Peter King

Rep. Peter King’s hearings accomplished nothing and so he proposes an unconstitutional strategy like the one the NYPD carried out and that produced exactly zero results.

After Boston, we should put Muslims under surveillance, says Rep. King

Aliyah Frumin (MSNBC)

President Obama cautioned the nation not to rush to judgment about the Boston Marathon bombers. But that’s not stopping Republican Rep. Peter King.

King, who chairs the House subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, is urging authorities to beef up their surveillance of Muslims in the U.S.  following Friday night’s arrest of bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Police must “realize that the threat is coming from the Muslim community and increase surveillance there,” the New York lawmaker told National Review.

King—who spearheaded controversial hearings on the radicalization of Muslim-Americans in 2011—also told CNN that “we can’t be politically correct. I think we have to see, has radicalization extended into the Chechen community?”

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, was taken into custody on Friday night in Watertown, Mass., after a day-long manhunt following an early-morning shootout with police in which his older brother, Tamerlan, 26, was killed. The two are suspected of planting bombs that killed three people and injured more than 170 near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday.

The ethnic Chechen brothers came to the U.S. in 2002 after fleeing the war-torn region. The two were born in the former Soviet territory now known as Kyrgyzstan. Those who knew the family have said Tamerlan Tsarnaev had become a devout Muslim in the past few years.

Dzhokhar became a naturalized citizen in 2012, while Tamerlan had a green card and was reportedly hoping to become a citizen.

Read the rest…

Gohmert: Radical Muslims ‘being trained to come in and act like Hispanics’

(RawStory)

Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R) on Wednesday connected the Monday bombings in Boston to the immigration debate and warned that “radical Islamists” were “being trained to come in and act like Hispanics.”

During an interview on C-SPAN, host Greta Wodele Brawner asked the Texas Republican about a bipartisan “Gang of Eight” proposal in the Senate that would increase funding for border security by $5.5 billion over ten years and establish a 13-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“What I first thought after my prayers went for the victims and the families in Boston is, ‘My gosh, we’ve seen this in Israel,’” Gohmert recalled. “And after Israel had to suffer the slings and arrows and the deaths and the maimings… Finally the Israeli people said, ‘You know what? Enough.’ They built, over 70 percent of it is just a fence, and the rest is a wall, prevents snipers from knocking off their kids. And they finally stopped the domestic violence from people that wanted to destroy them.”

“And I’m concerned we need to do that as well,” he insited.

Pressing Gohmert, the C-SPAN host noted that Rep. Steve King (-R-IA) had speculated that the Boston bombings were perpetrated by a “foreign national” and that Congress should proceed with caution on immigration reform.

“We know that al Qaeda has camps with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border,” Gohmert agreed. “We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics when they’re radical Islamists. We know these things are happening, and it’s just insane to not protect ourselves and make sure that people come in — as most people do, they want the freedoms we have.”

Watch the video below video from C-SPAN, broadcast April 17, 2013.

There was a similar incident in New York not long ago. This is also interesting in view of the recent attempts by Barbara Boxer and AIPAC seeking to codify Israel’s right to discriminate against Americans.:

Report: French rail firm banned Muslims from working during Peres visit

(YNet)

France’s national railway company banned its black and North African employees from working during President Shimon Peres’ visit last month over fears they “might be Muslim,” newspapers in Britain reported overnight Monday.

According to the Daily Mail, the alleged discrimination took place when Peres arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris, the hub for high-speed trains travelling to cities including London, on March 8.

The SUD-Rail transport union filed an official complaint saying everything was done to ensure there were “no Muslim employees to welcome the head of the State of Israel,” according to the British newspaper.

Peres and a delegation of other senior Israeli officials arrived on a morning train from Belgium and were greeted by staff from SNCF, France’s national railway, and their baggage-handling subsidiary, ITIREMIA.

But the day before, the Daily Mail reported, a site manager told all workers at the station about the ban on black staff, and those of North African descent, because they might be Muslim.

SUD-Rail said in a statement it was assumed by management that anyone from a “black or Arab” background might be Muslim – an assumption “based on the appearance of the workers.”

According to the report, SNCF initially blamed the discrimination on “security protocol” advised by the French Interior Ministry and the Israeli Embassy in Paris, but this has been emphatically denied by both.

Instead, the order came from SNCF management, with a spokesman for the state-run company pledging “a full investigation.”

The Daily Mail mentioned that the row is particularly embarrassing for SNCF because of the part it played in the extermination of Jews, and other minorities, during the Second World War. In 2011 the organization made its first formal public apology to Holocaust victims, many of whom had been entrained to death camps in Germany on lines which ran out of the Gare du Nord.

France has the largest Muslim population in western Europe, with up to six million living in the country, many in major cities like Paris, the report said.

(via. Islamophobia-Watch)

Austrian Right-Wing Populists Lose Ground

(Spiegel.de)

The southern Austrian state of Carinthia was long a source of inspiration for right-wing populists across Europe. As early as 1989, the Freedom Party of Carinthia (FPK) briefly nabbed the governor’s mansion in the state. In 1999, the right-wingers — behind the charismatic leadership of Jörg Haider — emerged victorious in state elections once again, and have managed to hold onto the state since.

Until Sunday, that is. In a key state election seen as a bellwether for the Austrian general election approaching in September, Carinthian voters delivered a painful blow to the FPK, the state chapter of the national Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Sunday evening exit polls indicated that the FPK managed a mere 17.1 percent of the vote — a veritable collapse since their 45 percent result four years ago. It was the largest vote-on-vote disintegration ever seen in postwar Austria.

The Social Democratic party SPÖ won with 37.1 percent of the vote, while the center-right ÖVP landed in third place with 14.2 percent. Notably, the80-year-old billionaire businessman Frank Stronach managed to win 11.3 percent of the vote just a half year after bursting onto the Austrian political scene.

The right-wing populists’ poor showing comes afternumerous corruption allegations stemming from the time when Jörg Haider set the tone on the Austrian right. Members of the FPK and the Haider splinter party Alliance for Austria’s Future (BZÖ) — which received just 6.5 percent in Carinthia on Sunday– have been accused, investigated or indicted for just about every form of corruption imaginable in recent years.

‘Extremely Disappointing’

Among the most notable cases is the purchase of Eurofighter jets under the aegis of BZÖ member Herbert Scheibner during his stint as defense secretary. He is under investigation for money laundering as part of that deal. In addition, the FPK has been heavily implicated in irregularities surrounding the sale of the Hypo-Alpe-Adria-Bank.

While politicians from other parties were also allegedly involved in bribery related to the sale, the reputation of Jörg Haider, who initiated the sale, has taken the biggest hit, particularly given his party’s longstanding pledge to do away with the corruption endemic in the country’s more established political camps. Haider died in an accident while driving drunk in 2008.

Sunday’s result — combined with their meager 8.2 percent showing in the other Austrian state election on Sunday, in Lower Austria — does not bode well for the right-wing populists this autumn. “It was a clear rejection and a … clear demand for a restart,” said a visibly irate FPÖ head Hans-Christian Strache on Austrian television on Monday morning. “There is no way around it. A renewal is necessary. The result is extremely disappointing, but the voters are always right.”

As recently as last year, the populists under Strache’s leadership had been in pole position, briefly leading in public opinion surveys. Lately, nationwide surveys have indicated sliding support, though, with the FPÖ now in third place behind the center-left SPÖ and center-right ÖVP.

EDL vows to return to Cambridge in bigger numbers

The English Defence League has vowed to return to Cambridge in bigger numbers – despite a low turnout and several arrests.

Its rally on Christ’s Pieces on Saturday ended early after only about 40 members turned up. More than 400 officers were drafted in to police them and a counter-demonstration by Cambridge Unite Against Fascism which had more than 500 people in its ranks, according to police.

EDL members said they were furious, claiming they were “penned in” during attempts to protest against a planned mosque in Mill Road. Scores of police surrounded the EDL protesters who were behind fences next to Drummer Street bus station.

EDL members were heckled by passers-by and began to fight among themselves as their stewards tried to eject a man who had a “banned” Nazi banner. When counter-protesters marched past, with the two groups separated by a police “no-go zone”, one EDL member broke through but was quickly stopped by police.

A spokesman for the group’s East Anglia Division told the News: “We are not thugs or extremists. We are the silent majority but we have been penned in like pigs while the police allow the lefties to march through the city.

“But we will be back in bigger numbers. The leaders are planning a national protest here in Cambridge. All we want to do is have a peaceful protest against a mosque that is not in keeping and will cause no end of traffic problems as it holds 1,000 but has just 80 parking spaces. We are not against Muslims. We are anti-Islam.”

Tourist Vic Synott, 50, of Ayr, Scotland, came across the EDL chanting “we are the famous EDL”. He said: “They are just showing themselves up by their behaviour. They are a disgrace.”

EDL speakers hit out at MEP Richard Howitt for branding them “extremists”.

The Euro MP told the counter-marchers the party had sent him a note “adorned with Nazi swastikas” and accusing him of being “a traitor to civilisation and democracy”. He added: “There is only one group that represents everything in our society which is uncivilised and undemocratic. The traitors to Britain’s traditions of tolerance, fairness and respect – the true traitors – are the EDL themselves. They are a joke.”

Cambridge News, 25 February 2013

As you can see from the YouTube link, the so-called Nazi banner featured the word “ISLAM” with the letter “S” replaced by a swastika. The individual holding it shouted that “Islam is fascism – anti-democratic, misogynistic, anti-gay”, while his drunken supporters chanted “stick your fucking Islam up your arse”. However other EDL members, who were presumably too thick to understand the message behind the banner, attacked him on the basis that he had broken the EDL’s ban on the public display of Nazi symbols.

The UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, visited this camp for displaced Rohingyas in Myebon in Rakhine State. (PHOTO: UNIC)

As a recent TIME article by Jason Motlagh highlights, more and more stateless Rohingya are fleeing persecution in Burma through perilous boat journeys,

A large chunk of Abdul Rahman’s home is gone, and so is his oldest son, Shakur. The ethnic Rohingya farmer tore down nearly half his home for scrap needed to secure his son’s passage on a boat bound for Malaysia. In the wake of bloody sectarian violence last year that left hundreds dead and forced tens of thousands of minority Muslim Rohingya into camps outside the coastal city of Sittwe, Rahman, 52, insists his people are being “strangled” by a Burmese government that does not want them. While foreign donors have supplied basic food rations, checkpoints manned by armed guards prevent the displaced from returning to the paddies and markets their livelihoods depend on. “Even animals can move more freely,” says Rahman.

These days, more and more Rohingya are betting what little they still have on a dangerous journey at sea. Community leaders and boatmen involved in the exodus say the volume of passengers is unprecedented because of enduring tensions and a total lack of mobility inside Burma, also known as Myanmar, where the Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination and neglect. The growing sense of despair is borne out by the roughly 1,800 refugees who washed up in Thailand in January. And they keep arriving, on overloaded boats without navigational equipment, despite a voyage that can take up to two weeks. If they’re lucky: of the 13,000 mostly Rohingya Muslims who fled Myanmar and Bangladesh last year, the U.N. says at least 485 were known to have drowned.

It is clear that many are fleeing not only violence and persecution but also prison-like conditions in “camps” that the Myanmar government has set up for internally displaced Rohingya,

Speaking at a press conference at Yangon International Airport before leaving the country on Saturday, Quintana said nearly 120,000 people are now living in camps in Rakhine State with a lack of adequate healthcare, and noted that conditions were worse in camps sheltering Rohingyas and other Muslims.

The UN official said harassment of medical staff by Buddhist extremists in Rakhine State was one of the reasons behind the poor healthcare.

The government needs to address the problem of freedom of movement in the camps, Quintana stated, adding that one of the camps “felt more like a prison than a camp.”

Disturbing reports also allege that the extent of violence against Rohingya includes torture and sexual exploitation of minors,

New data obtained by DVB shows that torture and violence, including the sexual exploitation of minors, is widespread throughout prisons in Burma’s northern Arakan state – also known as Rakhine – where at least 966 Rohingya have been detained since November last year. At least 10 women and 72 children, aged between 10 and 15 years old, are understood to be among the prisoners. Sixty-two deaths were recorded in Buthidaung jail alone, where prisoners also reported being forced to shower naked in public and were routinely subjected to torture and sexual humiliation.

Jihad was denied permission to attend an event held by free press group Trykkefrihedsselskabet, whose chair, Lars Hedegaard (pictured), was the recent target of an assassination attempt (Photo: Scanpix)

(h/t: Tosseanstalten)

Arabic man accuses free speech group of hypocrisy

(Copenhagen Post)

A 20-year-old student from Roskilde University with an Arabic background has been denied entry to a debate on Thursday about the importance of free speech, despite having purchased a ticket.

The debate was organised by free press advocates Trykkefrihedsselskabet, which is chaired by historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard, who was the target of a recent failed assassination attempt.

While the perpetrator has yet to be apprehended, it is widely believed that Hedegaard’s vocal criticism of Islam may have been a motivation.

The student, Jihad Taha, says his middle-eastern background and the fact that his first name is also used to refer to ‘holy war’ in Arabic may be the reason he received an email yesterday informing him he wouldn’t be granted entry to the parliament building, Christiansborg, where the meeting is being held.

“I’m afraid to inform you that for security reasons we have chosen to reject your participation in the meeting on Thursday,” Torben Mark Pedersen, a Trykkefrihedsselskabet board member wrote in an email to Taha. “Your name will not appear on the guest list and you will not be granted entry to Christiansborg. If you send me your bank details we will refund your money.”

Taha, who volunteers for a range of charity and human rights organisations such as the Danish Youth Council told Politiken newspaper that he found the decision by Trykkefrihedsselskabet to be “strongly discriminatory”.

“I have a spotless criminal record, I study at university and I volunteer for [the children’s charity] Red Barnet Ungdom and [the home guard] Hjemmeværnet,” Taha told Politiken newspaper. “I hate to say it but I can’t imagine anything other than my Arabic name being used as justification for Trykkefrihedsselskabet’s decision.”

In a reply to the newspaper, Trykkefrihedsselskabet wrote that it was entitled to choose who could attend the event.

“We are a private association and our event is also private, meaning that we can choose who can and cannot participate,” spokesperson Torben Mark Pedersen wrote in a comment to Politiken. “Our events are normally open to the public but we evaluate each case individually, and that occassionally leads to some being excluded in order to let others participate. That is what has happened in this case and I will make no further comment.”

Pedersen would not divulge which security reasons were used to justify Taha’s exclusion, but domestic intelligence agency PET informed Politiken that it had not been consulted.

According to metroXpress newspaper, Taha was born in Denmark to a Palestinian father and Egyptian mother. He explained that he found his exclusion hypocritical.

“I think it is really bad especially given that I am being excluded from a debate about free speech,” Taha told metroXpress. “I disagree with Hedegaard’s views but I still think he has the right to have them. Dialogue is the only way forward.”

France has an “intelligentsia” that includes high profile deniers of Islamophobia, take for instance the case of Pascal Bruckner, part of the “nouveaux (new) French philosophers,” who has fallen for the line that the term “Islamophobia” was created by the “mad Islamist Mullah Ayatollah Imam Khomeini.”

These “philosophers” and many of their fellow travelers from the French establishment live in a bubble divorced from reality, as they cannot see what is happening in their own backyard (see article below), either that or they just don’t give a damn and are pleased by such acts of violence and intimidation.

via. Al-Kanz, (adjusted Google translation)

Inaugurated in December of 2010, the Thiers mosque might not be here today. The website Lamontagne.fr reported yesterday that one or more individuals tried to set fire to the boiler room of the building.

Rags of gasoline were found on site, which leaves no doubt about the desire to destroy the mosque, said the site. As was recommended by the specialist mosques website, Trouvetamosquee.fr, the Turkish association that manages the building has “put surveillance cameras and systems of protection.”

Last October, swastikas were recorded on a disused building located in a parking lot in front of the Thiers mosque. These Nazi tags were removed just before the prayer of Eid al-Adha.

It is the eighth act against a Muslim place of worship since the beginning of 2013. But according to “media specialists on Islam,” Islamophobia is a figment of the imagination. These acts are as common crime.

Since 2003, the CCIF (Collective against Islamophobia in France) struggles to contain the hatred. Click on the following link or the image below for support by joining: http://www.islamophobie.net/adherez

 

Racial abuse shouted in Hartlepool mosque

Police are hunting two men and a woman who burst into a mosque and shouted racial abuse. The incident happened at the Nasir Mosque on Brougham Terrace, in Hartlepool, at around 7.45pm on Tuesday, February 5.

These brave men laughed when their pal spat on a young women in headscarf. How much you want to bet they are part of those “freedom fighting” EDL bunch?

Thug spat on woman who was wearing a hijab in Humberstone Road, Leicester

(This is Leicester)

A thug spat at a woman in the street apparently because she was wearing an Islamic head scarf.

Police have appealed for help tracing the man, who targeted the woman in Humberstone Road, near Leicester city centre.

The 20-year-old woman was walking near to the St Matthews service station when she noticed three young men approaching her.

One of them spat on her as they passed by and the three began laughing as they walked away.

Officers have released a CCTV image of three people they want to trace.

The incident happened shortly before 1pm on Monday, February 4.

Pc Dave Adams said: “The victim felt upset and frightened following the incident and feels that she was targeted because she was wearing a hijab.

“We will not tolerate people feeling intimidated and frightened on our streets and I would urge anyone with information to call us as soon as they can.

“The road was quite busy at the time of the incident so there is a possibility that passers-by and passing traffic may be able to help.”

The three suspects are white, 18 or 19 and of slim build.

One was wearing a peaked cap and another was wearing a black hooded top.

Contact Pc Adams on 101 or Crimestoppers, which is anonymous, on 0800 555 111.