NRK also reminds me of a story we posted here in November 2003, suggesting that something sinister may have been afoot in a school right in this country:
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is investigating a Saudi college student and his American wife who recently videotaped a Jewish school in Baltimore and said they sent the footage to Saudi Arabia, according to law enforcement officials and community leaders who know about the case.The Saudi man, who came to the United States on a student visa four years ago, and his wife were seen videotaping an Orthodox school for girls, Beit Yakov, on Oct. 26 and fled after witnesses wrote down their automobile's license plate number, officials said. Law enforcement officials were contacted and later interviewed the couple, who said the video was intended for the man's parents in Saudi Arabia.
In the local shopping mall I saw middle easterners doing the same thing....I guess it is nothing to worry about but it still gives me the creeps when i think about it...why do some middle eastern guys want to video tape all the shops and entrances to a mall...I dont see anyone else doing it...it aint an exciting video to send back home.
Everyone:
"Khaled" is "Reza".
Some time after 9/11, I recall seeing on the news an Al-Quaeda training tape which involved taking a school. My blood ran cold then, and since Beslan, I've become more aware that something similar could indeed happen here in the United States. We are fooling ourselves if we think that our schools are safe from an attack of this kind.
As a teacher, with experience in both the public and the private sector, I well know that schools are not built like fortresses. In fact, many classsroom windows reach nearly to floor level to facilitate fire evacuations.
Furthermore, maintenance personnel can easily, after hours when much of the cleaning and repair work are done, stash weapons for a takeover. Most schools are extrememly lax about doing background checks on these after-hours personnel. Of course, in keeping with Consitutional rights, background checks do not search the religious affiliation of the personnel.
To complicate matters, some individual militant students who attend the schools could go off on a personal jihad. Remember the teenager who, a few years back flew the private plane into that Florida Bank of America building? He had bin Laden/Al-Quaeda reading material aboard and decided, literally and in answer to bin Laden's recoreded directive, to strike what his immature mind perceived to be a financial center.
God protect our children and teachers!
Goodness gracious. Anyone that videotapes the entrances to a shopping mall, bridge, public building, etc. today must be thoroughly questioned. Such behavior can no longer be overlooked. The "I guess it's o.k." mentality can get someone killed.
WatchfulEye's post is correct. I would further add that some students have been militarized by the Leftist philosophy of some of the teachers that have a Hate America agenda.
One recalls a little incident near Boston, in which four Arab men, who claimed to be "Turks," were going from elementary school to elementary school in Brookline, each time offering a different explanation as to why they were there. Something about wanting to "look over" the schools their children were supposed to attend. Don't know what happened, but they were, one assumes, let go.
Undoubtedly the police and the F.B.I. in this country know a good deal more about attacks that have been headed off, and for various reasons have decided to hush it up. One wonders if that is in fact the wisest policy.
When an attack is prevented, the would-be vicitms forget about it. For example, the plot to blow up the Christmas market in Strasbourg was averted. But people in France should think, should act, AS IF THE ATTACK TOOK PLACE. They should not merely react to successful attacks, but should understand that it is only by dint of complicated, expensive, sometimes lucky police work that such attacks are averted. But their attitudes, their policies, should be shaped not only by the successful attacks, but by those that did NOT succeed. Otherwise, every successful effort by the police to disrupt or prevent an attack may, paradoxically, encourage people to minimize the danger -- and not to recognize the larger problem of steady demographic conquest from within. It is the most important problem.
I remember this distinctly. There was a very small story buried in the Baltimore Globe, and little to nothing about it in the Washington Post (I never saw anything in the Post). The most coverage that the story received was in the Boston Globe. I did and still do find that deeply distressing. Of all the media failures, the printing of lies, the publication of fake photographs, fake documents, and all the other disastrous failures of American media - the **WORST** has been the utter failure of the American media to consistently cover stories that affect Local Safety.
Thus my letter to the Washington Post below on November 23, 2003.
Why should it be OUR JOB to hunt across every media source to find stories and information involving incidents impacting the safety of our local communities?
Not only such media outlets failed in providing in responsibility in providing local safety information, but also they have failed as in having any concern about the life and death of people they claim to want to "cover" in their publications. In my mind, they should be torn down.
Unless it is critical of the government or Bush, the media doesn't care about it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeffrey Imm [mailto:jeffreyimm@earthlink.net]
Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2003 5:05 PM
To: 'letters@washpost.com'
Subject: Letter to Washington Post: Why is this story unimportant to you? "FBI probing taping of Md. Jewish school"
Washington Post:
Why is the following story unimportant to you, but is something that the Boston Globe has to cover? Or are you only concerned about articles attacking the federal government?
Remember that some people actual LIVE in the Washington DC/Baltimore metro area. Articles regarding our safety should be the most important news in the Washington Post. Or do we have to read newspapers from other parts of the country to find out what is going on around here?
I find your continuing lack of coverage regarding potential terrorist threats to this region to be very lacking, especially in regards to such potential threats in Maryland.
This is exactly why so many in this country are continuing to lose trust in the media.
I have written you previously regarding your lack of coverage of a woman believed to be working with al Qaeda in Gaithersburg, MD who was wanted for questioning by the FBI. You failed to meaningfully address that story also.
Perhaps unless it is a story critical of the FBI, the Washington Post does not find it newsworthy.
Jeffrey Imm
email: jeffreyimm@earthlink.net
==============================================================
FBI probing taping of Md. Jewish school
The Boston Globe
By Bryan Bender, Globe Correspondent, 11/23/2003
WASHINGTON -- The FBI is investigating a Saudi college student and his American wife who recently videotaped a Jewish school in Baltimore and said they sent the footage to Saudi Arabia, according to law enforcement officials and community leaders who know about the case.
The Saudi man, who came to the United States on a student visa four years ago, and his wife were seen videotaping an Orthodox school for girls, Beit Yakov, on Oct. 26 and fled after witnesses wrote down their automobile's license plate number, officials said. Law enforcement officials were contacted and later interviewed the couple, who said the video was intended for the man's parents in Saudi Arabia.
The couple has not been charged, and law enforcement officials have declined to identify them.
Federal and local law enforcement officials emphasized that they have not uncovered any reason to believe the couple was casing the school.
A spokesman for the US Department of Homeland Security said no new national terrorist alerts have been issued about possible threats to Jewish institutions, considered attractive targets for anti-Semitic groups.
But recent terror attacks on Jewish synagogues in Turkey and the fact that the Baltimore couple fled have raised enough concern that FBI agents are investigating. The inquiry has been broadened to Saudi Arabia, where the FBI is trying to recover the tape, and to the woman's home state, Utah, the officials said.
"We are not aware of anything beyond this incident," said special agent Barry Maddox from the FBI field office in Baltimore. "But it is under investigation, and that will continue."
Last week, representatives from the FBI, US Attorney's Office in Baltimore, the Maryland Homeland Security Department, and local law enforcement met with Jewish community leaders in the area to update them on the investigation and urge them to report any suspicious activity or persons at their facilities. Baltimore has one of the largest concentrations of Orthodox Jews in the country.
"This has precipitated some concern that is continuing," said Arthur C. Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council. "It also precipitated the need to reassure the area religious schools that everything is being done to make sure the facilities are being secured."
Abramson said authorities reported that the man and his wife, a Muslim convert, were not initially asked for a copy of the tape by local authorities because they had no legal grounds to seize it. But he said officials at the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia are trying to help the FBI recover it as part of the investigation.
"The tape that he had used ended up not being seen by local authorities," Abramson said. "It ended up in Saudi Arabia." He added that officials said the Saudi end of the investigation has been delayed somewhat, in part because American officials there have been focused on the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks on a housing complex in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Jewish institutions around the world have stepped up security significantly in recent years. Officials said suicide attacks on Nov. 15 at two Jewish synagogues in Istanbul and two bombings at synagogues in Tunisia last year have led to additional security precautions.
There already has been an attack on an American school. The Jewish Day Care/Preschool in LA.
It is VERY likely that a major attack against an American school will take place this year to try and influence our election. We should all be aware that what Muslims did to innocent children in Russia and Israel they can easily do and want to do, here. Of course, we make it easy for them by declaring our schools to be "gun free zones" and by refusing to station armed guards in them. We also make it easy by bending over backward to let Muslims into the country.
Eneri:
I think you are referring to an attack by a nut case ex-aerospace worker who took up with either the Ideology of the Aryan brotherhood, or some American Nazi group, if my recollection serves me correctly.
This lunatic killed a U.S. post office employee that was just walking his route, minutes before his attack on these Jewish school children. No children where killed in the attack I believe.
The New York Crimes explains all (Sunday, Page 1, above the fold) spinning the attack as more "nationalistic" than "islamic."
WAKE UP!
Once again the liberal press in its misguided attempt to be PC has emerged as the bastion of obfuscation.
Today (Sunday) in the Toronto Star, columnist Richard Gwyn showed the world how little he understands the problems of Islam when he wrote ………
“Despite Russian President Vladmir Putin’s claims, there’s precious little evidence that the massacre of the schoolchildren at Belsan was masterminded by or assisted in any significant way either by Al Qaeda or by Islamic Terrorists.
There may have been a couple of “foreigners” among the hostage takers and other may have provided planning advice and technical know how. But the deed was essentially domestic. Chechen rebels were lashing back at the Russians for the harshness of their occupation”
Mr. Gwyn for the love of Christ, let me make this simple for you. The people who killed these children were not Christians, Jews, Hindi, Mormons or Druids, they were MUSLIMS.
As members of Islam, they committed atrocious acts against little children to achieve their dubious goals …….…………. hence they are I..S..L..A..M..I..C… T..E..R..R..O..R..I..S..T..S.
Were the hijackers on September 11, 2001 anything less than Islamic Terrorists because they were Saudi’s?
Anyone familiar with Islam knows the Muslim problem has nothing to do with concept of country or nation. Countries are the fiction of the infidel. No, religion is where their loyalties lie and their Allah allows any atrocity to support the dominance of their cult and the fact that an ill informed columnist that does not know the difference only furthers the reluctance of the West to act.
Mr. Gwyn your comments are nothing less than spectacularly STUPID. The fact that your opinion gets published is very sad.
Not that I expect much more from that great bastion of Western Democracy, the Toronto Star. Last week columnist Haroon Siddiqui argued that because the Islamic Terrorists were so willing to commit the atrocities of killing children, they must have legitimate complaints that effectively should be heard.
Excuse me. It is the third anniversary since the bombing of The World Trade Centre and still we are hearing this kind of crap from the Media. When will the media wake up and stop spouting this kind of crap.
We have seen the enemy and in any coat it is still ISLAM
As long as we keep avoiding the issue, that Islam has to fundamentally change, there is no hope for a resolution of the problem. As long as the western media is prepared to place each terrorist activity in its own little slot without seeing the larger picture, more of the world is going to suffer.
As far as Gwyn and Siddiqui are concerned, you guys are part of the problem. Face reality for God’s sake (not Allah’s) open you eyes and wake up to the truth.
No Islam Know Peace
Toro
Posted by: Toro at September 12, 2004 01:45 PM
There already has been an attack on an American school. The Jewish Day Care/Preschool in LA.
Posted by: eneri at September 12, 2004 12:21 PM
GOOD JOB
Makie forgets how they always say they are alone or nut cases? Remember the ISLAMIC TERRORIST WHO SHOT UP THE L.A. AIRPORT HE IS NO TERRORIST DON'T PAT ATTION TO THE FACT THAT HE WAS IN A GROUP IN EGYPT ?
Yes Eneri You are right? I remember the children being led down the street all holding hands?
BUY GUN'S
As we know that there are not enought ploice in this country and we will defend ourselfs !!!
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom and Courage to stay the course to Defeat the Islamic Terrorist and ALL who support them Open the Eyes of the World to the Threat Amen
Yesterday, receiving no coverage except from Al Jazeera, wife and three children of Iraqi Policeman were abducted - Heaven help these innocents, followers of Allah will show the helpless woman and kids no mercy! Where are the French Hostages? Two Italian women Hostages??
Believe terrible Beslan School atrocity is going to set a precedent for Islamo killers who can always justify their most evil actions by referring to what Mohammed did and what is written in Koran.
If those jehadi scum do carryout an attck in US schools, they'll be surprised that even the PC-leftist media will be unable to spin, defend and justify them anymore. You won't have leaders and newsmen the world over calling for restraint, diallogue and peace.... The loony left better shut up else they'll be quite simply lynched (in the metaphoric sense)
The jihadis invite their own doom by attempting any such foolish suicidal mission. Let it be known to all those jihadis who're following and analysing western media coverage of their activities.
"The loony left better shut up else they'll be quite simply lynched (in the metaphoric sense)"
Must it only be in the "metaphoric sense".
I sense Kj will be racing to defend his fifth column socialist vermin brethern.
ATTENTION: Will the real America please take one step forward; Thank You.
Now that we are clear on this I would like to know how some one like (no offence) UBL R US could post a message stating" I saw some middle easterners taping a mall...........!
Did you pounce on them immediatley or will you wait till your trapped in the debris of any fallen structure? Could you not walk up on them writing down the license number asking what are you doing? Please do not count on Big Brother for this because hands are tied behind the back and kicking or headbutting is off limits.
We must stay vigilant to the cause and effects going on around us at all times. Do not be afraid to approach and ask questions.
Does any one remember how to initiate a citizens arrest?
Would you rather be carried by six or judged by twelve?