Islamic North Sudan continues Etnic cleaning, South Sudan says 80,000 flee after north takes oil-rich Abyei

(Al-Arabia).Alel Bol fled with four of her six children when armed northerners on motorbikes roared into her home in Sudan’s contested Abyei border region and, she said, bombs started falling from the sky.

On Friday, she was still waiting for news of the other two children as she and tens of thousands of her compatriots took refuge in villages inside south Sudan, many sleeping on the bare earth under trees, plastic sheets and torn tent fabric. 

About 80,000 people have fled since the north Sudanese armed forces seized oil-producing Abyei almost a week ago, a southern official said, doubling previous estimates of the displaced, according to Reuters.

 “I saw the attackers ... I saw their guns. They were even bombing from the sky,” Ms. Bol said beneath the baking sun in Turalei, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) away from Abyei town. “I made it here with four of my children, but two are missing.”Both Sudan’s mostly Muslim north, and the south, where most follow Christian and traditional beliefs, claim Abyei—a battleground in a north-south civil war that ended in 2005.

The north’s move last week sparked an international outcry and raised fears a land-grab could return Sudan to full-blown conflict, which could have a devastating impact on the region by sending refugees back across borders and creating a failed state in the south.

The attack came at a highly sensitive time for Sudan, just seven weeks before south Sudan is due to secede as an independent country, taking its oil reserves with it.Southerners voted for independence in a January referendum agreed under the 2005 peace deal that ended the last civil war.

Thousands of men, women and children, many of them without possessions, crowded into Turalei in the south’s Twic county.Entire villages have been emptied after widespread looting and shooting broke out following the advance of northern armed forces into Abyei, international organizations say. 

The United Nations, meanwhile, said Friday that it will send a representative to Sudan to assess the country’s human rights situation, including the consequences of recent clashes in Abyei. 

Mohammed Chande Othman, the UN’s independent human rights expert, said in a statement that he “will focus in particular on the arrests and detentions in the north (and) the armed confrontations that have taken place between the (southern army) and armed militia groups.”

He added, according to Agence-France Presse that during his May 31 to June 8 visit he will assess “the ongoing conflict in Darfur and the deteriorating situation in Abyei.” 

Read the full story here.

FBI Official: Illinois Imam Wouldn't Pass Background Check,but was allowed to tour the National Counterterrorism Center and FBI headquarters in September 2010 

From Will at The Other News:

The FBI's top agent in Chicago told Illinois State Police (ISP) officials that an imam under consideration to be the agency's first Muslim chaplain wouldn't pass a background test if it were up to his agency.

That comment came before the State Police initially approved Imam Kifah Mustapha's appointment in 2009, a move they later rescinded after the Investigative Project on Terrorism published an article documenting Mustapha's connections to a Hamas-support network.Mustapha is suing the ISP claiming it violated his 1st and 4th Amendment rights in withdrawing its offer for the chaplain's position. The suit claims the IPT report was flawed and the state had no legitimate grounds to reject him.

As part of the lawsuit, Mustapha wants to see ISP and FBI records related to its background check of him.The U.S. Attorney's Office argued those records are protected from disclosure, in a motion filed Wednesday.  

In it, the government said FBI Chicago Special Agent-in-Charge (SAC) Rob Grant had "several" conversations with ISP officials before Mustapha's appointment in which he advised the ISP of Mustapha's worrisome background.

"In each conversation, SAC Grant stated that Mustapha would not pass an FBI background check if he applied for an FBI chaplain position and then proceeded to explain the bases for his opinion," the motion said.Mustapha's supporters say the ISP's decision was "based on suspicion and paranoia," which they blame on the IPT report.  

The story cited internal documents from the support network, called the Palestine Committee, which became public during a 2008 prosecution, and other court records.He was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five former officials. 

In 2008, a Dallas jury convicted the defendants on more than 100 counts tied to illegally funneling money to Hamas. Mustapha served as a paid Holy Land Foundation employee from 1996 until the group's assets were frozen by the federal government in 2001.

Mustapha also served as a member of a volunteer committee for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP).  

In testimony given in another case, Mustapha recalled donating money to HLF and "maybe" IAP. Like the Holy Land Foundation, the IAP was an arm of the Palestine Committee, which was created to promote the Hamas agenda financially and politically in the United States.Additionally, Mustapha sang in a band that performed at HLF fundraisers.

In one video, submitted as evidence in the HLF trial, Mustapha sings, "O mother, Hamas for Jihad. Over mosques' loudspeakers, with freedom. Every day it resists with stones and the dagger. Tomorrow, with God's help, it will be with a machine gun and a rifle."

The FBI's Grant, meanwhile, is known for his outreach in the Chicago Muslim community. In 2009, he attended a meeting of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago (CIOGC) to assure members that the FBI doesn't targets mosques for investigations

."The FBI unequivocally does not plant informants in mosques or any other houses of worship," Grant said. He urged attendees to report any FBI agents acting in an inappropriate manner. 

Though Grant predicted Mustapha could not pass an FBI background check, Mustapha was allowed to tour the National Counterterrorism Center and FBI headquarters in September 2010.

"If we thought he was a security risk, we wouldn't have included him," on the tour, which is part of the FBI's Citizens' Academy, said Chicago FBI spokesman Ross Rice.According to the FBI Citizens' Academy website, "Because of the classified investigative techniques discussed, nominees must also undergo a background check and get an interim security clearance."For a detailed profile of Mustapha's ties to Hamas-linked groups, click here.

Read the full story here.

Yes Sir, Obamafat

Thanks to Will from The Other News.

Sharia Law Involved in 23 US Court Cases

Sharia Law Involved in 23 US Court Cases

Think Sharia might be coming to America? Well yeah.

Key Findings include: 22 trial court decisions refused to apply Shariah; 15 utilized or recognized Shariah; 9 were indeterminate; and in 4 cases Shariah was not applicable to the decision at the trial court level, but was applicable at the appellate level.

23 appellate decisions refused to apply Shariah; 12 utilized or recognized Shariah; 8 were indeterminate; and in 7 cases Shariah was not applicable to the appellate decision, but had been applicable at the trial court level.

The 50 cases arose in 23 different states: 6 cases were found in New Jersey; 5 in California; 4 each in Florida, Massachusetts and Washington; 3 each in Maryland, Texas and Virginia; 2 each in Louisiana, Iowa and Nebraska; and 1 each in Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and South Carolina.

Click on the title to get the full report over at Jawa.

Robben Ford
Help The Poor

Obama For Another Four Years?

In Front Page Magazine, Phyllis Chesler opines:

President Obama’s election is due, in part, to the desire among many American liberals and leftists to be seen as “atoning” for the sin of racism and the crimes of slavery. The fact that Obama is bi-racial—his mother was white—matters little since he looks like an African-American. Indeed, the President’s own writing focuses on his African, Muslim roots, especially because his Kenyan father abandoned both him and his mother.

In an era of symbolic identity politics and affirmative action, only one kind of candidate could trump Obama’s credentials and that would be an African-American woman....

[...]

Given the extraordinary pathology of Bush Derangement Syndrome, and short of Armeggedon, I do not believe that enough Americans will, without doubt, elect another white male Republican. No matter what his politics may be, he himself will be seen as retrograde, anti-woman, anti-gay marriage, anti-abortion, pro-racism, pro-war and as both dull and evil. The media, combined with Soros and Saudi monies and our intelligentsia have poisoned the minds of millions....

Read the rest HERE.

Have we really reached the point that whom we elect to the Oval Office depends upon race and gender?

Is white guilt that powerful a force?

Is gender correctness that powerful a force?

Maybe.

When Obama was elected in 2008, many Americans rejoiced, "We are living in an unprecedented time!"

Of course, electing an African-American President was indeed unprecedented for America. There is no denying that fact.

But what tide has been set in motion with this idea of "We must continue with unprecedented times"? Shouldn't political platform be the deciding factor for voters and not race and gender?

When I first read Chesler's essay, I thought to myself, "She's way off base." But the longer I think about what she has written, the more I think that she has a valid point.

Something has gone very wrong with the American electorate. We have lost sight of what deciding upon a political leader should mean.

Barack Obama has been 'ticketed' to pay the London congestion charge for his security vehicle

The Mayor told the Standard each car in the President’s motorcade will be billed for £10 - including the bomb-proof Cadillac. Mr Johnson also said he had a discussion with Mr Obama about the US embassy’s refusal to pay £5.3 million in C-charge fines.

But the embassy said its position on not paying the C-charge was “wholly in accordance” with a convention on taxing diplomats. Mr Johnson said: “Our roads were not closed during the President’s visit so his motorcade will pay. The Beast will pay the charge, I’m delighted to say.

“We didn’t charge the Pope when he was here because all the roads were closed, so the Popemobile was exempt. But this was different.”

Mr Johnson raised the issue of the US embassy’s unpaid C-charge bill with the President during a state banquet at Buckingham Palace. He said: “We had a very friendly conversation. Suffice to say discussions will be ongoing.”

A spokesman for the Mayor later said: “They already owe £5.3 million so it is probable the bill for the motorcade will just go on top of that.”

We owe the City of London $5.3 million in traffic charges?

Think they’ll collect?

As Marco from Trepoya would say “GOOD LUCK”

Terrence Malick’s Mystical Tree of Life

From PJM:

The Tree of Life is strange, vivid, at times glorious. Prominent among its features are a crumbled and exasperating narrative, little dialogue, and astonishing leaps in time — all the way back from 1950s and 60s Texas, where most of the film is set, to the creation of the universe. But what might be its most surprising aspect is its wonderment in the face of God.

This open-ended but immensely serious movie begins with a quotation from Job 38:4, 7, in which God asks Job where the mortal was when He laid the foundations of the earth.

At the start of the story (I almost said “in the beginning”), two middle-aged parents (played by Brad Pitt and newcomer Jessica Chastain) of three grown boys find out that one of the children has died. What exactly happened to him remains clouded in mystery. In their anguish, the surviving characters begin speaking to God, pleading for answers about the grand design.

This is as far as most Hollywood directors would go, but Terrence Malick is not an ordinary hack. After his classic debut Badlands in 1973, he began to grow increasingly interested in abstraction. Followup movies like Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998, his first released film in two decades), and especially The New World (2005) were content to wallow in a sort of dreamy stupor, with storytelling pushed well to the background.

The Tree of Life, too, is certainly not for all tastes. It won the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. That prize usually is awarded to experimental films. But there is something special about The Tree of Life and that something is a hushed reverence for the Almighty and all His works (or, if you prefer, for the universe and all its workings).

As we learn more about the family at the center of the film, one boy (played as an adult by Sean Penn, who in some of the film’s less successful scenes spends a lot of time wandering around a rocky and deserted landscaped) gradually becomes accepting of the ways of wickedness while one of his little brothers takes on an Abel-like quality of innocence. The Pitt character, the patriarch, bears much blame for impressing sin into his oldest son, telling him that in business and in life it’s okay to cut corners. He also encourages the boy to turn to violence as a solution to problems and as a general attitude.

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Lech Walesa snubs Obama, fellow Nobel winner

Lech Walesa, Poland’s Solidarity-era legend, ex-president and 1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner said Friday he would not accept an invitation to meet with fellow Nobel winner US President Barack Obama.

“It’s difficult to tell journalists what you’d like to say to the president of a superpower. This time I won’t tell him, I won’t meet him, it doesn’t suit me,” Walesa told Poland’s public broadcaster TVP.

Obama is due to arrive in Poland Friday after the G8 summit in France.

Walesa was originally scheduled to meet Obama Saturday along with other key figures in Poland’s post-1989 transition from communism to democracy.

According to sources close to Walesa, he was expecting a personal invitation from Obama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 shortly after taking office.

The US president is Friday scheduled to attend a working dinner with more than a dozen presidents of ex-communist states focusing on what lessons their democratic transformation could hold for the Arab Spring.

On Saturday, Obama is due to hold bilateral talks with his Polish counterpart Bronislaw Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk on the last leg of his European tour which has also covered Ireland and Britain.

Yemen on brink of civil war as fighting worsens

SANAA (Reuters) - Yemeni tribesmen said they wrested a military compound from elite troops loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh outside the capital Sanaa on Friday as increased fighting threatened to tip the country into civil war.

Tribal leader Sheikh Hamid Asim told Reuters his fighters killed the base's military commander and a separate tribal source said the Yemeni air force dropped bombs to prevent the tribesmen from seizing an arms cache at the site.

Further bombing sorties by the air force could be heard near Sanaa during the course of the day.

If confirmed, the Republican Guard's loss of a military compound to tribesmen with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades would be an embarrassing setback for Saleh, whose security forces have been drawn into pitched street fighting in the capital this week that has killed nearly 100 people.

Tribes outside the capital said they were also fighting government troops at two other military sites.

In Sanaa, tens of thousands of people gathered for what they said would be a "Friday of Peaceful Revolution" against Saleh, releasing white doves and carrying the coffins of about 30 people killed in clashes this week.

A few kilometers (miles) away, government loyalists held their own rally, waving Yemeni flags and pictures of Saleh, who has ruled the Arabian Peninsula state for nearly 33 years.

"By God, you won't leave!" some red banners read.

There are worries that Yemen, already on the brink of financial ruin, could become a failed state that would undermine regional security and pose a serious risk to its neighbor Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter.
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The Blaze:

Israel Struggles to Stop Weapons Smuggling at Sea

HAIFA, Israel (AP) — Israel’s navy is casting its net wider and deeper in an effort to stop Gaza militants from receiving weapons by sea, a difficult mission made harder, Israel says, by political turmoil in Egypt and the Egyptian decision to fully reopen its border crossing with Gaza.

In recent weeks, Palestinian militants in Hamas-ruled Gaza have aimed rockets at Israeli cities, far enough away that Israel is convinced the projectiles came from abroad, probably Iran.

The first leg of a journey for weapons ending up in Gaza is a sea journey, ending with a trek across Egypt’s barren Sinai desert, and then through a network of smuggling tunnels under the 9-mile (15-kilometer) Gaza-Egypt border.

The Israeli navy is trying to stop the shipments at their first stage — on the high seas.

Like other branches of Israel’s military, the navy works mostly behind the scenes, and many of its operations are classified. They come to light when the navy carries out a major interception.

Its most recent success was March 15, when it seized the Victoria cargo ship. That weapons shipment departed from the Syrian port of Latakia and stopped in Mercin, Turkey. It was headed for the port of Alexandria in Egypt when it was intercepted, some 200 miles (320 kilometers) off Israel’s Mediterranean coast. From there, Israel charges, the weapons were headed for Gaza.
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150 years later, Jewish home in Old City becomes Jewish again

A house in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City has been bought by an American and become residential for Jews again.

A house dedication ceremony was held and a mezuzah was affixed on Thursday at Beit Shechter (Schechter house), located in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter, 150 years after the home was transferred to an Arab family when Jews had to leave the area. The house thus returned to Jewish hands.

Very likely this was during the time of the Ottoman Empire.

There was also a mezuzah slot found:

Two days earlier, as renovations were taking place inside the house, the original slot for the mezuzah was discovered.

Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, head of the Ateret Cohanim Yeshiva, the main catalyst in the home's recovery as it has been in other parts of the Muslim Quarter, was the one who affixed the mezuzah into place, following which a special dinner was held and dancing took place. The American Friends of Ateret Cohanim annual dinner will take place on June 1st in New York.

There's a video interview available at the link in the full article.

Jerusalem Post:

Egyptian activists 'to form Nazi party', newspaper reports
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
05/26/2011 16:41
'Al-Masry Al-Youm' report says Facebook pages launched to attract followers; Nazi parties operated secretly in Egypt during Mubarak regime.

A group of Egyptian political activists have announced plans to set up a local version “of the Nazi party,” an Egyptian newspaper reported on Thursday.

Citing a leftist Egyptian news portal, the Al-Masry Al-Youm daily said that “the party’s founding deputy is a former military official,” and that the party would be aimed at bringing “together prominent figures from the Egyptian society.”

The report cited founding member Emad Abdel Sattar as saying that the unestablished party “believes in vesting all powers in the president after selecting him or her carefully,” and that “preparations are under way to choose the most competent person to represent the party.”

Almasry Alyoum added that an Egyptian Nazi party “operated secretly under former President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime prevented party leaders from carrying out their activities freely.”

The newspaper said it could not verify the report, but said it found two Facebook pages that appeared recently under the title of “the Egyptian Nazi Party,” which have so far attracted 70 followers.

Members are “increasing at an unexpected rate, and several people came to ask about the nature of the party and its plans,” the report said.

The party has a one-year plan to develop Egypt – unlike the “marginalized liberal parties, which are like dead bodies,” a source was quoted as saying.

The idea to start it came after some fundamentalist-religious waves emerged, which, according to the source, created a state of chaos, and led to the burning of churches, the destruction of shrines and assaults on unarmed civilians.

Responding to the report, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, of Bar-Ilan University’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said Egypt was going through a highly turbulent period, adding that all manner of bizarre individuals were launching Facebook groups and attracting members.

Historically, he said, the German Nazi party saw three attempts to copy it in the Arab world in the 1930s in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. The Egyptian party of that time was led by former president Anwar Sadat, who went on to sign a peace treaty with Israel in 1979.

“They were copying the extreme nationalism of Germany, before the Second World War, and before the word ‘Nazi’ became a coarse word,” Kedar said.

Irrespective of the unconfirmed report on “the Egyptian Nazi party,” Egyptian activists opposed to army rule in Egypt are planning to hold demonstrations on Friday, Kedar noted.

“Egypt is a country of 85 million people. Some activists want a second and a third revolution. No one knows where things are heading yet,” he said.

This Week On The Gathering Storm

Listen to The Gathering Storm Radio Show, hosted by WC and Always On Watch. The show broadcasts live every Friday beginning at noon, Pacific Time, for 30 minutes.

The call-in number is 646-915-9870.

Callers welcome!

Our scheduled guest this week is IQ al Rassooli.

Listen to the May 27, 2011 edition of The Gathering Storm Radio Show, live or later, by CLICKING HERE.

UPCOMING SHOWS
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