Olbermann: Bush, Cheney Should Resign

Riveting commentary. It is approximately 10 minutes long, and it is essential to watch.

Google Health Advertising Blog Makes Me “Sicko”

First and formest, everyone needs to watch “Sicko”, Michael Moore’s moving documentary about the health care crisis in the United States. The documentary makes a compelling arguments about the need to revolutionize the dysfunctional health care system.

Last Friday, on the opening night of the movie, Lauren Turner, a health account planner at Google wrote a disgusting post, criticizing “Sicko”, and worse, calling on health care companies to offset the negative press generated from the movie by advertising with Google.

The post caused uproar among bloggers, and Turner was forced to backtrack with another post on Sunday, by distinguishing between her personal opinion and that of Google’s. By then, however, the damage had been done to Google’s self-proclaimed “do no evil” image, forcing Google to post on their primary official blog apologizing for Turner’s post.

If Google was sincere in vehemently disagreeing with Turner’s ultra-insensitive post, the correct course of action should have included deleting the original post and terminating her position at Google.

For more:

• Buy tickets to see “Sicko”

FBI Whistleblower Describes Government Muscle Tactics

Frome Wired Blogs:

A whistleblower who lost her job and was gagged by the Bush administration after revealing careerism, corruption and widespread incompetence at the FBI detailed her difficult search for justice to an audience on Monday at the American Library Association’s annual conference. Sibel Edmonds, hired by the FBI as a translator shortly after 9/11, was fired in 2002 after reporting a range of problems at the bureau, including:

• slothful, unqualified employees
• family members of diplomats suspected of spying who translated the wiretaps of their relatives
• ignored or overlooked intelligence warning of Al-Qaeda’s plans to hijack planes and attack major cities
• evidence of a Turkish bribery ring that, according to some accounts, was connected to then-Speaker of the House Denny Hastert (R-Illinois)

Read more:

• Wired Blogs: FBI Whistleblower Describes Government Muscle Tactics

Alleged Egyptian ‘Mossad Spy’ Found Dead in London

From Al Jazeera English:

An Egyptian billionaire who allegedly spied for Israel in the 1970s has been found dead outside his home in London.

Ashraf Marwan, the son-in-law of Gamal Abdel Nasser, a former Egyptian president, “lost his balance” while standing on his balcony on Wednesday and fell to his death, Egyptian state media said.

British police said only that they were looking into the death of an Egyptian man in central London, and it was being treated as “unexplained” but not suspicious...

Yom Kippur ‘tip-off’

Gad Shimron, a former Mossad officer turned historian, said Marwan had warned Israel hours before the Egyptian attack in 1973.

“We know now, from testimony given by Israeli spymasters and made public years after the Yom Kippur War, that Marwan was the man who tipped off the Mossad,” he said.

According to The Times, a UK newspaper, Marwan offered his services to Israel in 1969, going on to provide information on Egypt and the Arab world.

He worked as a senior information official for both Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat, Abdel Nasser’s successor as president.

Read more:

• Al Jazeera English: Egyptian ‘Mossad Spy’ dies in UK

Bravo to the 2.38%

These “elections” are an utter joke. Can’t they at least choreograph it a little better to make it seem less obvious that it’s staged? You know, throw in a couple of extra “candidates” from other “parties” with other “platforms”. That way the Syrian information minister will seem a little more credible when he says hails “the political maturity of Syria and the brilliance of our democracy and multi-party system”.

And who are these 2.38% that didn’t vote for Al-Assad? They have to be some of the bravest people on the planet.

An excerpt from an Al-Jazeera article:

The Syrian president has won 97.62 per cent of the vote in a referendum that handed him a second term in office, officials say.

But the US denounced the poll, in which Bashar al-Assad was the only candidate, for offering no real choice to the electorate.

Al-Assad, 41, was the only person allowed to put his name forward in the run-up to Sunday’s plebiscite, which was boycotted by the opposition and widely regarded as a formality.

Bassam Abdel Majeed, the information minister, declared the results at a news conference.

‘This great consensus shows the political maturity of Syria and the brilliance of our democracy and multi-party system,’ he said.

Read more:

• US criticises al-Assad election win

Salon.com: Wolfowitz’s Tomb

وَمَكَرُواْ وَمَكَرَ اللّهُ وَاللّهُ خَيْرُ الْمَاكِرِينَ

Wa makarū wa makara Allāh. Wa Allāhu khayru l-makirīn.

They plotted and planned. And God plotted and planned.
And God is the Best of Planners.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat Āli ‘Imrān, Āyah 54)

Here is an except from an excellent Salon.com article about Paul Wolfowitz’s decline from the architect of “shock and awe” to the his recent forced resignation from the World Bank.

A lead architect of the Iraq war, he believed shock and awe would transform the Middle East. But his policies failed -- along with his tenure at the World Bank.

Paul Wolfowitz’s doctrines are a summa of numerous failed political dogmas of the 20th century. His notion of politics was essentially Bolshevik, but less democratic in practice than Lenin’s. Wolfowitz had no concept of mass politics. Nor did he have an idea of democratic centralism, the core of Leninism, by which the vanguard led the cells of the party. Wolfowitz believed only in the vanguard...

The squalid ending of Wolfowitz’s glittering career, bickering over lies about payments to his girlfriend, submerged his grandiosity. Wheedling with the World Bank board, he appeared as a shadow of his former self, the intellectual field marshal pulverizing the opposition with the artillery of his arguments, reduced to using a Washington lawyer to make fine points.

Read more:

• Salon.com: Wolfowitz’s tomb

The Independent: Exclusive: Secret U.S. Plot to Kill Al-Sadr

British newspaper The Independent reports how the U.S. army attempted to assassinate Muqtadā al-Sadr in an act of desperate deceit.

The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying.

Read more:

• The Independent: Exclusive: Secret US plot to kill Al-Sadr

Keith Olbermann: Democrats Betray the Voters’ Mandate

Olbermann hits hard again, this time about the weak leadership that Democrats displayed by agreeing to Bush’s demands for an Iraq war budget without a timetable for withdrawal.

This is the best quote from his Special Comment:

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

Time: Was Gonzales’ Emergency Visit Illegal?

It appears that Alberto Gonzales may have committed a serious federal crime when he was the White House counsel. Here is an excerpt from a Time article:

When then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales went to John Ashcroft’s hospital room on the evening of March 10, 2004 to ask the ailing Attorney General to override Justice Department officials and reauthorize a secret domestic wiretapping program, he was acting inappropriately, Ashcroft’s deputy at the time, James Comey, testified before Congress earlier this week. But the question some lawyers, national security experts and Congressional investigators are now asking is: Was Gonzales in fact acting illegally?

In dramatic testimony Tuesday, Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that he raced to the intensive care unit of George Washington University Hospital that evening to intercept Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card and prevent them from convincing Ashcroft to reauthorize the program after Justice Department lawyers had concluded that it was illegal. Comey, who during Ashcroft’s stay in the hospital was acting Attorney General, has told Congressional investigators that when he arrived at the room and began explaining to Ashcroft why he was there, he was intentionally “very circumspect” so as not to disclose classified information in an unsecure setting and in front of Ashcroft’s wife, Janet, who was at his bedside and was apparently not authorized to know about the program.

Comey described what happened next: “The door opened and in walked Mr. Gonzales, carrying an envelope, and Mr. Card. They came over and stood by the bed. They greeted the Attorney General very briefly. And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there — to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was — which I will not do.” Ashcroft bluntly rebuffed Gonzales, but Comey’s unwillingness publicly to say what Gonzales said in the hospital room has raised questions about whether Gonzales may have violated executive branch rules regarding the handling of highly classified information, and possibly the law preventing intentional disclosure of national secrets.

“Executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace,” says Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal, who was National Security Advisor to the Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton. “The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power,” Katyal says. This particular information could have been highly sensitive. Says one government official familiar with the Terrorist Surveillance Program: “Since it’s that program, it may involve cryptographic information,” some of the most highly protected information in the intelligence community.

Read more:

• Time: Was Gonzales’ Emergency Visit Illegal?

Carter: Bush is “Worst President Ever”, Blair is “Abominable, Loyal, Blind, Apparently Subservient”

An excerpt from New York Times article:

Former President Jimmy Carter criticized George W. Bush’s presidency in interviews released Saturday as “the worst in history” in international relations and faulted Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain for his loyal relationship with Mr. Bush.

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Mr. Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said in a telephone interview with The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette from the Carter Center in Atlanta.

“The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me,” Mr. Carter told the newspaper.

In an interview on BBC radio, he criticized Mr. Blair for his close relations with the president, particularly concerning the Iraq war.

“Abominable,” he said when asked how he would characterize Mr. Blair’s relationship with Mr. Bush. “Loyal, blind, apparently subservient.”

Mr. Carter, who was president from 1977 to 1981 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his charitable work, was an outspoken opponent of the invasion of Iraq before it was begun in 2003.

“I think that the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world,” he said.

In the newspaper interview, Mr. Carter said Mr. Bush has taken a “radical departure from all previous administration policies” with the Iraq war.

“We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered,” he said.

Read more:

• Al Jazeera English: Carter: Bush ‘worst president ever’
• New York Times: Carter Criticizes Bush and Blair on War in Iraq

Palestinian Christian: Why Israel is after me

Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian Christian who was a member of the Knesset until last month wrote this op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

A few excerpts from the op-ed:

More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews. The Law of Return, for example, grants automatic citizenship to Jews from anywhere in the world. Yet Palestinian refugees are denied the right to return to the country they were forced to leave in 1948. The Basic Law of Human Dignity and Liberty — Israel’s “Bill of Rights” — defines the state as “Jewish” rather than a state for all its citizens. Thus Israel is more for Jews living in Los Angeles or Paris than it is for native Palestinians.

Israel acknowledges itself to be a state of one particular religious group. Anyone committed to democracy will readily admit that equal citizenship cannot exist under such conditions.
...

I have certainly ruffled feathers in Israel. In addition to speaking out on the subjects above, I have also asserted the right of the Lebanese people, and of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, to resist Israel’s illegal military occupation. I do not see those who fight for freedom as my enemies.
...

Why then does the U.S. government continue to fully support a country whose very identity and institutions are based on ethnic and religious discrimination that victimize its own citizens?

Read the full op-ed piece:

• Los Angeles Times Why Israel is after me

Tell Us the Mission

A strong spoken word critique of Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” blunder from tellusthemission.org:



Visit:

• Tell Us the Mission

Student Protesters Upset Attorney General’s Harvard Reunion

Student protesters wearing hoods and Guantanamo Bay garb found their way into the US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ 25th Harvard Law School reunion Saturday.

A release sent by the group to RAW STORY claims Gonzales was “forced to leave through a back door.”

Gonzales apparently arrived unannounced. Students met him and his fellow classmates outside the law library where the class of 1982 had posed for a photo.

As the photographer said cheese, the group said students yelled that “torture,” “resign” or “I don’t recall” might be more appropriate.

The Justice Department could not immediately be reached for comment.

“When I heard he was on campus, I was stuffing envelopes with letters to Congress in an office two floors above,” said Deborah Popowski, a second-year law student, according to the release. “I dropped everything. Gonzales needs to know that after approving poorly-reasoned memos that distort the rule of law and justify torture, he is simply not welcome here.”

According to the group, Popowski slipped though the law library’s front doors and approached Gonzales from behind as the Attorney General’s security detail kept protesters at bay.

“On behalf of many other Harvard Law students,” she said, “I’d like to tell you that we are ashamed to have you as an alumnus of this school. And we’re glad you’re here to be able to tell you that.”

Gonzales thanked the student and offered to shake her hand, but was refused.

Following the photo, Gonzales was said to have entered the library, traveled to the reading room, then ducked out through a basement emergency exit and into a waiting SUV.




Photos by Nate Ela, one of the protest organizers.

Source:

• The Raw Story: Student Protesters Upset Attorney General’s Harvard Reunion

Washington Post: 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

Even though 82 inmates have been cleared by military review panels to leave Guanatanmo Bay, U.S. officials could take months or even years to free them from captivity.

An excerpt from a Washington Post article:

More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers.

Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.

Read more:

• The Washington Post: 82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo

Gravel Rocks the Boat at Democratic Debate

Former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska rocked the boat at the Democratic presidential debate, even attacking other candidates for their stances on Iraq, Iran, the use of nuclear weapons, pre-emptive strikes, and hostile foreign policy.

Entertaining and definitely worth the watch:


This clip is 6:43 long.

New York Times: The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest Wars

The New York Times published this article about child soldiers being used very effectively in wars in Africa.

An excerpt from the article:

IN the early 1980s, in the lowlands of Mozambique, a new technology of warfare emerged that would sweep across Africa and soon the rest of the world: the child soldier.

Rebel commanders had constructed a four-foot tall killing machine that cut its way through village after village and nearly overran the government. Its trail was smoking huts and sawed off ears.

The Mozambicans learned that children were the perfect weapon: easily manipulated, intensely loyal, fearless and, most important, in endless supply.

Today, human rights groups say, there are 300,000 child soldiers worldwide. And experts say the problem is deepening as the nature of conflict itself changes — especially in Africa.

Read more:

• The New York Times: The Perfect Weapon for the Meanest Wars

Washington Post: Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed

The Washington Post reported today how the U.S. government failed to collect most of the $854 million in aid offered in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster. This only further underlines the clear double-standard in how the government responded to the victims of the 9/11 attacks versus those of Katrina.

An excerpt from the article:

...the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

In addition, valuable supplies and services -- such as cellphone systems, medicine and cruise ships -- were delayed or declined because the government could not handle them. In some cases, supplies were wasted.

Read the rest of the article:

• Washington Post: Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed

Laila Al-Arian: My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat

Laila Al-Arian wrote this heart-wrenching post on The Huffington Post on Monday about civil rights abuses suffered by her father Sami Al-Arian at the hands of prison guards. While the length of the post may be formidable, it is a very important read.


My Father, 9/11 Scapegoat
by Laila Al-Arian

“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. I am not going to put off Dr. Al- Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”

-- federal prosecutor Gordon Kromberg

“The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive.”

-- Amnesty International

My father, a Palestinian professor named Sami Al-Arian, was arrested over four years ago on trumped up terrorism charges and submitted to a prosecution over the course of six months that bordered on the farcical. Though he was ultimately acquitted by a jury of the most serious charges against him, the Bush administration has prolonged his imprisonment indefinitely. My father now languishes in a Virginia jail, another victim of the demagogic politics of the so-called war on terror.

Many have wondered why my father would be targeted so vigorously, especially after the government lost a case that cost $50 million. But as with its firing of the eight federal prosecutors who “chafed” against its radical agenda, the administration of President George W. Bush has injected its politics into the system, prolonging my father’s imprisonment to punish him for the humiliation his acquittal caused them.

Last month, my father completed a 60-day hunger strike to protest his continued imprisonment that left him in such a weakened state he was confined to a wheelchair. Soon after receiving medical treatment, he was transferred to a Federal Correctional Institute in Petersburg, Virginia. Upon my father’s arrival, a prison guard remarked while strip-searching him: “Where are you from? Afghanistan?” Though my father refused to answer the demeaning question, the guard repeated it several times. He went on:

“It doesn’t matter where you’re from. If I had my way, you wouldn’t be in prison. I’d put a bullet in your head and get it done with. You’re nothing but a piece of s***.”

This is not the first time this guard harassed my father. In January, he told him: “You’re a terrorist. I can tell by your name.”

This time there was a witness to the abuse, though he wasn’t exactly a friendly one. Upon hearing his underling’s outburst, the lieutenant in charge took my father aside and shackled his arms and legs. The shackles were so tight my father lost sensation in his extremities for the duration of the four-hour trip to his final destination, a detention center in Alexandria. On the way, the lieutenant joined in the abuse, unleashing a stream of obscenities at my father and repeatedly telling him to “Shut the f*** up.” When they arrived, the lieutenant violently shoved my father against a wall.

The human rights group Amnesty International has condemned the government’s treatment of my father. “The conditions under which Dr. Al-Arian has been detained both during his pre-trial detention, and since his sentencing,” Amnesty wrote in a February letter to the Attorney General, “appear to be unacceptably harsh and punitive.”

My father immigrated to the United States in 1975 and eventually earned tenure as a computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida. As the son of Palestinians forcibly removed from their land after the creation of Israel in 1948, he considered it his obligation to bring attention to the plight of the Palestinian people from his position of influence in the United States. He held conferences and published literature to tell the story of Palestinians living under occupation.

His activism earned the ire of some of the most reactionary figures of the right, from self-declared “terror experts” like Steven Emerson to Bill O’Reilly, whose expertise on Middle Eastern affairs apparently does not extend to the falafel.

(See here, here and here to learn about Emerson’s long history of hysterical, discredited claims.)

As the shrill cries for my father’s prosecution intensified after 9/11, the Bush administration arrested him. According to an anonymous FBI source, Attorney General John Ashcroft personally ordered the indictment against my father, a mandate that puzzled the many career professionals assigned to the case. The political nature of the charges was apparent from the beginning. A jury empaneled by the federal government would reach the same conclusion three years later, concluding that the Bush administration’s case was not much of a case at all.

But first my father would suffer under extremely restrictive, inhumane conditions clearly meant to psychologically break him before trial, including being placed in solitary confinement for 27 months. At one point, he was denied phone calls for six months, and while convicted felons were allowed to hug their families, my father, a pre-trial detainee, had to visit us behind glass. Even then, he was strip-searched before and after our visits. The cards were stacked against us.

When my father’s trial finally began in June 2005, the government presented 71 witnesses, including nearly two dozen from Israel, paraded before the jury for sheer emotional effect. Four hundred phone calls out of half a million the government recorded during a decade of relentless, indiscriminate surveillance of my family were also presented. The prosecutors acted out the phone calls on the 13th floor of a courtroom in downtown Tampa, giving new meaning to the phrase political theater.

The government’s evidence against my father largely consisted of speeches he gave, magazines he edited, lectures he presented, articles he wrote, books he owned (4 out of 5,000), conferences he organized, rallies he attended, and news he heard. In one particularly bizarre instance, the prosecutors presented as evidence a conversation a co-defendant had with my father in a dream.

Some of my father’s detractors say that his criticism of Israel was overly strident. Often they deliberately de-contextualize his remarks, made nearly two decades ago, to undermine the credibility of the Palestinian narrative they have long sought to suppress. But whatever you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you hopefully agree that the criminalization of political speech is un-American and violates the letter and spirit of the Constitution.

Because the government based its case on my father’s expressed political views, our lawyers rested without presenting a single witness. Our defense was the First Amendment.

On Dec. 6, 2005, my father was acquitted of 8 of the 17 charges against him, though the jury voted 10 to 2 for full acquittal. Those holding out for conviction were the only two who listed themselves as readers of the Tampa Tribune, a paper which had slandered him for over a decade. Two of my father’s three co-defendants were fully acquitted; the jury did not return a single guilty verdict in over 100 charges. The verdict was a testament to the hollow nature of government’s case--an especially strong statement in the midst of post 9/11 hysteria.

Following the trial, the government had the option of dropping the charges against my father, but chose not to, once again revealing the political nature of his case. At the same time, they decided to casually drop tax-evasion charges against the founder of Hooters whose jury split evenly on his conviction.

Facing the prospect of a new trial that would drain my family emotionally and financially, my father decided to plead guilty to one charge of nonviolently supporting a designated terrorist group. In return, the government signed a plea agreement promising to drop the remaining charges, recommend the minimum sentence (which would have basically amounted to time-served) and allow my father to walk free on the condition that he leave the country. Disregarding the prosecutors’ recommendation and dismissing the jury’s verdict, the judge in the case gave my father the maximum sentence, which pushed his release date to this month.

Sadly, our story does not end there. An overzealous federal prosecutor with a documented record of bigoted remarks against Muslims, Gordon Kromberg, is trying to force my father to testify before a grand jury in Virginia in direct violation of his plea agreement. This is a ploy to bring further charges against my father and prolong his imprisonment -and our suffering--as much as possible. Kromberg himself bitterly referred to the plea agreement as a “bonanza” for my father.

Shortly before the Muslim observance of Ramadan began last October, Kromberg revealed an ulterior political motive behind his prosecution. When my father’s attorney requested to delay a prison transfer during the holy month, a time he would have liked to spend with visits from his family, Kromberg responded:

“If they can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. I am not going to put off Dr. Al-Arian’s grand jury appearance just to assist in what is becoming the Islamization of America.”

Kromberg’s racist outburst clearly calls his objectivity into question. Another reason my father has been reluctant to testify before a grand jury is because we fear Kromberg is setting up a perjury trap. The prosecutor did just that with another Muslim defendant in Virginia, who was acquitted by a federal judge. Following his acquittal, Kromberg summoned him to testify before a grand jury and charged him with making false statements when he didn’t like his answers. The man, Sabri Benkhala, is now facing 25 years in prison.

My father has endured a decade of surveillance and government harassment, a draining six month trial, and the demonization of his entire family by self-serving right-wing demagogues, all the while hoping his nightmare would end. It should have when he was acquitted by a jury and the government promised his freedom. Surely, the fulfillment of that promise is not too much to ask.

(To learn more about Sami Al-Arian or to join the campaign for his freedom, visit freesamialarian.com)

The Butcher of Chechnya Is Dead

Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin died today from heart failure at the age of 76. He will certainly not be missed by the people of Chechnya. In 1994, he launched a brutal invasion of Chechnya. Two years later, when the dust had settled, 80,000 to 100,000 Chechen civilians were killed, and 500,000 more were forced to become refugees.

No matter how much power, resources and wealth a ruler may have, as Allāh says in three places in the Qur’ān:

كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَائِقَةُ الْمَوْتِ

Kullu nafsin dhā’iqatu l-mawt.
Every soul shall taste death.

(Qur’ān, Sūrat Āli ‘Imrān, Āyah 185,
Sūrat al-Anbiyā’, Āyah 35,
and Sūrat al-‘Ankabūt, Āyah 57)

Read more:

• Wikipedia: First Chechen War

Last Act of Muslim Victim of Virginia Tech Massacre: Saving a Fellow Student’s Life

Waleed Shaalan, a 32-year-old member of the Blacksburg Muslim community, was among the 33 victims of the Virginia Tech massacre. He left behind Amira, his wife of 3 years, and Khaled, his one-year old son.

A fellow student who was in the room when Shaalan was killed credits him with saving his life.

An excerpt from an Associated Press article:

Randy Dymond, a civil engineering professor, said Shaalan was credited with distracting gunman Cho Seung-Hui to save the life of a fellow student.

Dymond, who attended a service for Shaalan Thursday, said the Egyptian was in the first classroom Cho attacked and was badly wounded. Cho returned to the room twice to search for signs of life.

During one of those incidents, a second student who was uninjured, was playing dead. When Shaalan noticed Cho making a move to shoot the student, the Egyptian made a “protective movement to basically decoy the killer into thinking it was him making any kind of sound instead of the survivor,” Dymond said.

Dymond declined to give the name of the student who survived, but said the student wanted him to tell the story “so that the family of Waleed understands the sacrifice.”

Shaalan’s mother broke down when she heard Dymond’s account.

“He was trying to save someone else?” she said repeatedly.

Dymond said Shaalan’s body was taken to a Blacksburg mosque Thursday afternoon so classmates, teachers and friends could say goodbye before it was sent to Egypt for burial.

Please click here to donate to the fund for Waleed’s family.

Read more:

• Associated Press: Egyptian student killed at Virginia Tech leaves behind wife and 1-year-old son