Grandson of El-Hajj El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) Confirmed by Family
5/10/2013
MANA has received confirmed reports of the tragic death of 28-year-old Malcolm Shabazz, a grandson of the late El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) and the late Dr. Betty Shabazz. Surely we belong to Allah and to Him will we return.
Following contact with the Shabazz family, we are now confirming our young brother’s demise. Reportedly he was killed yesterday morning in Mexico. The family has no official statement at this time, as they strive to cope with the shock and grief of their loss and make arrangements to identify and retrieve his remains. Formal announcement of burial arrangements will follow.
May Allah forgive our young brother’s sins, have mercy on him, and admit him to paradise. Our prayers and condolences are offered to Malcolm’s mother, Qubilah, his aunts and other family members. Please pray for them.
Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee poses with participants in the World Learning program.
The World Learning (WL) program has developed The Legislative Fellows Program (LFP), among other programs. The Legislative Fellows Program is a two-way exchange program for professionals and young leaders from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and the US. The project is intended to strengthen the understanding of the US legislative process and civil society’s role in the political process, and to foster relationships among Asian and American institutions. The US Department of State funds and runs the program.
This year 40 young leaders attended this program on invitation, 19 from Pakistan and 21 from the other above-mentioned countries. They came to Washington DC on April 13, 2013 to participate in various fellowship programs.
During their 4 day orientation program, from April 14th to April 18th, they visited US political institutions, especially the US Congress and the Library of Congress. Their poster show in US congress building was noticeable.
The Congresswoman Sheila Lee Jackson, a representative from Houston-TX, met with the delegates to exchange views. The other dignitaries present were US State Department officials, Officials from the Pakistan Embassy, Vladimir Spencer, Manager Development & Innovation World Learning Exchanges and Training Unit, Amanda Bischoping, Jessica and Laura Horsting of WL. The Pakistani young leaders presented a very positive and forward looking aspect of Pakistan in their poster show.
Following the orientation and visits to various institutions, on April 19th, delegates were sent to different US states to explore and to avail themselves of opportunities to understand US political and social systems.
Accordingly, four of us ended up in Chicago, including two Pakistanis, Muhammad Akbar Hoti (me) and Qurban Ali Solangi from Pakistan. Rahol Ray from India and Golam Rony from Bangladesh were also in Chicago, lodged with families from their respective countries.
I worked as a fellow with the Chicago Cultural Alliance and Qurban Solangee worked with the Albanian Educational society. During their stay at Chicago the fellows visited historical places; they also observed and studied the social life of the American people.
Akbar Hoti visited so many museums of different ethnic group i.e. Ukrainian, German, Polish and African museums and also attended many workshops about cultural activities, and studied about the political, economic and social life of the different races of Chicago.
It is a big and magnificent opportunity for the fellows to get positive experiences for their countries and share their experiences with Americans peers. I am sure it will have a very positive impact on our return.
WE DEFEATED Florida Senate Bill 58 for the third consecutive year. The Senate President just announced that SB 58 did not get enough votes to pass. What a great way to end the Florida legislative session. Congratulations to you, Florida and America.
Thank you GOD.
Our campaign to defeat this discriminatory law has been challenging from the start. But because of your support, emails and phone calls we were able to defeat it together. Thank you for doing your part, this victory belongs to you.
SB 58 was crafted by a racist lawyer and pushed by anti-Muslim hate groups, would have banned Muslim marriages, divorce and child custody agreements if they’re based on Islamic values. WE FOUGHT BACK, mobilizing thousands of supporters to email, call, tweet and pressure lawmakers to oppose this bill.
Please watch this short video message on how the bill was defeated and the video clip of the actual final vote count on the senate floor. Then forward it to your friends, let them know the great news. If you’re proud of this accomplishment, please consider making a donation here, so we can continue this critical work.
We could not have defeated this bill without the help of others, Muslims, people of other faiths and people of no-faiths. Thank you to groups like the Florida ACLU, CAIR Florida, ADL, Emerge-USA and the International Law Section of the Florida Bar. In addition to all the pastors, Rabbis and other clergy who helped us lobby against this un-American bill.
Together we can defeat similar bills in other battleground states. But in order to take the fight to them, we will need your financial support. PLEASE HELP OUR MOVEMENT BY MAKING A DONATION NOW. CAN YOU DONATE $50, $100 OR $250 NOW?
Thank you again and God Bless you and your family,
Ahmed Bedier President and Founder United Voices for America StopSB58.org
I would like to personally invite you on behalf of the Muslim Students’ Association at Wayne State University to our 17th Annual MSA Dinner!
This year inshallah on Friday, May 17th we are excited to have the one and only Sheikh Yusuf Estes, a world renowned Islamic speaker, visionary, and former Christian preacher! We will also have the pleasure of seeing world famous comedian Mohammad “Mo†Amer perform his skit, ending our evening together with lots of laughter. Purchase your ticket early for a wonderful night full of delicious food, knowledge, and laughs!
It will be at 5 PM at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn on May 17th.
Tickets are available at www.wsu-msa.org and many other volunteers around the communities of SE Michigan. You can personally buy a ticket from them or you can go to the above website and purchase them. Online ticket sales end Thursday, May 16th at 11:59 PM. Don’t delay, tickets are selling out fast!
Prices:
$15 per person $60 per family
At the Door:
$20 per person $75 per family
If you have any questions or would like to purchase a ticket please contact me!
Note: We don’t know this author, but his conclusions are generally consistent with ours — download the FREE BOOK “9/11 Unveiledâ€
Almost 12 years and many a million deaths later, the US and its NATO allies have made public their plan to start withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014. The war in Afghanistan has been an abject failure, orphaned both on the military and the public relations fronts, with the loss of life, property, and infrastructure being colossal.
More importantly, contrary to initial claims, the global war on terror has not made the world a safer place. Instances of terrorism have continuously been on a rise, engulfing one after another the countries neighboring Afghanistan. Lest we forget, almost all subsequent wars waged by US and NATO have had their genesis in the war that was thrust onto Afghanistan after 9/11.
Much of America’s foreign policy since 9/11 has been based on the assumption that it was attacked by Muslims on that day. This assumption was used, most prominently, to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In fact every war fought by US and its allies during the first decade of the third millennium has been founded in the post-9/11 doctrine of preemption.
It is now widely agreed that the use of 9/11 as a basis for attacking Iraq was illegitimate: none of the hijackers were Iraqis, there was no working relation between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and Iraq was not behind the anthrax attacks. But it is still widely believed that the US attack on Afghanistan was justified. For more than a decade now, the corporate media around the world has consistently been forcing this fantastic narrative as an undisputable fact. It seems likely that the indoctrination will increase to new levels as spin-doctors try to justify the Afghanistan withdrawal plan and prove that the ‘war on terror’ has been a success unmatched in human history.
The stage has been set for a massive ploy of psychological and media war to be unleashed on the unsuspecting minds of the masses. For example, as recently as in 2011, the New York Times while referring to the US attack on Iraq as a “war of choice,†called the battle in Afghanistan a “war of necessity.†Time magazine dubbed it “the right war.†And in 2009, Barack Obama was reported to have said ‘one reason to wind down our involvement in Iraq is to have the troops and resources to “go after the people in Afghanistan who actually attacked us on 9/11.â€
In 2012, after his reelection, Barack Obama was reported to have said ‘The war against terror has been won, with the main perpetrators, including Osama Bin Laden, brought to justice.’ ‘We will continue to fight Al-Qaeda on all fronts and support the cause of freedom and human rights around the world’, he added, giving us a glimpse of what the US and its NATO allies have in store for the world in general and for the Middle East in particular, in time to come.
The assumption that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11 lies behind the widespread perception of Islam as an inherently violent religion and therefore of Muslims as guilty until proven innocent. This perception surely contributed to attempts to portray Obama as a Muslim, which was lampooned by a controversial cartoon on the July 21, 2008, cover of The New Yorker. There has also been a steady increase in reported incidents of Islamophobia, ranging from hate speech against Muslim communities to incidents of insulting the Qur’an and the prophet of Islam.
As could be illustrated by reference to many other post-9/11 developments, including spying, torture, extraordinary rendition, military tribunals, America’s new doctrine of preemptive war, and its enormous increase in military spending, the assumption that the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked by Muslim hijackers has had enormous negative consequences for both international and US domestic issues. In light of the unfolding events it becomes essential to recap the real ‘facts’ about 9/11, which served as the pretext for the whole campaign named ‘war on terror’.
Is it conceivable that 9/11 was not done by Muslims? Insofar as Americans and Europeans would say “No,†they would express their belief that this assumption is not merely an “assumption†but is instead based on strong evidence. When actually examined, however, the proffered evidence turns out to be remarkably weak. This can be illustrated by means of 12 questions.
1. Were Mohamed Atta and the other hijackers devout Muslims?
The picture of the hijackers conveyed by the 9/11 Commission is that they were devout Muslims. But this portrayal is contradicted by various newspaper stories. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Atta and other hijackers had made “at least six trips†to Las Vegas, where they had “engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures.†These activities were “un-Islamic†because, as the head of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada pointed out: “True Muslims don’t drink, don’t gamble and don’t go to strip clubs.â€
2. Do Authorities Have Hard Evidence of Osama bin Laden’s Responsibility for 9/11?
Mystery shrouds the character of Osama bin Laden even after his alleged death. Whatever be the truth about the devoutness of the hijackers, one might reply, there is certainly no doubt about the fact that they were acting under the guidance of Osama bin Laden. The attack on Afghanistan was based on the claim that bin Laden was behind the attacks, and the 9/11 Commission’s report was written as if there were no question about this claim. But neither the Bush administration nor the Commission provided any proof for it.
Two weeks after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking to Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,†said he expected “in the near future . . . to put out . . . a document that will describe quite clearly the evidence that we have linking [bin Laden] to this attack.†But at a press conference with President Bush the next morning, Powell reversed himself, saying that although the government had information that left no question of bin Laden’s responsibility, “most of it is classified.†According to Seymour Hersh, citing officials from both the CIA and the Department of Justice, the real reason for the reversal was a “lack of solid information.â€
It is often claimed that bin Laden’s guilt is proved by a video, reportedly found by US intelligence officers in Afghanistan in November 2001, in which bin Laden appears to accept responsibility for planning the attacks. But critics, pointing out various problems with this “confession video,†have called it a fake. General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan’s ISI, said: “I think there is an Osama Bin Laden look-alike.†Actually, the man in the video is not even much of a look-alike, being heavier and darker than bin Laden, having a broader nose, wearing jewelry, and writing with his right hand. The FBI, in any case, obviously does not consider this video hard evidence of bin Laden’s responsibility for 9/11.
Therefore, the White House, the British government, the FBI or the 9/11 Commission have not provided solid evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11.
3. Was evidence of Muslim hijackers provided by phone calls from the airliners?
Many readers may think that there can be no doubt that the airplanes were taken over by al-Qaeda hijackers, because their presence and actions on the planes were reported on phone calls by passengers and flight attendants, with cell phone calls playing an especially prominent role.
The most famous of the reported calls were from CNN commentator Barbara Olson to her husband, US Solicitor General Ted Olson. According to CNN, he reported that his wife had “called him twice on a cell phone from American Airlines Flight 77,†saying that “all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by . . . hijackers [armed with] knives and cardboard cutters.â€
Although these reported calls, as summarized by Ted Olson, did not describe the hijackers so as to suggest that they were members of al-Qaeda, such descriptions were supplied by calls from other flights which stated the hijackers to be ‘Middle Eastern-looking men’ and ‘Having an Islamic look’. From these calls, therefore, the public was informed that the hijackers looked Middle Eastern and even Islamic.
There was, however, a big problem with these reported calls: Given the technology available in 2001, cell phone calls from airliners at altitudes of more than a few thousand feet, especially calls lasting more than a few seconds, were not possible, and yet these calls, some of which reportedly lasted a minute or more, reportedly occurred when the planes were above 30,000 or even 40,000 feet. This problem was explained by some credible people, including scientist A.K. Dewdney, who for many years had written a column for Scientific American.
Multiple lines of evidence, therefore, imply that the cell phone calls were faked. This fact has vast implications, because it implies that all the reported calls from the planes, including those from onboard phones, were faked. Why? Because if the planes had really been taken over in surprise hijackings, no one would have been ready to make fake cell phone calls.
4. Was the presence of hijackers proved by a radio transmission “from American 11?
It might be objected, in reply, that this is not true, because we know that American Flight 11, at least, was hijacked, thanks to a radio transmission in which the voice of one of its hijackers is heard. According to the 9/11 Commission, the air traffic controller for this flight heard a radio transmission in which someone told the passengers: “We have some planes. Just stay quiet, and you’ll be okay. We are returning to the airport.†After quoting this transmission, the Commission wrote: “The controller told us that he then knew it was a hijacking.†Was this transmission not indeed proof that Flight 11 had been hijacked?
It might provide such proof if we knew that, as the Commission claimed, the “transmission came from American 11.†But we do not. According to the FAA’s “Summary of Air Traffic Hijack Events,†published September 17, 2001, the transmission was “from an unknown origin.†The Commission’s claim that it came from American 11 was merely an inference. The transmission could have come from the same room from which the passenger calls originated.
Therefore, the alleged radio transmission from Flight 11, like the alleged phone calls from the planes, provides no evidence that the planes were taken over by al-Qaeda hijackers.
5. Did passports and a headband provide evidence that al-Qaeda operatives were on the flights?
However, the government’s case for al-Qaeda hijackers also rested in part on claims that passports and a headband belonging to al-Qaeda operatives were found at the crash sites. But these claims are patently absurd.
A week after the attacks, the FBI reported that a search of the streets after the destruction of the World Trade Center had discovered the passport of one of the Flight 11 hijackers, Satam al-Suqami. But this claim did not pass the giggle test. ‘The idea that this passport had escaped from that inferno unscathed,’ wrote one British reporter, ‘would test the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI’s crackdown on terrorism.’
Also found on the ground, according to the government’s evidence presented, was a red headband. This was considered evidence that al-Qaeda hijackers were on Flight 93 because they were, according to some of the phone calls, wearing red headbands. But besides being absurd for the same reason as was the claim about the passport, this claim about the headband was problematic for another reason. Former CIA agent Milt Bearden, who helped train the Mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, has pointed out that it would have been very unlikely that members of al-Qaeda would have worn such headbands:
The red headband is a uniquely Shi’a Muslim adornment. It is something that dates back to the formation of the Shi’a sect. . . . It represents the preparation of he who wears this red headband to sacrifice his life, to murder himself for the cause. Sunnis are by and large most of the people following Osama bin Laden and they do not do this.
We learned shortly after the invasion of Iraq that some people in the US government did not know the difference between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims. Did such people decide that the hijackers would be described as wearing red headbands?
6. Did the information in Atta’s luggage prove the responsibility of al-Qaeda operatives?
The evidence that is said to provide the strongest proof that the planes had been hijacked by Mohamed Atta and other members of al-Qaeda is the two pieces of Atta’s luggage that were discovered inside the Boston airport after the attacks. The luggage was there, we were told, because although Atta was already in Boston on September 10, he and another al-Qaeda operative, Abdul al-Omari, rented a blue Nissan and drove up to Portland, Maine, and stayed overnight. They caught a commuter flight back to Boston early the next morning in time to get on American Flight 11, but Atta’s luggage did not make it.
This luggage is said to have contained much incriminating material, including a handheld flight computer, flight simulator manuals, two videotapes about Boeing aircraft, a slide-rule flight calculator, a copy of the Koran, and Atta’s last will and testament. This material was widely taken as proof that al-Qaeda and hence Osama bin Laden were behind the 9/11 attacks. When closely examined, however, the Atta-to-Portland story loses all credibility.
One problem is the very idea that Atta would have planned to take all these things in baggage that was to be transferred to Flight 11. What good would a flight computer and other flying aids do inside a suitcase in the plane’s luggage compartment? Why would he have planned to take his will on a plane he planned to crash into the World Trade Center?
The biggest problem with the story, however, is that it did not appear until September 16, five days after 9/11, following the collapse of an earlier story. According to news reports immediately after 9/11, the incriminating materials, rather than being found in Atta’s luggage inside the airport, were found in a white Mitsubishi, which Atta had left in the Boston airport parking lot. Two hijackers did drive a blue Nissan to Portland and then take the commuter flight back to Boston the next morning, but their names were Adnan and Ameer Bukhari. This story fell apart on the afternoon of September 13, when it was discovered that the Bukharis, to whom authorities had reportedly been led by material in the Nissan at the Portland Jetport, had not died on 9/11: Adnan was still alive and Ameer had died the year before.
Given this history of the Atta-to-Portland story, how can we avoid the conclusion that it was a fabrication?
7. Were al-Qaeda operatives captured on airport security videos?
Still another type of evidence for the claim that al-Qaeda operatives were on the planes consisted of frames from videos, purportedly taken by airport security cameras, said to show hijackers checking into airports. Shortly after the attacks, for example, photos showing Atta and al-Omari at an airport “were flashed round the world.†However, although it was widely assumed that these photos were from the airport at Boston, they were really from the airport at Portland. No photos showing Atta or any of the other alleged hijackers at Boston’s Logan Airport were ever produced. We at best have photographic evidence that Atta and al-Omari were at the Portland airport.
Therefore, video proof that the named hijackers checked into airports on 9/11 is nonexistent.
8. Were the names of the “hijackers†on the passenger manifests?
What about the passenger manifests, which list all the passengers on the flights? If the alleged hijackers purchased tickets and boarded the flights, their names would have been on the manifests for these flights. The passenger manifests that were released to the public included no names of any of the 19 alleged hijackers and, in fact, no Middle Eastern names whatsoever. These manifests, therefore, support the suspicion that there were no al-Qaeda hijackers on the planes.
9. Did DNA test identify five hijackers among the victims at the Pentagon?
If a Boeing 757 could have traveled at 500 mph at ground level, it would have caused enormous damage to the grass and the ground, including producing substantial furrows from the low hanging engines, yet photos taken immediately after the alleged impact show the grass surface as smooth and unblemished as a putting green. The purported debris began showing up later and may have been dropped from a C-130 that was observed circling the building.
Moreover, the lack of positive identification of the alleged hijackers in DNA tests is consistent with the autopsy report, which was released to Dr. Thomas Olmsted, who had made a FOIA request for it. Like the flight manifest for Flight 77, he revealed, this report also contains no Arab names.
10. Has the claim that some of the “hijackers†are still alive been debunked?
Another problem with the claim that the 19 hijackers were correctly identified on 9/11, or at least a few days later, is that some of the men on the FBI’s final list reportedly turned up alive after 9/11. On September 22, 2001, the BBC published an article by David Bamford entitled “Hijack ‘Suspect’ Alive in Morocco.†It showed that the Waleed al-Shehri identified by the FBI as one of the hijackers was still alive. The following day, September 23, the BBC published another story, “Hijack ‘Suspects’ Alive and Well.â€
11. Were bin Laden and al-Qaeda capable of orchestrating the attacks?
For prosecutors to prove that defendants committed a crime, they must show that they had the ability (as well as the motive and opportunity) to do so. But several political and military leaders from other countries have stated that bin Laden and al-Qaeda simply could not have carried out the attacks. General Leonid Ivashov, who in 2001 was the chief of staff for the Russian armed forces, wrote: Only secret services and their current chiefs-or those retired but still having influence inside the state organizations-have the ability to plan, organize and conduct an operation of such magnitude . . . Osama bin Laden and “Al Qaeda†cannot be the organizers nor the performers of the September 11 attacks. They do not have the necessary organization, resources or leaders.
Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, the former foreign minister of Egypt, wrote:
Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaida as if it was Nazi Germany or the communist party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there.
Similar statements have been made by Andreas von Bülow, the former state secretary of West Germany’s ministry of defense, by General Mirza Aslam Beg, former chief of staff of Pakistan’s army, and even General Musharraf, the president of Pakistan until recently.
12. WTC 7: The Smoking Gun of 9/11
Given the fact that WTC 7 was not even hit by a plane its vertical collapse at virtually free-fall speed, which was preceded by explosions and involved the melting of steel, was still more obviously an example of controlled demolition. For example, Jack Keller, emeritus professor of engineering at Utah State University, who has been given special recognition by Scientific American, said: “Obviously it was the result of controlled demolition.†Likewise, when Danny Jowenko-a controlled demolition expert in the Netherlands who had not known that WTC 7 had collapsed on 9/11-was asked to comment on a video of its collapse, he said: “They simply blew up columns, and the rest caved in afterwards. . . . It’s been imploded. . . . A team of experts did this.â€
The destruction of Building 7 of the World Trade Center had to have been an inside job.
Conclusion
As a decade-long phase of the war imposed on false pretenses begins to come to an end in Afghanistan, starting 2014, the question of who benefitted from 9/11 is no longer unsolved. In the last 12 years or so, the world has witnessed rich dividends reaped by USA, Western Europe and Israel on the political, diplomatic, territorial and economic fronts as a result of these wars. Afghanistan, Iraq and their Muslim neighbors have, on the other hand, been victims of violence, bloodshed and atrocities committed by the US and its NATO allies. The Western military machine has been stampeding all around the globe with its feet stained with the blood of millions of innocent Muslims.
The official version with all its proffered evidence that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11, when subjected to critical scrutiny, appears to have been fabricated. If that is determined indeed to be the case, the implications would be frightening. Discovering and prosecuting the true perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks would obviously be important. People’s confidence in the moral integrity and political correctness of the West would crumble. The most immediate consequence, however, would be a reversal in those attitudes and policies that have been based on the assumption that America was attacked by Muslims on 9/11.
(Reuters) – Two human rights groups have asked world soccer governing body FIFA to withdraw Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa from the race to become president of Asian football, accusing the Bahraini royal of human rights breaches.
In a letter to FIFA president Sepp Blatter, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights said Sheikh Salman, the head of the Bahrain Football Association (BFA), was not fit for the role.
“Sheikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al-Khalifa is involved in human rights violations with the assistance of his office and consultants against players, administrators, referees and clubs who participated in the democracy protests in February 2011,†the two groups wrote in Friday’s letter.
“We hope that you bear in mind the sublime principles of sport and fair play that respect basic human rights and to distance all violators of human rights from reaching prestigious sport positions in order to embellish their notorious image.â€
Sheikh Salman did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment on the accusations, which have followed the 47-year-old throughout his campaign to head Asian soccer.
He is up against Worawi Makudi of Thailand, Saudi Arabian Hafez Ibrahim Al Medlej and United Arab Emirates soccer chief Yousuf Al Serkal with the vote taking place on Thursday in Malaysia.
Sheikh Salman is also running for a seat on FIFA’s all powerful executive committee against Qatari Hassan Al Thawadi.
Earlier this month, Sheikh Salman dodged questions about the uprising at a news conference to announce his manifesto pledges in Manama shortly before the Formula One Bahrain Grand Prix.
On Tuesday, the Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) sent a letter to Asian Football Confederation delegates urging them not to vote for Sheikh Salman, alleging that soccer players had been persecuted.
“Under the direction of Sheikh Salman al-Khalifa, head of the Bahrain Football Association and member of Bahrain’s royal family, football players were arrested, detained, abused, tortured, and publicly humiliated,†the group said.
On Thursday, Sheikh Salman issued a statement “vehemently denying†the allegation.
“I can assure anyone that the BFA is being guided according to the highest possible governance standards of integrity and transparency – fully in line with the AFC and FIFA Statutes; and no action has been taken under my direction against any member of the football community,†Sheikh Salman said.
“The content of this letter is a clear attempt to damage my personal reputation and to interfere with the AFC Presidential elections taking place in Kuala Lumpur.â€
Pakistani-British boxer Amir Khan made an appearance in Las Vegas to attend the Floyd Mayweather – Robert Guerrero fight this past Saturday, and he used the occasion to issue a challenge to the victorious Mayweather. “Obviously I would love to fight him,†Khan told The Guardian. “With my speed and explosiveness, I would trouble him,†added Khan.
“I am full of admiration for him,†said Khan. “I can’t understand people booing him at the end because he didn’t knock Guerrero out. It was a terrific performance, a work of art. He is the best boxer in the world, without question. If someone is going to have a chance against him, it is someone with speed, and that is my best asset,†he added. “Remarkably, maybe prison was good for him. Boxing is the art of self-defense, ideally hit and not be hit – and maybe we should all think about that a bit more. We like to entertain, but it is not our duty to do so. I have had a lot of exciting fights and been hit way too much, so that is something to think about.â€
Khan is already committed to fight in December against either Danny Garcia, who defeated Khan last year, or the winner of the Lamont Peterson – Lucas Matthysse bout. Peterson also defeated Khan in December of 2011, but was stripped of the victory after reportedly testing positive for a synthetic testosterone. Khan could earn the biggest payday of his career if he secures the Mayweather fight. He’ll resume training in the San Francisco Bay Area in two weeks.
Alina Aftab, age 13, and Mahin Aftab, age 11, are a sister act of aspiring Pakistani tennis champions. They’ve already been playing for three years. They received four months of intensive training in Barcelona last year from some of the world’s top tennis coaches. In Pakistan they train with former national champion Zulfiqar Rahim among others, who have the girls practice for three hours a day “Both the sisters are full of passion, determination and self- belief, which are prerequisites for those aspiring to become champions,†Rahim told the Associated Press of Pakistan (APP). “I’ve never seen such talented girls like Alina and Mahin in my coaching career. They have a lot of natural talent, they are very explosive and fast, and can play from anywhere on the court,†he added. “They are hard workers, talented and great competitors. They are smart on the court. I am sure they have a bright future. The good thing about them is that they don’t like to lose. They will leave it all out there before they shake hands.â€
“The Williams sisters are our role models and we are on course to achieve what they did,†the sisters told the APP. “Besides the Williams sisters, we like Roger Federer and want to become true champions…We wish to match and break records set by Serena and Venus and I’m sure we can do that,†she said. “We got really tough training in Spain under the watchful eyes of renowned coaches. Every day we used to get intensive training of around five hours,†Alina said.
Thus far Mahin has won the under-12 category of the first ITC National Junior Ranking Tennis Championship last year. Alina and Mahin’s father is Air Commodore Aftab Ahmed. Last year Ahmed himself paid for his daughters’ training in Spain, but soon the Pakistani tennis academy will provide financial support, as both girls will need further training in Barcelona for at least four months every year until 2016 to be able to compete in WTA events. “I feel I’ve been so blessed, I have colleagues and relatives, who are appreciative and supportive of my endeavors to make my daughters true sportspersons,†Ahmed said.
LONDON (Reuters) – No one has ever seen an oil field.
Typically buried thousands of feet below the surface, oil fields are like a sponge saturated with a mixture of oil, water and gas, rather than the underground cavern most people imagine when they think about oil and gas reservoirs.
Many rock formations contain limited amounts of oil and gas, especially in sedimentary basins, but only a few contain enough to be worth the costs of drilling. Finding substantial amounts of oil is therefore akin to seeking a needle in a haystack.
Before deciding whether to sink a well, exploration and production firms must estimate how much oil the reservoir contains, and how much might be technically and economically recoverable, usually based on interpreting relatively limited amounts of data on what is actually down there.
As the easy oil runs out, and exploration and production companies delve deeper below the surface, in tougher environments like deepwater and the Arctic, the costs of drilling and field development rise sharply, and the risks of getting it wrong are correspondingly greater.
Oil companies have resorted to more and more computing power to “de-risk†the process.
Rather than drill wildcat wells and hope for the best, which is basically what happened in the 19th and early 20th centuries, most exploration and production companies now rely on super-computers to process and combine vast amounts of data gathered from seismic, gravity and magnetic surveys, in addition to well logs, to produce a three-dimensional “map†of the subsurface. The aim is to identify drilling locations that maximize the chance of finding an exploitable amount of oil and gas, minimize the danger of drilling a “dry holeâ€, and target the most-productive “sweet spots†in a formation.
The most modern models often employ four-dimensional visualizations to identify how oil, gas and water flow through the reservoir during production. They enable field engineers to plan the optimum layout for producing and injection wells, and to scrape some of the oil and gas left behind from primary production through waterflooding and carbon dioxide injection.
WILDCATS AND SUPER-COMPUTERS
Oil majors like BP and Shell own and operate some of the world’s biggest super-computers to help process the vast amounts of information gathered in the exploration process. BP’s computer needs have grown 10,000 times since 1999, according to the company, as a result of its increasingly data-driven exploration and production process. Its High Performance Computing Center, in Houston, Texas, has maxed out its computing power and cooling capacity. The company is building a new facility on the same site that will roughly double its computing power.
The new three-story facility at Westlake Campus, scheduled to be operational by the middle of 2013, will have more than 67,000 central processing units, and data storage equivalent to 147,000 Apple iPods with 160GB of memory each. It will be able to perform more than 2,000 trillion operations per second (2 petaflops).
“This is not just about building a bigger and better computer. BP’s new high performance computing centre will be as important to our global search for new energy resources as any piece of equipment we employ today,†the company said in December.
In the Middle East, Saudi Aramco’s Exploration and Production Engineering Centre (EXPEC) operates a legendary control room that enables engineers to visualize Ghawar, the kingdom’s super-giant oil field, as if they were walking through it, using special eye-pieces and screens, backed by a super-computer.
Aramco’s latest and most powerful simulator is GigaPOWERS, which can break a giant oilfield up into billions of separate cells to analyze it better.
“GigaPOWERS is an innovative reservoir simulation technique (that) helps us to better analyze and predict the production rate of our oil and gas reservoirs over time so we can manage reserves well into the future,†Aramco says.
“By combining relevant physics, chemistry and thermodynamic relationships, we create highly complicated mathematical equations. The solutions to these equations are then presented in grid blocks that create a detailed visual picture of an oil field,†Aramco explains on its website.
“The increased resolution of GigaPOWERS has allowed us to identify bypassed oil zones and additional oil zones, leading us to drill new wells and recover more oil,†the company adds.
Oilfield service companies like Schlumberger and Baker Hughes now market their own sophisticated reservoir visualization software making it available to even small and midsize exploration and production companies.
PROCESSING AND DATA LIMITATIONS
Despite the enormous strides in computing technology, super-computers and geologists still rely on indirect measurements such as gravity anomalies, seismic patterns and cores brought back to the surface from test wells to estimate the amount of oil in place and potential recovery rates.
Petroleum geology remains an art, relying on good judgment and interpretation, as much as a science.
Data remains expensive to acquire and comparatively scarce.
Geologists have to estimate the thickness and extent of petroleum-generating source rocks as well as the reservoir formations from which the oil and gas is recovered.
The total organic content of the source rock, and its temperature-pressure history, all determine how much of the organic matter has been converted into oil or gas, and have to be estimated (or intelligently guessed).
The porosity of the reservoir, the connectedness of its pores, and its relative saturation with oil, gas and water all determine how much can ultimately be recovered, how many wells may be needed, and how far apart, as well as whether special techniques like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing will be needed.
In most cases, initial estimates of the amount of recoverable oil and gas across comparatively large areas must be made based on surface seismic surveys and rock samples and well logs from just a small number of wells.
Even small changes to estimates of total organic content, porosity, connectedness and other factors can result in enormous changes in estimated resources and reserves. For this reason, resources and reserve estimates are subject to huge uncertainty.
CONSERVATISM IN RESOURCE ESTIMATES
It is normally good practice to adopt a conservative approach, employing the least realistically feasible estimates for the various parameters to produce a cautious estimate, and hope any surprises will be on the upside.
As the field is developed, more wells are drilled, and more data becomes available, it is possible to update the initial estimates. If good practice has been followed, reserves and resource estimates will normally be revised upwards.
This caution is one reason why the recent U.S. Geological Survey estimates for the ultimate technically recoverable resources from the Bakken shale deposits in North Dakota remain low compared with estimates published by some exploration companies and consultants involved in the play.
Technology is the other. Most of the oil originally contained in a reservoir is never recovered (though exactly what percentage remains is left behind is also subject to uncertainty because no one knows for certain how much was actually there in the first place). But as technology improves it has usually become possible to produce more of the oil that was originally left behind.
In many cases, it has been possible to identify pools of stranded oil, or fractured the reservoir rock and pump in water and chemicals to drive extra oil towards the wells.
Super-giant fields like Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar and California’s Wilmington have already produced many times more oil than geologists originally thought possible, and are still thought to be capable of producing billions of barrels more.
North Dakota’s Bakken is no exception. Once thought to be essentially impossible to produce because there was not sufficient connectivity between the pores, it has already produced more than 500 million barrels and could ultimately yield at least eight times as much, according to USGS.
Given the conservative estimating methods employed by USGS it may eventually yield far more.
(John Kemp is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)
‘Above Average’ Hurricanes Season Predicted for 2013
Predictions of an “above average†hurricane season for 2013 could be just what the doctor ordered for many drought-stricken areas of Texas. While hoping that this year’s season does not bring devastation like that wreaked on the East Coast last year by Superstorm Sandy or by 2005’s costliest natural disaster in American history, Hurricane Katrina, a little rain would go a long way toward reviving lakes and streams and reservoirs in the Lone Star State.
Texas State Climatologist Dr. John Nielsen-Gammon recently told a legislative committee that if the current drought, which began in 2011, continues into this summer, it could become the second-worst drought in Texas history.
So while the state is grappling with water shortage problems, the Colorado State University hurricane forecast team has predicted that this year’s season, which begins June 1, will result in 18 systems becoming at least tropical storm level, earning a name for each. The experts, who have been predicting hurricanes for three decades, say nine of those storms will become hurricanes and four will become major hurricanes. They gauge “major†hurricanes by categories and say the major hurricanes – category 3 – will carry top sustained winds of at least 111 miles per hour. These hurricane experts note that the last three years were among the busiest on record for storms. Reporting at the March National Hurricane Conference in New Orleans, the Colorado State team noted that the tropics “look favorable†for an above average season. They say that warmer than usual waters in the Atlantic Ocean and lack of the warm water in the Pacific Ocean (El Nino) lend themselves to more storm activity.
The Colorado State team last year predicted 13 named storms with five of them becoming hurricanes and four major hurricanes. They later increased that prediction to 14 total storms. When the season ended, there were 19 named storms, 10 that became hurricanes and one major hurricane. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2012 prediction was 12 to 17 named storms, five to eight to become hurricanes and three of them major.
With more than 98 percent of the state recording some stage of drought – from abnormally dry to moderate, severe, extreme and exceptional drought conditions – much-needed rain from storm activity in the Gulf would be welcomed in parched areas of the state, particularly since Nielsen-Gammon and others who study the climate and weather predict another below-normal rainfall this spring.
Dr. Zubair Khan receives St. Francis hospital award
POUGHKEEPSIE,NY–the Franciscan Award, the highest honor Saint Francis Hospital and Health Centers bestows, was presented to Dr. Zubair Khan, at the 32nd annual Franciscan Awards Gala on April 29th.
Dr. Khan has been practicing in the Hudson Valley for almost 15 years. He’s regarded by his peers as among the best clinicians in the region with an innate ability to organize and treat multiple complex interrelated medical conditions.
Dr. Khan is nationally board certified in internal medicine, pulmonology, critical care and sleep disorders. He was formerly the director of critical care at St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie until most recently being elected as Vice-President of the Hospital.
Fatima Bishtawi to be honored for her leadership
MIDDLETOWN, CT– Fatima Bishtawi, a student at Middletown High School, is one of 37 woman in central Connecticut who will be honored on May 15 as the YWCA New Britain hosts its 15th biennial Women in Leadership Luncheon
The event will recognize women who demonstrate extraordinary leadership and outstanding achievements. Author Gretchen Rubin will deliver the keynote address. Bishtawi’s student counselor, Stephanie Campbell, nominated the MHS student because “not only is she a top member of her class, she continues to give back to her community to help others.†Bishtawi has been a high honors student for most of her high school career, is an AP Scholar, has won the Governor’s Scholar award, Yale Book award and the Michael’s Cup award. She has also participated in numerous extracurricular activities and service work outside of school to better her community.
Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid to be honored
AMSTERDAM,NY– Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur-Rashid will be honored by the Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP) will be holding their Second Annual Citizen of the City Awards. He has been selected along with others for his efforts to to bring diverse communities together through -out New York City. Their main goal is to create a safer, more livable and more inclusive city for all New Yorkers.
Boston Muslims hold blood drive
A group of Muslim volunteers held a blood drive at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, in Boston, last week. The event was organized by members of Mercy to all Mankind, a group of young Muslims seeking to help the greater community while building relationships between non-Muslims and themselves. A total of 51 volunteers enthusiastically participated in this event.
“In response to the tragic events of the Boston Marathon, Mercy to All Mankind volunteers came together to donate blood and wrote down their thoughts and prayers on note cards to the victims, families, first responders and all of those directly affected by the tragic event,†said a spokesperson.
Mercy to all Mankind is a group of Muslim volunteers with a common goal of helping the larger community. Their goal is to revive the true values and precious brand of Islam through campaigns of peace, unity and prosperity. They aim to build bridges between Muslims and Non-Muslims and to help others understand that Islam is not as it is portrayed through actions of extremists, and to show how merciful it really is. “For decades we have been passively watching as the media and extremists were defining our religion, but now we will take matters in our own hands, and are determined to show the world what the Islam we believe in is all about†said the spokesperson.
Mercy to all Mankind was founded last year with the objective to promote creative campaigns that re-brand the image of Islam to form a peaceful communication to the public, to promote understanding and to break down any misconceptions about the religion of Islam.
About 1000 people gathered on Friday May 3rd to hear Nouman Ali Khan present a “story night†at the Tawheed Center Banquet Hall in Farmington, MI.
Parking was so full in the newly extended parking lot that dozens of cars were double parked preventing exit by people who tried to leave before ‘Isha, creating what was perhaps the best attended event TMO has attended in the past eight years.
And a few moments in teh room with Mr. Nouman Ali Khan showed why. Mr. Khan spoke with in depth knowledge of Qur`an, presenting his listeners with the fruits of his hours of thought and study on the Holy Qur`an.
What made this “story night†so extraordinary was that it wasn’t just for kids-but also for adults! The majority of the attendees were indeed adults, sitting and listening attentively with their children on their knees to the heartwarming stories Khan told of Sayyidina Musa (as) and his birth, and insights into the Qur`an’s explanation of the events surrounding his birth and his meeting his future wife. These were not the same old fairy tales of a locked up princess or good versus evil. Instead the stories were deep and intense reflections of our prophets. Khan went in depth about the many parallels between the stories of Sayyidina Yusuf and Sayyidina Musa, who both went to Egypt but under different circumstances.
He took the typical stories we all heard as Muslim children and gave us a scoop of background information and depth we would never have imagined. He gave many gems for the youth, to be strong and inspired, encouraging them to realize and understand that Muslims have faith that is so strong and is so correct that to outsiders and non-believers it simply seems insane and detached from reality.
He explained that a believer might refuse to do drugs, or refuse to party with members of the opposite sex, confident in the knowledge that his Lord will provide better for him, and meanwhile his peers might literally say that he is crazy as they run off to destroy their bodies and their minds at parties with drugs and alcohol.
This amazing event did not end Friday night. Nouman Ali Khan is hosting the same story night in Chicago and various cities, with the help of the Bayyinah institute. Unfortunately Mr. Khan will be limiting his future similar events because he will now be doing more work to reform the manner by which children are taught Qur`an. For more information about Story Night or Nouman Ali Khan in general like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter.
May 8 (Reuters) – In the past two decades, a group of specialized hedge funds have transformed corporate bankruptcies, injecting much-needed capital while at the same time drawing fire as “vultures.â€
Now these same funds may be poised to descend on another landscape: struggling cities and counties – and no place beckons more than Detroit.
This sudden interest in the staid world of municipal debt comes as these so-called distressed funds are looking for new places to put their money. Lucrative corporate bankruptcies have dried up, thanks in part to the Federal Reserve’s policy of low interest rates.
Of course, these hedge funds may be deterred by the financial and political constraints of local governments, which must pay police and collect trash and cannot be forced into liquidation.
But despite the risks, some are already betting hundreds of millions of dollars that there are big returns in cash-strapped governments.
Monarch Alternative Capital, which played a major role in the bankruptcy of Twinkie-maker Hostess Brands Inc, and several other funds have scooped up more than $600 million of debts of Jefferson County, Alabama, according to court records.
But nowhere is attracting more attention than Detroit.
With $8.6 billion in long-term debt, Detroit would be comparable to the biggest corporate failures if it eventually files for bankruptcy, a major advantage for big hedge funds that are used to investing hundreds of millions of dollars at a time.
The sheer size of Detroit’s debt should make it easier for the funds to track down very large chunks of bonds, magnifying their profit potential, cutting their research and advisory costs and giving them leverage when it comes to restructuring talks.
Bill Nowling, a spokesman for the city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, said the city is still assessing its approach to its financial turnaround and said he was not aware of any contact with potential hedge fund investors.
Detroit was once America’s fifth largest city and a thriving center of U.S. industry. Now, its population has plummeted to 700,000 from a peak of 1.8 million, a third live in poverty and basic services such as street lighting have broken down. Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Orr, a corporate bankruptcy expert, in March to take over the city’s finances.
Even if the city does not file for bankruptcy, its debt will likely be restructured, providing an opportunity for hedge funds to make a profit.
Financial advisers, restructuring consultants and lawyers who work with the funds have told Reuters they have been fielding calls, digging through documents and even flying to Detroit as they try to pinpoint a profitable investment.
“Everyone is looking for ways into Detroit. It’s new and unique,†said Marti Kopacz, who founded Brant Point Advisors, which provides turnaround advice to municipal governments.
One of the normally secretive distressed debt fund managers confirmed the funds are circling the Motor City.
“Detroit is something we as well as other funds have looked at,†said Alan Mintz, the founder of Stone Lion Capital, which was spun out of Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment Corp.
Like Monarch, Stone Lion has bought tens of millions of dollars of Jefferson County’s debt and has also been involved in the bankruptcy of Eastman Kodak Co, among other big corporate failures.
The hedge funds’ interest in municipal debt reflects the divergent fortunes of Wall Street and Main Street.
Distressed debt funds love to jump in when most bail out. But with the coffers of U.S. companies overflowing with cash, there has been a dearth of the debt defaults, bankruptcies and liquidations that such funds normally feast on.
By contrast, a small but potentially growing number of U.S. cities and towns are struggling with pay and pension obligations that they took on in the boom years. As well as Jefferson County, the California towns of Stockton and San Bernardino have recently filed for bankruptcy.
Distressed debt investing has been one of the most successful hedge fund strategies over the past decade. Funds such as Oaktree Capital Management and Appaloosa Management buy large portions of a company’s debt and use teams of top-flight lawyers and advisers to control a bankruptcy.
In the Chapter 11 of Visteon Corp, hedge funds scooped up the car part maker’s bonds at pennies on the dollar and raised $1.6 billion to pay off the company’s secured lenders, who had expected to own the reorganized company.
The hedge funds ended up controlling Visteon, notching up large profits.
WAYS TO INVEST
Hedge funds are considering various approaches when it comes to local governments, including asset sales and loans, but in the case of Detroit the bonds are the big draw.
“If Detroit’s debt goes way, way down in value they will snap it up in the market and work for solutions that might help get Detroit back on its feet,†said Lewis Feldman, who heads the public-private development practice at the law firm Goodwin Procter.
Earlier this year, a $25 million block of Detroit’s pension certificates traded at around 66 cents on the dollar. The buyer is unknown, but Matt Fabian of the Municipal Market Advisors research firm suggested it could be a sign of hedge fund involvement.
Explaining one hypothetical strategy, Fabian estimated that hedge funds could make a great return by negotiating repayment from Detroit as low as 80 cents on the dollar on those certificates.
While that would sting investors who bought the same debt at par, it would obviously help Detroit.
“They would do good for the citizens of Detroit and their own pocket,†Feldman said.
Fabian said a discounted repayment might chip away at the long-standing belief that muni bonds, even ones issued by a bankrupt government, are always repaid at par. That could send debt prices lower, creating more distressed muni bonds for the hedge funds to buy, he said.
Mintz, of the Stone Lion hedge fund, played down Fabian’s scenario, although he said the funds would consider accepting a below-par repayment where warranted. “Just to gratuitously offer discounts probably wouldn’t happen,†he said.
EUROPEAN BANKS
Detroit may have another ingredient to attract distressed debt hedge funds: motivated sellers.
Hector Negroni, the co-chief executive of Fundamental Credit Opportunities, a fund that specializes in muni market investing, said a significant amount of Detroit’s roughly $1.5 billion in pension certificates is held by foreign banks.
Some advisers anticipate those banks would prefer to sell their large holdings rather than slug it out in politically charged restructuring talks overseas.
A similar situation has played out in the Jefferson County bankruptcy. A unit of Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group and French bank Societe Generale have been selling warrants to the hedge funds, according to court records.
But advisers and lawyers in the municipal world warned that while there may seem to be significant opportunities in restructuring local governments, skills honed in corporate bankruptcy may not apply.
“I think it will be a period of time where the distressed investor community will come to an appreciation that these situations are so very, very different from a commercial bankruptcy,†said Kopacz, the municipal adviser.
“Everyone points to the politics but it’s even more fundamental than that. If you live in the north you have to take care of the snow and you have to have a police department and a fire department. You can’t liquidate a city.†(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Eddie Evans and Mary Milliken)
(Reuters) – The Iranian property developer leant back in his chair, drew hard on a shisha pipe and looked down at photographs of a Tehran apartment block on his tablet computer.
“I designed it myself,†he said proudly as he blew a cloud of scented smoke out into Dubai’s night air.
The pictures showed the lavish interiors of apartments and penthouse suites in a 20-floor development his company recently completed in Niavaran, one of the Iranian capital’s wealthiest areas, with views towards mountains to the north.
One of many towers to have sprung up on the Tehran skyline in recent years, it is part of a property boom due indirectly to sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear activities.
While the sanctions threaten to bring the Iranian economy to its knees, million dollar apartments fitted out with the best imported equipment have become ever more common in Tehran. Embargoes imposed on the oil and banking sectors since late 2011 have sent the Iranian rial currency crashing, pushing up import prices and contributing to spiraling overall inflation. Wealthy Iranians, often unable to move money abroad due to the banking sanctions, have tried to protect their savings by turning to property at home, further stoking the market. Developers have reaped the rewards but some now believe a bubble is forming and fear the consequences should it burst. For poorer Iranians, the boom is creating more immediate problems as it stretches their ability to provide for their families.
“Until around two years ago, the market rose steadily. Then it started going crazy,†the developer said on a visit to Dubai.
“You can’t believe how quickly everything’s gone up,†he said, asking not to be named.
The cost of apartments in his developments – among the most sought after in Tehran – have almost tripled in two years, he said. They now sell for about 200 million rials ($5,500) a square meter, and even his medium-sized apartments cost the local currency equivalent of $1 million.
Property inflation has spread across Tehran and is now being felt around the country, say investors, estate agents and prospective buyers.
“Prices have gone up drastically in recent months,†said Hooman Bina, a Tehran-based professional property investor. “There’s even been a hike since Persian New Year (on March 20).â€
DEMAND VS COSTS
Iranian manufacturing is grinding to a near halt and unemployment is rising. In April the International Monetary Fund forecast the economy would shrink 1.3 percent this year. This has left investors with few opportunities beyond construction, and estate agents say it is a seller’s market.
“A lot of people have started buying places, especially small apartments, just to protect the value of their money. Real estate looks like a safe investment, at least for now,†said a Tehran-based analyst who – like many Iranians in the current sensitive political atmosphere – did not want his name to appear in international media.
Everything from the cost of land to equipment for new homes has soared. “The materials used in houses such as air conditioners, elevators, wood, iron and steel, especially in buildings in northern Tehran, are of very high quality and imported from abroad,†said Bina.
“Everything imported is much more expensive now,†he added. With the rial at 36,000 to the dollar in the open market, Iran’s currency is around a third of the value it had in mid-2011, making imported goods far more expensive.
To sell million dollar apartments in plush areas of northern Tehran, developers need to provide the best fittings on the market. Despite the sanctions, top quality European products such as Poggenpohl kitchens and Siemens white goods from Germany are available alongside even some American ones.
Those Iranians with access to hard currency are in the best position of all. Their dollars or dirhams go as far as they did in 2011, and in some cases farther, because the U.S. and Gulf currencies held their value while the rial plunged.
“I’d been meaning to upgrade my apartment and this is a great opportunity,†said an Iranian businessman looking out over Dubai from his 18th floor office. He settled in the United Arab Emirates 20 years ago but regularly visits Tehran on business.
OUT OF REACH
As with every boom, many are missing out and struggling to afford a home as grocery and fuel prices also soar, however. After saving for 10 years, Mohammad Hossein’s hopes of buying a family home are further away than ever.
Worse still, the surge has also pushed up rents and the 38-year-old shoe factory worker has had to move with his wife and infant to a smaller apartment in Tehran because the family could not afford the landlord’s demand for an increase.
“Prices have gone up so much that people like us can only afford to buy or rent an apartment half the size of what they could afford with that same money two years ago,†Hossein said.
Iran has an unusual rental system, called rahn, in which a tenant “lends†the landlord a sizeable sum, sometimes with a modest monthly rent. The landlord uses the money as an interest-free loan – a valuable commodity when annual interest rates are around 20 percent – before returning it after an agreed period.
When 28-year-old graphics graduate Parastoo moved to Tehran earlier this year, she soon found out her budget could not keep up with the rents. Eventually she found a 51 square meter (550 square foot) apartment in central Tehran, paying rahn of 385 million rials ($11,000) in addition to a monthly rent of 2.5 million rials.
“It was a real struggle,†said Parastoo, who asked to be identified only by her given name. “The owner of my apartment originally wanted to sell it but because of the daily fluctuations in price he decided to rent and wait for prices to stabilize,†she said by phone from Tehran.
DECIMATED ECONOMY
Iran’s property phenomenon reflects just how badly the economy is suffering from “stagflation†– zero growth alongside high inflation and increasing unemployment.
According to official figures, inflation is running at more than 30 percent but some analysts estimate the real rate could be double or even triple that.
“Iran has definitely entered an era of stagflation. It’s very vulnerable and its own economic policy has not helped.†said Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who estimates annual inflation at over 100 percent. “Without oil, everything would collapse overnight.â€
For those in the business, the rapid property inflation has now become worrying. The national union of property advisers says that in the second half of the Persian year (up to March 20), prices went up more than the rate of inflation.
“The purchasing power of prospective buyers is going down with the increased rates,†said union head Mostafa Khosravi. “We want to see price stability because this leads to increased prosperity in the market,†Mehr news quoted him as saying.
Real estate agents say business has slowed in recent weeks and speculate this may be due to uncertainty before a presidential election in June to elect a successor to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The outcome is far from clear.
With fluctuations in the market and the ensuing difficulty of planning large-scale construction, the developer in Dubai said he had halted projects in Iran and was proceeding with caution.
“The country has stopped. Nothing’s moving but inflation’s still going up,†he said. “It’s a bubble and I don’t know what will happen.â€
Social media activist Nasser Weddady’s career has been promoted by pro-war and anti-Palestinian forces determined to undermine Muslim communal organizing across the US. (Flickr)
Social media activist Nasser Weddady’s career has been promoted by pro-war and anti-Palestinian forces determined to undermine Muslim communal organizing across the US. (Flickr)
On 18 April, three days after a bombing killed three and left many more wounded at the Boston marathon, a figure unknown to most Americans stepped suddenly into the national spotlight. At a nationally broadcast interfaith service addressed by President Barack Obama, a Mauritanian-born social media activist named Nasser Weddady appeared on stage as the designated representative of Boston’s Muslim community. Introduced as the chairman of the New England Interfaith Council and the civil rights outreach director for the American Islamic Congress (AIC), Weddady delivered a well-received sermon referencing Jewish and Islamic scripture on non-violence.
Unlike the notable Jewish, Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Protestant religious figures chosen to speak at the service, Weddady was not an ordained clergy member, nor was he known to many members of the community he claimed to represent. In fact, he was a last-minute replacement for Suhaib Webb, a Muslim educator and imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, the largest Muslim house of prayer in New England.
Commenting on Twitter that the office of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick “made the call†to replace him, Webb said the governor chose “Muhammad Weddady,†misidentifying Nasser Weddady. When another Twitter user asked Webb who Weddady was, he responded, “No idea.â€
A report by the right-wing, pro-Israel website JNS.org suggested that Webb’s replacement by Weddady was politically motivated (“Muslim Brotherhood-linked mosque’s imam replaced as speaker at service for Boston Marathon attack victims,†21 April 2013).
According to the article, groups including self-styled “terror expert†Steven Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism, the anti-Muslim outfit Americans for Peace and Tolerance created by David Project founder Charles Jacobs, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) claimed Webb’s mosque “has an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel history that started with its founding by members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas.â€
The allegations stemmed from a failed campaign directed by Jacobs and assisted by the ADL, Emerson and other anti-Muslim elements to block the construction of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. In May 2010, after the dust cleared, Governor Patrick appeared at the mosque, seemingly rebuking the cast of Islamophobes that smeared it as a terrorist front. Patrick told the congregation, “Yours is a peaceful faith, and I know that … .†Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley also offered support for the mosque, dispatching a staffer to attend Patrick’s speech and earmarking $50,000 in state funds to “sensitivity training for law enforcement officials†(“‘Yours is a peaceful faith’,†Boston Globe, 23 May 2010).
Disturbing history
The JNS.org report has not been confirmed by Governor Patrick’s office, Webb, or by Weddady. However, the replacement of Webb, perhaps the most notable Muslim religious authority in New England, with an obscure lay figure raises questions about why the local Muslim community was not able to delegate its own representative.
And who was Weddady? Was he, in fact, a rising human rights activist promoting tolerance among Bostonians and spreading freedom abroad? And was his employer, the AIC, simply a group of earnest Muslim do-gooders “trying to build bridges among people of different faiths and ethnicities,†as Public Radio International’s The World claimed it was on its 16 April edition?
An investigation of the American Islamic Congress by The Electronic Intifada revealed a disturbing history that stretches back to the invasion of Iraq, with political patronage from the Bush administration building the organization from the ground up. Despite its claim to promote tolerance, the AIC has depended on substantial support from the very same elements that fought tooth and nail to sabotage the Islamic Society of Boston, and which seem determined to undermine Muslim communal organizing efforts across the country.
The organization has managed to maintain US government funding during the Obama era, serving as a faithful arm of soft American power in the Middle East while nurturing the creation of Weddady’s new “Free Arabs†website, a self-proclaimed portal to “Democracy, Secularism, [and] Fun†that eschews criticism of Western policies towards the Middle East while promoting US military intervention in Syria.
Weddady and AIC co-founder and Executive Director Zainab Al-Suwaij did not respond to calls and emailed queries requesting comment for this article.
According to Internal Revenue Service 990 information filings, the AIC is funded largely by a pool of right-wing donors responsible for bankrolling key players in America’s Islamophobia industry, from Charles Jacobs to Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism and Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum. These same donors have pumped millions into major pro-Israel organizations, including groups involved in settlement activity and the Friends of the IDF, which provides assistance to the Israeli army.
Among the AIC’s most reliable supporters is the Donors Capital Fund, which has provided at least $85,000 in funding since 2008. Donors Capital was among the seven foundations identified in the Center for American Progress’s 2011 report Fear Inc. as “the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America.†Another foundation singled out in the report, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, has donated $325,000 to the AIC between 2005 and 2011.
The Bradley Foundation is one the most generous donors to the American conservative movement, according to People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch project, pumping millions into right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, key bastions of neoconservativism. It has also supported the work of Charles Murray, a right-wing author who notoriously argued in his 1994 book, The Bell Curve, that intelligence was based on race, and that blacks and Latinos were genetically inferior to whites and Asians.
Some of the most virulent anti-Muslim agitators, from David Horowitz to Frank Gaffney to Daniel Pipes, who has called for razing entire Palestinian villages and other forms of collective punishment, have received more than $5 million from the Bradley Foundation.
Aided by Adelson
In 2009, the AIC received a $95,500 donation from the Adelson Family Foundation, the charitable entity of Las Vegas casino baron Sheldon Adelson and his wife, Miriam. Adelson is best known for his attempts to unseat President Barack Obama through million dollar donations to the 2012 presidential campaign of Republican former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.
A major donor to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Birthright Israel program that sends Jewish American youth on free trips to Israel, Adelson is also a key financial benefactor of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s political career (“The Bibi Connection,†Al Akhbar English, 12 January 2012).
In December 2011, Adelson told a Birthright Israel group that Palestinians were “an invented people.†“Don’t let Muslim student organizations take over the campuses,†he urged the Jewish college students. Adelson has never explained his funding of the AIC, perhaps the only Muslim-oriented recipient of his donations (“Sheldon Adelson to Birthright group: Gingrich is right to call Palestinians ‘invented people,’†Haaretz, 26 December 2011).
Of all the right-wing, pro-Israel donors to the AIC — and there are too many to mention here — none has been more generous than the Klarman Family Foundation, which provided the group with $425,000 from 2005 to 2011. The foundation is the charitable vehicle for Boston-based pro-Israel billionaire Seth Klarman. He is the principal funder of The Israel Project, an Israeli government-linked public relations and lobbying group run by former AIPAC spokesperson Josh Block, which has, among other things, taken dozens of journalists on helicopter tours in Israel and the territories it occupies (“Israel Project brags on planting story in CNN and taking 38 journalists on helicopter trips in Israel,†Mondoweiss, 18 April 2013).
Besides the AIC, Klarman has donated to a who’s who of anti-Muslim and pro-Israel groups, including the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), the American Jewish Committee, The David Project, Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Forum, and Friends of Ir David Inc., the US tax-exempt fundraising arm of the settler organization behind a wave of Palestinian expulsions in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.
Klarman is also a major donor to Birthright Israel, AIPAC-founded think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the pro-Israel neoconservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
The AIC is not the only putatively Muslim group funded by Klarman. In 2011, Klarman made his first donation to the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, the shell organization that serves as the personal platform for Zuhdi Jasser. The previously unknown Jasser, a physician from Arizona with no academic or theological credentials, is one of the country’s most outspoken Muslim proponents of law enforcement surveillance of Muslim communities.
Two years earlier, Jasser was welcomed onto AIC’s board of directors, joining a host of like-minded neoconservatives.
“Demographic jihadâ€
Daniel Pipes, one of America’s foremost anti-Muslim activists, has promoted the AIC as one of the “moderate groups†presenting a counter-weight to Muslim organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which he has repeatedly labeled as a front for a secret plot to place the US under the control of “sharia law.†A staffer for a major Muslim-American civil rights organization told me that AIC’s leadership refused to participate in any initiative with the organized Muslim American community.
Described by his frequent host Glenn Beck as “the Muslim we were all looking for after 9/11,†Jasser starred in an Islamophobic propaganda film, The Third Jihad, warning that Muslims were organizing a takeover of the US through “demographic jihad.†He gained prominence as the lead Muslim witness in the congressional hearing on “Muslim radicalization†hosted by New York Republican Congressman Rep. Peter King, and has vehemently defended the New York Police Department’s profiling of Muslims.
In October 2012, AIC director Zainab Al-Suwaij signed a letter authored by Jasser and addressed to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urging her to bar Pakistani politician Imran Khan from entering the US (“AILC Press Release: Secretary Clinton should bar Imran Khan from entering the U.S.,†23 October 2012).
Jasser described Khan, one of Pakistan’s most outspoken opponents of US drone strikes, as “an anti-American politician who regularly defends the Taliban.†The letter contained the signatures of more than a dozen obscure Muslim figures, including Farid “Frank†Ghadry, a neoconservative favorite and AIPAC member who has attempted to promote himself, Ahmed Chalabi-style, as the future leader of a free Syria, including before the Israeli Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
Another neoconservative activist seated on the AIC’s board, Hillel Fradkin, is a scholar of Islamic studies who signed the notorious Project for the New American Century letter calling for the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Then there is Khaleel Mohammed, a professor of religion at San Diego State University whose views have endeared him to hardline Islamophobes. A contributor to Daniel Pipes’ Middle East Quarterly, Mohammed argued in a friendly interview with David Horowitz’s far-right FrontPageMag that the Quran states that “Israel belongs to the Jews.†“Only when Muslims themselves accept Israel will they be following their Quran,†Mohammed claimed (“The Koran and the Jews,†3 June 2004).
Mohammed is the faculty advisor for AIC’s student group at San Diego State University, Project Nur, and to the school’s Graduate Program in Homeland Security. On his personal website, Mohammed declared that Muslims who did not rise up to fight “the world terrorists†were betraying their Islamic duty. “The Quran makes it absolutely clear that Muslims must bear arms against errant Muslims in times of need,†he wrote. “It is either one or the other. We must either fight against terrorism or deem our silence as evidence of complicity†(“Statement on Terrorism,†10 September 2004).
Bush’s Iraqi fixer
In August 2004, two years after she founded the AIC, Zainab Al-Suwaij appeared before the Republican National Convention to speak in support of George W. Bush’s re-election and the invasion of Iraq. “America, under the strong, compassionate leadership of President Bush, has given Iraqis the most precious gift any nation has ever given another — the gift of democracy and the freedom to determine its own future,†Suwaij proclaimed, according to a Fox News transcript.
Al-Suwaij was born into a Shiite family in Iraq that suffered under the regime of Saddam Hussein. When she appeared at the helm of the AIC just months after the 11 September 2001 attacks and with an invasion of Iraq on the way, her organization was little more than a shell, with no board of directors and only a little more than $12,000 in its coffers. By 2004, however, Al-Suwaij was earning six figures, with government contracts pouring into her organization along with requests from national media outlets. The US occupation of Iraq was propelling her ambition.
On 21 March 2003, two days after the US invasion of Iraq began, Al-Suwaij appeared on ABC’s 20/20 alongside three other Iraqi women representing a now-defunct group called Women For Iraq.
The women told host Barbara Walters that those protesting the invasion were “missing the point,†and thanked the US military for “freedom and liberty.†Days before, the four of them were invited to the White House to meet with a grateful Bush.
The following year, Secretary of State Colin Powell announced a $10 million grant for women’s “democracy training†in Iraq. Much of the money went to the Independent Women’s Forum, a militantly anti-feminist Republican organization then run by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and originally founded as Women For Clarence Thomas — a support group for the embattled, ultra-conservative Supreme Court nominee. Two organizations were brought in on the mission as subcontractors: the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, the hard core neoconservative think tank currently promoting a US military assault on Iran, and the AIC.
In 2004, the Bush administration funneled $542,123 to the AIC; a year later, the Independent Women’s Forum paid the AIC $533,052 in State Department grants to serve as its “subcontractor†in Iraq. In 2006, the AIC received $465,780 in compensation from the Independent Women’s Forum for its work. According to IRS 990 information returns filed by the AIC, hefty State Department grants poured in to the group’s coffers throughout Bush’s second term in office.
An Independent Women’s Forum report on its work in Iraq contained few details about the concrete results it achieved. However, it hinted at a slew of embarrassing failures, including an Iraqi women’s conference held in Jordan in 2005 where participants arrived exhausted, famished and shell-shocked after being shot at by unnamed assailants. According to the report, the women were not provided with the food or lodging they requested, and “providing and confirming flights for the participants in a very short period of time proved impossible†(“Advancing Women’s Rights – Two Years in Iraq†[PDF]).
When Al-Suwaij attempted to open women’s centers in Basra and Karbala, local officials rebuked her — “this segment of the grant was never fully realized,†the report noted. A more successful forum organized through the AIC instructed Iraqis in Nasiriyah on “coughing into one’s elbow instead of into one’s hand, and other basic health concepts.â€
Despite having participated in a dubious mission that was widely criticized as right-wing political patronage, the AIC has maintained a steady stream of government funding since Barack Obama entered the White House. In 2009, the AIC received more than $433,000 from the State Department to conduct conflict resolution programs in Iraq, claiming to have “diffused 60 conflicts†in the country. Two years later, it reaped $1.28 million in government funding for Iraqi conflict resolution and to train “social entrepreneurs†in Tunisia; over $170,000 of the government money was earmarked for democracy promotion. Today, the AIC maintains offices in Tunis and Cairo, both apparently supported by State Department grants.
To help coordinate its efforts across the Middle East and at its gleaming new cultural center in Boston, the AIC has turned to social media activist Nasser Weddady.
A profile of Weddady by Karen Leigh in The Atlantic describes him as a hidden force behind the Arab revolts — “an activist quietly pulling strings from Boston.†According to Leigh, Weddady is among the “top four most-influential Twitter users of the Arab Spring uprisings†and “is networked in every country in the region.†Leigh went on to claim “Weddady’s network†was largely responsible for the release of several activists jailed in Syria and Egypt during the Arab uprisings (“Behind the Arab Revolts, an Activist Quietly Pulling Strings From Boston,†25 January 2012).
One of Weddady’s most high-profile projects is the “Dream Deferred Essay Contest.†With approximately $58,000 in grants since 2005 from the Earhart Foundation, a right-wing charity best known for funding conservative efforts to unravel affirmative action programs for minority students in the US, the “Dreams Deferred†competition has doled out cash prizes to Arab youth for essays detailing repression and cultural problems like female genital mutilation in their countries. Among the winners selected by a panel chaired by famed American feminist Gloria Steinem was Maikel Nabil Sanad, an Egyptian anti-military conscription activist who told Israel’s Ynet “I am pro-Israel,†and who supported Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008-09, blaming Palestinians for provoking Israel “to defend itself†(“Egyptian refusenik: I’m pro-Israel,†25 October 2010).
In 2012, Palgrave Macmillan published an anthology of “Dreams Deferred†contest winners co-edited by Weddady and called Arab Spring Dreams. The book earned a glowing review from The Times of Israel, the Israeli publication financed by top AIC funder Seth Klarman. The blogger iPouya offered a less charitable critique, accusing the authors of committing a multitude of embarrassing factual errors.
Weddady co-edited the anthology with one of the neoconservative movement’s rising stars — Sohrab Ahmari, an Iranian-American former fellow at the right-wing Henry Jackson Society, and assistant books editor at The Wall Street Journal, who has been described by MJ Rosenberg at The Huffington Post as “the neocons’ favorite Iranian†(“Neocons Do Not Speak for Iranian-Americans,†27 March 2012).
Ahmari is a vocal proponent of a US military strike on Iran to precipitate regime change, a position he advocated last year in an article for Commentary (“Can Iran Be Saved?†March 2012).
In the introduction to their book, Weddady and Ahmari explain their decision to exclude the Palestinian narrative from the anthology on the grounds that “a [Palestinian] state there, or a treaty here, are of little consequence to the Middle East’s struggle for civil rights.â€
While speaking on a panel at the American Jewish Committee’s 2012 national conference in Washington, DC, Ahmari argued that the US “should try to actively shape the outcomes of the Arab Spring. In other words, we don’t have the opportunity to be humble and stay away from the region and favor all actors equally,†he stated, as video of the event shows. “… What needs to happen from the Western perspective is to be equally engaged, morally and militarily, to make sure the Arab Spring reflects our preferences rather than Tehran’s.â€
Views like these have found an occasional home at Free Arabs, the website co-founded by Weddady. Described as a forum for Arab liberals who “confront both oppressive autocrats and religious zealots with audacious reporting,†the website’s launch generated a wave of online criticism and debate. Many critics pointed at “The Fatwa Show,†a comical portrayal of ultra-conservative Muslim sheikhs who issue absurd edicts against high heels and body hair.
Others homed in on “The Horrific 4,†a narrative series aiming to “push to an extreme the worse [sic] prejudices seen in the Arab world, sometimes with a satirical tone.†No satire was apparent, however, when “Yehudi,†a fictional Mizrahi Jew from Israel who appeared as part of the series, claimed, “we Middle Eastern Jews [living in Israel] … are the most free Arabs in the world†(“Mizrahi Jews are the ultimate pan-Arabs,†24 October 2012). Without a trace of irony, Yehudi added: “Yes, we Middle Eastern Jews in Israel are the ultimate pan-Arabs — and we are free to explore that cross-cultural mix and blaze new identities in one of the most experimental societies in the world.â€
Free Arabs states on its website that it was born from “a network of creative next-generation Arab activists facilitated by the American Islamic Congress, backed by a small grant from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.†Another sponsor of the website is Stanford University’s Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, where the Moroccan journalist Ahmed Benchemsi — a co-founder of Free Arabs — serves as a visiting scholar.
The Stanford program that houses Benchemsi and Free Arabs is overseen by Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Larry Diamond, a liberal interventionist academic and former senior advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority that governed the US occupation of Iraq. Diamond emerged as a critic of the war after the occupation turned into a bloodstained boondoggle, but maintained that the invasion was just (“What went wrong in Iraq,†Foreign Affairs, September-October 2004).
Almost a decade later, with the Arab revolts in flux, he sees new opportunities for the exercise of hard American power. In a recent commentary for The Atlantic, Diamond and Stanford’s Lina Khatib argued for US military intervention in Syria, warning that the failure to intervene would have “catastrophic consequences for regional stability and for the position of the United States in the Middle East†(“The Case for Intervening in Syria,†25 April 2012).
Three days later, Free Arabs republished Diamond and Khatib’s piece, headlining it, “Syria – No More Excuses!â€
Around this time, Weddady was busy organizing a 2 May panel discussion at AIC’s Boston cultural center that would be co-hosted by the the leading pro-Israel advocacy group the American Jewish Committee. Themed as “A New Vision of Muslim-Jewish Relations,†the event’s keynote speaker was Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
Built into the original scaffolding of Bush’s imperial project, the AIC emerged unscathed from its dramatic collapse, finding favor in a new era among Obama’s top allies. As Washington grasps for strategies to influence the course of the Arab revolts, Wedaddy and his colleagues are earning new opportunities, and ample compensation.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated since publication to indicate that Sohrab Ahmari is no longer a fellow at the Henry Jackson Society and is now assistant books editor at The Wall Street Journal.
Civil Rights activist Assata Shakur, formerly known as Joanne Byron-Chesimard, has re-appeared in the headlines after years of exile in Cuba, because on May 2, 2013, the State of New Jersey raised the bounty on her head to $2 million after the FBI promoted the 66-year-old woman to its Most Wanted Terrorist list.
Many in the African American community are shocked to learn that this astonishingly beautiful woman, whose inspirational significance has been compared to Leila Khalid, and whose contributions to the Civil Rights movement are legendary, is now being treated like the next Osama bin Laden!
Nick Chiles writes in the Atlanta Black Star that “to many blacks Shakur is a hero for standing up to law enforcement while she was a leader of the Black Liberation Army in the 1970s and for her forceful writings and commentary on the conditions of black people after she fled to Cuba sometime around 1984. She has been the subject of films, documentaries and rap songs over the years.†Why would the government do this, and why now? Is this an act of war against Cuba? Are they trying to create a Black Messiah in order to instigate a racial civil war in the US? Professor Julio Pino, who teaches history at Kent State University, told TMO, “It’s part of the long Cold War against Cuba, but also a warning to African Americans to act like Obama or else.†During the earlier part of the 1970s, Shakur, an active member of the Black Panther Party and its paramilitary arm, the Black Liberation Army (BLA), assisted in clothing, educational and food drives within many dilapidated communities, and gave speeches at rallies in efforts to help empower the everyday people. The BLA organization was known to mimic the current tactics of other liberation movements around the world by robbing banks, hijacking planes, and bombing courthouses in order to make public the grievances of American blacks. They also trained and organized black people to stand up to police brutality by shooting back when attacked. Importantly, they appealed to International Laws protecting people engaged in revolutionary struggle against tyrannical government. They regarded themselves as warriors, as political prisoners, not as criminals. While their approach was very radical, the aggressive tactics of the BLA paved the road towards acceptance of Martin Luther King’s message of human equality, in large part out of white fear that if segregation did not end, blacks would retaliate with organized violence.
Assata Shakur was convicted of killing a New Jersey State Trooper during a shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973, though she has always maintained her innocence. Evidence shows she was shot by the police while her hands were in the air. In the aftermath, Zayd Shakur and a police officer lay dead.
Davey D writes in Hip Hop Corner, “If we’re gonna talk about Assata and say she’s a ‘cop killer,’ let’s be completely honest and put such accusations into perspective. Everyone wants to forget that in the 60s and 70s the FBI and police declared War on the black community and organizations that formed in the community to end oppression. The police and FBI went all out to destroy Black leaders and these organizations with undaunted impunity. The reason why you had BPP (Black Panther Party), SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) and BLA (Black Liberation Army) was because they responded to police terrorism. They were tired of seeing the police come into our communities and take them over like an ‘occupying army,’ if I may quote Black Panther co-founder Bobby Seale.â€
The FBI had long viewed Shakur as a black leader that needed to be neutralized, but the police hatred of her was intense. The white police officer who arrested Shakur raped her with his gun and dragged her broken and bleeding body on the street. That the New Jersey government just contributed another $1 million to the existing $1 million Federal reward for her capture on the 40th anniversary of her arrest shows that there remains a very personal sense of vendetta against her.
“Although I drifted in and out of consciousness I remember clearly that both while I was lying on the ground, and while I was in the ambulance, I kept hearing the State troopers ask ‘is she dead yet?’†remembers Shakur.
“Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial. We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison.â€
Shakur was treated in an extraordinary way, put in a high security men’s prison where she had to take care of her bodily functions in front of male guards, and was frequently tortured and beaten. She became pregnant by another Black Panther who shared a cell with her during her trial. She was then put in solitary confinement in a women’s prison. She gave birth in her prison cell and her baby daughter was immediately taken away from her. She was violently brutalized while still in postnatal weakness.
On November 2nd 1979, BLA comrades broke Shakur out of New Jersey’s Clinton Correctional Facility for Women by seizing the visiting area, brandishing previously concealed 45 caliber pistols, taking two officers hostage, and hijacking a prison van to escape the premises, then switching vehicles at an undisclosed area & fleeing further. Assata’s brother, Mutulu Shakur and Sekou Odinga along with two white women, Silvia Baraldini and Marilyn Buck got life sentences for aiding Shakur’s escape. Shakur went underground, and was given political asylum by Fidel Castro in 1983.
In 1997, the New Jersey State Police wrote a letter to Pope John Paul II upon his visit to Cuba, unprecedented in history, asking him to intervene in order to get Shakur extradited back to the US. This was combined with a vicious media smear campaign against her, coordinated with then Governor Christine Whitney. “It is nothing but an attempt to bring about the re-incarnation of the Fugitive Slave Act. All I represent is just another slave that they want to bring back to the plantation. Well, I might be a slave, but I will go to my grave a rebellious slave,†responded Shakur.
“They wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie,†Castro told Cuban TV.
Shakur addressed her own letter to the Pope:
“I first learned of the struggle and the sacrifice of Jesus in the segregated churches of the South… It was in the dungeons of prison that I felt the presence of God up close, and it has been my belief in God, and in the goodness of human beings that has helped me to survive… I am not writing to ask you to intercede on my behalf. I ask nothing for myself. I only ask you to examine the social reality of the United States and to speak out against the human rights violations that are taking place.â€
A policeman stands guard at an election commission office in Quetta May 8, 2013. Pakistan’s general elections will be held on May 11. REUTERS/Naseer Ahmed
MUCH yakked about general elections are just days away. The nation has been experiencing the desired democracy for the last five years and despite abundance of hiccups, the last government somehow finally completed the term making itself the first in the history of Pakistan under a man who once was considered the most dislike individual who in recent course of time turned out to be the utmost genius of all time and enjoying an ultimate honor of being the president.
There have been several rumors if the elections were actually going to be held and it may be postponed or even cancelled; this caretaker government will be stretched to multiple years; if Najam Sethi has taken a post in this caretaker setup then this government is for sure, extending the term beyond three months, otherwise, why would he even bother to accept a revolving door type opportunity? Recently, some quarters also guessed if military is going to take over the control or will pass the rein to president Parvez Musharraf and he will be made an undisputed leader of the country for another at least five years because on the grounds that he is tested and he knows how to control the government but all these speculations cast-out to be completely spurious and seems like May 11 is going to be the show day.
Well, thanks to General Kiani that military played a positive role, overall, and now that the nation is ready for the upcoming polls, expecting a better tomorrow versus yesterday and today under ‘whoever’ comes to power. So to say, indeed, people of Pakistan are a great nation; they tend to forget quickly, believes in hope and move on to next and gives opportunity to another person with a hope until he proves to be an opportunist but the quest of finding a better team leader of this nation sincerely continues.
For these elections, referencing the political leaders, there are two names that emerged as a power for having large support on the ground, and they are, Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri. They both have proved that they are working for people of Pakistan and want a better system in practice. Though Tahirul Qadri made every sense in his statements but still his commands doesn’t supersedes Imran Khan political strength. Imran’s political planning is seemingly working great and he has support across the board nationally and internationally or maybe it will not be an exaggeration that if anyone who is popular among the overseas Pakistanis, then it is indeed only him but this doesn’t mean, if he is going to have a landslide victory in the mainland. Though, because of immense support from the overseas Pakistanis, he was able to obtain enough funds to launch a strong election campaign but regardless, he is going to have a tough contest against deeply rooted parties like PML-N and of course, PPP. All others are not his really competition rather a possible alliance.
Nonetheless he is strongly connected to the masses, and has done huge jalsas and stuff, but it is also observed that Imran Khan has not been speaking about those tough issues like land reforms as he used to pinpoint and was gravely against the feudal system. Earlier, he was found talking about levying taxes on agriculture and those larger than life, rich industrialists and so called lords who barely pay any taxes causing severe losses to the national exchequer; also avoiding to discussing on Kashmir issue and he has even stopped criticizing military. Perhaps, adapting to this change in his approach is a good sign that has somewhat escalated his chance to get in the race. Nonetheless, he also understands that he cannot win a mandate but if he can pull to a degree that draws an attention, he may be able to form a coalition government under him and if not, than for sure, he can take opposition leadership position and prepare himself during the term for future.
However, amalgamated government has its own issues as during the course of time, it can fire back as well in the sense if the alliance gets into any disagreement over any issue and if gets to a point where they part ways, then this can cause fall of the government too but the success is how well the formation is being done and how generously the ministries have been given to the alliance!
So this upcoming elections has brought interesting developments as well such as rise of Imran Khan, introduction of Tahirul Qadri, end of Parvez Musharraf’s political career, escalated corruption stories of PPP government’s, Nawaz Sharif’ pardons Parvez Musharraf for taking down his government. While, speaking of President Musharraf, God knows was really are his advisers that suggested him to come back and kept on making him believe that he is popular among the masses, form a political party and become the head of the government again. How in the real world it was possible? President Musharraf is a very realistic person but still he came round to his advisers who perhaps were more of an opportunist than being his sincere. Now that his political career is over, his party is not taking part in the elections rather they are not prepared so he wisely realized and pulled out of elections whereas, election commission has disqualified him to participate in the elections for life. Did he really believe that his arrival will bring a Khumani style revolution and everything will start to circulate around him as perhaps he thought if the nation was completely fed-up of the failed system and he was the solution but in between he over estimated his power and prevailing hovering judicial complications over him and all of that for elections and power that he enjoyed more than anyone else!
Certainly, there is something in that big house in Islamabad that compels the occupants to stay there forever, and if driven out, struggle until the possession is seized again, so Nawaz Sharif himself is in the race again for the third term, President Parvez Musharraf returned home and now under arrest pursuant to his wish of going back to that big house. Alas, why won’t our leaders adopt a democratic culture and pave the way for others with open arms, but since this is not the practice there, so they try again and again and believe, hey, you never know!
– To participate in this column or for comments and suggestions, you may reach the scribe via email at theamericannotebook@gmail.com & follow him on Twitter @AsifJamalNY
(May 7, 2013) Yesterday ISNA President Imam Mohamed Magid met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and other religious leaders for over two hours to discuss the critical issue of gun violence prevention. Religious leaders included Rev. Franklin Graham, Rabbi David Saperstein, and several others.
Vice President Biden shared progress and setbacks on advancing gun violence prevention legislation and assured the group that he would continue working to advance this issue. There is been a great deal of misinformation about this legislation; for example, some believe that the legislation would create a national registry of gun owners, when in fact such a registry is explicitly banned by the bill. Imam Magid urged the Vice President to create a resource that separates the facts from the fiction on gun violence prevention legislation. “It is critical that community members understand the bill’s clear protections of the right to bear arms and how this will help us prevent gun violence,†said Imam Magid. “I know many other religious leaders feel the same way that I do — that we must stand up to protect our communities. The children who lost their lives in Newtown could have easily been our children.†The Vice President reiterated his commitment to work on behalf of all those who have lost their lives to gun violence in our nation.
Over the past couple of years, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) has continually spoken out after each major tragic shooting. It is time to stop the epidemic of gun violence once and for all. ISNA supports and reaffirms the constitutional right of all citizens to bear arms, and calls for sensible federal policies to ensure that guns stay out of the hands of those who pose a risk to society. As such, ISNA is an active member of both Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.
ISNA was among those devastated by the U.S. Senate’s failure to move forward critical legislation to prevent gun violence. We applauded Senator Manchin and Senator Toomey’s heroic efforts to draft a bipartisan bill that would significantly expand background checks to those who purchase firearms through private sales at “commercial venues†like gun shows and websites. Right now such privates sales are completely unregulated in many states, and this is a major threat to our public safety.
Now, two members of Congress in the U.S. House of Representatives are sponsoring H.R. 1565, the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection Act of 2013. This legislation mirrors the Senate’s Manchin-Toomey amendment and ISNA urges everyone to call on their members of Congress to pass this bill.
A picture taken on July 5, 2005 shows contractors of the US private security firm Blackwater securing the site of a roadside bomb attack near the Iranian embassy in central Baghdad. (AFP Photo / Ahmad Al-Rubaye)
In an interview published Thursday by the Daily Beast, Prince revealed how deeply connected Blackwater was to the Central Intelligence Agency, especially in the early 2000s. Last month, federal prosecutors dropped felony charges against Blackwater personnel after it was revealed that the employees had been acting under the orders of the US government. After a three-year-long prosecution, most of the company’s executives walked free and two men received nothing more than probation, house arrest and $5,000 fines.
But the tens of thousands of pages of court documents from the case shed light on an argument the company made throughout those three years – that Blackwater itself was an extension of the CIA.
“Blackwater’s work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked,†Prince told the Daily Beast.“In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the agency either could not or would not do in-house.â€
Initially, lawmakers believed the CIA was “looking for skills and capabilities, and they had to go to outside contractors like Blackwater to make sure they could accomplish their mission,†said retired Congressman Pete Hoekstra. But the relationship was in fact much closer than believed.
When King Abdullah of Jordan visited the US in 2005, he took a trip to the Blackwater headquarters in Moyock, North Carolina, where company executives awarded him two gifts – a modified Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and a Remington shotgun. The weapons were labeled with the Blackwater logo, but Prince says that the CIA asked the company to give Abdullah the guns “when people at the agency had forgotten to get gifts for him.â€
In a 2008 raid of the Blackwater headquarters, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discovered that the weapons given to Abdullah had been registered as personal property by two employees at the agency – and there was no paperwork indicating that they were now in the possession of Jordanian royalty.
Additionally, the ATF found that many of Blackwater’s weapons had been purchased illegally. Some of these weapons, which included Romanian AK-47s and 17 Bushmaster AR-13s, had illegally had their barrels shortened and been exported to other countries in violation of federal gun laws.
Blackwater argued that in all of these instances, it had been working on behalf of the CIA. Court documents include depositions from CIA executives testifying that Blackwater provided weapons and training for them. One court document even lists “Erik P†as a CIA officer himself.
“The CIA routinely used Blackwater in missions throughout the world,†one document reads. “These efforts were made under written and unwritten contracts and through informal requests. On many occasions the CIA paid Blackwater nothing for its assistance. Blackwater also employed CIA officers and agents, and provided cover to CIA agents and officers operating in covert and clandestine assignments. In many respects, Blackwater, or at least portions of Blackwater, was an extension of the CIA.â€
Prince told the Daily Beast that he agreed to provide the CIA with free services out of “patriotic dutyâ€. And even though he sold Blackwater, now known as Academi, for $200 million, he continues to hold a grudge against prosecutors for going after the company.
“Blackwater carried out countless life-threatening missions for the CIA,†he said. “And in return, the government chose to prosecute my people for doing exactly what was asked of them.â€
