Florida town to use blanket of surveillance cameras  

One of the nation's wealthiest towns, Manalapan, Florida, will soon have cameras and computers running background checks on every car and driver that passes through.

Police Chief Clay Walker said cameras will take infrared photos recording a car's tag number, then software will automatically run the numbers through law enforcement databases. A 911 dispatcher is alerted if the car is stolen or is the subject of a "be on the lookout" warning.

Next to the tag number, police will have a picture of the driver, taken with another set of cameras — upgraded versions of the standard surveillance cameras already in place.

If there is a robbery, police will be able to comb records to determine who drove through town on a given afternoon or evening.

"Courts have ruled that in a public area, you have no expectation of privacy," said Walker, one of 11 sworn officers who protects Manalapan's 321 residents. Still, Walker says Manalapan's data will be destroyed every three months.

Manalapan's town council authorized $60,000 in security upgrades last week after three burglaries this winter robbed residents of $400,000 in jewelry. The town averages two or three burglaries per year and residents demanded swift response, Town Manager Gregory Dunham said.

The 2000 Census listed Manalapan, about 15 miles south of West Palm Beach, among the nation's richest cities, with two out of every three homes worth more than $500,000.

http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&urlID=10059403&fb=Y&url=http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-04-27-ri

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:34 AM
matt@lefande.com

Ultraconservative Islam is "fighting its last fight"  

Despite the devastation wreaked by terrorist attacks on the United States and other targets around the world, the forces of political, ultraconservative Islam are actually "weaker" than ever. "They're fighting their last fight."

That unexpected assessment comes from Syrian-born, Yale-trained scholar Sadik Jalal Al-Azm, an emeritus professor of modern European philosophy at the University of Damascus and one of three winners this year of the Erasmus Prize.

Al-Azm, whose writings have examined modern philosophy, Islamic fundamentalism and trends in Arab thought, offered a reading of current events that challenged conventional wisdom. At the heart of his analysis: the assumption that Osama bin Laden's followers attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon not because those structures were bin Laden's first-choice targets but because they symbolized the power of the United States, which, in turn, was Saudi Arabia's main supporter in the world.

Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, whose ruling regime he considers corrupt. Therefore, Al-Azm explained, it's the Saudis whom bin Laden really has been after, but he has done so indirectly. Thus, he attacked the United States, Saudi Arabia's surrogate and supporter, in the hope of destabilizing the Saudi regime. "[He] attacked America because attacks on local regimes in the [Middle and] Near East wouldn't have been successful," Al-Azm said. He suggested, too, that bin Laden had hoped to scare the Americans, who already had a presence in Saudi Arabia, out of the country, thereby leaving the Saudi regime vulnerable to an overthrow by fundamentalists. But the United States did not pull out of Saudi Arabia immediately after September 2001. Under George W. Bush, events played out differently.

Had the Americans withdrawn, and had the Saudi government become weaker, "the [Islamic] fundamentalists, who are even more extreme than the Saudi ruling family, would have come to power and Islamicized Saudi society according to their plans," Al-Azm said. In fact, he recalled, fundamentalists had been hoping for just such a change in one of the region's regimes for a long time. That was also the goal, Al-Azm added, of the fundamentalists who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981, hoping to take control of Egypt's government.

In Iran, of course, fundamentalists did take over, but the problem with Islamist-controlled states such as Iran or the Sudan, Al-Azm said, is that now, years later, they offer the faithful in other countries "no positive [role] models" to emulate. "The model the Islamists offer is that of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and, when the Taliban fell, there wasn't the slightest voice of opposition from the Islamic world," he added. "Not a single Islamic [leader] spoke out publicly against [what happened in Afghanistan] or in support of the Taliban regime." Therefore, Al-Azm proposed, the rash of terrorist actions carried out by Islamic extremists in recent years has only demonstrated that, today, their brand of "Islam is on the retreat."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2004/04/29/worldviews.DTL
Second item

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:03 AM
matt@lefande.com

Arizona House votes to OK guns in bars, restaurants  

The House approved a bill Wednesday to make it legal to take guns in bars and restaurants if the bearers aren't drinking alcohol and if the establishments don't opt out.

Arizona now bans possession of firearms in bars and restaurants that sell alcohol.

Under the bill (SB1210), bars and other liquor-license holders still could exclude guns from their premises but only if they post notices at entrances.

The bill now goes to the Senate where similar legislation was heard by a committee but not voted on earlier in the legislative session.

The House's 35-18 vote was nearly along party lines, with most Republicans voting for it and Democrats against.

Wednesday's vote followed minimal debate though supporters and opponents thoroughly aired their views last week when the House considered the amendments.

Supporters said current law tramples on the constitutional rights of law-abiding people who want to carry guns for self-protection and who could become criminals inadvertently if they didn't realize a restaurant sells alcohol.

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/breaking/042804_guns_and_alcohol.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:28 AM
matt@lefande.com

Thursday, April 29, 2004

Al Qaeda's Poison Gas  

Jordanian authorities say that the death toll from a bomb and poison-gas attack they foiled this month could have reached 80,000. We guess the fact that most major media are barely covering this story means WMD isn't news anymore until there's a body count.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- the man cited by the Bush Administration as its strongest evidence of prewar links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and the current ringleader of anti-coalition terrorism in Iraq -- may be behind the plot, which would be al Qaeda's first ever attempt to use chemical weapons. The targets included the U.S. Embassy in Amman. Yet as of yesterday, most news organizations hadn't probed the story, if at all, beyond the initial wire-service copy.

Perhaps the problem here is that covering this story might mean acknowledging that Tony Blair and George W. Bush have been exactly right to warn of the confluence of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Jordan's King Abdullah called it a "major, major operation" that would have "decapitated" his government. "Anyone who doubts the terrorists' desire to obtain and use these weapons only needs to look at this example," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.

More details of the plot emerged Monday night with the dramatic broadcast on Jordanian television of confessions from the terror cell's leader and associates. The idea apparently was to crash trucks -- fitted with special battering rams and filled with some 20 tons of explosives -- through the gates of targets that included the U.S. Embassy, the Jordanian Prime Minister's office and the national intelligence headquarters. The explosions notwithstanding, the real damage was reportedly to come from dispersing a toxic cloud of chemicals, which included nerve and blister agents.

Anonymous U.S. officials have been quoted playing down the WMD wrinkle, suggesting the chemicals may have been meant to merely amplify a conventional explosion. But then much of our "intelligence" bureaucracy is still wedded to the discredited notion that secular tyrants and fundamentalist terrorists don't cooperate (see Hezbollah). They may also be defensive about their earlier, dismissive assessments of Zarqawi's significance.

Plotter Hussein Sharif Hussein was shown on Jordanian television saying the aim was "carrying out the first suicide attack to be launched by al Qaeda using chemicals." A Jordanian scientist described a toxic cloud that could have spread for a mile or more. So was it really a foiled WMD attack? Here's hoping someone is trying to get to the bottom of this.

The provenance of the operation is also of note. The bomb trucks and funds are said to have entered Jordan via Syria. Last fall General James R. Clapper Jr., director of satellite intelligence for the Pentagon, said there had been an unusual amount of traffic -- including possibly WMDs -- between Iraq and Syria in the lead-up to war.

The terror cell's ringleader, Jordanian Azmi Jayyousi, said he was acting on the orders of Zarqawi, whom he first met at an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan: "I took courses, poisons high level, then I pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi." Mr. Jayyousi said this attack had been plotted from Zarqawi's new base of operations in Iraq. A Jordanian court sentenced Zarqawi to death this month for plotting the 2002 murder of U.S. diplomat Laurence Foley in Amman.

Prime Minister Blair has said it's simply "a matter of time unless we act and take a stand before terrorism and weapons of mass destruction come together." According to Jordanian authorities, that sometime was intended to be last week. That strikes us as news.

http://online.wsj.com/public/page/0,,public_home_search,00.html#SB108319596484796798
pay site, entire article as above

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:52 AM
matt@lefande.com

Monday, April 26, 2004

Videotapes exposing Chechen rebels, mercenaries seized  

Russian military officers have found videotapes showing the details of attacks perpetrated by Chechen rebels and foreign mercenaries. Most of the rebels on the tapes come from Arab countries, officials at the Federal Security Service told Interfax on Friday. Rebels are known to make such video accounts for their bosses who guide and finance their operations in Chechnya and also provide a propaganda cover, the officials are quoted as saying.

http://english.pravda.ru/chechnya/2001/02/09/2420.html

Sample video showing Improvised Explosive Device before and during attack.

http://www.lefande.com/weblog/IED.wmv

posted by Matthew LeFande 3:09 PM
matt@lefande.com

Saddam's WMD have been found  

New evidence out of Iraq suggests the U.S. effort to track down Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction is having better success than is being reported.

Key assertions by the intelligence community widely judged in the media and by critics of President George W. Bush as having been false are turning out to have been true after all.

But this stunning news has received little attention from the major media, and the president's critics continue to insist that "no weapons" have been found.

In virtually every case -- chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles -- the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.

The Iraq Survey Group, ISG, whose intelligence analysts are managed by Charles Duelfer, a former State Department official and deputy chief of the U.N.-led arms-inspection teams, has found "hundreds of cases of activities that were prohibited" under U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Both Duelfer and his predecessor, David Kay, reported to Congress that the evidence they had found on the ground in Iraq showed Saddam's regime was in "material violation" of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441, the last of 17 resolutions that promised "serious consequences" if Iraq did not make a complete disclosure of its weapons programs and dismantle them in a verifiable manner.

The United States cited Iraq's refusal to comply with these demands as one justification for going to war.

Both Duelfer and Kay found Iraq had "a clandestine network of laboratories and safe houses with equipment that was suitable to continuing its prohibited chemical- and biological-weapons [BW] programs," the official said. "They found a prison laboratory where we suspect they tested biological weapons on human subjects."

They found equipment for "uranium-enrichment centrifuges" whose only plausible use was as part of a clandestine nuclear-weapons program. In all these cases, "Iraqi scientists had been told before the war not to declare their activities to the U.N. inspectors," the official said.

But while the president's critics and the media might plausibly hide behind ambiguity and a lack of sensational-looking finds for not reporting some discoveries, in the case of Saddam's ballistic-missile programs they have no excuse for their silence.

When former weapons inspector Kay reported to Congress in January that the United States had found "no stockpiles" of forbidden weapons in Iraq, his conclusions made front-page news. But when he detailed what the ISG had found in testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last October, few took notice.

Among Kay's revelations, which have been amplified in subsequent inspections in recent weeks:

- A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?

- "Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"

- New research on BW-applicable agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

- A line of unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, or drones, "not fully declared at an undeclared production facility and an admission that they had tested one of their declared UAVs out to a range of 500 kilometers [311 miles], 350 kilometers [217 miles] beyond the permissible limit."

- "Continuing covert capability to manufacture fuel propellant useful only for prohibited Scud-variant missiles, a capability that was maintained at least until the end of 2001 and that cooperating Iraqi scientists have said they were told to conceal from the U.N."

- "Plans and advanced design work for new long-range missiles with ranges up to at least 1,000 kilometers [621 miles] -- well beyond the 150-kilometer-range limit [93 miles] imposed by the U.N. Missiles of a 1,000-kilometer range would have allowed Iraq to threaten targets throughout the Middle East, including Ankara [Turkey], Cairo [Egypt] and Abu Dhabi [United Arab Emirates]."

In addition, through interviews with Iraqi scientists, seized documents and other evidence, the ISG learned the Iraqi government had made "clandestine attempts between late 1999 and 2002 to obtain from North Korea technology related to 1,300-kilometer-range [807 miles] ballistic missiles -- probably the No Dong -- 300-kilometer-range [186 miles] antiship cruise missiles and other prohibited military equipment," Kay reported.

In testimony before Congress on March 30, Duelfer, revealed the ISG had found evidence of a "crash program" to construct new plants capable of making chemical- and biological-warfare agents.

The ISG also found a previously undeclared program to build a "high-speed rail gun," a device apparently designed for testing nuclear-weapons materials. That came in addition to 500 tons of natural uranium stockpiled at Iraq's main declared nuclear site south of Baghdad, which International Atomic Energy Agency spokesman Mark Gwozdecky acknowledged had been intended for "a clandestine nuclear-weapons program."

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38213

posted by Matthew LeFande 3:00 PM
matt@lefande.com

Arlington to ignore law aimed at illegals  

A new Virginia law targeting illegal aliens has been embraced as a powerful weapon to combat gangs and terrorism by local police departments, but Arlington County officials plan to ignore it.

The law, which takes effect July 1, permits local police to arrest any illegal immigrant who previously had been convicted of a felony and deported. Under current state law, police investigating a crime are not authorized to forcibly hold an illegal immigrant pending the arrival of a Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

A spokesman for Arlington County Police Chief M. Douglas Scott told The Washington Times that, rather than use the new arrest powers, the force likely will follow existing department policy that forbids immigration-related investigations.

The Arlington policy also discourages officers from checking a suspect's immigration status, despite evidence that illegal aliens are involved in the region's crime gangs and terrorist cells.

In response, Arlington County Board Chairman Barbara Favola said enforcing immigration law is the responsibility of the federal government.

"It isn't my job," she said.

She needs to find a new job.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/metro/20040426-011701-7078r.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:34 AM
matt@lefande.com

Friday, April 23, 2004

Overworked Police Dogs Losing Sense of Smell  

Madrid's police dogs and their trainers have been so overworked since the March 11 Madrid train bombings that the dogs are losing their ability to detect bombs, a police union official said.

Madrid has received an average of 15 bomb threats a day since the train bombings that killed 191 people, said Jose Canales, an officer with the Federal Police Union. Before there had been one or two threats a day.

"We have dogs. What we need are trainers," Canales told Reuters Thursday, confirming a report in El Mundo newspaper.

Without the trainers, the dogs can't perform, Canales said. The dogs need one day of training for every two days on duty, he said, or five hours of training for every one hour of work.

There are around 65 police dogs in Madrid, some for bomb detection, others to hunt drugs and others for attack and defense.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=6&u=/nm/20040423/od_nm/policedogs_dc

posted by Matthew LeFande 2:33 PM
matt@lefande.com

Police Brawl in Identity Dispute  

A fight broke out between four Belgian police officers on Wednesday after local cops disputed the identity papers of a pair of plain-clothes colleagues, a police spokesman said.

Two Flemish-speaking police officers from Brussels were scouting out a prison near the francophone town of Charleroi when local police stopped their unmarked car for a suspected driving offence, federal spokesman Olivier Vincent said on Thursday.

"They were in civilian outfits. They showed their police cards but the local police didn't believe them."

A scuffle started after local officers refused to accept the identity cards of their federal colleagues, and one of the Flemish officers needed hospital treatment after being put in an arm-lock, Vincent said.

Belgium is split roughly equally between French and Flemish speakers, but few Belgians speak both languages fluently.

Vincent denied media reports that the officers' inability to easily understand each other had caused the fight.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=9&u=/nm/20040423/od_nm/police_dc

posted by Matthew LeFande 2:27 PM
matt@lefande.com

Slang in a flash  

In grade school, teachers use flashcards to help students learn to read. One side has the printed word. The other has a colorful illustration so young minds can associate the picture with the idiom.

Cat.

Dog.

Boy.

Even as adults, some of us still could use a little help with the language. Not with everyday English but with its distant (and rarely talked about) cousin -- slang.

Janky.

Dime out.

Hater.

If those three words tripped you up, then you might be one "groovy" away from being unhip -- tired, even. And you may need the help of slang flashcards, a novelty item with surprising practical applications from a Venice, Calif.-based company called Knock Knock.

"I love vintage paper products," says Jen Bilik, self-described head honcho and owner. "I love old notepads, schoolbooks and old flashcards."

So, she merged the classic format with the latest street-spoken and hip-hop slang to create the cards, which sell for $12.95 on the Web site www.knockknock.biz. They're meant to be both humorous (for pop-culture junkies) and educational (to all those who are unhip, i.e. parents).

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2524441

posted by Matthew LeFande 11:07 AM
matt@lefande.com

America's Compassion in Iraq is Self-Destructive  

The bloody siege in Fallujah and the standoff against a religious warlord, Moktadr al-Sadr, and his militia indicate that the war in Iraq is worsening. Things are going badly not because—as some, like Sen. John Kerry, claim—the United States is arrogant and lacking in humility, but because it is self-effacing and compassionate.

The Bush Administration's war in Iraq embraces compassion instead of the rational goal of self-defense. Such an immoral approach to war wantonly sacrifices the lives of soldiers and emboldens our enemies throughout the Middle East to mount further attacks against us.

Morally, to fight a war in self-defense requires that one soundly defeat the enemy while safeguarding one's forces and citizens. But America's attention has been diverted to rebuilding Iraqi hospitals, schools, roads and sewers, and on currying favor with the locals (some U.S. soldiers were ordered to grow moustaches in token of their respect for Iraqi culture.) Since the war began, Islamic militants and Saddam loyalists have carried out random abductions, devastating ambushes, and catastrophic bombings throughout the country. That attacks on U.S. forces (including those engaged in reconstruction efforts) have gone unpunished has emboldened the enemy.

Stark evidence of the enemy's growing audacity came in March with the grisly murder and mutilation of four American contractors. America's response to the attack confirmed the militants' expectation that they can get away with murder. Following the attack, U.S. forces entered the city of Fallujah vowing to capture the murderers and punish the town that supports them. But such resolve was supplanted by compassion.

In the midst of the fighting the United States called a unilateral ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid in and to enable the other side to collect and bury its dead. The so-called truce benefited only the enemy. The Iraqis, as one soldier told the Associated Press, were "absolutely taking advantage" of the situation, regrouping and mounting sporadic attacks: as another soldier aptly noted, "It is hard to have a ceasefire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us." As the siege wore on, the goal of capturing the murderers quietly faded—and the enemy's confidence swelled.

Not just in Fallujah, but throughout this war the military (under orders from Washington) has been purposely treading lightly. Soldiers have strict orders to avoid the risk of killing civilians—many of whom aid or are themselves militants—even at the cost of imperiling their own lives. Mosques, which have served as hideouts for terrorists, are kept off the list of allowed targets. Military operations have been timed to avoid alienating Muslim pilgrims on holy days. By confessing doubt about its moral right to defend itself, America has encouraged further aggression.

http://www.aynrand.org/medialink/compassioniniraq.shtml

posted by Matthew LeFande 10:34 AM
matt@lefande.com

Armed Citizen of the Week  

A Jackson homeowner who fatally shot a man who broke into his home last year should not be prosecuted, a Hinds County grand jury has determined.

"The grand jury didn't indict," said Hinds County Chief Assistant District Attorney Robert Taylor.

Tommy Christian, 53, of 5933 Floral Drive, shot and killed Christopher Stiff, 31, of 3811 Mosley Ave., after finding Stiff inside his back door on Oct. 21, police said.

Christian couldn't be reached for comment Monday. He has said he shot Stiff because he didn't know what Stiff's intentions were after he broke into his home.

Christian's neighbor, James E. Bibbs, said he feels good knowing Christian won't face charges.

"Maybe it will send a message," Bibbs said, adding a person should be able to protect his home.

The grand jury considered the case earlier this year, Taylor said. He revealed the grand jury's decision when asked about the case Monday.

Stiff had been arrested more than 30 times since his first arrest on a burglary charge on July 26, 1990.

http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040420/NEWS01/404200368/1002

posted by Matthew LeFande 10:22 AM
matt@lefande.com

Traffic stop crash videos  

Nasty crashes during traffic stops captured on in-car video.

http://www.dw.ohio.gov/ohiostatepatrol/newsroom/video.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:55 AM
matt@lefande.com

Thursday, April 22, 2004

Manila Folder  

In February 1986, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos--unpleasant, unwell, and unloved--held a "snap election." This was a somewhat baffling attempt to bolster his authority by running against Corazon Aquino, widow of the opposition leader assassinated by Marcos henchmen. The American diplomatic response was baffled. Marcos was a friend of America, and U.S. military bases in the Philippines were vital to Cold War strategy. But the Philippines was being rent by popular political upheaval, Communist insurgency, Muslim unrest, and economic collapse; and a stable government was needed. But a stable government run by Marcos opponents would be angry about the support Marcos had received from his most powerful, not to say only, friend.

Not knowing what the heck to do in the Philippines, the Reagan administration sent an official election observer delegation headed by Senator Richard Lugar to do what-the-heck. Lugar said his delegation's purpose was "to demonstrate the importance to the United States of free and fair elections in the Philippines." Marcos had ruled the country, by means electoral and otherwise, since 1965. There was little likelihood that the snap election would be free and fair. Not that the U.S. delegation meant to find out. Lugar said, "Our delegation is going to the Philippines to watch and observe and not to pass judgment on the elections." Among the members of this watchful, observant, and non-judgment-passing delegation was the first-term senator from Massachusetts, John Kerry.

The U.S. election observer delegation proceeded predictably, also. After a couple of hours of poll-watching on election morning, Senator Lugar told Manila's government-controlled Channel 4, "The only problems I saw were minor and technical." Channel 4 played this tape clip the rest of the day. By the next morning, Lugar was indignantly telling Tom Brokaw, "It's a very, very suspicious count." But that was not shown on Philippine TV. The members of the U.S. delegation used the words "passionate commitment of the Philippine people to democracy" so often that, shortened to "Pash Commit of Flips to Dem," it became a catch phrase among reporters.

"Anything going on in Quezon City?"

"Pash Commit of Flips to Dem."

On Sunday night, two days after the election, thirty of the computer operators from COMELEC [the Philippine government "Commission on Elections," appointed by Marcos and in charge of compiling the final vote tally] walked off the job, protesting that the vote figures were being juggled. Aquino supporters and NAMFREL volunteers took the operators, most of them young women, to a church, and hundreds of people formed a protective barrier around them.

Joe Conason and I had been tipped off about the walkout, and when we got to the church, we found Bea Zobel, one of Cory Aquino's top aides, in a tizzy. "The women are terrified," she said. "They're scared to go home. They don't know what to do. We don't know what to do." Joe and I suggested that Mrs. Zobel go to the Manila Hotel and bring back some members of the Congressional observer team. She came back with Kerry, who did nothing.

Kerry later said that he didn't talk to the COMELEC employees then because he wasn't allowed to. This is ridiculous. He was ushered into an area that had been cordoned off from the press and the crowd and where the computer operators were sitting. To talk to the women, all he would have had to do was raise his voice. Why he was reluctant, I can't tell you. I can tell you what any red-blooded representative of the U.S. Government should have done. He should have shouted, "If you're frightened for your safety, I'll take you to the American embassy, and damn the man who tries to stop me." But all Kerry did was walk around like a male model in a concerned and thoughtful pose.

From my journal: "Gets there & never talks to Comelec girls. Boy is ball-less. Joe and I finally push forward & tell Kerry it was us (1 Dem. & 1 Rep.) that called for him (we also heard, Comelec girls wanted Observers called). That it was Joe & me seemed to make a big difference to Kerry. Who still did f---all."

What I meant by "seemed to make a big difference" was that Kerry's ears perked right up when he heard his name called by members of the press. His reaction was to turn to us and say, magisterially, "No interviews, boys." We explained that we had no interest in interviewing him and suggested that he provide some reassurance to the frightened conscientious objectors from COMELEC.

Now, with benefit of hindsight, I think I can tell you why Kerry didn't do so. He was caught in Kerry-ish calculation--an ambitious young senator on his first important bipartisan delegation with its delicate mission of neutrality. Cory Aquino was very popular. But so was President Reagan. Which way to have it? Why, have it both ways! So Kerry was firmly behind Pash Commit of Flips to Dem, up to a point. Just as today Kerry is brave sailor/bold war protester; foe of Saddam/friend of Hans Blix; political underdog/entitled nominee; big government liberal/corporate tax-cutting conservative; rider of Harleys/marrier of Heinz; and, incidentally, still a real jerk.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/947nzczv.asp

posted by Matthew LeFande 6:59 PM
matt@lefande.com

The American burden.  

Here's some background on Al Faluja to keep in mind.

A) Why is it in the news almost every night? Because it is one of the FEW places in all of Iraq where trouble exists. Iraq has 25 million people and is the size of California. Faluja and surrounding towns total 500,000 people. Do the math: that's not a big percentage of Iraq. How many people were murdered last night in L.A.? Did it make headline news? Why not?

B) Saddam could not and did not control Faluja. He bought off those he could, killed those he couldn't and played all leaders against one another. It was and is a 'difficult' town. Nothing new about that. What is new is that outside people have come in to stir up unrest. How many are there is classified, but let me tell you this: there are more people in the northeast Minneapolis gangs than there are causing havoc in Faluja. Surprised?

C) Then why does it get so much coverage? Because the major news outlets have camera crews permanently posted in Faluja. So, if you are from outside Iraq, and want to get air time for your cause, where would you go to terrorize, bomb, mutilate and destroy? Faluja.

D) Why does it seem to be getting worse? Two answers:

1) This country became a welfare state under Saddam. If you cared about your well-fare, you towed the line or died. The state did your thinking and your bidding. Want a job? Pledge allegiance to the Ba’ath party. Want an apartment, a car, etc? Show loyalty. Electricity, water, sewage, etc. was paid by the state. Go with the flow: life is good. Don't and you're dead. Now, what does that do to initiative? drive? industry?

So, we come along and lock up sugar daddy and give these people the toughest challenge in the world, FREEDOM. You want a job? Earn it! A house? Buy it or build it! Security? Build a police force, army and militia and give it to yourself. Risk your lives and earn freedom. The good news is that millions of Iraqis are doing just that, and some pay with their lives. But many, many are struggling with freedom (just like East Germans, Russians, Czechs, etc.) and they want a sugar daddy, the U.S.A., to do it all. We refuse. We don't want to be plantation owners. We make it clear we are here to help, not own or stay. They get mad about that, sometimes.

Nonetheless, in Faluja, the supposed hotbed of dissent in Iraq, countless Iraqis tell our psyopers they want to cooperate with us but are afraid the thugs will slit their throats or kill their kids. A bad gang can do that to a neighborhood and a town. That's what is happening here.

2) We have a battle hand-off going on here. The largest in recent American history. The Army is passing the baton to the Marines in this area. There is uncertainty among the populace and misinformation being given out by the bad guys. As a result there is insecurity and the bad guys are testing the resolve of the Marines and indirectly you, the American people. The bad guys are convinced that Americans have no stomach for a long haul effort here. They want to drive us out of here and then resurrect a dictatorship of one kind or another.

Okay, what do we do? Stay the course. The Marines will get into a battle rhythm and, along with other forces and government agencies here, they will knock out the crack houses, drive the thugs across the border and set the conditions for the Falujans to join the freedom parade or rot in their lack of initiative. Either way, the choice will be theirs. The alternative? Turn tail, pull out and leave a power vacuum that will suck in all of Iraq's neighbors and spark a civil war that could make Rwanda look like a misdemeanor.

Hey, America, don't go weak kneed on us: 585 dead American's made an investment here. That's a whole lot less than were killed on American highways last month. Their lives are honored when we stay the course and do the job we came to do; namely, set the conditions for a new government and empower these people to be the great nation they are capable of being.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php%3fdish_inc=archives/2004_04_18_dish_archive.html#108264593303373903

posted by Matthew LeFande 5:00 PM
matt@lefande.com

FBI searches for missing tanker truck  

A 1996 Fruehauf tanker with "TK Transport" in large, green letters on its side and New Jersey license plate T852SC was last seen April 8.

The FBI and the state Office of Counterterrorism have issued bulletins to law enforcement agencies in New Jersey to look for the truck.

"If there's some way they can get into the terminal and fill up with jet fuel, it's a very large bomb," said Greenwich Township Detective Sgt. Joseph Giordano Jr.

Most truckers use a credit card system to enter the terminal and fill their tankers, he said. Giordano recalled one past incident in which $60,000 worth of jet fuel was taken with a stolen credit card.

Valero public relations consultant Claire P. Riggs said there are "multiple security systems in place to prevent someone from loading in an unauthorized manner." She said the only materials that could be loaded in the kind of tanker that's missing are gasoline, diesel and jet fuel and asphalt, lube oil and sulfur.

West Deptford Township Police Chief Jim Mehaffey said "Prior to 9-11, you wouldn't get much attention" to a tanker theft. Today it attracts much more attention "because of the potential of what you could do with one of these tankers."

"You can hide some type of explosive in it and use it as a weapon of mass destruction," said Mehaffey.

http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/index.ssf?/base/news-1/1082621755293160.xml

Photos of missing tanker:

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:03 AM
matt@lefande.com

Airport Security Bars Cancer Patient From Boarding  

Security workers at Orlando International Airport refused to let a cancer patient board a plane because she no longer looks like her photo ID.

Athena LaPera finally flew home to Denver on Wednesday night, two days after she says security screeners prevented her from boarding.

LaPera says she's lost weight and her hair because of chemotherapy treatments. She is 4-feet-11 and weighs 78 pounds.

She says the screeners refused to let her board Monday night, and she spent most of Tuesday trying to resolve the issue only to be told by a federal Transportation Security Administration employee that she needed new photos and a doctor's note to explain her changed appearance.

http://www.wftv.com/news/3030202/detail.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:51 AM
matt@lefande.com

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

How Stupid Can You Be?  

The knock on Gerald Ford's door (not that Gerald Ford) came around 1:30 in the morning. That's not unusual. Ford keeps some pretty strange hours.

"I answer it and there's a guy standing there," says Ford, who lives in a housing complex on North Alfred Street in Alexandria. "I open the door and I ask him, 'Can I help you?' He says 'Ford?' I'm like, I've never seen him before, and he's calling me by my name."

But, really, that's not unusual either. When you do what Ford does for a living, everybody in the housing project knows who you are.

"Go on," Ford said to the man.

"Can I get three dubs?"

Ford translates: "Three dubs are three rocks of cocaine, worth 20 dollars each. I said, 'Pardon me? What did you say?' "

"Can I get three dubs?"

"I said 'Okay, have a seat in the chair on my porch. I'll be right back.' "

That's when Ford went back into his house to get his gun.

He also got his badge and his police radio. For Gerald Ford is an officer with the Alexandria police, a member of the city's community policing team. For seven years, he's lived in the housing complex he's responsible for patrolling.

The man was still sitting on the porch when Ford emerged after calling for backup. "When I walked outside, he looked at me like a deer in the headlights, like he was shocked. I said, 'Stand up, you're getting arrested.' "

The man was drunk, so Ford booked him on that. "I can probably get a warrant for attempting to purchase narcotics, too."

Ford took the man to jail. "He started crying. He started begging. He said, 'I'll do community service. I'll wash your car for a month.' "

Ford said the suspect was from outside the neighborhood, on the prowl for drugs.

"He started walking around, asking, 'Can I get some drugs?' He asked the wrong person," Ford said, somebody who "just thought it would be funny to send him up to the officer's house."

As Ford marched the suspect to a police car, he passed a crowd of onlookers.

"The first thing I said was, 'Who sent him over here?' And they started laughing at him. They said, 'Ohhh, he's going to jail.' "

Officer Ford has only one regret: "I wish I had a picture of the look on my face when he asked me" for the drugs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29182-2004Apr20.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 1:08 PM
matt@lefande.com

U.S. sees Syria 'facilitating' insurgents  

Syria is "facilitating" the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq and helping supply them with arms, according to U.S. military officials with access to intelligence reports.

The sources said the reporting has not been clear on whether hard-line Syrian President Bashar Assad is involved directly in ordering the aid. But they say he has much to lose if Iraq becomes a pro-U.S. democratic country.

Foreign fighters from Syria have become a major stumbling block to stabilizing Iraq and turning over sovereignty by June 30.

The bloody fighting in Fallujah, for example, is inspired, in part, by well-armed foreign jihadists who crossed the Syrian border and have committed some of the most gruesome attacks against Americans and their allies.

Officials said Syrian help includes facilitating their border crossing, arming them and allowing them to return for fresh supplies.

Asked how conclusive U.S. intelligence is on Syrian aid, one official said, "No doubt about it."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040420-115628-7182r.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:46 AM
matt@lefande.com

Friday, April 16, 2004

Robber Called Ahead to Order Heist at KFC  

City police on Friday said they were looking for a man who called a KFC restaurant and placed an unusual takeout order -- a robbery.

The man called the restaurant March 31 and told the manager he was a police officer. The caller told the manager that a robber was on his way to the store and that the store employees should cooperate so nobody would get hurt. Police planned to grab the robber as he left the store, the caller said.

Moments later, a robber showed up and took $200, but no police arrived to arrest him -- fueling police suspicion that the telephone "cop" and restaurant robber are the same person.

Police said at a news conference Friday they believe the same man is responsible for at least 10 other robberies in the city since late January. The other stores weren't called ahead of time.

The robber was caught on video at the KFC, and the images match a description given in the other heists.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-takeout-robber,0,5687247.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:18 PM
matt@lefande.com

Cat Gets Head Cut Off in Ad, Ford Has Hissy  

When a bunch of agency creatives get together and brainstorm a new ad campaign, some of the racier concepts get left in the conference room after the campaign is approved by the client taken to the market. When Ford had Ogilvy and Mather create a campaign for is new SportKa, one of racier and un-approved concepts found its way virally to market. The concept is a clip - based on an originally "approved" concept for the SportKa showing a pigeon getting his due when trying to land on the hood - that shows a cat getting its head cut off by the cars sunroof.

http://www.adrants.com/2004_03_28_archive.php#108093138316471897

The video:

http://www.lefande.com/weblog/ka.mpeg

posted by Matthew LeFande 4:52 PM
matt@lefande.com

Armed Citizen of the Week  

The old saying of going to the well one too many times proved true for at least one thief, who broke into the Pro Pizza and Grill restaurant on March 29.

According to the Flint Journal, shortly after midnight on March 29, a store manager discovered the restaurant's till had been cleaned out, and reported the theft to police and owner Mitch Degele.

Degele suspected the perpetrator was a former employee, who might return for the safe later. So he went home, got his pillow, a blanket and a gun and returned to the restaurant to keep watch.

"I don't sleep in my restaurant normally, but I decided no one is taking my weekend receipts," Degele said.

Degele’s hunch was right. A second thief, using a cordless saw to cut his way into the building, made it all the way to the restaurant's drop ceiling before police arrived—but it wasn’t the former employee. Rather the thief was the former employee’s roommate, who had overheard talk of the first robbery and decided to come back for the safe.

http://www.pizzamarketplace.com/news_story.htm?i=18753

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:59 AM
matt@lefande.com

Bin Laden Mimics MoveOn.org?  

If remarks attributed to Osama bin Laden Wednesday sounded familiar, there may be a reason.

At least one political wag has noticed that certain rhetorical flourishes in the terrorist's tirade bore an eerie resemblance to the political attacks launched by the Democratic propagandameisters at MoveOn.org.

Notes OpinionJournal.com's James Taranto, the latest bin Laden outburst "shows a command of Democratic talking points - Halliburton is evil; the president is a 'liar' who commands a 'gang'," etc.

The only thing bin Laden seems to have missed is Ted Kennedy's blast that Iraq has become George Bush's Vietnam.

Then again, perhaps he simply didn't want to recycle the Kennedy barb so soon, since terrorist cleric Muqtada al Sadr used it just last week.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/4/15/194256.shtml

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:26 AM
matt@lefande.com

92 year old strip-searched at Toronto Pearson International Airport.  

On the same day that the federal government helped a family with alleged terrorist links enter Canada, a 92-year-old disabled grandmother was strip searched at Pearson International Airport upon returning from Florida with her husband, a Korean War veteran.

Kann claims his grandparents are so distraught over their experience that they refuse to discuss it in detail. He does know that they suffered a great indignity.

“I have no idea what the whole-case scenario is - all my grandfather told me was they strip searched her,'' he said, adding: “It's ridiculous. You have to understand that she can't even walk without her two canes, or a walker or a scooter.''

"I can't believe they would do this to this woman, or any woman in the same physical capacity or obvious physical impairment that she has,'' said Kann. "It's not like she had a gun hidden in her canes."

Kann's grandparents landed at Pearson the same day Maha Elsamnah, the widow of Ahmed Said Khadr, an admitted al-Qaida financier and close associate of Osama bin Laden, returned to Canada with her 14-year-old son, Karim. Ottawa arranged emergency passports for the family.

http://www.pulse24.com/News/Top_Story/20040415-020/page.asp

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:05 AM
matt@lefande.com

The fifth hijacking you never heard about  

Today, Ed Ballinger will speak to a roomful of strangers about the one subject he doesn't care to discuss: The first two hours of his shift as a flight dispatcher for United Airlines on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

The Arlington Heights resident and former United Airlines employee will meet with a sub-committee of the 9/11 commission in Washington, D.C., so panel members can decide whether his testimony warrants his appearance before the full commission.

Ballinger is there because he was in charge of United flights 175 and 93 when they crashed into the World Trade Center and a field near Shanksville, Pa.

Because perhaps, just perhaps, offering his story will calm the whispering thought that troubles him still: If he'd been told the full extent of what was unfolding sooner that morning, he might have saved Flight 93.

"When Sept. 11 came along, that morning, I had 16 flights taking off from the East Coast of the U.S. to the West Coast," he said. "When I sat down, these 16 flights were taking off or just getting ready to take off."

Then the first American Airlines planes struck New York and the Pentagon.

Ballinger contacted all his flights to warn them. But United Flight 175 "was not acting appropriately."

He asked Flight 175 to respond. The pilot didn't reply and Ballinger was forced to conclude he'd been compromised and that he was rogue.

By now, the situation was terribly different from previous hijackings Ballinger had handled. In two hours, he sent 122 messages.

Realizing what was going on, he sent all his airplanes one message: "Beware of cockpit intrusion."

Ballinger said he didn't wait for orders from his supervisors, or for Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta's decision to ground all flights. He immediately tried to get his pilots down on the nearest Tarmac.

"As soon as I had a grasp of what was going on ... I sent it out immediately. It was before Mineta, and even before the airlines told us to alert the crews," he said.

"Perhaps if I had the information sooner, I might have gotten the message to 93 to bar the door."

Perhaps, but Kirk is adamant that Ballinger did save the passengers and crew of United Flight 23, which on Sept. 11 was about to depart from Newark, N.J., to Los Angeles. Kirk believes Flight 23 was going to be commandeered.

Thanks to Ballinger's quick call, the flight crew told passengers it had a mechanical problem and immediately returned to the gate.

Later, Ballinger was told six men initially wouldn't get off the plane. Later, when they did, they disappeared into the crowd, never to return. Later, authorities checked their luggage and found copies of the Qu'ran and al-Qaida instruction sheets.

"I felt good about that one," Ballinger said.

http://www.dailyherald.com/search/main_story.asp?intid=38091153

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:53 AM
matt@lefande.com

Thursday, April 15, 2004

Documents prove oil-for-food corruption involving French leaders  

Investigators, led by Claude Hankes-Drielsma and the KPMG accounting firm, currently are in Baghdad sifting through mountains of Saddam Hussein-era records seized from his Oil Ministry and the State Oil Marketing Organization that detail payments by Saddam to his legions of foreign friends and political supporters.

In a scathing letter sent to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan on March 3, which he made available to Insight, Hankes-Drielsma called the U.N. program "one of the world's most disgraceful scams," and said that "based on the facts as I know them at the present time, the U.N. failed in its responsibility to the Iraqi people and the international community at large."

In an earlier letter to Annan, to which he received no reply, Hankes-Drielsma noted that allocations of "very significant supplies of crude oil [were] made to ... individuals with political influence in many countries, including France and Jordan," both of which supported Saddam and his regime to the bitter end.

Among the revelations at the April 22 hearings will be new details of oil vouchers allegedly granted to Patrick Maugein, a prominent crony of French President Jacques Chirac, said to total 72.2 million barrels.

Maugein's involvement in the U.N.-approved oil deals is significant, investigators say, because he is believed to be a conduit for backdoor payments to Chirac and his family. It was Chirac who spearheaded a worldwide coalition last year that opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and tried desperately to keep Saddam in power.

Other French recipients named in the Iraqi documents include former Interior minister Charles Pasqua (12 million barrels), former French U.N. ambassador Jean-Bernard Merimee (8 million barrels) and Lebanese-French middleman Elias Firzli (14.6 million barrels).

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38040

posted by Matthew LeFande 10:00 AM
matt@lefande.com

Dying Driver Gets a Ticket  

A callous traffic agent ignored the pleas of a double-parked Brooklyn driver suffering a fatal heart attack and wrote him a $115 summons - telling witnesses as she walked off, "Just tell him to pay his ticket!" the victim's family charged last night.

The stunning claim came as the outraged relatives of Onofrio Avvinti, a Bensonhurst tailor, filed a $100 million lawsuit against the female traffic-enforcement agent, her co-worker and the city. "We're very hurt! I can't even talk, I'm so upset," the victim's brother-in-law Antonio Leto wailed.

The tragedy occurred just after noon on Saturday as Avvinti, 61, waited for his wife, Carmela, who was shopping at the Met supermarket on 20th Avenue between 72nd and 73rd streets.

That's when the family says a traffic agent, identified as L. Hinkson, walked up and, without a word, started writing Avvinti a ticket for double parking.

"He was angry about it, he started to feel sick and complained that he wasn't feeling well. He told the agent she should call for an ambulance," said Avvanti's heartsick son, Vito, 32.

"The witnesses said she just walked away and told them, 'Just tell him to pay his ticket.' "

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/18855.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:29 AM
matt@lefande.com

Wednesday, April 14, 2004

TV Show Previews WTC Attack Many Months Before 911  

In February of 2000, The Lone Gunman series aired on FOX TV. The pilot episode was about a commercial airliner being flown into the World Trade Center Towers 19 mos. before 9/11.

Here is the 3 meg trailer. Windows Media format.

http://www.lefande.com/weblog/lonegunmanpilo.wmv

posted by Matthew LeFande 1:41 PM
matt@lefande.com

Doctored photo "outrages" pro-terror constituency  

The U.S. military has begun an investigation into a gag photo of Lance Cpl. Ted J. Boudreaux Jr., a reservist with Headquarters and Service Company, 3rd Battalion, 23rd Marines that has him posing with two Iraqi children

Unfortunately, Lcpl Boudreaux took this opportunity to humiliate two unsuspecting children and further sour relations with the Arab community by having one of the boys hold up a sign that reads, "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad, th[en] he knocked up my sister!"

Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a press release harshly condemning the actions of Lcpl Boudreaux. The largest Islamic association in America is calling on the defense department to quickly determine the legitimacy of the photo.

http://www.officialspin.com/main.php?action=recent&rid=1404


CAIR, don't wait for DOD, www.lefande.com has already debunked this nonsense.

Fodder for the liberal media:



The original photo:



http://www.lefande.com/weblog/boudreauxlarge.jpg

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:50 AM
matt@lefande.com

Top DUI arrests thanks to record-breaking cop  

Waukegan, Illinois cops arrested more suspected drunken drivers in 2003 than any other town in the state except Chicago -- the second such crown in three years for the far north city, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Led by patrol officers Michael Newman, Scott Thomas and Donald Paulsen, Waukegan nabbed 843 drivers on DUI charges last year, according to the Schaumburg-based Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists.

That was four more than second-place Naperville, which led the state with 961 arrests in 2002.

Since the alliance began surveying the state in 1990, Waukegan has come out on top five times -- more than any other department. Chicago, which had 6,342 DUI arrests in 2003, is excluded from the rankings because of its size.

Newman's 403 arrests in Waukegan were the most by an officer in one year in state history.

He credits his success to a $120,000 federal grant that lets him and Paulsen troll for drunks full time. Paulsen had 123 arrests, and Thomas had 148 -- putting both in the top 25 statewide.

"I don't sit in front of a bar looking for someone to stumble out," Newman told the Chicago Sun-Times in January. "I don't wait in front of a specific road. I drive all over the city. Drunk driving is a chronic problem everywhere."

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-dui14.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:27 AM
matt@lefande.com

After death, they do the cleanup job others won't  

SOMETIMES, LIFE isn’t pretty.

People die, people kill themselves, they kill other people.

The cops come. The TV trucks set up camp. The body gets hauled away.

Then, just as everyone else leaves, Andy Bell and James Redd pull up. They climb out of a plain, white van, grab their chemicals, machines and rags and slip by unnoticed.

Within minutes, they dive into the mess. They put their faces inches from whatever has splattered, stick their hands into puddles of fluids, smell odors that would send most people running from the room. They embrace the aftermath of disease and anger and depression.

After all, someone’s got to clean it up.

On a cleanup like this, it’s hard to see why anyone would want this job. They’ll spend two hours wallowing in human biohazard. For all that, they’ll split about $800.

http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=68917&ran=127566

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:35 AM
matt@lefande.com

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Jury finds Maryland man guilty of a night-time shooting outside of a restaurant in Adams Morgan  

Jury finds Maryland man guilty of a night-timeshooting outside of a restaurant in Adams MorganWashington, D.C. - United States Attorney Roscoe C. Howard, Jr. announced that Carlos Gutierrez, 21, of Rockville, Maryland, was convicted by a Superior Court jury on Friday, March 12, 2004, of Assault with a Deadly Weapon, Possession of a Firearm during a Crime of Violence, Possession with Intent to Distribute Cocaine while Armed, and related gun charges stemming from an incident that took place outside of Las Placitas restaurant in Adams Morgan on August 25, 2002. Sentencing is set for May 21, 2004, before the Honorable Lynn Leibovitz of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The defendant faces potential incarceration of more than 50 years on all of the related charges, with at least a five-year mandatory minimum sentence required under the applicable statutes.

In announcing the verdict, United States Attorney Howard praised the efforts of the following members of the Metropolitan Police Department: Detective Wayne Torres, Anthony Hector, Brian Devine, Gregory Kurtz, Israel Ruiz, Ralph Nitz, Firearms Expert Michael Mulderig, Fingerprint Specialist Gloria Graves, and Reserve Officer Matt LeFande.

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/dc/Press_Releases/Mar_2004/04085.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:55 PM
matt@lefande.com

Search Continues for Man and Office Chair  

A rolling office chair and a man arrested for breaking and entering remained on the loose Tuesday afternoon. The pair were handcuffed together when that man, Nathan Gubachy, escaped from a Michigan State Police post in Ypsilanti on Monday.

Since his escape, Gubachy has been spotted - still attached to the chair - in an area surrounding the police post. One woman reported seeing him lug the chair up a hill in her Ypsilanti Township backyard.

Police searched the woods and neighborhood near the post, but they have yet to turn up the escapee or the chair he rode out on. Their search continued Tuesday afternoon.

Police believe Nathan Gubachy may now be free of the chair. They also say that he is probably not dangerous.

http://www.wxyz.com/wxyz/nw_local_news/article/0,2132,WXYZ_15924_2803660,00.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 3:45 PM
matt@lefande.com

Monday, April 12, 2004

In a parallel universe called "What if . . . "  

President-elect John F. Kerry's rise to the nation's highest office came as little surprise following almost four years of remonstrations against President George W. Bush for his bizarre attack on the defenseless people of Afghanistan.

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, was the right man for a nation outraged by the Bush administration's pre-emptive war, which, it now seems clear, was based on highly speculative intelligence that Saudi Arabian-born terrorist Osama bin Laden was planning an attack on the U.S.

Absent absolute proof of such an imminent attack, Bush's Sept. 10 bombing of Afghanistan earned him international condemnation and, in all likelihood, an indictment in coming weeks. United Nations (U.N.) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, appearing last night on Larry King Live, said the U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal likely would bring charges of genocide against the president.

Bush also faces charges at home for his baseless arrest of 19 foreign nationals, many of them native Saudis, whose "crime" was attending American flight schools. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a joint suit against both Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, charging racial profiling, unlawful arrest, and illegal search and seizure.

Kerry's campaign mantra - "You go to war because you have to, not because you want to" - clearly resonated with Americans as they tried to make sense of Bush's September 10 attack on Afghanistan. Neither the president, nor National Security Adviser Dr. Condoleezza Rice convincingly defended their actions during the recent "9/10 Commission" hearings, which Congress ordered in response to public outcry.

The commission's purpose was to try to determine what compelled the president to launch a war against Afghanistan. What kind of intelligence suggested that such an act was justified?

The man credited with sounding the alarm on bin Laden and al Qaeda was Richard Clarke, a counterterrorism expert who has served four presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton.

At Rice's and Clarke's urging, Bush called a meeting of principals and, after "connecting the dots," decided to wage war against Afghanistan. What did the dots say? Not much, in retrospect. Apparently, the president decided to bomb a benign country on the basis of "chatter" that hinted at "something big."

With no other details on the "big," and by weaving together random bits of information from a variety of questionable sources, Bush and company decided that 19 fundamentalist Muslim fanatics would fly airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon on 9/11.

In a flourish of irony and the spirit of bon vivant for which president-elect is widely known, Kerry gave his acceptance speech from Windows on the World, the elegant restaurant atop the World Trade Center's Tower One.

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com/kathleen/parker1.asp

posted by Matthew LeFande 1:41 PM
matt@lefande.com

Thursday, April 08, 2004

Jail sentence for Englishman who stole and cleaned dozens of cars  

Colin Sadd might be the man you'd prefer to steal your car, but he's going to jail again.

Sadd, 41, who has 155 previous convictions, was sentenced Wednesday to six years in jail after pleading guilty to stealing five cars and admitting responsibility for 31 other thefts. Sadd's modus operandi is to dress up in a suit, go to an auto dealer and ask for a test drive. The car never returns, but is abandoned after being spotlessly cleaned. "He looked after the cars he stole better than me," said his wife, Mary, who added that Sadd has never owned a car.

"He only takes brand new vehicles, drives them around for a couple of hours, then he cleans them inside and out. He will even buy a tin of polish to give them an extra sparkle and sometimes takes them to a car wash to get them extra clean."

Psychiatrists have said that Sadd has a compulsive disorder, and a judge in a previous case described him as "the man you would most want to steal your car."

http://www.mytelus.com/news/article.do?pageID=cp_oddities_home&articleID=1566182

posted by Matthew LeFande 6:17 PM
matt@lefande.com

1/3 of police pursuits involving fatalities nationwide involve death of a bystander  

One third of all high-speed police pursuits nationwide resulted in the death of an innocent bystander, according to a Harborview analysis of nine years of national statistics released Wednesday.

But several law enforcement agencies in King County, like the Sheriff's Office, say the option to pursue offenders must not be taken away from individual officers.

"We are going to weigh the balance between the need to apprehend a suspect and the risk to the public,'' Sheriff spokesman John Urquhart Urquhart said, noting that the study also makes that point.

He said the high speed pursuit a week ago today by several law enforcement agencies of a Renton man wanted for kidnapping a Mercer Island girl was a classic example. ``You don't stop, you gotta catch the guy'' he said.

Officers didn't know the girl was in the car but they had to catch the man because he was the only one who knew where the girl was located, he said. The chase ended in a crash but no one was hurt.

The study results released Wednesday by the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center in Seattle pointed out that the number of deaths nationwide each year far exceeds that due to any other police activity. Nearly 300 people are killed annually in police pursuits, the study found.

http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/160771

posted by Matthew LeFande 10:38 AM
matt@lefande.com

Islamist Fifth Columns  

The general commanding four columns moving on Madrid during Spain's civil war (1936-39) referred to his militant supporters within the capital as his "fifth column."

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union maintained fifth columns in the United States. These were groups of secret sympathizers, sleeper cells, or supporters of an enemy that engage in espionage or sabotage, or simply disinform about the attacker's intentions.

But as soon anyone suggests the presence of an Islamist equivalent in Western democracies, watch out. Militant Muslim "moderates" go into their well-rehearsed tonitruant mode. Islamophobia and McCarthyism are among the milder epithets.

Following the Madrid train bombings March 11 and the arrest of eight young British-born Pakistanis before they could put half a ton of ammonium nitrate to work against Heathrow Airport or the London Underground, Prime Minister Tony Blair decided "the enemy within" had to be sharply circumscribed. He ordered an end to any further debate on a national ID card and made it mandatory.

The new Fifth Column syndrome indicates the enemy inside the gates has plenty of bedlamites rooting for him in other countries. In Pakistan, some 66 percent believe Osama bin Laden is a good guy. As for the world's biggest proliferators of nukes to America's enemies, he has close to a 100 percent approval rating.

Recent opinion surveys among Britain's almost 2 million Muslims, mostly from South Asia, rang alarm bells in Whitehall and in the media. Eighty percent were against the invasion of Iraq, 13 percent said another September 11-style attack on America would be justified, and 50 percent said they would consider becoming a suicide bomber if forced to live like Palestinians. Some 200,000 openly sympathized with Osama bin Laden.

While authorities claim it is well-nigh impossible to fool immigration officers with forged passports, a British reporter flew to Poland with no introductions, asked a few questions, was told where to go and in two days picked up a new Polish passport on the black market — it cost his paper $1,500 — and returned through British immigration unchallenged. The reporter said all kinds of forged documents were on offer. Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan in Pakistan, is also known for its expertise in forgeries and counterfeit currency.

Spain formally accused 12 Moroccans of involvement in the March 11 train bombing that killed almost 200 and injured 1,800. Of the 20 arrested, 16 are still in custody, including six charged with mass murder. Five blew themselves up as security forces closed on their suburban hideout near Madrid. They have ties to Islamist cells all over Europe. In France, raids on eight locations yielded and arrested 13 Moroccan militants.

The Fifth Column is alive and well in the U.S. Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American citizen who was the prime mover behind the American Muslim Council (AMC) and a number of other U.S.-based Islamist-sympathizing organizations, is the man who certified 75 Muslim chaplains for service in the U.S. Armed Forces. He is a self-described supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah and was arrested at Heathrow last summer as he flew in from Libya on his way back to Washington. He had a little contretemps at the airport, unable to give British customs a plausible explanation for the $340,000 he was carrying in cash.

Mr. Alamoudi, now in jail in Virginia awaiting trial for allegedly lying to immigration authorities, was the most prominent leader of the Muslim World League in America, a Wahhabi Saudi front, made up of some 40 groups run by a small circle of trusted and wealthy individuals.

Mr. Alamoudi was directly involved in 16 Islamist front organizations. The network is controlled through four different layers of front organizations connected to Muslim charities and businesses in Northern Virginia. The FBI has gathered enough evidence to put away several prominent figures. But diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia — and Saudi influence on the price of oil — have limited expulsions to 16 Arab clerics with Saudi diplomatic passports.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040407-092859-5549r.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:54 AM
matt@lefande.com

Saudi Money at Riggs Probed  

The FBI is investigating banking transactions by Saudi Arabian officials with accounts at Riggs Bank N.A. in the District, including millions of dollars in deposits and withdrawals conducted in December by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter.

Riggs officials responsible for ensuring compliance with laws against money laundering reviewed the December transactions and asked a representative of the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to explain them, the sources said. When the representative declined to provide more information, Riggs made a report of suspicious activity to Treasury Department officials, the sources said, leading the bank to terminate its long business relationship with the Saudis.

The Riggs relationship with the Saudi Embassy goes back 20 years and arose out of Riggs's long-standing expertise in diplomatic banking. The sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified because the federal investigation is continuing, said that the Saudi Embassy had more than 100 separate accounts at the bank and that the prince and other royal family members controlled more than a dozen other Riggs accounts.

In the spring of 2003, after months of investigation, banking regulators began to crack down on what they saw as Riggs's relative lack of oversight of its international banking business, according to the sources. Riggs then sought more information about Saudi banking activity, and for much of last year, the Saudis complied. But in December, the sources said, representatives of the ambassador deposited several million dollars, in increments of $2 million to $4 million, into his personal account. The deposits came in the form of international drafts in riyals, the currency of Saudi Arabia, according to the sources who have been briefed.

After each deposit, the sources said, the ambassador's representatives would withdraw roughly half the money in cash and the rest in a cashier's check made out to the ambassador. An equivalent amount to the cash withdrawal often would be re-deposited the next day, then wired to a European bank, the sources said.

Bank officials said they didn't understand why the ambassador didn't simply transfer the riyals directly from Saudi Arabia to the European banks and could get no satisfactory explanation from the Saudis, the sources said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59587-2004Apr7.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:05 AM
matt@lefande.com

Video of Suicide in Bronx Appears on Web Site  

The NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau is investigating how a police security video that captured a young man's suicide ended up on a Web site devoted to violence and pornography, a department spokesman said yesterday.

The young man, Paris Lane, 22, of Harlem, used a 9-millimeter handgun to kill himself on March 16 in a lobby at the Morris Houses project in the Bronx, where he had been visiting his girlfriend.

His foster mother said yesterday that she had notified the police when she learned the video had been posted on the site.

The 45-second video, which is no longer displayed there, shows Mr. Lane and his girlfriend standing near an open elevator door. She pulls her hands across her face as if wiping away tears and kisses him briefly, then they hug for a long moment, until she gently pulls away and steps into the elevator.

Mr. Lane waits for the elevator door to close, stares at it for a second, then pulls out the gun, puts it in his mouth and fires once, falling to the ground.

The camera that captured the suicide was part of an extensive police surveillance system that had been installed in 15 of the city's housing projects, said Paul J. Browne, the department's chief spokesman. It records digital images, which means they could have been easily sent by e-mail, he said. He said the department still had the original compact disk containing the video.

The police were investigating whether someone could have hacked into the system. ''But we've never had it happen,'' Mr. Browne said.

The department has obtained a subpoena to learn who owns the Web site and will try to learn how the video was obtained. Mr. Browne said he did not know why the video had been removed from the site

Mr. Lane had apparently killed himself because he was despondent over his relationship with his girlfriend, Mr. Browne said. He had prior arrests, including one on domestic violence charges, Mr. Browne said.

http://nytimes.com/2004/04/01/nyregion/01video.html

Video, as described above.

http://www.lefande.com/weblog/BRONX.mpg

posted by Matthew LeFande 7:55 AM
matt@lefande.com

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Cowlick Lucy and the Grandsons at IOTA  

Here are some pics I took at the Cowluck Lucy and the Grandsons show at IOTA on March 26. They aren't in any particular order.

http://www.lefande.com/cowlicklucy.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 9:50 AM
matt@lefande.com

Friday, April 02, 2004

We don't need a "commission" to find out how 9-11 happened.  

The truth is in the timeline:

PRESIDENT CARTER, DEMOCRAT

In 1979, President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah of Iran to be deposed by a mob of Islamic fanatics. A few months later, Muslims stormed the U.S. Embassy in Iran and took American Embassy staff hostage.

Carter retaliated by canceling Iranian visas. He eventually ordered a disastrous and humiliating rescue attempt, crashing helicopters in the desert.

PRESIDENT REAGAN, REPUBLICAN

The day of Reagan's inauguration, the hostages were released.

In 1982, the U.S. Embassy in Beirut was bombed by Muslim extremists.

President Reagan sent U.S. Marines to Beirut.

In 1983, the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut were blown up by Muslim extremists.

Reagan said the U.S. would not surrender, but Democrats threw a hissy fit, introducing a resolution demanding that our troops be withdrawn. Reagan caved in to Democrat caterwauling in an election year and withdrew our troops bombing Syrian-controlled areas on the way out. Democrats complained about that, too.

In 1985, an Italian cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, was seized and a 69-year-old American was shot and thrown overboard by Muslim extremists.

Reagan ordered a heart-stopping mission to capture the hijackers after "the allies" promised them safe passage. In a daring operation, American fighter pilots captured the hijackers and turned them over to the Italians who then released them to safe harbor in Iraq.

On April 5, 1986, a West Berlin discotheque frequented by U.S. servicemen was bombed by Muslim extremists from the Libyan Embassy in East Berlin, killing an American.

Ten days later, Reagan bombed Libya, despite our dear ally France refusing the use of their airspace. Americans bombed Gadhafi's residence, killing his daughter, and dropped a bomb on the French Embassy "by mistake."

Reagan also stoked a long, bloody war between heinous regimes in Iran and Iraq. All this was while winning a final victory over Soviet totalitarianism.

PRESIDENT BUSH I, MODERATE REPUBLICAN

In December 1988, a passenger jet, Pan Am Flight 103, was bombed over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Muslim extremists.

President-elect George Bush claimed he would continue Reagan's policy of retaliating against terrorism, but did not. Without Reagan to gin her up, even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher went wobbly, saying there would be no revenge for the bombing.

In 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

In early 1991, Bush went to war with Iraq. A majority of Democrats opposed the war, and later complained that Bush didn't "finish off the job" with Saddam.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON, DEMOCRAT

In February 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed by Muslim fanatics, killing five people and injuring hundreds.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.

In October 1993, 18 American troops were killed in a savage firefight in Somalia. The body of one American was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu as the Somalian hordes cheered.

Clinton responded by calling off the hunt for Mohammed Farrah Aidid and ordering our troops home. Osama bin Laden later told ABC News: "The youth ... realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat."

In November 1995, five Americans were killed and 30 wounded by a car bomb in Saudi Arabia set by Muslim extremists.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.

In June 1996, a U.S. Air Force housing complex in Saudi Arabia was bombed by Muslim extremists.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.

Months later, Saddam attacked the Kurdish-controlled city of Erbil.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, lobbed some bombs into Iraq hundreds of miles from Saddam's forces.

In November 1997, Iraq refused to allow U.N. weapons inspections to do their jobs and threatened to shoot down a U.S. U-2 spy plane.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.

In February 1998, Clinton threatened to bomb Iraq, but called it off when the United Nations said no.

On Aug. 7, 1998, U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Muslim extremists.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.

On Aug. 20, Monica Lewinsky appeared for the second time to testify before the grand jury.

Clinton responded by bombing Afghanistan and Sudan, severely damaging a camel and an aspirin factory.

On Dec. 16, the House of Representatives prepared to impeach Clinton the next day.

Clinton retaliated by ordering major air strikes against Iraq, described by the New York Times as "by far the largest military action in Iraq since the end of the Gulf War in 1991."

The only time Clinton decided to go to war with anyone in the vicinity of Muslim fanatics was in 1999 when Clinton attacked Serbians who were fighting Islamic fanatics.

In October 2000, our warship, the USS Cole, was attacked by Muslim extremists.

Clinton, advised by Dick Clarke, did nothing.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, REPUBLICAN

Bush came into office telling his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, he was "tired of swatting flies" he wanted to eliminate al-Qaida.

On Sept. 11, 2001, when Bush had been in office for barely seven months, 3,000 Americans were murdered in a savage terrorist attack on U.S. soil by Muslim extremists.

Since then, Bush has won two wars against countries that harbored Muslim fanatics, captured Saddam Hussein, immobilized Osama bin Laden, destroyed al-Qaida's base, and begun to create the only functioning democracy in the Middle East other than Israel. Democrats opposed it all except their phony support for war with Afghanistan, which they immediately complained about and said would be a Vietnam quagmire. And now they claim to be outraged that in the months before 9-11, Bush did not do everything Democrats opposed doing after 9-11.

What a surprise.

http://www.anncoulter.org/columns/2004/033104p.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 6:15 PM
matt@lefande.com

A dearth of Muslim outrage  

As the ghastly pictures from Fallujah flashed across the television screen, one of Salman Rushdie's most famous outbursts in recent years came to mind: "Where's the Muslim outrage?"

Here the world saw an ugly crowd beating the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes and then hanging them on a bridge over the Euphrates River. And all the while the mob howled, "We sacrifice our blood and soul for Islam."

One was reminded of Salman Rushdie's words in the New York Times in 2002, "As their ancient, deeply civilized culture of love, art and philosophical reflection is hijacked by paranoiacs, racists, liars, male supremacists, tyrants, fanatics and violence junkies, why are they not screaming?"

But there has never been a unison outcry. There have never been high-powered delegations of Muslim notables willing to intercede, for example, when northern Nigerian religious courts sentenced alleged adulteresses to be stoned to death.

European Muslim scholars follow what they term the spinelessness of their Middle Eastern counterparts with growing alarm: "Sadly, apart from a few courageous examples, very few Muslim leaders condemn -- clearly and unconditionally -- the evil of suicide bombers who kill innocent people."

With great sorrow, rather than anger, one spoke of the decline of the Islamic culture. "Although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known in the West as the Dark Ages, it is sad to relate that no great invention has come for many hundred years from Muslim countries," he said.

He attacked the "glaring lack of democracy" in Muslim countries. "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes," he complained.

Then he pleaded with moderate Muslims to resist the usurpation of Islam by radicals and to "express strongly, on behalf of the many millions of their co-religionists, their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah."

But this prompted the kind of commentary which often causes despair among Westerners perfectly willing to coexist amicably with Islam: "Muslims must not denounce other Muslims," militant Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad told the British Broadcasting Corporation. "Cooperation with the authorities against other Muslims, that is an act of apostasy."

http://www.washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040401-042817-2005r.htm

posted by Matthew LeFande 4:07 PM
matt@lefande.com

Car-scam grandmother skips court  

A 75-year-old grandmother suspected of scamming a dozen car dealers by passing bad checks has lost her attorney after the check she gave him bounced, media reports said Thursday.

Attorney Stephen Ford dropped Betty Gooch on Wednesday, the same day a judge issued an arrest warrant for Gooch when she failed to show up for a court hearing in Woodstock, Illinois.

"She gave me this sob story," Ford told the Chicago Tribune. "She gave me a check for a retainer and I took it."

The white-haired septuagenarian, who gets around with a walking frame and a portable oxygen cart, was scheduled to appear in court for a bond hearing. She has been charged with five felony counts of theft by deception and passing bad checks.

Gooch allegedly used bad checks to pay for vehicles, including a Toyota minivan, a Toyota Matrix car, a Mazda sport utility, and a Chrysler minivan.

Circuit Judge Ward Arnold revoked Gooch's personal bond after she failed to turn up, set bail at 100,000 dollars and issued an arrest warrant.

In October, 2003, Gooch admitted using a bad check to pay for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. She was sentenced to a year of court supervision and fined 385 dollars, according to news reports.

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9165746^13762,00.html

posted by Matthew LeFande 8:07 AM
matt@lefande.com

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