The New York Times headline says they were recruiting for jihad. How's that again? Recruiting for a benign struggle for self-improvement? What will the friends of the Times in the U.S. government say when they see the Gray Lady eschewing their new guidelines and speaking of jihad as if it had something to do with violence?
"France Convicts 7 of Jihad Recruiting," by Katrin Bennhold for the New York Times, May 15 (thanks to Davida):
PARIS — A Paris court sentenced seven men to prison terms of up to seven years on Wednesday for helping to send French youths to fight alongside insurgents in Iraq, ending a four-year investigation into a jihadist recruitment ring.The men — five French, one Algerian and one Moroccan — were tried on charges including criminal association with intent to commit terrorism.
Jean-Julien Xavier-Rolai, the prosecutor, had accused the group of sending about a dozen young Frenchmen to join Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who was killed in an American airstrike in 2006, after funneling them through radical religious establishments in Syria and Egypt.
At a six-day trial in March, most of the men testified that they had either been to Iraq after the 2003 American-led invasion or had planned to go, but they denied having been part of a network that recruited insurgents.
The group’s leader, Farid Benyettou, 27, was given a six-year-sentence. Mr. Benyettou, a former janitor and self-taught preacher, was accused of recruiting fighters from Paris mosques and justifying suicide bombings in private sermons given in his family apartment.
Boubakeur al-Hakim, 24, who had fought in Iraq and was accused of running a way station in Syria for French youths headed for Iraq, was sentenced to seven years. So was Said Abdellah, 39, a Moroccan citizen.
Nacer Eddine Mettai, a 39-year old Algerian national, was ordered jailed for four years for forging passports. Three others — one who fought in Iraq and two who had been planning to — were given lighter sentences....
The seven men, including three young French Muslims who died fighting against American forces in Iraq, were members of what has become known as the “19th Arrondissement cell,” named after the working-class, heavily immigrant Paris neighborhood where most of them lived. The cell had been under surveillance for at least a year before the seven men were arrested in early 2005....
Could the Times have possibly understood that their deep drops in circulation and revenue are the results of their shoddy and slanted reporting? Could the Times editors have decided to become more honest and neutral on the news pages?
Nah!
OT: LOOK WHO IS HELPING BARACK
Robert, not sure if this got posted yet anywhere on your sites:
http://www.townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=fbb066d0-707d-4d9f-a589-90121409d900&t=c
Palestinians Phonebank for Obama
Amanda Carpenter
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
A television news segment produced by Al-Jazeera shows Palestinians in Gaza engaging in phone banking activities for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
The segment explains how young Palestinians have banded together to call American voters at random asking them to vote for Obama.
“It all started at the time of the US primaries,” says one of pro-Obama Palestinian organizers. “After studying Obama’s electro campaign manifesto I thought this is a man that’s capable of change inside of America. As for potential change in the Middle East, he can also do that if he can bring peace to the area. At least this is what we hope.”
Townhall was tipped off to the video by American Spectator’s Phillip Klein, who wrote Tuesday “It’s been around, but I'm just now seeing this Al Jazeera report of Palestinians in Gaza phonebanking for Obama. I hear that Hamas, which has endorsed Obama, has a bit of influence in those parts.”
Ahmed Yousef, a political adviser of the anti-Israel terrorist group Hamas said Hamas supports Obama last Sunday.
“We don’t mind–actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance,” Yousef said in an interview on WABC radio.
In recent days, Obama's position on the Isreali-Palestinian conflict has been scrutinized. One of his Middle East advisers, Robert Malley, resigned over the weekend after reporters found Malley had met with Hamas.
Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.
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Just gets you all tingly to vote for Obama, doesn't it?
Just gets you all tingly to vote for Obama, doesn't it?
Posted by: Paleologos at May 14, 2008 6:44 PM
No. I wouldn't vote for the Mohammedan if you gave me a million bucks.
I mean it.
darcy,
Although the Republicans are doing their best to become a permanent minority party, I am starting to hope and pray the Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory for the upcoming presidential election. Obama may turn out to be my "perfect" candidate ... outs the dreaded Hillary, and then gets pummeled in the main election.
Sorry for the OT:
Sheila Musaji from The American Muslim is ecstatic about the dhimwits in the US government who have imposed a ban on words like Islamic terrorism or jihad.
“Thank God Someone Is Finally Listening to Us - Terrorism Is Not Jihad”.
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/thank_god_someone_is_listening_to_us_terrorism_is_not_jihad/0016153
Paleologos, hopefully that will happen. Many Dems have already said that if H is not the nominee, they will NOT vote for O, or else vote for McCain.
shiek - I can't read that article right now. We've just had dinner, and I might throw up.
Later.
At first I thought it was good that France is cracking down on Jihadists. But...
This shows the uselessness of treating the jihadist war with the courts systems. It makes no sense to let them out in 7 years to go right back to making war on us. Worse yet they'll probably be let out sooner for good behavior. Meanwhile they'll no doubt be trying to make jailhouse converts.
These are prisoners of war. They should be confined in a P.O.W. camp for the duration, or a life sentence in other words. Unless of course the war is called off, which is never going to happen.
Seven years is a joke. It's nothing to these people.
Bush's policies have hurt the party by his inability to accurately associate the Mideast's troubles with flawed religious dogma, rather than flawed political practices. He has incorrectly identified the lack of democracy as a cause of the Islamic world's problems, rather than that lack being the result of problems intrinsic to Islam.
There have been negative consequences. Merely pushing for democratic infrastructure has enabled Islamists to exploit their popularity, as in Gaza and Lebanon; it has done little for Iraqi stability; Afghanistan is regressing. Bush has helped make it politically correct to approve of Islamists if they gain power through an election. Finally, his unwillingness to be clear or frank about the issue has failed to adequately educate the public.
In 1968 LBJ and the Democrats had the millstone around their necks called Vietnam. Although Johnson gave up running for re-election, the Democrats lost the White House anyway. History does have this nasty habit of repeating itself. However, there is one great difference between the Republicans of 1968 and the Democrats of 2008. The Democrats do not have a Nixon.
From the article in Le Monde, those convicted are:
Farid Benyettou
Boubakeur al Hakim
Cherif Kouachi
Mohammed El Ayouni
Thamer Bouchnak
Said Abdellah
Nacer Eddine Mettai
Abdellah is Moroccan and Mettai Algerian. Can anyone spot a recognisable French name amongst the other five? They may have had French passports but they were no more French than Abdellah or Mettai.
Just gets you all tingly to vote for Obama, doesn't it?--- Posted by: Paleologos
No. I wouldn't vote for the Mohammedan if you gave me a million bucks.
I mean it. --- Posted by: darcy
Exactly.
"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" -- Matthew 16:26
Darcy,
Yep. I'm in West (by G*d) Virginia, and know several Democrats who'll be voting for McCain come fall...our media keeps focusing on our aging poor population (we export our college graduates) as if poor whites were the demographic heading...no--it's conservative Democrats that should be the heading!
Democrats have been in firm control of this state for eighty years...with no signs of letting up (our Republican population is puny): But let me tell you, if the states get the right to overturn Roe v Wade--this state will be one of the first. There are plenty of wacko wacko liberals here of course--but there are many more Zell Miller types. We're a state chock full of conservative Democrats...many of whom used to be called Reagan Democrats--that's our significance politically speaking come Presidential election time.