By Trevor Aaronson

Foad Farahi, North Miami Beach, FBI, Muslim

Bush-Cheney and Kerry-Edwards signs littered the lawns of North Miami Beach as Imam Foad Farahi walked from a mosque to his apartment a few blocks away. It was November 1, 2004, the day before George W. Bush would win a second term in office. But the Muslim holy man had been too busy fasting and praying to pay much attention to the presidential election.

For Farahi, an Iranian citizen who had lived in the United States for more than a decade, it was simply another month of Ramadan in South Florida. Then, around 5 p.m., as he neared his apartment, he saw two men standing outside. They were waiting for him.

“We’re from the FBI,” one of the men said.

“OK,” he responded.

They wanted to know about José Padilla and Adnan El Shukrijumah, two South Florida men linked to the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. Padilla, the so-called Dirty Bomber, was arrested in May 2002 and initially given enemy combatant status. He eventually stood trial in Miami, was convicted on terrorism charges, and sentenced to 17 years in prison. Shukrijumah is a Saudi Arabian and an alleged Al-Qaeda member whose last known address was in Miramar. The FBI is offering up to $5 million for information leading directly to his capture.

“I know José Padilla, but I don’t know Adnan,” Farahi told the agents.

Of course, Farahi knew of Shukrijumah. As imam of the Shamsuddin Islamic Center in North Miami Beach, Farahi was in a unique position to know about local Muslims, including Padilla and Shukrijumah. Padilla had prayed at Farahi’s mosque and was once among his Arabic students. Shukrijumah was the son of a local Islamic religious leader.

“I have had no contact with Padilla since 1998, when he left the country,” Farahi told the government agents. He had once met Shukrijumah but had no contact with him after that. “I don’t know anything about his activities.”

“We want you to work with us,” Farahi remembers the agents telling him.

And this is when the imam’s five-year battle with the federal government began.

“I have no problem working with you guys or helping you out,” Farahi said. He could keep them informed about the local Muslim community or translate Arabic. But the relationship, he insisted, would need to be public; others would have to know he was helping the government.

But that wasn’t what the FBI had in mind, Farahi says. The agents wanted him to become a secret informant who would investigate specific people. And they knew Farahi was in a vulnerable position. His student visa had expired, and he had asked the government for a renewal. He had also applied for political asylum, hoping one of those legal tracks would offer a way for him to stay in the United States indefinitely.

“We’ll give you residency,” the agents promised. “We’ll give you money to go to school.”

Farahi considered the offer for a moment and then shook his head.

“I can’t,” he told them.

The slender, bearded 34-year-old Farahi frowns as he recalls all of this while sitting on a white folding chair in the Shamsuddin Islamic Center on a recent afternoon. “People trust you as a religious figure, and you’re trying to kind of deceive them,” he says, remembering the choice he faced. “That’s where the problem is.”

Farahi soon discovered the FBI’s offer wasn’t optional. The federal government used strong-arm tactics — including trying to have him deported and falsely claiming it had information linking him to terrorism — in an effort to force him to become an informant, he says.

The imam has resisted the government at every step, having most recently taken his political asylum case to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

“As long as you’re not a citizen, there are lots of things [the government] can do,” says Ira Kurzban, Farahi’s attorney. “They can allege you’re a terrorist and try to bring terrorist charges against you, or they can get you deported.” Terrorism, he explains, can even be defined as giving “money to a hospital in the West Bank that turns out to be run by Hamas.”

Farahi asserts unequivocally he is innocent of any terrorism charges the government could bring against him. In fact, he says, he would report anyone in the Muslim community supporting terrorism. “From the Islamic perspective, it’s your duty to respect the law, and if there’s anything going on, any crime about to be committed, or any kind of harm to be caused to people or property, it should be reported to the police,” he says.

The FBI’s intense efforts to pressure Farahi into becoming an informant reveal the bureau’s desperation to infiltrate local Muslim communities. The hard-line tactics have become so widespread in the United States that the San Francisco-based civil rights group Muslim Advocates distributes a video advising how to respond if FBI agents approach.

In fact, relations between the FBI and U.S. Islamic communities are so strained that a coalition of Muslim-American groups in March accused the government of using “McCarthy-era tactics” and threatened to sever communication with the FBI unless it “reassessed its use of agent provocateurs in Muslim communities.”

Despite this public conflict, few specific cases of Muslims being recruited as informants have become public. Farahi’s battle with the government is not only daring but also unusual.

“People have two choices,” Farahi says. “Either they end up working with the FBI, or they leave the country on their own. It’s just sometimes when you’re in that situation, not many people are strong enough to stand up and resist and fight — to reject their offers.”

———-

By law, Foad Farahi is an Iranian. But by every other measure, the North Miami Beach imam is something else. In his 34 years, he has never set foot in Iran. He speaks Arabic, not Farsi, and while the majority of Iranians are members of the Shia sect of Islam, Farahi is a Sunni. He is an Iranian only because he inherited his father’s citizenship.

But Farahi grew up in Kuwait. His father was an Iranian businessman who operated a currency exchange business in Kuwait City. His mother, a Syrian, raised him and his younger sister to speak Arabic and worship as Sunnis. But he knew his future would never be secure in Kuwait. “Even if I married a Kuwaiti woman, I wouldn’t become a citizen,” he says. “Kuwait could deport me to Iran at any time for any reason.”

At age 19, he applied for and received a student visa from the United States. He chose to come to South Florida, where his family once vacationed when he was a teenager, and enrolled in Miami Dade College. He received an associate’s degree there and transferred to Barry University, the private Catholic school in Miami Shores, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.

While at Barry, he served on the university’s interfaith committee, several faculty members recall. This continued even after he graduated. He helped put together interfaith dinners and talked about Islam. In addition, he participated as a teacher in a Barry University peace forum attended by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim children. “He has had a positive influence at this university,” says Edward R. Sunshine, a theology professor at Barry. No one who knows Farahi, Sunshine says, would suspect he is radical or militant in any way.

Farahi went on to obtain a master’s degree in public health from Florida International University. He also began an intensive, three-year imam’s training course administered by the director of Islamic studies at a mosque in Miramar. In 2000, the Shamsuddin Islamic Center opened near his home in North Miami Beach. Six months later, its imam returned home to Egypt, and Farahi was a logical successor.

In Islam, an imam is among the designated leaders in a community or mosque. The imam leads prayers during gatherings and helps others understand the teachings of Islam. Farahi earns a modest salary funded by donations to the mosque.

It was through this position that he met several South Floridians who have been linked to terrorism. In addition to Padilla and Shukrijumah, he encountered Imran Mandhai, a 19-year-old Pakistani man living in Hollywood who was arrested in 2002 for an alleged plot to bomb power plants.

“Imran came here once years ago during Ramadan,” Farahi recalls as he sits in a corner of the mosque. “It was a big event for him at the time. He memorized and recited the Koran.”

When Farahi met with the FBI agents November 1, 2004, he said he couldn’t spy on members of his mosque in good conscience. Two days later, FBI agents phoned him. They requested he come to their office to take a polygraph. “I had nothing to hide,” Farahi recalls. “They asked the same questions over and over, to see if my answer would change, and it didn’t.”

The agents were still focused on Shukrijumah.

“What is your relationship with him?”

“When was the last time you were in contact with him?”

“Where is he now?”

For two and a half years after the polygraph, Farahi didn’t hear from the FBI. Then, in summer 2007, he received another call from the bureau. An agent asked to meet with him immediately. In Cooper City, two FBI agents — a man and a woman — again asked Farahi if he would work with the government. He again declined, and the meeting ended amicably.

Farahi didn’t know the pushback would come later.

———-

On a November day in 2007, Farahi arrived at Miami Immigration Court for what he thought would be a routine hearing on his political asylum case. The imam had requested asylum because he is a Sunni, a persecuted religious minority in Iran. Fear of religious persecution is one of the internationally recognized grounds the United States considers in granting asylum from Iran.

As Farahi entered the courthouse, he saw four men from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They wore body armor and had guns holstered at their sides. All followed Farahi from the security checkpoint on the ground level to the third-floor courtroom of Judge Carey Holliday.

Farahi’s attorney at the time, Mildred Morgado, spoke with the ICE agents and then asked to talk to Farahi in private. “They have a file with evidence that you’re supporting or are involved in terrorist groups,” Farahi recalls Morgado telling him. (Morgado did not return repeated calls seeking comment.)

Farahi says the ICE agents gave him an ultimatum: Drop the asylum case and leave the United States voluntarily, or be charged as a terrorist. He was afraid.

Indeed, luck wasn’t on Farahi’s side when drawing a judge for his asylum claim. Appointed to the immigration court in October 2006 by then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Holliday was a Louisiana Republican who had quickly earned a reputation for being tough on immigrants in Florida. In one case, he declined to hear arguments from an Ecuadorian couple who alleged they were targeted for deportation because their daughter, Miami Dade College student Gabby Pacheco, was a well-known activist for immigration reform. “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” Holliday wrote. (The judge resigned this past January, after the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General found Bush administration officials had illegally considered political affiliation when selecting judicial candidates for immigration court.)

So Farahi told Judge Holliday he would voluntarily leave the country within 30 days. Although Farahi’s Iranian passport was expired — a bureaucratic problem that should have given him more time to consider the government’s threat — Judge Holliday granted the order of voluntary departure.

Soon, Farahi realized the government’s claim that it would prosecute him as a terrorist was a bluff — nothing more than leverage to coerce him into becoming an informant. To this day, the government has not shared with Farahi or his attorney any information about this professed evidence, and he has not been charged with a crime.

“If they have something on Foad, they should make it public. They haven’t done that,” says Sunshine, the Barry University theology professor. “They are intimidating and bullying, and I resent that type of behavior being paid for by my tax dollars.”

Farahi’s assertion that the government is trying to coerce him to become an informant cannot be verified independently because the FBI won’t comment on his case. “It is a matter of policy that we do not confirm or deny who we have asked to be a source,” says Miami FBI Special Agent Judy Orihuela. But similar claims from other would-be informants seem to support Farahi’s assertion.

In November 2005, for example, immigration officials questioned Yassine Ouassif, a 24-year-old Moroccan with a green card, as he crossed into New York from Canada. The officials confiscated his green card and instructed him to meet an FBI agent in Oakland, California. The bureau’s offer: Become an informant or be deported. Ouassif refused to spy and won his deportation case with the help of National Legal Sanctuary for Community Advancement, a nonprofit that advocates for civil rights on behalf of Muslims and immigrants from the Middle East and South Asia.

The government employed a similarly tough tactic against Tarek Mehanna, a 26-year-old U.S. citizen living in Sudbury, Massachusetts. After FBI agents failed to persuade Mehanna to spy, the government charged him with making a false statement. Prosecutors allege Mehanna told FBI agents a suspect was in Egypt when he knew that person was in Somalia. Mehanna is awaiting trial, and his attorney has alleged the prosecution is a form of revenge for Mehanna’s unwillingness to be an informant.

Among more recent cases is that of Ahmadullah Sais Niazi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Afghanistan. Charged with making a false statement to obtain citizenship, he alleged in a February detention hearing in Orange County, California, that he was arrested and indicted for refusing to be an informant.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) suspects there are hundreds of similar cases in which the government has used deportation or criminal charges to force cooperation from informants. Most of these cases will never be made public. What’s more, the FBI is now working under guidelines, approved in December 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey, that allow agents to consider religion and ethnic background when launching undercover investigations. Today, many Muslims in the United States simply assume informants are working inside their mosques.

“This is becoming increasingly common,” says Ibrahim Hooper, CAIR’s national communications director. “Law enforcement authorities seek to use some vulnerability of the individual, whether it be business, immigration, or personal, to try to gain some sort of informant status.

“The issue is law enforcement’s basic understanding of the community. Is it one that law enforcement needs to have blanket suspicion toward or is it… well integrated into our multi-faith nation and wants to preserve public safety as well as civil liberties?”

———-

Ira Kurzban’s law office in Miami is a mile from the alfresco restaurants of Coconut Grove. On a hot day in late August, Kurzban wears a white guayabera and shows no concern for the disheveled gray hairs on the sides of his balding head.

He leans forward at his desk, having been asked a question about Farahi. “He’s an imam in his mosque,” Kurzban says as he throws his hands in the air in a sort of protest. “He’s basically, you know, the rabbi.”

Kurzban has become a well-known advocate for immigrants’ rights, having argued more immigration-related cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any of his peers. He is also on the board of directors of Immigrants’ List, the first political action committee in Washington, D.C., established to support candidates who endorse immigration reform.

Farahi, desperate not to leave the country but frightened after government agents threatened to charge him as a terrorist, hired Kurzban to take his case on appeal.

In November 2007, Kurzban asked the Board of Immigration Appeals to throw out Farahi’s voluntary departure order and reopen his political asylum case, arguing the imam was illegally intimidated. The board denied the request, so Kurzban petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Farahi’s order of voluntary departure has been stayed.

For now, the legal battle makes Farahi a kind of no-land’s man. He no longer has an official immigration status in the United States, and in asking for political asylum, he has rejected his Iranian citizenship. As he was in Kuwait, Farahi is home in a land that could expel him at any time.

“I think the real issue is, does the government have the right to pressure people… to make them informants?” Kurzban says. “It’s clearly modus operandi of the FBI to (a) recruit people who are going to be informants and (b) to use whatever leverage they can.”

A few weeks later, in North Miami Beach, Ramadan is nearing its end. For Farahi, this year’s religious festival marks nearly five years since the FBI first asked him to be an informant. “I’m not bitter about what has happened,” the imam insists.

Dressed in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt, he walks barefoot through the mosque as members begin to arrange food on folding banquet tables. After sundown, everyone will eat and drink together to break the fast. Farahi is distracted as he waves at attendees and hugs others entering the mosque.

“I’m not bitter,” he repeats after a few moments. “I wouldn’t say I’m bitter at all. But I’m tired. I want to live my life in this country. I want to stay here. That’s all.”

Farahi stops and waves to another man. The imam shakes his head quickly. “I wish the case would be over,” he says. “I just wish I could stay here.”

Research for this story was supported in part by a grant from Political Research Associates, with funding from the Atlantic Philanthropies.

11-43

By Douglas Hamilton

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – President Obama’s peace envoy sought Thursday an “early relaunch” of Israeli-Palestinian talks but Israel’s foreign minister said Washington’s goal of comprehensive peace was an illusion.

With wider Muslim-Jewish tension brewing over access to holy sites in Jerusalem, Western-backed Palestinian Pres. Abbas struggling for credibility and Islamist Hamas ascendant in Gaza, omens for U.S. envoy George Mitchell’s trip were not good.

“We are determined, persevering, and we recognize the complexities and the difficulties,” he told reporters before talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv.

Resuming talks suspended 10 months ago was essential for a comprehensive regional treaty involving Israel and neighbors that include Syria and Lebanon. Obama believes “there is no alternative” if the region wants peace, Mitchell said.

Desultory peace talks were derailed by the Gaza war. Obama has made their resumption a priority. He invested more political capital last month by arranging a meeting of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in New York, but with scant results.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced before meeting Mitchell earlier on Thursday that he would tell the envoy there was no chance of a peace deal for many years.

“There are many conflicts in the world that haven’t reached a comprehensive solution and people learned to live with it,” Lieberman, a hawk in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-leaning coalition government, told Israel Radio.

US officials said Mitchell, who meets Abbas and Netanyahu on Friday, was back with a sense of urgency but no expectation of a breakthrough. Since his appointment in January, Mitchell has visited Israel and the West Bank nine times. The missions have been stymied by Netanyahu’s refusal to halt settlement construction and by Arab states’ reluctance to make peace overtures.

The Palestinians say Mitchell must realize that Lieberman has made it clear why “there will be no relaunch of negotiations any time soon,” Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdainah told Reuters from Rome, where Abbas was on an official visit. “We need to hear a response to this statement, from Mitchell and from the American administration who are making efforts to salvage the peace process while faced with an Israeli government which destroys all those American efforts.”

King Abdullah of Jordan, whose country has made peace with Israel and who plays an important role in advancing the peace process with the Palestinians, was quoted on Thursday as saying in an interview “we are sliding back into the darkness.”

The sense of pessimism was deepened by the political weakness of Abbas, who has angered Palestinians by agreeing under U.S. pressure not to push for action on a U.N. war crimes report critical of Israeli conduct of the Gaza war.

Abbas aides admit this was a mistake and say he will explain everything in a broadcast to the nation. Support for the 74-year-old leader has been badly damaged. Critics say he should resign and in the Gaza Strip he is branded a “traitor.”

Hamas asked Egypt to postpone a meeting with Abbas’s Fatah movement to sign a reconciliation pact. It was supposed to take place in Cairo on Oct 24-26, but Hamas said Abbas’s decision had “sabotaged the atmosphere.”

Unlike Abbas and Fatah, Hamas is enjoying a wave of popularity for securing the release of 20 female prisoners from Israel last week in return for a video showing that the Israeli soldier it has held captive for three years is alive and well. Like Lieberman, Hamas does not believe in a comprehensive peace leading to a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It proposes a long-term truce but has no intention of surrendering its claim to all of formerly British-ruled Palestine.

Jordan’s King Abdullah warned in an interview with the Israeli daily Haaretz that Jerusalem, which Israel says is its non-negotiable, non-divisible capital, is “a tinderbox” that could ignite fire throughout the Islamic world.

Palestinian leaders on Thursday called for a general strike over disputed Jerusalem and warned of further protests on the Muslim day of Friday prayers at al-Aqsa mosque.

Israel say it is not taking seriously recent Palestinian warnings that a general uprising is about to break out.

11-43

By David Kushner, Wired Magazine

Joe Apichella in his replica 1934 Ford street rod.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington

Gallery

Pimp My Ride: Golf Cart Edition

It’s a brutally hot morning here at the Villages, one of the biggest retirement communities on the planet. But the saunalike central Florida weather doesn’t slow down the 77,000 seniors who call this place home.

On the nine softball fields around the development, smack-talking eightysomethings try to leg out a base hit. Graceful swimmers slice through the water in glittering pools. Near the Bait Shop bar in one of the immaculate town squares, line dancers shimmy in unison.

Villagers play hard. And they drive … well, they drive kinda slow. Because the ride of choice at the Villages isn’t a Lincoln or a Cadillac. It’s a golf cart.

The diminutive vehicles are the primary mode of transportation for daily life here. Residents can drive them just about everywhere they need to go. They whiz along 87 miles of trails, from the Walmart to the town squares, from the hospital to the archery range. When they have to cross the six-lane US 27/US 441 highway, no sweat—they take the specially built golf cart overpass. "We don’t like to call them our golf carts," a retiree named Warren Cromer tells me. "They’re our second car."

Tony Colangelo, owner of the Villages Golf Cart Man.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington

Second cars with massive upgrades. Villagers have tricked out their carts to look like 1930s roadsters, fire trucks, and stretch limos. The hottest ride in town is currently a canary-yellow imitation of a Hummer H3 with alligator interior, undercarriage lighting, and a 1,400-watt stereo. The most obsessed drivers have spent upwards of $20,000 pimping their rides: Villagers trade up for bigger tires, swap computer codes to overclock their batteries, and hack their motors to bypass built-in speed caps. Standard carts typically top out at around 20 miles per hour, but a little tweaking can boost that to as much as 40.

Retirees who want ever more speed (and who still have their driver’s licenses) can buy so-called neighborhood electric vehicles, a burgeoning class of electric cars that are street-legal in at least 45 states. At a strip mall dealership called the Villages Golf Cart Man, owner Tony Colangelo takes me out back to show me a cherry-red NEV called the LC3 that I’ll be driving during my stay here. "Pretty sweet, huh?" Colangelo says.

My Lilliputian chariot boasts beige zip-down doors, chrome-capped 12-inch wheels, and a sloping front end with tiny round headlamps. It looks like a sidekick for Herbie the Love Bug.

If you ever wondered what the world would look like if we all ditched our cars, visit the Villages. Designed from the ground up as a golf cart community, it has developed into something even more compelling: a town where cars don’t isolate people from each other, but rather bring them together.

With a flick of a button on the LC3 dash, I whisk quietly out of the dealership’s parking lot and into the electric future.

Before the golf cart, there was golf. Lots and lots of golf. "Free golf for the rest of your life" is the marketing slogan here, and residents get unlimited access to 24 nine-hole "executive courses," with thoroughbred names like Churchill Greens, Pimlico, and Truman.

The first courses were built as a way to lure retirees to the small trailer park that Villages CEO Gary Morse‘s father bought here in the early 1980s. As the aging snowbirds flocked down for the free golf, the community grew around one founding principle: Everything would be accessible by golf cart.

The hottest ride in town is a canary-yellow imitation of a Hummer H3 with a 1,400-watt stereo.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington

Today, the serpentine golf cart trails dominate the Villages. On a full charge, carts can cover about 45 miles, more than enough to handle a day’s worth of leisure. Just about everything a retiree could need is contained within the 40 square miles of the community. Each neighborhood—or Village—is clustered around a recreational center, golf course, and pool. And it’s just a short ride to one of the 12 fishing lakes or 85 horseshoe pits or 115 bocce courts.

After a vigorous day of recreation, Villagers cart over to one of the two town squares for a night of drinks and live music. When I join the herd for happy hour at the nautical-themed Lake Sumter Landing Market Square, I find rows and rows of gleaming golf carts parked along the curbs. It’s like something out of Disney World or The Truman Show—meticulously engineered and brilliantly detailed, all the way down to the harmonies of "Michael Row Your Boat Ashore" wafting from the speakers overhead. The town would be easy to ridicule if not for the fact that the residents love it. For them, it’s perfect.

The cart-friendly design stretches far beyond this hub. Trails lead directly from the Villages to big chains like Target, Staples, and Starbucks, which line the nearby highways. Instead of parking lots crammed with minivans or SUVs, I see fleets of golf carts, often parked two or three to a spot.

This laid-back EV lifestyle is spreading. Other communities around the country—from the retirement enclave of Sun City, Arizona, to the all-ages suburb of Peachtree City, Georgia—are expanding and marketing themselves as cart towns. The secret to a successful community, says Peachtree City’s David Rast, is "getting the path system in before or as part of the development." Integrated into the fabric of a community, the carts cease to be icons of decrepitude and instead become a defining vessel, an icon of a new life. "It becomes more than transportation for a lot of people," says Gary Lester, VP of community relations for the Villages. "It’s who they are as a community." Indeed, it creates community. "If your neighbor is in his yard," Lester says, "you can’t drive by in your golf cart without waving and saying hello."

Art Plant hacked his Boston Red Sox-themed cart with a custom 10-to-1 gear ratio.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington

Joe Kobar, a peppy 68-year-old retired shop teacher from Scranton, Pennsylvania, is up early and ready to run errands in his EV cart: "Time to go to Walmart!"

Kobar belongs to the geeky underworld of Villagers who are spending their leisure years modifying their carts to look and behave more like cars. Kobar’s current project is a maroon and gold-trimmed replica of a 1934 Ford street rod. The $17,000 vehicle is authentically rendered, including a chassis that’s been stretched 8 inches to match the body style of the original Ford. The names of Joe and his wife, Janet, are painted in gold lettering on the hood. Kobar put his shop-class skills to use by adding a plywood enclosure on the back of the cart to house an extra battery. That power supply feeds regular 110-volt electrical outlets, allowing Kobar to plug in a Breeze Easy cooling fan during the summer (in lieu of air-conditioning) and a string of halogen lights during the holidays. "The kids just love it," he says.

Kobar has neat white hair and is wearing dark shorts, sandals, and a Hawaiian shirt festooned with sailboats. On a typical day, the Kobars might drive their cart to the health club, then spin over to the golf course or the air-gun range. The afternoon agenda might include a trip to the grocery store, where they load up the compartment under the hood with ice cream. "Being in one of these is like riding a motorcycle or a skateboard," he says. "Every time you’re in it, you feel a little bit more free."

The Kobars belong to the Villages’ equivalent of a Harley gang—the Streetrod Club, a collection of 500 residents who share a taste for tricked-out rides. A few years ago the group anchored a chain of 3,321 carts, setting a record for the world’s longest golf club parade. Club member Art Plant, a lanky retired math teacher and statistician, drives a Boston Red Sox-themed cart with a custom 10-to-1 gear ratio to boost his performance on the hills. A satellite radio receiver on the dash provides the in-cart entertainment.

Just one problem: Some of the grannies tooling around in modified rides are technically breaking the law. Because not everyone in the Villages is satisfied with bumpin’ speakers and a custom paint job. Some are tweaking their rides to boost speed as well. According to Florida statute, hacking a cart to go faster than 20 mph changes the legal definition of the vehicle. The local cops aren’t driving around checking under everyone’s hood, but they will issue speeding tickets when an overclocked hot-rodder races by. "We try our best with our manpower," says Laurie Davis, a lieutenant with the Lady Lake Police Department.

Inquire at service shops around town and most mechanics say they turn away wannabe speed demons. "I don’t go anywhere near it," says Colangelo at the Villages Golf Cart Man. But quietly, a scruffy service technician at one garage schooled me in the options. "I can have this doing 35, 36, 40 miles per hour," he says. For $400 to $600, you can get bigger gears—adding another 5 to 6 miles per hour. A bigger engine will get you another few miles per hour. Larger tires, like the 12-inch fatties on my ride, can boost it a couple more.

Unfortunately, safety rarely keeps up with speed. And it doesn’t help matters that drivers don’t need a license to operate a standard cart. Dylan Galbreath, a local deputy near the Villages who also runs a 24-hour golf cart emergency-service company, tells me, "There are people who have DUIs who can’t drive a car but drive a golf cart instead." Some folks move to the Villages because they’ve lost their licenses in other cities or states and don’t want to give up their freedom of mobility. "I met an elderly woman who had an eye condition and couldn’t pass the vision test, and that’s why she moved here," one resident tells me. "We’ve got a club member who has MS," Kobar says. "They wouldn’t renew his license, so he comes down here and drives."

Joe and Janet Kobar with their modded cart.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington

At one point during my visit to the Villages, I zip past a spot where last year a woman was thrown from her cart and died. Seat belts are not required in non-street-legal carts; in fact, they’re not even installed. Some carters put them in anyway, but most people I talk with would rather go without for fear of getting trapped. (Because of the lack of nearby emergency care, crash victims have to be airlifted out of town for help.)

The larger neighborhood electric vehicles are designed to be safer. In addition to requiring insurance and registration, the rides sport a windshield, brake lights, seat belts, a horn, reflectors, a parking brake, turn signals, and a VIN.

The safer they are, the more retirees will drive them. And the more seniors drive them, the more the general population will too, says Nick Cappa, a spokesperson for Global Electric Motorcars, a major manufacturer of NEVs. He calls retirement communities the key to fueling awareness and adoption. "Other drivers are more apt to purchase an NEV after seeing retirees using them," Cappa says, "and then cities are more willing to create infrastructure that supports their use."

What’s more, though the NEV classification has existed for a decade, dealers and analysts report growing demand of late. The US government’s recent stimulus package offers NEV buyers a $2,500 tax credit (a third to half the cost of the vehicle). The branch of the Department of Energy that tracks electric vehicles estimates there are 75,000 NEVs on US roads.

But their use is limited, because few communities were designed with these vehicles in mind. And without proper infrastructure, NEV drivers can feel vulnerable. Despite the miles of golf trails in the Villages, there are some areas that require carts and cars to share the road—a fearsome proposition, as I discovered. On one road, all that separated me from passing cars was the thin white line of a diamond lane. When I made a wrong turn on a roundabout, an SUV left me choking on its dust.

It’s 9 am in the Villages—practically midday for the chipper residents who often rise at four—as I drive my LC3 down to the Colony Cottage. I’m due for a quick primer in pickleball—sort of a Ping-Pong/tennis hybrid. I arrive to find dozens of fit retirees dashing around the courts, the ubiquitous row of shiny EVs parked outside.

Few communities were designed with NEVs in mind and lack the infrastructure to keep NEV drivers safe.
Photo: Andrew Hetherington

There will be more carts fighting for space here soon. While the rest of the country wallows in the recession, homes are still being built and sold in the Villages at a rapid clip. The population of the community is expected to hit 100,000 by 2014.

The Villages embodies what environmentalists have been waiting decades for—a glossy future powered by electric vehicles. The slightly messy reality, though, is that it’s not powered by pristine futuremobiles but by gaudy, overclocked golf carts.

But the lesson of the Villages isn’t just about the vehicles we’re driving—it’s about where we’re driving them. The future of transportation should be focused on the quick jaunts that make up most of our day-to-day driving.

The Villages is for people who’ve lived long enough to know that what they want now is a warm breeze in a quiet, open ride—going fast enough to hit both the golf course and the Walmart in the same afternoon but slow enough to take in the scenery along the way.

As my octogenarian opponent deftly whacks the pickleball past my reach, I look up to catch a glimpse of the future on the horizon. It’s a gray-haired guy with a backward cap, cruising in his cart past a brand-new community center. A golden retriever stands on the passenger seat, tail wagging, and an American flag is displayed proudly right where the gas tank should be.

Contributing editor David Kushner (david@davidkushner.com) wrote about Russia’s cosmonaut training facility in issue 16.09.

By Karin Friedemann

A lot of aging leftists invite us to march in the streets. Some say, “Mass action will defeat the empire.” Will protesting stop war? Everyone who has been paying attention probably already knows that marching on Washington will not even disturb President Obama’s breakfast.

In fact, by causing havoc on the streets we actually distract the public’s attention from the real crimes taking place like AIPAC’s lobbying of Congress to bomb this or that country or like Halliburton’s pocketing of our tax money. Americans and their politicians need to understand that invading other countries hurts America. This approach is the only way to get the anti-war movement into the mainstream and away from the fringes of society.

The Israel Lobby has made sure the Zionist perspective permeates American discourse from grammar school through the highest levels of government. No child is too young for brainwashing.

An official diverging one iota gets his knees shot metaphorically. Holocaust Studies in the public school curriculum can start as early as Pre-K. Anyone that wants to discuss the role the Holocaust plays in US policy-making is an insane Holocaust denier. The Israel Lobby makes no distinction between national, transnational, and international politics.

Obama told AIPAC, “… the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable today, tomorrow and forever.” As long as Zionist subversives dictate to Obama, patriotic Americans will not make much headway in attempting a direct effort to change US policy. Activists need to change tactics by focusing on the danger that the Israel Lobby represents to the American political system and by attacking the discourse on which the Israel Lobby stands.

The pro-Israel lobby operates on every level of American society. Holocaust propaganda serves to shield the most privileged group in America from just criticism of many of its members and of its collective conduct—especially in relation to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people and the destruction of America’s Constitutional liberties.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was one of the main proponents of the Patriot Act, which monitors the reading history of library patrons. Zionist organisations are heavily involved with Homeland Security and they use book banning and far worse methods to squelch criticism of Israel. While there is no limit to the amount of hate speech against Muslims or Christians that is tolerated now in the western world, the mere suggestion that Muslims and Christians should have equal rights with Jews in the Holy Land, or that the Hollywood version of the Holocaust is not entirely accurate, have in recent times resulted in the deportation, imprisonment, and even assassination of the speakers, writers, or publishers, and in the banning of their books or films because of Zionist pressure on western governments to abandon the principle of freedom of expression.

How about a turn-around in rhetoric? Instead of trying to make Americans care about Arabs—too hard—we need to increase their awareness that Jewish Lobby is undermining American democracy and costing taxpayers money. Since activists can destroy a movement if they dwell upon who the good guys are (there are various opinions), we should concentrate on what we can all agree on: The Lobby needs to be stopped. That’s the only way to stop war and war taxes. The Israel Lobby is the enemy of all Americans. I would suggest a public rhetoric campaign against all Israel lobbyists suggesting prison. It should be social suicide to participate with Hillel or other pro-Israel organizations training future lobbyists.

There are plenty of ways to address this issue in town meetings, parent-teacher conferences, and other mundane ways. Causing a huge stir at a Martin Luther King school assembly or sending a mass mailing to all the high school students will create a lot more word-of-mouth grass roots pressure than a protest in DC, which doesn’t even get discussed. We are at war because we allowed our country and our minds to be taken over by Zionists and other opportunists. We refused to take responsibility for our country or for our children’s education.

Every town has a web of pro-Israel groups that work together to undermine American democracy to promote their personal interests. Pro-peace advocates need to identify the Zionist individuals who are pushing their agenda in the local school system. As soon as you start engaging in anti-Israel activism, all the Israel lobbyists will come crawling out of the woodwork to try and discredit or stop you.

Once you know who these individuals are, then you will be able to protest directly to the local leadership and law enforcement specifically about those who are personally responsible for pushing Americans to die for Israeli interests. You probably know where they live. If Americans started talking to their neighbors we could probably stop this insanity.

Karin Friedemann is a Boston-based writer on Middle East affairs and US politics. She is Director of the Division on Muslim Civil Rights and Liberties for the National Association of Muslim American Women.

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New America Media, News analysis, Jalal Ghazi

This year Al-Qaeda celebrates its 20th birthday, having outlived the Bush administration. It may even outlive the Obama administration as well, despite all the all the manpower and resources that have been allocated to the war in Afghanistan.

Abdel al-Bari Atwan, the editor-in chief of the Al-Quds Al-Arabi, told Arabic News Broadcast (ANB), “Al Qaeda continues to strengthen and expand despite the 8 years of search and destroy, which shows that the US has lost, not al Qaeda”.

Atwan said that Al Qaeda has managed to drag the US into wars of attrition. He explains, “when I met bin Laden in November 1996, he told me ‘I can’t fight America inside America, but if I manage to drag America to Arab and Islamic countries, then I can win because I would be fighting it in our land.’” The US so far has spent $918 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq at a time when its economy is in serious crisis.

Osama bin Laden’s latest audiotape message confirms that he views the war in Afghanistan as an opportunity to fight a war of attrition against the US. Bin Laden said in the tape, which was aired on September 13, “If you [Americans] stop the war, then fine. Otherwise we will have no choice but to continue our war of attrition on every front just as we have worn out the former Soviet Union for ten years until it disintegrated.”

“Continue to fight for as long as you wish,” bin Laden warned. “You are fighting a desperate war that you can’t win.” He also observed that Obama was "powerless" to halt the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and must rethink his policy on Israel.

Dia Rashwan an Egyptian expert at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies told Al Jazeera English that Al Qaeda became an enfranchised enterprise after the war in Afghanistan. Radical Islamic groups – such as the Algerian Salafi group for combat and Islamic Call, and the Tawhed and Jihad group of Abu Musab Al Zarqawi in Iraq — joined Al-Qaeda by simply declaring allegiance to the organization.

Atwan agreed with that assessment. He said before the war in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda was confined to “a cave in Tora Bora,” but now has presences in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Europe, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and North Africa. And the list is growing.

This makes it extremely difficult to defeat Al-Qaeda because it requires defeating many Al-Qaeda-franchised groups on many war fronts, Rashwan said. While Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups were weakened in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, other Al-Qaeda groups in Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Africa were strengthened.

Syed Saleem Shahzad, the Asia Times bureau chief, told Al Jazeera English that “Al Qaeda is no longer an Arab organization. Now it is more of a South Asian organization because a big number of men from this region [“Tribal area”, in Pakistani] joined the organization”.

Therefore, defeating Al-Qaeda can only be achieved by defeating its ideologies.

Atwan said that Western media, and even some Arab media, have mistakenly concluded that Al-Qaeda was weakened because it failed to carry out attacks inside in the West in recent years. Rather, it is a new strategy by Al-Qaeda, which no longer considers carrying out attacks inside the West and the US a priority, especially after the election of Barack Obama.

Atwan told ANB, “without a doubt the election of Barack Obama put Al-Qaeda in a very awkward position. So far Obama’s policies have deprived Al Qaeda from many justifications that Al-Qaeda was using to fight the US.” He added, “Obama is an American president that wants to reconcile with the Muslim world. His father was a Muslim. He gave a speech in Cairo in which he spoke about mutual respect and interests.” Obama, in effect, has managed to pull the rug from under Al-Qaeda by his reconciling speeches.

Atwan added, “this was like an earthquake that shook all Al-Qaeda’s plans, and ideologies.” This explains the change of Al-Qaeda strategy, which was evident in Bin Laden’s latest audio recording.

Osama bin Laden said in the audiotape, which was aired on Al Jazeera English on Sep 13, that he wanted Americans to stop their support for Israel. Bin Laden said, “Are your children, money, jobs, homes, economy and reputation more important to you than the security of the Israelis, their children and their economy? Should you choose your security and stopping war, this would require you to hold accountable those who are meddling in our security on your behalf. We are ready to respond positively to this option on solid and fair bases.”

This is a big change from bin Laden’s previous messages, in which he threatened bloody attacks against western and Arab countries.

Bin Laden even had an intellectual suggestion to the American people, urging them to read books by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt to find out for themselves about the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in the US.

Dia Rashwan also saw a dramatic change in tone. He told Al Jazeera English, “I think that Osama bin Laden changed his speech compared to previous speeches. For example, Osama bin Laden spoke about September 11 attacks without saying ‘Ghazwa’ which means conquest; he only said 9.11. He never mentioned his 19 martyrs, his heroes. For the first time, he is making a distinction between bad and good American administrations.” In this case, the bad administration was that of former President George Bush’s.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, vice president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, saw it in another way. He told Al Jazeera English, “Bin Laden referenced John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and their assassinations. He argued that once a train is on its tracks, it can’t leave those tracks. His argument is that if Obama deviates too much from the Bush administration, then he can get assassinated. In essence… regardless of if you like [Obama] more than Bush, the nature of the US is not going to change. That is a very defensive stance vis-a-vis Obama.”

Bin Laden’s focus on the Palestinian plight in his latest speech may have also been intended to offer a new image of Al-Qaeda in contrast to the bloody one that has been imprinted in the minds of Muslims worldwide. Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups were responsible for a great deal of bloodshed not only in western countries but also in Arab and Muslim countries, including Iraq and Algeria.

Giving up its rhetoric about using violence against Arab regimes, and confining its armed attacks against American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan at least temporarily makes Al-Qaeda appear less extremist. Bin Laden hopes this will reestablish its legitimacy, clearly eroded after Obama’s election.

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Associated Press

File photo from the 1980s of Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu, with his wife and survivor, Zeynep Tarzi, an exiled member of the Afghan royal family.

Friday, September 25, 2009–Osman Ertugrul Osmanoglu, 97, the eldest member of the former Ottoman dynasty, died of kidney failure Sept. 23 at a hospital in Istanbul.

He was the last surviving grandson of an Ottoman sultan and was regarded as the head of the royal family’s living members.

Mr. Osmanoglu would have become its sultan (Sultan Osman V) but for the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman dynasty and the exile of its members to Europe.

Mr. Osmanoglu moved to New York City in 1933 and as a young man ran a mining company. He returned to Turkey in 1992 and was granted Turkish citizenship in 2004.

He was a descendant of Osman I, the Anatolian ruler who established the Ottoman Empire. The empire, which grew to control parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, lasted about 600 years.

Osmanoglu was born in 1912. His grandfather, Abdul Hamid II, ruled from 1876 to 1909. In 1924, the royal family was expelled by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who led the revolution that deposed the family and founded the Turkish Republic.

The New York Times reported that Mr. Osmanoglu’s first wife, Gulda Twerskoy, died in 1985 and that since 1991 he had been married to Zeynep Tarzi, an exiled member of the Afghan royal family. The paper said she is his only immediate survivor.

In 1924, while studying in Vienna, Austria, he received news that all members of the Sultan’s family were to be exiled. He did not return to his native Turkey until the 1990s, when the Government of Turkey agreed to grant him Turkish citizenship. He has lived in the United States since 1933, and currently resides in New York City. He became the 43rd Head of the Imperial House of Osman in 1994.

Born at Yıldız Palace, Istanbul, he is the younger son of H.I.H. Captain Prince Muhammed Burhanettin Efendi, by his second wife, Aliye Melik Nazlıyar Hanım Efendi, daughter of Huseyin Bey, educated at Theresianum Academy, Vienna, and École des Sciences Politiques, Paris. He is also the grandson of Sultan Abdul-Hamid Khan II Ghazi, 34th Sovereign of the Imperial House of Osman. His (second) wife, Mrs. Zeynep Tarzi, is the daughter of Abdulfettah Tarzi, nephew of the former King of Afghanistan, Amanullah Khan, and of Dr. Pakize Tarzi, a pioneering Turkish gynaecologist from a deep-rooted Ottoman family. He spoke Turkish, English, German and French perfectly and understood Italian and Spanish.

Ertugrul Osman V recently declared his wish to return to his homeland from exile, stating that he is living his last days, then was allowed to return by the Turkish republic.

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s documents would have formed part of an appeal against his conviction for the Lockerbie bombing. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
Two key figures in the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber were secretly given rewards of up to $3m (£1.9m) in a deal discussed by Scottish detectives and the US government, according to legal papers released today.

The claims about the payments were revealed in a dossier of evidence that was intended to be used in an appeal by Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of murdering 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.

Megrahi abandoned his appeal last month after the Libyan and Scottish governments struck a deal to free him on compassionate grounds because he is terminally ill with prostate cancer. Now in hospital in Tripoli, Megrahi said he wanted the public to see the evidence which he claims would have cleared him.

“I continue to protest my innocence – how could I fail to do so?,” he said. “I have no desire to add to the upset of many people I know are profoundly affected by what happened in Lockerbie. My intention is only for the truth to be made known.”

The documents published online by Megrahi’s lawyers today show that the US Department of Justice (DoJ) was asked to pay $2m to Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who gave crucial evidence at the trial suggesting that Megrahi had bought clothes later used in the suitcase that allegedly held the Lockerbie bomb.

The DoJ was also asked to pay a further $1m to his brother, Paul Gauci, who did not give evidence but played a major role in identifying the clothing and in “maintaining the resolve of his brother”. The DoJ said their rewards could be increased and that the brothers were also eligible for the US witness protection programme, according to the documents.

The previously secret payments were uncovered by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC), which returned Megrahi’s conviction to the court of appeal in 2007 as a suspected miscarriage of justice. Many references were in private diaries kept by the detectives involved, Megrahi’s lawyers said, but not their official notebooks.

The SCCRC was unable to establish exactly how much the brothers received under the DoJ’s “reward-for-justice” programme but found it was after Megrahi’s trial and his first appeal in 1992 was thrown out.

A memo written by “DI Dalgleish” to “ACC Graham” in 2007 confirms the men received “substantial payments from the American authorities”.

The inspector claims the rewards were “engineered” after Megrahi’s trial and appeal were over, but said there was “a real danger that if [the] SCCRC’s statement of reasons is leaked to the media, Anthony Gauci could be portrayed as having given flawed evidence for financial reward.” Instead, he claimed, the reward was intended to ensure the Gaucis could afford to leave Malta and start new lives “to avoid media and other unwanted attention”.

However, the documents disclose that in 1989 the FBI told Dumfries and Galloway police that they wanted to offer Gauci “unlimited money” and $10,000 immediately. Gauci began talking of a possible reward in meetings with Dumfries and Galloway detectives in 1991, when a reward application was first made to the DoJ.

The evidence, which was due to be heard by the appeal court next month, also discloses that Gauci was visited 50 times by Scottish detectives before the trial and new testimony contradicting the prosecution’s claims that Megrahi bought the clothes on 7 December 1988 – the only day he was in Malta during the critical period.

In 23 police interviews, Gauci gave contradictory evidence about who he believed bought the clothes, the person’s age, appearance and the date of purchase. Two identification experts hired by Megrahi’s appeal team said the police and prosecution breached the rules on witness interviews, using “suggestive” lines of questioning and allowing “irregular” identification line-ups.

Two new witnesses also disproved the prosecution claim that Megrahi was in Gauci’s shop on 7 December, his lawyers said. Gauci said the area’s Christmas lights were not on when the clothes were bought. The current Maltese high commissioner to the UK, Michael Rufalo, then the local MP, told the SCCRC the lights were switched on on 6 December, raising further inconsistencies in the prosecution case.

It has also emerged that Scottish police did not tell Megrahi’s lawyers that another witness, David Wright, had seen two different Libyan men buying very similar clothes on a different day; evidence that psychologists believe may have confused Gauci and again clouded the prosecution case.

Dumfries and Galloway police said only a court could properly consider this material, and supported previous criticism of Megrahi’s decision to release his appeal papers by Elish Angiolini, the lord advocate. “We will not be taking part in any discussion or debate concerning the selective publications made by Mr Megrahi,” a statement said.

“We have nothing more to add other than to echo the lord advocate’s recent comments pointing out that Mr Megrahi was convicted unanimously by three senior judges and his conviction was upheld unanimously by five judges, in an appeal court presided over by the lord justice general, Scotland’s most senior judge. Mr Megrahi remains convicted of the worst terrorist atrocity in UK history.”

A spokesman for the US Department of Justice also refused to comment, since Megrahi had voluntarily withdrawn his appeal. He said: “None of the allegations in the SCCRC referral, or the grounds of appeal filed by Megrahi, were finally adjudicated by the Scottish High Court of Justiary (the appropriate judicial forum) because Megrahi withdrew his appeal before the court could rule. Consequently, the U.S. Department of Justice will not comment further on his aborted appeal.”

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By Imam Abdullah El-Amin, Muslim Media News Service (MMNS)

And those who believe and whose seeds follow them in faith, to them shall We join their families:  Nor shall We deprive them (of the fruit) of any of their works.  (Yet) is each individual in pledge for his deeds.

At-Tur:21

There is a new generation coming up in the Muslim community.  Many of the young have grown up and are starting their own families.  This is wonderful and a blessing from our Lord.  ALLAH lets us know how important parental leadership is in the above sura where He says, “if you are a believer and your seed follows you, He will make your journey easy.”

There is only one place where character can be built: the home.  If you run your household in an Islamic manner, the chances of your offspring going astray are minimal.  Your active positive involvement in your children is crucial in their development.  Here are some fundamental principles to consider and go by in raising our children.

Be there for them.  Boys and girls need quality time from BOTH parents.  As we are well aware, men and women bring different qualities to the family setting and both are necessary.  Females are mostly the compassionate, merciful ones. (Rahim).  When the child gets a bump on the head or has a runny nose, the mother is usually the one to attend to him.  But he father has an important job as well.

Not long ago I had a talk with a man who said his son lacked the motivation to charge into projects and succeed.  He just liked to be alone and read.  Upon further discussion I discovered that the mother was busy with outside activities and the father worked all the time.  The boy had no recreational time with his father.  No ball games, no fishing, golf – nothing extra.  This was the core of the problem.  If we are not active in our child’s life, they may lack motivation to lead a full well-rounded life – so BE THERE.

Next , let them be children.  Quite often children will have strong feelings about things that seem foolish to us.  Let them laugh and have fun.  Life is not all straight-faced seriousness.  One of the surest ways to have your children go astray is to be too strict with no balance in their lives.  In many Muslim families, the children left the religion when they became of age because their parents forced a strict life on them with no compromise. There is a tremendous amount of peer pressure in young people.  If you care to look back to when you were a kid, you will remember some of the “tough decisions” you had to make like `what pair of socks to wear.’

Also, Don’t let them push you around. Sometimes children react to discipline with anger and resistance.  They feel you are being the meanest, most unreasonable parent in the world. (Remember?).  But you must not give in if you know you are right.  The children will not respect you for it.  Young people want to be disciplined.  They find security in knowing there are limits they must live in.  That is what causes all this vulgar promiscuity today – parents who are too permissive.

Be balanced in your parenting.  Follow the common sense directives of ALLAH and you won’t go wrong – and neither will your kids.

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