Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Turkey Denies Hamas Funding Reports
From IPT:
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Turkey Denies Hamas Funding Reports
by IPT News • Jan 30, 2012 at 12:50 pm
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Be the first of your friends to like this.Turkish officials are denying media reports that Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh was promised $300 million during his visit to Turkey earlier this month.
"There is no cash aid to Hamas, but Turkey is, of course, engaged in projects to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza," a Turkish foreign ministry official told the Turkish paperToday's Zaman, "A $40 million hospital project is one of them, but the construction material for the hospital is not allowed in Gaza."
On Friday, Reuters quoted a diplomat in Syria saying that there has been a void in aid from Iran to Hamas since August, and Haniyeh was believed to have "'received promises from Turkey to provide the movement and his administration with $300 million a year to help Gaza.'"
In December, the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) alleged that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed to provide $300 million to Hamas in a confidential letter Haniyeh.
A high-ranking Hamas official told the Qatar-based Al-Sharq newspaper that Haniyeh's tour in Turkey opened the door to financial cooperation between Turkey and Hamas, and that Hamas will open an office in Turkey in the coming weeks.
In response, Turkish President Abdullah Gül said "Turkey is one of the strongest supporters of the Palestinian cause. And Hamas is an important political formation which participated and succeeded in the elections."
"Our contact [with Hamas] has been constant, but we will have to wait and see what has come out of the frequent visits," he added.
Update: Israeli President Shimon Peres isn't buying Turkey's denials, telling a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos that "Turkey has transferred resources to fund the infrastructure of Hamas," with $900 million which "has strengthened terrorist networks in the region,"
Jasser Takes on Media
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Jasser Takes on Media
by IPT News • Jan 30, 2012 at 2:32 pm
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Be the first of your friends to like this.Critics of the New York Police Department's use of the film "Third Jihad" for training not only have their facts wrong, they're missing one of the program's key point, argues Muslim reformist M. Zuhdi Jasser.
Jasser, who narrated the film, responded with two op-ed columns, one published Friday by the National Review and one Sunday in the New York Post. He focused on a New York Times report last week about the NYPD's use of the film, calling the story "shoddy and biased."
Investigative Project on Terrorism Executive Director Steven Emerson also published a lengthy analysis of the Times story here.
Media reports have bashed the film as generalizing Muslims as radicals and criticized officials for allowing it to be screened to nearly 1,500 officers. The Times got its most damning quote about the film wrong, Jasser wrote, saying it interspersed graphic violent images with the narration "This is the true agenda of Islam in America." In fact, the film cites a Muslim Brotherhood document which "shows the true agenda of much of Muslim leadership here in America."
The narration also included this disclaimer prominently: "This is not a film about Islam. It is about the threat of radical Islam. Only a small percentage of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are radical."
Yet the unquestioning nature of news reports critical of the film actually proves producers' points, Jasser wrote. Any criticism of radical Islam, be it from people outside the faith or devout Muslims like himself, is dismissed as bigoted. Drumming up outrage via the media helps shove moderate and reform-minded voices out of the debate, leaving Islamists alone to define the faith.
His work on the film was part of his own battle "against the radicals who seek to hijack our faith," Jasser wrote. He founded the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and joined the American Islamic Leadership Coalition as part of that effort to show the diversity of though among Muslims.
"That is what the vicious distortions about this film do to my work and the work of so many others within the House of Islam who are trying to publicly take on the American Islamist establishment."
Khadr Going Free, and Public
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Khadr Going Free, and Public
by IPT News • Jan 30, 2012 at 1:36 pm
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Be the first of your friends to like this.Canadian terrorist Omar Khadr, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who pled guilty to a litany of al-Qaida terrorism charges in October 2010, soon will be released to Canada. As the Toronto Sun's Ezra Levant puts it in his new book, The Enemy Within, Khadr's reception by Canadian liberals will cover up his crimes and salute him as the victim of American abuses.
Khadr was captured in Afghanistan in July 2002, after throwing grenades at American soldiers, and was discovered with video of his helping to build and places anti-vehicle mines for Afghan resistance fighters. Khadr, who was 15 at the time of his arrest, spent the next eight years in Guantanamo interrogations, awaiting his American trial.
During this time, liberal activists like the Canadian Bar Association advocated on Khadr'sbehalf alongside local Muslim associations, arguing that the Canadian conservative government was responsible to protect his rights while he was in American custody and to bring him home.
The irony of the case, as Levant points out, is that despite Khadr's confession andunrepentant attitude, he is unlikely to serve much time in Canadian prison. After completing his mandatory year in American prison, he could be repatriated at any time as soon as his paper work is complete. Under Canadian law, the years Khadr spent in prison will count toward his parole date, which amounts to only one third of his sentence. He will also be released without any formal rehabilitation program, allowing him to roam freely in Canada and speak before Canadian Muslims and leftists about the crimes of America.
As Levant points out, Khadr's superstar status among Canadian left-wing intellectuals means that he will likely be asked to address some of Canada's most anti-American and anti-Semitic student audiences. Despite his crimes, Canada's government is essentially giving him a "Get-out-of-jail-free card," and a podium to boot.
Iraqi officials outraged by use of US drones: report
From AFP and Yahoo News:
AFP – 21 hrs ago
Iraqi officials outraged by use of US drones: report
AFP – 21 hrs agoRELATED CONTENT
Enlarge PhotoFile photo shows US soldiers preparing to launch a Shadow drone in Iraq. Iraqi officials …
Iraqi officials have expressed outrage at the United States' use of a small fleet of surveillance drones to help protect the US embassy, consulates and American personnel in Iraq, The New York Times reported.
The newspaper said the State Department began operating somedrones in Iraq last year on a trial basis and stepped up their use after the last US troops left the country in December.
The US government plans to take bids for the management of drone operations in Iraq over the next five years, the report said.
The State Department drones carry no weapons and are meant to provide data and images of possible hazards, like public protests or roadblocks, to security forces on the ground, the paper noted. They are much smaller than armed drones.
But the US government needs formal approval from Iraq to use such aircraft there, the paper noted, citing unnamed Iraqi officials.
Such approval may be hard to get given the political tensions between the two countries, The Times said.
A senior American official said negotiations were under way to obtain authorization for the drone operations, but Ali al-Mosawi, a top adviser to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki; Iraq’s national security adviser, Falih al-Fayadh; and the acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, all said in interviews that they had not been consulted by the Americans, the report said.
"Our sky is our sky, not the USA’s sky," Asadi is quoted by the paper as saying.
Bin Laden Raid: Will CIA's Secret Doctor Face Treason Trial?
From ABC News and Yahoo News:
By HABIBULLAH KHAN and LEE FERRAN | ABC News – 9 hrs ago
Bin Laden Raid: Will CIA's Secret Doctor Face Treason Trial?
By HABIBULLAH KHAN and LEE FERRAN | ABC News – 9 hrs agoRELATED CONTENT
Enlarge PhotoBin Laden Raid: Will CIA's Secret Doctor Face Treason Trial? (ABC News)
Pakistan is re-examining the fate of the Pakistani doctor who allegedly helped the CIA gather information on the hideout of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden through a fake vaccination program after a top U.S. official publicly confirmed his secret spy operation.
Officials with the commission investigating the May 2 Navy SEAL raid that took the life of America's most wanted terrorist inAbbottabad, Pakistan, told Pakistan's The News they've ordered Dr. Shakeel Afridi to face trial for treason and said he will not be turned over to the U.S. Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Gilani, also said Sunday Afridi would be tried.
Another senior Pakistani official, however, said that the commission does not give the final say on Afridi's fate and that the Pakistani government has yet to decide whether to try him.
Pakistani officials have called for a treason trial previously, but the commission's new order comes just days after U.S. Defense SecretaryLeon Panetta publicly confirmed Afridi's key role in the Bin Laden mission.
In a Friday preview of an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Panetta said he was "very concerned" for Afridi.
"This was an individual who in fact helped provide intelligence that was very helpful with regards to this operation," said Panetta who was head of the CIA at the time of the operation. "He was not in any way treasonous towards Pakistan, he was not doing anything that would in any way undermine Pakistan... Pakistan and the United States have a common cause against terrorism."
"For them to take this kind of action against someone who was helping to go after terrorism I just think is a real mistake on their part," he added.
The New York Times first reported Afridi's alleged role in the CIA's intelligence gathering gambit in July. Afridi allegedly set up a fake polio vaccination program, going door-to-door in Abbottabad in hopes of collecting DNA samples from bin Laden family members. After he was arrested outside his home just weeks after the deadly raid, local media reported Afridi admitted to his role, but said he was unable to get access to bin Laden's compound or his children.
In his "60 Minutes" interview, Panetta also said he "personally felt" that the Pakistani government must have known something about the Abbottabad compound, perhaps that a high value target could be there.
"I don't have any hard evidence, so I can't say it for a fact. There's nothing that proves the case. But as I said, my personal view is that somebody somewhere probably had that knowledge," he said.
By all official accounts, no Pakistani officials told the U.S. government bin Laden could be in the compound, but Panetta was the only one to recommend with certainty that the raid should take place, according to a new account of high-level decision making provided by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden.
"[Obama] said, 'I have to make this decision -- what is your opinion?' He started with the National Security advisor, the Secretary of State and he ended with me," Biden said at a recent gathering of Democrat leaders in Maryland. "Every single person in that roomed hedged their bet, except Leon Panetta. He said, 'Go.'"
For his part, Biden said he advised the President not to launch the operation.