The letter from the FBI director to Scotland’s Justice Secretary 7

Here is the full text (from the Telegraph):

Dear Mr. Secretary:

Over the years I have been a prosecutor, and recently as the Director of the FBI, I have made it a practice not to comment on the actions of other prosecutors, since only the prosecutor handling the case has all the facts and the law before him in reaching the appropriate decision.

Your decision to release Megrahi causes me to abandon that practice in this case. I do so because I am familiar with the facts, and the law, having been the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the investigation and indictment of Megrahi in 1991. And I do so because I am outraged at your decision, blithely defended on the grounds of “compassion.”

Your action in releasing Megrahi is as inexplicable as it is detrimental to the cause of justice. Indeed your action makes a mockery of the rule of law. Your action gives comfort to terrorists around the world who now believe that regardless of the quality of the investigation, the conviction by jury after the defendant is given all due process, and sentence appropriate to the crime, the terrorist will be freed by one man’s exercise of “compassion.” Your action rewards a terrorist even though he never admitted to his role in this act of mass murder and even though neither he nor the government of Libya ever disclosed the names and roles of others who were responsible.

Your action makes a mockery of the emotions, passions and pathos of all those affected by the Lockerbie tragedy: the medical personnel who first faced the horror of 270 bodies strewn in the fields around Lockerbie, and in the town of Lockerbie itself; the hundreds of volunteers who walked the fields of Lockerbie to retrieve any piece of debris related to the breakup of the plane; the hundreds of FBI agents and Scottish police who undertook an unprecedented global investigation to identify those responsible; the prosecutors who worked for years–in some cases a full career–to see justice done.

But most importantly, your action makes a mockery of the grief of the families who lost their own on December 21, 1988. You could not have spent much time with the families, certainly not as much time as others involved in the investigation and prosecution. You could not have visited the small wooden warehouse where the personal items of those who perished were gathered for identification–the single sneaker belonging to a teenager; the Syracuse sweatshirt never again to be worn by a college student returning home for the holidays; the toys in a suitcase of a businessman looking forward to spending Christmas with his wife and children.

You apparently made this decision without regard to the views of your partners in the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for the Lockerbie tragedy. Although the FBI and Scottish police, and prosecutors in both countries, worked exceptionally closely to hold those responsible accountable, you never once sought our opinion, preferring to keep your own counsel and hiding behind opaque references to “the need for compassion.”

You have given the family members of those who died continued grief and frustration. You have given those who sought to assure that the persons responsible would be held accountable the back of your hand. You have given Megrahi a “jubilant welcome” in Tripoli, according to the reporting. Where, I ask, is the justice?

Sincerely yours,

Robert S. Mueller, III

Director

For whose eyes only? 91

Noah Pollak writes on the Commentary ‘contentions’ site:

The world’s nuclear weapons watchdog is hiding data on Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear arms … The officials and diplomats said that the International Atomic Energy Agency under Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.

ElBaradei … has said that the agency does not have any evidence that suggests Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

But … new evidence was submitted to the IAEA in a classified annex written by its inspectors in the Islamic Republic. The report was said to have been signed by the head of the IAEA team in Iran. The classified report, according to the sources, was not incorporated into the agency’s published reports. The details, they said, were censored by senior officials of the IAEA in the organization’s Vienna headquarters.

Posted under Defense, Iran, Islam, middle east, News by Jillian Becker on Saturday, August 22, 2009

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What is that smell? 103

Michelle Malkin writes:

Two weeks ago, the White House embraced $150 million in drug industry ads supporting Obamacare. This week, Bloomberg News reported that White House senior adviser and chief campaign strategist David Axelrod’s former public relations firm, AKPD Message and Media, has raked in some $24 million in ad contracts supporting Obamacare — along with another PR firm, GMMB, run by other Obama strategists.

The ads are funded by Big Pharma, the AARP, AMA and the powerhouse Service Employees International Union (whose Purple Shirts dumped $80 million in independent expenditures to get Obama and the Democratic majority elected). In trademark Axelrod style, the special interest coalition adopted faux grassroots names — first under the banner of “Healthy Economy Now” and more recently as “Americans for Stable Quality Care.” …

Axelrod was president and sole shareholder of AKPD from 1985 until last December, when he resigned to take his White House position. His son, Michael, works there. So does former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.

Axelrod is prominently featured on AKPD’s website, from a founder’s quote on the front page (“CHANGE IS SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO FIGHT FOR”) to the glamorous election night photos of Plouffe and Axelrod with the Obamas. AKPD still consults with Axelrod on “strategy and research” for the Democratic National Committee. The firm owes Axelrod $2 million … That Axelrod and his old firm benefit mutually from their respective roles selling Obamacare should be gobsmackingly obvious. Axelrod pushes the White House plan on TV news shows. AKPD derives mega-income from ad contracts selling the White House-endorsed plan. The windfall allows AKPD to settle its debts with Axelrod, whose name, face and high-powered ties are critical to future wheel-greasing for AKPD — and future salary-earning for Axelrod’s son and close associates.

White House flack Gibbs called any suggestion that Axelrod benefits from the relationship “ridiculous.” Retorted Gibbs: “David has left his firm to join public service.” So when Republicans trade power and access, Team Obama calls that being “in cahoots” with business. But when noble servants like Axelrod do it, it’s called “public service.”

What else is Axelrod keeping from full public view? AKPD is just one of his influence-peddling operations. Housed in the same office as AKPD is Axelrod’s secretive former PR shop, ASK Public Strategies. That firm also owes Axelrod money from a buy-out deal — five annual installments of $200,000 each. Axelrod has remained notoriously tight-lipped about ASK’s corporate business. One client that came to light: utility company Commonwealth Edison in Chicago. Axelrod ran a fear-mongering campaign in Illinois for ComEd in support of a huge utility rate hike — and failed to disclose that his bogus grassroots ads (under the guise of public interest group “Consumers Organized for Reliable Electricity”) were actually funded by the utility…

Mocking the victims of Lockerbie 171

It is incomprehensible why some people’s hearts bleed for terrorists when they are punished for committing their atrocities. The fuss made over those Taliban monsters, all too cushily accomodated at Guantanamo!  Now Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, convicted of blowing up the Pan-Am plane over Lockerbie in Scotland on December 21, 1988 , killing 270 people (259 in the plane, 11 on the ground), has been released from prison, after serving a mere 8 years of a ‘minimum 27 year’ sentence, ‘on compassionate grounds’ because the wretch is dying of cancer. What moral right has this Scottish Justice Minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose decision it was, to forgive him any of his punishment time? It may make MacKaskill himself feel good, but 270 people dying a terrible death, and the lasting grief of those who survived them, is an exorbitant price to pay for him to have a feeling of personal virtue. To make the disaster matter so little is to mock the victims, the living and the dead.

And there is even more that is sickening about this story.

If al-Megrahi was guilty of planting the bomb on the plane [some doubts over his personal guilt have been argued not entirely unreasonably, but he was found guilty in a court of law and I thought at the time of the trial that the evidence was convincing  – JB], it was certainly not his own plan. Nothing of that sort could possibly be plotted in Libya without the say-so of Qaddafi. We’re talking about a dictator. There are no free-lance terrorists in a country like Libya. When there’s a Libyan terrorist strike it’s because Qaddafi orders a Libyan terrorist strike. Not just allows it. Orders it. And Qaddafi himself will suffer no lasting consequences.

What ‘negotiations’ – read ‘conspiracy’ –  went on behind the scenes between Qaddafi and British diplomats?

What message does the release send to other plotters of terrorist atrocities?

To look into these events is to look into a moral sewer.  Come to think of it, ‘moral sewers’ is an apt description of  the British Foreign Office and the  left-wing parties that govern Scotland and the United Kingdom.

More on the battle in Gaza 46

Here is an Israeli report of the battle between Hamas and an al-Qaeda linked group in Gaza (see post below):

A senior Hamas commander is reported among the nineteen dead and 120 injured in the gun battles between Hamas forces and hundreds of members of the al Qaeda offshoot Jund Ansar Allah in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah Friday Aug. 14. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hamas special units fired mortars and heavy machine guns into the Ibn Thaymas mosque where the Jund leader, Abdullah al Latif Mussa earlier proclaimed the enclave an al Qaeda emirate. He urged all its inhabitants to defy Hamas rule and take an oath of allegiance to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. After storming the mosque, Hamas forces blew up the Jund leader’s four-storey home with all its occupants. [As our reader aeschines says in a comment on the post below, if the Israelis tried something like that there’d be ‘global fireworks’ – JB.] His death was reported but not confirmed.

Our counter-terror sources report that in recent months terrorist groups identified with al Qaeda are spreading out through the southern Gaza Strip, establishing their influence with plentiful cash, weapons and explosives. They accuse Hamas of failing to establish Islamic law in the enclave.

Which report is the more accurate we’ll have to wait and see. This account puts the episode in a believable context. Credible reports of al-Qaeda groups establishing themselves, well armed, in the southern Gaza Strip have been circulating for some months now. Of course Hamas feels threatened. Which terrorist group will dominate the other? Will war decide the issue? Meanwhile, let crocodile eat crocodile.

Posted under Arab States, Islam, Israel, Muslims, News, Terrorism by Jillian Becker on Saturday, August 15, 2009

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Hamas fights a bloody battle with the ‘non-existent’ in Gaza 170

From the Telegraph:

Six people were killed and 55 wounded in Gaza fighting on Friday when Hamas police stormed a mosque where radicals had declared an Islamist “emirate” in the Palestinian territory, emergency services said.

Shooting was continuing after dark, witnesses said, after clashes began in the afternoon following weekly prayers in the southern city of Rafah, which straddles the Egyptian border.

Among the dead was Mohammed al-Shamali, head of the Hamas military unit for southern Gaza, emergency services said, adding that bodies of some other victims could not be reached because of the intensity of the fighting…

An Egyptian security official said a three-year-old boy was critically wounded by a bullet from the fighting across the [Egyptian] border.

Witnesses said that following the prayers, a group of Palestinians announced the formation of the Islamist “emirate,” defying the authority of Hamas, which has ruled Gaza’s 1.5 million people for the past two years.

“We are today proclaiming the creation of an Islamist Emirate in the Gaza Strip,” Abdul Latif Musa, a representative of Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Partisans of God), said at the Bin Taymiyya mosque, the witnesses reported.

Musa was surrounded by armed fighters when he made his statement, according to the witnesses.

Rafah is the Gaza stronghold of the so-called Salafist movement, of which Jund Ansar Allah is said to a part and which is ideologically close to al-Qaeda.

An AFP photographer reported that Hamas police dynamited Musa’s house. It could not be established whether the Islamist was there at the time.

Hamas police blocked all entrances to Rafah, the photographer said.

The Hamas interior ministry warned that those violating the law would be pursued and arrested.

“Everyone outside the law and carrying arms in order to spread chaos will be pursued and arrested,” a ministry statement said.

At the same time, Hamas premier Ismail Haniya denied that the group exists.

“No such groups exist on the ground in Gaza,” he said at prayers in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya. He blamed the “Israeli media for spreading this information with a view to turning the world against Gaza.”

Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007 after a week of vicious fighting with forces of the secular Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Global warmists advance world government 205

From an article by Alan Oxley in Investor’s Business Daily:

Environmental NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) Greenpeace and Worldwide Fund for Nature have just released the “NGO Climate Change Treaty.” It’s their wish list for terms of a treaty to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol, and they’re pushing it this week at a U.N. meeting in Bonn, Germany.

Environmental activists have always believed governments should put the environment ahead of every other issue, including economic growth. The NGO Treaty is a blueprint for this.

In addition to soliciting the same sort of tough emissions targets they’ve demanded in the past, this latest document maps out a strict plan to restructure the global economy into their “Brave New World.” Yet it reads like an old Soviet 20-year plan.

The negotiators who inked the original Kyoto treaty envisaged that the agreement would create an open global market for emissions trading which would efficiently distribute the cost of reducing emissions among the world’s economies.

Under the NGO plan, a form of global government supplants national sovereignty, and a central committee of international officials allocates the proceeds from the sale of carbon emission, not the market. The activists lay out, in no uncertain terms, just who should bear the costs and how high those costs should be.

Worldwide Fund for Nature and Greenpeace also want industry in developed nations to pay $160 billion every year for the first five years. Their Treaty creates a “Committee” of backroom officials selected from parties to the Treaty which approves a plan by each member to reduce emissions.

If the plans are deemed unacceptable, countries would be forced to go before two other regulating bodies (the Facilitation Branch and then the Compliance Branch) to “correct” their strategies or be penalized for not doing so.

Posted under Climate, Economics, Environmentalism, Law, News by Jillian Becker on Friday, August 14, 2009

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Creepy crawly Clintons 190

For years now North Korea has been hoping for direct talks with the US. By granting ex-president Clinton the release of two illegally held American journalists that he had to come and beg for, Kim Jong Il now gets just what he wanted. The one-on-one negotiations will legitimize the North Korean regime. (They ought to delegitimize the Obama presidency.)

Hillary Clinton lies about what happened. Is anyone taken in? Is anyone surprised?

From the New York Post

One week after North Korea released two imprisoned American journalists, the Obama administration announced its willingness yesterday to hold direct talks with the rogue nation over its nuclear weapons. “The ball is in their court,” said America’s UN ambassador, Susan Rice, on CNN’s “State of the Union” yesterday.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, along with the rest of the administration, insisted that former President Bill Clinton’s trip to North Korea to secure the release of the two journalists was not a negotiation with the country, led by dictator Kim Jong Il, but she said she hoped it would improve relations with them. “What we’re hoping is that maybe, without it being part of the mission in any way, the fact that this was done will perhaps lead the North Koreans to recognize that they can have a positive relationship with us,” Secretary Clinton said on CNN’s “GPS.”

Posted under Commentary, communism, Defense, News, Totalitarianism, United States by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, August 12, 2009

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And hear the silence of the feminists 101

From Front Page Magazine:

A gala event has occurred in Gaza.

Hamas sponsored a mass wedding for four hundred and fifty couples. Most of the grooms were in their mid to late twenties; most of the brides were under ten.

Muslim dignitaries including Mahmud Zahar, a leader of Hamas, were on hand to congratulate the couples who took part in the carefully staged celebration.

We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness,” Zahar told the grooms, all of whom were dressed in identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp.

Each groom received a gift of 500 dollars from Hamas.

The pre-pubescent girls, dressed in white gowns and adorned with garish make-up, received bridal bouquets.

We are presenting this wedding as a gift to our people who stood firm in the face of the siege and the war,” local Hamas strongman Ibrahim Salaf said in a speech.

The wedding photos tell the rest of the sordid tale.

PLEASE SEE THE COMMENT BY C.GEE ON THIS POST

Posted under Arab States, Feminism, Islam, Law, Muslims, News, Religion general by Jillian Becker on Tuesday, August 11, 2009

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The Chicago way 13

Is this the lowest any president of the United States has ever sunk?  Obama is revealing himself to be even more base than Jimmy Carter! 

He’s sending in union heavies to use violence against citizens peacefully protesting against his health care swindle and other measures that will turn America into a vast socialist misery. The protestors are dubbed a ‘mob’ by the vicious lefties in power. By sending in their thugs they hope to make it seem that the protestors themselves are violent. 

From Power Line:

The Obama administration unveiled its strategy for dealing with the eruption of populist protest against the health care cramdown to Democratic Senators yesterday: It will punch back twice as hard. What does that mean? During the campaign, Obama invoked Jim Malone’s lecture to Elliot Ness in The Untouchables: “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia. Obama omitted Malone’s gloss on the lesson: “That’s the Chicago way.”…

The mainstream media will dutifully report the emergence of Obama’s thugs as representing a lapse in civility on the part of those who are revolting against Obamacare. The truth is that it represents the imposition of “the Chicago way” on the resistance.

Follow the link to the article to view a shocking video of the Democrats’ organized mob on the attack.

And see the whole article from which this is taken in Investor’s Business Daily:

The president is familiar with the Alinsky way, the Chicago way, of organizing a group to act. Obama spent years prodding underprivileged Chicagoans to channel their political anger by orchestrating activist mob scenes designed to coerce businesses and public officials. A 2007 profile in the left-leaning New Republic was titled “The Agitator.” He’s still at it.

The community organizer is trying to organize America in his image, but the American people are more than scared bankers and groveling politicians. They are the descendants of the original tea partiers who threw the teas in Boston Harbor. That Tea Party protested taxation without representation. Their descendants are protesting the taxation they are getting with it.

Obama cut his political teeth as a community organizer with Acorn, the group that buses people all wearing the same red shirts and all carrying the same union-printed signs to the homes of AIG executives and their families and anyone else they want to intimidate. Brown shirts would be more appropriate.

The modern-day tea partiers and those opposing government-run health care carry kids on their shoulders and wave signs they’ve hand-painted on their living room floors to protest the mortgaging of their future and the bankrupting of their country. According to the Democrats, these people are dangerous and need to be watched… 

Posted under Commentary, communism, News, Socialism, Totalitarianism, United States by Jillian Becker on Friday, August 7, 2009

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