organizations goes against what the nation stands for.

Just last week, Bloomberg declared at a speech that "there is nowhere in the five boroughs of New York City that is off limits to any religion."

Radio host Michael Savage first exposed on his national show the pending sale in 2006 of port management businesses in six major U.S. seaports to a company based in the UAE. The sale was delayed amid public outcry.

Savage weighed in on Bloomberg's Middle East and African business dealings.

"'Bloomberg's expansionist business interests in the Middle East are well-known," Savage told WND.

Continued Savage: "That he would spit in the face of the memories of the victims of Islamic terrorism by not only supporting the extremists and agitators who want to build a victory mosque at Ground Zero is one insult. Another is him calling those who oppose this desecration of what is essentially a 'cemetery' various insulting names goes to further show the callousness and greed of this naked opportunist.

"Further, Bloomberg is so out of touch with reality that he actually believes his 5th grade concept of 'tolerance,' and his sing-songy sermons during his Ramadan PR event at Gracie Mansion has rendered him immensely popular. So popular that he may even run for the presidency! What this cocoon-man does not yet know is that West of the Hudson River he is despised and mocked."

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, quipped, "Imagine how quickly (Bloomberg's Middle East) revenue stream would dry up if Bloomberg sided with the people whom Rauf and other leaders of the Ground Zero mosque initiative are busy smearing as 'Islamophobes' and 'bigots.'

"When his company is doing poorly worldwide except in the Middle East, it couldn't have been hard for Bloomberg to see on which side his bread was buttered," Spencer charged.